specular inversions

[Doug Henwood]

"...Third Worldist perspectives, which may earlier have had a limited 
utility, were now [by the 1970s] completely useless. We understand 
Third Worldism to be defined by the notion that the primary 
contradiction and antagonism of the international capitalist system 
is between the capital of the First World and the labor of the Third. 
The potential for revolution thus resides squarely and exclusively in 
the Third World. This view has been evoked implicitly and explicitly 
in a variety of dependency theories, theories of underdevelopment, 
and world system perspectives. The limited merit of the Third 
Worldist perspective was that it directly countered the 'First 
Worldist' or Eurocentric view that innovation and change have always 
originated, and can only originate, in Euro-America. Its specular 
opposition of this false claim, however, leads only to a position 
that is equally false. We find this Third Worldist perspective 
inadequate because it ignores the innovations and antagonisms of 
labor in the First and Second Worlds. Furthermore, and most important 
for our argument here, the Third Worldist perspective is blind to the 
real convergence of struggles across the world, in the dominant and 
subordinate countries alike."

   -- Hardt & Negri, Empire, p. 264