False development?
From the Hon. Executive Secretary of the 7lentSociety for International Develop 1 Professor Joan Robinson, reviewing °}10 White's book, The Politics of ,areigri Aid (The Spectator, September 4G) writes that "'Development' means to .„
--Ppress any movement that might aPPeal to the poor people within the 1Xior countries and to build up a middle
class hooked on Western patterns of ..011sumption, who can be relied upon to of their governments within the orbit or world trade.'' If this were true, instead of being a distortion to fit a Marxist thesis, the
Wicked West could be expected to play a Much more wholehearted part than it does in the International Development
Strategy for the Second UN Development Decade. The fact is that far from seriously attempting to contribute their are towards implementing the StraNY, the rich nations show increasing indifference. As against the agreed target of 0.7 per cent of GNP for official development assistance, the rich countries contributed only 0.34 per cent in 1972 and 0.30 per cent in 1973, less han half the target, instead of a steady !ilcrease, and still going down. There nas been a decline of about 30 per cent in real terms, compared to ten years ago. Similarly in the trade field, far from encouraging the poor countries to keep Within the orbit of world trade, "deve'oPed countries have made slower and illore limited and disappointing progress than expected in . . . reducing or eliminating barriers to the export trade
of the developing countries" (UN General Assembly resolution). At the Special Session of the General Assembly held last April, convened on the initiative of Algeria, a Declaration and a Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order were adopted nem con. These called, inter alio, for the fulfilment of commitments in the field of trade "undertaken in the UN Conference on Trade and Development and in the International Development Strategy" and for "increase in the official component . . . of financial resource transfers to developing countries so as to meet and even to exceed the target" (of the Strategy). The vast majority of governments supporting this Declaration and Programme were those of poor countries (but all, of course, Western stooges). Gordon Evans 7 Gerald Road, London; SW 1
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