Rising oil prices benefited imperialist economies while wrecking other imperialized states

Evidence

197 3 and much admired in Third-Worldist circles at the time, actually benefited the imperialist economies and wrecked that majority of the imperialized ones which did not themselves produce oil. The structural link between the oil-producing countries of the Gulf and the petrodollar economy of imperialism is therefore a vivid illustration of the fact that speaking of a unified ‘Third World’ - in a global context in which producers of industrially strategic raw materials seek a world price without a massive compensatory mechanism for those countries in the backward zones which rely on them - is at least, to put it very, very mildly, an extremely misguided notion. It is in this double motionthe differential assimilation of each of the national-bourgeois states into the structure of imperialist capital, the mutual competitions and even warfare among the Asian and African states - that the so-called Third World has kept on collapsing into its constituent units, starting certainly with the Sino- Indian War of 1962, if not earlier, and decisively since petrodollars became a linchpin of the imperialist economy and a force of destruction in the nonoil-producing countries in the imperialized world. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 84

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evidences Ahmad’s materialist objection to Third-Worldist solidarity of the sort postcolonial discourse theory (including strategic essentialism) presupposes; connects to my research on essentializing the ‘Third World’ as a united subject. — connects to: Third World wars and oil price rises chiefly benefited imperialist economies — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 30; Empire’s end forced small states into relying on open world markets and domestic austerity. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 158

Broader Connections

• Third World wars and oil price rises chiefly benefited imperialist economies #corroborates (0.95) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 30