Latin American Development Theories Revisited A Participant Review

by
Andre Gunder Frank

Bjorn Hettne Development Theory and the Three Worlds. (London: Longman/
New York: Wiley, 1990) 296 pp. Diana Hunt Economic Theories of

Development: An Analysis of Competing Paradigms. (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989) 363 pp. Cristóbal Kay Latin American Theories of Development and Underdevel. (London and New York: Routledge, 1989) 294 pp. opment Jorge Larrain Theories of Development: Capitalism, Colonialism, and Dependency. (London: Polity Press, 1989) 252 pp. David Lehmann Democracy and Development in Latin America: Economics, Politics, and Religion in the Postwar Period. (London: Polity Press, 1990) 234 pp.
My intention here is not so much to review the above-listed books on development theory as to compare, classify, and situate them in the context of recent history and theory. To do so, I shall distinguish the following rubrics: their treatment of history, their topical coverage, their classification of theories and theorists, and the authors as well as my own critiques and evaluations of the development theories. In conclusion, I ask what all these portend for future development.
Andre Gunder Frank is a professor of development economics and social sciences at the University of Amsterdam. Frank, a citizen of Germany, received his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago. He has taught in departments of anthropology, economics, history, political science, and sociology at universities in Europe, North America, and Latin America. His recent work has been in the fields of world system history, contemporary international political economy, and social movements. His early work was primarily on dependence and the &dquo;development of underdevelopment.&dquo; In addition to writing three of the books reviewed here, my friends Bjorn Hettne, David Lehmann, and Crist6bal Kay kindly also made valuable incisive comments on a draft of this essay. So did Marta Fuentes and Kunibert Raffer.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 73, Vol.19 No. 0 1992 Latin American Perspectives

2, Spring 1992,125-139
125

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HISTORY All five authors review the history of development theory since 1945. Hunt and especially Larrain also examine its history before 1945, but both confine themselves to development theory itself. Hettne, Kay, and Lehmann confine themselves to the period since World War II. They make some effort to place and interpret development theory within the historical context that gave rise to it. Hettne cites his compatriot Gunnar Myrdals observation that major developments in economic thought have always been responses to changing political conditions and opportunities. Kay and Lehmann make an effort to demonstrate how these changing circumstances gave rise to changes in development theory, but they do not go far enough. This is a task that I have myself undertaken elsewhere, in an autobiographical vein (Frank, 1991), and Celso Furtado, at least, has also recently written autobiographical reflections on this period. We will occasionally return to this matter below. In the meantime, it may be appropriate to ask what recent changes in political conditions and opportunities have given rise to this spate of books on development theory. I have no obvious answer.

TOPICAL COVERAGE
These books, it should be stressed at the outset, are about economic, social, and political development theory, not about development economics. 0evelopment economics is a branch of economics that is applied to problems of development. Academic and practicing neoclassical and Keynesian economists have scarcely recognized, much less accepted, the &dquo;development theories&dquo; under review here as part of economics. They do not teach them and scarcely include them in their own reviews of &dquo;the rise and decline&dquo; of development economics. For instance, The State of DevelopmentEconomics (Ranis and Schultz, 1988) includes (by noblesse oblige?) only one of the theorists under review here, Raul Prebisch, who is by far the most establishment oriented theorist of them. According to the index of Economic Devel-

opment : Theory, Policy and International Relations, published under the

of the establishments Twentieth Century Fund (Little, 1982), Prebisch is mentioned on all of 9, Frank on 2, Cardoso on 1, and the others on none of this books 452 pages of review of the state of the art. If some of these latter and their theories have invaded Western academia, then they have done so in and through departments of sociology and other social sciences, not through the economists departments of unblemished orthodoxy.

auspices

127

TABLE 1

Main

Topics

Covered in Five Books

on

Development Theory

NOTE: Because the authors sometimes refer to essentially the same subject matter under different names, this tabulation does the same. The amount of attention devoted to the various topics of course differs from one book to another. Moreover, some authors also discuss other topics; thus Hettne especially is wider-ranging (as per his title, which refers to &dquo;Three Worlds&dquo;).

Because the five books reviewed here differ in their treatment of history, they also differ in their coverage of topics (Table 1). Hunt, Larrain, and to some extent Hettne include more &dquo;classical&dquo; development theory. Kay and especially Lehmann extend their coverage to more recent developments. They all overlap in their coverage of Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) structuralism and dependence, but they treat it and classify its authors rather differently. Hunt begins with a general discussion of theoretical paradigms. After that, she devotes three chapters to theoretical heritage and to classical and Keynesian theories. Then she goes on to the topics covered by all five books, beginning with ECLA structuralism. Larrain does something similar from a more Marxist perspective; he interposes a chapter on colonialism and imperialism before proceeding to structuralism. Hettne opens with two chapters on crisis and Eurocentrism in development thinking and then proceeds to the

128

voices from the Third World. postwar era in Latin America.

Kay

and Lehmann

begin

there

during

the

VARIETIES AND CLASSIFICATION OF THEORIES/THEORISTS

The common focus of attention among all five books is Latin American theories of development and underdevelopment. The authors distinguish among varieties of the dependency approach. Hettne, for instance, distinguishes under this heading (pp. 89-91) six &dquo;theoretical dimensions&dquo;: holism versus particularism, external versus internal causal factors, sociopolitical versus economic analysis, sectoral/regional versus class contradictions, underdevelopment versus dependent development, and voluntarism versus determinism. Other authors make similar distinctions and sometimes others that are to their particular liking. The cast of characters that these books review varies in range, but it has a common core in the best-known ECLA structuralists and dependentistas. Among the former, not surprisingly, Prebisch stands out and is followed by Furtado as a distant second most-mentioned structuralist. According to their indices, Prebisch appears on 32 pages of Kay, 21 pages of Hunt, 9 pages of Lehmann, 7 pages of Larrain, and 4 pages of Hettne. The dependentistas receive more attention. Among them, according to the books indices, Andre Gunder Frank and Fernando Henrique Cardoso are the most cited theorists reviewed: on 49 and 49 pages respectively (or 1 page in 5) of Kay, on 47 and on 38 (also 1 page in 5 or 6) of Larrain, on 23 and 9 of Hunt, and on 15 and 11 of Hettne. Only Lehmann gives less attention to us than to the structuralists, mentioning Cardoso and Frank each on 4 pages. Some authors discuss the history and &dquo;origins of the dependency school&dquo; (Hettne, p. 82) or &dquo;the origins of dependency analyses&dquo; (Hunt, p. 198). In so doing, they occasionally posit lines of influence among dependentistas, which seem to me curious, to say the least. Depending on whom they include or exclude, the originators are identified as Prebisch, Baran, Frank, or Cardoso. There is little dispute about the first two. Hunt and Larrain devote more attention to the history of development theory and therefore also to Baran. Either Cardoso or Frank is dubbed the real father of real dependency theory, and there is more dispute about the &dquo;originality&dquo; of these two, although perhaps I am overly sensitive to that! Moreover, Larrain (pp. 112, 118, 125) calls dos Santos, Marini, and Gonzdlez Casanova &dquo;followers of Frank.&dquo; I and perhaps they would agree about dos Santos and Marini (both friends and colleagues of mine since the University of Brasilia in 1963), but

129

neither Gonzdlez Casanova nor I would agree to all of this statement with regard to him. Perhaps he was a later convert to dependence theory, but he was a pioneer and my guide on internal colonialism. In his chapter on internal colonialism, Kay discusses Gonzdlez Casanova, Stavenhagen, and Frank but rightly gives pride of place to the first two. There are many dangers if not fallacies in post hoc attribution of early lines of influence, particularly for the later historians, who were neither participants in nor contemporary observers of the development of the theories and theorists they discuss. In this regard, a brief look back by a participant may not be out of place. At a panel held at the 6th Congress of the Brazilian Anthropological Association in Sdo Paulo in 1963, I criticized my fellow panel member Cardoso for his lack of a dependency perspective. Nonetheless, when Fernando Henrique arrived in Chile as an exile from the military I received him at the airport and earned, he says, his coup in Brazil in 1964, everlasting gratitude. This was while I was writing my &dquo;Development of Underdevelopment in Chile.&dquo; This chapter was then read and critiqued by Enzo Faletto, as I later duly acknowledged in the preface of my Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. All this was long before he and Cardoso began to work on their Dependence and Development in Latin America (Cardoso and Faletto,1979, Spanish original in 1969) at the Instituto Latinoamericano para Planificaci6n Econ6mica y Social (Latin American Institute for Economic and Social Planning-ILPES) in Santiago. However, we do not claim influence over the other(s). So why do nonparticipant observers try to attribute it? The five authors classify and evaluate structuralist and dependency theorists and their theories rather differently. They conclude by evaluating these theorists and theories differently, as we will see below. However, our five authors also label and classify the theorists and their theories differently to begin with. I find this labelling and pigeon-holing particularly problematic, if only because I find myself particularly difficult to place. Only Lehmann, I think to his credit, simply takes people for what they are and disdains such misleading classifications. I reproduce their classification here as best I can (see Table 2). There is agreement on dubbing the main ECLA people structuralists, except that Larrain calls Prebisch something of a modernizationist as well. Cardoso and Faletto, however, appear under both structuralist and dependentista labels. Perhaps there is some justification for this in that they wrote their Dependence and Development at ECLAs ILPES. Moreover, as one of our authors stresses, they did entitle their book &dquo;development&dquo; and not &dquo;underdevelopment.&dquo; The other main dependentistas, however, appear all

130

TABLE 2

Classification of Development Theories/Theorists by Various Authors

NOTE: Abbreviations are as follows:

Lar, Larrain; Het, Hettne; Hnt, Hunt; Ref, reformist; Mx, Marxist; Neo-Mx, neo-Marxist; Non-Mx, non-Marxist.

the lot. They are categorized according to each of the five authors own or ideological, taste. To begin with, the authors set up different categories: &dquo;Reformist&dquo; and &dquo;non-Marxist&dquo; dependentistas seem to be similar if not the same, and of course the &dquo;non-Marxist&dquo; category makes sense only by reference to a &dquo;Marxist&dquo; one and then only if the author regards these categories and distinctions as important in their own right. To complicate matters still more, Hunt insists on the further distinction between (real orthodox) Marxism and (not really kosher) neo-Marxism. Thus Frank, Marini, and dos Santos are variously labeled non-Marxist, Marxist, and neo-Marxist. In this case-indeed probably in all cases-the label pigeonholes the author himself much more than the &dquo;theorist.&dquo; Thus, Hunt denies my Marxism and recalls that I myself have long ago claimed not to be a Marxist. She does not recall, however, that in the same breath or sentence I also said that I am not a non- or anti-Marxist. The point is that these categories obscure more than they clarify.
over

theoretical, that is political

131

This point may be further illustrated through participant observation. Theotonio dos Santos and I are always put in the same bag, but these classifiers may not know our agreements and disagreements very well. We have been friends and, on and off, colleagues since 1963. (We were at the University of Brasilia together in Jango Goulart times and later at the Centro de Estudios Socioecon6micos in Chile in Allende times.) In 1963, when I wrote my first dependentista things in Brazil, Theotonio had no such ideas. He later acquired and developed them on his own. However, Theotonio criticized my theory as &dquo;functionalist&dquo; and my politics as unrealistic. On the other hand, I thought of my ideas as much more &dquo;revolutionary&dquo; than his and regarded him, his writings, and his political practice as consistently reformist. Another case is related in my autobiographical essay The Underdevelopment of Development (1991). In this regard, I remember my argument with Osvaldo Sunkel, another CEPAL (ECLA) stalwart with first structuralist and then dependence positions. Osvaldo insisted (in the late 1960s) that his and my positions were the same, and I insisted that they were not. The irony is that after repeated other meetings between us, two decades later Osvaldo now claims that we no longer share our by now changed views, and I think that we now do. Anibal Quijano and I have been friends since 1962 and were neighbors in Chile in 1968. We have had similar and shifting agreements and disagreements. So have Cardoso and I since 1963, which we last reviewed and revised together in 1990.I could go on and on in the same vein. To repeat, these classifications say much more about the authors themselves than they do about the theorists they (mis)classify. In particular, the classification reveals something about Jorge Larrain. He takes Marxism, including his own, seriously and therefore classifies none of the above, except perhaps Warren, as a Marxist. For some of these authors there is even doubt about who is a dependentista. Kay (p. 156) calls me &dquo;a reluctant and short-lived dependentista&dquo; who stood by dependence only from about 1970 to 1972. Commenting on a draft of this essay, Kay writes, &dquo;My main point is that retrospectively it is more appropriate to view your work within the world-system theory. In this sense my phrase is actually meant as a compliment.&dquo; Kunibert Raffer comments in turn, &dquo;I do not see why one should split dependencia and World System Analysis in the way he [Kay] does, i.e., opposing one to the other. In my view they are both part of the same line of thought.&dquo; I agree with Raffer. Moreover, in 1965 I wrote that &dquo;if we are to understand the Latin American problematique we must begin with the world system that creates it and go outside the selfimposed optical and mental illusion of the Ibero-American or national frame&dquo;

132

1969: 231). In the 1965 preface to my Capitalism and Underdevelopment, I also referred to &dquo;the capitalist system on an integrated world scale&dquo;

(Frank,

(1967: xi).
For this reason and for others, I think that Kays assessment is not well taken. My 1963 manuscript was already entirely on dependence in the world system. Dependence was the red thread running through my books written in the mid-1960s. Dependence defined my never published reader on underdevelopment in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, which I edited with Said Shah in 1967-1969 (summarized in Frank, 1984); the reference, of course, was to dependence within the world capitalist system. The word &dquo;dependence&dquo; was part of the title of my book with Cockcroft and Johnson, done in the mid- to late 1960s but not published in Spanish until 1970 (see Cockcroft, Frank, and Johnson, 1972). Dependence also appeared in the title of my Lumpenbourgeoisie: Lumpendevelopment: Dependence, Class and Politics in Latin America (1972), written in 1968-1969 and firstpublished in Spanish in 1970. Incidentally, this book also dealt with differences in &dquo;internal&dquo; class and politics! Moreover, part of my allocution in 1972 was &dquo;Long live dependence and the class struggle!&dquo; I meant, of course, that the fact of dependence would have a long life, and it has in the 1980s debt crisis, with a vengeance. But in the 1970s, many wrote untimely obituaries for it. As to the &dquo;class struggle,&dquo; I was both right and wrong: Right in that it was to become more acute in the growing world economic crisis, wrong in that the exploited would challenge the exploiters more; it turned out the other way around. By early 1974,I was predicting that military regimes and states of emergency would become the order of the day all over the Third World (see Frank,

1981 a), and, unfortunately, I was right (see Frank, 1981b).

CRITIQUES AND EVALUATIONS
Each of the five authors also offers critiques and evaluations of structuralism and especially of dependence theory. Kay and Larrain devote a chapter or special section to critiques and evaluation. They often also review the critiques of other writers (mainly from the North) as well as their own. Other authors present their own critical evaluations along the way. Structuralism is examined critically by all five, but most of their critique is reserved for and directed at dependence. Kay sets out seven &dquo;shortcomings of structuralism and dependence analysis&dquo; : excessive emphasis on terms of trade and unequal exchange and on underdevelopment as caused by dependence, idealist visions of the (espe-

133

cially socialist) state, inadequate accounting for the constraints and costs of revolution, inadequate commitment to civil society, insufficient microlevel studies, and failure to consider a variety of capitalist and socialist paths of development. Larrain is less catholic and more Marxist. In a chapter entitled &dquo;Dependency and Historical Materialism&dquo; he examines 15 differences between Marxism and dependence theory. In a brief and perhaps inadequate summary, he consider dependence theory: (1) tautological; (2) theoretically weak, not rooted in any deductive theory; (3) contradictory; (4) ideologically determinist ; (5) a form of &dquo;Third Worldist&dquo; ideology; (6) lacking a proper theorization of capitalism; (7) static, economistic, and mechanistic; (8) incorrect in its assumption of the monolithic structure of imperialism; (9) stagnationist; (10) incorrect in its explanation of underdevelopment in terms of the draining of surplus; (11) dubious in its approval of socialism; (12) tied to national capitalism; (13) vitiated by lack of empirical evidence or empirical fallacy; (14) ideologically negative with respect to Marxism; and (15) functionalist and teleological. To my mind, of the five authors Larrain provides the most rigorous and consistent examination of these theories. However, both his exposition and his evaluation are vitiated by his own narrow conception of and commitment to Marxism. He regards this as his strength; I regard it as
his weakness. Lehmann is the least wedded to any preconceived notion or schema. Instead of evaluating one theory in terms of another, he examines his cast of characters as they cross the stage of history. If he evaluates them at all, he does so against the &dquo;empirical&dquo; test of history itself. All of the authors make some reference to &dquo;empirical&dquo; evaluation of dependence theory, but only Kay seems even to be aware of the American &dquo;school&dquo; that puts dependence theory and its predictions to empirical and statistical tests. Perhaps that is just as well; for those who like them, these tests tend to confirm both the existence of dependence and the propositions of its &dquo;theory,&dquo; whereas for those who dont, they disconfirm even the existence of dependence! In the evaluations of the dependentistas, by and large Cardoso comes off best. The authors like it that Cardoso allows for growth or &dquo;development,&dquo; industrialization, class, and &dquo;internal&dquo; differences as against exclusive &dquo;external&dquo; determination. Indeed, Cardoso insists that there are only &dquo;situations&dquo; of dependence and no dependence &dquo;theory&dquo; to encompass them all. Thus he is seen as conducting the best concrete analysis of concrete reality. Bambirra, who does the same thing, is mentioned only by Kay, who was her colleague at the Centro de Estudios Socioecon6micos (CESO). I am presented as the most superficial and schematic and I come off by far the worst. I get minuses on

134

all the points for which Cardoso gets pluses. But I often wrote the same things about industrialization, class, and internal differences. Larrain (pp.193-194) writes that &dquo;many of the criticisms just outlined [by Larrain, previously] are quite compelling and adequately fit the first group of dependency theories represented by Frank, Wallerstein, Emmanuel, and Amin. However... such a critique becomes grossly unfair when applied generally,&dquo; especially to Cardoso and to some extent to Warren. However, Larrain (p. 195) regards Warren as too determinist on the opposite, that is, the developmentalist, side. Lehmann shares some of this criticism of my writings but suggests (p. 28) that nonetheless
Frank is
an extraordinary, perhaps unique case in intellectual history, and the nit-picking polemics surrounding his work have obscured its real significance. He should be treated not as an interlocutor but as a phenomenon, a social fact. What is extraordinary is that a person writing in this paranoid and intemperate style, the antithesis of the dispassionate academic, should have had such a profound influence both within and outside the university.

However that may

be, the problem with these evaluations is that they

comparing one theory with another and even on their theoretical or judging ideological purity. Rather than ruminating about how this or that dependentista or his theory rate on highly (in all senses of the word) academic criteria of purity, it seems better to subject them to the test of history as Lehmann does: to inquire what policies these theories generated or supported, and how successful they were. What it all comes down to is that there was really not much difference among these theorists, ranging from Prebisch, who headed ECLA and founded the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), to Frank, whom Emmanuel de Kadt has called &dquo;an academic Che Guevara.&dquo; In terms of their practical application, all of the these theories failed the test of history in the 1970s and 1980s. For that reason, Prebisch and Frank, at the two &dquo;extremes,&dquo; have amended their positions in each others direction. As Kay (p. 156) notes, I wrote as early as in 1972 that &dquo;dependence [theory] is dead,&dquo; at least as a guide for practical political policy in Latin America. Our five authors and others are writing their belated postmortems today. I think it is fair to say, however, that they are not doing so on the strength of their own and others successful nitpicking at the theoretical, not to mention ideological, weaknesses of structuralism and dependence. Rather, these &dquo;theories&dquo; and their associated policies have been defeated by more powerful opponents. Politically, General Pinochet has done this by force of arms in Chile, the main locus of the germination, birth, development, and application of both structuralism and dependence theory. Economically, the

concentrate too much on

135

world economic crisis and especially its severe 1973-1975 and 1979-1982 recessions have rendered these theories inapplicable as recipes for practical political policy. The same underlying economic conditions have also provided fertile ground for the (re)birth of neoliberalism to supplant Keynesianism, structuralism, and dependence theory on the reformist and would-be revolutionary left (Frank, 1981a, 1981b, 1984). Alas, the right has had nothing better or even new to offer; neoliberalist monetarism and supply-side theory were no more than warmed over &dquo;neo-&dquo;classical theory, disinterred from its half-century old grave. Of course, our authors also find structuralism and dependence theories and policies wanting in practice during the past two decades, but they do so for different and sometimes strange reasons. True to her subtitle, Hunt continues to focus on the &dquo;competing paradigms.&dquo; Larrain still holds high the standard of Marxism. Kay (pp. 197ff., 225, 226) examines &dquo;the Latin American contribution in perspective&dquo; and in his &dquo;final remarks on development theory and options&dquo; says that &dquo;reform or revolution is still the paramount development dilemma&dquo; (for my earlier review of Kays book, see Frank, 1990). On the other hand, some of these authors also examine or at least touch on such real-world issues as the new international economic order, the newly industrialized countries, and the ideological triumph and near universal application of neoliberalism. All of these authors express serious reservations about this neoclassical development. However, they make little attempt to explain the difference between &dquo;model&dquo; newly industrial development in East Asia and newly industrial underdevelopment in Latin America. The best, indeed the only satisfactory, attempt that I have seen on this score is Deyos (1987), especially Peter Evanss contribution &dquo;Class, State, and Dependence in East Asia: Lessons for Latin Americanists.&dquo; Incidentally, it is curious that Evanss own 1979 contribution to the study of dependent development in Brazil does not merit any mention in the index of any of the five books on that subject under review here. It does, however, appear in Kays list of references, and he also favorably quotes Evanss article in Deyos (1987) collection. For all their differing critiques of structuralism and dependence, Hunt, Kay, and Larrain express few reservations about development theory itself. If these development theories are not quite satisfactory, the first two hope for better but still similar ones in the future; Larrain harks back to similar and perhaps worse ones from the past. Only Hettne and especially Lehmann express serious reservations about any fundamental shortcomings of these and similar theories of &dquo;national&dquo; development in or, indeed, of &dquo;development&dquo; itself, and not even they find any of these theories especially wanting

136

in the service of our &dquo;better half,&dquo; women. But my wife, Marta Fuentes, long ago and many other women since have seen and even taught me that (in her words) &dquo;development is bad for women.&dquo; No structuralist or dependentista ever took the trouble to find out that dependent development is especially bad for women. No dependentista ever proposed another sort of development that would have been better for women. (My own still very limited discussion of this problem is in Frank, 1991.) In brief summary, very few of the often extremely esoteric academic and/or very interested political critiques identify the real weaknesses of dependence &dquo;theory.&dquo; These have, however, become part of my own later auto-critique: First, real dependence exists, of course, and more than ever, despite arguments to the contrary. However, dependence &dquo;theory&dquo; and policy have never answered the question of how to eliminate it and how to pursue the chimera of nondependent or independent growth. Second, dependence heterodoxy has nonetheless maintained the orthodoxy that (under)development must refer to and be organized by and through (nation-state) societies, countries, or regions. This orthodox tenet turns out to be wrong. Third, although I turned orthodoxy on its head, I maintained the essence of the thesis that economic growth through capital accumulation equals development. Thereby, the socialist and dependence heterodoxies were caught in the same trap as development orthodoxy, and any real alternative definitions, policy, and praxis of &dquo;development&dquo; were precluded. Fourth, in particular, this orthodoxy incorporated the patriarchal gender structure of society as a matter of course. However much I may personally have been against male chauvinism, I thereby prevented examination of this dimension of dependence.

TOWARD THE FUTURE

For his part, Hettne (chapters 5-7) goes on to consider &dquo;Dimensions of Another Development,&dquo; &dquo;Transcending the European Model,&dquo; and &dquo;Reorientations in Development Theory.&dquo; Lehmann devotes more than the second half of his book to examining and welcoming the move from dependency to democracy, the return of the Church to center stage, social movements, and basismo, or development mobilization from below. This extension of their reviews from the by now shopworn Latin American theories of development and underdevelopment to another development and its &dquo;theory&dquo; is the most novel and, I believe, the most useful contribution of these books. Hettne reviews world-system theory, on the one hand, and the &dquo;smallis-beautiful&dquo;/&dquo;self reliance&dquo; approaches of the Dag Hammarskj6ld Founda-

137

tion, Marc Nerfins Foundation for Development Alternatives, and others, on

the other. He also devotes attention to ethnodevelopment (Stavenhagen, 1986) and ecodevelopment (Redclift, 1987) but still none to differential development for women and not much to the needed change in gender relations. However, he finds that &dquo;no General Theory of development has appeared and perhaps one never will&dquo; (p. 241) and that &dquo;indigenization [of development theory] in fact stands out as a precondition for universalization&dquo;

(p. 243).
myself written under the title &dquo;The Underdevelopment of Development&dquo; (Frank, 1991) that development is either an attribute of the whole of what Hettne calls the &dquo;globalized&dquo; world system or indigenized communal development on a local level to whatever extent that is possible in the face of the obligatory participation in the global world system. Hettne (p. 145) observes that &dquo;radical delinking has now been ruled out as more or less impracticable by all camps.&dquo; &dquo;National&dquo; development without delinking turns out to be a chimera. What is left for &dquo;development&dquo; is indigenous self-help on the basis of avoiding the worst and trying to do the best we can. Hettne finds that &dquo;there can be no fixed and final definition of development, only suggestions of what development should imply in particular contexts&dquo; (Hettne, p. 2, emphasis in the original). Lehmann follows particularist and indigenous self-help development farther still. First, especially through the writings of Guillermo ODonnell,
I have

he examines the Latin American state in the 1960s, its bureaucratic authoritarianism in the 1970s, and its redemocratization in the 1980s. He welcomes the latter but notes its limitations. Then, he devotes a long chapter to the development of liberation theology out of a marriage of old and new Church doctrine with Comunidades Eclesiais de Base (Christian Base Communities). Paulo Freire, Gustavo Guti6rrez, and Leonardo Boff have been their promoters and high priests. The strength and hope of this other development is in their communally based and other social movements and nongovernmental organizations. (Marc Nerfin observes that they should not be negatively called &dquo;non-something&dquo; but rather positively named for the people 3 organizations that they are). Lehmann tries to count them - up to 80,000 in Brazil and 1,400 in Santiago, Chile, alone. He coins the term basismo from the Spanish base (which means more than the English &dquo;base&dquo;). Lehmann entitles his last chapter &dquo;Basismo as if Reality Really Mattered, or, Modernization from Below.&dquo; He correctly observes the preponderance of women and their less hierarchical (more democratic?) organization in his immediately preceding, more expository chapter on social movements, but he makes no direct reference to women and also none to their increasingly

138

feminist grassroots demands in this more theoretical chapter (!) on basismo. He also notes and sounds the alarm about international dependence on foreign nongovernmental organization money (which he identifies in many movements), grassroots support, and nongovernmental organizations; he calls this financial and sometimes organizational dependence &dquo;the Achilles heel of much basista activity&dquo; (p. 189). Even so, he finds the real roots and hope of more democracy and another kind of development in these social movements. I have come to the same conclusion (Frank, 1991). Fuentes and Frank (1989) and Frank and Fuentes (1990) see these social movements as exercising what we call &dquo;civil democracy&dquo; in civil society. If there is any hope for &dquo;development,&dquo; that is where it is in reality, and that is where it must be developed and later reviewed in &dquo;theory.&dquo; Amen!t

REFERENCES
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique and Enzo Faletto
1979 Development and Dependence in Latin America. Berkeley: Press. Cockcroft, James D., Andre Gunder Frank, and Dale L. Johnson

University

of California

Dependenceand Underdevelopment: . 1972 Latin Americas Political Economy Garden City, NJ: Doubleday. Deyo, Frederic C. (ed.) 1987 The Political Economy of New Asian Industrialism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Evans, Peter 1979 Dependent Development. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Frank, Andre Gunder 1967 Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press. 1969 Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press. 1972 Lumpenbourgeoisie: Lumpendevelopment. New York: Monthly Review Press. 1975 On Capitalist Underdevelopment. Bombay: Oxford University Press. 1981a Crisis: In the Third World. New York: Holmes & Meier. 1981b Reflections on the Economic Crisis. New York: Monthly Review Press. 1984 Critique andAnti-Critique. New York: Praeger. 1990 "Review of Latin American Theories of Development and Underdevelopment by Crist6bal Kay," Development and Change 23 (July): 560-562. 1991 "The Underdevelopment of Development" and "Bibliography of Publications 19551990." Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives 10 (September): 1-150. Also . Caracas: published in Spanish as El subdesarrollo del desarrollo. Ensayo autobiografico Editorial Nueva Sociedad 1991. Frank, Andre Gunder and Marta Fuentes 1990 "Social Movements in Recent World History," in S. Amin, G. Arrighi, A. G. Frank, and I. Wallerstein Transforming the Revolution: Social Movements and the World-System . New York: Monthly Review Press.

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