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This paper will be published in Fall 2005 in Kothari, Uma (Ed.) A Radical History of Development Studies, London: Zed Books: http://zedbooks.co.uk/. It outlines an intellectual history of Development Studies, particularly in Britain, and its interactions with Marxism and neo-liberalism. It provides a critique of the neoliberal ascendancy in the study of international development and describes some challenges facing Marxist analysis of the political economy of capitalism in the South. Bernstein writes: 'Freeing the market to carry out the tasks of economic growth for which it is deemed uniquely suited rapidly degenerated into an extraordinary ambitious, or grandiose, project of social engineering that amounts to establishing bourgeois civilization on a global scale.' (8-9)

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ABSTRACT:
In British universities in the 1960s and 1970s, the institutionalization of Development Studies as a distinct field of teaching and research coincided with the rapid growth of Marxist ideas in the social sciences. This chapter considers aspects of Development Studies and Marxist work over the last 40 years or so, including some intrinsic tensions that each brings to their encounters. I try to identify conditions and issues of intellectual production and its practical applications that may be useful to constructing and pursuing the project of an historical, and critical, sociology of knowledge of Development Studies.

SUGGESTED CITATION:
Henry Bernstein, "Development Studies and the Marxists" (July 16, 2004). Center for Global, International and Regional Studies. Paper CGIRS-2004-8.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgirs/CGIRS-2004-8