I wanted to provide a counter point, or rather, a more balanced and self-conscious vision. As to your definition of what "third world" meant, that's not how I remember it (but I grew up in West Germany, and the GDR may have defined terms differently). The "third world", according to the Western definition, definitely were those countries that were poor (and also perceived as primitive and culturally backwards, so the term eventually came to be seen as stigmatizing, at least with left-leaning people).
What you're referring to, the unaligned countries/states, were called "blockfreie Staaten", and they were not "promoted" in Western propaganda as featuring "despots", but still could end up being bombed (democratically), like founder state Yugoslaviya.
But it is also true that many "third world" countries joined the block-free group, so there is considerable overlap.
> As to your definition of what "third world" meant, that's not how I remember it
And the reading you adopted is a simplified superstition.
The expression 'Tiers Monde' was coined by academician Alfred Sauvy in an article on l'Observateur (14 August 1952), to express that the countries not directly aligned to the "two blocks" are akin to the social "third state" as a worldwide class that will demand a better position.
> Nous parlons volontiers des deux mondes en présence, de leur guerre possible, de leur coexistence, etc., oubliant trop souvent qu’il en existe un troisième, le plus important, et en somme, le premier dans la chronologie. C’est l’ensemble de ceux que l’on appelle, en style Nations Unies, les pays sous-développés. [...] Ce qui importe à chacun des deux mondes, c’est de conquérir le troisième ou du moins de l’avoir de son côté. Et de là viennent tous les troubles de la coexistence. [...] Car enfin ce Tiers Monde ignoré, exploité, méprisé comme le Tiers Etat, veut, lui aussi, être quelque chose.
The expression 'Tiers Monde', which works as "the part to remember in the opposition of the two blocks at war", is coined mirroring the 1789 pamphlet of
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès "Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-État ?": «Que demande-t-il [le Tiers-État] ? À devenir quelque chose». And Sauvy stresses that the same rise is coming in the global context.
« the countries not directly aligned to the "two blocks" are akin to the social "third state" as a worldwide class » — That's the economic (rather than political) definition right there in 1952. Les pays sous-développés … et aussi exploités … le Tiers État.
it's nice that you trying to get to the bottom of your understanding on this. But let me join mdp2021 and flohofwoe.
The mistake is that the quote you pulled was already showing the historical revisionism that you inherited, but maybe not as explicitly.
it say "the under developed countries, to say it using the style of the UN". So it is already pointed out as a forced and politically loaded term. See how those things start?
It is certainly political: "the countries non aligned in the "cold war", currently hindered, will demand a political weight". Why have you quoted me omitting «that will demand a better position»? The whole idea from Sauvy cannot prescind from the parallel from the "Tiers Etat": third as in a different thing politically, third like that large class of poor that demand to emerge. Technically, defined as "the non aligned, the other thing", practically, "something with an historic role important in the conflict and about to explode".
In context of these branches: the academician who introduced the concept did not imply any "superiority" of other parts or other lowly characterization. Obviously disadvantages are noted as they are objective - just like we do when we deal with the world with duly detached analysis. None of them can be translated to vile gut understanding. If the academician introduces a concept of "someidea" and beasts misuse it, if you want to discuss the world remain on the "someidea", if you instead want to be an ethologist focus on the misuse.
If some proponent notices a relevance of some phenomenon to the "someidea", those who noted a "Ah, like the beasts intended" commit a grave base failure in the mandate from the guidelines here to responding to the most plausible interpretation and assuming good faith.
« Why … omitting » – There was no ill intent. I saw you provided a third explanation for the term, but didn't want to analyze any deeper, so I focused on the part where Sauvy fit the notion I grew up with, the only one I was familiar with (and ignored the "superstition" part of your reply).
I respectfully read the Sauvy link you provided, but frankly, despite reading/listening to lots of French, I've never come across him anywhere, and I was unaware that he coined that term in French (when it may already have been coined differently in English before). Now I see that the German Wiki article has Sauvy right at the top. (Is that where you got it from?)
By the way, Sauvy "repudiated" his definition in 1989 (French Wiki):
Auteur de l'expression [« tiers monde »], [Sauvy] la désavoue à la fin de sa vie : « Que l'on permette au créateur de l'expression tiers-monde, il y a déjà près de quarante ans, de la répudier, tant elle fait oublier la diversité croissante des cas. Englober dans le même terme les pays d'Afrique noire et « les quatre dragons » ne peut mener bien loin. »
J'espère ne plus me faire sévèrement réprimander ici pour avoir commis des « grave base failure in the mandate from the guidelines here ». :)
There is only one, only complex, that can be rephrased at will - and which was the intention of the coiner of the expression.
> I was unaware that he coined that term in French (when it may already have been coined differently in English before) [...] Is that where you got it from?
I know it from Books, the good old traditional way. And not necessarily books in French: it is in the works of Paul Johnson, for example. It was not "independently coined by many" - all authors I have state that Sauvy has coined the term.
> By the way, Sauvy "repudiated" his definition in 1989
Surely at some point he may have felt to retract, given that an expression coined to make a point and a good intellectual proposal - "what will be the future and the world role of those that we can now recognize as the non-aligned" - from analytical effort had become a synthetic vulgar twisted label. But the descent into vulgarity was not Sauvy's intention, and certainly there is no intent of attributing "superiority/inferiority" to the parts (as you will have seen from having read the piece on the Observateur).
So again: when somebody mentions Schrödinger's cat or Hegel's cows, you cannot assume that the context be violence or discrimination against animals "as mass interpretation became at some point". You cannot attribute to the speaker unproven intentions especially if dubious, especially if frequentistic. In general; as written, here it is explicitly forbidden.
For the rest, incidentally, I do agree with a tirade against the dire state of civilization in the decadent "western world", especially about the denunciation of «eunuch-like consumerist subservience» (50 years ago a conscious warning and today the token of the dead), but it was uncalled for from the post of flohofwoe.
> [French language]
I hope you are not falling into other assumptions.
« You cannot attribute to the speaker unproven intentions … explicitly forbidden »
As I said, I didn't intend to diss either Sauvy or you, first time I heard about this guy, and also asked some French contacts about whether he's still known in France, and the answer is « Pas la moindre idée de qui c'est ».
Also, in the article you linked, which I duely read in its entirety, he does talk about hunger and misery looming over the Third World, and he laments the misallocation of funds for more war and NATO (« pacte atlantique »). The bit about the origin of the expression and Sieyès is just the final note.
So I frankly don't think I insinuated (unterstellen) anything that was not in his text, and I was and am surprised for being reprimanded. If we are to assume good faith, then it must apply universally, not selectively.
You wrote, see the emphasis, «[/]superior[/] first world» in apparent reply to member flohofwoe's «former Soviet scientists and engineers trying their luck with 3rd world despots». You wrote that «"third world", according to [some] Western definition, ... were those countries that were poor (and also perceived as primitive and culturally backwards, so the term eventually came to be seen as stigmatizing, at least with left-leaning people)».
When people mention 'third world', they are assumed to mean Sauvy's frame - there is no subsequent one overriding it, it is still the reference. "Third world" means what that short piece you read proposed. Billions of people trying to bend language, concepts and culture have the weight of a hefty nuisance, not that largely opposite one of Authority.
In Sauvy's frame, 'third world' has no connotation of «[infer]iority», «primitiv[ity]» «backward cultur[e]» or «stigmatiz[ation]». And «hunger and misery» are just facts relevant to the phenomenon, of course they are there, they are part of the point (they are grounds for the parallel with the "third state" near the French Revolution) - they are not appreciative nor depreciative, they are analytical.
If people said "third world" as a disparaging label, it is their own fault, and you cannot assume it in instances - you can suppose it frequentistically, but you cannot point to John and take for granted that his speech yesterday meant what the laymen at the bar would have meant.
« When people mention 'third world', they are assumed to mean Sauvy's frame »
Well, that's what you're assuming. I had never heard of Sauvy and was totally unaware of his definition that had lost all meaning by the time I grew up (and I guess the same holds true for most other participants). But okay, learnt something in the process.
What I took issue with in floh's comment in the beginning was not some improper definition of a term but the arrogance implicit in his tone (learnt or rather osmotically received arrogance, instilled by propaganda), an irritation possibly accumulated from a series of prior comments he'd made and which I'd read as part of my feed (because I appreciate his tech comments).
Now I respectfully suggest that we leave it at that.
> that's what you're [...] his definition that had lost
No, again the point is not clear.
When people mention a concept, they are assumed to know it. If the concept is "third world", that corresponds to the page of Sauvy you read. People may not know that concept properly, and create a superstition, and oftentimes will: that does not mean that the concept is replaced by the product of its ignorance. The proper concept in intellectual use remains untouched by its misuse; its misuse cannot have pretensions of preeminence. The terms do not «lose meaning»: they are simply misused by the ignorant and shallow - which intrinsically forcibly have no authority over it; what happens is that a twisted meaning will be spread, and that is just a natural phenomenon of the life of concepts. The people in the street are not the authorities. The meaning of 'spleen' is determined by a subset of doctors and a subset of poets, not by the a mass of near-laymen.
When people hear of "Schroedinger's cat", some, maybe many, will probably think "Mr. Schroe was very lonely; one day he found a cat and got to be a happy fella...": that does not replace the proper concept introduced by Schroedinger. People will do any disservice to it, and that you can suspect - but still there is no legitimacy in assuming that when /specific/ people talk about Schroedinger's cat, they mean "lonely people finding comfort" instead of the difficulty in determining etc.
« the point is not clear » – Yes it is. And it was, and had been before. I understand exactly what you're saying. I simply don't agree to such mechanistic, rigid “rules” for conversation.
See, the statements are clear, the message is not.
You speak about "rigid"?
When specific people, instances, say "gay", do you assume it is sexual? When they say "frown" do you assume it is not? I wrote "superstition", was it the concept of the "man in the street"? When men not in the street say "AI", do you understand "delirious neural networks"?
Those interpretations would be rigid. On the opposite terms are richer. And that richness is necessarily there in some of them specific people because we do not speak demotic. Not everyone is a layman.
Celebrating a "man sagt" is utterly absurd, and Heidegger wrote about it. I suggest you (re)read the pages in Sein und Zeit about Gerede, Neugier und Zweideutigkeit (§35, §36, §37).
Do you think the Soviets would have called the US aligned countries "First World"? ;)
The more 'correct' term for that modern/popular meaning of 3rd world is 'developing countries' (or in German "Entwicklungslaender"). But tbh, I have no idea when, how and why the transition from 'politically unaligned country' to 'underdeveloped country' happened in the modern popular opinion - the Wikipedia article has some ideas though - but tbh I would never have considered Cold Ware era Cuba or Vietnam to be "3rd world countries", and after 1990 the whole idea behind those "three worlds" has lost all meaning anyway, and especially after China had entered the chat.
Yugoslavia and Albania are more interesting cases though indeed, at least Yugoslavia tried to play both sides during the cold war, while Albania started as a very close Soviet ally but then moved towards China and then eventually ending up as completely isolationist.
Also as a clear example for a '2nd world despot' look at Romania's Ceausescu, and for examples of '1st world despots' look at Spain under Franco (easy to forget that Spain was a fascist dictatorship until the 1970s), or Chile under Pinochet.
> nobody uses the old definition because it's no longer WW2
These are Cold War terms (post WW2). And for the Cold War era it makes sense to use the original meaning.
IMHO the term "3rd world country" shouldn't be used in the first place when talking about the time after the early 1990s though. It's misleading and the "modern" meaning comes with a hefty whiff of implied racism/colonialism.
The Soviet didn't use this numerical terminology usually, but rather a categorical/ideological distinct classifications:
- Socialist Countries (only the developed ones)
- Developed Capitalist Countries
- Developing Countries(Развивающиеся страны). (with a secondary subdivision for countries in a "non-capitalist path of development", a.k.a. non developed socialist countries)
In more ideologically charged contexts, the Developed Capitalist Countries could be called the Imperialist Camp.
« quite literally » – Not what I remember, but okay, that may have been the original meaning before I "entered the chat". Then, it was associated with hunger, poverty, misery. I remember distinctly.
« Do you think the Soviets » – Right, that was silly. They had their own propaganda.
« Spain was a fascist dictatorship until the 1970s » – It seems the worst thing they ever did was aiding and abetting the U.S. Air Force. Certainly shameful, but then again "not a unique selling proposition" in Europe.
Back in the Cold War the 'division' of the world into power blocs was quite simple:
- 1st world: countries aligned with the USA
- 2nd world: countries aligned with the USSR
- 3rd world: independent countries that were neither aligned with the US nor USSR
E.g. in its actual meaning, 3rd world doesn't say anything about how rich or poor a country is, or about its form of government.