1. Nowadays, it became quite clear to just about anyone that the idea that, by providing a financial aid to the so-called ‘developing’ countries, Western nations would be able to help these countries to get out of poverty, has been deprived of the remains of its former legitimacy.[1]
This could not be otherwise, because ever since the ‘aid’ paradigm has attained the status of the UN official policy, in regards to the Third World countries, there has been not even a single instance reported of the policy’s implementation having produced a positive outcome.
Quite on the contrary – the more this ‘aid’ has been pumped into the concerned countries’ economy, the faster they grew detached from the notions of progress and development, in the first place. In its turn, this leaves very little doubt that the assumption that aid can serve as the tool of development, is conceptually fallacious. In this paper, I will explore the validity of the above-stated thesis at length.
2. One of the reasons why, during the course of the late 20th century, it became a commonplace practice among ‘progressive’ politicians in the West to advocate the idea of aid, is that during this time it used to be fashionable to assess the essence of the ongoing developments on the international arena within the conceptual framework of political Constructivism. According to the paradigm’s foremost provision, as time goes on, the very purpose of the independent states’ continual existence undergoes a qualitative transformation. [2]
In its turn, this was supposed to justify the idea that rich countries should preoccupy themselves with trying to improve living standards in the Third World. Nevertheless, as time goes on, it becomes increasingly clear to more and more people that, discursively speaking, political Constructivism is nothing by the instrument that allows Western countries to conceal their actual (Realist) agenda, concerned with: a) political/economic expansion, b) maintenance of a political stability within, c) destabilization of competing states.
What it means is that Western countries cannot be genuinely interested in having aid, which they provide to the ‘developing’ countries, to prove effective, by definition. After all, the fact that people in the West enjoy the world’s highest standards of living is the direct consequence of the Western countries’ existential mode remaining largely ‘parasitic’.
The validity of this statement can be well illustrated, in regards to the FRS’s practice of emitting billions and billions of dollars, without bothering to ensure that the money in question does reflect the value of any material assets. As a result, the US currency had ceased to represent any objective value, whatsoever, while being turned into essentially the tons of a valueless green paper (nowadays, it is rather the bunch of digital zeroes in the FRS’s main computer).
Yet, it is specifically this currency (the US dollar), with which the Western world pays ‘developing’ countries, in exchange for their natural and human resources. In the similar manner, Spanish and later British colonists used to buy land from the American Natives, in exchange for glass-beads. Therefore, the Western practice of providing the Third World countries with aid, while these countries are being robbed clean by the very same ‘aid-providers’, is a hypocrisy of the worst kind.
Being strongly hypocritical, this practice cannot possibly result in the improvement of living standards among the world’s most impoverished people. Quite on the contrary – it prompts aid-recipients to adopt the mentality of beggars, which are doomed to rely on others, while trying to meet the ends.[3] In its turn, this causes the ‘poor and needy’ to become resentful of their moralistically minded ‘beneficiaries’.
In this respect, it would prove quite impossible to disagree with Bindra, who suggested that: “Far from being productive or necessary, the donor-dependant relationship most often ends in mutual hatred. And amid the final acrimony, one crucial fact is forgotten: the longer the relationship has carried on, the less capable the dependant of reducing his dependence”.[4]
This explains the phenomenon of legal and illegal immigrants from the Third world continuing to arrive to the Western shores in big numbers, despite remaining deeply resentful of the so-called ‘Western values’. These people are perfectly aware that in their own countries, they do not have even a slight chance of a social advancement, by definition, which in turn is the direct consequence of the West’s ‘well-meaning’ geopolitical arrogance, reflected by the euro-centric belief that aid can indeed serve as the tool of development.
This, of course, once again exposes the sheer fallaciousness of the assumption that by throwing ‘crumbs’ from their richly served tables to those people that have to struggle with hunger on a daily basis, philanthropically-minded Westerners would be able to make a difference.
There is another reason why there can be no rationale, whatsoever, in thinking that there may be any objective benefits to the policy of providing aid to the ‘developing’ countries – especially if the latter happened to be situated in Africa. This reason has to do with the fact that, in the evolutionary sense of this word, these countries’ citizens cannot be considered equal with their Western or South-Asian counterparts.
After all, it does not represent much of a secret that the average rate of IQ among citizens of the world’s most impoverished countries, such as Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Ethiopia, amounts to as low as 50-60.[5] What it means is that the very assumption that aid can trigger the process of the evolutionary underdeveloped individuals being set on the path of progress, does not stand much of a discursive ground.
The reason for this is apparent – it is only those individuals that are capable of operating with highly abstract subject matters, which in turn is being reflected by the rate of their IQ, who have what it takes to be able to enforce the virtues of a rationale-based (and consequentially prosperous) living.
After all, it is specifically one’s ability to understand the meaning of abstractly sounding terms/definitions, which creates objective preconditions for the individual in question to be capable of exercising a rational control over its animalistic urges.
One of these urges is concerned with the intellectually underdeveloped people’s tendency to remain tribally minded, throughout the course of their lives. In its turn, this can be discussed in terms of a metaphysical ground, out of which these people’s taste for corruption actually stems.
This helps us to understand why, as practice indicates, at least 60% of a financial/material aid that is being provided to the ‘developing’ countries annually, on the part of the West, ends up being stolen by the local officials, in charge of distributing this aid among the most socially disadvantaged citizens. [6]
Yet, it is not only that this does not cause aid-providing Western countries to reconsider the legitimacy of the policy in question, but it in fact appears to provide aid-donors with an additional incentive to keep on throwing money into the bottomless pit of the Third World. Such a seeming illogicality, however, can be well explained once we realize that, in the geopolitical sense of this word, the term ‘aid’ is nothing but the well-sounding euphemism to the term ‘extortion’.
The rationale behind this suggestion is as follows: By providing aid to the Third World countries, Westerners contribute to the maintenance of the situation when the representatives of the corrupted ruling elites in these countries, are able to remain in the position of power, while continuing to lead a parasitic existence. The price of this is that the rest of ordinary citizens are being kept in the state of an extreme poverty.
After all, the more impoverished citizens are, the easier it is to provide them with the incentives to participate in elections/publicly held mass-rallies, which in turn legitimize the earlier mentioned state of affairs. This is because the cost of the impoverished citizens’ active participation in the earlier mentioned activities is comparatively cheap.
For example, it represents a common practice, on the part of politicians in many ‘developing’ countries, to hire people to participate in the mass-rallies (staged to prove that these politicians indeed enjoy much of a public support), by paying every individual ‘supporter’ as little, as $1 per day.[7] This partially explains the reason why, while pumping finances into the economies of the Third World countries, the UN bureaucrats never cease stressing out that the provided financial assistance is also meant to promote the values of democracy.
While knowing perfectly well that, within the Third World settings, democracy necessarily breeds corruption, the earlier mentioned bureaucrats simply strive to maintain the present status quo in the ‘developing’ countries, concerned with the situation when the small minority of these countries’ richest citizens continues to subject their less fortunate countrymen to the most extreme forms of an economic exploitation.
Therefore, the democracy-rhetoric, on the part of those Western politicians who popularize the idea that aid can indeed be considered the tool of development, indicates that, despite having condemned the legacy of colonialism formally, Western countries nevertheless continue to remain essentially colonial – although this time, their colonial aspirations are concealed with the politically correct wrapper of ‘aid’.[8]
Finally, the idea that aid may serve as the instrument of development cannot be considered thoroughly valid, because it is nothing but the byproduct of White people’s endowment with the sense of a perceptual euro-centrism.
That is, the concerned idea appears to be consistent with solely the Western outlook on what the notion of development stands for, because it reflects While people’s tendency to associate this particular notion with the notion of quality. What it means that there are no good reasons to consider this idea applicable, within the context of how people in non-Western countries go about addressing their evolutionary agenda of securing and expanding the affiliated environmental niche on the planet.
The reason for this is apparent – even though that, regardless of what happened to be the particulars of their ethno-cultural affiliation, all people are similar, in respect of being ‘programmed’ to seek domination, the strategies that they deploy during the course of the process, reflect the measure of the concerned individuals’ existential complexity.
Whereas, some people strive to maintain their evolutionary fitness by the mean of contributing to the pace of the technological/cultural progress (quality), the others pursue the same agenda by the mean of making babies on an industrial scale. In the eyes of evolution, neither of the mentioned strategies can be deemed ‘superior’ – all that matters, is that the chosen strategy ensures the eventual survival/dominance, on the part of its affiliates.[9][10]
In its turn, this implies that, despite the fact that many citizens in the Third World countries do suffer from undernourishment; ‘aid’ (in the Western sense of this word) is the last thing they need.
For example, within the matter of forty years, the population of Ethiopia has tripled – despite the fact that, throughout this time, Ethiopians continued to suffer from the never-ending civil war and famine.[11] Perceptually ‘feminized’ Westerners, on the other hand, grow ever more incapable of addressing even the most basic life-challenges – despite enjoying the world’s highest standards of living.
As opposed to the Western societies of whining degenerates, which have effectively ceased evolving, the Ethiopian society is blessed with the Darwinian vitality, which in turn allows its members to successfully deal even with the most unimaginable hardships – without needing to be ‘aided’ by those who cause these hardships, in the first place.
3. I believe that the earlier deployed line of argumentation, in defense of the suggestion that the notions of ‘aid’ and ‘development’ are mutually inconsistent, fully correlates with the paper’s initial thesis. Apparently, aid cannot lead to development, by definition.
Bibliography
Bebler, Anton. “Self-Assertion in the Third World.” International Political Science Review 1, no. 3 (1980): 369-380.
Bindra, Sunny. “Men Behaving Badly.” In Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits: An Anthology, edited by Rasna Warah, 147-155. London: AuthorHouse, 2008.
Ghosh, Arun. “Self-Reliance, Recent Economic Policies and Neo-Colonialism.” Economic and Political Weekly 27, no. 17 (1992): 865-868.
Hodgson, Geoffrey. “Darwinism and Institutional Economics.” Journal of Economic Issues 37, no. 1 (2003): 85-97.
Jones, Jack. “Social Darwinism Reconsidered.” Political Psychology 3, no. ½ (1981): 239-266.
Lynn, Richard, and Tatu Vanhanen. IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002.
O’Higgins, Eleanor. “Corruption, Underdevelopment, and Extractive Resource Industries: Addressing the Vicious Cycle.” Business Ethics Quarterly 16, no. 2 (2006): 235-254.
Olssen, Mark. “Radical Constructivism and its Failings: Anti-Realism and Individualism.” British Journal of Educational Studies 44, no. 3 (1996): 275-295.
Szeftel, Morris. “Misunderstanding African Politics: Corruption & the Governance Agenda.” Review of African Political Economy 25, no. 76 (1998): 221-240.
Tomlinson, Bill. “What Was the Third World?’, Journal of Contemporary History 38, no. 2 (2003): 307-321.
White, Phillip and Lionel Cliffe. “War & Famine in Ethiopia & Eritrea.” Review of African Political Economy 27, no. 84 (2000): 329-333.
Footnotes
- Bill Tomlinson “What Was the Third World?’, Journal of Contemporary History 38, no. 2 (2003): 311.
- Mark Olssen “Radical Constructivism and its Failings: Anti-Realism and Individualism.” British Journal of Educational Studies 44, no. 3 (1996): 280.
- Anton Bebler “Self-Assertion in the Third World”, International Political Science Review 1, no. 3 (1980): 375.
- Sunny Bindra, “Men Behaving Badly.” In Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits: An Anthology, ed. by Rasna Warah (London: AuthorHouse, 2008), 149.
- Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, IQ and the Wealth of Nations (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), 120.
- Eleanor O’Higgins “Corruption, Underdevelopment, and Extractive Resource Industries: Addressing the Vicious Cycle.” Business Ethics Quarterly 16, no. 2 (2006): 237.
- Morris Szeftel “Misunderstanding African Politics: Corruption & the Governance Agenda.” Review of African Political Economy 25, no. 76 (1998): 219.
- Arun Ghosh “Self-Reliance, Recent Economic Policies and Neo-Colonialism.” Economic and Political Weekly 27, no. 17 (1992): 866.
- Geoffrey Hodgson “Darwinism and Institutional Economics.” Journal of Economic Issues 37, no. 1 (2003): 90.
- Jack Jones “Social Darwinism Reconsidered.” Political Psychology 3, no. ½ (1981): 245.
- Phillip White and Lionel Cliffe “War & Famine in Ethiopia & Eritrea.” Review of African Political Economy 27, no. 84 (2000): 332.