Twentieth century socialism is
moribund. In the Americas,
socialist-oriented movements
were dealt severe blows by the elec-
toral defeat of the Sandinistas in
1990, the general impasse of
Central American revolutionary
movements and the crisis of Cuban
Communism with the collapse of
the Soviet Union. Radical grass-
roots movements as Judith Hellman
noted in a previous anniversary
essay, have by no means disap-
peared in the Americas, but those
that enunciate socialist goals are
few and far between. 1
Can socialism be reborn? And if
so, what might it look like? Over the
years NACLA has played a critical
role in reporting and analyzing the
four major socialist or neo-socialist
experiences in the Americas–
Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas in Berkeley California. He has been associated with NACLA as volunteer, staff and editorial board member since 1972. His most recent book, coauthored with Orlando Nufez and Boris Kagarlitsky is Globalization and Its Discontents: The
Rise of Postmodern Socialisms, (Pluto
Press, 1997).
The May/June 1980 cover of NACLA
Report on the Americas.
Cuba, Chile, Grenada and
Nicaragua. The latter two were not
self-proclaimed socialist experi-
ments, but the processes were anti-
imperialist and the governments
enacted policies designed to allevi-
ate or eliminate economic and
social inequalities. Moreover, the
dominant political parties of these
two revolutions-the Sandinista
National Liberation Front (FSLN)
and the New Jewel Party-were
powerfully imbued with socialist
concepts and ideals.
The reasons for the failure or
demise of each of these experiences
are varied, although if there is one
Vol XXXI, No 3 Nov/DEC 1997
overriding cause it is that U.S.
imperialism proved to be very flex-
ible and adaptive, developing a
variety of interventionist strategies
in the economic, social and political
spheres. Interestingly, it was not
direct U.S. military intervention that
defeated them. The 1961 invasion
of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs was an
abysmal failure and led to the con-
solidation of Cuban socialism,
while the U.S. invasion of Grenada
in 1983 came only after the revolu-
tionary movement had self-destruc-
ted and executed its own leaders.
My general thesis is that twenti-
eth century socialism has been
defeated for two contradictory rea-
sons. In those socialist experiments
that were the most democratic, like
Chile from 1970 to 1973, the United
States was able to exploit relatively
open political and economic
processes to destroy them from
within. On the other hand, in those
centralized and verticalist socialist
projects such as Cuba, the lack of
authentic democratic processes
weakened their popular support and
led to the implementation of ineffi-
cient state-dominated economies.
This provided grist for the ongoing
15ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ SOCIALISM
U.S. ideological campaign against
Communism and socialism.
Yet before a new socialism can be
postulated, we need to understand
the nature of late capitalism and
imperialism as we approach the new
millennium. Here, I maintain the
starting point is that capitalism in
recent years has undergone an
epochal shift with globalization. 2
Briefly stated, those who view glob-
alization as a new stage of capital-
ism argue that the economies of the
world are now integrated under the
aegis of transnational capital and
that the nation-state is losing much
The September 1971 cover of the NACLA Newsletter.
of its autonomy to international
institutions like the World Trade
Organization (WTO), the World
Bank and the International Mone-
tary Fund (IMF). The state is still a
very powerful entity, but now it
responds to the needs of transna-
tional capital rather than national
interests.
In a sense this newness is a matter
of degree. A century and a half ago,
Marx argued in the Communist
Manifesto that capital was an inher-
ently universalizing process that
continually internationalized itself,
breaking down regional and
national barriers as it advanced.
Certainly this process has deepened
since Marx’s time, but for over a
century, the Manifesto’s corollary–
the growth of an international strug-
gle for socialism generated by the
expansion of capital and its contra-
dictions-has been undermined by
the nation-state and its ability to co-
opt the working class into national
and chauvinist conflicts among
nations. Yet with globalization, the
conditions that facilitated the coop-
tation of national working classes
are changing, and we are seeing the
emergence of an array of social
movements, many of which have
internationalist perspectives.
For socialists, the epochal shift to
globalization also means that the
historical argument of Lenin and
other Marxists that imperialism nur-
tured a labor aristocracy is losing its
validity. In the era of globalization,
transnational capital is now free to
roam the world, tapping the cheap-
est labor markets, thereby under-
mining wages and the standards of
living in the core countries. The two
wealthiest countries in the Western
Hemisphere-the United States and
Canada-have experienced a grow-
ing economic polarization and a
decline of the influence of their
working classes and trade unions.
These processes have also had
adverse effects on the middle
classes of these nations. Both the
United States and Canada have
become “third worldized” due to the
pauperization of certain sectors and
the expansion of immigration from
the Third World-a phenomenon
also related to the process of global-
ization.
Simultaneously, as capital be-
comes increasingly international-
ized, it incorporates Third World
elites into its fold. NACLA’s recent
Report on Latin American billion-
aires documented the extent of this
process.3 These elites now view
their interests in an international
context and are increasingly
opposed to national, protectionist
policies-policies once favored by
important sectors of the bour-
geoisies in countries like Mexico,
Brazil, Chile and Argentina.
he shift to globalization has
also altered the political para-
digm that the core countries
are advocating for the Third World.
As William Robinson shows in
“Promoting Polyarchy,” the United
States has turned against many of
the dictators it once nurtured, and
has adopted a policy of supporting,
and even imposing, controlled
democracies in order to integrate
the third world into a global neolib-
eral economy. 4 The effort to oust
Pinochet in Chile was the first
manifestation of this new policy
approach in the hemisphere. More
recently, the invasion of Haiti to
reinstall Jean-Bertrand Aristide
served as a dramatic illustration of
this policy shift. In general, the
United States and the other imperial
powers now recognize that dictators
can be politically unstable and may
not provide the best terrain for the
advance of free trade and transna-
tional capital.
Of course this approach does not
prevent the United States from
endorsing pseudo-democracies such
as the Fujimori regime, which shut
down Peru’s Congress in 1992,
ruled by emergency decree and then
adopted a new constitution that
granted President Fujimori virtual
dictatorial powers. But it is impor-
tant to note that even in these
instances, the regimes do hold refer-
endums and elections that give them
a certain sense of legitimacy, both
domestically and internationally.
The implications of this epochal
shift for the future of socialism and
socialist struggles are many. For
one, it means that it will never again
be effective for socialists to build
their movements around a vertical-
ist Marxist-Leninist state or politi-
cal party. Imperialism, especially
U.S. imperialism, is now extremely
adept at using the language and
even the basic forms of democracy
16NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ SOCIALISM
Socialism is not just one path. Nor is it a beaten path. We’re used to reciting and repeating,
to quoting correctly. But if we aspire to a future, now more than ever we have to overcome
our fear of creativity, to recover the utopian dimension of socialism.
Socialism came to power unexpectedly in 1917, a mere 70 years ago, in one of the most
unlikely places imaginable. Years later, after the Second World War, it spread to other conti-
nents, Asia and Africa. Capitalism, on the other hand has been expanding for several cen-
turies. The doors to socialism are not permanently closed; we just have to find news ways to
open them. A third, fourth, fifth way. A socialism built on new foundations, one that recog-
nizes the dreams, hopes and desires of the people. A socialism with room for these needs.
Alberto Flores Galindo, JanuarylFebruary 1991, Vol. XXIV, Number 5
to advance the interests of the
transnational elites. Radical move-
ments for change can only be suc-
cessful to the extent that they are
able to demonstrate that they are
more democratic in their struggles
and goals than the neoliberal demo-
cratic paradigm. In particular, they
need to continually demonstrate
that capitalist democracy is insuffi-
cient; that true democracy extends
to the economic arena; and that the
unregulated market advocated by
neoliberals is incompatible with
authentic democracy. 5
Despite the limitations of capital-
ist democracy, the growing aware-
ness among socialists of the impor-
tance of transparent elections and
basic political freedoms explains
why Cuba in recent years has
ceased to serve as a model for
socialist struggles in the Americas.
It is not the economic difficulties
Cuba is experiencing nor the U.S.
blockade that has weakened the
appeal of Cuba. In fact, Cuba’s eco-
nomic plight was much more severe
in the late 1960s than it is today. But
in the 1960s the revolution enjoyed
extensive popular support because
Cubans then had a sense of partici-
pation in the political and economic
life of their country. It was during
the 1970s that the Cuban
Communist party and the state con-
solidated control over virtually all
facets of the economy and exercised
centralized control of the trade
unions, the educational system and
“mass organizations.”
In recent years in Cuba there has
been a devolution of many state
enterprises to worker and peasant
run cooperatives, particularly in the
agricultural sphere. Few steps, how-
ever, have been taken to democra-
tize the country as a whole, as Fidel
Castro and the party insist on retain-
ing total political power. The Cuban
variant of socialism may survive
into the foreseeable future, but until
the political system opens up, the
revolution will remain in a largely
defensive position, unable to pro-
vide inspiration for a renewal of
socialism in the Americas.
The Sandinista revolutionary
leadership understood to a certain
extent that the old socialist para-
digm of single-party states was no
longer viable and that democratic
elections were necessary. Thus the
Sandinistas, instead of monopoliz-
ing political power, brought other
parties into the process in a coali-
tion government and began holding
open elections in 1984. But the
Sandinista revolution was caught
between the new and the old. While
allowing pluralist elections, the
FSLN was a vanguard party with a
“national directorate” that exercised
tight control not only over the party
but also over the affiliated “mass”
or social movements.
On the economic front, the
Sandinistas advocated a “mixed
economy,” wherein some enter-
prises were controlled by the state
while others remained in the hands
of private interests. Those economic
and political spheres that remained
autonomous were thus in a position
to undermine or sabotage San-
dinista initiatives. In the end, the
United States and its allies inside
and outside of Nicaragua proved to
be adept at tarring the Sandinistas
with the “totalitarian” brush while
manipulating public opinion and
civil society. They forged a counter-
revolutionary bloc comprised of a
number of political parties, civic
and business organizations, the
Catholic hierarchy and even trade
unions and sectors of the peasantry.
This bloc brought Violeta Chamorro
to power in 1990.
Can the most democratic socialist
experience in the Americas, Chile
of the early 1970s, serve as a model
for the future? Here it was not verti-
calism or the lack of democracy that
debilitated the Popular Unity coali-
tion, but the “invisible blockade” of
Richard Nixon and Henry
Kissinger. 6 The blockade under-
mined the economy, destabilized
the political system, and laid the
ground for the U.S.-backed coup by
General Pinochet.
The government of Salvador
Allende made one fatal mistake-
it’s failure in mid-1973 to retain
General Prats as head of the military
and to purge the officers who were
conspiring against him. Such a
move would also probably have
required the arming of working-
class civilians and the overnight
creation of popular militias to fight
with the loyalist sectors of the mili-
Vol XXXI, No 3 Nov/DEC 1997 17ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ SOCIALISM
To locate the science and organization of work in the hands of working people, and to put
an end to capital’s ceaseless attack on labor in all its myriad forms, it is imperative that the
working class seize control from capital of the means and process of production. The interna-
tional struggle of the autoworkers and of all workers must be an international struggle for
socialism. Internationalism has served capital well; now it’s labor’s turn.
July/August 1979, Vol. XIII, No. 4
For the Soviets, the 1970 election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile was a vindication
of their contention that a peaceful road to socialism was possible, albeit a socialism that had
little in common with the Soviet variety.
January/February 1987, Vol. XXI, No. 1
tary. However, as Allende realized,
a decision to back Prats with these
measures would have provoked a
civil war and required the suspen-
sion of the Chilean parliament and
constitution. These measures were
abhorrent to Allende and to most of
the parties of the Popular Unity
coalition, given their deep commit-
ment to maintaining Chile’s democ-
ratic institutions. It was this para-
doxical choice between maintaining
the Popular Unity’s commitment to
democratic institutions and proce-
dures and the need to take military
steps to destroy the opposition that
makes Chile the most tragic social-
ist experience in the Americas and
perhaps in the history of twentieth
century socialism.
Many of the socialist leaders who
survived the Pinochet years now
argue that the economic policies of
Allende’s Popular Unity govern-
ment may never have been viable.
For some of them, especially those
who have been incorporated into the
center-left government led by the
Christian Democrats, policies that
would nationalize sectors of the
economy are even more problem-
atic in the era of globalization
because any efforts to restrict or
control the flow of international
capital by a given government are
immediately met by capital flight
and economic crisis. This argument
of leftists against any effort to
revive such state socialist policies is
perhaps best encapsulated in Jorge
Castaneda’s book, Utopia Unarmed,
which argues that the left has to
accept “the logic of the market” and
limit itself to choosing what type of
capitalist system it buys into–
neoliberalism or the “social market”
of Western Europe or Japan. 7
hile any economic alter-
native will have to deal
with the realities of the
global market, we cannot limit our-
selves to choosing one variant of
capitalism over another. The devel-
opment of a new economic model is
key to the resurrection of the left.
Any new approach, of course, can-
not be simply willed into existence;
it will have to emerge out of con-
crete, ongoing economic and politi-
cal struggles.
At this point in history, the left,
instead of lamenting the lack of
“grand narratives” and an explicit
economic alternative, can draw
inspiration from the fact that there
are so many local, unconnected
movements occurring throughout
the Americas. As James Petras
points out in a recent essay, for
example, there is a renewed insur-
gency among the peasantry of Latin
America, as demonstrated by the
landless movement in Brazil, the
struggles of the coca farmers in
Bolivia and the Zapatista movement
of Chiapas. 8
These struggles are more than
defensive. The landless movement
in Brazil is developing alternative
economic projects and securing lim-
ited international funding, often
from non-governmental organiza-
tions. As for the Zapatistas of
Mexico, a central plank of their
struggle is that the indigenous com-
munities of Chiapas are entitled to
the resources necessary to carry out
their own autonomous economic
development. These are important
self-help approaches, calculated to
develop alternative, viable eco-
nomies at the local and regional
level. 9
In fact, these local and regional
initiatives can be viewed as part of a
deeper long-term process of creat-
ing alternatives to modern capital-
ism. Here it is important to recog-
nize that the globalization process
of transnational capital is both cen-
tripetal and centrifugal. It concen-
trates and integrates capital and
trade, while at the same time casting
off industries, peoples and even
countries that it has no use for.
In the parts of the world that cap-
italism discards, a new mode of pro-
duction is taking hold, which is
comprised of what can be called
“popular economies,” or what we
have elsewhere referred to as “post-
modern economies.”‘ 0 These
economies do not and cannot com-
pete head to head with transnational
capital in the globalization process.
Rather they lurk on the sidelines,
seizing those activities that the
transnational world decides to dis-
pose of. This historic process
Meanwhile, the past 15 years have also been dominated by the crisis and death of existing
socialism. From Perestroika- that desperate but belated recognition- to the fall of the
Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the world has witnessed one of the
most profound changes in history. What was believed to be irreversible- Soviet socialism
born of the most powerful revolution of the twentieth century- showed itself to have
feet of clay and fell to pieces in less than five years. The world became unipolar.
The painful evolution of the Latin American: left from Allende to the national-security
regimes forced it to begin to value political democracy. People began to abandon the
old dichotomies- economic democracy vs. political democracy, formal (bourgeois) democracy
vs. real (workers’) democracy- which were only smokescreens that concealed a pitiful
reality: an undemocratic, authoritarian left, politically cast in the Soviet mold, which
raised the banners of political liberties to attack its opponents, but was not prepared to
practice them inside its own structures, not to mention if it ever achieved power.
Ruben Zamora, July/August 1995, Vol. XXIX, No. 1
resembles the transition from feu-
dalism to capitalism. Capitalism
first took hold in feudalism’s nooks
and crannies, slowly gathering
momentum until it became the
dominant mode of production.
The new popular or postmodern
economies are still incipient in
Latin America and other parts of the
world, comprised of highly differ-
entiated activities and economic
islands that rise out of what capital-
ism discards. The most extensive of
these economies, particularly in
Latin America, is the informal sec-
tor-the ever more numerous street
vendors, flea markets, petty family
businesses, and even garbage scav-
engers who recycle aluminum cans,
cardboard and bottles while using
what they can of the refuse. On a
larger scale, the struggles of peas-
ants and workers in post-Sandinista
Nicaragua are reflective of another
kind of popular economy: the sell-
ing off of large but weak enterprises
to worker and peasant cooperatives.
Over 350 enterprises of all sizes and
types are now owned and run by the
workers, many of which were con-
trolled by the state under the
Sandinista government. When the
Chamorro government began to sell
them off as part of the privatization
process demanded by the IMF and
World Bank, the workers on many
of these enterprises simply occu-
pied them, and/or began to negoti-
ate for taking control of them.
Today there is a national association
of worker-run enterprises that facil-
itates their development and access
to technical assistance and capital
while lobbying with the govern-
ment and the banks for their growth
and expansion into new areas of the
economy.”
All these areas of postmodern
economic activity are growing in
importance in Latin America and
the Caribbean, not because they can
compete in any significant way with
transnational capital, but because
they are the only option available to
ever-increasing numbers of people.
A subcontractor for a large corpora-
tion, a refuse scavenger, a worker-
run cooperative, a micro-entrepre-
neur in the informal economy, a
peasant or a street vendor-none of
them abandon their activities
because there is little else they can
do to survive. While none of this
constitutes socialism, these are all
proto-socialist activities because
they represent efforts by people to
take control of their lives at the
most fundamental, grassroots level.
The postmodern economies and
their participants will continue to
grow in importance because global
capitalism excludes more and more
people, and also because of inherent
crises and contradictions within the
system itself. Clearly these new
economies need to advance in tan-
dem with alternative political
movements and with the struggles
The September/October 1995 cover of NACLA Report on the Americas.
of workers and peasants. Popular
economies can survive and grow
even in the midst of a globalized
world only if people become
increasingly conscious of their need
to struggle for them-building a “new politics” along with new eco-
nomic activities.
Here the EZLN and the
Zapatistas in Chiapas are particu-
larly illustrative of how this process
can unfold. Their political and eco-
nomic demands are focused largely
on the needs of Chiapas
an its indialgenous peo-
ples. This is probably
the first national liber-
ation movement that
did not proclaim as its
objective a march on
the capital city and the
seizure of state power.
Rather, the Zapatistas
have centered on civil
society as the agent of
change, calling for the
mobilizationU o a wideU
array of civic associations and
organizations to demand authentic
economic and political democracy.
The strength of the Zapatistas has
not come from the “barrel of a
gun”–in fact at times they have
had only wooden guns-but from
their ability to wage a political-ide-
ological war against Mexico’s rul-
ing party and the state.
In the introduction to the recent
NACLA Report, “Voices on the
Left,” which contained interviews
with activists from around the
hemisphere, the NACLA editors
note the remarkable reality that
“that in this age of doubt and cyni-
cism, the activists interviewed
maintain a radical commitment and
enthusiasm.” In the interviews with
these activists, all of whom are
“engaged in the struggles of their
times and places,” the editors note
an emphasis “on democratic modes
of development, mass participation
in politics and structural, ‘achiev-
able’ reforms.” l2
In other articles, I have argued
that this constitutes a new, postmod-
ern politics, a politics that is leading
to the rise of postmodern social-
isms.’ 3 It is a socialism of place, a
socialism with a local agenda, a
socialism with a hundred faces and
experiences, a socialism without a
name or a grand narrative at present.
The genius of these struggles is that
every effort to raise consciousness
or to develop self-help projects at
the local level is innately part of the
long-term process of building new
socialisn
of Chia
rebels
ns. As Bishop Samuel Ruiz
pas remarks, the Zapatista
“emerged without faces
1- 1 because L ey repre- sent many unseen
faces from elsewhere
which are now em-
erging as new sub-
jects.”‘ 4 They exist
here and now, even if
socialism is not men-
tioned and capitalism
retains control of the
global economy and
the formal political
I
The concept of postmodern
socialisms will not become a ban-
ner that people fight and die for;
rather the term is a conceptual
framework for viewing the diverse
struggles that are growing through-
out the hemisphere and the rest of
the world. These movements over a
period of time will have to frame
and characterize their struggles
from the ground up, creating local,
regional and international ties to
other struggles and movements.
Only they have the capacity to cre-
ate a grand new narrative capable
of challenging capitalist globaliza-
tion and replacing the state social-
ism of the twentieth century with a
new emancipatory project.
The trade union is an organ for winning
immediate conquests while the party should
be the organ for changing society. The party
has to have a program that takes care of the
society in a general sense, transforming it.
And we know that this means a struggle
against capitalism for socialism.
Jaco Bittar, Brazilian oil workers leade,
May/June 1979, Vol. XIII, No.3
Notes
1. Judith Adler Hellman, “Social Movements: Revolution, Reform
and Reaction,” NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. 30, No. 6,
May/June, 1997, pp. 13-18.
2. Roger Burbach, “Globalization as an Epochal Shift,” paper presented
to the International Conference on Critical Geography,
Vancouver, Canada, August 10-14, 1997.
3. See “Latin America in the Age of the Billionaires,” NACLA Report
on the Americas, Vol. 30, No. 6, May/June, 1997.
4. William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US
Intervention and Hegemony, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1996).
5. For an extensive discussion of democracy and its relationship to
neoliberalism and the struggles of the left, see Steve Volk’s
anniversary essay “‘Democracy’ Versus ‘Democracy,”‘ NACLA
Report on the Americas, Vol. 30, No. 4, Jan/Feb, 1997, pp. 6-12.
6. See especially one of NACLA’s most important groundbreaking
reports, Elizabeth Farnsworth, Richard Feinberg and Eric Leenson,
“Facing the Blockade,” NACLA Latin America and Empire Report,
Vol. III, No. 1 (January, 1973).
7. Jorge G. Castenada, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left
After the Cold War, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 432.
8. See James Petras, “The Peasantry Strikes Back,” New Left
Review, No. 223, May/June, 1997, pp. 17-47.
9. While Petras argues for a revived peasant movement in Latin
America, it is clear from his article that he does not believe the
NGO’s are useful in this process, nor does he place hope in the
building of alternative economies among the peasantry as this
essay does.
10. For an extended discussion of postmodern economies and postmodern
socialisms, see Roger Burbach, Orlando Nuhez, and Boris
Kagarlitsky, Globalization And Its Discontents: The Rise of
Postmodern Socialisms (London: Pluto Press, 1997). Orlando
Nuiez develops the concept of the popular economy in: La
economia popular: asociativa y autogestionaria, (Managua:
CIPRES, 1995).
11. Orlando Nuiez, La economia popular, pp. 289-312.
12. “Voices on the Left,” NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. 31,
No. 1, July/August, 1997, pp. 5-6.
13. Globalization And Its Discontents, see especially Chapter 9, “The
Long Transition To Postmodern Socialisms,” pp. 153-169.
14. “Voices on the Left” NACLA Report on the Americas, p. 5.
