THE POORER NATIONS: A POSSIBLE HISTORY OF THE GLOBAL SOUTH - VIJAY PRASHAD

I don’t remember exactly why I chose this book to read, it must have come from something else, it’s reasonably obscure (tho it does have a Chomsky quote on the cover) and somewhat technical (tho it does it’s best to avoid the econ trap of obscuring moral questions with math). As someone who’s lived in the 3rd world and aspires to do so again I found the early sections, the sections about the history, helpful. I’m more familiar, due to recent reading, with the more colonial/earlier segments on the history between the “West” and the rest of the world. I’m always down for some intellectual history so tracing the idea of the “Washington Consensus” or “Neoliberalism” is appealing to me. It’s basically the history of a project that seeks to arrange the world in such a way that the elite get everything imaginable but they also skirt rebellions and dissent. What became most clear to me is the way in which the “unfinishedness” of Capitalism or Neoliberalism is a good faint away from actually changing anything. Since you’re always adjusting rates and opening new markets and reforming land agreements you never allow the subalterns to complain that this isn’t working. Of course it’s not working yet! We’ve got more technocratic tinkering to do, hold tight. I was of course taken by the sections about NGOs, since I have a lot of experience with them both here in Amerika and abroad. Prashad does nail the way in which they, “depoliticize a target population by concentrating on delivering goods rather than on social transformation.” I feel that tension at my current job. Like most communists (and, to be fair, leftists as a whole) he doesn’t have an answer or a very convincing answer for that issue. Also, he does the communist thing where he’ll declare “the African peasantry” as insufficiently politically engaged or something equally broad and, I would argue, unhelpful. It is in the final sections, where Prashad talks about the future where he gets off track. Climate Change is barely mentioned in the book but it’s about to totally upend the relationship between 1st and 3rd world nations (fun fact: Mbuto Miland, a Tanzanian diplomat coined the phrase 4th world to draw attention to the world’s indigenous population and the ways in which their treatment is both shitty and similar around the globe). But, very soon (now actually) the physical changes the world will undergo is going to send millions into a migration. It’s going to fuck up farming and fishing. It’s going to change what parts of the world are habitable and desirable. The book does a great job chronicling the ways in which the Global South have tried to form political solidarity and the ways that this fell apart. What does a nation like China have in common with somewhere like Zambia? In fact, there’s a whole long chapter about the relationship between these large nations, aka the “locomotives of the south” (China, India, etc.), and the 3rd world as a whole. As we move forward we need to begin to envision solidarities that will minimize the global catastrophe that is coming. Or figure out ways to make sure the catastrophes are felt primarily by those responsible i.e. the elite in the 3rd world and basically all of the 1st. I believe the model of aid and development is on its way out but this book is a bit slow on what’s going to replace it. Prashad has a really wide range of examples and quotes and the book is lucid and interesting. I would encourage anyone who is interested in building a non-hell world. 33 LDCs