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Development: What Development?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Extract
Ever since debate on the development process became popular it has been customary to frame the discussion largely in terms of the contrast between the underdeveloped societies (or, as they are now more tactfully described, the ‘less developed countries’) and the developed societies of the White North (capitalist and state capitalist). That these latter societies are industrially sophisticated and highly productive cannot be denied. Whether they are ‘developed’ in the sense many of the writers on global problems would use the word ‘developed’ is less certain.
Indeed if, as Pope Paul VI insisted, development ‘cannot be limited to mere economic growth’, if it ‘has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man’, we have to recognize that there are no developed societies. We have only the underdeveloped societies of the third world and the maldeveloped or overdeveloped societies of the White North. Or, perhaps, one global society in which the underdevelopment of the great majority of mankind is the price they have to pay for the overdevelopment of the affluent nations. Overdevelopment and underdevelopment are two sides of the same coin. When we read of Pope John Paul II beginning his recent American visit with an appeal to the American people to share their wealth with the rest of the world, this has to be borne in mind.
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- Copyright © 1987 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 The accelerated pace of the transfer of wealth from the poor nations to the rich nations (i.e. this process of underdevelopment) is demonstrated by Clairmonte and Kavanagh in their paper on the ‘Third World Debt Crisis’ in IFDA Dossier 59 (Nyon) May/June 1987, pp. 43–50; they comment: ‘The net transfer of capital from the Third World to the rich countries rose from US$7 billion (1981) to US7 billion (1981) to US56 billion (1983) to US7 billion (1981) to US74 billion (1985). In 1985, new borrowing and rescheduling was US7 billion (1981) to US41 billion but debt servicing was far higher at US7 billion (1981) to US114 billion.’ p.45.
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