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September 15 - October 28, 2024
All important insights are missed if we continue to think of development mainly in quantitative terms and in those vast abstrations – like GNP, investment, savings, etc. – which have their usefulness in the study of developed countries but have virtually no relevance to development problems as such.
Far more serious is the dependence created when a poor country falls for the production and consumption patterns of the rich.
Poor countries slip – and are pushed – into the adoption of production methods and consumption standards which destroy the possibilities of self-reliance and self-help. The results are unintentional neocolonialism and hopelessness for the poor.
The quantitative aspect is quite secondary to the qualitative aspect. If the policy is wrong, money will not make it right; and if the policy is right, money may not, in fact, present an unduly difficult problem.
Without a genuine effort of appropriation on the part of the recipient there is no gift. To appropriate the gift and to make it one’s own is the same thing, and ‘neither moth nor rust doth corrupt’.
For £100 you may be able to equip one man with certain means of production; but for the same money you may well be able to teach a hundred men to equip themselves.
The beginning of wisdom is the admission of one’s own lack of knowledge.
As long as we think we know, when in fact we do not, we shall continue to go to the poor and demonstrate to them all the marvellous things they could do if they were already rich. This has been the main failure of aid to date.
Both in the donor countries and in the recipient countries it is necessary to achieve what I call the A-B-C combination, where A stands for administrators; B stands for businessmen; and C stands for communicators – that is intellectual workers, professionals of various descriptions. It is only when the A-B-C combination is effectively achieved that a real impact on the appallingly difficult problems of development can be made.
The mobilisation of relevant knowledge to help the poor to help themselves, through the mobilisation of the willing helpers who exist everywhere, both here and overseas, and the tying together of these helpers in ‘A-B-C-Groups’, is a task that requires some money, but not very much.
Economic development is something much wider and deeper than economics, let alone econometrics. Its roots lie outside the economic sphere, in education, organisation, discipline and, beyond that, in political independence and a national consciousness of self-reliance. It cannot be ‘produced’ by skilful grafting operations carried out by foreign technicians or an indigenous elite that has lost contact with the ordinary people.
Success cannot be obtained by some form of magic produced by scientists, technicians, or economic planners. It can come only through a process of growth involving the education, organisation, and discipline of the whole population. Anything less than this must end in failure.
When considering productivity in any society it is not sufficient to take account only of those who are employed or self-employed and to leave out of the reckoning all those who are unemployed and whose productivity therefore is zero.
Leo Tolstoy referred to it when he wrote: ‘I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.’
If this ideology does not prevail, if it is taken for granted that education is a passport to privilege, then the content of education will not primarily be something to serve the people, but something to serve ourselves, the educated.
‘Development’ meant the development of raw material or food supplies or of trading profits. The colonial power was primarily interested in supplies and profits, not in the development of the natives, and this meant it was primarily interested in the colony’s exports and not in its internal market.
the stupid man who says ‘something is better than nothing’ is much more intelligent than the clever chap who will not touch anything unless it is optimal.
To apply the word ‘planning’ to matters outside the planner’s control is absurd.
In principle, everything which is immune to the intrusion of human freedom, like the movements of the stars, is predictable, and everything subject to this intrusion is unpredictable. Does that mean that all human actions are unpredictable? No, because most people, most of the time, make no use of their freedom and act purely mechanically.
Full predictability (in principle) exists only in the absence of human freedom,
a plan is something essentially different from a forecast. It is a statement of intention, of what the planners – or their masters – intend to do.
all long-term forecasting is somewhat presumptuous and absurd, unless it is of so general a kind that it merely states the obvious.
As soon as human freedom enters, we are in an entirely different world where there is great danger in any proliferation of mechanical devices.
life, including economic life, is still worth living because it is sufficiently unpredictable to be interesting.
‘Stop, look, and listen’ is a better motto than ‘Look it up in the forecasts’.
The stronger the current, the greater the need for skilful navigation.
The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within large organisation.
We can associate many further pairs of opposites with this basic pair of order and freedom. Centralisation is mainly an idea of order; decentralisation, one of freedom. The man of order is typically the accountant and generally the administrator; while the man of creative freedom is the entrepreneur.
the Principle of Subsidiary Function teaches us that the centre will gain in authority and effectiveness if the freedom and responsibility of the lower formations are carefully preserved, with the result that the organisation as a whole will be ‘happier and more prosperous’.
Ideals can rarely be attained in the real world, but they are none the less meaningful.
Business operates with a certain economic substance, and this substance diminishes as a result of losses, and grows as a result of profit.
A unit’s success should lead to greater freedom and financial scope for the unit, while failure – in the form of losses – should lead to restriction and disability.
greed and envy demand continuous and limitless economic growth of a material kind, without proper regard for conservation, and this type of growth cannot possibly fit into a finite environment.
Ownership is not a single right, but a bundle of rights.
it is dangerous to mix business and politics. Such a mixing normally produces inefficient business and corrupt politics.
Third, nationalised enterprises, nonetheless, should have a statutory obligation ‘to serve the public interest in all respects’.
‘Serving the public interest in all respects’ means nothing unless it permeates the everyday behaviour of management,
one does not have to be a believer in total equality, whatever that may mean, to be able to see that the existence of inordinately rich people in any society today is a very great evil.
