Lecture notes: Pan-nationalisms

Imagined communities

how communities are constituted

requires an act of the imagination
this is true of all communities — even the smallest

what unites people who never have met each other?

why should we sacrifice ourselves for them?

the problem seems even bigger for the largest communities

mankind
religious community
pan-nationalisms

Benedict Anderson: we read in order to imagine

the national community appears in the pages of newspapers
actually Gabriel Tarde make this point much earlier

The problem of seeing your community

you need distance in order to see
difficult for people who are stuff in their local lives
farmers in Africa, workers in factories
they must be shown the community
the problem of Marxist mobilization

how to create distance?

why universal communities are associated with the sky
when you read you are taken away from the place where you are

seeing your nation from Europe

all national independence movements started in Europe
directly influenced by European ideas
but also easier to see the nation from here

come back and mobilize people

show ordinary people the nation

nationalism as an elite phenomenon

elites vs. rural masses

these are the elites that lead the independence movement

fight against “tribalism” — always a local phenomenon

Imperial nationalisms

nationalism as corrosive to empires

since they consist of many nations they will always fall apart

Pan-Ottomanism

as a response to nationalist movements all over the empire

shared institutions and a shared sense of citizenship
difficult to replace the millet system
not very good at stirring the imagination

Russia, India and China

they were also empires
but tried to hold themselves together
and they still do

Ergo: imperial nationalism is not obviously a crazy idea

1930s — a greater Britain

Senghor on a French federation

more on Leopold Senghor
the future leader of Senegal

very Frenchified

French education in Senegal
went onto the Sorbonne — and to work as a philosophy professor
elected deputy to the French parliament
much later member of the Academie Francaise

bad reputation

ended up as a dictator after independence
but above all too close to French views
the federal idea as an example

why federation?

need for African “development” — need for “civilization”
too much “tribalism” and ignorance
Africa is not ready
clear loyalty to French institutions
economic benefits
not least being inside the European Union

socialism

1/3 of French voters voted Communist
general reformation of France

new federation

equality between states
full political and economic rights
socialism would change them all
France without a special position
France too would be liberated

votes on a new constitution

question of citizenship rights
extending French laws to the colonies

outcome

the first, radical, draft is rejected in a referendum in 1946
the second, far more traditional, is accepted
to general colonial disappointment

verdict of history

in the 1960s — he looked like a collaborator with the enemy
today more positive — if only the revised federation would have happened

Senegal

federation with Mali
independent in 1960
the federation breaks up in 1962
not a history of endless coups — reasonably democratic

Pan-Africanism

again created at a distance

almost all the main leaders were from the Caribbean
Marcus Garvey
Edward Wilmot Blyden
Frantz Fanon and many others

George Padmore

from Trinidad but couldn’t go to school in the US and went to Liberia instead
A Vindication of the Negro Race, 1857

looked for their own nation in an age of nationalism

Jamaica a British colony until 1962

agitated in their colonies

continued onto the US or in France
very little actual connection to Africa
an imagined utopia

African nationalism

black people in the diaspora

easier to identify with Africa as a whole — they had no particular homeland

shared history of slavery, discrimination and racism

everyone lives under the same conditions
a national, US, movement but also a global movement

the basic ontological distinction is race

each race has its own destiny

we should organize a united kingdom in Africa

the experience of being black overrides their internal differences

rampant racism and discrimination
by definition they have more in common than not

not so much basis for black nationalism today

Marcus Garvey

there will never be equality with white people

racism and prejudice are too strong
the only solution is for black people to look after themselves

reject the idea of assimilation

will never happen on equal terms
must united in Africa — must break with white people

Back to Africa

Africa as a dream of a homeland

a place where we can look after ourselves

Sierra Leone and Liberia

The American Colonization Society
as a way to get rid of freed slaves

freed slaves in Liberia would help “civilize” the Africans

American Negro Academy, 1897
an institution for “bettering” American blacks

similar to Zionism

Garvey met with the Ku Klux Klan
“we have the same aspiration” — return black people to Africa
cf. Eichmann seeing himself collaborating with Zionists — returning Jews to Palestine

Black Star Line

to take black people back to Africa

Compare contemporary “Blaxit”

but really another form of neocolonialism

First pan-African institutions

1893, The Chicago Congress on Africa

1900, Pan-African Conference

arguing against the British treatment of the locals
at the time of the Boer War
first references to “pan-Africanism”

Negro Society for Historical Research, 1912

Garvey had himself elected “king of Africa”

he wanted to be the Napoleon of black people
autocratic politics, not a democrat
patriarchal view of women

Universal Negro Improvement Association

African Communities League

“universal confederacy amongst the race”
“assisting in the civilizing of tribes in Africa”

Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, 1920

“we have given a national consciousness to the Negro”

Liberal, black, response

Du Bois — integration as possible

don’t give up on America

Martin Luther King

a lot of patience with white American society

Separate black institutions

black churches

Martin Luther King
black colleges

African Orthodox Church

Islam as an alternative

Nation of Islam

for example …

Muhammed Ali
Malcolm X

black people need to defend themselves

Black Panthers
helped to assure the strict gun laws in California

Rastafari culture

Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia

beating the Italians at the Battle of Adwa in1896

Halie Selassie crowned in 1930

The Harlem Renaissance and The New Negro

all the black soldiers who fought in the First World War came back empowered
lot’s of Caribbeans coming to the US

Black socialists greatly inspired by the Russian Revolution

and the establishment of the First Internationale

Negro World read throughout Africa

and was banned in most colonies

Negritude

Wikipedia here

Paris of the 1920s

“Negrophilia”
Josephine Baker

again mainly Caribbeans

but also some Africans — like Senghor

The three leaders

Leopold Senghor
Aimé Césaire, from Martinique
Léon Damas, from French Guyana

studying in Paris in the 1930s

artists and poets

Senghor

Western reason
African spirit

three steps

slavery
assimilation
self-reliance

a unique African personality

different from the Europeans

African Life and Customs, 1908

Senghor:

heart rather than head
spirit rather than reason
and so on ...

this is why Europe and Africa need one another

only way to construct a whole identity

easy to identify as Western stereotypes

African pan-Africanism

The National Congress of British West Africa

the idea of a “West African nationality”

they combined the idea of a self-governing West Africa with a strong commitment to the British Empire

Nkhruma

learned about pan-Africanism in England

constant problem of the tension between educated elites and ordinary people

Kwame Nkrumah speech that will unite Africa

The political history of pan-Africanism

some fledgling attempts

The African Union

What is left of the idea of a united Africa today?
Africa is a Country

Pan-Arabism

Historical roots

Nasser

Gamal Abdel Nasser interview, 1969

The end of pan-Arabism

the Ajami article

what, if anything, is left of pan-Arabism today?

Frantz Fanon

Frantz Omar Fanon or Ibrahim Frantz Fanon

born 1925 in Martinique
died 1961 … only 36

writer and philosopher

Marxist and pan-Africanist

psychopathology of colonization

and the consequences of decolonization

influential in “post-colonial studies”

inspired political liberation movements
Black Panthers

France

joined French army at 18

liberate Martinique from the Vichy regime
fought in Europe

studied medicine and psychology in Lyon

practiced as a psychologist in France

community psychology

Work in Algeria

worked as a psychologist
treated French soldiers who carried out torture

Algerian revolution in 1954

joined the FLN
left his job
expelled to Tunis

participated in conferences all over Africa

pan-Africanism

diagnosed with leukemia

went to the Soviet Union for treatment
and then to the US where he died

met with Jean-Paul Sartre

Black Skin, White Mask

there is an IR theory of sorts here!
a story about relations between peoples and between states!

Peau noire, masques blancs, from 1852

written as an autobiography
start to be widely read in the 1960s
crucial “post-colonial” reading

historical critique of the effects of racism and dehumanization on the human psyche

inherent effect of colonial domination

you internalize your own inferiority

psychoanalysis

feelings of dependence and inadequacy felt by Black people.

White people

deed fear of educated black people
but they will always be regarded as inferior

Language

He says that the black man has two dimensions: One with his fellows, the other with the white man. A Negro behaves differently with a white man than with another Negro. Fanon claimed that whether this self-division is a direct result of colonialist subjugation is beyond question

All colonized people position themselves in relation to the metropolitan culture.

Blackness

She wants above all to be with a white man, and strives to be as close to communities of white people as possible. Fanon also discusses how mulatto women see themselves as superior to black men.
Antillean man who upon arrival has one goal: to sleep with a white woman. For the black man, an unconscious need to prove that their worth is similar to the white man is fulfilled through sexual interaction with the white woman
Black people are unable to truly process this trauma or “make it unconscious.” Black people are unable to not think about the fact that they are Black and all of the historical and current stigma that come with that.

Sexual relations

being accepted by a white member of the opposite sex is to become truly accepted
neurotic obsession with whiteness

black men as phobogenic

the imagined sexual power of black men
I am loved like a white man
he was dictating this to his white girlfriend

not looking for authenticity through sexual relations

but through whiteness

Chapter 5. The Lived Experience of the Black Man

Sartre, Reflections on the Jewish Question

it is the anti-semite who defines the Jew

the Jew is defined from the inside

Black people are overdetermined from the outside

they cannot avoid being seen as black

consciousness through the body

look, un negre!

my soul desires to be at the origin of the world, and here I am an object among other objects

I cannot be allowed to forget myself as an object

A black person can never make a mistake

cf. Thuran on being a hero as a goal striker and a failure as a goal misser

negritude

quoting from Senghor
I was expelled to a stereotype
negritude as a condemnation of its own death
it cannot provide a complete independent identity
it is always negative in relation to whiteness
my black skin is not a repository of particular values
black people are nothing in themselves

but assimilation is not possible either

violence as a way out

The educated black person

lost his own culture and embraced the colonial culture
acquiring the status symbols of white culture, education abroad etc

Performance of whiteness

they are putting on white masks

But they will never be successful

they will always be told that they are fakes

“a normal Negro child, having grown up in a normal Negro family, will become abnormal on the slightest contact of the white world.”

comic books and cartoons

the blacks as villains
sparking feelings of fear and dread in white people
white people feel insecurity

What happens when this attitude is internalized by black people?

black people internalize this phobia

learn from childhood that black is wrong

a mental wound that they carry with them

impose a servile attitude

desperate for white approval

they can save themselves by becoming whiter

Hegel

but also Adler

embraces the theory on recognition

theory of recognition
there should be more of a struggle by black people

the problem of how to make yourself autonomous

The Wretched of the Earth

Les damnés de la terre, 1961
cf. The Internationale — “Debout, les damnés de la terre”

more obviously political

written in Algeria during his time as an activist
banned by the French authorities

defends the right to use violence

human beings who are not considered as such (by the colonizer) shall not be bound by principles that apply to humanity in their attitude towards the colonizer
the colonizer’s presence in Algeria is based on sheer military strength. Any resistance to this strength must also be of a violent nature because it is the only “language” the colonizer speaks

dehumanization

but since the colonized know they are not animals, they immediately feel a sense of rebellion

violence

the violence of the colonizer through annihilation of body, psyche, culture, along with the demarcation of space
the violence of the colonized as an attempt to retrieve dignity, sense of self, and history through anti-colonial struggle

overthrow the colonial system

rely on the lumpenproletariat in the colony — the people who were not workers
useless according to Marxist theory
they are independent of the colonial system — the lumpenproletariat will be the first to discover violence in the face of the settler

The acceptability of violence

Martin Luther KIng vs. Malcom X

but much longer history

David Walker

kill or be killed

Fredrick Douglas

was much more skeptical

On Violence

The need for violence in the anti-colonial struggle

the Algerian war of independence
treating people on both side of the conflict

1956 joined FLN

1955, important conference in Paris

only armed struggle will bring about an end to colonialism

1959, A Year of the Algerian Revolution

ambassador to Ghana and much of the rest of Africa

critical of negritude
the focus was rather national liberation

1961 he was diagnosed with leukemia

long talks with Sartre

violence is essential in order to explode the colonial situation
duality can be undone by violence

violence as the only way of establishing yourself as a human being

very Hegelian
no way to replace it with diplomacy
breaking off on your own terms

the colonized intellectual

has internalized the colonial culture
but the alternative is to “go native” — not actually a solution

a lot of colonized people are really angry

the muscles of the colonized are always tense
mental disorder as a problem

power is the only thing that counts

the psychological value of violence not only a necessary evil

Sartre sympathized with the idea of violence

He hated violence

colonial societies are ongoing structures of violence
doing nothing will make you complicit with the violence
if you are trying to stop the structural violence you will be called violent

You appearing in a public sphere is a violent act

you are illegitimate
only black violence is violence

dialectics of possibility

human reality as communicative
it is not enough to be independent — you are still locked within a colonial mentality

the system is kept intact

that’s why subsequent generations have to negate them

you are wasting your time

oppression is a political reality

The national bourgeoisie

lacked bargaining power

simple puppet of the colonial power
supported by intellectuals

talks about types and classes

Marxist in spirit

give power back to the masses
embrace the nation as a whole

but it is the peasantry that is the agent of the revolution

The pitfalls of national consciousness

It so happens that the unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical
links between them and the mass of the people, their
laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive
moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps.

an underdeveloped middle-class

very small
based in the capital

not a transformative class

only living off rents and contacts — business, agriculture, liberal professions
no entrepreneurial skill
no inventions
no constructions
not transforming the nation

“Not a replica of Europe, instead its caricature”

Its innermost vocation seems to be to keep in the running and to be part of the racket. The
psychology of the national bourgeoisie is that of the
businessman, not that of a captain of industry

although, admittedly, they don’t really have another choice
they could never have accumulated capital during colonization
after independence they fall into “deplorable stagnation”

as a result

we send out our natural resources
we are Europe’s small farmer
we specialize in unfinished products

they are a tool of international capitalism

in Europe the bourgeoisie was national, in the colonies it is international
they are “the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism,
rampant though camouflaged, which today puts on the
mask of neo-colonialism.”
‘it is already senile”

To them, nationalization quite simply means the transfer into native
hands of those unfair advantages which are a legacy of the
colonial period.

and they are encouraged by all the foreign visitors

come for wild animals
casinos
sex — “it will in practice set up its country as the brothel of Europe”

the landed elite

simply take over the plantations that were run by the Europeans

they use their profits for

ostentatious displays and various prestige projects
investing in foreign bank accounts
they spend their weekends “in Paris or Hamburg” — “neonlit nightclubs”

“It will fight to the bitter end against these people “who insult our dignity as a nation.”

they are exploiting the people just like the colonial power did

collusion with the bit international corporations

take concessions from them
work as their agents

W e observe a permanent seesaw between
African unity, which fades quicker and quicker into the
mists of oblivion, and a heartbreaking return to chauvin
ism in its most bitter and detestable form.

Tribalism

and since they cannot lead the nation

the country falls back into tribal attitudes
and we get all kinds of religious divisions — rivalries between Muslims and Christians

North Africa is divided from Sub Saharan Africa

the north is told that it is European
black people are inferior — talking to the servants in pidgin English

“Immediately after independence, the nationals who live
in the more prosperous regions realize their good luck,
and show a primary and profound reaction in refusing to
feed the other nationals.”

even openly, organizes an authentic
ethnic dictatorship. We no longer see the rise of a bour
geois dictatorship, but a tribal dictatorship. The ministers,
the members of the cabinet, the ambassadors and local
commissioners are chosen from the same ethnological
group as the leader, sometimes directly from his own
family.

These
heads of the government are the true traitors in Africa,
for they sell their country to the most terrifying of all its
enemies: stupidity. This tribalizing of the central au
thority, it is certain, encourages regionalist ideas and sepa
ratism. All the decentralizing tendencies spring up again
and triumph, and the nation falls to pieces, broken in bits.
The leader, who once used to call for “African unity” and who thought of his own little family, wakes up one day to
find himself saddled with five tribes, who also want to
have their own ambassadors and ministers; and irrespon
sible as ever, still unaware and still despicable, he de
nounces their “treason.”

the end of pan-Africanism

African unity takes off the
mask, and crumbles into regionalism inside the hollow
shell of nationality itself. The national bourgeoisie, since
it is strung up to defend its immediate interests, and sees
no further than the end of its nose, reveals itself in
capable of simply bringing national unity into being, or
of building up the nation on a stable and productive
basis. The national front which has forced colonialism to withdraw cracks up, and wastes the victory it has gained.”

Now the nationalist bourgeoisies, who in region
after region hasten to make their own fortunes and to set
up a national system of exploitation, do their utmost to
put obstacles in the path of this “Utopia.”

This is why we
must understand that African unity can only be achieved
through the upward thrust of the people, and under the
leadership of the people, that is to say, in defiance of the
interests of the bourgeoisie.

National parties

And they establish national parties — parties of unity

simply another example of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

and the people had always put their trust in these leaders

they were the heroes of the national liberation struggle

the national leaders side with the bourgeoisie and with the exploiters

in order to govern they must use harsher and harsher methods

the leader pacifies the people

The leader, seen objectively, brings the people to a halt
and persists in either expelling them from history or
preventing them from taking root in it.

he uses every means to put them to sleep, and
three or four times a year asks them to remember the
colonial period and to look back on the long way they have
come since then.

the govt bureaucracy is the same as before

for ordinary people nothing has really changed

the party is all about “delivering to the people the instructions which issue from the summit”

they continue to derive their legitimacy from the anti-colonial struggle

people are constantly reminded of the heroic fight
ordinary members are only called upon to show up at ceremonial occasions

Now
that they have fulfilled their historical mission of leading
the bourgeoisie to power, they are firmly invited to retire
so that the bourgeoisie may carry out its mission in peace
and quiet.

The party is becoming a way of private advancement

it helps the government to hold people down
they started by ruling with the people and then against them

the army and the police are the new pillars of the regime

use to repress the people

A different solution

there is no need for “the bourgeois stage of development”

a party in the hands of the people

organized from the bottom up

local

with revolutionary leaders who help give power to the people

sounds a bit like Cambodia …

give “the masses” new opportunities

A national culture

Rather than depending on an orientalized, fetishized understanding of precolonial history, Fanon argues a national culture should be built on the material resistance of a people against colonial domination

against the idea of Negritude

since “every culture is first and foremost national.”
find an ally in European anthropologists
demonstration of nationhood, but one that holds on to a fixed idea of the nation as something of the past, a corpse
instead a nation is already existing in the present national reality — national struggle and national culture then become inextricably linked in Fanon’s analysis. To struggle for national liberation is to struggle for the terrain whereby a culture can grow
this is also why a national culture cannot exist under colonization
there is no such thing as an African culture — nothing to uncover
the struggle is about today and tomorrow
it’s not about culture, it’s about economics
you must start with a free culture

Senghor was not the same as Gobineau

as a reactionary form — the conditions are set for your own authenticity
we have to learn to live beyond reductive abstractions

The Whites created the Negro

negritude as an act to be built on — it was a start

rejection of essentialism

it is not ontological
it is a social construction — it is socially real and cannot simply be unthought

combat literature

the example of Algerian storytellers changing the content and narration of their traditional stories to reflect the present moment of struggle against French colonial rule
the bebop jazz movement in America as a similar turn, whereby black jazz musicians began to delink themselves from the image imposed on them by a white-Southern imaginary

replacing the ‘concept’ with the ‘muscle’

but a national culture is a stage towards an international culture

once the truly independent nation has been established it can participate in an international culture

humanity matters more than blackness

not just copy Western institutions

Sartre’s preface

violence by the colonized people against the colonizer, as necessary for their mental health and political liberation

After 1967, in the wake of Sartre’s support for Israel in the Six-Day War, the introduction by Sartre was removed from new editions by Fanon’s widow, Josie

Criticism

Some theorists working in postcolonial studies have criticized Fanon’s commitment to the nation as reflective of an essentialist and authoritarian tendency in his writing

the lack of attention to the imposition and artificiality of national borders in Africa overlooks the cultural and linguistic differences of each country that make theorizing a unified national culture
why is he treating particular or local histories as subordinate to the universal or global struggle of the nation
overemphasizes a sense of unified political consciousness onto the peasantry in their struggle to overthrow colonial systems of power
peasant militancy in Fanon’s analysis becomes the exact justification for his theory, yet does not necessarily exist in the material sense

Fanon’s dedication to a national consciousness can be read as a “deeply troubling” demand for cultural homogeneity and the collapse of difference

“strategic essentialism” (Spivak)

pretend that we are united in order to facilitate the anti-colonial struggle

Relationship to the Négritude movement

The problems and solutions presented by the congress, inspired as they were by the movement, often revolved around the presumption that a unified African Negro culture existed.
Fanon was especially critical of prominent Négritude writers and politicians Jacques Rabemananjara and Léopold Sédar Senghor, who called for black cultural unity yet opposed Algeria’s bid for independence at the United Nations.

Neurological and mental illness are not the same

difference between clients and patients

you should be made happy in the face of your degradation

you should be angry about that

social psychiatry as necessary

there will always be people who don’t live up to their stereotype
putting in the examples of trauma, there is no mental illness left
psychiatric science fails to address this

taking agency over their possibilities

first-nation discourses

Nation-building

Amin, “The deployment of the Bandung project, 1955-1970”

Wright, The Colour Curtain : A Report on the Bandung Conference, 1956

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Wright – 1956 – Race and Religion at Bandung

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Wright – 1956 – The Western World at Bandung

Another alternative conception was presented at the meeting of the non-aligned movement in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. Instead of siding with one of the parties in the Cold War, the newly independent countries should rally together. Theories of dependency and neocolonialism seemed to explain their predicament. Radicals theorized about a world revolution, while the more reformist-minded saw the United Nations as an instrument for change. This too was an attempt to remake the world that Western colonialism had created. Yet these projects too failed.

The experience of colonialism has brought countries together. There is a natural sense of solidarity between all countries that have been dominated and exploited by the West. This constitutes an alternative basis on which international relations can be established. In addition, since one country taken by itself never is powerful enough to stand up against the West, the former colonies have no choice but to stand up together. There is strength in numbers. This alternative outlook resulted in a number of proposals and institutional initiatives.

The “Third World”

The term arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the “First World”, while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and their allies represented the “Second World”. This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on political divisions. Strictly speaking, “Third World” was a political, rather than an economic, grouping. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term Third World has decreased in use. It is being replaced with terms such as “developing countries,” “least developed countries” or the “Global South.” The concept itself has become outdated as it no longer represents the current political or economic state of the world and historically poor countries have transited to different income stages. They no longer live in the same world. Their economic positions are too different.

The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Oceania, and Asia. It was also sometimes taken as synonymous with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement.

The term was never perfect. Countries aligned with the Soviet bloc were included, such as Cuba, and European non-aligned countries such as Sweden were not included. Relatively rich countries such as Brazil were counted as third world too.

The term was originally coined by Alfred Sauvy, a French historian and writer, in an article published in the French magazine L’Observateur, August 14, 1952. He called it tiers monde, referring to countries that were playing little role on the international scene. His usage was a reference to the Third Estate (tiers état), the commoners of France who, before and during the French Revolution, opposed the clergy and nobles, who composed the First Estate and Second Estate, respectively (hence the use of the older form tiers rather than the modern troisième for “third”).

Third-Worldism

Third-Worldism is a political concept and ideology that emerged in the late 1940s or early 1950s during the Cold War and tried to generate unity among the nations that did not want to take sides between the United States and the Soviet Union. The political thinkers and leaders of Third-Worldism argued that the North-South divisions and conflicts were of primary political importance compared to the East-West opposition of the Cold War period. In the three-world model, the countries of the First World were the ones allied to the United States. These nations had less political risk, better functioning democracy and economic stability, and continue to have a higher standard of living. The Second World designation referred to the former industrial socialist states under the influence of the Soviet Union. The Third World hence defined countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO, or the Communist Bloc. In the 1960s and 1970s by a second generation of Third-Worldist governments that emphasized on a more radical and revolutionary socialist vision, personified by the figure of Che Guevara. At the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, Third Worldism began to enter into a period of decline.

Many times there is a clear distinction between First and Third Worlds. When talking about the Global North and the Global South, the majority of the time the two go hand in hand. People refer to the two as “Third World/South” and “First World/North” because the Global North is more affluent and developed, whereas the Global South is less developed and often poorer.[8]

To counter this mode of thought, some scholars began proposing the idea of a change in world dynamics that began in the late 1980s, and termed it the Great Convergence.[9] As Jack A. Goldstone and his colleagues put it, “in the twentieth century, the Great Divergence peaked before the First World War and continued until the early 1970s, then, after two decades of indeterminate fluctuations, in the late 1980s, it was replaced by the Great Convergence as the majority of Third World countries reached economic growth rates significantly higher than those in most First World countries”.[10]

Others have observed a return to Cold War-era alignments (MacKinnon, 2007; Lucas, 2008), this time with substantial changes between 1990–2015 in geography, the world economy and relationship dynamics between current and emerging world powers; not necessarily redefining the classic meaning of First, Second, and Third World terms, but rather which countries belong to them by way of association to which world power or coalition of countries — such as G7, the European Union, OECD; G20, OPEC, N-11, BRICS, ASEAN; the African Union, and the Eurasian Union.

Third Worldism is a political movement that argues for the unity of third-world nations against first-world influence and the principle of non-interference in other countries’ domestic affairs. Groups most notable for expressing and exercising this idea are the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the Group of 77 which provide a base for relations and diplomacy between not just the third-world countries, but between the third-world and the first and second worlds. The notion has been criticized as providing a fig leaf for human rights violations and political repression by dictatorships.[6]

Since 1990, this term has been redefined to make it more correct politically. Initially, the term “third world” meant that a nation is “under-developed”.[7] However, today it is replaced by the term “developing”.

Most Third World countries are former colonies. Having gained independence, many of these countries, especially smaller ones, were faced with the challenges of nation- and institution-building on their own for the first time. Due to this common background, many of these nations were “developing” in economic terms for most of the 20th century, and many still are. This term, used today, generally denotes countries that have not developed to the same levels as OECD countries, and are thus in the process of developing.

In the 1980s, economist Peter Bauer offered a competing definition for the term “Third World”. He claimed that the attachment of Third World status to a particular country was not based on any stable economic or political criteria, and was a mostly arbitrary process. The large diversity of countries considered part of the Third World — from Indonesia to Afghanistan — ranged widely from economically primitive to economically advanced and from politically non-aligned to Soviet- or Western-leaning. An argument could also be made for how parts of the U.S. are more like the Third World.[11]

The only characteristic that Bauer found common in all Third World countries was that their governments “demand and receive Western aid,” the giving of which he strongly opposed. Thus, the aggregate term “Third World” was challenged as misleading even during the Cold War period, because it had no consistent or collective identity among the countries it supposedly encompassed.

During the Cold War, unaligned countries of the Third World[2] were seen as potential allies by both the First and Second World. Therefore, the United States and the Soviet Union went to great lengths to establish connections in these countries by offering economic and military support to gain strategically located alliances (e.g., the United States in Vietnam or the Soviet Union in Cuba).[2] By the end of the Cold War, many Third World countries had adopted capitalist or communist economic models and continued to receive support from the side they had chosen. Throughout the Cold War and beyond, the countries of the Third World have been the priority recipients of Western foreign aid and the focus of economic development through mainstream theories such as modernization theory and dependency theory.[2]

By the end of the 1960s, the idea of the Third World came to represent countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that were considered underdeveloped by the West based on a variety of characteristics (low economic development, low life expectancy, high rates of poverty and disease, etc.).[5] These countries became the targets for aid and support from governments, NGOs and individuals from wealthier nations. One popular model, known as Rostow’s stages of growth, argued that development took place in 5 stages (Traditional Society; Pre-conditions for Take-off; Take-off; Drive to Maturity; Age of High Mass Consumption).[12] W. W. Rostow argued that Take-off was the critical stage that the Third World was missing or struggling with. Thus, foreign aid was needed to help kick-start industrialization and economic growth in these countries.[12]

Since 1990 the term “Third World” has been redefined in many evolving dictionaries in several languages to refer to countries considered to be underdeveloped economically and/or socially. From a “political correctness” standpoint the term “Third World” may be considered outdated, which its concept is mostly a historical term and cannot fully address what means by developing and less-developed countries today. Around the early 1960s, the term “underdeveloped countries” occurred and the Third World serves to be its synonym, but after it has been officially used by politicians, ‘underdeveloped countries’ is soon been replaced by ‘developing’ and ‘less-developed countries,’ because the prior one shows hostility and disrespect, in which the Third World is often characterized with stereotypes.[13] The whole ‘Four Worlds’ system of classification has also been described as derogatory because the standard mainly focused on each nations’ Gross National Product.[14]

The general definition of the Third World can be traced back to the history that nations positioned as neutral and independent during the Cold War were considered as Third World Countries, and normally these countries are defined by high poverty rates, lack of resources, and unstable financial standing.[15] However, based on the rapid development of modernization and globalization, countries that were used to be considered as Third World countries achieve big economic growth, such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia, which can no longer be defined by poor economic status or low GNP today. The differences among nations of the Third World are continually growing throughout time, and it will be hard to use the Third World to define and organize groups of nations based on their common political arrangements since most countries live under diverse creeds in this era, such as Mexico, El Salvador, and Singapore, which they all have their own political system.[16] The Third World categorization becomes anachronistic since its political classification and economic system are distinct to be applied in today’s society. Based on the Third World standards, any region of the world can be categorized into any of the four types of relationships among state and society, and will eventually end in four outcomes: praetorianism, multi-authority, quasi-democratic and viable democracy.[17] However, political culture is never going to be limited by the rule and the concept of the Third World can be circumscribed.

Mao’s Three World Theory

The Three Worlds Theory by Mao Zedong proposed to the visiting Algerian President Houari Boumédiène in February 1974. The international system operated as three contradictory politico-economic worlds.

On April 10, 1974, at the 6th Special Session United Nations General Assembly, Deng Xiaoping applied the Three Worlds Theory during the New International Economic Order presentations about the problems of raw materials and development, to explain the PRC’s economic co-operation with non-communist countries.

The First World comprises the United States and the Soviet Union, the superpower countries respectively engaged in imperialism and in social imperialism. The Second World comprises Japan, Canada, Europe and the other countries of the global North. The Third World comprises China, the countries of Africa, Latin America, and continental Asia. Nice how China puts itself as the leader of their own world.

There was critique from Enver Hoxha, the leader of the Albanian Communist Party. This was a contributing factor to the split with China.

World revolution

The Weather Underground documentary. Che Guevara. Maybe this is “Thirdworldism” too.

Dependency theory

In the dependency theory of thinkers like Raúl Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotônio dos Santos, and Andre Gunder Frank, the Third World has also been connected to the world-systemic economic division as “periphery” countries dominated by the countries comprising the economic “core.” Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Celso Furtado, and Aníbal Pinto Santa Cruz, and Ruy Mauro Marini, Anibal Quijano, and Vânia Bambirra. Sergio Bagú and Caio Prado Júnior; this structuralist approach is best represented by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Maria da Conceição Tavares, José Serra, J. M. Cardoso de Mello, Osvaldo Sunkel, and Francisco Oliveira. Maria da Conceição Tavares.

There are two camps of dependency theorists. Both groups would agree that at the core of the dependency relation between center and periphery lies the inability of the periphery to develop an autonomous and dynamic process of technological innovation. The center countries controlled technology and the systems for generating tech-nology. Foreign capital could not solve the problem because it only led to limited trans-mission of technology but not the process of innovation itself. This article argues that in that respect, both versions of dependency resemble neoclassical economics, which sees technical progress, that is, supply-side forces, as the main limitation to economic growth(and development) The origins of the center-periphery relation are strictly technological and determined by the international division of labor. In other words, the center produces manufactured goods for itself and the periphery, whereas the periphery produces com-modities mainly for the center as well as maintaining a relatively large subsistence sector. The predominance of large estates in plantation systems implies that a great part of the surplus remains in the hands of landowners, who emulate the consumption patterns of developed countries. Excessive and superfluous consumption on luxuries would then reduce the potential for investment and capital accumulation.

Dependency theory is the notion that resources flow from a “periphery” of poor and underdeveloped states to a “core” of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. A central contention of dependency theory is that poor states are impoverished and rich ones enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the “world system.” This theory was officially developed in the late 1960s following World War II, as scholars searched for the root issue in the lack of development in Latin America.

The theory arose as a reaction to modernization theory, an earlier theory of development which held that all societies progress through similar stages of development, that today’s underdeveloped areas are thus in a similar situation to that of today’s developed areas at some time in the past, and that, therefore, the task of helping the underdeveloped areas out of poverty is to accelerate them along this supposed common path of development, by various means such as investment, technology transfers, and closer integration into the world market. Dependency theory rejected this view, arguing that underdeveloped countries are not merely primitive versions of developed countries, but have unique features and structures of their own; and, importantly, are in the situation of being the weaker members in a world market economy.

Dependency theory originates with two papers published in 1949, one by Hans Singer and one by Raúl Prebisch, in which the authors observe that the terms of trade for underdeveloped countries relative to the developed countries had deteriorated over time: the underdeveloped countries were able to purchase fewer and fewer manufactured goods from the developed countries in exchange for a given quantity of their raw materials exports. This idea is known as the Prebisch–Singer thesis.

Prebisch, an Argentine economist at the United Nations Commission for Latin America (UNCLA), went on to conclude that the underdeveloped nations must employ some degree of protectionism in trade if they were to enter a self-sustaining development path. He argued that import-substitution industrialization (ISI), not a trade-and-export orientation, was the best strategy for underdeveloped countries.

The theory was popular in the 1960s and 1970s as a criticism of modernization theory, which was falling increasingly out of favor because of continued widespread poverty in much of the world. At that time the assumptions of liberal theories of development were under attack.

Baran placed surplus extraction and capital accumulation at the center of his analysis. Development depends on a population’s producing more than it needs for bare subsistence (a surplus). Further, some of that surplus must be used for capital accumulation – the purchase of new means of production – if development is to occur; spending the surplus on things like luxury consumption does not produce development. Baran noted two predominant kinds of economic activity in poor countries. In the older of the two, plantation agriculture, which originated in colonial times, most of the surplus goes to the landowners, who use it to emulate the consumption patterns of wealthy people in the developed world; much of it thus goes to purchase foreign-produced luxury items –automobiles, clothes, etc. – and little is accumulated for investing in development. The more recent kind of economic activity in the periphery is industry—but of a particular kind. It is usually carried out by foreigners, although often in conjunction with local interests. It is often under special tariff protection or other government concessions. The surplus from this production mostly goes to two places: part of it is sent back to the foreign shareholders as profit; the other part is spent on conspicuous consumption in a similar fashion to that of the plantation aristocracy. Again, little is used for development. Baran thought that political revolution was necessary to break this pattern.

In the 1960s, members of the Latin American Structuralist school argued that there is more latitude in the system than the Marxists believed. They argued that it allows for partial development or “dependent development”–development, but still under the control of outside decision makers. They cited the partly successful attempts at industrialization in Latin America around that time (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico) as evidence for this hypothesis. They were led to the position that dependency is not a relation between commodity exporters and industrialized countries, but between countries with different degrees of industrialization. In their approach, there is a distinction made between the economic and political spheres: economically, one may be developed or underdeveloped; but even if (somewhat) economically developed, one may be politically autonomous or dependent.

Cardoso summarized his version of dependency theory as follows:

there is a financial and technological penetration by the developed capitalist centers of the countries of the periphery and semi-periphery;
this produces an unbalanced economic structure both within the peripheral societies and between them and the centers;
this leads to limitations on self-sustained growth in the periphery;
this favors the appearance of specific patterns of class relations;
these require modifications in the role of the state to guarantee both the functioning of the economy and the political articulation of a society, which contains, within itself, foci of inarticulateness and structural imbalance.

With the economic growth of India and some East Asian economies, dependency theory has lost some of its former influence. It still influences some NGO campaigns, such as Make Poverty History and the fair trade movement.

Tausch, based on works of Amin from 1973 to 1997, lists the following main characteristics of periphery capitalism:

Regression in both agriculture and small scale industry characterizes the period after the onslaught of foreign domination and colonialism
Unequal international specialization of the periphery leads to the concentration of activities in export-oriented agriculture and or mining. Some industrialization of the periphery is possible under the condition of low wages, which, together with rising productivity, determine that unequal exchange sets in
These structures determine in the long run a rapidly growing tertiary sector with hidden unemployment and the rising importance of rent in the overall social and economic system
Chronic current account balance deficits, re-exported profits of foreign investments, and deficient business cycles at the periphery that provide important markets for the centers during world economic upswings
Structural imbalances in the political and social relationships, inter alia a strong ‘compradore’ element and the rising importance of state capitalism and an indebted state class.

Classical liberal critique: Market economists cite a number of examples in their arguments against dependency theory. The improvement of India’s economy after it moved from state-controlled business to open trade is one of the most often cited (see also economy of India, The Commanding Heights). India’s example seems to contradict dependency theorists’ claims concerning comparative advantage and mobility, as much as its economic growth originated from movements such as outsourcing – one of the most mobile forms of capital transfer. In Africa, states that have emphasized import-substitution development, such as Zimbabwe, have typically been among the worst performers, while the continent’s most successful non-oil based economies, such as Egypt, South Africa, and Tunisia, have pursued trade-based development.

The Bandung Conference of 1955

The first Asian-African Conference, most of which just had gained independence. It took place 18–24 April 1955 in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. The twenty-nine countries that participated represented a total population of 1.5 billion people, 54% of the world’s population. The conference was organized by Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and Pakistan and was coordinated by Ruslan Abdulgani, secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia.

The conference’s stated aims were to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by any nation. The conference was an important step towards the eventual creation of the Non-Aligned Movement yet the two initiatives ran in parallel during the 1960s, even coming in confrontation with one another.

Indonesia’s President Sukarno and India’s prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru were key organizers, in his quest to build a nonaligned movement that would win the support of the newly emerging nations of Asia and Africa. Nehru first got the idea at the Asian Relations Conference, held in India in March 1947, on the eve of India’s independence. There was a second 19-nation conference regarding the status of Indonesia, held in New Delhi, India, in January 1949.

Acharya points out that sovereignty was affirmed thus strengthening the logic of the Western competitive system. Sovereignty here meant protecting the countries from neo-colonial interference. The new leaders wanted to be in a position to protect their countries and themselves. However, they are at the same time calling for cooperation and solidarity. The state-system should be strengthened, but it should not be competitive, at least not as far as the former colonies of Asia and Africa are concerned.

The Bandung Conference reflected what the organizers regarded as a reluctance by the Western powers to consult with them on decisions affecting Asia in a setting of Cold War tensions. Major debate centered around the question of whether Soviet policies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia should be censured along with Western colonialism. A memo was submitted by ‘The Muslim Nations under Soviet Imperialism’, accusing the Soviet authorities of massacres and mass deportations in Muslim regions, but it was never debated. A consensus was reached in which “colonialism in all of its manifestations” was condemned, implicitly censuring the Soviet Union, as well as the West. China played an important role in the conference and strengthened its relations with other Asian nations. Having survived an assassination attempt on the way to the conference, the Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, displayed a moderate and conciliatory attitude that tended to quiet fears of some anticommunist delegates concerning China’s intentions.

The US was in favor of decolonization, and officially positive to the conference, but were worried about the close ties to their Europeans allies with remaining colonies. The US also worried that the conference would increase Chinese influence, and allow them to break out of their diplomatic isolation. The US wanted to be a friendly power but also to warn them of the threat of Communism.

The Non-Aligned Movement

The Non-Aligned Movement is a forum of 120 countries that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. The movement originated in the aftermath of the Korean War, as an effort by some countries to counterbalance the rapid bi-polarization of the world during the Cold War, whereby two major powers formed blocs and embarked on a policy to pull the rest of the world into their orbits. In 1961, drawing on the principles agreed at the Bandung Conference of 1955, the Non-Aligned Movement was formally established in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, through an initiative of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, and Indonesian President Sukarno.

This led to the first Conference of Heads of State or Governments of Non-Aligned Countries. The term non-aligned movement first appears in the fifth conference in 1976, where participating countries are denoted as “members of the movement”. The purpose of the organization was summarized by Fidel Castro in his Havana Declaration of 1979 as to ensure “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries” in their “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.” This is really just an affirmation of the Western system of competitive nation-states.

The countries of the Non-Aligned Movement represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations’ members and contain 55% of the world population.

The Non-Aligned Movement gained the most traction in the 1950s and early 1960s, when the international policy of non-alignment achieved major successes in decolonization, disarmament, opposition to racism and apartheid in South Africa, and persisted throughout the entire Cold War, despite several conflicts between members, and despite some members developing closer ties with either the Soviet Union, China, or the United States. In the years since the Cold War’s end in 1992, it has focused on developing multilateral ties and connections as well as unity among the developing nations.

Declaration of Brijuni on 19 July 1956: “Peace can not be achieved with separation, but with the aspiration towards collective security in global terms and expansion of freedom, as well as terminating the domination of one country over another.”

A guide for Sino-Indian relations called Panchsheel (five restraints); these principles would later serve as the basis of the Non-Aligned Movement. The five principles were:

Mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Mutual non-aggression.
Mutual non-interference in domestic affairs.
Equality and mutual benefit.
Peaceful co-existence.

Again, this is an affirmation of the Western understanding of the world.

Six years after Bandung, an initiative of Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito led to the first Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries, which was held in September 1961 in Belgrade. The term non-aligned movement appears first in the fifth conference in 1976, where participating countries are denoted as members of the movement.

At the Lusaka Conference in September 1970, the member nations added as aims of the movement the peaceful resolution of disputes and the abstention from the big power military alliances and pacts. Another added aim was opposition to stationing of military bases in foreign countries.

In 1975, the member nations which also were part of the United Nations General Assembly pushed for the Resolution 3379 along with Arab countries equated Zionism with South Africa’s Apartheid and as a form of racial discrimination. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted on 10 November 1975 by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), “determine[d] that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. It was revoked in 1991 with UN General Assembly Resolution 46/86. The vote on Resolution 3379 took place approximately one year after UNGA 3237 granted the PLO Permanent Observer status, following PLO president Yasser Arafat’s “olive branch” speech to the General Assembly in November 1974. The resolution was passed with the support of the Soviet bloc, in addition to the Arab- and Muslim-majority countries, many African countries, and a few others.

In the 1970s, Cuba made a major effort to assume a leadership role in the world’s non-alignment movement. The country established military advisory missions and economic and social reform programs. The 1976 world conference of the Non-Aligned Movement applauded Cuban internationalism, “which assisted the people of Angola in frustrating the expansionist and colonialist strategy of South Africa’s racist regime and its allies.” The next Non-Aligned conference was scheduled for Havana in 1979, to be chaired by Fidel Castro, with his becoming the de facto spokesman for the Movement. The conference in September 1979 marked the zenith of Cuban prestige. However, in December 1979, the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan’s civil war. Up until that time, Afghanistan was also an active member of the Non-Aligned Movement. At the United Nations, nonaligned members voted 56 to 9, with 26 abstaining, to condemn the Soviet Union. Cuba voted against the resolution, in support of the U.S.S.R. It lost its nonaligned leadership and reputation after Castro, instead of becoming a high-profile spokesman for the Movement, remained quiet and inactive. More broadly the Movement was deeply split over the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979, as many members of the Non-Aligned Movement, particularly the predominantly Muslim states, condemned it.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Non-Aligned Movement has felt forced to redefine itself and to reinvent its purpose in the new world-system. A major question has been whether any of its foundational ideologies, principally national independence, territorial integrity, and the struggle against colonialism and imperialism, apply to contemporary issues. The movement has emphasised its principles of multilateralism, equality, and mutual non-aggression in attempting to become a stronger voice for the Global South, and an instrument that can promote the needs of member-nations at the international level and strengthen their political leverage when negotiating with developed nations. In its efforts to advance Southern interests, the movement has stressed the importance of cooperation and unity among member states.[25] However, as in the past, cohesion remains a problem, since the size of the organization and the divergence of agendas and allegiances present the ongoing potential for fragmentation. While agreement on basic principles has been smooth, taking definitive action vis-à-vis particular international issues has been rare, with the movement preferring to assert its criticism or support rather than to pass hard-line resolutions.

The Movement continues to see a role for itself: in its view, the world’s poorest nations remain exploited and marginalised, no longer by opposing superpowers, but rather in a uni-polar world, and it is Western hegemony and neo-colonialism that the movement has really re-aligned itself against. It opposes foreign occupation, interference in internal affairs and aggressive unilateral measures, but it has also shifted to focus on the socio-economic challenges facing member states, especially the inequalities manifested by globalization and the implications of neo-liberal policies. The Non-Aligned Movement has identified economic underdevelopment, poverty, and social injustices as growing threats to peace and security.

NIEO

The attempts in the 1970s to come up with a New Economic World Order. Using the United Nations as a tool for transforming the way the world economy operated. For a while it seemed it could almost happen.

The rise and fall of the idea of a “new international economic order.” This may have been “the most serious challenge to US global leadership since the end of the Second World War.” It added an economic dimension to the struggle for independence.

There was an economic boom in the West after WW2 — in contrast to what happened after WW1. But this did not include the newly independent states. There was little economic growth, industrialization, and they remained dependent on commodity exports. To many Communism appeared as a tempting alternative. There were cases of “neocolonialism” everywhere. MNCs dominated the economy of many countries. They did not have control over their own economies. As these countries insisted, the North/South division is more important than the East/West division.

The United Nations was very much the forum where NIEO was worked out. This was a much friendlier institution than the Bretton Woods institutions that were dominated by Western countries. At the UN one country had one vote — at least in the General Assembly. A majority of members are no longer Western countries. This was the only forum where small countries have influence. But this, in turn, led to the US moving away from the UN. The UN was no longer a tool of US statecraft.

Some institutional developments. UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, established in 1964. The primary objective of UNCTAD is to formulate policies relating to all aspects of development including trade, aid, transport, finance and technology.

Expropriation of natural resources. Natural resources are nationalized. There is a discussion whether to pay compensation to the previous owners. How much should be paid and to whom? There was also a problem of who should control the expropriated resources. There was little accountability and in many cases the local leaders used this as a way to enrich themselves. In any case, it was a quickly growing trend during the 1960s and 70s. Western countries tried to protect their investments by means of bilateral investment treaties, but the developing countries wanted multilateral agreements. It should not be possible to play them off against each other.

The idea of a new trade regime. They wanted a commodity fund which could help stabilize prices and thereby export earnings. It had always been a problem that prices on natural resources had varied so much. Petroleum as a case in point. In October, 1973, OPEC organize an embargo on oil shipments to the US. Cut back oil production and the price skyrocketed.

Harnessing the power of the state. Use the state as a way to control key industries, establishing a new trade regime, and stop MNCs from plundering natural resources. The demands included

permanent sovereignty over natural resources and the right to expropriation
control over foreign investments, raw material prices, commodity exports, and the indexation in relation to manufactured goods

access to markets in developed countries, technology transfer, fixed aid rates, debt relief
decision-making power in international organizations
special program for the poorest countries affected by the oil crisis

But then it all comes to an end. A number of factors contributed to reducing their leverage. The oil shock, the debt crisis — recycling of petrodollars — conditional loans from the IMF, etc.

There was a meeting in Cancun meeting in 1981 — in response to a call from the Brandt Commission. Here Reagan kills off the whole thing. The idea is to do the opposite — to reduce the power of the state and open up markets. What needs to happen is to improve the incentives for individuals. This is the emerging Washington Consensus. What is needed are structural adjustments, cutting back state-owned corporations, privatizations etc — resulting in the largest transfer of property in history.

The conclusion is consequently that the West won, and the poor countries lost. Instead there was a return to discussions regarding human rights. There was a new kind of individualism, but nothing about state rights.

The United Nations

Something more generally about the United Nations. Various resolutions. Most notoriously the annual resolution condemning Zionism. The issue was always who would vote for this. The US always vetoed it.