Revising the Democratic Revolution —Into the Americas

Third World Quarterly, Vol 24, No 4, pp 655Ð669, 2003

Revising the Democratic Revolution —into the Americas

PETER WILKIN

ABSTRACT This article examines the claims of the democratic peace thesis by tracing the embedding of democracy in three countries: Nicaragua, Brazil and Colombia. In so doing it highlights the way in which the democratic peace that has spread in the post-cold war period has to be understood as part of a continued imperialist strategy by the core capitalist states and their dominant social forces in the modern world system. The meaning of democracy in this revolution is to promote and instill a form of corporate government that reinforces private power against human needs and rights. Nonetheless, this is an unstable strategy and the three examples considered here illustrate that this creates space for anti-capitalist opposition to organise and challenge this restricted conception of democracy.

The Democratic Revolution that has shaped the post-cold war era has had profound implications for those who had held to progressive anti-capitalist beliefs.1 So successful has the rhetoric underpinning the Democratic Revolution become that it is almost a sign of political immaturity to be seen now as being anti-capitalist. Indeed, capitalism and democracy appear to have become two parts of a progressive development in world history. The argument frequently encountered is that to be anti-capitalist is to be both anti-economic growth and anti-democracy.2 That these claims are false has not prevented a retreat by many on the anti-capitalist left, particularly in the academy. The facts need to be restated firmly that to be anti-capitalism is not necessarily to be either anti- democratic or anti-economic growth. On the contrary, as this paper illustrates, it is capital and the power of the world’s core states that have sought historically to oppose and limit democracy, particularly in the periphery and semi-periphery of the world system, and that have produced the warped distribution of resources that lies at the heart of so many of the world’s current social crises. Capitalism will never place human needs or democracy before profit in the same way that state power in the core always places its particular version of the national interest before those of universal human rights. These should be obvious truisms and yet in practical political discourse they are beyond the pale. The Democratic Revolution has created many problems for the anti-capitalist left and in this paper I will examine the reality, rather than the appearance, of the Democratic Revolution as it has occurred in the Americas.3 By focusing upon the

Peter Wilkin is in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University, Cartmel College, Lancaster LA1 4YL, UK. E-mail: [email protected].

ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/03/040655-15 ᭧ 2003 Third World Quarterly DOI: 10.1080/0143659032000105803 655 PETER WILKIN experiences of Nicaragua, Brazil and Colombia a clearer picture can be obtained as to what the Democratic Revolution means in the periphery and semi-periphery alike. The paper argues that, although the embedding of formal democracy is a crucial theme in the current world order, the reality of neoliberalism is that it promotes a form of global corporate governance that attempts to empty the substantive content of the Democratic Revolution in practice. In short, you can vote for whomever you like, as long as they are a party that promotes the interests of the world’s dominant elites. The strength of the Democratic Revolution thesis is that it has the appearance of empowering ordinary people but, while doing so, it also sets very specific constraints on what is and is not politically acceptable in terms of policy choices. The neoliberal goal is to deliver the formal appearance of democracy while denying it substantive content. This, as I will argue, is a dangerous and unstable imperialist strategy that potentially opens the way for progressive movements to argue and struggle for a more expansive notion of democracy and social change that goes to the heart of current state and corporate power. The paper proceeds as follows. It will:

● set out the claims of the Democratic Revolution thesis and how radical critics have responded to it; ● compare the cases of Nicaragua and Brazil as examples of the route to capitalist democracy; ● examines how this form of neoliberal corporate governance is being aggres- sively promoted in Colombia; ● conclude by explaining the anti-democratic nature of this revolution.

The Democratic Revolution and the radical response The end of the cold war has been seen by many commentators as ushering in a new era in which the world increasingly moves towards political systems shaped by a commitment to democratic values.4 More than this, all economies are increasingly seen as being disciplined and developed by the demands of global capitalism, as even the most powerful political figures concede. Along with this trend has been a commitment to liberal values that place human rights as the benchmark for progress and to a range of attendant liberal values that are seen as the hallmark of a good society. The power of the Democratic Revolution’s rhetoric is profound and has helped to undermine the credibility of progressive alternatives to capitalism and liberal democracy. Many of the radical left have been so heavily intertwined with the authoritarian Bolshevik project that its historic failure has led them to abandon any alternative to a more humane kind of democratic capitalism, or social democracy as it used to be called. Indeed, some of these figures now act as de facto guardians patrolling the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable progressive politics.5 The Democratic Revolution thesis’ power is described, in Fukuyama’s grandiose philosophy of history:

by the human longing for freedom … the growth of liberal democracy, together with its companion, economic liberalism, has been the most remarkable macropolitical 656 REVISING THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

phenomenon of the past four hundred years … the current liberal revolution … constitutes further evidence that there is a fundamental process at work that dictates a common evolutionary pattern for all human societies—in short, something like a Universal History of mankind in the direction of liberal democracy. The existence of peaks and troughs in this development is undeniable. But … cycles and discontinuities in themselves are not incompatible with a history that is directional and universal.6 More succinctly, the claims of liberal capitalist democracy can be summarised as bringing about a world of peace, prosperity and freedom. This universalistic claim rests on the not unreasonable assumption that anyone would choose these options over their alternatives. For President Reagan it was the fulfilment of the liberal belief that ideas can change history: more than armies, more than diplomacy, more than the best intentions of democratic nations, the communications revolution will be the greatest force for the advance- ment of human freedom the world has ever seen … the biggest of big brothers is increasingly helpless against communications technology. Information is the oxygen of the modern age. The peoples of the world have increasing access to this knowledge. It seeps through the wall topped with barbed wire. It wafts across the electrified, booby-trapped borders.7 This idealist philosophy argues that, in the long run, the best ideas will out. If something like the condition for global free speech can be established, people will choose liberal capitalist democracy as the best promoter of their desires for peace, prosperity and freedom. The triumph of the best idea. The propaganda power of this claim is matched with Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis and it has served as a powerful intellectual defence of the values of liberal capitalist democracy. Or has it? In truth, and what this paper illustrates, is that the reality underpinning this revolution is far more complex and is based upon a mixture of long-term planning and strategy on the part of core capitalist states, President Reagan’s foreign policy of actively seeking to roll back communism had its roots in the aggressive foreign policy of President Kennedy and the Democratic Revolution has to be situated in the context of this social and historical backdrop.8 The Democratic Revolution thesis sets out a few simple and powerful points about global social change:

● The world is moving in the direction of liberal democracy. ● The absence of democracy is an internal (domestic) problem of sovereign states. ● Capitalism brings peace and prosperity by building interdependence between states and enabling wealth to trickle down globally so that all benefit. ● Liberal, capitalist, democratic states do not go to war with each other. ● All alternative political systems have been tried and tested in history and found wanting.

What this paper illustrates is that the aspiration to provide peace, prosperity and freedom as set out in the official discourse of the democratic peace thesis is a triumph of rhetoric over reality. In short, my response is that: 1) capitalism 657 PETER WILKIN does not bring universal prosperity or the general satisfaction of human needs; 2) capitalism and democracy are analytically distinct and, for capitalists, democracy is a potential threat to their power unless the general populous has been sufficiently subdued and disciplined; 3) while liberal democratic states do not go to war with each other they are certainly capable of launching illegal wars against other states; and 4) the curbing of inter-state war, though an important development, will do nothing to end the social wars that have been a part of the modern world system and the most fundamental of which is that of the rich against the poor. What, then, has been the response of the radical intelligentsia to these trends? I think that there are three main responses and they can be succinctly described as follows.

1. We give up Progressive voices from Michael Walzer to Perry Anderson and Fred Halliday have all been taken with Fukuyama’s thesis and the apparent triumph of liberal capitalist democracy. As a consequence they have sought to argue that the most realistic goal for progressive politics in the current era is a form of social democracy that tames the excesses of capital. In this camp are often to be found former Marxist Leftists who see the failure of socialism as inherently intertwined with the collapse of the former Eastern Bloc. For such writers, the game is up for the traditional ambition of progressives to replace capitalism with a humane system of social and economic production that places human need before private profit.9

2. New Utopians Martin Shaw in his recent work on the global state is an example of this but it can often be found in the rhetoric of social democratic politicians, eager to align themselves with the positive connotations of the Democratic Revolution. Such views suffer from a tendency towards over-generalisation and insufficient attention to the qualitative distinction between formal and substantive democracy, as I will show later.10

3. Carry on regardless Finally, there are many traditional progressives who have viewed the end of the cold war as little more than the ‘revenge of history’, to use Alex Callinicos’s memorable phrase. The failure of the Eastern Bloc and actually existing socialism brings no particular fear to real revolutionaries, as those systems had nothing to do with socialism anyway. As such, what is required is more of the same as laid down by classical forebears such as Marx and Lenin. Suffice to say this Quixotic vision is lacking in critical reflexivity about its own particular lineage.11

My point here is merely to categorise the kinds of responses that have emerged from anti-capitalists since the end of the cold war. While all of them are capable of making important points in an understanding of the Democratic Revolution, 658 REVISING THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION they are, in themselves, insufficient responses to the growing global anti- capitalist movement. There are things to be learnt from the Democratic Revolution that progressive voices must heed.

Contradictions of the Democratic Revolution?

Formal vs substantive democracy The neoliberal Democratic Revolution is the promotion of a particular idea of democracy. Contrary to President Reagan’s suggestion, the spread of neoliberal capitalist democracy has not emerged from the ether as the triumph of the best idea but has been promoted through a complex strategy of coercion, violence, propaganda and financial promises. While it presents a formal commitment to democratic practice there are clear constraints on what is acceptable and unacceptable ideology and policy under neoliberal democracy. Again, Fukuyama’s suggestion that we are witnessing the end of history is a form of idealism that implies that the triumph of neoliberal democracy has come about through a friction-free global consensus. As the examples I will turn to next illustrate, this is far from the case. In the world of neoliberal democracy, the formal appearance of democratic choice is open to people, while the substantive choice is, as far as possible, removed. When it cannot be removed, as was the case in Brazil, then it is necessary to turn to more coercive measures in order to discipline the populace. Nonetheless, this is a contradictory process and is an unstable form of governance. It is one thing to promote the idea of democracy, it is another to imagine that its outcomes can easily be controlled.

Capitalism against democracy The relationship between capitalism and democracy is not the same as that which is often presented. Rather than being complementary processes on the path to modernity it is clear that historically the emergence and spread of capitalism from core to periphery has depended in significant part upon the denial of democracy.12 As the example of Nicaragua in the periphery shows, democracy can be a major threat to the imperialist interests of capitalists and core states and so it is always necessary for liberal states to reserve the right to use varying forms of coercion and/or violence in order to defend private power from democracy. The Democratic Revolution thesis fails to address this question in any substantive way. Herein lie two of the central contradictions of the Democratic Revolution. First, its commitment to democracy is ultimately subordinated to its commitment to the interests of capital and the geopolitical concerns of the core states. Private profit and power come before universal human needs and rights. Second, democracy has specific limits beyond which citizens tread with increasingly severe consequences. In the core, the parameters of the politically possible are patrolled in the ideational realm by intellectuals and commentators seeking to brand those who reject neoliberal democracy (more accurately, corporate democracy) as beyond the pale.13 As I have noted elsewhere, the idea of corporate 659 PETER WILKIN democracy refers to the neoliberal policy framework that attempts to constrain and enable particular kinds of political outcomes. In the age of neoliberalism the limit to feasible democratic choice is between parties that are rhetorically committed to contrasting political ideologies (socialism, conservatism, liberalism) but which in practice espouse variants of neoliberalism. To step outside the framework renders a political institution or actor liable to be seen as an illegitimate voice of protest. The boundaries of the politically acceptable and unacceptable are well patrolled by an intricate nexus of stateÐcorporate think- tanks, intellectuals, PR firms and popular commentators, all eager to reinforce the prevailing neoliberal common sense whenever it is significantly questioned.14 At a more extreme level when human rights groups, trade unionists, environ- mentalists and community workers in the periphery seek to promote the interests of ordinary people against neoliberalism, the results are brutal: in Colombia 3800 trade unionists have been murdered since 1986, mainly by state-funded paramilitaries, with not a single prosecution being brought against them.15 All of these barbarous acts were carried out by the ‘forces of democracy’ promoting neoliberal change. What becomes apparent is that the historical absence of democracy in the periphery and semi-periphery is not simply a product of the internal or cultural failings of particular states and nations; it is an outcome of the exercise of power by core states and dominant social forces in the world system. Democracy in the periphery and semi-periphery has always been a potential threat to the power of core states such as the UK and the USA. Its presence has become acceptable now but only in the form of neoliberal democracy, as I will explain by examining the examples of Nicaragua and Brazil.

Nicaragua and Brazil—living through the Democratic Revolution

Nicaragua The Nicaraguan revolution proved to be an early target for what was later to become known as the Democratic Revolution. The overthrow of the Somozan regime that had acted as a proxy government for US political and economic interests presented a significant and familiar threat to US imperial ambitions. If the Nicaraguan revolution was to succeed in placing the satisfaction of the needs of the local population before the interests of private capital it might potentially provide what Oxfam later described as ‘the threat of a good example’. If people in the periphery could see that it was possible for general needs to be met, for humane lives to be constructed in Nicaragua, then why not everywhere? Clearly this aspiration ran directly into the long-term strategic goals of US foreign policy that were succinctly expressed in NSC 68.16 (US strategic goals were to ensure favourable access to the world’s resources and spread its military apparatus globally in order to defend its national interests.) Recognising this makes it easier to understand why the Nicaraguan revolution had to be destroyed before the example of meaningful self-determination could take root. The US strategy was a familiar one that had been used against Cuba: isolate the ‘rogue state’; impose a blockade; launch a major propaganda offensive against the regime; carry out various acts of subversion within the country; launch an ‘indirect’ war against the 660 REVISING THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION revolutionary government.17 The impact of this is not hard to measure. Despite the initial successes of the Nicaraguan revolution in areas such as health, education, welfare and housing, the long-term costs of the US war against Nicaragua were horrendous. Some of the major costs can be summarised as follows: 30 000 civilians killed; 25 000 civilians injured in a total population of 3.5 million people; 500 000 internally displaced people.18 So powerful was the US propaganda campaign that the 1984 elections in Nicaragua (taking place at a time when the USA was carrying out what the ICJ later described as acts of ‘force against another state … an intervention of one state in the internal affairs of another’) had to be airbrushed out of history.19 This Orwellian tactic was so successful that mainstream commentators reflecting on the demise of the Sandinista government commented that, when the Nicaraguan people were given a ‘free’ choice in the 1990 elections, they voted out the Sandinista party and voted in the conservative business party, which had the financial backing of the US administration.20 Does this represent a triumph for the Democratic Revolution? Hardly, even allowing for the faults of the Sandinista government, the 1990 election is hardly in keeping with President Reagan’s belief in the triumph of the good idea. After a decade of terror carried out against a weary population the choice offered at the 1990 election was stark: more of the same or support the pro-US business party. The cost of the US embargo alone to Nicaragua by 1990 was already $3 billion and the Bush (senior) White House made clear that it would continue if the Sandinistas won the election. During the election campaign itself the US proxy army, the Contras, killed 42 civilians, again sending out a stark message to the civilian population as to what to expect if the Sandinistas continued in office.21 In the world of the Democratic Revolution this represents an uncoerced free choice. A besieged population took the opportunity to vote for a peace that would usher in a neoliberal government. Where has this left Nicaragua in terms of the satisfaction of such needs as general health, education, housing and poverty alleviation? The UN Human Development Report (HDR) for 2002 paints a stark picture, with Nicaragua 118th out of 173 countries. The UN HDR figures tell us that 50.3% of the population lives in poverty, which is certainly in keeping with the other neoliberal democracies of Central America.22 It also contrasts with the early achievements of the Sandinistas, who sought to tackle such things as illiteracy and poverty with a range of imaginative programmes that saw them win a number of awards from international bodies such as UNESCO.23 The new Nicaraguan government of 1990 illustrated its commitment to neoliberal democracy by cancelling the reparations of $17 billion ordered against the USA by the ICJ as punishment for the damage its war against Nicaraguan citizens had caused.24 A triumph for democracy indeed. The nature of liberal state violence has become more complex but the results remain largely the same for those on the receiving end. The Nicaraguan case illustrates clearly the way in which a mixture of violence, coercion, financial promises and intimidation have been used to support the aims of the Democratic Revolution. Those aims are clear and familiar: to promote a system of corporate democracy in which people have the right to elect the business party of their choice or suffer the consequences. The disciplinary punishment meted out against electorates who fail to heed this 661 PETER WILKIN message can take the form of direct military intervention, as was the case in 2002 with the coup in Venezuela against the populist Chavez government,25 or the indirect pressure of global capitalist investors, who can withdraw investment or attack currencies to force populations back in line, as has been seen recently in countries such as Argentina and South Korea. What, then, of the Brazilian example?

Brazil Since the end of military dictatorship in 1985 Brazil has seen the rise of a radical populist party known as the Workers’ Party, which has sought to promote the interests of the most impoverished sectors of Brazilian society at regional and national elections.26 The symbolic figurehead of this movement has been the former sheet metal worker and presidential candidate Lula de Silva. In four successive presidential campaigns the Workers’ Party, opposed by Brazil’s political, economic and cultural establishment, fought hard to secure the presidency. The cost of victory to the Workers’ Party was made clear to the Brazilian electorate through the Globo media network, which sought to portray it as a mixture of economic incompetents and totalitarians in waiting.27 Under- pinning this was the perennial threat in Brazilian politics of the latent power of the military to intervene to preserve the balance of social power. Furthermore, there was always the threat of international financial actors seeking to attack any progressive social policies that a government might pursue.28 The Brazilian population showed themselves to be remarkably resistant to this disciplining technique and the popularity of the Workers’ Party remained high, despite the ominous threats as to what would happen were it ever to secure office. In terms of the Democratic Revolution, this was a free and fair political process in an open political culture. In reality the power of the Brazilian establishment was ranged against those such as the Workers’ Party who sought to place the interests of the general populace before those of Brazil’s local oligarchs and the array of core interests. It was an open competition in which one side controlled the key mechanisms of governance—the military, the state apparatus, the mainstream cultural industries and the economy—while the other side sought to use the freedoms of capitalist democracy to defend and promote a vibrant civil society where substantive opposition to Brazil’s corrupt political system could be developed.29 By the time of the recent presidential election, failure to secure presidential success had sufficiently tamed sections of the Workers’ Party that it was willing to form a unified ticket with sections of the business community.30 This was an important strategy for Brazil’s ruling elites as the structure of the existing political culture had been exposed as both hideously corrupt and inefficient by successive political scandals, including presidential impeachments. The Workers’ Party and its representative Lula had agreed to alter their policy priorities so that they were in line with the interests of global neoliberal orthodoxy and Brazil’s ruling elites. Low inflation was the priority, along with repeated campaign trail speeches in which Lula vowed to remain truthful to the international financial orthodoxy of neoliberal doctrine: privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation of 662 REVISING THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION industry.31 At the same time Lula pledged to work for poverty alleviation. In turn Lula found himself receiving more sympathetic coverage from both the Brazilian and the world’s financial media, although they remained insistent that if he won the presidency he would have to be monitored continually for deviation from his pronounced economic policies. As The Economist put it when describing the policy options open to Lula as president, ‘better pain now and gain later’. The question of who will take the pain and who will acquire the gains hardly needs asking.32 Lula’s victory was greeted with the most important indicator of govern- mental legitimacy for neoliberals, the blessing of the stock markets.33 The consequences of this for Brazil’s opposition movements are perhaps similar to those of opposition movements in Haiti. President Aristide returned to office in 1995 after a coup d’état in 1991 with a revised mandate in keeping with the demands of global capital.34 After being re-elected in 2000 Aristide has subsequently been attacked by a coalition known as Democratic Convergence, which, among other things, is a conduit for the US think-tank the National Endowment for Democracy, whose purpose seems to be to ensure that Haiti remains part of the neoliberal norm in the region.35 No doubt politics is the stuff of compromise but these examples represent something quite different from a compromise between equal partners. The Democratic Revolution is revealed as a process through which a complex array of institutions and actors in the political, economic, military and cultural realm is able to use a variety of mechanisms to constrain democratic choices and limit the possibility of the movement towards more humane societies. As I have said earlier, however, this is an unstable process and, although the Democratic Revolution provides new forms of social control and coercion to ruling elites at national, regional and global levels, this is not an inevitable outcome. The examples of Brazil, Nicaragua, Haiti and others are stark in their implications for the reality of the Democratic Revolution. People might indeed prefer peace, prosperity and freedom to their alternatives, as the democratic peace thesis suggests, but this does not mean that they want the kind of peace, prosperity and freedom that neoliberalism offers them. If the straitjacket provided by neoliberal doctrine is so attractive to people, why do they need to be forced to wear it? What it also reveals is the possibility of opposition movements using democratic freedoms to organise and oppose neoliberalism. For all its contradictions, the victory of Lula in Brazil’s presidential election is potentially hugely significant for those seeking to encourage popular opposition to the constraints and demands of the neoliberal Democratic Revolution.36 What of the role of violence in supporting the Democratic Revolution? I want to turn now to the ongoing case of Colombia to explain how the core capitalist liberal states are using the means of violence as a mechanism for promoting social change in a way that far exceeds the worst excesses of any non-state terrorist actors. According to the CIA, terrorism is the ‘premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience’, with international terrorism defined as ‘terrorism involving the territory or citizens of more than one country’.37 The example of state policy in Colombia fits this description clearly and shows that the Democratic Revolution is not simply the 663 PETER WILKIN outcome of ‘reason’ in history, the triumph of the best idea, but is a coherent imperial ideology backed by a variety of mechanisms of coercion that serves to legitimise and protect the interests of the core states and capitalist classes.

Enforcing democracy: Plan Colombia

Gunning for Colombia The ongoing civil conflict in Colombia that has been taking place since the early 1960s has taken on a new meaning and intensity in the current juncture. Under the rubric of combating drugs and terrorism, and as part of the more recent ‘war on terrorism’, US foreign policy under both the Clinton and Bush administrations has sought to underpin the Colombian state apparatus with a massive prolifera- tion of military aid and increasingly direct support.38 While any serious analyst of Colombian political culture and conflict will focus upon social factors as the key causes behind the conflict, most notably the need for land reform and the conflicts between a modernising and reactionary capitalist class, such analyses are inadequate for the propaganda purposes of the Democratic Revolution. For Clinton’s Plan Colombia the cause of the conflict is quite simple—it is driven by narco-terrorists, a theme taken up and expanded upon by the Bush administration.39 In fact, the ‘narco-terrorists’ are the drug gangs and the paramilitaries, who exist in a mutually supportive relationship with the Colombian state.40 The rebel forces in general and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in particular have been consistently critical of the drugs trade and sought only to levy a tax upon it to finance their activities.41 With heightened US involvement in the past decade in support of the ruling classes in Colombia, the balance of forces is now firmly weighed against the rebels, who have historically sought to address and struggle for the grievances of the general populace with regard to such issues as land reform and human needs. The ongoing war on terrorism has enabled the Bush administration to widen its agenda in Colombia and the region. This has led to support for an all-out war against the rebels that has enabled the newly elected President Uribe to suspend civil liberties and impose a state of emergency. The irony here is that the president, the Colombian state, military and mainstream political parties are all heavily implicated in the activities of both the drug gangs and the paramilitaries, who have carried out the most barbarous assaults on the general populous over the past 30 years.42 Nonetheless, in the discourse of the Democratic Revolution, this all translates as a necessary step on the path to democracy. Supporters and agents of state terror against the general populous are, for neoliberals, the defenders of democracy precisely because their political agenda fits with the general US geopolitical and economic agenda for the region. Colombia is an important part of the Bush Administration’s plans for the Free Trade Area of Latin America (ALCA) and the rebels have to be suppressed if the economic conditions are to be fully exploited. As in Brazil, this has seen continuing popular opposition resisting the imposition of neoliberal policies. It has also seen a dramatic widening of US military involvement in Colombia and surrounding territories such as Northern Brazil, Peru and Ecuador. The USA has slowly and 664 REVISING THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION carefully deepened its military control and bases through Central America and down into South America, often violating the constitutions of countries along the way.43 The Democratic Revolution promotes a form of corporate democracy in Colombia in which the interests of the rich and powerful are to be preserved as far as possible and integrated more firmly into the economic structure of USÐ Latin American trade and finance. The ideal outcome for the neoliberal agenda at the heart of the Democratic Revolution would be for Colombia’s long suffering citizens to end up with the same kind of choices presented to the citizens of Nicaragua, which Noam Chomsky succinctly summarises as, ‘if you want your children to eat, vote the way we order you to’.44 These are the morals of the Democratic Revolution in practice, not the loftier appeals to freedom and human rights expressed in official discourse. The rhetoric of the official discourse justifying the Plan Colombia dovetails with the quote from former President Reagan. The discourse of the Democratic Revolution is idealist in the most utopian sense—it sets out a series of claims about the alleged values at the heart of the revolution that are not open to empirical scrutiny. When the actions of the agents of the Democratic Revolution are found to be in direct contradiction with their rhetorically claimed values, as is starkly the case in Colombia, this does not lead mainstream analysis to call into question their commitment to these values. On the contrary, commitment to these values is an a priori truth and as such it is an infallible theory. The apparent deviation can be explained away as a temporary aberration from the ‘real’ goal, which is the promotion of peace, prosperity and freedom. Thus, an account of the Colombian conflict that points out that the state and paramilitary forces in Colombia have been terrorising the general populous, often with US support, for decades is quite simply mistaken; rather, these actions were not to undermine or prevent democracy but to enhance it. Such is the warped ideology of the Democratic Revolution.

Conclusions: evaluating the democratic peace thesis The examples I have briefly set out here serve as a check to the eulogising about the Democratic Revolution and the end of history that has become such a common refrain in mainstream discourse. The claims of the Democratic Revolution cannot be taken at face value. Instead what is illustrated here is the move towards a global system of neoliberal governance: corporate democracy. The implications of this are that it places substantive constraints on the kind of governments that will be regarded as legitimate by the dominant actors and institutions that shape this system: the world’s major corporations, capitalist investors, core states and international financial institutions can all bring a variety of pressures to bear, as the examples here show, in order to discipline populations and political parties alike. While the movement towards a more fully integrated global system of corporate governance lessens the likelihood of major inter-state conflict between those adhering to these principles, it at the same time intensifies the social conflict that is taking place: the intensification of global poverty and inequality; the erosion of democratic control over the major governing institutions of the current era; the transfer of public assets into private 665 PETER WILKIN hands.45 While the idea and attraction of democracy over alternative political systems is undeniable and helps to account for the success of the Democratic Revolution thesis as an explanation of the post-cold war period, a closer analysis emphasises the contradictory features of this ongoing process.

Capitalism against democracy Historically the relationship between capitalism and democracy has been at best mixed and more often than not antagonistic.46 Capitalism is threatened by democracy if the latter enables people to transform the social order towards one that places human need before private profit. As a consequence in the cold war period many nationalist movements in the periphery that fought for self- determination and the need to raise the quality of life for their own people had to be overturned, subverted or isolated.47 Thus the period of the Democratic Revolution is in one sense a continuation of the geopolitical and economic aims of core states during the Cold War, to subordinate the periphery and semi- periphery to a form of global political economic structure that embeds neoliberal principles as global norms of imperial governance. The cold war and imperialism continue by other means. In the core capitalist states such as the UK, democracy followed a long way behind capitalism and was a result of the opposition of working class movements to their exploitation by state and capital rather than being a logical outcome of it.48 Democracy is acceptable for capitalists when it does not threaten corporate interests and the geopolitical concerns of the world’s core states. Indeed, for the rich and powerful a liberal culture underpinned by protection of their rights, particularly the right to property, is a very enjoyable form of life.49 However, this is a contradictory and unstable structure as I have mentioned and the war against Iraq illustrates this quite clearly. The USA and its allies were conscious of the danger of undermining the ‘good’ authoritarian regimes in the region such as those in Jordan and Saudi Arabia if they were to conduct an invasion of Iraq. Even with the vast array of political, economic, military and cultural tools open to them there is no guarantee that the promise of substantive democracy can be endlessly contained by the world’s ruling elites.

Changed strategies for anti-capitalists As a consequence of these factors anti-capitalists have changed and continue to change their tactics with regard to opposing the current world order. There are two major factors in this period that have enabled anti-capitalists to emerge from apparent defeat to cause severe propaganda and practical problems for the world’s governing elites.

New networks of protest. The emergence of new forms of political organisation has been a significant challenge to the neoliberal Democratic Revolution of the past 20 years. Unexpected and innovative, anti-capitalists have established new and spontaneous networks of protest through the use of information and communications technology as a mechanism to oppose capital and state power 666 REVISING THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION and to raise a continuous surveillance of the practices of the world’s powerful institutions and actors.50 This represents an important development in the history of anti-capitalist movements as it allows for a complex form of opposition that is at once local, national, regional and global. Older progressive voices have raised many objections to these new forms of protest and organisation, some of which are valid and others merely condescending.51 The promise of the anti-capitalist network is that it provides a focus of protest and analysis of the limitations of the neoliberal Democratic Revolution, as well as an increasingly complex forum for debate and activity that seeks to transform and extend the meaning of democracy. The contradictions of the Democratic Revolution are manifest and I have raised some of them in this paper. A crucial one is that, at the same time as it seeks to install and legitimate a structure of corporate governance, it also provides its opponents with the tools that they need in order to challenge it. To this extent it remains a world in motion, despite the fears of some radical voices.

Democracy and social change. The spread of democracy has never been simply an elite-driven process as Barrington Moore Jr explained.52 Historically the paths to democracy have emerged through periods of intense social struggle and war. While neoliberals and some radicals view the current phase of democratisation as being the end of history, it is quite clear that there is now a global movement of anti-capitalists who have a participatory view of democracy that embraces both political and economic realms. The success or failure of these movements will in part depend upon the way in which they embrace democracy in both theory and practice. Former anti-capitalist movements ran aground in many instances because of the dismissive view they took of democracy as being simply a bourgeois concept. Such views failed to comprehend the importance of democratic institutions and processes to the construction of any free society and it is clear that the emergent global anti-capitalist movement is conscious of these problems. The Democratic Revolution has taught a profoundly important lesson to anti-capitalists about the means by which social change can legitimately be effected: it must be inclusive, accountable and participatory. The extent to which the anti-capitalist movement can achieve such processes will be crucial in its attempts to refute the assertion that the current phase of the Democratic Revolution is indeed the end of history.

Notes 1 See M Doyle for an articulate account and defence of the Democratic Revolution, Ways of War and Ways of Peace, New York: Norton, 1967, Part Five. For a critical overview see the essays in T Barkawi & M Laffey (eds), Democracy, Liberalism and War: Rethinking the Democratic Peace Debate, London: Lynne Rienner, 2001. 2 See ‘Better than the alternatives’, The Economist, 16 May 2002. 3 M Shaw, Theory of the Global State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 4 H Wiarda, The Democratic Revolution, New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990. 5 See the journal Dissent, established by former Trotskyist Irving Howe for a good example of this. 6 See the website http://www.hrnicholls.com.au/nicholls/nichvo20/Henderson99.html. 7 D Wilhelm, Global Communication and Political Power, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publications, p 140. 8 T Bodenheimer & R Gould, Rollback! Right-Wing Power in US Foreign Policy, Boston: South End Press, 1989. 667 PETER WILKIN

9 See, for example, P Anderson, ‘Renewals’, New Left Review, 2 (1), January/February 2000; and F Halliday, Rethinking International Relations, London: Palgrave, 1994. 10 N Mann, ‘Blair’s global vision’, BBC News, 2 October 2001; and Shaw, Theory of the Global State. 11 A Callinicos, The Revenge of History, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. 12 C Chase-Dunn, Global Formation, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989, pp 107Ð150. 13 See also Anne Applebaum, ‘Who elected the anti-capitalist convergence?’, Slate Magazine, 23 April 2001, at http://slate.msn.com/default.aspx?id=104829. 14 On corporate democracy see my own The Political Economy of Global Communication, London: Pluto Press, 2000; B Gills et al, Low Intensity Democracy, London: Pluto Press, 1993; and A Carey, Taking the Risk out of Democracy, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996. 15 See the Labour Rights website at http://www.laborrightsnow.org/Colombia.htm. 16 The document can be found at http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-68.htm. For edited highlights see N Chomsky, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Berkeley, CA: Odanian Press, 1993, pp 8Ð9. 17 On the US war against Cuba see W LeoGrande, ‘A politics driven policy: Washington’s Cuba policy is still in place—for now’, NACLA, 34 (3), 2000. For the war against Nicaragua see M Gonzalez, Nicaragua: What Went Wrong?, London: Bookmarks, 1990. 18 S Wallace, ‘Nicaragua: ten years on’, The Guardian, 19 July 1989. 19 On the ICJ rulings see L Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, New York: Public Affairs, 2000, p 380. For a full account see the ICJ ruling at its website, http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/icases/ inus/inus_ijudgment/inus_ijudgment_19860627.pdf. On the mainstream press failure to acknowledge the 1984 Nicaraguan elections see Noam Chomsky, Letters From Lexington, Edinburgh: AK Press, 1993, pp 20Ð28. 20 Money went to the business opposition party UNO from the CIA and the National Endowment for Democracy. See N Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, London: Verso, 1991, ch 10. 21 Chomsky, Letters From Lexington, pp 21Ð28. 22 UN, Human Development Report 2002, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, at http://hdr.undp. org/reports/global/2002/en/indicator/indicator.cfm?File=indic_299_1_1.html. 23 On the Sandinistas’ early successes in promoting basic needs, see D Elson, Nicaragua: The Threat of a Good Example, Oxford: Oxfam Books, 1985. 24 For details of the reparations see the ICJ ruling at http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/icases/inus/inus_ isummaries/inus_isummary_19860627.htm. It should be noted that the USA had refused to pay any of the reparations anyway. 25 S Elner & F Rosen, ‘Crisis in Venezuela’, NACLA, 36 (1), 2002; and E Vulliamy, ‘Venezuela coup linked to Bush team’, Observer, 21 April 2002. 26 ME Keck, The Workers’ Party and Democratisation in Brazil, Yale: Yale University Press, 1992; and Keck, ‘Brazil’s socialism as radical democracy’, NACLA, May 1992, pp 24Ð29. 27 IJ Rodrigues, ‘The CUT: new unionism at the crossroad’, NACLA, MayÐJune 1995, pp 30Ð32; and E Sader & K Silverstein, Without Fear of Being Happy: Lula, The Workers’ Party and Brazil, London: Verso, 1991. On Globo’s historical relationship to the military, state and economic elites, see J Straubhaar, ‘Brazil: the role of the state in world television’, in N Morris & S Waisbord (eds), Media and Globalisation, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. See also W Bello, ‘Brazil’s new era’, in Eclipse: The Anti-War Review, (Sussex University), 23 November 2002, pp 19Ð22, at http://www. sussex.ac.uk/affiliates/eclipse/index.html. 28 M Weisbrot, ‘Brazilian democracy faces obstacles from the north’, Z Magazine, http://www.zmag. org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=1619. 29 Z Navarro, ‘Breaking new ground: Brazil’s MST’, NACLA, 33 (5), 2000. 30 Lula chose to run with a millionaire textile magnate from the right-wing Liberal Party as his vice- presidential candidate, as well as seeking a meeting with Henry Kissinger! See Petras, ‘US offensive in Latin America’, Monthly Review, May 2002, p 8. 31 J Petras, ‘Brazil: neoliberalism, crises and electoral politics’, at http://www.rebelion.org/petras/ english/petras080902.htm; Business Week, ‘What business wants from Lula’, 4 November 2002; Business Week, ‘Lula: seeing eye to eye with business’, 4 November 2002; and Business Week, ‘Business likes Lula, but Wall Street doesn’t’, 14 October 2002. 32 ‘Better pain now and gain later’, The Economist, 31 October 2002. 33 ‘Overview’, The Economist, 31 October 2002. 34 C Orenstein, ‘Haiti undone’, NACLA, 33 (3), November/December 1999. 35 ‘Haiti government foils “coup plot”’, BBC News, 19 October 2000, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ world/americas/980550.stm; and M Drohan, ‘Another US war—on the poor in Haiti’, at http://www. thomasmertoncenter.org/The_New_People/July-August2002/war%20on%20the%20poor%20in%20 Haiti.htm. 36 The Workers’ Party has sought to encourage participatory democracy in local and regional govern-

668 REVISING THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

ment. See J Rebick, ‘Brazil victory’, Z Magazine, at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm? SectionID=41&ItemID=2435. 37 See the CIA’s website at http://www.cia.gov/terrorism/faqs.html. 38 J Gerber & EL Jensen (eds), Drug War, American Style, New York: Garland Publishing, 2001. 39 On the expansion of US personnel in Colombia see the State Department website at http://usinfo.state. gov/regional/ar/colombia/fact09.htm. On Clinton’s Plan Colombia see his official statement at http:// usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/drugs/assist.htm. Plan Colombia made Colombia the third highest recipient of US military aid. C Zarate-Laun, ‘Introduction to Putumayer’, Z Magazine, February 2001, at http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/feb011aun.htm. 40 N Richani, Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia, New York: State University of New York Press, 2002, ch 5. 41 Ibid, pp 70Ð73. 42 J Giraldo, ‘Corrupted justice and the schizophrenic state in Colombia’, Social Justice, 26 (4), 1999, pp 32Ð33. President Uribe is accused by exiled opponents of heading the paramilitary networks in Colombia. See http://www.anncol.com/October_eng/0810_Colombian_President_accused_of_ heading_brutal_killer_network.htm. 43 J Petras, ‘Neo mercantilist empire in Latin America: Bush, ACLA and Plan Colombia’, at http://www. eurosur.org/rebelion/petras/english/bushalcal70102.htm. 44 Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, 1991, p 298. 45 P Wilkin, ‘Global poverty and orthodox security’, Third World Quarterly, 23 (4), 2002, pp 633Ð645. 46 EM Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 47 F Halliday, Cold War, Third World, London: Radius Books, 1989. 48 EP Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, London: Penguin, 1991. 49 B Schiffman, ‘America’s best cemeteries’, Forbes Magazine, 1 November 2002, illustrates that even death is in a different class for the rich, at http://www.forbes.com/2002/11/01/cx_bs_1101home.html. 50 See the following for examples of this network-centred approach to political organisation: the web- sites of People’s Global Action at http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/en/; Globalise Resistance at http://www.resist.org.uk/; Global Action at http://flag.blackened.net/global/; Reclaim the Streets at http://www.reclaimthestreets.net/; Mobilisation for Global Justice at http://www.a16.org/; The South Centre at http://www.southcentre.org/; and Corporate Watch at http://www.corporatewatch.org/. In addition see J Wainwright, S Prudham & J Glassman, ‘The battle in Seattle’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18 (1), 2000, pp 5–15; PF Gilham & GT Marx, ‘Complexity and irony in policing and protesting: the World Trade Organization at Seattle’, Social Justice, 27 (2), 2000, pp 212Ð236; E Bircham & J Charlton (eds), Anti-Capitalism: A Guide to the Movement, London: Bookmarks, 2000; A Melucci, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in an Age of Information, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; D Della Porta & M Diani, Social Movements: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999; R Cohen & M Rai, Global Social Movements, London: Athlone Press, 2000; D Della Porta, H Kriesi & D Rucht (eds), Social Movements in a Globalising World, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999; I Welch & G Chesters, ‘Re-framing social movements’, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences Working Papers No 19, November 2001, at http: //www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/publications/workingpapers/wrkgpaper19.pdf; A Starr, Naming the Enemy: Anti-Corporate Movements confront Globalisation, London: Zed Books, 2000; and P Hamel et al, Globalisation and Social Movements, London: Palgrave, 2001. 51 D Macintyre, ‘As an old peace protester I have no time for anarchists’, Independent, 24 July 2001, at http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=84987. 52 B Moore jr, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, London: Allen Lane, 1967.

669 Australian Journal of International Affairs

EDITOR William T Tow, Queensland University, Australia CONTRIBUTING EDITORS James Cotton, University of New South Wales, Australia Peter Edwards, Deakin University, Australia ASSOCIATE EDITOR Lorraine Elliott, Australian National University, Australia Supported by an International Editorial Board Established in 1946 (as Australian Outlook), the Australian Journal of International Affairs (AJIA) is Australias leading scholarly journal of international affairs AJIA is the journal of the Australian Institute of International Affairs The Institute was established in 1933 as an independent and non-political body and its purpose is to stimulate interest in and understanding of international affairs among its members and the general public AJIA publishes high quality scholarly research on international political, social, economic and legal issues, especially (but not exclusively) within the Asia-Pacific region The journal also publishes research notes, book reviews, review essays, notes and news from the Institute, and an annual review of Australian foreign policy This journal is also available online Please connect to wwwtandfcouk/onlinehtml for further information To request a sample copy please visit: wwwtandfcouk/journals SUBSCRIPTION RATES 2003 Volume 57 (3 issues) Print ISSN 1035-7718 Online ISSN 1465-332X Institutional rate: US$239; £145; AU$234 (includes free online access) Personal rate: US$99; £60; AU$112 (print only) ORDER FORM caji PLEASE COMPLETE IN BLOCK CAPITALS AND RETURN TO THE ADDRESS BELOW Please invoice me at the q institutional rate q personal rate

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