Development Dichotomies

THE WORLD IS DIVIDED into two groups of people: those who divide the world into two groups of people, and those who don't. As I evidently belong to the former, I believe that the nature of various divisions can throw light on what has come to be known as the rise and decline of development economics. Albert Hirschman, in his stimulating contribution to the international symposium on Latin America at Bar Ilan University in 1980,' used two criteria for classifying development theories: whether they asserted or rejected the claim of mutual benefits in North-South relations; and whether they asserted or rejected the claim of monoeconomics that there is a single economic discipline, applicable to all countries and at all times. Using this classification, he derived four types of theories. Orthodox (neoclassical) economics asserts both claims. Neo-Marxist and dependence theories reject both claims. Development economists tend to reject the monoeconomics claim-the reason for their existence calls for a distinct subject-but to assert the mutual benefit claim, whereas paleoMarxists assert the monoeconomics claim (except insofar as class determines consciousness) but reject the mutual benefit thesis. One may want to quibble with Hirschman's classification. Development economists constitute a large group, many of whom would reject the mutual benefit claim without regarding themselves as neo-Marxists or dependence theorists. Others would assert the unity of economics, while considering it legitimate to carve out special areas for development economics, to which particular branches or modifications of the single disci-