What Future for Socialism?
Vilas, Carlos M.
IN THE "NEW WORLD ORDER" ANNOUNCED by George Bush the North-South conflict has displaced the East-West one at the forefront of international politics.' The ideological confrontation between...
...Cuba's President Fidel Castro...
...Not a few progressive leaders and intellectuals claim that no alternatives exist to the policies of structural adjustment now in force...
...As one Buenos Aires taxi-driver told me many years ago: "What we need is a strong government...like Franco's, or Fidel's...
...The shift to party politics and electoral democracy since the mid-1980s placed these semi-political/semi-military organizations under enormous stress...
...The fact that this cost is being borne by poor and working people is not due to any technical requirement, but to their political weakness: the burden falls on those who are least able to defend themselves...
...1, and "Is Socialism Still an Alternative for the Third World...
...As I see it, the main problem is that very few political organizations in Latin America are concerned with change, to say nothing of socialism...
...Structural adjustment may well be inevitable, but who suffers its consequences is a matter of the class nature of policy decisions...
...They hardly adhere to any defined political ideology...
...and Sara Miles and Bob Ostertag, "FMLN New Thinking," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...This sort of leftist thinking paid ess attention to the actual advances of the working and peasant masses than to the partisan and ideological names attached to them...
...2 Orthodox socialist interpretations of Latin American history tended to force the hemisphere's particular dynamics into the "universal" categories of European capitalist development, charac,,..,..,,,., ,,,..,,,,,...,.,,, VOLUME XXV, NUMB ) 13The Lefto4A The Left A I S. I revolutionaries, the Sandinistas had difficulty combining s economic dimensions of democracy with political ones...
...In order to service the interest on the foreign debt, Latin America's governments are selling off at bargain prices the economic patrimony of their respective countries...
...The vitality of these aspirations-of socialism-lies above all in the Left's capacity to adapt to changing realities, and to accept the challenges of new times...
...The drastic adjustment program applied during the final years of the Sandinista government, at the expense of those who had fought and suffered to defend the revolution, was a dramatic illustration of this lack of progressive alternatives...
...5. CEPAL, Balance preliminar de la economic de Amdrica Latina y el Caribe, 1991, table 3; UNICEF/SEGEPLAN,Andlisis de la situacidn del niuo y la mujer (Guatemala: UNICEF, Aug...
...ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING ASPECTS OF the mix of profound economic crisis and electoral democracy is the retreat of Latin America's governments and a good number of its intellectuals from their traditional support of reform...
...Massive protests, many of them extremely violent, indicate that such policies are not what people had in mind when they cast their votes...
...Up to now Latin America's popular organizations have paid more attention to denouncing the negative effects of adjustment than to designing alternatives...
...1989...
...1991), p. 12...
...FOR MORE THAN THREE DECADES, SOCIALism and even profound social change have been intimately associated with a particular political strategy: armed struggle...
...Of these 183 million Latin Americans, nearly half live in so-called "extreme poverty...
...In Mexico and Argentina populist governments made great advances, although not to the same extent as in Cuba and Costa Rica.' Socialism may mean a great many things in Third World societies...
...Moreover, the Left appraised its political activities in terms of the means utilized, rather than the depth, scope and orientation of the objectives sought...
...Economic instability and social deterioration may also lead to the acceptance of new forms of authoritarian rule: the oft-repeated wish for "strong government," notwithstanding its particular ideological appeal...
...It is a question of the gap between the growing number of people living in poverty and the increasing involvement of leftist political parties, intellectuals and politicians in what was for a long time known as "the establishment," and is now being termed "modernity...
...42, No...
...Given the failure of state ownership to achieve any strategic breakthrough, the Left finds itself without proposals to counter neoliberal policies...
...Carlos M. Vilas, The Sandinista Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986), ch...
...But the deepening crisis and the new global geopolitics oblige us to search for new ways, new ideas, and new programs...
...After a decade of repression, persecution and censorship, the abdication of what was once known as "critical thought" is astounding...
...He is a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Center for Inter-disciplinary Studies in Humanities anda member of NACLA 's Editorial Board...
...In my opinion, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the M19 in Colombia took the latter course...
...3. This would not necessarily imply some form of "delinking...
...By the end of the 1980s some 183 million Latin Americans lived under the official poverty line, comprising 44% of the region's total population...
...Their well-crafted arguments about modernizing the state and economy and strengthening civil society can't hide the fact that their policies are designed not to encourage development, but to pay off debts...
...The gulf debt, they gave up the only instrument at their disposal for pressuring the international financial system to reverse this trend...
...Under the New World Order, what does socialism mean-if it means anything at all...
...Likewise, they have prospered by emphasizing the socio-economic dimensions of democracy more than its political and cultural aspects...
...Among Latin American countries, only Cuba was profoundly affected by the Soviet collapse...
...See Carlos M. Vilas, Transicidn desde el subdesarrollo (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1989), ch...
...Rafael Guido B6jar, "La crisis del socialismo en El Salvador," in Arturo Anguiano (ed...
...States holds sway in Latin America, and the old and decadent Russian Empire seeks to retain control over the East through unstable, difficult alliances with the West...
...What Future for Socialism...
...See sidebar, page 15.] People have used many different political strategies and experiences in their quest for a life of dignity, ustice and liberty...
...Nicaragua's Sandinismo refused to be identified as a variant of socialism during the successful initial years of mass organization, but adopted the label when orthodox adjustment policies became the main focus of its economic strategy...
...Monthly Review, Vol...
...Such efforts only reinforce authoritarianism...
...4. See Clive Y. Thomas, Dependence and Transformation (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974...
...Moreover, little work has been done in the area of development strategy...
...Export capacity could be redirected to fit the new import needs of an economy based on satisfying popular demand...
...Socialism is the name that, since the nineteenth century, has been given to people's aspirations for a life of dignity, justice and liberty...
...See Carlos M. Vilas, "Is Socialism Still an Alternative for the Third World...
...Until very recently Latin America's potential for taking the socialist road was believed to depend on two factors: internally on the achievement of certain levels of economic development and class differentiation, and externally on the existence of a socialist bloc in competition with the capitalist system...
...the United Argentine social scientist Carlos M. Vilas has written extensively on Nicaragua...
...Costa Rican social democracy, too, has scored many successes...
...The future of progressive change in Latin America is not a question of comparing the theoretical merits of different abstract social and political paradigms...
...3 (July-Aug., 1990...
...6 Governmental attempts to overcome the crisis are notoriously homogeneous: Alfonsin and Menem in Argentina, Ortega and Chamorro in Nicaragua, Arias and Calder6n in Costa Rica, Fujimori in Peru, Collor de Mello in Brazil, Pdrez in Venezuela and Lacalle in Uruguay...
...With slight variations, the elected governments have turned to adjustment policies designed according to the same model, a model which has proved unable to resolve the problems we face, and which has had a disastrous impact on the living conditions of the poorest members of society...
...Revolutionary socialism enabled Cuba o achieve some of Latin America's highest levels of basic well-being and social participation...
...today that 10% earns only 0.5%.5 This means that each of these nearly 900,000 Guatemalans earns an average of four dollars a month...
...OVER THE 1980S LATIN AMERI- ca's gross domestic product per capita fell by nearly 10%, Central America's by over 17%, Argentina's by over 24%, Venezuela's by over 20%, Bolivia's by over 23%, and so on...
...People feel they have been tricked and made fools of-a situation that contributes little to the consolidation of democratic institutions...
...4 We must ask then not just about the prospects for a particular variety of socialism, but about the prospects for progressive social and political change n the region...
...Samir Amin, Delinking (London: Zed Books, 1990...
...Delinking" proponents seem to lose sight of the fact that what they recommend as a development strategy is actually an effect of imperialist aggression in the underdeveloped world...
...See Manuel Caballero, La Internacional Comunistay la revolucidn latinoamericana (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1987...
...The Socialist Register 1991 (London: Merlin Press, 1991...
...8. See Clyve Thomas, Dependence and Transformation (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974...
...The recent coup attempt in Venezuela and the suspension of democracy in Peru point to the difficulties of trying to build electoral democracies on empty bellies...
...IN THE "NEW WORLD ORDER" ANNOUNCED by George Bush the North-South conflict has displaced the East-West one at the forefront of international politics.' The ideological confrontation between capitalism and communism was, apparently, easier to handle and eventually to overcome than the conflicts stemming from uneven access to productive, technical and financial resources and the ever-increasing imbalances in international development...
...Over the decades not a few revolutionary organizations met greater success under dictatorships than under bourgeois democracies...
...El socialismo en el umbral del Siglo XXI (Mexico: Universidad Aut6noma Metropolitana, 1991...
...To put it in a more sophisticated way: democracy is a global system, involving both political and socio-economic institutions and participation, as well as culture...
...or they jumped into the new ball game, and abandoned hope of achieving socialist-oriented reform...
...Only sporadically have progressive Latin American economists considered the notion that satisfying the demand for food, work, health and education could itself become a strategy for capital accumulation and social change...
...These aspirations did not fall with the Berlin Wall or the statues of Lenin...
...The magnitude of the crisis has placed the economy at the center of current debate...
...In 1980, the poorest 10% of Guatemala's population received 2.4% of the national income...
...205-218...
...and armed struggle became tantamount to radical change...
...People's unrest and upheavals do not necessarily lead to social change, nor to socialism...
...This association was the result of dictatorial rule in many Latin American countries, under which those who sought democratic social change risked persecution, imprisonment, torture, exile or death...
...Many would add El Salvador's FMLN to this list, even before the signing of the peace accords.7 To some, this ideological transformation demonstrated political maturity...
...3 (Sept...
...The problem is not whether adjustment policies are inevitable, but whether the social cost of those policies must fall on the poor...
...between people's aspirations and the prevailing orientation of political parties grows ever wider...
...8 This would have to involve a profound change in power relations and, without a doubt, a profound democratization of the economy and of development policies...
...1988...
...In any case, it points to one of the real outcomes when an overall design for political and socio-economic change is reduced to a particular strategy for seizing power...
...From the South's perspective the New World Order is reminiscent of the order that reigned up to the beginning of the present century, when the colonial powers were on one side and the colonies and neo-colonies on the other...
...The fact that elected governments are carrying out these policies puts democratization itself in question...
...Incomes have been transferred from the working classes to the most well-off, and from Latin America to the region's governments refused to attempt erizing as distortions and deviations the specificities of peripheral development...
...Germany dominates Europe, Japan the Pacific...
...In general Latin American critical thinking on economics has not progressed beyond generic proposals for broad state ownership of the economy...
...Attempts to put a democratic face on these policies by appealing to the elected nature of the regimes provoke even greater anger...
...The fall of the dictatorships did not bring a return to the conviction that profound structural reforms are necessary to achieve development, democracy and equality...
...This represents 71 million more than in 1970...
...2. A debate has raged from the 1920s on about the potential for most Latin American societies to be involved in a transition to socialism, given their economic and technological backwardness, and their small and weak proletarian classes...
...7. See Carlos M. Vilas, "Nicaragua: A revolution that fell from the grace of the people," in Ralph Miliband (ed...
...in William K. Tabb (ed...
...Paradoxically, this is the point where Latin American critical thought is most vulnerable...
...XXIII, No...
...3. The level and scope of political participation also vary greatly...
...The restriction of the activities of the state limits the region's potential for development, which has historically been linked to the dynamism of the public sector and to the state's capacity for creating favorable conditions for private investment and accumulation...
...3, and Alexander Cockbumrn's interview with this author in Z (Dec...
...Except in the case of Chile and afew other countries, authoritarianism and minority rule made the pursuit of socialism, national liberation, participatory democracy and people's access to basic economic and social resources tantamount to armed struggle...
...Restricting it to any of its constitutive parts has always proved deceptive...
...From Latin America's perspective, what room is left in this new old order for economic development, structural reform, and political and social democratization...
...to others, it was political opportunism...
...They responded in essentially two ways: either they rejected these changes "from above" as false and as designed to cheat the masses...
...also Carlos M. Vilas, Transicidn desde el subdesarrollo (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1989), ch...
...6. Although in many cases nationalizations were carried out in the past in pursuit of particular interests which had nothing to do with national (to say nothing of people's) goals, wholesale privatization and drastic cuts in welfare expenses hit the poorest most severely...
...If we admit that state socialism in the Soviet bloc was not the only, nor the best version of socialism, the Soviet collapse seems not so relevant to Latin America, from either an economic or a political perspective...
...1. This article was adapted with the author's permission from two separate pieces...
...The Future ofSocialism: Perspectivesfrom the Left (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990), pp...
...The distribution of gains and losses over the past decade has been extremely unequal...
...The twentieth century, which opened with the hope, or nightmare, of a socialist future, is about to close with the likely resurrection of Europe's Holy Alliance of 1815...
...Much of what is conventionally considered socialist economic policy in the underdeveloped world is simply a leftist version of desarrollismo, the notion that technological advance equals development...
Vol. 25 • May 1992 • No. 5
