Third World Ideology and Western Reality: Manufacturing Political Myth

There is a wide, unthinking accep­tance of the premise that the gap between rich and poor countries is largely due to the exploitation of the latter by the former, first through colonialism and more recently through neocolonialism and eco­nomic dependency. Carlos Rangel rejects this approach. He traces the sudden appearance and rise of this "Third World ideology" as a kind of socialism of last resort, made neces­sary by the failure of the original Marxist prophecy of imminent cap­italist collapse, with the "prole­tarian" and "bourgeois" nations substituted for the proletarian and bourgeois classes in the Marxist drama of struggle and salvation through revolution. Rangel also ex­plains the emotional appeal, and therefore pervasiveness, of this ideology not only in the Third World but also among all alienated mem­bers of Western society. This volume presents a critical assessment of the Third World ideology. Rangel argues that it is false that Third World mis­fortunes and shortcomings are di­rectly related to its having been overwhelmed by the West. He offers a new path toward understanding the problem of economic inequality between nations, and therefore opens the possibility of searching for creative solutions to that problem.