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Is Development a form of Neo-Colonialism?

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 Is Development a
form of Neo-Colonialism?*
Gabriel Jiménez Peña**
Fecha de recepción: 17 de julio de 2014
Fecha de aceptación: 3 de octubre de 2014
Fecha de modificación: 26 de octubre de 2014

“History does not repeat

itself, but constantly ABSTRACT
reinvents everything”
In this paper I will defend that development is a form of neo-
G. Rist colonialism. In order to do so, I distinguish between a nuan-
ced point of view and a radical one. I will present first (I) the
origins and the roots of the development in the colonialism,
then (II) the radical position and, finally (III) the nuanced
one, in order to show why this is a stronger argument to de-
fend the general thesis of this paper.

Keywords
development, neo–colonialism.
 * Artículo de reflexión adscrito
al grupo de investigación
de Colciencias: “Conflictos
armados, construcción de
paz y estudios globales en

¿Es el desarrollo una forma O desenvolvimento é uma seguridad”.

** Estudiante de PhD en Ciencia

Forma de Neocolonialismo?
Política, en la Universidad

de Neocolonialismo de los Andes (tercer año).

Profesional en Filosofía de
la Universidad Nacional de
Colombia, con estudios de
profundización en Ciencias
Sociales en la Europa
RESUMEN RESUMO Viadrina Universität. Correo
electrónico: g.jimenez28@
uniandes.edu.co
En este artículo sostengo que el desarrollo es una forma de Neste artigo sustento que o desenvolvimento é uma forma de
neocolonialismo, para demostrarlo, distingo entre un punto neocolonialismo. Como respaldo para esta afirmação, distin-
de vista matizado sobre el desarrollo y uno radical; para ello, go entre um ponto de vista matizado sobre o desenvolvimen-
en primer lugar presentaré los orígenes y las raíces del desarro- to e um radical. Para isso, em primeiro lugar, apresentarei as
llo en el colonialismo (I). A continuación, el punto de vista origens e as raízes do desenvolvimento no neocolonialismo
radical sobre el desarrollo (II) y finalmente el punto de vista (I). A continuação, o ponto de vista radical sobre o desenvol-
matizado, para mostrar por qué este es más fuerte al defender vimento (II); e, finalmente, o ponto de vista matizado (III),
la tesis general de este artículo. mostrando por que este argumento é mais idôneo para defen-
der a tese geral deste artigo.
Palabras clave
Desarrollo, neo–colonialismo. Palavras-chave
Desenvolvimento. Neocolonialismo.

1 For a non-orthodox version of
the origins of Development,
Cf. Kothari (2005).
2 “The merit of a colonizing
people is to place the young
society it has brought forth in
the most suitable conditions
for the development of its
natural faculties; to smooth
its path without hampering its
initiative; to give it the means
and tools that are necessary or
useful for its growth” (Leroy-
Beaulieu, 1874, cited by Rist,
2002: 54).
38
(I) INTRODUCTION: THE ORIGINS AND ROOTS
OF DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES IN THE
COLONIALISM
According to an orthodox version of the origins of
Development1, this practice had their origin in the
European colonial project accomplished by France,
Britain, Belgium, Portugal, and Germany, particularly
in Africa in the period from 1870 to 1960 (Rist, 2002,
Cf. also Duignan and Gann, 1975) and it consolidated
since 1945 with the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall
Plan, and the Rostovian Modernization Theory. It
was the French Paul Leroy-Beaulieu the first ‘thinker’
who used the concept ‘Development’ in his book De
la colonisation chez les peuples modernes2, although
this term had been already employed as well, e. g. by
Marx, Lenin, the League of Nations, etc. (Rist, 2002:
73). On the other hand, in 1949, the President of the
United States at that time, Truman, did exposed the
principal lines upon which the Foreign policy of his
Country was sustained after World War II through 4
points: American support for the UN, the Marshall
Plan for the reconstruction of Europe, the creation of
the NATO, and the fourth point, in which he talked
about mobilizing American advanced science and te-
chnological resources for ‘Underdevelopment areas’.
With this, it starts the new age of ‘Development’.
Since the instauration of the Marshall Plan in 1947
(1947, a, b), ‘Development’ becomes a mode of thin-
king and a source of practices, which convert it into
an omnipresent reality (Escobar, 1988, 430). In other
words, Development professionalizes and institutiona-
lizes itself through instruments and practices like plan-
ning, foreign aid, loans, and investment to fill in the
‘savings gap’, promoted by institutions like World Bank
and IMF. This way, for instance, peasants, are managed
and controlled, obliged to maneuver within the limits
posed by the institutions. In other words, these prac-
tices are Western techniques of power and knowled-
7 2015
ge, in many ways resisted by indigenous people. Thus,
the Third World entered post-World War II Western
consciousness as constituting the appropriate social
and technical raw material for Development. This sta-
tus of course depended, and still does, on an extractive
neocolonialism (Escobar, 149).
In Economics, ‘development’ was conceived as an
evolutionary process, which ends in a modernization.
American Economist W. Rostow builds this natura-
listic view in the celebrated book Stages of Economic
Growth (1959, 1-16). There, he considers 5 phases,
which countries must accomplish to ‘take off’ in the
path of production: 1. Traditional society, whose pro-
ductivity is very low, 2. Preconditions for takeoff, in
which modern science and creation of technology
come with the discovery of new lands –thereby, jus-
tifying colonialism, 3. The takeoff or achievement of
growth: industry, railroads, and net investment 10%,
4. The drive to Maturity, in which the Values of tradi-
tional society are overcome, something Russia did not
accomplished, and finally, 5. High mass-consumption,
which could be characterized as American Fordism. Pa-
radoxically, this ‘anticommunist manifesto’, according
to Rist, can be seen as a ‘Marxism without Marx’, inso-
far as “both authors replace history with a philosophy
of history, which prevents today’s ‘underdevelopment’
from being understood as historical in origin” (2002,
101-102). The success of Rostow’s point of view in the
history of development consists, then, on assuring a
kind of legitimacy of West economic intervention into
the ‘Third world’ (Rist, 2002: 103).
The terminological innovation ‘development’ and its
antonym ‘underdevelopment’, in this context, thus,
appears to persuade surreptitiously the ‘Third world’
about the necessity of North-Western intervention,
in order to preserve values of free market, democracy,
and wellbeing, threatened by communism and the So-
viet Union in the Cold war. So, ‘development’ took
Is development a form of neo-colonialism? (pp. 36 - 42)
at this time a transitive meaning: an action performed
by one agent upon another, to ‘catch up’ backward
areas, supposedly looking for their ‘take off’, according
to Rostow’s metaphor, while underdevelopment beca-
me a ‘naturally’ occurring, apparently causeless, state
of things (Rist, 2002, 73). In this sense, Development
discourse is, then, a Western-American invention, a
piece of rhetoric power discourse, a performative act,
configuring the episteme of an epoch, in order to exert
more influence in countries not taken by the increa-
singly other side of world power, and creating, then, a
West/East North/South dichotomist division.
Thereby, given that ‘Development’, as showed above, is
a form of indirect intervention over the so-called ‘Third
World’ or backward countries of the South, and if ‘colo-
nialism’ is understood as the way that one country exer-
cises power over another, whether through settlement,
sovereignty, or indirect mechanisms of control (Kohn,
2012); hence, ‘Development’ is a form of neocolonialism.
(II) THE RADICAL VIEW OF DEVELOPMENT.
This point of view, that I name the radical one, is re-
presented by Goldsmith (1997) and others, and consi-
ders ‘Development’ as a form of neocolonialism in the
extent to which its main target is merely to open up
markets, to ensure the laissez faire or free global market
in order to obtain raw materials. This kind of ‘conspira-
cy theory’ explains development as being the result of
a predetermined plot by the IMF and the World Bank.
Thus, in this radical view, modern ‘development’ is a
colonialism repacked (Goldsmith, 1997) and there is
continuity between both practices and together are
doctrines of indirect and direct intervention.
The arguments for this view are the following. First,
development as neo-colonialism is not a matter of free
choice for the ‘Third World’, but a matter of violent
Gabriel Jiménez Peña
imposition. This is accomplished through setting up
indigenous elites, engineering coups d’état, military
intervention, killing the domestic economy, lending
money under strong terms, and new corporate colonia-
lism (Goldsmith, 1997). Second, a quick look at the
situation in the ‘Third World’ today undoubtedly re-
veals the disquieting continuity between the colonial
era and the era of development (Ibid: 1). There is not
particular advance in backward areas or poor countries
after development intervention and, on the contrary,
there is deepen poverty and misery (Goldsmith, 1993).
Third, ‘development’ leads to a retreat of the state and
the erosion of the sovereignty (Rush and Szeftel, 1994).
The imposition of structural adjustment programs and
the political conditionalities designed to effect good
governance have eroded state sovereignty for Third
World countries in order to receive essential foreign
assistance, to cede domestic political arrangements,
and policy options to international agencies and go-
vernments (Ahluwalia, 2001: 54-55). Fourth, the IMF
and the World Bank are institutions created just in or-
der to complete this obscure plan through debt, and
the professionals who work in the development indus-
try are, for the most part, ‘economic hit men’ (Zeitgeist
addendum, 2008). I now take all this arguments and
criticize them from another point of view.
(II) The nuanced view. The point of view that I call
the ‘sober’ one, the nuanced perspective of develop-
ment as neocolonialism, is represented by, e. g., Fergu-
son and Lohmann (1994), Kothari (2005), and others.
According to this view, development studies rarely
acknowledge the colonial roots of development. This
perspective, also called post-developmental (Sylvester,
1990), attempts to reveal how contemporary global in-
equalities between rich and poor countries have been,
and continue to be, shaped by colonial power relations
(Kothari, 2005: 47). But despite affirming the colonial
continuity, for this point of view, it is a mistake to su-
ggest that development discourse is simply a reworking of
2015
7 39
 the colonial one, “since development is not always and
inevitably an extension of colonialism” (ibid: 49-50).
In the following, I offer some arguments, which will con-
trast the nuanced approach with the radical one and, if
there is no contrast, it is because there is commonality
between those views: the affirmation of development
as industry and neocolonialism. First of all, there is no
need of violent imposition, like engineering coups d’état
or military intervention in Development as neocolonia-
lism, because its force depends on a new type of power,
which can be analyzed through the Foucaultian concept
of ‘governmentality’, which refers to “the ‘the conduct of
conduct’, a particular modern form of power that is cha-
racterized by an increasing reliance on pastoral care and
techniques of normalization and consensus, as opposed
to more overtly coercive forms of power” (Abrahamsen,
2004: 1459). This comprises what the Bretton Institu-
tions had built with development discourse: “Indirect
mechanisms of rule such as techniques of notation, com-
putation, and calculation; procedures of examination
and assessment; the invention of devices such as surveys
and presentational forms such as tables; the standardiza-
tion of systems for training and the inculcation of habits
and other ways to act upon individuals and whole popu-
lations” (Anders, 2005: 39).
Second, according to Leftwich (1995), ‘development’
as colonialism led to a stronger state: the developmen-
tal state. In the first place, the internal autonomy of the
‘developmental states’ has increased “by the inflow of
substantial amounts of foreign aid, loans and state-di-
rected private investment which reduced government
dependence on locally-generated revenue capital” (Le-
ftwich, 1995: 411). In the second place, in the develo-
pmental state, bureaucracy has had authoritative and
pivotal influence in making development policy (Let-
fwich, 1995: 406). That produces a relative autonomy
of the elites, which constitutes a high technical bureau-
cracy and abroad-educated population. That leads to
40 7 2015
an increased autonomy of these elites, which have an
enormous political power to decide policies and perpe-
tuate themselves in the government. Thus, there is not
a retreat of the State, but a metamorphosis of it: “One
can also discern state strategies that appear to be in re-
treat, in decline, even in a state of decay, as part of the
process of continual formation of the state, as a new
modality to produce the political” (Hibou, 2004: 3).
Third, development projects fail and that is just in or-
der to perpetuate the development institutions and the
‘technical’ intervention. Notwithstanding this, as Fergu-
son explains, it is not part of a capitalist conspiracy, but
they bear a deliberated misunderstanding of the ‘Third
world’, a fancy construction of the realities of countries
(Ferguson, 1994, p. 176-177). In other words, as Nau-
det (2000) stresses, in particular about Aid operations,
but that we can extent to ‘development projects’, these
have been mainly ‘one-size-fits-all’ and rarely tailor-ma-
de ones (127). Finally, ‘development institutions’ hear
what they like to hear —projects fail because absence
of compromise and ‘entrepreneurship by people of the
‘third World’—, and the ‘development project’ is a co-
lonial one, but not a global conspiracy, and the way of
opposing to it consists in a political engagement, which
is looking for truly empowering the poor and unmasking
the false assumptions of this whole project.
Fourth, it is preposterous to affirm that development
professional and brokers are all just hit men (cf. Mosse,
2005), and is not a good idea to homogenize the insti-
tutions or individuals which work in the development
industry (Kothari, 2005: 57).
To conclude, colonialism did not repeat itself, but it
has reinvented itself through development: “On the
basis of the old conceptual frameworks, together with
snatches of ancient mythological discourse, the present
was reinterpreted in such a way as to give it unchallen-
geable legitimacy” (Rist, 2002: 54).
Is development a form of neo-colonialism? (pp. 36 - 42)
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Is development a form of neo-colonialism? (pp. 36 - 42)