Self-Reliant Industrialization

Abstract

This paper surveys the role of industrialization in developing countries in the light of certain objectives (efficient growth, reduced inequality, diversified jobs, integrated development) and certain constraints (environmental damage, scarcity of resources, protectionist policies by industrialized countries). It is argued that the basic objective of development provides a key to the solution of a number of problems that appear to be separate but on inspection are related: urbanization, protection of the environment, equality, a better international division of labour. This approach throws a new light on the demand for sources of energy and for sophisticated products, the transfer of inappropriate technologies, the role of the trans-national enterprise, the relation between rural development and industrialization and the relation of domination and dependence.

This article was written for The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment ed. Charles K. Wilber, 2nd edn., New York (1979). It draws on Paul Streeten’s contribution to Employment, Income Distribution and Development Strategy: Problems of the Developing Countries—Essays in Honour of H. W. Singer, ed. Alec Cairncross and Mohinder Puri, Macmillan (1976) and a paper for UNIDO written in 1972.