Chang, Ha-Joon – Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002)
Category: economy; history; industrial policy; Rating: 5/5
Summary: Kicking Away the Ladder:How the Economic and Intellectual Histories of Capitalism Have Been Re-Written to Justify Neo-Liberal Capitalism (Ha-Joon Chang)
Much has been said of the smug arrogance, cultural aloofness and end-of-history conceit characterizing the neoliberal Washington Consensus, the philosophy that a one-size-fits-all set of “good policies” (e.g. privatization, liberalization, deregulation) and “good institutions” (e.g. patent and IP protection system, etc) can – and must – be transplanted onto any country, irrespective of its historical or cultural traditions, if it were to ever join the developed “international community’. The general bankruptcy of this approach is evident from the facts on the growth, with global GDP growth during the 1960-1980 period of “bad policies” substantially higher than during the “good policies” 1980-2000 period. After seeing high growth during the earlier period, Latin America stagnated, and Africa and Eastern Europe declined during the latter; the major exception was mercantilist China.
Though always disabused by reality, from 1998 Russia to the 2008 crisis, the neoliberals retain their intellectual underpinnings by continuing to claim, like Marxists, that history itself is ultimately on their side – after all, did not Britain and the United States, the world’s greatest economic successes, rise to global preeminence through the virtues of minimal government and free trade? Not at all, argues Ha-Joon Chang in this excellent book.
