The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development

428 Pages·1984·15.351 MB·English

by  Peter Worsley

PETER WORSLEY
THREE
WORLDS
Culture & World Development

The Three Worlds
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The Three Worlds
CULTURE AND WORLD DEVELOPMENT
Peter Worsley
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., London SW4
© 1984 by Peter Worsley
All rights reserved. Published 1984
Printed in the United States of America
The extract from Regis Dehray, A Critique of Arms,
vol. 1 (1974), on pp. 322-3 is printed by permission of Penguin Books Limited.
93 92 91 90 89 88 87 86 85 5432
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Worsley, Peter.
The three worlds.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Developing countries. 2. Rural development.
3. Social history-modern, 1500- . I. Title.
HC59.7.W685 1984 306'.09172'4 84-2609
ISBN 0-226-90754-6
ISBN 0-226-90755-4 (pbk).
In memory of Ruth First, a White communist
who spent her life fighting for a
multi-racial South Africa and who died working
for a Black revolutionary country.
Murdered in Maputo,
17 August 1982.
First Priest: Great Sarastro, dost thou
think that Tamino will withstand the stern trials that
await him? Consider well: he is a prince.
Sarastro: More than that! He is a man!
Emanuel Schikaneder, The Magic Flute, Act n
And at last he realized that man never knows who it is he suffers for and
who it is he waits and toils for. He suffers and waits and toils for people
he will never know, who in their turn will suffer and wait and toil for
others who will not find happiness either, because man always yearns for
more happiness than the little granted him. But the greatness of man
consists precisely in wanting to improve on what exists. In setting himself
Tasks. In the Kingdom of Heaven there is no greatness to be conquered,
for there all is fixed and hierarchical; nothing is unknown, all is revealed;
since there is no limit to existence, sacrifice, rest and pleasure are
impossibilities. So, weighed down by suffering and by Tasks, splendid in
the midst of his misery, capable of love in the midst of affliction, man can
only reach greatness, his highest stature, in the Kingdom of this World.
Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of this World
Contents
Tables ix
Preface xi
I Prolegomena 1
The Creation of the Third World 1
Theories of Development 16
The Myth of Base and Superstructure:
Dialectics versus Materialism 22
Culture: the Missing Concept 41
Anthropology and Holism 44
Literary Criticism: the Elitist Paradigm 47
From Hegemony to Pluralism: Subculture and Counter-culture 50
II The Undoing of the Peasantry 61
Before Agriculture 61
Enter Agriculture: the Domestic Mode of Production 66
The Peasant Mode of Production 69
The Road to Capitalist Agriculture 83
The Road to the Collective Farm 95
A Diversion: the ‘Asiatic’ Mode of Production 99
The Great Debate: Russia 108
Revolution, 1905 116
The Moral Economy of the Peasant 119
Collectives and Communes ' 133
The Peasantry: Persistence, Transformation, Disappearance 142
Reform
(i) Community Development 145
(ii) Co-operatives 147
(iii) Land Reform 148
The Varieties of Capitalist Agriculture 154
Agribusiness 158
Ill The Making of the Working Class 168
The Urban Explosion 168
Systems Theory, Interactionism, and Dialectical Sociology 178
Systems Theory: Functionalist and Marxist 183
Lumpens, Aristocrats, and the Reserve Army 186
The Culture of Poverty 190
The Variety of .Poverty 194
The Myth of ‘Marginality’ 202
The ‘Informal’ Sector 210
The Poor in Action 213
The Established Working Class 222
IV Ethnicity and Nationalism 235
Ethnicity, Class and Culture 235
Ethnic Group and Nation 244
The Three Modes of Nationalism 251
Before Nationalism: The Segmentary State 252
The Absolutist Nation-state: Hegemony 255
The Bourgeois Nation-state: Uniformity 256
Decolonization: the First Wave 259
Pluralism: Internationalism and Multinationalism 268
Nationalism and Myth: Inventing a New Past 272
Nationalism and Socialism 275
Nationalism in the Capitalist Third World 284
Populism and Authoritarianism 293
V One World or Three? 296
Decolonization 296
Models of the Third World 306
From Politics to Economics 315
Third World: Resistance and Change 322
Cultural Imperialism, Cultural Resistance, and
Cultural Revolution 332
Appendix The Urban Poor in the Workshop of the World 345
Notes 349
Bibliography 373
Index 395