Álvaro García Linera: All popular victories require prior cultural victories.

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Álvaro García Linera, former Bolivian Vice President and current member of the Council of the Progressive International, delivers a speech at the VIII Latin American and Caribbean Conference of Social Sciences, “All popular victories require prior cultural victories.”

Beyond his tenure in Bolivian politics, García Linera has been a leading figure in the development of Latin American Marxist thought. His writings include "Plebeian Power: Collective Action and Indigenous, Working-Class, and Popular Identities in Bolivia" and "The Communitarian Horizon: Towards a New Left".

This Special Issue of The Internationalist translates García Linera’s speech from its original Spanish and reproduces it in English for the first time.

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What does it mean to be progressive, to be a populist, to be a leftist, to be a socialist in Latin America? It means lifting 72 million people out of poverty in Latin America. It means strengthening trade unions and a multitude of social movements. It means new forms of participation such as referendums, communitarian democracy, inter-sectoral initiatives, and social mobilisations that had an effect on the state and resulted in changes to decrees and laws.

There is a growing democratisation of personal relationships and a drive for bodily autonomy in which every woman is, and must be, sovereign over decisions regarding her body. Progressive governments have learned from the women's movement. Many governments likely began without understanding at all, or if so, only from a distance. But, as they moved forward, they were flexible and wise enough to abandon their initial beliefs saturated with conservative views. They instead adopted an attitude of accompaniment and not of direction, because women do not need to be directed, but rather accompanied in their struggles for their demands.

Over the past twelve years, the left has brought new forms of governance: countries are functional and stable, offering more than just partisan political coalitions. What we have shown the world is that real, plebeian governance is built by both a parliamentary majority and a majority in the streets. We govern from the streets and from parliament, and the unity of these two makes progressive governments functional.

Governments and progressive forces in Latin America also had the strength of building on prior cultural victories — both in extended ways over 10-20 years, or in concentrated ways in the months or years before great cathartic social uprisings. Gramsci was right: all popular, political or military victories require prior cultural victories developed in different aspects of life: in universities, in the media, in neighbourhoods, in everyday activities, in the family, and so on.

Along the way, Latin American progressivism has resolved a debate taking place in the context of the reconstitution of the European left, whether socialist or radical social democrats: the relationship between progressivism and freedom. In general, those of us who came from the left in the ‘60s and ‘70s were distanced from the concept of freedom because we associated it with the free market or the selfishness of personal interest. Looking at the facts and without much reflection, Latin American progressivism has dealt with this issue in a very creative way. Through our respect for republican freedoms — that is, the freedom of opinion, freedom of association, freedom of thought, freedom to freely form the national political will — we have been able to come to power, and to transform power itself, through elections. And we shall return to power again and again (and again) through elections.

Faced with a logic of historical determinism in which there was a single subject promoting change and the rest of society was merely an out of place companion to the vanguard, Latin American progressivism had the strength to  promote and create a set of contingent social articulations. Multi-sectoral, multi-identity and multi-civilisational: workers, Indigenous people, neighbourhoods, young people, women, professionals, peasants, together in a plebeian articulation in which no single subject is mandated to lead or direct the rest. Those who lead are the product of contingencies, of strategic skills, of convening, of discursive constructions, of civilising narratives. In any case, there is no vanguard subject, no single articulating subject. Social transformations and historical blocs are contingent and flexible plural constructions.

The most difficult part, which so far has been only partially achieved, is that  Latin America's progressive governments have formed, or have promoted, alternative forms of post-neoliberal economic management. I wouldn't say post-capitalist because no revolution begins with the idea of communism: the Russian Revolution began with the idea of "bread", and ended up taking over the factories. But it began with the fight for bread, for freedom. It ended up, of course, by going into the factories and building soviets.

In Latin America, we have been able to expand common goods, both public and social. We have had the capacity to create and selectively combine specific forms of globalisation, economic protection, and promotion of the internal market. This is now what Europe is trying to experiment with, from its progressive side, at least. New forms of economic, financial, banking sovereignty — a central bank that controls, or used to control, its own currency — military sovereignty which  removes American bases on the continent, and political sovereignty, which does not permit foreign embassies to a country’s destiny.

More than ever before, progressivism had the strength of promoting policies of integration and sovereignty at a continental scale. A ‘progressive international’ that allowed Latin America to define and address its own problems and to solve them itself without expecting the US, the IMF, the World Bank or the European Union to tell us what to do.

***

Latin American progressivism has of course contributed many other things to the world. I will stop at those I have mentioned, although others may come up later in the debate, because right now I want to focus on the limits we have encountered. For it is through our limitations and our awareness of them that we will begin to overcome them, in the Hegelian sense.

The first limit we faced — which must be a lesson for the future, for the new progressive wave — was the sustainability of growth and economic satisfaction. It is possible to enter government in a time of crisis, of social openness and responsiveness, of collective frustration with conservative policies, with a coherent program and narrative of the future. It is possible. But political will is not enough to stay in government. Don't forget what Lenin said: politics is concentrated economics. And the key, the sustainability of a progressive government lies in good, sound management of the economy. Economic growth, redistribution of wealth, sustainability of growth and redistribution.

On the left, unlike for conservatives or the right, a mistake in economics costs us our lives. On the right, a mistake in economics is tolerated: it is part of the conservative common sense that makes it tolerant of conservative forces. The left has no right to make mistakes. It is complicated, but we will learn from this in order to look to the future.

A second limitation is the weakness of the transformation of common sense. What we call "common sense" is a set of moral criteria, logical procedures and habitual attitudes that we adopt without reflecting on them. From the way we sit, the way we eat, language, the architecture of that language which allows us to communicate and create shared meanings with other people in our neighbours, with our family, with our colleagues at work... It is the set of moral indignations and tolerances that we practise every day. It is the set of algorithms of everyday life that we automatically trigger or execute without thinking about doing so.

It's like me holding this microphone: I can be discussing my ideas about the left without having to worry about how to hold a microphone or how to look at the audience, because that's common sense. That knowledge, that way of situating oneself in the world, that way of acting automatically in the world, that way of instantaneously and spontaneously valuing the world, which is not natural: it is the product of slow build up, of what Marx called education, habit, tradition, from the time we are a day-old until we are adults, that is what we call common sense.

And common sense used to be the most important thing in politics. Basically, politics is a struggle for directing common sense. Progressive governments succeeded in being there at the right moment, at the time, as did progressive forces who were there with the right discourse, at the moment when a piece of common sense cracked. That piece of the old common sense that assigned to others decisions about one's own affairs, that bet on the market or globalisation to satisfy one's needs, that delegated the solution to the problems of the poor to individuals, party patronage or businessmen. This old common sense was shattered in a moment of social catharsis. In Bolivia in 2001, 2003 and 2005. Argentina, Brazil, each country has its own moment of social catharsis (in the Gramscian sense) that breaks off superficial bits of common sense.

When you enter into government, you think that the new common sense that catapulted you into state office has permanently entrenched itself. This is not true: what we understood and realised is that common sense is more than these circumstantial moments of social catharsis. Common sense is a conservative sediment, reproductive rather than transformative, and that if progressive governments do not make a planned, systematic effort to transform it in education, health, daily life, schools, the media, books, theatre, expressions, intra-family relations, symbolism, in the forms of social unification, in the moral order of the world, in the logical order of the world, then the old common sense will be reconstituted and will take over and displace the new superficial progressive common sense.

This is the paradox that has been hard for us to accept: how is it possible that comrades who were lifted out of poverty as a result of progressive policies vote against progressive governments? It may seem like a betrayal, but it is not. It may seem like a product of unawareness, but it is not. We have to accept this as our weakness. Both as our weakness and as a lesson to us: progressive processes will continue as long as they satisfy growing basic needs, as long as they continually transform and steadily revolutionise the patterns of conservative common sense that govern 90-95% of our thought processes.

The third weakness, and third lesson, is that economic growth and ecological degrowth are not possible simultaneously. How can we resolve this paradox of economic growth and ecological protection? In other words, the horizon of ecological socialism presents itself as an unavoidable fact for the next progressive wave in Latin America.

***

Strengths, weaknesses, challenges. What is likely to happen in Latin America now? Are we at the beginning of a long retreat of Latin American progressivism that will give way to a long conservative, neoliberal, racist, misogynist, exclusionary, neo-colonial night? Or are we not? That is what one must consider with Siberian coldness. I am convinced that we are not, and for the following reason: we are facing a neoliberal conservative wave that has two intrinsic limits — it is fossilised and it is in itself contradictory.

Why fossilised? Because the neoliberalism that has triumphed recently in some Latin American countries is repeating the same recipes that failed twenty years ago and led those countries to economic and social disaster. There is no ingenuity, no creativity, no hope, it is simply a tired repetition — both poorly marinated and, on top of that, poorly formulated — of old positions and decisions that failed on the continent years ago.

Why is it contradictory and sickening? Because unlike what happened in the 1980s, when neoliberalism was presented to the world as a hope that stirred emotions, as a hope that motivated voluntary adherence, today's neoliberalism only mobilises hatred and resentment: hatred of the poor, hatred of liberated women, resentment against the dignified worker, against expanded trade unionism that hinders capital accumulation. In other words, it is a neoliberalism founded on negativity and not on propositions. Not on medium-term hope, but on short-term emotional rejection. And that doesn’t last long.

Also, what kind of neoliberalism are we talking about? It turns out that those who advocated free markets, free enterprise and privatisation ten or twenty years ago, today nationalise banks, fortify their borders and fight against globalisation. Apparently now the "communists" who own state enterprises are the proponents of globalised free trade, so, does that mean the communists have become globalised and the privatisers have become protectionists?

We are dealing with a failed, short-lived neoliberalism and an uncertain world. Right-wing forces have lost their North Star, their horizon. Where are we heading? To ally with China, and then nationalise companies, or to knock on the doors of Europe and the United States, who are asking for protection of their markets? What path is Latin America going to follow? A piece of one and a piece of the other? No. The neoliberal fuel has run out; what we now have is a kind of zombie neoliberalism, which survives on the fumes of its old victories and fails to capture the collective enthusiasm of society.

I am convinced that this will come to an end — that instead of a long neoliberal night, we have to live through a short neoliberal summer night. And that is where it is up to us to acknowledge what we did right, to acknowledge what we did wrong, and to prepare ourselves. The left has to prepare itself to take power in Latin America again in the coming years. And let us hope that this new wave of progressive governments goes beyond the first wave and has support from other parts of the world. We look to Spain, we look to Britain, we look to France, we look to Italy, and we look to all of the parts of the world in the hope that we will not be left alone. So that the next wave can join with a global wave that will enable us to make much more progress on the rights and welfare for the people of the world.