The battle between tradition and modernity is accelerating and combining the worst of each. Neither the pristine essays in The Case Against the Global Economy nor Jay Mandle's review of it take account of this growing threat of violence. I am reminded of an encounter I had once, a rare visit to an arid place, the Harvard Institute of International Development. I presented a paper on alternative experiments in energy. We need to understand why so many grassroots, alternative, Third World critiques are at a philosophical level, how they challenge the fundamental categories of thought, what relation they see between concepts and ways of life.
Development is a bloody term.
I think we need a body count of its victims. But more important still, I think we need to trace the roots of violence in the concepts we employ so facilely. Such concepts, when institutionalized, can be death warrants. It is this that eludes Jay Mandle completely. We know that many in the Third World, both marginals and elites, want the goods of the 'developed' world.