The World System

Abstract

In recent years, this search for the internal obstacles to development, with its paradoxical (given its origins) neglect of imperialism, has come under increasing attack by the theorists of the new dependency school. Increasingly, analysts have been forced to focus on the fact that theories which assume that the processes of social change are endogenous to the societies of the Third World are completely ahistorical. Quite the reverse is true; change in the Third World is primarily the consequence of the externalisation of Western European capitalism through the formation of a world market and through various forms of imperialism and colonialism. One attempt to deal with this fact is embodied in the various theories of dependency, most of which spring from attempts to rethink the ECLA analysis in the light of the failure of its programmes of ISI to overcome underdevelopment.