By Marguerite and Michael Rivage-Seul
Foreward by Franz Hinkelmmert

Published by Praeger Press, 1995
ISBN 0-275-95201-0

Mike and Peggy Rivage-Seul with Franz Hinkelammert (center) at the DEI (Departamento Ecumenico de Investigaciones) in San Jose, Costa Rica, 1992

This study provides a much needed Third World perspective on the "New World Order" (NOW). Calling on the work of critical scholars from Latin America, Mike and Peggy Rivage-Seul dispel reigning NOW illusions. These include the conviction that the world is better off with the Cold War ended, that the world’s poor bear primary responsibility for their condition, that the free market can solve the very problems it has created, that ideology has disappeared, that God underwrites the human sacrifice required by the emergent brave new world, and that utopias haved outlived their usefulness. According to the Rivage-Seuls, such illusions prevent inhabitants of the developed world from recognizing the literal impossiblility of continuing economics of untargeted economic growth celebrated by triumphalistic free marketeers. Left to itself, they argue, the market not only manufactures increasing quantities of "throw-away" people, but environmentally speaking, it destroys the very foundations on which untargeted growth depends. Not content with negative criticism, the Rivage-Seuls show the necessity of establishing North/South solidarity and reviving Judeo-Christian traditions of community concern, selflessness, and humanism. A Kinder and Gentler Tyranny provides students of political and intellectual history, economics, third world studies, theology and contemporary studies with an antidote to the prevailing conviction that the human race has somehow reached the end of history.