ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to set down some of the beliefs of the author generation, beliefs that would eventually come undone under the impact of historical events. There was a time when the authors believed that economic growth would go on forever. The hopes of some countries, such as China, to catch up with Western economies within a lifetime are likely to be vitiated by the probability that the world cannot sustain an unlimited expansion of productive forces. W. W. Rostow hypothesized a long period during which certain preconditions would have to emerge within a country that was readying itself for the “take-off” into rapid, cumulative growth. The most popular development treatise of the time was by Rostow, an American economic historian, whose Stages of Economic Growth, published in 1960, became the ideological rallying point for Western experts. In 1985, then, the prospects for universal development seem remote.
