by Aram Ziai
In their text, Tough questions for new EU ‚development‘ commissioner‘, Sarah Delputte, Jan Orbie and Julia Schöneberg are criticising EU development policy from a Post-Development perspective. Appreciating the renaming of the EU development commissioner as one responsible for international partnerships only as a first step in a long series of necessary changes, they suggest to ‘fundamentally reconsider the EU‘s engagement with the rest of the world‘. They criticise that Van der Leyen expects ‚value for money‘, wants to pursue ‘investment opportunities in Africa‘, and intends to leverage aid for private investment. And they castigate the focus on ‘countries of migration origin and transit‘ and the corresponding adaptation of funding as the ‘instrumentalisation of EU aid for geopolitical and migration management purposes‘. Instead, the EU should reflect its growth-centered model of ‘development‘ and tackle ‘global structural injustices and inequalities‘ through abandoning the free trade orthodoxy of the EPAs and establishing a ‘truly fair‘ global trading system, ending tax evasion, promoting climate justice and engaging in reparative action for the crimes and robberies committed during colonialism.
These are important and legitimate demands, absolutely. However, they implicitly seem to assume (strategically or not) a model of politics which I think is problematic. As Ferguson (1994) has argued in the epilogue of the Anti-Politics Machine, the assumption of an all-powerful, benevolent actor is at best misleading. The demands seem to suggest that there could be a ‘good‘ EU which would establish a social and democratic global governance – if only we manage to convince the politicians. This neglects that the capitalist states which form the EU are not institutions to promote the global common good through politics of international ‘development‘ or partnership, or at least is based on the claim that they can be made to promote it given enough public pressure. But can they?
Although there certainly are (limited) effects of progressive lobbying on EU institutions, I would like to advance three arguments that cast doubt on this assumption. First, the historical argument: If we look at the origin of ‘development‘ policy, we find that in Truman‘s announcement of his program for the ‘development‘ of ‘underdeveloped regions‘ in 1949, the geopolitical and economic motives are admitted, albeit in a subtle manner: global poverty was seen as a ‘handicap‘ and a ‘threat‘ for the USA. The threat refers to the geopolitical context of the Cold War and the fear that the countries of the South (some of them in the middle of decolonisation processes) would join the communist camp. The handicap referred to the expansion of the US economy into poorer areas hitherto controlled by European colonial powers which were seen as potential markets. The message of the new program addressed to leaders on the South was: you don‘t have to get rid of capitalism to get rid of poverty. That problem can be solved through investments, development projects and transfer ot technology. From its very beginning, the program of ‚development‘ in the South was designed to legitimate a capitalist world order through the promise of affluence and to replace the ideology of colonialism but still maintain access to the resources of the former colonies (Alcalde 1987: 223, Rahnema 1997: 379).
Second, the theoretical argument: even if the capitalist constitution of states engaging in development policy should not be seen as determining all its practices, a serious analysis must not simply ignore this fact. If capitalist accumulation is the condition for the reproduction of a state based on enterprise and wage labour, then the policies of this state must somehow contribute to ensure this condition. Following the analysis of Schimank (1983: 60ff), the function of development policy in a capitalist state is to integrate ‘developing countries‘ into the world market, provide infrastructure for capitalist investments and ensure reproduction through measures of social policy. Probably Van der Leyen would subscribe to that, she would merely add that this would of course lead to poverty reduction, reiterating the central assumption of the ‘promise of development‘.
Third, the empirical argument: Between 1998 and 2005, the leftist social democratic German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Wieczorek-Zeul tried to implement a coherent policy aiming at reforming global economic structures for the benefit of poorer countries, arguing that in a globalised world we have to combat crises in the South if we do not want to be affected by their repercussions in the form of terrorism or migration (thus employing a concept of ‚enlightened self-interest‘). This global structural policy failed on most accounts, predominantly because the ministries for the economy and agriculture were far more convicing in arguing that the German interest would be served by pursuing policies in favour of German businesses and that this was the task of German politicians, thus they rejected the interference by leftist idealists. While the impetus of Wieczorek-Zeul was not too far from the alternative agenda outlined by Delputte, Orbie and Schöneberg, its tangible results were very limited indeed (Ziai 2007).
My argument is not that capitalist states cannot be pressured to engage in a more social and ecological policy. It is that the extent to which this is possible is severely limited and not remotely adequate for the changes that many of us deem urgently necessary for ethical reasons or reasons of planetary survival.
Some critical minded readers might respond: ‘Ok, we get it, capitalism sucks. So let us try socialist development?‘
A story I like to tell about capitalism is that Bill Gates is so rich that he could afford to buy a new S-class Mercedes Benz every month of his entire life – if he lives to see 150.000 years. All the while the WHO tells us that 5.4 mio. children under 5 die each year mostly of preventable causes, i.e. of poverty (Oxfam 2022: 13). Capitalism leads to absurd economic inequalities and simultaneously makes the survival of children dependent on sufficient income. And other people keep telling us that socialism has not worked and cannot work. Now it is true that the track record of socialist states is better in terms of social inequality and corporate influence, but in terms of the massive violence inflicted upon people (often in the name of ‚socialist development‘), it is not (see Berger 1974 and as cases in point the displacements in the context of the Sardar Sarovar dam in India and he Three Gorges Dam in China, two countries seen as socialist at least by some at the time). Many Post-Development scholars followed Illich (1973) that industrial modernity was not a successful model to be emulated, and that the creation of convivial societies required progressive changes which go beyond that model as it was a threat to people‘s autonomy, capability and creativity. Some even questioned the entire philosophical underpinnings of Western modernity in the form of Cartesian rationality, a Baconian and patriarchal view on nature, and a Hobbesian image of human beings (the homo oeconomicus) (Nandy 1988, Apffel-Marglin/Marglin 1990 and 1996, Mies/Shiva 1993, Ziai 2004: 134-136).
But even attempts to implement the good society rejecting capitalism and industrial modernity have led to terrible violence, as can be witnessed in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. So where does this leave us? To my mind, it should be perfectly clear that an emancipatory position cannot consist of realising progressive blueprints through the state or in general from above. If ‚development‘ denotes a good society and if there are numerous views on how such a society should look like, every attempt to talk about a good society (or ‘development‘) in universal terms and in the singular remains problematic and contains an authoritarian element. The only solution I can see to this dilemma is grassroots democracy in a pluriverse (Kothari et al. 2019).
In a world where many worlds fit, as the Zapatistas say, all communities can decide how they want to organise the economy, politics, etc. – provided they do not adopt an imperial mode of production and consumption which depends on the cheap labour and resources of other societies. So how can we prevent that? We certainly cannot trusts markets to do that and the arguments above provide grounds for skepticism that states can be counted on in this respect. Some scholars have – approvingly or disapprovingly – identified the anarchist implications of Post-Development (Nederveen Pieterse 2001: 105, Ziai 2015: 835) and Neusiedl (2021) made the point abundantly clear. If Post-Development articulates the will not to be governed in the name of ‘development‘ and invokes a right to resistance, this is directed against the very institution which assumes – in the South as well as in the North – to possess the legitimate right to act in pursuit of the common good: the state. So what is left if we do not trust the state (or the EU) to implement the good society? Nederveen Pieterse comments: ‘In the end postdevelopment offers no politics besides the self-organizing capacity of the poor‘ (2001: 110). But would that be so bad? Of course relations of power at the local level can be as bad as on the global level, but they are not as far-reaching and can be overcome more easily. Self-rule and democracy in the village republic (‚swaraj‘) is easier than on the planetary level.
Yet there is another problem: can we trust civil society? Given the curent inequalities and hierarchies, chances are that many communities would willingly enter relations of neocolonialism supporting imperial modes of living. This is why these inequalities need to be undone – see the concept of ‘Undeveloping the North‘ – before free choice can lead to self-determination.
All of the above does not intend to undermine the demands for a fair global trading system, climate justice, and so on. It merely wants to argue that even these demands – as radical as they may be in the context of EU development policy – are actually too modest from a Post-Development perspective. And if they serve as pragmatic first steps, we need to debate whether this is a viable strategy and identify actors and alliances possibly struggling for these demands. The EU commission seems an unrealistic candidate to me.
About the author
Aram Ziai teaches at the University of Kassel, Germany. This text was originally written as a contribution to the EADI Conference 2021: Solidarity, Peace and Social Justice, Panel 2-SP098: Views on the EU as a Development Actor in Conversation with Postdevelopment, The author is grateful to the organisers of this panel.
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