Although volumes are now written about basic human needs, few of them issue from the subjects of those needs: the desperately poor. And a recent Third World document warns that:

While the satisfaction of basic human needs of the people, and the eradication of mass poverty must have a high priority in economic and social development, the idea is unacceptable and erroneous that these goals can be achieved without the all-round and comprehensive economic development of the developing countries and the establishment of the New International Economic Order.

This essay is concerned with value perceptions of populations marginal to development. In accord with the usage found in United Nations documents, development here designates the move by a society toward self-sustaining economic growth and institutional modernization. Our interest centers on how marginals view the relationship between their own values and the images they have of visible benefits ordinarily associated with development—better housing and nutrition, easier access to jobs, schooling for all, and the like.

Mexico's two thousand-mile border with the United States is unarmed, but it remains the locus of sharp conflicts. Last October, House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill, bowing to pressure from the Hispanic Caucus, withdrew the Simpson- Mazzoli bill on immigration reform over White House objections that "it is in the best interests of all Americans to have the nation regain control of its borders." Jorge Bustamante, director of Mexico's Center for Border Studies, argues, however, that such a bill would "leave all migrant workers, whether documented or not, in a state of virtual slavery, since they will have no access to the courts to plead for justice."

The most serious analyst of the danger of technical determinism is still Jacques Ellul. As far back as 1965 this French philosopher, lawyer, and social prophet argued that “The technical phenomenon has assumed an independent character quite apart from economic considerations, and that it develops according to its own intrinsic laws…, following its own intrinsic causal processes, independent of external forces or human aims.“

Frequent accusations to the contrary notwithstanding, Ellul replied that he “never intended to describe any inexorable process of inevitable doom.” In fact he insists “that if we can be sufficiently awakened to the real gravity of the situation, man has within himself the necessary resources to discover, by some means unforeseeable at present, the path to a new freedom.“

Mr. Gastil's summary of the survey conducted by Freedom House commands assent on several points. Freedom is indeed a comparative word and exists in varying degrees. Freedom does not necessarily accompany, or result from, economic or organizational progress. And there is a close bond between civil and political liberties.

Mr. Gastil displays knowledge of a wide spectrum of political systems and writes in clear prose. Why, then, do his words leave this reader skeptical, with a sense of unreality, as though all that is written bears no relation to what he knows of Africa, the Mideast, Latin America, or Europe? I could not begin to take Gastil's essay seriously without first finding the key which explains these disquieting impressions.