The collapse of socialist development in the Third World

Abstract

For about 140 years, since the publication of Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto, it has been usual to think in terms of two broadly contrasted ways of organising political and economic arrangements, very loosely describable as capitalist on the one hand, and socialist on the other. For about half of that time, since the Soviet revolution of 1917, it has been possible to point to actual examples of societies plausibly claiming to be socialist as well as capitalist; and these alternatives could be regarded not merely as mechanisms for managing the production and distribution of a given stock of goods and services, but as means of substantially increasing the total stock over a long period-in other words, as alternative strategies of development. For rather more than half of this period, since the rapid accession to independence of formerly colonial Asian and African states in the aftermath of the Second World War, this simple dichotomy has likewise provided the framework for rival strategies of development within what is now known as the Third World. The dramatic developments in Eastern Europe have effectively destroyed the pretensions of socialism as a system of economic and political management in industrial societies, with obvious knock-on effects for the Third World. But the question may also be raised of whether the capitalist/socialist dichotomy has had its day in the Third World too, on the grounds that the idea of a socialist path to development has collapsed beyond the point of resuscitation. A working definition of socialism Having bluntly posed the question, a fair amount of preliminary work is needed before we can tackle it. We need, in particular, a workable definition of 'socialism', which will distinguish states or economies deemed to be socialist in a way precise enough to produce useful generalisations, without being so restrictive as to be almost inapplicable. Like many terms in common political use, 'socialism' has acquired both a high emotional content, and an almost infinite plasticity of meaning. It has extended from the abolition of the state on the one hand, to the creation of the most rigid and centralised structures of state control on the other. It appears sometimes as a blueprint for producing rapid industrialisation, at other times as a distributive mechanism which assumes that the major articulation of productive forces has already taken place. And it encompasses a wide variety of political arrangements, from preindustrial communalism, through personalist and populist regimes, to multiparty liberal democracies and states ruled by Leninist vanguard parties.