across class lines, further reducing political consciousness (Wolfe, 1968).
Political action also risks severe repression by the state.
The potential for political organization and communication on the part of
the poor is further reduced by low levels of literacy and education, extreme
parochialism, and respect for traditional authority, religion and custom.
Access to the mass media is limited. It is also difficult to organize and
unionize when there are substantial reserve armies of labour available to
much better organized employers. Women may feel reluctant to join male-
dominated organizations such as trade unions. Another factor inhibiting
political organization, whether of workers or peasants, is that leadership
needs to be drawn from people with education and experience outside the
countryside and from the intelligentsia (Migdal, 1974, pp. 223, 232; Shanin,
1982, p. 311). In parts of Latin America the Roman Catholic clergy have
provided badly needed leadership, organization and consciousness-raising.
Finally the poor experience cultural subordination, sometimes originat-
ing in colonial racialism. Domination is exercised through ideological
devices which confer subordinate status on exploited groups such as
indigenous Latin Americans, untouchables and tribals in India, and women
in most countries. An important task of such ideology is to instil the belief
that subordination is natural and irreversible.
The rate of growth
An alternative hypothesis is that the rateof economic growth is crucial to
political stability. The more rapid the rate of development, the more difficult
it is to maintain stability (Huntington, 1968). Rapid economic growth
produces social groups that find themselves left behind in the progress being
made. Their skills, occupations and economic activities become less impor-
tant than they were. When a society is modernizing and transforming its econ-
omy from subsistence or small-scale production via industrialization or the
commercialization of agriculture, and introducing new technology, formerly
important groups find themselves excluded from the new economic opportu-
nities. For example, peasant proprietors may be turned into a rural proletariat.
Discontent arises from a loss of status and autonomy. Economic development
produces opportunities for social mobility by releasing the bonds that
positioned people in a social order. New economic roles create new opportu-
nities for economic independence for individuals who in a traditional society
would not expect to enjoy them. The unity and bonds of family, kin group and
village community are undermined by these new roles and values.
226 Understanding Third World Politics