Finally, India is getting its act together in its Iran policy. The ‘breaking news’ that India proposes to robustly explore expanding its trade with Iran signals a new approach to stepping up oil imports from Iran while at the same time rectifying the imbalance in trade, which heavily favours Iran traditionally, and to make this happen within a paradigm that resolves the current problem over the payment mechanism.
The new thinking is an acknowledgement of Iran’s importance as a strategic partner. That is where the rub lies. Delhi has lumped far too long the blackmail tactic by Washington with the malicious intention to erode India’s ties with Iran. Indeed, as result, for no real fault of Tehran, the India-Iran relationship suffered needless setbacks in the recent years.
Delhi should never accept that this is a zero sum game – India’s relationships with the US and Iran respectively. Iran is far too important a regional power in India’s extended neighbourhood to be neglected. There is no need to dilate on this thought.
Other Asian countries like Japan, South Korea or Malaysia have successfully managed to have positive relationships with both Iran and the GCC states. Also, GCC states themselves have maintained highly nuanced relationships with Iran. In a long term perspective, it is far from inevitable that Iran’s rise is an irreconcilable eventuality for the GCC states.
Much of the present-day tensions in the Persian Gulf is also to be attributed to the imperial policy of ‘divide-and-rule’ that the West continues to pursue in the region for the sake of perpetuating their hegemony. Finally, the US-Iran standoff itself is increasingly becoming unsustainable if Washington is to optimally develop a regional strategy. The point is, Iran has already bolted away.
China sees all these trends very clearly and is successfully developing a multi-tiered regional strategy that creates space for pursuing fruitful relations with Iran and GCC – and even Israel – alike.
Indeed, it is also best for a healthy US-India partnership that it is an equal relationship where neither side takes undue advantage or tries to browbeat or resorts to prescriptive approaches and arm-twisting. In this case, the US policy toward Iran also happens to be vacuous, lacking sincerity of purpose; it is opaque and brittle – and increasingly, US comes to realise that even its European allies are reluctant to follow its lead. Therefore, it is simply appalling that US has chosen to harbour expectations of dictating to Delhi the directions and content of its Iran policy.
Of course, the American side is not to bear the entire blame, either. Somehow, the Indian elites (including bureaucrats) and strategic pundits have come to develop an atavistic fear that US-Indian partnership is highly perishable unless Delhi keeps harmonising its policies with the US global strategies even by sacrificing its interests. This sort of inferiority complex is completely unwarranted.
The heart of the matter is that the US is a highly experienced practitioner of diplomacy. If it began abandoning its historic cussedness toward India sometime during Bill Clinton administration’s second term, it was because Washington saw the growth potential of India and the great possibilities that would arise for a beneficial relationship.
Even today, that consideration is the prime mover of the US polices toward India. It is a well-known fact that after being grumpy for a few weeks after India spurned the US offer for the 10-billion dollar multi-purpose aircraft tender, Washington moved on.
We could also learn from the Americans – how doggedly they keep pursuing their regional strategies through the Afghan endgame, no matter what Delhi thinks of it. Suffice to say, the high probability is that India’s Iran policy may displease Washington for a while and then life will move on. As for the fear complex of the Indian elites or pundits, it is borne more out of their own insecurities vis-a-vis the US establishment and it should remain their private affair.
February 3, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics | India, Iran |
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Sri Lanka has lashed out at the recent US-backed sanctions targeting the Iranian energy sector, stressing that the bans will inflict heavy losses on the country’s economy.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse said Tuesday that the island’s only oil refinery is designed to work with Iranian light crude and any disruption to oil imports from Iran deals a blow to Colombo.
He also noted that by imposing an embargo on the Iranian oil industry, the US and its Western allies “are not punishing Iran, but us… the small countries.”
On December 31, 2011, US President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions which seek to penalize countries importing Iran’s oil or doing transaction with the country’s central bank.
In their latest meeting in Brussels on January 23, EU foreign ministers also imposed new sanctions on Iran which include a ban on purchasing oil from the country, a freeze on the assets of Iran’s Central Bank within the EU, and a ban on the sale of diamonds, gold and other precious metals to Iran.
The United States, Israel and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program and have used this pretext to impose four rounds of international embargos and a series of unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Iran has refuted the allegations, arguing that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tehran has a right to use nuclear technology for peaceful use.
February 1, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Sanctions against Iran |
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Washington’s double-edged sword of policies towards the Islamic Republic is not only exhausting the patience of the Iranian nation but it is provoking the ire of international conscience as well.
Goaded by Washington, EU foreign ministers decided on January 23 to impose a ban on oil imports from Iran under the fickle excuse that the country is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
In a recent stance, Iran has threatened that it would never let a situation prevail where regional states could sell their oil while Iran couldn’t. Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has said, “When there is an absence of Iranian supply, oil prices will soar up dramatically and the western countries are well aware of this fact; However, Iran will never allow itself to land in a situation in which it cannot sell oil but other regional states can.”
It hardly needs saying that such a firm stance on the part of Iran has been given considerable thought and that the European Union should be prepared to face the consequences of their irrationality and blind servitude to Washington.
Earlier Iran had warned that it would close the Strait of Hormuz, a move which, as the IMF has said, “could trigger a much larger price spike including by limiting offsetting supplies from other producers in the region.”
The sanctions on Iran oil, which will be effective in July, will surely have drastic repercussions for the European Union as Iran is mulling banning the sale of oil to Europe, a proactive move which will salvage the country’s economy on the one hand and will also lead to a drastic hike in oil prices on the other.
Undoubtedly, the EU decision to impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports is, as Velayati has said, “a political maneuver,” and that “Iran doesn’t need any favor from any country to sell its oil, because global demand is always there.”
In the long run, Western oil firms and consumers may “emerge the biggest losers.” The IMF has predicted that crude oil prices could rise up to 30 percent namely to over USD 140 per barrel if Iran ever decided to retaliate by halting its oil exports altogether. Saudi Arabia has vowed to fill the gap.
But what if Saudi Arabia is bluffing? What if she cannot make up for the supply deficiency?
At all events, oil is fungible and Iran will easily find its own customers in Asian markets.
Europe has seen better days and now is not surely the best time for the imposition of sanctions on Iran’s oil as they will suffer most. For some European countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece, it will not be really easy to participate in the ban on Iran oil as they largely rely on Iran imports. As for Greece which is receiving oil from Iran on credit, it will be an utterly wrong decision to join other European countries which have secret plans to disintegrate the country.
Much to the chagrin of Washington and the Zionist regime, a number of countries such as China, India, Russia, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea have already refused to abide by the new measures. Russia has slammed the new package of sanctions and in a tough-worded statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the EU move as “deeply erroneous.”
“Under such kind of pressure Iran will make no concessions and no correction of its policy,” it said. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that there was nothing to prove that Iran was trying to build an atomic weapon.
Russia has also warned the West against a US-led invasion of Iran, saying that this would incur a chain reaction and that the catastrophic consequences will affect the entire region.
It is manifest that Iran will do without the EU and will find its customers elsewhere in Asian markets. In other words, Iran will not lose in the passive war of sanctions engineered by Washington.
Indeed, sanctions are to be seen as part of Washington’s policy of coercion to break the back of the Iranian government and bring the nation to its knees. However, it should be noted that Iran has been mercilessly under severe sanctions for over 30 years and that it has turned the sanctions into opportunities to attain self-sufficiency and stand on its feet again. The entire gamut of the sanctions designed and spurred by the US and now followed by the EU is also tailored to suit the interests of Israel, the archenemy of Iran and thus the bosom buddy of Washington.
Ever since its inception, the Islamic Republic has been the target of Washington’s inveterate animosity.
In his book Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq (1993), Alan Friedman reveals how the US government aided the regime of the executed dictator Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran. Ironically, the once good pal of the United States suddenly turned into a parasite to be eliminated from the face of the earth. According to Friedman, Washington generously doled out its assistance in various forms to Iraq including billions of dollars worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, non-US arms, military intelligence, Special Operations training, and active participation in war against Iran. An Atlanta branch of Italy’s largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro funneled over USD 5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. This piece of information had been concealed by the CIA.
An appalling report revealed that the US government provided Saddam’s regime with chemical weapons. Released on May 25, 1994 by the US Senate Banking Committee, the report detailed the export of pathogenic (‘disease producing’), toxigenic (‘poisonous’), and other biological materials to Iraq after licensing by the US Department of Commerce. The report revealed 70 shipments (including Bacillus anthracis) from the US to Iraq over a span of three years.
The Iraqi regime used the chemical weapons provided by the US against the Iranian combatants and civilians, thus leaving them in a life-in-death situation. Around 100,000 Iranians were affected by nerve and mustard gases, and around one in 10 died before receiving any medical treatment. About five to six thousand are still under medical treatment, of whom around a thousand are critically ill.
The Iranian chemical victims are still dying on a daily basis.
So, Washington’s enmity towards the Islamic Republic goes far beyond its peaceful nuclear program which has constantly been used as a political leverage to stunt the economic and political growth of an anti-imperialism state and prevent the emergence of a Muslim superpower.
The depiction of Iran as a nuclear nightmare and as a global threat is only a saga manufactured by Washington in order to smother a voice so overpoweringly critical of the myriad morbid policies of a government whose American dream is dead and gone.
~
Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.
January 28, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | European Union, Iran, Sanctions against Iran |
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President Barack Obama blew a kiss to Apple in the State of the Union speech, praising the entrepreneurial spirit of its founder, the late Steve Jobs, as the cameras panned to his widow in the audience.
Obama’s timing couldn’t be weirder. In the last month, Apple has released a damning audit which found that almost 100 of Apple’s supplier factories force more than half their workers to exceed a 60-hour week. The company announced responsibility for aluminum dust explosions in Chinese supplier factories that killed four workers and injured 77. Hundreds more in China have been injured cleaning iPad screens with a chemical that causes nerve damage.
Apple was just subjected to a “This American Life” radio special reporting on its abysmal factory conditions in China (Jon Stewart gigged ‘em on the issue, too). Last weekend a front-page New York Times story asked why the company offshored all of its manufacturing, mostly to China. (The answer is found in the what its executives call “flexibility.” Tens of thousands of workers there live in factory dorms on-site, where, the Times reports, they are woken in the middle of the night and forced onto 12-hour shifts when Apple decides a product needs tweaking.)
In the face of all this bad press, the tech darling’s response has been to reveal its supplier factories and to announce a partnership with the Fair Labor Association to do stepped-up factory inspections. The FLA is the partly corporate-funded group that until now only monitored apparel factories, and which Nike helped establish after its own scandals in the ’90s.
In sum, Apple is now doing what Nike has been doing for nearly 15 years: the apology-plus-transparency formula, straight out of the manuals offered by “reputation management” consultants.
This was certainly enough for most mainstream media and even some activists. Some were a bit more dubious but still pinned their hopes for stemming the abuses on the chimera of “consumer pressure.” For those who may believe that rich-country consumer pressure should not be so summarily dismissed, I believe that it’s useful to turn to Jeffrey Swartz, until mid-2011 the CEO of Timberland, who says that consumers don’t care at all about workers’ rights. In a late-2009 article he wrote, “With regard to human rights, the consumer expectation today is somewhere in the neighborhood of, don’t do anything horrible or despicable… if the issue doesn’t matter much to the consumer population, there’s not a big incentive for the consumer-minded CEOs to act, proactively.” In a 2008 interview he mused about his desire to “seduce consumers to care” so that Timberland’s CSR report was not mere “corporate cologne”.
It must be said that Apple looked more serious this week than it did two years ago, when it shrugged off 18 worker suicides at its main supplier, Foxconn, in China. Steve Jobs told the press that the high number of suicides was about average for the Chinese population as a whole. Just last week, Terry Gou, CEO of Foxconn, referred to his workers as “animals” during an appearance at the Taipei City Zoo—not a lot of empathy there, either.
Change the Image, Not the Actual
When anti-sweatshop campaigners in the ’90s relentlessly called Nike out for its miserable, toxic factories around the world, sneaker-buying Americans did have an impact on Nike.
U.S. sales fell for four successive years, despite billion-dollar marketing outlays every year. So CEO Phil Knight rented the National Press Club and told reporters his shoes were “synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime and arbitrary abuse.” He vowed to put things right.
Since then, Nike has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on factory “monitoring” and hired on a “corporate social responsibility” staff of over 200. Nike became a charter member of the FLA in 1999, and has a representative on its board.
What has it wrought? Very little. Richard Locke, a highly-regarded business professor and long-time observer of Nike, has been granted extraordinary access by the shoe giant. “A decade’s-worth of high-profile efforts to change sweatshop conditions in overseas apparel factories hasn’t worked,” Locke concludes.
Why hasn’t it? He who pays the piper calls the tune. All these new workers’ rights experts work for the corporations they’re monitoring—either directly, as on Nike’s social responsibility staff, or in NGO mode. NGOs sell their monitoring services to the big brands that are seeking cover while their supplier factories continue the same profitable patterns of worker abuse.
The most recent example where this kind of voluntary monitoring has proved ineffective comes from Indonesia. An Indonesian union won in court a $950,000 settlement this month for 4,500 workers at a factory that supplied Nike. They were forced to work seven days a week without overtime pay—at a big factory supposedly under FLA monitoring for a decade. (It’s easy to miss 570,000+ unpaid overtime hours, right?)
A decade’s-worth of high-profile efforts to change sweatshop conditions in overseas apparel factories hasn’t.
This is not to say that these high-profile monitoring operations are worthless. Just ask the shareholders who saw Nike bounce back from being equated with slavery to join the top rankings of “responsible” companies. “Corporate social responsibility” has proved invaluable at repairing brand images and wrong-footing the anti-sweatshop movement – maybe what Bill Clinton had in mind when launching the Apparel Industry Partnership, precursor to the FLA.
In fact, one could argue that the FLA has made the situation worse. It has been monitoring and certifying “compliance” for Nike and other apparel giants for more than a decade, apologizing for the corporations as they continue to squeeze suppliers, crush worker organizing, and cheat workers out of severance pay when their factories flee to lower-cost havens.
FLA CEO Auret van Heerden has excused Nike and its other corporate “partners” for the below-subsistence prices paid to sweatshop contractors, saying “simply blaming buyers and the prices they pay is too simple.”
Meanwhile sportswear companies unabashedly gloat over the power they have to dictate prices paid to supplier factories.
When Reebok and Adidas merged in 2006, an executive bragged on an investor call about negotiations “with all our key footwear and apparel suppliers to lock in cost savings for 2007 that should be in the double-digit million range.”
A New Hope?
With Apple, however, we may be able to turn the FLA’s involvement to the workers’ advantage.
An independent Hong Kong-based group, Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), has years of experience interacting with Foxconn workers.
The situation is similar to what we’ve seen happen with United Students Against Sweatshops, which has developed on-the-ground relationships with garment worker organizations in Latin America for a decade.
USAS and the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent factory monitor funded by its member colleges, have used a combination of pressure inside boardrooms and outside retail stores.
When companies that supply garments to colleges close their contracted factories in the face of worker organizing, or subject workers to unsafe working conditions, the WRC investigates and USAS students agitate.
Through pressure on the corporations at the top of the supply chain, several factories have reopened and hired back workers—with a union.
In China, it is quite possible that SACOM could bird-dog the FLA, insisting on real-time sharing of its reports, for example.
So far Apple, following Nike’s playbook, has produced audits that say violations are occurring, but does not reveal in which factories they’re happening. The FLA also doesn’t insist on that level of transparency, essentially saying “trust us.”
The WRC, by contrast, insists on knowing where the factory is and what’s happening, so it can gauge progress. The FLA could use some pressure to do the same.
One of the most refreshingly honest voices in the global worker rights field is the business professor, Prakash Sethi. For years he was the architect of Mattel’s supply chain code-and-monitoring apparatus and has done consulting work in this field for several other Fortune 500 firms (including – ugh! – Freeport McMoRan). He says that the major global players – the World Bank, OECD countries and the International Labor Organization – have failed to apply pressure on low-cost producing countries that do not protect workers’ human rights or health and safety. He has also called on corporations to pay restitution to developing-world workers for ‘years of expropriation’ enabled by corrupt, repressive regimes. (Particularly poignant was his brusque assertion in a New York Times interview that ‘bigotry’ was at the root of most companies’ refusal to even try to grapple with some of these issues.) Mattel ended its supplier-factory monitoring in 2009 and there were no untoward consequences, such as negative press reports.
In any case, more attention paid to Apple’s supplier factories will further anti-sweat groups’ communications with workers, and help build networks through social media and texting. It’s not the UAW in the ’30s yet, but it’s a beginning.
Jeff Ballinger is a researcher and writer on sweatshop monitoring. He is a member of Worker Rights Consortium’s advisory council. Follow his tweets @press4change & ballingerjd@gmail.com is the e-mail
January 27, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | Apple, China, Fair Labor Association, Nike, Sweatshop |
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A decisive struggle promising to shape the fate of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), West Coast dockworkers, and all organized labor is swiftly nearing a climax in Longview, Washington.
Within weeks, if not days, the international conglomerate EGT Development will seek to commence operations at its new $200 million export grain terminal at the Port of Longview. In refusing to use ILWU labor, EGT is breaking the precedent in place since the 1930s, which holds that all public port docks up and down the West Coast are to be worked by the ILWU.
As ILWU Local 21 in Longview maintains, the union’s struggle against EGT’s scab facility is indicative of “the fight of working people everywhere.” It is, as the union continues, “a make-or-break struggle for all organized labor.”
Yet, as the ILWU and its allies ready to fight EGT’s union busting, the US military lies in wait to intervene on the behalf of the conglomerate.
As ILWU International President Rob McEllrath disclosed in a January 3 letter:
We have been told that this vessel will be escorted by armed United States Coast Guard, including the use of small vessels and helicopters, from the mouth of the Columbia River to the EGT facility.
The revelation that the Coast Guard (one of the five armed forces of the United States, and the lone military organization within the Department of Homeland Security) will be utilized to guard the EGT ship has drawn outrage and harsh condemnation from many within the labor community. A January 9 resolution from the San Francisco Labor Council, for example, read in part:
This is the first use of the US military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years—not since the Great 1970 Postal Strike when President Nixon called out the Army and National Guard in an (unsuccessful) attempt to break the strike. The use of the Armed Forces against labor unions is something you expect to see in a police state. This is part of a disturbing trend where the US military, acting as enforcers for the 1%, is poised to be used against our own people, as exemplified by the new law [the National Defense Authorization Act] allowing the military to imprison US citizens without trial…
…We condemn this use of the military as part of a union-busting campaign to lower the cost of labor on the waterfront and destroy the union.
Other labor organizations, meanwhile, have sent letters to President Obama in protest. As a letter sent by the South Central Federation of Labor in Wisconsin states in part:
Use of our tax dollars and our military to assist such union busting is horrifying. Mr. President, as Commander in Chief, we call upon you to order the Coast Guard to stand down, to not interfere on the side of management in this labor dispute.
Mr. Obama’s willingness to deploy military force ought, though, to be of little surprise. Despite his campaign promise to “walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America,” Mr. Obama has consistently shown himself to be no champion of organized labor. The president, after all, was all too content with leaving labor’s prized Employee Free Choice Act to unceremoniously rot in a Democratically controlled Congress.
But as President Obama clearly sides with management in Longview, the national AFL-CIO and its president, Richard Trumka, continue to maintain an indifference stance on the whole matter.
For its part, the AFL-CIO has maintained a virtual blackout of the Longview struggle, with no coverage of the dispute appearing on the federation’s website or blog. As a frustrated reader commented on the federation’s blog, “It would be nice if the AFL-CIO Blog gave workers a voice by reporting on the struggle in Longview, Washington by ILWU Local 21.”
Mr. Trumka, on the other hand, has made just one statement on the matter, coming back in July. In it, he deemed the struggle a mere “jurisdictional dispute.” Trumka’s remarks were prompted by an Oregon AFL-CIO Executive Board resolution condemning the actions of International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 701—an AFL-CIO affiliate currently crossing ILWU pickets to work the EGT terminal—as “scab labor.”
Given that both unions reside within the national federation, Trumka went on to note that no AFL-CIO body had “the authority to intervene or take sides.” He did clarify, however, that “this should not be construed as a judgment on the merits of the dispute.”
For Trumka, choosing to cloak his muteness in such a technicality may very well stem from the fact that the IUOE provides substantially more in annual membership fees to the AFL-CIO than the ILWU.
But if such a financial incentive is indeed driving Trumka’s public indifference, it is rather shortsighted. For no matter the national AFL-CIO’s apathy, the struggle in Longview is proving to be a rather seminal event, bringing together organized labor, the Occupy movement, and an assortment of other activists in a direct fight against corporate greed.
And with such widespread support, coming from both within and without the house of labor, ample incentive and political cover would seemingly be in place for Trumka to step forth and take a firm stand against the jurisdictional raiding and corporate colluding of an AFL-CIO affiliate union.
Yet, as labor activist Harry Kelber writes, AFL-CIO leaders to this very day continue to “prefer a passive membership, rather than a militant one that might call for reforms.” However, continuing to cling to such conservative pragmatism, while ignoring the broad working class militancy and solidarity presently unfolding around the Longview struggle, is a posture Trumka can ill afford to maintain. For in doing so, Trumka only promises to relegate the AFL-CIO to further irrelevancy.
Thus, as President-“I’ll walk on that picket line with you”-Obama readies to send in the military against longshoremen in Longview, the time has come for all to take sides. The struggle can no longer be credibly held as a jurisdictional matter; rather, it is a fight for all organized labor. So, in the words of Florence Reece, the time has come to ask Mr. Trumka: Which side are you on?
Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer living in Salem, Oregon. He may be reached at: bnschreiner@gmail.com.
January 23, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Solidarity and Activism |
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Experts regard all this as an attempt by Washington to economically undermine the EU
The ongoing US pressure on the European Union, Turkey, Japan, China and India to halt imports of Iranian oil and suspend any related financial transactions is facing resistance by oil importing companies and nations.
Last week India and Turkey refused to sign up to a proposed embargo on the import of Iranian crude, just days after the same had been announced by China.
Moreover, just as the EU is bracing itself for a decision on halting Iranian oil imports it will have to make on January 23, a number of Western companies are hastily extending their contracts with Iranian partners to avoid being hit by the proposed sanctions.
In an affront to Washington, India and Turkey have said although they would comply with the standing UN sanctions against Tehran, they would ignore oil embargoes introduced by individual countries. Iranian oil accounts for just under 10 percent of India’s needs and a hefty 30 percent of Turkish imports.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, dispatched to drum up support for the proposed US oil embargo, had a bit more luck in Tokyo where he was assured that Japan would cut down its imports of Iranian crude. After the EU, China is the world’s third biggest buyer of Iranian oil. South Korea, which is buying about as much Iranian oil as India, is still undecided on whether or not to stand by Washington on this matter. A Moscow-based expert, Alexander Salitsky, still believes that Americans will eventually succeed in bringing South Koreans on board, just like they did with Japan.
But despite siding with the US on the matter, Japan and South Korea are still facing growing domestic discontent over their role as ‘junior partners’ to the American Big Brother. Even if they join in the sanctions, the sanctions are unlikely to succeed. As for China and India, they will keep importing Iranian oil, which means that America is losing its sway in Asia.
It looks like during their planned meeting on Monday EU foreign ministers will decide to stop buying Iranian oil, which is going to be a hard call for many of them. Another option is that by joining the US embargo per se, the EU will take its time implementing it as they will need a while to find a new supplier, says Lyudmila Kulagina, another Moscow-based expert.
“The US-proposed embargo will certainly add to Europeans’ economic woes, forcing them to look for new sources of much-needed oil supply which won’t be easy…”
Some experts regard all this as an attempt by Washington to play the Iranian oil card to economically undermine the EU which, unlike America, imports up to 40 percent of its crude oil from Iran. Vladislav Belov from the Institute of European Studies in Moscow disagrees.
“The ongoing global recession is playing right into the hands of the US and the EU by bringing down the overall demand for oil and gas… However, the US might eventually feel the pinch if the embargo sends oil prices up. In any case, I don’t believe Washington is actually using the proposed sanctions as a means of pressuring Europeans with the prospect of a possible oil deficit…”
In any event, if the US succeeds in pulling the plug on Iranian oil imports, even incrementally, Tehran will apparently try offering additional supplies to either China or India whose economies remain the main drivers of global economic growth. Turkey too could jack up its oil imports with an eye to partially reselling them to European buyers.
January 22, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics |
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The government of Greece has submitted its request to the European Union to ease the forthcoming ban on importing Iran’s oil by EU member states.
The EU decision to ban Iran’s oil imports comes after US President Barack Obama signed into law on December 31, 2011, new sanctions which aim to penalize other countries for dealing with Iran’s Central Bank or importing the country’s crude oil, Antiwar website reported.
The EU is expected to hold its summit meeting on Monday, January 23, to make a final decision on proposed embargo on Iran’s oil exports.
EU representatives failed in their latest meeting in Brussels on Thursday to reach an agreement on the details of a planned embargo on Iran’s oil exports and a final decision on the ban is to be raised at the meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday.
The EU members, however, remain divided over several issues, primarily the length of a planned grace period that would allow states heavily dependent on Iranian oil to fulfill existing contracts for a period after the ban went into place.
Some EU members are seeking grace periods of between one and 12 months to allow them to find alternative supplies. Greece, which depends heavily on Iranian crude, is pushing for the longest delay while Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany say they need a maximum period of three months.
EU governments will be prohibited from making new contracts with Iran from the time the embargo is imposed, but can purchase crude previously contracted. This exemption will end on July 1, 2012.
EU countries buy about 500,000 barrels per day of Iran’s oil, making the Union one of the largest markets for Iranian crude.
January 22, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Wars for Israel |
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What Next?
Power concedes nothing without a demand
– Frederick Douglass
Occupy Wall Street (OWS), giving vent to the pent up anger of the 99%, has inspired the people in the United States and other parts of the world to expose capitalism for what it is: a profit-driven system that tends to enrich and empower a tiny minority at the expense of everyone else. The movement has successfully shown how the two-party machine of the US politico-electoral system has increasingly become a charade, as the moneyed 1% is essentially in charge of the government. Regardless of its shortcomings and how it would evolve henceforth, the movement’s achievements have already been truly historical, as it signifies an auspicious awakening of the people and a new spirit to fight the injustice.
Despite these glorious achievements, however, OWS does not seem to be growing. The initial excitement and novelty of the movement has dissipated, and the public has become almost indifferent to watching commando-like police raids and evictions of protesters from most of their encampments. Many of its potential allies such as larger numbers of working people seem to be taking a wait-and-see stance toward it.
Several nationwide polls clearly indicate that the movement has stalled. While polling results need to be viewed with caution, they cannot be ignored either, as their findings are by and large consistent. Three major polls (conducted by Gallup/USA Today, Public Policy Polling, and The Pew Research Group) uniformly show that while the Americans’ overall view of the movement and their support of its goals have since mid-October remained largely unchanged, or even slightly improved, they have grown more critical (and less supportive) of its tactics, of the way the protests are being conducted. The Gallup/USA Today poll also showed that “most Americans [are] taking a neutral stance toward” the movement.
How is this to be explained? Why aren’t more of the 99% joining the movement? And why has support for protest actions of the Occupiers declined?
An obvious reason for the fading of support for Occupy demonstrations is the carefully calculated use of excessive power and presence of the police force, designed to frighten or discourage ambivalent spectators who may contemplate joining the protestors. Another equally obvious factor is the corporate media that, in collusion with politicians, tend to drive a wedge between the protestors and their potential allies among the wider working population.
More fundamental reasons for the flattening of support for the Occupy movement’s tactics, however, could be detected in the shortcomings of the movement itself. Three major weaknesses are (1) vagueness of demands and lack of a program for change, (2) lack of or insufficient mobilization of broader working people, and (3) aversion to building an alternative political organization of the 99% to the two-party machine of the 1%.
VAGUENESS OF DEMANDS AND LACK OF A PROGRAM FOR CHANGE
OWS has done a wonderful job in exposing the unjust and corrupting nature of the capitalist system. But it has not done as good a job in explaining or calling attention to an agenda for change. Its Declaration of Occupation catalogues a list of more than 25 grievances, ranging from inequality to bank bail outs to illegal house foreclosures to unemployment and job outsourcing, but, beyond general calls for justice and equality, it refuses to make specific demands. Exposing inequality, injustice and corruption is, of course, necessary—but not sufficient. More importantly is what to do about these corrosive maladies of capitalism. How can they be cured or rectified? What demands are to be made or what political steps are to be taken in order to change the status quo in favor of the 99%?
I am aware of the OWS’s rationale for shying away from making specific demands: “concrete demands tend to narrow the movement’s focus and limit its ideals and goals; focusing on specific demands is tantamount to focusing on trees while losing sight of the forest; or demands may balkanize the 99% and diffuse their energy as they tend toward the least common denominator.” In an article titled “Occupy Wall Street won’t be pigeonholed,” Professor Nicolaus Mills of Sarah Lawrence College argues, for example, “The refusal of Occupy Wall Street to tie itself down with an agenda that can be debated piecemeal is one of its great strengths. The decision allows Occupy Wall Street to remain a cri de Coeur [an impassioned cry] for all who believe they have lost ground over the last decade” [1].
Another example of this line of reasoning reads as follows: “Occupy Wall Street has left open a space for us all to feel we are a part of the movement. If the demands were already set, many of us might feel outside—that there wasn’t a place for us, that we couldn’t dream about our issue, that we had to stay on message. . . . Occupy Wall Street feels exciting in part because it doesn’t force us to choose, to prioritize” [2].
I understand the Occupiers’ concern when they argue that focusing on specific issues as rallying points may whittle down their broader and bigger ideals such as fighting for democracy, justice and equality. I also realize why they may argue, “Why bother with the branches when you could go for the roots of the tree.”
But, as Shamus Cooke aptly puts it, “any tree-removal worker will tell you [that] the tree comes first, then the roots.” Far-reaching goals such as “democracy now,” or essential grievances such as “banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” may sound loftier and more important than specific demands such as “save Social Security,” or “affordable healthcare.” But they are not as useful or as effective in mobilizing the people, escalating the struggle toward palpable/achievable results and, therefore, maintaining the movement. Again, as Cooke puts it, “although a general anti-1% sentiment sounds appealing to the 99%, a struggle to win worker-friendly demands can help pull these people into the streets” [3].
Furthermore, the argument that having a political agenda for change, or making specific demands, may “balkanize” the 99% and diffuse its energy is unwarranted. Demanding “Medicare for all” or “save Social Security,” for example, are bound to resonate with the overwhelming majority of the 99% and unite them all into a powerful fighting force in pursuit of achieving these goals.
Likewise, demanding “no budget cuts, no layoffs, jobs for all,” is certain to echo loudly with the working people, and further expand the fighting coalition against the 1%. A critically important natural ally of the Occupy movement, without whose participation no meaningful change could be brought about, is the working class. Although individual workers or unions have occasionally participated in the Occupy protests, the overwhelming majority of the working Americans seem to have taken a position on the fence; apparently torn between the Occupy movement, on the one hand, and the labor bureaucrats, in collusion with the Democratic Party, on the other.
So far, the movement has not done enough to begin to cut the umbilical cord that has traditionally tied the rank-and-file of the US labor to the Democratic Party and its allies in the labor bureaucracy. True, Occupy did have a number of auspicious joint actions with labor unions and college students, as in the case of shutting down the Port of Oakland, or the case of support for public education in California. Such promising instances of Occupy-labor alliance, however, remain sporadic, few and far between.
Only through specific demands such as “jobs for all” can OWS woo away the hitherto ambivalent mass of labor ranks from the corrupt union chiefs and the movement-wrecking Democratic Party. If OWS mobilizes around issues that resonate with the working majority, labor ranks and, therefore, unions will follow as they would be left without much of a choice. The resulting Labor/Occupy alliance would constitute an irresistible force of change in favor of the 99%.
Perhaps it would be instructive to recall historical evidence indicating that major social revolutions such as the French revolution (1789), the Russian/Bolshevik revolution (1917), the Spanish revolution (the 1930s), and the Chinese revolution (1949) were all precipitated and won by a few simple demands (like bread, peace and land) that resonated with the majority of the people. Likewise, the New Deal reforms in the United States and Social-Democratic reforms in Europe resulted from a few seemingly modest demands such jobs and economic security that galvanized and united the people against the ruling class, thereby effecting positive change in favor of the public.
Demands such as “Medicare for all,” “jobs for all,” or “save Social Security” are obviously unifying and strengthening causes for the Occupy movement, not “balkanizing” and “weakening,” as many Occupiers seem to think. More importantly, in the absence of such concrete, winnable demands it would become increasing more difficult to sustain the movement on the basis of general grievances, or lofty but amorphous ideals.
LACK OR INSUFFICIENT MOBILIZATION OF THE WORKING PEOPLE
Another weakness of the Occupy movement is that it has not made a concerted effort to reach out and mobilize the working people, especially the organized labor, which has sporadically engaged in protest actions around key demands related to job protection, but frequently hamstrung by many of the class collaborationist union leaders. Working class is, of course, not limited to the so-called “blue-collar” workers; it also includes vast layers of “professionals” or “white-collar” workers. The uniquely significant role of the working people lies not merely in their numbers; more importantly, in their critically important economic role as producers of the wealth of nations. Not only do they run factories, but also transportation and communication networks, schools and hospitals, food and entertainment industries . . . in short, the economy.
As long as they keep producing goods and services, and thus running the economy, no symbolic occupation (by groups of dedicated radicals) of Wall Street premises, of major banks, or of politicians’ offices would force the 1% to pay attention to the needs of the 99%. Agitating and organizing the working people around specific issues takes time and patience; but there are simply no short-cuts around it.
“Escalating the Occupy Movement without having engaged working people with their most pressing issues will amount to strangling it (imagine a battlefield where the cavalry charges and the infantry stays put, unable to back-up those mounting the advance). The real organizing still needs to be done, but the activists’ impatience is fast becoming a threat. This weakness has its roots in the left’s inability to link their ‘more radical’ ideas to the needs and current consciousness of the broader population. . . . This impatience pushes some activists to create change ‘now’—the urge to harvest the crops without having first plowed and sown the field. Working people soon get dismissed as being ‘not radical enough,’ and the most progressive participants become further isolated. No social movement can survive with this dynamic; in fact, many have died from this disease” [3].
The Occupy movement, too, seems to be in danger of being plagued by “this disease.” This is clearly reflected in the findings of the polls mentioned above, which show stable or increasing support for the goals of the Occupy movement but decreasing support of its tactics, or protest actions. Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling makes this point clear in the following words: “I don’t think the bad poll numbers for Occupy Wall Street reflect Americans being unconcerned with wealth inequality. . . . I don’t think any of that has changed – what the downturn in Occupy Wall Street’s image suggests is that voters are seeing the movement as more about the ‘Occupy’ than the ‘Wall Street.’ The controversy over the protests is starting to drown out the actual message” [4].
So far, only a small fraction of the of the 99% (the most radical, largely young, student and media/computer savvy) has been directly engaged in the Occupy movement; the rest could be won over or turned away depending on how the movement relates to them, and their specific needs, not on how much or how loudly it condemns the woes and wickedness of capitalism in general.
RELUCTANCE TO ORGANIZE AND COORDINATE NATIONALLY
Not only does the Occupy movement need to put forth specific demands and connect or communicate with the working people around such demands, it also needs to become better organized. While Occupiers have organized many successful protest actions in various venues around the nation, overall the movement remains very much disjointed and uncoordinated. To grow, to become sustainable and to transform the status quo, a social movement needs to be organized on a national level. Smaller numbers of dedicated activists, working on different social issues in various times and places are, of course, important. But the collective impact of massive nationwide actions against the 1% would be much more effective than the sum total of “autonomous” local actions.
The history of labor struggles to achieve a modicum of workers’ rights could be instructive here. In their negotiations with employers many local unions lost to the bosses because they were not supported by other unions. By contrast, local unions that enjoyed the support of other unions experienced higher rates of success in their collective bargaining with employers. Working people would feel truly powerful only when their fights for peace and social justice are coordinated in a collective national front against the 1%.
I am not unmindful of the movement’s wariness of “organization”—lest it should lead to centralization and bureaucratization of power. This is a legitimate concern. But there is such a thing as being too cautious. We can no longer afford not to use automobiles out of fear of auto accidents; we must drive carefully, and not allow drunkards to sit at the wheel. The solution to the problem of centralization of power is not doing away with organization; it is guarding against it through democratic means and “appropriate” checks and balances.
Decentralization does not necessarily mean “democracy,” just as centralization does not necessarily mean authoritarianism. The Occupy movement needs (and can have) both organization and leaders without losing democratic operations. Furthermore, claiming that the Occupy movement has no leaders, and that major decisions within the movement are made collectively is not altogether true. “Leaders exist within Occupy regardless of intentions; saying that Occupy is a “leaderless movement” does not make it so. The inevitable leaders of Occupy are those who dedicate their time to the movement, organize events, are spokespeople, those who help set agendas for meetings or actions, those who set up and run web pages, etc. In reality there already exists a spectrum of leadership that is essential to keeping the movement functioning” [5].
Surely, individual occupiers can utter any slogan or make any demand they wish to, but they can do so only as expressions of their personal opinions. But when it comes to issues or proposals to be approved or sponsored by the General Assembly, such issues are carefully screened by the influential members of the movement. For example, many a time proposals by individual members or Working Groups to make specific demands have been rejected by the General Assembly. Here is an example from New York: on December 18, 2011, the “Demands Working Group” proposed the following demand to the New York City General Assembly:
“JOBS FOR ALL—A Massive Public Works and Public Service Program:
“We demand a democratically-controlled public works and public service program, with direct government employment, to create 25 million new jobs at good union wages. The new jobs will go to meeting the needs of the 99%, including education, healthcare, housing, mass transit, and clean energy. The program will be funded by raising taxes on the rich and corporations and by ending all U.S. wars. Employment in the program will be open to all, regardless of immigration status or criminal record” [6].
The Proposal did not pass the General Assembly!
An obvious inconsistency can be detected between the Occupy movement’s goals and ideals, on the one hand, and the ways or tactics to achieve those objectives, on the other. For example, the movement has worked hard to show that President Obama and the Democratic Party are as beholden to the interests of the 1% as their Republican counterparts, which means that the 99% should not waste their energies to reform the Democratic Party, or their votes to elect its candidates. But then it refuses to organize an independent political organization, or put up alternative candidates to the Republican and Democratic candidates, thereby leaving the 99% with no alternative candidates to vote for.
The Occupiers argue that instead of building a third political party, developing an independent agenda for change, and putting up alternative candidates, they would put pressure on the Democratic and Republican politicians to bring about change in favor of the public. But why would these politicians, whose election/reelection is bankrolled by the 1%, and are therefore beholden to the interests of their benefactors, feel pressure from the Occupiers when their comfortable positions are not threatened by alternative candidates of the 99%?
Furthermore, smaller groups of autonomous local protesters would be easier targets for police raids and imprisonment than massive numbers on a national level. The often repeated cliché that there is power in numbers is as relevant here as in any other context. The Occupiers’ optimistic view that uncoordinated, independent local protests and occupations can effect change within the existing political structure seems to overlook the fact that the ruling 1% does not take class struggle lightly. As one observer of the commando-like police raids of the Occupiers’ camps has aptly put it, “The repression by the state provides its own answer to all those who claim that the rights of the working class can be secured through the existing political system” [7].
Divide and rule is a well-known policy of oppressive powers. By voluntarily remaining divided, OWS is inadvertently making this insidious policy of oppressors less onerous. Evidence shows that, in deciding to raid and evict an encampment, the police and politicians often base their decisions on the numbers and the level of popularity that the Occupiers have with the broader population, especially with the people who live in the immediate vicinity of an encampment. They often bide their time, hold off their storming raids and brutal evictions until such moments when they see that the number of campers and/or their supporters is dwindling. Reflecting on this experience, an observer has written: “Although the police deserve total blame for their tactics, Occupiers must out-flank them with a political strategy that leans towards organizing massive events, so that the police’s power is muted and the media cannot portray Occupy as a minority of extremist activists playing cat and mouse with the police” [8].
WHAT NEXT (AFTER THE ENCAMPMENTS)?
The Occupy movement seems to be at a crossroads. It may continue with the self-imposed policy of “no leadership,” “no program,” “no organization”; limit itself to sporadic protest and occupation activities around general goals such as peace, democracy and social justice—and quite likely witness its gradual decline. Or it could grow and become a true vehicle for meaningful changes in favor of the 99% by making specific winnable demands, by communicating with and organizing the broader layers of the working people around such demands, and by building a nationwide political organization of, by and for the 99% with its own candidates for public office.
REFERENCES:
[1] Nicolaus Mills, “Occupy Wall Street Won’t be Pigeonholed”: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/26/opinion/mills-occupy-sds/index.html
[2] Stephanie Luce, “More Observations from Occupy Wall St.”: http://www.solidarity-us.org/current/node/3406
[3] Shamus Cooke, “Occupy Movement Needs a Good Fight”: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=COO20111106&articleId=27509
[4] Tom Jensen, “Occupy Wall Street Favor Fading”: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/11/occupy-wall-street-favor-fading.html
[5] Shamus Cooke, “Theory and Practice in the Occupy Movement”: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28596
[6] “Proposal for Sunday, 12/18, General Assembly: Jobs for All – Demands Working Group”: http://www.nycga.net/2011/12/18/proposal-for-saturday-1217-general-assemblyjobs-for-all-demands-working-group/
[7] Joseph Kishore, “Occupy Wall Street movement at a crossroads”: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/oct2011/pers-o26.shtml
[8] Shamus Cooke, “Reform vs. Revolution Within Occupy”: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28196
January 20, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Solidarity and Activism |
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The editor of The Hill, a newspaper exclusively covering Congress, said that Congress was not going to do very much in 2012, except for “the big bill” which is extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment compensation, which expire in late February. That two month extension will likely reignite the fight between Democrats and Republicans that flared last month.
In 2012, Congress, the editor implied, would be busy electioneering. That is, the Senators and Representatives will be busy raising money from commercial interests so they can keep their jobs. There won’t be much time to change anything about misallocated public budgets, unfair tax rules, undeclared costly wars, and job-depleting trade policies that, if fixed, would increase employment and public investment.
So this year, Congress will spend well over $3 billion on its own expenses to do nothing of significance other than shift more debt to individual taxpayers by depleting the social security payroll tax by over $100 billion so both parties can say they enacted a tax cut! That is what the Democrats in Congress and the President call a significant accomplishment.
Will someone call a psychiatrist? This is a Congress that is beyond dysfunctional. It is an obstacle to progress in America, a graveyard for both democracy and justice. No wonder a new Washington Post-ABC news poll found an all time high of 84 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing.
Both Republicans and Democrats say they want to reduce the deficit. But they are avoiding, in varying degrees, doing this in any way that would discomfort the rich and powerful. One would think that, especially in an election year, the following legislative agenda would be very popular with the voters.
First, restore the taxes on the rich that George W. Bush cut ten years ago which expanded the deficit. So clueless are the Democrats that they have not learned to use the word “restore” instead of the Republican word “increase” when talking about taxes that were previously cut for the millionaires and billionaires.
Second, collect unpaid taxes. The IRS estimates that $385 billion of tax revenues are not collected yearly. If the IRS budget increased and more people were hired, every dollar it spent would return $200 from tax evaders, including corporations and the wealthy. When taxes are not collected, the large majority of honest taxpayers are left with the unfair consequences. Imagine that money being applied to jobs that repair our crumbling public works.
Third, end the outrageous corporate loopholes that allow profitable large corporations to pay just half of the statutory tax rate of thirty-five percent. More than a few pay less than five percent and many pay zero on major profits. During a recent three year period, according to the Citizens for Tax Justice, a dozen major corporations such as Verizon and Honeywell paid no taxes on many billions of profits, and the legendary tax escapee, General Electric, managed to pay zero and even receive billions in benefits from the U.S. Treasury.
Fourth, do what most U.S. soldiers in the field have believed should have been done years ago–get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and nearby countries like Kuwait where thousands of U.S. soldiers based in Iraq have moved.
Fifth, to increase consumer demand, which creates jobs, raise the federal minimum wage from the present level of $7.25–which is $2.75 less than it was way back in 1968, adjusted for inflation–to $10 per hour. Businesses who keep raising prices and executive salaries (eg. Walmart and McDonalds) since 1968 should be reminded of their windfall in that period.
In addition, President Obama can urge mutual and pension funds and individual shareholders to demand higher dividends from companies like EMC, Google, Apple, Cisco, Oracle and others firms hoarding two trillion dollars in cash as if this money was the corporate bosses’, not the owner-shareholders. More dividends, more consumer demand, more jobs.
Want to know why Congress doesn’t make such popular and prudent decisions for the American people? Because the people are not objecting to all the power that their Congressional representatives and their corporate allies have sucked away from them. Because the people are not putting teeth and time into the “sovereignty of the people” expressed in the preamble to our Constitution which begins with “We the people,” not “We the corporation.”
So citizens, it’s your choice. If you don’t demand a say day after day, you’ll continue to pay day after day.
By the way, the Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
January 20, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism |
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Most political analysts place the governments of Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia) and Rafael Correa (Ecuador) in the same category but without defining their common characteristics. Beginning with the publication of Leftovers in 2008, critics of the left sought to overcome the shortcoming by characterizing the three presidents as “populist leftists,” which they distinguished from the “good leftists” taking in such moderates as Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. According to the book’s co-editors Jorge Castañeda and Marco Morales, the salient features of the populist left consist of a radical discourse devoid of ideological substance, disrespect for democratic institutions, pronounced authoritarian tendencies and vituperations against the United States designed to pay political dividends at the expense of their nation’s economic interests (Castañeda and Morales, 2008) .
On the other side of the political spectrum, the long-time political analyst and activist Marta Harnecker has proclaimed the emergence of a “new left” in Latin America represented by all three leaders. Harnecker associates the new left with “twenty-first century socialism” embraced by the three presidents, while recognizing that both concepts are vague and will be defined over a period of time in large part through practice (Harnecker, 2010: 35-50). Another expression of the common thrust of the three governments was the call by President Chávez in late 2009 for the formation of a “Fifth International” which would constitute a new international movement in favor of radical change. The proposal sought to analyze and apply the novel experiences of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, as well as other occurrences, in order to break with traditions stemming from the previous four socialist internationals.
These developments make clear the need to go beyond the rhetoric of many of the left’s detractors and defenders, and to examine the wide range of similarities in order to determine just how new the new left is. One common feature of all three governments was the election of a constituent assembly at the outset of each presidency, which corresponded to a moderate political stage followed by the implementation of more radical socio-economic policies. All three governments came to power with an absolute majority of votes and counted on congressional majorities, advantages that facilitated the democratic road to far-reaching change. Other common characteristics that this article will examine include the emphasis on social participation and incorporation over considerations of economic productivity, modifications of the Marxist notion of class, diversification of economic relations, preference for radical democracy over liberal democracy, and the celebration of national symbols.
The article’s focus on a common model helps distinguish the three experiences from other ideologies and governments on the left in Latin America. Castañeda, for instance, labels the Argentine governments of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández as “populist left” and alleges that their discourse and policies are as irresponsible as those of Chávez and Morales (Castañeda, 2006: 38-40). By examining the salient characteristics of the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, the article will test the accuracy of these broad categorization. The article’s analysis of novel features and approaches also addresses the reservations and critical stands of traditional leftist organizations such as Communist parties and Trotskyist groups in the three nations. Finally, in spite of close relations between the three governments and Cuba and predictions that they will eventually replicate the Cuban model, the article sheds light on fundamental differences between the two paths to socialism followed in two distinct international settings, namely the Cold War and the post-Cold War.
The Radical Democracy Model
The political model embraced by the three governments, all of which were committed to socialism, represents a thorough break with the socialism of the past. One distinctive characteristic was the frequency of electoral contests, including party primaries, recall elections and national referendums, which were marked by high levels of voter turnout. The left in power generally emerged triumphant, sometimes by margins without precedent in the nation’s history. In April 1999, for example, 88 percent of Venezuelan voters ratified the government-sponsored referendum in favor of a constituent assembly. Venezuelans reelected Chávez for the second time in December 2007 with 63 percent, the highest of any presidential candidate in the nation’s modern democratic period. Similarly, Morales received 64 percent of the vote in his bid for reelection in December 2009 at the same time that his supporters garnered an unprecedented two-thirds majority in both houses of congress. Chávez and Morales also emerged victorious in recall elections with 58 and 67 percent of the vote respectively. Finally, in all three nations an overwhelming majority of voters approved new constitutions opposed by leading government adversaries.
These sizeable majorities provided the three governments with greater options to carry out radical reform than were available to other leftist presidents, such as Salvador Allende, who reached power in 1970 with 36 percent of the vote and the Sandinista Daniel Ortega, who returned to the presidency in 2006 with 38 percent. Nevertheless, given the acute political tensions and extreme polarization in all three countries, the strategy of holding frequent elections as a means to affirm legitimacy was risky since any defeat would have provided an intransigent opposition a platform to wage battle against the government.
Another characteristic of the political life in the three nations was the avoidance of intense repression, even though the opposition accused the government of laying the foundation for dictatorial rule. Party competition in the context of the acute political conflict that characterizes the three countries contrasts with the traditionally low level of tolerance on the part of fragile third-world democracies toward “disloyal oppositions.” As a whole, government opponents as a whole in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador represent a “disloyal opposition,” which by definition questions the legitimacy of those in power. By refusing to support virtually all government initiatives and by accusing it of authoritarianism, the opposition, in effect, seeks to delegitimize the government’s legitimacy. Moreover, at certain key junctures, important sectors of the opposition have been implicated in violent actions that other anti-government organizations failed to repudiate at the time. In the case of Venezuela, opposition leaders in 2004 openly advocated urban foquista actions called “la guarimba” seeking to create conditions of ungovernability. In Bolivia paramilitary groups tied to various governors attacked pro-government mobilizations in 2008, blew up gas pipelines to Brazil and destroyed government offices in the eastern lowland region.
Another distinguishing political feature of the three governments was their defense of radical democracy in the tradition of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and rejection of many of the basic precepts of liberal democracy. Radical democracy emphasizes social incorporation and direct participation. In contrast, liberal democracy, with its central concern for the rights and prerogatives of minorities (which is often synonymous with elites), places a premium on the system of checks and balances and diffusion of authority. The adherence to two distinct paradigms contributed to the intense polarization, and explains why the opposition questioned the democratic credentials of the three governments (Curato, 2010: 36-38).
The differences between the two approaches manifested themselves in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador in concrete ways. In the first place, radical democracy champions the principle of majority rule in which decision making on all matters requires 50 percent of the vote plus one. In contrast, the concern for minority rights by the advocates of liberal democracy leads them to insist on the need for consensuses between governing parties and the opposition on important decisions. Indeed, the opposition in all three countries praised the model of “pacted” democracy, which in the case of Venezuela and Bolivia had prevailed under the old regime (Smith, 2009: 108-109).
In addition, the defenders of liberal democracy often demand percentages significantly higher than 50 percent for legislation. The clash between the two concepts occurred at the constituent assembly in Bolivia in 2006 when the opposition demanded that the vote of two-thirds of the delegates be required for approval of each article of the constitution as well as the final document. After seven months of resistance to the notion of providing the “minority” with a “veto,” Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) accepted the two-thirds arrangement. Nevertheless, MAS’s position on the matter led it to take advantage of a temporary boycott of the assembly by two main opposition parties in order to ratify the constitution in December 2007 with the support of a simple majority of the delegates, who represented two thirds of those in attendance that day. Former president Jorge Quiroga who headed the main opposition party called the move “a national disgrace” at the same time that violence broke out throughout the nation. In Ecuador, Correa insisted that a simple majority of the delegates to the constituent assembly be required to approve articles, rather than the 66 per cent requirement which he claimed would have obstructed meaningful change (Conaghan, 2008: 56-57). Similarly, the Venezuelan opposition harshly criticized the Chávez-dominated National Assembly for stipulating that appointment of supreme court judges require the approval of a simple majority of the chamber’s deputies, rather than a two-thirds vote (Hawkins, 2010: 22).
The system of referendums and recall elections incorporated in the constitution of all three countries is also in line with the concept of majority rule, which is a basic component of radical democracy. In Bolivia and Venezuela the recall proved to be an effective mechanism to deal with crisis situations by moving the locus of political confrontation from the streets to the electoral arena. In Venezuela, the presidential recall election in August 2004 served to defuse tensions dating back to the 2002 coup and ushered in several years of relative stability. In Bolivia, Morales appealed to voting majorities in the face of insurgency by holding recall elections in August 2008 for the national executive and the nation’s governorships, some of which were promoting the internecine conflict.
Swayed by liberal democracy’s line of reasoning, the opposition in all three countries, as well as many political analysts, called the referendums examples of “plebiscitary democracy.” According to this model, the national executive frames issues in accordance with its own agenda without input from the opposition, and the public is presented with an “all or nothing” proposition. Government adversaries in Venezuelan, for instance, lashed out at Chávez’s proposed constitutional reform for being procedurally flawed. They argued that most of its 69 articles should have been incorporated into legislation to be considered by congress on an individual basis, rather than voted on as a package in a national referendum. In Ecuador, both the opposition and some political analysts accused Correa of promoting “plebiscitary democracy” on grounds that he presented the referendum on the nation’s new constitution in April 2007 as a vote of confidence on his government and threatened to “go home” if he lost (Conaghan, 2008: 46-47).
In the second place, popular mobilization and participation on a mass scale and an ongoing basis are basic features of radical democracy (but are viewed with suspicion by defenders of liberal democracy) and have proved essential for the political survival of all three presidents. Social movement protests paved the way for the rise to power of Morales and Correa (as well as Néstor Kirchner in the case of Argentina). The endorsement of the powerful Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenes del Ecuador (CONAIE) and other social movements for the candidacy of Correa sealed his triumph in the second round of the presidential election of 2006. In Venezuela, the rallying of massive numbers of poor people on April 13, 2002 made possible Chávez’s return to power after his ouster two days before.
In both Venezuela and Bolivia the mobilization of government supporters was designed to guarantee order in the face of opposition insurgency. Thus, for instance, the concentration of Chavistas in downtown Caracas on the day of the April 2002 coup was intended to serve as a buffer between violent members of the opposition and the presidential palace; and during the two-month general strike beginning in December, brigades consisting of members of surrounding communities protected oil instillations. In Bolivia, peasants and miners converged on the city of Sucre to ensure the personal security of constituent assembly delegates, who faced threats from paramilitary units shortly prior to the final vote on the new constitution. Finally, on September 30, 2010, thousands of Ecuadorians took to the streets and impeded the possible deployment of military forces in support of coup rebels who had virtually kidnapped President Correa.
In the third place, Chávez, Morales and Correa are charismatic leaders whose governments have strengthened the executive branch at the expense of corporatist institutions as well as the checks and balances that had underpinned liberal democracy in the past. Furthermore, the three governments favor the incorporation and direct participation of the non-privileged over corporatist mechanisms and political party prerogatives, and in doing so have broken with long-standing practices, accepted by some leftist parties, which facilitated elite input in decision making (Dominguez, 2008: 50). Along these lines, the governing leaders in all three countries reject the Leninst party model and instead favor, in the words of Bolivian vice-president Alvaro García Linera, “a more flexible and fluid model” (García Linera, 2010: 32). Finally, the governing political parties lack the influence, strength and independence to serve as checks on executive authority. Thus, for instance, the governing Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) is largely controlled at the regional level by cabinet ministers and, at local levels, by Chavista governors and mayors. Correa’s political organization, the Alianza País (PAIS), founded by about a dozen groups shortly prior to his election in 2006, is too heterogeneous to wield significant power.
Some government supporters justify the preponderant role of the national executive by claiming that the president maintains a “dialectic” exchange with the general population in which he formulates positions and then modifies them after receiving feedback from below (Raby, 2006: 100, 190-91; see also Laclau, 1978: 228-238). The opposition has responded to the centralization of power by raising the banner of decentralization and (in the case of Bolivia’s eastern lowland departments as well as the state of Guayas in Ecuador) territorial autonomy.
The political model that has emerged in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador is unique in fundamental ways that clearly differentiate it from both Communist nations and social democratic ones. On the one hand, the electoral democracy and party competition that prevail in the three nations are the antithesis of the closed political system of “really existing socialism.” In addition, unlike the Soviet Union and China, there was no tight-knit vanguard party in the Leninist tradition (or powerful political party of any type) that played a central role both before and after reaching power. On the other hand, the confrontational discourse of the leftists in power, the ongoing intensity of political conflict, the acute social and political polarization and steady radicalization have no equivalents among nations in Europe and Africa governed by parties committed to democratic socialism. Finally, popular participation in social programs and political mobilization in such massive numbers and over such an extended period of time in favor of the governing leadership have rarely been matched in other Latin American nations (Ellner, 2011).
The emerging hybrid model combining dimensions of both radical democracy and the representative democracy inherited from the past is also in many ways sui generis. Features associated with radical democracy include referendums, party primaries, frequent elections, numerous public works projects undertaken by community councils, the active role of social movements in the political life of the nation, a strong national executive and an official discourse exalting direct participation and attacking the representative democracy of the past. Nevertheless, the old system and structures have not been dismantled. Even though in Venezuela the specter of community councils displacing the elected municipal government has been raised, representative institutions at all levels have been left largely intact in the three nations.
The Process of Radicalization
The electoral platform of Chávez, Morales and Correa in their first successful bid for the presidency deemphasized far-reaching, socio-economic transformation and focused on more moderate goals. Their principal campaign offer was the convening of a constituent assembly in order to “refound” the nation’s democracy on the basis of popular participation. During his campaign in 1998, for instance, Chávez calmed fears regarding a possible unilateral moratorium on the foreign debt by calling for a negotiated solution. In the period prior to his election in 2005, Morales toned down the radical demands on coca cultivation and hydrocarbon nationalization that had been formulated by the social movements of the 1990s, from which MAS emerged, as he reached out beyond his regional base of northern Cochabamba (Crabtree, 2008: 95-97). Prior to embracing “communitarian socialism,” President Morales and his vice-president García Linera defended “Andean capitalism,” which was to prevail for one century. Correa, for his part, in 2006 criticized human rights violation in Colombia but pledged to capture FARC guerrillas and turn them over to Colombian authorities, denied that he formed part of Chávez’s Bolivarian movement even though he was a friend of the Venezuelan president and criticized the dollarization of the Ecuadorian economy but claimed it was unfeasible to change the system.
The three presidencies have been characterized by gradual but steady radicalization which was not held back by the types of concessions associated with the consensus politics and liberal democracy of previous years (Katz, 2008: 103-106). All three parlayed the widespread popular support for their initial constitutional proposals into consolidation of power and political and economic renovation. In general, the presidents followed a strategy of taking advantage of the momentum created by each political victory by introducing reforms designed to deepen the process of change. They also interpreted their electoral triumphs as popular mandates in favor of socialism. In Venezuela, Chávez’s decrees of land reform and state control of mixed companies in the oil industry in 2001, his redefinition of private property in 2005 and expropriation of companies in strategic sectors in 2007 and 2008 set the stage for more radical stages (Ellner, 2008: 109-131). In a surprisingly confrontational move just months after taking office, Morales ordered troops to take over 56 natural gas installations and the nation’s two major oil refineries in order to pressure foreign companies to accept new nationalistic legislation. In the months after his election, Correa radicalized his position on the proposed constituent assembly by insisting that it had the right to dissolve congress, thus placing him on a collision course with the congressional majority which represented the traditional political elite. The dynamic of initial moderation followed by gradual radicalization differs from the Soviet Union and China, where Communist Parties came to power with explicit far-reaching structural goals stemming from Marxist ideology, and Cuba where radicalization occurred at a more accelerated pace during the first three years of the revolution.
The governing left raised the banner of anti-neoliberalism and was thus in an advantageous position vis-à-vis the opposition to its right, which lacked a well-defined program to dispel fears that its assumption of power would signify a return to the past. A major issue of differentiation between the government and its adversaries to its right was privatization. While the leftists in power affirmed their anti-neoliberal credentials by largely halting and reversing privatization schemes, the major parties of the opposition upheld ambiguous positions, or no position at all, on the topic. Political polarization, in which all parties to the right of the government converged in criticizing virtually all of its actions, ruled out critical support for nationalist measures from a center-left perspective, and in doing so hurt the opposition which forfeited space on the left side of the political spectrum. In Venezuela, for instance, former leftist parties such as the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), Causa R and Podemos abandoned any appearance of following an independent line within the anti-Chavista bloc as they blended in with the rest of the opposition. Similarly, in Ecuador the social-democratic Izquierda Democrática (ID), which had supported Correa in the second round of the 2006 elections, assumed a position of intransigent opposition by his second term in office. (1)
At the same time, the gradual approach to socialism pursued by all three governments has drawn harsh criticism from political actors to their left who consider the state to be “bourgeois” and favor a complete break with the past. The clash between the three leftist governments and their leftist critics also defined the specificity of the emerging new left in power. The defenders of the three governments envision a gradual transformation of the state in accordance with Gramsci’s “war of position” based on the left’s incremental occupation of spaces in the public sphere. According to this strategy, the left takes advantage of the presence of its activists in the public administration and the internal contradictions besetting the state (Bilbao, 2008: 136-137; Geddes, 2010). In contrast, orthodox Marxists such as Trotskysts invoke Lenin’s dictum regarding the need to “smash the state” at the same time that they advocate blanket expropriation of banking, large agricultural estates and monopoly industry (Woods, 2008: 251-252). In addition, Communists and other traditional leftists criticize the term “twenty-first century socialism” for belittling the relevance of the struggles led by leftists over the previous century.
Some critics located to the left of all three governments come out of an anarchist tradition. They posit that the “constituent power,” consisting of autonomous social movements and the rank and file in general, inevitably confronts the “constituted power,” which embodies the state bureaucracy in its entirety as well as the “political class,” and call for a “revolution within the revolution” in order to root out bureaucratic privileges. This position finds expression in the indigenous-based movements in Bolivia and Ecuador which defend the autonomy of their communities and have resisted Morales’ and Correa’s efforts to promote large-scale mining activity that threaten to devastate the areas where their members reside. Some of the movements have embraced “identity politics,” which is at odds with the electoral strategy followed by the leftists in power (Crabtree, 2008: 93-94; Dosh and Kligerman, 2009: 21). Among the indigenous leaders critical of the government on a wide range of issues including cultural identity was Bolivian presidential candidate Felipe Quispe, who fervently opposed Morales’s limitations on coca production and advocated full-fledged nationalization.
When placed alongside the orthodox Marxist, neo-anarchist and new social movement currents on the left, the unique and heterodox character of the three presidents and their closest supporters become evident. Most important they recognize that “bureaucrats” who put the breaks on change are well represented in the state sphere, but stop short of initiating an all out purge and upheaval along the lines of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, as is advocated by political actors further to their left. Furthermore, all three leaderships promote the creation of a broad-based highly diversified movement, but also place a premium on unity among supporters and defend vertical as well as horizontal decision making.
Foreign Relations
The strategy pursued by all three governments in favor of a “multi-polar world” resembles in some ways and contrasts in others with the foreign policies of governments committed to socialism in the twentieth century. The multi-polar world phrase was originally invoked by Chávez at the outset of his presidency as a euphemism for anti-imperialism and opposition to U.S. hegemony. The concept refers to the strengthening of different blocs of nations in order to defend mutual interests, such as OPEC in the case of Venezuela and Ecuador, and UNASUR (grouping all South American nations around common goals), which Correa became the president of shortly after its founding in 2009. The strategy of unity in spite of diversity recalls the Non-Aligned Movement headed by Josip Broz Tito, Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Kwame Nkrumah beginning in the early 1960s, which sought to go beyond ethnic, religious and political differences in order to unite the nations of the South around common objectives and demands.
In essence, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador have followed a dual approach of uniting among themselves in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA) at the same time that they have played active and leading roles in promoting broader continental unity. In this sense, their strategy is comparable to the Cold War foreign policy of the Soviet Union that distinguished between its closest allies, which were committed to Communism, and third-world governments of “national liberation,” which were considered nationalistic and anti-imperialist. Similarly, the presidents of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador define themselves as anti-capitalist and have often clashed with Washington but also act in unison with moderate governments, such as Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
Nevertheless, the initial years of the twenty-first century contrasts with the highly polarized setting of the Cold War and is conducive to a greater degree of autonomy for Latin American nations vis-à-vis the United States (Hershberg, 2010: 241). Thus the “radical” Latin American nations have been able to cement close ties with the “moderates” in contrast with the isolated position of Cuba in the 1960s. Whereas Chávez courts the moderates such as the heads of state of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay (French, 2010: 48-51), Cuba promoted guerrilla warfare throughout the continent and in doing so forfeited the possibility of wining over or neutralizing moderate presidents such as Arturo Frondizi of Argentina (Ellner, 2008: 62).
Latin America was never united during the last century to the degree that it has been over the recent past. In the first place, moderate governments have acted firmly to avoid the destabilization and isolation of the countries run by radicals. The governments of Brazil and Argentina, for instance, helped mediate an end to the acute conflict generated by Morales’s “nationalization” of the hydrocarbon industry in 2006, even though their economic interests were at stake. Subsequently, all twelve UNASUR members signed the Moneda Declaration, which deterred possible plans to topple the Morales governments in Bolivia in 2008, and two years later played a similar role in the face of an attempted coup in Ecuador. In the second place, the positions of the “radicals” have been complementary rather than antithetical to those of the “moderates.” Thus, for example, for the first year and a half following the Honduran coup of June 2009, the UNASUR “moderates” and “radicals” blocked the new government’s entrance into the Organization of American States. While the “moderates” placed conditions on entrance, the “radicals” questioned the legitimacy of the new government per se (Valero, 2011). Finally, Latin American unity has brought the “radical” and moderate presidents together with centrist ones around common pursuits, such as the creation of UNASUR and its broader based successor, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
The discourse and content of the foreign policy of all three presidents are shaped by the imperatives of globalization (Arditi, 2010: 145-147). They are also free of the goals of absolute self-sufficiency and autarky that characterized Maoism half a century ago. Programs like ALBA and Petrocaribe (which offers Venezuelan oil to Caribbean and Central American nations under special terms) are justified along these lines. Furthermore, globalization pressures have taken the form of constraints that influence international policy, the fiery nationalistic rhetoric of all three presidents notwithstanding. Chávez, for instance, has refrained from defaulting on foreign loan payments or withdrawing from the International Monetary Fund, while Morales has, in the words of the editors of a recent study on the Latin American left, “tried to maintain access to U.S. markets” (Madrid, Hunter and Weyland, 2010: 156-157). The thrust of these strategies, policies and discourse are at odds with the “socialism in one country” thesis defended by the Soviet leadership under Stalin.
Discourse and Political Vision
Since 2005, Venezuelan, Bolivian and Ecuadorean leaders have espoused support for an alternative to capitalism embodied in the general concept of socialism for the twenty-first century. Following the ratification of Bolivia’s new constitution in January 2009, Morales proclaimed the birth of “communitarian socialism” which was underpinned by the regional autonomy promoted by the new document. Morales, Chávez and Correa have proposed to adapt socialism to the concrete reality faced by Latin America, at a time when the conventional wisdom in the west asserted that this model was all but dead.
In sharp contrast to the socialist trajectory of Cuba after 1959, the political process in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela unfolds within the parameters of a bourgeois democratic society in which capitalist relations of production are still the dominant mode of economic activity. Bolivia’s Vice-President García Linera, for instance, has stated that socialism does not preclude the existence of a market economy and favors dialogue with those who do not share MAS’s long-term structural goals (Postero, 2010: 27-28), while Chávez has called for a “strategic alliance” that would bind his government to the business sector. In effect, Venezuela’s mixed economy consists of state companies that compete with – but are not designed to replace – private ones in certain key sectors as a means to avoid inflation and scarcity of basic commodities. Finally, the economies of all three nations rest in large part on the export of extractive commodities to United States markets.
Along similar lines, cultural and social transformation has failed to keep pace with radical political change. Venezuela, for example, remains a highly consumer oriented society where such values of capitalist society as conspicuous consumption, individualism, and the primacy of private property are still highly valued (Lebowitz (2006: 113; Alvarez, 2010: 243). Furthermore, the conservative opposition in all three countries relies on a full array of allies including the private media, the Catholic Church and the every present role of the United States. In short, unlike in the Soviet Union after 1917, China after 1949 and Cuba after 1959, efforts to promote socialism for the twenty-first century occur in the highly contested arena of capitalist society, in which most traditional values and institutions, though weakened, are nonetheless present.
Twenty-first century socialism, as Marta Harnecker (2010: 25-26) points out, is born from a reappraisal of past leftist strategies based on long-held assumptions and an acknowledgment of the mistakes of previous efforts at socialist construction in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. The new perspective discards the purported role of a vanguard party and the dogmatic application of theory with little or no application to the Latin American social reality. It questions the preeminent role attributed to the working class, and the inability to incorporate broad segments of the population including the urban poor, the informal sector, religious communities, the indigenous, the afro-descendants, and women.
The rejection of working-class vanguardism has created the political space for working closely with other groups and political forces that advocate change. In the case of Bolivia, a central aspect of this approach, as vice-president Alvaro García Linera states, is the “project of self-representation of the social movements of plebian society” (Rockefeller, 2007: 166). The strategy is particularly relevant in Bolivia and Ecuador where political organizations on the left and the right have historically manipulated indigenous organizations to promote their own political program. In an interview with the German Marxist Heinz Dieterich, Morales assessed past asymmetrical power relations between workers’ organizations grouped in the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) and the indigenous population by pointing out that COB leaders “always said in their congresses that the Indians would carry the workers to power on our shoulders. We were the builders of the revolution and they were the masters of the revolution. Now things have changed and intellectuals and workers are joining us” (Dieterich, 2006).
In contrast to capitalism’s emphasis on the individual, twenty-first century socialism incorporates a strong moral and ethical component that promotes social well-being, fraternity and social solidarity. The model draws inspiration from Catholic and even Protestant theology of liberation. Indeed, most of its leaders still profess a religious faith. In an interview with British scholar Helen Yaffe, Correa pointed to the compatibility between theology of liberation and socialism and added: “Twenty-first century socialism… can be joined by both atheists and practicing Catholics – because I am a practicing Catholic. It does not contradict my faith which, on the contrary, reinforces the search for social justice” (Correa, 2009).
Twenty-first century socialism draws inspiration from the history, political practices and social-cultural experiences of Latin America. Like radical populism of the past, twenty-first century socialism glorifies the popular will as personified by historical symbols to a greater extent than traditional leftist and social democratic parties, which tended to be more selective and inclined to rely on imported slogans (in what was in many ways a missed opportunity for them). Chávez and the Chavistas, for instance, are willing to overlook the contradictions of nineteenth century and early twentieth century “caudillo” leaders such as Cipriano Castro in order to glorify them and emphasize their nationalist behavior, much as the Peronistas reinterpreted Juan Manuel Rosas and Juan Facundo Quiroga (Raby, 2006: 112-121, 231; Ellner, 1999: 130-131).
Leaders in all three nations have created a new narrative of nationhood that challenges long held assumptions and previous representations of culture, history, race, gender, citizenship and identity. Thus, the new political movements offer an alternative reading of the past that challenges the conventional wisdoms that had previously legitimated the old order. This dynamic process links contemporary social movements and political forces to a tradition of political and social struggle. Re-envisioning the past serves to incorporate previously marginalized peoples including indigenous, afro-descendants, peasants, women and workers who historically struggled to change social conditions in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. The indigenous movements in Bolivia see themselves as inheritors of the struggles led by Tupac Katari and Tupac Amaru that led mass movements against Spanish colonial authorities. By forging connections between past and current struggles, these movements build on a legacy of resistance previously excluded from the official historical record. The process, which is described among Bolivia’s Aymara as “to walk ahead while looking back,” incorporates historically marginalized voices and creates a sense of empowerment among those contemporary forces engaged in the process of social change (Hylton and Thompson, 2007: 149). When Morales announced the nationalization of Bolivian gas on May 1, 2006, he explicitly drew inspiration from the past, insisting that “the struggles of our ancestors like Tupac Katari, Tupac Amaru, Barotlina Sisa ….were not in vain” (Hylton and Thompson, 2007: 131).
The intellectual tenets of twenty-first century socialism can be found in the works of Peruvian intellectual José Carlos Mariátegui, which are frequently cited by Chávez and other pro-government leaders in the three nations. Mariátegui proposed an Indo-American socialism, adapted to the social and political reality of the continent. While recognizing the importance of the working class, he promoted the incorporation of the indigenous and rural communities as part of the broader class and national struggle. Along these lines, Mariategui argued that the indigenous heritage of collectivism dating back prior to the Spanish conquest would facilitate socialist construction under a revolutionary government. He also recognized the interrelation between race and class within an economic system inherited from the colonial experience and the importance of incorporating a broad front with which to confront the forces of capital (Mariátegui, 1970: 9, 38-48).
In all three countries, there is also an effort underway to incorporate women traditionally overlooked by the male dominated historical accounts. As a result, women’s role in the independence process, their contributions to the social and political struggles in the nineteenth century and their participation in the labor and political struggles of the twentieth century have been highlighted. In Ecuador, as part of a process dating back several decades, the independence leader Manuela Sáenz has undergone a reassessment and has emerged as an important figure in her own right, and not viewed simply for her relations with Simón Bolívar. Her contributions to the South American independence movements, including her courageous actions at the Battles of Pichincha and Ayacucho where she acquired the rank of colonel, has earned her the admiration of some social movements. Similarly, Bartolina Sisa, who led an indigenous rebellion in La Paz in 1781 that served as inspiration for the establishment in 1983 of the International Day of Indigenous Women celebrated on September 5th, has in the twenty-first century become even more revered. The cases of Sáenz and Sisa, one criolla and the other indigenous, highlight the incorporation of large numbers of women in the social struggles taking place in the region.
In the case of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez and his followers have called into question the traditional representations of Venezuelan history and its most dominant figure Simón Bolívar. The new political discourse has created a space where scholars and others have celebrated the role of criollo elites such as Francisco Miranda, Andrés Bello and Simón Rodríguez, while giving increased emphasis to other figures who had asserted equality of the races. Among the latter are “el Negro” Miguel, who led a rebellion in Buría in the state of Lara, Afro Venezuelans Juan Andrés López del Rosario (Andresote) and José Leonardo Chirinos, who headed uprisings against the Spanish in 1730 and 1795 respectively and Manuel Gual, and José España, who conspired against Spain in 1797. Bolívar’s views are now a source of public discussion concerning the past and present course of Venezuelan politics and society. His divergent opinions on democracy, race, international relations, social conditions and public policy serve to bolster positions taken by both the government and the opposition.
Social and Economic Dimensions
The social and economic conditions that paved the way for the left’s assumption of power in the three countries did not accord with the orthodox Marxist vision of a socialist revolution. In contrast to what Marxist theory predicts, the organized working class did not constitute the vanguard or the major driving social force in the confrontations leading up to the left’s advent to power. Non-proletarian, underprivileged classes played leading roles and belonged to powerful social movements in the case of Bolivia and Ecuador, while in Venezuela they participated in the disruptions that shook the nation in February 1989. (2) In urban areas, they took in workers in the informal economy and unorganized ones employed by small firms in the formal economy. These sectors “marginalized” and “semi-marginalized” in that the political and cultural elite had long ignored them and they lacked representation at the national level as well as the benefits of collective bargaining agreements and (in many cases) labor legislation. The social upheavals in the years prior to the left’s initial electoral triumphs help explain the more radical course of events in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador as compared to Brazil and Uruguay under moderate governments.
Neoliberal policies along with globalization-induced structural changes in the 1980s and 1990s fueled the growth of the informal economy and weakened the labor movement, whose struggles at the workplace were overshadowed by social movement activism and mass disturbances. The Bolivian mining workers’ Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros (FSTMB), and the COB labor confederation, with a long history of independent, militant unionism largely unmatched in the continent, were weakened by the phasing out of state-controlled enterprises and atomization of the labor force under neoliberal governments beginning in the mid-1980s (Kohl and Farthing, 2006: 125). In Venezuela, the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV) not only endorsed neoliberal-inspired labor legislation in 1997, but helped draft it as well, and then went on to organize general strikes from 2001 to 2003 in conjunction with the nation’s main business organization in an attempt to oust President Chávez (Murillo, 2001: 62-64).
Chávez reacted to organized labor’s submissiveness and resistance to change by questioning the Marxist insistence on working-class primacy in the revolutionary process (Blanco Muñoz, 1998: 392-393) (although more recently he has modified his position). Twenty-first century socialism theoreticians flatly reject orthodox Marxism’s cult of the proletariat, “a privileging whereby all other workers (including those in the growing informal sector) are seen as lesser… unproductive workers, indeed lumpenproletariat” (Lebowitz 2010a; see also Alvarez, 2010: 114-116; Harnecker, 2007: paragraphs 115-116). The three governments both in policy and discourse emphasize incorporation of marginalized and semi-marginalized sectors of the population in decision making and the cultural life of the nation and their eligibility for the benefits accorded to workers of the formal economy. This orientation contrasts with traditional Marxism’s special appeal to the proletariat, whose salient characteristics were hardly that of an “excluded” sector. Not only was the proletariat incorporated in the economic system, but it was generally represented by a trade union structure. The challenges posed by the goal of incorporation of the marginalized and semi-marginalized sectors, which were to a large extent lacking in organizational experience and discipline, were in many ways more demanding than the task of representing the interests of the organized working class.
The social makeup of the ruling bloc in the three nations embodies diversity, complexity and internal tensions. This pattern is contrary to Marx’s prediction, which has influenced orthodox Marxist movements over the years, of industry-driven polarization pitting an increasingly large, concentrated and powerful proletariat against the bourgeoisie. According to the traditional Marxist vision of polarization, non-proletarian, non-privileged social sectors eventually become virtually extinct, or else form an alliance with the proletariat without creating sharp internal conflicts over distinct priorities or interests. The profundity of the fissures in the leftist bloc in the three nations also calls to question the concept of “multitude,” which takes for granted the unity and convergence of the social groups and sectors resistant to the established order. (3)
Social heterogeneity and conflicting interests are particularly evident in the case of Bolivia. It was easier for the left to maintain the unity and support of the indigenous movements, peasant unions, labor unions and the cocalero movement in the Water War (2000) and the Gas War (2003), which shook the nation, than it has been for the Morales government since 2006. In spite of similar roots, indigenous groups and unionized peasants have clashed as a result of adherence to distinct paradigms. While the former defend the sacredness of indigenous self-government and traditions, including in some cases prohibition on property inheritance, the latter come out of the tradition of the 1952 revolution favoring individual property ownership. In reality, however, the indigenous communitarian ideal (known as the ayllu) often clashes with the self-interests of indigenous community members, thus putting in evidence the complexity of the internal contradictions within the governing movement in Bolivia (Fabricant, 2010: 93-98). At the same time, the peasant unions criticize Morales’ land distribution program for its bias in favor of the communal property and rights of indigenous groups, which they claim constitute the “new hacendados” of the Bolivian east.
A similar situation of confrontation in spite of similar origins pits those miners who resisted neoliberal reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, and those that acceded to pressure to form worker cooperatives. Some political actors and analysts, such as Vice President Alvaro García Linera, defend the new social movement paradigm by arguing that the traditional working class has been severely weakened, and conclude that the Morales government is “the government of social movements” (Ruiz Arrieta, 2010: 185-186).
The three governments’ class orientation, which does not center on the industrial proletariat, has implications for the strategies they follow. Inclusionary politics and social programs in general are sometimes pursued at the expense of economic objectives. The Venezuelan government, for instance, has assigned large sums of money to community councils and worker cooperatives in popular areas, programs that are often not cost effective but incorporate the previously excluded in decision making and provide them with valuable learning experiences and a sense of empowerment. These priorities contrast with the focus on production targets of really existing socialism, such as during the Soviet all-out industrialization drive in the 1930s and the Great Leap Forward in China beginning in 1959.
Various parties on the left and center-left of the political spectrum implicitly or explicitly criticize the focus on the marginalized and semi-marginalized sectors and the emphasis on social programs over economic objectives, and insist on the primacy of industry, productivity and the working class. Social democratic oriented parties such as the Patria Para Todos (PPT), which dropped out of the pro-Chavista governing coalition in 2010, and the ID of Ecuador embrace this discourse. Both parties have lashed out at the government of their respective nations for belittling the importance of technical competence and efficiency. Further to the left, Trotskyist factions in Venezuela, in accordance with their adherence to proletarian ideology, have expressed skepticism toward government-promoted worker cooperatives which received massive funding more as part of a social strategy in favor of the poor than an economic one to promote development. The cooperatives, which generally grouped only about five members, often hired workers who were not protected by labor legislation, collective bargaining agreements, or union representation (Ellner, 2008: 157, 187). The Communist Parties of all three nations, while more supportive of the government, criticized it for underestimating the importance of the role of the working class and failing to respect its independence vis-à-vis the state (Figuera, 2010; Pérez, 2009).
While the three nations failed to advance significantly in increasing their productive capacity, as did the Soviet Union and China under initial Communist rule, they did make inroads in the diversification of commercial and technological relations. In their international dealings, all three governments privileged relations with state companies and private ones outside of the advanced bloc over the multinationals. Venezuela, for instance, attempted to lesson dependence on the multinationals by signing contracts with state oil companies in Russia, China, Belarus, Iran and various Latin American nations for preliminary exploration of the oil-rich Orinoco Oil Belt for the purpose of obtaining certification. These developments were a reflection of the decline of U.S. political and economic strength at the outset of the twenty-first century.
Expropriations, threats of expropriations, confrontations and greater state control of private (and particularly foreign) owned companies went beyond the actions and discourse of most radical populist and nationalist Latin American governments since the 1930s. The Chavista government reasserted control of the oil industry and expropriated strategic sectors including electricity, steel, cement and telecommunications in 2007 and 2008 and then took over firms accused of price speculation and others in order to limit the practice of outsourcing. In Bolivia, using the threat of expropriation and insisting on the irrevocability of deadlines for compliance of new legislation, the Morales government succeeded in pressuring foreign companies into accepting the law that obliges concessionaries to sell oil and gas to the state-owned Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB).
Conclusions
Scholars and political analysts have long been divided between those who emphasize the uniqueness of conditions in a given nation and those who affirm the scientific nature of the social sciences and tend to generalize and synthesize across national boundaries. Similarly, leftist theoreticians are divided between those influenced by the Hegelian tradition of focusing on national trajectories that underpin distinct “roads to socialism” and those who apply what they allege to be the fixed laws of Marxism. This work has documented the convergences of three Latin American countries which are historically different in many respects, but have adopted various similar policies and approaches to achieve structural change. The common grounds include political and economic strategies that challenge the interests of traditional sectors in fundamental ways; the constellation of social groups and identities, some of which have played a more central role in political struggles than the traditional working class; and the celebration of national symbols associated with rebellions against the old order. The article attempts to underline the similarities between the presidencies of Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa by contrasting them with social democratic, really existing socialist and classical populist experiences of the past. The three presidents also stand in sharp contrast with non-socialist, center-left governments in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, where political conflict and polarization are less acute, relations with the United States less confrontational, and socialism has not been proclaimed as a goal.
Some social scientists have cautioned against viewing the “pink tide” in Latin America as a “homogenizing project” and call for a focus on diversity and specificity as a corrective to simplistic explanations (Motta and Chen, 2010; Motta, 2009; Hershberg, 234-235, 244-245; Beasley-Murray, Cameron and Hershberg, 2010: 15). This article has also recognized diversity and complexity, at the same time that it points to the similarities of the roads followed by the three governments and the similar challenges they face. In the first place, the article discusses the diversity of social groups that support transformation, each with distinct interests and goals, and the resultant internal tensions that beset the left. In the second place, the challenges faced by governments stemming from their trial-and-error approach to socialism, which attempts to avoid the perceived errors of “already existing socialism,” defy simple solutions and formulas. In the third place, the article discusses different models of democracy that underlie the clash between government and opposition, and in doing so points to the diversity of criteria that complicates the debate over the boundaries between democratic and nondemocratic behavior.
These conflicting definitions of democracy and their application to concrete conditions have complex implications that are at odds with the simplicity of the thesis of the “bad left,” or “populist,” authoritarian left put forward by Jorge Castañeda (Castañeda 2006; Castañeda and Morales, 2008), Mario Vargas Llosa and other ardent critics of twenty-first century socialism. In short, diversity and complexity characterize the political landscape in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, even while the three countries share basic features, such as sharp political and social polarization, political systems that borrow significantly from radical democracy and governments that embrace an anti-capitalist discourse and nationalist foreign policy.
FOOTNOTES
* I would like to thank Miguel Tinker Salas for his careful reading of the manuscript at various stages and for his comments that greatly enhanced the quality of the work.
1. The falling out of the center-left position may be a generalized trend in twenty-first century politics. See, Hedges (2010) and, for Venezuela, Ellner (2008: 105-108).
2. Sara Motta (2009: 37-43) argues that orthodox Marxists, with their focus on production as the center of political contestation, and social democrats minimize the importance of social movement, territorial-based struggles because they are unable to engage the state or impact national politics.
3. See Laclau (2005, 239-244) for his refutation of the concept of multitude put forward by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.
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Source: Latin American Perspectives
January 17, 2012
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Economics, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular |
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Lebanese Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Najib Miqati launched the 300-million dollar Litani River project to irrigate land in southern Lebanon on Tuesday.
Berri said at the launch at the Grand Serail: “Today we are witnessing one of the chapters of Lebanon’s victory against Israel.”
“We thank Kuwait, its emir, and people, as well as the Lebanese government that helped make this project a reality and defeat Israel’s aspirations to exploit Lebanon’s water wealth,” he added.
“Its success cannot be achieved without fortifying Lebanon’s stability,” Miqati noted adding that it was possible through the Lebanese government’s efforts and foreign aid.
“The Litani project will encourage our people to remain in their homeland,” Miqati stated.
He thanked Kuwait for its contributions to the project, congratulating the residents of the South on the achievement.
“Exploiting water wealth is Lebanon’s right and the country is entitled to defend it against foreign aggression,” the premier stressed.
The Litani River project is aimed at irrigating agricultural land in southern Lebanon.
It provides irrigation water to lands that lie 800 meters above sea level, As Safir newspaper reported Monday.
Speaker Berri said earlier this month that the irrigation and hydroelectric project in addition to the implementation of oil exploration decrees would be seen as the culmination of the government’s achievements.
Those two projects will be a source of pride for Miqati’s government after consecutive cabinets since 1943 failed to implement them, he said.
“They will make a development and economic renaissance,” Berri added.
January 17, 2012
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Economics |
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The UK’s Occupy protesters have occupied the vacant building of Bank of Ireland in Belfast city centre, Northern Ireland, media reports said.
Police said that a number of youths broke into the disused former headquarters of the Bank of Ireland on the city’s main thoroughfare, Royal Avenue, the daily The Guardian reported.
They said that about a dozen protesters, some of whom were masked, remained inside the building at the corner of North Street and Royal Avenue.
Some of the demonstrators had occupied the top floor and draped anti-capitalist banners over the exterior, the report said.
A police helicopter hovered over the former bank but did not initially attempt to make any arrests.
Bank of Ireland is one of the Irish banks rescued from collapse by billions of euros from the Republic’s taxpayers.
The Royal Avenue branch near to the Belfast Telegraph newspaper has been closed for several years.
“Occupy Belfast have taken control of the Bank of Ireland on Royal Avenue in opposition to soaring homelessness, lack of affordable social housing and home repossessions”, said a statement from the anti-capitalist demonstrators.
Stating that they hoped for the “building of a housing campaign”, the protesters added: “Banks take our houses so we take their buildings. This is a repossession for the community!”
Occupy protests have been held across the world, with the most high-profile demonstrations taking place outside Wall Street in New York and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
In Belfast a small band of Occupy activists have been camped out for the last few months on Writer’s Square facing onto St Anne’s Cathedral in Donegall Street.
January 16, 2012
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Economics, Solidarity and Activism |
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