Late-developing countries cannot replicate Europe’s capitalist transition because its global conditions are gone

Evidence

European transition occurred when there were no external, imperialist, far more powerful capitalist countries to dominate and subjugate the European ones; when the world’s resources – from minerals to agricultural raw materials to the unpaid labour of countless millions – could form the basis for Europe’s accumulation; when vast reservoirs of European populations could simply be exported to other continents; when the European working classes could be pressed into service for commodity exports to the markets of the world, establishing a global hegemony of European capital. Where can India send the approximately five hundred million people for whom Indian capitalism simply cannot provide, and whose minerals is the Indian bourgeoisie to extract to fuel our economy and guarantee our balance of payments for the next two hundred years? It has only its own forests to ravage, its own mountains to denude, its own rivers to dam up and pollute, its own countryside to consign to generalized filth, its own cities to choke with carbonized air – in a subordinated partnership with imperialist capital. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 593

While the logic of capital is now irreversible in Asia and Africa, the great majority of these countries simply cannot make a fully fledged capitalist transition of the European type, now or at any point in the foreseeable future. European transition occurred when there were no external, imperialist, far more powerful capitalist countries to dominate and subjugate the European ones; when the world’s resourcesfrom minerals to agricultural raw materials to the unpaid labour of countless millionscould form the basis for Europe’s accumulation; when vast reservoirs of European populations could simply be exported to other continents; when the European working classes could be pressed into service for commodity exports to the markets of the world, establishing a global hegemony of European capital. Where can India send the approximately five hundred million people for whom Indian capitalism simply cannot provide, and whose minerals is the Indian bourgeoisie to extract to fuel our econqmy and guarantee our balance of payments for the next two hundred years? — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1339

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges modernization-theory assumptions of the sort Cole / dependency debates address; connects to world-systems theory.
• DEFINE: Clarifies what ‘transition to capitalism’ historically required — the four enabling external conditions.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 593; Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1339