THE HISTORICAL PROBLEMATIC OF THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT 5 The xecord of modernization experiments in the Third World has been the record of "the disintegration of an idea", the idea of economic liberalism [Clajrmonte : I960]. The isis of LCLA also functioned within the wasteland of the dualist modernization perspective. The isis and the class interests that sustained it had not been able to induce the nec.ssary structural shifts to spur on development through accumulation via increases in labour productivity. Neither the modernization theory nor the LCLA project ever tried to evolve a class analysis of development. Neither tried to explain the configuration of class, interests in which labour productivity and accumulation were largely held back by the absence of fixed capital, continuation , of low wages and widespread use of the modes of increasing absolute surplus labour. Such analyses, to be sure, would have called forth a historical exposition of the structural specificities of Third World societies; but history had no nk^ie in the scheme of things sponsored by modernization and ECLA. It should nevertheless be said in favour of the latter that it did make a significant intellectual contribution by its powerful critique of the neoclassical refinements of the law of comparative co^ts, by its formulation of the "centre-periphery" perspective, and by its exposure of how unequal exchange in trade between the industrialized "centre" and the agricultural "periphery" led to a flow of resources-transfer from the latter to the former, stifling an autonomous economic growth in Latin America [Raul Prebisch : 1963]. With the false dawn of modernization being soon over, the field has long been taken over by a number of competing, and highly stimulating, paradigms of explanation which, largely influenced by Marxist and allied theory, have been opening up fresh woods and new pastures. I cite below four such theoretical perspectives which have captured significant insights, although not all of these are, as 1 shall try to show, keenly interested in the antecedent history of peripheral societies. This often leads to the formulation of development strategies in some of which the cocks simply won't fight. World Economy World-System "It's foolish to take singing lessons from peacocks" : Andre Gunder Frank seems to be saying in his devastating critique of bourgeois development theories. If you do. you then continue to dance to the tune of "modernization and development" fostesed by metropolitan capital's liberal theory. Look at Latin America; its "national" bourgeoisie is interested not in development by the overhauling of society, but in fostering the very system which stifles the country's economic advance—a system in which the local merchants have grown a stake in selling the industrial products of the metropolis and in promoting the local plantation and mining enterprises, while the indigenous bourgeoisie has got involved in luxury production for the local rich and nothing much besides,