Ignacio Walker

S E R I E E S T U D I O S S O C I O / E C O N O M I C O S “THE THREE LEFTS OF LATIN 51 AMERICA” Ignacio Walker La Corporación de Estudios para Latinoamérica es una institución de derecho privado sin fines de lucro y con fines académicos y científicos. Con domicilio en Dag Hammarskjold 3269-piso 3, Vitacura, Santiago de Chile, autorizada por decreto Nº1102 del Ministerio de Justicia, con fecha 17 de octubre de 1975. Serie Estudios Socio / Económicos Nº51 “THE THREE LEFTS OF LATIN AMERICA” Ignacio Walker Abril 2009 Este trabajo forma parte del Proyecto "Una Nueva Agenda Económico Social para América Latina”, llevado a cabo por CIEPLAN y el Instituto Fernando H. Cardoso, con financiamiento del BID, el PNUD y la AECI. En 2008 fue publicado en Dissent Magazine. Esta serie de documentos de trabajo (ISSN 0717 -5264) tiene el propósito de contribuir a la difusión de las investigaciones de CIEPLAN. Las opiniones que se presentan en los documentos, así como los análisis e interpretaciones que ellos contienen, son de la responsabilidad exclusiva de sus autores y no reflejan necesariamente los puntos de vista de la Corporación. POLITICS ABROAD The Three Lefts Of Latin America Ignacio Walker should not obscure the complex and diverse reality of Latin America, including the emergence of a new social democratic left, differ- ent from both Marxism and populism. began to write these lines while listen- Populism emerged in the middle of an au- ing to a speech by Hugo Chávez at a sum- thoritarian wave, if we are to follow Samuel mit of the Andean Community of Nations Huntington’s account of the three waves of Iin Lima, Peru, some time in 2005. As inspira- democratization: the long wave, from the 1820s tion for this article, the speech helped crystal- to 1920s, the short wave from the 1940s to the lize my thinking. Populism in Latin America 1960s, and the current “third wave,” starting has a lot to do with discourse, rhetoric, and in the mid-1970s in southern Europe and the symbolism, and I came to understand many late-1970s in Latin America. The 1930s and things about this kind of politics that are not 1940s saw the emergence of populism in Latin to be found in the literature. I want now to America, characterized by negative attitudes describe the inherent tensions and contradic- toward liberal-democratic institutions and lib- tions of old and new populism in Latin eral capitalism—in Europe, Nazism, fascism, America, especially as they relate to democracy. and Stalinism; in Latin America, corporatism I will then consider the emergence in recent and populism. This context of a widespread years of a new social democratic left charac- discrediting of liberal-democratic institutions terized by an unambiguous commitment to makes for a fundamental difference from con- democratic institutions. For there is not one temporary neopopulism, which appears in the (populist), not two (Marxist and populist), but midst of an unprecedented wave of democra- at least three lefts in Latin America (populist, tization in Latin America and around the world. Marxist, and social democratic). Hugo Chávez At the core of the emergence of traditional may be the most visible and strident Latin or classical populism was the crisis of oligar- American political figure, but he is not the most chic rule and the emergence of the “social representative. In fact, he is the exception question” as the newly mobilized popular and rather than the rule. middle sectors sought “their place in the sun”— In significant ways, the history of Latin social and political inclusion. This populism America in the last century can be described had six characteristic features. as a search for responses to the crisis of oligar- The first corresponds to its popular and na- chic rule that took place in the 1920s and tional elements: “popular” means anti-oligar- 1930s. Populism appears as the most salient chic and “national” means anti-imperialist. response within the context of the waves of Populism set itself against the rule of the democratization and authoritarianism that we landed aristocracy, and it rejected foreign con- have known in Latin America for so many de- trol of natural resources and national econo- cades. Somehow we are still in the process of mies. The crucial dichotomy was between the “desoligarquización” that started at the begin- people and the oligarchy. The people (“pueblo,” ning of the twentieth century. This is perhaps “povo”) were considered as a moral rather than what explains the emergence of “neopopulism” a social category. It was the masses, the urban in recent years, especially in the cases of workers, the people from below—the Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, “descamisados” or the “cabecitas negras” in and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. But these cases Argentinean Peronism—that became the de- DISSENT / Fall 2008 ■ 5 POLITICS ABROAD fining feature of this movement (for populism The fourth feature of populism was the fo- was always a movement rather than a party or- cus on industrialization, which came to be ganization). seen as a strategy of development. Of course Hence the tension between populism and this was not present in the first stages of popu- Marxism. It was never the struggle between the list politics, whose leaders followed their in- “proletariat” and the “bourgeoisie,” as they ap- tuitions rather than a carefully worked-out peared in the context of capitalist development, blueprint. Starting, however, with the ideas of that drove populist politics. In fact, populist Raúl Prebisch and the Economic Commission leaders like Juan Perón and Getúlio Vargas for Latin America (ECLA) in the late 1940s, aimed to avoid any intensification of the class industrialization was adopted not only as a struggle. In many ways, it was the fear of com- policy but as a doctrine that was very much munism, following the Bolshevik Revolution, at the core of the “populist coalition.” Indus- that led populists to advocate anti-oligarchic trialization was thought to be the necessary and anti-imperialist reforms. This tendency was means through which the “labor surplus” re- strengthened even further by the mentality of sulting from massive migrations from the the officer corps, from which many of Latin countryside could be absorbed, providing the America’s populist leaders emerged. masses with new opportunities for well-being and progress. he second feature of classical populism The fifth feature of populism, and one that is that it usually took the form of a po- reappears in contemporary populist politics, is T litical alliance between the popular and the identification between a charismatic leader middle sectors of society. When we study the and the people. In fact, the term “populism” populist phenomenon of the 1940s, we usu- commonly refers to the direct appeal to the ally describe it as a multiclass alliance, even people by a charismatic leader, whether mili- an alliance of business, labor, and the state— tary or civilian, under an authoritarian or a as in Brazil under Vargas or Juscelino democratic regime in the context of weak po- Kubitsheck. This alliance held out the poten- litical institutions. This strong personalization tial for both democratization and moderniza- of power is a defining feature of populism in tion but, as we shall see, only in an incomplete, Latin America from the 1930s to the present. ambiguous way: always in tension with repre- Populism presupposes a low level of institution- sentative democracy and its institutions, espe- alization—in fact, there seems to be a trade- cially in their liberal expression. off between populist personalization and strong The third feature of populism was the cru- institutions. This trade-off is at the core of the cial role of the state, conceived in almost a tension between populism and democracy, mythical way as the means of salvation of the which is also a tension between personal and dispossessed. It may still be debated whether institutional forms of power. the state undertook this role because there was The sixth feature of populism is this intrin- no private sector (or “national bourgeoisie”) sic ambiguity of its relation to representative that could perform it or whether a private sec- democracy. In the logic of populism, what re- tor or a bourgeoisie never developed because ally matters is the incorporation of the masses the state occupied such a predominant posi- of the people. So there clearly is an element of tion in the economy. The fact remains that the “democratization” in populism, both old and state played a very active role in economic de- new, but it is democratization understood more velopment. The emergence, especially from the in social than in political terms, and it is not late 1940s, of the “developmentalist state,” or accomplished through the institutions of rep- the “entrepreneurial state,” and of state-led im- resentative democracy, which are regarded with port-substitution industrialization had a lot to suspicion. As Enzo Faletto has written, do with populist statism. The state came to be “[P]opulism emerged as a response to the cri- seen as the means of progress and well-being sis of oligarchic rule but at the same time, it for the emerging popular and middle sectors constituted a divorce with the liberal under- of the populist coalition. standing of democracy.” 6 ■ DISSENT / Fall 2008 POLITICS ABROAD In fact, populism usually took an authori- much because no one understands it. (Quoted tarian rather than a democratic form. This was in Albert Hirschman, “Against Economic De- the case, for example, with Perón in Argentina terminants,” in David Collier, ed., The New and Vargas in Brazil, perhaps the most emblem- Authoritarianism in Latin America [Princeton atic manifestations of Latin American popu- University Press, 1979], p.

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