How the West is Underdeveloping Itself

This essay deals with the history of development discourse, recurring problems, and its present day manifestations. It argues that the deindustrialisation of the core and concomitant hollowing-out of political institutions belies several truisms of development discourse, and that a new "relational" model of development is required. This relational model recognises two distinct forms of development: autogenous (that which requires the exploitation of domestic workers) and parasitic (that which depends on unequal exchange and export specialisation). Finally it is argued that a socialist development programme must be ambivalent to "growth," and instead the core and periphery must pursue different forms of development together.