Universitatea Bucuresti

Facultatea de Stiinte Politice

Greater Romania : Politics, Economics and

Society

Neoliberal and Social Democratic

Theories of Development

– The Zeletin - Voinea Debate –

Realizat de:
Ivanov Alexandra
Simionescu Diana
Stefu Ruxandra
1. Introduction to Politics in Greater Romania
The influence World War I had over Romania shows in the
transformations it suffered, demographically, socially, territorially, and
consequently, in the sphere of politics. The general context of political
instability between 1918 and 1930 is demonstrated by the frequent
changes of government, the division of parties, and the leap political
personalities made from one party to another.

The reforms taken hastily on account of the war or the country’s

prominent expansion set back the political parties from becoming
national after the unification in 1918. Thus, “the achievement of
national territorial unity in the absence of national parties destabilized
rather than stabilized Romania’s political system”1, as Paul Shapiro
mentions, while observing that after the war, all parties claiming to be
“national”, actually remained regional in outlook.

After the war and the demise of the Conservative Party, drawing
support from the landowning class, the National Liberal Party,
perceived as the party that negotiated the return of Bukovina, Banat
and Transylvania, became the most prestigious, oldest and strongest
interwar party and thus managed to dominate Romanian politics.
Pursuing most of the same ideals since 1848, the Liberals, with their
“through ourselves alone” motto, advertised state-led industrialization,
an economic program from which mostly their affiliated industrialists
and financiers benefited, but also a nationalism more moderate and
conservative that the radical version promoted by the younger
generation.

During the 21 years of peace, the Liberals were the only party to
end its government corresponding time (1922-1926; 1933-1937), and
managed to achieve their highest successes through the Ion I. C.
Bratianu government (1922-1926), which solved most organizational

1
Paul A. Shapiro, Romania’s Past as Challenge for the Future: A Developmental
Approach to Interwar Politics, in Romania in the 1980s, ed. Daniel N. Nelson
(Boulder, Colo.:Westview, 1981), p.21.
problems of the newly formed state, of the unification of the four
regions, both administrative and legislative. It is also remembered as a
time of economic recovery and reform enforcement, concluded with
the Constitution from 1923, concentrated on unification, centralization
and nationalization issues.

However, the 1920s Liberal program faced criticism, mostly from

the new provinces and the minorities. As argued by some historians,
“the acts of unification and centralization were to the advantage of the
Old Kingdom as against the provinces, of the Rumanians as against
the minorities, and of the Liberal party as against all comers”2.
Consequently, the opposition, constituted in the other historical party,
the Social Democrat Party, divided in several organizations, later
reorganized(in 1927) and cooperating with movements from other
parties such as the Peasant parties, finally taking shape as the National
Peasant Party, won the elections in December 1928, with an
overwhelming majority. In spite of its much more democratic ideology,
and thoughts of sustained development, the party failed to manage
the economic crisis from 1929-1930 and to find popular and effective
solutions in order to maintain the country’s relative prosperity. The
start of the descend was marked also by the return of King Carol to the
throne on June 6th, 1930, who gradually widened his authority until he
reached dictatorial powers (1938-1940), thus creating the perfect path
towards fascist and authoritarian government.

2. Theories of development
Contemporary debates concerning various theories of
development have identified, as Daniel Chirot briefly mentions in his
article, three issues worth pursuing.

The most theoretical of all consists in the main perspective on

the history of economy and of societies in general, as it refers to the
existence of similar stages of development through which societies
pass. It is a search of patterns and analogies between different
evolution moments, eras or strategies.

2
Henry Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1951), p.118.
 The more practical inquiry is about the most suitable
economic strategy applicable for developing countries, about
choosing between open and closed strategies, between free trade and
neo-mercantile denial.
The last concern, presenting no longer much contemporary
interest, is the question whether or not democratic government can
work in developing societies.

On account of the various struggles Romania faces in the 1920s,

it is remarkable how some intellectuals engaged in controversies that
continue to be debated 50 years later, among scholars, politicians and
intellectuals throughout the world.
Stefan Zeletin (1882 - 1934), member of the Peoples’ Party
during the interwar period, is the one to theorize the basis of Romanian
sociology, as the most significant bourgeois sociologist of the time. His
main struggle is to prove that the future of the country in “neoliberal”,
constituted not through the socialist party, but through the “Romanian
oligarchy”. Thus, his major work, Burghezia română, originea şi rolul ei
istoric. The main thesis identified in Zeletin’s book is that in the 1920s
Romania there was an urging need of objective development towards
the industrial civilization, seen as a society of neoliberalism. In order to
prove his idea, with arguments based on his reading of Marx, the
author produces his own sociological theory, which argued that in all
states there are fixed stages of national development. Also, he claims
that since democracy would only put off the capitalist oligarchy
leading the country into modernity, there is an urging need for
economic closure.

Serban Voinea (1893 - 1969), member of the Social Democrat

Party during the interwar period, as a follower of Constantin
Dobrogeanu Gherea, represents the socialist criticism of Zeletin’s
neoliberalism. However, he does not so much propose his own theory
concerning Romania’s prospects for the future, as he rejects Zeletin’s
arguments, while ridiculing the oligarchic bourgeois interpretation of
socialist sociology. His major work, Marxism Oligarhic, proves his point
by underlining the differences between the stages of evolution
between the western and eastern capitalism, and thus rejecting every
theory of universal stages of development. Voinea also sustains the
genuine pluralist democracy in developing Romania, as it is thought to
be supported by the creative role of an open economy.

Stages of development
When discussing the controversies about Romania's prospects in
the 1920s, we firstly ought to observe whether there is a resemblance
between different developing steps that all societies must take in order
to move forward from agrarian to a huge economical change, based on
industry and if these developing steps walk hand in hand. It is of high
relevance to conclude whether there are so called "fixed stages" in the
development of every society through its way to modernization.

While graphically representing the "fixed stages", Daniel Chirot

questions if every single society must take these steps in its process of
modernization.

According to this theory,

in all societies there are
stages of development in
which societies move from A
to B, B to C, and so on. All
societies must go through all
these stages once they begin
the process of modernization.
Of course even the strictest
follower of the uniform
evolutionary theory recognizes that the world changes, and that
societies going through stage A at times 2 or 3, are different from the
ones going through the same stage, at a different time (1), but
basically, the similarities between stage A, as experienced by society I,
and as experienced by society II, are more important than the different
aspects f experiencing the same stage at different times.

However, followers of such theories acknowledge that time

frames are not uniform, and that, as different societies move forward
in different periods of time, they are likely to move from one stage to
another more quickly, and by the acceleration of the process, societies
advance more rapidly than they might have done in the past.
 Although we can rely on obvious proofs that there are differences
in the processes of development, the existence of uniform stages is not
to be denied.

It is fair to mention Walt Rostow3 as an adept of this idea. As he

sustains, on economic grounds, the stages societies go through can be
divided into:
-traditional societies
-the preconditions for take-off
-the take-off
-drive to maturity
-the age of high mass consumption
1.Pre-Newtonian science and technology characterizes the
TRADITIONAL SOCIETY, in which Newton is pictured as capable of
productive manipulation. A traditional society is based on technical
innovations, industry and agriculture.

2.PRECONDITIONS FOR THE TAKE-OFF. Refer to societies in

process of transition. This kind of society, according to Walt Rostow,
includes the beginning of modern science.

3.We can associate the TAKE-OFF with economic progress and

modernization and political business high order.

4.In the DRIVE TO MATURITY we focus not only on the growing

economy but also on the extent of modern technology, the
improvement of technique, and acceleration of new industries.

5.After the maturing of the societies in the 20th century, people

relied on mature economy, and in this stage of maturity (THE AGE OF
HIGH-MASS COSUMPTION) societies start their political process.

Important stages of development require elasticity of demand

because of the desire of rapid growth. In different periods of time the
development process varies greatly from one society to another, and
from one sector to another. It is very probable for one society to
develop faster agriculturally, while another flourishes through its
industry. Based on each society’s main resource, Rostow examined a

3
Contemporary economic historian and promoter of linear stages theory of economic development.
chain of strategic choices.

Uniformitarian theory has deep roots in some social

philosophers as Saint-Simon, Compte, Spencer, and Marx. The last one
found historical epochs among the birth of humanity on its way to
modernization. He mentioned four different stages:
-agrarian
-feudal
-industrial
-capitalist
According to him, except for the agrarian society, all have an
oppressor and an oppressed group. Marx predicted that when the
working class will finally be aware of its exploitation it will opt for a
socialist society and revolt against the capitalists.

On the contrary, there is the theory of no FIXED STAGES on each

society’s way to modernization, at least in the domain of industrial and
social changes. The Western view on modernization is uniformitarian.
However, Max Weber and his disciples Reinhard Bendix and Guenther
Roth share some kind of skepticism on these strict evolutionary laws.

In opposition to the “fixed stages” theory, there are Charles

Maurras, through his “Action Francaise” , the Slavophil with “Russian
soul”, and Mihai Eminescu with some political articles. They all share
the idea that modernization, foreigners and industry are bad, whereas
the only good remaining things are the land, the soil and the past
(customs).

In Romania, Stefan Zeletin is one of the defenders of the theory

that “fixed stages” do exist. From his point of view, in order for
Romania to be led into modernization, its democracy would have to
step backward and temporary be substituted by capitalist oligarchy. In
his debates, Zeletin underlined some oppositions:
-reactionary elements opposed to progress
-the masses ( there was a struggle between masses
organized by the Peasant party and those organized by the socialists)
In their way to obstruct the capitalist oligarchy, the peasants
were in fact fighting for progress, their demands consisted in bigger
wages and protection. This aspect was thought to be the failure of
industrialization.
Trying to argue Zeletin, Voinea completely disagrees his
interpretation. His argument on the theory he sustained was the major
work of Constantin Dobrogeanu Gherea, Neiobagia(Bucharest, 1910).
He had strong other arguments as his own interpretation.

Although there are more than 50 years since, the debate

between these 2 major figures is still of relevance.

In the 20 century Romania was the best example of a

peripheral society, with no way out from the modern capitalist world
and both analysts were aware of the issue that this will represent in
their country’s future.

Zeletin, Voinea, just as Dobrogeanu Gherea went ahead of

Immanuel Wallerstein with the issue of uniformitarian evolution. In
Burghezia Romana we find such an example.

Zeletin’s stages of development in Romania correspond to the

stages of capitalist development in Europe. In accordance, the first
stage, the invasion of foreigners groups corresponds to the “usurious
capitalism” in England in the 13th century.

Zeletin underlined two sources of opposition to capitalist

development:
-reactionaries ( junimists )
-socialist and popular peasants.
As a member of the Liberal Party, Zeletin’s work could not be
put in use after 1944. However, positions similar to Zeletin’s on the
issue of fixed stages in the development of states still survive in some
backward societies. On the other hand Voinea has gained important
points having Gherea as an ally and assuming most of his version of
Romanian history.

Strategies
All development processes are based on certain strategies,
presenting huge influence in final outcomes. Thus, the importance of
economic strategies when discussing Romania’s prospects in the
1920s.
 According to Paul Samuelson4, most contemporary analysts
agreed on David Ricardo’s theory presenting the advantages of
maintaining an open economy. The positive aspects he takes into
consideration are : the ability to make trade mutually profitable in a
more efficient way, the possibilities to reach and use modern
technologies, the stimulation of economic growth by facilitating access
to exterior capital, and the contributions more advanced societies
bring throughout modernizing processes.

However, problems concerning the gap created between the

advanced and the backward economies remain to be solved. This is
the basis on which thinkers such as Friedrich List sustains that for a
backward society to develop its industry, it must protect against the
far more efficiently produced items from advanced economies, which
would maintain their advantages, while backward ones remain
dependent. Though he stands against free-trade doctrines, List does
not defend protectionism (closure) and was therefore considered weak
in his thesis by those with more radical approaches, like the Marxists.

They stand for closed theories of development concluding that

open development is beneficial only for the more advanced economies
by this meaning that rich economies have a greater control on
international trade. The most negative aspect they highlight is the fact
that open economies imply open societies. This is definitely a major
cause of preoccupation because the final result is maintaining what is
ready achieved and not striving to develop own economies.

If backward economies take the choice to remain open the

obvious feedback will be recognized in the slower rate of national
integration and stagnation.

The answer to this issue is still unclear for many of us as the

debate on open vs. closed economies is overwhelming.

Despite this , the general view of the open vs. closed economies
was of great importance to Romania in the late 19th and much of the

4
Samuelson's most famous piece of work, Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947), one of
the grand tomes that helped revive Neoclassical economics and launched the era of the
mathematization of economics.
20th. When speaking about Romania this issue spread its influences in
noneconomic as well as in strictly economic domains.

The first to understand this major issue was Stefan Zeletin and
what was to be called his analysis was a major contribution to
Romanian mentality. His arguments are based on the fact that, to his
mind, closure was necessary for the industry of Romania and in order
to fulfill modernization Romania would have to be transformed in a
closed country. Zeletin encourages own means of production .

Zeletin’s ideas resemble Dudley Seers’ theory based on the fact

that open economies finally end as a big trouble where capital is out of
the country and political pressure is born. Seers goes on in his theory
but this time he classifies closure as the cause of severe problems.
Shortages ,devaluation and inflation are major processes that occur in
this vicious circle. In this way the desire for a reopened economy
appears again. The strategy suggested by Seers has similarities with
the one that Romania adopted despite Zeletin‘s approval.

Zeletin’s theory was just in part accepted by Voinea. He

comments upon the possibility that a bourgeoisie oligarchy could
carry out a program of closure in a very effective way. In his vision
Voinea said that the Romanian bourgeoisie should not be
misinterpreted. Closure was not an answer and it was inefficient on
long term.

Gunnar Myrdal5 ,a modern social democrat comes to support

Voinea’s arguments against Zeletin. He presents striking similarities
between South Asia and Romania and also makes a classification of
the different kinds of states mentioning the hard and soft state.

The Zeletin – Voinea debate on closure still remains a subject of

actuality. The reasons for which this is important are especially
practical ones.”Open economies” have no supporters in the
contemporary societies but oligarchy still exists in many states
5
Karl Gunnar Myrdal (6 December 1898 – 17 May 1987) was a Swedish economist, politician,
and Nobel laureate. In 1974, with Friedrich Hayek, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in
Economic Sciences for pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations
and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and
institutional phenomena.
because are consider to be more suitable in the ruling and modernizing
process. This debate is an appreciated one.

Tribute to Zeletin theory is his ideology that survives in many

backward societies . He was considered an enemy worth being
attacked and despite the fact that the arguments were not so clear
Voinea speculated this wisely.

As Zeletin predicted in his book "Burghezia Romana" ,Romania

approached a new political direction. The author’s theories were not
put in practice and Romanian events that followed gave birth to a
policy of closure.

Democracy
The concept of democracy has lost much of the value it had in
the 1950s, when presented as mandatory in discussing the prospects
of any new nation. By the late 1960s, as Gunnar Myrdal emphases in
his “Challenge of World Poverty” (New York, 1971), in the context of
developing societies, democracy is associated with corruption and
stagnation, as opposed to dynamic economic growth.

While focusing on backward India, Barrington Moore6 observes

that: “The atmosphere of action became a substitute for action. For
the sake of democracy, some sacrifice in speed is necessary.”7, thus
marking both the positive and negative influences of comfortable
democracy, opposite to the brutality of communist modernization.

Considering political orientation of the ruling party, as also

occurred in 1920s’ Rumania, one can identify liberal as well as socialist
types of democracies. While liberal democracy emphases the ability of
the representatives, elected by will of the majority, to exercise power
as subject to the rule of law, socialist thought claims to counteract and
put off all social inefficiencies and injustice, through state regulation
and reformation.

6
Barrington Moore Jr. (12 May 1913 - 16 October 2005) was an American political
sociologist, who put a base to what is today called “comparative-historical analysis” in the
social sciences.
7
Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the
Making of the Modern World, Boston, 1966, p. 407.
 The same ideology separation was identified in the cases of
Zeletin and Voinea, and had high influence on their theories of
development. However, the limited knowledge the 1920s provided led
to many mistaken assumptions.

According to the neoliberal perspective Zeletin presents,

liberalism is the one to refocus state life, from center towards its
periphery, by taking sovereignty from the centralized power and giving
it to the individuals, to the people in general. Consequently, modern
democracy appears as a political expression of the economic
liberalism. Also, he claims that the evolvement of democracy was
subordinated to the rise of bourgeois capitalists, and therefore,
impossible in the short run, as no shape of social life is eternal, though
it also doesn’t disappear before finalizing its historical part. Therefore,
all opposition to the bourgeoisie was anachronistic and antithetical to
progress, since the supremacy of the oligarchy cannot be suppressed
by any political activity and it would dissolve on its own, as step in the
evolution process the society faces. The far-sighted vision Zeletin
actually had still shows in the part democracy yet plays in developing
countries, as such democratic forms still exist in less developed states
like Sri Lanka, India, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Turkey, or Gambia.

As opposed to Zeletin, Voinea presented an even more limited

vision, through his view on democracy, which claimed that all the
country’s problems might be solved if only the workers and peasants
organized socially, in a democratic state, also joining minorities, in
order to control the oligarchy and awaited for the western socialist
revolutions to take place. As Chirot ironically mentions, Voinea was too
sincere a believer in democracy to take into account the more obvious
solution against the corrupt and inefficient oligarchic regime,
comprised in closure and constrained industrial growth.

3. Conclusion – Debate Outcome

The main importance of the debate between Stefan Zeletin
and Serban Voinea is that their conclusions have a great political role.
Even though today we have merely no adepts of open strategy of
development ,several states consider themselves as being capitalist,
nationalist and progressive.

Zeletin - an advocate of the bourgeoisie, of the capitalism and

the revival of the nation through the death of our pastoral past, in
whose ideology Serban Voinea saw a pure enemy, but failed to find
persuasive arguments.

By naming as „oligarchic” the group of political individuals

holding the power in a state, and by dening any connection they might
have with the bourgeoisie, intellectuals of the beginning of the 20th
century only prove their lack of interpretational capacities, and narrow
visions, as neighter did Zeletin nor Voinea manage to clearly observe
that the oligarchy was merely the political shape of the bourgeoisie’s
and ladowners’ interests.

Zeletin, an aknowledged defender of the Liberal Party, which

was in power at the time he wrote most of his work, in spite of his use
of propagandistic and analytic powers, never received the recognition
he expected. Although in the development of his idea, he manages to
capture the core of neoliberalism, with relevance for the contemporary
world just as well, understand the and analize the reactionary aspects
of the romanian culture, while presenting his own perspective on the
marxist view of history, the thesis failed to work in practice.
Eventually, Voinea’s thesis proved to have more validity than Zeletin’s,
as he understood Romanian history better and foresaw its outcome.

In agreement with Daniel Chirot’s opinion, I have come to

conclude that in spite of his elegant, more sophisticated ideology
combination between the uniformitarian theory of development and
neomercantilistic doctrine, Zeletin’s neoliberal hopes for the ruling
oligarchy could never be achieved. Also, in spite of his appealing
political ideology, Voinea wronged in considering social democracy as
the leftist alternative to neoliberalism, when the corresponding regime
was actually communism(a people’s democracy).

All in all, in the light of tragic events that overwhelm all

backward societies (as 1920s Romania), the Romanian debate on the
country’s future prospects and on the issues of development merely
mark out deliberate historical distortions, fanatically appliance of
ideologies, in disregard of any popular wishes and mostly the limited
scope of options contemporary narrow-mindness provided.

Bibliography
Daniel Chirot, Neoliberal and Social Democratic Theories of
Development: The Zeletin-Voinea Debate concerning Romania’s
Prospects in the 1920s and its Contemporary Importance in
Kenneth Jowitt, ed., Social Change in Romania: A Debate on
Development in a European Nation (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1978), pp. 31-52.
Stefan Zeletin, Burghezia română, originea şi rolul ei istoric,
Bucuresti, ed. Humanitas, 1991
Serban Voinea, Marxism oligarhic, Bucuresti, 1926

Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism,

Nation Building & Ethnic Struggle, 1918 – 1930 (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1995), pp.1-48.

Friedich List, The National System of Political Economy, 1841,

http://www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/
Karl Marx, Selected Writings, 2nd edition, David McLellan (ed.),
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000
Paul A. Samuelson, Economics: An Introductory Analysis, 7th ed.,
New York, 1967
*** http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/home.htm

*** http://blds.ids.ac.uk/

*** http://www.econlib.org/