The World Challenge

...It being the nature of these books to put forward a Big Solution to the Big Challenge, it is no surprise that M. Servan-Schreiber sees microchips as the salvation of Third World nations and their economies...

...The paradox of the West's attraction to the idea of progress is that it seldom can be differentiated...

...M. Servan-Schreiber, whom Francois Bondy has described as a self-appointed "inside dope-ster," claims that OPEC leaders met and drew up a long-term plan to use the wealth and power of their organization to force the West into a "massive" transfer of technology to the Third World, thereby ushering in the New International Economic Order...

...From the Mideast, M. Servan-Schreiber turns to the Far East and the technological revolution taking place in Japan...

...we must help them enter the Computer Age...

...It would be best to resurrect faith in progress without reviving utopianism, but that, too, is a rather Utopian hope.is a rather Utopian hope...

...Now it seems that challenge is over, replaced by a more ominous double threat facing the entire West: on the one hand the political threat posed by the "Third World" (he includes OPEC countries), and on the other the economic threat posed by Japanese advances in applying micro-chip computer technology to production...

...On the political side, OPEC "solidarity" with developing nations has become secondary to obtaining other concessions from the West (AWACs), overcoming regional disputes (Iran-Iraq), and maintaining domestic tranquility (Saudi Arabia...

...But taking separate and rather complex "challenges" - OPEG, poverty in underdeveloped nations, UN politics, falling productivity in the West, extraordinary growth in Japan-and wrapping them into one Big Challenge requiring one Big Solution leads him to distort recent international developments...

...For these reasons, The World Challenge, though it will be widely read, should not be taken too seriously...

...Either we believe there can be progress in human affairs, progress in economics and technology and society and culture, or we pull back and start to question whether the word "progress" has any meaning at all...

...above the vision of Jane Jacobs, and the French seldom descend below that of le Corbusier...

...No matter if we happen to share the author's view or come to be persuaded by certain arguments he makes, there always seems to be something about the level of generalization and self-confidence of tone that irritates American and British political pragmatism...

...Though he is exaggerating when he says that "the chip will eventually replace the barrel of oil as the basis for a new kind of 'information society,'" Servan-Schreiber shrewdly sees that the automated workplace has made the Japanese worker both highly productive and generally satisfied...

...This is not because French political discourse is Utopian and ours never is...

...After the initial supply shocks caused by embargo and severe price increases, it is now clear that OPEC power has become weaker and more diffuse...

...Either we have it or we don't...

...The author's discussion of these developments and how they affect our "information-based" and "post-industrial" society is rather pedestrian and at times quite breathless, but in general he makes all the right points...

...On the economic side, rapid decreases in oil consumption by the West have caused a temporary glut and wide price variations, forcing price reductions after the last OPEC meeting in Geneva...

...No matter how much we agree with the sensible anti-utopianism of Bauer and Naipaul, there is, or should be, something in us that rebels against this constant nay-saying...

...After telling the tale of Japan's extraordinary economic success, it is quite remarkable that M. Servan-Schreiber fails to take from that tale the one obvious lesson-Japan developed from within, not because of "transfers...

...The developing countries are behind the times in demanding the transfer of heavy industrial technologies from Western nations...

...As the gifted founder and former editor of L'Express, M. Servan-Schreiber has also developed a breezy and dramatic writing style which makes the book very pleasurable reading, but only clouds his argument further...

...Micro-chips really are revolutionizing the world of computers, making them far more adaptable and far less expensive (in the long run) than the systems used today, and making workers far more productive in their jobs...

...We read about men who are ambitious, creative, and enthusiastic about their prospects, and who have understood that the key to long-term development and growth lies not in "things" like oil, but in what Servan-Schreiber rightly calls the vast "mine of intelligence...

...With his continental utopianism, M. Servan-Schreiber overestimates OPEC, misunderstands the cultural bases of Third World torpor, and naively accepts the tiresome rhetoric of "technology transfer" and the "North-South dialogue...

...It is not surprising, then, that Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber's The World Challenge has generated so much interest and debate in his native France...

...But as a society and civilization we seem only to be able to turn our engines of progress either on or off...

...M. Servan-Schreiber fails in constructing his Third World "radiant countryside," but he has maintained a faith in progress which many in the West have lost...

...It is just that the architects of American utopianism seldom rise Mark Lilla is managing editor of the Public Interest...

...The author does not try to make the moral case for expropriation...

...Individually we know the truth lies somewhere in between, that some things will improve and others remain pretty much the same, and that progress always has its own, often well-hidden price...

...To his credit, M. Servan-Schreiber uses the word "challenge" rather than the tired "crisis" to describe the political-economic situation of the West, for he sees within our troubles the opportunity for great progress both in the "First" and "Third" worlds...

...Sociological and economic explanations of Japanese successes both have their place, but in this case biography is far more revealing...

...Japan's success has a cultural base which simply cannot be duplicated elsewhere in the world merely by handing over advanced technology, and this is not only owing to a lack of formal training...

...we have our share of Packards and Tofflers too...

...he just repeats it endlessly and uncritically with the warning that we must respond if we wish to avoid some unstated "catastrophe...

...He quotes at length from the report (how did he get it...

...it must dein-dustrialize the workplace through micro-chips made out of ordinary sand...

...It is not unreasonable to assume that this flexibility in demand along with a desire of suppliers to maintain revenues will moderate prices over the next few years (something for which oil-impoverished developing nations should be grateful...

...For some reason, perhaps because of its "confidentiality," the author does not see the Taif Report as just another disposable Third World manifesto, but as a key with which to unlock the mysteries of Mideast politics, the Protocols of the Elders of OPEC, as it were...

...We cease to believe in bur own material well-being and deny that it is possible elsewhere in the world...

...The book opens, in thriller fashion, at a supposedly secret meeting of OPEC leaders last summer in Taif, Saudi Arabia...

...But we should not underestimate the extent to which we all, as Westerners, face the paradox he does in reflecting upon progress in the developing world...

...Naipaul...

...And nothing uses the "mine of intelligence" more efficiently or effectively than computers, especially those exploiting recent developments in micro-chip technology...

...Solidarity in manifestoes is all well and good, but when OPEC countries face their own severe economic and political challenges, it will be every oppressed, struggling, Third World nation for itself...

...But the zeal with which Western men have rolled up their sleeves and pursued economic progress has always caused trouble when it has spilled out into areas where progress is an alien idea...

...The notion of an Apple computer in every pot, or an airlift of IBMs into African villages that never invented the wheel, seems so absurd as to invite ridicule, were it not that M. Servan-Schreiber's proposals perfectly capture all the contradictions in Western thinking about developing nations and the idea of progress...

...In the digressive chapters that follow, the reader is led through rambling, though still intriguing, histories of OPEC, the Mideast wars, the so-called non-aligned movement, and the revolutions in Libya and Zaire...

...and though there appears to be nothing in it one cannot find in most UN documents, the author still concludes that "the implementation of the Taif Report will launch the greatest challenge to the Western way of life since the Moslems hammered on the gates of Europe a thousand years ago...

...To speak of "limits" in domestic social affairs has become so common now as to sound banal, and the barriers to economic and social progress in underdeveloped nations are all too painfully obvious if we are to believe the writings of economist Peter Bauer and novelist V.S...

...If Third World "leaders" continue to speak of the North and South as separate and homogeneous groups of nations, of poverty as a malady rather than a natural condition, of a worldwide Marshall Plan as a viable road to development, M. Servan-Schreiber will repeat their views dramatically and unthinkingly...

...Reindustrial-ization" or "worker control" are not what the West needs...

...The advantage of micro-chip processors, as the author explained to a rapt Indira Gandhi, is that "computerized infrastructures for the Third World could make it possible for whole stages of development to be bypassed...

...The point of all this is to show that M. Servan-Schreiber, like so many of his continental colleagues (including M. Mitterand), has come to accept the Western-inspired delusion of Third World "leaders" that their nations are impoverished because of colonialism and imperialism, and that the only solution to their quandary is to develop quickly by expropriating technology from the West...

...This lack of critical analysis becomes most evident when the author assumes that the economic and political power of OPEC will enable it to underwrite Third World demands...

...It goes without saying that the Eastern Bloc is spared both guilt and penance...

...Here the author's journalistic style works to his advantage as he give a very readable and highly personal account of Japan's spectacular postwar growth as seen through the biographies of two of Japan's leading industrialists- Masuru Ibuka, of Sony, and Soichiro Honda...

...His model of Third World Utopia is not a "Radiant City," but a radiant countryside built upon a "computerized infrastructure," with every village and every town connected by terminal into vast networks of information and education...

...In discussing the Japanese, it is evident that M. Servan-Schreiber believes in progress, and you have to like a man, any man, who celebrates economic growth and technological improvement as the only hope for the poor and future generations...

...Until a society's "animal spirits" are released and it occurs to a people to behave like entrepreneurs, the machines will rust and the manuals will grow dusty...

...In 1968, Servan-Schreiber announced The American Challenge, warning that unless Europeans adopted the modern management techniques, industrial organization, and structure of specialized higher education he found in the United States, they would see their major companies transformed into branches of American multinationals, and their nations into third-rate industrial powers...