By Dr Tafataona Mahoso
WHAT is the problem with the linearist model of development and its language?
On the surface the problem is that the linear distinctions are based on what is called progress which is measured as endless ‘economic growth’.
Perkins himself pointed out this problem, saying: “…the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits,” is dangerous.
Another surface problem is what to do when that growth stops or comes down to almost zero in the so-called First World itself and there is growth elsewhere.
What is to be done with this theory when neo-liberal capitalism reduces Greece to the status of a ‘Third World’ economy?
But at a much deeper level, the problem is that the idea of development and progress comes from transferring the racist language of evolution from plants and animals to human beings and then from there to culture, technology and whole societies.
Even deeper is the fact that development discourse actually involves reading and re-labelling historical events backwards, that is, in retrospect. When they took place in real history, the so-called phases or stages of economic growth and development, which W.W. Rostow elaborated in his 1960 book, did not have the names which the Professor assigned them. What is known is that the rise of England as an economic power followed the English Revolution; the rise of France as an economic power followed the French Revolution.
The rise of Holland followed the freedom of the Netherlands from Spanish rule.
The rise of the United States as a world economic power followed the American Revolution and the American Civil War.
The rise of the former Soviet Union as a global superpower followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
And now, the arrival of China as the second largest global economy is partly a result of the Chinese Revolution.
All these peoples were pursuing their emancipation in their own time and space but not following development programmes prescribed by the World Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organisation or USAID.
There was no Washington Consensus and no University of Chicago economics to prescribe one neo-liberal agenda for the whole world or for a single revolutionary movement.
Now, if there is one thing which the imperial powers want to crush everywhere, it is revolution.
That is why, in 1982, Maimire Mennasmay published a paper called “Political Theory, Political Science and African Development” in which he lamented the wholesale adoption of Eurocentric linear time and language in the field of Political Science in Africa, which has resulted in “…the negation of the notion of the human being as historical agent.”
The language of economic development used by the African university needs liberation.
As a result, Africans “…are reduced (in political science and development studies) to being spectators engaged in an involuntary movement (and programme) which is unidirectional, objective and mechanical … In short, such a conception of time cannot recognise (Africans) as moral agents. It is then impossible for the political scientist to see the historical nature of what is called development.”
Yet this concept and language have been transferred, after the fact, from a certain mode of making and understanding a particular Eurocentric experience.
What Rostow and Sunter implied by their linear chronologies and typologies of development is the “…thesis that the end of history has already been achieved by those (called the First World) whose history (read backwards) has produced the grammar of development.”
The African, in this linear narrative, is not supposed to engage in revolution now because past revolutions elsewhere produced a universal grammar of development which the African only needs to memorise and grasp:
“By dehistoricising social time, the latter (the history of the West) is made to be a universal grammar of development.”
We must develop our own benchmarks, just as the Russians and Chinese have done against Euro-American pressures to force them to be like Europe and North America.
For instance, population control became part and parcel of the development prescription offered by the North for the South and East. But big populations for India and China have in the end proven to be critical for the rise of these nations to super-power status.
Big populations mean big markets for home-grown industry!
Africa is now supposed to come home to its own philosophy, its own model.
But the following definition of the circular economy in the new book, already cited, should cause the reader to qualify our optimism: This is how the authors defined their understanding of the circular economy:
“The concept of the circular economy (CE) focuses on a set of principles that offer an operational vision of a concrete path to sustainable production and consumption systems and thus to a sustainable economy. The CE approach highlights the importance of changing the current linear model into a system that is regenerative and restorative by design. (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015). This can be achieved by redirecting energy and material flows from a linear to a circular direction, transforming waste into productive inputs, reducing pollution, greenhouse gases and their impacts on health and environment. This involves systems, ambitious policies to internalise externalised costs and new approaches to production, distribution, consumption and investment within each sector of the economy.”
This definition does not credit Africans with the invention and retention of the elemental philosophical foundation of the circular economy in the form of dariro.
Moreover, the definition is instrumental; which means, it sounds mechanical and totally detached from the changes in perception, orientation, appropriation and symbolising capacity which would be needed for the circular economy to become rooted.
In African societies, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the dariro or dariro-like formation and construction was, and still is, ubiquitous.
There is no explanation in the concept of the circular economy of how rigid and linear capitalist constructions would accommodate a circular economy without being dismantled first.
This question becomes more pressing when one reads the definition of lifestyles to go with the circular economy according to the book:
“Lifestyles is a term used to describe behavioural codes and cognitive frames enabling decision-making for actions and choices consistent with one’s social identity and role within a particular community. This includes roles as consumers of products and services, producers (i.e workers, managers, shareholders, service providers) and investors. Lifestyles are increasingly complex given the fact that people tend to belong and identify with not one but a cluster of communities. Lifestyles are considered more or less sustainable to the degree that the actions and choices associated with different roles and identities are guided by sustainability values (Leiserowitz, et al, 2006)”
What seems to emerge from the literature, therefore, is not a circular economy capable of producing a new humanity and new human character, but rather an enclave economy borrowed from outsiders’ linear values but only for the purpose of continuing to support and benefit capitalists and remaining as obsessive as ever in their perceptions of the world and humanity; in their orientation; in their appropriation habits; and in their symbolising capacities.
The African model then would have succeeded only in being commandeered not for itself but for the purpose of moderating the excesses of linear capitalism in order to postpone it’s approaching dead-end.
These challenges become clear from reading further the book’s definition of livelihoods:
“Livelihoods… (in a circular economy?) shape lifestyles in relation to the role they play in acquiring means of living…. The concept of sustainable livelihoods relates to a wide set of issues that encompass the relationships between poverty and environment. This includes concerns with work and employment, poverty reduction, broader issues of adequacy, security, well-being and capability, and resilience of livelihoods and natural resource base on which they depend.”
The remaining challenge for Africa and its elemental heritage of the dariro as circular economy is how to disarm the obsessive, intolerant and aggressive patriarchy of the imperial West.
As we go to press, the US alone is waging economic wars against the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people through various sanctions against Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, Iran, Syria, Turkey, North Korea, India and China!
The circular economy model, though now admired by millions of Western citizens and their movements, is incompatible with linearist obsession, intolerance and military and economic aggression.