Third Worldism and the lineages of global fascism: the regrouping of the global South in the neoliberal era

Abstract

We come to an analysis of Third Worldism through an historical understanding of the development project, one that locates Third Worldism as a moment in a broader series of resistances both to capital and colonialism, and to the techniques used by the state to maintain hegemony. Viewing Third Worldism in this wider context, we argue, enables us to not only explain the failure of Third Worldism to deliver on its vision of emancipation from colonialism, but to also explain the shape of contemporary resistance to the world capitalist order. We argue that the theory and practice of development depends on a certain biopolitics, rooted in a regime of sovereign state control, and designed to mobilise citizens in ways favourable to capital. We hold that Third Worldism embraced this form of sovereignty and its biopolitics. Further, by blending cultural studies analysis with a Polanyian interpretation of the rise of fascism, we argue that Third Worldism can be situated as a moment in the maturation of ‘global fascism’. Finally, we argue that contemporary resistances to neoliberalism have recognised the complicity of the state with capital. These ‘new internationalisms’ arise from the ashes of Third Worldism, with an altered understanding of ‘sovereignty’ that challenges the trajectory of the Third World sovereign state.

Notes

Rajeev Patel is at Food First/the Institute for Food and Development Policy, 398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618, USA. Email: [email protected]. Philip McMichael is at Cornell University, New York, USA. Email: [email protected].

The authors thank Mark Berger and Dia Mohan for invaluable suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

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We should say at the outset that our critique is directed at a particular vision of state nationalism and national statism that, while clear and vehement in its rejection of US- and Soviet-sponsored visions of development, was grounded in a variety of programmes of national development co-ordinated and managed by elites. Clearly, we do not seek to indict anti-colonial struggle—rather, we suggest that it continues to be necessary.

We note that, while Third Worldism came to be elite managed, its origins were in historic, spontaneous mass movements. The historiography of this phenomenon demands abstraction and an observation of continuities across time. These continuities are not, however, intended to provide any sort of claim about the ultimate permanence or inevitability of any phenomenon, but rather an orthogonal and reorientating framework through which to recast our current understanding of, in this case, Third Worldism. We note, in passing, that the state, though a central feature of our analysis, is not the only locus of power in international political economy. The power of corporations, the media (both domestic and international/ imperial), local ‘traditional structures of power’, the family, prisons, schools and the military is also important.

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World Social Forum, 2001. There are, even within movements, critics of Porto Alegre. See, for instance, Peter Waterman's Second Reflections on the Third World Social Forum, available at http://www. voiceoftheturtle.org/show_article.php?aid=342.

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www.ns.rds.org.hn/via/. Via Campesina is a movement we find particularly interesting because of the centrality of autonomy and sovereignty in its history. The history of Latin American peasant movements had, until the advent of structural adjustment, been overwhelmingly tied to urban political parties. Corporatist structures of political patronage had been used by urban political elites to pacify and, at election time, mobilise peasant constituencies to vote for their political patrons. Peasantries were, however, at the tail of a political system wagged by urban dogs. Structural adjustment changed this dramatically. With a reduction in the surpluses controlled by the state came a concomitant reduction in the capital available to pacify rural communities. This staunching of patronage led to a radicalisation and separation of peasant constituencies from their erstwhile urban masters. Politically, this was given expression through ‘autonomous peasant organisation’, where the term ‘autonomous’ denoted autonomy from urban and state-embroiled political parties (and non-governmental organisations). Via Campesina emerged through a political process in Central America of precisely these autonomous peasant organisations. Personal communication with Peter Rosset, Food First.

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