This reflection on the situation in the countries of the global South examines their shared but diverse experiences of the hard facts of poverty and exclusion in the world of capitalist globalization. It probes the reality of ‘underdevelopment’ in an unequal world, driven by western power and capitalist profit-seeking and supported by inequalities within the countries of the ‘third world’ themselves. John Saul suggests fresh ways to consider the dynamics of this situation and seeks to rethink the ways of linking a class-based struggle with the progressive demands of gender equality and identity politics.

John S. Saul was educated at the Universities of Toronto, Princeton and London and, on the ground, in Africa and has taught for many years both at York University (until his retirement) in Canada and in Africa: in Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa. He also worked throughout these years as a liberation support and anti-apartheid activist, notably with the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa (TCLSAC) and with Southern Africa Report magazine. He had published over seventeen books including: Millennial Africa: Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy, The Next Liberation Struggle: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy in Southern Africa, Development after Decolonization: Theory and Practice for the Embattled South in a New Imperial Age, Recolonization and Resistance: Southern Africa in the 1990s, and O Marxismo-Leninismo no Contexto Moçambicano. He remains committed to an anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist politics.

John Saul's profile page

“(Saul’s) writings are all about instilling hope and learning from failure…. He is in a sort of underground, alternate Canadian tradition to the internationalism of Lester Pearson, (one that) includes Dr. Norman Bethune, who worked in China in the 1930s, and Dr. Chris Giannou today.”

Rick Salutin, Globe and Mail