Table Of ContentHELPING PEOPLE HELP THEMSELVES
Evolving Values for a Capitalist World
In most of the world today, the issue is not whether or how to embrace
cap i tal ism, but how to make the best of it. The currently dominant capitalist
values include competitive individualism, instrumental rat io nal i ty, and ma te ri al
suc cess. The series explores questions such as: Will these values suffi ce as a
basis for social organizations that can meet human and env i ron men tal needs
in the twenty-fi rst century? What would it mean for capitalist systems to evolve
toward an emphasis on other values, such as cooperation, altruism, res pon si -
bil i ty, and concern for the future?
Titles in the series:
Neva R. Goodwin. Editor. As if the Future Mattered: Translating Social
and Economic Theory into Human Behavior
Severyn T. Bruyn. A Civil Economy: Transforming the Market in the
Twen ty-First Century
Jonathan Harris. Rethinking Sustainability: Power, Knowledge,
and Institutions
Nikos Passas and Neva Goodwin, Editors. It's Legal but It Ain't Right:
Harmful Social Consequences of Legal Industries
David Ellerman. Helping People Help Themselves: From the World Bank
to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance
Helping People
Help Themselves
From the World Bank to an Alternative
Philosophy of Development Assistance
David Ellerman
the university of michigan press
Ann Arbor
First paperback edition 2006
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2005
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
cPrinted on acid-free paper
2009 2008 2007 2006 5 4 3 2
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise,
without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellerman, David P.
Helping people help themselves : from the World Bank to an
alternative philosophy of development assistance / David Ellerman.
p. cm. — (Evolving values for a capitalist world)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-472-11465-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Economic assistance—Developing countries. 2. Economic
development—Social aspects—Developing countries. 3. World
Bank—Developing countries. I. Title. II. Series.
HC60.E433 2004
338.91'09172'4—dc22 2004019094
ISBN 978-0-472-03142-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
To Vlasta,
who taught me
a thing or two about
autonomy-respecting assistance,
and to Joe,
who in many different ways
led to my writing this book.
A Note from the Series Editor
Helping People Help Themselvesis the ‹fth volume in the University of
Michigan Press Evolving Values for a Capitalist World series.The ‹rst
volume, As if the Future Mattered (ed. Goodwin), describes, and pro-
poses constructive responses to, a deep ›aw in the capitalist system,
especially in the United States: that considerations of the future are
external to most market transactions. The second and fourth books in
the series can be seen as a pair. Existing institutions that encourage
capitalist ‹rms to act in consonance with social needs and goals are
described in A Civil Economy (Bruyn); while some of the most antiso-
cial realities of the present system are described in It’s Legal but It Ain’t
Right: Harmful Social Consequences of Legal Industries (ed. Passas and
Goodwin). The third book in the series, Rethinking Sustainability (ed.
Harris), takes up the topics of development and how it can be made
sustainable for the future. These topics are examined in depth in the
present book.
In Helping People Help Themselves, David Ellerman focuses on the
deepest layer of economic life: the cultural values that determine the
institutions that support the economy. In chapter 8, a case study of the
disastrously misdirected efforts to smooth the transition to capitalism
in the former Soviet Union, Ellerman states that his primary purpose is
“to lay the intellectual foundations for an alternative philosophy of
development.” Economic development is about change; Ellerman
starts by inquiring into how change may be fostered on many levels—
the most basic being that of individual learning. The answer is a deep
and simple truth that has been expounded by a number of thinkers
(thoroughly referenced in this book): to be sustainable, change must
come from within those who are changing. It must, therefore, be some-
viii A NOTE FROM THE SERIES EDITOR
thing that they want—not something that the donors (or teachers,
community organizers, therapists, or managers) have told them they
should want.
We in the industrialized world have not, in fact, done very well at
knowing what we actually want—at enunciating acceptable goals for
our own economic development. We have been led astray by economic
simpli‹cations, which have shown how to maximize that quanti‹able
thing—wealth—while ignoring the ‹nal goal—well-being—that
wealth must serve if it is to have human value.
One of the outstanding characteristics of capitalism has been its
inexorable spread. Those countries that have successfully adopted cap-
italism have been vigorous in their attempts to convert others. Unfor-
tunately, economic development, as it has been practiced and
preached for the last ‹fty years, often devolves to transmitting a carica-
ture of capitalism. Standard introductory economics textbooks for high
school or college students lay out a simpli‹ed understanding of the
workings of a market economy. This schematic view is codi‹ed and
reduced even further in the advice given by development organizations
such as the World Bank.
Development assistance, based on an economics in which history
does not exist and human psychology is reduced to the most sel‹sh
motivations, has too often ignored some essential characteristics on
which our own economic system depends. These necessary characteris-
tics include institutions such as legal systems and generally accepted
accounting practices—not to mention the educational, health, and
social service institutions that support the human beings who run the
whole show and for whose bene‹t (theoretically) it is run. A well-func-
tioning capitalist (or any other) economic system also requires cultural
expressions of basic values, such as trust, honesty, and a desire to do a
good job or to make a meaningful contribution.
Ellerman describes how much of what has been done in the name of
development assistance actually destroys essential culture and values
and often fails to support the necessary existing and emerging institu-
tions. He joins a growing chorus in pointing out that efforts to export a
version of capitalism based on simplistic, exported goals have in many
cases not been sustainable. His evidence supports an emerging consen-
sus that failures in this area arise from the relationship between those
who are doing the development and those who are having it done to
them.
A Note from the Series Editor ix
One of Ellerman’s brilliant innovations is the terminology he uses
throughout the book. Insisting on a too-often-ignored reality, that
“development will not yield to social engineering no matter how much
aid is provided” (chap. 10), he refers to those who are developing some
aspects of their own economies as the “doers,” while the aid workers,
policymakers, and others are, at best, “helpers.” This book rests on a
deep theoretic grounding in the standard and nonstandard economics
of capitalism (including management theory), in philosophy, and in
theories of learning and change, for a practical description of how goals
can be better set and met. It examines in detail how the relationship
between doers and helpers might be better carried out, with speci‹c
suggestions such as the use of “parallel experimentation,” movement
“from a global agency to a global network of local agencies,” and
encouragement for developing countries to oppose further indebted-
ness or “addiction” to a kind of aid that enriches a few while further dis-
empowering the rest.
Understanding the reality and the potential of the development
relationship between industrialized and other countries is key to under-
standing capitalism, at its best and its worst. Ellerman not only illumi-
nates many of the values that contribute to more and less successful
forms of capitalism; he also suggests a constructive path along which
some of these values could evolve.
Neva Goodwin
Co-director, Global Development
And Environment Institute,
Tufts University
