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THE ACCIDENTAL MARXIST: ANDRE GUNDER FRANK AND THE “NEO-MARXIST” THEORY OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT, 1958–1967

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2016

CODY STEPHENS
CODY STEPHENS*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of California–Santa Barbara E-mail: cstephens@umail.ucsb.edu
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Abstract

Based on newly available archival records, this article examines the life and thought of Andre Gunder Frank from his years as a graduate student in development economics to the publication of his first and most influential book. A closer look at the evolution of Frank's thought provides new insight into the relationship of his brand of “neo-Marxist” development theories with both classical Marxism and modernization theory. Frank interpreted Marxist political debates according to the categories of thought of 1950s American development economics, and in doing so he both misinterpreted fundamental aspects of Marxism and simultaneously generated lively theoretical debates that remain relevant today.

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Articles
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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , August 2018 , pp. 411 - 442
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 Paul Marlo Sweezy Papers, Box 20, Sweezy to Rackliffe, 5 Dec. 1964, Houghton Library, Harvard University (hereafter PMS).

2 Chew, Sing C. and Denemark, Robert A., eds., The Underdevelopment of Development: Essays in Honor of Andre Gunder Frank (Thousand Oaks, CA, 1996), 363–6Google Scholar.

3 Street, James H., “Review: Packenham, “On Capitalist Underdevelopment by Andre Gunder Frank,” American Political Science Review, 73/1 (1979), 341–2Google Scholar.

4 Laclau, Ernesto, “Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America,” New Left Review, 1/67 (May–June 1971), 19–38Google Scholar. Brenner, Robert, “The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism,” New Left Review, 104/1 (1977), 25–92Google Scholar.

5 “I have never had the temerity myself to claim to be a Marxist; and nowhere in my published—or unpublished—writings can or will anyone find such a personal claim.” Frank, Andre Gunder, “Dependence Is Dead, Long Live Dependence and the Class Struggle: An Answer to Critics,” Latin American Perspectives, 1/1 (Spring 1974), 87–106, at 96Google Scholar. As the rest of this article will show, the archival record reveals numerous similar private claims.

6 Saccarelli, Emanuele, Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism: The Political Theory and Practice of Opposition (New York: Routledge, 2008), ixGoogle Scholar.

7 For historians and political theorists discussing the concept of Stalinism and its importance in the intellectual and political history of the left see Palmer, Bryan D., “Rethinking the Historiography of United States Communism,” American Communist History, 2/2 (2003), 139–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saccarelli, Gramsci, passim but esp. 11–18; Zumoff, Jacob A., The Communist International and U.S. Communism, 1919–1929 (Chicago, 2014), 10–19Google Scholar; Wald, Alan, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill and London, 1987Google Scholar).

8 Andre Gunder Frank, “The Underdevelopment of Development,” in Chew and Denemark, Underdevelopment, 22–3.

9 For the history of development economics see Arndt, H. W., Economic Development: The History of an Idea (Chicago and London, 1987Google Scholar); Rist, Gilbert, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith (London and New York, 1997Google Scholar).

10 For the best general intellectual histories of modernization theory and its influence in American foreign policy see Gilman, Nils, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore and London, 2003Google Scholar); Latham, Michael E., Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation-Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill and London, 2000Google Scholar); Engerman, David C., Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development (Cambridge, MA, 2003Google Scholar).

11 Most famously in Rostow, Walt W., Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, 1990Google Scholar).

12 Hoselitz, Bert, “The Role of Cities in the Economic Growth of Underdeveloped Countries,” Journal of Political Economy, 61/3 (1953), 195–208, at 195CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Hoselitz, Bert, “Noneconomic Factors in Economic Development,” American Economic Review, 47/2 (1957), 28–41, at 29Google Scholar.

14 Andrew Gunder Frank, “Goal Ambiguity and Conflicting Standards: An Approach to the Study of Organization,” Human Organization, 17/4 (1958–9), 8–13.

15 Frank, Andrew Gunder, “Built in Destabilization: A. O. Hirschman's Strategy of Economic Development,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 8/4 (1960), 433–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Hirschman, Albert O., The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven and London, 1958), 102–4Google Scholar.

17 Andre Gunder Frank Papers, Box 51, A. F. Brandstetter, director of Michigan State University Department of Public Safety, to Frank, 24 June 1958, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam (hereafter AGF).

18 AGF, Box 1, MSU Board of Trustees to Frank, 16 June 1960.

19 AGF, Box 1, Sidney Mintz to Frank, 14 June 1960.

20 AGF, Box 1, Wenner-Gren Foundation, 10 May 1960.

21 PMS, Box 5, “Gunder File,” Frank to Sweezy, 1 July 1964. It is not clear to me where Frank got the money for all this travel.

22 Van Gosse has pioneered the effort to foreground the Cuban Revolution as a crucial event drawing together the forces of the New Left. See Gosse, Van, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left (London and New York, 1993Google Scholar).

23 See Rojas, Rafael, Fighting over Fidel: The New York Intellectuals and the Cuban Revolution (Princeton, 2016Google Scholar). The reader is free to decide who from Rojas's book falls into each of my categories.

24 This is not to say that they were not marginalized and even persecuted within the discipline. But Baran did retain his position at Stanford until his death, and Sweezy maintained ties with the professional association, and taught intermittently at elite universities, including Cornell, Harvard, and Stanford.

25 For McCarthyist persecution see “Academic Freedom and the Sweezy Case,” 29 Nov. 1954, PMS, Box 11; letters from Baran to Sweezy discussing climate at Stanford, 9 Jan. 1953, 18 Jan. 1953, 3 March 1953, Baran, Paul A. and Sweezy, Paul M. (1949–64). Correspondence with Paul M. Sweezy, Stanford Digital Repository, available at http://purl.stanford.edu/km151hd0812 (hereafter listed with acronyms PAB and PMS, letter writer connected to receiver through hyphen followed by date). Letters referring to the psychological toll are numerous. For a small sample see PAB-PMS, 27 May 1956; PAB-PMS, 4 June 1956; PMS-PAB, 4 July 1956; PAB-PMS, 11 May 1957; PMS-PAB, 26 May 1957; PMS-PAB, 4 Oct. 1957; PAB-PMS, 9 Oct. 1957; PMS-PAB, 14 Oct.1957. For views of the American public as “fascist” and “worse than the Nazis” see PAB-PMS, 27 April 1954.

26 See Hunt, Diana, Economic Theories of Development: An Analysis of Competing Paradigms (Savage, MD, 1989), 64Google Scholar.

27 AGF, Box 1, David Reisman to Frank, 3 Aug. 1960; AGF, Box 1, Hoselitz to Frank, 5 Sept. 1961; AGF, Box 1, Higgins to Frank, 18 Oct. 1960.

28 AGF, Box 1, Frank to Chester Bowles, 11 Feb. 1961.

29 AGF, Box 51, Frank to Lanzillotti, 14 Sept. 1961; AGF, Box 51, Frank to the editor of the State News, Michigan State University, 11 Aug. 1961.

30 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, 1 July 1964.

31 See especially Love, Joseph, Crafting the Third World: Theorizing Underdevelopment in Rumania and Brazil (Stanford, 1996), 182Google Scholar. Also Gilman, Mandarins, 235–6; Latham, Revolution, 165; Hunt, Economic Theories, 121–97; H. W. Arndt, Economic Development, 115–29. For an exception see Packenham, Robert A., The Dependency Movement: Scholarship and Politics in Development Studies (Cambridge, 1992Google Scholar). These theorists are called “structuralist” because they pursue “theoretical efforts to specify, analyze, and correct economic structures that impede or block the ‘normal,’ implicitly unproblematic, development and functioning allegedly characteristic of Western economies.” Love, Crafting the Third World, 1.

32 For an intellectual biography of Prebisch see Dosman, Edgar J., The Life and Times of Raúl Prebisch, 1901–1986 (Ithaca, 2008Google Scholar). For Prebisch's ideas as precursor to dependency theory see Love, Crafting the Third World, 119–39.

33 Sikkink, Kathryn, Ideas and Institutions: Developmentalism in Brazil and Argentina (Ithaca and London, 1991Google Scholar).

34 See Michael Löwy, “Introduction: Points of Reference for a History of Marxism in Latin America,” in Löwy, ed., Marxism in Latin America from 1909 to the Present: An Anthology (New Jersey and London, 1992), xiii–lxv.

35 See Löwy, Marxism, xxiii; Caballero, Manuel, Latin America and the Comintern, 1919–1943 (Cambridge, 1986), 28Google Scholar.

36 Puiggrós, Rodolfo, De la colonia a la revolución (Buenos Aires, 1943Google Scholar).

37 Jobet, Julio César, Ensayo crítico del desarrollo económico-social de Chile (Santiago, 1955Google Scholar).

38 Gunder Frank, Andrew, “Mexico: The Janus Faces of the 20th-Century Bourgeois Revolution,” Monthly Review, 14/7 (1962CrossRefGoogle Scholar), 370–88.

39 Frank, “Development,” 25.

40 Sikkink, Ideas, esp. chap. 4.

41 Love, Crafting the Third World, 153–7.

42 Packenham, Dependency, 20–23. Packenham ultimately determined that Frank deserved credit for what he called the “thunderclap,” but his determination was based exclusively on the publication dates of the major works, and some hearsay about collusion before publication. Because both Frank's and Cardoso's work came out of a collaborative exchange of ideas, I see little relevance in trying to identify the thunderclap. To the extent that it is relevant, Frank's archives show pretty clearly that he formulated his main thesis by November of 1963 at the latest.

43 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, 18 July 1963.

44 AGF, Box 1, Frank to Rodolfo Stavenhagen, 1 June 1963.

45 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, 1 June 1963.

46 Gunder Frank, Andre, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil (New York, 1967Google Scholar) (hereafter CU), 221–77.

47 Frank, CU, 224–9. None of the works cited for the “traditional Marxist” view pre-dates 1961.

48 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, 18 July 1963.

49 Rodolfo Stavenhagen, “Siete Tesis Equivocadas Sobre América Latina,” El Día, 25–6 June 1965.

50 For scholars who credit Bagú with the thesis, see Löwy, Marxism, xxxix.

51 AGF, Box 201, “Proposito para um curso de post-graduaça para o segundo semestre de 1963 no Departamento de Ciencias Humanas ad UNB,” 1 July 1963.

52 As far as I know, only Löwy, Marxism, even mentions Frondizi in the same breath as dependency theory.

53 This line came through in a string of pamphlets. See especially Codovilla, Victorio, Batir al Nazi-Peronismo: Para Abrir una Era de Libertad y Progreso (Buenos Aires, 1946Google Scholar); Ghioldi, Rodolfo, Los Comunistas al Servicio de la Patria (Buenos Aires, 1945Google Scholar).

54 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, 4 Nov. 1963.

55 PMS, Box 5, Sweezy to Frank, 7 Jan. 1964.

56 Sweezy, Paul M. and Dobb, Maurice, “The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism,” Science and Society, 14/2 (1950), 134–67Google Scholar.

57 Brenner, “The Origins of Capitalist Development.”

58 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Huberman and Sweezy, 15 Aug. 1963.

59 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, undated letter most likely written in September of 1963.

60 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, 28 Oct. 1963.

61 Another time, Rackliffe quoted a passage of a letter Frank had sent to him, and followed up with the comment “Christ he sounds like a real prick.” PMS, Box 20, Rackliffe to Sweezy, 2 Oct. 1965. For numerous other examples peruse the correspondence between Sweezy and Rackliffe in 1964, 1965, all in Box 20. Not many letters from Rackliffe to Sweezy fail to disparage Frank.

62 PMS, Box 20, Rackliffe to Sweezy, 13 Sept. 1965.

63 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy and Huberman, 15 Aug. 1963. This was a common refrain for Frank, and made him the unknowing subject of ridicule at the hands of the merciless, but witty, Rackliffe.

64 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, 15 Jan. 1964 (misdated 1963).

65 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, 9 March 1964.

66 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, 30 May 1964.

67 AGF, Box 1, Frank to Rabinowitz Foundation, 17 Nov. 1964.

68 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Hamza Alavi, 24 June 1964.

69 PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, 23 Nov. 1964.

70 Frank, CU, xvi; Gunder Frank, André, “Who Is the Immediate Enemy? Capitalist Underdevelopment or Socialist Revolution,” in Frank, Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution: Essays on Development and Underdevelopment and the Immediate Enemy (New York and London, 1969), 371–409Google Scholar. Packenham describes this as one of the more egregious examples of non-falsifiability, substantive utopianism, and politicized scholarship endemic to the dependency approach. See Packenham, Dependency, 31; 116–17.

71 Peña's work, published in serial form in the 1950s and early 1960s, was collected and published posthumously as a single volume by the Argentine historian Tarcus, Horacio. See Milcíades Peña, Historia del Pueblo Argentino, 1500–1955 (Buenos Aires, 2012Google Scholar).

72 For an excellent discussion of the evolution of “Permanent Revolution” in Marxist thought see Richard B. Day and Gaido, Daniel, “The Historical Origin of the Expression ‘Permanent Revolution,” in Day and Gaido, Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record (Chicago, 2009), 1–58Google Scholar.

73 Quotations, discussion of Chilean politics, and proposal and outline of Chilean history from PMS, Box 5, Frank to Sweezy, 18 Aug. 1964. Sweezy responds favorably in a letter dated 26 Aug. 1964.

74 Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment, 37.

75 Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment, 50.

76 Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment, 146–7.

77 AGF, Box 1: Frank to McKelvey, 20 Oct. 1967; Frank to McKelvey, 26 Jan. 1968; McKelvey to Frank, 8 Feb. 1968.

78 AGF, Box 1, anonymous student to Frank, 26 May 1968.

79 Ruy Mauro Marini, “Dialéctica de la dependencia: La economía exportadora,” Sociedad y Desarrollo, 1 (1972), 35–51.

80 The entirety of CESO's work is held at the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile in Santiago.

81 In English, these essays were gathered in a volume entitled Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution: Essays on the Development of Underdevelopment and the Immediate Enemy (New York, 1969).

82 Packenham, Robert, “On Capitalist Underdevelopment by Andre Gunder Frank,” American Political Science Review, 73/1 (1979), 341–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 See Graham, Richard, “Review,” American Historical Review, 74/5 (1969), 1757–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Kadt, Emanuel, “Review,” International Affairs, 45/2 (1969), 396–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Street, “Review,” 885–6.

84 Genovese, Eugene, “The Comparative Focus in Latin American History,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 12/3 (1970), 317–27, at 325CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Laclau, Ernesto, “Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America,” New Left Review, 67 (1971), 19–38, at 28Google Scholar.

86 Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York and London, 1974), 98Google Scholar.

87 Sklansky, Jeffrey, “Labor, Money, and the Financial Turn in the History of Capitalism,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, 11/1 (2014), 23–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reynolds Nelson, Scott, “Who Put Their Capitalism in My Slavery,” Journal of the Civil War Era, 5/2 (2015), 289–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Beckert's, Sven Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Knopf, 2014Google Scholar) is heavily framed around Wallerstein's model. In his depiction of the way cotton merchants structured peripheral economies, particularly in India, around monocrop exports, he is undeniably making claims that mimic the dependency tradition.