role as the Soviet Union and has adopted many features of the
capitalist economic system.
‘Developing’ is of course a polite euphemism for not yet developed
or ‘underdeveloped’. It certainly cannot be taken literally that the rate
of economic growth in developing countries is greater than else-
where. The sad truth is that the whole of Africa on average has
actually stayed economically static or even retreated in terms of gross
national product per head over the last three decades as World Bank
statistics show.
The term ‘underdeveloped’ also carries something of the impli-
cation of general inferiority as against the ‘developed’ countries,
together with an aspiration to emulate them in all respects. To assume
that a subcontinent like India with its artistic and spiritual richness,
diversity and long history of civilisation should aspire to emulate the
United States of America is surely to adopt a somewhat limited
perspective. Consider the reply attributed to Gandhi on being asked,
on a trip abroad, what he thought of Western civilisation: ‘I think it
would be a good thing’! (Still, clean water and modern sanitation
would no doubt be very welcome in many parts of the subcontinent.)
The simple terms ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ states might be adopted as
descriptors of the division we are making but perhaps politically and
socially an oil-rich sheikhdom might have more in common with its
poorer neighbours than with Sweden or Switzerland.
The ‘South’ then is a very loose term to describe the less
industrialised countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Although
such countries encompass an enormous variety of political, economic
and social conditions, we can see they share some important simi-
larities that may potentially place them in conflict with the ‘North’.
Besides the general problems inherent in a relatively low average
standard of living, most of these countries share an experience of
colonial subordination to the ‘North’ (often exacerbated by racialism)
and a continuing position of economic subordination to a world
market dominated by Northern interests. Although the military and
economic dominance of the North seems at this date inescapable, the
coexistence of the vast majority of the world’s population in poverty
with a relatively small minority living in secure plenty does seem to
constitute a position of long-term extreme instability.
In most areas of the ‘South’ the institutions of a modern130 PROCESSES