The Accidental Marxist: Andre Gunder Frank and the “Neo-Marxist” Theory of Underdevelopment, 1958–1967

Abstract

Based on newly available archival records, this article examines the life and thought of Andre Gunder Frank from his years as a graduate student in development economics to the publication of his first and most influential book. A closer look at the evolution of Frank's thought provides new insight into the relationship of his brand of “neo-Marxist” development theories with both classical Marxism and modernization theory. Frank interpreted Marxist political debates according to the categories of thought of 1950s American development economics, and in doing so he both misinterpreted fundamental aspects of Marxism and simultaneously generated lively theoretical debates that remain relevant today.

Gharbzadegi, colonial capitalism and the racial state in Iran

“…15 Raúl Prebisch, one of the leading thinkers of Latin American protectionismwho published his classic The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems in 1950as well as more radical Marxian exponents of dependency theory such as Andre Gunder Frank provided a crucial corrective to modernisation theory's myopic Eurocentrism and unilinear, stadial assumptions regarding the nature of social change in the 'developing' world. 16 Despite their differences, these thinkers postulated that instead of some deep-seated resistance to 'modernise' rooted in the 'personality' and 'cultural traits' of non-Western societies, 17 what in fact had transpired in the Third World was 'the development of underdevelopment'. 18 One is hard-pressed to find direct evidence that Al-e Ahmad read Prebisch, let alone Frank, whose The Development of Underdevelopment was published four years after Gharbzadegi.…”