"The South Commission is convinced that the developed countries cannot play the role of the engine of Southern growth. The new locomotive forces have to be found within the South itself. South-South co-operation is therefore crucial." Manmohan Singh, then secretary general of the South Commission, said this to a symposium on development at Espoo, Finland, in May 1989.
Dr Singh's statement came at a time when the Atlantic powers, under the leadership of the Group of Seven (G7), were using the debt crisis of the 1980s to remake the global economic order in their favour. The "Third World project" was already in retreat. What was on offer was the structural adjustment programme of the Washington Consensus. "…Intellectuals like Manmohan Singh," writes Vijay Prashad in his latest book, The Poorer Nations, "began to trumpet a new siren: Neoliberalism with Southern Characteristics for domestic policy and South-South Cooperation for international policy. It was not a capitulation to the North, but the creation of a new approach."
Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, US, tells the story of this new approach: how the Global South dealt with the challenges of neoliberal capitalism thrust upon it by the developed nations. Neoliberalism, according to Professor Prashad, refers to "a fairly straightforward campaign by the propertied classes to maintain or restore their position of dominance". The first meeting of the G7, held in Chateau de Rambouillet (France) in 1975, laid the foundation for this "polycentric revival" of neoliberalism. G7 leaders wanted to do away with three facts: the social democratic agenda of the post-War world, the communist agenda, and the Third World project. They wanted to lead the global economy to a new "geography of production".
The Poorer Nations builds on his 2007 book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, and tells the story of the global economic order from a Southern standpoint - which was a mammoth task since the current literature "masks the Northern perspective and interests of much of this history-writing". The book, which is divided into four major chapters, starts by telling us how the Brandt Commission, which studied the widening inequality between the world's rich and poor, was defeated by the Global North. The second chapter discusses how the South Commission tried to construct an alternative to neoliberalism, which actually led to South-South co-operation. The third chapter offers a deep analysis of the formation of BRICS, the "locomotives of the South", while the fourth chapter evaluates the potential of the "South from below".
The problems of the current system are "social" and require "political solutions", in Professor Prashad's view: "the social order of property, propriety and power has to be radically revised." Can the BRICS bloc lead any revolutionary change in the system? The BRICS formation has several limitations, he says, the biggest of which is this neoliberalism with Southern characteristics "with sales of commodities and low wages to workers accompanying a recycled surplus turned over as credit to the North". The formation has not endorsed any ideological alternative to neoliberalism. Still, Professor Prashad believes the BRICS nations have enabled the "opening of some space, allowing a breath of air to oxygenate the stagnant world of neoliberal imperialism".
Professor Prashad has used the South Commission archives, interviewed officials and done extensive research on the subject to build a strong theoretical framework and then reconstruct the history of the South. It's a passionate academic effort to tell the world that the "South also exists". More importantly, the book comes at a time when there are serious discussions at global fora about the shape of the post-crisis economic order. With neoliberalism already taking a hit after the global financial crisis and China expected to surpass the US as the world's biggest economy in a few years, the contradictions in the global system are likely to be sharper, paving the way for formations like BRICS - as well as ground-level movements - to play a larger role. As Professor Prashad himself concludes in the introduction of the book, "The time of the impossible has presented itself. That's the message of The Poorer Nations."
THE POORER NATIONS
A Possible History of the Global South
Vijay Prashad
LeftWord; 292 pages; Rs 600
Dr Singh's statement came at a time when the Atlantic powers, under the leadership of the Group of Seven (G7), were using the debt crisis of the 1980s to remake the global economic order in their favour. The "Third World project" was already in retreat. What was on offer was the structural adjustment programme of the Washington Consensus. "…Intellectuals like Manmohan Singh," writes Vijay Prashad in his latest book, The Poorer Nations, "began to trumpet a new siren: Neoliberalism with Southern Characteristics for domestic policy and South-South Cooperation for international policy. It was not a capitulation to the North, but the creation of a new approach."
Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, US, tells the story of this new approach: how the Global South dealt with the challenges of neoliberal capitalism thrust upon it by the developed nations. Neoliberalism, according to Professor Prashad, refers to "a fairly straightforward campaign by the propertied classes to maintain or restore their position of dominance". The first meeting of the G7, held in Chateau de Rambouillet (France) in 1975, laid the foundation for this "polycentric revival" of neoliberalism. G7 leaders wanted to do away with three facts: the social democratic agenda of the post-War world, the communist agenda, and the Third World project. They wanted to lead the global economy to a new "geography of production".
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They succeeded in meeting these goals. The social-democratic programme - the requirement of a welfare state - has since almost been given up by leading economies. The communist agenda took a severe beating after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Third World project was "assassinated by the enforced debt crisis", leading even the poorer nations to take the path of the new geography of production. A new economic paradigm, in which finance played the supreme role and the state was reduced to being a facilitator, was unleashed. "Rather than a South-led New International Economic Order, the world had to live with a North-led New International Property Order," writes Professor Prashad. The approach created by the South towards this new international property order, or neoliberalism - as described by Manmohan Singh in 1989 - prepared the "intellectual map that would produce the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) formation", which, in Professor Prashad's view, has the potential to "challenge the settled orthodoxy of the Global North".
The Poorer Nations builds on his 2007 book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, and tells the story of the global economic order from a Southern standpoint - which was a mammoth task since the current literature "masks the Northern perspective and interests of much of this history-writing". The book, which is divided into four major chapters, starts by telling us how the Brandt Commission, which studied the widening inequality between the world's rich and poor, was defeated by the Global North. The second chapter discusses how the South Commission tried to construct an alternative to neoliberalism, which actually led to South-South co-operation. The third chapter offers a deep analysis of the formation of BRICS, the "locomotives of the South", while the fourth chapter evaluates the potential of the "South from below".
The problems of the current system are "social" and require "political solutions", in Professor Prashad's view: "the social order of property, propriety and power has to be radically revised." Can the BRICS bloc lead any revolutionary change in the system? The BRICS formation has several limitations, he says, the biggest of which is this neoliberalism with Southern characteristics "with sales of commodities and low wages to workers accompanying a recycled surplus turned over as credit to the North". The formation has not endorsed any ideological alternative to neoliberalism. Still, Professor Prashad believes the BRICS nations have enabled the "opening of some space, allowing a breath of air to oxygenate the stagnant world of neoliberal imperialism".
Professor Prashad has used the South Commission archives, interviewed officials and done extensive research on the subject to build a strong theoretical framework and then reconstruct the history of the South. It's a passionate academic effort to tell the world that the "South also exists". More importantly, the book comes at a time when there are serious discussions at global fora about the shape of the post-crisis economic order. With neoliberalism already taking a hit after the global financial crisis and China expected to surpass the US as the world's biggest economy in a few years, the contradictions in the global system are likely to be sharper, paving the way for formations like BRICS - as well as ground-level movements - to play a larger role. As Professor Prashad himself concludes in the introduction of the book, "The time of the impossible has presented itself. That's the message of The Poorer Nations."
THE POORER NATIONS
A Possible History of the Global South
Vijay Prashad
LeftWord; 292 pages; Rs 600