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Yes, I really am about to criticize Jeffrey Sachs...

The End of Poverty, or the Beginning of Hegemony?

In his 2005, New York Times bestseller, Jeffrey Sachs, with inspiring rhetoric and practical simplicity, lays out the grand vision of a world without poverty – a goal which, approached through the right (modernist) steps, can be achieved in our lifetime. Sachs imagines the development process as a progressive climb up the “development ladder.” The problem for the poorest countries, he says, is that they are so indebted or impoverished that simply reaching that first wrung is a near impossibility without “our” help. But, fortunately, after grasping that first wrung and taking that first step, these countries will be able to follow us up the ladder towards a freer democratic system and a capitalist market economy; thus marks the end of poverty.

Or, the beginning of hegemony? Even in his casual rhetoric, Sachs reveals his modernist approach. His use of “clinical economics,” which employs the more amicable language of modern medicine, does not fully mask his very particular and very Western set of goals. Again and again, we are fed images of the “others” – poor, helpless, violent, or irrational. Sachs, not lacking a real compassion for humanity, sells his modernist agenda as the only solution to the ailing Third World “others.” It is their corrupt governance and outdated economic knowledge, he says, or their culturally based prejudices and lack of (modern) infrastructure that blocks growth and prosperity. The prescription: a full dose of markets, a round of “shock therapy,” and some liberal-democratic institutions. A few years and a few financial crises later, and they should be just fine…

By grasping that first rung on the development ladder (with a little boost from foreign aid), Sachs believes that the third world countries can begin the “historical” and inevitable climb toward a liberal democracy and capitalist economy. Their future is viewed in the West’s reflection, with modernity as both the means and the end of his prescription. Our theories, based on a particular understanding of “development,” forcefully create an underdeveloped “third world.” This straightforward juxtaposition hides the subtle domination of the developed over the developing. Help – in the form of foreign aid, World Bank loans, or structural adjustment – can all be seen as instruments of cultural hegemony; it is the projection and affirmation of our selves as the pinnacle of progress, while framing the other as opposite. They are backwards, according to Sachs, and their only hope for a turnaround is to follow the lead of the developed countries.

Jeffrey Sachs’s vision is not just of a world without poverty, but of a world of total cultural homogenization and complete market integration. The “other” he creates is not our equal, but opposite and inferior. To save “them,” they must be helped to become “us.” If his modernist agenda is carried out, Sachs believes we will see the end of poverty. Perhaps, though, what we would see is really the final triumph of Western hegemony.