according to dependency theory, it could not. He argues against assuming
a priorithat an independent local capitalist class cannot develop, and in
favour of analysing the factors that stimulate or inhibit its development.
Among the former are the scope for rural capitalism, the significance of the
informal sector, and global capitalism. Among the latter are ethnic conflict,
state administrative capacity and parasitic political leadership (Leys, 1996,
chs 7 and 8).
Dependency theory’s revolutionary socialist solution to the problem of
dependence does not carry conviction in the absence of a structural analysis
that demonstrates there are classes or movements on which a revolution
could be based. There is very little analysis of oppression, exploitation or
class-based organizations. The failure to explain underdevelopment by ref-
erence to the interplay of political, social and economic forces exposes
dependency theory to the charge that it is ahistorical (Leys, 1977, pp. 98–9).
The weakness of the class analysis springs in part from a conflation of spa-
tial entities and social classes. Relations between classes, such as landlords and
peasants, are presented as comparable to relations between geographical tiers
in the metropolitan satellite hierarchy. Relations of exploitation among classes
are identified with transfers of value between spatial regions. The implication
is that an exploiting class at one stage in the centre–periphery hierarchy is
exploited by the class at the next higher stage. Such an assumption provides no
basis for an analysis of the political behaviour of different socio-economic
groups (Roxborough, 1976, pp. 121–6). Brewer also attacks the equation of a
geographical hierarchy with a hierarchy of exploitation as superficial when
‘the real relation of exploitation is a direct wage relations between the workers
and the corporation as a unit of capital’ (Brewer, 1980, p. 173).
Dependency theory leaves much work still to be done on the problem of
societies that are supposedly capitalist finding it so difficult to sustain the insti-
tutions and forms of state that we associate with the development of capitalism.
However, the concept of ‘disarticulation’ takes us a bit further than saying that
if the propertied classes do not like what is happening under parliamentary
government they do not hesitate to support military intervention; or that there
is a contradiction between the material inequalities of capitalism and the polit-
ical equality of democracy. That contradiction is an inadequate explanation in
many Third World countries where there is no fully developed working class.
Levels of generality
Dependency theory operates at too high a level of generality and conceptual
imprecision for it to be refutable at the macro-level or applicable at the
104 Understanding Third World Politics