156

p The winning of political independence by the bulk of the countries of the colonial world in the postwar period opened up fundamentally new opportunities for them to fight to step up their national development, and for socio-economic progress and equality in international relations against imperialist diktat and exploitation by expatriate monopoly capital. As Leonid Brezhnev said at the 25th Congress of the CPSU:

p Glancing at the picture of the modern world one cannot help noticing the important fact that the influence of states that had only recently been colonies or semi-colonies has grown consider ably.

p It may definitely be said about the majority of them that they are defending their political and economic i ights in a struggle against imperialism with mounting energy, striving to consolidate their independence and to raise the social, economic and cultural level of their peoples.  [156•2 

157

p In these conditions important changes are occurring or coming into life in the structure and distribution of the developing world’s social production, which are putting their stamp on the processes that govern the peculiarities of the former colonies’ and semi-colonies’ position in the present international division of labour, including their mounting struggle to lay the foundations of their economies. In the 50s through the 70s the physical volume of their industrial production as a whole rose by more than 450 per cent, so that now, in contrast, to the earlier stages of their economic history, industrial goods, especially manufactures, are beginning to predominate in the material production of most of them. At the end of our period somewhat more was produced by manufacturing industry in value terms (in 1970 prices) than in agriculture, and roughly four times as much as in mining.

p As the general economic capability, and especially the industrial potential, of these countries grew there was an inevitable consolidation of the demarcation of class forces, a deepening of the heterogeneity of their social development, and a growth of class struggle. For the immense majority, at the same time, that were to one degree or another within the orbit of the laws of the world capitalist economy, it remains characteristic that the tasks of the anti-feudal revolution have not been completed and the socio-economic survivals of the colonial period are very burdensome. Many of the new sovereign states had begun to carry through radical reforms during the liberation struggle that were both antifeudal and anti-capitalist. In thatsituation the differentiation of their paths and levels of economic development greatly broadened.

p In spite of essential differences of that kind, however, all the emancipated countries are part of the agrarian and raw material periphery of the industrial centres of capitalism. Even the most economically advanced of them are still mainly exporters of raw materials arid importers of machinery, equipment, and other industrial goods.  [157•1  They 158 continue to he in an unequal position within the capitalist world system and subjected to exploitation by expatriate monopoly capital, which is why they are being urgently faced with a number of common internal and external economic problems.

p The most important trends in the changing postwar structure of the periphery’s social production have been analysed above. How, however, was this production distributed among the developing countries in the first postwar decades? The answer is given in concise form by Fig. 11, which enables us at the same time to compare the dynamics of the physical growth of the GDP by regions.

p As will be clear from the graphs the growth rates of aggregate production were very fast in Latin America, where most of the countries had achieved national independence and taken the road of independent capitalist development long before break-up of the colonial system began.  [158•1  As a result the postwar years have been marked by a gradual raising of the role of Latin America in the aggregate product of the developing world, from 40 to 44.5 per cent, so that it is now greater than that of the Asian region although the latter had nearly four times its population at the end of the period surveyed.

This growth did not come about through the contribution of all Latin American countries, but occurred on a background of a marked imbalance of their economic development and was mainly determined by a few leading countries, primarily Brazil and Mexico, for which much higher growth rates were typical.  [158•2  At the end of the 70s more than 60 per cent of the aggregate product of the region was produced in these two countries alone, whereas they produced around 40 per cent of it at the beginning of the 50s. At the same time certain countries (Haiti, Honduras, Barbados, etc.), still caught up in heavy chains of dependence on expatriate commodity monopolies, remained among the most economically 159 backward appendages of the world capitalist economy, with the usual low growth rates typical of semi-colonial countries.

Fig. 11 Developing countries: weight and growth dynamics of GDP in the principal geographical regions irdex* ’0-1 100% !2t? “”"’ 197I)- 1974- 1979- t951" "6, ,97, )4₅ J™.. I -SOUTH A SOUTH FASl A^iA l|- NCAR .’-MIDIILE 1 AS1 (ASIA) ’ Index of the growth of GDP of all developing countries (l!)5fl=100) “* Estimated Sourcr.s- Calculated from UNCTA1) Handbook of Int/’rnational Trade and Development StnliHlic.it, I’.IT.I; UN Yearbook of National Accounts Sttitistics, Slati«lie.iil Yi-nrhixih, and Monthly Bulletin of Statistics for the relevant years. 160

p A steady deepening of the unevenness of Hie intor-regional. and especially of the intraregional, distribution of production has become typical of the various groups of commodityproducing countries in the other continents. In Africa, where colonialism succeeded in retaining key positions in many areas for a number of years in the postwar period, the course of economic development has proved to be relatively slow, so that the weight of the continent in the aggregate social product of developing countries has had a clear tendency to fall, despite the fact that the total GDP of African countries has risen substantially.

p As national independence has been consolidated and African countries have thrown off the yoke of colonial exploitation, however, their growth rates, it must be noted, as in other areas of the developing world, have gradually risen. They have been highest, as a rule, in the Arab countries in North Africa, where the positive consequences of the breakup of the colonial system made themselves felt much earlier than in Tropical Africa. The rapid increase in income from exploiting their oil wealth, moreover, provided some of them with favourable material conditions for their struggle for quicker economic development.

p There has been an ever wider difference in levels and rates of development in Asian countries, where around two-thirds of the developing‘world’s population lives. Most of Ihem, which were in forced dependence on a handful of European powers during nearly the whole history of the forming of the world capitalist economy, were able to win national independence at the start of the postwar period. In the 50s they had already begun an active fight for accelerated growth of their previously stagnating productive forces. The mean annual growth rates of the GDP of all the developing countries of Asia reached 4.5 per cent in that decade, 5.1 per cent in the 60s, and around 6 per cent in the 70s. This accelerated growth was due to no small degree in recent times, however, to the ’oil boom’ in the Near and Middle East. The real volume of the GDP (in value terms) increased more than sixfold in that region in the 50s through the 70s, and was more than one-third of the GDP of all the developing countries of Asia, although its population at the end of the period was only 7 per cent of the continent’s total. At the same time the GDP of all the other developing countries in South and South-East Asia, which 161 have immense human resources, rose less than threefold.

p Demographic factors, as we have already mentioned, play a very considerable role in general economic analysis, and are particularly significant for comparing long-term development trends in developing countries that differ almost solely in their demographic situation and rates of population growth. The aggregate indices of the dynamics of growth of the GDP arid population in the main regions and biggest countries for separate periods are compared in Table 16, which helps us characterise the long-term processes more fully.

p If we examine these processes through the prism of the data on population growth, the generalisations made above, stemming from a comparative description of the regional dynamics of production, obviously need to be made more precise, and corrected. The successive changes in the indicators of per capita GDP for the separate regions and countries enable the scale of the shifts in the geographical distribution of their productive forces to be brought out more clearly.

p In almost all the groups of countries in the table, there is a quite marked tendency, albeit extremely varied in dynamics and significance, toward a differentiation of population growth rates, in addition to a sharpening of the differences in dynamics of production. This trend characterised one of the inevitable consequences of the break-up of the colonial system, and could not help having an essential influence on the ratio of economic potentials, and consequently on the mutually interlocked processes of economic development.

p In the Asian region a particularly wide gap has been formed in the dynamics of per capita production of the aggregate social product between the oil-producing countries of the Near and Middle East and the overwhelming majority of the countries of South and South-East Asia.

p Within each regional group, in turn, there has been a further widening of the imbalance in per capita production. An analysis of the data in international statistical publications does not, in general, provide the grounds for expecting a smoothing out of this imbalance in the immediate future. In all probability it will widen because of the natural laws of capitalism, with an increasingly great effect on the sharpening of the crisis processes and international socio-economic
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162 Table 16 Approximate Estimates of the Growth of Per Capita GDP by Selected Groups of Countries ler Annual growth rates (in percentages) 1980 GDP in————————————————— . ?°f,U  19SO PM capita Group of countries latlon ($000 .. „,,„ GDP (in (milli-ir, cur- Population GDP constant ons> rent 1977 prices) prices) 1960- 1970- 1960- 1970- 1960- 1970- 1970 1980 1970 1980 1970 1980 I. Developing oil- 450 0.97 2.6 2.5 5.5 C.I 2.8 3.5 exporters of which the largest* 70 4.61 3.0 3.1 10.5 8.4 7.3 5.0 II. Other developing countries (regions) 1. with a low income level* (a) Asia 990 0.21 2.4 2.2 4.2 4.2 1.8 2.0 (b) Africa 140 0.24 2.5 2.8 4.2 3.0 1.7 0.2 2. with average income lovelj (a) South-East Asia & Oceania 160 1.17 2.8 2.3 7.7 8.0 4.9 5.6 (b) Africa, south of the Sahara 125 0.87 2.5 2.9 4.9 3.9 2.4 0.9 (c) North Africa & Middle East 30 0.66 2.4 2.6 2.3 3.0 -0.2 0.4 (d) Latin America 255 1.77 2.6 2.5 5.4 6.0 2.7 3.5 III. Developed capitalist countries 670 9.68 1.0 0.7 5,0 3.1 3.9 2.4 ^^*^^ Saudi Arabia, Kuweit, Iraq, Iran, Libya + Countries with a per capita GDP under $ 300 a year + Countries with a per capita GDP over $ 360 a year Source: World Bank, World Development Report 1980, pp 11, 99. 163
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problems of world capitalism’s agrarian, raw material periphery.

p Similar processes have been occurring in Africa, for all its special features. The growing uncvenness of development has been deepened there, even more than in Asia, by considerable differences in rates of population growth. In some cases these differences, it is true, have encouraged a convergence of the dynamics of per capita production in the separate groups of countries. That is confirmed, in particular, by comparison of the lines of postwar development of North and Tropical Africa. Population has grown faster in the former, which has led to a certain levelling out of the aggregate indicators of per capita growth of production used in the table. At the same time there have been quite different trends within each of these regions.

p In the biggest North African country, Egypt, for example, there was an obvious slowing of the growth rates both of production and of population in the 60s and 70s. The annual rates of per capita growth of GDP in those years were 1.5 per cent in Egypt and only 0.2 per cent in Sudan. In other words, they were lower than in many of the countries of Tropical Africa whose economies on the whole still suffer maximally from the burden of harmful survivals of the colonial period compared with other developing countries. Although some of the new states south of the Saharajiave achieved a relatively high growth of production (Kenya, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Malawi, etc.), most of them still have extremely slow and very unstable rates of development. In quite a few countries, moreover, the main indices of the dynamics of GDP growth have been lower in recent decades than the growth of population (Burundi, Chad, the Central African Empire, Uganda, Upper Volta).  [163•1 

p The long-term trends in the distribution of production in the former colonial regions are primarily governed by the resultant tendencies of the development of a few of the biggest countries (as regards area, population, and natural 164 resources). The ratio of their economic capabilities is therefore important in a generalised description of intraregional processes, including the contradictory consequences of the ’demographic explosion’ in the Third World.

p In Latin America, for example, GO per cent of the inhabitants and nearly two-thirds of the aggregate GDP of the whole region were concentrated in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. Among the ’Big Three’ production developed at the lowest rates in Argentina in the postwar years, but the comparatively slow dynamics of its population growth led to its per capita production, for example, exceeding Brazil’s in the 60s and Mexico’s in the early 70s. It is typical that the economies of several small countries (Uruguay, El Salvador, Paraguay, Haiti, Honduras, and others) wore below the average of the developing countries of South and SouthEast Asia as regards the same indicators in those years, not to mention of bulk of the emancipated countries of Africa.  [164•1 

p The examples given, whose number could be greatly extended, very clearly confirm that there has been a steady sharpening of the unevenness of economic development of the former colonies and semi-colonies in recent decades. This irresistibly intensifying process, however, in no way refutes the need (in addition to the study of the features of the economic growth of each country) for a comprehensive systems approach to analysis of the summary trends of their interconnected development within the whole developing world. Such an approach helps, on the one hand, to bring out the objectively operating trends in which the extremely contradictory and isolated processes and phenomena characterising the shifts in the distribution of the productive forces of the separate countries and their regional groups are ultimately reduced, and on the other hand, gives the possibility of better understanding and appreciating the specific features of their development.

p In this connection comparative analysis of the long-term changes in the industrial structure of the social production of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America is becoming of paramount importance (see Fig. 12).

p The facts summarised in the graphs indicate that a whole series of common phenomena reflecting the deep patterns of the present stage of the functioning of their social production 165 still remain typical, given the growing differentiation of levels and paths of economic and social development in most
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Fig. 12 Proportion of the principal sectors in the regional structure of the GDP of developing ..... in percentages) ASIA 1960-61 SOUTH &SOUTH-£AST ASIA JAGRICULTUHE J INDUSTRY JBUILDING& £ CONSTRUCTION 3 TRANSPORT & COMMUNICATIONS ’/-/\ ^.riaOTHER SERVICES * The annu.il production of all sorlors from each rog;ion=1flO Sources: calculated from UN Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics, Statistical Yearbook, and Monthly Bulletin of Statistics for the relevant years (in 1975 prices). 166 developing countries. The trend among them toward a substantial and in fact steady fall in the role of agriculture in their gross product catches the eye. The weight of this sector in the GDP, historically predominant in their economies, fell hy around 45 per cent in Asian countries (more than a third in South and South-East Asia and almost two-thirds in the Near and Middle East). In Africa the corresponding fall was more than 50 per cent, and in Latin America about 45 per cent.

p As these countries are industrialised this process will undoubtedly hec07iie more and more pronounced. Its effect gives grounds for supposing that even before the end of this century the share of agriculture in the GDP of most of the developing countries of Asia and Africa may fall by 50 to 50 per cent and reach the level attained in Latin America al the beginning of the 80s. At the same time the proportion of agriculture in the GDP of the Latin American region as a whole will also probably diminish, gradually approaching the present average level of the industrial capitalist countries (around 4 per cent). An inevitable consequence of that will be the pushing of increasing numbers of the rural population into the cities.  [166•1 

p Another very important trend determining botli the current structure of changes in the production of the developing countries and their probable future structure has become the general though not uniform rise-in the role of industry in their GPP. The scale of its growth, moreover, has been quite regularly higher in the economically more backward countries. Thus the proportion of industrial output in the aggregate product for the period considered in the graphs increased in the African region by 120 per cent (from 12 to 26 per cent), in the Asian region by almost 100 per cent (from 14 to 27 per cent), and in the Latin American region by almost a third (from 24 to 31 per cent).

p As a result of the increasing imbalance of this growth, a trend toward a certain convergence of the significance and place of industry in the general structure of these regions’ production has been noted in the postwar period. The 167 proportion of industry in the GDP of countries in South and South-Easl Asia and in Africa was 50 per cent less than in Latin America at the beginning of the 50s; at the beginning of the 80s the gap had noticeably closed and was estimated now at 1:1.3 for the former and 1:1.2 for tho latter.

p This trend will intensify, in all probability, in the future, and characterise one of the tendencies of developing countries’ uneven economic growth. It can be expected that the weight of industry in the GDP of most Asian and African] countries will come close to tho present level in the leading Latin American countries in the next two or three decades, while the latter will reach the average level of the present-day industrial centres of capitalism.  [167•1 

p These very general estimates provide the dnta needed, but only the initial data, for studying the significance and place of industry in the regional economies. They naturally smooth over tho vast differences in structure and sectoral dynamics of the industrial production of the separate regions and countries. A more and more concrete analysis of the separate industries is a central task of the part that follows, but here we must bear in mind that these processes of industrial development in agrarian and raw material producing countries are largely linked with rapid growth of mining, whose output is mainly sold on the world capitalist market, and in fact is still really controlled to one degree or another by expatriate monopoly capital. The rapid growth of the mining of minerals, and in particular of fuel, has played no small role in the regions being considered in the postwar rise in the proportion of industry in the gross product.  [167•2 

p It would not be legitimate, however, to conclude from this that the steady raising of the role of industry in the gross product of developing countries is more or less wholly 168 linked with the working of minerals. The rapid development of their manufacturing industries in recent decades has had an ever increasing effect, especially the development of heavy industry, the volume of whose production rose on the whole by almost 150 per cent in 1968-80. At the beginning of the 80s the heavy industries of all developing countries were producing 30 per cent more output in value terms (in added value in 1975 prices) than the light industries.  [168•1  There is little doubt that their basic industries will also grow al faster rates in the next few decades, which will further a gradual raising of their role in industrial production.

p In all the main geographical regions of the former colonial world there has been a considerable, though very uneven development of building in the postwar period. Its growth has been particularly rapid in the more economically backward countries, which led to the increase shown in Fig. 11 in its ‘contribution’ over a quarter of a century to the GDP of the developing countries of both Asia and Africa, and Latin America. Their further economic growth is inseparable from an extension of the significance of building in their economies, but since it is a direct function of other industries no great increase of any kind can be expected in its proportion in the gross product in the long run. In coming years it will most likely stabilise between 5.5 and 6.5 per cent, i.e. at the level of the developed countries in the 60s and 70s.

p For a comparative estimate of the long-term trends bringing out both the general and the particular in the production sphere of the main developing regions of capitalism, it is essential to compare the mean annual growth rates of their main industries (including per capita rates) over some considerable period. Because of the inadequacies of the economic statistics of developing countries it is very difficult to bring out these growth rates in summary form (in contrast to developed countries). The comparison can only be attempted on the basis of very approximate calculations (the results of which are given in Table 17), which allow us to characterise the most general trends of the sectoral shifts with a certain degree of accuracy. At the same time they can 169 be used as a starling point of sorts for studying the specific features of the development of production in the separate countries and groupings in each of the regions.

p The figures in the Table reflect the most important results of the economic activity of the peoples in developing countries and clearly illustrate in a regional breakdown the course of the growing uncvcnness of their economic development. When the annual growth rates of the main sectors of the GDP are looked at in this breakdown Ihe following facts become of paramount importance for an analysis of the post-
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Tablo 17 Regional Differences Between Developing Countries in Annual Growth Rates and Per Capita Production by Industries (in 1975 prices) I! op ion Growtli roles fin percentages) I’cr oai’ita production* (ids 70s 19(iO-lfl61 1970-1971 1979-1U80 Agriculture As a 2.8 2.7 0.36 0.35 0.31 Africa 1.8 1.7 0.53 0.44 0.37 Latin America 3.6 3.5 0.60 0.55 0.54 Industry Asia 8.2 5.5 0.05 0.06 0.07 Africa 13.8 3.7 0.04 0.00 0.07 Latin America 6.8 5.2 0.23 0.21 0.23 Building & Conx Iructiou Asia 0.6 9.2 0.03 0.04 0.06 Africa 4.7 10.8 0.06 0.05 0.06 Latin America 5.4 6.5 0.14 0.13 0.18 All Brandies of Material Production Asia 5.6 5.4 0.10 0.09 Africa 6.7 3.2 0.11 0.11 Latin America 5.4 5.5 0.27 0.24 All Brandies oj Circulation and Services 0.09 0.10 0.25 Asia 5.9 7.5 0.03 0.03 0.04 Africa 5.8 5.5 0.05 0.04 0.05 Latin America 5.8 6.3 0.18 0.17 0.18

p * The level of developed capitalist countries™ 1

p Ftmrcr: calculated in tlic main from UN Jl<ni<llmi>h of \Yorlil Prrrtopmcnl Stu-

p tictics, I!i7fi; UN Statistical Ywirbnoli 797 9/ft o; UN Monllil’j llullc I’m

«f Statistics tor 1981 and 1982.

170
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war changes in the distribution of developing countries, material production.

p In agriculture, which is still in a slate of deep, protracted depression in the developing world as a whole, Latin America and most of the countries of the Near and Middle East have displayed relatively faster growth, so that a line toward an increase in their share in developing countries’ total production of farm produce has begun to show., with a corresponding drop in the role of South and South-East Asia and Africa. As a result they have become further differentiated as regards per capita farm production. By the beginning of the 80s the Latin American countries on the whole considerably surpassed the countries of Asia and Africa in this respect. It is unlikely that there will be any closing of this gap in the near future. More probably it will widen. (See Table

p 17.)

p The fight to eliminate the extreme backwardness of agriculture will undoubtedly remain one of the most pressing socio-economic problems of most of the countries of the former colonial world in the coming decades. It is the slow development of their agriculture, compared with population growth, that is the decisive cause of the consistent tendency manifested since the war toward a widening of the gap in GDP per capita between the developing and developed countries of the capitalist world.

p In the 60s and 70s, however, this trend began to be more and more actively countered by processes developing in most of the other sectors of the economies of the former colonial periphery of capitalism, and primarily in industry. The international statistics clearly indicate that the per capita growth rates of industrial production in economically most backward regions of capitalism’s periphery have noticeably exceeded the industrial centres in per capita growth rales of industrial production. In the developing countries of Asia per capita industrial production increased by a factor of 4.3 from 1950 to 1978, in Africa by 3.5, and in the developed capitalist countries taken together by 2.6. The countries of Latin America also showed a rather faster growth in this respect, on an average, than the main economic regions of capitalism.

p In present conditions there has begun lo be a tendency toward a certain closing of the gigantic, gap in per capita industrial production formed under colonialism, together with 171 a gradual increase in the weight of the agrarian and raw material producing countries in the industrial production of the non-socialist world. In Hie very early 50s this gap was estimated at 1:35 for Asian countries, 1:32 for Africa, and 1:5.5 for Latin America. By the end of the 70s it had been clearly reduced and was expressed by the following approximate ratios: Asia 1:24, Africa 1:27, and Latin America 1:5.3. In the middle of 70s the substantial slowing of industrial growth rates in the developed countries connected with the greatest postwar cyclic crisis of the capitalist world economy fostered a consolidation of this trend.

p The general course of this process leads to th,e conclusion that it is acquiring a quite stable, irreversible character in Ihc present situation. Being a natural consequence of the break-up of the colonial system, it has already begun to have (and in all probability will continue to have) a growing impact on the steady deepening of the crisis of the unequal system of international capitalist division of labour built up on a colonial basis.

p At the same time the facts adduced confirm the extreme complexity and difficulty of the problem of overcoming the age-old industrial backwardness of the former colonies and semi-colonies, especially with their constant exploitation by expalriate monopoly capital. The solution of such a major and objectively inevitable hislorical task will obviously require several decades and will continue for a long time to be one of the urgent problems ol the light of the peoples of the liberated countries for final liquidation of the heavy legacy of the colonial period and imperialist domination of their economies.

p To reduce their backwardness by even two-thirds from the present mean per capita industrial production of the developed countries, for instance, it would take the countries of South and South-East Asia around a quarter of a century at the rates of real industrial growth of the 60s and 70s, Africa more than a quarter of a century, and Latin America around 30 years. Then, however, per capita output of industrial goods in each of these regions would he respectively one-eighth, a ninth, and about a third below the level already reached by Ihe advanced capitalist countries at the end of the 70s. If that level remains unchanged in the future, then in that hypothetical case the way out for most developing countries would have lo be a 15-fold or 16-fold 172 expansion of the volume of industrial production within the present-day world capitalist economy.

p These figures cannot, of course, serve as a generalised criterion of a quantitative, let alone a qualitative, estimate of the future parameters and goals of the industrial development of all the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.  [172•1  In fact, however, they help determine only the scale of the industrial backwardness of developing countries. It inevitably follows from them that the struggle for a cardinal solution of the problem in the present transitional epoch will give rise to an urgent need to develop a long-term strategy and-strictly scientific approach to the global outlook for industrialisation of the former colonies and semi- colonies on quite other principles of social and world economic relations compared with those historically built up by capitalism.

p The postwar processes in the agrarian and industrial spheres have consequently had a different effect on the resultant ratio of per capita GDP in the groups of countries under consideration. In the agrarian sphere they have fostered a widening of the economic gap, and in the industrial sphere a narrowing. But since the role of the agrarian sector in the GDP of developing countries is more significant than in the centres of capitalism, and the industrial sector less significant, the gap between them in per capita output of the main sectors (agriculture, industry, and building) has also continued to widen in recent decades, and for Asian and African countries was more than 10:1 at the beginning of the 80s against 8:1 in the first postwar years. In other words, at the turn of the decade to the 80s, per capita production in value terms (in comparable prices) was much lower in developing countries compared with capitalist ones, than at the turn of the 40s and 50s.

p As for industry, its growth in developing countries has still not led to any real qualitative shifts in the liquidation of age-old industrial backwardness. The struggle to lay an industrial foundation for their national economies is still 173 more or less, as a rule, in the initial stage. In spite of a narrowing of the gap in per capita industrial output, they now produce dozens of times less product than the average for capitalist countries. The most powerful, technically advanced branches of production, moreover, that can more efficiently exploit the fruits of the present scientific and technical revolution are concentrated in the latter. That is affecting the dynamics of productivity in the industry of both groups of countries. In the 60s and 70s its annual growth rates in the economic centres of capitalism were double that in the developing countries.  [173•1 

p The comparatively new, but stable processes being manifested in the main agrarian and raw material producing regions include a tendency that in turn is varied in its results, but in practice general, toward an increase of the circulation and services sphere in their economies. As the figures in Fig. 12 and Table 17 indicate, the growtli rates of the main sectors of this sphere accelerated markedly in developing countries in the period under review, and began to be higher, as a rule, than their corresponding mean growth indicators the slower development of which was maiuly due to the relatively low growth rates of their agriculture. Consequences of a dual sort have followed from that.

p (1) There has been a quite stable tendency toward a gradual, tliough slow, rise in the proportion of circulation and services in the GDP of the developing world, which rose perceptibly in 1900-80. As a result of the rapid expansion of this sphere its weight in the GDP of the Asian and African regions rose by a quarter and nearly a third respectively in the 50s through the 70s. It rose a little as well in Latin America on the whole and constituted more than half of that region’s GDP at the end of the 70s. In other words, there was a certain convergence of structural proportions in the sectors of non-materialproduction of the main developing regions, but the historical underdevelopment of these sectors still remains a distinguishing sign of the economic backwardness of the vast majority of the former colonies and dependent countries of these regions.  [173•2 

174

p (2) The proportion of developing countries in the aggregate production of the services and circulation sphere of the world capitalist economy is beginning lo grow. At the start of llio 80s it was 10 per cent against 11 per cent in the early 50s. The per capita gap between them and the developed countries, it is true, not only did not in fact diminish but even widened a bit on the whole, and was estimated at 15.5:1 in the late 70s, i.e. was considerably wider than in the sectors of material production.

p For the main sectors of the circulation and services sphere this gap has not built up in the same way; in practice it has always been narrower in trade. But it is in that sector, as in agriculture, that the capitalist countries continued steadily to outpace the developing countries in per capita indices of growth, so that, although the proportion of the latter in the total value of the home trade of the capitalist world lias risen since the war (from one-seventh to one-sixth), there has been another trend in per capita terms While the value of per capita trade (in constant 1975 prices) in the GDP of capitalist countries was 12 times as much as in developing countries at the beginning of the 60s, it was 16 times as much at the start of the 70s. This trend above all determined the effect in the circulation and services sphere of the tendency toward a further widening of the general economic gap in per capita GDP between the two groups of countries.

p The intensification of this trend also to no small extent was promoted by processes taking place in the sectors producing so-called services. Developing countries’ backwardness in this respect has long been deeper than in the other sectors of the sphere of social production we are considering. At the turn of the 50s and 60s it corresponded approximately to the level of their industrial backwardness. At that time less than one-tenth of the value of the services created in all capitalist countries was produced in developing countries, and the gap per capita was nearly 20:1.

p In recent years there have been changes in various directions in these ratios. The rapidly increasing dynamics of the growth of services in developing countries has led to their share rising in absolute terms to one-seventh at the end of the 70s. But in per capita terms the gap continued to widen for a long time, and in the early 70s could be expressed as 19.5:1, which was mainly due to the backwardness in this 175 area of the economically less developed and more densely populated countries of the African and Asian regions.

p In the second half of the 70s alone, especially during the world cyclic crisis of 11)74-75, a long-term consequence of which was a marked slowing of the growth rales of services in the centres of capitalism, did this gap begin to narrow a bit; at the beginning of the 80s it was expressed by a ratio of 17.5:1 (in 1975 prices). In other words, it has remained wider than in industry. The extreme backwardness of the services sphere governs several of the paramount aims of the long-term socio-economic strategy being developed by developing countries today in their striving to attain the maximum possible speeding up of the rates of social progress in present-day conditions and to raise the standard of living of their populations.

p The only major group of services and circulation sectors in which developing countries managed to get a relatively stable increase in the dynamics of per capita production over that of the developed countries in the postwar decades was transport and communications; the grand total of per capita production in them increased by a factor of 3.4 against 2.4 in the developed countries. There was a corresponding ri se (from 11 to 16 per cent) in developing countries’ weight in the aggregate value of the product of transport and communications in the world capitalist economy. In per capita terms their mean annual rates of development have been higher of late than those of the industrial regions, so that in the area of the infrastructure, and in industry, there has begun to be a relatively new and apparently promising trend toward a certain narrowing of the gap in per capita indices, though it still remains extremely wide.  [175•1  If the present dynamics of the growth of production and population is maintained the gap should be halved at least on an average in the coming two or three decades in each of the main regions of the developing world, but its ultimate closing will undoubtedly still remain an urgent task for a long time.

p At the same time there was a clearly increasing unevenness in the development of transport and communications in the developing countries, which, as the figures given above show, 176 was organically characteristic of all the other sectors of tho circulation and.services sphere. Its dynamics will also undoubtedly be a close function of the degree and scale of development of material product ion and of the population grovyth rates in the various regions and countries of the developing world. On the whole, however, one can say with confidence that as the productive forces rise the weight of this sphere in the social production of these countries will gradually increase although it will still lag greatly behind the corresponding average indicator for the industrialised countries for several decades.

p The wide gap between the developing countries and the centres of capitalism in all the decisive areas of economic activity consequently remains one of the objective realities of our time. Formed long ago, during the building of the world capitalist economy on a colonial basis, it now characterises many of the most important features of that economy, and of tho whole system of its postwar international relations.

p The developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, given the existing differences in their levels of sociopolitical and economic development, arc inevitably coming up against a need to deal with several common problems, vitally important for all developing countries, on both an international and a national scale. They include the very intricate set of each country’s national problems, but ultimately tho struggle to cope witli all of them, taken together is objectively directed to eliminating the pernicious surviv’ als of the colonial period from the affairs of human society" and to emancipating the developing countries from neoco, lonialism and continuing capitalist exploitation.

p At the same time, as will be clear from the facts adduced above, the gap in levels of economic development remains extremely wide, in spite of considerable progress by the developing countries in coping with these problems, and moreover retains a tendency to widen in several determinant indicators, above all in gross product per capita. The relations of inequality and rapacious exploitation of the natural and human resources of the developing countries by expatriate monopoly capital prevailing in the world capitalist economy are furthering maintenance of this trend, even since the break-up of imperialism’s colonial system. The capitalist social system itself not only bears responsibility for the socio-economic backwardness of the peoples of the former 177 colonial world, but the exploiter system of international division of labour created by it largely continues today to fetter their productive forces. The basic patterns of the world capitalist economy still operate in the direction detrimental to the developing countries.  [177•1 

p The striving of the developing countries to spread the liquidating of colonialism to the economic sphere, to put an end to their exploitation by the industrial powers of the West, and to achieve creation of the necessary external and internal conditions for attaining a level of development in the foreseeable future corresponding to the needs of today, is quite justified. At the same time all the nations of the earth without exception have an interest in the speediest attainment of these aims. The struggle for a steady acceleration of socio-economic and cultural progress in the former colonies and semi-colonies is therefore becoming an inseparable part of the fight of all progressive mankind for detente and the consolidating of lasting peace, for further development of the scientific and technical revolution for peaceful purposes, and for a favourable solution of the other global problems of today on which the whole subsequent course of world development to an enormous extent depends.

p In his day Karl Marx concluded that

p mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the_course of formation.  [177•2 

p In the present historical situation more favourable objective conditions are being created than ever before for the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America that have liberated themselves from the imperialist yoke, or are in the course of doing so, for a successful struggle to overcome the backwardness inherited by them from the past in all sectors of 178 the economy and oilier areas of social affairs. But every kind of obstacle is still being put in llio way of this bard, long, stubborn light with the world capitalist economy by the former colonialists and expatriate monopoly capital. In these conditions the developing countries are uniting their efforts more and more firmly in the anti-imperialist movement to establish a new international economic order.

p The Soviet Union and other socialist countries are supporting these efforts in every way possible and demonstrating their solidarity with the progressive aims of the struggle of the peoples of the developing world for a better future. As the Central Committee’s Report to the 26’th Congress of the CPSU stressed:

p the CPSU will consistently continue the policy of promoting cooperation between the USSR and the ncwly-freo countries, and consolidating the alliance of world socialism and the national liberation movement.  [178•1 

The long-term trends reviewed in this chapter thus not only help us better to understand some of the general results of the changes that have already taken place in the structure of the distribution of the productive forces of the two groups of countries of the postwar capitalist world, but also to distinguish sqveral objective premises for analysing the probable outlook for subsequent structural shifts leading to aggravation of the internal contradictions and crisis phenomena in the capitalist economy. Study of these trends obviously calls for a need to allow in every way for the effect on them of the spontaneously operating laws of the cyclic development of the capitalist mode of production.