Publisher's Synopsis
If it is assumed that the "end of history" has not arrived, then this book could not be more opportune, for at a time of radical and impatient re-appraisal of ideologies, it offers the means for inventorizing and criticizing what has been said and claimed about the Third World since World War Two. In offering the reader the instruments with which to dissect, pitilessly if needs be, both Marxist and capitalist dogmas, it does not pretend that political choices are no longer valid but only that they require, more than ever in the past, a passionate commitment to the reality of history.;In fact, this work originated as an attempt to explore the possible framework for a coherent Third World outlook, which gradually expanded as a search for the historical roots of certain fundamental contemporary ideas and as an attempt to classify rationally and sytematically the "systems of conceptualization" that affect and sometimes shape the relations between nations. If, in the end, the subject itself of the original enquiry comes into question, it is not scepticism or lack of hope, but from the author's conviction that the oneness of humanity, especially in its unyielding expectation of social justice, is the fundamental undercurrent in the course of the mainstream of history. This work derives from a doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics. Its author has behind him a considerable experience in journalism, embracing fields as diverse as freelancing and literary criticism, althought his main interest has been directed towards the problems of "modernizing" societies, especially in Latin America.
