André Gunder Frank: biography of this economist and sociologist

André Gunder Frank was a rather peculiar sociologist and economist, basically due to the fact that contrary to what many of his fellow neoliberals at the University of Chicago thought, he tended towards neo-Marxism.

Born German, raised American, matured as a Latin American and died in Luxembourg, his life is that of a person in constant movement, in contact with different socioeconomic realities and critical of how the developed countries prevented the underdeveloped advance.

Next we will delve into the life of this researcher and We will see his thoughts and works through this biography of André Gunder Frank.

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Brief biography of André Gunder Frank

André Gunder Frank's life was spent in a lot of countries. Born in Germany, emigrated and raised in the United States, his identity and thought would be shaped by traveling again, this time in Latin American countries. As an economist and sociologist that he was, he developed a world-renowned theory, his dependency theory.

, which served to explain why the less developed countries of his time failed to progress economically.

Gunder Frank's thought belongs to the neo-Marxist current of economic sciences and, in fact, he considered himself a radical economist. It is not surprising since there are not a few economists, both of his time and today, who do not see the world beyond their neoliberal logic. Gunder Frank's writings were not very well received among American economists, but they were Latin America in the 1960s, coinciding with the years in which this economist lived in South America.

early years

André Gunder Frank was born in Berlin, then the Weimar Republic, on February 24, 1929.. His youth was troubled as he witnessed the rise of Nazism, which forced his family to travel to Switzerland and establish his new residence there. With the outbreak of World War II, his family left Europe, moving to the United States. It would be in this new country where the young André would attend his secondary studies.

With the passing of the years, it was time to choose a university degree, choosing economics and entering the University of Chicago.. In 1957 he would obtain his doctorate at that institution, presenting an excellent thesis in which he delves into agriculture in the Soviet Union, bringing out his thoughts on the matter economic.

At that time, the University of Chicago was one of the most important centers in the field of economy as a science and, in fact, the appearance of a group of thinkers neoliberals. Curiously, Frank, with neo-Marxist ideas totally contrary to those of that group, would hold debates with them and further reaffirm his ideas.

Intellectual maturity and years in Latin America

At the end of his studies, André Gunder Frank decided to travel to Latin America to witness first-hand what was happening there. He traveled and lived in various Latin nations, including Brazil, Mexico, and Chile. Gunder Frank was impressed by the economic, social and political reality of these states and became actively involved in left-wing movements in the region.

Of all the Latin countries that he visited, Chile was the one that marked him the most. He would settle in that nation in 1967 and had frequent meetings with Chilean academic circles. In fact, his wife Marta Fuentes was Chilean, something that made it easier for André Gunder Frank to join the intellectual life of the South American country.

Being in those countries Frank He shared his Marxist theses from the North American intellectual scene with leftist movements. In addition, he warned them of the dangers of neoliberal thought that was gaining strength, especially at his alma mater, the University of Chicago, especially at the hands of Milton Friedman.

Last years

In the same way that his life practically began with a forced march, his family having fled from the Nazis, when André Gunder Frank and his wife Marta Fuentes were already in their early years, they had to flee from Chili. The reason for this was the rise of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who in 1973 carried out a coup and overthrew the left-wing parties that ruled at that time.

Gunder Frank fled to the United States, although this country would not exactly be a welcoming place. The American government did not treat Gunder Frank with courtesy because he had renounced his American nationality and he had regained his German birth, in addition to the fact that so many years living in Latin America made him feel more from there than from the United States.

For this reason, he decided to travel again to countries that were kinder to him and his way of thinking, including Canada and the Netherlands, although without ceasing to feel Latin American. That identity still connected him to Latin America, and at the same time it filled him with deep sadness to see how those countries that until recently had been a true environment in favor of free thought and the defense of Marxist and social theses was becoming a continent full of dictatorships military.

But in addition to this, he had to experience the death of his wife, a fact that would fill him with grief that would not leave him until the day of his death. After this he decided to live in Canada for a while and, when Bill Clinton won the presidency of the United States, André Gunder Frank was able to return to that country, allowing him to work there. But his last days were not spent in the US, but in Europe, although instead of living in his native Germany, he preferred to go to Luxembourg. It would be there where he would die at the age of 76 on April 23, 2005, after having been fighting cancer for 12 years.

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dependency theory

One of André Gunder Frank's major theoretical contributions is his dependency theory. The background of this theory dates back to the 40s, when the Argentine Raúl Prebisch began to spread the idea about the differences in development between the center and the periphery.. However, it would be in Santiago de Chile where this debate would acquire more force and the place where Gunder would hear about these ideas.

The basic idea of ​​this dependency theory is that the world economy always ends up harming the least developed countries. In fact, to make this idea more understandable, his authors used the terms "center" and "periphery", which are not are more than euphemisms to say Western and white countries and non-Western and/or non-Western countries. whites. The periphery, which is not developed, has to fulfill the role of supplier of raw materials, while industrialization and benefits go to the center.

These ideas would be taken up by Frank himself and other authors, such as Ruy Mauro Marini, developing them in greater depth. Specifically, Gunder Frank argued that underdevelopment was not a consequence of the survival of archaic institutions in less developed countries, nor the lack of capital in the regions that have kept away from the movements economic. In reality, underdevelopment has been and is generated by the same historical process that has generated the economic development of capitalism.

From the same point of view as Gunder Frank, world trade has mechanisms that prevent countries peripheral countries to improve and develop, keeping them in a poverty that already pays off for the countries of the center. Among these mechanisms we can highlight that the global market only allows the periphery to act as exporters of raw materials or as consumers of already manufactured products. They are not allowed to make their own manufactures.

Besides, the core countries have monopolized all technical and technological development, increasing the prices of the products since they have that if they want to possess they have to ask for travel from those countries to the peripheral ones, causing the price to increase since it has to go to more far. Even though there is a better situation in the peripheral economy, the market ensures that, due to the difference in prices, imports increase and exports stagnate.

Repercussions of your ideas

The ideas of Gunder Frank and the other ideological supporters were not simply a theoretical model. Several Latin American nations began to put into practice some maneuvers inspired by Gunder's Marxist theses to avoid stagnating in underdevelopment that the core nations were trying to condemn them.

In them he highlights the application of trade protectionism, with the imposition of tariffs and controls on foreign products. In addition, a powerful industrial structure was built that provided manufacturing capacity for different products to the countries that previously imported them. Another of the strategies applied by the Latin nations was to overvalue the currency, which made buying something cheaper.

However, although these strategies worked for a while, especially in the 1970s, in the end the pressure of the central countries using the external debt that the peripheral countries had always had made it necessary to change the strategy.

world system theory

Another of André Gunder Frank's contributions was his theory of the world system. It is a work in which addresses both economic and historical aspects from a naturally Marxist perspective and makes an important analysis of social and political relations throughout history. In it he talks about what he calls the "world-system" and, according to Frank, at first this system had as its main command China, economic center for centuries, but the discovery of America and its riches made Europe take the relief.

As a curiosity, Gunder considered that it was a matter of time before the center returned to Asia, something that he somehow predicted quite well. Today China, Japan and India have become powerful economies in Asia, along with South Korea. In fact, several economists point out that if Korea is reunited one day, the economic power of Asia will be such that the world economic system will change very drastically.

About the lumpen bourgeoisie

Another of André Gunder Frank's interesting ideas is about how America was installed in capitalism since the 16th century, practically since it was discovered by Europeans. The continent worked with a lumpenburger system (from the German “lumpen”, “beggar”), a concept invented by him. This idea refers to the context of Latin American colonial and neocolonial elites, which became very dependent on colonial power and is related to how the upper class in these countries has little class consciousness and supports their colonial masters

Bibliographic references:

• Kay, Christopher. (2006) André Gunder Frank (1929-2005): pioneer of the theory of dependency and globalization, Mexican Journal of Sociology, 68, 1, 181-190.
• Mintz, Sydney (2007). André Gunder Frank (1929–2005)". American Anthropologist. 109 (1): 232–234. doi: 10.1525/aa.2007.109.1.232.