The State And Underdevelopment In Spanish America

The Political Roots Of Dependency In Peru And Argentina

Douglas Friedman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000306057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

Challenging the dependency theory approach to the origin of underdevelopment in Spanish America, this book argues that internal political and economic factors led the nations of the region to become dependent and underdeveloped during the nineteenth century. Dr. Friedman focuses on Peru and Argentina in the aftermath of their wars of independence to show how underdevelopment and dependency resulted from a crisis of the state brought about by the loss of legitimacy of Spanish colonial rule. Class conflicts had been effectively managed by the colonial state; its collapse, Dr. Friedman demonstrates, created conditions of intense inter- and intra-class conflicts, chiefly political in nature, which weak post-independence governments found impossible to restrain. Left with little authority, legitimacy, or control over internal resources, the fledging Peruvian and Argentine states turned to external sources for the capabilities with which to begin the process of consolidating their internal power. By the last half of the nineteenth century, both Peru and Argentina had chosen a course that led to their integration into the international economy as dependent nations.

Part One
Dependency, Colonialism, and Crisis

1
Spanish American Underdevelopment: Dependency Theory, the State, and Class Conflict

In the late nineteenth century, the Spanish American countries emerged from a period of relative economic stagnation or decline and almost constant civil war into a period of economic growth and relative political stability, Economically, this period was characterized by the emergence of "classic export economies" in which agro/mineral products were exchanged in international trade for manufactured goods, capital, and Infrastructure investment. Politically, this period was characterized by the emergence of the "oligarchies," small groups of landowners, merchants, urban politicians, bureaucrats, and intellectuals who formed a solid class base for governing, whether in liberal democratic or authoritarian guise.

The fact that agro/mineral export growth and relative political stability arose at approximately the same time has led recent interpretations of this period to suggest that, (1) political stability in late nineteenth century Spanish America resulted from prosperity created by agro/mineral export growth;¹ (2) both the growth of agro/mineral exports and political stability in nineteenth century Spanish America can be explained primarily by external factors, as the industrial development of Western Europe and the United States sparked world demand for Spanish American agro/mineral products;² and (3) the underdevelopment and dependency of Spanish America was caused by a world capitalist economic system controlled by Western Europe and the United States.³

Such interpretations, in my estimation, are flawed because they ignore the role of internal factors in the creation of Spanish American agro/mineral export growth and political stability. By examining class conflicts and the consolidation of the State in two Spanish American countries, this study will show that that agro/mineral export growth was a result of the search for political stability and thus, that underdevelopment and dependency have their origins in factors internal to Spanish America.

Underdevelopment, Dependency, Theory, and Nineteenth Century Spanish America

To ask why the Spanish American countries had agro/mineral export economies by the late nineteenth century is to ask the more important question of why they became underdeveloped and dependent. The term "underdeveloped" is used here in a very specific sense. It does not mean that these countries were left undeveloped; obviously economic development occurred throughout the nineteenth century--more land was cultivated, people were put to work, production was extended, wealth was created, etc. Yet at the close of the nineteenth century, Spanish America was well behind Western Europe in economic development. Of course this lag could be explained by Western Europe's "head start," but what about the United States which began from a comparable position to Spanish America in the early nineteenth century, or Japan which still had a feudal system in the mid nineteenth century? By the late nineteenth century, both nations were progressing quickly towards advanced industrial capitalism, far outdistancing economic development in Spanish America.⁴

Of the various explanations for Spanish American underdevelopment and dependency, the one that has prevailed in recent years is "dependency theory."⁵ Although developed by neo-Marxists such as Andre Gunder Frank⁶ and Fernando Henrique Cardoso,⁷ dependency theory has been accepted by non-Marxists like Peter H. Smith, who argues that the approach has . . great potential as an explanatory tool . . which he hopes . . political history in the 1980s will pursue."⁸ Dependency theory was conceived by its authors as a response, critique, and alternative to "modernization theory,"⁹ notable in the writings of Jacques Lambert, Gino Germini, Frank Jay Moreno, W. W. Rostow and others, who argued that underdevelopment in Spanish America resulted from an "original" undevelopment, which could only be overcome through greater contact—trade, investment, technology, and values—with more developed nations.¹⁰ These authors contended that in Spanish America there existed "dual" economies and societies in which relatively developed modern capitalist sectors stood in opposition to undeveloped feudal or "traditional" sectors. Development, they concluded, was a process of a diffusion of modern economic, social, and political values from the developed modern sectors to the traditional ones. In the same way, economic, social, and political intercourse with the advanced Western countries would greatly facilitate the "modernization" of Spanish America.

Frank began his attack on modernization theory by rejecting these notions and arguing quite the opposite. He contended that what the modernization theorists took to be the traditional characteristics of Spanish America were in fact the results of economic, social, and political contact with the advanced Industrial countries. Development and underdevelopment, he argued, were opposite sides of the same coin of world wide capitalist development.¹¹ In Frank's formulation, Spanish America has been part of an expanding world capitalist system since the sixteenth century and therefore must be defined as capitalist. The structure of its economies, societies, and polities have been determined by its incorporation into that system, which Frank defines as an international system of trade. Accordingly, Spanish American countries were forced to become complements of the European economies, producing raw agricultural and mineral goods in exchange for manufactured articles from Europe.¹²

ine dependentistas contend that the structuring of Spanish American'economies by the world capitalist system during the last 500 years has left Spanish America "dependent." While the dynamic "metropolitan" countries could determine their own economic, social, and political direction because their economies generated economic growth autonomously, those of Spanish America were determined externally because the impetus for their economic growth lag outside their borders. Thus, the rhythm of the international economy, which is sensitive only to the needs of the advanced industrial nations, determined the economic development (and therefore to a large extent the social and political development) of Spanish America. According to Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto.

. . . the situation of underdevelopment is produced historically when the expansion of early commercial capitalism and later industrial capitalism ties the backward regions into the international market, and these regions become suppliers of essential raw materials for the advanced countries as well as purchasers of their industrial goods. Therefore, Internal development In the countries of the periphery is shaped according to the needs of the metropolitan powers that dominate them.¹³

To argue that a capitalist world economy causes underdevelopment and dependency is no better an explanation than the argument that tradition causes underdevelopment. If the capitalist world economic system was responsible for integrating the Spanish American economies into that system as agro/mineral exporters, then why did it not integrate, for example, the United States, Germany, or even France In the same manner? Why did the capitalist world economy differentiate between Peru and the United States? The answer obviously cannot be found in focusing on an undifferentiated "world capitalist system," but this is precisely what the dependentistas would have us believe. For them, Spanish America, Western Europe, and the United States all had fundamentally the same type of economy—capitalist. Since all were capitalist, any explanation citing fundamental differences between the Spanish American economies, societies, and polities and those of Western Europe and the United States is absurd. In other words, capitalism creates dynamic industrial economies in one part of the world, and dependent underdevelopment in the other.

By arguing that capitalism created development and underdevelopment at the same time, the dependentistas have eliminated capitalism as an explanation for either. Yet, isn't the question of development in reality a question of the development of capitalism as we understand it? The prodigious increase in material wealth and production in the modern era results from the capitalist system of production, which requires continued progress and expansion for its very survival. The reproduction of the existing system is not enough; it must continually expand, generating more production, higher profits, greater efficiency, higher consumption, more technologically developed production tools, etc.¹⁴ It is, of course, a highly exploitative system but nevertheless has produced greater surpluses than any previous economic system.

The basic weakness of dependency theory is its mistaken assumption that capitalism is simply a national and international system of commodity exchange in which profit, i.e. capital, is acquired through trade.¹⁵ Is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• PART ONE DEPENDENCY, COLONIALISM, AND CRISIS
• PART TWO THE STATE ORIGINS OF DEPENDENCY IN NINETEENTH CENTURY PERU AND ARGENTINA
• Bibliography
• Index