exports from developing countries were of little help because they
remained subject to excessive protectionist barriers. In addition,
transnational corporations established in the South exported their
profits overseas, and parsimonious aid policies were tightly geared to
the strategic and commercial interests of donors. In the wake of the
International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems,
otherwise known as the MacBride Commission, a number of obser-
vers commented that these combined trends nurtured “a form of
cultural and economic domination.”^81
According to the overall analysis of the left, the main obstacles to
development were not internal but external to the South. Two types of
behavior on the part of the rich countries were explicitly denounced.
First, the governments of the North refused to apply at the inter-
national level the interventionist policies that had proven effective
nationally. Second, they persisted in wasting on armaments resources
that would have easily sufficed to eradicate poverty in the developing
world. During the 1960s and the 1970s, the left put forward numerous
proposals to strike a new deal in North–South relations. These pro-
posals gave rise to many debates – between those who favored
increased economic integration and those who called for de-linking
the South from the North, as well as between those advocating a
productivist approach and those proposing a greener model of
development – but a broad consensus was achieved around two basic
positions: poor countries needed special treatment, and new inter-
national norms had to be introduced to rein in market forces.
A series of measures were thus proposed to make the trade and
finance regimes as well as international economic institutions more
equitable.^82 Typically, they were formulated by the developing
countries, and then backed by the Soviet Union and the Western left.
In trade, for instance, the Third World stressed the need to implement
international agreements to control the price of commodities, and
fought to secure trade preferences. Countries of the South also
advocated the establishment of codes of conduct to facilitate their
(^81) Sean MacBride,Many Voices, One World: Towards a New More Just and
More Efficient World Information and Communication Order, Report by the
International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, London,
New York and Paris, Kogan Page, Unipub, and UNESCO, 1980, p. 37.
(^82) Jean-Philippe The ́rien,Une voix pour le Sud. Le discours de la CNUCED, Paris
and Montre ́al, L’Harmattan and Presses de l’Universite ́de Montre ́al, 1990.
134 Left and Right in Global Politics