A B OU T T H E AUTHOR Gilbert Rist has for many years been a leading Swiss scholar of development. Before joining the Graduate Institute of Development Studies (IUED) in Geneva, now the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), where he was a professor from 1986 until his retirement in 2003 , he taught in Tunisia and then spent several years as Director of the Centre Europe–Tiers Monde. One of his principal intellectual interests has been to construct an anthro­ pology of modernity in which he sees Western society as being every bit as traditional and indeed exotic as any other. Professor Rist is the author of a number of pathbreaking books. These include: Il était une fois le développement, with Fabrizio Sabelli et al. (Éditions d’En Bas, Lausanne, ). Le Nord perdu: Répères pour l’après-développement, with Majid Rahnema and Gustavo Esteva (Éditions d’En Bas, Lausanne, ). La Mythologie programmée: L’économie des croyances dans la société moderne, with Marie­Dominique Perrot and Fabrizio Sabelli (PUF, Paris, ). La Culture, otage du développement? ed. (L’Harmattan, Paris, ). La Mondialisation des anti-sociétés: Espaces rêves et lieux communes, ed. (Nouveaux Cahiers de l’IUED, no. 6I, UED, Geneva; PUF, Paris, ). The original edition of the present book was his first to be published in English. It has also been published in French as Le développement. Histoire d’une croyance occidentale (Presses de Sciences Po, Paris, 1996; 2nd edn, 2001); in Italian as Lo sviluppo. Storia di una credenza occidentale (Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 199); and in Spanish as El desarrollo. Historia de una creencia occidental (Los Libros de la Catarata, Madrid, 2002). T H E H is TORY OF DEVE L Opm E N T From Western Origins to Global Faith third i l b e rt r i s t Translated by Patrick Camiller bs London & New York The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith (third edition) was first published in English in 2008 by Zed Books Ltd, Cynthia Street, London 1 9, , and Room , 1 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY , s www.zedbooks.co.uk Copyright © Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1996, English edition © Zed Books Ltd, , , 2008 The translation of this book into English was made possible thanks to the generous contributions of the Fondation Antoine Duchemin and the Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer pour le Progrès de l’Homme. The rights of Gilbert Rist to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, Cover designed by Andrew Corbett Typeset in Monotype Bembo by illuminati, Grosmont, www.illuminatibooks.co.uk Printed and bound in the UK by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin’s Press, llc, 1 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available isb 98 1 8813 188 0 (Hb) isb 98 1 8813 189 (Pb) CON TE N T S Preface to the Third Edition viii Preface to the Second Edition x Introduction 1 1 Definitions of Development 8 Conventional Thinking · A Methodological Word of Caution · Elements of a Definition · A Scandalous Definition? · ‘Development’ as an Element in the Religion of Modernity 2 Metamorphoses of a Western Myth 2 What the Metaphor Implies · Landmarks in the Western View of History · Conclusion 3T he Making of a World System Colonization · The League of Nations and the Mandate System · Conclusion T he Invention of Development 69 President Truman’s Point Four · A New World-view: ‘Underdevelopment’ · US Hegemony · A New Paradigm · The ‘Development’ Age T he International Doctrine and Institutions Take Root 80 The Bandung Conference · The New International ‘Development’ Agencies 6 Modernization Poised between History and Prophecy 93 A Philosophy of History: Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth · Anti-communism or Marxism without Marx? · Dissident Voices 7 The Periphery and the Understanding of History 109 Neo-Marxism in the United States · The Latin American Dependentistas · A New Paradigm, but Age-old Presuppositions 8 Self­reliance: The Communal Past as a Model for the Future 123 Ujamaa and the Tanzanian Experience · The Principles of Self-reliance · Possible Futures for Self-reliance 9 The Triumph of Third­Worldism 10 The New International Economic Order · An Original Voice: The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation Report on Another Development · In the Wake of the NIEO: Further Proposals · The ‘Basic Needs’ Approach · Conclusion 10 The Environment, or the New Nature of ‘Development’ 11 The Return to Classical Economics Plus a Few Humanitarian Extras · ‘Sustainable Development’ or Growth Everlasting? · The Earth Summit · Reflections on Deliberate Ambiguity 11 A Mixture of Realism and Fine Sentiments 19 The South Commission · The undp and ‘Human Development’ 12 Globalization as Simulacrum of ‘Development’ 211 On the Usefulness of Talking at Cross-purposes · Globalization, The Last Hope of Achieving ‘Development’? · Virtual Reality as a Refuge for Continuing Belief 13 From the Struggle against Poverty to the Millennium Development Goals 226 Just What Is the Problem? · Who Are the Poor? · Intervention on All Fronts · The Millennium Goals: ‘Development’ in Shreds · ‘Development Aid’: Massaging the Figures · Conclusion 1 Beyond ‘Development’: From Downscaling to a Change in the Economic Paradigm 20 Objectors to Growth and ‘Development Loyalists’ · Economic ‘Science’: An Obsolete Paradigm · Conclusion Conclusion 2 The Facts · ‘Post-development’ · Exhaustion of the Economic Paradigm: Believing or Knowing? Bibliography 26 Index 277 P RE FAC E TO THE TH I R D E DI T ION In 1996, when the first French edition of this book appeared, it was possible to think that ‘development’ was running out of steam. The future of the planet and its inhabitants, it seemed, would from now on be seen in a more pragmatic or ‘realistic’ manner, far removed from the illusions of the myth of progress and the obsolete nostrums underpinning mainstream economic theory. This is not how things have turned out. Even if ecological worries temper the once dominant optimism, the fact remains that, in North and South alike, on both left and right of the political spectrum, economic growth is still prescribed as the means to universal improve­ ment, and this is increasing the threat to the global climate as well as the very inequalities whose reduction is held up as the desired goal. The minority who run and profit from the system therefore have no interest in challenging it; they merely assert that, despite all the evidence, wealth can be generalized to everyone on earth. Once people are brought to believe this, injustice can be presented as a merely temporary state of affairs. As concerns over the state of the planet become more and more pressing, ‘development’ is no longer invoked as often as in the past. Yet it has continued to assume new forms, ranging from the Millennium Development Goals – which are supposed to halve extreme poverty by the year 201 – to an interest in ‘global public goods’ shielded from market laws. On the margins of mainstream thinking, growth itself has become the object of a debate which, though rather timid when simply underlining its future limits, becomes a little bolder among the advocates of décroissance or ‘degrowth’ (that is, of a downscaling of viii preface ix the economy). Some ‘neo­developmentalists’ still try to keep up the belief in a ‘different kind of development’ – one which, in the name of ‘social progress’, would finally achieve the democratic and participatory socialist utopia first envisaged in the nineteenth century – whereas others resolutely prepare the ground for ‘post­development’. These new approaches had to be discussed, through an expansion and clarification of older critiques of the dominant economic paradigm. The question is whether its particularly reductive world­view is not behind the impasse in which most contemporary societies find themselves trapped. The repagination of this work for a new series of publications made it possible to add a new chapter on these widely debated issues, and to convert the epilogue to the previous edition into another fully fledged chapter. A number of statistics have also been updated, a few digressions that did not seem indispensable have been eliminated, and the conclusion has been largely rewritten. I am aware that these revisions will make things more complicated for those who do me the honour of commenting positively or nega­ tively on my positions, since the latter part of the text now differs quite considerably from the earlier version. But I could not pass up the opportunity to express my views on current debates, especially as those involved in them often call upon me as a witness. The reader may rest assured, however, that my convictions have not changed. To my mind the critique of ‘development’ will remain necessary so long as the fetish­word is employed to arouse unfounded hopes. Gilbert Rist PRE fac E TO T H E S E C Ond Edi T ION Since it first appeared some years ago, this work has aroused a measure of controversy, which cannot but be a good thing. I shall not dwell on those who have appreciated the fact that I have tried to show ‘development’ as it is, rather than as it should be. Critics have tended to fall into two main camps. First, there are those who are unhappy to see the immense hope evoked by ‘development’ tarnished by a depiction of the practices it has justified, practices that effectively boil down to the global extension of the market.1 But why, I might respond, should it be inappropriate to recognize that the noblest causes have often had dramatic consequences? To take just one example, those who dreamt of a classless society in which wealth would be distributed ‘to each according to his need’, as Marx hoped, woke up to find not only the soviets plus electricity, as Lenin put it, but also the gulag and a shortage of everything.