Preface

The question of development finance in underdeveloped countries is ultimately one of the use of the surplus: how can a significant part of that share of national income above a nation's culturally determined subsistence requirements be channeled into investment? In every society an elaborate system of claims on the surplus exists, whether as a material expression of the fealty owed to elders and chiefs in tribal society or the rent, interest, and profits due the owners of capital in capitalist society. These systems of claims are ordinarily so deeply imbedded in the social structure that any effort to redirect the income flows associated with them into socially fruitful investment channels will be severely constrained. Only when the existing claims are eliminated through the revolutionary transformation of society does an opportunity arise for massive redirection of the income flows that compose the surplus into development finance.