Breaking the North–South divide? Reflections on the 2024 Program of Action on the Construction of a New International Economic Order

In September 2024, the Havana Group of the Progressive International launched its Program of Action on the Construction of a New International Economic Order. The launch was timed to mark the fiftieth anniversary of its namesake, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1974. Across its 31 proposed measures for coordinated action, the new Program seeks to revive the anti-colonial, anti- imperialist Third Worldism embodied by the original document. Its overall coherence and viability is damaged, however, by failing to go beyond a focus on how to bridge the developmental divide between North and South, to a more fundamental examination of capitalism. Such an examination requires placing exploitation and class relations centre stage alongside North–South dynamics. Incorporating an analysis of capitalism reveals the limits to and tensions within and across some of the Program’s stated aims, objectives and measures. It also highlights the Program’s tendency to see labour as a passive recipient of protections and regulations, neutralising the historical role of peasants and workers as both conceivers of and contributors to liberation struggles and anti-imperialist politics.