Reply #33: More...this is important

[leftist_not_liberal]

The Consensus on Third-World Development

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The fact that such conservative ideas concerning development meshed perfectly with the goals of United States was not fortuitous. Myrdal has noted that American studies of the developing world at this time were "expected to reach opportune conclusions , and to appear in a form that is regarded as advantageous, or at least not disadvantageous, to national interests as these are popularly understood." 70 The interests of the United States in the Third World, as popularly understood at the time by mainstream social scientists and policy makers, were defined in terms of gradual movement toward a form of Western democracy, continued alignment to the world capitalist system, continued access to strategic raw materials, order, and stability, and at best a policy not antagonistic to the United States -- all of which were to be encouraged by the nurturing of an indigenous elite that understood the benefits that could accrue from such policies.

O'Brien notes that this developmental consensus endorsed the leadership role of "technological and bureaucratic elites." The political scientists concerned with the development shared the "bureaucrat's perspective in fearing the passion and unpredictability which may be unleashed if people escape control from above." 71 Social scientists, business leaders, foundation personnel, and those who implemented United States foreign policy agreed on the importance of order and stability for Third-World development. Packenham notes that the consensus held that "radical politics, including conflict, disorder, violence, and revolution, are unnecessary for economic and political development and therefore are always bad." 72 As early as 1949 the director of the Rockefeller Foundation's Division of Social Science commented on the role of the social sciences in helping "to serve the orderly evolution of the unindustrialized countries." 73 In short, the measured and gradual development of Third-World nations was seen to serve the interests of world stability, preclude the advance of "radical" regimes and the concomitant possibility of nationalization of foreign holdings, while simultaneously affording an international context within which the major foundations could play crucial roles in developing national polities.

The views of the social scientists, foundation personnel, and government officials toward Third-World development were mutually reinforcing. Many of the key foundation personnel concerned with the social sciences had worked in one of the Washington agencies involved with foreign policy in the immediate post-1945 period, while others had close ties to major American universities.

This period was also characterized by the frequent movement of social scientists between their university bases and policy centers in Washington, where they made available to government officials their analyses of social phenomena at home and abroad and suggested policy options for implementation. So broad was the evolving consensus concerning the ideology of corporate liberalism at home and imperial liberalism abroad that such interaction only strengthened the sense of rectitude -- if not arrogance -- which characterized the work of the mainstream social scientists. Halberstam's analysis of the planning and implementation of the Vietnam war largely on the basis of the "expert" and "objective" advice by intellectuals with pronounced social science backgrounds of the mainstream variety is, of course, the best documented-and most appalling-manifestation of this syndrome. 74 To these people the struggle against the communist juggernaut was beyond ideology. To intimate that their work was ideologically biased was tantamount to questioning their integrity.

This ideological commitment to America's international role meant that the theories of development elaborated by the foundation- supported academics only gained currency to the degree that they were judged to be supportive of the broader foreign-policy objectives that grew out of that ideology. Such theories restricted the possible range of development in the Third World to options that were perceived as advantageous to the United States, but not necessarily to the developing nations in question, all the rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding. Developmental theories posited on the assumptions of gradualism, the maintenance of the existing institutional order, the legitimacy and inviolability of certain elites, the importance of sustained economic growth-to name only several-refuse to recognize that the price of such development in terms of human misery and suffering may exceed that of development brought about through revolution and different forms of economic and social arrangements. Such views are also ahistorical. The development of the West was generally accompanied by revolution and civil war, as Rhodes, for one, notes. He asks how rational people can ignore this reality when focusing on the contemporary Third World and continually stressing order and stability. 75 While Barrington Moore's views on these subjects have received a polite response from academics, the implications of his work have been largely ignored. 76 The proponents of gradualism and moderation, wedded as they are to Western-oriented institutions, elite domination, and modi operandi which do little to alleviate the plight of the masses in the underdeveloped nations while ensuring extended markets for capitalist activity, continue to see their particular viewpoint prevail.

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http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/ideologyofphilanthropy.htm