The focus of this issue is to analyse the 'Third World' from the heyday of optimistic anti-colonial struggle to the present. There was the promise of a new world order which claimed to be socialist/coial democratic in orientation. Today, this project lies in ruins and the hopes of that earlier period seem to have given way in large parts of the South, to a pessimism of the possibilities of 'progressive' change in the present 'victory' of capitalism.

The authors of the core articles will be analysing three examples which are representative of many of the general tendencies in much of the 'Global South'. These are: The Bahamas/Carribean, India/South Asia and Africa, mainly the Sub-Saharan part of the continent, which will afford readers a good continuity from issue 39, which looked at the North African experiences. The articles examine the pitfalls and possibilities of progressive change in the case studies, highlighting the contradictions and alliances at work in complex social formations. There are important lessons to be learned in the quest for a world beyond capitalism, the original aspiration of the anti-imperial and anti-colonial movements three generations ago.