| Table of Contents Honors and Memberships Research Interests Publications Recent Publications ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age Essays on NATO and Kosovo On-line Essays |
Andre Gunder FrankLetter to R. Stavenhagen |
Pages 6-7 of a letter to Rodolfo Stavenhagen at the UNESCO Centro de Pesquisas em Ciencias Sociais in Rio de Janeiro written by Andre Gunder Frank at the University of Brasilia, June 1, 1963. ---------------- --------------------------- -------------- .... 6 I'm getting more and more off the topic so you will now find a criti- cism. So for I haven't criticised anything you've written but now I will on a side issue, side of the one under discussion but of first importance in its own right. on page 22 of Article 1 you say- middle page- "thus in some underdeveloped countries industrial capitalist production, regionally limited coexists with a semi-feudal system of great latifundios. Both structures or substructures) of the society are characterized by their own productive relations, and therefore, by their respective classes. But insofar as the economic development of these countries is a capitalist development, the fundamental classes are, or will get to be, the classes of the capitalist system". I think here you are not seeing the real world and I will hope to demon- strate the same in another article I have started to write. When I got to Lat Am a year ago, I naturally thought that Lat Am is feudal, or at least its countryside and agriculture is, since that's what everybody always told me. It took me about three months to find out that that is 100% crap. and I then began to see the matter as you describe it in the quote above and as it is seen by my marxist friends in Brazil here at the univ and people like Wernek Sodre, Joacir Paixao(whom I don't know yet but surely will if I stay long), Paul Singer ( whose wife I know so far and him not yet), Caio Prado Junior to a lesser degree and Anibal Pinto ditto- and apparently that guy Stavenhagen. Implicit in that view of the matter is, among other things, that feudalism got here first, that it is determinant in the regions and social relations in which it can be said to exist, that capitalism is still or just "invading" the countryside, that "feudal" relations on the farm are just as determinant of what happens in agriculture as the market relations of the farm owner or large rentier, that these relations really are feudal, or semi feudal, or pre- capitalist, or backward or a million similar names. Well I mean to write an article demonstrating that each and every one of these propositions is wrong, and that even if some of them, like the last one about what the relation between latifundista and his peasant really is -are really feudal- that this doesn't make a damn bit of difference in the general scheme of things. Instead I mean to suggest - or show if my feeble capacities permit it- that feudalism didn't get here first but that mercantilism - or mercantile capitalism did. That determined all the remaider and still continue to do so- including of course that lat am from the very beginning was a plantation and mine for the metropole and still is in large degree, that it was and is the development and requirements of the capitalist national economy which already and for ever since (not as you say will get to be) are determinant of that indeed. Agriculture is also capitalist but of course, as the rest of the economy monopoly capitalist, most especially on the distribution and financing side and of course on the lawndownership end. and that these relations determine make exist in the past and maintain today and even in some cases make exist today and tomorrow where necessary, the so called feudal relations on the farm. That the shifting fortunes of the monopolized capitalist industrial, trade and agricultural economy, to say nothing of its foreign monopolist direc- tion, are sufficient to determine and explain what goes on on the land without inventing feudalism which, certainly in Brazil, has not existed for one minute in its history. Wernek Sodre, who argues about slavery as others do about feudalism, marxist scholar tough he may be simply don't understand what in the hell went on in Brazil. He is a victim of his marxist categories which he quotes to deny that trade can be determinant, that only production can. Marxist friends here support their view of the matter by arguing that inside relations are really ultimately determinant- ergo, the feudal relations on the farm are and the market relations "outside" the farm cant. The trouble is they cant tell inside from outside. Historical references about how things came to be the way they are, the emphasis on mercantilism and later industrial capitalism and on monopoly, I will combine with a few other things to write a third article and hopefully later a book- on what underdevelopment is really about, most specifically that it is not just un-(or lack of) development. An attempt to analyse, not just trace, how lat am and other places got to be underdeveloped. Not just because the other developed away from a common start. How the develop- ment of development was related to the development of underdevelopment, and vice versa, how it continues to be, how this mechanism is made to work by various gimmicks such as monopolization, demonstration effects of economic, political and social(mobility) liberalisms - all of which of course are designed to keep these places underdeveloped, in fact make them every year more underdeveloped instead of less - economic and political cycles of good and bad, liberal and dictatorial times, and a variety of other bags of tricks ------------------------------------...7 that are used consciously and unconsciously by foreign and homegrown or homemade bourgeois groups. So in each of these three articles I want to cut at least one chinck into our armour of myths. In the first to tackle the myth of feudalism, in the second to challenge the myth that growing middle classes (forgive the word) and social mobility are a sure fire bet to produce economic development - they are just the opposite, in the third the myth that underdeveloped countries always were that way and that the developed ones never had nor now have anything to do with the matter and that they are helping these countries to become developed too by foreign aid, investment export of economic theory and the like, when also just the opposite is the case. In each of these tasks, and I suppose especially the second, I expect your articles, and the future development of your thought, to be of great influence and aid in my thinking and writing. Just for good measure I will ad a couple of other article topics I have been planning, even though they are slightly off that track(the first three articles hang together), another is to suggest why the famous structural (CEPAL) and monetarist (neoclassical) theories of inflation and development etc. are really, contrary to what the combattants in both camps claim, are really based on the same body of economic theory- a more or less competitive market economy model which underlies classical and keynesean theory alike- and that of course politically they end up on the same side, howevermuch some Americans, and especially of course my learned betters at the University of Chicago, may wave red herrings at CEPAL (ECLA). The other article is one on why and how every last one of the fundamental and incidental assumptions of the theory of comparative advantage on cost, and the consequent supposedly derived policy for economic development, is totally out of keeping with reality, not only today, but that it was equally so in Ricardo's time - the famous exchange of textiles for wine between England and Portugal, far from benefiting each contributed to England’s development and Portugal’s underdevelopment, and that the assumptions are not only empirically wrong but even logically mutually inconsistent in at least two important places- such as for instance that resources stay the same only production changes; but production evidently changes resources in the process, so the two can never be both sure at the same time, moreover, vide above reference to Ricardo’s famous example, evidently production of textiles and production of wine do not result in the same kind of changes in resources, and it is precisely the difference in the resulting effects on resource distribution- which in theory stays the same to begin with which accounts for a large part of England’s development and Portugal’s non, no de- or under-development (not to speak of the fact, to be discussed in econ deve article or book above, that through trade all the wealth from Brasil flowed right through Portugal and into England). Moreover given the very terms of the whole comparative advantage explanation, it really only "explains" what exists and can not possibly generate any policy recom- endations, to say nothing of policy recomendations about changing the resource base. One thing I don’t understand is how I ever made it in and out of the university of Chicago where each and every one of the things I have said in the foregoing 7 pages is evidently either unheard of or anathema, or both. And you? how did you manage? and Martin Orans? Or to put it another way, how did we ever manage to see even so little a part of the world’s reality- and even theory- after having so assidually had the wool pulled over our eyes. Well, I am of course very sorry, that you did not make it up here - up is right since it is after all the altiplano and both Marta and I freeze to death every night under three blankets- more are not to be found in the univ. I never got the letter that Roberto Cardoso promised to write me (God knows if he wrote, vide letter we wrote you) instructlng me what to prepare a paper for the symposium on sociological something (it was not decided just that it was to be my last time in Rio) at the july anthro meetings in Sao Paulo. So I prepared nothing. Also have no invite, so don't know if I will go, but maybe will just to see you and meet the other people. If I don't go to Recife or Maranhao ( to wich our great party secretary - or shall I really call "front"? - Naiva Moreira invited me to go with him in an airforce plane). Regards, Andrew Gunder Frank [PS 2003: I did go to Sao Paulo,sent by my boss at UNB Dary Ribeiro, to a special Round Table at the 6th Conference of the Brazilian Antrhopological Association. There I confronted Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Octavio Ianni and others who then also still thoihght like Stavenhangen with critiques and theses like those above. I saw Ianni again at another round table in SP two weeks ago and Fernando Henrique on numerous occasions since then]. |
Andre Gunder Frank website is hosted by The Róbinson Rojas Archive