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| Revolution Africa, Latin America, Asia 1:7 (November 1963). |
Although we may not agree with some of the author’s sweeping historical claims below, in a time of renewed academic interest in the history of the Third World and mainstream enthusiasm for its cognate “the Global South,'' strident critiques are useful as ever. Published in Jacques Vergès' great if short lived Parisian journal of tricontinental Marxism, Revolution Africa, Latin America, Asia Pierre Jalée’s 1963 essay below is characteristic of the moment and the magazine. Enthusiastic about Maoist China, deeply critical of Kruschev’s “revisionism,” and skeptical of Nehru’s non-alignment, Revolution published regular dispatches from those movements of national liberation still raging and acerbic criticism of imperialist thought and practice. Its editorial board would include Hamza Alavi, Hassan Diab (Samir Amin). Mohamed Babu, and Maulana Bhashani, as the historian Layli Uddin has noted. Siné drew many of the magazine’s brilliant cartoons.
Despite being a prolific and widely published writer, very little has been written about Jalée himself. The pseudonym of Maurice Rue, a French communist closely involved with the nationalist movement in Morocco in the 1930s—and imprisoned for that activity—Jalée would go on to serve the independent Moroccan state’s finance ministry, before moving to France. His many books on the political economy of imperialism were published by Maspero and in English translations by the Monthly Review Press. Texts like The Pillage of the Third World, The Third World in World Economy, and How Capitalism Works, pepper the bibliographies of the 1960s and 70s. Pillage was among the 99 books removed from George Jackson’s prison cell after he was murdered in San Quentin. Jalée’s Moroccan career is detailed in a memoir, L'ancre dans l'avenir (Paris: Karthala, 1981). And the French conditions of his efforts are narrated in Christoph Kalter, The Discovery of the Third World: Decolonization and the Rise of the New Left in France, c. 1950–1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). But Jalée’s life and work deserves serious study.
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Third World? Which Third World?
Although it first appeared only in 1956, the expression "Third World" has already had a brilliant career. Quickly entering the vocabulary of the economist and the journalist, it is known today even to the man on the street. Blossoming generously under the pens of capitalist technocrats and politicians, it nevertheless is not rare to find it also being used by Marxist theorists. The neo-colonialist and the neo-colonial use it. Even Frantz Fanon used it.
There is only a step to believing that this universality of use is explained by a clear, precise and indisputable meaning. However, let us not take that step until we have attempted to make an inventory of the term.
For the French association which calls itself "Tiers Monde" (Third World), the problem is simple: there is an identity between the so-called countries of the "Third World" and the underdeveloped countries. But others have felt the need to try to be more precise. Jean Lacouture and Jean Baumier, in the preface to their book, Le Poids du Tiers Monde (Arthaud, Paris, 1962), try to explore the reality masked by these two familiar words. After referring to a kind of Third Estate or international Third Force, they suggest that the Third World might represent ex-colonial, underdeveloped countries, or, further yet, stand for the countries which refuse, if not socialism and capitalism, at least the socialist camp as well as the imperialist camp. The idea is put forward that the Third World might be made up of the nations which have benefited neither from the liberal capitalist and industrial revolution of the 19th century nor the socialist revolution of the 20th century and which seek their own form of revolution. Our two authors, after having been seduced by the definition "countries carrying out an inventory," finally decide on no single definition and leave the reader still unsatisfied.
The November 1962 issue of the French publication, Documents (La Revue des Deux Mondes, Paris), devoted to "Aid to the Third World," seems to go a bit further with less words, in so far as it denounces the confusion reigning about this "ready-made formula," a confusion which arises from the fact that the meaning of the term is essentially political, although it is usual to use it in an economic sense to designate all the underdeveloped countries.
To unmask a confused and even confusion-making term is already good but one should go further. For us — and although we have used this expression elsewhere — , we shall not wait to throw our pebble into the stream: there is no Third World. This expression is more than confused, it is a mystification.
Indeed, to call a group of countries without further definition the Third World is to say expressly that this group of countries belongs neither to the group of socialist countries nor to the group of capitalist countries. Objectively, such a group of countries does not exist, even if one wanted to make a faulty distinction between politics and economics.
The expression "Third World" can only have meaning by reference to the two other "worlds": the group of capitalist countries and the group of socialist countries or countries committed to socialism. It implies that the countries to which one applies the term belong to neither one nor the other, which is obviously false. But it is necessary to examine the question more closely.
A Third Force?
The expression "Third World," as has been said, dates from 1956. It could hardly be born or have much success before, because the Bandung Conference was held in 1955, and the equivocable nature of the expression depends upon the policy developed by the Afro-Asian countries after Bandung.
Indeed, the majority of these countries defined and claim to carry out an international policy which they qualify as "neutralist" or "non-aligned" or "non-committed," aimed at maintaining a certain independence in regard to the international policy of both of the two big blocs. Some persons even believed or let themselves be convinced that a third world force was coming into being.
But imperialism was sufficiently supple to tolerate youthful sins on the part of the newly independent countries, pardonable sins which consisted of affirming principles which in any case it would be difficult to oppose openly. The situation called for generous understanding of the countries obtaining their political emancipation. It was to let time and American aid do their work and to take action individually in concrete cases. The Congo was one of these, and it must be admitted that the non-committed countries did not cause many major worries for the imperialist camp on that occasion, the principal difficulty having arisen within the imperialist camp itself. In 1963, some twenty African States finally showed how docile they were by renouncing their demand that South Africa be expelled from the United Nations. They were left Portugal as a target, which embarrassed few persons, even in the West.
Hence, there is no third force either on a global scale or on that of various States. And this for the sole and sufficient reason that economics commands politics, and at present only two economic systems divide and dispute the world: capitalism and socialism. The so-called third ways are never more than a camouflage for the first, as Theodore Stibbe, in numbers 4 and 5 of the French review Partisans, and the Peking Review (in its issue of April 15, 1963—"Socialism and Nehru") effectively demonstrated in the case of India. The same is true for all the countries lumped together under the term "Third World," as well as for others. North Vietnam and Senegal are both underdeveloped countries; but the former belongs from every angle to the group of socialist countries, the second to the group of capitalist countries. There is no other problem, no other basic choice, and Jean Lacouture and Jean Baumier put forward an already exposed untruth knowingly a mystification, when they claim that "the debate between capitalism and socialism appears, from many aspects, to be outdated, at least in the Third World." Have they cited a single country that has escaped the dilemma?
The Storm Centres
But, no doubt we shall be asked, you are not going to place on the same footing, although classifying them in the same world, the United States, which has an annual per capita revenue of $2,400 and directs (not without difficulty) the politics of half the planet, and Morocco, whose national per capita revenue does not exceed $130? — Certainly, there can be no question of mixing together the great powers and the small, technically backward countries, the dominating and dominated economies. But the fact that imperialism has an essential internal contradiction between exploiting and exploited countries does not remove any of its unity. This unity is indeed the fruit of this contradiction, without which imperialism would not be imperialism. And the fact that the United States, Britain, France and several other countries exploit for the profit of their monopolist capital the economy of twenty countries of Africa and, in order to do this, guide or control the policy of those countries, not only does not remove the fact that both are basically part of imperialism, but creates that fact. On the other hand, although Morocco and Cuba have in common numerous characteristics that greatly distinguish them from the United States and France, it is nevertheless true that there is a primordial difference between them. One has maintained its ties with imperialism, the other has broken them. The former is politically and economically part of one group of coun- tries, the second part of another group. There is no third indeed, the most certain consequence of the expression "Third World" is to conceal that fact and confuse people. group. And, indeed, the most certain consequence of the expression “Third World” is to conceal that fact and confuse people.
Every coin has two faces; let us recognize, nevertheless, that the fact of grouping together the underdeveloped countries dominated by imperialism under a special term, implies that they constitute a special zone within the imperialist camp. This is almost a preliminary hommage to an emancipation that is felt to be inevitable and relatively near. The "Third World," in its current use, means the underlings of imperialism. But these underlings are more or less aware of that and aspire with greater or lesser confusion to be that no longer. "Black Africa has had a bad start," some say, while others say it has not started off at all. In any case, it is the question of its departure, or new departure, that is in the air.
The countries given the misleading name of "Third World" are those at present where plots are multiplying against leaders committed to imperial- ism. Whether these plots are real or not, exaggerated or minimized, whether they do not often appear to have an immediate positive aspect, it is none the less true that plots in general do not flourish in the countries where the population is satisfied with its fate and the regime. They imply, if not popular support for the plots, at least a certain receptivity among the masses. Objectively, the gap does not cease to widen, despite all the "aid," between the economic level of the dominated underdeveloped countries and that of the countries that exploit them. And the weak national bourgeoisies in power in the former submit more and more to imperialism, sinking into nepotism and an insulting luxury amidst poverty. These countries in a state of ferment represent without a doubt the point of weakest resistance of the imperialist front. Some of them have already reached the stage of open struggle. And the Chinese Communists are right in seeing in them "the storm centres." "The various types of contradictions in the contemporary world are concentrated in the vast areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America; these are the most vulnerable areas under imperialist rule and the storm-centres of world revolution dealing direct blows to imperialism." (A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, June 14, 1963.)
The Basic Choice
Hence there is no Third World, but there are storm centres. The revolutionary can ask himself under which conditions will these areas be that of the good storm.
The basic conditions were defined impeccably in a speech of April 13, 1963 by Le-Duan, secretary-general of the Lao-Dong Party of North Vietnam: "The immediate task of the peoples of these nations must be that of foiling and breaking imperialism's attempts at domination. For independent nations, this task is reduced to a choice between two roads: the non-capitalist road of development or the capitalist road of development." This is an absolute condemnation of any so-called third road. One does not compromise with imperialism, one does not limit it or temper it: one breaks with it or one submits.
If this is the golden rule for the countries directly concerned, it is also the rule that guides the action of the socialist countries and the proletarians of the developed capitalist countries in regard to the emancipation of the underdeveloped countries. And it is difficult to explain why certain leaders of Western Communist parties are maintaining that States with different social structures (capitalist and socialist) can, through mutual cooperation, intervene jointly for the progress of the underdeveloped regions. This is to misunderstand the very essence of imperialism, and one can understand why the Peking People's Daily, in December 1962, spoke out against the principle of "joint intervention," recalling that "the policy of imperialism in regard to the underdeveloped countries... can only be a policy of colonialist pillage: it can never be a policy concerned with the progress of the underdeveloped countries." The organ of the Chinese Communist Party stressed that it was obvious that the socialist countries must aid the peoples of the underdeveloped countries, first to conquer independence, then to develop their national economy. "But," it added, "the socialist countries must not second the colonialist policy of the imperialists, still less intervene jointly at their side in the underdeveloped areas. Whoever acted in that fashion would betray proletarian internationalism and serve the interests of imperialism and colonialism."
Hence, the fundamental choice between the socialist road and the capitalist road, and non-collaboration with imperialism.
But a primordial question of strategy is raised for the socialist countries and the world revolutionary movement: that of the importance of the aid to be given to the peoples of the storm centres. The Leninist theory that the front of imperialism is not uniformly strong is well known, and the clashes occur at the weakest points, with the best chances of success for the anti-imperialist forces. If, therefore, the "underlings of imperialism" are also its point of least resistance, if in these countries the storm threatens here and already rages there, it is obvious that the principal effort of the world revolutionary movement must be made in these areas in order to open a wide breech in the enemy front, which may determine the outcome of
the struggle.
Thus, the letter of June 14 of the Chinese Communist Party, after recalling that the national revolutionary movement of the areas of the storm centre and the socialist revolutionary movement in the world are the two great historical tendencies of our epoch, adds: "In a sense, therefore, the whole cause of the international proletarian revolution hinges on the outcome of the revolutionary struggles of the people of these areas, who constitute the overwhelming majority of the world's population."
The terminology should be noted: "revolutionary struggle," "national revolutionary movement" of the peoples of the areas concerned. Lenin himself already warned against the emancipation movements of a non-revolutionary character which sought to disarm the workers before the bourgeoisie. He stressed the necessity of fighting against "reactionary and feudal elements," of "giving the peasant movement the most revolutionary character," of fighting "against the tendency to dress with the colours of communism the currents of bourgeois democratic liberation of the backward countries" and of supporting these currents only on condition that the elements of the future proletarian parties were "grouped and educated in the spirit of their particular tasks, tasks of struggle against the bourgeois democratic movements of their own nation"... etc. (On the National and Colonial Questions, June 1920). The Chinese Communist Party says the same thing in its letter of June 14, when it declares that the proletarian party of the oppressed peoples "supports progressive nationalism and opposes reactionary nationalism. It must always draw a clear line of demarcation between itself and bourgeois nationalism, to which it must never fall captive."
A Single Struggle in a Single World
If we have directed our attacks against the expression "Third World," it should be understood that it was not to begin a quarrel of linguists. To accept too easily the term, to introduce it in ordinary language, means to introduce insidiously the idea that the group of countries about which we have spoken constitute a particular entity, a world in themselves, in regards to which the theories and reasoning applied to the group of capitalist coun- tries and to the group of socialist countries as well as their relationship, should be revised, adapted, and more or less adulterated. Unconsciously, this is attacking the universality of Marxist doctrine and the unity of the revolutionary struggle on a world scale. The revolutionary struggles through- out the world only form a whole because the strategy of the international communist movement must start from the overall phenomenon, must study each country and its internal class forces, not as isolated entities, but rather by the specific weight that they have at various moments in the class
struggle, within a national and international proletariat.
A single theory, a single struggle, in a single world, whose present division must not be made permanent, but overcome.
Pierre JALÉE.
Pierre Jalee, “Third World? Which Third World?” Revolution Africa, Latin America, Asia 1:7 (November 1963), 3-9.