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The Need for Dialogue
While there is much the poor must do for themselves, some obstacles are not easily overcome. Most of the poor nations, for example, are burdened with a tropical climate, which lowers both soil fertility and levels of human exertion. Many also lack the cultural milieu to reinforce individual initiative and social concern for progress. "What holds back many LDCs is the people who live there," says P.T. Bauer. "Material achievement depends primarily on people's attitudes, motivation and mores. In many LDCs, popular mores are often uncongenial to economic development; there is widespread fatalism and torpor and preference for a contemplative life." For many traditional African societies, work is considered only a means of survival rather than a way to improve one's living standard.
Even for the best-endowed Third and Fourth World states, development will be a long, slow process. "We warn those who today demand a fast redistribution of wealth not to be impatient," declared West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in a recent New York speech. "In Europe, the process of industrialization has so far lasted about 200 years." Modern methods of agriculture, in fact, advanced through Europe in the 19th century at the snail's pace of only a few miles yearly.
There is much the world's developing states can learn from the First World. But this will require a dialogue rather than the hostility of the past two years. "It could go back to the jungle," warns a Harvard political scientist. "It is a toss-up whether the developing countries opt for economic progress or instead, for winning symbolic points by twitting the industrial states."
If the developing countries carry their tactics of harassment into this week's Paris conference and later into the four specialized commissions, they may be squandering an unprecedented opportunity to involve the First World in a new strategy for development. Those poor nations genuinely committed to economic growth rather than continuing a verbal assault on the First World may begin to discover that their self-interest lies with the industrial states rather than with the Group of 77.
The Paris conference is also an opportunity for the First World. There, and at next May's UNCTAD conference in Nairobi and the ongoing trade talks in Geneva, the North will have to demonstrate its readiness to consider reasonable requests for changes in the international economic system. If the developed countries seem unwilling to make any substantive concessions, the poor countries may well conclude that only a new wave of confrontation can bring gains.
Then Secretary of State Kissinger's warning to the U.N. last September may become prophetic: "The division of the planet between rich and poor could become as grim as the darkest days of the cold war."
* The U.S., Canada, the Common Market, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan and Australia from the