Gunder Frank Political Ironies in the World Economy

The world capitalist economy, its interstate system, and its class structure seem to be pursuing a development that may, like Frankenstein, have been created by man (and not by woman?), but which seems no longer to be subject to his/her control least of all through the formulation and implementation of conscious political policy. Indeed, political and economic policies seem more and more to be an ineffectual response to developments on the world stage that are largely beyond anyone's control. They are minor determinants of these developments within the nation state, and are even less significant in the world at large. This uncontrolled economic, political and social development has generated and continues to generate situations and events whose contradictions of expectations and intentions can appropriately be called ironies. We will examine some important ironies below for the period since the end of World War II, but they may be illustrated by a minor contemporary irony that was reflected in the International Herald Tribune under the title, "Reagan Sending New Signals to Moscow." There it says: "It was ironical that President Jimmy Carter who came to office without any anti-Soviet bias, ran for re-election in 1980after having virtually cut off all high-level contacts with Moscow. Mr. Reagan, known for his strong anti-Soviet views, will now be campaigning for re-election offering to put new life into most of the ac-