The End of the Third World: Newly Industrialising Countries and the Decline of an Ideology

By Nigel Harris

Book Overview

Harris assesses the development of the Asian Gang of Four (Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore) and the two largest Latin American countries (Taiwan, and Singapore) and the two largest Latin American countries (Mexico and Brazil), and describes a newly emerging global economy that is now superseding the old national state and politics based on it.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140225633
• ISBN13: 9780140225631
• Release Date: September 1987
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Reconstructing Global Representations

The final lines of Nigel Harris' The End of the Third World bear striking resemblance to another, older work about pending global change. He speaks of the "great unfinished question of world history: the freedom not of minorities, nor of states, but of the majority." A little more than 100 years before Harris, a man who could be perceived as his predecessor wrote: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of the world unite!" But Harris' vision differs from Marx. Marx believed that capitalism would inevitably change the world and wanted to have an effect on that change. Harris believes capitalism or the movement of capital is creating a global market that powerful governments can no longer control. The end result is that the world order itself is changing and with it, the Third World, as well as the First and of course the Second are being dissolved. Harris devotes a tremendous amount of time discussing the historical, economical and governmental settings of the old world order which required less dependence on other countries and allowed for more exaggerated exploitation of other countries. This background is essential to his argument, so that the common reader can understand the interpenetrating, organic solidarity of the new global structure. It is organic solidarity in Weber's terms. Harris never uses Weber's term. Instead, he simply describes this interdependent economic solidarity as follows: "They have to export in order to import the goods they cannot afford to make at home, because the domestic market is too small." Harris presents impressive evidence that the Third World not longer exists because a New World order is being born. The New World order is being shaped by the diversity of cultures, empowered by a global economic forces that have escaped the grasp of powerful governments trying to distort it and shaped more by a myriad of competing smaller forces. The New World order is shaped by these smaller, more diverse and interpenetrating forces rather than by the powerful governments that ruled the dinosaur days of imperialistic giants. In this respect, I think Harris is absolutely correct that the Third World no longer exists. The only question that remains is whether Harris' depiction of the future bears an accurate resemblance to tomorrow. Only time will tell.