About the same time as Western 'demoeracies' disco- vered that they were dumping_ garbageinto their livingfl space, they also noted that the-world's populationawas growing rather rapidly — at arate of over two peopleper second. Further, being the observant technocratic stat— mticians that they were they also realized that almost all d this growth was taking place in the underdeveloped countries. Thus for perhaps the first time they were ab- 1e to explain the poverty of these people without re— sorting to the innate lazi— ness, shiftlessness, and stu- mdity of the poor. After fll only nasties like John Mrchers and K.K. Klansmen use terms like that. Since Hwy were equal to us there fwd to be some other explan- ation. ‘ -

And the population ex— plosion was it. If only these people would quit acting like rabbits then everything would be hunky --dory. And so by

population control efforts. Of course such a_solution ignores a few rather minor problems such as contradic- dons within the capitalist system or even more basic ones like the doubtfulness of Spaceship Earth's.life support systems to handle the large increase in reSou— rce consumption and effluent production that such a solu— tion would imply.

To deal with just one difficulty, one of the most fundamental laws of demogra— Phy states in effect that as a people initially comes in— to contact with modern tech—_ nology and industry, death

1975_a major portion of 'aid'I _ programmes are going towards ' THC, \L, AN-VNEWCNED

«n 91qu MM}

Concorli'VWitlI‘ It “neglects More Fonda the Third World Nations Must Take New Tack To Gain Self-sufficiency.-

rates decline while birth rates remian'at their former high levels, thus creating a condition of rapid populat— ion expansion. All presently

.developed countries went

through this stage. As tech-\ nology results in incresing— ly high iving standards, the birth rates decline to match the death rates. Again, all developed countries have gone through this process as well. Many theories have been developed to explain this process and one of these is given in the adjoining art— icle on OXFAM, but suffice it tO'for our purposes that

me \9 A momomm J EDUCATED ‘ul mm) MAN ,

it exists and therefore any attempts to negate it will inevitably fail. An example is the famous Indian fiasco. The corollary of this fact

is, of course, that any one—'

dimensional attempt at pop— uation control not only will

fail but also will waste de- '

sperately needed human and financial resourses..

Since underdeveloped co— untries cannot slow their population growth and then develope then they must dev- elop in exactly the same way as the presently developed countries did‘- in the con- text of a rapidly expanding population. *

Yet all this is berating the point. Why have all ef- forts to develop consistly failed since about 1900? What is it that prevents un-

derdeveloped nations in their _drive for self—sufficiency?

-fter all, in many ways the

present developed countries

ad less going for them than the ones which are under—

their own technology instead of being able to import one; they had to follow a road that no one had yet'travele

have a ready-made model to‘ imitate. Must we go back to the John Birch theory?

. If we do not wish to do

/

developed. They had to create

led while‘Third World Nations'

so then the only alternative is to assume that the world has changed in some way in the past hundred years, in a way which relates directly to the problem we are now discussing. The obvious dif- ference is that there were no developed nations when, for example the United States developed and that therefore when it developed it did not haVe competition from others the had a comsiderable adv vantage in terms of resOur— ces, organization, and sheer size.

Any first year business student will tell you that the capitalist system bases itself on competition betw- een different corporations and in the larger sense, na- tions. Now, in any case where the available resourses (of all types) are so disparate' as they are between a tril- lion dollar post—industrial economy and a million dollar ‘pre-industrial one, there

. can be little doubt as to

\\~ _

“nut, 14 A III wt)ng NMJ .ewcmn Hm. T’FEEOOM

which will win out.

Further because the lat— ter is so desperate to gain foreign exchange for the nec— essities of life (e.g. food) it will sell the few asstes it does have for next to no- thing inxreturn for food- stuffs. Thus an economy is created where few materials are exchanged for-food. While both commodities, until re- cently, have been extremely cheap, the point of view that both sides are thus obtain- ing_a bargain is at best mi?“ sguided. '

In effect the underdev- eloped countries are giving 'away a non-renewable resourse

, made by the crudeSt of meth-

ods in return for a renew— able one made with the re— sourses of a modern indust- rial state. Thus the‘time will come when these count-

_ries have bartered away their

only assets~in return for — what? They will still need

waoodstuffs but-will have no-

Yme Cadre,6§pr.~l, 1975, Page 7

mental Issues

I

thing with which to obtain them.

Thus the conclusion has to be reached that in order to break out of this vicious cycle, the underdeveloped countries must break a ser— ies of relationships which give them nothing but a con— tinuance of their present miserable existence. In oth—» er words these nations are playing the role of a modern— day Esau — giving away their birthrights for a bowl of potage. -

'Ir is significant tha the only countries which ap- pear to have a chance of be— coming developed (other than the odd American anti-comm— Unist showcase like Taiwan and South Korea) are preci— sely those that have attemp— ted to break this Imperial- istic relationship — China and Cuba. It may be argued that these peoples are not free. Whatever may be said about freedom in a commun— ist society, it must never be forgotten that to a per- son whose very existence is in doubt every day, freedom is a meaninglessword.To him

freedom is something much more simple than the right to speak out in public. It merely means a full belly and a roof over his head. Until those very basic nec—

lessities are provided the :terms which we traditional-

ly use to describe freedom are nothing but a piece of issue-clouding obscureant-

vism.

Incidently, these people never have concieved of ma- terial well-being as meaning two cars with a third of the

'way and I doubt very much

that the people who created our society did either.It isl aburd that one-third of the world's population wallows .in luxury while the other two-thirds does not have e- nough to eat. When a third world leader talks of des- troying Imperialism this is what he means, not the dir— ect political control of his- government

,Dave MacRae