The beginning of the twenty-first century has witnessed the rise of exciting new revolutionary movements against capitalist globalisation. They are characterised, in Latin America particularly, by qualitatively different strategies from the socialist movements of the last century. Rather than vanguard parties leading a Leninist insurrection or Maoist people's war, these movements are building broad social blocs in a Gramscian war of position and manoeuvre. It is suggested here that these movements are best viewed from the standpoint of a democratic dialectic linking together the roles of the state, the market and civil society. This recognises the need to build institutional power in each sector as well as the play of contradictions within and between each aspect of society. In what follows, an attempt is made to develop theory that can explain and contain the actual social practice of the new revolutionary struggles.
Alexander Gallas , `Review of Entfesselter Kapitalismus: transformation des europaischen sozialmodells by Joachim Bischoff', Dialectical Materialism (2003).
2.
Antonio Gramsci , Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York, International Publishers, 1971), p. 235.
Matt Hancock , `The cooperative district of Imola: forging the high road to globalisation ' (University of Bologna, School of Economics, 2005); Matt Hancock, `The Communist Party in the land of cooperation ' (University of Bologna, School of Economics, 2005).
8.
Jerry Harris , `Emerging Third World powers', Race & Class (Vol. 46, no. 3, 2005), pp. 7-27.
9.
For a detailed analysis of the second contradiction, using Germany as an example, see Jerry Harris, `Globalisation and class struggle in Germany ', Nature, Society and Thought (Vol. 18, no. 3, 2005), pp. 383-412.
10.
Michael Albert offers such a complex array of managerial committees and social organisations in his effort to replace the state that his ideas can be labelled `bureaucratic anarchism'. See Michael Albert, Parecon: life after capitalism (London, Verso , 2003). For a traditional Marxist critique of the inevitable `slippery slope' of market socialism, see Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett, China and Socialism: market reforms and class struggle ( New York, Monthly Review Press, 2005). And for an argument that still defends the Soviet statist model, refer to Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny, Socialism Betrayed: behind the collapse of the Soviet Union (New York, International Publishers, 2004).
11.
I am using the term `non-antagonistic contradictions' not to argue for an absence of political struggle but for such contradictions to be solved among social classes and forces with common goals to build a post-capitalist society. This is to be distinguished from contradictions between the people and counter-revolutionary forces. Although Mao articulates this in his 1957 essay, `On the correct handling of the contradictions among the people', the failure to carry out this policy led to the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. Mao Tse Tung, Selected Works of Mao Tse Tung: volume V ( Beijing, Foreign Language Press, 1977), pp. 350-421.
12.
David Schweickart , After Capitalism (New York, Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), pp. 56-7.
13.
Oscar Olivera , Cochabamba! Water war in Bolivia (Cambridge, South End Press, 2004), pp. 111-13.
14.
Alvaro Garcia Linera , `The multitude', in ibid., p. 66.
15.
Ibid., p. 28.
16.
Raquel Gutierrez-Aguilar , `The Coordinadora: one year after the water wars', in ibid., p. 55.
17.
Linera, op. cit., p. 83.
18.
Gutierrez-Aguilar, op. cit., p. 60.
19.
Olivera, op. cit., p. 136.
20.
Ibid., pp. 136-7.
21.
Juan Forero , `Coca advocate wins election for president in Bolivia', New York Times (19 December 2005 ), <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/international/americas/19bolivia.html>.
22.
Jim Schultz , `Bolivia's unplanned elections', Democracy Center On-Line (Volume 67, 1 December 2005), <http://www.democracyctr.org/newsletter/vol67.htm >.
23.
Neil Harvey , `Inclusion through autonomy: Zapatistas and dissent', NACLA Report on the Americas (Vol. 39, no. 2, September/October 2005), p. 14.
24.
Vladimir Escalante Ramirez , `Why does the PRD lose?', Documents on Mexican Politics (October 1994), <http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/politics/prdlose.html>.
25.
Harvey, op. cit., p. 14.
26.
Joao Pedro Stedile , `Memories of struggle in the MST', NACLA Report on the Americas (Vol. 38, no. 5, March/April 2005), p. 25.
27.
Gramsci, op. cit., p. 253.
28.
Steve Ellner , `Venezuela: defying globalisation's logic', NACLA Report on the Americas (Vol. 39, no. 2, September/October 2005), p. 24.
29.
Steve Ellner , `Directions of the Chavista movement in Venezuela', Science & Society (Vol. 69, no. 2, 2005), pp. 160-90.
30.
Ibid., p. 187.
31.
Jorge Luis Acanda Gonzalez , `Cuban civil society: reinterpreting the debate', NACLA Report on the Americas (Vol. 39, no. 4, January/February 2006), p. 35.
32.
Graciela Monteagudo , `Autonomism in Argentina under a new governmentality ', paper delivered at the Global Studies Association conference, May 2006.
33.
Michael Albert , `Argentina's occupied factories: practising participatory democracy in the workplace', Z Magazine Online (Vol. 18, no. 12, December 2005), <http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Dec2005/albert1205.html >.
34.
Camila Pineiro Harnecker , `The new cooperative movement in Venezuela's Bolivarian process', Monthly Review Webzine (12 May 2005), <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/harnecker051205.html >.
35.
Christian Parenti , `Hugo Chavez and petro populism', The Nation (24 March 2005), <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050411/parenti/8 >.
