> Take a look at the left's election
> victory in Uruguay. The new government's choices boil down to trying
> some kind of left program and facing a capital strike and economic
> crisis or trying the Lula approach of moderation and facing failure
> and defeat. You act as if it's just a matter of fidelity and will,
> and we face no structural constraints at all in the real world. It's
> a lot easier to call other people stupid, isn't it?
>
> Doug
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
These are the choices facing the new government in Uruguay. But there are also choices concerning how to respond to this dilemma. Vazquez--or Lula or any leftist politician who comes to power--would have to be pretty stupid indeed not to foresee an international capital strike in response to any serious redistributive measures before coming to office, and just as stupid not to have thought about a strategy for combating it, which would necessarily go beyond the arena of elections and legislative programs.
Lula lacked such strategy not because he was stupid, but because he was committed in advance to working within the electoral/parliamentary framework. This means, in effect, that he had already decided not to do anything to displease the US or its lending agencies. Vazquez's social-democratic economy minister, Danilo Astori, promises more of the same. "It's going to be just like Brazil," he says. This suggests that Vazquez's Broad Front operates on a similar method: engage in leftist rhetoric, in Vasquez's case promising to restore slashed social benefits, to get elected, and then back off, counseling "realism" in the face of "limited" choices. Post-election limitations were there before the elections. To talk about them only afterwards indicates a lack of seriousness about overcoming them in the first place. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20041102/f4012aa6/attachment.htm>