Missing the Full Story

...Others, meanwhile, have been striving for genuine improvements in the living standards of the poor—and actually achieving success in several quarters?without risking radical upheavals that could prove dangerous for all concerned...

...Similarly, the international marketing structure prompts quite a few impoverished countries to let the bulk of their people starve because it is temporarily profitable, at least for the ruling few, to export food and other resources...

...As I said at the outset, Harrington can be maddening...

...And maddening because the conditions Michael Harrington describes with convincing compassion are so real, so perdurable and, as he implies, so defiant of solutions...

...That, of course, is hardly news...

...This evolved during the past 400 years with the growth, under a unique set of favorable circumstances, of Western capitalism...

...He does not, though, go on to attack endemic Third World practices that do so much to impede cohesive development—say, baksheesh—and can at least to some degree be corrected...

...When Third World nations attempt collective action through groupings like the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and make such demands as the smoothing out of commodity fluctuations, the easing of debt burdens and assistance in industrializing, the wealthy nations often try to divide or divert them...

...to make sure the poorer countries do not become so pauperized that they can no longer provide resources and markets...

...He also declares: "The worst thing that could happen to the Third World during the next 25 or 50 years would be a catastrophic collapse of Western capitalism...

...Harrington considers the discussions on the development of seabed resources, sponsored by the UN Law of the Sea Conference, to be "One of the greatest, and most painless opportunities for international justice that has ever existed...

...The villain is "a global system of injustice that warps or destroys the minds and bodies of hundreds of millions of human beings...

...He is on weak ground as well when he condemns Western capitalists and analysts for looking upon the status quo to be "Utopia...

...What is new and worth reading are some of Harrington's views as to why most schemes that appear likely to help the Third World constitute little more than "the development of underdevelopment" and the reinforcement of existing evils...

...Maddening because in addition to soundly structured arguments, we are given easily-toppled straw men...

...At worst, the various arguments of the defenders of present conditions boil down to the contention that nothing better can be done...

...Nonetheless, his book is valuable and should be read because it also contains much that will get people mad for the right reasons and contribute to his unchallengeable objective: to improve the lot of the poor...

...In the process, however, they are simply enriching themselves—by getting cheap labor to produce goods they can sell at higher profits than would otherwise be possible—and frequently are depleting the host countries of natural resources—creating further dislocations in already disjointed economies...

...No one, including the individuals he cites, really holds that view...

...Maddening because the author, a leading American Socialist, flays people of the industrialized world for behaving in ways he himself admits are natural or inevitable, while ignoring or indulging many faults and frailties of the less fortunate...

...But surely Harrington is being unrealistic in repeatedly exhorting the wealthier countries to sacrifice and to restructure their ways on terms geared basically to the needs of the poor—especially since, as he observes, some of their own leaders care less than we do about who starves...

...Realistically and judiciously, Harrington does not attribute the perpetuation of international injustice to deliberate individual or governmental malevolence, but rather to the system in which, consciously or unwittingly, we are all ensnared...

...The poor of Latin America, Africa and Asia nurtured the system with their human and material resources, only to see their numbers and their general misery increase in direct proportion to the wealth of their exploiters...

...Yet he finds the capitalist nations, notably the U.S., either turning their backs in situations of this kind or openly seeking to control more pieces of what he feels should be mainly Third World action...

...The multinationals, for example, do indeed—as their public relations departments proclaim—create factories, jobs and income in the less developed countries...

...Two impressionistic chapters giving Harrington's personal reactions to conditions in India, Mexico and East Africa provide some refreshing insights and useful caveats—particularly his cautioning that each society should be viewed in terms of its own history and values, not broad or self-serving generalities...

...Reviewed by Lorna Hahn Executive Director, Association on Third World Affairs This is a maddening book...

...Maddening because, although a good number of his points are bolstered by a wealth of documentation drawn from Marxist as well as non-Marxist sources, others cry for some elaboration or demonstration...

...Nor does he heed his own advice about respecting cultural differences when he suggests that in India, where the Prime Minister proudly and publicly drinks his urine, we should be appalled that the poor urinate and defecate in the streets and rivers and should take steps to change this...

...And he rightly notes it would be good business for the U.S...