Are we really so stupid?

Are we really so stupid?
By Editor
Thursday May 29, 2008 [04:00]

We share United States Ambassador to Zambia Carmen Martinez’s feelings about aid. We believe the great majority of our people, if not all our people, are looking forward to a day when our country will stop asking for aid. And, like Ambassador Martinez, it shall be their happiest day when Zambia will stop seeking assistance from any country. Even biblically, it is said:

“Son, don’t live the life of a beggar; it is better to die than to beg. If you have to depend on someone else for your food, you are not really living your own life. You pollute yourself by accepting food from another. Begging is torture to the soul of any sensitive person. A shameless person can make begging sound sweet, but something inside him burns (Sirach 40:28 – 30).”

We would prefer self-reliance to begging, to aid. Of course, we hope for foreign aid but we are not happy to depend on it; we would rather depend on our own efforts, on the creative power of our people.

We also believe that the great majority of our people, if not all, like Ambassador Martinez are saddened by the fact that Zambia with all its rich natural resources, still exported raw materials as opposed to finished products.

But things don’t just happen like that. There is a reason for this arrangement that clearly appears to be stupid. And it is not easy for us to get out of it, otherwise we would have done that a long time ago. And moreover, this is not a problem unique to Zambia. It is a problem that affects most of our Third World Countries.

Industrialisation is a decisive process for the Third World’s economic development, a need nobody dares deny, even though there are diverse opinions when attempts are made to establish its specific characteristics, mechanisms and periods for each country. Unquestionably, the industrialisation of the Third World is equivalent, in strategic terms, to laying the main technological and material base for development.

The classical model that postulates that agriculture and raw materials are specialised enough for the underdeveloped countries, leaving industrial production in the hands of the developed countries, does nothing but try to perpetuate a model which our countries firmly reject as irrational, unequal and unjust.

Today, it is perfectly clear that industrialisation – as a process whose effects are felt in all sectors of the economy, mobilising a growing portion of national resources for the development of technically advanced economic structures that can produce consumer goods and investments and guaranteeing its own economic and technological reproduction – is a historic imperative for our countries; it is a path that we should take in order to have access to development, modern technology and contemporary civilisation itself.

It is well known that industrialisation of the underdeveloped world is presented as a process of even greater complexity and involves even greater difficulties than the processes through which the industrial development of England was effected in the early days of the capitalist system, Germany and the United States later on, and even the Soviet Union starting in 1917.

The high-speed dynamics of present scientific-technical revolution is leaving the underdeveloped countries farther and farther behind.

The Third World’s industry is also characterised by the very primitive level at which it exploits and processes its natural resources. The relationship between the exploitation of its natural resources and their industrial processing as manufactured goods reveals the primary nature of this industry.

It isn’t a case only of the underdeveloped countries’ participating to an insignificant extent in processing their own natural resources; rather, the breaking apart of their economies both within and between sectors – that is, the extreme weakness of the links between their sectors and branches.

There is not enough integration in their inter-sectorial relations linking the industrial processing of raw materials with the final consumer, semi-finished and capital goods.

Most of the developing countries have little participation in the production of capital goods. Typically, their industries turn out simple products made to order for small enterprises that process foods, do repairs, turn out textiles, work metals, and so on and so forth. The complex, high-precision capital goods are imported within the framework of favourable trade and investment policies.

The branches that are related to mechanical activities are those least represented in the developing countries. In the case of iron and steel, a relatively large number of developing countries have some manufacturing activity, but production in many of these countries is limited to processing domestic or imported scrap iron.

Naturally, in the industrial reality of the underdeveloped world, the transnational corporations bear a high degree of responsibility. It would not be exaggerated to say that their activities are largely responsible for this distorted industrial growth of our countries.
A very revealing aspect of capitalist industry is the high degree of control that the transnational monopolies wield over it.

This control over industrial production – together with their control over capital, technology and marketing – enables the transnationals to impose their model of growth not only in the developed countries but also in the countries of the Third World, causing serious imbalances in the distribution of world industry.

It only remains, therefore, to point out another well-defined characteristic of the Third World’s industrial growth. This is the strong concentration of the underdeveloped world’s industrial production in a few countries, with a tendency to increase that concentration.

It is not a matter of reproducing in our countries the industrial model of the West, since it cannot be repeated under the present historic conditions; it cannot ensure stable, long-term development; and it has subjected the world to periodic crises.

In the United States, the most developed country, industry manages to grow only marginally by producing for war, ignoring the social welfare of the ever larger portions of the population, squandering the natural resources that are the patrimony of all mankind, contaminating the environment and turning man into a simple instrument of capital.

Our countries do not need industries that consume foreign exchange and produce weak currencies. They do not need industries that mostly produce goods that neither ensure economic and technical reproduction nor create a base for self-sustainment.

They do not need industries whose growth increases the debt and debt servicing, unemployment, social marginalisation, the deterioration of the standard of living, foreign dependency and internal socioeconomic disproportions.

Nor do our countries need an export industry that, in order to function, requires large imports because it is limited to carrying out the simplest labour intensive phases of an international productive process that is controlled by transnational corporations. They do not need industries that provide cheap inputs for transnational capital.

Industrialisation does not always mean development. Statistical industrial growth and increases in exports of manufactured goods do not always mean that the path of development has been followed.

There is even the danger of following a path that, while seemingly leading toward the goal of socioeconomic development, really takes us farther away from it.

A very instructive lesson of the past few years is that underdevelopment may also present a façade of industrial exports without losing any of the essential characteristics of underdevelopment.

An even greater cause for concern is the fact that the incorrect formulation of our demands regarding industrialisation may help to confuse the Third World’s legitimate interest in development with the transnational corporations’ pillaging, deforming activities in the industrial sectors of the underdeveloped countries.

We must therefore always go into the whys and wherefores of anything and use our own heads and carefully think over whether or not it corresponds to reality and is really well founded; on no account should we follow blindly.

There is need for us to be far sighted as we try to size up situations. We should always use our brains and think everything over carefully. In this world, things are complicated and are decided by many factors.

We should look at problems from different aspects, not from just one. When we look at a thing, we must examine its essence and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, and once we cross the threshold, we must grasp the essence of the thing, this is the only reliable way of analysing things before us.

It really looks stupid for us to be so dependent on aid. And it equally looks stupid for us to be exporting our raw materials without processing them.

But are we so stupid as a people to be subjected to all these seemingly stupid ways of living our lives? Are all our leaders so stupid not to see that dependency on aid is undesirable and that to export our raw materials without processing them is not sensible?

We don’t think we are a stupid people with stupid leaders. There are tangible realities that are making us conduct our affairs in this apparently irrational manner. And this is what needs to be understood, fought and defeated before we can make progress.

Until we do this, our wisdom as a people, and that of our leaders, will always be questioned even by people who can’t even govern a village as long as they come from affluent countries.