Post-capitalist Development in Latin America's Left Turn: beyond Peronism and the Magical State DRAFT Manuel Larrabure, PhD Submitted to Development and Change on September 21, 2017 Reference number: DECH-17-421 Abstract The persistence of struggles by popular sectors in the context of the pink tide has generated ongoing debates about how to interpret the region's left turn. For some, these movements are understood as forming part of a tense but ultimately productive relationship with left governments in the pursuit of post-neoliberal development. For others, it points to potentially irreconcilable political differences, and neoliberal continuities in pink tide governance. In this paper, I address these debates by presenting research on two social movements: Argentina's recuperated enterprises and Venezuela's popular economy. Using a Marxian-inspired, situated case study approach, I argue that these movements can be understood as 'post-capitalist struggles', that is, attempts to articulate new forms of democracy and cooperation that point beyond capitalism. As such, these movements push beyond the politics of Kirchnerismo and Chavismo that reproduce, albeit in new forms, the limitations to post-capitalist development associated with Peronism and the 'magical state'. These movements therefore reveal both the region's potential post-capitalist future, and the barriers that stand against it in the context of the region's latest phase of development. Lastly, these cases highlight the need to both re-assert and re-define one of the pink tide's political goals, namely regional integration. Latin America's Left Turn During the first decade and a half of the 21st-century, Latin American politics took a meaningful turn to the left. This 'left turn' first emerged as a flood of social movements that began to contest neoliberal policies in the 1980s and 1990s (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2001; Harris, 2003). By the late 1990s, these movements then became articulated within the electoral arena, providing tacit or active support for the unprecedented wave of progressive parties elected into office throughout the region, a phenomena known as the 'pink tide' (for discussion see Castañeda, 2006; Llosa, 2007; Lebowitz, 2007; Ciccariello-Maher, 2013). In the context of this left turn, the region has undergone what is arguably a reversal of the development trajectory experienced during the neoliberal period, one characterized by widespread social devastation (Portes, 1997; United 1 Nations Development Programme, 1999; Gwynne and Kay 2000; Portes and Hoffman, 2003). Indeed, since the early 2000's, Latin America has experienced significant improvements in a wide range of social indicators, including poverty, inequality, unemployment and women's rights (Friedman, 2009; Bárcena, 2011; Cornia, 2010; Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2012; Lustig and Ortiz-Juarez, 2013; Bulmer Thomas, 2014). In part, these improvements can be attributed to the economic boom the region experienced during the first decade of the new millennium. This has included consistent levels of growth, a massive expansion in the region's international trade, and a strong improvement in its terms of trade (Bárcena, 2010). Just as noteworthy is the range of 'pro poor' policies introduced by the pink tide, most notably, conditional cash transfers aimed at vulnerable populations. Emblematic examples of these policies include the Bolsa Familia program developed by the Partido dos Trabalhadores in Brazil (Hall, 2006; 2008), Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados introduced by the Kirchner governments in Argentina (Pautassi, 2004) and Chile Solidario introduced by the Concertación governments in Chile (Serrano, 2005; Larrañaga y Contreras, 2010). Other initiatives combine a pro-poor outlook with participatory governance. These include, for example, municipal participatory budgeting (for specific cases see Fedozzi, 2001; Ford, 2008) and Communal Councils in Venezuela (El Troudi, 2005; Burbach and Piñeiro, 2007; Ellner, 2009). Central to these changes is also a new role of the state. During the neoliberal period, the Latin American state adopted what became known as the ‘Washington Consensus' (Williamson, 1993). As a result, the state's role in the region became that of extending the market in society through structural adjustment and other policies of dispossession and austerity (Gwynne and Kay, 2000; Saad-Filho et al., 2007; Harvey, 2003, 2010; Soederberg, 2003, 2005). In contrast, under the pink tide, the state in Latin America has played a more active role in social provision and welfare. In large part, this has been possible through increased state spending, taxation, and most importantly, tighter control over the use of revenues from natural resources (Gudynas, 2009, Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2012; Rosales, 2013). Lastly, the highly technocratic and elite character of policy making under neoliberalism was often replaced, or at least somewhat subverted, by calls to mass mobilization by charismatic leaders (Roberts, 2007). Increased revenues and greater willingness to intervene in the economy, in turn, allowed the pink tide to distance itself from the debt regime of the Washington Consensus. Indeed, since the pink tide came to power, there has been a regional tendency to not renew agreements with the IMF, with Brazil and Argentina even settling its outstanding debts (Moreno-Brid and Paunovic, 2006). This in part explains why, unlike previous global economic collapses, the 2008 crisis led neither to bank failures or a renewed debt crisis in the region (Katz, 2015, p. 14). In addition, left governments introduced a new political outlook that enhances citizenship through cultural recognition, evident in institutional reforms and, in some cases, new constitutions (Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2012). As Jean Grugel and Pía Riggirozzi (2012) argue, an important aspect 2 of the pink tide is its promotion of new forms of democratic belonging by establishing new state–society relationships (p. 3). To some degree, this new political outlook was accompanied by a new sense of regional identity and solidarity (Kellog, 2007; Riggirozzi, 2012), a topic I will come back to in the conclusion. These changes in the region over the last almost two decades have been the subject of ongoing discussions and debates about how to conceptualize this left turn. Perhaps the most optimistic interpretation has come from the pink tide itself and supportive intellectuals. One influential contribution is that of Alvaro García Linera, vice-president of Bolivia and key intellectual figure within the ruling Movimiento al Socialismo government. According to García Linera (2011), Bolivia can be said to have entered a new phase of development, one characterized by 'creative tensions' between popular demands from below and a responsive government enacting changes from above, a relationship that could be referred to as a ‘positive dialectic’ (for case study see Anria and Niedzwiecki, 2016). Similar perspectives have been forwarded in the cases of Brazil (Sader, 2013), Venezuela (Ciccariello-Maher, 2007; Harnecker, 2010), and Argentina (Wylde, 2016). Somewhat overlapping with this interpretation of the region's last decade and a half is the work of those utilizing a Polanyian framework. From this perspective, Latin America's left turn is a classic example of a double movement: society fighting back against the unsustainable expansion of the market, this time, in the form of neoliberalism (Silva, 2009; Villalba, 2013; Munck, 2015).1 However, there are good reasons to look for more critical interpretations. On the economic front, the high levels of growth and trade achieved have been the result of an overwhelming reliance on the export of primary goods, and have come alongside a decline in industrial production (Bárcena, 2010; Katz, 2015). Indeed as Eduardo Gudynas (2009) argues, the pink tide became an active promoter of extractivism, natural resource extraction geared toward international markets and based largely on mono-cropping (see also Robinson, 2008; Katz, 2008, 2015; Rosales, 2013; Chiasson- LeBel, 2016). As Maristella Svampa (2015) argues, we can therefore understand the period of the pink tide in Latin America as representing at least a partial shift from accumulation based on finance (the Washington Consesus) to accumulation based on the exploitation of land, what she calls the ‘commodities consensus' (see also Borras Jr. et al., 2012). On the political front, although pro-poor and participatory policies have helped lift millions from poverty while building democratic capacities, in many cases programs have been weakly instituted, prone to cooptation, and paternalistic in character (Andersson and Van Laerhoven, 2007; Chavez, 2008, Dinerstein, 2013). Furthermore, in some cases, notably Brazil, social programs have been used to underwrite new forms of financial accumulation (Lavinas, 2017). 1 For a more mainstream perspective with a similarly positive outlook based on western democratic theory see Huber and Stephens (2012). 3 Given this evidence, in contrast to the positive dialectic and Polanyian interpretations of Latin America's left turn, it would be more accurate to understand this period as expressing significant continuities with neoliberalism. As Fernando Leiva (2006, 2008) has argued, using the cases of Brazil and Chile, the changes in the region can be best understood thorough the concept of neostructuralism, a new development model that attempts to combine growth with equity. However, as Leiva underscores, this model remains highly