Some events and settings stand out as important symbols of a historical period. Versailles, in my opinion, is such a symbol. Constructed at great cost by order of Louis XIV, Versailles symbolizes the isolation of the court of Louis XVI and the insensitivity of Marie Antoinette as expressed in the unforgettable lines: “The poor have no bread? Then let them eat cake.” More recently, in June of 1982, Versailles was the setting for the summit gathering of the heads-of-state of seven major industrialized countries. The response of these “guardians” of the present world order (or disorder) to the cries of the world's poor was an echo of Marie Antoinette: “The poor countries have no foreign exchange? Then let them eat monetarism.”

I could not escape this reflection and this symbolism as I re-read the World Bank Report, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action (1981), and its recent follow-up, Sub-Saharan Africa: Progress Report on Development Prospects and Programs (1983, hereafter Progress Report). Scapegoating the victims seems to be a popular pastime in the drawing rooms of the wealthy. These World Bank reports, supported by country and sectoral studies of many African nations, manifest this same tendency of “blaming the victims.” They are classical expositions of “horse and sparrow economics,” patronizingly instructing the sparrows to improve their techniques so that they might more completely pick out the oats in the horses' droppings. But they are deadly serious, as the geography of hunger and hunger-related deaths again expands.