​     An ultra-rightist, Jair Bolsonaro, won the October 28 presidential elections in Brazil, attaining 55.21% of the votes, against the leftist candidate of the Workers Party (PT for its initials in Portuguese and Spanish), Fernando Haddad, who received 44.79%.  Bolsonaro will take office in January.
 
     Let us distinguish between the ultra-Right and the Right.  Generally, commentators tend to use the designation “ultra-Right” for political figures that adopt hate speech against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, gays, and women.  There are, however, other differences as well.  The Right likes to maintain the fiction of democracy, whereas the ultra-Right tends to override the pretense in favor of repressive measures against leftist organizations, political activists, minorities and gays.  Moreover, the Right endorses neoliberal economic policies, whereas the ultra-Right, at least in rhetoric, endorses an economic nationalism that defends the industry of the nation. 
 
        Following this distinction, it can be said that Bolsonaro is for the most part ultra-Right.  He has a history of using hate speech, making openly fascist, homophobic, misogynist and racist declarations; and he professes admiration for Brazil’s military dictatorship of 1976 to 1989, having declared that “Democracy is good for nothing,” and that the only way to solve Brazil’s problems is through a new dictatorship.
 
     However, he professes support for neoliberal economic policies, which if implemented, would place him in alliance with the forces of the Right, in Brazil and in the United States.  Therefore, the Bolsonaro victory in Brazil, as Fiona Edwards observes, “strengthens the US project in Latin America to attack the sovereignty, independence and democracy of the continent’s left governments including in Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.”  The U.S. goal is to attain regime change in key countries in order to reestablish domination of Latin America. 
 
      But the Bolsonaro victory is a political setback for the Brazilian Right, which used the tactic of accusations of corruption against PT to end its thirteen-year rule.  The strategy backfired, for it led to a popular rejection of both the Left and the Right, resulting in the rise of Bolsonaro, an anti-establishment political figure of the ultra-Right.  However, given his orientation to neoliberal economic policies, the Right and Bolsonaro could arrive to an accommodation.
 
      From 2003 to 2016, the Workers Party governments of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”) and Dilma Rousseff registered important gains.  As Brazilian commentator Marcelo Zero observes, “Despite much resistance and prejudice, the Lula and Dilma governments managed for a time to promote social inclusion for vast segments of the population and substantially reduced poverty and inequality, in a context of fierce opposition but relative democratic stability.”  On the international plane, the PT governments pursued a policy of alliance with progressive and socialist governments in Latin America and Eurasia.  Lula served two terms, and he finished his second term with record high approval ratings; his tenure was followed by the election of Dilma, and her electoral victory for her second term was by record-breaking margins. 
 
      During this period, the PT governments made important accommodations to finance capital, including low taxation of the rich and high interest rates (which has the effect of attracting capital to finance rather than to investments in production).  Such accommodation to finance capital make political sense, for it nullified the opposition of finance capital to the PT governments, thus facilitating political stability and making possible international alliances that would lead to mutually beneficial South-South commerce and industrial development in the long term.  As long as commodity prices were high, the country would possess resources for funding significant social programs, enabling socioeconomic gains in the short time.  The strategy could be viewed as a politically intelligent first step toward more fundamental structural transformations in the long term. 
 
      However, when the commodity price boom ended, preservation of the socioeconomic gains required adjustments in the accommodation to finance capital.  Accordingly, the Rousseff government moved to reduce the absurdly high rates of interests, which provoked an attack by finance capital on the PT government, involving an assault on democratic structures and not merely on the Workers Party.
 
      The attack was centered on accusations of corruption, on two fronts.  First, a media and parliamentary coup d’état against Dilma, described by Zero as involving a coup against an honest president in order to put in power a band of corrupt politicians.  It was accomplished by the abandonment of the PT parliamentary coalition by the Brazilian Democratic Movement (BDM), which joined with the opposition in parliament to impeach Dilma on unsubstantiated charges, bringing the Vice President and BDM leader Michel Temer to the presidency.  Temer immediately began imposing neoliberal austerity measures, which have deepened the economic crisis and led to greater unemployment and underemployment.
 
      The second front was the arrest of former President Lula, in order to block his return to power via a presidential bid in 2018.  Noam Chomsky has noted the baseless character of the charges.  “The primary charge against Lula, based on plea bargains by businessmen sentenced for corruption, is that he was offered an apartment in which he never lived. Hardly overwhelming.”  With the support of the judiciary in these trumped up charges, Lula was barred from running in the 2018 presidential elections, even though polls showed him to be the favorite candidate by far.  Zero notes that “according to all polls, Lula was the clear favorite and would have beaten Bolsonaro by a wide margin if he had been allowed to run.”
 
     Inasmuch as corruption is rampant in the world, no head of state or ruling political party, no matter how committed, can completely eliminate it.  So corruption becomes fair game for cynical politicians to undermine the credibility of their political opponents.  As Chomsky writes of corruption in Brazil, “singling out the PT for demonization is pure cynicism, considering the escapades of the accusers.”
 
     The cynical political game of accusations of corruption is played on a global scale, with the North seeking to undermine the legitimacy of progressive and leftist governments of the South with charges of corruption.  As Chomsky points out, corruption is far more rampant in the North, but most of it is technically legal.  Such corruption includes absurdly low cash settlements for criminal behavior by corporations, manipulation of wage payments to workers, offshore tax havens, and exemptions from taxes, all of it technically legal.  In addition, there are legal campaign contributions, through which elected officials are placed in the debt and obligation to wealthy big contributors. 
 
     The only remedy to the manipulation of the political process by cynical accusations of corruption is the political intelligence of the people.  Our initial reaction to any charge of corruption against any government official ought to be suspicion, not of the conduct of the accused, but of the motives of the accuser.  And we should maintain this principled position, , which is consistent with the due process principle of innocent until proven guilty, until we are provided clear evidence of wrong-doing.  The disciplined political intelligence of the people would put an end to the manipulation of the political process though accusations of corruption by cynical politicians and actors.
 
      In the case of Brazil, the entire affair of the unfolding media-parliamentary-judicial coup d’état of 2016-2018 directed against the two principal PT leaders provoked disgust among the people, deepening distrust for traditional political parties, in which the PT, in power from 2003 to 2016, was implicated.  The BDM, principal actors in the coup, fell sharply in electoral support; and support for the PT fell, although not as much as the BDM.  Apparently, the false accusations against Dilma had some effect in undermining her prestige among the people.  Lula, who completed his two terms before the dishonorable coup was carried out, was exempted from the popular rejection, but he was excluded from the elections by a corrupt judicial process.
 
      In disgust, the people turned to a marginal political figure from the ultra-Right, whose rapid rise was surprising to all.  The attack on democracy by the Right was successful in dethroning the Workers Party; but it backfired, because it brought to power an ultra-Right political figure not of the political establishment.
 
     There are important lessons to be learned from the loss of political power by the Left in Brazil.  Of primary importance, the Left has to be more effective in political education.  It is not enough to mobilize the people for demonstrations and to put forth slogans.  Leaders and members of political parties and movement organizations of the Left have to be educators, developing the people in political, social, and scientific consciousness.  The Brazilian theologian and intellectual Frei Betto has been critical of the Left in the regard.  He writes that “the political literacy of the people has not been addressed.  A progressive government is not maintained on the basis of slogans.”
 
      In addition, inasmuch as the media of communication are in the hands of corporate interests, the Left has to pay attention to the democratization of the media of communication and the development of alternative media.  Related to this, the Left has to become more effective in the use of social media, which the Right and the ultra-Right has mastered.
 
     Although Bolsonario can reasonably be understood as a figure of the ultra-Right, his victory should be viewed as part of the counterrevolutionary counterattack of the Latin American Right, which has been unfolding with renewed intensity since 2014.  In the first place, his electoral victory was a consequence of the parliamentary-judicial-media coup d’état launched by the Brazilian Right against the Workers’ Party.  And one would presume that the Brazilian Right acted with the support of the political Right of the United States and sectors of international capital.  Secondly, Bolsonario’s professed economic neoliberalism makes possible an alliance with the Right in the United States, given its commitment to neoliberal imperialist penetration of Latin America.  Brazilian finance capital also has a particular interest in such Brazilian subordination to U.S. imperialist interests.
 
       Two things strike me about the counterrevolutionary counterattack of the Latin American Right.  First, its gains have been based on the deception of the people.  In Argentina, Mauricio Macri won the presidential elections of November 2015 by falsely presented himself as a progressive candidate in defeating the candidate put forth by Christina Kirchner’s party.  In Venezuela, the electoral victory of the Right in the December 2015 parliamentary elections was made possible by the strategic position of the Right in the economy, enabling it to wage economic war in order to undermine the economy, and to blame the Chavist government for the consequences of their own misdeeds.  In Ecuador in 2017, Lenin Moreno was a Trojan horse, a candidate of the Nation Alliance of Rafael Correa, pretending to seek to push forward its progressive agenda, but in reality a representative of the Right.  
 
     Secondly, in the political space that was attained through such deceptions, the Right has conducted itself in a blatant anti-popular manner.  The Venezuelan parliamentary majority had no plan to offer as an alternative to the Chavist project.  Its strategy was the removal from office the constitutionally elected president Nicolás Maduro, and it was outmaneuvered by Maduro’s convoking of a Constitutional Assembly.  In Argentina, Macri adopted anti-popular and anti-national measures in accordance with neoliberal recipes, provoking serious economic problems and mass demonstrations.  Similarly, Temer in Brazil took decisive anti-popular neoliberal steps, which combined with its odor of corruption, led to the victory of an ultra-Right candidate.
 
     In short, in the space attained recently, the Latin American Right is demonstrating that it has no politically viable plan to offer.  The Right returned to power has not conduced itself in a politically intelligent manner.  It has not formulated some kind of clever “post pink tide” political posture that pretends to make improvements in the popular measures of the progressive governments as it in reality serves the interests of international capital.  The Right back in power does nothing other than to return to the neoliberal policies that were rejected by the people, which in the past fueled the rise to power of the progressive and leftist parties. 
 
      It seems, therefore, that the counterrevolutionary Latin American Right does not come armed with a viable political strategy, which does not bode well for its capacity to attain popular legitimacy.  It is reasonable to project that the revitalized Right will not be able to maintain itself in power on the basis of popular support, and that it would only be able to maintain itself in power via popular repression and military dictatorships, backed by U.S. military power, which is to say, by an ultra-Right turn.
 
      The situation in Latin America mirrors the world-system as a whole.  Imperialism and neoliberalism have been based on deceptions of the people.  During the course of the twentieth century, imperialism presented itself as democratic, when in reality its interests were in raw materials, cheap labor, and markets for its surplus goods; a fundamental deception that has been exposed by anti-imperialist movements.  In the 1980s, neoliberalism invoked an ideological attack on the state, absurdly presenting the state as the source of underdevelopment and global economic problems; a deception exposed by the observable gains of the socialist and progressive governments (and the Asian tigers), in which states successfully promote economic development through direction of and engagement in the economy.  In essence, the neocolonial world-system is based on untruths and deception, and it is not sustainable in the long run; while socialist and progressive governments of the world are demonstrating a politically and economically viable alternative road.
 
       Therefore, in my view, the correct reading of the situation in Latin America and the world is that recent gains of the Right are temporary and unsustainable.  The Right must give way either to the ultra-Right, political repression, and militarized governments, the inevitable contradictions of which could result in the fragmentation of the world-system and/or worldwide chaos; or to the progressive and leftist governments and movements that are seeking to construct a more just, democratic, and sustainable world-system.
 
       We find ourselves in a historic moment in which humanity confronts the option of barbarism or socialism, as Rosa Luxemburg understood.  Fidel taught that ideas are the most important weapons of revolutionaries.  In order to prepare ourselves to be effective soldiers in the battle of ideas, we must study the historic and unfolding process of popular and socialist revolutions, in order that, on the basis of the teachings of the contemporary prophets of humanity, we can develop the ideas that we need.  These prophets are the leaders of various revolutions and movements of the last two hundred years: the Haitian Revolution; the Latin American independence movements of the early nineteenth century; the mid-nineteenth century movements of workers, artisans, and peasants in Western Europe; the October Revolution of 1917; the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions, which have evolved into politically stable and economically viable pragmatic socialist projects; the Non-Aligned Movement and its demands for a New International Economic Order; and socialist and progressive governments of recent years in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil, and Argentina.  They have left us an important legacy of humanity: a political culture that has been developed not on the basis of deception but on the basis of truth and science; and that has been driven not by particular interests but by the common interest of humanity in a just and sustainable world. 
 
     In this important historic moment, revolutionaries must be above all students and popular educators.  Our duty is to study the revolutionary cultural heritage of humanity, and to patiently and effectively teach our peoples, so that the people can block the pending turn to fascism, and can strengthen the possibilities for the more just and democratic world-system presently being developed by the governments of China, Russia, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, and by international organizations of the Third World like the Non-Aligned Movement and the G-77 plus China.

References
 
Chomsky, Noam.  “I Just Visited Lula, the World’s Most Prominent Political Prisoner.”  October 2, 2018.
 
Edwards, Fiona.  “Brazil’s Presidential race 2018.”  eyesonlatinamerica.com, October 8, 2018,
 
Zero, Marcelo.  “International interests and the destruction of Brazilian Democracy.”  New Socialist, October 24, 2018.

      An article by the editors of New Cold War maintains that the popular support for Bolsonaro in the Brazilian elections was less than has been widely reported in the Western media.  They note that the widely cited figure of 55.13% is Bolsonaro’s percentage of votes cast for the two candidates, and it ignores blank and invalid votes. Furthermore, it does not take into account registered voters who did not vote, which the editors interpret as an act of defiance, inasmuch as voting is mandatory in Brazil.  Taking these factors into account, they observe that Balsonaro received votes from 39.2% of registered voters, which they consider a more accurate assessment of his actual support.
 
     The editors further maintain that, historically, fascism has come to power not as a majority but as a significant minority, and it came to power in spite of being a minority through cooperation of the judiciary sector, elimination of the opposition, and the tacit consent of a middle sector that is opposed to the leftwing alternative.  They maintain that these factors were present in the parliamentary-judiciary-media coup d’état against Lula and Dilma (see “The ultra-Right wins in Brazil” 11/26/2018).
 
       The Argentinian economist Claudio Katz, however, maintains that the various manifestations of the ultra-Right in the world today are different from classical fascism, in that they embrace economic neoliberalism rather than the economic nationalism of classical fascism.  “All the variants of the global ultra-right [today] share the same combination of neoliberalism with xenophobia. That is why they reject immigration but accept the continued global circulation of capital and goods. They are chauvinists fascinated by the market who reject the protectionism of their predecessors.”  He maintains that conditions in the world today are pointing to the emergence of a new form of fascism, “neoliberal fascism.”
 
      Such a neoliberal fascism, in Brazil or any nation in the semiperipheral and peripheral zones of the world-economy, would involve the eclipse of any national development project that represents the interests of the national bourgeoisie; for it would involve the complete subordination of national productivity, commerce, and finance to international capital.  Such subordination indeed has been the tendency in the semiperiphery and periphery since 1980.  Elites of the periphery and semi-periphery can adjust to this turn away from autonomous national economic development, if they adapt by reconverting their investment to financial capital and international corporations.  Although there is some resistance, the elite can adapt to neoliberal fascism in the semiperiphery/periphery.
 
     However, for popular sectors of the periphery and semiperiphery, reaction to neoliberal policies takes a different form.  Inasmuch as neoliberal priority to international capital generally has negative effects on urban and rural employment and on the standard of living of the people, the global neoliberal project has given rise since the 1990s to progressive social movements.  In Latin America, the renewal of the social movements led to progressive and socialist governments, now under counterattack by the Latin American Right.  Ultimately, the restauration of the neoliberal project in Latin America would require repression of the awakened popular classes, which could be accomplished through control of the military and police forces by the executive branch, and the subordination of the parliament to these bodies of force.  Such then are the basic characteristics of the emerging neoliberal fascism in the semi-peripheral and peripheral zones: subordination to imperialist neocolonial powers and to international capital, adaptation of elites to such subordination, the increasing militarization of the state, the repression of social movements and the people; and manipulation of the media of communication.
 
      In my last post (“The ultra-Right wins in Brazil” 11/26/2018), I wrote of the possibility of neoliberal fascism in Brazil and elsewhere, although with different terminology.  I suggested the possibility of an alliance in Brazil between the Right (committed to neoliberalism) and the ultra-Right (characterized xenophobia and repression and represented by Bolsonaro).  I maintained that such a turn by the Right to the ultra-Right is a possibility, because the Right has no project to offer for the benefit of the nation and the people; it only returns to the anti-national and anti-popular neoliberalism of the 1980s.  The Right, therefore, will be rejected by the people, as occurred from 1994 to 2014.  The politicians of the Right can only maintain themselves in power by turning to the ultra-Right.  That is, by abandoning the pretense to democracy and turning to repression of social movements, with the support of a fascist minority formed by the scapegoating of the marginal, the political errors of the Left, and the media distortions of the alternative proposal of the Left.
 
       In contrast to the semiperipheral and peripheral zones, the ultra-Right in the USA can embrace economic nationalism.  Neoliberalism since 1980 has been implemented only partially in the core.  In the neoliberal creed, the nations of the semi-periphery and periphery do not have the right to intervene in the market to protect their national economies, but the global powers do.  Accordingly, Trump’s economic nationalism is fully consistent, in practical terms, with Brazilian neoliberalism and subordination to international capital and with the historic intentions of U.S. imperialism in Latin America.
 
     Trump’s economic nationalism provokes much resistance in the U.S. power elite, because many sectors of the industrial elite have made their adjustments to U.S. deindustrialization during the last twenty-five years, through investments in peripheral manufacturing and finance capital.  So there is a civil war within the U.S. power elite, with many castigating Trump for his refusal to accept the rules of a world-system dominated by international capital, transnational corporations, a manipulated international media of communication, and the myths of representative democracy.  Trump, on the other hand, discerns the popular dissatisfaction with representative democracy and the relative economic decline of the USA, and he seeks to obtain popular support for a militarist economic nationalism through the scapegoating of the marginal.  That is to say, Trump seeks to revive the fortunes of the declining hegemonic neocolonial power with a turn toward a new form of fascism.
 
     The profound contradictions of the world-system began to be evident in the 1960s and 1970s.  As they became evident, the global elite turned to the Right, which only deepened the contradictions.  Now, showing signs of a move to the ultra-Right or neoliberal neofascism, the world-system is exposing its true character.  From a scientific vantage point based in the perspective of the colonized, we are able to see its essence as a system established on a foundation of force, conquest, slavery, and colonialism, which evolved to a neocolonial world-system, with apparent but not real forms of democracy.  For us, it is hardly surprising that, in its hour of profound structural crisis, the world-system would return to its roots, shedding its democratic masque and revealing its hidden essence of force and domination, trademarks of fascism.
 
      In making clear its true character, the world-system demonstrates the only possible road for humanity.  The movements of the Left in the North must develop a more global and historical consciousness, and form political parties that educate the people, explaining the colonial and repressive character of the world-system.  The Left in the North must develop alternative political parties that educate the people toward rejection of the Right and the ultra-Right, toward an anti-fascism that also sees the repressive character of “representative democracy,” and toward cooperation with the neocolonized peoples of the world in the development of a more just, democratic, and sustainable world-system.

References
 
Editors.  “Interrogating the Bolsonaro Era.”  New Cold War (November 17, 2018).
 
Katz, Claudio.  “Interrogating the Bolsonaro Era,” New Cold War (November 17, 2018).

     By a vote of 61 to 20, the Brazilian Senate has removed President Dilma Rousseff from office.  The progressive governments of Latin America and the progressive social movements consider it to be a parliamentary coup d’état.

     The President was accused of emitting credits without the authorization of the Congress and of delaying payments to public banks in order to finance social programs.  These fiscal strategies, however, were used by previous governments, without any political consequences.  Moreover, a report submitted by the technical staff of the Senate noted that the accusations against Rousseff did not have any basis, and they did not constitute a “crime of responsibility,” which the Constitution requires for the removal of a president from office. The report maintained that no evidence was presented of crimes of corruption or “crimes of responsibility.”

     The accusation of corruption against Dilma Rousseff is political farce.  Brazil has a notoriously corrupt political process, and Dilma, who was imprisoned by the military dictatorship in the early 1970s, enjoys a reputation of personally not participating in common corrupt practices.  Moreover, she and her Workers’ Party, which captured the presidency under the leadership of Luis Inácio Lula in 2002, has been seeking to reform the political system, restructure the financing of political campaigns, and investigate cases of corruption.  Indeed, sixty percent of the Senators who voted for her removal are presently under investigation for corruption; as is Michel Temer, the former Vice-President who became interim president on May 12 and now assumes the presidency until 2018; and as are seven members of the government that Temer has formed since May.  One wonders if the parliamentary coup is a strategy by corrupt politicians to stop investigations moving against them.

       Beyond its efforts to combat corruption, the Workers’ Party of Brazil is a threat to the interests of the Brazilian oligarchy and US imperialism.  As the Cuban government pointed out in its declaration of solidarity with Dilma, Lula and the Workers’ Party, the governments of Lula and Dilma, in addition to combating poverty and increasing education and health care, have been actively participating in the process of Latin American and Caribbean integration, seeking to develop an alternative to a US-imposed form of integration.  Brazil played a central role in the defeat of the US-proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), and it was the leading force in the constitution of the South American Union of Nations (UNASUR).  It also has been an active member in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which has been seeking to sidestep the US- and European-dominated world-system by developing alternative structures of commerce, finance and cultural exchange among the nations of the South (see Declaration of the Revolutionary Government of August 31, 2016).

      The removal of Dilma from office is a victory for the imperialist and right-wing counteroffensive against the progressive governments of Latin America.  The counteroffensive has assumed a new intensity since 2014, when the fall of raw materials prices, including a sharp decline in the price of oil, created economic difficulties for the region. The counteroffensive has included: economic war and political destabilization in Venezuela; the organization of miners into cooperatives advocating privatization, in opposition to the mining unions, in Bolivia; and an international media campaign to discredit the upcoming elections in Nicaragua.  

     Central to the political process that culminated in the removal of Dilma from office was the abandonment of the Workers’ Party coalition by the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB).  The PMDB decided to abandon its alliance with the Workers’ Party and to join in the imperialist and oligarchic counteroffensive.  Inasmuch as the previous agreement with the Workers’ Party resulted in the PMDB occupying the Vice-Presidency in the person of Temer, the initiative to remove Dilma has had the result of putting the PMDB, now allied with the Right, in control of the executive branch.

      But the victory of the imperialist and oligarchic counteroffensive may not be long-lasting.  Following the shameful vote, Dilma declared to the people that she will continue to struggle tirelessly for the good of the nation, and that she will confront the illegitimate government with determined opposition.  And on the following day, there were massive popular demonstrations against the Temer government.  Does the dishonorable conduct of the Right make it possible for the Workers’ Party to form new alliances, perhaps with the radical Left, and return to power in 2018 with greater strength?

     In the region as a whole, during the counteroffensive since 2014, when the Right has taken partial control (in Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil), it has acted in an uncompromising manner, in accordance with the interests of US imperialism and the Brazilian hierarchy.  Measures taken and proposed include privatizations, cutbacks in social programs, and greater opening for foreign capital; clearly revealing the intention of the Right to return to the neoliberal and anti-popular policies of the 1980s and 1990s.  The conduct of the Right in its recent partial taking of power should teach the people to not be deceived by the vague promises of politicians who stand opposed to the progressive governments, for said politicians represent the interests of the United States, transnational corporations, and the sector of the national bourgeoisie tied to transnational capital.

     For the Cuban journalist Laura Bécquer Paseiro, the parliamentary coup d’état in Brazil is evidence of the serious limitations of bourgeois democracy.  As she sees it, a conservative minority, soundly defeated in the elections of 2014, was able to nullify the political will of the people, expressed in the electoral process, by means of lies and political maneuvering.  

     This suggests that the people must not only reject the vague promises and distortions of the Right, but also must seek ways to fundamentally restructure the political process itself, so that it is not subject to manipulations by the powerful and the wealthy.

Key words: Brazil, parliamentary coup d’état, Dilma Rousseff, Lula, Workers’ Party of Brazil. Latin American Right

Posted September 27, 2016

       As we have seen, a new political reality has emerged in Latin America since 1994, characterized by: popular movements in opposition to neoliberalism; the emergence of self-proclaimed socialist governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua; the emergence of progressive governments in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay; the increasing prestige of socialist Cuba; and the establishment of regional organizations of solidarity and cooperation, such as ALBA and CELAC.  What has occurred can be understood as a popular revolution, inasmuch as political parties that seek to represent the interests of the popular sectors, and not the interests of one or more sectors of the elite, have taken power.

       From its outset, the post-1994 Latin American popular revolution has generated a counterrevolution, composed of those who have economic interests or ideological motives to bring down the revolutionary project.  The primary social base of the counterrevolution is the Latin American estate bourgeoisie, which has an economic interest in the preservation of the global core-peripheral relation, by virtue of its role in exporting raw materials to the core.  Import-export trading companies also have interests in the preservation of core-peripheral trade.  In addition, the privately-owned media of communication tend to be opposed to the popular revolution, inasmuch as socialist and progressive patterns of thought historically have expressed the idea that the media of communication ought to be under public control rather than in private hands.  In addition, the middle class and new urban residents, influenced by the ideological messages of the privately-owned media, are participants in protest actions organized by the counterrevolution.
 
     Since 2012, the new counterrevolution of the Right has been able to reverse the momentum that the Left enjoyed in Latin America from 1994 to 2011.  The more favorable situation for the Right has been rooted in three factors: (1) the decline of prices for Latin American raw materials exports, on which the region continues to depend, in spite of the revolution’s long-range goal of breaking the core-peripheral relation; (2) the problem of corruption, which is a persistent problem in all governments, and which the progressive governments of Latin America have been able to reduce but not eliminate; and (3) the tendency for the people to have expectations that are unrealistically high with respect to revolutionary processes, and a related tendency to blame the government for the persistence of any problem. Commentators have identified four strategies that have been used by the Right in its recent upsurge: an electoral strategy of vague promises in defense of popular interests, economic warfare, ideological distortions and attacks of the government through the mass media, and the parliamentary coup d’état.  

     The electoral strategy of the Right is to form new political parties and make vague promises of change, formulating a discourse that sounds progressive.  This is combined with aggressive and distorted attacks on the government in the mass media, owned by corporations that support the counterrevolutionary project of the Right.  This strategy for the most part has not had success in obtaining sufficient electoral support to remove the progressive governments, but it was successful in the presidential elections in Argentina in November 2015, taking advantage of the term limits that precluded a third presidential term for popular and progressive President Cristina Kirchner.  Mauricio Macri, of the rightist party Cambiemos (Let us change), defeated Daniel Scioli, candidate of the Front for Victory (the party of Kirchner) by a vote of 51.32% to 48.68%.   Once in office, Macri ignored his vaguely progressive promises and adopted neoliberal polices; such as eliminating government protection of the national currency, cuts in government employment, and settling the “vulture funds” conflict in a form favorable to foreign capital.  These measures have provoked popular protests (see “The Right takes power in Argentina” 1/4/2016).

     In the case of Venezuela, the electoral strategy of the Right was combined with economic warfare.  The Venezuelan economy is dependent on the importation of food, medicine and other goods, and the importing companies launched a campaign to reduce importation and to horde goods, creating shortages and price increases, in an effort to discredit government economic policies.   In conjunction with a sharp drop in petroleum prices, the strategies of vague electoral promises, economic warfare and a media anti-governmental propaganda campaign were successful in creating the conditions for a victory of the Right in the parliamentary elections of December 2015. The Rightist parliamentary leaders then launched a campaign to end the presidency of the constitutionally-elected President Nicolás Maduras, before the completion of his term of office.  The United Socialist Party of Venezuela has organized popular demonstrations in defense of the constitutionally-elected president, who was able to successfully host the Non-Aligned Movement in September 2016 (see “Economic war in Venezuela” 1/7/2016; “Political polarization in Venezuela” 1/8/2016; “Economic and media war against Venezuela” 6/9/2016).

      In Brazil, the central strategy has been the parliamentary coup d’état.  The Workers’ Party came to power in 2002 as the leading force in a progressive coalition of parties.  It enjoyed fourteen years of rule, under presidents Luis Inácio Lula and Dilma Rousseff, during which time a number of progressive domestic programs were enacted, and the nation played a leading role in the process of Latin American unity and integration, particularly with respect to the formation of the South American Union of Nations (UNASUR).  But with the decline of raw materials prices, the Workers’ Party Coalition feel apart.  The second largest party in the coalition, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), broke with the coalition and established a political alliance with the Right, thus converting the Workers’ Party into a minority in the parliament, and positioning Michel Temer, Vice-President of Brazil and head of PMDB, to assume the presidency, if the elected president were to be removed from office.  Under these political conditions, the Brazilian parliament, on August 31, 2016, voted to remove President Dilma from office, on the basis of unsubstantiated charges of corruption.  The vote was declared by the socialist governments of the region to be an illegitimate parliamentary coup d’état (“Parliamentary coups of the Right in Latin America” 5/23/2016; “Parliamentary coup d’état in Brazil” 9/2/2016).

     The resurgent Latin American Right, however, has no viable project to offer.  Thus far, it has indicated its intention to return to neoliberalism, adopting measures that include privatizations, reductions in social programs, and greater opening for foreign capital. But the people previously rejected the neoliberal project.  The resurgent Latin American Right did not express its neoliberal intentions, and there is little indication that the people desire to return to it.  The politicians of the resurgent Latin American Right appear to be opportunists rather than true leaders.  They do not appear to be seeking to develop a sustainable political project; some may be playing a short-term political game in order to further enrich themselves.

      Inasmuch as the Latin American Right lacks a viable political project to propose, there is a good possibility that the popular revolution in Latin American will recover or retain its majorities and proceed toward the construction of an alternative, more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.


Key words: counterrevolution, Right, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil

     An economic and media campaign against the constitutional government of Venezuela has been unfolding since 2008.  It is a coordinated campaign involving the Venezuelan and Latin American Right, the corporate-owned national and international media, the government of the United States, and the Organization of American States.  It has been condemned as interventionist by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua; by the Bolivarian Alternative for Our America (ALBA); and by numerous organizations of the Left.

     The targeting of Venezuela is a consequence of the leading role that it has played in forging Latin American union and integration and a new political reality in Latin America and the Caribbean, in which the nations of the region seek to defend their sovereignty and to develop alternatives to the structures of neocolonial domination.  The process of change in Latin America can be dated to 1994, when Hugo Chávez was released from prison and was able to further develop the Fifth Republic Movement.  After his election as president in 1998, Chávez led the nation in the development of a Constitutional Assembly and a new Constitution, and his government proceeded to take effective control of the national oil industry and to use revenue from oil to fund various social missions in defense of the needs of the people.  At the same time, invoking the dreams of La Patria Grande of Simon Bolivar, he led a regional process that sought relations of solidarity and mutually beneficial trade among the nations of the region, and that sought to develop South-South cooperation, strengthening ties with China, Iran and South Africa.  Building upon popular social movements in opposition to the neoliberal project imposed by the global powers, several Leftist and progressive governments emerged, and all of the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean began to cooperate in the alternative vision, culminating in the formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).  Chávez died of cancer in 2014, and Nicolás Maduro subsequently was elected as the first Chavist president, in accordance with the procedures of the Constitution (see “Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela” as well as blog posts in the categories of “Venezuela” and “Latin American and Caribbean unity”).

     The campaign against the government of Venezuela has had various components.  Taking advantage of the dependence of the Venezuelan economy on the importation of necessities like food and medicine, export-import companies began to refuse to import or to horde necessary items, provoking shortages and price inflation, with the intention of producing popular discontent.  The Right called for popular demonstrations, and it formed gangs dedicated to violence toward property and persons.  At the same time, the privately-owned national news media attacked the government, and the international media portrayed the Venezuelan government as violating human rights.  The overall plan was to create a humanitarian crisis and civil disorder, with the intention of justifying foreign intervention, thus toppling the Bolivarian Revolution from power.

     The campaign began to have some success as a result of the dramatic drop in oil prices, thus reducing government revenues and its capacity to respond to the economic war.  As a result, the opposition was able to win a strong majority in the parliamentary elections of December 2015, without offering a concrete program, but merely capitalizing on an emerging popular discontent.  Once it captured control of the parliament, rather than offering an economic plan, the opposition focused on removing Nicolas Maduro from power, frequently ignoring the constitutional constraints on parliamentary power and not recognizing the constitutional authority of the executive and legislative powers.  It sought to create a political crisis, in addition to difficulties emerging from the economic war and the oil price drop.

     The participation of the Organization of America States in the campaign against the government of Venezuela is fully consistent with its function as an instrument of US neocolonial hegemony.  Created in 1948, OAS was the culmination of US Pan-Americanist policy, through which the United States sought to create an Inter-American system that would enlist the support of the governments of the region in the US project of economic, financial and ideological penetration.  During the first half of the twentieth century, the United States convened various Inter-American conferences, but its objectives were blocked by the resistance of Latin American governments.  However, with the arrival of the United States to global hegemony following World War II, it was able to implement its Pan-Americanist vision of American integration under US political and economic direction, and OAS was born (see “Pan-Americanism and OAS” 10/2/2013).  

     Seeking to actively involve OAS in the Venezuela situation, OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro sent to Juan José Arcuri, Argentinian Ambassador to OAS and President of the Permanent Council, a request for the convening of a special session of the Permanent Council, for the purposing of developing a diplomatic response to the Venezuelan situation.  The request invoked the Inter-American Democratic Charter, adopted by OAS in 2001.  The Democratic Charter defines democracy in accordance with the Western concept of representative democracy and its limited notion of human rights; it ignores the concept of popular democracy that has emerged in socialist and Third World nations, which focuses on the development of popular assemblies, on the role of the state in protecting social and economic rights, and on the rights of all nations to sovereignty and non-interference in its affairs.  The 114-page request by Almagro maintains that Venezuela is experiencing a multi-dimensional crisis, including shortages of medicine and food; and it maintains that Venezuela violates the political rights of the opposition.  It describes the Venezuelan situation from the vantage point of the opposition, and it provides a curt four-page summary of the analysis presented by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez.  The document concludes with eight recommendations that reflect the vantage point of the opposition.

     The June 1 Special Session of the Permanent Council was a defeat for the Secretary General.  The ambassadors indignantly denounced his inappropriate behavior, not only for the one-sided presentation, but also for the fact that the 114-page document was discussed secretly with some governments, but the majority of governments did not see it prior to the Special Session.

     On June 2, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations declared that Venezuela had won a diplomatic battle in OAS.  Making reference to the successful expulsion of socialist Cuba from the OAS in 1962, the Declaration observed that the Secretary General and the OAS bureaucrats forgot that we do not live in 1962, and that what occurred in the Special Session is new evidence that “Our America” has changed, even though OAS continues to be an irredeemable instrument of US domination over the Latin American and Caribbean peoples, and for this reason, Cuba will never return to the OAS.  

     On June 4, at the inaugural address of the Seventh Summit of the Association of Caribbean States in Havana, Cuban President Raúl Castro expressed his deep concern for “the unacceptable attempt of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States to apply the so-called Democratic Charter in order to intervene in the Internal Affairs of Venezuela.”  He further observed that “the OAS, since its founding was, is and will be an instrument of imperialist domination, and that no reform will be able to change its nature nor its history. Therefore, Cuba never will return to OAS.”  

    As the world-system is increasingly characterized by a multifaceted structural crisis, the global powers are continually demonstrating that they have no solution.  Their approach is to search for new strategies of economic and financial penetration, not only in violation of the rights of nations and persons, but also in violation of the established rules of the neocolonial world-system, which permit some economic and political space to the national bourgeoisie in order to ensure global political stability.  As a regional manifestation of this phenomenon, the Latin American Right, in the three cases (Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil) in which it has partially and temporarily returned to power, has demonstrated that it has no constructive alternative to offer; it seeks merely to destabilize the progressive projects that have emerged in recent years.  The Latin American Right risks that its temporary and partial power will be taken from it by the indignant people, increasingly able to discern that the project of the Right is to surrender the sovereignty of the nation to the international corporations and to the core governments that act in defense of corporate and financial interests.  
     

Key words: Venezuela, OAS, Almagro, Maduro

      In the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States and Great Britain were in competition for economic penetration of the continental republics of Latin America, which had attained independence from Spain and Portugal by 1825.  In conjunction with similar dynamics on a global scale, this culminated in the neocolonial world-system, with the United States as the hegemonic core power. The system reached its zenith in the period 1946 to 1968.  Latin America provided cheap raw materials for the United States as well as markets for its surplus agricultural and industrial goods, a relation that was fundamental to the industrial, agricultural, commercial and military expansion of the United States during the twentieth century.  Thus the natural resources of Latin America promoted the wealth of the United States and at the same time promoted the impoverishment of its own peoples, with the support of the Latin American estate bourgeoisie. These are the fundamentals of the history that US President Barack Obama wants the peoples of Latin America to forget, but they are unable to do so. Indeed, they consider it their duty to remember (see various posts in the categories Latin American History, Imperialism, and Neocolonialism).

     From 1919 to 1979, the Latin American industrial bourgeoisie and the popular sectors of urban workers, miners, and students (but not peasants and indigenous peoples) cooperated in the a developmentalist project, which promoted industrial development and concessions to workers’ demands to an extent that did not challenge the fundamental core-peripheral relation between the United States and its Latin American neocolonies.  Inasmuch as these modifications were limited to space allotted by the neocolonial world-system, they did not involve the transformations that were necessary for the protection of the social and economic rights of the people.  However, they were sufficient to attain the support of the majority of the popular organizations.  The dynamics were similar to what was occurring with respect to moderate (but not revolutionary) governments in the newly independent nations of Asia and Africa in the post-World War II era.

     When the world-system entered its long structural (and possibly terminal) crisis in the 1970s, the US power elite led the global elites in the implementation of the neoliberal project, designed to break the limited capacity of Third World governments to regulate their economies, thus rolling back concessions to the Latin America developmentalist project.  The neoliberal project undermined imperialism, inasmuch as imperialism was based on a degree of cooperation with the national industrial bourgeoisie, which was responsible for social control.  With the weakening of the national bourgeoisie and its turn to increasing subordination to international capital, and with the need for governments to make drastic cuts in social services expenditures, the national bourgeoisie and its political representatives could no longer present themselves with credibility as defenders of the rights of the people or the sovereignty of the nation. The popular indignation and rejection of the traditional political parties was not long in coming.

     In the period of 1994 to 2011, Latin America and the Caribbean were transformed by popular movements and new political parties that stood in opposition to neoliberalism and in support of the true independence of the nation and the protection of the social and economic rights of the people.  New political parties of the Left came to power in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and El Salvador.  The new governments adopted measures designed to respond to the needs of the people and to control and protect natural resources.  And they cooperated with one another, forming regional associations that have been guided by a policy of South-South cooperation and mutually-beneficial trade, seeking to break the core-peripheral relation with the United States.

     From the outset, the Latin American Right has been opposed to the anti-neoliberal popular project, and it has used a variety of strategies to undermine it, including attempted military coups, regional secession, economic disruptions, and media ideological campaigns.  The social base of the opposition is formed by the Latin American estate bourgeoisie, the middle class, and new urban residents, with the latter two sectors being vulnerable to the ideological distortions of the mass media, which remains for the most part under the ownership of the elite.  Since 2012, the counterrevolutionary project of the Right has attained a degree of momentum, established by various factors: decline in the prices of Latin America’s raw materials exports, on which it continues to be dependent; the persistence of corruption, an endemic problem that the progressive and Leftist government have been able to reduce only partially; and the normal tendency of the people to blame the government for any unresolved problem, driven by idealistic hopes that expect more than is possible for any government, including one fully committed to the people.

     The Latin American Right has turned increasingly to the strategy of the parliamentary coup, involving the removal of the president from office by the parliament under some pretext.  The Right used the strategy with success in Honduras and Paraguay in 2009.  Recently, the Brazilian parliament removed the President on a temporary basis. And in Venezuela, the parliamentary majority is invoking a recall referendum of the President.  The strategy represents a significant advance over the military coup, inasmuch as the parliamentary coup has the appearance of legitimacy.  No one doubts that the military coup is indeed a coup; but the parliamentary coup has provoked a debate between the Left and the Right, between those who are naming the coup and calling for its international denunciation, and those who claim that it is a question of a parliament exercising a legitimate constitutionally-defined function.

      The specific situations in the four nations are significantly different.  In Honduras, the president was brought to office as a candidate of one of the two traditional parties, and he therefore did not have support in the parliament for his efforts to deepen relations with the Latin American governments of the Left.  In Paraguay, the elected president was a former Bishop, popular for his defense of the poor, who was elected as an independent.  He too lacked parliamentary support for his progressive agenda.  

     In the case of Venezuela, the economy was severely affected by the drastic reduction in oil prices, inasmuch as Venezuela is a major oil exporter, and its economy is dependent on the oil industry.  In addition, many of the import-export companies began to stockpile or refuse to import food and medicine, producing a shortage in these necessary goods and a drastic rise in prices.  At the same time, the corporate-controlled mass media continued their long-standing denunciations of the government, characterized by the repetition of false or misleading information.  From the period of 1998 to 2012, the Fifth Republic Movement, which later became the Socialist Party of Venezuela, enjoyed for the most part an electoral majority of fifty to sixty percent. But as a result of the factors mentioned, the Socialist Party attained only thirty-five percent of the votes in the December 6, 2015 parliamentary elections, and the opposition obtained a parliamentary majority of nearly two-thirds.  The Socialist Party remains the largest single party, and the opposition consists of a variety of parties that do not have a coherent program.  However, the opposition does agree on its opposition to the presidency of Nicolas Maduro, and it has initiated a referendum for the revocation of the president.  Some believe, however, that the referendum is not in the interests of the opposition, and that it will not proceed.

     In Brazil, the Workers’ Party came to power in 2002 not as a party, but as the leader of a coalition of parties.  During the fourteen years of Workers’ Party rule, the coalition has gradually fallen apart.  At first, the defectors were parties of the Left, who were not satisfied with what they believed was an overly moderate government program, the specifics of which were shaped by concessions to the centrist coalition partners.  With the fall in prices for Brazilian goods on the international market, and the ensuing economic problems, the principal centrist party of the coalition, the Brazilian Party of Social Democracy (PSDP), jumped ship and allied itself with the Right in opposition to the government.   Now with a parliamentary majority, the opposition was able to obtain a parliamentary vote for the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, making vague charges of corruption.  Many observers consider the charges to be farcical, inasmuch as the accusers are tainted by charges of corruption, and Dilma enjoys a reputation as an exceptionally honest political figure.  But as a result of the parliamentary vote, Dilma has been temporarily removed from office, and the vice-president has formed an interim government.  In this case, the vice-president is the head of the PSDP, who held the position as a result of its alliance with the Workers’ Party.  Now aligned with the Right, he has formed a notably right-wing cabinet as interim President.

      The Right also attained a victory in Argentina.  In this case, the candidate of the Right won the presidential elections in a close vote, ending four presidential terms of the progressive governments of Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Kirchner.  The narrow electoral victory of the Right was aided by the factors of prices, corruption, and popular idealism, mentioned above.

      In the cases of Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, the Right in power is overplaying its hand.  It is not seeking to form a right-center coalition that would enable it to govern for a period of time; instead, it is taking extreme measures that are likely to alienate people with a centrist political orientation.  In Venezuela, the Right-dominated parliamentary majority offers no program to respond to the economic problems, which its own sectors helped to create.  Rather, it is focused on seeking to remove the president from office before the end of the term to which he has been elected.  In Brazil, the government has formed a cabinet of the Right, ignoring that it is constitutionally an interim government whose leader faces charges of corruption. In Argentina, the president has negotiated an agreement with creditors of “vulture funds,” leaving the government with excessive debts; and the president has made drastic cuts in government employment.  

      But the Right must overplay its hand.  It seeks a restoration of the neoliberal project and the return to rule by international capital and its national allies.  With this agenda, it cannot make concessions to the center.  It must take decisive action in defense of its particular interests.  In times of crisis, the center disappears.  It becomes a battle between the Left and the Right.

      In overplaying its hand, as it must, the Right is revealing its true character as a promoter of the interests of international capital in opposition to the sovereignty of the nation and the protection of the social and economic rights of the people.  As a result, there is a good possibility that the progressive and Leftist political parties will be able to discredit the restoration project of the Right, and recapture the ten percent electoral vote that it has lost recently.  

      The forces that defend neoliberalism and the neocolonial world-system do not have a constructive project to offer as the world-system experiences a multifaceted crisis.  The alternative world-project emerging from the Third World, including the progressive project of the Latin American Left, remains the only possibility for the development of a just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  These factors contribute to the possibility that the Latin American progressive and Leftist governments will be able to overcome the restoration project of the Right and to proceed with the consolidation of its project for truly independent republics and a better world.

     For blog posts on the new political reality in Latin America since 1994, see the categories Latin American and Caribbean unity, South-South cooperation, Bolivia and Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa and the Citizen Revolution in Ecuador as well as a reading on Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.  

​Key words: parliamentary coup, Right, Latin America, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina

      In the December 6, 2015 elections for the 167 seats of the National Assembly of Venezuela, a coalition of opposition parties attained 109 seats, against 54 won by the Great Patriotic Pole, a coalition of progressive parties headed by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV for its initials in Spanish).  It is the first time in sixteen years that the forces of the Left will not have a parliamentary majority.  The factors in the setback for PSUV were discussed in yesterday’s post (“Economic war in Venezuela” 1/7/2016).

      The results of four elections are being challenged, so the seating of four legislators has been delayed.  As a result, 163 deputies were installed on January 5, 2016.  Depending on the outcome of the court review of the disputed elections, the opposition could attain 111 seats and a two-thirds majority, which could empower it to take measures that would reverse the gains of the Bolivarian Revolution.  But on the other hand, the revolutionary forces will have the support of the Constitution of 1998, which was a creation of the revolution.  And the executive and judicial branches of the government as well as the armed forces remain under the control or influence of the popular revolution of the Left that has transformed the political reality of the country since 1998.  Moreover, the revolutionary project likely will continue to have the support of the majority of the people, for the voting in the December legislative elections reflect dissatisfaction with economic conditions during the last eighteen months, and they do not necessarily imply popular rejection of the Bolivarian Revolution.  Without doubt, the PSUV remains the largest single political party, and its members are among the most committed and most politically active sector of the people.

     The December 6 elections have created a situation of political polarization, as the opposition and the parliamentary majority, on the one hand, and President Nicolás Maduro and the PSUV, on the other, are aggressively pursuing their political agendas.  It is a question not only of different political parties, but of the radically opposed models of neoliberal capitalism and popular revolutionary socialism.  The former represents the interests of national and international corporations, and the latter seeks to protect to the sovereignty of the nation and the social needs of the people. 

     Maduro and PSUV have in no sense retreated since the electoral setback.  Maduro maintains that the setback was due to incidental circumstances and that the Bolivarian Revolution will recover and continue to advance. He called on December 9 for a self-critical dialogue in popular assemblies in order to reconstruct a revolutionary majority, which led to the mobilization of popular assemblies by Chavist forces in the entire country.  At the same time, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela is undertaking an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the Presidential Councils of Popular Power, with the intention of re-launching this popular organization.  

     Meanwhile, the Chavist-controlled National Assembly, in its last days in December, passed protective measures in response to the threatening declarations of some of the opposition representatives.  It approved the granting of control of the television and radio stations to the workers themselves, and it emitted a decree against the dismissal of public employees for the next three years.

    In addition, an Economic Congress of Socialist Thought was announced on December 11, with the goal of redesigning the guidelines for the development of a productive economy, in order to effectively respond to the withholding of supplies and the financial speculation launched by the Right (see “Economic war in Venezuela” 1/7/2016).  On January 6, the president announced new cabinet members, including the creation of five new ministries that are dedicated to various areas of economic productivity.   

     At the same time, by a vote of 62 to 49 in the opposition quorum, the opposition has chosen the ultra-rightist Henry Ramos Allup as President of the National Assembly.  Ramos Allup is recognized as one of the most recalcitrant representatives of the oligarchy and bitter enemy of the Bolivarian Revolution.  He was among the architects of the neoliberal policies of the 1980s, and he was involved in destabilizing maneuvers after the 1998 triumph of the revolution, such as the failed coup d’état against President Hugo Chávez in 2002 and the petroleum stop of the same year.  He has been known over the years for his hostile verbal attacks critical of the public media (developed by the Chavist government), the National Assembly (under Chavist control), community doctors (a program developed with Cuban cooperation), artists and other public figures.  And he sought to discredit the National Electoral Council for its certification of electoral victories by the Chavist forces, in spite of the fact that it recognized his own election to the legislature on three previous occasions, and in spite of the confirmation of the legitimacy of the electoral process by international observers.    

     Since the December 6 elections, Ramos Allup has announced possible measures that would dismantle the gains and social reforms of the Chavist government.  And he declared that the opposition legislators will seek to bring down the Executive Branch in the first three months of the year.  He also has confirmed the opposition’s promotion of an Amnesty Law, which would free Leopoldo López and others who were found guilty of corruption or of inciting violence during the vandalism of 2014, which resulted in the deaths of forty-three people.

     In the installation of the deputies of the National Assembly on January 5, the oppositionist majority ignored the decision of the Supreme Court of Justice to review four disputed elections, and it attempted to present three deputies whose elections are under review.  Following the swearing in of 163 deputies, when member of the revolutionary bloc took the floor, they were greeted with violent gestures by the oppositionist deputies.  And there were various procedural irregularities on the part of Ramos Allup as presider.  As a result of these factors, the revolutionary deputies withdrew from the legislative hall and joined in popular mobilizations in the city.  Later in the day, Ramos Allup ordered the removal of the portraits of Simon Bolívar and Hugo Chávez from the legislative hall, provoking popular protest.

    Continued polarization and conflict is expected. Some commentators maintain that the Right does not have sufficient political support to govern legitimately and carry out its neoliberal agenda, so it is seeking to create civil conflict and political instability, thus creating conditions for US intervention, which would remove the Bolivarian revolutionary forces from all positions of political authority.  Meanwhile, the Bolivarian Revolution, confident that it will have the support of the majority, particularly in light of the conflictive and destabilizing conduct of the parliamentary majority, proclaims that “a parliamentary majority is not a social majority.”  It intends to use the political authority that it possesses in the executive and judicial branches and the armed forces, sanctioned by the Constitution of 1998.  And it is further developing the popular assemblies as a popular voice that is an alternative to the parliament.


Key words: Venezuela, United Socialist Party of Venezuela, Bolivarian Revolution, Maduro, Ramos Allup

      The opposition in Venezuela waged economic war against the socialist governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.  The central strategy was for privately-owned importing companies to reduce the importation of goods and to horde goods in warehouses, causing shortages and price increases, and thereby stimulating discontent among the people.

      Venezuela was declared socialist by Chávez, and so it is.  The United Socialist Party of Venezuela is the largest single party, and it is by far the largest party in a progressive popular coalition that has governed the country for seventeen years.  Prior to Chávez, the state-owned petroleum companies in Venezuela functioned autonomously, in collusion with international petroleum interests.  The government of Chávez took effective control of the industry, incorporating it into a comprehensive plan for national development, which has included the development of a wide variety of social missions, attending to the social and economic rights of the people; and which has included a foreign policy of cooperation and the promotion of Latin American unity and integration.  At the same time, popular councils have been developed, seeking to facilitate popular participation and education.   

      But socialist Venezuela has a mixed economy, which includes private ownership of importing companies.  Venezuela is highly dependent on the importing companies, since the country imports seventy to seventy-five percent of the goods that it consumes.  When these companies, with foreign financial support, reduced the availability of food, medicine and consumer goods through hording and the reduction of imports, a wave of price speculation was unleashed, leading to an increase in the cost of living.  The government responded by purchasing goods in the international market and making goods available in state stores, but the desire of the people for goods could not be completely satisfied by the state-owned system.  Moreover, the price speculation forced the state stores to also raise prices, in order to prevent buying from state stores in order to sell in an informal market.  So the result of these dynamics was that desired goods were not always available, and when they were available, there were long lines to purchase them at high prices.

    Other international factors have contributed to economic difficulties in Venezuela.  (1) In the last eighteen months, the price of oil has fallen from 155 to 30 dollars per barrel.  This has had a dramatic effect, inasmuch as petroleum accounts for ninety percent of the income from foreign trade.  (2) China has adopted a model of slower economic growth, which has reduced the prices of metals and soy bean exported by Venezuela’s trading partners in Latin America.  (3) The value of the US dollar has increased, resulted in a higher cost for all imported goods in Venezuela.  
      
      In conjunction with a media barrage against the government (most of the media remains privately owned in Venezuela) and the economic problems, the economic war was effective in stimulating a lack of satisfaction with the government among the people.  Most people think concretely.  They focus on the shortage of goods and higher prices, and they attribute the problem to those who have political power, without understanding the dynamics that created them.  They blame the government for its inability to manage things well.

     But rather than blame the government, it would be more on the mark to blame the capitalists and their political allies for adopting an unethical and unpatriotic political strategy.  Is it morally acceptable for a capitalist to withhold desired goods from the people in order to advance a political project of opposition against the government, elected by the people?  Is it patriotic to promote political instability in order to defend particular interests?  

     The economic war and media campaign had its impact on the December 6, 2015 elections for the national assembly, converting a majority for the coalition of progressive parties headed by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela into a nearly two-thirds majority for the opposition coalition.  

      As occurred in Argentina (“The Right takes power in Argentina” 1/4/2016), the Right in Venezuela played a political game of pretending to be in support of the people but in reality representing corporate interests.  The French journalist Ignacio Ramonet observes that the opposition candidates hid their intention of neoliberal restauration during the election campaign.  But once the results were in, they announced their plan of privatizing companies, reducing public services, revoking labor laws, eliminating social gains, and dismantling international agreements.  Ramonet further notes that the Bolivarian Revolution continues to have the support of the majority of the people, and that those who voted for an opposition candidate for the national assembly in the context of the current economic difficulties did not imagine a dismantling of the revolution.  Ramonet argues that to proceed to dismantle the gains of the revolution would be an error by the opposition, for it would provoke popular rejection.

     With respect to the political game of the Right, questions should be asked.  Is it ethical for a candidate for public office to speak vaguely in support of change, with the full intention of implementing specific measures that promote corporate interests?  If a candidate intends to return to the neoliberal agenda of the 1990s, should it not be fully declared?   Should not political campaigns be characterized by open, honest and respectful debate among the candidates?  The difference between the Left and the Right in Latin America is not merely a difference in political parties.  It is a difference between two alternative ways of being political.  The one is rooted in an informed understanding and a commitment to the people; and the other seeks to manipulate the people and defend corporate interests.

      The election of an oppositionist majority in the National Assembly creates a situation of political polarization in Venezuela, which will be discussed in the next post.


Key words: Chávez, Maduro, Venezuela, United Socialist Party of Venezuela, Latin American Right, opposition, socialism

      A government that pretends to defend the people but in fact defends the interests of corporations must play a constant political game.  The government of Mauricio Macri, which took power in Argentina on December 10, 2015, is in this situation (see “The Right takes power in Argentina” 1/4/2016).  In pursuit of this political game, the government of Macri has indicated its interest in establishing free-trade agreements with the United States and the European Union.  “Free trade” pretends to promote economic development for all, but in reality it serves the exclusive interest of corporate profits.

     “Free trade” has been a powerful ideological tool of the bourgeoisie since Adam Smith extolled the virtues of the market in opposition to government-issued overseas monopolies in the era of mercantilist capitalism.  Smith’s classic work, The Wealth of Nations, was published in 1776, at the beginning of the transition of the capitalist world-economy from agricultural capitalism to industrial capitalism.  In opposing government-issued monopolies, Smith was taking the vantage point of the newly emerging industrial bourgeoisie, and he was seeking to eliminate restraints on the development of industry. Smith’s analysis constituted an important advance in the science of political economy.  His concepts, however, were formulated before the emergence of large-scale and concentrated capitalism, and they therefore must be reformulated, taking into account this development and others in the evolving world-system (McKelvey 1991:61-64).

      When concentrated industry emerged during the nineteenth century height of British hegemony, British economists used the concept of free-trade to argue against the government protection of national industries, seeking to promote the sale of British manufactured goods in other core nations.  In spite of its contradiction with the interests of their nations, the economists of other industrializing nations used the concept, because it justified the determination of workers’ wages on the basis of the market principle of supply and demand, thwarting state intervention in support of workers’ needs.  

     In removing the concept of free trade from the theoretical and historical context of Adam Smith, and in using the concept to justify national and international policies, economists were taking free trade from the domain of science and placing it in the sphere of ideology, where ideas distort reality in order to defend and promote particular interests.  But as is typical of ideological distortions, free trade as ideology was characterized by contradictions: it was not followed in practice by core nations that needed to protect their industries; nor by governments with respect to labor, as courts intervened to declare union activities to be restraints of trade and police intervened violently to repress workers’ strikes.

     The ideology of free trade suffered a setback during the era of welfare state capitalism, which was provoked by the Great Depression of the 1930s.  The period was dominated by the concepts of Keynesian economics, which advocated state investment in order to expand the economy, increase employment, and create greater social equality.  The capacity for core states to invest in the economy and society was made possible by the colonial and neocolonial superexploitation of vast regions of the earth, providing core nations with high levels of capital and revenue.  The idea of free trade did not completely die; its virtues were proclaimed by a few economists, including Milton Friedman, a well-known economist of the University of Chicago.  But most economists considered that events had shown that free trade was limited in its validity, and that governments would never again be guided by it.

     During this period of welfare state capitalism from 1929 to 1980, global elites made concessions to the Third World project that sought independence and national sovereignty for the colonized regions of the planet.  The concessions gave Third World states a degree sovereignty, in order that they could adopt measures for the protection of their national industries and national currencies.  The protective measures had benefits for the people, however limited.  During this period, there ruled in the Third World the idea that sovereign states had the right and the duty to take necessary measures to promote national economic and social development.  

     In the 1970s, the first signs of a long structural and possibly terminal crisis of the world-system emerged.  Historically, since the sixteenth century, the world-system had expanded by conquering new lands and peoples, thus making available new sources of cheap raw materials and cheap labor as well as new markets for surplus manufactured goods.  But by the 1970s, two factors emerged to block this historic mechanism of expansion.  First, the world-system had reached the geographical limits of the earth, so that there were no more lands and peoples to conquer.  Secondly, the colonized peoples of the earth had attained a capacity to politically mobilize in defense of their natural resources and the rights of the people (see various posts on the crisis of the world system).  

     In response to this situation, the global elite launched the neoliberal project, giving new life to the ideology of free trade.  Core governments and think tanks launched an ideological attack on the state, seeking to reverse the modest concessions that had been made to Third World governments during the era of welfare state capitalism.  They maintained that state intervention by Third World states in their economies had promoted poverty, and that the implementation of free market principles would allow them to finally overcome poverty.  This claim of the global elite represented the highest form of deceit and hypocrisy: in fact it was imperialist interventions by core states in the affairs of Third World nations, in pursuit of the particular interests of the core, which had deepened the underdevelopment of the Third World since the attainment of political independence.  The deception was understood in the Third World, where popular movements could not lose sight of the fact that colonialism is the author of underdevelopment, and that imperialist policies maintain the economic and cultural structures of colonialism.  But because national elites in the Third World, in collusion with international financial actors, had betrayed their nations and accepted untenable loans, Third World governments were now in debt, providing a lever for the core to impose the neoliberal project.

      The global elite was able to impose the neoliberal project and resurrect the free-trade ideology as a result of the vulnerability of the Third World project during that historic moment.  In the first place, there was the high indebtedness of Third World governments, exacerbating their lack of capital for investment in industry, infrastructure and education.  But in addition, the Third World project from the outset had been forged by a mixture of reformers and revolutionaries, with the former having economic interests tied to international capital, and with the latter seeking a decisive rupture with colonial economic, financial, cultural and ideological structures.  Although some nations, like Cuba and Vietnam, took decisive revolutionary steps, many did not sufficiently seek transformation of colonial structures, with the result that promises of improvement in the material conditions of the nation could not delivered.  So by the late 1970s, the hopes of the people had not been fulfilled, and the governments were in debt, rendering the Third World project powerless to prevent the implementation of neoliberal policies.

     But the neoliberal project further impoverished the impoverished, thus giving rise to waves of popular indignation.  At first the popular protests focused on concrete issues, such as the price of water.  But charismatic leaders emerged to teach the people a more comprehensive understanding of neoliberal policies, exposing the ideological character of the free-trade doctrine.  Proclaiming that a “Better world is possible,” the movements brought to power alternative political parties that would defend the rights of the people, a process particularly advanced in Latin America, where a number of progressive governments have been established on a foundation of popular support since 1998.  These governments reversed the trend toward free-trade agreements with the United States and other core governments, and they have moved toward the development of South-South cooperation (see also “The fall of FTAA” 3/7/2014 and other posts in the category of Latin American union and integration).  The Right in Latin America today seeks to bring down these progressive governments.

     We should not lose sight of fundamentals.  An objective analysis of human history and the modern world shows that the state commonly has played a central role in the development of a nation and in the formation of a national social project.  An unregulated market contributes to economic development, under conditions in which buyers and sellers are small scale and more or less equal.  But such conditions do not pertain to today’s world-system, characterized by the concentration of production and by the concentration of power in the hands of a few states.  And they did not pertain to many empires in the past.  Throughout human history, in pre-modern empires as well as in the development of the modern capitalist world-economy, the state has played a central role in economic development.  The important role of strong state action to promote national development has been historically demonstrated, and this lesson from history especially applies to nations today that have been made underdeveloped through colonial and neocolonial domination.  

     The fundamentals that we should keep in mind include moral principles.  In accordance with the democratic value of the equal sovereignty of nations, all states have the right to pursue projects of national development, seeking to utilize natural and human resources in accordance with long-term national needs.  Those nations that have been historically colonized should be free to exercise this right, without being subjected to ideological attacks, in which false assumptions and distortions abound in order to justify military interventions and political interferences in defense of the particular interests of the powerful.  

     The long-term negative consequences of free-trade agreements in today’s global reality are not self-evident.  Charismatic leaders were able to delegitimate the ideology of free trade in the immediate aftermath of the imposition of the neoliberal project.  But only a minority of people, twenty-five or thirty percent, are able to internalize an historical and global understanding of the problems that the nation confronts.  The majority is susceptible to the distortions of the major news media, which is characterized by selectivity and superficiality, driven by corporate interests.  In the contest between, on the one hand, educating the people, and on the other hand, manipulating and seducing the people, the latter is easier to do, especially when undertaken by those with wealth, power, and control of the means of communication.

     The concept of free trade once pertained to science.  But it now belongs to ideology.  We who are committed to the development of a just, democratic and sustainable world-system must undertake the difficult task of educating the people.  This mission includes the delegitimation of “free trade,” an idea that is inconsistent with empirical reality and that has vibrancy, not because it is valid, but because its serves the interests of the wealthy and the powerful.

     See further “Imperialism as neoliberalism” 10/7/2013 in the category US Imperialism; and “Free trade in the 19th century” 8/26/2013 in the category Colonialism, semi-colonialism, and neocolonialism in Latin America. 

​Reference

McKelvey, Charles.  1991.  Beyond Ethnocentrism:  A Reconstruction of Marx’s Concept of Science.  New York:  Greenwood Press. 
 
​
Key terms: free trade, unregulated market, Adam Smith, political economy, neoliberalism, free-trade agreements, FTA, Third World project, Third World socialism

     On November 22, Mauricio Macri, of the rightist party Cambiemos (Let us change) won the presidential elections in Argentina, defeating Daniel Scioli, candidate of the Front for Victory, by a margin of 51.32% to 48.68%.  He assumed office on December 10, 2015.

      The Front for Victory is the party of Nestor Kirchner, who assumed the presidency in 2003, initiating an era of policies in defense of the needs of the people, continued by the presidency of Cristina Kirchner.  The policies of the Front for Victory have established a low rate of unemployment of 5.9% in Argentina and a reduction of government debt to its lowest level since 1976, and they have led to significant gains in education, health, and science and technology, including the establishment of nineteen universities.  In addition, the Kirchner governments have nationalized the petroleum industry and the airlines, and they have created other public companies that have contributed to national development.  The Kirchner governments brought to an end an era of neoliberal governments that had defended corporate interests and that had generated intense waves of popular protest.  In addition to defending the rights of the people in Argentina, they also played an important role in the process of Latin American union and integration.

     The Right won the November 22 presidential elections in Argentina with the strategy that the Latin American Right has been using in opposition to the progressive governments that have taken power during the last fifteen years:  forming a new political party, taking into account the fact that the traditional political parties have been discredited by their collusion in the implementation of the neoliberal project of the global powers during the 1980s and 1990s;  making promises that are supportive of popular desires, such reducing poverty, expanding the economy, extending the reach of social programs, improving housing, and launching campaigns against corruption and crime, without providing specifics or a developed plan; developing a media campaign designed to discredit the progressive governments, playing on the fact that no government, no matter how committed to the people, can fully deliver on all of the people’s hopes; and offering candidates with a certain degree of popular appeal.  Corporate ownership of the media, which plays an intense role in the campaigns, makes the success of the strategy possible.  Representative democracy, as distinct from popular democracy, is vulnerable to this kind of demagogic maneuver, and it is particularly successful in influencing the middle class (see “Popular Democracy” 11/6/2013, found in the category on the American Revolution).

     This is not the first setback of the Left in the current wave of Latin American governments, initiated by the election of Hugh Chávez as president of Venezuela in 1998: the party of Chávez failed to win a constitutional reform referendum in 2007; the president of Paraguay, a former Catholic Bishop who emerged to defend the poor and who was elected in 2008, was removed from office by a legislative coup d’état; and the constitutionally-elected president of Honduras, who represented a traditional political party but was moving toward closer relations with the most radical governments of the region, also was removed from office in a legislative coup d’état in 2009.  But the presidential elections in Argentina on November 22 mark the first time in the current progressive stage in Latin America that a Leftist government has been removed from power by an electoral process.

     What happens now in Argentina?  The Front for Victory remains strong in the legislature and in the provincial governments.  It likely will attempt to block any effort to reverse the policies that have resulted in an improvement of conditions of life for the people.  Insofar as the new government considers certain progressive policies untouchable, as a result of their evident benefits for the people, such policies would become consolidated, accepted even by governments of the Right.  On the other hand, to the extent that the government seeks to reverse policies that defend the needs of the people, it could generate intense popular mobilizations that would undermine its capacity to govern, as occurred with the governments of the neoliberal era.   The political game of the Right is inherently contradictory: it comes to power through a vaguely populist rhetoric, but then it seeks to govern in the interest of national and international corporations.  To the extent that it adopts pro-corporate measures that have anti-popular consequences, its true character is made manifest. 

      Thus far, on the one hand, the government of Macri has promised to keep intact the nationalizations and the social programs of the Kirchner governments and to continue cooperation with the governments of the region in the process of Latin American and Caribbean union and integration.  On the other hand, the Macri cabinet has been staffed with former directors of multinational corporations and with persons who are linked to the military dictatorship of 1976; and the government has indicated its orientation to free-trade agreements, it has eliminated protection of the national currency, and it has decreed a new law over the media of communication.  

     The Media Law of Argentina was approved by the National Congress in 2009.  It sought to democratize the media, which has been under the control of the media conglomerates, and to ensure a plurality of voices.  It established the Federal Authority of Audiovisual Communication Services (AFSCA for its initials in Spanish) and the Federal Authority of Information and Communication Technologies (AFSTIC) as state organisms with autonomy.  The new Macri government issued a decree placing the functions AFSCA and AFSTIC under the direct authority of the Ministry of Communications through a newly-created National Entity of Communications (ENACOM).  The degree has generated popular protest in defense of the 2009 Media Law.

     The Macri government’s elimination of protection of the national currency defends the interests of corporations and has negative consequences for the people.  The value of Argentinian peso fell with respect to the US dollar, with the rate of exchange going from 9.7 to 14.7 pesos for the dollar, a devaluation of 34%.  The result was an increase in prices for domestic goods sold in pesos, such as beef, wheat and water, according to a consumers’ association, diminishing the purchasing power of the people.  A leader in the truckers’ union has calculated that the workers would need a salary increase of 28% to compensate for the devaluation and attending inflation.  On the other hand, the devaluation benefits exporting companies, which receive dollars for exported goods and at the same time pay salaries in Argentinian pesos.  It is estimated that the estate bourgeoisie will have an additional four to eight billion dollars in profits for their sales of beef, wheat, corn and soy bean.  

     Such elimination of government protection of national currencies was one of the principal components of the neoliberal project imposed on the peoples of the world in the 1980s and 1990s, giving rise to popular movements of indignation, which in Latin America led to the sweeping aside of traditional political parties and the establishment of a different political reality from the period of 1998 to 2015.  The Latin American Right at the present time hopes that the presidential elections in Argentina are the beginning of the end of the era of progressive governments in Latin America.  But we could be in a moment in Argentina in which the reforms of the Left are consolidated, accepted even by governments of the Right; or in which a new wave of popular rejection demonstrates the political impossibility of the agenda of the Right in Latin America.  Either would reinforce the Latin American movement toward governments that defend the people and the nation, standing in opposition to the neoliberal and militarist policies of the global elite, which seeks to defend its privileges and its interests at all costs, creating a precarious condition for humanity.  

Key words: Macri, Scioli, Front for Victory, Argentina, Kirchner, devaluation, media