The socialism syndrome
SOCIALISM, as an alternative vision of the future, is at a dead-end in
Latin America. Even the term socialism has been put on the Index. It is better not to speak of socialism or adhere to it. In this wave of
"competitiveness" and "modernity" we socialists are to be treated as dinosaurs who have survived their death.
We are to be exhibits in the gallery of lost hopes — located on Mount
Fukayama where history has ended - or worse, sent to the circus of ideological grotesques, where we will even be permitted to spit fire, as long as we don't upset the spectators, who are, after all, paying for the
International Viewpoint #244 April 1993
FREI BETTO*
T HE defeat of the Sandinista
National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the 1991 elections in Nicaragua proves that, without bread or peace, a people will not see the left as their vanguard. People want bread and peace, leisure and religion. From the villages of Guatemala to the mountains of Ecuador, from the forests of Bolivia to the countryside of Brazil, what else besides faith and fiestas can help the suffering?
The left has historically proclaimed itself to be the vanguard (a pompous term which gives those who use it the illusion of being in command). Were we not so pretentious we would perhaps prefer to be considered as the rearguard: the people would be out in front and those of us with heads full of strategies would support that and channel their political potential for a revolutionary alternative.
In reality, the question is not to be either in front or behind the people but with
A certain positivist reading of Marxism has led large sections of the left to see theory as a reflection - and moving force of reality. Concepts were like leprechauns that acted as implacable subverters of the existing order. How could the people refuse, in a secret and free vote, their vanguard and vote for the candidates of imperialism?
If theory stated that the workers in power could not commit class suicide and if theory is right, then, clearly, it is the people who are wrong.
LATIN AMERICA
But was the working class in power in Nicaragua? A class cannot be identified with the leaders of a revolutionary party that had progressively drifted away from its supporters and, in particular, had prevented the rank-and-file from developing mechanisms that would allow its own representatives to control the FLSN. At its last congress the FSLN did little more than engage in a power struggle over their own
From subject to object
Rapidly after July 19, 1979, the people of Nicaragua went from being the revolutionary subject to being an object of the FSLN's administration. The Sandinistas, trapped between an economy dependent on foreign capital, a war against mercenaries and a population that lacked the most basic necessities of life, hard hit by unemployment and inflation, tried to find a way out.
In the struggle to overthrow Somoza, the FSLN could not do without popular participation. Once in power, they believed that the superstructure could determine the infrastructure and that whoever controlled the machinery of state and the means of communication no longer needed to bother about the good functioning of the Sandinista Defence Committees (CDS) and the mass organizations. Thus, for the majority of the population the FSLN gradually became the establishment party rather than the political expression of popular demands.
The former militant, companion in eader and an official in the power structi re. While the youth went off to fight an omen were suffocated by the speedy f n the value of the cordoba and price rises,
That Sandinism planted good seeds in the soil of Nicaragua cannot be doubted. A generation of revolutionaries is today ready to take up the dream of Sandino. Nicaragua is certainly the most politically aware coun try in Central America. But the impossibility of ending the imperialist aggression has seriously damaged the myth of the irreversibility of history and the hope of seeing in Nicaragua the second free country of Latin America.
The great novelty in the FSLN's strategy for building socialism was its adoption of economic and political pluralism, the latter guaranteed by universal suffrage. Perhaps it was the unfavourable international climate that dictated this choice. Unlike Cuba, Nicaragua did not get the support of a great power. And the emergence of the Sandinista regime in a continent governed by military dictatorships required that the democratic space was broader than in the conceptions of former socialist regimes.
Thus, the Sandinista regime came to consider pluralist democracy and universal suffrage as strategic elements for the building of socialism, reflecting the range of alliances that had opened the way for the fall of Somoza and the victory of the revolution. For the first time in history, the Christians present in the revolutionary process were not seen as "mere allies" . The unity of the nation around its political leadership supplanted ideological Cartesianism, which had elsewhere made the mistake of sharpening antagonisms between believers and atheists. * Frei Betto is a Dominican priest and writer in Brazil, close to the Workers Party, and author notably of Fidel and Religion, Letters from Prison and Baptism of Blood. This article first appeared in the first issue of America Libre, published in Buenos Aires, Argentina of which Betto is the editor and which aims to stimulate broad debate on the Latin American left.
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International Viewpoint #244 April 1993
The resumption of the building of socialism in Nicaragua will therefore depend on the capacity of the Sandinistas to return to the rank-and-file and change their project into an newly attractive vision of the future.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the failure of socialism in Eastern Europe seem to have banished a socialist alternative in Latin America even further away. If Nicaragua collapsed under imperialist pressure, the same cannot be said of European socialism. There was no military aggression and the spectre of famine did not haunt the
There it was the people themselves, fed up to the teeth with bureaucracy and mesmerized by the neo-liberal mode of consumption, who rejected the political model imposed during the partition of Europe at the end of the Second World War. Where the party had imposed its dictatorship, the people demanded democracy, where ideological censorship was backed up by a police apparatus, the people demanded freedom.
New wine in old bottles
The system had tried to build a new edifice on old and deep roots. It was believed that concrete reinforced with arms would be enough to suppress such profound growths as ethnicity, religion, national culture and idiosyncracies. However, the roots pushed upwards, split apart the concrete and the house fell down.
The socialism adopted in the countries adjoining the USSR was based on the Russian model which had itself never totally broken free from the autocratic heritage of imperial Tsarism. There was something fundamentally religious in those supposedly scientific and indisputable concepts which demonstrated the irreversibility of the socialist regime and the inexorable march towards communism.
In practice, as ever, reality turned out otherwise. The party's authoritarian outlook, the lack of mechanisms of popular participation in power, the reduction of the unions and popular movements to transmission belts for the party, were blatant. The siege mentality strengthened censorship of intellectual production and inhibited critical debate while the police mind viewed any disagreement as dissidence, revisionism and treason. The excess of orthodoxy deepened the gulf between state and nation, the party and the masses, ideological principles and practice, and undermined the foundations of a project which had promised to renew society and citizenship.
The only thing that the population had not noticed was that they themselves did 34 not suffer from famine, shanty-towns, inflation and capitalist exploitation. Some things are only apparent when you compare yourself with those worse off than you. The Hollywood-style abundance of the Western countries had its impact on the inhabitants of Eastern Europe, while the Third World and its sick and hungry children could have been living on Mars.
Older people knew about such things but later generations — just like young Cubans - thought that it was natural to aspire to dignity. Since the destruction of the Berlin Wall, they have discovered freedom as defined by the IMF - the right to everything but a decent life and with a workers' wage.
The children of Marti
The disintegration of the USSR has dispelled some illusions about Cuban socialism. In thirty years, the revolution had not succeeded in creating an infrastructure that can guarantee a minimum of self-sufficiency. The state is dependent. And, as in Nicaragua, the frontiers between state and party have withered away. The hierarchical state lacks institutional channels that would transmit criticism and allow new ideas to rise upwards from the people.
In the absence of any counterweight in the form of ideological work at rank-and-file level the problems produced by this double blockage have created a kind of civic stress among the population, as if all energy has evaporated in the absence of any prospect for material improvement
It is hard to maintain resistance confronted with tourists enjoying a special apartheid regime of privileges which gives them access to the most sophisticated consumer goods and the best spots on the island, while the population is missing out even on ham and has to queue for hours to get an ice-cream. This segregation is justified by the imperious need for convertible hard currency in a country that depends on imports of raw materials.
And given the geographical and familial closeness of Miami, from where thousands of Cubans entice their families on the island with a picture of consumption that arouses dreams of liberty, calls for resistance smack of asking a child in a sweet shop to restrict her or his desire for sweets to their imagination.
However, as we know, the Cuban regime is working on the perfecting of socialist democracy by widening the channels of popular participation in running the state, going as far as constitutional reform.
Despite these difficulties, Cuba is the only socialist country in the West and its experience inspires us to consider national sovereignty and independence as the only foundation for the building of socialism in Latin America. Cuba redeems the dignity of the continent. There you die only of old age. The social achievements of the regime, its internationalist character and the heritage of Martí make it an unavoidable reference point for those committed today to the fight for a society where the rights of the population are more important than those of private capital.
The difficulties facing Fidel's regime are a result of the US-imposed blockade. Our unconditional solidarity with the Cuban people necessarily implies an end to the blockade. Debating Cuba's future is an empty pastime if the blockade is not lifted. Furthermore, we cannot leave the future of Cuba in the hands of Cubans alone. Or, do we in Latin America and the Caribbean have by chance another model of society that could serve as an example for the chil-
The case of Brazil
The case of Brazil, and in particular of the Workers Party (PT) shows that the left can dream of socialism and increase its space in the bourgeois democratic game insofar as it is legitimized by popular vote and mobilization. Everything bourgeois is seductive. To conquer a corner of a state machine designed to ignore popular interests is to face a dangerous temptation. The head thinks as a function of where the feet are placed. How can the socialist project thrive when you are managing the very apparatus you had set out to destroy? Elections can mean a straightforward cooptation of militants. As the French say: the state has its reasons of which the people know
In the townhalls captured by the PT, some set out to show they can govern with the same competence as the bourgeois authorities. Generally they end up like bulls in a china shop. Others use the administration to strengthen workers' organization and popular movements, behaving with an ethical rigour that flabbergasts the corrupted officials who cannot believe that the PT's cadres are capable of refusing the lure
We must not give way to the illusion that a revolution can be made via elections. The interests involved are such that the bourgeoisie may be prepared to stake its rings, but not its fingers. Any change in economic model going against the interests of big capital will meet resistance and will suffer the consequences of breaking the rules of the game, in the form of political and military violence.
International Viewpoint #244 April 1993
All this leads us to wonder: has socialism a future in Latin America and the Caribbean? There is no law, dogma or theory that will enable us to answer with total assurance. What can be forecast is that under the current neo-liberal dispensation there is no future for the majority of the population of the region. The recessionary and privatizing model of exclusion and marginalization imposed by the IMF has only meant more hunger and poverty. Everything indicates that the more the IMF applies its recipes to the countries of this continent, the worse the social, political and economic crises gets.
But if we can agree that neo-liberalism will not bring a solution to the population's vital problems, it remains to discover what economic system would bring such a solu-
While the aim is the building of a society which distributes to all the fruits of their labour, the winning of formal democracy opens up the room for socialists to take part in the contest for power according to rules defined by the bourgeoisie.
The vanity of theory
It would be vanguardist to deny this democratic space and embark on the suicide mission of armed confrontation with the existing regime without first winning popular support. We thus have to work out a strategy where small disagreements on the left do not become deep divergences. A real divergence cannot be measured accor ding to mere theoretical disputes. The ideological vanity of each group, tendency or party, displaced into theory, stops people from seeing further than the end of their nose. The left may miss the bus of history and still keep its belief in its dogmas.
The search for solid and fruitful unity must be based on electoral alliances on the left and, above all, work at grassroots level. Eventual access to the institutions of power must not give the illusion that the state apparatus can be turned into a tool for the implementation of socialism. We also have to make sure that it does not act to neutralize socialist ideas by turning militants into state officials, with an authority accompanied by privileges but far removed from popular concerns.
There can only be socialism if there are revolutionary socialists. And these will get nowhere if they do not strengthen grassroots' organization.
The overthrow of Haiti's radical elected President Aristide shows that there is no future in our region for a regime which sets out to put the interests of its own population first to the detriment of those of the USA and its allies unless it has first broken all its links with the latter, following in this the Cuban example.
The experiences of Grenada, Nicaragua and Haiti have shown the worthlessness of the notion of the gradual and peaceful victory of socialism on our continent. But they have not for all that given support to the apocalyptic inclinations of some militants who have it from heaven that there is an inevitable coincidence between their own personal future and that of history. In the present situation the Cuban or Sandinista model of revolution has shown itself to be romantic if not irresponsible. There is no contradiction between our elites and the US. We are a mere province of the pax
Today, a strategy for building socialism must be based on ethical foundations. We do not fight for a socialist society because in that way we can take power from the bourgeoisie and award it to ourselves or because it is written on the Tablets of the Marxist-Leninist Law.
In a continent in which 230 million people are starving, there is a more serious question: how can a dignified life be assured to everyone given the resources available? It is of little importance what label we use to describe a system that would do this. We must aim to guarantee to all the inalienable right to a decent, healthy, participatory and happy life.
I do not believe this possible without social ownership of the available goods and natural resources. The 20th century has left us a unique legacy: huge populations, those of the USSR and China, have lived off the fruits of their own labour without stealing from others.
This does not mean we have to adopt this or that model. Such historic references are there to enable us to develop our critical approach and encourage us to build the society of our visions.
Ethics are more than simply the justification and end result of our project. They must also imbue our militant activity. What is morally incorrect is also politically incorrect.
Men and women with a new outlook cannot come into being using the models and weapons of the oppressors. What works for those who only have interests is not enough for those who have principles. Furthermore, it is not enough that such principles sound good. They have to be tested against our feelings, enrich our subjectivity and our daily practice — in our family relations, in the struggle against personal and political vanity, by our open-mindedness, or our understanding of public office
Parties and people
To build a socialist future, ethics must be backed up by political work at a grassroots' level. The left has always stubbornly built up its parties but has shown little interest in organizing the people. But there can be no real democracy without popular participation and that implies anonymous and tireless self-sacrificing work directed towards those in city and countryside, in the shanty-towns and workers' neighbourhoods, who have not yet discovered that workers' unity is like the waters of a dam that has burst.
An old formula holds that changes take place when all the objective and subjective conditions have come together. The first are part of the unpredictability of history and arise at the moment they are least expected.
The second are the result of popular education that changes all popular values - roots and cultural relations, religion and art, solidarity and fiesta - into an energy that changes history. It prefigures, in the community or neighbourhood, the church or the trade union, the popular movement or party, the socialization of life and goods that will be the source of happiness for all.
Thus, the socialist future is not just something to dream about, but also something which its genuine protagonists must anticipate. *
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AROUND THE WORLD
International Viewpoint #244 April 1993