Third-Worldism

THE NOTION OF third-worldism is intimately linked to the term third world. According to Nigel Harris (1990), the third world first came to the fore in the mid-1950s, following the rapid decolonization process that began in the aftermath of World War II. The term itself was coined in 1952 by the French intellectual Alfred Sauvy and became institutionalized during the 1955 Bandung, Indonesia, conference, which brought together this group of newly decolonized countries to discuss their role in international politics.

Beyond the mere descriptive element in the label that referred to those newly independent countries, the term third world also gave these countries a new status in international politics by virtue of the fact that they amounted to more than half of the world's population. It could not be otherwise since the decolonization process took place in a world that was then divided between the capitalist first and the communist second worlds, both of which were poised to increase their influence on the decolonized nations. As a result, the third world grew partly to decenter and to provide a counterbalance to the increasing bellicose nature of the Cold War. The fear provoked by the original weapon of mass destruction—the atomic bomb—was clearly captured by Indonesian President Ahmed Sukarno in his speech at the Bandung Conference: “Not so long ago it was possible to take some little comfort from the idea that the clash, if it came, could perhaps be settled by what were called –conventional weapons'—bombs, tanks, cannon and men. Today that little grain of comfort is denied us for it has been made clear that the weapons of ultimate horror will certainly be used, and the military planning of nations is on that basis.”

The political emphasis on the third world's role was thus on world peace by advocating neutralism in the Cold War, the dominant conflict of the time. To this end, the third world was supported by large sectors of the left in the West, principally in Europe and the United States. This New Left was an assorted collection of intellectuals, activists, and students whose origins in Europe can be traced back to dissident sections of the communist parties who were critical of the Soviet Union's role in the Cold War, and of the political, economic, and military control it exerted over Eastern Europe. In particular, this New Left was united in the condemnation of the Soviet Union's crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolt and of Josef Stalin's brutal political legacy.

However, the emphasis on peace and neutralism did not last in the third world. A number of major international conflicts altered both the meaning of the term and the support it received from the New Left. In France, the Algerian war of independence was perhaps the single most important formative experience of the [Page 451]New Left and marked a radicalization of the intellectuals and of large sectors of the young, who would become the main actors of the May 1968 revolts in Paris. In the United States, however, the opposition to the Vietnam War acted as the catalyst for increasing the prominence of a new generation of activists. In the interim period, the terminology and conceptual understanding of the global political order had changed significantly.

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