The ‘development state’ in Latin America: Whose development, whose state?
2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 34; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/03066150701802876
ISSN1743-9361
AutoresJames Petras, Henry Veltmeyer,
Tópico(s)Political Economy and Marxism
ResumoAbstract Examined here are interrelated issues in Latin America of class, class struggle, agrarian movements and several permutations (developmental, neoliberal) of the capitalist state. The latter encompasses rival paths of development in Latin America: state-led, market-assisted and grassroots land reform. Although a long history of violence by the state against peasants and workers struggling for land culminated in the reform programmes of the 1960s and 1970s, the laissez faire project of the neoliberal state has continued to inflict and generate violence, as well as to transfer its effects to urban areas as outmigration from the countryside gathers momentum. It is argued in this context that there are three fundamental modalities of social change, two of them paved with state power. However, for agrarian movements there is only one viable road: that of class struggle over state power. Notes 1 See, for example, the 1970s discussion about the extent to which the state embodied the interests of a 'new' bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie, a discussion that involved – among others – Poulantzas 1973; 1975, Therborn 1976 Therborn, Göran. 1976. Science, Class and Society, London: New Left Books. [Google Scholar], Wright 1978 Wright, Erik Olin. 1978. Class, Crisis and the State, London: New Left Books. [Google Scholar] and the contributors to the volume edited by Holloway and Picciotto 1978 Holloway John Sol Picciotto State and Capital: A Marxist Debate London Edward Arnold 1978 [Google Scholar]. 2 The importance of the second of these two questions – the retention of state power once it has been acquired – was underlined in a dramatic manner by the ousting of Salvador Allende's Popular Unity government in Chile during September 1973. 3 That state regulation of agribusiness enterprises continues to be regarded by some engaged in the study of development as a viable option is evident from the contributions to Jansen and Vellema 2004 Jansen Kees Sietze Vellema Agribusiness and Society: Corporate Responses to Environmentalism, Market Opportunities and Public Regulation London and New York Zed Books 2004 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. 4 For an endorsement by the regulation school of Gramscian 'hegemony', see Aglietta 1979 Aglietta, Michel. 1979. A Theory of Capitalist Regulation, London and New York: New Left Books. [Google Scholar]: 29]. 5 As Aglietta 1979 Aglietta, Michel. 1979. A Theory of Capitalist Regulation, London and New York: New Left Books. [Google Scholar]: 29ff.] makes clear, his notion of regulation does not address the presence in the wider capitalist system (and thus the impact on the nation-state) of imperialism. 6 Gramsci, it should be emphasized, did not discount either the role or the significance of the class struggle, a crucial point that distinguishes his ideas from the far less valuable ones of present day populists who write about Latin America. Thus, for example, it is impossible to disagree with the acuity of the following observation made by him [Gramsci, 1977 Gramsci, Antonio. 1977. Selections from Political Writings (1910–1920), London: Lawrence & Wishart. [Google Scholar]: 140] in 1919, at the height of the class struggle taking place in Italy after the 1914–18 war: 'In the countryside, we must count above all on the action and the support of the poor peasants, the 'landless'. They will be driven into activity … by the need to resolve the problem of how to live, by the need to struggle for bread. And this is not all: they will be obliged by the same perpetual need, the ever-present danger of death from hunger or bullets, to put pressure on the other sectors of the agricultural population, to make them set up organs for collective control over production in the countryside as well. These organs of control, the peasants' Councils, despite the fact that they will leave intermediate forms of private land ownership (small holdings) in existence, will have to carry out a psychological and technical transformation of the countryside and become the basis of a new communal life-style: centres through which the revolutionary elements will be able to enforce their will in a continuous and concrete fashion.' 7 All of them are regarded not only as having been but also still being on the political left. Thus, for example, his interviewer describes Unger 2005 Unger, Roberto. 2005. 'The Future of the Left: James Crabtree interviews Roberto Unger'. Renewal: The Journal of Labour Politics, 13(2/3) [Google Scholar]: 173]– inaccurately – as 'one of the most innovative and interesting thinkers of the modern left'. For an example of the application of a post-structuralist and/or subaltern studies framework to Latin America, see among many others Santiago 2002 Santiago, Silviano. 2002. The Space In-Between: Essays on Latin American Culture, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and the collection edited by Rodríguez 2001 Rodríguez Ileana The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader London and Durham, NC Duke University Press 2001 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. 8 That Laclau 2005 Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]: 249, 250] has ejected from his analysis the fact of class and class struggle is evident from the following comments: '[I]n my view, conceptualizing social antagonisms and collective identities [needs] to go beyond stereotyped and almost meaningless formulas such as "class struggle" … terms such as "class struggle", "determination in the last instance by the economy" or "centrality of the working class" function – or functioned until recently – as emotionally charged fetishes, the meanings of which were increasingly less clear, although their discursive appeal could not be diminished'. 9 See Veltmeyer 2000 for a critique of Laclau's project 1985 Laclau, Ernesto, 1985, 'New Social Movements and the Plurality of the Social', in David Slater (ed.), New Social Movements and the State in Latin America, Amsterdam: CEDLA [Google Scholar], 2005 Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason, London: Verso. [Google Scholar] to move beyond Marx and Marxist class analysis. 10 Populism, according to Laclau 2005 Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]: 18], '"simplifies" the political space, replacing a complex set of differences and determinations by a stark dichotomy whose two poles are necessarily imprecise.' For Laclau 2005 Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]: 18], therefore, populism is 'a constant dimension of political action which necessarily arises … in all political discourses, subverting and complicating the operations of the so-called "more mature" ideologies'. This is the reason why he [Laclau, 2005 Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]: xi] ends up with a discourse that is without content or socio-economic subject: 'My attempt has not been to find the true referent of populism, but to do the opposite: to show that populism has no referential unity because it is ascribed not to a delimitable phenomenon but to a social logic whose effects cut across many phenomena. Populism is, quite simply, a way of constructing the political.' 11 Rejecting the Marxist argument that classifies populism as a form of false consciousness, Laclau 2005 Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]: 15] maintains that where Third World populisms are concerned, '[t]he class struggle is … an irrelevant conception', and that no 'manipulation' is involved. In his words [Laclau, 2005 Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]: 13], '[a]n approach to populism in terms of abnormality, deviance or manipulation is strictly incompatible with our theoretical strategy.' 12 This is evident, for example, from the insistence by Laclau 2005 Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]: 224, original emphasis] that it is necessary to conceptualize 'the "people"'not as a datum of the social structure' but simply as 'a political category…[a] socio-political demand'. That is, a discourse without a social referent or a material basis, one in which the socio-economic composition of 'the people' is of no significance. Hence the admission by Laclau that 'questions such as "Of what social group are these demands the expression?" do not make sense in my analysis'. 13 In the words of Laclau 2005 Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]: 176], 'I actually think the notion that populism is the democratic element in contemporary representative systems is one of the most insightful and original ideas.' 14 For his influential work on the nature of the Latin American State, see O'Donnell 1979 O'Donnell, Guillermo. 1979. "'Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State and the Question of Democracy'". In The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, Edited by: Collier, David. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]; 1988 O'Donnell, Guillermo. 1988. "Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Argentina, 1966–1973". In Comparative Perspective, Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press. [Google Scholar]; 1992 O'Donnell, Guillermo. 1992. "'Transitions, Continuities, and Paradoxes'". In Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective, Edited by: Mainwaring, Scott, O'Donnell, Guillermo and Samuel Valenzuela, J. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. [Google Scholar]. 15 In the words of O'Donnell 1988 O'Donnell, Guillermo. 1988. "Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Argentina, 1966–1973". In Comparative Perspective, Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press. [Google Scholar]: 31], '[t]he specificity of [bureaucratic authoritarianism] in relation to other, past and present, authoritarian states in Latin America lies in this defensive action by the dominant classes and their allies to crises involving the popular sector that has been politically activated and is increasingly autonomous with respect to the dominant classes and the state apparatus.' 16 On this, see O'Donnell 1988 O'Donnell, Guillermo. 1988. "Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Argentina, 1966–1973". In Comparative Perspective, Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press. [Google Scholar]: 36, note 2]. 17 Like so much of the framework on which his views about current 'redemocratization' are based, Unger's conceptual apparatus has its roots in the analysis by him of the way in which 'agrarian bureacratic empires' do or do not develop. The desirability of 'redemocratization', or a politically inclusionary approach within neoliberal capitalism, is echoed in his argument that, historically, landlords and other elements of the ruling class in 'pre-industrial' agrarian societies baulked at the destruction of an independent peasantry, favouring instead 'an inclusive, commercial economy'[Unger, 1987b Unger, Roberto. 1987b. Plasticity into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]: 21, emphasis added]. In other words, in the past – as in the present – the panacea to the ills of society took the form of the desirability of political inclusion of peasants and workers within an exploitative/oppressive economic system. Hence the origin of an 'inclusive' politics, a spuriously progressive term, means nothing more than the incorporation (or reincorporation) of peasants in a way that continues economically to benefit those who extract surplus labour from them. This in turn underscores the importance to Unger of 'the political', and its deterministic role where systemic transformation is concerned. A symptomatic observation in this regard is as follows [Unger, 1987b Unger, Roberto. 1987b. Plasticity into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]: 21, emphasis added]: 'So the whole dynamic of occasional declines into natural economy, limits on this decline, and reversals of it, grew out of a characteristic situation of group struggle. This situation has to be understood in its unity if it is to be understood at all. Even the aspects of the process that seem most narrowly economic had no life apart. They, too, were politics.' 18 Hence the systemic goal is for Unger 1987a Unger, Roberto. 1987a. False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]: 462ff.]'political stability in an empowered democracy', or – less charitably – the property relations of capitalism without, if possible, the class struggle (='instability') which they generate. His programmatic utterances, like those of Laclau, are a mish-mash of contradictory motherhood-and-apple-pie pronouncements (= something for everyone). The latter take the form of 'rights' to just about everything – to solidarity, to immunity, to the existence of and participation in the market, and against destabilization [Unger, 1987a Unger, Roberto. 1987a. False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]: 520, 524, 530, 535]. What happens in a zero-sum context when these 'rights' come into conflict with or negate one another is something he fails to elaborate. 19 The two prefiguring models are Chayanovian in terms of theory: peasant family farming and agricultural involution. Both the latter posit a 'natural' limit to economic growth, determined by the consumption needs generated from within peasant economy, a traditional equilibrium to which cultivation reverts. Populists interpret this process of reversion as evidence for the stability of pre-modern cultivation practised by smallholders in what the former take to be natural ecosystems. 20 At the centre of Unger's framework is the concept of a 'reversion cycle', or the periodic return on the part of what he terms 'agrarian bureaucratic empires' to natural economy, with a consequent decline in commercial activity, trade and prosperity. This happens, Unger 1987b Unger, Roberto. 1987b. Plasticity into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]: 6ff., 10ff., 15ff.] maintains, either when government fails to 'protect' smallholders from expropriation by landlords, or when peasants, petty traders and agricultural workers combine to resist landlord oppression. Only when 'from below' organization is effective, when 'elite unity' is lacking (and the state disintegrates), or when government succeeds in preventing 'from above' appropriation from occurring, is 'reversion' avoided. In such circumstances (state protection, peasant fightback, or elite disunity), peasant households survive as economic units fully integrated into the 'monetary commercial economy', and systemic development occurs. Of the many substantial theoretical objections that might be levelled at this rather odd theory, two can be mentioned here. First, Unger places a seeming unbridgeable historical divide – between state and landlord – where in reality none exists. In the kind of pre-capitalist (='pre-industrial') agrarian societies he talks about, landlords were the government, or the ruling class. Even where the latter disagreed on specific policies (='elite disunity'), therefore, it would unite when faced with a threat from below. To see this in terms of an absolute dichotomy (state v. landlord) is accordingly incorrect (a point Unger 1987b Unger, Roberto. 1987b. Plasticity into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]: 17] subsequently concedes). And second, in contrast to Unger – for whom the disintegration of the State prevents a unified elite from mobilizing its power against the peasantry, the latter becoming as a result integrated into the 'monetary commercial economy'– it is precisely when central state power disintegrates that 'natural' (or peasant) economy reasserts itself (as Kautsky and Weber argued with reference to the decline of the Roman empire). 21 For a critical perspective on 'civil society', see the contribution by Brass to this collection. In his most recent text, Unger 2007 Unger, Roberto. 2007. The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar] advocates a reordering of society that is open-ended under the rubric of 'pragmatism' (whose, precisely, we are never told). In other words, a form of social change guided – yet again – by postmodern aporia. 22 Asked by his interviewer to respond to the observation that '[o]ne of the most distinctive claims you make … is that the future of the left involves abandoning the link with the working class in favour of a link with what we used to call the petit bourgeoisie', Unger 2005 Unger, Roberto. 2005. 'The Future of the Left: James Crabtree interviews Roberto Unger'. Renewal: The Journal of Labour Politics, 13(2/3) [Google Scholar]: 177] replies: 'The mass of ordinary humanity now has an imaginary horizon that is much more petit bourgeois than it is proletarian. They dream of a small business or independent professional existence, but they are still working class. They live off their labour. They do not command but are commanded. They are not propped up [by] hereditary transmission of either property or educational advantage. The left must meet them on their own terms and help broaden the repertoire off [sic] economic instruments and institutions that might respond to their aspirations.' On this point, his conclusion [Unger, 2005 Unger, Roberto. 2005. 'The Future of the Left: James Crabtree interviews Roberto Unger'. Renewal: The Journal of Labour Politics, 13(2/3) [Google Scholar]: 184] is that 'all of our understandings of agency [have] become congealed and frozen. A leftist cannot accept it. The basic impulse must be to unfreeze things. This unfreezing always must happen through two manoeuvres. It has to speak in the cold calculus of interest, the appeal to people's present understandings of their interests such as the appeal to the petit bourgeois aspirations.' To the observation that his 'conception of economic reform [is] the same as that offered by the new right', Unger 2005 Unger, Roberto. 2005. 'The Future of the Left: James Crabtree interviews Roberto Unger'. Renewal: The Journal of Labour Politics, 13(2/3) [Google Scholar]: 179] answers in the affirmative ('It is true that what I propose has a superficial resemblance to the neoliberal idea of the privatization of public service'), but then adds – implausibly – that his own view is nevertheless 'fundamentally different'. Among the reasons for this implausibility is the similarity between Unger's view about the petit-bourgeoisie and that of the political right in Italy nearly a century ago. According to Hamilton 1971 Hamilton, Alastair. 1971. The Appeal of Fascism: A Study of Intellectuals and Fascism 1919–1945, New York: The Macmillan Company. [Google Scholar]: 31–2], therefore, in May 1920 the 'Fascist programme issue at the end of the Congress contained a new clause "in favour of a working bourgeoisie", per una borghesia del lavoro. "The Fasci recognize the immense value of that 'working bourgeoisie which, in every field of human activity (from industry to agriculture, from science to the liberal professions), constitutes the precious and indispensable element for the development of progress and the triumph of national fortunes."' The significance of this conjuncture is that it marked an attack on socialism and (therefore) an influx to fascist ranks not just of capitalist peasants but also of monarchists, Catholics, conservatives, and landowners. 23 Hence the view [Unger, 2005 Unger, Roberto. 2005. 'The Future of the Left: James Crabtree interviews Roberto Unger'. Renewal: The Journal of Labour Politics, 13(2/3) [Google Scholar]: 178] that the 'quarrel of the left cannot be with the market … The basic impulse of the left should be: market yes, free civil society yes, representative democracy yes.' For more of the same, see Unger 1996 Unger, Roberto. 1996. Politics: A Selection, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]; 1998 Unger, Roberto. 1998. Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]. 24 On the Tupac Amaru rebellion, see Jacobsen 1993 Jacobsen, Nils. 1993. Mirages of Transition: The Peruvian Altiplano, 1780–1930, Berkley, CA: University of California Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. 25 See Wheelock Román 1975 Wheelock Román, Jaime. 1975. Imperialismo y Dictadura: Crisis de una Formación Social, Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores. [Google Scholar], Amador 1990 Amador, F. 1990. Un siglo de lucha de los trabajadores en Nicaragua, Managua: Centro de la Investigación de la Realidad de América Latina. [Google Scholar] and Mahoney 2001 Mahoney, James. 2001. The Legacies of Liberalism: Path Dependence and Political Regimes in Central America, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar]. 26 The theoretical issues involved in categorizing peasants in terms of class are outlined by, among others, Brass 2000a Brass, Tom. 2000a. Peasants, Populism and Postmodernism: The Return of the Agrarian Myth, London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers. [Google Scholar]; 2000b Brass, Tom. 2000b. "'Moral Economists, Subalterns, New Social Movements and the (Re-) Emergence of a (Post-) Modernized Middle Peasant'". In Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial, Edited by: Chaturvedi, Vinayak. London and New York: Verso. [Google Scholar] and Kearney 1996 Kearney, Michael. 1996. Reconceptualizing the Peasantry, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. [Google Scholar]. The Latin American historical trajectory has been characterized by a politically weak and subjugated peasantry and by the predominance of the latifundio. On the issue of the alternative paths of agrarian development in Latin America see de Janvry 1981 de Janvry, Alain. 1981. The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press. 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Because of declining revenues, the compression of prices to below production 1972] costs, and massively increasing indebtedness among producers, an additional 800,000 families, that is, over two million persons, are estimated by IBGE (the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) to have abandoned the countryside in just five years (from 1995 to 1999) because of low prices and the lack of land and credit. 32 Carlos Menem, Argentina's President at the time, declared that at least 200,000 small and medium-sized farms and rural 'businesses' were productively marginal and surplus to the country's requirements, and could not be supported by government policy. 33 On 'social exclusion', see Behrman, Gaviria and Székely 2003 Behrman, Gaviria and Székely, 2003, Who's In and Who's Out: Social Exclusion in Latin America, Washington DC: Inter-American Development Bank [Google Scholar] and Veltmeyer 2003 Veltmeyer, Henry. 2003. 'Social Exclusion and Rural Development in Latin America'. Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 27(54) [Google Scholar]. Some of these social scientists work for organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank while many others are affiliated with diverse 'independent' research institutions or universities. But they all seem to share this enthusiasm for 'social exclusion' as the problem of poverty and 'social capital' as the solution. 34 IBASE, a research centre in Brazil, has studied the fiscal impact of legalizing MST land occupations cum settlements versus the cost of services used by equal numbers of people migrating to urban areas. When landless workers occupy land and force the government to legalize their holdings, it implies costs: compensation to the former owner, credit for the new farmers, etc. But the total cost incurred by the state to maintain the same number of people in an urban shantytown, including the services and infrastructure used, exceeds in one month the yearly cost of legalizing land occupations. 35 Details about changes in Brazilian landownership are contained in INCRA 1999 INCRA [Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária]. 1999. Balano da Reforma Agraria e da Agricultura Familiar 1995–99, Brasília: Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário. [Google Scholar], Petras and Veltmeyer 2001a Petras, James and Veltmeyer, Henry. 2001a. Brasil de Cardoso: Expropriação de um País, Petrópolis: Editorial Vozes. [Google Scholar]; 2003 Petras, James and Veltmeyer, Henry. 2003a. 'Whither Lula's Brazil? Neo-Liberalism and "Third Way" Ideology'. 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'¿Y si los campesinos se extinguen … ?'. Historia y Sociedad, 8(Winter) [Google Scholar]; Cancian, 1987 Cancian, Frank. 1987. "'Proletarianization in Zinacantan 1960–83'". In Household Economies and Their Transformation, Edited by: Maclachan, Morgan. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. [Google Scholar]. The process of proletarianization has proceeded slowly and unevenly, and it has to be said that extra-economic coercion has persisted well into (and in some cases beyond) the 1960s in most Latin American nations. By 1970, a large part of the rural population in many countries was partially or wholly separated from its means of labour, a situation which generated a new wave of political protest and peasant insurgency. As pointed out by Paige 1975 Paige, Jeffery M. 1975. Agrarian Revolution: Social Movements and Export Agriculture in the Underdeveloped World, New York: The Free Press. [Google Scholar], specific categories of peasants (tenants, sharecroppers, rich/middle/poor cultivators) responded differently to this process; thus the key issue in rural struggles might be land, land reform, access to credit or technology, higher wages and better working conditions, or indeed any combination thereof. 38 Broadly speaking, the concept of the 'development state' came to prominence in the 1950s in response to two problems endemic to the 'economically backward' societies of the developing world. First, the perceived absence or weakness of a capitalist class loath to invest its capital productively. And second, the need for the advanced capitalist states that dominated the world order to ensure that the developing countries, many of which were engaged in a struggle for national liberation,
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