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Mark T. Berger
Introduction
The end of the Cold War has contributed to the dramatic globalisation of
market economics and electoral democracy. But, the significance of global
capitalism and the substance of the democratic transitions of the past few
years are subjects of considerable debate. Some observers continue to
emphasize that the end of the Cold War represents the triumph of liberalism
and it is only a matter of time before the former Soviet Bloc along with
the rest of the world (led by the 'Newly Industrialised Countries' of East
Asia) arrives at the capitalist prosperity and democratic stability
currently seen to prevail in North America, Western Europe and Japan._
Certainly the end of 'state socialism' in Eastern Europe and the former
USSR has made an important contribution in symbolic and substantive terms
to the demise of socialist development models generally and 'state
socialism' in the 'Third World' more particularly._ At the same time,
although the so-called Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and
Singapore) are at the center of a major economic boom which is lifting them
out their 'Third World' status and shifting the axis of global political
economy to the Pacific Rim, the 'neo-liberal' governments of the rest of
Asia, the former Soviet Bloc, Latin America, Africa and Oceania are not
necessarily guiding their people to consumer capitalism and parliamentary
democracy. Democratic transitions, where they have taken place at all, have
often remained superficial, while neo-liberal economic policies have
stimulated economic growth without necessarily improving the quality of
life for the majority of the population. The acceleration of economic and
political globalisation which attended the end of the Cold War has
contributed more to the resurgence of ethnic and national conflicts than
it has to international peace and stability._ The social formations which
are emerging out of the ferment of Soviet collapse are not characterized
by democratic order and dynamic economic 'development', but by unstable
parliamentary-authoritarian governments, considerable dependence on the
IMF-World Bank and transnational capital, and growing 'ideological' and
even 'cultural' subordination to the United States and Western Europe.
While East Asia may be leaving the 'Third World' much of the former Soviet
Bloc can be said to have (re)joined the 'Third World'._
The rise of East Asia, the demise of the 'Second World' and the onset of
a new era of global capitalism, throws the problems associated with the
continued use of the term 'Third World' into sharp relief. The term (along
with the closely related concepts of 'developing countries', 'less
developed countries', 'underdeveloped countries', 'backward countries'
and the periphery) continues to be a central organizing concept in the
social sciences and the humanities generally, and in development studies
and development policy debates more specifically. In the last few years
a growing number of writers have sought to reinterpret the term the 'Third
World'. For example, Aijaz Ahmad has emphasized that the 'Third World' "does
not come to us as a mere descriptive category". He noted that it "carries
within it contradictory layers of meaning and political purpose"; however,
he still sought to differentiate the theoretical uses and abuses of the
term from its use in "common parlance" to describe "the so-called developing
countries, from Cuba to Saudi Arabia and from China to Chad"._ Marc Williams
has argued that the 'Third World' could undergo a "resurgence" around a
global environmental agenda. He is optimistic that "the movement toward
political pluralism in much of the Third World and the important role played
by NGOS in the environmental debate suggests that a re-vitalised Third World
coalition will reflect a set of priorities which has not been set
exclusively by the political Žlites"._ At the end of 1992 Vicky Randall
noted, in a review of two books which seek to 'rethink' the 'Third World',
that both works continued to "hold back from any explicit or sustained
questioning of the validity of talking about a 'Third World' as such". From
her perspective, however, the time has come to rethink the concept of a
'Third World' and she asks: "(c)an we justify still holding on to the term?"_
In the 1950s the 'Third World' referred to the growing number of non-aligned
nation-states which were reluctant to take sides in the Cold War. It was
increasingly deployed by governments and movements in the 'Third World'
and their sympathizers to generate unity and support in the face of the
political and economic power of the US and a handful of former colonial
powers. During the late 1950s and 1960s the term 'Third World' gained
popular currency as numerous European colonies in Asia and Africa gained
their political independence._ Although the Bandung Conference of 1955 has
come to be regarded as the event which gave birth to the 'Third World',
none of the ways in which the term has subsequently been used are easily
extrapolated from the meeting itself. Many of the governments in attendance
were already politically aligned with one of the two superpowers, most of
them were not seriously committed to an alternate economic route between
capitalism and socialism, no government from Latin America or Oceania
(where decolonization had not yet begun) was in attendance, and the
gathering did not encompass all of the Asian and African governments of
the day._ Following Bandung, 'Third Worldism', as it was articulated by
its main nationalist proponents, such as Nehru and Sukarno, meant that the
governments of the 'Third World' sought, at least rhetorically, to chart
a political and economic path between the liberal capitalism of the 'First
World' and the 'state socialism' of the 'Second World'. By the 1960s 'Third
Worldism' also had its Soviet and Chinese (Maoist) varieties. The former
incorporated those regimes in the 'Third World' which were formally allied
with the USSR and possessed substantial public sectors, despite their
sometimes highly repressive treatment of peasants and workers. This Moscow
oriented 'Third Worldism' sought to establish a broad front between the
'Second World' and the 'Third World' against the 'First World'. The Maoist
variant articulated a Peking oriented 'Third World', in which China was
part of the 'Third World', against the 'First World' of which the USSR was
perceived to be a part._ By the 1960s, many movements and governments in
the 'Third World' had forged an alliance with the New Left in the
industrialised countries of North America, Western Europe and Japan. And
the Vietnam War became exemplary of the wider struggle between US
imperialism and its allies on the one hand and the national liberation
struggles sweeping Latin America, Africa and Asia on the other hand._
At the outset of the Cold War it was widely assumed in US government and
academic circles that poverty facilitated the spread of international
communism._ It was also assumed that modernization would bring an end to
poverty and undercut anti-capitalist revolution. In the 1950s and early
1960s modernization theory perceived a direct causal link between economic
growth, social change and democratization. It also assigned particular
importance to the emerging 'middle classes' which were expected to fulfil
both a restraining and a progressive function. Although it reflected
continuity with the British 'White Man's Burden', the French mission
civilisatrice, and the racism of the emerging US 'imperial state' before
1945, modernization theory was more secular and more systematic._ Like
these earlier approaches modernization theory was committed to a period
of tutelage and focused on the need for cultural transformation in order
for the 'Third World' to achieve modernity. Modernization theory emphasized
the 'totality' of change and saw modernization as a process, often called
'diffusion', which spread throughout a society affecting economics, the
type of government, social structure, values, religion and family
structure. Modernization theorists viewed 'underdevelopment' in the 'Third
World' as the result of internal shortcomings specific to the
'underdeveloped' societies in question. 'Underdevelopment' was seen as a
result of their pre-colonial rather than their colonial history. And
despite detailed and tightly focused scholarship the entire edifice of
post-war modernization theory rested on a homogeneous image of a 'Third
World' destined to follow the North American and Western European path.
By the late 1960s, however, the US led mission to modernize the 'Third World'
and guide it towards liberal capitalist democracy was increasingly
challenged by revolution and economic nationalism ('Third Worldism') in
Latin America, Africa and Asia , and by a concern in North America and
Western Europe with the limits of 'Western' power. Under these
circumstances distinct radical discourses on the 'Third World' emerged (as
part of the rise of, and often committed to, radical 'Third Worldism') to
challenge the dominant academic and policy discourses. Dependency theory
was at the center of the new radicalism. Dependency theory, as it came to
be understood in the 1960s, had developed out of Latin American
'historico-structuralism', which was initially associated with Raul
Prebisch and the United Nations's Economic Commission for Latin America
(ECLA), and out of the North American marxism of Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran._
AndrŽ Gunder Frank, an economist who was educated at the University of
Chicago, emerged in the second half of the 1960s as one of the main conduits
for the entry of dependency theory into North America and Western Europe
and its diffusion around the globe. Walter Rodney was another important
figure whose career and work reflected the linkages between the dependency
debate in the Caribbean and Latin America and nationalist and radical
debates in Africa, at the same time as his overdetermined dependency model
was popularized in North America and Western Europe._ The overwhelming
emphasis on external factors which characterized the dependency approach
in this period and was linked to radical 'Third Worldism', contributed to
a homogenized understanding of the 'Third World' as much as modernization
theory did.
This was readily apparent in Frank's work. While he was clearly influenced
by Baran and the the ECLA theorists, his approach departed from the
reformism of Prebisch and was less historically grounded than the work of
Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Falleto._ Writers like Cardoso, now
Brazilian Finance Minister, were much more concerned with the analysis of
internal historical structures, rather than adopting a deterministic focus
on external factors._ In Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America,
which was published in 1967, Frank outlined the concept of 'the development
of underdevelopment', and articulated a model of historical development,
which directly linked 'underdevelopment' and economic stagnation to the
transfer of an economic surplus from the periphery to the industrialized
core. Following Baran, Frank made a dramatic break with classical marxism
asserting "that it is capitalism, both world and national, which produced
underdevelopment in the past and which still generates underdevelopment
in the present"._ Frank's work rose to particular prominence and his ideas
were produced and reproduced so widely that they emerged in the late 1960s
and early 1970s as the main radical interpretation, at least as it was
understood in North America and Western Europe.
By the second half of the 1970s dependency theory had peaked. Its demise
can be traced to its failure as revolutionary prophecy and the end of the
US war in Southeast Asia. Despite the Communist victory over Washington's
erstwhile Saigon based ally in 1975, by the late 1970s Vietnam represented
a major setback for socialist 'Third Worldism'. From the very beginning
the various types of 'Third Worldism' could not, and in most cases did not,
disguise the centrality of nationalism and national liberation to the
various struggles for social change in the 'Third World'. The wars between
Vietnam, Cambodia and China in the late 1970s were the culmination of years
of tension and fragmentation, and clearly reflected the way in which
nationalism had undermined 'Third Worldism' and socialist internationalism
more generally._ The rise of the 'Newly Industrialized Countries' in Latin
America (Mexico and Brazil) and East Asia, and the rise of OPEC also
contributed to both the fading of dependency theory and the failure of
radical 'Third Worldism'. At the same time, by the late 1970s, an emphasis
on the corruption and authoritarianism of many 'Third World' states,
shifted the blame for 'underdevelopment' back on to the 'Third World'.
Another important factor behind the 'fall' of radical 'Third Worldism' and
dependency theory was that by the mid-1970s the radical challenge had been
partially contained via the political accommodation of radical 'Third
Worldism' by various international organizations, such as the United
Nations and by the theoretical incorporation of important elements of the
dependency approach into the dominant liberal discourses._ The relative
decline of radical 'Third Worldism' and the demise of dependency theory
was followed by the emergence of a number of 'new' radical theoretical
approaches which built on and interact with dependency theory, and
contributed to the diffusion of radical ideas in the 1970s and 1980s.
Although the new radical approaches departed from the determinism
associated with classic dependency theory most of them facilitated the
continued circulation of the idea of a homogeneous 'Third World'.
By the 1970s a marxist dependency synthesis had begun to emerge that linked
historical materialism to the insights of dependency theory, placing
considerable emphasis on state and class structures in the 'periphery'.
Writers in this tradition accepted dependency theory's overall critique
of classical marxism: that is that the potential for independent capitalist
development is constrained by a dependent economic position in the
international economic order. At the same time, however, this tradition
also brings together revisionist arguments which emphasize the relative
potential for dependent capitalist development and the survival of
pre-capitalist modes of production, emphasizing that politics in the 'Third
World' still enjoy a certain degree of freedom from external pressures.
They focus then on local social structures, particularly the character and
degree of class formation, and the concerns and ambitions of different
social groups. Many writers in this tradition emphasize the colonial and
post-colonial state as the location in which the local ruling classes may
initially have taken form, and through which they seek to consolidate their
economic and socio-political dominance. This approach is also concerned
to determine to what degree the post-colonial state reflects the interests
of international capital and/ or local concerns._ But much of this work
has continued to rely implicitly on a homogeneous image of the 'Third World'
and a sharp distinction between industrialized North America, Western
Europe and Japan and the rest of the world.
While the state and class approach, and the 'mode of production' approach,
represented a significant challenge to dependency theory as it emerged in
the late 1960s, the eclipse of classic dependency theory cannot be
understood without reference to the work of Samir Amin and the world-system
theory of Immanuel Wallerstein. Although Amin, an Egyptian economic
historian whose work has focused primarily on Africa, is often located
within the world-system and unequal exchange school, his work as a whole
reflects a synthesis of 'modes of production' and a theory of 'unequal
exchange' with insights drawn from dependency and world-system theory._
While Amin's work was influential by the 1970s, Wallerstein's world-system
theory emerged as the most important single trend in radical social science.
Wallerstein was influenced by dependency theory and by the work of Fernand
Braudel and the Annales 'school'._ As Paul Buhle has suggested,
Wallerstein's first major book on world-system theory, which appeared in
1974, has, quite possibly been "the most influential single book of the
post-New Left era"._ By the time he published the first volume of The Modern
World-System Wallerstein was clearly articulating the view that social
change in the modern world could only be 'understood' within the framework
of the historical evolution of the modern world-system as a whole. And by
the end of the 1980s his central ideas continued to display considerable
continuity._
While changes in the post-war order stimulated the emergence and the
diffusion of radical approaches, modernization theory continued to spread
at the same time as it underwent considerable revision. An early shift was
the rise of 'military modernization' theory and the emergence of a 'politics
of order' approach._ This approach questioned the view that there was a
connection between 'underdevelopment' and instability. Its exponents
argued that it was the attempt to modernize in the 'Third World', rather
than "the absence of modernity", which resulted in political instability.
According to Samuel Huntington, for example, 'Third World' instability had
to be understood as primarily a result of the "gap between aspirations and
expectations", which flowed from the dramatic expansion of "aspirations"
in the initial stages of "modernization". From his perspective the
"traditional polity" was "suffering from the absence of power", and the
"problem" was "not to seize power but to make power, to mobilize groups
into politics and to organize their participation in politics", and this
had to be done from the top down._ This approach emphasized the important
stabilizing role of the military and a strong state._ By the late 1960s
conservative developmentalism had also found a possible source of stability
in 'traditional' political and social institutions._ Some of this work
provided a degree of intellectual legitimacy for 'Third World'
dictatorships._ And much of this work also continued to homogenize the
'Third World' and contribute to the overall efforts to manage economic and
political change in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania.
At the same time a more liberal trend had emerged by the early 1970s which
built on the 'politics of order' approach, but was also influenced by and
incorporated radical perspectives on the 'Third World'. This was part of
the wider shift in the late 1960s and 1970s towards greater influence at
the UN by 'Third World' governments, the call for a New International
Economic Order (NIEO) and the apparent recognition in North America and
Western Europe that the North-South conflict was more important than the
East-West conflict. This liberal managerialism was reformist and
envisioned improving North-South relations without having to make major
structural changes. The shift in the 1970s, from the East-West conflict
and the containment of communism, to the North-South conflict and the
management of revolution, was partially reflected in the policies adopted
by the Carter administration in its first two years in office. Carter, as
well as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as his National Security Advisor,
and a number of other members of the Carter administration, were members
of the Trilateral Commission, which was founded in 1973 by prominent North
American, Western European and Japanese academics, politicians and
corporate heads. According to Brzezinski, one of the organizations
co-founders, the Trilateral Commission saw US relations with Japan and
Western Europe as the "strategic hard core for both global stability and
progress"._ The major goal of the Trilateral Commission was to develop a
cohesive and semi-permanent alliance which embraced the world's major
capitalist governments in order to promote stability and order and protect
their interests._ In the case of the 'Third World', Trilateralism advocated
and sought accommodation rather than confrontation. It sought to encourage
a limited amount of reform in order to maintain long term stability. By
the end of the 1970s the Brandt Commission and its North-South report had
emerged as a major initiative and a key document by which the elites of
the industrial nation-states attempted to to manage the 'Third World'._
At the same time the initiatives associated with the New International
Economic Order (NIEO) and the liberal managerialism embodied by the
Trilateral Commission, the early Carter administration and the Brandt
Report, were under serious challenge by the end of the 1970s from a powerful
'neo-liberal' approach to 'development' associated with the ascendancy in
the early 1980s of 'conservative' governments in North America and Western
Europe. Although the 'conservatism' of the early 1980s dismissed many of
the ideas associated with liberal managerialism and modernization theory,
the ÔconservativeÕ revival still rested on the earlier diffusionist ideas
that North American and Western European economic expansion was primarily
beneficial and that economic growth tended to undermine any need for
policies aimed at the redistribution of wealth. This 'free-market'
counter-revolution emphasized supply-side economics and recommended that
'Third World' governments follow the North American and Western European
lead and privatize public companies, as well as curb the regulation of
prices and wages and economic activity generally._ These 'recommendations'
were backed up by North American and West European power over the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the context of the
new found leverage provided by the Debt Crisis and the international
economic recession of the early 1980s. This situation also weakened the
impact of the United Nations and related organizations such as the
International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP), where 'Third World' views had gained weight in the 1970s. The
central prescription for the 'Third World' that flowed from 'free market'
ideology was that 'underdevelopment' was caused by excessive state
involvement in the economy. However, North American and Western European
assumptions about economic behavior are often irrelevant even in North
America and Western Europe. During the 1980s the mechanical application
of free-market economics to the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America
and Oceania, where markets are still fragmented, information is often
limited and significant aspects of economic exchange are still outside the
money economy, could not be expected to have, and has not had, a beneficial
impact for the majority of the population._
The East Asian 'miracle' provides a particularly good example of the way
in which the 'Third World' has been managed and homogenized over the course
of the Cold War. The dramatic rise of a number of East Asian countries since
World War II has resulted in the growing expectation that we are on the
threshold of the "Pacific Century"._ The 'Newly Industrialised Countries'
of East Asia have undergone profound economic changes and it is very
difficult to continue to evaluate their economies, politics and societies
as part of the 'Third World'._ But rather than seeing the East Asian
'success' as evidence that the 'Third World' is far too homogeneous a
concept, history is ignored and the 'lessons' of East Asian
industrialisation are regularly held out as readily transferable
throughout the rest of the 'Third World'. The East Asian 'miracle' is now
the central theme in a wide range of development literature which has sought
to universalize the 'lessons' from East Asia. A key approach to East Asian
development, as exemplified by the World Bank and the related literature,
has been to point to East Asian success as evidence of the global
applicability of liberal economic policies._ According to one unrepentant
'free trade' advocate "such success as Asia now enjoys is the result of
unremitting hard work, an unquenchable spirit of enterprise, and sound
economic policies"._ The famous novelist and one-time Peruvian
presidential hopeful Mario Vargas Llosa, insists that East Asian 'success'
has demonstrated that liberalism "is the only recipe" for the 'Third
World'._ In the context of the enthusiastic response to the rise of East
Asia there has been a tendency to conflate 'export-oriented'
industrialisation with 'free-trade'; however, aside from Hong Kong, the
governments of the East Asian NICs have played a far more interventionist
and protectionist role in economic development than the liberal economic
development model suggests. Because the central goal of the various East
Asian NICs has been export success, their governments have, among other
things, manipulated interest rates and credit channels, made major
concessions to foreign investors--in the case of Singapore
particularly--and intervened in the labour market to keep workers' wages
below market rates. The importance of state intervention in East Asian
development actually challenges neo-liberalism and has given rise to
considerable literature and debate on East Asian and 'Third World'
development._ However, most of the discussion of the applicability of the
East Asian model to the rest of the 'Third World' has failed to go beyond
the debates over the role of state intervention, the relationship between
economic development and political democracy, and the role of liberal
economic policies. There has been far less work which seeks to address the
'problem' in a way that focuses on the historically specific experience
of East Asia in contrast to other parts of the 'Third World'.
While an historical approach to the rise of East Asia calls into question
prevailing conceptions of a 'Third World', the existence, and even the
expansion, of 'Third World' conditions within the borders of the so-called
'First World' further undermines the notion of a 'Third World'. The
'internal colonialism' which has characterized the history of the United
States and Australia, for example, has consigned native Americans and
Australian aborigines to circumstances which mirror the conditions in which
the rural and urban poor of 'Third World' countries live. Mike Davis's
recent history of Los Angeles seriously qualifies any attempt to view the
US as simply a 'First World' country. For African-Americans and Chicanos,
and recent arrivals from Latin America, life in Southern California is
little different from the urban poverty south of the Rio Grande._ At the
same time countries like South Africa have always presented a particular
problem for anyone attempting to talk about a 'Third World'. In South Africa
the white minority enjoys a standard of living comparable to any other
industrialized country, while the black majority lives in 'Third World'
conditions._ The concept of 'internal colonialism' or related approaches
have also been applied to parts of Latin America in order to highlight the
way in which in a number of countries a Europeanized elite continues to
occupy a position of power and privilege in sharp contrast to the indigenous
inhabitants and/or the descendants of African slaves._
The solution to the problems generated by the concept of the 'Third World'
is not to find a new label, but to dispense with the term. There is already
important work being done which has begun to foreshadow ways of moving
beyond the concept of the 'Third World'. Although this work has,
predictably, had less impact on development economics and development
policy debates, it provides the basis for a theoretically informed
historical perspective on 'development' which is global. While some of this
work has also sought to universalize its conclusions by reference to the
'Third World', there are a growing number of approaches which in different
ways seek to privilege the specific over the systemic, and have emerged
out of important debates in the humanities and the social sciences over
the past decade or so._ Dissatisfaction with the elite-oriented focus of
much of the work on India, for example, has given rise to Subaltern Studies.
Informed by Gramscian, and later post-structural theory, Subaltern
approaches have focused on the peasantry and workers with particular
concern to delineate structures and techniques of domination, strategies
of resistance and the historical particularity and role of culture and
religion._ Their concern to restore the subaltern classes to history, and
provide the intellectual underpinning for a less elite-oriented politics,
intersects with the growing amount of work by historical anthropologists
coming out of the modes of production and world-system debates of the 1970s
and 1980s. These scholars have drawn attention to the way in which the
expanding world economy has neither historically nor currently levelled
'pre-capitalist' structures and discourses to the degree that many of the
earlier theoretical models implied._
In the case of Latin America, for example, the work of Steve J. Stern, which
has grown out of efforts to synthesize a 'modes of production' approach
with Wallerstein's world-system model has resulted in an important attempt
to emphasize both historical particularity and global political economy.
From his perspective the central dynamics of Latin American history since
the colonial era have been the various approaches and popular resistance
strategies of the inhabitants, the interests of mercantile and political
elites whose "centers of gravity" were in the Americas, and the
world-system._ The overall methodological concerns apparent in Stern's
work intersect with the emphasis on the longue durŽe in the work of
Jean-Fran•ois Bayart, which attempts to historicize 'states' in Africa,
rejects the state-society dichotomy and argues that colonial and
post-colonial 'states' should be seen as historically rooted in particular
social formations rather than regarded as alien institutions._ This overall
concern with the strategies of resistance pursued by the peasantry and
subaltern classes, and the historicity of 'states', needs to be meshed with
an approach which breaks down the North-South dichotomy. One of the central
problems with the development discourses is the way they have treated
'development' in the 'developed' world as a problem that has been solved.
There are a growing number of development theorists who emphasize the need
to move beyond North America and Europe as implicit models and address
'development' as a historical and political question that is still common
to all parts of the globe._
Conclusion
_The most well known exponent of this view is probably Francis Fukuyama,
a RAND consultant and former US State Department employee, who suggested
in 1989 that the end of the Cold War might be the "end of history". In a
now famous article he characterized the waning of the conflict between
Washington and Moscow as the "end point of mankind's ideological evolution
and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form
of human government". He emphasized that the liberal "victory" was still
unfinished, and it had occurred mainly "in the realm of ideas or
consciousness". The process was "as yet incomplete in the real or material
world". According to Fukuyama's scenario, much of the 'Third World' is still
"mired in history" and will be "a terrain of conflict for many years to
come". At the same time he was confident that economic and political
liberalism would "govern the material world in the long run". F
Fukuyama,"The End of History?" The National Interest 16 (8), 1989, pp. 3-4,
15. See also F Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1992. Z Brzezinski, The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of
Communism in the Twentieth Century New York: Macmillan, 1990. J Muravchik,
Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America's Destiny Washington: American
Enterprise Institute, 1991. R Nixon, Seize the Moment: America's Challenge
in a One-Superpower World New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. For a variety
of critical views on the end of the Cold War see G Arrighi, "Marxist Century,
American Century: The Making and Remaking of the World Labour Movement"
New Left Review 179, 1990. R Blackburn, "Fin de Siecle: Socialism After
the Crash" New Left Review 185, 1991. These articles are both reprinted
in After the Fall: The Failure of Communism and the Future of Socialism,
R Blackburn (ed), London: Verso, 1991. A Callinicos, The Revenge of History:
Marxism and the Eastern European Revolutions Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.
I Wallerstein, "The Collapse of Liberalism" in Socialist Register 1992:
New World Order?, R Miliband and L Panitch (eds), London: Merlin Press,
1992. S P Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs 72 (3),
1993.
_B Anderson, "The Last Empires: The New World Disorder" New Left Review
193, 1992.
_G Myrdal, Asian Drama: An Inquiry Into the Poverty of Nations New York:
Pantheon, 1968, vol. II, pp 791-798. R A Packenham, Liberal America and
the Third World: Political Development Ideas in Foreign Aid and Social
Science Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973, pp 52-53.
_G Evans and K Rowley, Red Brotherhood At War: Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos
Since 1975 London: Verso, second edition revised 1990. It was the failure
of marxist internationalism in Indo-China that provided the impetus for
Benedict Anderson's influential book. B Anderson, Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism London: Verso, 1983,
pp. 1-2. See also B Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origins and Spread of Nationalism London: Verso, second revised and
extended edition 1992.
_E Laclau, "Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America" New Left Review 67,
1971. reprinted in E Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory London:
Verso, 1979, pp 15-50. (In a postscript Laclau extends his critique to
Wallerstein's work.) A particularly orthodox marxist perspective also
emerged to challenge dependency theory. See B Warren, Imperialism: Pioneer
of Capitalism London: Verso, 1980. Also see G Kay, Development and
Underdevelopment: A Marxist Analysis London: Macmillan, 1975.
_The influence was a two way affair insofar as volume three of Braudel's
Civilization and Capitalism drew heavily on Wallerstein's 'modern
world-system'. Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution: The Annales
School 1929-1989 Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990, p 50. See F Braudel, The
Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century
Volume 1 New York: Harper and Row, 1981. F Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce:
Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century Volume 2 New York: Harper
and Row, 1982. F Braudel, The Perspective of the World: Civilization and
Capitalism 15th-18th Century Volume 3 New York: Harper and Row, 1984, pp
69-70.
_P Buhle, Marxism in the USA: From 1870 to the Present Day London: Verso,
1987, p 265.
_L S Stavrianos, Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age New York: William
Morrow, 1981. D Chirot, Social Change in the Twentieth Century New York:
Brace, Harcourt and Jovanovich, 1977. D Chirot, Social Change in the Modern
Era New York: Brace, Harcourt and Jovanovich, 1986.
_See A Zolberg, Creating Political Order: The Party States of West Africa
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
_Already at the beginning of the Cold War there was considerable economic
diversity in the 'Third World' and throughout the Cold War era the diversity
has increased. If the World Bank's new technique for the calculation of
national wealth, described as "purchasing-power parity" is taken into
consideration China is ranked as the world's second largest economy
(according to the IMF using the same technique it is third) with India fifth,
Brazil ninth and Mexico eleventh, while just before its breakup the USSR
would have probably ranked fourth on this scale. A Swardson, "Are the Right
Seven at the Summit?" Guardian Weekly July 11 1993, p 16. A number of
oil-rich states, in the Middle East especially, although not industrialised
have risen to positions of financial and political prominence in the
international order. Saudi Arabia with a per capita GNP of over 6,000
dollars US by the late 1980s hardly seems to belong in the same category
as Bolivia with a per capita GNP of less than 600 dollars US a year, or
Zaire with a per capita GNP of around 150 US dollars a year. Third World
Guide 91/92 Montevideo: Instituto del Tercer Mundo, 1990, pp 232, 493, 577.
In fact, economic and quality of life indicators for Sub-Saharan Africa
as a whole suggest that throughout much of the region there has been no
improvement over the past thirty years and in many cases considerable
decline.
_For a good summary of the East Asian development literature see J Henderson
and R P Applebaum, "Situating the State in the East Asian Development
Process" in J Henderson and R P Applebaum, eds., State and Development in
the Asian Pacific Rim Newbury Park: Sage, 1992.
_See for example, R Hofheinz Jr., and K E Calder, The Eastasia Edge New
York: Harper and Row, 1982. Linked to the emphasis on 'culture' there have
been reductionist explanations which find in Confucianism the same kind
of dynamism that was earlier attributed to Protestantism's role in the "Rise
of the West". C H Chung, J M Shepard and M J Dollinger, "Max Weber Revisited:
Some Lessons from East Asian Capitalistic Development" Asia Pacific Journal
of Management 6 (2), 1987. Weber's thesis has also undergone a certain
amount of revival in relation to Western Europe. See Daniel Chirot, "The
Rise of the West" American Sociological Review 50 (2), 1985.
_J MacKenzie, "A Second Wind From the Third World" in After the End of
History, A Ryan (ed), London: Collins and Brown, 1992.
_An important pioneering work is E Wolf, Europe and the People Without
History Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. See also W
Roseberry, Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture, History and
Political Economy New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989. The
emergence of, and growing interest in, the new social movements is also
linked to a renewed concern with historical particularity in the context
of global processes. A Escobar, "Reflections on Development: Grassroots
Approaches and Alternative Politics in the Third World" Futures 24 (5),
1992. A Escobar, "Imagining a Post-Development Era? Critical Thought,
Development and Social Movements" Social Text 10 (2-3), 1992. A Escobar
and S E Alvarez, "Introduction: Theory and Protest in Latin America Today"
in op cit, Escobar and Alvarez (eds).
_J F Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly London: Longman,
1993. J F Bayart, "Finishing with the Idea of the Third World: The Concept
of Political Trajectory" in Rethinking Third World Politics, James Manor
(ed), London: Longman, 1991 There are now a number of historical approaches
to state formation which parallel Bayart's overall concerns. For example
see B Anderson, "Old State, New Society: Indonesia's New Order in
Comparative Historical Perspective" Journal of Asian Studies 42 (2), 1983.
reprinted in B Anderson, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures
in Indonesia Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. B Anderson, "Cacique
Democracy and the Philippines: Origins and Dreams" New Left Review 169,
1988.
The Emergence and Management ofThe Maintenance of the 'Third World' and
the East Asian 'Miracle'
Introduction: Globalisation and the 'Third World': The Rise and Fall of
the 'Third World'