The Third World Countries

The sharpening of the economic and political conflicts generated in the world economic crisis may lead to substantially increased metropolitan protectionism and to a breakdown of the international financial and economic system, and therefore also to a reduction of western imports from Third World countries. In that case, the Third World countries will not be able to carry out the role now assigned to them in the "new international division of labor" or to pursue their present policies of "export promotion." This international economic breakdown, of course, would severely undermine the economic basis of the new authoritarian regimes. A weakened economic basis could perhaps alter the political coalitions and alliances in some Third World countries in the direction of the nationalist-populist alliances and internal market policies of the "import substitution" era of the 1930s-1950s. Some important pressures and tendencies in this direction are already visible in both the metropolis and parts of the periphery. Some American business and labor interests are already calling for the "human rights" enforcement of minimum wage and labor standards in Third World countries whose exports compete with domestic production and jobs.

At least two other intermediary alternatives are visible on the horizon: limited export promotion in very specialized product lines in particular Third World countries, which may or may not permit regeneration of production for an internal market and its expansion; and the formation of economic and political blocs -- e.g. United States -- Latin America, Europe -- Africa, Japan -Southeast Asia -- in which more limited or specialized export promotion and some expansion of the internal market might be reserved for Third World countries in the respective imperial area. The second alternative would make it likely that the metropolitan political regimes in each bloc would experience marked shifts to the right, with concomitant political repercussions in the neocolonies. The productive apparatuses of the Third World countries would then be even more dominated by the metropolitan capital of their respective bloc than they are now.

In short, the immediate prospects for a democratic summer since the 1977-1978 liberalizing spring are not very bright. Mr. Carter's "human rights" campaign never held much promise for the Third World, and it is now being abandoned for domestic economic and foreign policy reasons anyway in concert with renewed recession. Prospects for a democratic summer will remain dim unless and until popular revolutionary movements are organized, as in Nicaragua and Iran, on a new basis in the Third World countries themselves, in the imperialist ones, and perhaps in the socialist ones as well.