4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
capitalist pattern, the latter predicted a spectacular "inner-directed'1' development in the periphery once the t ^is would be administered mainly through the investment of private capita] and with some State assistance (although its analogue—the Mahalanobis project in India under the spell of Soviet planning—did not wish to keep the State on a tight leash).
Based upon the received wisdom of European experience and the "stages-of-growth" formulations [cf. Rostow : I960], modernization theory sponsored the "diffusionist" claim, in keeping with the "dualist" Lewis model [Lewis : 1954], that the less developed countries [LDCS], if they could update their "backward" agrarian sector and stimulate their "modern" industrial sector, would very soon arrive at capitalism (and therefore development) via the same stages through which the Western capitalist countries had passed [Hoselitz : 1960; Nash : 1964; and Eisenstadt: 1966;
see for a critique Taylor : 1979]. Modernization thus openly advocated the extension of capitalist relations in agriculture'by legislations, proletarianization of the ^minfwdists and small-holder peasants, transformation of ^th^ backward agrarian sector" for building up a home market for manufactures, and adoption of the isis. At the same time, modernization let the neoclassical modifications of the so-called law of co nparative costs take care of the LDCS' external trade policy, promising "gains" flowing from the 19th century division of international trade [Cordon : 1965; cf. Kemp :
1983 : 172f].
The explosion of eloquence during the 1950s inspired by the painted lily of modernization theory also contributed to the glib talk of the "advantages of backwardness", a term once popularized by Veblen [1939] in the sense that the backward countries could readily take advantage of the innovations in knowledge and technology which the advanced countries had taken centuries to achieve. If Marx had once spoken of the possibility that "backward" Russia might instantly appropriate (without going through the modus operand! of Western capitalism) the capitalist knowledge and technology developed over centuries, that possibility was however conditioned upon a prior revolutionary transformation of the country [Marx : 1984 : 102f, 110f,and 121; cf. Banerjee : 1976 : 875; and Wada : 1984 ; 65ff]. Actually, it is not the advantages but the disadvantages of backwardness which have become critical today. In this age of fast technological change and obsolescence the race between the LDCS and the capitalist West usually ends up with the "prizes" going to the latter [Elster : 1984 : 41]. Indeed, those LDCS, which were once will-o'-the-wisped into dallying with "modernization" high-falutin', now exhibit, if anything, an acute technological dependence, what with the control of multinational corporations over advanced technology, over the supplies of machineries, spare parts, designs and blue prints, patents, etc. However, not many would take modernization seriously today, especially after what had taken place in the LDCS, whose resouices were opened up on most favourable terms for the Western capitalist countries, in the name of trade and specialization under comparative advantage,