economic institutions, the demands of the South were considered
utopian and too costly. Yet more fundamentally, the objectives of the
developing countries were deemed incompatible with the workings of
a market economy.
In the 1950s, neoclassical economists, earnestly involved in the
political debate, defined development as a universal process directed
toward industrialization and growth. The “underdeveloped” coun-
tries, later rechristened “developing,” were defined in opposition to
the “developed” countries. Although the connotations of “developing”
seemed less pejorative than those attached to the notion of “under-
developed,” both adjectives ultimately expressed the same thought:
poor nations simply lagged behind rich ones, and these showed the
way ahead.^69 Formalized through the theory of modernization, this
analysis couched the primary challenge of development in terms of
progress from a traditional, rural economy to a modern, industrial
economy characterized by technological development and high
productivity.
InThe Stages of Economic Growth– the cult text of modernization
theory – Walt W. Rostow condensed the evolution of all societies
under five headings: traditional society, preconditions for take-off,
take-off, drive to maturity, and the age of high mass-consumption.^70
Inspired by the historical trajectory of the advanced capitalist coun-
tries, this interpretation identified modernization with Westernization
and replicated in a pro-capitalist way the path to modernity envisioned
by Marxism. Rostow’s book was indeed subtitledA Non-Communist
Manifesto. The author explicitly acknowledged the ideological nature
of his work and presented it as “an alternative to Karl Marx’s theory
of modern history,” in which “net human behaviour is seen not as an
act of maximization, but as an act of balancing alternative and often
conflicting human objectives.”^71 According to modernization theory,
the best strategy for promoting growth in poor countries was to open
borders and integrate the world market. To use a terminology in
vogue at the time, export promotion offered more economic potential
than import substitution. In the field of finance, Third World countries
(^69) Gilbert Rist,The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global
Faith, London, Zed Books, 1997, p. 74.
(^70) Walt W. Rostow,The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist
Manifesto, third edition, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
(^71) Ibid., pp. 2 and 149.
130 Left and Right in Global Politics