Review

Author(s): Karl de Schweinitz, Jr.

Review by: Karl de Schweinitz, Jr.
Source: Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 6, No. 2/3 (Sep., 1972), pp. 166-169
Published by: Association for Evolutionary Economics
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4224161
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166 BookReviews

THE STAGES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH. By W. W. Rostow.

Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1971, 2d ed. Pp. 253, $4.95.
POLITICSAND THE STAGES OF GROWTH.By W. W. Rostow.
Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1971. Pp. 410, $9.50.

In 1971the CambridgeUniversity Press publishedW. W. Rostow's

Politics and the Stages of Growth along with the second edition
of his well-known The Stages of Economic Growth,perhapsbecause
it anticipatedthat readers coming to Rostow for the first time through
the former might well wish to study the fundamentals of stage
theory in the latter. The text of the new edition of The Stages
is the same as the 1960 edition, but Rostow has added an appendix
entitled "The Critics and the Evidence." Readers of this journal
do not need to be reminded that the critics were legion and that
the closer they were professionally to the subject matter of the
book the more hostile they tended to be. In constrast, noneconomists
and journalists were a good deal kinder. On re-reading The Stages
one understandsthese varied reactions.
Economic developmentis an historicalprocess that most countries
in the world have experienced to greateror lesser extent. It therefore
should provide a focus for comparingthe performanceof economies
cross-sectionally and intertemporally,however diverse the cultural
and institutionalenvironmentsin which they are embedded. Professor
Rostow responded to this opportunity with alacrity and verve, at
once exorcising the specter of Marx's stages and inventing his own.
As popular economic history or high-gradejournalism, The Stages
was a distinct success. Who, now, does not know of the take-off?
Who cannot nod sagely when informed that country X is struggling
throughthe preconditionsor that country Y is driving to maturity?
For economic historians and economists, however, The Stages
lacked credibilitybecause in trying to explain everythingit explained
very little. Rather than being a methodologicalaid to understanding
the complex changes that societies undergoduringeconomic develop-
ment, the stages became reified and seemingly detached from the
reality they were intended to identify and describe. On page 1
Professor Rostow was properly sceptical: "I cannot emphasize too
strongly at the outset, that the stages-of-growth are an arbitrary
and limited way of looking at the sequence of modern history."
By page 12 he had become servant to the monster he created:
"These stages are not merely descriptive. They are not merely
a way of generalizingcertain factual observations about the sequence

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 Book Reviews 167

of development of modern societies. They have an inner logic and

continuity. They have an analytic-structure, rooted in a dynamic
theory of production."
Now, more than a decade later, he addresses himself to the
question of whether or not the United States took off in the 1830s
or Germanyin the 1840sand answers: "I have examinedthe evidence
and weighed it. I have concluded that, on balance, the scale of
the leading sectors and the extent of their spreading effects in
these precedingdecades do not justify their inclusionin the take-off."
(Appendix B, pp. 195-96). It would be unkind to say: Who cares?
as Edmund Wilson was alleged to have responded when asked
who murdered Roger Acroyd. Yet the style of the book provokes
indelicate reactions. It is not just a matter of the take-off and
other stages being applied to historical experience in what frequently
seems to be an arbitraryway; in addition Professor Rostow writes
repeatedly of "Buddenbrooksdynamics" and "the march of com-
pound interest" as if these metaphors really explained something.
It is this that made The Stages a scholarly disappointment. With
such a vast knowledge of economic and political history at his
command and such a keen sensitivity to the problems that arise
in a world whose societies are modernizing in various sequential
patterns and at varying rates, he gave us stages and metaphors
rather than analysis and explanation.
After his years in the corridors of power, Professor Rostow in
Politics and the Stages of Growthreturnsto the problemsof economics
and politics that concerned him especially in the second half of
The Stages. "The grand, unsolved problem of political science is
how to relate politics in the narrowsense to the evolution of societies
as a whole" (p. 17). Unhappily, he thinks the stages of economic
growth, now resplendent with still another stage-the search for
quality-are up to the task. Making a tripartite division of the
political system into sectors concerned with justice and order, growth
and welfare, and security and international involvement, Rostow
surveys the stages in an attempt to discern patterns in the political
priorities that societies pursue over time. In so doing he leans
heavily on highly condensed political histories of Britain, France,
Germany, Russia, Japan, China, Turkey, Mexico, and the United
States, while also discussing other countries and regions of the
world.
The picture that emerges is reminiscent of a nineteenth-century
evolutionist view, because all societies seem to be headed for the
search for quality, the stage that now characterizes the United

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168 Book Reviews

States as it tries to clean up the effluvia of high mass consumption.

There are, of course, many hazards as well as opportunitiesalong
the way. The increased output that is the consequence of economic
growth may be directed to imperialism, regional domination, wars,
and other external adventures. But these age-old phenomena may
generate in the victim countries a reactive nationalism that can
become a critical medium for modernization. If, in consequence,
countries take off and drive to maturity,the prospects for democratic
institutions, which are so dark in the preconditions and traditional
society, brighten. Yet the latecomers to the process are burdened
by the simultaniety of political and economic demands that strain
the capacity of government and jeopardize democratic deliberative
procedures. Moreover, the existence in the world of communist
societies which have taken off and are explicitly committed to
spreading their ideology makes the internationalenvironment too
threatening. Professor Rostow therefore believes that the United
States must use its military power to neutralize the expansionist
drive of the communist nations so that "the march of the stages
of growth" will allow increased output to be used for welfare and
so release the potential for political development the world around.
While Politics abounds in interesting and provocative general-
izations, it labors under the same disabilities as The Stages. It
is metaphorical and rhetorical rather than analytical. In chapter
3, for example, "The Politics of the Preconditions for Take-off,"
he speaks of "a disciplined working force organized around the
hierarchies decreed by technique" (p. 57), the "slide towards
modernization" (p. 61), nineteenth-centuryFrance "with no solid
consensus on the meaning of its experience or on the substance
of its nationalagenda" (p. 67), and the accession in 1940of General
Camacho to the Mexican presidency "launching the stable admin-
istration which mounted the Mexican take-off" (p. 82). It is not
that the ideas suggested by these phrases and sentences do not
have merit, but that the language Rostow uses prevents him from
examining their substance, especially when placed in the context
of stages with their exhilarating promise of a trip to the world
of quality.
But the real difficulty with Politics is the confusion of political
development and politics, the subordinationof analysis to values;
indeed, it might well have been subtitled: "The View from the
White House underLBJ." Early on Rostow defines political develop-
ment as "the elaborationof new and more complex forms of politics
and government as societies restructurethemselves so as to absorb

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 Book Reviews 169

progressively the stock and flow of modern technology which is

essentially uniform" (p. 3). Thereafter he dedicates himself to the
propositionthat political development is best achieved within institu-
tions that bear the Western stamp and, as suggested above, it is
apparent that the United States is the appropriate custodian of
the process. The bias of Rostow's politics is pervasive; perhaps
I can convey its effect by citing one egregious example. In chapter
8, "War and Peace in the Global Community," he discusses the
role of regional security arrangementsin response to the threat
of international communism and notes that "the crisis in the
Dominican Republic at first strained the system; but the outcome,
as seen by most Latin Americans, was, on balance, finally seen
to be salutary" (p. 309). The evidence in supportof this observation
is the New York Times assessment of 7 March 1966.
If he had acknowledged frankly that Politics was a tract for
the times or a defense of American foreign policy, it would have
been fine. In fact, he wants the imprimaturof the social sciences,
a need made embarrassinglyclear by an appendix at the conclusion
of the book on "The Views of Others in Relation to the Approach
Taken Here," in which he compares himself with a wide range
of writers who have addressed themselves to the problems of
modernizationas social scientists. One can only hope that in his
next book Professor Rostow will be able to break out of his
ambivalenceand come down either on the side of economic history
or politics.

KARLDE SCHWEINITZ,
JR.
NorthwesternUniversity

PUBLIC POLICY TOWARD GENERAL AVIATION. By Jeremy

J. Warford.Washington,D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1971. Pp. 193,
$7.95.

This is the fifth title in the Brookings series of Studies in the

Regulation of Economic Activity. The author conducted the study
while a member of the staff of Brookings Institution; the research
was supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation. Mr. Warford
is now an economist at the InternationalBank for Reconstruction
and Development.
The title is pretentious and misleading; the author, however,

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