ABSTRACT
The creation of capitalist mechanisms of development ultimately requires political intervention into the economy. Such intervention is based on the appropriation of rents and their allocation into appropriate lines of production. These are capable of satisfying increasing mass demand without inflationary pressures. The appropriation of rent creates classes which control these rents. These classes exist independently of market controls. They are thus free to indulge themselves and preserve their own privileges.
State classes are more coherent in their direction than traditional oligarchies. Nonetheless, they ultimately fail to overcome underdevelopment. They also face increasing scarcity of financial resources due to their incessant self-privileging, and to developments on international raw materials markets. State classes are thus invariably replaced, or forced to shift to strategies of growth via export-oriented manufacturing.
In stark contrast to the usual provisions of neoliberal thinking, export-oriented manufacturing constitutes a mobilisation of rent which allows for a devaluation of the national currency below purchasing power parity. Export-oriented manufacturing allows for efficiency to be combined with an extension of internal mass markets. However, it must be complemented by government-sponsored efforts to equalise local demand through income redistribution, or through land reforms and import substitution for local consumption, and for inputs in the emerging export industries.
