Doubt cast on the goal of development

Press, 21 May 1981, Page 16

Doubt cast on the goal of development

By

GWYNNE DYER

in London

The word “developing” — as in the phrase ‘developing countries’ — is not merely a polite euphemism for “poor.” It is . also a pernicious distortion of reality, for most of the Third World is not developing at all. Nor, argues Mr Brian May in his controversial new book “The Third World Catastrophe,” (published bv Routledge and Kegan Paul, London) can most of the Third World ever hope to become “developed” in' the Western sense. Not only is “development” not working, says Mr May, but in many places it shouldn’t even be tried. “Throughout the Third World ... there is no development taking place with the economic speed, psychological depth and social aptitude needed to bring about a useful transformation within the foreseeable future. “Yet such is the impact of Western dynamism that even this virtual stagnation does not prevent ■ the.'further erosion of ■ already damaged traditional structures,, from which a better life might otherwise be evolved: the irreplaceable is being destroyed in the pursuit of the impossible.” Mr May boldly asserts that cultural and psychological attitudes are the most important difference between the developed countries and the Third World. This directly attacks the ideological beliefs or the professional interests, (or both) of most people who work in the development business, and is all too likely to be met by charges of racial or cultural prejudice. Mr May is undeterred: he talks bluntly about taboo subjects like differences

of mentality, and even cheekily quotes Marx 'about “the natural predisposition” of a community. It is only in professional circles that such facts are systematically ignored; in real life, everybody recognises them. You have only to look at the frustrated fury that engulfs first-time travellers from the developed world who arrive to do private or governmental business in the Third World to understand Mr May’s point. Whether they are from Canada or Italy or Russia, and whether they are failing to accomplish their mission in Nigeria or Mozambique or Indonesia, their reactions are virtually identical. What, they are suffering from is known as culture shock. The cultural gulf between the European-American world and the mainly peasant societies of Afro-Asia, so far as the mass of the populations is concerned, is utterly unbridgeable.. It extends to the most basic concepts: “The absence of the Western concept of time,” as Mr May observes, “is one of the hallmarks of the Third World.’.’ Mr May further points out tha,t the Third World is “underdeveloped” now for the same reason that it fell victim to European imperialism in previous centuries: a basic cul- • tural inertia. All the fashionable prattle about the “process 'of underdevelopment” (as if Angola and Burma would be rich industrialised nations today if it hadn’t been for the European imperialists) is merely trendy twaddle.

"If we are to understand the Third World’s plight, it is essential to keep in mind that the peoples whose lands were to be colonised were socially and technologically backward and stagnant when European intervention began ... in the 17th century. There was no sign that the upsurge of rationality and purposeful social action that had begun in Europe was to take place anywhere in Africa or Asia.” By and large, it still hasn't. It isn't their fault if they can’t “develop” — i.e. turn themselves into facsimiles of Western societies. Social and cultural change just can t happen that fast, and if you push the social structure too hard in your impatience, it will simply fracture. Which is, of course, what is happening all over the Third World. As Mr May puts it: "The West's neo-colonialists and Leftist ideologists, each in their own way, are trying to push the Third World countries towards economic and social goals, European in conception, that lie beyond impenetrable psycho-cultural barriers: the consequence is not development but destruction. “The- Iranian revolution emphasises that socio-economic structures that have- been evolved in the West rarely take root elsewhere. The collapse of Iran’s imitation . Western enclave points to less spectacular failures that are occurring, for cultural reasons, throughout . the Third World.” Curiously, it is the excep- ; tions to the rule — -the “Third World” countries that actually are developing .rapidly — which do most to prove Mr

May's case. Consider the list of “Newly Industrialising Countries” that was recently drawn up by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In addition to Greece. Yugoslavia. Spain and Portugal (which are simply poor European countries), the list included Singapore. Hong Kong. Brazil, Mexico, Taiwan and South Korea, with Argentina and Chile as the next candidates. But all these “Third World” countries are either in Latin America (which means that they are basically European in culture) or else they are part of the Chinese cultural sphere of influence. This should surprise nobodj’. Of all the countries where the Confucian cultural model predominates, only war-ravaged Vietnam and China itself, crippled for a generation by the feuds of obscure Marxist sects, have failed to achieve a rapid industrial revolution. It is the non-Western, non-Chinese countries — the rest of Asia, and almost all of Africa — that Mr May is talking about. What he is saying may be too extreme and generalised (Turkey, for example, still has a chance of making it), but a lot of it rings uncomfortablv true. Down the length of Africa and across the breadth of Asia, the pseudo-Westernised cities grow ceaselessly and cancerously, like so many wouldbe Calcuttas, while the neglected countryside steadily declines. Total food production in Africa is now falling at about the same rate that population rises. “Development” in far too many countries is pro-

ducing only deformed caricatures of Western societies which are characterised by

misery and alienation now, and quite likely by bloody and futile revolution later.