Third World Socialism was a variant of Socialism preached by Nkrumah, Modibo Keita, Sekou Touré, Julius Nyerere, al-Bitar, Aflaq, Nasser, Perón,[1][2] Nehru, Sukarno, Ben-Gurion,[3] Muammar al-Gaddafi, Zulfikar Bhutto, Buddhadasa, Walter Lini and other such socialist leaders of the Third World who saw a non-soviet version of socialism as the answer to a strong and developed nation. It could be argued that the new "turn to the left" leadership in Latin America Socialism of the 21st century, with its anti-americanism, connection with less developed Eastern Europe, sense of undeveloped countries/developing countries unity and pro-arabism/pro-Islamism is a new kind of Third World socialism.
It may be described as an ideologically specific form of Third worldism, and it is made up of African Socialism, Arab Socialism, Nasserism, Justicialism,[Note 1] Nehruism, Labour Zionism,[4] Islamic Socialism,[Note 2] Buddhist socialism and Melanesian socialism.
The leaders of African Socialism were Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanzania after the independence, who coined the concept of Ujamaa and collectivized the land, Kwame Nkrumah, first president of Ghana, who was one of the fathers of the Non Aligned Movement, praised state planning policies like Five-Year Plans and an agency for the regulation of cocoa exports, and in several political speeches and writings developed his theory of an "african socialism", Modibo Keita, father of Mali, and Ahmed Sekou Touré, father of Guinea.
The main figures of Arab Socialism are Gamal Abdel Nasser, first president of Egypt, who nationalized the Suez Canal, and the Baath Party, founded in Syria by Michel Aflaq, which gained popularity in the whole arab world and reached the government in Syria (until present) and Iraq (until 2003).
In the case of Juan Domingo Perón, elected president of Argentina on three non-consecutive times, the Third World Socialist stance was a more radical variation of populism which aligned itself with the Third World and the Non-Aligned Movement (what Perón called "the third position"), with a significant state intervention for development, such as five-year plans, the nationalization of railways, ports and banks, the creation of an agency to regulate grain exports (the IAPI), and the establishment of a modern welfare state. Despite his progressive policies, Perón didn't define himself or his doctrine as "socialist" during his first presidencies (1946–1952 and 1952–1955), but he did later, during his exile and during his third presidency (1973–1974), when he coined the term "national socialism", sort of an Argentine way to socialism, which he described as a social-democracy mainly modeled after the "Swedish way" and also inspired by other Non-Aligned, third-world-socialist models such as Nasser, Christian socialism, and the corporatist policies of European 1920s, 1930s and 1940s fascism.[2]
Iran experienced a short Third World Socialism period at the zenith of the Tudeh Party after the abdication of Reza Shah and his replacement by his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (though the party never rose to power). After failing to reach power, this form of third world socialism was replaced by Mossadegh's populist, non-aligned Iranian nationalism of the National Front party as the main anti-monarchy force in Iran, reaching power (1949–1953), and it remained with that strength even in opposition (after the overthrowning of Mossadegh) until the rise of islamism and the Islamic Revolution.[5] The Tudehs have moved towards basic socialist communism since then.[6]
Kemalism can very arguably be added to the list,[7][8] as it happeared before the notion of Third World was created in post-World War II, it added populism to the equation (something not all Third World socialists did; Nasser and Nkrumah, for example, did), and Turkey is more developed than the typical notion of a Third World Country. But as it was used as a model of government after the Turkish Independence War to rebuild Turkey and recover it from the underdeveloppement of Ottoman Turkey, creating a strong nation in face of the prospect of European Colonialism, it can be considered as reaching the templates of a Third World Socialism movement. And from the 1960s onwards, Third World socialist and Third Worldist thought influenced Left-Kemalism.[9]
Anyway, the Kemalist experiment,[10] Fabian Socialism (and social democracy in general),[11] and the main Third World communist regime, the People's Republic of China,[11] were big influences on the movement. Despite being inspired by Social Democracy, most of this regimes were affected in one time or the other by strongmen or bigmen leaders or one-party systems. In any case, all Third World Socialist regimes are followers of social democratic reformism (normally state-guided), preferring it to revolution, though some adopted a kind of permanent revolution stance on the social progress to a socialist society.
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