higher up the level of social development, the individual is more helpless while the group is not. In undeveloped societies, the individual fends for himself and perhaps for his family and can survive in complete isolation for a considerable time. In a complex and developed society, however, the opposite condition prevails: "Paradoxically, perhaps, the richer the nation, the more apparent is this inability of its average inhabitant to survive unaided and alone" (Heilbroner, n.d., 3).
Heilbroner further points out that this involves a hidden vulnerability in that we can sustain our material existence only insofar as we can maintain the organized cooperation of huge armies of people, and this indeed is what is needed for the continuing existence of our nation at the developmental level we have attained. We are not rich as individuals but as members of a social order that can assure our wealth. Heilbroner thus says we must begin a systematic analysis of economics by considering the functions that the social organization must perform:
1) organize a system to assure the production of sufficient goods and services for the survival of society; and
2) arrange the distribution of the fruits of this production so that more production can occur (Heilbroner, n.d., 3-4).
Development involves more than attaining a level of economic development for both economists and political scientists, then, for each also recognizes the importance of achieving a certain social and political level in order to marshal the forces necessary to create and sustain a market economy. Organski notes that most of the literature on the subject of developed and underdeveloped nations centers on issues of technological and economic change, and he notes that it is assumed that the social and political changes accompanying industrialization are also part of "development." He says it is therefore necessary to be clear about what is meant by national devel...