Shariʿati, Anti-Capitalism, and the Promise of the “Third World”

This essay engages with Ali Shariʿati’s lecture “Some of the Vanguard of the Return to Self in the Third World” to explore his conception of the “Third World” as a cultural, psychic, and politico-economic project of which Iran would be an integral part, and his relationship to the intellectual contributions of above all Frantz Fanon, whose translation and critical reception proved to be of considerable importance to the ideological development of a popular-nationalist and avowedly religious section of Iran’s anti-Pahlavi opposition during the 1960s and 1970s. The essay explores several elements of Shariʿati’s anti-capitalism in the context of his advocacy of a Third World politico-economic bloc as well as some of the potential difficulties, tensions, and contradictions this vision would, and ultimately, did encounter. Finally, the essay concludes by examining how Shariʿati’s prescriptions for breaking the chains of “dependency” might have been further developed and complicated, given the immense obstacles the promise of Third World solidarity has faced historically.