Recovering Utopia

...At the same time, after the region's recent experiences, it is very likely that the VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 5 (FEBRUARY 1991) 35Columbian Quincentenary A soup KItcnen in santiago, Unile: urassroots community organizations point a way out of the deadend debate over "public" versus "private" ownership of the economy proponents of state control have also declined in number...

...It is no overstatement to say that the barriada has been the primary form of social and cultural experience in Peru over the past 30 years...

...Even socialism-which arose as an alternative to the bourgeois vision as a vehicle for reaching the aspirations of modernity-gave in to the instrumental rationale, and was unable to establish itself as anything but "existing socialism," i.e...

...it becomes a direct form of political democracy, not necessarily channeled through the state...

...The concept of reason, essential to modernity, was not understood in the same way in all parts of Europe...

...At the other extreme are the "neoliberals," for whom private capitalist ownership of production and the "invisible hand" of the market are the sine qua non for the creation and widespread distribution of wealth, and for the full expression of political democracy...

...The state or public sphere is the expression of that limited compatibility: It imposes its authority precisely when the logic of domination is threatened...

...Yes...

...1988).1...

...Another concept of what is private and what is public was part of Latin America's earlier history and is still with us today...

...Present-day society is undoubtedly too complex...

...The poet will point to the moving clouds and the sway ofthe treetops...

...While in Europe, the principles of modernity developed in the Enlightenment became incorporated into the accepted way of life, in Latin America, until well into the twentieth century, modernity became an ideology whose social practice was either repressed by the authorities or given only lip service, while actual practices ran directly counter to it...

...Democracy, no matter how demos, is also cratos...

...It still exists today despite the best efforts of the "modernizers...

...State capitalism, "real socialism" and the welfare state allbelong to the same family, but act within different contexts and inresponse to different sorts of specific needs...

...The socially-oriented private sector and its non-state public sphere show us a way out of the blind alley into which the ideologues of capital and power have led us...

...It has become clear that "neoliberalism" and what could be called "neodevelopmentalism" are two sides of a dead-end street...

...While the distinction drawnhere may be a simplified one, it is not in my opinion overly arbitrary.3...

...The tapestry may be unraveled, perhaps even destroyed, but new hands will return to the ancient loom...

...You heard...

...In the final analysis, both paths lead to the same thing: vertical corporate structures which become, or are closely linked to, the state...

...In fact, these new types of public and private practices can gain ascendancy only if they represent an alternative sort of power...

...In the Enlightenment that unfolded in Europe in the eighteenth century, America was no mere bystander...

...But Alvarado and the horse divided into two andstayed that way: the conquistador detached himself from thedecapitated horse and stood up...

...Captain Tectin Um-n flewoff again and rose higher, all aglow...

...Later, it continued to function despite attacks by Lima and the caciques...

...However, in this new type of structure, power regains its social dimension...

...Today, that capitalist logic is in crisis throughout the continent, and the utopian vision of solidarity and reciprocity may be our only hope...

...The dogs dashed up to tearTectin Umdn apart, andAlvarado's sword heldthem back...

...The capitalist private sector is not the only possible form of private economic activity, and the state is not its only possible "public" counterpart...

...The state may be the rival of the private sector, but cannot be its opponent...

...2 This difference became crucial in determining the fate of modernity and of the hopes it held out...

...Nor are these institutions scattered and unconnected...

...After 500 years of false "modernization," the question before Latin America is not to choose between statism and control, on the one hand, and the freedom of the market and of profit-making, on the other...

...It is not a question of an abstract equivalence of objects, as in the market, but rather their diversity...

...Within the traditional private/public framework, personal freedom has been possible for some people only at the expense of others...

...When this connection became obscured, the oligarchic Creole culture in America became even blinder still...

...At one time, it appeared to be making way solely for a cultural "modernization," that is, for the primacy of the instrumental rationale...

...This is the modernity which is in crisis according to the new prophets, almost all of whom are apostates of socialism or, at the very least, radical liberalism...

...35 (Aug...

...Unlike other options, this alternative power is not only a goal in itself, but also a path to that goal, and we are currently travelling down that path...

...Under Pax Americana, the pressure to "modernize"' fell with full force on Latin America...

...Its world-wide dominion became even more entrenched as Britain's imperial hegemony gave way to that of the United States after the end of the First World War...

...In Latin America, this idea influenced socialist thinking as well as diverse versions of populism, nationalism and developmentalism...

...The private sector's interests are compatible with such values only up to a point...

...The private/state dichotomy is no more than a distinction between two aspects of the same instrumental rationale, whose ascendance has brought us an extremely protracted crisis, disorder and confusion...

...Couched in these terms, the debate is hopelessly deadlocked, because both sides accept the same assumptions and categories: for both, "private" refers to private interests in a capitalist society, and "state" or "public" to the state/public facet of such private interests...

...Nor is it mere happenstance thatthe spokespeople for this school of thought do not hesitate to statethat modernism is nothing more than a utopia in the pejorative senseof the word.4...

...The capitalist concept of private endeavor is based on the market, an idea which has acquired almost mystical qualities...

...When Olavide was persecuted bythe Inquisition, it was none other than Diderot himself who launcheda campaign in his defense, taken up in virtually all the Europeancenters of the Enlightenment...

...Complete state controlover the economy may be seen as representing the interests of thesociety as a whole visa vis private interests...

...THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA COMPLETELY revolutionized the European imagination...

...However, it could serve as a basis for a noninstrumental rationale...

...In simplified terms, the Saxon countries viewed reason first and foremost as a way of fitting means to ends, a useful tool for increasing power...

...For a long time Alvaradocontemplated his beaten enemy, his body slashed open, thequetzal feathers sprouting from his arms and legs, the wingsbroken, the triple crown of pearls, diamonds, and emeralds.Alvarado called to hissoldiers...

...And that the only thing that is real in this world is power, the technology of power, the language of power...

...Before its subjugation by the Spanish and throughout the colonial era, it represented a unique environment, one characterized by reciprocity, solidarity, democracy and their corresponding freedoms...

...We have yet to completely emerge from the dark tunnel of militarism and authoritarianism...

...Those groups most closely associated with inequality and arbitrariness, despotism and obscurantism, were able to take political power...

...He flew and fell uponAlvarado and with one fierce blow severed the head of hishorse...

...Let's take the Andean community as an example...

...In Peru, what are known as barriadas--neighborhoods of the urban poor-contain around 70% of the urban population, which in turn is 70% of the population of the country...

...Pantheon, 1985) Recovering UtopiaThis article was adapted from "A Different Concept of thePrivate Sector, A Different Concept of the Public Sector, whichappeared in CEPAL Review, No...

...Nor has it made the state more legitimately representative, or even, perhaps, more stable...

...They band together to form soup kitchens, community schools, housing and production cooperatives, and a host of other organizations...

...And in 1810, at the Cortes of Caidiz, theLatin American delegates were among the most consistent in up-holding a modern ideology and in defending liberal radicalism,playing a prominent role in drafting the liberal constitution.2...

...A new system of democracy, built on solidarity, equality and personal freedom, would not imply the dissolution of all power...

...Power in Europe shifted toward the British in the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries, and the Anglo-Scottish version of the Enlightenment and of modernity came to dominate the bourgeois rationale as a whole...

...4 (Nov/Dec 1989...

...Reciprocity is a special type of exchange, based on the usefulness of the objects involved...

...At the same time, the conquest was the first step in the formation of the world market, in which capitalism and its logic were to emerge as the material foundations for European modernity in another sense...

...But the relationship between personal freedom and the needs of society as a whole ("order") are radically different in the socially-oriented private and non-state public sectors...

...In other words, the socially-oriented private sector tends to generate its own public institutional sphere, but without acquiring the characteristics of a state...

...On both sides of the Atlantic, these prophets of "post-modernity" (the most blatant form of anti-modernism) want to persuade us that modernity's hopes of liberation are not only unattainable now, but always were so...

...However, this approach will not carry us very far along toward the liberation promised by modernity...

...the state is less of a prisoner to society, and in one sense is more national...

...The same is true for production and distribution...

...Such forms of social life the Europeans had thought of as myths relegated to a golden age in the remote and shrouded past...

...In simplifying the differences between the southern andnorthern European concepts of modernity and rationality, I am notattempting to absolve Southern Europe of its sins, which may be justas serious as those of Northern Europe...

...You were here...

...This disillusionment is reflected in the virtual paralysis of purposeful economic action in the countries of the region...

...Everywhere, the desire took hold to reform society and its institutions, paving the way for political and intellectual freedom.' In Latin America, however, the stagnation of the mercantile economy undermined the ideological and social demands of modernity, particularly from the last third of the eighteenth century onward...

...Stalinism...

...The market leads to the fragmentation and differentiation of interests within society...

...Circles of reformers emerged in both the Old and New NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34Worlds, debating the same topics and exploring the same scientific questions...

...4 T HE HISTORY OF MODERNITY IN LATIN America, however, contains elements of an alternative-elements which are taking shape once again...

...When he dived downfrom the clouds, Alvarado dodged and ran him through withthis lance...

...IW -EN THE CONCEPT OF MODERNITY AROSE in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on both sides of the Atlantic, its protagonists in America were members of the ruling class, descendants of Europeans...

...On the contrary, especially during the past two decades, they have formed links with one another, setting up vast networks which in many cases cover the entire country...

...Historically in the Andes, reciprocity did not prevent the exercise of power and domination...

...In Latin America today, few people harken to the songs of these "neoliberal" sirens...

...The consequences of this deception are still with us...

...There, society's need for collective solidarity, reciprocity and democracy do not conflict with the individual's need for differentiated self-fulfillment...

...Listen," he will say, and puthis ear against the ground, filled with explosions.And he will teach them to smell history in the wind, totouch it in stones polished by the river, and to recognize itstaste by chewing certain herbs, without hurry, as one chewson sadness...

...But this process has occurred in the barriadas of virtually every Latin American city...

...Those favoring state ownership of production and distribution and state orientation of the entire economy believe this to be central to "modernizing...

...This, however, has not made it more democratic or more capable of meeting the needs of the population...

...Equality, social solidarity and freedom, and democracy for producers cannot flourish under such a system...

...Yet the experience of Latin America has shown beyond all doubt that this approach, also fails to lead to equality, social solidarity or democracy...

...In short, to oppose the ruling power...

...But it did act at both the base and the apex of the ruling structure as a mechanism of solidarity, a form of exchange between A Chilean tapestry depicts urban community life: After 500 years of false "mo ancient traditions may offer the only chance for achievina the promise of a modern life VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 5 (FEBRUARY 1991) 37Columbian Quincentenary equals and, also, a mechanism for solidarity between rulers and ruled...

...One blind alley into which the instrumental rationale leads is the conflict between private and state ownership of productive resources...

...But such linkages have not necessarily involved the establishment of an apparatus apart from or above day-today life...

...This, I call the instrumental rationale...

...bFrom Memory of Fire: Genesis by Eduardo Galeano(TranslatedbyCedric Belfrage...

...Because the logic of capital never fully developed here, it was unable to completely override the insights which, once they entered the consciousness of an astonished Europe in the early sixteenth century, had given birth to the historic rationale-focusing on ends rather than means, and on liberation rather than on power...

...And this might have occurred, if the expansion of international capital had not entered into a severe and prolonged crisis...

...This, I call the historic rationale...

...The institutions formed in the barriada are not islands in a capitaldominated sea...

...That, after Nazism and Stalinism, no one could still believe in them...

...See the horses hooves?The rain of arrows?The smoke...

...After all, was it not this type of society that inspired Europeans with the utopia of a rational society, marking the beginnings of modernity...

...Private enterprise, together with the state, will not cease trying to obstruct, divide, distort or eliminate these new institutions...

...All are marking time as they concern themselves with short-term (and frequently extremely short-term) measures...

...XXIII, No...

...Look," he said to them, andmade them remove their helmets.The children, seated in a circle around the poet, will ask:"And all this you saw...

...A socially-oriented private sector like that of the Andean community presently exists in Latin America, within today's highly complex and diversified society...

...T HE MOST COMPREHENSIVE EXAMPLE OF successful "modernization" in Latin America is perhaps the changeover from oligarchic to modernized states throughout the region...

...None of our people who were here survived...

...Under thesecircumstances, the private sector eventually re-emerges when thesuffocating weight of bureaucracy entailed by state control causesproduction to stagnate.5...

...The United States' extreme version of the instrumental rationale had by then been divested of any connection to the promises originally held out by modernity...

...Order" in such relations can result only from the personal freedom of all-and this is precisely what it can not be within the existing state and society...

...The version of modernity, in which reason was associated with ever more efficient material production, would come to obscure that headier vision of modernity as liberation from feudalism, despotism, and religious obscurantism...

...in Latin America, its weft is already apparent in the threads of our daily life...

...The liberation of society is more than an enlightened vision of utopia...

...A Peruvian, Pablo de Olavide y JAuregui, was a friend ofVoltaire and was deeply involved with the French Encyclopedistsand in the Spanish Enlightenment...

...The southern countries, in contrast, linked reason to the ends to be pursued: to free society from inequality, arbitrariness, despotism and obscurantism...

...By its nature, the market rules out reciprocity, or allows for it only as a means to its own ends...

...And socially-oriented private activities are a central element of this experience.: Of course, capitalist private enterprise is by far the predominant form of activity, in the country as a whole and in the barriada...

...The supremacy of this oligarchy is now coming to an end throughout Latin America...

...But the market is nothing less than an alignment of forces, a power-based relationship and a component of the power structure...

...But it neither eliminatesdomination and inequality, nor even tends to do so...

...This is why the market is incapable of accommodating any type of reasoning other than the most blatant sort of instrumental rationale...

...As it is, the crisis has reinforced the region's social, ethnic and cultural diversity, and the one-track, one-way transition from "traditional" to "modern" envisioned by ideologues is not taking place...

...Under state ownership, the economy can only be developed up to a point, after which it is paralyzed by the weight of bureaucracy...

...For want of a better term, I will refer to it as a "sociallyoriented" form of private activity, differentiated from self-seeking types of private endeavor...

...If this new socially-oriented private sector and its public, non-state network have been able to function under such adverse conditions, they might also serve as a foundation for a genuinely democratic integration of society-a real opportunity for the true and differentiated self-fulfillment of the individual...

...It was instead based solely on the exigencies of capital, productivity and the effectiveness of means for achieving the ends dictated by capital and the empire.' In broad sectors of Latin America, this instrumental view of modernization nourished the beguiling chimera of a modernity somehow achieved without a social revolution...

...In America, that golden age appeared as a possibility to be conquered or constructed...

...See "The Homeless Organize," NACLA Reporton theAmeri-cas, Vol...

...See the lances?* he will ask...

...Within the framework of reciprocity, objects are symbols of people themselves...

...the children will ask...

...reciprocity requires their linkage...

...Old World to struggle for modernity, understood as a freer and more rational social order based on reciprocity and solidarity...

...A large part of the population has been pushed into rediscovering and reestablishing-within a more complex historical context-NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36one of the most deeply-rooted, longest-lasting and richest elements of Peruvian culture: the Andean community...

...From the nineteenth century onward, modernity in Latin America came to be accepted as an intellectual attitude, but not as a day-to-day social experience...

...And it is private...

...I am in no way proposing a return to an agrarian communal life...

...They are part of that sea and they, in turn, alter its logic...

...The expansion of this process in Peru is probably due to the severity of the crisis there...

...A vast portion of the urban poor organize their day-to-day activities in just such a way...

...It is surely not a mere coincidence that the leaders of today'santi-modernist "neoconservative" movement in the United Statesstress their rejection of the "Franco-Continental Enlightenment"and their adherence to the "Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment" ofLocke, Hume and Smith, in attempting to vindicate the privilegedposition ofsome groups overothers...

...The state's institutional apparatus has grown and become more professionalized...

...Here, to their astonishment, the Europeans found-or thought they found-societies living in solidarity free of arbitrary authority and accepting of diversity within the community...

...THE POET WILL TELL THE CHILDRENTHE STORY OF THIS BATTLErHE POET WILLSPEAKOF PEDRODEALVARADOSand of those wh came withhim to teach fear.He will relate that when the native troops had been de-stroyed, and when Guatemala was a slaughterhouse, CaptainTectin Umn rose into the air and flew with wings, andfeathers sprouted from his body...

...Regardless that parts of this vision were purely imaginary and others exaggerated, the supposed American utopia inspired the Peruvian social scientist Anibal Quijano has written extensively on Latin American development and Andean history and culture, most recently Modernidad, Identidad y Utopia en Am6rica Latina...

...Their social status blinded them to the fact that the culture of the "Indians" contained elements which would inspire Europe's vision of the connection between reason and liberation...

...He is a professor at the Universidad de San Marcos in Lima...

...To survive, to withstand the crisis, and to defy the logic of underdevelopment, they use solidarity, collective effort and reciprocity as the foundation of democracy...

...Moreover, capitalist logic not only exists alongside reciprocity, solidarity and democracy, but also intermingles with it and alters it...