Posted March 7, 2017
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     Public discourse in the Third World constantly refers to colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism.  This is consistent with the widespread commitment in the Third World to the construction of an alternative more just and democratic world-system that is post-neoliberal and post-neocolonial.  

     The Third World emerged as a unifying project of national and social liberation in the 1950s and 1960s, forged by the charismatic leaders of Asia, Africa and Latin America, who possessed moral authority and great prestige, as a result of their having had led their peoples in independence struggles.  By the 1970s, the Third World was able to present to the global powers a scientifically informed proposal for a new sustainable, post-colonial international economic order.  The proposal was cast aside by the global powers in the early 1980s, as they turned to the implementation of neoliberal policies; and the Third World project appeared dead.  But on the foundation of popular movements, the Third World project was born again in the late 1990s.  Today, the Third World project has reached its most advanced stage, precisely in an historic moment in which the global elite is demonstrating its moral and intellectual incapacity to respond to the sustained structural global crisis, and the neocolonial world-system makes evident its unsustainability (see various post on the Third World project in the category Third World).

     Thus, we are today in a critical historic moment.  In the North, there are critical and reformist proposals, but they either do not involve structural transformations of the neocolonial world-system, or they are lacking in political viability.  In the Third World, an alternative theory and practice has emerged, and political reality is being transformed. Thus, humanity faces a practical choice between the neocolonial project of the global elite and the emancipatory project of the Third World.  

      We intellectuals and activists of the North pay insufficient attention to the Third World project.  If we were to encounter it, we would be able to arrive to the insights necessary for scientific critique of the world-system and of neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and neo-fascism. And we would be able to forge effective political movements among our peoples, which would seek to establish a just, democratic and sustainable world-system, in alliance with the Third World governments and movements.  

     If we were to encounter the Third World project, we would find that the Third World movements do not disdain grand narratives; to the contrary, they have formulated grand narratives that have been effective in mobilizing their peoples.  We need to learn from their example, and to formulate grand narratives for our own nations of the North, projecting that the peoples of the North will cast their lot with the neocolonized peoples of the Third World, forging an international popular movement that will create a sustainable world-system and save humanity.     

     The Third World narrative sees the European colonial/neocolonial project as an impressive military, political and economic achievement. However, it sees the European colonial project as completely lacking in moral justification, violating the fundamental tenets of all religious traditions that humanity has created, and violating as well the democratic values that were formulated and are proclaimed by the dominating colonial/neocolonial nations.  Moreover, the Third World narrative discerns that the European project was characterized from the outset by a fundamental contradiction: it established a world-system that requires unlimited economic growth through the conquest of new lands, but the earth has finite geographical and ecological limits.  In accordance with this contradiction, the global powers ran out of lands and peoples to conquer during the course of the twentieth century.  Having overextended its natural geographical and ecological limits, the world system has been in a sustained structural crisis since the 1970s, revealing its unsustainability.  From the vantage point of the Third World, economic stagnation, spiraling financial speculation, wars of aggression led by a declining hegemonic neocolonial power, the rise of religious fundamentalism, the emergence of secessionist and ultra-nationalist movements, and uncontrolled international migrations are the signs of the profound structural crisis of the world-system.

      The Third World narrative thus discerns the ecological and economic unsustainability of the world-system and its capitalist world-economy.  And it also sees its political unsustainability, inasmuch as the neocolonized peoples of the world are in movement, calling for a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system as the only hope for saving humanity.  Here the Third World narrative tells its own story: the Haitian Revolution; the formation of the Latin American republics; the anti-colonial movements of Asia and Africa; the creation of the unified Third World project and the Non-Aligned Movement; the reverses as a result of the imposition of the neoliberal project of the global powers; and the renewal of the Third World project, especially evident in the formation of regional associations in Latin America and the proclamation of “socialism for the twenty-first century.”  

     In formulating a vision for a post-colonial future, the Third World project has not sought to return to a pre-colonial past, however much it remembered and appreciated a more dignified earlier era, for it recognized the practical impossibility of doing so.  In “returning to the source,” its goal was to appropriate from its past and to rediscover and re-experience its essential dignity, robbed by colonialism.  But it did not seek to resurrect earlier forms of thinking in a pure form.  It has had a practical orientation to the present: transforming economic structures imposed by colonialism, which promote deepening underdevelopment and poverty in the neocolonial situation; forging a political and social movement that could unify the peoples, taking control of state structures established by colonialism, and using such political control to transform national economies; and reforming international associations created by the neocolonial powers, so that Third World governments would have democratic voice in global affairs.

       In forging an alternative political and social project, the Third World appropriated from its own precolonial past as well from the political and philosophical cultures of the colonial powers. From the outset, it was a project of national and social liberation, seeking independent and truly sovereign nations as well as a social transformation that would protect the social and economic rights of all and would permit all to live in human dignity.  It forging the project, it drew from the bourgeois and proletarian revolutions of Europe and the United States, appropriating their insights, but expanding and deepening their meanings as it placed them in the intellectual and moral context of a project of national and social liberation that sought to overcome colonial and neocolonial domination.  Later, the Third World project appropriated the insights of the women’s movement, again transforming them in order to fit them into an ongoing popular movement for national and social liberation.  And still later, the Third World project appropriated the insights of the ecological movement, once again transforming them in order to fit them into its own project. Ultimately what emerged was a movement that integrated issues of colonial domination, class exploitation, patriarchy and gender exclusion, and ecological degradation into a comprehensive intellectual movement, tied to political practice, and articulated in eloquent voices by charismatic leaders as well as by intellectuals.

     Third World leaders have formulated an interpretation that explains the historic roots of their current political powerlessness and economic weakness, and that projects hope for a more just and democratic world.  Through this narrative, the Third World leaders have politically mobilized their peoples.  In their most advanced manifestations, they have taken control of states, redirected policies, and forged alternative international associations.

      Intellectuals and activists of the North could learn much from the achievements of the Third World project, for it is taking the initial steps toward the construction of a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  If we were to do so, we would be in a much better position to counter the neofascist narrative of Trump and his team.

Posted March 13, 2017

      In the forging of independence movements in the colonies of what would later become the Third World, movement leaders and intellectuals defined the issue of independence in a form that integrated issues of national liberation and class.  The leaders understood that national liberation could not be achieved without a national unity that overcame class differences.  Although the leaders and intellectuals came mostly from the national bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie, they recognized that the attainment of their goals could not be accomplished without significant mass participation, and this required the formulation of platforms that addressed the specific needs of peasants and workers, as felt and understood by them.

      In the Caribbean, where African slavery was significant, as well as in those African colonies in which there were significant numbers of European settlers, race also was an inescapable factor.  Accordingly, the movements also embraced the principle of racial equality. 

       Thus, the Third World movements of national liberation were born with an integrating dynamic, in which the most politically astute understood the necessity of integrating issues of national liberation, class and race.  They evolved in this integrated form from the end of the eighteenth century to the twentieth.  Other issues later emerged: women during the twentieth century; and ecology and the original peoples of America during the second half of the twentieth century.   As a result of the historic integrating dynamic of the movements, leaders were able to include these new sectors and issues, such that by the beginning of the twenty-first century the movements of the Third World had accomplished an integration of issues of national liberation, class, race and ethnicity, gender and ecology.

       The integration of the issue of women faced challenges.  The women’s movement emerged in the West, so Third World women leaders, who always had been present but not as spokespersons for the cause of women, had to formulate their proposals in ways that made clear that they were not the unwitting transmitters of a form of cultural imperialism.  They thus re-formulated the Western women’s agenda, not only because it was an intelligent political strategy, but also because doing so reflected their deepest beliefs, as citizens of the emerging Third World.  As one dimension of this, they left aside the issue of lesbianism, not wanting to create divisions among the people and to risk rejection of the demands and issues that affected the great majority of women (see “The rights of women” 11/11/13; “Gender and revolution” 1/21/2016). 

        The integration of the issue of ecology also was complicated.  In its initial formulation in the West, the ecology movement viewed economic growth and environmental protection as opposites.  But the Third World, in conditions of underdevelopment, had to increase production. Recognizing the essential validity of the claims of the ecology movement, the Third World arrived to the notion that it was necessary to expand production, but in a sustainable form, thus giving birth to the concept of sustainable development, which today is a central demand of the Third World movements of national and social liberation (see “Sustainable development” 11/12/13).

      The integration of the indigenous movements of America into the struggle of Third World national and social liberation was the least complicated.  It emerged late, in the last decades of the twentieth century, by which time the integrating dynamic had been consolidated as a movement tendency.  The historic exclusion of indigenous nations from the Latin American movements of peasants and workers came to be recognized as unjust and as an historic error.

        Thus, the Third World movements arrived to be movements that integrated the various issues that today are in debate, except for the issue of gay rights.  On this issue, there is some marginal discussion and debate in the Third World, but by and large it is left aside as potentially undermining the necessary unity of the people.

       In the Third World, the various issues are integrated around the organizing principle of the nation.  The theoretical integration does not give primacy to race, nor to gender, nor to class, as occurs with grand narratives developed in the West.  Rather, primacy is given to the nation: the right of the nation to exist and to be sovereign; the historic development of the nation; the values that are the foundation of the nation; the place of the nation in the world; and the values that ought to guide relations with other nations, especially respect for their sovereignty.  

     Patriotism, therefore, is fundamental to the Third World movements: love for the nation; loyalty to the nation; and heroic sacrifice in defense of the nation.  In the Third World narratives, patriotism is the foundation of commitment to the cause of justice that is formulated with respect to the various issues of national liberation, class, gender, race and ethnicity, and ecology.

     The Third World example of giving centrality and primacy to the nation could serve as an inspiration for those committed to social justice in the North.  All modern nations have a story that includes a struggle for democracy in some form or other, even those nations that became colonizing or imperialist nations in the world-system.  These stories can be the foundation for national narratives that mobilize the peoples in defense of the true and the right.

     The integrated movements of national and social liberation of the Third World are comprehensive.  Not only do they integrate a number of key issues, but they also have a historical and global perspective. They possess consciousness of the historic development of the nation, largely understood as a dialectal and evolving contradiction between domination and democracy.  And they possess global consciousness, with a scientifically-based understanding of the position and function of the nation in the modern world-system.

      When we intellectuals and activists in the North look at the Third World revolutions, we should appreciate what they have accomplished, for in truth, in spite of the significant political, economic and military obstacles they have encountered, they have accomplished much more than have the movements of the North.  If we were to ask how they did it, we would find that they constructed an integrated movement that was attentive to the sensibilities of each sector of the people.  This could inspire us to formulate narratives for our own peoples that are integral and comprehensive, rooted in knowledge and in historical and global consciousness.

     Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned by the Left in the North from the Third World is the centering of the concept and sentiment of patriotism.  In these times, we should note the importance of patriotism in the neofascism of Trump and his team.  They want to defend the nation, against foreign companies that steal our jobs and sell their products in our land; and against immigrants who enter the country without an adequate process of regulation.  So they have a patriotic discourse that is effective among the people.  But their patriotism is narrow, for it wants to ignore the rights of other nations. The Left can effectively counter their narrow patriotism not with a belief that patriotism is an antiquated sentiment, possessed only by those who lack sophistication; nor with a posture that gives insincere lip service to narrow patriotism.  Rather, neofascism can be effectively countered with a form of patriotism that is guided by an internationalist spirit, that recognizes that all nations have rights, and that proclaims that such was the full intention of the American promise of democracy, even though the founders of the American republic could not, in the context of their times, grasp its full implications.  We today, with the greater wisdom that results from experience, must further develop the great work that the Founding Fathers began.

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      The Third World project of national and social liberation burst into the world scene in the 1950s, led by the giants of the anti-colonial revolutions of Asia and Africa.  From the period 1955 to 1982, it proposed an alternative to the modern world-system, which had been constructed on a foundation of European colonial domination of vast regions of the Americas, Asia and Africa.  The Third World proposal for a New International Economic Order was adopted by the General Assembly in 1974 (see “The Third World Project, 1948-79” 7/20/2016 in the category Third World). 

     The Third World proposal was cast aside by the global powers, which proceeded to impose neoliberal policies on the world from 1980 to 2001.  But the Third World project was renewed, on a foundation of mass movements in opposition to neoliberalism, provoked by its overwhelmingly negative consequences for the peoples of the world. The global movement in opposition to neoliberal globalization has been particularly advanced in Latin America, where progressive and socialist movements have taken control of a number of governments (see various posts from July 22 to September 26, 2016 in the category Third World).  

     The renewal of the Third World project can be seen in the evolution in recent years of the leadership of the Group of 77.  Formed in 1964 by seventy-seven Third World nations, G-77 is a bloc within the United Nations, established for the purpose of promoting mutually beneficial trade among the member nations and with the goal of ameliorating the effects of colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism.  In now consists of 133 nations, including China, which joined in 1991.  It is now called the Group of 77 plus China (see “The nations of the Global South speak” 6/20/2014; 2014 Declaration of G-77).  

     Ecuador and Rafael Correa assumed the presidency of the Group of 77 plus China on January 13, 2017.  Correa was brought to the presidency of Ecuador by a popular social movement in opposition to the neoliberal project that emerged in the late 1990s.  Correa won the presidential elections of 2006, with the support of labor, peasant and indigenous organizations, soundly defeating a pro-neoliberal candidate supported by the national bourgeoisie and the United States.  Upon assuming the presidency on January 15, 2007, Correa immediately convoked elections for delegates to a constitutional assembly, in accordance with a campaign promise.  Nation Alliance, an alternative political party formed by Correa, won 80 of the 130 seats in the constitutional assembly, which developed a new constitution that was approved in popular referendum.  Correa was elected president under the new constitution in 2009 and was reelected in 2013.  As President, Correa has renegotiated the Ecuadorian national debt, making payments only on debts that were legitimately contracted.  This strategy has enabled the government to develop a budget in which social expenditures exceed debt payments.  The government of Correa also has nationalized underutilized properties and has attracted foreign investment in industries strategic for Ecuadoran economic development.  It did not renew a previous agreement with the United States for the use of an Ecuadorian Air Force Base by the U.S. military. Correa has declared that Ecuador is constructing “socialism for the twenty-first century” (see “Correa and the revolution in Ecuador” 9/19/2016).

     The emergence of Correa is part of a general social phenomenon in Latin America since 1994, in which leaders with exceptional capacities have been lifted up by the people and have led the people in changing the political reality of Latin America, stimulating the renewal of the Third World project of national and social liberation in Asia and Africa.  Other charismatic leaders include Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Luis Inácio Lula and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, and Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Kirchner of Argentina.  The emergence of charismatic leaders is a general characteristic of revolutionary processes (see Charismatic Leaders).

     Upon receiving the mandate of the presidency of G-77, Correa addressed the representatives of the 133 member nations in New York.  He began by noting that Ecuador will continue the work of its predecessors in the presidency of G-77.  “Ecuador defends the principles that have guided the Group of 77 since 1964: unity, complementarity, cooperation and solidarity of the Global South.”  The Group of 77, he observed, seeks social and economic equality in the world, which requires the eradication of poverty and exclusion and the attainment of the right of the peoples to live with sovereignty and dignity and in peace.  

     Correa maintained that poverty in the world is “a consequence of unjust and excluding systems.” And he proclaimed that “the overcoming of poverty of the greatest moral imperative of the planet.”

     Correa maintained that the global South seeks not only economic development but also a new notion of integral development, which involves the development of the whole person and of all persons.  In Ecuador, the concept of integral development is based on the heritage of the ancestral peoples and on the idea expressed in the quichua language as sumak kawsay, which means “living well.”

     He rejected the neoliberal project of the global powers.  “Neoliberal globalization does not seek to create planetary societies, but only planetary markets; it does not seek to create citizens of the world, but only global consumers.”  “The idea that free commerce always benefits everyone is simply fallacious, an extreme ingenuousness closer to religion than to science, and it cannot withstand a profound historical, empirical or theoretical analysis.”

     Correa observed that the savage capitalism of the eighteenth century and the Industrial Revolution caused workers to die from excessive working hours.  This historic exploitation, he maintains, was overcome by means of collection action through nation-states, which placed limits to these abuses.  But today, such collective action does not exist for the confrontation of the present process of globalization.  

      The remedy to this situation is unified political action by the peoples of the world, as a foundation for the taking of political power by the people in a number of nations.  “What is required is the capture of political power, in order to transform the relations of power in service of the great majority and to change our apparent states, representing only the interests of the few, into truly popular states, representing the interests of the great majority.”

     Correa called for “the transformation of the system of the United Nations, such that the General Assembly makes the great political decisions of humanity, and not the veto power of the small group of countries in the Security Council.”  He demanded an end to the privatization of knowledge and the diffusion of knowledge so that it is available for all of humanity.  And he advocated the creation of an International Court of Environmental Justice, with the authority to sanction attacks against the rights of nature and to establish obligations with respect to an ecological debt and to the consumption of natural resources.

     He called for a new international financial infrastructure.  From the point of view of the countries of the South, he maintained, it does not make sense to attempt to reform the Bretton Woods financial institutions, established by the global powers in 1944.  “We ought to construct our own international financial architectures, in order that our savings remain in the region and do not go to finance the richest countries, such as when our central banks, frequently autonomous and without democratic control, send hundreds of billions of our reserves to other countries, not only financing, but also transferring wealth to the most developed countries, while we continue depending on foreign loans and foreign investment” that do not change existing economic structures.

      He maintained that the dominant Western model of democracy has been imposed; it is a model that does not serve the needs of the people.  Real democracy requires equality of opportunity, but these imposed Western democracies grant sovereignty to capital and not to the people.  It would be best to call them “market-media” democracies, because they measure democracy by the size of the market, and because the media of communication are a more important component of the political process than the political parties and political authorities.  “We must ask ourselves if a society can be truly free when the societal communication, particularly information, comes from private profit-seeking businesses that are the property of the great corporations or a half dozen families, many of them without the most elementary ethics.”

      He criticized a confused understanding of human rights.  Many believe that only the state attacks human rights.  But “in fact, any power can attack human rights.”  For example, profit-seeking pharmaceutical transnationals condemn to death the poor that are not able to buy medicine that could save their lives; and the media of communication attack the reputation, the intimacy and the prestige of persons.

      Correa described fiscal paradises as “the extreme expression of a capitalism without face, without responsibility, without transparency, and without country.”  He maintained that “fiscal paradises are the worst enemies of our states,” because they exist for the purpose of evading taxes or hiding the origin of illicit wealth.  The poor nations and the economies in development are the most victimized by fiscal paradises.  In Latin America alone, 32 million persons could be lifted from poverty, if the resources hidden in fiscal paradises were taxed in accordance with the appropriate laws.  “The world needs more knowledge paradises and less fiscal paradises.”  

     We are here, Correa declared, “to demand democracy and to stress an alternative possible world, the urgent world that we require, the world of peace and justice, that is constructed through respect for the sovereignty of the nations and the prosperity of the peoples.”

     Correa concludes with a reference to the advanced stage of the popular movements in Latin America, more advanced today that in the period 1948 to 1979.  “Who governs in a society?  The elites or the great majority?  Capital or human beings?  The market or the society? In many countries of Latin America, with socialism of the twenty-first century and of living well, our peoples already govern.  And although their remains much to do, never before has so much been done.”

     Rafael Correa speaks on behalf of a Third World in renewed social movement, which envisions a sustainable future for humanity on the basis of fundamental universal principles: the rights of the nations of the world to sovereignty and integral development; the eradication of poverty; the rejection of the neoliberal prioritizing of markets over people as scientifically unsound and morally unjustifiable; the right of the peoples to collectively act in order to take power from the corporate elite; the democratization of the United Nations; the creation of a more just international financial architecture; and the need for the development of a form of democracy that responds to the needs of the people.  Many Third World governments, with the cooperation of China and Russia, are seeking to develop, in theory and practice, an alternative world-system based on these concepts and principles. They are doing so precisely at the historic moment in which the global powers are demonstrating their moral and intellectual incapacity to rescue the world-system from its sustained structural crisis, thereby revealing the unsustainability of the neocolonial world-system.  

     As these dynamics unfold, cynicism abounds in the North, and even popular social movements of the North are characterized by limited understandings and confusions.  But in the South, hope is alive, and the peoples, led by leaders with exceptional gifts, are developing that unity of thought and action required for the establishment of a possible and necessary more just, democratic and sustainable world-system. The activists and intellectuals of the North would do well to listen to the voices of the Third World, and to permit themselves to be inspired and to learn.

     From July 19 to October 10, 2016, I published twenty-three blog posts on the Third World project.  The Third World burst into the international scene in the post-World War II era, as the newly independent nations of Asia and Africa demanded a voice in global affairs.  The most insightful and most committed of the Third World leaders would lead the Third World states and peoples toward the formulation of a New International Economic Order, based on cooperation and solidarity rather than domination.  They would be joined by socialist Cuba, which would assume a leadership role in the formulation and defense of the Third World project.

     With the imposition of neoliberal and structural adjustment policies, many thought that the Third World project had died.  In reality, although hidden, it was alive: in the hopes and aspirations of the people; in the historic memory of committed intellectuals, community organizers, and political leaders; and in the tremendous thirst of humanity for social justice.  It would re-emerge as a political force, on the foundation of a massive popular rejection of the global neoliberal project, by virtue of its negative consequences at a concrete level, in the daily life of the people.

     In the developed nations of the North, the political actors have been quicker than the intellectuals in discerning the rebirth of the Third World project.  The political representatives of corporate interests see the renewed Third World project as a threat to the established global order, and they are using any and all means to destroy it. Intellectuals, however, especially those of the Left, are content to assume that the Third World project is no longer what it was; they therefore do not find reason to encounter it and to take seriously its insights, permitting their own understanding to be challenged at its roots.

     Against the tendency of the societies of the North to be divided between attacking and failing to appreciate, I maintain that we have a duty to encounter, for wisdom emerges from below.

      The twenty-three posts in this series on the Third World project are as follows:
“The significance of the Third World project” 7/19/2016; 
“The Third World Project, 1948-79” 7/20/2016; 
“The Asian Tigers” 7/21/2016; 
“Derailing the Third World project” 7/22/2016; 
“Fidel speaks on the global crisis, 1983” 7/25/2016; 
“Fidel proposes new global structures, 1983” 7/27/2016; 
“IMF & USA attack the Third World project” 7/29/2016; 
“The Cuban structural adjustment plan” 8/1/2016; 
“Renewal of the Third World project since 1994” 8/2/2016; 
“The neocolonial era in Venezuela” 8/3/2016; 
“Hugo Chávez Frías” 8/4/2016; 
“The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” 8/5/2016; 
“The Chávist presidency of Nicolás Maduro” 8/9/2016; 
“The Movement toward Socialism in Bolivia” 8/11/2016; 
“The citizen revolution in Ecuador” 9/19/2016; 
“The Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua” 9/20/2016; 
“Latin American and Caribbean unity” 9/21/2016; 
“The renewal of South-South cooperation” 9/22/2016; 
“The spirit of Bandung lives” 9/26/2016; 
“The new counterrevolution of the Right” 9/27/2016; 
“The subtle Eurocentrism of the Left” 10/3/2016; 
“Beyond Eurocentrism” 10/5/2016; and
“The possible and necessary popular coalition” 10/10/2016.

      The Website automatically places the most recent blog posts first.  So to enable you to scan down and see the posts in the order that they were written, I have changed the dates.  However, each post begins with a notation of the actual date of publication.  I apologize for any inconvenience or confusion that this may cause.

Posted July 19, 2016

     The Third World project was born in the post-World War II era in the context of the Cold War.  The colonized and formerly colonized peoples envisioned a Third World, an alternative to both the modern capitalism of the West and the form of socialism in Eastern Europe under the leadership of the Soviet Union.  The Third World project sought to break the economic structures established by European colonialism and to develop an alternative just and democratic world-system based on economic cooperation and solidarity among peoples (see “What is the Third World?” 7/16/2013; “What is the Third World Revolution?” 7/17/2013; “What is the Third World perspective?” 7/18/2013; “Third World anti-neocolonial movement” 7/19/2013).

     The key to understanding social structures and social dynamics is appreciation of the vantage point forged from below.  Therefore, intellectuals in a social position of relative privilege, in order to move beyond the assumptions rooted on one’s culturally-based horizon, must encounter the social movements emerging from below, taking seriously their understandings and permitting their insights to stimulate questions that will lead to an understanding that transcends the limited possibilities imposed by one’s own cultural horizon (“What is personal encounter?” 7/25/2013; “What is cross-horizon encounter?” 7/26/2013).  Such a process of cross-horizon encounter was central to the advanced understanding formulated by Marx, who encountered in Paris in the 1840s the movement formed by workers, artisans, and intellectuals.  Marx’s encounter with the workers’ movement, in conjunction with his intense study of British political economy and his previous study of German philosophy, enabled him to formulate an analysis of capitalism and human history from the vantage point of the worker (“Marx illustrates cross-horizon encounter” 1/7/14; McKelvey 1991).  

      Marx could not have formulated his analysis prior to the emergence of the workers’ movement.  He himself appreciated the relation of understanding to technological development and the emergence of social movements.  In his critique of the science of political economy, he maintained that David Ricardo, because he was writing after the emergence of large-scale industry, was able to discern the tendency of capitalism to reduce the percentage of the population involved in productive labor; however, writing before the emergence of the proletarian movement, Ricardo was not able to discern the importance of the reduction of labor time for the development of a more just and humane society (Marx 1969a, 1969b, 1972; McKelvey 1991:57-72).  

     Just as capitalism must be analyzed from the vantage point of the worker, the modern world-system must be analyzed from below, that is, from the vantage point of the colonized.  As Marx himself without question would appreciate, Marx was limited in his capacity to understand the structure and dynamics of the world-system from the vantage point of the colonized, because he wrote before the emergence of the anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements of the Third World.  The anti-colonial movements had begun in Latin America in Marx’s time, but the Third World anti-colonial movement did not attain maturity until the twentieth century, and in addition, Marx was geographically isolated from Latin American political and intellectual developments.  He was aware of the importance of the conquest of America in the development of modern capitalism, but writing before the full implementation of the European colonial project of world domination and before the emergence of anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa, he could not consistently maintain an anti-colonial perspective in his analysis or develop an anti-colonial frame of analysis.  As a result of his time and place, he could not possibly have sought to formulate a synthesis of an analysis rooted in the vantage point of the worker with an anti-colonial perspective, as would be possible for Third World movement leaders and intellectuals during the twentieth century.

     Just as Marx sought to analyze social dynamics from the vantage point of the social movement emerging from below, we should do the same in our time.  In seeking to understand the structures and dynamics of the world-system today, we have to take seriously the insights of the anti-colonial, anti-neocolonial and anti-imperialists movements of the Third World, which reached political and intellectual maturity in the period 1946 to 1979, and which have reemerged since 1994.  Leaders and intellectuals of the Third World project have formulated a frame of analysis that is rooted in the perspective of the colonized. The most advanced among them have formulated a synthesis of the Third World national liberation perspective and Marxism-Leninism, developing an understanding beyond the parameters established by Marx and further developed by Lenin. 

     Yet there is a tendency in the nations of the North, including the Left, to not listen to the leaders and intellectuals of the Third World and to criticize the Third World project from the vantage point of assumptions and ideas rooted in the European side of the colonial divide.  In this series of posts on the Third World project, I seek to point to a correction of the Eurocentric under-appreciation of its significance.

      In addition to clarifying the theoretical formulations and political practice of the Third World project, these posts maintain that, after suffering setbacks and distortions during the period 1980 to 1995, the Third World project has reasserted itself as an actor on the world stage, and indeed, it is in the process of formulating, in theory and practice, the best hope for humanity.  And while the Left in the North underappreciates the importance of the Third World, the global powers do not: they discern that the Third World project is a threat to the established world order, and their policies are dedicated to its destruction.

      I turn in the next post to a review of the formulation of the Third World project during the period 1948 to 1979.

References
 
Marx, Karl.  1969a.  Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. I.  London: Lawrence & Wishart.
 
__________.  1969b.  Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. II.  London: Lawrence & Wishart.
 
__________.  1972.  Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. III.  London: Lawrence and Wishart.
 
McKelvey, Charles.  1991.  Beyond Ethnocentrism:  A Reconstruction of Marx’s Concept of Science.  New York:  Greenwood Press. 
 

Posted July 20, 2016

     The Third World project of the post-World War II era was rooted in the twentieth century anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa and anti-imperialist movements in Latin America.  The giants of the era, who had enormous prestige based on the leadership of their peoples in anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles, met with another to formulate a united vision for the future of the world-system and to develop cooperative strategies of action.  They sought to transform the structures of the neocolonial world-system, which were ensuring the preservation of European economic, financial and cultural domination, and which were obstacles to the genuine sovereignty of Third World nations.  
    
     At the UN Conference on Trade and Employment in Havana in 1948, delegates from the Third World criticized Western ethnocentric assumptions with respect to economic development.  They denounced the creation of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) for its exclusion of the Third World, thus enabling the advanced industrial states to make the economic rules of the world.  They argued for the right of the Third World nations to utilize tariffs to protect their domestic industries.  And they called upon Third World nations to invest in industrial development with capital attained through foreign aid and the surplus from the exportation of raw materials (Prashad 2007: 62-69).

      In Bandung, Indonesia in 1955, representatives of twenty-nine newly independent Asian and African nations met.  Sukarno of Indonesia was the leading force; Nehru of India, Nasser of Egypt, Zhou En-lai of China and U Nu of Burma were among its prominent participants.  The Bandung conference declared the importance of Third World unity in opposition to European colonialism and Western imperialism.  It advocated economic cooperation rather than exploitation as the base of international relations.  It sought to break the core-peripheral relation, in which the Third World nations export raw materials and import manufactured goods, and thus it called for the diversification of the economies of the formerly colonized nations and the development of their national industries.  It supported the regulation of international capital flows.  It advocated international regulation and control of arms, the reduction of military forces, and the prohibition of nuclear arms.  It denounced cultural imperialism and the suppression of national cultures (Prashad 2007:32-33, 36-46).

      The Bandung conference had a tremendous impact on the peoples of the Third World.  Vijay Prashad writes:

      In 1957, the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference was held in Cairo, Egypt.  Egyptian head of state Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had come to power through a military coup that overthrew a corrupt monarchy that had served European interests, was an advocate of the ideology of “Arab Socialism”.  In 1956, his government had nationalized the French-owned Suez Canal in order to finance construction of the Aswan Dam, after the United States revoked its agreement to finance the project.  The Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference was dominated by the Bandung Spirit, although it was more strongly partisan against the First World than the Bandung conference, which had been characterized by a distancing from both the First and Second Worlds. Cairo also differed from Bandung by virtue of the prominent participation of women speakers that defended the rights of women, linking the liberation of women with the anti-colonial struggles for national liberation.  Distinct from the European women’s movements, Third World women’s movements, which had emerged in the early twentieth century, conceptualized the struggle for the rights of women as integral to the broader social struggle of national liberation and for the protection of the social and economic rights of the people, and they organized the struggle for women’s rights within the national liberation movement.  At the 1957 Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference, the Afro-Asian Federation for Women was established (Prashad 2007:51-61).   

     In 1960, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was established by Venezuela, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, which together produced eighty-two percent of the world’s crude oil exports.  The creation of OPEC was one example of a general Third World strategy of creating public commodity cartels that united producing and exporting nations, with the hope of curbing the power of the private cartels that had been formed by core manufacturers and distributers.  Public primary product cartels would enable producing and exporting nations to set prices for their raw materials exports, thus generating more income for investment in national industry and social development.  In addition to petroleum, public cartels were formed by nations that were producers and exporters of cocoa, sugar, rubber, copper, and bauxite (Prashad 2007:69-70, 180-86).

     In 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, representatives of twenty-three governments of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe established the Non-Aligned Movement.  Tito of Yugoslavia, Nehru and Nasser were its founders.  U Nu, Ben Youssef (Algeria), Sukarno, Nkrumah (Ghana) and Osvaldo Dorticós (President of Cuba) were present at the first Summit in Belgrade.  The Summit called for the democratization of the United Nations, particularly with respect to the Security Council, which holds unbalanced power vis-à-vis the General Assembly, and which is dominated by the core powers.  The Summit called upon the nuclear powers (United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain and France) to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.  And it supported the armed struggles of national liberation movements in Algeria and the Portuguese colonies (Mozambique, Angola, and Cabo Verde) in Africa (Prashad 2007:95-97, 100-4, 110).

     In 1964, seventy-seven nations of the Third World formed the Group of 77, an organization that functions as a bloc within the United Nations.  It called for the First World nations to finance Third World projects, as compensation for colonialism, and to permit Third World states to use protective tariffs without sanctions.  It supported Third World efforts to improve the prices of raw materials, and it called upon the Third World nations to develop new forms of mutually beneficial trade among one another in order to ameliorate the effects of imperialist exploitation (Prashad 2007:70-71).

     In 1966, the First Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America was held in Havana, convoked by the revolutionary government of Cuba.  The 513 delegates represented 83 governments and national liberation movements from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, including the National Liberation Front of Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), and Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau.  The conference named colonialism and imperialism as the source of Third World underdevelopment, and it defended nationalization as an effective strategy for attaining control over the national economy.  It supported armed struggle as a necessary tactic in opposition to colonialism and imperialism, and it pledged solidarity to the Vietnamese struggle against the United States (Prashad 1007: 106-13, 310).

     At its 1973 Summit in Algiers, the Third Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement declared that the international order continued to promote the underdevelopment of the Third World nations.  The Summit supported the creation of public cartels to transfer power to raw material producers; it called for a linking of the prices of raw material exports to the prices of imported manufactured goods; and it affirmed the principle of the sovereignty of nations over their natural resources, including their right to nationalize property within their territories.  The Summit endorsed a document on the New International Economic Order, which had been in preparation by Third World governments for a decade (Prashad 2007:189, 330).

     In 1974, the UN General Assembly adopted the Third Word document on a New International Economic Order, which was supported by the Non-Aligned Movement, the G-77 and the socialist nations.  The document affirmed the principles of the right of self-determination of nations and the sovereignty of nations over their natural resources.  It advocated: the creation of raw materials producers’ associations to give raw material exporting states control over prices; a new international monetary policy that did not punish the weaker states; increased industrialization of the Third World; the transfer of technology from the advanced industrial states to the Third World; regulation and control of the activities of transnational corporations; the promotion of cooperation among the nations of the Third World; and aid for Third World development (Castro 1983:27-28; Prashad 2007:189, 334-35).

     Later in 1974, the UN General Assembly approved the “Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States,” which drew upon the New International Economic Order.  It affirmed the right of the nationalization of foreign properties, endorsed the establishment of raw material cartels, and called for the creation of a system with just and equitable terms of trade (Prashad 2007:189). 

     In 1979, the Sixth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement was held in Havana.  Ninety-three countries of the Third World reaffirmed their commitment to national sovereignty, economic integrity, cultural diversity and nuclear disarmament (Prashad 2007:113-14). They declared: “The Chiefs of State and Government reaffirm their deep conviction that a lasting solution to the problems of countries in development can be attained only by means of a constant and fundamental restructuring of international economic relations through the establishment of a New International Economic Order” (quoted in Castro 1983:25).

     In the aftermath of the 1979 Havana Summit, representing the Non-Aligned Movement as its President, Cuba called upon the United Nations to respond to the desperate economic and social situation of the Third World.  It proposed: an additional flow of resources to the Third World through donations and long-term low-interest credit; an end to unequal terms of trade; ceasing of irrational arms spending and directing these funds to finance development; a transformation of the international monetary system; and the cancellation of the debts of less developed countries in a disadvantageous situation (Castro 1983:25).            

     The Third World project, formulated with clarity and commitment and on a basis of a knowledgeable understanding of the world-system, confronted the hostile opposition of the global powers.  It thus found itself in a war on two fronts, on the one hand, with the aggressions and maneuvers of the global powers, and on the other hand, with the colonial legacy of underdevelopment and poverty.  And it would be temporarily derailed by Third World spokespersons who were tied economically and ideologically to core corporations and international organizations, and who promoted their particular interests.  We will discuss these themes in the subsequent posts in this series on the Third World project.

​References
 
Castro, Fidel.  1983.  La crisis económica y social del mundo.  La Habana: Oficina de Publicaciones del Consejo de Estado.
 
Prashad, Vijay.  2007.  The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World.  New York: The New Press.
 
 
Key words: Third World, Non-Aligned Movement, Bandung, G-77, New International Economic Order

Posted July 21, 2016

     The implementation of the Third World project confronted numerous obstacles, as we will discuss in a subsequent post in this series.  The formerly colonized nations did not have sufficient capital to develop and diversify industry, and they did not have the necessary transportation infrastructure for the development of mutually beneficial trade with one another.  These limitations were a legacy of one to four centuries of European colonial domination, and the imposition of a peripheral role in the world-economy, involving the exportation of raw materials on a base of cheap labor.  Moreover, whenever a Third World nation was able to mobilize the political will to seek to sever the neocolonial core-peripheral relation, it was targeted by the global powers, which used all forces at their disposal to destroy the dangerous examples and to convey to other Third World nations that going beyond the permitted limits of national sovereignty would be punished.

     However, there were some East Asian states that were in a position to ascend in the world-economy without violating the established rules of the neocolonial world-system.  Their strategy was to develop low-wage export manufacturing in their hinterlands, served by urban export distributorships connected to core markets.  These East Asian “tigers” or “dragons” were Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.  From 1960 to 1990, they attained spectacular economic results, such that the World Bank released in 1993 a report on The East Asian Miracle (Prashad 2007:245-48).

       Particular exceptional characteristics enabled the Asian tigers to follow this ascent strategy.  Singapore and Hong Kong had been port cities in the unequal treaties imposed on China by the colonial powers, and their role in Chinese-European trade promoted their commercial development.  Taiwan and Korea, on the other hand, had been Japanese colonies, and Japanese colonialism imposed structures different from those of European colonialism.  To some extent because of limited available land in Japan itself relative to its population size, Japan developed core-like activities in its colonies, thus contributing to the economic development of the Japanese colonies.  In addition, South Korea and Taiwan were important allies of the United States in the Cold War, and they thus had access to high levels of aid and credit (Prashad 2007:249, 252).

     As a result of the exceptional historical, political and economic situation of the Asian Tigers, they had access to capital that other Third World formerly colonized nations did not possess.  They applied the capital to investment in low-wage export manufacturing and distributing, using strong state action to develop a national plan, to guarantee credit for private entrepreneurs, and to develop state-owned enterprises (Prashad 2007:250-53).   

     The turn of the Asian tigers to low-wage export manufacturing coincided with a restructuring of the international division of labor, thus facilitating its success.  Technological developments in transportation and communication across continents made possible the breakdown of the production process, in an historic moment in which core corporations, facing stagnating profits, were increasingly looking for cheaper sources of factory labor (Prashad 2007:253; Wallerstein 1999).
     
     The development of low-wage export manufacturing was not a good development strategy in the long term.  The core nations, in contrast, had developed their manufacturing on a base of relatively high wages.  Core manufacturing was tied to the importation of cheap raw materials attained through the superexploitation of labor in peripheral regions, thus making possible concession to workers’ unions in the core, leading to relatively high wages.  Accordingly, the development of industry in core nations contributed to the development of strong domestic markets in the core, continuously fueling an industrial development that supplied manufactured goods primarily for expanding domestic markets (although secondarily for export, often to peripheral zones whose manufacturing capacity had been undermined by peripheralization).  But low-wage export manufacturing in the periphery or semi-periphery contributes little to the development of the domestic market; it represents a continuation of the peripheral role of providing low-wage labor for the production of goods destined for export to the core.

      In spite of the limitations of the East Asian development strategy, it was recommended by the IMF as a general strategy for Third World nations (Prashad 2007:248).  This recommendation was flawed on three counts.  (1) The conditions and possibilities for the East Asian nations were not the same as those of Third World nations in general, as we have noted above.  (2) The IMF recommendation in fact departed from the East Asian model.  The IMF recipe for Third World nations involved a weak state and a reduced state role in the economy, whereas the Asian tigers had ascended on a foundation of strong state involvement in the economy.  This distorted recommendation of the model, ignoring a fundamental and clearly evident component, suggests that the recommendation was politically and ideologically motivated, designed to imply that ascent in the world-system is possible and to legitimate neoliberal policies with respect to the Third World (Prashad 2007:248).  (3)  Economic development must be based on the development of high-wage production or service industries, so that the domestic market will expand.  Those who promoted the East Asian model tended to ignore that the benefits applied only to some, inasmuch as they were based on the superexploitation of factory labor.

     In 1997, the Asian tigers collapsed, brought down by a fall in the prices of the computer chip as well as the financial speculation ushered in by IMF-recommended neoliberal deregulation (Prashad 2007:255-56).  But as a result of the prestige in which the Asian tigers were held for a period of time, East Asian leaders were able to exert themselves in the Non-Aligned Movement, in opposition to the defenders of the Third World project, led by Fidel, as we will see in the next post.
​

References
 
Prashad, Vijay.  2007.  The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World.  New York: The New Press.
 
Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1999. “The Rise of East Asia, or the World-System in the Twenty-First Century” in The End of the World as We Know It:  Social Science for the Twenty-First Century.  Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
 
 
Key words:  Third World, Asian Tigers, IMF, Prashad

Posted July 22, 2016

      From the beginning of the emergence of Third World anti-colonial movements, there was a sector of the Third World national bourgeoisie that had an economic interest and/or ideological orientation to develop national independence in a form that preserved the economic structures established during the colonial period.  Those members of the national bourgeoisie who owned enterprises dedicated to the exportation of raw materials or the importation of manufacturing goods had a vested economic interest in the preservation of the core-peripheral relation.  In addition, significant numbers of the national bourgeoisie had been educated in Western institutions, facilitating the dissemination of ideas that justified the established world-system.  

     Thus, in reflecting on the Third World, we have to continually keep in mind a distinction between moderate and radical, or between accommodationist and revolutionary, leaders and intellectuals of the Third World project.  During the transition to independence and the subsequent evolution of the neocolonial world-system, the global powers continually gave support to the accommodationists and attempted to undermine or assassinate the revolutionary leaders. Many Third World states emerged in which the government tried to maintain a balance, making concessions to revolutionary aspirations and popular demands, but trying to maintain friendly relations with the global powers.  Some political leaders adopted the balancing act out of genuine concern for the people and the nation, but others became skilled at presenting themselves as defenders of the people as they protected the particular interests of the national bourgeoisie.  In contrast, in those nations that developed a clearly revolutionary project, there emerged charismatic leaders with an exceptional capacity to explain the necessary transformations to the people, to delegitimate the moderates as representatives of colonial and neocolonial interests, and to lead the nation in the development of a radical national liberation project.  Such charismatic leaders included Fidel, Ho, Nasser, Sukarno, Nu, Nkrumah and Nyerere, who in the eyes of the people became heroic figures in the formulation and defense of the Third World project.

      During the period 1946 to 1979, the global powers were aggressive in attacking and undermining the radical Third World project, and they were determined and persistent in constructing obstacles to any transformation of neocolonial structures that would be detrimental to their interests.  As a result, the Third World project was able to accomplish less improvements in the material conditions of the formerly colonized nations than had been hoped.  The people became disappointed, and popular dissatisfaction tarnished the image of the Third World project and its revolutionary leaders, even as the most insightful understood that the cause was the uncompromising commitment of the wealthy and the powerful to the protection of their privileges.

     At the same time, the world-system as a whole entered a long structural crisis during the 1970s, as a result of the fact that it had reached the geographical limits of the earth, and it could no longer expand by conquering and peripheralizing new lands and peoples.  In response to the crisis, the global powers launched an accelerated ideological attack on the Third World project, particularly its insistence that the state must play a central role in the national development project.  Intellectuals and academics were called to the attack on the state, arguing that a corrupt and overly bureaucratic state was to blame for persistent Third World underdevelopment.  This implied not only an attack on the Third World revolutionaries, but also on the host of Third World states that had sought to balance the needs of their peoples with Western demands.  State concessions to popular demands now had to be rolled back.  Modest protections of national industries and national currencies, moderate regulation of capital flows, state ownership of key national industries, and inadequate social programs in defense of the people had to be eliminated.  The “free market,” neoliberalism (resurrecting the classical liberalism of Adam Smith), and the “Washington Consensus” (for the apparent agreement among policies makers in the US capital) became the clarion call.   

     The global ideological turn of 1979-80, signaled by the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, provided the opportunity for moderate Third World leaders, economically and ideologically tied to the neocolonial powers and transnational corporations, to seize upon the weakened international position of the radical leaders and to derail the radical Third World project.  At the 1983 Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in New Delhi, moderate accommodationists gained the upper hand, led by Sinnathamby Rajaratnam, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Singapore.  Rajaratnam maintained that the world had entered a “systemic crisis” in the 1970s, and as a result, each Third World nation needed to be motivated primarily by national interest. The best policy, he maintained, is the elimination of state-directed development, reducing the role of the state to the protection of the people from extreme inequalities by redistributing income, but “without deadening competitive spirit” (Prashad 2007:211-212).  

     Rajaratnam spoke on behalf of a Third World national industrial bourgeoisie that had been born after colonialism and the anti-colonial movements.  The members of this class had benefitted from the protective measures of the national liberation state, but they now experienced the structures that had enabled them to flourish as shackles.  They were a self-confident class that were emboldened to defend their particular interests rather than the interests of the people as a whole.  They envisioned the development of new information technology in the Third World, through their expertise and entrepreneurship, thus taking advantage of opportunities provided by the technological development of the world-economy.  They rejected the radical Third World project and adopted an anti-Soviet, pro-US stance (Prashad 1007:212).  

     Many of the accommodationists to neoliberalism had been socialized in international organizations, such as the IMF and the World Bank, or in transnational corporations.  And they were especially well represented by the national bourgeoisies from the better-off Third World nations, such as the Asian Tigers (Prashad 2007:212, 215).

      Standing against accommodation, Fidel powerfully defended the radical Third World project of national liberation.  His speech, “The World Economic and Social Crisis,” was enthusiastically received by the delegates, and it was the only speech at the Summit to receive a standing ovation.  Many delegates felt emotional attachments to the classic Third World agenda of national liberation, even as the world political and economic situation and the political situations in their own countries compelled them to adapt (Prashad 2007:210-11).

     Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, in her capacity as chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, steered a middle ground between the two positions, not wanting to concede too much to the revolutionary camp, but at the same time not wanting to adopt a pro-US line.  Nevertheless, the New Delhi Summit marked a definite move toward neoliberal ideology (Prashad 2007:213).  

     However, as the world turned to neoliberalism, the Third World project of national liberation remained alive in the aspirations of many. Fidel remained “the moral embodiment of what the Third World was,” and his speech on the social and economic crisis of the world was published in a more complete version and distributed in various countries in different languages (Prashad 2007:210-13, 221).

      The expanded and printed version of Fidel’s 1983 speech at the New Delhi Non-Aligned Movement was entitled: The Economic and Social Crisis of the World: Its repercussions for the underdeveloped countries, its dismal prospects, and the need to struggle if we are to survive.  It is at once a comprehensive historical, economic and political analysis and a prophetic moral call, proclaimed on behalf of the colonized peoples of the world.  We shall look at this remarkable document, largely ignored by academics of the North, in the following post.
​

​References
 
Prashad, Vijay.  2007.  The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World.  New York: The New Press.
 
 
Key words:  Non-Aligned Movement, Third World, Rajaratnam, Prashad

Posted July 25, 2016

     Prior to the 1960s, historical scholarship tended to emphasis the role of great men in shaping human history.  Reacting to this, there emerged a tendency to give emphasis to underlying social forces in explaining the events the shaped the direction of human history.  But the error of the previous scholarship was not that it emphasized the importance of exceptional individuals.  Rather, its fundamental error was that it was written from above, from the perspective of the dominating classes, nations and gender.  Somewhat off base in its critique of the previous scholarship, the new scholarship of the North, concentrating on social forces, did not reflect profoundly on the possible development of knowledge from below.  It thus could not see the important role of exceptional individuals in forging anti-colonial, anti-neocolonial, and anti-imperialist revolutions in the formerly colonized regions of the world.  

     If we of the North could escape from the lens that blinds us to exceptional leadership, we would be able to discern that Third World leaders were not only unifying the people for effective collective and political action, they also were creating new understandings, and thus were implicitly advancing the possibilities for a comprehensive philosophical-historical-social science from below.  And we would be able to see that in Third World national liberation revolutions that had significant gains, the presence of leaders with an exceptional capacity to analyze and to lead was the norm.  This suggests that Max Weber was on to something when he identified charismatic authority as one of the three forms of authority in human history, and it leads to the conclusion that the emergence of charismatic leaders is integral to revolutionary processes when they have success in attaining a major part of their goals.

      One of these charismatic leaders was Fidel Castro.  He is perhaps the most important of the charismatic leaders of the modern era, considering that the Cuban Revolution in the 1960s was a symbol to the hopes and aspirations of subjugated peoples throughout the world, and the Cuban nation today continues to be a symbol for the peoples of the Third World as they seek to create a more just and democratic world-system.  As Fidel led the Cuban Revolution and the revolutionary project of the independent Cuban nation, he repeatedly demonstrated an exceptional capacity to analyze the global structures of domination and exploitation, understanding them to be structures of colonial and neocolonial domination, class exploitation, and gender domination; and to understand the steps necessary for creation of a sovereign Cuban nation characterized by the protection of the political, civil, social and economic rights of the people.  And he also demonstrated mastery of the art of politics: he was able to unify the people to lead them in the taking of power, in the consolidation of state power, in the institutionalization of an alternative political process of popular power, and in the necessary economic adjustments at different historic moments in the development of the world-economy.  

      One example of the charismatic leadership of Fidel was his role as chair of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1979 to 1983, which occurred during the historic movement in which the global powers were turning to the implementation of the neoliberal project on a global scale.  In accordance with the rules of the Non-Aligned Movement, Cuba and Havana had been previously selected to be the host country and city for the 1979 Summit, with Cuba serving as president of the Non-Aligned Movement until the following summit, held in 1983 in New Delhi, where the presidency was turned over to India.  As we have seen (see “Derailing the Third World project” 7/22/2016), as outgoing chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, Fidel addressed the New Delhi Summit.  His speech, “The Economic and Social Crisis of the World,” was enthusiastically and emotionally received by the delegates, even though political realities prevented nearly all nations from following its suggestions.  The speech was printed in an expanded form and distributed in various languages.  The expanded version was prepared by Fidel with the support of scholars of the Cuban Center for Research on the World Economy, the Center for Research on the International Economy of the University of Havana, and the Economics Faculty of the University of Havana.  It provided a thorough and informed analysis of the problems that the world-economy confronted, and it proposed an alternative direction to that being implemented by the global powers.  Although dated with respect to statistics cited, the document’s proposals remain viable, and indeed they are more urgent than ever, as the world-system enters increasingly into crisis, led by a global elite that ignored the proposals of Fidel and the Third World, and that could conceive of no other response to the structural crisis of the world-system than a global economic war against the poor and the unleashing of neo-fascist wars.
 
     The Economic and Social Crisis of the World: Its repercussions for the underdeveloped countries, its dismal prospects, and the need to struggle if we are to survive: Report to the VII Summit of the Non-Aligned Countries was published by the Cuban government in 1983.  It understands the global crisis to be fundamentally rooted in the structures of a neocolonial world-system that is based on centuries of colonial and neocolonial exploitation.  At the same time, it identifies particular steps taken during the 1960s and 1970s by the hegemonic power that sent the system spiraling toward crisis.  In the view of the report, these steps were taken by the United States in an effort to preserve its hegemony in the system; and the results were disastrous, because the preservation of US hegemony was not possible, a fundamental fact never understood by US leaders.

      The report notes important characteristics of the post-World World II period of 1946 to 1970, a period that began with uncontested US hegemony.  It was above all a period of commercial expansion and long economic growth for the developed capitalist nations, uninterrupted by depression or long recessions.  And it was a period characterized by: important technological and scientific advances, which facilitated the emergence of consumer societies in the developed capitalist nations as well as a tremendous increase in the destructive capacity of military weapons; the emergence of transnational corporations to a position of dominance accompanied by increasing concentration of power, capital, and production; an increasing role of states in their economies, including state ownership or co-ownership of companies in many countries; and a relative decline in industry and the emergence of service as a more dynamic sector of the economies of the developed capitalist nations.  And the same time, it was a period of enormous inequality between the developed and underdeveloped worlds, during which the underdeveloped world developed mechanisms to challenge the structures of the system.  And during the period Japan and Western Europe (especially Germany) emerged to challenge US hegemony, establishing by 1970 three centers of power in the capitalist world, namely, the United States (still dominant), the European Economic Community, and Japan, all of which were united in their opposition to the protest movements in the underdeveloped countries (Castro 1983:17-19, 54-55).  

     The report notes that from the 1944 Bretton Woods conference to 1971, the US dollar enjoyed a privileged position in the international monetary system.  Since the value of the dollar was fixed in gold, possession of it was equivalent to the possession of gold itself, and thus the US dollar functioned in practice as the fundamental holding for international reserves.  As a result of its privileged position in the international monetary system, in conjunction with its unchallenged dominance in production and commerce, the United States could obtain financing through the simple mechanism of a policy of monetary expansion, so long as there were sufficient gold reserves to support the money in circulation.  An expansionist monetary policy was the mechanism used from 1946 to the late 1950s to finance massive exportations of capital as well as programs of reconstruction in Europe and an enormous military budget that included maintenance of military bases throughout the world (Castro 1983:79-80). 

     But in the late 1950s, the favorable position of the United States began to suffer erosion.   Of primary importance was the emergence of competition from Japan and Western Europe, reducing the growth of US exportation of goods and services.  Beginning in the early 1960s, the United States responded to its declining position by the emission of dollar bonds, which were increasingly less backed in gold, other currencies, or in the exportation of goods and services.  This strategy was described by commercial bankers as “creating money with the stroke of a pen.” It financed investments by US transnational corporations as well as programs of “foreign aid” (tied to political conditions) and military expenditures abroad.  This was a successful strategy for the attainment of political and economic objectives in the short term, but it had the consequence of undermining the position of the dollar, and it was one of the primary sources of the high level of inflation of the 1970s, which began in the late 1960s.  In spite of the weakened position of the dollar, the price of the dollar remained fixed in gold, so that the dollar was overvalued, until it was freed from the gold standard in 1971, when it suffered devaluation and a subsequent devaluation in 1973 (Castro 1983:80-81).

     The 1970s was a decade of high levels of inflation.  From 1973 to 1981, the inflation rate varied from 7.0% to 13.3% for the seven principal capitalist countries.  The inflation was caused by the issuance of bonds by the US government to sustain unproductive state expenditures, especially military expenditures, as well as by control of prices by the transnational corporations that controlled international commerce, including international commerce in petroleum.  Although some Western economists blamed the inflation of the 1970s on the 1973 OPEC price increase for crude petroleum, the 1983 Castro report argues that that nationalized petroleum companies of the OPEC countries controlled only the supply of petroleum, while the transnational petroleum companies maintained control over technological and commercial aspects.  The report maintains that the transnational petroleum companies profited enormously during the 1970s as a result of the rapid increase in the prices of the derivative products as well as speculation in combustibles.  Making a distinction between inflation generated from imported products, including petroleum, and inflation generated internally by US producers and distributors, the report finds that the US inflation rate during the 1970s was almost entirely generated by domestic inflation.  In 1974, for example, 11% of the 12% total US inflation rate was generated domestically, while only 1% was generated from importations (Castro 1983:80-82, 157, 160-61).

      The weakened position of the dollar and high levels of inflation were signs of an international monetary system in crisis.  The crisis had particularly negative effects on the nations of the Third World. The inflation rate was higher for the underdeveloped world: underdeveloped countries that were exporters of petroleum had inflation rates from 10.5% to 18.8% during the period 1973 to 1981; underdeveloped countries that were importers of petroleum had inflation rates from 22.1% to 36.9% during the period (Castro 1983:82-83).

      Moreover, changes in financial relations between the North and South during the 1970s had negative consequences for the Third World.  Private banks in the core significantly increased the amount of lending to Third World governments and decreased investment in Third World production, inasmuch as profits from loans became higher than profits from production.  As result, capital flows between the banks of the North and Third World governments increased, while the participation of Third World countries in world commerce declined.  By the end of the decade, Third World debt payments to the banks of the North greatly exceeded investments by banks, governments and corporations of the core in Third World production (Castro 1983:20-23, 54-55, 95, 146-47).  

      High prices for manufactured goods and low prices for raw materials historically has been central to an unequal exchange between the developed capitalist countries and the underdeveloped world, inasmuch as for the latter, income from agricultural and mineral raw materials constitutes the principal source of income from exportation.  However, during the 1960s and 1970s, declining terms of exchange between raw materials and manufactured goods occurred. For example, in 1960, the sale of a ton of coffee enabled purchase of 37.3 tons of fertilizer, but by 1982, a ton of coffee could buy only 15.8 tons of fertilizer; in 1959, twenty-four tons of sugar could buy a sixty-horsepower tractor, but in 1982, 115 tons of sugar were needed to buy the same tractor; and in 1959, six tons of jute fiber could buy a seven-ton truck, but in 1982, twenty-six tons of jute were needed.  The declining terms of trade were aggravated during the 1970s by inflation and the high cost of petroleum, generating a chronic situation of a commercial balance deficit for the underdeveloped countries.  The negative commercial balance of the Third World countries during the period 1973 to 1981 became the basis for the Third World debt problem (Castro 1983:23, 59-66, 88).

     The 1983 Report to the Non-Aligned Movement especially focused on dynamics of the world-economy from 1979 to 1982, the period of the Cuban presidency.  In 1979, responding to the unprecedented situation of stagnation combined with inflation, the developed capitalist countries departed from Keynesian economic policies and adopted a monetary-fiscal recipe of combining a monetary policy of high interest rates (to increase money reserves and reduce money in circulation) with a fiscal policy of reduced government spending (by reducing budgets for social programs and rationalizing of government employment), thus giving priority to the problem of inflation.  The result was moderation in the inflations rates but reduced industrial production and high levels of unemployment in the seven most developed countries of the world by 1982 (Castro 1983:30-37). 

     The Report considers that “the indiscriminate elevation of the rate of interest, promoted by the government of the United States, constitutes, without doubt, one of the most arbitrary economic measures of recent years.”  The policy had negative consequences for the economy of the United States, and it deepened the crisis of the international financial system.  And it had “disastrous economic repercussion for the underdeveloped countries,” for which it has meant the “nearly complete ruin of their economies and the cancelation of hopes for improvement.”  The high-interest rate policy increased the cost of the servicing of the external debt of Third World governments, thus increasing government budgetary deficits as well as increasing the percentage of capital flow to the core in the form of interest payments on loans as against profits from production.  At the same time, the policy increased the value of the dollar, leading to its overvaluation, and a corresponding reduction in the value of the national currencies of the nations of the Third World.  It thus intensified the problem of the balance of payments deficit of the underdeveloped countries (Castro 1983:30-31, 36-38, 46-48, 82).

      The severity of the situation, the Report maintains, has obligated an increasing number of countries to adopt “adjustment” policies that are not a result of their own decisions in the context of a development plan formulated in the exercise of their sovereignty.  Rather, these policies are adopted as emergency measures in response to balance of payments and government deficits.  And they are adopted as conditions for the reception of loans from the International Monetary Fund.  The measures include devaluation of national currencies, reduction of government expenditures, and opening the economy to the merchandize and investments proceeding from the developed capitalist countries.  The measures do not reduce the deficits, because foreign capital invests in its own profit and not in forms of production that promote the development of the nation.  They are presented as measures that follow from technocratic considerations, but they are in reality neocolonial measures that are integral to an international monetary system that responds to a small group of five countries (Castro 1983:48-49, 87).

     Thus, there has occurred in the period 1979 to 1982 a deterioration in the situation of the less developed countries: a decline in the value of national currencies with respect to the dollar, a fall in the prices of raw materials and declining terms of trade with the advanced capitalist nations, a reduction in rates of growth, and a spiraling escalation of the external debt (Castro 1983:12, 14, 41-44).  With respect to the external debt, the report states:

     The Report on the world economic and social crisis also describes the alarming increase in the influence of transnational corporations on the economic relations of the world.  The spectacular growth and proliferation of transnational corporations began in the 1960s, but it particularly took off in the 1970s.  US transnational corporations profit highly from its Third World investments.  In 1981, US corporations attained 16.6% profit from its investments in the developed capitalist countries, in contrast to 24.1% profit from investments in the underdeveloped world.  However, the transnational profits from Third World investments have principally been in the form of loan interest payments to transnational banks (Castro 1983:66-69, 131, 141-44).

      The transnational corporations have a perspective on the development of the Third World countries, which the Castro report refers to as the “transnational ideology.”  It proposed a model of development based on transforming underdeveloped countries into “exporting platforms.”  This model of development, the Report maintains, does not respond to the basic requirements for the true economic development of these countries; rather, it responds to the needs of capital, and in particular, the need of capital for a cheap work force that elevates profitability.  The exporting platforms, although they in degree contribute to employment, are isolated from the rest of the economy in the countries where they are located.  They therefore have an extremely limited effect on the national economy, and they could not be considered as promoting independent economic development. In order to attract investments by international corporations in exporting platforms, governments grant enormous liberties to foreign capital, including unlimited transfer of capital out of the country and exemptions from taxes, as well as unlimited access to cheap labor and to natural resources.  By 1975, exporting platforms had been developed in seventeen countries in Asia, thirteen in Africa, and twenty-one in Latin America (Castro 1983:148-49).

     The 1983 Report maintains that the growing presence of transnational corporations in the underdeveloped countries constitutes a serious threat to the national sovereignty of these countries. Transnational corporations do not adjust their operations in accordance with the legislation of the countries in which they are located.  They interfere directly or indirectly in the internal affairs of the countries in which they operate.  They ask the governments of the countries from which they come to pressure the governments of the countries in which they are operating, in support of their particular interests.  They attempt to obstruct governments of the underdeveloped countries from exercising control over their natural resources (Castro 1983:150-51). 

    The 1983 Report also discusses the environment.  It maintains that “human action on the natural environment is provoking in an accelerated manner changes without precedent in the stability, organization, equilibrium, interaction, and even the survival of the principal ecological systems of the planet.”  Issues of concern include desertification, the accelerated erosion of agricultural soil, the increasing contamination of water and the exhaustion of its sources, and deforestation.  The Report maintains that “the market economies of the developed countries are directly responsible for an important part of the degradation of the environment,” including contamination of the air, lakes, rivers, and oceans as well as an enormous quantity of chemical and nuclear residues that have been deposited in the atmosphere, the fresh waters, and the seas.  It also maintains that transnational enterprises are responsible for the exhaustion of mineral, agricultural and forest resources of numerous underdeveloped countries (Castro 1983:118-25)

     Fidel Castro did not consider that these maladies of the international financial system and the neocolonial world-system could be rectified within the structures of the international economic order.  But he believed that they could be overcome through the mobilization of a global political will for the creation of a New International Economic Order.  This will be the subject of our next post.  

​

​References
 
Castro, Fidel.  1983.  La crisis económica y social del mundo.  La Habana: Oficina de Publicaciones del Consejo de Estado.
 
 
Key words: Fidel, Non-Aligned Movement, global crisis, structural adjustment, transnational corporations

Posted July 27, 2016
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     According to Cuban legend, Che Guevara once said, “When Fidel speaks, I am not sure if he is expressing his own ideas, or those of the people.”  Indeed, one of the gifts of Fidel was his capacity to listen to the people, and to reformulate their hopes and needs on a political and moral plane. 

      This dynamic was present with respect to Fidel’s leadership of the progressive forces in the Non-Aligned Movement during the period 1979 to 1982.  He adopted the 1974 Third World proposal for a New International Economic Order and made it his own, placing the proposal in the context of the increasingly aggressive and destructive policies of the global powers and the consequent eclipse of Third World hopes, and at the same time further developing the proposal, bringing it to a more complete and more advanced formulation.

     In the 1983 Report to the Seventh Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (Castro 1983), Fidel’s call for a more just and democratic world-system was based in an analysis of the adverse effects of world-system dynamics on the Third World, including elevated interest rates, high levels of inflation, declining terms of trade, increasing external debt payments, and declining foreign investment in production.  This economic state of affairs was compounded by global political realities: the global powers, rather than recognizing their historic debt before the situation, seized upon it as an opportunity to rescue declining corporate profits, imposing structural adjustment policies on the governments of the Third World.  At the same time, transnational corporations were promoting their own development ideology for the Third World, seeking to undermine the sovereignty of Third World nations in order to promote and defend their particular interests (see “Fidel speaks on the global crisis” 7/25/2016).

      Confronting this reality, the peoples of the Third World, Fidel concluded, must struggle to create a more just world order, recognizing that the peoples of the Third World constitute the immense majority of humanity, and that the development of the Third World economies would be beneficial to the world-system as a whole and enable it to overcome its structural crisis.  Accordingly, the peoples of the Third World must struggle: to transform the structures that promote unequal exchange and declining terms of exchange; for the cancellation of the Third World debt; for new and more equitable international monetary and financial systems; for a form of industrialization that responds to the interests of the Third World; for necessary socio-economic structural changes, such as agrarian reform; for the adoption of measures by states that control and limit the activities of transnational corporations; and for an elevation of the prestige of the United Nations.  The struggle requires the unity of the peoples of the Third World, in spite of political and cultural differences, in recognition of their common experience of colonial domination (Castro 1983:223-29).

      In the 1983 Report, Fidel formulates a concept of development that is not based on the model of Western development, which Fidel considers impossible to repeat in present global conditions.  The development model proposed by Fidel involves strong state action in order to break the core-peripheral relation, in which the underdeveloped countries export raw materials and leave industrial production in the hands of the developed countries.  To overcome core-peripheral structures, the underdeveloped countries must mobilize national resources for the development of technically-advanced industries.  In this vein, Fidel maintains that the forms of industry that have been developed recently in the underdeveloped world will not lead to their economic development.  Recent industrial expansion in the Third World has been in labor-intensive industries that have low levels of technical development, such as textiles or manufactured food products, which have been attractive to transnational capital because of the Third World cheap labor supply. In contrast to emphasis on low-wage export-oriented manufacturing, Fidel advocates investment in the Third World in those branches with technological-industrial complexity, such as nuclear, chemical, or petrochemical energy, or the aerospace industry; this would stimulate the growth of Third World internal markets (Castro 1983:127-40).

    Fidel’s understanding of Third World development included the concept of South-South cooperation.  The 1983 Report notes that cooperation among the underdeveloped countries has been an historic objective of the Non-Aligned Movement, and it is an important component of the 1974 program for a New International Economic Order.  Cooperation among the countries of the Third World would be a weapon of struggle against neocolonial dependency, which derives from the colonial empires, reinforces underdevelopment and poverty, and aggravates the present crisis of the world-system; it would be a powerful, dynamic factor contributing to autonomous development (Castro 1983:165-67).  

     Fidel maintains that South-South cooperation is a real practical possibility.  The Third World as a whole has ample petroleum, agricultural and mineral resources, and some of the Third World nations possess a certain level of industrial development as well as a sufficient supply of highly-qualified specialists, technicians and doctors. If developed with a strong political will to protect the sovereignty of the nation over its natural resources, South-South cooperation could be a mechanism for controlling the actions of transnational corporations.  At the same time, the concept of cooperation among the nations of the Third World does not negate the possibility for North-South cooperation.  The Third World continues to seek mutually beneficially commerce with developed countries; it seeks to put an end only to unequal exchange and exploitative trade with the developed capitalist countries (Castro 1983:167-70).  

     Fidel concludes The Economic and Social Crisis of the World: Its repercussions for the underdeveloped countries, its dismal prospects, and the need to struggle if we are to survive: Report to the VII Summit of the Non-Aligned Countries with a call for Third World unity, proclaiming that the Non-Aligned Movement has the objective:

     Fidel stood at central stage, the spokesperson for the colonized peoples of the earth, at an historic moment when the global powers were preparing to roll back modest concessions to the Third World nations as well as the popular movements of the core, as they endeavored to preserve material privileges in the context of a world-economy confronting structural crisis.  Fidel was like the ancient biblical prophets who denounced the greed and hypocrisy of the kings, in defense of the poor.  But unlike the prophets of old, Fidel’s denunciation was rooted in scientific analysis.  In the tradition of Marx, Fidel, with the support of economists formed by the Cuban revolutionary project, was analyzing social scientific knowledge of the world-economy from below, from the vantage point of the history and the human needs of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of the planet, common victims of European colonial domination.  From such vantage point, Fidel could arrive at insights that the defenders of the established order could not see, driven as they were to defend the privileged minority.  

     The guardians of the established order were driven not primarily by the desire to know, but by the defense of the particular interests of the wealthy, the corporations, and the powerful nations.  They were not merely mistaken; they were morally culpable, for they chose to align themselves with power and privilege, and to ignore the basic human needs of the majority.  But unlike the ancient prophets, Fidel did not predict the unleashing of the vengeful wrath of God, punishing the powerful and the privileged for their transgressions.  Rather, driven by a moral commitment to the people, Fidel was led to dream, to envision a world in which the people would have the capacity to defend their interests.  He thus called the peoples of the Third World to a unified and dignified struggle in defense of themselves, for the sake of the future of humanity.

      The global powers could have no reasonable response to the words of the twentieth century prophet.  They could only ignore them, pretending that the prophetic words in defense of humanity had never been uttered.  As we will see in the following post, they would proceed to implement their economic war against the people, confusing the people for a time.  But the people did not forget the words of the prophet, nor the ignoring of them by the global powers.  By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the peoples of the Third World would rediscover their resolve and their spirit of struggle, as we will see in subsequent posts in this series on the Third World project.  The peoples of the Third World would begin again to strive together for the creation of an alternative, more just, democratic and sustainable world-system, proclaiming Fidel as their comandante.

​References
 
Castro, Fidel.  1983.  La crisis económica y social del mundo.  La Habana: Oficina de Publicaciones del Consejo de Estado.
 
 
Key words: Fidel, Non-Aligned Movement, global crisis, New International Economic Order