Challenges Facing the Latin American Left According to Marta Harnecker

In A World to Build, the prolific Chilean Marxist writer Marta Harnecker applies Marx’s and Lenin’s theories on socialist construction to twenty-first-century Latin American left governments and points to the original aspects of the lessons drawn from those experiences. The book is divided into three parts: past developments such as the anti-neoliberal protests of the 1990s that helped change the political map in Latin America, the transition to socialism in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, and the challenges faced by the left in power to achieving consolidation and hegemony. In each chapter Harnecker discusses the effectiveness of mechanisms designed to bring about decentralization and popular participation in decision making. In some cases she analyzes arrangements promoted by leftist governments such as worker cooperatives, community councils, and participatory planning. In other cases she presents proposals of her own or those formulated by leftist activists and intellectuals such as the Canadian economist Michael Lebowitz (2010), whose emphasis on “human development” under socialism she shares.

The book is enriched by Harnecker’s familiarity with the concrete problems, challenges, and successes of leftist governments in Latin America and her ability to draw on the lessons and theories derived from struggles over the past two centuries. Indeed, her diverse political experiences include her leadership involvement in the Christian student movement, her studies under the famed Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, her participation in the leftist movement that supported President Salvador Allende, her extended residence in Cuba, where she founded and ran an institute on popular memory, and her numerous interviews with Latin American leftist leaders and activists throughout the continent.

Another of the book’s contributions is Harnecker’s analysis and conclusions on the thorny issue of the role of the state in the prolonged democratic transition to socialism. She implicitly rejects the social-democratic vision of a unified state that presides over socialist construction in the absence of intense political conflict. She also considers inapplicable Lenin’s concept of dual power, in which two state structures, one representing the old system and the other the new one, compete with and confront one another. In contrast, she envisions the relatively harmonious coexistence of an old state, with a large presence of revolutionary cadres, and an emerging state in what she calls a “relationship of complementarity” (140). The old state, however, is plagued by “bureaucratism,” which she calls “the greatest scourge” (185) and one of the main impediments to the advancement of the revolutionary process. She attributes bureaucratism to “excessive centralization” (185) and the attitude among civil servants that they are called upon to “make the decisions because . . . they are the only ones who have the expertise to do so” (186). She points to decentralization as the major corrective and quotes Marx in Civil War in France as saying, “All that can be decentralized should be” (81). Her emphasis on bureaucracy is undoubtedly influenced by developments in countries where the radical left is in power, such as Venezuela, where inefficiency and corruption have become, along with the opposition’s disruptive tactics, major challenges facing leftists.

Harnecker insists that a “transition to socialism” is currently under way in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. To those questioning the slowness of structural transformation in those nations, she responds that what counts is the “direction” in which the nations are heading and not the “pace at which [they] . . . are implementing change,” which “will largely depend on how they deal with the obstacles they encounter” (10). In doing so, she takes issue with Valter Pomar, the Brazilian Workers’ Party leader and executive secretary of the São Paulo Forum, who claims that until the state is completely controlled by revolutionary forces the current stage cannot be called anything other than a “struggle for socialism” (105), as opposed to socialist transformation. Pomar, in effect, is expressing doubts about the achievement of socialism anywhere in the continent in the near future. In contrast, Harnecker’s position implies that conditions in the three countries are ripe for structural change and that Chávez, Morales, and Correa have gone beyond advanced welfare state policies by beginning to lay the groundwork for socialism. Elsewhere, she quotes the Cuban Communist Roberto Regalado as saying that all three governments have implemented “reforms whose strategic direction and intent are anti-capitalist” (48).

There are gaps and shortcomings in Harnecker’s analysis of the role of the state in socialist transformation and in her emphasis on the pitfalls of bureaucratism. At the theoretical level, she passes over the relationship between the state (referred to in Marxist terms as part of the “superstructure”) and the capitalist system (or the “structure”), which in all three countries continues to be dominant even though somewhat weakened. Regardless of the good intentions and revolutionary commitment of those in power, the state cannot be autonomous vis-à-vis the capitalist system. This fundamental principle is recognized by state theoreticians belonging to distinct Marxist currents such as Ralph Miliband and Nicos Poulantzas.

The tie-in between capitalist structure and state superstructure played out during and after the general strike that attempted to topple the Chávez government in 2002–2003. During the two-month shutdown when it appeared as if the Chavista government’s days were numbered, President Chávez relied on a group of businesspeople who refused to heed the strike call of the main business organization FEDECAMARAS. In the aftermath of that conflict, he announced that he would favor those nonstriking businesspeople, specifically in the authorization of preferential dollars (at favorable exchange rates) to finance imports. The ensuing unofficial alliance between the government and an emerging bourgeoisie outside of the fold of FEDECAMARAS made sense from political and economic viewpoints. Nevertheless, it was conducive to the abrupt accumulation of wealth by members of the new bourgeoisie and unethical dealings on their part that were responsible for the banking crisis of 2009, followed by arrest orders for over 50 bankers and the expropriation of 13 banks (Ellner, 2014: 9). Both Presidents Chávez and Nicolás Maduro have called for an “alliance” with “productive businesspeople” in an attempt to isolate those members of the private sector who seek to destabilize the nation’s economy.

Harnecker’s analysis of the “old state” overlooks this aspect of the complexity of socialist construction through peaceful democratic means and the material basis for bureaucratism and government backsliding. Her call for bottom-up participation in decision making would have been strengthened by a recognition of the need to create democratic mechanisms to supervise the ongoing interactions of state officials with the private sector, a necessary relationship but one that runs the risk of undermining the efficiency and popular thrust of the public administration.

Harnecker makes a distinction between the decentralization she proposes and anarchist-style and neoliberal-style decentralization. In contrast to anarchists, she rejects the complete elimination of the central government on the ground that it is instrumental in bringing about a redistribution of wealth. In contrast to neoliberals, she prioritizes popular participation. While she offers a detailed and informative discussion of popular participation, however, she places too much emphasis on decentralization as a corrective to bureaucratization. Indeed, decentralization can give rise to the same unwieldy bureaucracy that exists at the national level.

Viable mechanisms of popular participation—and not decentralization per se—are a sine qua non for combating inefficiency and corruption in the transition to socialism. Harnecker demonstrates the importance of popular participation even in the case of Ecuador, contrary to the assertions of some leftist scholars who question Correa’s commitment to authentic democracy. An example is the itinerant cabinets—workshops held throughout the country (especially in small towns, which are “prioritized over large cities” [124]) in which the entire cabinet interacts with mayors and the general populace. She claims that in these encounters “Correa is always careful not to make any promises that cannot be kept” (125).

In general, Harnecker is a realist who recognizes that leftist strategy needs to take into account subjective and objective conditions, examples of which she points to throughout the book. In one example of the importance of objective conditions, she attributes the moderateness of Lula’s policies, in contrast to those of Chávez, largely to “the fact that Brazil depends to a much greater degree on international finance capital” (55). She calls Chávez a “realist” (8) and credits him with having taken “existing reality” (8), consisting of “the inherited state apparatus, the inherited economic system, and the inherited culture” (9), as his starting point. On the international front, Chávez realized that the changes brought about by globalization “required an alternative globalization,” and therefore he rejected the old notion of building “socialism in one country” (9).

Subjective conditions, as defined by the level of political consciousness and commitment of popular and leftist forces, are harder to measure but no less significant than objective ones. Indeed, the left in the era of Marx and Lenin tended to highlight objective conditions, but over the past half a century or more leftist political analysts and activists have assigned increasing importance to subjective conditions, which are a fundamental component of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. Harnecker presents a realistic evaluation of political and subjective conditions prevalent in Latin America in order to determine what leftist governments can do and “cannot do, not because of lack of will but rather because of . . . limitations” (54). In doing so, she takes issue with the “ultra-left” by questioning the viability of “things that more radical left sectors, which demand that their governments take more drastic measures, often fail to take into account” (54). Thus she points out that company employees are not prepared to assume management responsibilities because “capitalism has never been interested in providing workers with the necessary technical knowledge” (85–86) to do so. Nevertheless, she underscores the importance of workers’ participation and notes that failure to incorporate them in decision making in the Soviet Union converted them into “mere cogs in the machine” and meant that a factory in that nation “differed little from its capitalist counterpart” (84). At the same time, however, she questions the applicability of the term “state capitalism” to Soviet-bloc nations.

Harnecker’s evaluation of the correlation of political forces in Latin America leaves room for guarded optimism. She agrees with Pomar that the new correlation of forces in Latin America is “capable of limiting foreign intervention in the region” (30). She goes on to discuss numerous setbacks to U.S. domination, such as the rejection of the Washington-promoted Free Trade Area of the Americas proposal, growth in the region’s economic relations with China, Ecuador’s closing of the Manta military base, the Organization of American States’ support for lifting sanctions against Cuba, Brazil’s decision to buy French rather than U.S. military equipment, and the growing number of international meetings and the establishment of new organizations and programs “without U.S. participation” (34).

A more somber leftist view, however, would point out that Boliva and Ecuador, with radical leftist governments, have always been politically volatile and that they lack an industrial base, while Venezuela is highly dependent on oil and lacking a diversified economy. None of the nations with more solid industrial bases have joined the radical left camp. Harnecker’s position is that the governments of the moderate left such as those of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil have failed to break with neoliberalism even while they have implemented viable social programs.

She also identifies herself with a school of thinking sometimes labeled “eco-socialism,” which attempts to reconcile Marx’s materialist doctrine with ecological imperatives. She credits Marx with anticipating environmentalism, especially toward the end of his life, when he moved away from the developmentalism and positivism that characterized some of his writing at an earlier date. After welcoming capitalism’s capacity to revolutionize productive forces including in the countryside, Marx and Engels began to warn that a new capitalist-driven agricultural revolution “would only worsen . . . problems” (66), particularly as a result of soil depletion. This dimension of Marxism is particularly relevant because of the confrontations between progressive Latin American governments and indigenous populations opposed to megaprojects, which Harnecker very briefly discusses in the case of the conflict-ridden Huanuni tin mine in Bolivia (Fuentes, 2014: 112–117; Webber, 2013: 181–183).

In short, A World to Win is a valuable study of the twenty-first-century Latin American radical left in power. Most important, it discusses a diversity of concrete proposals and experiences at the same time that it presents a theoretical framework for understanding the transformation of the state in the process of structural change. If Harnecker’s reasoning regarding the socialist path of radical left governments is correct, her analysis is especially important because the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador are presenting an attractive alternative to the forceful conquest of power undertaken by the communist movements that reached power in the twentieth century. Other works that examine in detail the knotty problems confronting all three governments are required if these experiences are to be assimilated and useful lessons drawn. Future studies need to be empirically strong and theoretically grounded, as is A World to Win. Specifically, they need to focus on the contradictions inherent in the process whereby a government committed to socialism interacts with the capitalist class in order eventually to change the capitalist system.