The Sao Paulo Forum: is there a new Latin American left?

Monthly Review, Dec, 1992 by William I. Robinson

Revolutionary movements must move from ideology to a politics rooted in the specific realities of the nation. The tendency in the past has been to substitute ideology for politics and political objectives as the focus for uniting people and linking the political action of separate groups. "Political groups who, on the one side, represent the marginalized and the impoverished, and on the other side, the privileged and the wealthy, have concrete and contrasting interests which each will pursue," says Victor Hugo Tinoco, a Sandinista militant and former Nicaraguan Deputy Foreign Minister. These groups "have not disappeared with the Berlin Wall or the socialist bloc." However, the junctions between distinct interests are now expressed "less through dichotomous schemes or ideologies which draw societal divides than through the contradictions between concrete policies and goals. This is the harbinger of political struggle in Latin America."[7]

Progressive change and revolutionary transformation of society are not one-class projects. The old debate among Latin American leftists which posited an opposition between reform and revolution has given way to the view that there is no contradiction between struggling for reforms and struggling for revolution. Fundamental transformations in Latin America will be achieved through broad multi-class national projects that bring together popular majorities, well beyond "workers and peasants."

The relations among the state, civil society, and power must be restructured. The correlation of social forces in civil society is at least as important as who actually holds state power, maybe more so. Although it is of great importance, state power can only transform society if it mobilizes popular majorities with hegemony over civil society. The state must be democratized through popular control over its activities.

The days of vanguardism and verticalism are over; the autonomy of the new social movements must be respected and encouraged. There has been a real revolution of civil society in Latin America. Mass popular and social movements have burgeoned, demanding thoroughgoing democratization of political, social, and economic life. Indigenous communities, women, campesinos, trade unions, ecological and religious movements, shanty-town residents, the poor and marginalized everywhere are becoming "new historic subjects." These social movements advance the demands of specific popular sectors, yet also embody wide aspirations for a new social order.

Different sectors may link their struggles in numerous ways around an overall popular project. It is not for a single "vanguard"to lead masses of people, but for masses of people to organize themselves and become actors in their own struggles. The role of a revolutionary organization in these struggles is to help articulate the actions of diverse sectors and forces.

The old vanguardist conception of a revolutionary movement keeping mass social movements under close control in conformitywith its revolutionary line and program is obsolete. The relation between revolutionary organizations and mass social movements is perceived as mutually reinforcing. However, the new left groups have not yet defined the precise nature of this relation.