Borincano
17th May 2002, 05:34
Socialism in Latin America
by Luis Orlando Gallardo Rivera
http://www.reddemcee.com
(I didn't write the article, it's an online buddies'.)
Latin America – a continent and a half of beautiful scenery, vast reserves of just about every mineral known to man, a huge labor force, gigantic stretches of under-populated land, the capability to produce food to sustain its population many times over, and strong cultural similarities shared by the area’s inhabitants from Mexico to Argentina to the Dominican Republic and Chile. One would think that such conditions would allow the region to be a prosperous world power, but such a premature thought is crushed by the poverty and political distraught seen throughout the region today.
The injustices, social structure, and poverty seen in Latin America are reminders of its harsh past. As Spaniard and Portuguese colonists carved out the region, rich colonial landowners stood over large plantations worked by Indians, Africans, and other lower class groups. Today’s social structure pretty much remains untouched – where the upper classes of today’s Santo Domingo and Bogota physically resemble their light skinned ancestors while the slums of Mexico City and Santo Domingo are filled with the dirt-poor descendents of mulattos, mestizos, and slaves. Economic policy in the region, much like today, was usually written by and in the interests of far away world powers.
Capitalism in Latin America
Latin America currently carries the economic torch of the market. More and more we see Latin America’s capitalism becoming freer as borders give away to trade routes and governments decrease their size and influence. Despite the region’s adoption of the free market, it has failed to provide Latin America with widespread democracy, social justice, and a uplifting from poverty. “Why,” asks John Walton, “are the political systems of these countries, which we were told would become more “integrative” and “democratized,” still rent by the conflicts of class struggle and neo-colonialism?”
Liberal democracy, a model of democracy imported from the outside, is limited to the upper class, which both runs and extracts what it wants from it. Only those who are well off are in positions to have their voices heard, since usually all of the political parties that participate in Latin American democracy protect the ruling class’s interests. “The voice of the poor,” states Duncan Green, “still goes largely unheard despite the return of liberal democracy to the region”. The structure of the social hierarchy has not changed: the ruling class which ruled five centuries ago still rules, and participation among the masses has failed to take place. If democracy really is established in Latin America, than why are only the small upper class sectors benefiting?
As governments privatize, deregulate, shrink in size, and minimize their power, international banking organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank begin to take their place. Government spending, healthcare, public projects, infrastructure, and government restructuring are now responsibilities being picked up by these undemocratic zealots of free market capitalism. Transnational corporations that flood into the region are also threats to democracy, for many of them obtain more wealth and power than governments themselves. Capitalism, exercised by international banking organizations and globalist corporations, is decreasing the power wielded by the vote.
Capitalism has also failed to cure Latin America of poverty, debt, and its rigid class structure. “In dollar terms, the Latin American poverty line stands at an income per individual of roughly $60 a month, while indigence occurs at half that figure.” As the region digs into capitalism more and more, the situation has getting worse: only three years after a neoliberal government took control of Nicaragua after the fall of the socialist Sandinista government, unemployment had doubled to 22% and industrial employment by nearly a third. Even though almost twenty years has passed since neoliberal doctrines and debt rescheduling has been enacted, the region’s total debt has reached half a trillion dollars, which is double the level at the start of Latin America’s debt crisis.
“While Latin America is not as poor as Africa or parts of Asia, it leads the world in inequality, and since 1982 [when neo-liberalism began to take hold], inequality has got worse. [Emphasis added].” In a study of a group of Latin American countries during the period surrounding the influx of neo-liberal capitalist policies, the bottom 75% of the population lost income while the top 5% got richer even during the worst years of the region’s debt crisis.
Harvard professor Jeffrey Sachs, who drew up the decree enacted by Bolivia that marked its entrance into neoliberalism, sums up what capitalism provides for Latin America:
I always told the Bolivians, from the very beginning, that what you have here is a miserable, poor economy with hyperinflation; if you are brave, if you are gutsy, if you do everything right, you will end up with a miserable, poor economy with stable prices.
Achieving “stable prices” is not a realistic goal when the prices of goods increase overnight as neoliberal doctrines are employed. What’s the good of having “stable prices” when most of the population cannot even afford them? Capitalism and neoliberalism fail to nourish equality and democracy in Latin America.
If the invisible hand of the free market guides capitalism, then Latin America is being pulled and dragged by foreign economic players. Economic policies, development and growth, and exporting are all done to please foreign governments and financial organizations. Demanding to what foreign consumers want, not what the domestic population needs, is what dictates what is manufactured and to where it’s exported. Unemployed peasants starve in shantytowns while huge corporate farms a few kilometers away ship off fruits to First World consumers.
Modern capitalism is generally exercised in Latin America at the expense of domestic demands and domestic markets. It also subjugates Latin America to foreign markets, putting the lifeline of the region on the demands of tropical crops, fossil fuels, and minerals. Businesses and industries shut down and hundreds of thousands loose jobs, as the domestic market is flooded with cheap consumer goods from around the world. This dependency on foreign markets and imports has heavy political baggage, as seen in Guatemala and Chile, as threats to foreign investment result in invasions, blockades, and foreign-backed coups and revolutions. Capitalism in Latin America does not exist for Latin Americans.
Socialism in Latin America
Every Ibero-American country of has at one time or another held a socialist, communist, democratic socialist, social democrat, state socialists, and state capitalist, or in general “leftist” president that pushed for nationalization and land reform. In the vast majority of these eras, the living conditions for the masses increased greatly. Not all of these movements and governments came about democratically, but where they did, an increase in popular participation usually followed. Chile’s Salvador Allende showed just how much democracy could be enhanced by socialism:
We have broadened and consolidated democracy: here in Chile there are elections every day, parliamentary, municipal, of students, of professional colleges, of workers, union delegates, in the workplace, in the industries, in hospitals and schools. Every day people directly elect their representatives and delegates; this is what the people experience, learn and live: an authentic democracy of its own strength and vitality.
The downfall of these governments did not usually come to being through failure, but through civil wars, coups, blockades, and counterrevolutions, but mostly foreign-sponsored economic destabilization and international pressure.
There seems to be a socialist “default setting”. Even decades after socialist governments are dismantled and tucked-away, they pop back up out of nowhere. After the dust settles from the storm of privatization, restructuring, and the arriving of foreign investment, almost “naturally” the region nudges back to the left. Socialism in Latin America can easily be compared to a plant; plant it sideways, upside-down, or under a carp but it will still grow towards the sun.
Socialism, capitalism, and culture
When intellectuals debate the subject of which system works for the world, either socialist or capitalist, they fail to note important factor: culture. Some cultures react to certain political and economic systems better than others, so therefore whichever system enacted by a population should be modified in accordance to their social and cultural needs. Whether the system “works” or not, is also a subject of debate, for the goals of one society might not be the goals of another. “Works”, in a non-ethnocentric definition, would mean that the system could function and work in tranquility with the culture – without changing the people or their identity. If a culture can exist side-by-side, untouched, or even developed by a given economic system then it can be said that that system works. If a population must assimilate or reform their culture to look like that of another peoples, then the system they use does not work.
While Capitalism might work just fine for the United States and its Western allies, it is not culturally compatible with Latin America. The cultural conditions in the West and in Latin America are radically different from each other, so it is foolish to believe that the same economic (and political) system could exist among both with the same results. The most visible difference in conditions between the two is that of class. Both the distribution of power and wealth are radically different between North and South America – a fact demonstrated by the lack of a real middle class in Latin America.
Religion, morals, competition, notions of justice, work ethic, the concept of time, who has authority, worldview, life view, visions of democracy, and the definition of utopia are a few of the twenty contracting cultural factors outlined by Mariano Grondona in A Cultural Typology of Economic Development. When liberally comparing the cultures of North and South America, each of the sides’ position on each of these notions differs greatly, which in turn effects their successfulness in capitalism. One of the most visible notions lacked by Latin Americans is individualism, one of the essential ingredients to successful capitalism. Western religion, philosophy, democracy, and capitalism all depends on the individual, thus explaining all of these subjects’ failures within Latin American culture.
The most important difference between the North and the South is that of religion. The “Protestant ethic” is commonly linked to the “entrepreneurial spirit” for it has succeeded in “defining and sanctioning an ethic of everyday behavior that conduced to economic success.” Catholicism economically led Europe for a good part of the old colonial days, but once Protestantism began to spread, the conditions were set for capitalism to flourish soon after. Even today the leaders of the West are the protestant countries and their offspring. Latin America is “too Catholic” and is not protestant enough to flourish within an individualistic capitalist system. The population cannot sit around and wait for someone to open up a business when the ethic is not present to do so. Due to this, direct government investment is required. Socialism is an ignored cultural meme for Latin America.
This “socialist culture” is not shared by all of the inhabitants. The elites of Latin America is highly westernized, with their Western products, Western educations, Western ideologies, and at times even their Western tongues. The region’s upper class has joined the ranks of the globlalized Westerners, thus making the lower class (since the middle class is almost non-existent) the only real Latin Americans. Proletarian and peasant culture is Latin American culture, and onto this culture one needs to implement a system designed especially for peasants and proletarians. Any system enforced should be responsive to the region’s poverty and class structure; otherwise you have a culture of rural farmers with no land and a nation of proletarian workers with no jobs.
There are also various historic traits to Latin American socialism: even the Aztec mode of production, for example, included a state that oversaw public works, utilized the economy, owned the land, and partook in land reform where citizens enjoyed the fruits of their labor. Inca socialism, which is a little better documented than Aztec socialism, consisted of a carefully organized system where every community collectively contributed to the whole. The empire claimed all of the resources, where they were in turn redistributed evenly among the population. Even the Spaniard occupation expressed some forms of socialism; natural resources, land, and the dividing and granting of land was in the hands of the state. This practice was inherited by many of the colonies after independence, but soon gave away to market and privatization principals.
It is obvious that culturally Latin America does not have the ability to operate in an individualist economic and political system; religiously it does not have the entrepreneurial motivation to live in a system that depends highly on intense private investment; class-wise the population cannot exist under a system built for a class other than theirs; and historically the state has played a big role in property and the economy. When taking culture, religion, class, and history into account, Socialism is Latin America’s natural and default system.
Previous socialisms as examples to build off of
Daniel Quinn in Beyond Civilization states:
When things work, the forces that make them work are invisible. The universe at large is a notorious example of this. It took a towering genius to recognize the laws of motion and universal gravitation that now seem almost boringly obvious to us. Newton’s genius was precisely the genius of seeing that which is so evident as to be unseeable. Every advance in science makes manifest a working that is cloaked by its very success.
Quinn in another book of his, My Ishmael, presents an interesting story:
“… a wooden bridge… was built over a river…. [where] a massive rock shelf presented itself as an abutment on each side of the river. After many centuries, however, it was felt that something more advanced than a wooden bridge was needed to join the two countries, and a team of engineers drew up plans for a metal bridge to replace it. This bridge was duly built, but after a few decades quite suddenly collapsed. … The bridge was rebuilt, using the best [metal] materials available but it collapsed again after just forty years. Another panel of engineers… drew up another set of plans, and the new [metal] bridge went up – and collapsed again, this time only after thirty years. … The builders of the original wooden bridge have been gone for centuries, of course, but there was in that land a student of their works…. ‘The traffic on the bridge naturally causes the metal to vibrate,’ he said. … ‘the powerful resonance… carried back to the bridge by the metal, is what’s causing them to disintegrate so quickly. The original bridge, being made of wood, transmitted almost no vibration to the rocks… This is why the original bridge lasted so long, and why it would actually still be here and working as well as ever if you hadn’t torn it down.’”
Since pure uncut capitalism for Latin America does not work (for it fails to respond to the real issues of poverty, class, and culture), a new system must be devised for today. “Democracy and freedom are incompatible with unemployment and lack of housing, the lack of culture, illiteracy and sickness”, all of which are services that have provided by socialism in the past. The socialism of yesterday, a system that worked in responding to these issues can be used as an example of what to build off of. If socialism, and not capitalism, provides cultural advancement, social justice, class relief, and employment, then when these problems arise, Latin American socialism should provide an example of how they can be tended to.
Socialism and capitalism side by side
This writing is not specifically suggesting the abolition of capitalism, but the increase of socialism. Despite popular mis-belief, both at the same time can exist side by side. This writing only suggests the presence of socialism in Latin America – just how much socialism exists is a matter that should be decided by the people. Like socialism, capitalism also provides at least something: “the market is obviously more efficient than the state,” states Green, “free trade has to be better for growth than protectionism; the state should not spend more than it earns.” Even though free trade and other neoliberal policies might not be picked up, their invisible hand and their pros should be examined and respected by a socialist Latin America. Mexico’s former leftist president, Lazaro Cárdenas, was “committed to the reform of capitalism rather than its destruction.” This is the attitude that this writing is attempting to portray: modern capitalism doesn’t work for Latin America, so it should be made to work (this being done through socialism).
Full-blown socialism can be detrimental: the nationalization of businesses down to corner stores and mom-and-pop cake shops and the monopolization of too many industries will only succeed in creating a bogged-down bureaucracy. Currently, capitalism in Latin America literally destroys domestic industries due to the fact that it leaves them prey to large transnational corporations and foreign investment. By nationalization or excluding these large corporations, than domestic industries would have the ability to flourish. Former business owner and Yucatán socialist governor Salvador Alvarado summed it up well:
Today there is a formula for the collective good, namely, the socialization of the state… [under a socialized state] the capitalist will be able to dedicate himself to business in peace, without the anxieties that today disorder his hours.”
The nationalization of large corporations and transnational businesses reflects the economic policy of former Chilean president Salvador Allende. Allende partook in the appropriation of natural resources, financial systems, foreign trade, monopolies, and influential industries, all of which were large enterprises. Meanwhile, medium and small businesses were guaranteed their rights to exist.
Since capitalism provides deregulation, thus allowing businesses to run more efficiently, a process of nationalization could occur with large businesses, while a process of deregulation occur with medium and small businesses. The guarantee of existence and deregulation for small and medium businesses provides a nice tranquil relationship between socialism and capitalism. Socialism, on the national level, can actually result in the benefiting of domestic capitalism. This form of capitalism is the only form of capitalism that works for the region, and it is only obtainable through socialist policy.
Capitalistic tactics can also be employed by state industries in order to increase efficiency and output. Nationalized businesses can be given the autonomy and mobility present in private enterprises, thus allowing them to pull in larger profits for the government and operate with a minimized amount of bureaucracy. Currently, government-owned enterprises usually means money-sucking bureaucracy, but if pinches of capitalism are mixed into the formula, than profits can actually be earned on behalf of the government, as seen in Muñoz’s Puerto Rico and Alessandri’s Chile.
Meanwhile, socialism can step in where capitalism fails: socialism can be used to provide appropriate working and living conditions that are not available with capitalism. “Raising all the poor in the continent to just above the poverty line would cost only 0.7 per cent of regional GDP – an approximate equivalent of a 2 per cent income tax on the wealthiest fifth of the population.” Such redistribution (and 2% is in fact a very small amount of redistribution) can only be carried out by socialist policies.
Socialism can also prevent the continent from becoming exploited from foreign investors or domestic elites, a condition fueled by Latin American capitalism (for exploitation is associated with control of the means of production). Since Latin America does not have the resources or the “religious capacity” to create businesses on the large-scale, it is subjugated to foreign investors who run their businesses and policies in according to what they, not Latin Americans, want. The state is the only body with the ability to produce the desired investment. “The dilemma of Chile,” states Allende, “clearly is not between Democracy and Totalitarianism. The dilemma of Chile is between Chilean interests and those of foreign capital.” “On the one hand, we can continue to base our industrial development on foreign investment and technology, intensifying more and more the dependency which is threatening to turn us back into colonies.”
Latin America is seriously in debt to international banking organizations like the IMF and the World Bank. To negotiate debt payments and to receive new loans (usually to cover infrastructure and government restructuring programs authored by these same organizations), Latin American governments are forced to neo-liberalize more and more. “From 1989-1993,” states Green, the IMF “actually received $9.3bn more in loan repayments from Latin America than it lent in new money”. Meanwhile, “From 1990-1994 Latin America paid the [World] Bank $11bn more in repayments and interests than it received in new loans.” The continent is locked into an endless cycle of debts and repayments that only become deeper entrenched as the years pass. Modern capitalism is sucking out more from Latin America than it puts in. Under the current system, the region cannot just scream “enough!” for if debts are ignored than most likely these countries will fall victim to a virtual financial blockage of the country (much like in 1984 when the Dominican Republic failed to fulfill its promises to the IMF). Despite this, Latin America as a whole, can give the silent treatment to these organizations and opt out of this capitalist cycle, for the continent has more than what is needed to keep itself alive. Socialism is the only route that can be taken in order to utilize the region’s good for the region, thus allowing Latin America to drop out the free trade cycle.
“The Fund and the Bank’s standard policy packages take little account of local political or economic conditions,” states Green. “Typically, macro-economists from Washington,” with no knowledge what so-ever on the historic and cultural environment of the continent, “fly in for three weeks with a blueprint for the country’s future economic policy already in their briefcases.” Latin America needs a system for Latin America, not a homogeneous plan meant to turn the world into a bland monochrome mall. The “different systems for different cultures” philosophy is highly ignored by these organizations as seen in the following statement by former U.S. Under-Secretary to the Treasury and Chief Economist and Vice-President for Development Economics for the World Bank, Lawrence Summers: “The laws of economics, it’s often forgotten, are like the laws of engineering. There’s only one set of laws and they work everywhere.” “We need a system that works for us”, states the masses.
Class
Above all, Latin America’s rigid class structure is the main motivating force for the implementation of socialism. In the West, where social mobility is available and a large middle class exists, class is not too much of a problem, but in Latin America one is either dirt poor or filthy rich. While there is not much friction between classes in the Western world, due to the lack of social mobility, all conflicts in the region arise from class clash. If there was social mobility, than why have the demographic poverty statistics remain static? In the West, competition within classes allows one to progress to the next, while in Latin America all it causes is civil war and further problems. All a poverty-stricken rural citizen can do is move to the city, where he becomes a poverty-stricken urban citizen. There are not enough jobs, and due to the emigration of rural peasants, there are not enough hands to keep up with the growing urban population.
A common feature of orthodox socialist ideology is the elimination of class. This essay will break from that ideology and acknowledge that such is impossible. Democratic socialism in Europe, state capitalism in China, and even hard-line communism in Cuba has failed to demolish inequalities and class. This writing is not suggesting “equality in poverty,” as it is called by David Lanes, but the alteration of the present system where one class rules over the other. It is possible to have multiple classes exist side-by-side – an upper-class capitalist who works in domestic industry can have more wealth than a peasant that works a small plot of land without the capitalist dictating over the peasant. It is hypothesized “that the ownership and organization of economic production (agrarian, commercial, industrial) determine class structure,” but this is not necessarily true. Sections of land can be distributed among those who work it, natural resources could be state-owned, and key industries be owned by either the state or the workers, and people would still have the freedom to obtain more wealth than the next man. Classes shouldn’t be eliminated; they should just be deinstitutionalized.
Wealth and redistribution
To fix today’s economic and social problems, politicians, intellectuals, and economists endorse economic growth as the key to all problems. An increase in trade, a boost in the GDP, and the liberalization of markets is considered to be the steps needed to uplift the masses from poverty. “In societies resistant to [capitalist] development, wealth above all consists of what exists; in favorable [pro-capitalist] societies, wealth above all consists of what does not yet exist.” Further capitalist growth is totally unnecessary, for the continent already contains enough riches. Why build more factories and search for new oil reserves when the factories and oil fields that are currently being used are currently misused? To feed the hungry population of Latin America, there is no need to deforestate cultivatable land, for there is already more plenty of land to go around. Downtown properties rot away and large unfinished building skeletons collect dust while economists and politicians lay out plans to build more. There is no need to obtain more when the continent has more than enough already.
These lands are rich with minerals and vast areas of land are already being cultivated, but the problem is that they are concentrated in the hands of the few. There is no real problem with this if social mobility existed, and hard working citizens had the ability to one day enjoy these riches, but since it doesn’t than this is the most important issue that should be tackled. Currently in Latin America, the products of a man’s labor is not for his enjoyment, the crops cultivated by a peasant farmer are not for him to eat, and the riches of a nation are not for the nation to use. Put the land in the hands of the farmers and the factories in the hands of the workers, sit back, and watch them develop. Michael E. Porter states, “one often hears complaints about workers in developing countries as having a poor work ethic. But what if there is no reward for hard work? What if there is no advancement even if one works hard?”
Democracy
Democracy is a human right, but it really depends on what form of democracy is being used. The liberal democracy currently available in Latin America does not put the people in the power (what democracy is suppose to be in the first place), for it has only handed over power to the upper class. There are really only two ways to enhance Latin American democracy: replace the liberal democracy used today with communal democracy, and/or the democratization of the economy. Since liberal democracy has failed to give voice to the shantytowns and lower class communities, placing that democracy and interweaving it into those communities is the only way to give them voice. Various socialist movements in the region have given way to democratic communal cells, which act as executive, judicial, service, administering, health, and defense providers. Due to the decentralization of government responsibility and the democratization of communities, the majority of which are overran with lower class citizens, socialism would be inevitable in this system.
The extension of democracy to the economy is also another method available to enhance Latin American democracy. Placing natural resources, and at least some land and industries under public control would increase the voice of the people. A mix of communal democracy and democratized economics could be implemented, where judicial, defense, and administrative services could be provided to the community by the community, and resources, land reform, and large industry be controlled my the central government. Political and economic socialism give way to an enhancement of democracy.
Military
The military, unlike in the U.S. and other Western countries, plays a very active and influential role in Latin America. Edwin Lieuwen, former Chairman of the Department of History at the University of Mexico states that “so active have the armed forces in Latin America been in nonmilitary activities that their military functions of defending against outside aggression and of preserving internal order have, oftener than not, become of secondary importance.” “In Latin America, the military has often assigned itself the task of saving the nation from the failures of the politicians,” states Carlos Alberto Montaneder. Because of this, governments commonly have to find ways to incorporate the military into public politics. During the 1930s and 40s, Latin American militaries began to utilize themselves to promote state-driven economic development. To this day, even democratically elected presidents assign senior military officers to manager positions of state enterprises. While this has been seen as a drag, or at times unhealthy, under a more socialist rule, there is not too much problem with this. Including economic and administrative education in military academies could solve any problems that could arise from this.
Education culture
Latin American universities are well known for their leftist nature. Maintaining autonomy even during the rule of even the most capitalistic regimes, “Latin American universities and many private ones, with some exceptions, are archaic deposits of old Marxist ideas about economy and society.” These universities are churning out socialist citizens for a non-socialist society. This is not negative at all, for if a return to socialist systems, or a system built off of them, were to occur, the intellectual and social reality would finally be cooperative with the new economic and political system.
80 to 90% of the students from these universities belong to the middle and upper classes. These students sympathize with socialism, and at times run off to join these political or armed movements. “The weapons these young men carried with them into the jungle, mountains, and the city streets were loaded in the lecture rooms of the universities,” states Montander. The socialistization of the upper class through the universities can succeed where economics and politics did not – in tranquilizing the friction between social classes.
Constitutionalization of socialism
Montander identifies the “revolutionary left” as “one of the principal causes of the region’s underdevelopment,” due to its interruption of “that long and fragile cycle of savings, investment, profit, and reinvestment.” The same can be said about the capitalist right; socialism, in the little pockets of time that it has been implemented within these countries, has succeeded in tending to the real social problems, but has repetitively been cut off by capitalism. After resources and industries are nationalized, later governments privatize them, only to have them bought back, and so on. This back-and-forth motion leaves the continent in shock. One path should be agreed upon for the region to take up and maintain. This writing emphasizes the compatibility with socialism in the region, and the only way that it could be implemented without interruption is through its constitutionalization.
Private property is guaranteed in the U.S. constitution. This constitution was implemented after being agreed upon by voters in a referendum. If the U.S. constitution can guarantee private property, than why cannot Latin American constitutions, especially if democratically authenticated, guarantee public property? If the U.S. constitution can be voted in more than 200 years ago, and still stand today without interruption, than it is only right for socialism to have the ability to be etched in stone (constitutionalized) in order to create a long-lasting uninterruptible socialist economy. If a socialist party in the U.S. wished to implement its programs, it would be forced to go through a long grueling process of deprogramming the constitution.
Even after socialism is guaranteed, there is still a lot of “moving space” within the party system that would allow more than enough choices to please the majority of the population. Within the liberal “socialist” sect, there is available the communitarian, Christian, communist and Marxist, Anarcho-communist and libertarian socialist, civil socialist, global and national socialist, bourgeois, conservative and liberal, utopian, reactionary, middle class, and social democrat versions of socialism. The existence of some socialism would be agreed upon by the people and etched into the constitution, and the regulation of how much or how little excess socialism followed, is carried out through these parties as elected by the people.
Communal democracy and socialism has and can prevail where liberal democracy and capitalism has failed. Demographically, religiously, intellectually, socially, and culturally the stage is set for socialism in Latin America.
by Luis Orlando Gallardo Rivera
http://www.reddemcee.com
(I didn't write the article, it's an online buddies'.)
Latin America – a continent and a half of beautiful scenery, vast reserves of just about every mineral known to man, a huge labor force, gigantic stretches of under-populated land, the capability to produce food to sustain its population many times over, and strong cultural similarities shared by the area’s inhabitants from Mexico to Argentina to the Dominican Republic and Chile. One would think that such conditions would allow the region to be a prosperous world power, but such a premature thought is crushed by the poverty and political distraught seen throughout the region today.
The injustices, social structure, and poverty seen in Latin America are reminders of its harsh past. As Spaniard and Portuguese colonists carved out the region, rich colonial landowners stood over large plantations worked by Indians, Africans, and other lower class groups. Today’s social structure pretty much remains untouched – where the upper classes of today’s Santo Domingo and Bogota physically resemble their light skinned ancestors while the slums of Mexico City and Santo Domingo are filled with the dirt-poor descendents of mulattos, mestizos, and slaves. Economic policy in the region, much like today, was usually written by and in the interests of far away world powers.
Capitalism in Latin America
Latin America currently carries the economic torch of the market. More and more we see Latin America’s capitalism becoming freer as borders give away to trade routes and governments decrease their size and influence. Despite the region’s adoption of the free market, it has failed to provide Latin America with widespread democracy, social justice, and a uplifting from poverty. “Why,” asks John Walton, “are the political systems of these countries, which we were told would become more “integrative” and “democratized,” still rent by the conflicts of class struggle and neo-colonialism?”
Liberal democracy, a model of democracy imported from the outside, is limited to the upper class, which both runs and extracts what it wants from it. Only those who are well off are in positions to have their voices heard, since usually all of the political parties that participate in Latin American democracy protect the ruling class’s interests. “The voice of the poor,” states Duncan Green, “still goes largely unheard despite the return of liberal democracy to the region”. The structure of the social hierarchy has not changed: the ruling class which ruled five centuries ago still rules, and participation among the masses has failed to take place. If democracy really is established in Latin America, than why are only the small upper class sectors benefiting?
As governments privatize, deregulate, shrink in size, and minimize their power, international banking organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank begin to take their place. Government spending, healthcare, public projects, infrastructure, and government restructuring are now responsibilities being picked up by these undemocratic zealots of free market capitalism. Transnational corporations that flood into the region are also threats to democracy, for many of them obtain more wealth and power than governments themselves. Capitalism, exercised by international banking organizations and globalist corporations, is decreasing the power wielded by the vote.
Capitalism has also failed to cure Latin America of poverty, debt, and its rigid class structure. “In dollar terms, the Latin American poverty line stands at an income per individual of roughly $60 a month, while indigence occurs at half that figure.” As the region digs into capitalism more and more, the situation has getting worse: only three years after a neoliberal government took control of Nicaragua after the fall of the socialist Sandinista government, unemployment had doubled to 22% and industrial employment by nearly a third. Even though almost twenty years has passed since neoliberal doctrines and debt rescheduling has been enacted, the region’s total debt has reached half a trillion dollars, which is double the level at the start of Latin America’s debt crisis.
“While Latin America is not as poor as Africa or parts of Asia, it leads the world in inequality, and since 1982 [when neo-liberalism began to take hold], inequality has got worse. [Emphasis added].” In a study of a group of Latin American countries during the period surrounding the influx of neo-liberal capitalist policies, the bottom 75% of the population lost income while the top 5% got richer even during the worst years of the region’s debt crisis.
Harvard professor Jeffrey Sachs, who drew up the decree enacted by Bolivia that marked its entrance into neoliberalism, sums up what capitalism provides for Latin America:
I always told the Bolivians, from the very beginning, that what you have here is a miserable, poor economy with hyperinflation; if you are brave, if you are gutsy, if you do everything right, you will end up with a miserable, poor economy with stable prices.
Achieving “stable prices” is not a realistic goal when the prices of goods increase overnight as neoliberal doctrines are employed. What’s the good of having “stable prices” when most of the population cannot even afford them? Capitalism and neoliberalism fail to nourish equality and democracy in Latin America.
If the invisible hand of the free market guides capitalism, then Latin America is being pulled and dragged by foreign economic players. Economic policies, development and growth, and exporting are all done to please foreign governments and financial organizations. Demanding to what foreign consumers want, not what the domestic population needs, is what dictates what is manufactured and to where it’s exported. Unemployed peasants starve in shantytowns while huge corporate farms a few kilometers away ship off fruits to First World consumers.
Modern capitalism is generally exercised in Latin America at the expense of domestic demands and domestic markets. It also subjugates Latin America to foreign markets, putting the lifeline of the region on the demands of tropical crops, fossil fuels, and minerals. Businesses and industries shut down and hundreds of thousands loose jobs, as the domestic market is flooded with cheap consumer goods from around the world. This dependency on foreign markets and imports has heavy political baggage, as seen in Guatemala and Chile, as threats to foreign investment result in invasions, blockades, and foreign-backed coups and revolutions. Capitalism in Latin America does not exist for Latin Americans.
Socialism in Latin America
Every Ibero-American country of has at one time or another held a socialist, communist, democratic socialist, social democrat, state socialists, and state capitalist, or in general “leftist” president that pushed for nationalization and land reform. In the vast majority of these eras, the living conditions for the masses increased greatly. Not all of these movements and governments came about democratically, but where they did, an increase in popular participation usually followed. Chile’s Salvador Allende showed just how much democracy could be enhanced by socialism:
We have broadened and consolidated democracy: here in Chile there are elections every day, parliamentary, municipal, of students, of professional colleges, of workers, union delegates, in the workplace, in the industries, in hospitals and schools. Every day people directly elect their representatives and delegates; this is what the people experience, learn and live: an authentic democracy of its own strength and vitality.
The downfall of these governments did not usually come to being through failure, but through civil wars, coups, blockades, and counterrevolutions, but mostly foreign-sponsored economic destabilization and international pressure.
There seems to be a socialist “default setting”. Even decades after socialist governments are dismantled and tucked-away, they pop back up out of nowhere. After the dust settles from the storm of privatization, restructuring, and the arriving of foreign investment, almost “naturally” the region nudges back to the left. Socialism in Latin America can easily be compared to a plant; plant it sideways, upside-down, or under a carp but it will still grow towards the sun.
Socialism, capitalism, and culture
When intellectuals debate the subject of which system works for the world, either socialist or capitalist, they fail to note important factor: culture. Some cultures react to certain political and economic systems better than others, so therefore whichever system enacted by a population should be modified in accordance to their social and cultural needs. Whether the system “works” or not, is also a subject of debate, for the goals of one society might not be the goals of another. “Works”, in a non-ethnocentric definition, would mean that the system could function and work in tranquility with the culture – without changing the people or their identity. If a culture can exist side-by-side, untouched, or even developed by a given economic system then it can be said that that system works. If a population must assimilate or reform their culture to look like that of another peoples, then the system they use does not work.
While Capitalism might work just fine for the United States and its Western allies, it is not culturally compatible with Latin America. The cultural conditions in the West and in Latin America are radically different from each other, so it is foolish to believe that the same economic (and political) system could exist among both with the same results. The most visible difference in conditions between the two is that of class. Both the distribution of power and wealth are radically different between North and South America – a fact demonstrated by the lack of a real middle class in Latin America.
Religion, morals, competition, notions of justice, work ethic, the concept of time, who has authority, worldview, life view, visions of democracy, and the definition of utopia are a few of the twenty contracting cultural factors outlined by Mariano Grondona in A Cultural Typology of Economic Development. When liberally comparing the cultures of North and South America, each of the sides’ position on each of these notions differs greatly, which in turn effects their successfulness in capitalism. One of the most visible notions lacked by Latin Americans is individualism, one of the essential ingredients to successful capitalism. Western religion, philosophy, democracy, and capitalism all depends on the individual, thus explaining all of these subjects’ failures within Latin American culture.
The most important difference between the North and the South is that of religion. The “Protestant ethic” is commonly linked to the “entrepreneurial spirit” for it has succeeded in “defining and sanctioning an ethic of everyday behavior that conduced to economic success.” Catholicism economically led Europe for a good part of the old colonial days, but once Protestantism began to spread, the conditions were set for capitalism to flourish soon after. Even today the leaders of the West are the protestant countries and their offspring. Latin America is “too Catholic” and is not protestant enough to flourish within an individualistic capitalist system. The population cannot sit around and wait for someone to open up a business when the ethic is not present to do so. Due to this, direct government investment is required. Socialism is an ignored cultural meme for Latin America.
This “socialist culture” is not shared by all of the inhabitants. The elites of Latin America is highly westernized, with their Western products, Western educations, Western ideologies, and at times even their Western tongues. The region’s upper class has joined the ranks of the globlalized Westerners, thus making the lower class (since the middle class is almost non-existent) the only real Latin Americans. Proletarian and peasant culture is Latin American culture, and onto this culture one needs to implement a system designed especially for peasants and proletarians. Any system enforced should be responsive to the region’s poverty and class structure; otherwise you have a culture of rural farmers with no land and a nation of proletarian workers with no jobs.
There are also various historic traits to Latin American socialism: even the Aztec mode of production, for example, included a state that oversaw public works, utilized the economy, owned the land, and partook in land reform where citizens enjoyed the fruits of their labor. Inca socialism, which is a little better documented than Aztec socialism, consisted of a carefully organized system where every community collectively contributed to the whole. The empire claimed all of the resources, where they were in turn redistributed evenly among the population. Even the Spaniard occupation expressed some forms of socialism; natural resources, land, and the dividing and granting of land was in the hands of the state. This practice was inherited by many of the colonies after independence, but soon gave away to market and privatization principals.
It is obvious that culturally Latin America does not have the ability to operate in an individualist economic and political system; religiously it does not have the entrepreneurial motivation to live in a system that depends highly on intense private investment; class-wise the population cannot exist under a system built for a class other than theirs; and historically the state has played a big role in property and the economy. When taking culture, religion, class, and history into account, Socialism is Latin America’s natural and default system.
Previous socialisms as examples to build off of
Daniel Quinn in Beyond Civilization states:
When things work, the forces that make them work are invisible. The universe at large is a notorious example of this. It took a towering genius to recognize the laws of motion and universal gravitation that now seem almost boringly obvious to us. Newton’s genius was precisely the genius of seeing that which is so evident as to be unseeable. Every advance in science makes manifest a working that is cloaked by its very success.
Quinn in another book of his, My Ishmael, presents an interesting story:
“… a wooden bridge… was built over a river…. [where] a massive rock shelf presented itself as an abutment on each side of the river. After many centuries, however, it was felt that something more advanced than a wooden bridge was needed to join the two countries, and a team of engineers drew up plans for a metal bridge to replace it. This bridge was duly built, but after a few decades quite suddenly collapsed. … The bridge was rebuilt, using the best [metal] materials available but it collapsed again after just forty years. Another panel of engineers… drew up another set of plans, and the new [metal] bridge went up – and collapsed again, this time only after thirty years. … The builders of the original wooden bridge have been gone for centuries, of course, but there was in that land a student of their works…. ‘The traffic on the bridge naturally causes the metal to vibrate,’ he said. … ‘the powerful resonance… carried back to the bridge by the metal, is what’s causing them to disintegrate so quickly. The original bridge, being made of wood, transmitted almost no vibration to the rocks… This is why the original bridge lasted so long, and why it would actually still be here and working as well as ever if you hadn’t torn it down.’”
Since pure uncut capitalism for Latin America does not work (for it fails to respond to the real issues of poverty, class, and culture), a new system must be devised for today. “Democracy and freedom are incompatible with unemployment and lack of housing, the lack of culture, illiteracy and sickness”, all of which are services that have provided by socialism in the past. The socialism of yesterday, a system that worked in responding to these issues can be used as an example of what to build off of. If socialism, and not capitalism, provides cultural advancement, social justice, class relief, and employment, then when these problems arise, Latin American socialism should provide an example of how they can be tended to.
Socialism and capitalism side by side
This writing is not specifically suggesting the abolition of capitalism, but the increase of socialism. Despite popular mis-belief, both at the same time can exist side by side. This writing only suggests the presence of socialism in Latin America – just how much socialism exists is a matter that should be decided by the people. Like socialism, capitalism also provides at least something: “the market is obviously more efficient than the state,” states Green, “free trade has to be better for growth than protectionism; the state should not spend more than it earns.” Even though free trade and other neoliberal policies might not be picked up, their invisible hand and their pros should be examined and respected by a socialist Latin America. Mexico’s former leftist president, Lazaro Cárdenas, was “committed to the reform of capitalism rather than its destruction.” This is the attitude that this writing is attempting to portray: modern capitalism doesn’t work for Latin America, so it should be made to work (this being done through socialism).
Full-blown socialism can be detrimental: the nationalization of businesses down to corner stores and mom-and-pop cake shops and the monopolization of too many industries will only succeed in creating a bogged-down bureaucracy. Currently, capitalism in Latin America literally destroys domestic industries due to the fact that it leaves them prey to large transnational corporations and foreign investment. By nationalization or excluding these large corporations, than domestic industries would have the ability to flourish. Former business owner and Yucatán socialist governor Salvador Alvarado summed it up well:
Today there is a formula for the collective good, namely, the socialization of the state… [under a socialized state] the capitalist will be able to dedicate himself to business in peace, without the anxieties that today disorder his hours.”
The nationalization of large corporations and transnational businesses reflects the economic policy of former Chilean president Salvador Allende. Allende partook in the appropriation of natural resources, financial systems, foreign trade, monopolies, and influential industries, all of which were large enterprises. Meanwhile, medium and small businesses were guaranteed their rights to exist.
Since capitalism provides deregulation, thus allowing businesses to run more efficiently, a process of nationalization could occur with large businesses, while a process of deregulation occur with medium and small businesses. The guarantee of existence and deregulation for small and medium businesses provides a nice tranquil relationship between socialism and capitalism. Socialism, on the national level, can actually result in the benefiting of domestic capitalism. This form of capitalism is the only form of capitalism that works for the region, and it is only obtainable through socialist policy.
Capitalistic tactics can also be employed by state industries in order to increase efficiency and output. Nationalized businesses can be given the autonomy and mobility present in private enterprises, thus allowing them to pull in larger profits for the government and operate with a minimized amount of bureaucracy. Currently, government-owned enterprises usually means money-sucking bureaucracy, but if pinches of capitalism are mixed into the formula, than profits can actually be earned on behalf of the government, as seen in Muñoz’s Puerto Rico and Alessandri’s Chile.
Meanwhile, socialism can step in where capitalism fails: socialism can be used to provide appropriate working and living conditions that are not available with capitalism. “Raising all the poor in the continent to just above the poverty line would cost only 0.7 per cent of regional GDP – an approximate equivalent of a 2 per cent income tax on the wealthiest fifth of the population.” Such redistribution (and 2% is in fact a very small amount of redistribution) can only be carried out by socialist policies.
Socialism can also prevent the continent from becoming exploited from foreign investors or domestic elites, a condition fueled by Latin American capitalism (for exploitation is associated with control of the means of production). Since Latin America does not have the resources or the “religious capacity” to create businesses on the large-scale, it is subjugated to foreign investors who run their businesses and policies in according to what they, not Latin Americans, want. The state is the only body with the ability to produce the desired investment. “The dilemma of Chile,” states Allende, “clearly is not between Democracy and Totalitarianism. The dilemma of Chile is between Chilean interests and those of foreign capital.” “On the one hand, we can continue to base our industrial development on foreign investment and technology, intensifying more and more the dependency which is threatening to turn us back into colonies.”
Latin America is seriously in debt to international banking organizations like the IMF and the World Bank. To negotiate debt payments and to receive new loans (usually to cover infrastructure and government restructuring programs authored by these same organizations), Latin American governments are forced to neo-liberalize more and more. “From 1989-1993,” states Green, the IMF “actually received $9.3bn more in loan repayments from Latin America than it lent in new money”. Meanwhile, “From 1990-1994 Latin America paid the [World] Bank $11bn more in repayments and interests than it received in new loans.” The continent is locked into an endless cycle of debts and repayments that only become deeper entrenched as the years pass. Modern capitalism is sucking out more from Latin America than it puts in. Under the current system, the region cannot just scream “enough!” for if debts are ignored than most likely these countries will fall victim to a virtual financial blockage of the country (much like in 1984 when the Dominican Republic failed to fulfill its promises to the IMF). Despite this, Latin America as a whole, can give the silent treatment to these organizations and opt out of this capitalist cycle, for the continent has more than what is needed to keep itself alive. Socialism is the only route that can be taken in order to utilize the region’s good for the region, thus allowing Latin America to drop out the free trade cycle.
“The Fund and the Bank’s standard policy packages take little account of local political or economic conditions,” states Green. “Typically, macro-economists from Washington,” with no knowledge what so-ever on the historic and cultural environment of the continent, “fly in for three weeks with a blueprint for the country’s future economic policy already in their briefcases.” Latin America needs a system for Latin America, not a homogeneous plan meant to turn the world into a bland monochrome mall. The “different systems for different cultures” philosophy is highly ignored by these organizations as seen in the following statement by former U.S. Under-Secretary to the Treasury and Chief Economist and Vice-President for Development Economics for the World Bank, Lawrence Summers: “The laws of economics, it’s often forgotten, are like the laws of engineering. There’s only one set of laws and they work everywhere.” “We need a system that works for us”, states the masses.
Class
Above all, Latin America’s rigid class structure is the main motivating force for the implementation of socialism. In the West, where social mobility is available and a large middle class exists, class is not too much of a problem, but in Latin America one is either dirt poor or filthy rich. While there is not much friction between classes in the Western world, due to the lack of social mobility, all conflicts in the region arise from class clash. If there was social mobility, than why have the demographic poverty statistics remain static? In the West, competition within classes allows one to progress to the next, while in Latin America all it causes is civil war and further problems. All a poverty-stricken rural citizen can do is move to the city, where he becomes a poverty-stricken urban citizen. There are not enough jobs, and due to the emigration of rural peasants, there are not enough hands to keep up with the growing urban population.
A common feature of orthodox socialist ideology is the elimination of class. This essay will break from that ideology and acknowledge that such is impossible. Democratic socialism in Europe, state capitalism in China, and even hard-line communism in Cuba has failed to demolish inequalities and class. This writing is not suggesting “equality in poverty,” as it is called by David Lanes, but the alteration of the present system where one class rules over the other. It is possible to have multiple classes exist side-by-side – an upper-class capitalist who works in domestic industry can have more wealth than a peasant that works a small plot of land without the capitalist dictating over the peasant. It is hypothesized “that the ownership and organization of economic production (agrarian, commercial, industrial) determine class structure,” but this is not necessarily true. Sections of land can be distributed among those who work it, natural resources could be state-owned, and key industries be owned by either the state or the workers, and people would still have the freedom to obtain more wealth than the next man. Classes shouldn’t be eliminated; they should just be deinstitutionalized.
Wealth and redistribution
To fix today’s economic and social problems, politicians, intellectuals, and economists endorse economic growth as the key to all problems. An increase in trade, a boost in the GDP, and the liberalization of markets is considered to be the steps needed to uplift the masses from poverty. “In societies resistant to [capitalist] development, wealth above all consists of what exists; in favorable [pro-capitalist] societies, wealth above all consists of what does not yet exist.” Further capitalist growth is totally unnecessary, for the continent already contains enough riches. Why build more factories and search for new oil reserves when the factories and oil fields that are currently being used are currently misused? To feed the hungry population of Latin America, there is no need to deforestate cultivatable land, for there is already more plenty of land to go around. Downtown properties rot away and large unfinished building skeletons collect dust while economists and politicians lay out plans to build more. There is no need to obtain more when the continent has more than enough already.
These lands are rich with minerals and vast areas of land are already being cultivated, but the problem is that they are concentrated in the hands of the few. There is no real problem with this if social mobility existed, and hard working citizens had the ability to one day enjoy these riches, but since it doesn’t than this is the most important issue that should be tackled. Currently in Latin America, the products of a man’s labor is not for his enjoyment, the crops cultivated by a peasant farmer are not for him to eat, and the riches of a nation are not for the nation to use. Put the land in the hands of the farmers and the factories in the hands of the workers, sit back, and watch them develop. Michael E. Porter states, “one often hears complaints about workers in developing countries as having a poor work ethic. But what if there is no reward for hard work? What if there is no advancement even if one works hard?”
Democracy
Democracy is a human right, but it really depends on what form of democracy is being used. The liberal democracy currently available in Latin America does not put the people in the power (what democracy is suppose to be in the first place), for it has only handed over power to the upper class. There are really only two ways to enhance Latin American democracy: replace the liberal democracy used today with communal democracy, and/or the democratization of the economy. Since liberal democracy has failed to give voice to the shantytowns and lower class communities, placing that democracy and interweaving it into those communities is the only way to give them voice. Various socialist movements in the region have given way to democratic communal cells, which act as executive, judicial, service, administering, health, and defense providers. Due to the decentralization of government responsibility and the democratization of communities, the majority of which are overran with lower class citizens, socialism would be inevitable in this system.
The extension of democracy to the economy is also another method available to enhance Latin American democracy. Placing natural resources, and at least some land and industries under public control would increase the voice of the people. A mix of communal democracy and democratized economics could be implemented, where judicial, defense, and administrative services could be provided to the community by the community, and resources, land reform, and large industry be controlled my the central government. Political and economic socialism give way to an enhancement of democracy.
Military
The military, unlike in the U.S. and other Western countries, plays a very active and influential role in Latin America. Edwin Lieuwen, former Chairman of the Department of History at the University of Mexico states that “so active have the armed forces in Latin America been in nonmilitary activities that their military functions of defending against outside aggression and of preserving internal order have, oftener than not, become of secondary importance.” “In Latin America, the military has often assigned itself the task of saving the nation from the failures of the politicians,” states Carlos Alberto Montaneder. Because of this, governments commonly have to find ways to incorporate the military into public politics. During the 1930s and 40s, Latin American militaries began to utilize themselves to promote state-driven economic development. To this day, even democratically elected presidents assign senior military officers to manager positions of state enterprises. While this has been seen as a drag, or at times unhealthy, under a more socialist rule, there is not too much problem with this. Including economic and administrative education in military academies could solve any problems that could arise from this.
Education culture
Latin American universities are well known for their leftist nature. Maintaining autonomy even during the rule of even the most capitalistic regimes, “Latin American universities and many private ones, with some exceptions, are archaic deposits of old Marxist ideas about economy and society.” These universities are churning out socialist citizens for a non-socialist society. This is not negative at all, for if a return to socialist systems, or a system built off of them, were to occur, the intellectual and social reality would finally be cooperative with the new economic and political system.
80 to 90% of the students from these universities belong to the middle and upper classes. These students sympathize with socialism, and at times run off to join these political or armed movements. “The weapons these young men carried with them into the jungle, mountains, and the city streets were loaded in the lecture rooms of the universities,” states Montander. The socialistization of the upper class through the universities can succeed where economics and politics did not – in tranquilizing the friction between social classes.
Constitutionalization of socialism
Montander identifies the “revolutionary left” as “one of the principal causes of the region’s underdevelopment,” due to its interruption of “that long and fragile cycle of savings, investment, profit, and reinvestment.” The same can be said about the capitalist right; socialism, in the little pockets of time that it has been implemented within these countries, has succeeded in tending to the real social problems, but has repetitively been cut off by capitalism. After resources and industries are nationalized, later governments privatize them, only to have them bought back, and so on. This back-and-forth motion leaves the continent in shock. One path should be agreed upon for the region to take up and maintain. This writing emphasizes the compatibility with socialism in the region, and the only way that it could be implemented without interruption is through its constitutionalization.
Private property is guaranteed in the U.S. constitution. This constitution was implemented after being agreed upon by voters in a referendum. If the U.S. constitution can guarantee private property, than why cannot Latin American constitutions, especially if democratically authenticated, guarantee public property? If the U.S. constitution can be voted in more than 200 years ago, and still stand today without interruption, than it is only right for socialism to have the ability to be etched in stone (constitutionalized) in order to create a long-lasting uninterruptible socialist economy. If a socialist party in the U.S. wished to implement its programs, it would be forced to go through a long grueling process of deprogramming the constitution.
Even after socialism is guaranteed, there is still a lot of “moving space” within the party system that would allow more than enough choices to please the majority of the population. Within the liberal “socialist” sect, there is available the communitarian, Christian, communist and Marxist, Anarcho-communist and libertarian socialist, civil socialist, global and national socialist, bourgeois, conservative and liberal, utopian, reactionary, middle class, and social democrat versions of socialism. The existence of some socialism would be agreed upon by the people and etched into the constitution, and the regulation of how much or how little excess socialism followed, is carried out through these parties as elected by the people.
Communal democracy and socialism has and can prevail where liberal democracy and capitalism has failed. Demographically, religiously, intellectually, socially, and culturally the stage is set for socialism in Latin America.