Libmonster ID: ID-1284
Author(s) of the publication: Yu. M. Ivanov

A characteristic feature of the modern era is the growing role of the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America that have freed themselves from colonial and semi-colonial dependence. One of the factors contributing to the strengthening of their anti-imperialist potential is the profound changes in urban-rural relations taking place on the periphery of the capitalist system.

These changes have two closely related aspects: international and domestic. From the international point of view, colonial and dependent countries in the international division of labor that determined their economic development played the role of the countryside, which provided raw materials for the industry of the cities of industrially developed capitalist powers. In other words, these countries served as agricultural and raw materials appendages of the capitalistically developed world. "The bourgeoisie," the Communist Manifesto emphasizes, " has subordinated the countryside to the rule of the city... Just as it has made the countryside dependent on the city, so it has made the barbarian and semi - barbarian countries dependent on the civilized countries, the peasant peoples on the bourgeois peoples, and the East on the West." 1 This dependence was a form of manifestation on a global scale of contradictions between the city and the countryside, which, with the development of the world capitalist market, outgrew the framework of bourgeois states. Naturally, these contradictions had a great impact on the relations between the city and the countryside and in the developing countries themselves, contributing, in particular, to the preservation of the political dominance of large farmers, on whom the colonialists relied.

In the modern era of the world-historical transition from capitalism to socialism, the old urban-rural relations are breaking down in the zone of national liberation revolutions. "The capitalist' periphery 'ceases to be only an agrarian and raw material appendage of the 'center' .2 On the basis of relatively high rates of industrial development, rapid urbanization processes are taking place here, accompanied by an accelerated formation of urban classes and a change in the ratio of social forces between the city and the countryside. According to the UN forecast, more than half (65%) of the world's urban population will live in Asia, Africa and Latin America by 2000.3 .
The study of the movement of capitalist opposites between urban and rural areas in developing countries allows us to understand not only the past of the peoples we study, but also the leading tenets of the world.-

1 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 4, p. 428.

2 Primakov E. M. Vostok posle krakha kolonialnoi sistemy [The East after the collapse of the Colonial system]. Moscow, 1982, p. 133.

3 Growth of the World Urban and Rural Population 1920 - 2000. N. Y. 1969, p. 49.

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trends of their modern development. Meanwhile, this problem is still poorly understood, there are no special works on this topic. Only a few publications devoted to the analysis of urbanization processes in the region of the national liberation movement speak about its individual aspects .4 Individual publications of Western researchers are also noteworthy, where one can find facts that indicate a crisis in traditional relations between the city and the countryside. 5
The high rate of urbanisation in developing countries is an important indicator of the crisis in relations fixed by the global urban-rural contrast. In most countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the relationship between city and village is no longer a village, but a city that has either become, or is becoming, a factor determining social processes. At the same time, the pernicious legacy of the colonial past continues to affect all aspects of their social life, including the processes of breaking the "world city" - "world village" links6 .

T. Mak Gee, a lecturer at the University of Hong Kong, writes that most developing countries " inherited from the era of colonialism an economic structure that was overly specialized in the production of raw materials for the industry of the mother countries. Despite their independence, these countries remain economically closely linked to the industrial Powers and are dangerously dependent on them. This dependence is one of the factors hindering the implementation of much-needed broad industrialization for third-world cities, designed to provide more employment... Cities in developing countries continue to retain their old economic function as intermediaries between industrial Powers and sources of raw materials. " 7 Thus, the old relations between the city and the countryside, although destroyed, do not completely disappear, but are closely intertwined with the new ones. Therefore, in order to identify qualitatively new shifts occurring in the movement of the opposition we are considering, it is necessary to show the historical forms in which it developed in the past.

The emergence of the capitalist contrast between urban and rural areas in developing countries began in the era of colonialism. At the same time, its genesis was significantly different from a similar process in the homeland of capitalism. It is known that in industrially developed countries the formation of capitalist cities took place on the basis of the decomposition of natural economy, in which each economic unit performed all types of work, "starting from the extraction of various types of raw materials and ending with their final preparation for consumption." In the course of this process, the manufacturing industry was separated from the mining industry, and each of them was divided "into small types and subspecies that produce special products in the form of a commodity and exchange them with all other industries." 8 At the same time obra-

4 See The African City (Critical essay of foreign concepts), Moscow, 1979; Pokataeva T. S. Developing Countries: Problems of Urbanization, Moscow, 1977.

5 City and Country in the Third World. Issues in Modernization of Latin America. Cambridge (Mass.). 1960; Geertz C. The Social History of an Indonesian Town. Cambridge. 1965; English R. W. City and Village in Iran. Settlement and Economy in the Kirman Basin. Madison. 1966; Me Gee T. G. The South East Asian City. A Social Geography of the Primate Cities of South East Asia. Lnd. 1967; Latin American Urban Research. Vol. 5. Urbanization and Inequality. Ihe Political Economy of Urban and Rural Development in Latin America. Beverly Hills. 1975; Ross M. Grass Roots in African City. Political Behaviour in Nairobi. Cambridge (Mass.). 1975.

6 See Primakov E. M. Uk. soch.

7 Me Gee T. G. The Urbanization Process in the Third World. Exploration in Search of a Theory. Lnd. 1971.

8 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 3, p. 21.

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The mining industry was concentrated in the city, while the mining industry was concentrated in the countryside. Thus, as the contradictions between the city and the countryside developed and these opposites became polarized, capitalism, destroying the subsistence economy in its homeland, completed the " gap... the original family union of agriculture and industry, which united with each other the infantile and undeveloped forms of both. " 9
The process of capitalist contradictions between urban and rural areas in developing countries was different. Colonial expansion found their peoples at various stages of pre-capitalist relations. And even where the separation of the city from the countryside had already taken place, it was even more likely to have the character of difference than of opposition. If in Western Europe" the main form of property in the feudal era was, on the one hand, land ownership together with the labor of serfs chained to it, and on the other - own labor in the presence of small capital dominating the labor of apprentices", then in the East there was still"an undivided unity of city and village". "Truly large cities," wrote Karl Marx, "can be regarded here simply as sovereign camps, as an outgrowth of the economic system in the proper sense." 10 Commodity connections between urban and rural settlements were insignificant. Urban craft developed independently from the village, which provided itself with almost everything necessary, including handicraft products, within the framework of natural relations. In turn, a significant part of the urban population was usually engaged in agriculture .11 All this showed that the contrast between town and country was not yet clearly defined, and the boundaries between them remained somewhat arbitrary.

The growth of urban handicrafts was not due to its separation from agricultural labor due to the expansion of trade exchange between the city and the countryside, but mainly on the basis of servicing the dominant classes, their servants and the army concentrated in the cities, as well as the inclusion of cities in the system of international trade. In other words, urban crafts were not the result of their offshoot from rural labor, but the result of improvement, their qualitatively new development, determined by the discerning tastes of the nobility and overseas buyers. Another feature of handicraft production was that it was usually complete, leaving little room for the social division of labor mediated by commodity relations. Naturally, in such conditions, there was no ground for the development of the capitalist system and, consequently, no prerequisites for the capitalist transformation of the city.

The new qualitative changes associated with the emergence of capitalist cities were not the result of the immanent economic development of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but of their forcible inclusion as a "world village" in the orbit of an international capitalist economy. Capitalist cities in these regions were created by colonialists not only as strong points of political domination, but also as key points for exporting raw materials - products of the colonial village and importing industrial goods-products of metropolitan cities. "Urbanization (we are talking about capitalist urbanization. - Yu . I.), - writes K. Girtz, an employee of the Massachusetts Institute of Applied Sciences, - took place here

9 Mark S. K. and Engels F. Soch. Vol. 23, p. 514.

10 Ibid., vol. 3, p. 23; vol. 46, part I, p. 470.

11 Cities in Change. Studies of the Urban Conditions. Boston. 1977, p. 20.

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mostly not on the basis of spontaneous development, but independently of it. It was brought in from outside, and was not the result of the immanent evolution of the society on whose body it originated. " 12
The opposite movement of raw materials and manufactured goods between town and country is a typical feature of capitalist accumulation. 13 However, under colonial conditions, this movement had its own specifics, which consisted in the fact that the colonial city as a whole was not a producer of industrial goods and, consequently, a consumer of raw materials. From this point of view, its functions were limited to intermediary operations between the colonial countryside and the urban industrial centers of the capitalistically developed world, where raw materials were consumed and industrial goods were produced, which partially entered the colonies. This predetermined the dualistic character of the colonial cities. These included European and indigenous neighborhoods. The former represented the city of capitalist powers, the latter-of colonial and dependent countries. European neighborhoods imitated the principles of urban organization in the capitalistically developed world, while the native principles of local rural organization.

In the East, the imitation of such principles in urban relations was manifested in the large-family and caste foundations of the organization of crafts and trade, the dependence of urban people on the feudal nobility engaged in usury, and the stability of traditional relations and forms of urban settlements. From this point of view, colonial exploitation has brought almost nothing new to the organization of urban neighborhoods inherited from the previous era of the indigenous population, which retained strong ties with land ownership in the countryside. This connection was one of the most typical features of the urban population in general and of the emerging urban proletariat in particular. "In many places," the documents of the Sixth Congress of the Comintern on the colonial question emphasized, "seasonal workers predominate, and even the main cadres of the proletariat still have one foot in the countryside." 14
In the colonial period, the main figure among those who worked for hire in urban enterprises was not a regular worker, but a peasant otkhodnik, who kept a plot of land in the village on which his family worked. The exploitation of otkhodnik peasants who periodically returned to the village was beneficial for urban entrepreneurs, since wages mainly ensured the existence of only the worker himself without a family. They were not paid unemployment, disability, or sickness benefits. Almost all of these costs were borne by the countryside, which subsidized the reproduction of the labor force employed in urban enterprises .15
Connections with land ownership in the countryside were made not only by the urban lower classes, including artisans, but also by the urban upper classes. Many of them were landlords who profited from exploiting the peasants, while others were representatives of the national bourgeoisie, who often acquired vast plots of land in the countryside and started semi-feudal farms, because due to the competition of foreign monopolies, they had only limited opportunities to invest in industry and trade. In turn, income from land ownership was widely used for investment in urban sectors of the economy. Thus, during the period under review, the city has not yet separated from the umbilical cord of rural life. The urban quarters of the indigenous population were as if

12 Geertz C. Op. cit., pp. 3 - 4.

13 See K. Marx and F. Engels Op. Vols. 23-25.

14 VI Congress of the Comintern. Issue six. Theses, resolutions, resolutions, proclamations. Moscow-L. 1929, p. 148.

15 See Ivanov Yu. M. Agrarian issue and formation of the army of hired labor in Tropical Africa, Moscow, 1974.

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a continuation of the village not only in form, but also in substance. But this was possible only because the main function of colonial cities was not industrial production, but financial and commercial operations to siphon raw materials from the colonial village and sell industrial goods of capitalist developed countries.

Undeveloped forms of capitalist urbanization corresponded to undeveloped forms of agrarian capitalism. On the periphery of the capitalist system, its beginning was evidenced, on the one hand, by the large farms that emerged on the basis of European capital, based on the widespread use of forced labor, and on the other, by the transition to the production of export crops in peasant farms that were dependent on the feudal nobility. Both types of economy specialized mainly in the production of raw materials for the urban industry of the capitalistically developed world. In both cases, commodity production on the international market was generated in pre-capitalist forms by world capitalism and served its needs. From this point of view, both types were capitalist, although the relationship between direct producers and owners of the means of production was often not conditioned by the purchase and sale of labor .16
Marx was the first to draw attention to this peculiarity of the functioning of capital on the periphery of the capitalist system. "And if the owners of plantations (slaveholding. - Yu . I. ) in America, - he wrote, - we now not only call capitalists, but they actually are such, this is because they exist as anomalies in the conditions of the world market based on free labor " 17 . But what appeared to be an anomaly in the mid-nineteenth century later turned out to be a pattern. Everywhere in Africa and Asia, initially on the plantations of Europeans that were created, either slave or feudal forced labor was used, which very slowly developed into a relationship of" free " hiring. The capitalist character of such plantations was revealed not so much in the relations between the owners of capital and the direct producers, as in the fact that, first, its "initial accumulation" was often carried out at the expense of the labor of hired workers in the homeland of capitalism, and, secondly, that its further increase was due to the sale of products on the world market, which served capitalist production.

As for the feudal landowners, the surplus product that they managed to obtain as a result of trading operations with European firms was converted into capital, used for the exploitation of direct producers by commercial and usurious methods. In other words, the feudal landowner became the owner of capital, and from this point of view it can be considered as a capitalist. This capital, being closely connected with banks and purchasing firms, represented the primary form of subordination of the simple commodity producer to the capitalist mode of production that dominated the world economy. "And production," wrote V. I. Lenin, " is obviously unorganized capitalistically: small artisans, peasants, small cotton producers in the colonies, and so on. and so on. fell under the dependence of banks and financial capital in general " 18 .

At the same time, the worst and lowest forms of capital that were rooted in the commercial agriculture of colonial and dependent countries are not so much a problem.-

16 See Ivanov Yu. M., Oganova A. S. Afrika: u istokov klassovykh bitv [at the origins of class battles], Moscow, 1978, 14.

17 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 46, part I, p. 505.

18 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 34, p. 367.

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As much as they fell into conflict with the feudal relations that existed before them, they adapted them to their needs, filling them with new, bourgeois content. Under the conditions of the paralyzing influence of usury on the productive forces, which contributed to the preservation of agricultural machinery, characteristic of the feudal system, wage labor was often unprofitable. In this regard, both landlords and well-to-do peasants who had capital widely used mining operations, one of the varieties of which was sharecropping. From this point of view, the well-to-do peasants were in many respects close in their economic position to the landlords, who lent the peasants capital not only in the form of money, but also the means of subsistence, as well as the means of production. "In terms of their economic type, small and medium-sized landlords and rich peasants in many countries of South and Southeast Asia did not differ much from each other. There are not so much qualitative as quantitative differences between them. " 19
At the other extreme of the village, the lower classes usually became not wage workers, but individuals who worked off the means of living that were lent to them by usurers, landlords, and well-to-do peasants. On the whole, these relations were characterized by the process of a steady decline in the stratum of wealthy tenants, the deterioration of lease conditions, the transformation of pauperizing peasants into bonded sharecroppers or persons who earn their living on the farms of landlords and well-to-do peasants, i.e., a process caused by the lowest, worst forms of decomposition of the peasantry .20 At the same time, a significant part of the ruined peasants became paupers, who were interrupted by casual earnings.

Thus, on the periphery of the capitalist system, a peculiar situation developed in which agriculture became capitalist, while classes, in terms of the forms of production relations between the owners of capital and direct producers, were mainly pre-capitalist in nature. But this was possible because there was a capitalistically developed world that drew the agriculture of colonial and dependent countries into its orbit of influence and turned pre-capitalist relations of production into one of the links in the chain of capitalist reproduction. In this connection, agriculture itself has evolved here in forms typical of capitalism. "The very process of the formation of commercial agriculture," Lenin emphasized, " does not take place quite in the same way as in factory industry: in industry it takes place in a simple and straightforward form, but in agriculture we see something different: a mixture of commercial and non-commercial agriculture prevails there. This is where different forms come together. Mainly one product is brought to the market in each given locality. On the one hand, the production of the landowner, and especially of the peasant, is commodity - based; on the other, it retains its consumer character." 21
Under the conditions of colonial and semi-colonial exploitation, this duality of agriculture-the combination of its commercial and consumer forms in the same farms-was stable. Market relations had little impact on the process of reproduction in peasant farms. This allowed monopolies, using trade and usury methods, to buy up the products of peasants at low prices that affected not so much production as the living standard of the producer, who was forced to buy industrial products of capitalist developed countries at exorbitant prices. Invasion

19 Agrarian question in the countries of Eurasia and North Africa, Moscow, 1968, p. 11.

20 See Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 4, p. 56.

21 Ibid., vol. 7, p. 112.

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The contribution of commercial and usurious capital to the sphere of rural production was mainly limited to areas of commercial agriculture, the area of which was relatively small. The vast territories of the colonial and dependent countries continued to be zones of predominance of subsistence farming, where traditional relations prevailed, and trade and usury operations were concentrated mainly in the sphere of undeveloped commodity and monetary circulation. However, this did not exclude the possibility that these zones also participated in the process of capital accumulation. Their main function in the system of colonial exploitation was to provide cheap labor for otkhodnik peasants in commercial farming areas and cities.

The forcible integration of developing countries into the orbit of the world capitalist market was initially accompanied by a tendency to transform the colonially dependent "periphery" into a village completely devoid of any production of industrial products. As a result of the competition of the urban industry of the capitalist powers, the largest cities of the East - the centers of handicraft production-declined. "The British conqueror," writes Marx, " destroyed the Indian hand-loom and destroyed the hand-spinning wheel. England first drove Indian cotton products out of European markets, then began to import yarn into Hindustan, and ended up flooding the home of cotton products with cotton goods." It was, he points out, "the decline of the Indian cities that used to be famous for their products." 22 The most harmful effect of the competition of the factory industry was on the simple rural crafts, the main prerequisite for the existence of which was the existence of a natural economy in the rural community and the natural relations associated with it. These crafts were doomed to a gradual extinction, the duration of which was determined not by their competitiveness, since the market climate was generally disastrous for them, but by the scale of penetration of commodity-money relations .23 The international division of labor determined the economic development of colonial and dependent countries, contributing to the regression of the underdeveloped urban-rural relations that existed here before the arrival of the colonialists. Therefore, in developing countries, crafts as a whole were never destined to become the basis of an independent stage of industrial development in the form of small crafts that produced goods for sale and became the base on which the manufactory grew.

It is well known that the lag of the countryside behind the city is a characteristic of capitalism. It is, as Lenin emphasized, "one of the most profound causes of the violation of proportionality between different branches of the national economy, crises and high prices." 24 However, this lag has never taken such extreme forms as in the relations between the capitalist " center "and the colonially dependent"periphery". While at home capital, liberating agriculture from feudalism, drew agriculture into trade, and with it into world economic development, pulled the agrarian population out of stagnation, stagnation and patriarchy, while at the same time contributing to the development of small-scale industrial production in the countryside, in colonial and dependent countries the same capital,as in the former Soviet Union, was used as a tool for the development of small-scale industrial production. by involving the countryside in global economic development, it simultaneously preserved feudal forms of relations, condemned it to stagnation, stagnation and patriarchy, and led to the disappearance of crafts. Naturally, when

22 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 9, pp. 133-134.

23 for Details, see: Kolontaiv AP Decomposition rural crafts, and the emergence of new industries, small-scale industry in India. M., 1968.

24 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 27, p. 219.

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At the same time, both within these countries and on a global scale, there were huge disproportions between urban and rural sectors of the economy, the interrelationships between which could only be carried out through the mechanism of the world capitalist market.

The colonial cities created by world capitalism exploited the countryside through taxes and monopoly prices for raw materials and manufactured goods. The income of landowners settled in the cities. Recognizing this fact, many bourgeois scholars often characterize colonial cities as parasites on the body of the nation, while emphasizing that they did not play a progressive role. "Economists," writes, for example, the Indian scholar V. De Sousa, " who study the role of cities in economic development, divide urban centers into parasitic and productive ones. Parasitic cities accumulate the resources of their surrounding regions, without giving appropriate compensation in return. Producing cities extend their influence to surrounding regions, serving their needs and stimulating change and development... More than a quarter of a century has passed since the end of colonialism in India. However, until now, Indian cities, including industrial ones, can hardly be considered as producing " 25 .

In reality, the phenomenon under study dialectically combined opposite features. Colonial cities both "parasitized"and" stimulated development." As early as the middle of the last century, Marx noted that British rule in India, based on colonial cities, ensured the political unity of the country, established a free press, promoted the growth of a new class armed with modern knowledge, broke the inertia of communities and was accompanied by the construction of railways - a harbinger of industrial development. In other words, even in the colonial era, cities were the centers of progress achieved through the exploitation of the countryside, its backwardness and poverty. But the latter only shows that under capitalism, progress, as Marx wrote, is inevitably likened to "that disgusting pagan idol who would not drink nectar except from the skulls of the slain." 26
The needs of the cities of the capitalistically developed world determined the structure and scale of production of the agrarian "periphery", which played a passive role in global relations. However, in the colonial and dependent countries themselves, the opposite pattern worked - not the village depended on the city, but the city on the village, since the economic life of the former was directly determined by the economic activity of the latter, which provided large farmers, on whom the colonialists relied, with a dominant position among the indigenous population. Such contradictions reveal the dualistic nature of colonial cities, which were, on the one hand, outposts of the capitalistically developed world, and, on the other, "peripheries" dependent on it .27
The relations between the "center" and the" periphery " gave rise to relative hypertrophy - at one pole of industry, at the other - of agriculture. At the same time, the dialectic of the development of these relations led to the fact that gradually there were prerequisites for overcoming this opposition. The exchange of goods generated by the capitalist powers contributed to the emergence in the colonial and dependent countries of such a demand for industrial goods that

25 D'Souza V. C. Urban Development in India: Demographic Functional and Socio-Cultural Perspectives. - The Indian Journal of Social Work, October-January 1976, Vol. XXXVI, N 3 - 4, p. 289.

26 See K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 9, pp. 225-228, 230.

27 Payne G. K. Urban Housing in the Third World. Lnd. 1977, p. 17.

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not fully covered by import. In part, the deficit was met by surviving old handicraft production (in cases where it could compete with the overseas factory industry due to the underdeveloped transport network), in part by turning small establishments into an appendage of the factory system (often overseas), 28 in part by developing local factory production when it did not compete with the mother country as was the case, for example, with the cotton industry of British India 29 . Last but not least, the imperialists were interested in the primary processing of agricultural and mineral raw materials on site in order to save on transport and labor costs.

These growth trends in industrial production, which prepared for fundamental changes in urban-rural relations in developing countries, were particularly pronounced during the world economic crisis of 1929-1933, which affected agriculture to the greatest extent. "Prices for raw materials and agricultural products have fallen significantly more than prices for finished industrial products... It is characteristic that the prices of colonial raw materials have fallen especially... Prices for such raw materials and semi-finished products of industrial countries as coal, pig iron, cement, etc. fell slightly. " 30 In other words, the crisis has had a particularly disastrous effect on the rural areas of colonial and dependent countries, where the products of the most profitable industries in the past have been devalued. At the same time, the existing industrial enterprises that were oriented towards the domestic market generally benefited from the crisis. They not only did not curtail their production, but also got the opportunity to expand it by displacing the production of expensive imported goods. Therefore, output and employment at such enterprises in some cases not only did not decrease, but also increased. In particular, in the cotton industry of British India-the mainstay of national capital - from 1929 to 1933, the number of spindles increased by 9.9, machine tools-by 14, workers-by 8% 31 . Moreover, the growth rate of factory yarn production was even higher than in 1923/24-1927/28. A similar situation has developed in Brazil, where industry focused on the domestic market has developed relatively quickly since the mid-1930s.

The growth of industrial production was facilitated by the fact that during the crisis, due to relatively low costs for wages and transportation of products, the competitiveness of national industries that produced consumer goods for the domestic market increased. Such industries have proved to be more adapted to low prices than those of the capitalistically developed countries. In this regard, the national industry in many cases expanded even during the crisis years, which contributed to the acceleration of the rate of urbanization of the population.

28 "When a factory confines itself to the production of semi - finished products," Lenin pointed out, "it sometimes brings to life small crafts that are engaged in further processing it; for example, mechanical yarn production has given an impetus to handicraft weaving, "handicraftsmen" appear near mining factories, producing metal products, etc. Finally, capitalist work at home is often an appendage of the factory" (Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 3, p. 535). It is the processing of factory semi-finished products (often imported): It provided a new qualitative basis for the revival of small-scale production in the colonial and dependent countries.

29 See Naumov N. Promyshlennoe razvitie kolonialnykh stran [Industrial Development of colonial countries], Moscow, 1930, p. 37

30 Mirovoi krizis 1929-1931 [The World Crisis of 1929-1931]. Moscow: l. 1931, p. 186.

31 Melman S. On the situation of the Indian cotton industry. - Revolutionary East, 1934, N 5, p. 121.

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The continued growth of industrial production in the colonial and dependent countries in the 1930s, the simultaneous fall in prices for products of the most profitable export industries in the past of the rural " center "with the" periphery " dependent on it, are indicators of the emerging anachronism of such links. One of its manifestations was the emergence of a trade deficit of the leading colonial power - Great Britain-with colonial and dependent countries. The main reason for this, writes Swansea University College lecturer A. Latham, " was the significant progress of the textile industry in India and China. Local products were replacing the products of the Lancashire cotton mills." In India alone, factory production of yarn increased 1.7 times in 1935/36 as compared to 1928/29, while its import during this period decreased by more than 2 times. 32 In the following years, this crisis of relations between the capitalistically developed world and developing countries continued to deepen.

The Second World War, which soon began, and the weakening of economic ties between the periphery and the centers of the capitalist system narrowed the possibilities for selling agricultural products that produced for export, while a sharp reduction in imports of industrial goods served as an impetus for further expansion of national industry and, consequently, a flood of new investments in it. Urban industries, especially industry and trade, provided higher profits than agriculture. This trend was born in the early 30s. "During the crisis," writes the Indian scholar A. Bagchi, " the terms of trade between agriculture and industry were clearly in favor of the latter." 33.. If earlier the surplus capital of the local urban bourgeoisie was directed to the countryside, now rural capital began to be invested in urban industries. In Egypt, for example, "in general, it was the crises and depressions of the 1930s that contributed to the transfer of capital from large landowners to the 'urban economy'. " 34 In turn, the increase in capital investment reinforced the trends of urban development based on national industrial production. In the context of the elimination of colonialism and semi-colonial relations, these trends have become decisive.

The destruction of imperialism's political dominance on the periphery of the capitalist system, which was characteristic of the colonial era, opened up qualitatively new and immeasurably broader prospects for the industrialization of developing countries than in the past. First, the monopoly of the imperialist powers that controlled the foreign economic relations of the States of Asia, Africa and Latin America was eliminated, and for the first time they were able to establish economic relations with the States of the socialist community that were directly interested in their development independent of imperialism. Second, the classes that came to power became owners of state revenues - a potentially huge source of financing for industry. Third, independence made it possible to pursue protectionist policies that protected developing industry from the harmful effects of competition from capitalist States. Although in many states that have freed themselves from colonial and semi-colonial dependence, development follows the capitalist path, "their objective interests are not limited to the following:-

32 Latham A. The Depression and the Developing World 1914 - 1939. Lnd 1981 pp. 183, 192.

33 Bagchi A. K. Private Investment in India 1900 - 1939. Cambridge. 1972, p. 90.

34 Fridman L. A. Egypt 1882-1952. Socio-economic structure of the village, Moscow, 1973, p. 34.

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This, as was emphasized at the June 1983 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, is contradicted by the aggressive policy of domination and dictate pursued by the imperialist Powers. In order to overcome their economic backwardness, these countries need equal international cooperation and lasting peace. " 35
An important tool to help overcome the economic backwardness of developing countries is the policy of industrialization. From 1950 to 1980, the share of developing countries in the gross domestic product of the capitalist world increased from 14.5% to 18.5%, including in industry - from 8.5% to 15.5%. Moreover, in terms of gross domestic product growth, they overtook most industrial capitalist states. Industrial production in the liberated countries began to develop at a much faster pace than in the colonial era, and its share in gross domestic product increased from 15.9% to 26% between 1950 and 1980 .36
Due to the growth of industry in developing countries, the share of imports in the consumption of manufactured goods has decreased. By the mid-1960s, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) estimated that the industry created in developing countries provided on average almost 4/5 of all supplies for domestic consumption and exports. "Of course," writes A. Ya. Elyanov in this connection, " the role of local industrial products in the markets of Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as individual young countries, is far from the same... Local products have the largest share in the markets of Latin American countries, and the smallest share in Africa." According to his data, in such major countries of the developing world as Argentina, Brazil, and India, the share of imports in all manufactured goods sold on the domestic market in the 60s was only from 7 to 11.5% 37 .

On the basis of foreign and local capital, industrial facilities have emerged in developing countries, specializing mainly in the production of personal consumption items that were previously imported from abroad. At the same time, the means of production and technology necessary for their manufacture were imported from capitalist countries. In this connection, industry, which was emerging in the developing countries, continued at this stage to be an appendage of the capitalistically developed world. The process of replacing imports of manufactured goods with their own production in developing countries generated an increase in exports of means of production and technology in capitalist countries. With such import substitution, on the one hand, intersectoral relations, including industry and agriculture, remained in their infancy, on the other hand, agriculture itself in many cases continued to play the role of the main source of currency needed for the import of means of production and technology. Thus, the industry that developed here initially grew on the basis of the old village-city relations characteristic of the colonial era, which developed between the capitalist " periphery "and its"center".

However, as the domestic market for personal consumption items grew, so did the domestic market for means of production.

35 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, June 14-15, 1983. Stenogr. otch. M. 1983, p. 128.

36 Primakov E. The law of uneven development and the historical destinies of the liberated countries. - World Economy and International Relations, 1980, N 12, p. 29.

37 Elyanov A. Ya. Developing countries: problems of economic growth and market, Moscow, 1976, p. 212.

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An indicator of this is the fact that between 1948 and 1972, the production of capital goods in developing countries increased by 744% .38 Today, countries such as India, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and others already have relatively developed industries that produce both consumer goods and means of production. Along with them, there are many countries in the developing world, particularly in Tropical Africa, that are at a lower stage of industrial development, characterized by a general lack of factory production of the means of production.

Today, developing countries are no longer just a" village", mainly consuming industrial products produced in capitalist countries. They already have a certain industrial potential, which allows them not only to meet their needs at the expense of their own production, but even to export their industrial goods abroad, including to industrially developed countries.

On this basis, the content of economic relations between developing countries and capitalistically developed States is changing. Previously, they were subordinated exclusively to the needs of the latter, ensuring the pumping of raw materials and the sale of industrial goods, but now there is a new trend-the development of international economic relations in the interests of national development in general, and, in particular, the developing countries themselves. The relations between the capitalistically developed "center" and the "periphery" dependent on it, limited only to the relations between the city and the countryside, have already become an anachronism on the whole. However, within the framework of the international division of labor, developing countries often continue to play primarily the old role of agricultural and raw materials appendages of the capitalistically developed world, i.e., qualitatively new trends in their industrial development are in contradiction with the old forms of foreign economic relations imposed on them by international capital. And this cannot but aggravate the contradictions between the developing countries and the imperialist powers, one of the manifestations of which is the demand for the establishment of a "new economic order".

With the development of national industrial production, the content of the urbanization process in developing countries has changed. In the past, the growth of capitalist cities in this zone was primarily based on the relations conditioned by the functioning of colonial and dependent countries as agricultural and raw materials appendages of the capitalistically developed world, i.e., on the international division of labor, while the processes associated with the development of the internal market, with the division of labor within the colonial and dependent countries themselves, and based on the contradictions between the city and the countryside, they did not have a significant impact on them. Now, changes in the social division of labor within developing countries themselves are becoming increasingly decisive. One important indicator of this is the accelerated growth of cities in the interior. "In 1920," writes the U. N. official, J. R. R. Tolkien. Desmond, - this region (meaning Asia. - Yu. I. ) did not have large cities located far from the sea coast. All the major urban centers were port cities, as they could only be under colonial conditions. However, after 1940, the share of the population of the leading ports in the total mass of residents of the largest cities sharply decreased - from 72 to 53%, while the number of cities in the interior and their population increased rapidly. " 39
Due to the growth of the industry focused on the domestic market,-

38 Elyanov A. Ya. Uk. soch., p. 223.

39 Urbanization and National Development. Beverly Hills. 1971, p. 63.

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In developing countries, the relationship between cities and villages is undergoing profound changes. If earlier the city depended on the countryside, now the trends of dependence of the countryside on the city, which consumes raw materials and sells industrial goods to it, are breaking through, which ensures the leading role of urban classes, which are gradually losing their connection with land ownership.

The greatest break in such ties and the patriarchal relations that resulted from them occurred among the factory proletariat. And this is not accidental, since the relations of hiring reach " full development and complete separation from the previous forms of economy... only in large-scale machine industry "40, because" large-scale machine industry, concentrating together masses of workers, often coming together from different parts of the country, absolutely no longer puts up with the remnants of patriarchy and personal dependence" 41 . Turning into cadre workers, yesterday's otkhodnik peasants break the economic ties that bound them to the countryside. And at the same time, the material prerequisites for the emergence of the modern revolutionary working class are being created, for the emergence of which, as is well known, "it is absolutely necessary that the umbilical cord that still binds the workers should be cut... to the ground " 42 . As for the urban upper classes, their ties to land ownership are being lost much more slowly. The shareholders of industrial companies are often large landlords. Many employees have plots of land in the village.

In developing countries, industrial cities generate the highest rates of growth and concentrate an increasing proportion of the urban population. In 1950, the millionaire cities of developing countries were home to 19% of urban residents, in 1975-32%, and in 1985 this figure may be 37% 43 . At the same time, the small towns created by the colonial era, whose business life was primarily determined by trade with the countryside, are increasingly falling into disrepair. Their decline is only a reflection of the general decline of the latter. The vast majority of the rural population, crushed by semi-feudal, commercial and usurious exploitation, not only cannot sell or buy almost anything, but also cannot support themselves at the expense of their allotments, which, as a result of parcelling, are becoming smaller and smaller, which in turn has a negative effect on the development of urban industry.

As a rule, it is concentrated only in a few cities where the activities of TNCs and national entrepreneurs are concentrated. For example, in Colombia, the top three cities - Bogota, Medellin and Cali-produce 70% of manufacturing output and attract 66% of foreign investment. In Argentina, 2/5 of industrial production is in Buenos Aires and Rosario, while in Brazil, 80% is in the Sao Paulo-Rio de Janeiro - Belo Horizonte triangle. According to an estimate from the 1960s, in Latin America, 1/3 of industrial output was produced in Buenos Aires. Sao Paulo and Greater Mexico City 44 .

It is well known that the tendency to concentrate industry in the largest cities is a pattern of the development of capitalism. 45 In developing countries, the concentration of industry in cities in general, and in a few of the largest cities in particular, reaches such enormous proportions that the capitalistically developed world did not know.

40 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 3, p. 586.

41 Ibid., p. 547.

42 See K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 18, p. 213.

43 Million Cities of India. New Delhi. 1978, p. 27.

44 Latin American Urban Research, Vol. 2. Beverly Hills. Lnd. 1972, p. 66.

45 See K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 2, pp. 261-262.

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In developing countries, large-scale industry has no basis outside the cities, because rural handicrafts, which are increasingly declining due to the extreme narrowness of rural markets and their disunity, cannot separate themselves from the umbilical cord of natural ties with agriculture. Therefore, in the countryside of these countries, as a rule, there are no small commercial crafts and, consequently, there is no ground for the absorption of small establishments by the factory. The polarization of opposites between the city and the countryside is greater here than it was in the homeland of capitalism, and industrial production is concentrated only in a few cities.

An important factor determining the limited nature of industrial development in the liberated countries is the low purchasing power of the masses. The fact is that income differentiation in developing countries, despite the low per capita income, significantly exceeds the current standards of industrialized countries. Thus, "the average share of individual income of the wealthiest (5%) stratum in developing countries (30.9%) is 1.5 times higher than in capitalist states (19.8%), while the share of the poorest (60% of the population) is 1.25 times lower (25.4 and 31.8%, respectively)." 46 . At the same time, the wealthiest strata are concentrated in cities, while those whose purchasing power is particularly low are concentrated primarily in the semi-feudal countryside, where the vast majority of the population of developing countries lives.

Previously, when their economy served only as an agricultural and raw materials appendage of the capitalistically developed world, the low purchasing power of the vast majority of the population in general, and rural in particular, could not serve as an obstacle to economic development within the framework of such ties, since the contradiction between a limited domestic market and growing commodity production was resolved by exporting the commodity product and transferring excess capital abroad. the border. Now, when there is an industry that focuses primarily on domestic demand, the low solvency of the village has become a fetter that hinders the development of industry, and therefore the entire economy as a whole.

The growing income gap between urban and rural areas results in migration from rural areas to cities, i.e., from areas with a low potential for developing capitalism to areas with a higher potential for developing it. The regions that are "the most developed in capitalist terms," Lenin wrote, analyzing the patterns of migration in Russia, " attract masses of workers... Wages are lowest in the exit areas,.. In the districts of the parish, however, wages are rising for all types of work, and the ratio of money wages to total wages is also rising, i.e., monetary economy is being strengthened at the expense of natural resources." 47 The rural population is also forced to migrate as a result of the huge agricultural overpopulation caused not only by the growing use of wage labor in agriculture, accompanied by an absolute decrease in variable capital, but also by the crisis of semi-feudal economic methods, which even in the colonial era merged with commercial and usurious capital. One of the features of this crisis is that, being extensive, such methods in many countries have already exhausted their potential for agricultural development of new territories, generating an excess of rural population, compounded by a demographic "explosion".

46 Elyanov A. Ya. Uk. soch., p. 50.

47 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 3, pp. 588, 590.

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In regions such as Southeast Asia, even during the colonial period, there was an increase in the pressure of an excess population on the productive forces of the village.

Today, in developing countries, the surplus rural population that has emerged as a result of insufficient development of productive forces is left either to vegetate in old places with deteriorating living conditions, or to migrate to places where productive forces have great scope for their development - to cities.

From the point of view of the growth in the number of urban residents, modern migration from the countryside certainly plays a big role, because if in the past those who migrated usually returned to the village, now the vast majority of them become urban residents. However, agricultural overpopulation in developing countries continues to grow. "Not only a small part of the total rural population goes to cities, but also a smaller part of the natural increase - less than a third in the 50s and less than a quarter in the 60s; most of it remains in the countryside, and the intensity of migration does not increase as one might expect. However, the absolute scale of migration is huge and increases even with the decreasing intensity of outflows, as the rural population grows... Although the annual outflow was small, the total number of rural migrants to cities in the 1950s and 1970s was about 230 million. " 48
Urban growth at the expense of newcomers is a progressive process that involves the most literate and energetic part of the population in its orbit. Moving to the city not only raises the standard of living of migrants, but also begins their liberation, associated with involvement in the maelstrom of modern public life. "Like the diversion of the population from agriculture to the cities," Lenin wrote, " non - agricultural withdrawal is a progressive phenomenon. It pulls the population out of the abandoned, backward, forgotten backwoods by history and draws it into the maelstrom of modern social life. It increases the literacy and consciousness of the population, instills in them cultural habits and needs... Going to the cities increases the peasant's civic identity, freeing him from the abyss of patriarchal and personal relations of dependence and class status that are so strong in the villages. " 49
Modern cultural and technological developments contribute to the intensification of migration flows generated by the growing disparity between urban and rural areas. The development of transport and communications, mass media, increased literacy, etc. facilitates the movement of the population, expands the perception of the urban way of life, promotes it, thereby helping to increase the number of people in developing countries who want to get rid of the "idiocy" of rural life or small urban backwoods.

The scale of capitalist urbanization in developing countries far exceeds the existing potential for capitalist rural development. This is due to a number of factors. In the post-war years in the agriculture of developing countries, commercial agriculture developed, on the one hand, in breadth due to the inclusion of areas with a predominance of subsistence farming in the trade turnover, on the other - in depth on the basis of more modern farming methods using high-yielding varieties, fertilizers, machines, etc., i.e. on the basis of the achievements of the "green economy". revolution", which expanded the scope of wage labor in agriculture. Nevertheless, the capitalists-

48 Pokataeva T. S. Developing countries: problems of urbanization, Moscow, 1977, pp. 18-19.

49 Lenin V. I. Vol. 3, pp. 575-57.

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the economic transformation of the village on the basis of relations of purchase and sale of labor is extremely slow, both because of the territorial limitations of the "green revolution" areas, which serve as the material basis for such transformation, and because of the continuing semi-feudal relations.

In most countries that are developing along the capitalist path, agrarian reforms aimed mainly at large-scale landownership and usury are half-hearted and very long in time. To this day, capitalist entrepreneurship continues to get along with intermediate semi-feudal methods of exploitation, not only in the landlords ' farms, but also often in many farms of well-to-do peasants. Under these conditions, the countryside is unable to provide either a large market for urban industry or meet the needs of urban residents for food, which leads to an unusually large increase in imports of food products in general, and above all grain. "There is a direct link between grain imports and the population size of major cities in developing countries." 50 According to FAO data, from 1962-1964 to 1974-1976, in 90 developing countries, for every percentage increase in domestic demand for agricultural products, there was an increase in agricultural imports of 1.75%. "In the years after World War II, net grain imports from developing countries increased almost 5-fold, including from the Middle East by more than 7-fold, and from Africa and South-East Asia by almost 2-fold." 51 Many developing countries have become major food importers.

Food imports to developing countries are an important indicator of the increasing breakdown of the old forms of international division of labor inherited from the colonial era, when colonial and dependent countries were the main suppliers of raw materials and food and bought only manufactured goods. Already at the turn of the 60s and 70s, these countries accounted for only 32.5% of food and only 33% of mineral raw materials supplied to the world capitalist market. On the one hand, food exports have already become an attribute of capitalist developed countries, whose agriculture has undergone industrial restructuring, and on the other hand, developing countries themselves are increasingly exporting manufactured goods. In 1968, their exports of manufacturing products reached almost $ 8 billion .52
Under the conditions of neocolonialist exploitation, progressive changes in relations between the former "world village" and the former "world city", as well as villages and cities in the developing countries themselves, are slow, as these relations are burdened by the dying ties between them inherent in the colonial era, in the preservation of which certain social forces are interested both in the liberated states themselves and in the and beyond them. The transition state experienced by these states from dependent to independent development cannot but create an environment of social tension, fraught with conflicts and explosions, the background of which is the struggle of new and old trends caused by the movement of the opposite city and village.

50 The Study of Urbanization. N. Y. 1965, p. 300.

51 Food problem in the modern world, Moscow, 1982, p. 17, 97.

52 Santos M. The Shared Space. The Two Circuits of the Urban Economy in Underdeveloped Countries. Lnd. 1979, p. 43.

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