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Opinion - The metropole – satellite relations and under-development

2022-09-02  Reverend Jan Scholtz

Opinion - The metropole – satellite relations and under-development

The economic and other relations between developed and developing countries established and maintained over centuries can be fully comprehended within the metropole – satellite pattern. The developed countries are the metropole, while the developing countries are satellites orbiting around the metropole. 

The metropole-satellite relationship operates in such a manner that the primary role of the satellite is to transfer economic surplus to the metropole, where the surplus is consumed and utilised. The profits that are produced by the toiling workers in developing countries, together with their peasantry, are channeled to the metropole centres of the developed countries. The satellite, therefore, is a conduit to ensure that whatever little surplus accumulated in developing countries is transferred to the metropoles. The metropole-satellite relationship, therefore, leads to the under-capitalisation of developing countries, and to the enjoyment of super-profits in developed countries. The lack of economic surplus for development therefore maintains the under-development of developing countries. 

Developing countries are severely indebted to the metropoles through private and public loans accrued over time. In servicing these loans, developing countries now pay more to developed countries than they get in new loans. Essentially, the developing countries are financing the development of the metropoles while they, on the other hand, are undergoing under-development. Within this context, clearly development is more constrained by external economic and other relations than by the internal structures in developing countries.

Developing countries are, therefore, not reflective of any stage in the past of the now developed countries. The development process within these countries is constrained by these exploitative relations. Several hypotheses are formulated within the under-development school which reflects the status of the metropole-satellite relationship, and the role of developing countries within it.

Firstly, it is argued that the development of developing countries is limited by their satellite status. Development is not constrained by the survival and persistence of archaic institutions (economic, cultural, social, etc), but by way of contacts between developed and developing countries. 

Secondly, developing countries experience their greatest development during periods when their contacts with developed countries are at their weakest. Indeed, evidence from Latin America and Africa appear to confirm this hypothesis. Thirdly, some of the poorest regions in developing countries were once thriving satellite centres which were the focus of international metropoles. Many developing countries are littered with ruins and ghost towns which were once prosperous centres. Once the economic surplus leaves, these areas are left to ruin because the international metropoles are no longer interested in them.

The whole metropole-satellite relationship between developed and developing countries results in the dependence of the latter on the former. The main proponents of the dependence–under–development school are A. Gunder Frank and Theotonio dos Santos, who led an onslaught on the economic growth school led by W.W. Rostow. 

The fundamental premises of the under-development school is the view that economic development of society occurs in a succession of capitalist stages, which is false and does not have any historical foundation. Particularly, the conclusion reached by the economic growth school that today’s developing countries are simply at a lower stage of development and will with the passage of time resemble the now-developed countries, is held to be seriously erroneous and misleading. 

Research in the history of economic development of societies indicates that under-development (the position of today’s developing countries) is not an original or lower stage of development through which the currently developed countries passed centuries ago. The past or present status of under-developed countries do not in any significant manner resemble the past of the now-developed countries. Under-developed countries are fundamentally different in both content and form from the past of developed countries. For instance, Namibia today does not resemble any stage in the past development of England or the United States of America (USA). 

It is, therefore, erroneous to presume that simply through the passage of time, Namibia will look like Britain in some distant future. Whereas today’s developed countries may have lacked development in the past, i.e. being under-developed, this situation was not a product of external relations with more advanced societies. On the contrary, however, today’s under-development is a direct product of external relations with the more developed capitalist west. Therefore, as well as the contemporary developed societies may have been undeveloped, they were never under-developed. It is thus essentially important for purposes of theorical clarity to distinguish between the status of being undeveloped and that of under-development. Today’s developing countries are not undeveloped, but they are under-developed.

Denis Goulet vividly portray’s the situation when he states that,” Under-development is shocking, the squalor, disease, unnecessary deaths and hopelessness of it all!.... The prevalent enotion of under- development is a sense of personal and societal impotence in the face of disease and death, of confusion and ignorance, as one gropes to understand change, decisions govern the course of events, of hopelessness before hunger and natural catastrophe.  Chronic poverty is a king of hell, and one cannot understand how cruel that hell is merely by grazing upon poverty as an object”(bid).

This is the problem of under-development today. Under-development for the majority of the populations in developing countries is a condition of life, a condition which billions of people live each day.  It is not possible to understand this “hell” merely by looking at statistics of unemployment, poverty, income equalities, etc.  It is an experience to be lived.  The realisation of this fact reveals how little the ‘experts’ on development know about the process of under-development itself.  Needless to say, poverty to the experts is an abstract phenomenon to be computed statistically on computers and volumes of resolutions passed.  For those who live in poverty, it is a hell they have to undergo each day, a state of physical and mental deprivation, and indeed a helpless and hopeless condition.  Under-development indeed for those who live it means a state of human deprivation in which they are denied their humanity by the physical and mental conditions which they live.

In conclusion, the fundamental question is, therefore, how can developing countries develop, given their condition of under-development? The under-development school argues that development within the metropole-satellite relationship does not appear feasible because as long as these relations are maintained, economic surplus will continue to leave developing countries, thereby devoicing them of the opportunity for self-sustaining development. These exploitative relations need to be broken in order for development to take place. 


2022-09-02  Reverend Jan Scholtz

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