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Sometimes, it pays to be a backward country
Key Points
Sometimes, it pays to be a backward country For all the destruction of the Mao era, it also replaced traditional structures with modern frameworks that set up China for rapid growth Trotsky continues: “Although compelled to follow after the advanced countries, a backward country does not take things in the same order. The privilege of historic backwardness – and such a privilege exists – permits, or rather compels, the adoption of whatever is ready in advance of any specified date, skipping...
Sometimes, it pays to be a backward country
For all the destruction of the Mao era, it also replaced traditional structures with modern frameworks that set up China for rapid growth
Trotsky continues: “Although compelled to follow after the advanced countries, a backward country does not take things in the same order. The privilege of historic backwardness – and such a privilege exists – permits, or rather compels, the adoption of whatever is ready in advance of any specified date, skipping a whole series of intermediate stages … Their development as a whole acquires a planless, complex, combined character.
“The possibility of skipping over intermediate steps is of course by no means absolute. Its degree is determined in the long run by the economic and cultural capacities of the country.”