Underdevelopment is thus seen as an externally induced phenomenon, in contrast to the linear-stages and structural-change theories'
stress on internal constraints such as insufficient savings and investment or lack of education and skills.
Revolutionary struggles or at least major restructurings of the world capitalist system are therefore required to
free dependent Third World nations from the direct and indirect economic control of their First World and
domestic oppressors.
One of the most forceful statements of the international-dependence school of thought was made by Theotonio
Dos Santos:
Underdevelopment, far from constituting a state of backwardness prior to capitalism, is rather a
consequence and a particular form of capitalist development known as dependent capitalism. . . .
Dependence is a conditioning situation in which the economies of one group of countries are conditioned
by the development and expansion of others. A relationship of interdependence between two or more
economies or between such economies and the world trading system becomes a dependent relationship
when some countries can expand through self-impulsion while others, being in a dependent position, can
only expand as a reflection of the expansion of the dominant countries, which may have positive or
negative effects on their immediate development. In either case, the basic situation of dependence causes
these countries to be both backward and exploited. Dominant countries are endowed with technological,
commercial, capital and socio-political predominance over dependent countries—the form of this
predominance varying according to the particular historical moment—and can therefore exploit them, and
extract part of the locally produced surplus. Dependence, then, is based upon an international division of
labor which allows industrial development to take place in some countries while restricting it in others,
whose growth is conditioned by and subjected to the power centers of the world.vii
Curiously, a very similar but obviously non-Marxist perspective was expounded by Pope John Paul II in his
widely quoted 1988 encyclical letter (a formal, elaborate expression of papal teaching)" Sollicitude rei socialis
(The Social Concerns of the Church), in which he declared:
One must denounce the existence of economic, financial, and social mechanisms which, although "they
are manipulated by people, often function almost automatically, thus accentuating the situation of wealth
for some and poverty for the rest. These mechanisms, which are maneuvered directly or indirectly by the
more developed countries, by their very functioning, favor the interests of the people manipulating them.
But in the end they suffocate or condition the economies of the less developed countries.
Various components of the neocolonial dependence argument will be explored in greater detail when we discuss
problems of poverty, income distribution, unemployment, international trade, and foreign assistance in Parts II
and III.