Dual societies, Dual economies

 

In reality we can understand what is happening in the underdeveloped countries only when we see that they develop within the framework of the process of dependent production and reproduction. This system is a dependent one because it reproduces a productive system whose development is limited by those world relation which necessarily lead to development of only certain economic sectors, to trade under unequal conditions, to domestic competition with international capital under unequal conditions, to the imposition of relation of super exploitation of the domestic labor force with a view to dividing the economic surplus thus generated between internal and external forces of domination.

In reproducing such a productive system and such international relations, the development of dependent capitalism reproduces the factors that prevent it from reaching a nationally and internationally advantageous situation, and thus reproduces backwardness, misery, and social marginalization within its borders. 

The development that it produces benefits very narrow sectors, ecounters unyielding domestic obstacles to its continued economic growth with respect to both internal and foreign markets, and leads to the progressive accumulation of balance of payments deficits which in turn generate more dependence and more super exploitation. 

For backward countries to enter the road of economic growth and social progress, the political framework of their existamce has to be drastically revamped. The alliance between feufal landlords, industrial loyalists, and the capitalist middle classeshas to be broken. The keepers of the past can not be the builders of the future. 

The previledged position of the city has its origin in the colonial period. It was founded by the Conqueror to serve the same ends that it stil serves today, to incorporate the indigenous population into the economy brought and developed by that Conqueror and his descendants. The regional city was an instrument of conquest and is still today an instrument of domination.

The mestizo population, in fact, always lives in a city, a center of an intercultural region, which acts as the metropolis of a zone of indigenous population and which maintains with underdeveloped communities an intimate relation which links the center with the satelite communities. 

Between the mestizos who live in the nuclear city of the region and the Indians who live in the peasant hinterland there is in reality a closer and economic and social interdependance than might at first glance appear and the provincial metropoles by being centers of intercourse are also centers of exploitation.

Dependance is not entirely the external factor which it is often belived to be. A national situation should be approached by determining its own specific movements. The international situation in which this movement occurs is taken as a general condition but it is the elements within a nation which determine the effect of international situations upon thenational reality.