CHAPTER I
PROSPECT: SOME ASPECTS OF ECONOMIC
GROWTH AND RESOURCES
According to a great deal of contemporary
thinking, the nations of the world might almost reason
ably be divided into roughly two groups, the rich and
the poor;'*' or, more euphemistically, and more abstractly,
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the developed and the developing. Much economic theory
has been generated, particularly since the Second World
War, to account for probable causes of observed differ
ences in relative material wealth. Economic growth and
development, with industrialization as a goal, has come
to be viewed as an on-going process; a new genus of
human activity begun by a few to be shared eventually by
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all the peoples of the world in greater or lesser degree.
Cf. Barbara Ward, Lenore N. Anjou, and J. D.
Runnalls, eds., The Widening Gap: Development in the
1970s (New York: Columbia University Press, 197l)
2
Lacking analytical utility, these terms have
created more problems than they have solved. Cjf.
Charles Bettelheim, Planification et Crossance accelere
(Paris: Francoismaspero,1967),chap.iii,for a most
powerful criticism of the term "underdeveloped country."
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Typical of the view that the world is engaged
in a race to a Western goal of industrialization is David
S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, Technological Change
and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to
the Present (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1969)
Like the work of Marx and Rostow, Landes' book is
1