Between Market Democracies and Capitalist Globalization: Is There Any Prospect for Social Revolution in Latin America?

[Michael Pugliese]

<URL: http://www.sdonline.org/32/capitalist_globalization.htm >
Between Market Democracies and
Capitalist Globalization: Is There Any Prospect for Social Revolution in 
Latin America?
Carlos M. Vilas
Social revolutions are massive progressive processes confronting from below 
the whole arrangement of power structures. If success- ful, they involve 
profound changes in class relations, as well as changes in the material and 
symbolic dimensions of individual and collective life. Social revolutions 
are the contingent outcome of political, ideological, social, and economic 
factors at both the national and international levels, resulting from 
political agency. Revolutionary situations tend to develop when: 1) 
political oppres- sion and illegitimate rule (i.e. dictatorships, 
autocratic rule, systematic electoral fraud) combine with regressive social 
and economic changes, fostering new social inequalities or deepening 
ongoing ones; 2) political organizations waving the banners of social 
revolution win over the active support of large segments of the population; 
and 3) internal conflicts in the ruling elites and/or specific 
international conjunctures improve chances to seize state power to build a 
better society. The combination of all of these conditions sets up what is 
usually called a revolutionary situation. This explains why social 
revolutions occur so infrequently.
Examining the prospects for social revolution in Latin America involves 
questioning the ability of the area’s current democracies and progressive 
political forces to cope with the most socially perverse dimensions of 
economic backwardness: capitalist rule and globalization. The following 
discussion focuses on the nature of existing democratic regimes and their 
recent evolution towards what have been called “market democracies.” It 
then offers a very brief assessment of the impact of recent capitalist 
globalization in reshaping power relations at both the national and 
international levels, in determining the living conditions of large 
segments of the Latin American population, and in provoking new strategies 
of social mobilization and protest. Finally, I advance some preliminary 
conclusions on revolutionary prospects in these institutional and 
structural settings.
In sharp contrast to most of the twentieth century, the current Latin 
American landscape is one of representative democracies, with left-of- 
center parties as active participants in institutional politics. Democratic 
polities have never been conducive to revolutions. A democratic government 
may be ineffective in advancing progressive reforms. Yet democracy 
provides, at least in theory, institutional resources to peacefully change 
things. This tends to convince many that if they create the proper means ¾a 
progressive political party, a broad enough political coalition, a talented 
leader, a social security system¾things can be improved. Even if, from a 
Marxist perspective, the democratic capitalist state is nothing more than a 
veil for bourgeois dictatorship, revolutions have occurred only when the 
dictatorial aspect became blatant. Social unrest motivated by harsh living 
conditions and government policies¾such as high cost of living, 
environmental pollution, police brutality, or downsizing social services—is 
widespread in today’s Latin America, not infrequently involving violent 
reactions and subsequent state repression. Yet these are mostly defensive 
struggles usually linked to issue-targeted negotiations with government 
agencies. Revolution is not seen as either a necessity or a possibility, 
even by the most powerful confrontational social movements.1
Democracy is not an obstacle to structural changes from either a 
theoretical or a historical standpoint. As a matter of fact, the 
relationship between political regimes and structural change is rather 
loose. Structural change can be implemented or attempted by government 
agencies and bureaucratic actors not supported by or resulting from 
revolutionary struggle, as in post-1948 Costa Rica, the 1968-75 Peruvian 
military regime, Chile’s Unidad Popular (1970-1973), or even in populist or 
social democratic experiences such as Argentina’s early Peronist phase 
(1946-55) or Michael Manley’s government in Jamaica in the 1970s.2Whereas 
some of the attempts could not withstand fierce opposition from 
conservative coalitions of domestic and foreign forces, others proved 
extremely efficient in bringing about long-term restructuring. In turn, 
there is no direct correlation between political revolutionary efforts and 
social or economic outcomes. Despite their commitment to far-reaching 
restructuring and the widespread social mobilization and violence that 
these revolutionary efforts usually involve, revolutionary performance in 
terms of structural change frequently relies on a different set of 
alliances, resources, capabilities, and power arrangements than those that 
propelled confrontation with the old regime.
Throughout the 1990s a disjunction developed between the way a great many 
Latin Americans approached democratic regimes, and the way really existing 
democracies performed. People’s criteria for viewing a particular 
government as legitimate or democratic revolved not just around legal or 
institutional issues but also around concrete daily ones. They focused on 
democracy as the combined product of institutional tools and policy 
outcomes, pointing as much to a particular institutional system for 
decision-making as to the content of the decisions made. Grassroots and 
middle-class concepts of democracy evaluate institutional procedures on the 
basis of their ability to implement progressive socioeconomic and political 
changes (Alarcón Glasimovich 1992, Franco 1993, Lagos 1997). By contrast, 
what we have today is a number of polities subordinating democratic 
procedures and institutions to market goals¾what former US president Bill 
Clinton branded as “market democracies,” that is, democracies whose 
legitimizing principle and main goal is the advancement of 
capitalism.3Thus, “market democracies” go back to crass eighteenth- and 
nineteenth-century definitions of state/ capital relations as they put 
emphasis on such specific outcomes as securing property rights, fostering 
the conditions for capital accumulation, and widening the involvement of 
market forces in the allocation of public goods (World Bank 1997).
Power shifts from the late 1970s on prompted this reinter- pretation of 
democracy. Capital reinforced its rule over labor. At the same time, 
financial capital predominated over productive capital, and interaction 
with new global markets supplanted interaction with domestic or regional 
markets. World Bank and IMF-sponsored state reforms facilitated the 
dismantling of incipient populist/social democratic welfare states and gave 
an institutional imprint to the symbiotic relationship between economic and 
political power (Rodríguez Reina 1993, Vilas 1995, Concheiro Bórquez 1996, 
Fazio 1997, Basualdo 2000). In little over a decade, privatization of 
state-owned firms, public utilities, health and educational services, and 
pension and retirement systems, combined with across-the-board deregulation 
of finance, the reduction of unions’ bargaining power, and a dismantling of 
institutional solidarity networks, brought drastic changes in power 
relations and quality of life for many Latin Americans, damaging not just 
social well-being but also individual physical security.
For the first time since the 1920s the Latin American ruling classes have 
been able to combine capitalist development with bourgeois democracy. Under 
the aegis of the “Washington Consensus,” representative democracy turned 
out to be the institutional tool to advance increasing concentration of 
wealth and power along with a growth in inequality. This tends to confirm 
the most vulgar depictions of the state as the “executive committee” of the 
ruling class. Capitalist restructuring was conducted through a systematic 
bypassing of parliaments or downgrading their institutional capabilities in 
relation to strategic decision-making—e.g., pace and scope of 
privatizations, economic policies, foreign-debt management, state reform, 
etc. Most market-oriented reforms were implemented by executive order. The 
traditional democratic principle of majority rule thus remained confined to 
periodic elections of governments, while effective governance took place in 
accordance with economic power (Vilas 1997, Diniz 2000).
Increasing inequality and economic hardship are insufficient conditions for 
social revolution. Revolutions involve consciousness, organization, and 
leadership, which do not develop spontaneously— although ingredients of 
spontaneity exist in every revolutionary process. Revolutionary 
consciousness has to be developed and a fighting spirit enforced through 
organization. Revolutionary political activists teach the common people to 
link their individual experiences of oppression and exploitation to general 
impersonal processes and actors. They encourage organizing and they bring 
leadership. They provide a political explanation for people’s grievances. 
They convince them that victory is only attainable through their own direct 
involvement and that revolutionary struggle is the only meaningful and 
successful path. The outcome of the process was summed up as follows by a 
Comandante of the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional): 
“Peasants...responded as if by magic, yet there was really no more magic 
than in the years we spent in the mountains” (Ruiz 1980).
The hypothesis of an imminent overall restructuring of social, political, 
economic, and cultural relations has receded in most Latin American 
countries as participation in state and government institutions has 
substituted for confronting or replacing them. In both El Salvador and 
Guatemala guerrilla warfare ended up in political negotiations which 
eventually led to constitutional reforms and the insertion of former 
insurgents into civilian life and mainstream politics. This also looks like 
the inevitable future of the Chiapas conundrum. In Colombia, guerrillas 
seem to approach war as a means to strengthen their positions until the 
moment arrives when political negotiation will be the only feasible option 
for the government. Across the continent, dozens of municipal and 
provincial governments are held by modernizing democratic forces—including 
capitals or mega-cities such as Buenos Aires, Montevideo, São Paulo, Porto 
Alegre and Mexico City. These same forces have also been able to build 
electoral coalitions running the national government in Chile. Prospects 
for broad political and economic restructuring have given way to pragmatic 
programs to attack the most obvious social effects of the economic 
restructuring. These are not times to assault the Winter Palace, but to 
reshape it and book some of its new accommodations.
A number of mass rebellions took place in several countries during the last 
decade: Guatemala (1993), Ecuador (1997 and 1999), Peru (2000). Governments 
were ousted as a reaction to economic crisis, corruption, and authoritarian 
manipulation of democratic institutions. Yet the absence or fragility of 
revolutionary actors prevented the unorganized masses from taking advantage 
of their own efforts and attempting to fill the power vacuum they had 
engendered. In the absence of organization, leadership, and anything more 
than anti-government rage, what might have evolved into a revolutionary 
situation ended up in new rounds of electoral participation or closed-door 
dealing among traditional political parties. However, revolutionary power- 
building and the accumulation of forces are protracted processes that 
demand long-term approaches more than short-term solutions. Conjunctural 
failures can teach lessons and contribute to subsequent more successful 
efforts. Revolutions, like plays, may have rehearsals, as Lenin referred to 
the 1905 Revolution in Russia.
Twentieth-century Latin American revolutions developed in a variety of 
regional and international settings, interacting in diverse ways with 
external actors and processes. Mexico’s revolution (1910) erupted at a time 
when the US was still building its hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. 
Guatemala’s (1944) and Bolivia’s (1952) revolutions belong to the beginning 
and late years of the Cold War. The revolutions in Cuba (1959), Grenada 
(1979), and Nicaragua (1979) triumphed during the Cold War in areas of 
uncontested US regional supremacy. Free trade and free cross-border 
investment were central traits at the time of the Mexican Revolution. 
Capitalism was looking for a new transnational system when the Guatemalan 
revolutionaries seized power. Bolivia’s and Cuba’s revolutions belong to 
the golden years of the Bretton Woods regulated world economy—a system that 
was crumbling under the initial blows of the current era of globalization 
by the time the New Jewel Movement in Grenada and the FSLN in Nicaragua 
began to implement their revolutionary programs.
As modern social revolutions have taken place in a world of nation-states, 
the end of the Cold War plus ongoing global restructuring along with 
increasing trade and financial integration pose questions about the impact 
of new international alignments and actors on the prospects for 
revolutionary change. Statements about the emergence of a “borderless 
world” (Ohmae 1990) or “the end of geography” (O’Brien 1991) have led to 
deriding revolutions as a thing of the past. Insofar as they aim at seizing 
state power in order to advance progressive changes, the impact of economic 
globalization and new informational technologies on state capabilities 
would make revolution a misguided, backward-looking fantasy. While 
traditional conservative politics opposed revolutions from a class 
perspective, updated conservative rhetoric faults them on the grounds of 
being passé. Yesterday they were dangerous, today they are outmoded.
<SNIP>
<URL: http://www.sdonline.org/32/capitalist_globalization.htm >

-- 
Michael Pugliese

I got an axe-handle pistol
with a graveyard frame.
It shoots tombstone bullets
wearing balls and chains.
I'm drinking TNT.
I'm smokin' dynamite.
I hope some screwball
start's a fight,
'cause I'm ready,
ready,
ready

Muddy Waters, "I'm Ready."