delinking

[Doug Henwood]

The critiques of the developmentalist view that were posed by 
underdevelopment theories and dependency theories, which were born 
primarily in the Latin American and African contexts in the 1960s, 
were useful and important precisely because they emphasized the fact 
that the evolution of a regional or national economic system depends 
to a large extent on its place within the hierarchy and power 
structures of the capitalist world-system. The dominant regions will 
continue to develop and the subordinate win continue to underdevelop 
as mutually supporting poles in the global power structure. To say 
that the subordinate economies do not develop does not mean that they 
do not change or grow; it means, rather, that they remain subordinate 
in the global system and thus never achieve the promised form of a 
dominant, developed economy. In some cases individual countries or 
regions may be able to change their position in the hierarchy, but 
the point is that, regardless of who fills which position, the 
hierarchy remains the determining factor.'

The theorists of underdevelopment themselves, however, also repeat a 
similar illusion of economic development.' Summarizing in schematic 
terms, we could say that their logic begins with two valid historical 
claims but then draws from them an erroneous conclusion. First, they 
maintain that, through the imposition of colonial regimes and/or 
other forms of imperialist domination, the underdevelopment of 
subordinated economies was created and sustained by their integration 
into the global network of dominant capitalist economies, their 
partial articulation, and thus their real and continuing dependence 
on those dominant economies. Second, they claim that the dominant 
economies themselves had originally developed their fully articulated 
and independent structures in relative isolation, with only limited 
interaction with other economies and global networks.'

 From these two more or less acceptable historical claims, however, 
they then deduce an invalid conclusion: if the developed economies 
achieved full articulation in relative isolation and the 
underdeveloped economies became disarticulated and dependent through 
their integration into global networks, then a project for the 
relative isolation of the underdeveloped economies will result in 
their development and full articulation. In other words, as an 
alternative to the "false development" pandered by the economists of 
the dominant capitalist countries, the theorists of underdevelopment 
promoted "real development," which involves delinking an economy from 
its dependent relationships and articulating in relative isolation an 
autonomous economic structure. Since this is how the dominant 
economies developed, it must be the true path to escape the cycle of 
underdevelopment. This syllogism, however, asks us to believe that 
the laws of economic development will somehow transcend the 
differences of historical change.

The alternative notion of development is based paradoxically on the 
same historical illusion central to the dominant ideology of 
development it opposes. The tendential realization of the world 
market should destroy any notion that today a country or region could 
isolate or delink itself from the global networks of power in order 
to re-create the conditions of the past and develop as the dominant 
capitalist countries once did. Even the dominant countries are now 
dependent on the global system; the interactions of the world market 
have resulted in a generalized disarticulation of all economies. 
Increasingly, any attempt at isolation or separation will mean only a 
more brutal kind of domination by the global system, a reduction to 
powerlessness and poverty.

   -- Hardt & Negri, Empire, pp. 283-284