ABSTRACT
The discussion of capitalist development in the Third World has often been divided between ‘impossibilists’ and ‘inevitabilists’ (Hamilton 1983). The former regard the world economy as permanently divided between a developed centre and a subordinate periphery. They believe that the countries of the periphery are condemned to underdevelopment or at best can aspire to rise to an intermediate or semi-peripheral status. However no peripheral economy has ever made the transition from periphery to centre.
