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Commentary No. 168, September 1, 2005
"Deepening Rifts on the Left?"
For the last 150 years, one of the biggest issues that has divided the world left has been whether or not it is important for left social movements to support the electoral objectives of whatever is the principal party "left-of-center" in a particular country. There have been three basic positions: those who say that such parties are totally unreliable as defenders of the interests of the social movements and therefore should be shunned; those who say that the only hope of achieving anything substantial is to have such parties in power; and those who waver between these two positions. In fact this third group, the waverers, are almost always a substantial group whose immediate position often dictates the political results.
The dilemmas have become very acute lately, as we can see by taking a look at the current political debates in Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico. The politics and the historical background of each country are of course quite different. But they share certain features. Each has a functioning parliamentary system with regular elections. In none of them is there a serious armed military insurgency that involves the breakdown of order. In all of them there is a public debate going on about what left social movements should be doing now.
The most immediately dramatic case is that of Brazil. There, a left party, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), came to power in October 2002 with the election of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva as President. This was the long-sought triumph of a left party and was hailed as this by the social movements in Brazil and indeed elsewhere in the world. In the elections, as well as in the twenty years preceding, the PT had the support of the two largest social movements - the trade-unions (CUT) and the rural landless (MST), as well as of a series of Catholic left social movements. The immediate problem for the government was that, although the PT won a clear majority in the presidential polls and was the largest party in the lower house, it only obtained circa 20% of the seats in both houses of the legislature. It felt it had to enter into shaky coalitions with centrist and even rightwing parties, in order to get legislation passed.
From the outset, the policies of the Lula government caused controversy on the left. The government appointed key officials and adopted a financial policy that met the desires of the world's investors and of the IMF, and was seen by the social movements as thereby capitulating to neo-liberalism. The PT had promised distribution of land to the landless, and over three years has delivered very little. The PT promised respecting environmental concerns about the development of the Amazon, and has delivered very little.
On the other hand, Brazil's foreign policy seemed to involve a major confrontation with the United States: emphasis on the strengthening of the regional trade community of Mercosur, and seeking its extension to all of South America; friendly links with Chavez in Venezuela; leadership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) of the G-20, which opposed the efforts of the U.S. and the European Union to pursue neo-liberal objectives via the WTO. Some however see Brazil's policies in South America as a regional "imperialism" merely competing with that of the United States.
And in 2005, a new element was injected into the picture. Brazil became embroiled in a corruption scandal that implicated some of the leading figures in the PT and the government, to the point that there has begun to be talk of impeaching Lula. In any case, his own reelection and/or a PT victory in 2006, which seemed a certainty not too long ago, is now in question.
So what should the social movements do? Very early on, many left intellectuals turned against the PT. And a small segment of the party seceded. But neither the CUT nor the MST seemed ready to desert the party. However, now, the MST has begun to be quite strong in its criticism of the government, and the party itself has become internally divided about its policies, especially its financial policies. On the other hand, the social movements, more left elements within the party, and many intellectuals hesitate to abandon the PT altogether, because they fear that, after 2007, there will be installed a truly right-wing government once again, one that would be difficult to evict, once in power.
The situation in South Africa is similar in many ways to that of Brazil. There the African National Congress (ANC) finally won an 80-year battle to establish a state structure based on one man one vote. And of course, once that was achieved, the ANC won the elections handily, electing Nelson Mandela as President in 1994. He was in turn succeeded by Thabo Mbeki in 1999 who was reelected in 2004. In South Africa, the ANC had an alliance with the South African Communist Party (SACP) throughout its years of resistance to the apartheid regime, as well as with the trade-union movement, whose present incarnation is the Congress of South African Trade-Unions (COSATU). In South Africa, unlike the case of the PT in Brazil, the ANC has had an overwhelming majority in parliament. The only formal alliance has been with the SACP and COSATU.
The actual policies of the ANC in power have not been that different from those of the PT. They have pursued economic and fiscal policies which the left intellectuals (and indeed COSATU and the SACP) have seen as neoliberal. The ministers who were actually in charge of these policies are however members of the SACP. The government has not done much on promised land reform, although they have done something about extending electricity to Black African urban areas. While originally promising better access to water, the government has sought to privatize the suppliers in part, and this has met resistance from the social movements.
In world affairs, they have joined Brazil in the G-20 within the WTO. They have in effect defended Zimbabwe's regime against the attacks of the U.S. and Great Britain. This however is not at all appreciated by COSATU and South African left intellectuals, which regard the Zimbabwe regime of Robert Mugabe as an antidemocratic regime that has betrayed the freedom struggle. Mbeki has played an important diplomatic role on the African continent, as a "mediator" in many struggles, but some see this too as a sort of regional "imperialism."
The immediate crisis in South Africa, as in Brazil, is over corruption. There however, it is the putative successor to Mbeki, Jacob Zuma, until recently the Deputy President, who has been charged with this and is facing court proceedings. Mbeki moved to suspend Zuma from his party and governmental functions. Both COSATU and the SACP have come to the strong support of Zuma, asking Mbeki to annul the prosecution and asking the ANC to reverse its suspensions of Zuma. But should therefore COSATU and the SACP actually break the alliance? Unlike in Brazil, where the fear is that right-wing parties could come to long-term power, the fear in South Africa of the social movements is that, if they broke with the ANC, it could succeed in excluding them from the limited power they now have. So they hesitate to make a definitive break.
In Mexico, as we have previously seen (Commentary No. 165), the analogous party is the Partido de la Revolución Democrátice (PRD) which is not yet in power, but whose candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), is widely predicted to win the coming elections. The key social movement in this situation is the EZLN or Zapatistas. And they have very loudly taken their distance from the PRD before it even comes to power. They have said that they expect very little in gains if and when that happens. In effect, the Zapatistas are predicting that the PRD in power will not be too different from the PT and the ANC in power. The PRD is also facing some corruption scandals, albeit lesser ones than those in Brazil and South Africa.
But almost immediately after enunciating this position, the Zapatistas clarified it. They said they were not calling on people to abstain from voting for the PRD, nor of course were they calling on them to vote for the PRD. They said that it was a matter for each voter to decide. But they themselves were going to concentrate on what they call "la otra campaña" (the other campaign) to build democratic structures and alliances, in Mexico and the world, from the bottom up.
So, deepening rifts all over, without yet definitive breaks between the left social movements and the main left-of-center party in the country. Can the situation in all three countries remain in this uncertain state? Will the parties respond to the pressures of the left social movements by pursuing bolder, more left policies? Or conversely, can the social movements maintain their pressure, if the parties instead move further to the right, and become more repressive of the social movements? The next few years are a political crossroads in all three countries (and no doubt in many others as well), which will have a major impact on the worldwide struggles of left social movements to construct that "other world that is possible," in the slogan of the World Social Forum.
Immanuel Wallerstein
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