A CASE FOR FOMENTARIANISM

KENNETH E. BOULDING

The American attitude toward revolution has all the ambivalence, so beloved of the psychologist, of our attitude toward our mothers. This, of course, is because the United States as a nation was born in a revolution, which one might describe, I suppose' as an adolescent revolt. Consequently, we feel a certain obligation to like revolution on principle, having been born in one ourselves. On the other hand, we are also afraid and suspicious of revolutions. This, no, doubt, can be traced back to a suppressed guilt feeling about the treachery to a parent culture which any revolution implies. Our attitude toward revolution, therefore, is a compound feeling of both love and hate' affectionate regard for the infants who are toddling in our early footsteps and unresolved quilt about our own breakaway.

The explanation of this ambivalence does not, of course, necessarily have to be psychoanalytic, for there are perfectly sober, rational reasons both for welcoming revolutions and for fearing them. Revolutions may get out of hand and they may turn out to be the wrong revolutions. The world is haunted today by the specters of past revolutions, like past noises echoing through the corridors of the present. The French Revolution7 which consists essentially in the disposition of large landowners and the division of land among peasants, and in which, in one of its aspects at least, has been called the "green revolution," continues to explode in countries which have not yet relieved themselves of the feudal landlord and the large estate. The American Revolution, which represents the breakaway of the colonies from a metropolitan power, continues its interesting, if erratic course, and is at the moment exploding in Africa. The Russian Revolution, which represents the dispossession al ALL capitalists and the seizure of political and economic power by a small and determined group of communists, continued to roll pretty vigorously just after the end of the Second World Jar, and although it has been temporarily checked it remains a constant threat.

The tendency for one kind of revolution to pass into another is at least great enough to make it had to select the precise revolution which one wants. Under these circumstances, there is a tendency to shore ;up the status quo and to prevent ANY revolution on the grounds that no revolution is better than the wrong revolution. This, however, is a rearguard action, almost certain to lead to ultimate defeat. Once revolutions are on the march, they have to be dealt with one way or another. And in one sense the only answer to the wrong revolution is the right revolution.

A further source of confusion is that it is not always easy to tell when a real revolution has occurred. Revolution is a system change, a social system with new laws and a new dynamic takes ever. Sometimes these boundaries are dramatic and visible. The French, American, and Russian revolutions are examples of such. Sometimes, however, the boundaries are not observable. The revolution, like the turn of the tide, is unnoticed at the moment but carries with it a profound reversal of the great tide of history. The industrial and technical revolution in which we are now living is one such o It is practically impossible to put a date on it. 1t was inaugurated by no violence and no fanfare. We can trace its origins perhaps as far back as the Benedictines of the sixth century. The movement is slow and uncertain7 however, until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Then is becomes clear that man is caught up in a new tide which is carrying him he knows not whither. The three types of political revolution may perhaps ultimately be seen as mere eddies in this vast tide. Nevertheless, they are still important in the small time perspective in which most human decisions have to be made.

We can neither perceive nor Judge change in systems unless we have some theory about the dynamics of social systems. There are a good many such theories around, some of them explicit, some of them largely implicit and unformulated. Two such implicit theories guide a good deal of American thinking.

The first of these might be the cowboy theory. This is the theory that people are divided into good guys and bad guys, '",!2.' that the business of a revolution is to get the bad guys out and the good guys in. It is not always easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys, but, of course, if any guys happen to be on Our Side, they are obviously good, and an y guys that happen to be o n the Other Side are obviously bad. A good revolution is one in which the good guys beat up the bad guys and a bad revolution is one in which the bad guys beat up the good guys. If there is a good deal of shouting, shooting, and running around going on, preferably on horses, the scenario is regarded as all the more satisfactory

A somewhat more sophisticated version of the cowboy theory is the Liberty Bell or Independence Hall theory. This is the theory that the dynamics of a society depends upon its political constitution and that if only the right political constitution can be established all will be well. Societies are divided into those which have good constitutions (like ours)' and those which have bad constitutions (unlike ours). A good revolution, then, is one that substitutes a good constitution for a bad one and a bad revolution is the reverse. Unfortunately for this theory, the slavish copying of the American Constitution, especially by South American republics, does not seem to have resulted in uniformly satisfactory economic or political development. And one suspects that more variables 1n the social system must be taken into account.

At the level of sophisticated, explicit social theory, we seem to have two main contenders. On the one hand, there is the Malthusian theory of the classical economics which Baumol has described as the "magnificent dynamics." This states, in effect, that in the long run the only revolution that is really worth having is the one that nobody has yet succeeded in accomplishing. This is establishment of a genuine population control. In the absence of'6 this all revolutions will lead ultimately to the same ruin and the "dismal theorem casts its long shadow over history. The dismal theorem is the preposition that if the only thing that can prevent the indefinite expansion of population is starvation and misery then all populations will expand until they are miserable and starve. A corollary is what I have called the "utterly dismal theorer1.'' This is the proposition that if misery is the only ultimate check on the growth of populations any improvement in man's capacities, whether in the form of technological inventors of in the form of social inventions, merely has tile ultimate result of enabling a larger population than before to live in misery. Improvement, therefore, leads to m more misery not to less [e should not be deluded by temporary food surpluses into thinking that the Malthusian specter has been allayed. At present rates of increase it only takes about seven hundred years before we have standing room only. Long before this time either the Malthusian revolution will have been accomplished or mankind will have sunk into a world of inconceivably teeming poverty.

The other system of explicit social dynamics is that of Marx which perhaps we should designate out of respect for its New Testament as Marxist Leninism.

The theory is elaborate and fairly familiar and I will not outline it here. It contemplates the establishment of a rich and classless society by the expropriation of the capitalist and the socialization of all property in the means of production. The actual predictions of Marx have, of course, been largely falsified by subsequent events, but this does not destroy the power of the theory. It has a peculiar fascination for poor countries which see in it a dream of controlling their own economic destiny. Its political and human costs' however' are high. It involves a gross centralization of power and is constantly exposed to the danger of tyranny O

But there is a type of revolution which does not fit comfortably into any of the above categories and which may be the most important of all in the long run. ~ call it the "Fomentarian revolution" in honor of a remarkable institution in Puerto Rico which embodies it, known as FOPENTO. The Fomentarian revolution has four aspects Its prerequisite is some kind of political consensus in the society. It cannot develop if a society is wracked with internal conflicts and factional fights., whether these are between races, cultures, classes, or political groups There must be some widely shared vision of the future and an image of the way in which the society can move toward its future O This usually has to be the work of a charismatic leader who can inspire large numbers of people with a vision of the future. Sometimes a succession of leadership is required. 'the charismatic but unrealistic leader may wake the people out of their apathy and give them a sense of identity and purpose. For the revolution to be accomplished, however, a new type of leadership may be necessary­­ more sober, less dramatic !.~ and with a clearer and more realistic vision.

The second pillar of the Fomentarian revolution is the stress that it lays on education and the development of human resources. If necessary, a society must be prepared to accept some sacrifice of quality in education in the interests of quantity. The developing society not only requires literacy of the mass of the people.; it requires a certain type of formal education in inculcating a favorable attitude toward work' and austerity and it requires technical education appropriate to the modern world. Higher education of the right kind occupies a key position in this process.

The third pillar of the Fomentarian evolution is the skill to strike clever bargain with foreign capitalists. Genuinely bootstrap development is possible, as the history of Japan showed. The development of Japan came almost wholly from internal reorganization a.ld by the acquisition of knowledge rather than capital from abroad. For this recipe to be successful, however, a fairly authoritative social structure seems to be necessary. Whether this is feudal as in the case of Japan, or communist as in the case of China, bootstrap development means holding down consumption holding down real wages, and squeezing the farmer as hard as he can be squeezed in order to extract every last ounce of subsistence for capital accumulation. In looser and more democratic societies this is hard to achieve. It is hard to resist the clamor of the people for a present share of future benefits. Under these circumstances it is hard to keep consumption from rising, which means it is hard to keep production ahead of consumption, which means it is hard to accumulate. Under these circumstances a careful us of foreign investment seems almost necessary. If the investor can be rewarded with friendly attitudes and with long­term security, the recipient society will not have to pay so much hard cash. With an unfriendly and querulous attitude, on the other hand, foreign investment can only be attracted at a high price. The ability to make good bargains with foreign investors is a very important element in the success of the Fomentarian society.

The fourth pillar of Fomentarianism is the most difficult of all to establish. This is the ability to effect a sufficient cultural change at the level of the individual, the family, the neighborhood, and the small group so that the gains of development can be reasonably permanent and acceptable to the society. This brings us back to Malthus, for unless the revolution encompasses some kind of control of the population the revolution is doomed to failure. The control may simply be the ability to emigrate as in the case of Puerto Rico. This, however, is a solution which is not open to the world at large, and it cannot be regarded as permanent. Nevertheless, the ability to emigrate from an already overpopulated area may be the key, paradoxically . enough, to a process of development which will eventually enable it to support a much larger population.

If a society is to enter the modern world, there must also be changes in the attitudes toward the family, toward work, and toward income and saving. All these changes, perhaps, may be summed up by saying that the transition from the traditional culture to what we call an "economic culture" will have to be made. In this process something inevitably is lost. One hopes that the gains are worth the cost.

When we ask where is the Great Revolution taking us, the revolution that is science and technology, the answer may emerge that the end product of this revolution does not depend as much as we thought on the means which are used or the road which is followed. If one presses the communists on what they ; mean by communism­­ that is, that ideal state of society toward which they hope they are moving, and which they do not now claim to have­­ the pat answer is, of course, that communism is a society in which we have "from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs." If they are pressed further on who is to be the judge of need and ability, the answer seems to be that, subject to the socializing forces of the society, the individual is to be his own judge e Certainly no dictator can judge either the need or the ability of the innumerable variety of men. This means, therefore, that in this ideal world people well decide what standard of life they wish to adopt and then go out and earn the kind of income which enabled them to support it. We are getting closer and closer to this in the United States. ­What the communists mean by communism, therefore, turns out to be surprisingly like that affluent society which is also the end of capitalist development.

The situation is somewhat confused at the moment by the fact that while we have examples of both successful and unsuccessful capitalist development, there are, as yet, no clearly unsuccessful examples of socialist development. This, I suspect, is because socialism is young. Given time, it will have no lack of failure. The crucial long­run question, therefore, for any community may not be whether it takes the capitalist or the socialist road to development. The question is whether its development is successful or unsuccessful in either system. The good revolution, whatever it is, is that which leads to a successful process of development. The bad revolution is that which does not. It may be, therefore, that we should be more relaxed about the political form finder which development takes place, and more concerned that, under any form, the development should be successful.

The great case for Fomentarian development where circumstances are such that it can be successful is that it can also be fairly cheap. Socialist development is obtained at a terrible cost. Capitalist nondevelopment likewise has a high cost in benefits foregone. We should look carefully at those social processes, as exemplified in Puerto Rico., that seem to make the best of both worlds' that use both government and private enterprise, both domestic reorganization and foreign investment, and that foment rather than whip. These are the hinds of revolution that one would like to see us encourage.