Lensing Paul Baran's Contribution to the Developmental Economy of Growth

The work is based on Paul Baran's Political Economy of Growth. It is one of the most influential studies ever written in the field of development economics, by an American Marxist in the year 1957. It then brought a whole school of followers who are producing further works along the lines indicated by Baran. Concerned with the generation and the use of the economic surplus, it analyzes from the point of view of both the advanced and underdeveloped countries. It is a work on political economy rather than a purely economic one. Baran deals here with the complexities of the present day imperialist relations in the backward areas and the mechanism regulating decadent monopoly capitalism in the advanced countries. The inferential contrast between the growth of the capitalism in its early "competitive" stages and its current stagnation in both the advanced countries and the backward areas is powerful. Baran stresses the need for net investment (the capitalizing of surplus value). Baran states that professors, politicians, business tycoons, and Wall Street economists- no one can escape to recognize the shadows of capitalism. Capitalism is the cause and continuer of the backwardness of most of the world not 'shortage of capital' or lack of entrepreneurial talent', or over population of the colonial world. Turning to the backward areas of the world Baran shows how the systematic export of their economic surplus to the advanced areas of the world contributed to the rapid accumulation in the West and resulted in the so -called 'underdevelopment' in the rest of the globe. A critical lens of his work and comparative analysis of his some other creations are also included here within. A part of the work would also attempt to locate the work of Paul Baran in comparison to other developmental theorist in the parallel trajectories including Fernando Cardzo, Celso Furtado, Theonitio Dos Santos, Ander Gunder Frank and Wallerstien etc. The American Marxist tradition is thoroughly scanned and an attempt to have substantive reflection on the functional mechanism of the Dependency theory is undertaken.