International Development: Shaping the mosaic
Truman’s Point IV and development
The intellectual productions of the enlightenment period and the works of evolutionist helped to give an academic foundation of evolution as a “unilinear”, “circular” or “multilinear” process, thus legitimating the ideas of western imperialism as we see even today.To move a step from the academic domain and to render the ideas norms, bilateral and multilateral institutions had to be established to transform and foster the view of development to fit the visions of the dominating nations. It will be a lack of sight to think that the dominant idea of “development”, as conceived today, is/was accepted peacefully. International institutions were, and are still, working very hard to render this vision acceptable.
To move from the intellectual circle to reach policy makers, agenda setting institutions and influential personality had to embrace the course. Treaties were thus signed, and new bilateral and multilateral organizations created to spearhead the idea. Within this transformation, while the “signifies” remains the same, the “significant” is continuously reformulated to adapt to critics, and to readjust the ills produced by former visions of development.
The concept development in international discourse has thus moved from the vision of colonial years as “mission civilizzatrice”, to development as economic growth, to development as the satisfaction of basic needs of the individual, and development as a means to foster good governance and the reduction of poverty. Key institutions have also helped to normalize these ideas of development.
To move from the intellectual circle to reach policy makers, agenda setting institutions and influential personality had to embrace the course. Treaties were thus signed, and new bilateral and multilateral organizations created to spearhead the idea. Within this transformation, while the “signifies” remains the same, the “significant” is continuously reformulated to adapt to critics, and to readjust the ills produced by former visions of development.
The concept development in international discourse has thus moved from the vision of colonial years as “mission civilizzatrice”, to development as economic growth, to development as the satisfaction of basic needs of the individual, and development as a means to foster good governance and the reduction of poverty. Key institutions have also helped to normalize these ideas of development.
Henry Truman Point IV and Development
I am going to focus on the fourth point on the speech pronounced by President Harry S. Truman in his inaugural address on January 20, 1949. I am focusing on this part of the speech because of its importance in the development discourse. I have have chosen to reproduce only this part of the speech because I wish to avoid confusing readers with other matters found in the speech, which are of little or no relevance to this paper. President Truman’s Point IV states as follows;
"Fourth, we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.
More than half of the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas.
For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffering of these people.
The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources which we can afford to use for the assistance of other people are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible.
I believe we should make available to peace-loving peoples the benefits of our store of technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspirations for a better life. And, in cooperation with other nations, we should foster capital investment in areas needing development.
Our aim should be to help free peoples of the world, through their efforts, to produce more food, more clothing, more materials for housing, and more mechanical power to lighten their burdens.
We invite other countries to pool their technological resources in this undertaking. Their contribution will be warmly welcomed. This should be a cooperative enterprise in which all nations work together through the United Nations and its specialized agencies wherever practicable. It must be a worldwide effort for the achievement of peace, plenty, and freedom.
With the cooperation in business, private capital, agriculture, and labor in this country, this program can greatly increase the industrial activity in other nations and can raise substantially their standards of living.
Such new economic developments must be devised and controlled to benefit the peoples of the areas in which they are established. Guarantees to the investor must be balanced by guarantees in the interest of the people whose resources and whose labor go into these developments.
The old imperialism-exploitation for foreign profit- has no place in our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair dealing.
All countries, including our own, will greatly benefit from a constructive program for the better use of the world’s human and natural resources. Experience shows that our commerce with other countries expands as they progress industrially and economically.
Greater production is key to prosperity. And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge".
President Truman was the first prominent leader to use the term “underdeveloped”, using it as a synonym to “economic backward areas” (Rist: 1996). Truman’s “innovation terminologique”, stands in his juxtaposing of the term “development” to “underdevelopment”, which gives a special significance to the “trumanian” vision of development. In fact, the term development had already been used in many ways before Truman’s speech. As we have earlier seen, development has always being the motto for change from the origin to present day. What has changed are the various transformations the concept has undergone: civilization, evolution, growth, progress, development with a human face, sustainable development etc.
Development after Truman’s speech
I am going to focus on the fourth point on the speech pronounced by President Harry S. Truman in his inaugural address on January 20, 1949. I am focusing on this part of the speech because of its importance in the development discourse. I have have chosen to reproduce only this part of the speech because I wish to avoid confusing readers with other matters found in the speech, which are of little or no relevance to this paper. President Truman’s Point IV states as follows;
"Fourth, we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.
More than half of the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas.
For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffering of these people.
The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources which we can afford to use for the assistance of other people are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible.
I believe we should make available to peace-loving peoples the benefits of our store of technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspirations for a better life. And, in cooperation with other nations, we should foster capital investment in areas needing development.
Our aim should be to help free peoples of the world, through their efforts, to produce more food, more clothing, more materials for housing, and more mechanical power to lighten their burdens.
We invite other countries to pool their technological resources in this undertaking. Their contribution will be warmly welcomed. This should be a cooperative enterprise in which all nations work together through the United Nations and its specialized agencies wherever practicable. It must be a worldwide effort for the achievement of peace, plenty, and freedom.
With the cooperation in business, private capital, agriculture, and labor in this country, this program can greatly increase the industrial activity in other nations and can raise substantially their standards of living.
Such new economic developments must be devised and controlled to benefit the peoples of the areas in which they are established. Guarantees to the investor must be balanced by guarantees in the interest of the people whose resources and whose labor go into these developments.
The old imperialism-exploitation for foreign profit- has no place in our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair dealing.
All countries, including our own, will greatly benefit from a constructive program for the better use of the world’s human and natural resources. Experience shows that our commerce with other countries expands as they progress industrially and economically.
Greater production is key to prosperity. And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge".
President Truman was the first prominent leader to use the term “underdeveloped”, using it as a synonym to “economic backward areas” (Rist: 1996). Truman’s “innovation terminologique”, stands in his juxtaposing of the term “development” to “underdevelopment”, which gives a special significance to the “trumanian” vision of development. In fact, the term development had already been used in many ways before Truman’s speech. As we have earlier seen, development has always being the motto for change from the origin to present day. What has changed are the various transformations the concept has undergone: civilization, evolution, growth, progress, development with a human face, sustainable development etc.
Development after Truman’s speech
Monique Chemillier-Gendreau notes that in Wilson’s 14 Points, one could already find the use of the word development, but with a different connotation from Truman’s vision. “In 1899, Lenin published a novel on the development of capitalism in Russia; in 1911, Schumpeter wrote his “Economic development theory” and in 1944, Rosenstein-Rodan proposed “The International Development of Economically Backward Areas” (Rist: 1996). These publications portray to us that the word development did not enter the lexicon only after Truman’s address. It was already profoundly used before Truman’s speech. What then renders Truman’s address so significant for the development discourse? What was new in Truman’s vision of development?
According to many development thinkers, Point IV of Truman’s address to his fellow citizens, and indirectly to the world paved the way for the modern vision of development, (Sach: 1992, Rist: 1996, Comeliau: 1991, Escobar: 1995, Rahnema, M, 1997). It does not transform the semantic consideration of development but impregnates the later with a completely new paradigm. As Rist (1996) succinctly puts it, «il ne s’agit plus seulement de constater que les choses « se développent », on pourra désormais « développer ». Thus « le développement » prendra alors un sens transitif. ». Truman’s inaugural speech brought in at least three critical ideas that became the new vision of development - full with western bias. Some of the ideas brought to the vision of development by Point IV of Harry Truman’s address could be classified as follows:
Conclusion
Truman in his speech gave a new semantic and pragmatic vision of development. The dichotomy colonizer/colonized gave way to the new vision of development, which juxtaposed “development” to “underdevelopment”. Nonetheless, despite this clear vision of development put forward by Truman, the decolonization period coupled with events of the cold war did not give an easy time to the smooth flow of ideas propagated by Point IV of Truman’s address (C.C. Vidrovitch: 1995, A. M Gentili: 2002, Ian Taylor & al: 2004). Thus to normalize the new meaning given to the concept development, new institutions had to be created to handle, reshape and universalize the ideas put forward by Point IV.
By Fonju Ndemesah
According to many development thinkers, Point IV of Truman’s address to his fellow citizens, and indirectly to the world paved the way for the modern vision of development, (Sach: 1992, Rist: 1996, Comeliau: 1991, Escobar: 1995, Rahnema, M, 1997). It does not transform the semantic consideration of development but impregnates the later with a completely new paradigm. As Rist (1996) succinctly puts it, «il ne s’agit plus seulement de constater que les choses « se développent », on pourra désormais « développer ». Thus « le développement » prendra alors un sens transitif. ». Truman’s inaugural speech brought in at least three critical ideas that became the new vision of development - full with western bias. Some of the ideas brought to the vision of development by Point IV of Harry Truman’s address could be classified as follows:
- First, the juxtaposition of the terms “development” and “underdevelopment” helped to revise early visions of North/South based on the dichotomy, colonizer versus colonized, civilized versus uncivilized, traditional versus modern. Truman’s speech cancelled the hierarchical vision of humanity of the colonial period, even though it continues to acknowledge the backwardness of the “underdeveloped”; the later can overcome this state of underdevelopment by imitating the western countries considered as models of development. Thus colonialism had to be abolished to favor growth and, subsequently, development of the new nations.
- Second, just as classical evolutionist saw progress in stages following a linear sequence, Truman’s juxtaposition of “development” to “underdevelopment” introduces an idea of continuity between the two concepts. In short, what has happened in Europe between the XVIII and XIX century will be reproduced in other places. Furthermore, the placing of underdevelopment versus development renders the former unjustly ahistorical, putting forward the idea of help as the key solution to underdevelopment (Rist: 1996).
- Truman’s speech also rendered “underdevelopment” an illness without a cause. The nations classified as underdeveloped were held responsible for their presumed state of “backwardness”. For that reason, time has come for them to follow the “road map” to development produced and given to them by the western powers. The western nations on their part will help these “underdeveloped” countries to attain development. Just like the “mission civilisatrice” which had to carry the colonies from their traditional state to that of civilization, Point IV of Truman’s speech pondered on the duty of the western nations in paving the way towards economic growth, which will consequently bring development in the new nations.
- Last, but not the least, Truman transformed people living in what was termed “underdeveloped” nation to object and not subjects of their destiny. Gilbert Rist (1996) contends that, as from 1949, millions of people on the world will “officially” be considered as “underdeveloped. “ They will no longer be considered as Africans, Latin-Americans or Asians (not to say Bambaras, Shonas, Berbère, Quechuas, Aymaras, Balinais or Gols), but simply “underdeveloped”.
Conclusion
Truman in his speech gave a new semantic and pragmatic vision of development. The dichotomy colonizer/colonized gave way to the new vision of development, which juxtaposed “development” to “underdevelopment”. Nonetheless, despite this clear vision of development put forward by Truman, the decolonization period coupled with events of the cold war did not give an easy time to the smooth flow of ideas propagated by Point IV of Truman’s address (C.C. Vidrovitch: 1995, A. M Gentili: 2002, Ian Taylor & al: 2004). Thus to normalize the new meaning given to the concept development, new institutions had to be created to handle, reshape and universalize the ideas put forward by Point IV.
By Fonju Ndemesah