ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that politics is a phenomenon with phases that can be described in terms of five components: consciousness-formation, mobilization, confrontation, struggle proper, and transcendence. It describes use of the distinction between individual and collective levels of self-reliance, keeping in mind that nonterritorial units may also act more or less self-reliantly. Any ideology of self-reliance would also have to fill in the details on what to produce and the kind of structure most likely to yield the results. Self-reliance ideology might be similar to capitalism in its emphasis on creativity and initiative, but highly dissimilar in its emphasis on mass participation and an equitable relation with other units. In many countries, consequently, the politics of self-reliance will for some time is reduced to the politics of the armed forces, the struggle between those recruited from the national periphery and those who are drawn from the center and who have a more professional, less populist vision of development.
