refuse_resist
26th January 2005, 07:07
Revolutionary struggle and social democracy in Latin America
By Andy McInerney
A genuine social revolution is marked by the transfer of political power from one social class to another. In the French Revolution of 1789, the political power of the king, the feudal lords and the Church was replaced by a state run by representatives of the merchants and manufacturers. In the Russian Revolution of 1917, the state of the czar, which had fused with the main elements of Russia's young capitalist class, was replaced by a state based on the power of workers, peasants and soldiers.
Revolutions are not willed into being by individuals or political parties. They occur when the contradictions inherent in class society can no longer be contained within a social order. Traditional means of social control are no longer sufficient to maintain class exploitation. Complaints turn to protest; protest turns to rebellion. The ruling class's right to rule is put into question.
Nowhere is the question of revolution being posed more sharply today than in Latin America. The potential for social revolution is the foundational issue in the unfolding political struggle in Venezuela. But the entire continent, traditionally dominated by U.S. imperialism, is in turmoil.
There are two broad ways in which political movements are attempting to address this question today. On the one hand, leftist parties and movements are finding openings in the electoral arena to challenge the traditional parties of the ruling class. On the other, new forms of revolutionary struggle are being opened up in the course of massive peoples’ struggles.
Deepening exploitation
U.S. intervention in and exploitation of Latin America is not new. One has only to remember: the invasions of Nicaragua; the U.S.-backed partition of Colombia around the turn of the century to secure control of the Panama Canal; and the 1954 invasion and coup in Guatemala to protect the property of the United Fruit Company.
As a result of this intense U.S. political and economic intervention across the continent, the emerging capitalist classes in the Latin American countries developed in a way that was highly dependent on U.S. capital. Capitalist economies were oriented primarily toward exporting raw materials for use in manufacturing and trade in the United States. The Latin American governments, oriented toward protecting their ruling classes' relationship with U.S. capital, relied extensively on U.S. military support, training and intervention.
Beginning in the late 1980s, the pattern of U.S. exploitation in Latin America shifted. The primary goal of U.S. domination of Latin America became the continent's cheap labor supply. Direct capital investment in Latin America skyrocketed, both in the form of building factories and buying local industry.
In order to facilitate this investment boom, the United States used its dominance in international financial organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to force Latin American governments to restructure their economies. Using loans as the carrot and loan payments as the stick, the IMF and World Bank demanded that countries privatize industry and government services, remove protective tariffs, and cut government spending.
At the same time, the U.S. has pushed a number of trade agreements designed to facilitate this restructuring. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement was aimed primarily at Mexico. Now the U.S. government is aiming for a continent-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would write the restructuring into formal agreements.
The sum of these measures has become known as neoliberalism.
Rebellion sweeps the continent
The impact of neoliberal policies can be seen across Central America, South America and the Caribbean. “Free trade zones” and maquiladoras, where foreign industry can produce and export without paying taxes or tariffs, were first seen in Mexico near the U.S. border. Now they dot the continent, from the Dominican Republic to El Salvador to Peru.
But the spread of foreign industry has not translated into benefits for the continent's working and poor people. The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean's November 2004 report, “Social Panorama of Latin America 2004,” shows a steady growth in the number of people living in poverty since 1990, from 200 million to 224 million people. The same report shows that gains in wealth have gone overwhelmingly to the top 10 percent of the population in Latin America.
A related consequence of the shift in U.S. exploitation from raw materials to labor markets has been a vast increase in political mobilization by the continent's poor and working people. Vast mobilizations against neoliberal policies have put into question the ability of the traditional ruling elites to implement Washington and Wall Street's political and economic agenda.
For example, in 1997, millions of workers in Ecuador staged mass demonstrations and strikes against soaring prices after the government cut subsidies for basic goods. The government fell. In 2000, a people's movement based in the unions and the Indigenous peasant organizations again mobilized against the government's neoliberal policies. After ousting the president and making a bid for power with a “National Salvation Committee,” the military stepped in with the support of the U.S. and installed a new government.
In December 2001, an economic crisis in Argentina caused by the government's inability to pay back IMF loans led millions of workers and middle-class elements to take to the streets shouting, “They all have to go!” President Fernando de la Rúa and his hated finance minister were forced from power. Argentina is Latin America's third largest economy, and is already highly industrialized.
In the Andean country of Bolivia, government austerity measures and moves against traditional coca growing peasants provoked a wave of protests in February 2003. Then, after the Bolivian government proposed privatizing natural gas reserves, mass protests forced President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to resign.
And in the Dominican Republic, greater reliance on IMF loans and free-trade zones has been matched by rising poverty, skyrocketing prices and electricity blackouts. In January 2004, a two-day general strike shut down the country.
All these mobilizations point to the growing inability of the traditional governments to implement the U.S. agenda in Latin America. They form the basis for putting the taking of power by the working class and its allies on the agenda across the continent.
Behind the electoral shift
The growing protests have forced a shift in the political landscape across Latin America, seen in a series of electoral victories by left-of-center candidates. Since the election of the Socialist Party's Ricardo Lagos in Chile in 2000, social democratic parties have been elected to govern key Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.
In December, local elections in Bolivia, Indigenous and peasant parties opposed to neoliberalism swept to victory across the country. “Traditional parties failed to win a single large city,” according to a Dec. 6 Associated Press report.
Twenty years ago, the U.S. government would never have allowed parties based in the working class access to the seats of power in Latin America. Today, Washington is proceeding much more deliberately.
Presidents Ignacio “Lula” da Silva in Brazil, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, and Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay have all promised to soften the impact of past governments' neoliberal policies. They have promised more independence from U.S. foreign policy, for example with respect to socialist Cuba. For these reasons, they have raised the hopes of working people across Latin America.
But they have also promised to keep their countries within the IMF economic orbit. None have threatened to suspend foreign loan payments, even though these loans only enrich U.S. corporations and a handful of local elites. They all made assurances to the ruling elites—and to Washington—that they would govern “responsibly.” They promised, in essence, to manage the desires of the masses within the bounds of the capitalist system.
This is why none of these elections have precipitated a break in relations with the Bush administration. Michael Shifter, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, described it in these terms in a Nov. 1 AP article: “I think that most people think that if someone is on the left wing like Lula and Lagos, that's not really cause to worry because those two presidents seem to be pursuing orthodox economic policies for the large part.”
This is the traditional and historic role of social democracy: to divert the energies of the masses into the electoral arena, granting some social concessions to the masses in return for social peace. Faced with growing rebellion that threatens to turn to revolution, U.S. imperialism is willing to tolerate “the left”—as long as it follows “orthodox” pro-IMF-economic policies.
Revolutionary poles
U.S. imperialism’s willingness to tolerate social democratic governments in major Latin American countries is also a function of new political poles in the continent. In Venezuela, the government of President Hugo Chávez has embarked on a revolutionary process that has inspired millions across the continent.
The Bolivarian Revolution, as the Venezuelan process is known, has unmistakable characteristics that set it apart from any of the other social democratic governments now in power in Latin America. It is firmly based on the increasingly organized working class, which has defeated coup attempts and counter–revolutionary mobilizations. It is firmly anti-imperialist. And it is developing a deepening relationship with socialist Cuba.
Washington understands the difference between the numerous elections that have supported President Chávez and those that have taken place in Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Elections in Venezuela have helped to mobilize the workers and oppressed. The other elections threaten to trap the workers into putting their hopes in governments whose ultimate allegiance is to the ruling class.
At the same time, communist-led insurgencies in Colombia continue to demonstrate the relevance of revolutionary struggle against U.S. imperialism and their client regimes. Despite $3.3 billion in U.S. military aid and the support and training of hundreds of U.S. military advisors over the last four years, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) continue to threaten capitalist rule in Colombia. A growing and militant union movement continues to carry out heroic strikes and protests in the face of brutal death squad murders.
And socialist Cuba continues to be a beacon for the continent. Every gain made by the Cuban Revolution in health, science or education is a further example to Latin American workers of the great advances that can be made by breaking the chains of capitalism and U.S. imperialism.
The basic contradiction facing the Latin American ruling classes is that their relationship with world capitalism depends to growing degrees on the increased exploitation of the continent's working class. Millions of workers and peasants have seen that reality in the struggles of the last decade.
Whether they will take the step from rebellion to revolution—challenging the capitalist class's right to rule—will depend on the ability of the revolutionary organizations to provide clear class-conscious and anti-imperialist leadership.
http://socialismandliberation.org/mag/inde...b4c4549b633420c (http://socialismandliberation.org/mag/index.php?aid=145&PHPSESSID=353e5e41d6dfe6bacb4c4549b633420c)
By Andy McInerney
A genuine social revolution is marked by the transfer of political power from one social class to another. In the French Revolution of 1789, the political power of the king, the feudal lords and the Church was replaced by a state run by representatives of the merchants and manufacturers. In the Russian Revolution of 1917, the state of the czar, which had fused with the main elements of Russia's young capitalist class, was replaced by a state based on the power of workers, peasants and soldiers.
Revolutions are not willed into being by individuals or political parties. They occur when the contradictions inherent in class society can no longer be contained within a social order. Traditional means of social control are no longer sufficient to maintain class exploitation. Complaints turn to protest; protest turns to rebellion. The ruling class's right to rule is put into question.
Nowhere is the question of revolution being posed more sharply today than in Latin America. The potential for social revolution is the foundational issue in the unfolding political struggle in Venezuela. But the entire continent, traditionally dominated by U.S. imperialism, is in turmoil.
There are two broad ways in which political movements are attempting to address this question today. On the one hand, leftist parties and movements are finding openings in the electoral arena to challenge the traditional parties of the ruling class. On the other, new forms of revolutionary struggle are being opened up in the course of massive peoples’ struggles.
Deepening exploitation
U.S. intervention in and exploitation of Latin America is not new. One has only to remember: the invasions of Nicaragua; the U.S.-backed partition of Colombia around the turn of the century to secure control of the Panama Canal; and the 1954 invasion and coup in Guatemala to protect the property of the United Fruit Company.
As a result of this intense U.S. political and economic intervention across the continent, the emerging capitalist classes in the Latin American countries developed in a way that was highly dependent on U.S. capital. Capitalist economies were oriented primarily toward exporting raw materials for use in manufacturing and trade in the United States. The Latin American governments, oriented toward protecting their ruling classes' relationship with U.S. capital, relied extensively on U.S. military support, training and intervention.
Beginning in the late 1980s, the pattern of U.S. exploitation in Latin America shifted. The primary goal of U.S. domination of Latin America became the continent's cheap labor supply. Direct capital investment in Latin America skyrocketed, both in the form of building factories and buying local industry.
In order to facilitate this investment boom, the United States used its dominance in international financial organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to force Latin American governments to restructure their economies. Using loans as the carrot and loan payments as the stick, the IMF and World Bank demanded that countries privatize industry and government services, remove protective tariffs, and cut government spending.
At the same time, the U.S. has pushed a number of trade agreements designed to facilitate this restructuring. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement was aimed primarily at Mexico. Now the U.S. government is aiming for a continent-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would write the restructuring into formal agreements.
The sum of these measures has become known as neoliberalism.
Rebellion sweeps the continent
The impact of neoliberal policies can be seen across Central America, South America and the Caribbean. “Free trade zones” and maquiladoras, where foreign industry can produce and export without paying taxes or tariffs, were first seen in Mexico near the U.S. border. Now they dot the continent, from the Dominican Republic to El Salvador to Peru.
But the spread of foreign industry has not translated into benefits for the continent's working and poor people. The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean's November 2004 report, “Social Panorama of Latin America 2004,” shows a steady growth in the number of people living in poverty since 1990, from 200 million to 224 million people. The same report shows that gains in wealth have gone overwhelmingly to the top 10 percent of the population in Latin America.
A related consequence of the shift in U.S. exploitation from raw materials to labor markets has been a vast increase in political mobilization by the continent's poor and working people. Vast mobilizations against neoliberal policies have put into question the ability of the traditional ruling elites to implement Washington and Wall Street's political and economic agenda.
For example, in 1997, millions of workers in Ecuador staged mass demonstrations and strikes against soaring prices after the government cut subsidies for basic goods. The government fell. In 2000, a people's movement based in the unions and the Indigenous peasant organizations again mobilized against the government's neoliberal policies. After ousting the president and making a bid for power with a “National Salvation Committee,” the military stepped in with the support of the U.S. and installed a new government.
In December 2001, an economic crisis in Argentina caused by the government's inability to pay back IMF loans led millions of workers and middle-class elements to take to the streets shouting, “They all have to go!” President Fernando de la Rúa and his hated finance minister were forced from power. Argentina is Latin America's third largest economy, and is already highly industrialized.
In the Andean country of Bolivia, government austerity measures and moves against traditional coca growing peasants provoked a wave of protests in February 2003. Then, after the Bolivian government proposed privatizing natural gas reserves, mass protests forced President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to resign.
And in the Dominican Republic, greater reliance on IMF loans and free-trade zones has been matched by rising poverty, skyrocketing prices and electricity blackouts. In January 2004, a two-day general strike shut down the country.
All these mobilizations point to the growing inability of the traditional governments to implement the U.S. agenda in Latin America. They form the basis for putting the taking of power by the working class and its allies on the agenda across the continent.
Behind the electoral shift
The growing protests have forced a shift in the political landscape across Latin America, seen in a series of electoral victories by left-of-center candidates. Since the election of the Socialist Party's Ricardo Lagos in Chile in 2000, social democratic parties have been elected to govern key Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.
In December, local elections in Bolivia, Indigenous and peasant parties opposed to neoliberalism swept to victory across the country. “Traditional parties failed to win a single large city,” according to a Dec. 6 Associated Press report.
Twenty years ago, the U.S. government would never have allowed parties based in the working class access to the seats of power in Latin America. Today, Washington is proceeding much more deliberately.
Presidents Ignacio “Lula” da Silva in Brazil, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, and Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay have all promised to soften the impact of past governments' neoliberal policies. They have promised more independence from U.S. foreign policy, for example with respect to socialist Cuba. For these reasons, they have raised the hopes of working people across Latin America.
But they have also promised to keep their countries within the IMF economic orbit. None have threatened to suspend foreign loan payments, even though these loans only enrich U.S. corporations and a handful of local elites. They all made assurances to the ruling elites—and to Washington—that they would govern “responsibly.” They promised, in essence, to manage the desires of the masses within the bounds of the capitalist system.
This is why none of these elections have precipitated a break in relations with the Bush administration. Michael Shifter, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, described it in these terms in a Nov. 1 AP article: “I think that most people think that if someone is on the left wing like Lula and Lagos, that's not really cause to worry because those two presidents seem to be pursuing orthodox economic policies for the large part.”
This is the traditional and historic role of social democracy: to divert the energies of the masses into the electoral arena, granting some social concessions to the masses in return for social peace. Faced with growing rebellion that threatens to turn to revolution, U.S. imperialism is willing to tolerate “the left”—as long as it follows “orthodox” pro-IMF-economic policies.
Revolutionary poles
U.S. imperialism’s willingness to tolerate social democratic governments in major Latin American countries is also a function of new political poles in the continent. In Venezuela, the government of President Hugo Chávez has embarked on a revolutionary process that has inspired millions across the continent.
The Bolivarian Revolution, as the Venezuelan process is known, has unmistakable characteristics that set it apart from any of the other social democratic governments now in power in Latin America. It is firmly based on the increasingly organized working class, which has defeated coup attempts and counter–revolutionary mobilizations. It is firmly anti-imperialist. And it is developing a deepening relationship with socialist Cuba.
Washington understands the difference between the numerous elections that have supported President Chávez and those that have taken place in Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Elections in Venezuela have helped to mobilize the workers and oppressed. The other elections threaten to trap the workers into putting their hopes in governments whose ultimate allegiance is to the ruling class.
At the same time, communist-led insurgencies in Colombia continue to demonstrate the relevance of revolutionary struggle against U.S. imperialism and their client regimes. Despite $3.3 billion in U.S. military aid and the support and training of hundreds of U.S. military advisors over the last four years, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) continue to threaten capitalist rule in Colombia. A growing and militant union movement continues to carry out heroic strikes and protests in the face of brutal death squad murders.
And socialist Cuba continues to be a beacon for the continent. Every gain made by the Cuban Revolution in health, science or education is a further example to Latin American workers of the great advances that can be made by breaking the chains of capitalism and U.S. imperialism.
The basic contradiction facing the Latin American ruling classes is that their relationship with world capitalism depends to growing degrees on the increased exploitation of the continent's working class. Millions of workers and peasants have seen that reality in the struggles of the last decade.
Whether they will take the step from rebellion to revolution—challenging the capitalist class's right to rule—will depend on the ability of the revolutionary organizations to provide clear class-conscious and anti-imperialist leadership.
http://socialismandliberation.org/mag/inde...b4c4549b633420c (http://socialismandliberation.org/mag/index.php?aid=145&PHPSESSID=353e5e41d6dfe6bacb4c4549b633420c)