Third-worldism - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Third-worldism is a tendency within left-wing political thought to regard the division between developed countries, and developing countries or "Third World

Third World

The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...

" nations against the background of primary political importance. Third-worldism tends to offer support to Third World nations and national liberation movements against Western nations or their proxies.
Key figures in the Third Worldist movement include Michel Aflaq

Michel Aflaq

Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, who is credited with being the ideological founder of ba'athism, a hybrid of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.-Early life:...

, Salah al-Din al-Bitar

Salah al-Din al-Bitar

Salah ad-Din al-Bitar , was a Syrian politician who, with Michel Aflaq, founded the Arab Ba'th Party in the early 1940s. During their student days in Paris in the early 1930s, the two worked together to formulate a doctrine that combined aspects of nationalism and socialism...

, Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...

, Ahmed Ben Bella

Ahmed Ben Bella

Mohamed Ahmed Ben Bella was a soldier and Algerian revolutionary, who became the first President of Algeria.-Youth:...

, Gamal Abdel Nasser

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...

, Ali Shariati

Ali Shariati

Ali Shariati was an Iranian revolutionary and sociologist, who focused on the sociology of religion. He is held as one of the most influential Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century and has been called the 'ideologue of the Iranian Revolution'.-Biography:Ali....

, Andre Gunder Frank

Andre Gunder Frank

Andre Gunder Frank was a German-American economic historian and sociologist who promoted "dependency theory" after 1970 and "World Systems Theory" after 1984...

, Samir Amin

Samir Amin

Samir Amin is an Egyptian economist. He currently lives in Dakar, Senegal.- Biography :Samir Amin was born in Cairo, the son of an Egyptian father and a French mother . He spent his childhood and youth in Port Said; there he attended a French High School, leaving in 1947 with a Baccalauréat...

and Simon Malley

Simon Malley

Simon Malley , was a prominent francophone journalist and a strong supporter of Third World independence movements....

.

The Bandung Conference

Asian-African Conference

The first large-scale Asian–African or Afro–Asian Conference—also known as the Bandung Conference—was a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, which took place on April 18–24, 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia...

, which was held in 1955 in Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

, and the resultant formation of the Non-Aligned Movement

Non-Aligned Movement

The Non-Aligned Movement is a group of states considering themselves not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. As of 2011, the movement had 120 members and 17 observer countries...

represented a significant venue for Third World politics during the twentieth century. Third worldism is also closely connected with movements such as Ba'athism

Ba'athism

Ba'athism is an Arab nationalist ideology that promotes the development and creation of an Arab nation through the leadership of a vanguard party over a progressive revolutionary state. The ideology is officially based on the theories of Zaki al-Arsuzi , Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar...

, Pan-Africanism

Pan-Africanism

Pan-Africanism is a movement that seeks to unify African people or people living in Africa, into a "one African community". Differing types of Pan-Africanism seek different levels of economic, racial, social, or political unity...

, Pan-Arabism

Pan-Arabism

Pan-Arabism is an ideology espousing the unification--or, sometimes, close cooperation and solidarity against perceived enemies of the Arabs--of the countries of the Arab world, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea. It is closely connected to Arab nationalism, which asserts that the Arabs...

, Maoism

Maoism

Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...

, African socialism

African socialism

African socialism is a belief in sharing economic resources in a "traditional" African way, as distinct from classical socialism. Many African politicians of the 1950s and 1960s professed their support for African socialism, although definitions and interpretations of this term varied...

, Arab socialism

Arab socialism

Arab socialism is a political ideology based on an amalgamation of Pan-Arabism and socialism. Arab socialism is distinct from the much broader tradition of socialist thought in the Arab world, which predates Arab socialism by as much as fifty years...

and Communism

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

.

The New Left

New Left

The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...

led to an explosion of support for Third-worldism, especially after the failure of revolutionary movements in the First World, such as Paris 1968. Among the New Left groups and movements associated with Third Worldism were Monthly Review

Monthly Review

Monthly Review is an independent Marxist journal published 11 times per year in New York City.-History:The publication was founded by Harvard University economics instructor Paul Sweezy, who became the first editor...

and the New Communist Movement

New Communist Movement

The New Communist Movement ' was a Marxist-Leninist political movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S. New Left which sought inspiration in the experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution, and the Cuban...

.

From the 1970s, National liberation movements such as the Palestine Liberation Organization

Palestine Liberation Organization

The Palestine Liberation Organization is a political and paramilitary organization which was created in 1964. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by the United Nations and over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed...

, and African National Congress

African National Congress

The African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...

have been causes célèbres of the movement. More recently, Third-worldism has become a powerful force in the World Social Forum

World Social Forum

The World Social Forum is an annual meeting of civil society organizations, first held in Brazil, which offers a self-conscious effort to develop an alternative future through the championing of counter-hegemonic globalization...

, (particularly since the Mumbai WSF in 2004) and in the Cairo Anti-War Conference

Cairo Anti-war Conference

The Cairo Conference against U.S. hegemony and war on Iraq and in solidarity with Palestine , generally known simply as Cairo Anti-war Conference, is an anti-war and anti-neo-liberalism conference held regularly since 2002 in Cairo, Egypt...

Further reading