Against the Buenos landowners control 43% of cultivable land, while 23 million small peasants and agricultural workers live below the
Aires Consensus Last December a group of left and left-of-centre Latin American intellectuals, including Mexican writer Jorge Castañeda, published a document with the grand title "Consensus of Buenos Aires." "This is the end of neoliberalism, of the Consensus of Washington," claims Castañeda. Full of pretentious phrases like this, the Consensus text lacks concrete suggestions for dealing with unemployment, the indigenous question, dependency on international financial organisations and the United States, globalisation, or the foreign debt. The document's real intention is clear: updating the programmatic vision of those on the Latin American left who claim a "vocation to govern." Ernesto Hererra Talking about Mexico City, writer Juan Villoro has said that "the only well distributed element is panic." He could be describing the dramatic social and economic situation of all Latin America. 30 International Viewpoint #298
"Latin American societies have been unequal from ancient times and divided in countless respects, writes the Consensus text. "In some countries -a minoritypoverty decreases although injustice persists. In others -the majority- the number of inhabitants condemned to an ungrateful, unacceptable, indignant existence is on the rise. At the same time, the already abysmal divide separating the poor from the rich broadens, as well as the gap between the city and the countrystde, between black and brown people and whites and Creoles, between women and men and between children and the rest of society.
Employment remains stagnant and incomes have been pushed downward, while expenditures in education, health, housing, children, and the future do not compensate for a decades-long decline. Our incipient democracies are constantly threatened by attempted coups, by lean economic results, by the understandable apathy of people overwhelmed by the tasks of daily survival, and by persistent displacement of the roots of whole popula-
The inconclusive formation of our national identities is today aggravated by a merciless process of globalisation, somewhat fictitious and exaggerated by the media, but always destructive of the fragile sovereignties built only in the last century and a half. All of this is what we should revise, improve and reform. In a word, change.
poverty line. And while Brazil is one of the world's principal food exporters (in 1996, its crops fed 300 million people world-wide) 32 million Brazilians go hungry every day.
Could anything be revised, improved, reformed, or changed in that country without a radical, anti-capitalist agrarian reform, such as the one the MST (Movement of the Landless) demands? Is it not a "citizen right" of first order that the peasant possess the land he works? And therefore, is it legitimate that he occupy estates and expel the landowners?
And consider the immoral foreign debt crisis. Between 1983 and 1991 Latin America's net capital transfers to the countries of the First World and their bankers were more than 200 billion US dollars - a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Even worse, between 1982 and 1996, Latın Amerıca paid $739bn. servicing its debt, which continues to grow. The proposes a public investment of 30% of GDP "to generate solid social balances. " Can that be done while continuing to service the foreign debt, which in some cases equals more than 30% of export earnings?
Compared to the document from the grouping, the declaration of the Catholic Bishop's Synod seems like an ultra-leftist proclamation: "reduction or cancellation of the debt" to reduce "the burden on the poor" and "to prevent the marginalisation of entire regions and countries of the global economy. " (Diario Pagína/12, Buenos Aires. 12/12/97)
The grouping speaks of a "feasible scaffolding" for bulding "countries in which there is more justice and solidarity,
Camacho Solis, Andres Lopez Obrador, Development Bank. [EH] * which are more free and conscious, in peace with themselves and inserted in a financial, ecological, commercial, and legal framework that is less aggressive and polarising. " Without "the prevailing market fundamentalism, "but without returning "to populist nationalism or to the semi-autarchic strategy of import
In a word, it proposes an intermediate road that avoids the following dilemma: "if the proposed reforms are too removed from the status quo, the objection is that they are attractive but utopian. If transformations limited to the current situation are outlined, the complaint is that they are viable but insignificant. " Then, matters is the direction, and its effects on people's understanding of their own interests, identities, and problems.
This is not just the soft' left's ritual eclecticism, but a total underestimation of social reality. People do understand their interests, identities and problems. From Chiapas to Buenos Aires, Latin America's social struggles proliferate; different cultures merge in a multicoloured quilt and combined organisational forms. The tactics and strategies of confrontation of sectors of the working class are combined with land occupations, movements for cultural autonomy, for Indian rights, for women's demands, the rights of youth, students, the unemployed, senior citizens, and workers in the informal economy.
These are radical and plural movements, which feed popular resistance, and represent an uncompromising opposition to the prevailing neoliberalism. They are the decisive factor for the accumulation of popular forces, though they are not inscribed in political projects that have the seizure of power as their horizon. These social movements develop as potential "counter-powers" from below and in them, as James Petras adds, "each member is an organiser. " ("America Latina: el regreso
America $13-14bn., according to U.S. financial experts. In Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Costa Rica, some economists believe the increase in interest rates will be 14% above the already reached ceiling. In Argentina, the losses are already in the neighbourhood of $3bn.
But the principal Latin American victim of the Asian crisis is Brazil. Losses already exceed $8.3bn.
"The oscillations of international capital movements determine macroeconomic measures necessary to avoid devaluation. This caused domestic interest rates to double, a measure that affects consumers twice as hard. Interest rates on consumer loans reached more than 100% per year, an absurd level, if one considers that yearly inflation does not reach 7%." (Carlos Castilho, "Las bolsas como termómetro político." Tercer Mundo Económico #103, Montevideo, November 1997)
Other measures taken by the government of social-democrat Fernando Henrique Cardozo include increase in gasoline and utility rates, and thousands of layoffs in industry, commerce, and the public sector. The argument is the same as always: new hardships to reduce the fiscal deficit and to maintain macroeconomic stability. These renewed hardships are imposed in the name of something that has no face, no name, no homeland, something whose origins -and destination- nobody knows." (C. Castilho.)
Sixty years ago, John Maynard Keynes -the theoretical economist who inspired the creation of the World Bank and the IMF at the end of World War II- argued in his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, that "speculators can do no harm, as they are practically bubbles in the constant flow of time."
Latin America * Now, the bubble has become a speculative hurricane with no end in sight: the Canadian radical economist Michel Chossudovsky argues that "The purchase and sale of currencies represents, on a world scale, more than a billion dollars daily, of which only 15% correspond to real goods traded or real capital flows. " (El costo de la especulación. Revista del Sur #73, Montevideo, November 1997)
The proposes to follow the policies taken by Chile, Brazil, and Malaysia to "control" speculative capital. In the face of the current crisis, this serious discussion of "different entry and exit taxes" "incentives to promote direct foreign as opposed to portfolio investment, " as effective methods for "increasing the (relative) margin of autonomy of national states" seems like a
Nevertheless, to give the proposal a (somewhat) serious tone, the authors of the document propose, without much conviction, the introduction "on an international scale of regulation or taxation proposals such as the Tobin tax proposed by deceased French president François Mitterrand) on speculative capital movements. " This refers to James Tobin, the exIMF official, who proposed a tax rate of 25% on capital transactions, so as to discourage short term speculative flows. No alternative to counter-reforms
Broad circles of the Latin American left and centre-left, have theorised the possibility of a "transition" from the previous national-developmentalist or military-authoritarian model, toward the "new market democracies." Certain theoreticians of the "renewal" left go a bit advance the idea of "transformism" (which some attribute to
The Buenos Aires Consensus de la izquierda." Cuadernos del Sur #25,
October 1997). It is wrong,
The Concensus group was launched and Adolfo Aguilar Zinser (Mexico).
even untruthful to speak of the "apathy"
in 1996 on the initiative of the Mexican Ricardo Lagos and Carlos Ominami
Financial disaster
According to the IMF, during 1996 foreign investment in Latin America exceeded $77.7bn., and inflation was a historically low 12.9%. The 1997 IMF annual meeting in Hong Kong repeated the claim that "facilitating the channelling of saving-flows toward more productive uses, capital movements increase investment, growth, and prosperity."
Jorge Castañeda and the Brazilian Roberto Mangabeira Unger. Previous meetings were held in Mexico, Chile and
Of the major forces of the left, only the Broad Front of Uruguay, the Nicaraguan FSLN, the Colombian guerrilla organisations, the Cuban Communist Party, and the Zapatistas have not participated in these continental gatherings.
The summit, led by the Mexican PRD
(Chile), Carlos "Chacho" Alvarez, Gracila Fernandez Meijide, and Dante Caputo (Argentina), Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Leonel Brizola, Marco Aurelio Garcia, Tarso Genro, Ciro Gomes, and Vicentinho (Brazil), Sergio Ramirez (Nicaragua) and Facundo Guardado (E
These are all top leaders, ex-office holders, current officeholders or those with aspirations to soon be so. They and the Chilean Socialist Party (SP), share "vocation to govern" or "culture of
Brilliant prophecy. Unfortunately, a few months later, the stock markets of the
"Asian dragons" collapsed. The same electoral victories of the Alliance Democracy" agreement between the
"specialists"
began to speak of a "world
(FREPASO-Radical Civic Union) in Socialist Party and the Christian Demodepression," and a "threat to the world."
Argentina and Cardenas in Mexico, cracy that governs post-dictatorial Chile
During the Asian crisis, billions of dollars in currency reserves from the
This "parallel Sao Paulo Forum" has a mixed hybrid of social assistance and central banks of Southeast Asia were confiscated by private speculators. The effects soon arrived on local markets across Latin
America.
The earthquake has thus far cost Latin includes the majority of the left and centre-left politicians who, based on the agree on an "anti-neoliberal" response.
been attended by, among others,
Cuauhtemoc government."
Their model is the "Conciliation for combining privatising neoliberalism with social policies as recommended by the
World Bank and the Inter-American
• £2/$3.50/20FF. Cheque payable to P. Rousset, IRE, Postbus 53290, 1007 Amsterdam, Netheriands,
Gramsci) which combines elements of a radical break with continuity.
The case of Chile is the most emblematic. To justity continuity through other means (since the radical break does not exist), they assign a "foundational" character to the capitalist neoliberal reorganisation introduced by the Pinochet regime.
With the return of civilian governments, the mechanisms of political and social consensus were modified (even though military tutelage was maintained). "Civil society" can express itself pluralis-
Transformation and regroupment
The collapse of Stalinism and the continuing capitalist crisis has contradictory effects. Myths and illusions connected to the restoration of capitalism in the post-
Stalinist societies have dissipated, faced with the actually existing market economy.
But reactions to the socio-economic crisis all too often take the form of reactionary tendencies of an ethnic, nationalist, racial or religious character. Hence the urgent need to rebuild a world-wide movement of anti-capitalist struggle, taking account of the recomposition of the workers movement which is underway as a result of the double failure of social democracy and
Regroupments of forces determined to learn the lessons of the historical abomination that was Stalinism and to continue, against the winds and the tides, to fight against capitalism are being realised in a number of countries.
In all the countries where such possibilities exist, the organisations of the
Fourth International are ready to be part of the re-groupment process. We consider this as an important step towards the recomposition of the anti-capitalist left on a world scale. At the international level, the Fourth International is an active participant in re-groupment, bringing with tically and give democratic substance to the new contract between state and society.
However, in a framework of "irreversible" globalisation, the neoliberal logic governs, in naked fashion. The macroeconomic principle is not touched.
In this context, the structural adjustment policies and commercial opening to guarantee "competitiveness" negotiable, regardless of the government's coloration. Bank (IDB) President Enrique Iglesias has been explicit in this respect: reforms are here to stay, and form part of a similar but not uniform process. Countries will be able to put an accent on some aspect or other, to adapt the reforms to their own realities -consider the reform of the pension systems in Uruguay or Chile, for example- but the direction is the same. It is not easy to decree one day that one is not ready to follow the rules of the game and to abandon the race, or to decide to reverse course." (Semanario Busqueda, Montevideo, 2/10/97)
The message is unambiguous: the privatisation of the state, and the counter-reforms in education and social security are irreversible. Future governments of the left or centre-left will not be able to think of breaking with "the rules of the game."
The grouping wants to avoid any uncertainty on the left. "Privatisation is a political and economic resort of a contingent character, not a predisposition or ideological dogma...
We should use privatisations to fragment property ownership and increase competition, avoiding the substitution of public monopolies by private monopolies or oligopolies." This is all within the context of a "national strategy of development."
In the realm of social security, the document states that "the reform of the social security system offers a special opportunity to organise and increase private
" It proposes a mixed public and private system, that redistributes "part of the accounts of the richest to those of the poorest, " (as if the administrating firms were philanthropic institutions and not a mechanism for capital accumulation).
The World Bank, the major proponent of privatisating social security, doesn't see it that way. According to the Third World Institute, "the World Bank and other defenders of cutting pensions have begun to use a new argument: that senior citizens are less impoverished than children and thus merit less support from public funds. Pensions should be reduced, they say, so programmes to support children can increase.
This argument has begun to gain a certain respectability and analyses of thi type have appeared in serious and socially responsible publications. The millionaire Peter G. Peterson, defender of pension cuts, has made child welfare and "generational social justice' a part of his arsenal of attacks on social security and pensions. (Suzanne S. Paul and James A. Paul, Assault on pensions: Neither savings nor efficiency nor welfare. The World Bank's social security policies for
World Institute, point toward competitive, flexible, and above all, cheap labour whose "common thread is lowering the global costs of education and knowledge." (Marita Silvera, Education Policies of the World Bank and their Rationale." Correspondencia #25, PST publication, Montevideo, August
In summary, the includes not a word on the true nature of the movement toward liberalisation and privatisation, nor the slightest denunciation of this process of pillaging and gutting social necessities. Competitiveness, government efficiency, business productivity, technological modernisation, market regulation, and a call for the "democratisation of globalisation" along with administrative and governmental transparency to combat galloping corruption are the slogans.
But can these succeed without breaking with the market and the individualist logic of capitalism? The proposal of the , which Castañeda claims
"end neoliberalism," can be reduced
The powers-that-be don't even blink an eyelash at such demands. This is why they have reacted with such prudence to the electoral victories of the opposition in Argentina and Mexico.
Michael Shifter, a member of the InterAmerican Dialogue in the US, analyses the victory of the Alliance in the Argentine provincial and legislative elections without mincing any words: "There is no reason for Washington -neither Clinton's Democratic administration nor the Republican congress- to do anything else than welcome this new political dynamic, especially in light of the Alliance's declared adherence to the basic elements of the predominant economic model." (Clarin, Buenos Aires, 11/2/97).
The "predominant economic model" obviously refers to the convertibility plan of former minister Domingo Cavallo, which has increased the misery of millions
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International Viewpoint #298
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Populism in Latin America
and the sale of a great part of the national
The same could be said of the victory of Cardenas in Mexico. While recognising its democratic importance in the long-term process of defeating the PRI monopoly and the social dynamic it might generate (which will inevitably clash with the bureaucratised, institutionalised, and in many cases co-opted apparatus of the PRD), it is evident that the Cardenista administration in Mexico City is not scaring foreign investors or the US State
Cardenas himself -who no longer emphasises his denunciation of NAFTA or the need for a democratic break (to the extent that this would be a "transition" toward democracy)- admits that his "room for manoeuvre is limited. " Much of what can be done, he argues, lies in "the fight against crime and corruption, for administrative reform, social assistance for women and children, and promoting
(With the left... toward the centre, Interview with A. Krivine, Convergencía Socialista, Mexico, September/October
The left's electoral defeats of 1994 (El Salvador, Mexico, Brazil, and Uruguay) are already in the past. The left and centre-left, currently govern dozens of cities and a few capitals, and are preparing to take their electoral revenge on governing conservatives and liberals. But although the neoliberal project is in crisis, the correlation of forces is still unfavourable to progressive forces.
Given this situation, the document argues that the democratic and popular alternative to neoliberalism has no other option than constructing a "centre-left alliance" to replace "the alliance between the centre and the right that, in so many countries, has supported the conservative economic reforms of recent years.
The task of the centre should consist of "transforming the restlessness of the middle class and defending the generalisation of meritocracy in social life.
And "showing the impossibility of realising the emancipatory impetus of the old liberal cause in our countries through a simple imitation of the political and economies of the Atlantic North."
The left, for its part, has the task of "confronting inequality and combating dualism through extending democracy; instead of reproducing the division of the corporativist left of the organised sectors and the populist left of the disorganised sectors, this proposal seeks to erase this division that is so pernicious for all."
And the best way of doing this, it seems, is to denaturalise the identity of the left, integrating it into a project where the vision of confrontation with the system and launching an intransigent resistance in the context of a radical break with it is totally absent.
The left's role would be reduced to developing a critique of contradictions and injustices or, in the best of cases, collaborating in managing a "culture of governance " that does not call into question the nature of power, the state or its many mechanisms of control and mani-
The idea of a real struggle over the correlation of forces in society to construct a truly alternative project with popular support is straight-jacketed by the institutional-electoral road, where all initiatives toward self-organisation are seen as an obstacle to "governability:"
Facundo Guardado, a leader of El
Salvador's FMLN and a participant in the grouping, has clearly stated the objectives of how and why to enter the government:
"Taking the road of majority agreement, to govern El Salvador, move the country forward and put it on the road to progress requires agreement between all social, political, and business forces. " (Pagína 12, Buenos Aires, 7/12/97)
Lula and the majority current of the Workers Party propose a similar approach speak of a "front of oppositions" whose programme should also be negotiated with businessmen. Though businessmen are, of course, the primary beneficiaries of the status quo.
Lula goes even farther, and while demanding efficiency, dynamism, and competitiveness in a 'globalised world," accepts that it is possible to reconcile these neoliberal objectives with social welfare.
In Uruguay, Tabare Vazquez, leader of the leftist Frente Amplio (Broad Front) coalition, is confident there will be a "progressive government" in 2000, "It is necessary to be absolutely clear that it is not a question of touching up the most negative parts of the current neoliberal model or putting forward a programme for
It is a question of advancing in the direction of a development model that allows us to make its fundamental components compatible, that is, growth, distribution of wealth with social justice, national and regional sovereignty, the full realisation of men and women, freedom and the broadest political participation, decentralisation of decision making, and respect for the environment, among other central aspects. " (Progressive-Broad
"Some ideas to carry out," Montevideo, November 1997).
Vazquez insists on the need for a "social dialogue" between management and labour, refinancing the foreign debt, and an alliance with the political centre -in sum, choosing (or distinguishing?) bet-
"the desirable country and the possible country." He says nothing about the necessary country. Solidarity and deprivatisation
Those of us outside the "realistic" left and centre-left, with their vocation to govern, "have to put forward a most realistic (and necessary) programme of democratic, social, and economic reforms.
Latin America * There is a difference between their reforms and ours. What the times obviously demand is working in the social movements and its struggles, promoting and strengthening the unity of revolutionary currents without giving in to the temptation of conducting politics in the minefield of institutionality. And all the time creating the conditions to change the
This signifies assuming a radically different posture than what currently pre-
First is rejecting the "globalisation" of the economy and the reinforcement of market mechanisms as irreversible processes. "Globalisation is not a steamroller that is destroying everything in its path, writes Eric Toussaint, of the Committee to Cancel Third World Debt. "Forces of resistance are indeed present.
Globalisation is not a coherent economic system... Its contradictions are many -between imperialist powers, between corporations, social discord, crises of legitimacy of regimes, criminalisation of the behaviour of the major economic actors." (Eric Toussaint, Neoliberal Ideology and Politics in Perspective, La Gauche, Brussels,
This implies reviving the "national interest" that many consider dead. the theme of social interest, that is, the people's interest, must be emphasised even more. These interests are not in harmony with those of the market. The opening of the economy must be changed. Some commercial liberalisation might be useful, but freedom of movement for capital is contrary to the national and social
Instead of increasing the foreign debt and financing it with new loans and a greater dependence on speculative capital, dependence on such financing must be reduced to create the possibility for a sovereign treatment of the debt...while creating the conditions for internal investment where foreign investment can eventually fulfil a complementary and
On the strictly domestic level, argues Brazilian left leader João Machado, "it is necessary to "deprivatise" the state, submitting it to popular control, reinforcing its role as provider of basic social services for the population, responsible for social solidarity. Social security and social rights should be expanded, not reduced." (João Machado, Their Reforms and Ours, Em Tempo, Socialist Democracy Tendency of the PT, São Paulo, August, 1997)
"Public functions should be given a responsible for deficits created by these
The capacity for public investment should be restored, and instead of privatising public banks or socialising the losses of private banks, "it is necessary to again put the need to nationalise the financial system on the agenda." *
33
booknotes
Working class lives
In A Millennium of Family Change, Wally Seccombe follows the changes in the nature of family life from the peasant families of the Middle Ages to the very different forms of working-class family structure and relationships that appeared with the proletarianisation during the early modern period. interpretations, he shows how these changes in the family form helped bring about an acceleration in rates ot populaton growth in the years just preceding the Industrial Revolution. In the second volume, Weathering the Storm, he continues the analysis, exploring the changing forms of working-class family from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the resulting sharp decline in levels of working-class fertility.