About the Book
This important book deals with two issues: the emancipation of the Third World from the debt system and the reappropriation of development by civil society through financial self-reliance.
The author begins by analyzing the failure of 50 years of externally financed development. He shows how the foreign aid system has had the perverse effect of downplaying the role of domestic savings and creating a chronic economic and technological dependency. Massive foreign aid also subverted the political process in many Third World countries by giving birth to a new class which Gélinas calls the "aidocracy". He traces the roots of autonomous development based on domestic capital accumulation and highlights the much neglected resource that exists in even the poorest countries: savings. This kind of development, already at work in the "people‘s economy", can only begin at the grassroots, not at the level of the state.
Critical of the foreign aid industry, Gelinas asserts that true international cooperation defined as external support for an internal dynamic remains useful and necessary. The issue for the North should not be to give more, but to take less.
Commendations
‘An enlightening synthesis of the benefits of informal and peasant savings in developing countries‘ - Jeune Afrique Economie
‘A very educational book for the general public, especially college and university students‘ - Le Bulletin de l‘Association d‘economie politique
‘An essential tool for anyone seeking an introduction to the problem of development aid‘ - L‘Agora
Contents
Part 1: Development through Foreign Debt
1. Fifty years of development aid and underdevelopment
2. The scope and depth of underdevelopment
3. The permanent debt system
4. The pillars of the system
5. The aidocracy
6. The Third World deadlocked
Part 2: Development through Domestic Savings
7. Savings and development
8. Voluntary savings in the people‘s economy
9. The Mobilization of popular savings
10. Investment of savings in food crops 11. Savings and democracy
12. The reappropriation of development
