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Introduction to Philosophy |
A much more recent theory of the same general kind is the picture of economic development put forward by the modern economic historian W.W. Rostow.
He thinks there are five stages.
This is the initial state.
Dispersed population living precariously. Hierachical political power. No sense of 'progress'.
Examples Rostow gives here include the dynasties of China, the civilisations of the Middle East and the Mediterranean as well of medieval Europe.
Enormous variation here, but Rostow says there is a central vital common feature:
they share 'a ceiling... on the level of attainable output per head, due to the fact that the potentialities of science and technology were not available, or not systematically applied'.
At some point in the history of the model traditional society, what Rostow calls the 'preconditions for take-off' develop, and this represents the second stage.
Among the preconditions are: the idea that economic progress is possible; education broadening 'to meet the needs of 'enterprise', prepared to take risks for the sake of profits; the appearance of banks; the emergence of a centralised national state.
With the preconditions established, the economy is able to 'take off' into sustained growth. Industries and investment expand rapidly, and so do towns, the class of entrepreneurs, the use of natural resources and new methods of production. The third stage of development has been reached.
During the period following the explosive 'take-off' the technology that powered the take-off is applied ever more widely.
It expands beyond the coal and iron and heavy engineering for example, into machine tools, chemicals and electrical equipment.
The economy grows during this fourth stage, if not steadily then at least continuously.
Eventually, the leading sectors of the economy shift towards consumers' goods and services, and the fifth stage of high consumption is reached.
Incomes rise at the point where people in general are able to 'consume' beyond the basic necessities, and the proportion of people in skilled or office jobs rises.
Society ceases to be interested in the further extension of modern technology: the welfare state for example arises.
Though the phraseology and the details of the Rostow model may be unfamiliar, the general conception that it embodies is, I suggest, very widespread: an evolutionist picture of the world as populated by countries in various stages of 'development', all of them travelling the same road, but some further on than others.
A deep-seated aspect of this conception is the idea that the natural goal of all countries must be industrialisation, and that the role of the developed nations must be to help the 'underdeveloped' in their struggle towards it.
It is Rostow's detailed suggestion, of course, that the way to induce development in a 'traditional' or 'transitional' society is to supply an economic 'push', most simply represented by an injection of capital.
Rostow thus provides the rationale of what the rich world thinks of itself as doing for the poor - providing it with 'aid', the capital necessary for 'lift-off', after which the economy is supposed to grow under its own steam.
These are examples of the 'evolutionist ' view of social change.
The common starting point may be said to be this:
the tenet that social change as it occurs in a particular society conforms to a fixed pattern.
An evolutionist of the type exemplified by Rostow for example, looks at a variety of different societies and discerns in the way they have changed down the ages a single pattern that is linear in form:
a movement towards greater 'productivity'.
On the basis of what he thinks he sees he concludes that there is indeed one fixed path followed by societies, and that therefore, if one identifies the point on the path reached by a particular society, one is able to predict its general development from that point.
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