Elimination of Dependency by Warren

In the previous articles we have discussed development researchers whose prime aim has been to adjust, elaborate or supplement the classical dependency theories. Other researchers within the Neo-Marxist tradition, however, have rejected the whole body of dependency theories and attempted to replace them with totally different approaches. This applies to, among others, the American social scientist Bill Warren.

Warren’s main point was; certainly imperialism has led to the creation of a system characterised by inequality and exploitation, but at the same time this imperialism has created the conditions for the spreading of capitalism to the Third World. And not only that. Warren went further by claiming that he was able to prove that capitalism, since the Second World War, had actually developed both in depth and width in the Third World. 

Although the capitalist mode of production was originally grafted on to the peripheral economies from outside, by the industrialised countries, Warren argued that in the long run it would lead to elimination of dependency or to a development out of dependency. Imperialism has, in other words, laid the foundations of its own dissolution.

Warren saw the situation in the 1960s and 1970s as especially conducive to national capitalist development in the Third World. He referred in this connection to the conflict between East and West, which he believed the dependent countries in general could derive considerable benefits from. He also pointed to the competition between the different industrialised countries, and between the many transnational corporations, and argued that these forms of competition could also be exploited with a view to promoting more independent national development. 

The difficulties were chiefly the internal conditions in these countries, including a very widespread tendency to pursue totally misconceived agricultural policies, which neither brought about the necessary land reforms nor linked the rural economies to the dynamic capitalist urban economies.

Warren’s theory is essentially the classical dependency theory turned on its head. To him imperialism and the world market were in no way obstacles to economic growth and progress, understood as capitalist development. On the contrary, it was from these global systems that the whole process of development would be set in motion. The fact that progress reserved for the few meant less to Warren; in contrast to Soviet Marxism, he regarded the development of capitalism — for good or evil — as an unavoidable necessity, as a stage all underdeveloped countries had to go through to reach socialism.

Warren must be credited for drawing attention, at an early stage, to the actual growth of industry and other capitalist sector sin the Third World within the framework of Marxist theory. But he did it with the eagerness and intensity that has his theory became one sided and biased, and therefore make itself most useful as a closing marginal note to the main body of Marxist theory regarding underdevelopment and dependency. On the other hand, there is, within this tradition, a pressing need for a better theory which can explain both underdevelopment and development.