MIM REVIEW: Amartya Sen's ITAL Development as Freedom END Amartya Sen Development as Freedom NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, 366pp. reviewed by MC5, June 1, 2000 This book by the Nobel Prize Winner in Economics (1998) is the best we could hope for from a bourgeois economist, because it handles the questions we care about; even though the perspective it takes is that of the petty-bourgeoisie, continually vacillating between the imperialists and the international proletariat. The theme of the book is that development contributes to freedom, but freedom is also necessary for development. "Expansion of freedom is viewed as both (1) the ITAL primary end END and (2) the ITAL principal means END of development."(p. 36) MIM agrees with the idea that development is freedom. The "freedom to" do something is important to the starving and dying, while the people who "have it made" worry about "freedom from" others especially the government or collectives engaged in class struggle. Sen favors "freedom to" and "freedom from," a combination of the views of the proletariat and the imperialists. Sen is an Indian economist working in the Anglo-Amerikan ivory tower, sometimes at Harvard University and sometimes at Cambridge University in England. To our benefit, he weaves in what he knows of Indian and Third World development, subjects that most bourgeois economists prefer not to touch, even if not touching the subject means domination of the field by self-professed Marxists. (Obviously these self-professed Marxists are generally Marxologists (people just studying Marx) and not much of a threat.) Vantage point of the Indian bourgeoisie Sen is aware of the many criticisms that can be put at the door of the Indian ruling class and the ruling class of many Third World countries. Furthermore, he has an accurate global sense of where poverty and suffering is. "Around 1991 there were fifty-two countries where the expectation of life at birth was below sixty years. . . . Forty-six of these countries are in South Asia and sub- Saharan Africa."(p. 99) The combined six countries outside of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa that are in the bottom tier of health are Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Laos, Papua New Guinea and Yemen. The six combined are only 3.5% of the 1.69 billion people at the bottom of the global totem-pole health- wise. Although Sen does repeatedly admit the negative side of Indian capitalism and what it means for the average persyn relative to what happened to the average persyn in Mao's China, overall he still concludes in defense of India and not China. Along these lines he takes up four bourgeois illusions: 1) The Indian province of Kerala is proof of the non-violent and democratic road to change and Maoism was unnecessary. 2) The situation of Blacks in the United $tates is worse than that of the poor in the Indian subcontinent. 3) Higher growth rates in other countries were not a result of "authoritarianism" or communism or violence against landlord classes. 4) Famines occur in non-democratic countries, countries where there is no freedom of criticism.(p. 16) Combined, his theses represent how the Indian bourgeoisie can have pride vis a vis the Amerikan bourgeoisie and other ruling classes. (Anecdotally, see his criticism of Winston Churchill as a chauvinist, see p. 174) His thesis on Kerala, amply statistically backed in his work and elsewhere is not something MIM can take up here. We will only point out that the best province of India should be compared with the best province of Mao's China. Also it should be considered whether the success in Kerala is one exception that proves the rule. The ruling class in Kerala would not feel the heat if it were not for Mao and others like him not using the electoral road. We invite our Indian readers to inform us on the exception of Kerala thrown at us by the bourgeoisie as proof of the possibility of electoral reform of capitalism in the Third World. The second Indian bourgeois thesis is that Blacks have lower life chances in the United $tates than people in China, Kerala, Sri Lanka, Jamaica and Costa Rica.(p. 21) Even Bangladeshi men have a higher chance of living past 40 than Harlem men.(p. 23) According to Sen, a large (1.69 billion people) but only a minority portion of the world's countries has a life expectancy below 60, but that portion includes Black men in New York, San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington, DC.(p. 99) Such comparisons let the Third World ruling classes off the hook, because they can say they are better than the imperialist rulers in their own countries in some ways. Sen's third thesis in defense of the subcontinent's bourgeoisie is very weakly supported empirically. His theory of why individualist freedom promotes development is potentially a scientific idea, but it has no factual evidence to support it and only summarizes other studies in passing in a sentence. He spends most of his time talking about the idea in theory while having to admit that East Asia grew faster economically than democratic India, Costa Rica and Jamaica.(p. 149) Empirically, he admits that "First Japan, and then South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and later post-reform China and Thailand and other countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia -- have done remarkably well in spreading the economic opportunities through an adequately supportive social background, including high levels of literacy, numeracy, and basic education; good general health care; completed land reforms; and so on. The lesson of opening of the economy and the importance of trade has been more easily learned in India than the rest of the message from the same direction of the rising sun."(p. 91) (On this subject we refer readers to http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/faq/failure.html and chapter 7 of MIM Theory 4.) While Sen is usually thorough in insisting on quantitative information, when it comes to land reform, he fell down again even as he mentions it in passing. He does not ask how many attempted land reforms failed and how many succeeded and at what costs. While he admits (as do other bourgeois economists these days) that land reform is necessary, he does not address the fact that it happened in communist countries or countries under severe threat of class struggle culminating in revolution. Land reform has generally failed in electoral and non-violent contexts. So while the bourgeois economists can acknowledge the role of land reform, they are not yet able to admit how it comes about. From MIM's scientific vantage point, it is clear that there can be no talk of East Asian economic miracles without the simple fact of violent class struggle culminating in land reform or the threat of such happening again (as in Taiwan). The fourth Sen thesis tending to whitewash the subcontinental ruling classes is that freedom including in markets prevents famine. Although he admits that on the whole Mao's China did better than the rest of the Third World in life expectancy, he aims his fire by focussing on what he defines as famine. According to Sen, famine is not what goes on in India and Bangladesh every year. He prefers to call that "undernourishment" and admits that "half of all Indian children, are, it appears, chronically undernourished." (p. 102) Sen says the low life expectancies there can be attributed to a general grind of poverty that cannot be described as famine. The Great Leap on the other hand, according to Sen, did create famine from a lack of accurate information to reach the top leaders, who Sen says overly intimidated their subordinates who then lied to avoid disgrace.(e.g. pp. 43, 181-2) (See also our book review of Roderick MacFarquhar on the Great Leap.) Although Sen provides that theoretical reason, we are afraid most poorly educated imperialist country people will be suckered by Sen's fine distinction between famine and the overall situation. Once again, we must point out that his thesis is limited: on the whole he conceded that all things considered, health was better in China than in democratic, bourgeois and semi-feudal India. Excluding what he defines as famine, Sen is still aware that "massive endemic hunger causes great misery in many parts of the world -- debilitating hundreds of millions and killing a sizable proportion of them with statistical regularity."(p. 204) Engaging the proletarian scientific outlook: Marx Sen is most definitively engaged with Karl Marx's ghost. In any matter concerning pre-capitalist history or modes of production, Sen agrees with Marx. He concurred with Marx that a free market for labor was better than previous arrangements that resulted in bonding or outright slavery. The American Civil War, was to Marx "'the one great event of contemporary history.'"(p. 29) Again and again Sen is able to address the fundamental questions of violence in our times. For example, he wrote: "Bordering on the Bay of Bengal, at the southern edge of Bangladesh. . .there is the Sundarban -- which means 'beautiful forest.' That is the natural habitat of the famous Royal Bengal tiger. . . . The surviving tigers are protected by a hunting ban. The Sundarban is also famous for the honey it produces. . . . The people who live in the region, desperately poor as they are, go into the forests to collect the honey, which fetches quite a handsome price in the urban markets -- maybe even the rupee equivalent of fifty U.S. cents per bottle. But the honey collectors also have to escape the tigers. In a good year, only about fifty or so honey gatherers are killed by tigers. . . . This is just one illustration of the force of economic needs in many third world countries."(p. 146) Addressing the revisionists in China today and the "authoritarian" rulers of East Asia, Sen goes on to say: "If poverty drives human beings to take such terrible risks -- and perhaps to die terrible deaths -- for a dollar or two of honey, it might well be odd to concentrate on their liberty and political freedoms. Habeas corpus may not seem like a communicable concept in that context. Priority must surely be given, so the argument runs, to fulfilling economic needs, even if it involves compromising political liberties. It is not hard to think that focusing on democracy and political liberty is a luxury that a poor country 'cannot afford.'"(p. 146-7) On the question of democracy, Sen falls down completely. No where does he address imperialism, and the pattern of U.$. government overthrow of elected governments throughout the Third World this century. He seems aware that the middle-classes and upper-classes might be the ones complaining about political liberties since their basic needs are taken care of, but Sen shows no factual sense of how politics works in practice in a world with a Pentagon, CIA etc. In contrast, Sen shows himself to be more keenly aware of demographic, sociological and economic matters. When it comes to politics he satisfies himself with theorizing about possible contradictions in majority rule(p. 251). When it comes to whether humyn rights actually function in this world, it is typical of Sen to throw aside the scientific questions and simply posit that the assertion of humyn rights is a good thing at the level of ethics and "should"s. Admissions on Mao Sen makes repeated admissions in the book about Mao's China as we have covered on our web page and elsewhere. Here we draw the connections for our reader: Sen makes the factual admissions while still on the whole negating the Maoist road to development. Unlike mainstream imperialist country propagandists, Sen is aware that Mao cannot be easily dismissed without debate in the Third World. "The health conditions in China were also much better than in India because of the social commitment of the pre-reform [Mao--MC5] regime to health care as well as education. Oddly enough, that commitment, while totally unrelated to its helpful role in market-oriented economic growth, created social opportunities that could be brought into dynamic use after the country moved toward marketization. The social backwardness of India, with its elitist concentration on higher education and massive negligence of school education, and its substantial neglect of basic health care, left that country poorly prepared for a widely shared economic expansion."(p. 42) Hence, according to Sen, Mao prepared China for economic expansion better than the Indian bourgeoisie prepared India for capitalist expansion. Sen openly admits that communist countries did better in life expectancy than their successors -- "perhaps nowhere more so than in Russia itself (where the life expectancy at birth of Russian men has dropped now to about fifty-eight years -- considerably below those in India or Pakistan)."(p. 114; see also p. 186 on Mao's successes in Sen's concluding remarks of chapter.) Conclusion There are some terribly dry sections of this book where Sen carefully reviews the philosophical underpinnings of his economic training and philosophy more generally. No doubt economics professors may wish students to read these sections, but they do detract from MIM's ability to recommend the book, beyond the fact that it is petty-bourgeois in outlook. However, for an economics student who must write a paper and would care to engage MIM line on Third World development, Sen's book would serve as a good foil. The quality of our opponents does not get any higher. Rarely do we see a bourgeois economist treat life and death questions so directly.