Long Term Development Aims

Abstract

The best starting point for this section is a brief glance into economic history. At the beginning of the century there was no such term as “less developed countries”. At that time references were made to the “industrialisation of new countries”, which shows that “development” and “industrialisation” were considered synonymous. When, after the Second World War, these problems were again very widely debated, the capital export countries were particularly careful — and quite consciously so — to avoid such a formula. This was probably due not only to the realisation that development can, at least in its initial stages, take place in various ways and not only through industrialisation but also to some extent due to the desire to speed up raw material production which appeared, from experiences in the Korean war, to be one of the most urgent development problems of the Western world. In the less developed countries, on the other hand, the urge to industrialise became even stronger after 1945. “Capitalist countries grew rich through industrialisation, we should therefore also industrialise in order to grow rich.” This could be heard as a frequently voiced argument. What was unconsciously or deliberately overlooked was that the industrial revolution in Europe — which incidentally was accompanied or preceded by an “agrarian revolution” — was a unique phenomenon, and that the rapid development of the United States was also basically a non-recurrent event. The resentment against “capitalist” economies, which from the outset caused less developed countries to distrust the advice of their capital providers that they ought to concentrate on the development of their raw material deposits, should also be added to this list. For a period, there were protagonists of two extreme opinions each able to put forward strong arguments to which they frequently found themselves committed in the face of contrary opinion. It is only in recent years that widespread agreement has been reached about the value of taking the middle course.