Non-capitalist Development: Fact or Fiction

Recently Making It Plain (MIP) had a discussion with Dr. Horace Bartilow (HB), Professor of International Economy at American University, Washington DC. The discussion covered a number of critical issues including the global economy and developing countries, Pan-Africanism, and non-capitalist development.

This week in Part 4 and the final of our series Prof. Horace Bartilow responds extensively to the concept of a non-capitalist path of development.

November 29, 2021

MIP: This now leads me to the question regarding developing countries. There was a time when certain newly independent countries were pursuing what was called a non-capitalist path of development, like in Jamaica between 1972 and 1980. It was a Social Democratic platform, where the State took an active role in developing social programs and monitoring capitalist production and distribution and so on. Can that still be realized? Recently especially in Latin America, there are some progressive movements who are now coming into power.

HB: Here is my take on this. Unless you get rid of global capitalism, individual states in the global capitalist world, cannot develop non-capitalist modes of development; I can sight example after example. Let me be very blunt. As long as there is a global capitalist economy there cannot be a non-capitalist path to development. This is a pipe dream that NEVER existed. The former Soviet Union’s centrally Planned Economy was an example of a non-capitalist path to development and eventually it collapsed within the belly of global capital. Under Tito, former Yugoslavia developed what was called Market-Socialism, which was an attempt to socialize the profit incentive of capitalism. This was another example of a non-capitalist path to development. 

 Well, what happened? Long before the ethnic conflicts that led to the breakup of former Yugoslavia, the so-called Market-Socialist system gave way to pure Capitalism, which was likely the precursor to igniting pre-existing ethnic divisions that destroyed and splintered the country into the states of Serbia, Crotia and Bosnia-Herzegovinian. China's peasant path to development and over time Global capitalism has co-opted Mao's revolution. Today China is the biggest capitalist economy in the world, eclipsing the USA. Cuba have also tried the so-called non-capitalist path to development, which again has largely failed due to:

 1.  Crushing economic sanctions from imperial USA.

2.  Lack of economic support after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

3.  And as a result of 1 and 2, is now forced to make compromises with global capitalism all of which threatens the viability and longevity of Socialism in Cuba. 

 North Korea is another example of the so-called non-capitalist path to development and what has happened there? Global capitalism or the Empire, as I call it, have not co-opted it like China, nor has it facilitated its internal collapse like the former Soviet Union or internal fragmentation like former Yugoslavia, but instead facilitated a dysfunctional and unpredictable "psychotic despotic regime" that is not only a security threat to capitalist countries like the US but to the rest of the developing world. The so-called formerly Soviet Union was the first example, Planned Economy. Well, collectivism is in direct contradiction to the capitalist mode of production. I am, going to go out on a tangent, but this needs to be said. We have an economic system that appeals not to the angels of humanity, but the demons of humanity.

 Why do I say that? It is a system that encourages the individual over the collective, a system, which encourages greed over generosity. In many respects for me it represents something that is evil because it appeals to the basic evil nature of human beings, not our good nature. The collective planned economic system in the former Soviet Union, by its very existence represented, a kind of  rejection of the very core of capitalism. And it was not surprising that it had to collapse. It collapsed because you have a system counter to capitalism, operating within the belly of capitalism and eventually; the belly would suffocate what is in it.

In other words, there is no such thing as a non-capitalist path to development. This concept has as much meaning as fictional stories like "Alice in Wonderland". If you are into fiction, then the non-capitalist path to development should be on your reading list. The historical record is clear. Global capitalism, the Empire, has dealt with these countries who have tried to undermine its central ideological and operational authority via a non-capitalist path in the following ways:

 1.  Promoting internal decay and ultimate collapse (former USSR).

2.  Promoting internal fragmentation and ultimate collapse (former Yugoslavia).

3.  Cooptation and capitalist replication and more efficient capitalist

    global reproduction (China).

4.  Slow strangulation (Cuba).

5.  Psychotic Despotism (North Korea).

To this list we could add an even longer list of the numerous countries like Jamaica during the 1970’s where attempts at a non-capitalist path to development was either rolled back, co-opted, or simply destroyed via the orchestration of military coups like Chile 1973, Guatemala 1954, Iran 1953 and the Congo 1963 under Patrice Lumumba.

 So, unless and until you get rid of the global capitalist mode of production, resistance to it in the periphery, in its belly; is almost doomed to fail. So here are two critical examples the former Soviet Union collapsed but what about China? China has not collapsed, so this is how capitalism works. If you do not collapse, you have to be incorporated, you have to be absorbed. China is a country that has a Communist government in name only. It is completely absorbed into the capitalist global economy, which is all it is. It is a country Communist in name only and that is it. For all intents and purposes, it is more capitalist that the United States. It has out competed the United States and Europe at its own capitalist game. But all it is, you are putting a Chinese face on a system that has its origin in white supremacy. That is all it is right now.

The fact is that capitalism and white supremacy are shifting systems they change forms over the years and if you do not pay attention you will get fooled. So no, I do not think non-capitalist modes of development can work as long as there is still global capitalism. They are too many examples that tell me the opposite right now. The fact that we have non-global capitalist modes of development tells me something. These non-capitalist global modes of development are there for a purpose because it reminds us that there is still ongoing resistance to capitalism, a war. So, you will find these non-capitalist modes of development strategies, they will come, and they will go.

But they will always come back because it is part of the dialectic, the struggle against capitalism. I am not going to say they should not do these things, or they should do it; it is the natural outcome of capitalism. Resistance to it and these are different forms of resistance to it. The Soviet type of development was a resistance to it; the Chinese type of development in the early years of Chinese political/economic development was a resistance to it until it got absorbed. Do you remember this group called Occupy Wall Street ? Have you ever heard from them recently? No, because they got occupied by Wall Street.

Beyond being fiction, the term is dangerous because it deceives people into thinking that capitalism and especially global capitalism can be reformed and changed without struggle and without conflict. The concept of non-capitalist path of development comes from a bourgeois-leftist understanding of historical processes. It is a belief that Empire can be changed with reforms from within the system and overlooks its existence.

Unless the underlying contradictions of capitalism undermines its global manifestations and operations, it will then force human beings, for the first time, to do the following: To cognitively imagine reorganizing production and individual incentive structures, that are not based on profit and greed; cognitively imagine incentive structures that are not based on capital accumulation; cognitively reconstruct modes of production that does not appeal to wealth and greed - the demons of our nature, but to incentive structures and modes of production that appeal to the angels of nature. Until then humanity will be stuck with capitalism and all its negative, perverse, and dysfunctional contradictions.