DEZVOLTAREA CAPITALISTĂ CA INEVITABILITATE ISTORICĂ ÎN ROMÂNIA. C. DOBROGEANU-GHEREA (I)

The paper aims to point out the contribution of C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea’s theory of capitalist development to the structuring of critical thinking and to establishing Marxism as an intellectual tool and a methodology for the analysis of backwardness. Its assumption is the founding role of Gherea’s theory of capitalist development in backward countries in the conceptualization of modernization based on the principle of diversity of social history and on the critique of uniformity. As such, Gherea’s theory is presented as a form of revisited Marxism in its criticism of the non-organic transformations in the body of society, in its thesis of the historical inevitability of capitalist development in Romania, in its analysis of social change in the underdeveloped countries and of the validity of Marx’s “inexorable law of history“ at the level of global social system. As well, the paper presents Gherea’s theory of neo-serfdom and “political industry of oligarchy,“ the “peasant question“ and the failure of the capitalist transformation of agriculture in Romania, the problem of distorted capitalism and true Western capitalism. It also specifies the implications of Gherea’s theory on the Romanian modernization sociology of Marxist-inspired of the first part of the 20th century – variants of “uniform modernization“.