Bill Rosenberg wrote:
> While Nathan's ideas of
> internationally financed free pharmaceuticals, education and
> unemployment fund are a necessary start, they (except perhaps for
> education) still don't provide a permanent answer to the development
> problem. And what would the democratic structures be like that would
> be needed to support them?
The question has been has any nation developed with free trade. But has any nation developed democratically? I don't think so. (No slave holding nation is in any relevant sense a democracy.)
So the question might be, "Is it possible for a nation to escape dependency without an authoritarian regime?" Is democracy compatible with development?
The obvious answer seems to be No to both questions. At least the burden of proof would seem to be on those who would answer yes.
Perhaps the really relevant question would be, Is it possible to maintain the authoritarian state necessary for development without unacceptable brutality? Of course "unacceptable" needs to be defined, which might be difficult to do, but that is a separate question. I would suggest the answer might be "It depends."
That is, authoritarian states will be established in all "underdeveloped" nations. Most of those states will be dominated by comprador capitalists (lackeys of imperialism in the old terminology). That is the present state of affairs globally. There will be no development in these states. Some may come to l be dominated by nationalist elements. That may or may not lead to development, but no other kind of state will. Those states and those states alone will provide an answer to the academic question of the relationship between free trade and development.
Carrol