Business: Brandt Sounds the Tocsin

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The most significant shortcoming in the Brandt commission treatment of North-South relations, however, is its limited attention paid to the role of the private sector. The report looks to government rather than to individual initiative to solve the problems of development. The study calls the establishment of "efficient planning" one of the most important tasks of poor countries and urges taxes on capital gains.

Thus while the commission would build up the new class of bureaucrats, it virtually ignores the crucial need for an entrepreneurial class. Yet the past decade's development success stories in Brazil, Hong Kong, South Korea, the Ivory Coast and many other advanced developing nations have shown the importance of private sector initiative and profits in motivating economic takeoff.

Unlike many studies of North-South problems, the report does not try to win support for Third World development on the basis of charity or the "white man's burden." The Brandt commission argues strict mutual interest. The economic travails of the past decade have shown the interdependence of nations. Stagnation in the developing world results in reduced imports of machinery and food from the industrialized countries. Slow growth in the North likewise can be devastating for economies in the South. Says the report: "The world economy is now functioning so badly that it damages both the immediate and the longer-run interests of all nations. The search for solutions is not an act of benevolence but a condition of mutual survival." Both peace and continued prosperity in the industrialized nations will depend on success in developing the Third World.