Latin America and 21st Century Socialism

The July-August issue of Monthly Review contains a translation of Marta Harnecker's Latin America and Twenty-First Century Socialism: Inventing to Avoid Mistakes, which is available online here.

The reader interested in the transformations of Latin America will find much of interest here, including commentary on events on the continent through 2009. Harnecker's focus is the development of 21st century socialism. The electoral capture of governmental power by the left across large parts of Latin America has not followed the revolutionary path of state seizure of 20th century socialism, and thus, as Harnecker argues, requires different metrics. First, 21st century socialism, of course, must learn from the mistakes of the 20th century version. And second, it must also learn from the diversification of the movements instead relying on the model of working class struggle to the exclusion of peasants, indigenous people, women, and others. Finally, it must focus on creating new forms of local and protagonistic democracy to decentralize state power.

Harknecker argues that, while there can be no step-by-step blueprint for socialism, there are three fundamental goals by which we can measure the success of the new Latin American left. She calls this, following Hugo Chávez, the elementary triangle of socialism (p. 43ff):

1. "Social ownership of the means of production." Harnecker argues that increased attention must be paid to the distribution of social ownership so that it does not become state-bureaucratic command over production.
2. "Social production organized by the workers." Like social ownership of the means of production, the modes of production must be organized by workers and not become the prerogative of only management. This requires an educational component to work so that the division of labor cannot coalesce into technocrats and workers. She quotes Allende's critique of technocratic and bureaucratic organization: "since workers had the same rights as any citizen [Allende argued] 'it would be paradoxical if in the heart of the company where they work they did not have equal rights'" (p. 45).
3. "The satisfaction of communal need." Rather than the acquisition of commodities, production needs to aim for the satisfaction of "full human development."

In addition, these new forms of distribution, production, and consumption should be organized with two other concerns in mind: first, a redefinition of productivity to include ecological concerns; and second, an eye toward integration and solidarity with other regional allies.

Much of Harnecker's essay focuses on these features of socialism. Nevertheless, its brevity leads to several omissions. First, I found that the discussions of implementing 21st century socialism sometimes left me wanting for current concrete examples. It helps, in this regard, to be familiar with at least some of the previous literature on Venezuela and Bolivia.

Second, after the initial discussion of international trade relations, Harnecker only revisits the topic in passing. Chávez, for instance, has made a significant effort to create a network of Latin American solidarity in trade and aid, to reduce the influence of US economic imperialism over the continent. Nevertheless, in attempting to establish stronger Venezuelan and/or Latin American economic autonomy he has forged ties with much less socialist sympathies (to put it nicely!). In Changing Venezuela by Taking Power (Verso, 2007), Gregory Wilpert argues that Chávez's ties with, and occasional praise of, leaders in repressive countries can undercut local struggles for social justice. These countries include Belorussia, Iran, Syria, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia. No matter how much skepticism the discourse of human rights warrants, Wilpert writes

Chávez does the peoples of these countries no favor by publicly praising their leaders and strengthening their positions while these same leaders trample on the rights of their people. By supporting these leaders, Chávez makes it more difficult for activists in these countries to fight for social justice (p. 181).

As many Marxists have pointed out, the uneven development of capitalism is central to its continued development and dominance as a system. Let us hope that the 'uneven' development of 21st socialism is only a transitional form.

Hassan Nasrallah and Hugo Chavez: What Does it Mean?

In this brief clip the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, calls Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez "brother." North America's right-wing uses speeches like this to create fear of a South American (Leftist) collaboration with Islamic terrorism. This is a distortion of the matter. Yet, it is true that some US leftists view Lebanon's Hezbollah, and even the current Iranian regime, as heroically anti-imperialist. At a wedding last summer I spoke with a few Iranian-American Communists that were outraged with the human rights abuses by the Islamic Republic of Iran. They also expressed annoyance with American leftists that sympathized with Islamist movements simply due to their solidarity with Latin American populist/leftist movements. One man told me, "It is an economic relationship not an ideological one." However this is viewed, several points of interest emerge. Nasrallah is a Shiite Muslim and yet very popular with Sunni Muslims and secular Arabs. Nasrallah even finds support among some Lebanese Christians. Hugo Chavez, a man who wears red, quotes Marx, and calls for a Cuban styled revolution in Venezuela, enjoys many anti-Marxist Muslim supporters. What this demonstrates is that political alliances are tentative and based on immediate circumstances. It also puts into question the relevance of official ideologies. To make a sophisticated politcal analysis always requires examinations beyond mere formalities.

Notable Reviews: Tony Wood on Latin America

In the New Left Review 58, Tony Wood reviews Michael Reid's Forgotten Continent. The review is worth reading because Reid's book is an example of the kind of revisionism I was discussing in previous posts. When neoliberal theorists encounter data that shows that the Washington Consensus has served more to redistribute wealth to the rich rather than continuously spur economic growth for the benefit of the lower classes, their (the neoliberals) solution is more neoliberal medicine. So as Wood summarizes:

In his balance sheet of the Washington Consensus, however, Reid admits that its overall economic record was ‘relatively disappointing’: growth picked up in the early 1990s, but stagnated from 1998 to 2002, the ‘lost half-decade’; the recovery from 2004 onwards, meanwhile, owed much to high commodity prices. The reason for this underwhelming performance, according to Reid, is that ‘too much remained unreformed’—Latin America continues to suffer from technological backwardness, low productivity, excessive regulation, bad transport and weak institutions. The answer, then, is more of the same neoliberal medicine—but this time, with ‘a greater emphasis on equity and the role of the state in obtaining it’, in line with ‘the new consensus being implemented by many governments in Latin America’ [my emphasis- DS].

As Wood points out, the new consensus in many of the governments of Latin America recognizes that neoliberal reforms are fundamentally antidemocratic, and anti-egalitarian. Instead, the 'new consensus', or Bolivarian Revolution, as it were, recognizes that neoliberalism increasingly leads to the enrichment of the few while the many end up working in an economy driven by a single export or the service industry (think, for instance, tourism), and increasing marginalization as democratic processes are subverted by powerful influences:

in the shape of the IMF, ratings agencies, hedge funds or multinational corporations, a host of outside actors entirely immune from democratic accountability have a decisively increased say over the fate of hundreds of millions, with the power to hold recalcitrant governments to ransom or blackmail them onto the path of macroeconomic orthodoxy.

Of course, one may object that authors such as Reid have learned a lesson. A reader may wonder why I claim that Reid holds a revisionist attitude when he admits that reform needs "a greater emphasis on equity and the role of the state in obtaining it." And this is why Wood's argument is important to read, because the

social schemes Reid advocates appear as little more than pious window-dressing, amid continual tranfers of massive resources to bondholders and the export overseas of ramped-up profits from privatized utilities. They are the symbolic element of redistribution—‘homeopathic’, in Perry Anderson’s phrase—designed to secure mass approval for the ongoing class project of neoliberalism. Their ideological character is made clear by Reid’s approval for their ‘individual’ nature, and by his disparagement of old-fashioned notions of ‘entitlement’. For such schemes seek to replace collective rights to a share of national income with atomized dependency on the state—and in the process have worked to entrench existing patterns of poverty. According to a 2007 UNRISD [UN Research Institute for Social Development] report, through their focus on women as guarantors of compliance with the schemes’ requirements, they have also reinforced traditional patterns of gender inequality [my emphasis].

Reid, as Wood points out, advocates these measures because they undermine an idea of collective rights and replaces them with a notion of individual rights. This transformation is not neutral: neoliberals know, as the path from Pinochet to Fujimori shows, the antidemocratic shock of neoliberal reform works best when social solidarity is destroyed. Many of the reforms that Reid advocates diminish social solidarities (such as unions) in a gentler form. After the disastrous decades of the 1970s and 1980s, market reformers know that this cannot be accomplished through direct brute force. Hence authors such as Reid seek ideological consensus for the continued, and in their eyes, unerring, project of neoliberalism.