This morning I’ll talk about the left in the global south. I will focus on the left in Latin America, but also touch upon the left in some countries in our home region, Asia. Latin America is the global region where there is apparently a resurgence of the left. Left parties or coalitions are in power in countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil and Uruguay, and are major - if not the main - opposition parties in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, etc. There are powerful social movements of peasants, workers, urban poor communities, women, indigenous peoples, and others in many countries of the region. Leftist guerilla forces have reached a virtual stalemate with the government of Colombia, and the Zapatistas continue to put pressure on the Mexican government to undertake radical social changes. In Asia, there are significant left parties or movements in a number of developing countries (i.e., outside of the region’s one-party states) - Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, India, Nepal and Mongolia.
The Latin American left is composed of left parties (including multi-tendency parties), and multi-party fronts, working closely with social movements and progressive non-governmental organizations and popular organizations. There are various types of left groups and parties: 1) Marxists of different traditions or roots (pro-Soviet, Fourth International or Trotskyist, Maoist, etc.); 2) social democrats (SDs); and 3) those coming from mixed traditions (Marxist and SD) and other socialist influences. None of the ruling or main opposition parties and fronts describe themselves as Marxist or Marxist-Leninist (except for Cuba), but there are Marxist parties or tendencies within them. Brazil’s Partido de Trabajadores (PT), a multi-tendency party, has various non-Marxist and Marxist groups, including an FI section. Uruguay’s Frente Amplio, a multiparty front, has several non-Marxist and Marxist parties and groups in it. The FI and various Trotskyst currents comprise a significant section of the Latin American left. A good number of left parties in Latin America are members of the Socialist International (SI). They refer to themselves in various ways - socialists, social democrats, radical democrats, etc. Parties like the PT and Nicaragua’s Sandinista Front (FSLN), which are members of the SI, cannot really be considered as mainstream SI - their thinking is not like that of the social democrats in Europe.
Over the past 25 years, the world has witnessed great changes such as the fall of dictatorships in various parts of the globe (including the Stalinist dictatorships in Eastern Europe), the rise and spread of neoliberalism, the end of the Cold War, and the emergence of the United States as the world’s lone superpower. Despite the fall of socialist regimes (i.e., of the distorted Stalinist kind) in Eastern Europe, left parties and movements in Latin America have persisted in the struggle against capitalism and for socialism. Since the late 1970s, the Latin American left has come a long way in its vision of an alternative society. Much of the change has to do with a changed view of democracy, which has had a profound effect of the Latin American left’s views on socialism and the means of achieving radical change in society.
Evolution of the Latin American Left’s View of Democracy
Prior to the 1980s, Latin American countries were mostly authoritarian regimes - they were ruled by dictators or military juntas. Many left parties and movements engaged in armed struggle against authoritarian rule, just as the CPP-NPA waged a “people’s war” against the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. In time, the authoritarian regimes of Latin America became increasingly discredited and isolated because of grave violations of human rights, large-scale corruption and economic stagnation. Many of Latin America’s authoritarian rulers adopted programs for gradual political liberalization. The dictators or juntas called for elections, which were of course less than democratic. Whether they liberalized or not, the dictatorships fell, one by one. In the transition from authoritarianism to democracy, and in the new or “newly restored” democracies, the Latin American left did much rethinking on democracy.
According to Kenneth Roberts, the left in Latin America traditionally viewed electoral democracy as a “fake” or “bourgeois” democracy, as a mere tool or façade for bourgeois class rule. Hence, the left boycotted elections, parliament and other democratic processes and institutions. This signified an outright rejection of “fake” or “bourgeois” democracy. In the late 70s and early 80s, however, many left parties took a different approach - participation. They still viewed electoral democracy as “fake” or “bourgeois,” but they saw that democratic processes and institutions could be used to conduct propaganda and to “accumulate forces” for an eventual revolutionary confrontation. The idea was to participate in elections and in legislature and exploit them for their tactical value. Roberts refers to this as the instrumental view of democracy.[1]
In the course of their rethinking, however, many of the left parties in Latin America - including most of the region’s major left parties - did not stop there. They began to recognize and accept the intrinsic value of formal democratic processes and institutions. During the time when they had been struggling against authoritarian rule, they had fought for political and civil liberties, and they themselves had benefited too when these or some of these were restored. They came to realize the value of these freedoms - that these were not just fake or bourgeois - and wanted everyone to continue enjoying them. Activists and members of left parties and groups who had been victims of torture and other violations of human rights developed a deeper appreciation of human rights. Hence, the Latin American left shifted from an instrumental to an integral view of democracy. Democracy became a central element of the socialist project, as essential as its anti-capitalist economic and social components.[2] The left was well aware that actually existing democracy in Latin America was very much deficient. But, as Evelyne Huber, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and John Stephens explain, the Latin American left came round to the view that formal democracy tends to be more than formal, that it makes open debate and a deepening to a more fully participatory and egalitarian democracy possible.[3]
Latin American left parties started to democratize their own internal processes and their relations to organizations and civil society, abandoning the verticalism characteristic of vanguardism. Brazil’s PT, for example, institutionalized mechanisms of rank and file participation, and established a characteristic “bottom-up” style.[4] The left parties also began to appreciate the importance of the autonomy of popular organizations and social movements. The rejection of a monolithic model paved the way for broader intra-left unity - the convergence of a larger number of parties and ideological currents.[5] The changed view on democracy had a profound effect on left strategy, especially on the question of revolution and reform, and on the notion of socialism itself.
Concepts of Revolution
Before we proceed to questions of strategy and socialism, let us first review the concept of revolution. Revolution in a general sense is the overthrow and replacement of a system of government. It is distinct from reform or evolution, where reform takes place within an enduring constitutional framework. All revolutions have a political character. There are different types of revolution. For example, you have a political revolution where there is a change in the political order. What we are most familiar with, however, is social revolution, which is Marx’s concept of revolution. A social revolution is not just a change in the political order. More importantly, it is a change in the social system, in the mode of production. According to Marx, revolution is a locomotive of history, marking a transition from one stage of history to the next.[6]
Political revolution comes in various types. There is the anticolonial revolution, in which a colony struggles for independence against colonial rule, as, for instance, the American revolution. There is also what scholars refer to as the democratic revolution, which involves a change from authoritarian to democratic rule. The so-called “third wave of democratization” from the 1970s to the early 1990s was marked by a good number of democratic revolutions, including the Philippines’ “people power revolution” of 1986.[7]
Social revolution, which involves the change from an ancien régime to a new political and social order, also comes in various types, e.g., the bourgeois democratic revolution, and the socialist revolution. The most frequently cited examples of the bourgeois democratic revolution are the French revolution and Russia’s February 1917 revolution, which are said to have brought down the feudal aristocracy. Russia’s October 1917 revolution is said to have been a socialist revolution. Iran’s Islamic revolution, which saw a change in the country’s social order, can be considered as a social revolution too.[8] Marxists, however, would tend to view the Iranian revolution as retrogression, unlike the French and Russian revolutions, which they regard as forward-looking movements.
For Marx, revolution was the rule as far as a change in the social system or mode of production was concerned, but he did make exceptions for peaceful transition to socialism. In the 1950s and 60s, the Soviet Union and China were locked in a great polemical debate over the issue. The Soviet Union put the stress on peaceful transition. China insisted on revolution, charging the Soviet Union with “revisionism.” In those days, Mao Zedong even asserted that “revolution is the main trend in the world today.”
Let us not confuse political with social revolution. Jose Ma. Sison (aka Amado Guerrero) mixed up the two when he characterized the Philippine revolution of 1896 as a “national-democratic revolution of the old type” and the CPP’s revolution a “national democratic revolution of the new type.”[9] The 1896 revolution was a political revolution, more like the American revolution, where the British were kicked out but there was no real change in the social order. We should not mix up a “democratic revolution,” which is a political revolution and a “bourgeois democratic revolution,” which is a social revolution. EDSA 1 had the character of a democratic revolution; it was not a bourgeois democratic revolution in the Marxist sense.
Two Contending Strategic Perspectives: OSS and DD
The integral and instrumental views of democracy are reflective of the two main contending strategic perspectives of the left in the global south, including the Philippines. I shall refer to them as: 1) OSS or “overthrow and smash the bourgeois reactionary state” and 2) DD or “deepen democracy.” OSS comes in two types: OSS Type 1, in which the left rejects and boycotts elections, legislature and other “bourgeois democratic” processes and institutions; and OSS Type 2, in which the left participates in bourgeois processes. Whether boycott or participation, the ultimate objective is the same: to overthrow and smash the bourgeois reactionary state. In the DD framework, the left recognizes the intrinsic value of democratic processes and institutions, takes their many deficiencies into account and fights to remove these deficiencies and to deepen democracy. OSS tends to put the stress on the attainment of socialism, which would include socialist democracy. DD tends to emphasize the attainment of a more substantive democracy, which would include socialist or egalitarian features. I will not go much further in discussing the OSS framework since most of us are already more or less acquainted with it and with its two variants, OSS 1 (boycott) and OSS 2 (participation).
There are various formulations or versions of the DD perspective. Putting forward one version, Huber et al. argue that democracy can be deepened from formal democracy, to participatory democracy and finally to social democracy. Formal democracy has four components or criteria - regular free and fair elections, universal suffrage, accountability of the state’s administrative organs to elected representatives, and effective guarantees for freedom of expression and association as well as protection from arbitrary state action. Participatory democracy includes those four elements plus high levels of participation without systematic differences across social categories (e.g. class, ethnicity and gender). Social democracy includes the five criteria plus a sixth, increasing equality in social and economic outcomes. Here democracy is no longer limited to the political spheres; it ventures into the social and economic spheres. Huber et al. clarify that their concept of social democracy does not refer specifically to the European movement bearing the same name.[10]
In another version of DD, Roberts sees liberal democracy being deepened and extended towards democratic socialism. The logic of deepening democracy is to intensify popular sovereignty in the political sphere, i.e., to move from hierarchical forms of elitist or bureaucratic control to forms of popular self determination by means of more direct participation in the decision making process or more effective mechanisms for holding elected representatives and public officials accountable to their constituents. The logic of extending democracy is to extend the democratic norms and procedures of collective self-determination from the formal sphere of state institutions (the political sphere) to new spheres of social and economic relationships. The deepening and extension of democracy moves towards democratic socialism.[11]
In a third DD version, that of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, liberal democracy is deepened to radical and plural democracy. For Laclau and Mouffe, radical and plural democracy is the deepening of the democratic revolution, the extension of the two great themes of the democratic imaginary - equality and liberty - to more and more social spheres. It seeks “to use the symbolic resources of the liberal democratic tradition to struggle against relations of subordination, not only in the economy, but also those linked to gender, race, or sexual orientation.” The struggle for radical and plural democracy basically consists of a struggle for hegemony of popular forces against conservative reaction. It seeks to build a new historic bloc that brings together a broad range of groups fighting for liberty and equality in different social categories. Laclau and Mouffe are for socialism because they still see the need to eliminate oppressive capitalist relations of production. “Understood as a process of democratization of the economy,” they contend, “socialism is a necessary component of the project of radical and plural democracy.” For them, however, socialism is not the main goal; it is only one of the components of the radical democratic project.[12]
Laclau and Mouffe reject the classic Jacobin - and traditional Marxist - concept of revolution, which they believe privileges “one foundational moment of rupture” and “the confluence of struggles into a unified political space” and is thus incompatible with the plurality that radical/plural democracy recognizes. (As you may be well aware, Marx was greatly influenced by the French revolution. The Marxist socialist project envisages a revolutionary overthrow followed by a radical overhaul of society. The Russian and Chinese revolutionaries did attempt to radically change society after the revolutionary overthrow. But even after more than fifty years of socialism, neither Russia nor China was able to achieve a democratic type of socialism. They ended up with Stalinist or Maoist one-party dictatorships.)
Laclau and Mouffe emphasize instead “the process character of every radical transformation - the revolutionary act is, simply, an internal moment of the process.” In their view, radical social change involves a process consisting of periods of gradual change and periods of rupture, not just one particular moment. They believe that the left should recognize all the different struggles for liberty and equality, those related to class, ethnicity, gender, environment, etc., and that no single struggle should be privileged over the others. Since each struggle has its own ebb and flow, one should not expect all these struggles to simultaneously reach a climax called revolution.[13]
Socialist scholars chide Laclau and Mouffe for abandoning class analysis and long-term socio-economic objectives altogether.[14] The criticism can as well be directed towards many others of the DD persuasion.
In Latin America and elsewhere in the global south, Marxist and Marxist-Leninist parties are the main bearers of the OSS perspective. Within OSS, Type 2 is currently more dominant than Type 1. With the decline of left guerrilla movements in the global south, adherents of OSS now aim to seize power mainly through mass insurrection or popular uprisings. The major left tendencies and parties are the main bearers of the DD perspective. OSS and DD may co-exist and contend within the left parties or fronts, with one perspective proving more influential than the other, but there could be shifts.
The Question of State Power
Let us now tackle a question that the left considers to be of crucial importance: the seizure of state power. The over-all strategy of the revolutionary left has often been directed towards this. The seizure of state power, in fact, has often been set as the central objective of a revolutionary project. Only after such a seizure can a new socialist state be built and radical changes in society be undertaken. Only after seizure can a dictatorship of the proletariat be set up, one that would suppress the reactionary classes and forces, especially those actively engaging in counter-revolutionary activities. In practice, the drive towards seizure of state power has become too single-minded a pursuit. In the experiences of the Soviet Union, the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe, China and North Korea, the dictatorship of the proletariat built after seizure of power ended up as a one-party dictatorship. It suppressed even legitimate dissent.
Those with the DD perspective stress the importance of democracy. They want to make sure that democratic safeguards are factored in, that a left party in power does not develop authoritarian tendencies and continues to enjoy the people’s support, and that the state does not degenerate into a dictatorial or totalitarian state. Those in power must submit themselves regularly to the people’s judgment and get the people’s mandate through elections. In the past, a communist or socialist party seized power, suppressed other parties, set up a one-party dictatorship and tried to stay in power forever. Now this is no longer possible. And, of course, it is not right. In today’s post-authoritarian states, a left party or coalition may get to power, but it cannot be sure how long it will be able to stay in power. After three, four or so years, you can be voted out of office. You cannot keep delaying the elections. The dilemma is: how can you possibly implement radical change within a few years? If you call for genuinely free and democratic elections, the traditional parties would just stage a comeback - they know all the dirty tricks.
Once you are in power, you can undertake radical change in two ways: through authoritarian/dictatorial means or through democratic means. As I mentioned earlier, the first option is out. It is morally reprehensible. But if you adopt democratic means, how can you undertake radical changes given that your term in public office is limited? You need more time. This means that you’ll have to win reelection to be able to continue with your program of radical change. A pluralist system is the opposite of a one-party system. You have to be prepared not to be in power forever. When in power, you may commit serious errors like giving in too much to comprador or landlord interests or to neoliberal forces. Or you may develop authoritarian tendencies or fall into corruption. As a result, the electorate can boot you out of power. But losing the elections does not have to spell the end for your program of radical social change. If you pursue a program of rectification and renewal, you may be able to stage a comeback. In power or out of power, you continue to push for radical change. The more times and the longer you are in power, the more opportunity you have to implement radical change. Hence, seizure of power is not the most important thing. What is more crucial is remaining in power through democratic means and long enough to undertake radical change.
Asserting the process character of radical social change, some DD adherents have gone so far as to raise very basic questions about socialism: Will there ever be a socialist system or a socialist society? Or can we really talk only about a socialist process? Chilean socialist Manuel Antonio Garreton writes:
“Given that there is no ’seizure of power’, given that there is a permanent struggle, within the democratic system, in all areas where there is power and domination ... the socialist project now defines itself much more as a process than as a society. This means that socialism cannot be defined as a model for society that is established once and for all ... In this view there is no ’socialist society’ as such, because socialism is a principle of social transformation, of the elimination of various kinds of alienation, oppression and exploitation. It is based on the ideas of social emancipation and popular empowerment, with the workers and the dominated as chief protagonists, but socialism is not a mechanistic order, a predetermined social system. In this sense the concept of the ’transition to socialism’ loses all meaning. There is no transition from one society or another, but rather a permanent transformation. There is no socialist model, only a socialist process; the latter is reversible and malleable, unlike models for society. The idea of a model for society is, to a certain extent, contradictory to the principles of a democratic regime.”[15]
The Left’s Engagements in Various Arenas: Civil Society, Elections and Governance
Now let me go briefly into some of the work of the left of the global south in various arenas: civil society, elections and governance. In the civil society arena, the left has been engaged in both contentious politics (rallies, marches, strikes, advocacy work, etc.) and development work. Those of the OSS perspective have put a premium on contentious politics. Indeed, if the central objective is the overthrow of the bourgeois state and seizure of power, then the reactionary character of the bourgeois state would have to be thoroughly “exposed and opposed.” Those of the DD perspective have ventured into development work much more than those of the OSS framework, and have moved further on into the governance arena, particularly participatory, development-oriented governance. DD adherents have criticized OSS adherents for stressing contentious politics too much and neglecting development work and governance. Conversely, OSS adherents have criticized the DD camp for falling into “NGOism,” for putting too much stress on building “a strong civil society,” for being unduly influenced by neoliberal ideas, or for simply following what Western donor agencies tell them to do. Well-known leftist writer James Petras has denounced NGOs for allowing themselves to be turned into instruments of neoliberalism.[16]
As regards elections, much of the left in the global south no longer resorts to outright rejection and boycott (OSS 1) and has moved on to participation (OSS2 or DD). The left’s engagement in the electoral arena in Southeast and East Asia (i.e., in the countries with competed elections) appears to be much less developed compared to that in Latin America. In the 1960s and 70s, the left in many Southeast Asian countries waged Maoist-style guerrilla wars and boycotted elections. Most of these guerrilla movements were eventually crushed. In Thailand, many former communist party members who went back to open, legal struggle opted to work in NGOs or in traditional parties of the elite, and did not organize themselves into a left party.[17] In Indonesia, social movements, popular organizations and progressive non-governmental organizations were in the forefront of the struggle against the Suharto dictatorship, but the parties that emerged from their ranks failed to win a seat in the legislature and performed poorly at the local level. The modest successes of the left in parliamentary and local elections in South Korea somewhat parallel those of its counterparts in the Philippines.
In Latin America, the left’s electoral strategy was to build a politico-electoral base from below. In the 1980s, the left parties focused mainly on the local level. Soon enough, they registered major gains and they moved to higher levels. From 1986 to 1995, left or center-left parties and coalitions were able to elect many mayors (and some governors) in twelve of the biggest cities in the region - Lima, Managua, Montevideo and others. In the 1990s, the left parties emerged as major or even the main opposition parties. Beginning in the late 1990s, several of them came to power. The Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), PT, Frente Amplio became the ruling parties in Venezuela, Brazil and Uruguay.
In the arena of governance, the left in many countries of the global south has been confronted with government decentralization schemes. In Latin America, many countries implemented decentralization, but this did not necessarily involve the democratization of local governance. “If a local government is already democratic and responsive to its citizens,” observed Jonathan Fox, “then the outcome is promising. If not, then decentralization can reinforce patronage politics or even authoritarian rule at the local level. Some decentralization programs create new concentrations of elite power while others actually do decentralize control. But despite these diverse outcomes, decentralization did pave the way for left victories at the local and regional levels.”[18] In the Philippines, decentralization provides better conditions for the left -in theory at least - since it includes some democratization features. The Code not only devolved certain powers of the national government to the local government, it also introduced some forms of direct democracy, as well as the participation of POs and NGOs in local special bodies such as the local development council and bids and awards committee.
On the basis of a study of the Peruvian left’s experience in local governance, Gerd Schönwälder has distinguished between two different approaches in engaging in local governance. There are two types of engagement in local governance. In the revolutionary approach, the left makes the local government serve mainly as a venue for ventilating popular demands deemed unrealizable under the existing order so as to build a political movement capable of overthrowing the state. In the radical democratic perspective, left engagement in local politics is viewed as serving to demonstrate its capacity to govern within existing political institutions while encouraging popular participation from below. The “revolutionary approach” corresponds to OSS2 and the “radical-democratic perspective,” to DD.
Needed: Deeper Study of the Latin American Left’s Experience
Many or most of the groups and blocs represented here in this conference carry the OSS perspective. As I mentioned earlier, many of the main or major left parties in Latin America are more oriented towards the DD perspective. In the light of the apparent political victories and gains of the Latin American left, it is very important to learn more about the DD perspective and its different versions as employed by our Latin American comrades, and the relation of DD to the apparent resurgence.
DD is not necessarily all that correct. OSS adherents in Latin America now argue that the left has made too many concessions or compromises with the elite. They assert that they were right all along in maintaining that radical social change can only be achieved through truly revolutionary means. In Brazil, a lot of leftists, including many PT members, are very much dissatisfied with the PT’s performance, assessing that it has been too soft in dealing with neoliberal and oligarchic forces. The social movements are angry because the Lula government’s record in settling landless peasants is much worse than the previous regimes’.
The PT situation is actually reflective of the problems that Latin American left parties had had to confront, especially when they get into government.
Roberts poses the strategic dilemma of the Latin American Left as follows: “[I]t can contribute to the consolidation of new democratic regimes by demonstrating a willingness to accommodate other political actors, but this is likely to entail a more limited form of democratic governance and a trade-off in transformative objectives. Conversely, the Left can push to deepen or radicalize democratic practices, but this strategy is likely to engender political polarization that destabilizes the regime by encouraging conservative elites to abandon the democratic arena.”[19] If you push too much, you might encourage militarist elements to stage a coup d’etat. If you push too little, you fail to respond the masses’ interests and demands for their rights and social justice.
According to Petras, extra-parliamentary movements - not left parties - have taken the lead in the struggle against neoliberal globalization. He contends that extra-parliamentary action has been the most widespread and effective approach to blocking or limiting the application of globalist policies. Groups adversely affected by globalization have turned toward extra-parliamentary activities and organization, to wit:
. General strikes in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, South Korea, etc., as well as in France and Italy.
. Land occupations in Brazil, Paraguay, El Salvador, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, etc.
. Urban revolts in Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Argentina, etc.
. Guerrilla movements in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Zaire, etc.
Petras further asserts that extra-parliamentary movements have become the chosen form of expression in the face of the impotence and co-optation of the electoral parties. Most anti-globalist electoral opposition, he claims, is confined to the legislature, and a minority at that. Once in power, center-left electoral parties have almost uniformly assimilated the globalist ideology. Former revolutionary groupings in the seventies and eighties, upon turning to electoral politics and entering political office have almost always abandoned their opposition to globalization and accepted its postulates.[20]
Broad Unity of the Democratic Left
Latin American left parties and groups, except for a few extreme left groups, recognize democratic pluralism and believe in left pluralism as well. Even with different perspectives, OSS and DD, they have managed to coalesce under multi-tendency parties or multi-party fronts. They engage in great discussions and debates, intense polemics. Sometimes, there have been splits. But, with the attitude that there is much more that unites them than divides them, they have often managed to forge some form of unity again. As long as you respect other groups and abide by democratic methods, you are welcome. You do not resort to violence against other left parties and groups, or denounce them as counter-revolutionaries, revisionist renegades, traitors or agents of imperialism. You do not attack them or disparage them by calling them “grouplets.”
The Sendero Luminoso, as far as I can remember, was not invited to the Sao Paolo Forum. I was able to attend the Forum’s conference in Managua in 1991. Participants coming from the Peruvian left narrated to me that Sendero harassed activists and members of other left parties and of popular organizations and NGOs aligned with them, driving them out of areas claimed by Sendero, even killing some of them. Because of the conflict between Sendero and other left groups, the entire Peruvian left suffered. It is only now that the Peruvian left is starting to recover.
In working for radical change in Philippine society, we can follow the example of our Latin American comrades. We can certainly build unity through multi-tendency parties and a multi-party front. We may have different perspectives - OSS, DD and variations of these — but we are all for socialism and democracy and radical transformation.
One possible source of sectarianism, however, is the question: Is this group reformist or revolutionary? There could be a tendency to equate OSS with being revolutionary and DD with reformist. This is virtually worthless. Adherents of both OSS and DD are for radical transformation and they engage in various forms of political struggle. They both are open to engaging in extra-constitutional forms of struggle, including popular uprisings and insurrections, which they both as valid forms of struggle. The difference is that the OSS sees a general popular uprising as the culmination of a revolutionary process to overthrow the reactionary state while DD sees it as part of a long process of social and political change with periods of gradual change and periods of rupture.
In Latin America, DD adherents have not closed their doors to armed struggle, to guerrilla warfare. They may even engage in it. Mexico’s Zapatistas are a good example. The Zapatistas do not operate within the OSS framework; they are not for the overthrow of the state. For them, guerrilla actions and popular uprisings are means to increase the pressure on the state and to help the progressive forces in pushing for radical social change.
Futhermore, DD adherents may have questions about social revolution in the Marxist sense but they are certainly open to the idea of political revolution. In recent years, there have been many uprisings in Latin America - in Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, etc. Ecuador has had six presidents in eight years. The presidents were replaced through various means - elections, uprising, etc. Were these revolutionary or reformist?
We should, however, think beyond insurrections or uprisings. If we won today and we start undertaking radical changes and four years from now there are general elections, will we win? My greatest worry is that given the stultifying hegemony of the oligarchic elite, we have not sufficiently built counter-hegemony. We have to accumulate victories, gains, and strengths in different arenas. We are strong in the mass movement but we are still quite weak in development work and very weak in engagement with political society (elections and governance), partly because of years of boycotting elections. Our electoral engagement is much too limited. During the last election, we focused on the party list ballot and did not pay enough attention to local elections. How can we possibly field a presidential candidate and expect him or her to win when we cannot even win at the barangay level?
Our engagement in local governance is even much more woeful. In 2002, I went around the country, interviewing progressive local officials. Some of these progressive officials won with the support of the left. After they had won, left parties did not assist them in running or managing the local government. Left activists approached these officials only when the former needed financial assistance, a meeting venue, and the like. It was just like in the good old days when underground activists approached “tactical allies” for “pera, prente, bahay.” We gravely lack experience in local governance. Ninety-nine per cent of the country’s municipal, city and provincial governments are controlled by trapos. If the left seizes power today, how can it possibly win the next election if that is the situation? How can we remain in power?
I’m all for a multiparty front. I think it should not just be an issue-based coalition, but one at a higher level. The Alternatiba initiative was fine but I think we should go for a bigger, broader and more powerful coalition, with a comprehensive political program. In the coming months and in the next few years, there are two major projects that I think the democratic left should work or prepare for. One is Dodong’s suggestion of a massive campaign for GMA’s ouster in the event that the electoral fraud implicating her does get to be exposed to the general public. Given the gravity of case, I think that another people power uprising is a distinct possibility. If it does come about, it would not be a bourgeois democratic revolution in the Marxist sense but it could be a political revolution. The other project is the 2010 national elections (regardless of whether the people power uprising materializes or not). I do not need to elaborate. We already know about the “Walden option” that Akbayan debated on shortly before the 2004 elections. Perhaps we can really go ahead with a presidential candidate in 2010, but this time a presidential candidate of the broad democratic left.
Notes
[1] Kenneth M. Roberts, Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 18-19.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Evelyne Huber, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and John D. Stephens, “The Paradoxes of Contemporary Democracy: Formal, Participatory, and Social Dimensions,” Comparative Politics 29, no. 3, 1997, p. 323.
[4] Maria Helena Moreira Alves, “Something Old, Something New: Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores,” in The Latin American Left: From the Fall of Allende to Perestroika, ed. Barry Carr and Steve Ellner (Boulder, San Francisco, London: Westview Press, 1993), p. 235.
[5] Steve Ellner, “Introduction: The Changing Status of the Latin American Left in the Recent Past,” in The Latin American Left: >From the Fall of Allende to Perestroika, ed. Barry Carr and Steve Ellner (Boulder, San Francisco, London: Westview Press 1993), pp. 11, 16.
[6] Andrew Heywood, Political Ideas and Concepts: An Introduction (Houndmills: MacMillan press, 1994), pp. 303-310.
[7] Mark R. Thompson, Democratic Revolutions: Asia and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 2004).
[8] Heywood, pp. 308-310.
[9] Amado Guerrero, Philippine Society and Revolution (United States: International Association of Filipino Patriots, 1979), pp. 15, 131.
[10] Huber et al., pp. 323-325, 340.
[11] Roberts, pp. 30-31.
[12] Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy : Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985); Mouffe, “Hegemony and New Political Subjects: Toward a New Concept of Democracy,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 89-104; Mouffe, Chantal 1996, “Radical Democracy or Liberal Democracy,” in Radical Democracy: Identity, Citizenship, and the State, ed. David Trend (New York & London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 19-26.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ellner, p. 19n
[15] Roberts, p. 23.
[16] James Petras, “NGOs: In the Service of Imperialism,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 29, no. 4, 1999.
[17] Ji Giles Ungpakorn, Radicalising Thailand: New Political Perspectives (Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, 2003).
[18] Jonathan Fox, “The Crucible of Local Politics,” NACLA Report on the Americas 29, no. 1, pp. 15-19, 1995.
[19] Roberts, pp. 37-38.
[20] James Petras, “Globalization: A Critical Analysis,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 29, no. 1, 1999, pp. 3-37.