the underdeveloped ones. Also, this contact was between
societies at different levels of development and between
two qualitatively different modes of production.?

(2) This contact more or less arrested and disrupted the self-
contained development-based on their internal dynamics-
of the societies of the ‘third world’ and put them on a new
trajectory of underdevelopment.

(3) The relations so established between the DCC and the
‘third world’ have undergone many historical changes and
passed through various phases; formal colonialism was
only one of them.

(4) The development of the DCC and the underdevelopment
of the ‘third world’ are two inter-linked opposites of the
same historical process. They form two parts of a single
system at the present time (the world capitalist system)
each part teing as much the cause as the effect of the
other.

(5) That the relationship between the DCC and the un-
derdeveloped countries is one of structural - social,
economic and political - dependency. That the nature and
forms of these structures are specific to each country and
society and should be analysed specifically. That formal
independence does not necessarily end this relation.

(6) The system of underdevelopment has its own laws of
motion responsible for its reproduction.

(7) The social and economic development of the ‘third world’
countries requires a complete reorganisation of the socio-
economic and political structures of these societies which
in turn means the overthrow of the existing socio-
economic and political structures which characterise un-
derdevelopment.> In economic terms, this means
reorganisation of externally-oriented economic structures
towards nationally-integrated economic structures.

What we have touched on in these assumptions is admittedly
an extremely complicated and controversial area and certainly can-
not be done justice within the scope of this paper. All the same, it
is necessary to mention these to better appreciate the particular

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