What Future for Socialism?

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