POLITICS AND THE STAGES OF GROWTH

by W. W. Rostow ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 1971

Rostow's theory of the stages of economic growth has been criticized over the past decade for its ahistorical, apolitical view of development and its basic automatism. Here Rostow takes each stage before and after industrial ""takeoff"" and discusses concomitant political developments in a number of 19th and 20th-century cases. He still writes as if the world in which Britain industrialized is fundamentally equivalent to all latter days. . . as if contemporary ""developing"" countries have truly national economies. . . as if their backwardness, deformation and collapse represents ""delayed"" development. He relies on anthropomorphic abstractions like ""impulses"" toward industrialization and ""fractured"" traditional society, and since he rarely deals with social groups beyond the elite and the masses, key political battles among broad classes or ruling sections are bypassed in favor of mere descriptions of governmental policies. Rostow is utterly indifferent to the economic problem of capital accumulation, much less its political manifestations; and since he declines to explore the interconnections of the world economy, key developmental issues like the debt burdens of India and Latin America are relegated to parentheses. Since the book is gravely flawed even without reference to its cold-war biases or Rostow's public role as privy hawk -- though some critics will dwell on them -- it only remains to note that Rostow refuses to directly confront his critics and thereby further devaluates whatever residual worth the book offers scholars and students.

Pub Date: Aug. 9, 1971

ISBN: 0521096537

Page Count: -

Publisher: Cambridge Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION