Conclusion

The chapter summarizes the argument and evidence of the book. It then makes a case about how capitalist development happens in a ‘profane’ way, that is, full of risk, coercive politics resistance, and instability. It returns to the normative questions raised by the case studies and makes an argument that the near-exclusive focus on rights is misleading. It argues that other norms and values cohabit politics: stability, economic improvement, national belonging, and commonwealth. The corollary here is that normative approaches to development are richer for a realist approach not impoverished. Norms and values emerge within capitalist transition as forceful political mobilizations.

America

This chapter sets out a detailed account of America’s capitalist transformation from the early 1700s. It shows how homestead and plantation agriculture generated a colonial economy. It stresses the importance of independence and then the civil war to the construction of a state and a nation. The chapter looks in detail at the varied forms of production throughout the territory and highlights the centrality of frontier expansion and dispossession. It discusses the role of plantation slavery and its abolition in capitalist growth. It then goes on to look at the ‘gilded age’ as one of developmentalism: forging a national economy, promoting industry, and conflating security issues with economic growth. It notes the slow social progress and crisis-prone nature of capitalist development, arguing that this is in the nature of capitalist transformation. It concludes by noting that the world of ‘late’ development is constructed by Britain and America’s capitalist transformations.

Rwanda and China

This chapter reviews the contrasting experiences of Rwanda and China. It does so to show how an early-stage and late-stage capitalist transformation might reveal risk involved in developmentalism. Rwanda’s post-genocide government is analysed as early-developmentalist. Here the focus is on agricultural transformation. An analysis of Rwanda’s developmentalism focuses on the insecurity of the elite, the insecurities of the region, and the challenges of reconstruction. The Chinese case starts with the accession to power of the Chinese Communist Party. It looks at the violence of the Great Leap Forward and then the post-Mao period. It analyses the sources of growth in China since 1978, showing how the state’s legitimacy shifted from socialist nationalism to a growth obsession in which capitalist accumulation became the source of legitimacy. It emphasizes China’s massive nut incomplete progress in poverty reduction and transformation.

The Post-Imperial Era and Japan

The chapter starts with an overview of the rise of modern development politics, showing how it was a manifestation of post-imperial sovereignty in a world order constructed by Britain, America, and other developed capitalist nations. It emphasizes the challenge of sovereignty and nationalism for post-colonial governance. It highlights the historical features of urgency, insecurity, and nationalism for post-colonial developmentalism. It then offers a treatment of Japan as a post-imperial developer. Commencing with the establishing of a national economy in the late 1700s, the chapter focuses on the Meiji politics of national development through imperialism and support for large companies. It focuses on the post-Second World War recovery and sustained transformation. It reviews the role of the state, the insecurities of post-war governance, the national vision of business, and the role of America. The chapter outlines the mass social improvements that resulted from capitalist transformation.

Britain

This chapter sets out a detailed account of Britain’s capitalist transformation from the late seventeenth century. It emphasizes the agrarian origins of capitalism and the use of the state to enclose land. It connects this to the emergence of industrial capital and the class relations it creates. It shows how uncertain the rise of industry was and how it relied on an increasingly proactive state which saw economic growth as key to its position in Europe and the world. It shows how radically the economy transformed and the ways in which this generated broader social improvements. It also connects the rise of capitalism in Britain to empire. It concludes by showing how Britain’s capitalism created a global context for other countries.

Capitalist Development

The chapter constructs a theory of capitalist development based on a distinction between capital-ascendant and capital-dominant countries. It makes this analytical separation by distinguishing real, actual, and empirical levels in a political economy. The real level identifies the essential underlying processes in developing and developed countries. These distinct ‘realities’ generate different kinds of actual and empirical phenomena that can be observed in differential rates of growth, poverty, productivity, life expectancy, or literacy. Across all of these observable phenomena, a general real distinction between ascendant and dominant pertains. The chapter makes this argument using critical realist and Marxist political economy. It then finishes with a review of critical development theory and its historical methods in order to identify the chapter’s own framework and its merits.

Taiwan and Israel

This chapter reviews the transformation successes in Taiwan and Israel. It starts Taiwan’s account with the colonization by Japan and the investments in industry. It then emphasizes the insecurities generated by occupation by the exiled Chinese government. This was intensified by a very rivalrous geopolitical regionalism. Taiwan’s sovereignty was doubtful and under threat. The chapter looks at the considerable efforts to promote agricultural development and then industrialization. Industrialization was motivated by a need to ensure legitimacy and security for a quasi-sovereign state. In relation to Israel, the chapter starts in the Mandate period and shows how Israel’s statehood was based on occupation, economic growth, and nationalism. It highlights the severe existential threat to the country and the response of the government to promote agricultural growth and industrialization. It shows how Israel faced repeated severe crises and that the government eventually found a way through these crises through capitalist transformation.

Realism, Values, and Development

The chapter identifies the core normative concern with transformative approaches to development: the coercion involved in generating capitalist development. It rejects a utilitarian solution to this problem and questions the idealism of mainstream normative political theory. It sets out a realist normative approach that accepts an antagonism in the values of development. It emphasizes how normativity is constructed not deduced and identifies the value-in-contention within development. It sets out a modified realist approach in which the basic legitimacy of developmentalism is based on both authoritative governance and the construction of a commonwealth. It finishes by making some illustrations of how norms can be understood in development contexts.

Capabilities and the Limits of Liberal Development

This chapter makes a critical assessment of the capabilities approach (CA). It sets out the core features of the CA and highlights its focus on local livelihoods and its development vision of incremental change. It notes the normative attractiveness of this position, and its focus on individual experiences. It then goes on to identify a series of limitations to this approach. It argues that the CA is excessively inclusive, using rights-speak to see all change as either good or bad. It also has a weak understanding of social relations because it focuses on individuals at the expense of structures. It argues that its liberal understanding of individual agency means that it fails to understand the social construction of agency. The chapter ends by sketching how the inability of capabilities to generate a theory of structural change leaves it limited in ambition and inattentive to history.

Introduction

The chapter starts by setting a global context. A small number of countries have achieved capitalist development and a good majority have not. The places where mass populations enjoy high material standards of living are in developed countries. Other countries are either very poor and economically stagnant, or aspiring to transform into fully fledged capitalism. The chapter identifies the political project to transform in this way as developmentalism. This argument is elaborated through references to Tanzania. It then sketches the substance of developmentalism in the following properties: a strong political support for expended accumulation, the conflation of development with state sovereignty, the construction of legitimacy, and the disciplining of business.