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. ------------------------------------------ What "strategy" did you have in mind to combat a capital strike? The only way to do so is to expropriate the bourgeoisie politically and economically, which means civil war and foreign intervention. Or print worthless paper money until an economic crisis and internal foreign-supported subversion brings your new government down. How far do you think Lula and Vasquez would get on this program? Or should they embark on a radical redistribution of power and property without first warning their supporters of the likely consequences? Even Chavez knows his limits, which are more elastic than most thanks to foreign capital's interest in Venezuelan oil.
Political leadership is about thinking things through to the end, and assessing the balance of forces, including the willingness of your base to do whatever it takes to win, and proceeding from there. When former revolutionaries become cautious government reformers, it's not because of a weak character or a newly-acquired taste for the good life or because they have illusions about the "parliamentary road", but because of their evolved assessment that they could not prevail in a revolutionary confrontation against their enemies, no matter how skilled their agitation or the heroism of their followers. Many of the former guerrillas and popular movement leaders who surround Lula and Vasquez came to that conclusion on the basis of many trials and a long and intimate connection with the masses which North American and West European radicals lack. The historic developments in the FSU and China, the decline of the international labour and socialist movement, and the growth of the capitalist world market, have also affected their thinking. It's easy to rush to judgement from an easy chair.
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