The Irresistible Decline of Progressivism
Progressivism, the current governmental policy that has provided continuity to the neoliberal model by deploying a discourse similar to that of the left is accelerating in its decline. The recent Argentinean parliamentary election results, which registered a marked decline for Kirchnerism, may represent the beginning of the end for processes that differ from those of Bolivia and Venezuela, the political currents that have sought to implement changes in a direction opposite to neoliberalism.
In the upcoming months elections will be held in the other countries completing the group of progressive governments: Uruguay will hold presidential elections in October, Chile will do the same in December as will Brazil in October of 2010. In Chile, it seems very likely that the right wing will attain an electoral victory for the first time since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship. In Uruguay, the candidate of the Frente Amplio Opositor (FAO), the former Tupamaro (Uruguayan guerrilla movement of the late 1970’s), Jose Mujica, the representative of the popular sectors most directly affected by structural adjustment, will struggle to defeat the neoliberal former president Luis Alberto Lacalle. In Brazil, the social democratic candidate Jose Serra maintains a comfortable lead, although the elections are still a year away.
It is highly likely that the region will shift to the right with enormous consequences as this shift will directly involve the continent’s most central countries. This is what was made evident by Argentina’s latest polls; they in effect crystallize a shift that had already become evident during the agrarian protests against Cristina Fernandez’s government in the first half of 2008. We are in the face of a deep trend that will not be held back, even if in Chile Michelle Bachelet’s Concertación party is able to win once more and even if Uruguay’s FAO proves successful as well. This conservative shift has deep roots and now projects a dark shadow over the entire region, most specifically on those social movements and processes of change occurring in Bolivia and Venezuela.
The advance of this new right, which some see a style similar to that of Berlusconi, has been fed first and foremost by the policies promoted by the progressive governments themselves. The continuation and extension of the neoliberal model under Lula, Kirchner, Bachelet, and Vazquez have actually expanded the socially conservative base upon which, an increasingly impatient right that seeks to multiply their profits, is supported. The [neoliberal] model today appears under the name of strip mining in the Andean region, soy monoculturalism in the plains of Argentina and Uruguay, sugar cane for bio-fuels and agribusiness in Brazil, as well deforestation, financial speculation and free trade in economies turned over to global markets.
It was the soy model that defeated Kirchner at the polls, in this same way the alliance of Brazilian capitalists and global capitalists will push aside the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) government in Brasilia. In these countries that comprise the Southern Cone there never did exist anything like a “post-neoliberal” model that some have wished themselves into seeing. On the contrary, there was nothing more than the continuation and expansion of the neoliberal model. In fact, under Lula Brazilian capital was able climb to unparalleled heights within global capitalism thanks to mergers and acquisitions blessed by Planalto (the Brazilian president’s workplace). This is the case with Petrobras; with the big banks Unibanco and Bradesco, Itau, which have been placed within the top 20 biggest banks in the world; and with Brazil Foods due to the merger of the food companies Sadia and Perdigao. Lula has recently approved the latest neoliberal nonsense: the privatization of 67 million hectares of the Amazon rain forest as part of his agrarian counter-reform that will allow for a large increase in the production of soybeans and beef.
In addition, the policies of these progressive governments have also worked to fracture the anti-neoliberal front that could have otherwise posed a formidable counterweight to the new right. The Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) was created to due the rightward trend in Lula’s PT; in Chile, powerfully surging is the candidacy of Marco Enríquez Ominami, son of the founder of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), against the possible return of a more rightwing elements of Bachelet Concertación; in Argentina, a substantial portion of the left simply opted to abstain or nullify and void their votes so as to not support the government.
Social policies, bonds, subsidies and cash transfers have contributed to the alleviation of poverty but they have also come to stand in for the universal rights from which the poor have been excluded. Furthermore, they have functioned to weaken and neutralize social movements—the third characteristic of progressive governments. Therefore, the short term holds no possible way out on the left. With the capacity of popular movements to mobilize effectively neutralized, the revitalized right is ready to pick up where progressivism has worn down. The decline of progressivism and the rise of the right—some of these linked to mafias, as in Argentina—closes a cycle that opened in the mid 90s with massive demonstrations, only to be “led back” to the institutional level by a layer of political professionals who managed to attract and co-opt social movements within their playing field. In this respect progressivism sowed what now lies under its own feet as it only popular mobilization that is capable of reversing the current right-wing offensive.
The new scenario places the Bolivian and Venezuelan processes into further international isolation, which will in turn encourage the rightwing within each of these countries to resume their attacks on their popular governments. The key point of inflection will be what happens in Brazil, the only country capable in and of itself to set off regional trends. Although it is an emerging power, Brazil’s path is one that both left and right share, the nuances between the two can be decisive when it comes to breathing life into projects such as the Banco del Sur, South American Defense Council or a regional currency. Despite this we should not be fooled: although the empire stands to benefit from these changes, it was the choices made by progressivism that brought them about.