Looking Back, Looking Forward

Abstract

LAP's first issue (Spring 1974) was dedicated to a reassessment of dependency theory. Browsing through it is a little bit like time travel; the world has changed so much since then that the terms of the debate seem quaint and naive. Twenty-five years ago, the center of theoretical and political debates was occupied by the determinants of underdevelopment and the political conditions for national economic development under socialism or, at least, for an autonomous capitalist development that would put the needs of a given nation-state first. Proponents of dependency theory and theories of imperialism variously theorized the dialectical interdependence between the development of the core and the underdevelopment of the periphery. While the theories varied, the actors were identifiable and, within limits, similar: powerful, dominant nation-states, capitalist classes, national bourgeoisies, multinational corporations, exploited colonial and neocolonial states, peasants, working classes, and so on. Through the years, LAP has documented the struggle for economic and political liberation in Latin America-its successes and its failures. But the balance of power between the struggling forces has changed, and the development of the productive forces has undermined the socialist bloc and produced a radical restructuring of the economic and political orders. The so-called New World Order or global economy that has emerged is a qualitative leap forward in the process of capitalist development, one that has brought the entire world under the sway of the world market and changed the material conditions for theorizing and political practice. Today capital rules unrestricted as the states crumble under its demands. While welfare-state policies still ameliorate the full effects of the world market in Western Europe, the United States, and a handful of other core countries, in the rest of the world states have given up any attempt to protect their citizens from its devastating effects. Capital knows no boundaries, political allegiances, or social responsibilities; it enjoys untrammeled mobility, causing financial crises and devastating millions of