ABSTRACT
Mr. John Friedmann moreover misunderstands or purposely misinterprets the export substitution prong of the proposed development strategy for the labour surplus developing economy. What the International Labor Organization (ILO) Philippine Mission, in fact, recommended is not a strategy of export substitution—as Friedmann contends—but a twopronged strategy of rural mobilization plus export substitution within which balanced rural growth is clearly given priority. Rather, wages cannot be expected to rise much as long as the labour surplus overhangs the market; neither the ILO Mission, nor presumably Mr. Friedmann, knows a way to legislate against the endowment—and to make it stick. Friedmann, moreover, denigrates the role of the foreigner who, having helped the developing country reach unskilled labour shortage via a labour intensive export drive, is then forced to turn to other activities. A final illustration of Friedmann’s ‘methodology’ is provided by his effort to misuse the conveniently emotive issue of the foreign investor.
