The Myrdal Legacy: Racism and Underdevelopment as Dilemmas
| DOI | 10.1177/001083678902400101 |
| Date | 01 March 1989 |
| Author | Immanuel Wallerstein |
| Published date | 01 March 1989 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The
Myrdal
Legacy:
Racism
and
Underdevelopment
as
Dilemmas
IMMANUEL
WALLERSTEIN
Wallerstein,
I.
The
Myrdal
Legacy:
Racism
and
Underdevelopment
as
Dilemmas.
Cooperation
and
Conflict,
XXIV,
1989,
1-18.
The
legacy
of
Gunnar
Myrdal
is
in
his
having
posed
in
very
important
ways
two
central
questions:
the
explanations
of,
and
practical
solutions
for,
racism
and
under-
development ;
the
relationship
between
the
scientist
and
his
valuations
and
the
objects
of
scientific
enquiry.
It
is
argued
here
that
racism
and
underdevelopment
are
consti-
tutive
of
the
capitalist
world-economy
as
an
historical
system,
and
are
not
curable
maladies
within
the
system.
It
is
further
argued
that
social
scientific
theorizing
is
going
through
a
great
sea-change
at
present,
along
with
the
theory
of
physical
science
which
is
in
the
process
of
rejecting
its
previous
Newtonian
premises.
Myrdal’s
views
are
as
pertinent
as
ever.
&dquo;Ignorance
is
seldom
random
but
instead
highly
opportunistic. &dquo;
(Gunnar
Myrdal
1957:
123)
1.
INTRODUCTION
The
Myrdal
legacy
is
the
set
of
Myrdal
questions,
not
the
set
of
Myrdal
answers.
Answers
to
questions
abound
in
the
his-
torical
social
sciences,
but
few
worry
about
which
questions
to
ask.
Myrdal
said
so
himself.
Theory,
he
asserted,
is
&dquo;no
more
than
a
correlated
set
of
questions
to
the
social
reality
under
study&dquo;
(1968:25).
Gunnar
Myrdal
spent
a
large
part
of
his
intellectual
life
doing
research
on,
devel-
oping
theory
about,
and
offering
practical
solutions
for
two
enormously
big
parts
of
contemporary
social
reality,
racism
and
underdevelopment.
He
studied
racism
in
the
specific
context
of
United
States
history,
and
he
entitled
his
book
An
American
Dilemma.
But
of
course
we
know
that
racism
is
not
an
exclusively
United
States
dilemma;
it
is
a
dilemma
of
our
world-system.
I
do
not
know
if
Myrdal
believed,
when
he
turned
his
attention
after
World
War
II
to
the
problem
of
the
economic
development
of
so-called
underdeveloped
countries,
that
he
was
moving
to
another,
different
arena
of
pub-
lic
policy.
I
in
any
case
do
not
think
he
was.
I
believe
rather
that
racism
and
underdevelopment
constitute
in
fact
but
a
single
dilemma.
The
dictionary
definition
of
dilemma
insists
that
it
involves
an
obligatory
choice
between
equally
unpleasant
alternatives.
I
am
not
sure
Myrdal
intended
to
convey
the
connotation
of
equally
unpleasant
alternatives.
He
probably
was
using
the
term
in
the
looser,
more
popular
sense
of
a
situation
in
which
the
actor
is
under
contradictory
pressures
but
for
which
a
political
solution
exists,
involving
a
dif-
ficult
but
not
impossible
choice.
I
think
the
belief in
the
existence of
middle-run
political
solutions
to
knotty
social
prob-
lems
was
central
to
Myrdal’s
ethos.
For
example,
he
closes
The
American
Dilemma
with
this
peroration:
The
rationalism
and
moralism
which
is
the
driving
force
behind
social
study,
whether
we
admit
it
or
not,
is
the
faith
that
insti-
tutions
can
be
improved
and
strengthened
and
that
people
are
good
enough
to
live
a
2
happier
life.
With
all
we
know
today,
there
should
be
the
possibility
to
build
a
nation
and
a
world
where
people’s
great
pro-
pensities
for
sympathy
and
cooperation
would
not
be
so
thwarted.
To
find
the
practical
formulas
for
this
never-ending
reconstruction
of
society
is
the
supreme
task
of
social
science.
The
world
catastrophe
places
tremendous
dif-
ficulties
in
our
way
and
may
shake
our
confidence
to
the
depths.
Yet
we
have
today
in
social
science
a
greater
trust
in
the
im-
provability
of
man
and
society
than
we
have
ever
had
since
the
Enlightenment
(1944:
1024).
Myrdal
did
not
limit
himself
to
doing
the
research
that
might
lead
to
these
&dquo;practical
formulas&dquo;.
He
also
purported,
in
all
of
his
work,
to
address
himself
to
the
still
broader
issue
of
the
theoretical
and
methodological
implications
of
what
he
saw
as
the
necessary
relationship
between
the
scientist
and
the
objects
of
scientific
enquiry.
He
called
this
the
issue
of
&dquo;value
in
social
theory&dquo;
or
&dquo;objectivity
in
social
research&dquo;,
the
titles
of
two
of
his
books
(1958,
1969)
and
the
subject
as
well
of
appendices,
or
special
chapters,
in
almost
all
the
others.
Myrdal
strongly
rejected
the
two
major
formulae
for
elim-
inating
so-called
bias
in
social
science.
He
said
that
biases
can
be
erased
neither
&dquo;simply
by
’keeping
to
the
facts’
and
by
refined
methods
of
statistical
treatment
of
the
data&dquo;
nor
by
&dquo;the
scientists’
stopping
short of
drawing
practical
conclusions&dquo;
(1944:1041).
Quite
the
contrary:
Social
science
is
essentially
a
&dquo;political&dquo;
science;
...
practical
conclusions
should
not
be
avoided,
but
rather
be
considered
as
a
main
task
in
social
research;
...
explicit
value
premises
should
be
found
and
stated;
...
by
this
technique,
we
can
expect
both
to
mitigate
biases
and
to
lay
a
rational
basis
for
the
statement
of
the
theoretical
prob-
lems
and
the
practical
conclusions
(1944:
1045).
Furthermore,
for
Myrdal,
not
only
is
it
a
positive
thing
to
assert
explicit
value
premises,
but
it
is
a
seriously
negative
thing
to
fail
to
do
so:
The
practice
of
expressing
political
atti-
tudes
only
through
the
medium
of
pur-
portedly
objective
arguments
and
scientific
theories
is
probably
in
the
long
run
highly
injurious
to
the
actual
policy
that
one
wishes
to
support.
Quasi-scientific
ration-
alization
of
a
political
endeavour
may
be
an
effective
propaganda
weapon;
yet
its
effect
at
the
crucial
time,
when
the
ideal
has
acquired
enough
political
backing
to
be
transformed
into
practical
action,
is
in
a
democratic
setting
almost
always
inhibitory
and
disintegrating.
I
make
an
exception
for
completely
conservative
strivings
which
seek
nothing
more
than
the
preservation
of
the
status
quo;
from
such
a
political
standpoint
doctrinaire
thinking
may
be
less
dangerous
(1954:xii).
Well,
what
value
premises
then?
Myr-
dal
is
quite
clear
on
his
own
premises:
&dquo;the
desirability
of
political
democracy
and
of
equality
of
opportunity&dquo;
(1957:vii).
I
am
perfectly
happy
to
make
these
prem-
ises
mine
and
to
take
the
discussion
from
there.
And
what
then
are
the
dilemmas?
And
whose
dilemmas
are
they?
It
is
clear
what
is
the
thrust
of
Myrdal’s
position.
On
the
one
hand,
persons,
nations,
per-
haps
the
entire
world-system
make
valu-
ations
-
a
word
on
which
Myrdal
insists
-
concerning
what
he
calls
the
&dquo;general
plane&dquo;.
The
so-called
&dquo;Ameri-
can
Creed&dquo;,
a
centerpiece
of
his
analy-
sis
of
the
United
States,
is
one
such
set
of
valuations
on
the
general
plane.
However,
Myrdal
also
tells
us
that
the
American
Creed
is
a
&dquo;humanistic
lib-
eralism
developing
out
of
the
epoch
of
Enlightenment&dquo;
(1944:8).
It
thus
seems
clear
that
the
humanistic
liberalism
to
which
he
is
referring
is
far
more
widely
held
than
only
in
the
US.
Europe
too
has
been
heir
to
the
Enlightenment,
and
so
today
is
much
of
the
rest
of
the
world.
That
is,
Myrdal
was
implicitly
saying
that
his
own
value
premises
-
&dquo;the
desirability
of
political
democracy
and
of
equality
of
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