Go Away ‘Cause Here Comes Development: Discursive Devices of Marketocracies or Market Democracies

Abstract

This paper analyzes the concept of development and denes it as a discursive device used politically to legitimize the contradictions inherent in an economic system based on the market. The rst part presents the evolution and transformation of the different meanings of development and the different historical moments in which this concept has established itself as a myth that legitimizes the exploitation of certain countries over others and, at a national level, to legitimize abuses of power by political and economic elites against the rural majority. The second part shows, by means of examples, how the opinions of multinationals or large national companies in Colombia are concealed with the justication of development and a set of beliefs that support the system of capitalist production. Finally, the paper presents examples of communities that, by undertaking nonviolent civil resistance processes against forced displacement fostered by armed forces (military, paramilitary and guerrilla), at the same time they face the voracity of the market and its development models.