Freedom from Debt: The Reappropriation of Development through Financial Self-reliance

This important book deals with two issues: the emancipation of the Third World from the debt system and the re-appropriation of development by civil society through financial self-reliance. The author begins by analyzing the failure of 50 years of externally financed development. He shows how the foreign aid system- has had the perverse effect of downplaying the role of domestic savings and creating a chronic economic and technological dependency. It also subverted the political process in many countries by giving birth to a new class which Gelinas calls the aristocracy. He traces the roots of autonomous development based on domestic capital accumulation and highlights the much neglected resource that exists in even the poorest countries: savings. Cx6linas asserts that true international cooperation, defined as external support for an internal dynamic, remains useful and necessary. The issue for the North should not be to give more, but to take less.