Category: Socialism

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Choosing the lesser evil.

(With Kate Nicholls)

Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on July 28th, delivering an apparent victory for the Opposition headed by Edmundo Gonzalez of the Unitary Democratic Platform (PUD) but a declared victory for incumbent Nicolás Maduro of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Gonzales was the hand-picked successor to businesswoman Maria Corina Machado, who was banned from running for president in the build-up to the election and who remains the power behind the PUD throne. Nicolas Maduro is the heir of Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian” legacy, something that sparked a resurgence amongst Latin American leftist movements at the turn of the 21st century but which has lost its promise and backtracked into decline and decay in the decades since then.

The election was held in the context of widespread claims and considerable evidence of electoral intimidation and fraud, against a backdrop of various restrictions on civil and political liberties, so the legitimacy of the declared outcome has been questioned from within Venezuela as well as abroad. In fact, wide-spread violent protests have broken out since the results were announced, and the possibility of civil war cannot be discounted as more evidence emerges that the election may have in fact been stolen by Maduro and his supporters. It remains to be seen whether he will remain power or face a coup, a domestic civil uprising, an escalation in regional or foreign intervention, or some combination thereof.

As even a causal observer will note, Venezuelan society has become especially polarized since the rise of former coup-monger Hugo Chávez to power in the 1990s (Chavez led two attempted coups before finally gaining power via electoral means). This polarization is not limited to Venezuelan partisan politics. Its echoes are heard as far away as New Zealand and elsewhere. Progressive left voices in particular, on social media and the blogosphere, are supportive of Maduro’s win, reject claims of electoral intimidation and fraud as right-wing disinformation, and highlight the potential for United States involvement should any coup eventuate. This championing of the Chávez-Maduro Bolivarian regime by the left is not new: Chávez’s brand of nationalist-Indigenous populism (cast as indigenous socialism) and its resistance to United States influence in Latin America gained much international attention in the early 2000s and continues to be supported today. For much of the Left in NZ and elsewhere, then and now, the historical sins of the US far outweigh the current crimes of contemporary Left authoritarians, Maduro included. For their part, Western media outlets see Maduro as a tin-pot dictator hell-bent on holding power at all costs, continuing in a long line of bad Leftist henchmen that extends back to Castro, Lenin, Mao and Stalin.

This framing poses a dilemma for political scientists. The discipline tends to prioritise regime type over left-right politics. That is to say, the discipline’s ideological preference is for democracy over dictatorship rather than the policy content of either type of regime. This is an obvious normative bias, one that is readily defended due to the fact that, despite all its limitations and contemporary flaws, empirically democracy does a better job at protecting basic human rights than any other regime type. The balance on how this is achieved (say, between individual and collective rights and responsibilities and between economic freedom, opportunity and equality) then becomes the stuff of quantitative and qualitative positive (objective) micro-analytic analyses rather than normative macro-analytic preferences. That allows political scientists to distinguish between specific types of dictatorship and democracy based on organisational features, public policies and socio-economic outcomes, including variants such as military-bureaucratic versus populist authoritarianism or social versus liberal democracy (which is also why political scientists can get very pedantic when words like “fascist” and “communist” are thrown around as epithets by mindless pundits).

The current situation in Venezuela underscores this dilemma all too well: from a democratic standpoint there is no comfortable way to back a winner given the nature of both sides, and the true loser in the game is likely democracy as an regime type and an ideal. Let’s examine why.

First, the Bolivarian regime. What began as a model for the “Pink Tide” of electoral socialism in Latin America in the late 1990s has devolved into a left-leaning nationalist populist authoritarian kleptocracy characterised by nepotism, corruption and incompetence. An increasingly shaky cadre of state managers, military leaders and Nicolas Maduro loyalists have stripped the country’s coffers nearly bare while allowing critical infrastructure to decay, including in the all-important oil sector. As a result, health, education and welfare indicators (including basics such as provision of transportation and potable water)  have dropped precipitously while poverty, unemployment and crime rates have spiked (a general assessment is provided here). Inflation is running at 130,000 percent per year, rendering the Venezuelan Bolivar worthless as a token of financial exchange. 8 million Venezuelans have migrated abroad, and the Venezuelan State has been hollowed out by bureaucratic parasitism and partisan agency take-overs and patronage. The result is country that has seen its GDP drop a staggering 80 percent in the decade since Maduro succeeded Chavez, even with considerable financial and material support from sympathetic foreign partners such as Cuba, Iran, the PRC and Russia. Truth be told, the country is ruled by thieves posing as anti-imperialist revolutionaries. In this they resemble Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua or Putin’s Russia more than post-Castro Cuba or Xi Jin-ping’s PRC. In short, the situation is dire. Under Maduro Venezuela has become a failed State.

The curse of Venezuela is that the PUD-led opposition is not a choirboy’s convention either. Besides the failed 2002 coup against Chavez and the 2018 drone attack against Maduro during a parade and its member’s history of dubious commitment to democratic practice (Gonzalez’s admirable personal traits as an academic and diplomat as well as his middle class roots notwithstanding), the current opposition has significant ties to Venezuelan ex-pats linked to rightwing Cuban and Nicaraguan exiles, who in turn have attracted the support of conservative groups in the US and other Latin American countries (some of which have connections to the military and oligarchical dictatorships of the 1980s and 1990s as well as contemporary political figures like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Millei in Argentina). Machado has been courted by and has extensive links to very conservative foreign actors, especially those in the US, for two decades. She also has direct social links to the pre-Boliviarian oligarchical past, as her parents were wealthy members of the old elite. For all of their talk of “democracy” and “freedom” and the gloss of respectability offered by Gonzalez, the unifying feature of the Venezuelan opposition led from behind by Machado is more about retribution and roll-back wrapped in a nostalgic vision of the pre-Boliviarian past and a desire to return the country to the old, albeit re-branded status quo. For all the public discontent about Maduro’s government, that is a non-starter.

For the PUD-led opposition the trouble is that, much like Cuba after the revolution, Venezuela is different for having undergone the Bolivarian experiment, especially when it comes to socio-economic and racial hierarchies. It therefore will not easily return to a past that was not always good for everyone. It is no longer the country of plastic surgery beauty queens, cheap petrol and affordable Scotch whisky for those who lived in the affluent Eastern Caracas foothill suburbs because if nothing else, economic and social decline and outward migration have made for a great leveller in Venezuelan society. In other words, the opposition yearns for a return to a political, social and economic status quo that no longer exists and which will be impossible to return to even if Maduro is forced from power. More importantly, a return to the pre-Bolivarian past is not only unrealistic, it is undesirable.

That is because Venezuela was no shining example of liberal democracy before the rise of Chávez. It is true, underpinned partly by the benefits of oil wealth, that it was one of the most stable polities in Latin America for much of the late twentieth century. The country did not experience the same pattern of populist authoritarianism and military rule that occurred in countries such as Chile, Brazil, or Argentina, or the kind of guerilla and para-military led violence that occurred in neighbouring Colombia or in Central America. Instead, the election-based two party-dominant regime that ruled Venezuela from 1958 until the late 1990s was what comparative politics specialists refer to as a limited, oligarchical or restricted democracy. The spoils of oil wealth and benefits of close ties with the United States were shared between two elite-backed political parties that allowed for relatively free elections, rotation in government office and key interest group cooptation via material incentives for favoured organisations. But that arrangement purposely left little room for truly leftist or authentic working class representation, thereby overseeing and perpetuating deep-seated socio-economic inequalities. Cheap fuel and commodity imports subsidized by taxes on primary (mostly petroleum) exports served as the opiate of the masses that maintained social peace. But as years passed after the 1958 tripartite agreement that founded the modern Venezuelan Republic (the Pact de Punto Fijo), the elite compact eventually turned into an increasingly distant and corrupt political duopoly unresponsive to popular demands for change, leading to outbreaks of protest and even episodic guerrilla violence.

Attuned to this discontent, Army officer Hugo Chavez led abortive “colonel’s coups” in the 1990s that paved the way for his eventually successful run for the presidency in 1999. His campaign was staunchly anti-elitist, anti-imperialist and redistributionist, with major state agencies expanded or granted control over previously private agencies. That contributed to the rise of the indigenous-socialist movement that came to be known as Bolivarianism and which continued after the eventual transfer of power from Chavez to Maduro (Chavez’s vice-president and former union leader) upon the former’s death in 2014. The trouble is that Chavez and his Bolivarian cohorts’ managerial skills did not match their ideological ambitions, and after much public spending at home and abroad–something that did lift basic domestic socioeconomic indicators and forged international solidarity links with foreign anti-Western regimes for the first ten years of the Bolivarian experiment–the wheels began to come off the Venezuelan cart. Graft crept into the public sector while investment declined and public spending continued unchecked even as it was increasingly untethered from hard currency earnings. The Boliviarians began to emulate their predecessors when it came to bourgeois lifestyles, the main difference being that they preferred to wear khakis and red berets rather than Liki likis, guayaberas and flowered polleras.

Occasional observers of Latin American politics tend to blame much of the region’s history of political instability, especially when it comes to worldwide attention-grabbing events such as military coups or foreign interference, especially on the part of the United States. While it is historically undeniable that the United States has supported various dictators in their rise to power, and withdrawn support when this no longer seems of benefit or, in true neo-colonial fashion, opposed revolutionary movements wherever they arose, other factors including political polarisation, democratic backsliding, bureaucratic corruption and military intervention cannot solely be explained by external factors. Domestic forces of one kind or another always play a role: from the problems of policy deadlock associated with forms of government that combine presidentialism with multi-party legislatures, to the failure to instil cultures of accountability and transparency in private and public institutions, to deeply ingrained social and racial hierarchies underpinned by institutional legacies, to historical patterns of land ownership and other forms of commercial exchange, and more. 

That said, foreign involvement, if not outright intervention, is already an element in the politics surrounding the Venezuelan presidential election. Cuba has sent para-military advisors to bolster the Maduro regime by helping organise the violent “colectivos” of armed young men intimidating election workers and demonstrators.These are modelled on the Cuban “turbas divinas” mobs that emerge as counters to episodic protests on the island. Hezbollah (and Iran) has had a decades-long presence in Bolivarian Venezuela, providing a criminal-ideological nexus that triangulates weapons, drugs and money smuggling activities that extend from the Levant to the Tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay and which launder criminal as well as ideological assets under the protection of the Bolivarian State. More recently, Wagner Group mercenaries have appeared as part of Maduro’s personal guard, essentially playing the role of foreign praetorians for the besieged leader. It is a sign of his insecurity and lack of trust in his own forces that he now depends on the protection of these Russian proxies.

But the Opposition is in no real position to remove Maduro on is own even if it has the material, political and logistical support of foreign agencies. Hence, given the disarray in post-election civilian politics, and the inability of the PUD to dislodge the Maduro regime by weight of popular sentiment (and votes), it will be left to the Venezuelan military to ultimately determine the outcome of the current crisis. However, the Venezuelan military is not monolithic and is rendered by cronyism and corruption. Guarantees will have to be made and assurances given if military support for regime change is to occur (which will likely involve immunity from prosecution for graft and other acts of official malfeasance). Otherwise, the default option is to repress, which remains as a default because it is highly unlikely that any external forces (including the US) will overtly intervene in the event Maduro’s forces dig in and crack down on dissent. That sets the stage for more covert forms of subterfuge and grey area machinations, which will only prolong the impasse even if in somewhat sublimated fashion. And we can rest assured that these covert options are already being explored by various interested parties.

Whatever the eventual outcome, it will involve foreign actors supporting each side as well as soft-and hardliners in the PUD and PSUV ranks. In that light Maduro is at best just one rock in the road to a peaceful transition. At worst, he is now a pawn in a larger game that is beyond his control. In that light it is others with skin in the game that now matter most, and that includes the armed forces and foreign actors aligned on opposing sides of the Venezuelan political divide.

In terms of potential transition scenarios, the best that can be hoped for is the formation of a unity government made up of moderate elements of the outgoing regime and Opposition who commit to a military or perhaps internationally-overseen transition project leading to “restorative” elections down the road. The transition would focus on erecting an acceptable framework for political contestation while revitalising critical infrastructure, attracting investment and cushioning the dislocating effects of the economic crisis via promulgation of foreign aid-supported safety net programs for the most disadvantaged. All of that means that a variety of foreign interlocutors will need to be engaged on multiple policy fronts, starting with the political negotiations over procedures and paths forward and then moving onto substantive discussions about economic and social recovery planning. The Organisation of American States (OAS) may prove helpful in this regard even if its criticism of the Maduro regime has seen its representation at the election curtailed and stonewalled.

Returning to the political science angle, one way to envision the process is as a type of stylised multi-actor “game” in which the objective is to restore an open democracy to Venezuela. Any peaceful transition scenario to this end assumes that longer-sighted moderates will dominate negotiations on both sides of the domestic crisis and that their respective foreign backers will support such moderation over hard-line entrenchment and ongoing confrontation. That is a very big ask given the deep animosities extant between the adversaries. Again, the Venezuelan military will become a major focus of pressure from all sides, and it will ultimately be them who give the nod one way or the other. That is because the Venezuelan armed forces have one thing that no other stakeholder has: veto power over what is agreed to.

In a sense, the Venezuelan transition “game” boils down to a choice of lesser evil. That is true for Venezuelan society as a whole but especially true for the military as veto welders over the entire post-election process. Does the military choose the evil that it knows and which feeds it while continuing as the defenders of a failed State propped by like-minded foreign authoritarians, or does it take a step into the unknown and go with a side that has very patchy democratic credentials, very dubious foreign rightwing connections, but which is popular and represents the possibility of national recovery and renewal? Is continuity or change the better option, both for the military as an institution and for the nation as a whole?

Which is to say that there is much yet to happen before the Venezuelan crisis is resolved, peacefully or not. Or in antiseptic political science terms, the transitional “game” has moved from iterative (outcomes do not change with each successive play) to extensive-form in nature (outcomes change with each play), with the ultimate “foundational” conclusion leading to the next Venezuelan regime being uncertain and not necessarily Pareto (both sides advance their interests without hurting the other, leading to mutual second-best outcomes), much less Nash-optimal (both sides achieve preferred goals) for all concerned. That is to say, negotiations between and within the competing political blocs are not so much about immediate choices and outcomes but about setting the terms and conditions for an eventual resolution to the political impasse on terms that may not be the preferred result for anyone but which are mutually acceptable given the circumstances. It could even be a Pacto de Punto Fijo 2.0 moment, one that could be considered as a historical referent for current negotiations. It may seem like over-intellectualised gibberish to phrase things this way, but there is a core truth in this parsing of words that the principals involved may want to heed.

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Media Link: AVFA on Latin America.

In the latest episode of AVFA Selwyn Manning and I discuss the evolution of Latin American politics and macroeconomic policy since the 1970s as well as US-Latin American relations during that time period. We use recent elections and the 2022 Summit of the Americas as anchor points.

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Indigenous socialism with a Chilean face.

Happy New Year everyone.

I am, by personal and professional inclination, loathe to speculate on uncertain future events. On the other hand, I have an abiding interest in distant political processes even though I cannot claim particular analytic expertise when considering them. Thus, when watching the recent Chilean presidential election from afar, I found myself wanting to offer a view while being unable to realistically give a prediction or even outline what the future course of affairs will be beyond the inauguration of Chile’s new president in March. An exchange with a long term reader (Edward Main) during the holiday break led me to look closer into the matter. With that in mind, I hope that readers will take the following as an interested bystander’s observations rather than an expert reflection of the ongoing turn of events.

Five days before Christmas and 51 years after Salvador Allende was elected as the first socialist president in Chilean history, Gabriel Boric re-made history as the youngest candidate (35) to win that office. A former student activist and Congressman from Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, he first rose to prominence during the 2011 student demonstrations against increases in tuition fees at the University of Chile, then again during the 2019 anti-austerity demonstrations precipitated by a 30 percent rise in public transportation prices in Santiago. In 2021 Boric rode a wave of votes (the most since mandatory voting laws were dropped in 2012) to win 56 percent of the national ballot (although less than 60 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, leaving a large pool of disaffected or apathetic voters in the political mix). He campaigned on an overtly socialist, specifically anti-neoliberal agenda, promising to tax the super rich, expand social services and environmental conservation programs, promote pension reform and universal health care and make the fight against income inequality his main priority in a country with the worst income gaps in South America.

Boric’s victory is remarkable given the tone of the campaign. His opponent, Jose Antonio Kast, embraced Trumpian-style rhetoric and openly said that he would be the “Bolsonaro of Chile” (Jair Bolsonaro is the national-populist president of Brazil who emulates Trump, now hospitalized because of complications from a knife attack in 2018). He railed against Boric as someone who would turn Chile into Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, or even Peronist Argentina. Kast is the son of a card-carrying Nazi who fled to Chile after WW2 and built a sausage-making business that served as a launching pad for his children’s economic and political ambitions during the Pinochet dictatorship (the Kast family dynasty is prominent in Chilean rightwing circles). Jose Antonio Kast openly praised the strongman and his neoliberal economic policies during his presidential campaign while downplaying the thousands of murdered, tortured and exiled victims of Pinochet’s regime. He won a plurality of votes in the presidential primaries but lost decisively in the second round run-off between the two largest vote-getters.

Surprisingly given their vitriol during the campaign, both Kast and the outgoing president, rightwing Sebastian Pinera (son of a Pinochet Labour Minister who happened to be a friend of my father) extended their congratulations and offers of support to the newly elected Boric, who will be inaugurated in March. This makes the transition period especially important, as it may offer a window of opportunity for Boric to negotiate inter-partisan consensus on key policy issues.

Boric’s election follows that of several other Leftist presidential candidates in Latin America in the last two years, including those in Bolivia (a successor to the illegally ousted Evo Morales), Peru (an indigenous school teacher and teacher’s union leader) and Honduras (the wife of a former president ousted by a coup tacitly backed by the Obama administration). Centre-Left presidents govern in Belize, Costa Rica, Guyana, Mexico, Panama, and Suriname. A former leftwing mayor of Bogota is the front runner in this year’s Colombian presidential elections (now in Right-center hands) and former president Lula da Silva is leading the polls against Bolsonaro for the October canvass in Brazil. These freely elected Leftists are bookended on one end by authoritarian counterparts in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela and on the other by right-leaning elected governments in Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala Paraguay and Uruguay. Argentina, which has a Peronist government, straddles the divide between Left and Right owing to the odd (and very kleptocratic) populist coalition that makes up the governing Party. 

One might say that the region is relatively balanced ideologically speaking, but with an emerging tilt to the moderate Left as a result of the exposure by the pandemic of inherent flaws in the market driven economic model that dominated the region over the last thirty years. It remains to be seen if this political tilt will eventuate in the type of socio-economic reforms upon which the successful Leftists candidates campaigned on. What is pretty clear is that it will not be a repeat of the so-called “Pink Tide” that swept the likes of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales into power in the early 2000s, both in terms of the extent of their policy ambitions and the style in which they rule. This most recent wave still retains many characteristics of the much lauded (by the Left) indigenous socialism of twenty years ago, but it is now tempered by the policy failures and electoral defeats that followed its heyday. It is indigenous not only because of its origins in populations that descended from pre-colonial civilizations (although there is still plenty of indigena in Latin American socialism), but because it originates in domestic and regional ideological thought and practice. Within this dual sense of the phrase, it is moderation and pragmatism that appears to differentiate the original 2000s versions from what is emerging today.

Western observers believe that the regional move Left may give China an opportunity to make strategic inroads in the hemisphere. That view betrays ignorance of the Latin American Left, which is not driven by any Communist orthodoxy or geopolitical alignment with China (or even blind hatred of the US), but instead is a very heterogenous mix of indigenous, environmental, trade union, student and social movement activism that among other things is progressive on gender and sexuality rights and climate change. This is not a Leninist/Maoist Left operating on vanguardist principles of “democratic centralism,” but instead a fluid amalgam of modern (industrial) and post-modern (post-industrial) causes. What that means is, since China is soon to overtake the US as the primary extractor of raw materials and primary goods from Latin America and has a checkered environmental record as part of its presence as well as a record of authoritarian management practices in Chinese controlled firms, it is by no means certain that it will be able to leverage emergent elected Latin American Left governments in its favor. 

In fact, given what has been seen in its relationship with the three authoritarian leftist states, many of the elected Leftist governments may prove reticent to deepen ties with the Asia giant precisely because of concerns about a loss of economic independence (fearing debt diplomacy, among other things). The Belt and Road initiative may seem an attractive proposition at first glance, but it can also serve to choke national sovereignty on the economic as well as diplomatic fronts. Boric and his supporters are very much aware of this given problems that have risen from Chinese investment in the Chilean mining and forestry sectors (such as disputes over water and indigenous land rights).

This is worth mention as a relevant aside. Chile’s economy remains primary good export oriented. The bulk of its GDP is derived from mining, forestry, fishing and agriculture, including value added products such as wine. Recently, lithium deposit exploitation has exploded across the so-called “lithium triangle” comprised of northwest Argentina, southwestern Bolivia and northeaster Chile, with Chinese investors jockeying for position with Western interests in the development of salt flat mining in which lithium is extracted for commercial purposes in an increasingly e-based global economy. Such mining is environmentally damaging and machine intensive, so the benefits accrued go to those who can afford to invest in it rather than to workers associated with it. Chinese firms compete on the bottom line, not on social responsibility.

The political economic consequences of this dependence on primary good exports fuelled by foreign investment follows a larger pattern whereby Chilean economic elites resist public investment in anything other than service industries connected to primary good supply chains and ancillary businesses (input and output logistics, highways, port infrastructure and the legal and commercial apparatuses attendant to them). This has made for a significant urban-rural divide when it comes to economic opportunity, something that is not alleviated by the proliferation of universities and private education institutions during the last 30 years. In fact, the Chilean economic model discourages investment in value-added technological innovation that would undermine the primacy of the primary good export sector as the dominant economic, social and political constellation. Instead, Right governments have used low export tax policy as a means of promoting “trickle down” opportunity to those inserted into the main productive sectors while Left leaning governments have used tax revenues on exports as a means of alleviating social inequalities and dysfunction while expanding the service sector middle class. As the 2019 demonstrations made clear, neither has worked. Boric’s presidency has that as its fundamental conundrum.

That brings up the internal political dynamics at play in Chile. For Boric to succeed he will have to deliver on very high public expectations. For that to happen he needs to navigate a three-cornered political obstacle course.

In one corner is his own political support base, which is comprised of numerous factions with different priorities, albeit all on the “Left” side of the policy agenda. This include members of the Constitutional Convention charged with drawing up a replacement for the Pinochet-era constitution still in force (something that was agreed to by the outgoing government in the wake of the 2019 protests). The Convention must design a new constitution with procedural as well as substantive features. That is, it must demarcate governance processes as well as grant enshrined rights. The balance between the two is tricky, because a minimalist approach that focuses on processes and procedures (such as elections, office terms and separation of powers) does not address what constitutes a “right” in a democracy and who should have rights bestowed upon them, whereas an encompassing approach that attempts to cover the universe of social endeavour risks granting so many rights to so many people and agencies that it overwhelms regulatory processes and becomes meaningless is real terms (the latter happened with the 1988 Brazilian constitutional reform, which covers a plethora of topics that have been cumbersome to enforce or implement in practice).

Not all of the delegates share the gradualist, incremental, moderately pragmatic approach to policy agenda-setting that Boric espouses, and because they are independently elected, it signals that the future of Chile resides in a very much redesigned approach to governance. It is even possible that delegates consider moving from a presidential to a parliamentary democracy given that Chile already has a very splintered party system that requires the building multiparty coalitions to form majorities in any event. Whatever is put on the table, Boric will have to urge delegates to exercise caution when it comes to sensitive issues like taxation, military funding and autonomy, land reform (including indigenous land rights, which have been the source of violent clashes in recent years) etc., less it provoke a destabilizing backlash from conservative sectors. In light of that and the strength of his election victory, it will be interesting to see how Boric approaches the Constitutional Convention, how his Cabinet shapes up in terms of personnel and policy orientation, and how his support bloc in Congress responds to his early initiatives.

The latter matters because Boric inherits a deeply fragmented Congress that has a slim Opposition majority but which in fact has seen all centrist parties lose ground to more extreme parties on both the Right and Left. Even so and depending on the issue, cross-cutting alliances within Congress currently transcend the usual Left-Right divide, so it is possible that he will be able to use his incrementalist moderate approach to advance a Left-nationalist project that keeps most parties aligned or at least does not step on too many Party toes. On the other hand, the fact Boric won 56 percent of a vote in which only 56 percent of eligible voters went to the polls means that his policy proposals could easily be rejected on partisan grounds given the lack of unified majorities on either side of the ideological divide.

In another corner are the political Opposition, dominated by Pinochetista legacies but increasingly interspersed with neo-MAGA and alt-Right perspectives (what I shall call Chilean nationalist conservatism). The Right has a significant presence in the Constitutional Convention so may be able to act as a brake on radical reforms and in doing so create space for Boric and his supporters in the convention to push more moderate alterations to the magna carta (each constitutional change requires a 2/3 vote in order to pass. This will force compromise and moderation by the drafters if anything is to be achieved).

The fact that Pinera and Kast, scions of the Pinochetista wing (they do not like that name and disavow ties to the dictatorship other than support for its “Chicago School” economic policies), readily conceded and offered support to Boric may indicate that the neoliberal wing of Chilean conservatism understands that many rightwing voters may have abstained from voting or voted for Boric on economic nationalist grounds as a result of Pinera’s adherence to market-oriented policies that clearly were not alleviating poverty or providing effective pandemic relief even as the upper ten percent of society continued to capture an increasing percentage of national wealth. This could mean that the Chilean Right is less disloyal to the democratic process as it was in the run up to Allende’s election and therefore more committed—or at least some of it is—to trying to reach compromises with Boric on pressing policy issues. In that sense their presence in the Constitutional Convention may prove to be a moderating influence. 

Conversely, in the wake of the defeat the Chilean Right might fragment between Pinochetista and newer factions, which will mean that conciliation with government initiatives will be difficult until the internal power struggle within the Right is resolved, and then only if it is resolved in a way that marginalizes Trump and Bolsonaro-inspired extremists within conservative ranks. After all, what sells in the US or Brazil does not necessarily sell in Chile. The most important arena in which this internal dispute will have to be resolved is Congress, where extreme Right parties have taken seats from traditional conservative vehicles. On the face of it that spells trouble for Boric, but the narrow Right majority in Congress and Pinochetista disdain for their extreme counterparts may grant him some room for manoeuvre.

In a very real sense, Boric’s political fate will be determined in the first instance by the coalition politics within his own support base as well as within the Right Opposition.

The final obstacle is getting the Chilean military on-board with the new government’s project. Of the three factors in this political triumvirate, the armed forces are both a constant and a wild card. They are a constant in that their deeply conservative disposition and institutional legacies are unshakable and guaranteed. This means that Boric’s government must tread delicately when it comes to civil-military affairs, both in terms of national security policy-making but also with regard to the prerogatives awarded the armed forces under the Pinochet constitution. Along with the Catholic Church and landed agricultural interests, the Chilean armed forces are one of the three pillars of traditional Chilean conservatism. This ideological outlook extends to the national paramilitary police, the Carabineros, who are charged with domestic security and repression (the two overlap but are not the same).

Democratic reforms (such as allowing female combat pilots) have been introduced into the military, especially during the tenure of former president Michelle Bachelet as Defense Minister, but the overall tone of civil-military relations over the years since democracy was restored (1990) has been aloof, when not tense. Revelations that Pinochet and other senior offices had received kickbacks from weapons dealers produced a paratrooper mutiny in 1993, and when Pinochet returned from voluntary exile in the UK in 2000 he was greeted with full military honors in a nationally televised airport ceremony. This rekindled old animosities between Right and Left that saw the military high command issue veiled warnings about leaving sleeping dogs lie. Until now, that warning has been heeded.

The role of the military as political guarantor and veto agent is enshrined in the Pinochet constitution. So is its receipt of a percentage of pre-tax copper exports. These powers and privileges have been pared down but not eliminated entirely over the years and will be a major focus of attention of the Constitutional Convention. With 7,800 kilometers of land bordering on three states that it has had wars with and 6,435 kilometers of ocean frontage extending out to Easter Island (and all the waters within that strategic triangle), the Chilean military is Army-dominant even if the other two service branches are robust given GDP and population size (in fact, the Chilean military is one of the most modernized in Latin America thanks to its direct access to copper revenues). What this means is that the Chilean armed forces exhibit a state of readiness and geopolitical mindset that is distinct from that of most of its neighbors and which gives it unusual domestic political influence.

The Chilean armed forces High Command continues to operate according to Prussian-style organizational principles that, if instilling professionalism and discipline within the ranks, also leads to highly concentrated and centralized decision-making authority in the services Flag-rank leadership. Moreover, although the Prussian legacy has diluted in recent years (with the Army retaining significant Prussian vestiges, to include parade march goose-stepping, while the Air Force and Navy have adored UK and US organizational models), the Chilean Navy is widely seen as a bastion for the most conservative elements in uniform, with the Air Force encompassing the more “liberal” wing of the officer corps and the Army and Carabineros leaning towards the Navy’s ideological position. The effect is to make democratic civil-military relations largely hinge on the geopolitical perspectives and attitudes of service branch leaders towards the elected government of the day.

Successfully navigating these three obstacle points will be the key to Boric’s success. The groundwork for that is being laid now, in the period between his election and inauguration. Should he be able to reach agreement with supporters and opposition on matters like the scope of constitutional reform and short-term versus medium-term fiscal and other policy priorities in the midst of a public health crisis, then his chances of leaving a legacy of positive change are high. Should he not be able to do so, then his attempt to impart a dose of pragmatism and moderation on Chilean indigenous socialism could well end in disarray.

We can only hope that for Boric and for Chile, the country advances por la razon y no por la fuerza.

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Media Link: “A View from Afar” on NZ security strategy and the end of neoliberalism in South America.

I have not had much time to blog in recent weeks but continue the weekly series of podcasts with Selwyn Manning. This week we discussed efforts to develop a comprehensive national security strategy for New Zealand that goes beyond Defense White Papers and annual reports from various security agencies, then turned to recent elections in South America as an indicator that neoliberalism is well and truly dead as an economic policy approach and, perhaps more importantly, as a social theory. You can find the episode here.

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Don’t fear the Bern.

With Super Tuesday primaries concluded, it is looking like the Democratic presidential nomination will be a two horse contest much like it was in 2016, with Joe Biden replacing Hillary Clinton as the centrist pick backed by the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Bernie Sanders once again carries the underdog aspirations of the progressive wing of the party. This year Sanders represents a more significant threat to the centrists than he did in 2016, and they have worked very hard to disparage him as “unelectable” and “”too radical” for the American voting public. I believe that this may be a wrong assumption to make.

Let’s address the issue of Sander’s socialism first. He professes to be democratic socialist, running as such under the banner of “Independent” throughout his political career until registering for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. But his “socialism” does not include socialising the means of production or doing anything other than using tax policy to redistribute wealth downwards, reforming health and education so that they become affordable to lower and middle income earners, promoting public works projects, re-establishing the role of the State as a macro-manager in economic areas prone to excess or abuse and diminishing support for fossil fuel production and defence spending.

Everything else on his policy agenda, while different than those of his opponents (say, when it comes to the US relationship with Israel and Palestine), may be alternative but are not socialist per se. In fact, all of his policy prescriptions are more akin to those of European social democracy than to democratic socialism (where the decisions about socialising the economy are done via democratic processes) because capitalism as a socio-economic construct is not challenged or replaced. It is just humanised and re-oriented towards the welfare of the majority, not of the elite minority. Sanders himself has pointed out that the stress is on the “democratic” in his democratic socialism, so it does not appear that he is doctrinaire when it comes to policy outcomes.

To this intrinsic aspect of his political philosophy can be added the extrinsic constraints on what he can do. The structural power of capital in the US is not going to be seriously challenged, much less undermined by a Sanders presidency. The US economy and its social relations of production are deeply rooted in notions of private property, self-initiative, “free” enterprise and a host of other market-focused orientations that transcend the business world. The US remains a huge economic engine that, even if it has lapsed into cowboy, crony and parasitic capitalism in places (such as the financial and health industries) and is very dependent on the State for its competitive edge (say, in awarding of defence- and other technology-related contracts), is largely impervious to whole-scale reform or collapse.

Along with an economy that is “too big to fail,” it is best to think of the relationship between US capitalism and the presidency as that of a monkey driving a machine–it is not so much the monkey that matters but the ongoing movement of the machine. In that light, Sanders can play the role of the monkey, acting as a corrective that tries to reign in the baser urges of the cowboys, cronies and parasites now dominating the US economic engine without impeding the forward momentum of the entire combine.

Added to the sheer structural inertia that must be overcome in order to reconstitute US capitalism is the political influence that it wields. Corporate influence permeates all levels of the US political system. Its influence is corrupting and often corrosive in places, and it extended deep into the Democratic Party–particularly the Party’s centrist, corporate-friendly faction. As Poulantzas wrote, the capitalist elite is not homogeneous and is divided into ascendent and descendent class fractions. The GOP defends the interests of the descendent class fractions that represent fossils fuels, auto manufacturers, agricultural interests, the military-industrial complex and traditional financial sectors. Democrats represent high tech, telecommunications, renewable energy, new financial sectors and other nascent and ascendent industries. The Democrats also represent, however diminished in presence when compared to the 1960s and 70s, the organised labour movement in traditional manufacturing industries as well as the public sector.

The capitalist class divisions in the US are not razor sharp and there is some overlapping in their political representation (for example, pharmaceuticals and insurance), particularly when the lobbying interests incorporate cultural idioms (such as the case with the gun lobby). Needless to say, there a host of other non-economic interests represented in the political system, although identity and value-based groups tend to aggregate in polar fashion (say, among ethnic, LBGTQ and religious communities). The main point is the centrist Democrats are corporate Democrats, not progressives, and for all of the talk of the “Gang of Four” leftist female representatives, the majority of Democrats in Congress are underwritten by and represent the corporate interests of the capitalist class fractions that they are associated with.

A Sanders presidency will therefore confront not only a hostile Republican opposition in Congress and in states dominated by Republicans. It will also have to contend with the very centrists that tried to impede his nomination in the first place. These corporate/centrist democrats will demand concessions and challenge anything that see as too radical to pass as law. That means that a Sanders policy agenda is likely to be watered down if it is to be implemented, which means that the final product will be anything but radical. The end result will be an incremental approach to policy reform, not revolution.

Sanders has already reframed the narrative on universal health to the point that some variation of single-user pay is likely to meet with congressional majority approval (assuming that the Democrats hold the house in 2020). He would be smart if he allowed for private health insurance schemes to co-exist with the public option (as in many other liberal democracies), since that will allow those with disposable incomes to afford things such as elective or cosmetic care outside of the public health system. The larger point is that he has offered some alternatives and initiatives that could well find support in Congress, especially if his election victory over Trump is significant. The greater the margin of his victory, the more a mandate he has within the Democratic Party as well as amongst the national electorate, and a large win will also help diminish GOP resistance to post-Trump corrections because in defeat Trump will have few political friends.

All of which is to say that although Sanders has many constraints on what he can do once in office, he potentially will have enough political clout and flexibility to pass legislation and enact significant reforms even if they cannot be described as “radical” or “revolutionary.”

It is true that Trump and the GOP dirty tricksters relish the opportunity to run against Sanders, who they see as easily beatable in a general election. The Republican smear machine is primed to go all out with its Cold War style fear-mongering. For them, Biden is a harder opponent to defeat because he cannot be painted into an ideological corner and tarred by spurious associations with the demons of the bi-polar world past.

But just like the centrist Democrats, the GOP may be wrong in its appraisal. Many younger voters are not frightened by the epithet “Socialist!” and have no memory of the Cold War. Bernie’s cantankerous independence from machine politics is seen as a positive. It is therefore possible that they will turn out in numbers that otherwise will not be seen in support of a Biden candidacy. The defensive “anyone but Trump” vote might be enhanced rather than diminished by Sanders. After all, Bernie represents a true break with the Swamp, whereas Biden is its product and Trump is basking in it while trying to monetarily benefit from the immersion. So it could well be that dismissals of The Bern are premature because his strengths as an honest alternative within the Democratic Party outweigh his weaknesses as an outsider in a system that is rigged in favour of insiders (for example, via the use of Superdelegates as tie-breakers in the Democratic National Convention).

What is clear is that the DNC fear a Sanders nomination not so much because they think that he will lose to Trump but because he represents a threat to THEIR interests. Even if diluted, his policy reforms will target them as a first order of business, as a way of clearing the path for substantive reforms in the policy areas in which they are vested.

Hence the disparaging of Sanders and downplaying of his chances at a general election victory. The proof of whether the anti-Sanders campaign has worked will come in the next two weeks when a cluster of primaries are held, including in Florida where I, just as a did in 2016, voted (via absentee mail ballot) for the Bern. If nothing else, just like then, my rationale is that even if Sanders does not win the nomination, if he gets a substantial amount of delegates he will have influence on Biden’s policy platform. Biden needs Sanders’ supporters to back him–and many “Bernie Bros” have said that they would rather sit on the couch or vote for Trump than see another corporate Democrat dash their progressive aspirations–so my thinking is that if the convention vote is close or at least not a Biden landslide, then the centrists will have to negotiate with Sanders over the campaign platform in order to get him to endorse Biden and encourage his followers to join the “anyone but Trump” camp.

Given the obstacles in front of him, Sanders may not be able to implement the progressive agenda that he campaigns on and which his supporters yearn for. But when compared with Biden, he certainly is not more of the same. Building on the momentum of the 2018 mid-term elections, perhaps that is the best we can hope for.

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Still think it is all about postmodern identity?

Long term readers may recall something I wrote a few years ago about the issue of Left praxis and the need for a class line above all other strategic perspectives. That post was done in part because of the prevalence of identity politics and other post-modern forms of association within the NZ Left (such as certain “polyamorous” factions present in local progressive circles). This focus on non-class based forms of identification has been eloquently defended at some length by my colleague Lew here at KP, so there is merit in it, at least in some instances.

However, I believe that a major contributing factor to the decline of the Left as an ideological force and political alternative to currently dominant market-supportive ideologies and parties is the turn away from a class line, be it by the 3rd Way Labourites that NZ Labour emulates or the NZ Green Party with its election campaign emphasis on youthful (primarily female Pakeha) candidates over policy substance (which has completed the turn away from “watermelon” politics where class was at the core of its environmental philosophy and grassroots demographic and towards a business-friendly largely urban metrosexual orientation). The fact that many on the Left welcomed the victory of Emmanuel Macron, an investment banker, over Marine Le Pen, a neo-fascist, in France and failed to understand Donald Trump’s populist appeal to white American working class and lumpenproletarians (a sin I was guilty of) demonstrates the intellectual and practical vacuum at the core of what passes for modern progressive politics in some parts of the world, Aetoroa in particular.

It puzzles me that even in the face of Bernie Sanders’ remarkable primary campaign in the 2016 US presidential election and UK Labour’s rise under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in the UK snap elections of a fortnight ago, that many in the US, UK and NZ Left still cling to the (false consciousness) notion that centrist policies and identity politics are the way to play the game. The truth is that centrist politics have bottomed out under the polarising conditions produced by Alt-Right provocations and disinformation and the futility of the Left trying to successfully play a “soft” version of the market-oriented election game. The corporate and media Right have been quicker to realise this and seized the opportunity to deepen neoliberal era policies of economic deregulation and public sector cost-cutting by adding to it the politics of cultural conflict, immigration control and other methods by which the underlying bases of class conflict are downplayed in order to harvest the political fruits of cross-class uncertainty and fear.

The effect of three decades of market-driven ideological socialisation and post 9/11 politics of fear has been to prompt vulnerable sectors of liberal democratic societies to revert to primal and centrifugal forms of identification–race, religion, ethnicity, culture, nationality–all of which divert attention from the commonality of wage labour class subservience and its increased precariousness under the rule of a predatory type of post-industrial capitalism. Clearly non-class forms of identification need to be factored into any  discussion of praxis in a given socio-economic and political context, but adding non-class identification into the mix as the main focus of progressive struggles only serves to further dilute the solidarity bonds created by the one commonality workers have in the social division of labour of contemporary advanced capitalism.

And yet, in the face of this much of the Left appears to be suffering a form of post-modern paralysis where it is unwilling or unable to recognise that the advances made on superstructural issues like gender and LBGTI rights have their genesis in (but are not reducible to) the class driven struggles of the industrial and post-industrial eras, many of which persist to this day.

With that in mind, rather than prattle on as an old white male former academic, I defer to a genuine organic intellectual of the Left. The context is the aftermath to the Grenfell Tower fire in London:

https://www.facebook.com/thedeepleft/videos/649061075299366/?pnref=story

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Autumn of the Patriarch.

Fidel Castro celebrated his 90th birthday a few days ago. During the public celebration of his milestone he sat in a specialised wheel chair between his brother Raul and Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela. He is physically frail but his mind is still sharp, as evidenced in a (rather self-serving) editorial he wrote in which he praised his revolution and denounced US president Obama and the thawing of relations between the US and Cuba (which his brother, now president of Cuba after Fidel’s abdication due to illness, helped engineer). As part of the month long celebrations of his birth, he is being gifted a 90 meter long cigar, a world record for “puros” of any type. Bill Clinton should be so lucky.

Yet, I felt sadness and some pity at watching Fidel in his autumn years. Like Garcia Marquez’s Colonel, he is a man of the past wrapped in memories of what could have been. A man who once was an icon of the Latin American Left, worthy successor to Jose Marti, comrade-in-arms of Che Guevara, patron of the Angolan and Mozambiquian revolutions, inspiration to insurrectionists world-wide, cunning adversary of the US for over five decades and arguably the best poker player the world after he bluffed the US into thinking that he would rather be incinerated rather than relent to US demands during the Cuban Missile Crisis (the USSR eventually agreed to withdraw its missiles from Cuba over Castro’s objections in exchange for a US withdrawal of surface to surface missile batteries in Turkey).

But rather than the imposing physical specimen that towered over so many of his emulators both in height and intellect and who attracted the attention of the rich, famous and powerful during his heyday, here sat a stooped, gaunt, hollow faced elder with visible hand tremors and a certifiable fool sitting on his left side. In fact, if Fidel represented the best hopes and aspirations of a previous generation of revolutionaries, Nicolas Maduro represents the terminal decline of the contemporary “Pink Tide” of elected neo-socialists that emerged during the 2000s and who, with few exceptions like the Frente Amplio governments of Uruguay, have been proven to be no less authoritarian, no less corrupt, and equally if not more incompetent than their capitalist predecessors. In some cases, these Pink Tide regimes were not so much socialist as they were kleptocratic, populist-corporatist or sold-out to the corporate interests they ostensibly opposed. And like Fidel, they have fallen on hard times.

Other than Maduro, no foreign leaders of note attended Fidel’s birthday party (even the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, a country in which many Cubans spilled blood in the overthrow of Somoza and defense of the Sandinista Revolution, did not send a high level delegation). The rich and powerful were absent. In a sense, Fidel’s decline mirrors the struggles of the Cuban Revolution after the USSR withdrew its economic support for it. More tellingly, it symbolises the squandered opportunity of the Pink Tide.

The emergence of elected Left regimes in Latin America during the 2000s was a moment of great hope for progressives in the hemisphere. It followed a wave of so-called neoliberal, market-friendly economic reforms undertaken by a variety of right and populist regimes such as those of Menem in Argentina and Fujimori in Peru during the previous decades. As the negative consequences of neoliberalism began to impact on basic social indicators such as income inequality and child poverty, and could no longer be hidden by creative accounting and statistical manipulation, a window of ideological opportunity opened for the Latin American Left. They were the earliest and fiercest critics of the so-called “Washington Consensus” behind the adoption of neo-liberal reforms.  They were the academics, activists, organisers and politicians who marshalled protests, demonstrations and other forms of passive and active resistance to the implementation of market-driven edicts. They were the outlets through which the dislocating effects and social impact of the “more market” approaches were highlighted. And they had one more thing: structural opportunity in the form of a global commodities boom.

With the rise of China as an economic powerhouse in competition and/or concert with other established and new powers (e.g. the US, India), the late 1990s and early 2000s saw the demand for commodities–primary goods, raw materials and especially minerals, metals and fossil fuels–skyrocket. As prices soared on the back of increased demand previously unexploited regions became the subjects of concerted interest by Chinese and other investors. What already existed in terms of commodities–oil in Venezuela and Ecuador, natural gas and oil in Brazil, copper in Chile, even soy, maize and beef in Argentina and Uruguay–saw redoubled investment in extractive export industries. A boom time ensued.

At the turn of the century Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Venezuela elected or re-elected neo-socialist governments (El Salvador, Honduras, Paraguay and Peru did as well but their tenures were short-lived). Every one of these countries benefited from the commodities boom. The question was not so much how to generate public money surpluses but in what measure and how to make use of them. But, just like Soviet subsidies gave Fidel’s Cuba an unnatural sense of comfort and inflated standard of living, the commodities boom was a temporary boost rather than a long term panacea for the region’s problems, depending on what was done with the surpluses generated by the golden moment.

With the exceptions of Chile and Uruguay, pretty much everywhere else the preferred combination was public spending on popular projects mixed with epic corruption, graft and theft. To be sure, health, education, welfare and housing services improved in the early years of these regimes and social indicators improved relative to the neo-liberal baselines. Income redistribution downwards was accomplished via generous benefits packages provided to the lower classes. Public services such as transport, electricity and gas were heavily subsidised by the State. So were basic food staples. Public works schemes generated employment. But after a while the money provided for such projects began to run out as the demand for commodities stabilised and prices began to drop.

Worse yet, what most of these regimes did not do was invest constructively in long-term productive capacity and infrastructure. Instead, they threw money at popular short term projects and grandiose schemes such as building sports arenas and stadiums. They pushed increased export commodity dependency rather than diversification of the productive apparatus. In parallel, they siphoned off millions in public funds to friends, cronies and family of government officials, when not to themselves. The combination was one of immediate gain (for them and their supporters) at the expense of long-term sustainability, and now those chickens have come home to roost.

In places like Argentina under Cristina Fernandez de Kichner, corruption was elevated to an art form (in a country where it was already a highly developed practice). In places like Brazil and Ecuador corruption was an integral part of the public-private nexus in construction and fossil fuel exploration. But it is in Venezuela where the full depths of the decline are seen. Even before Hugo Chavez died, his “revolution” had turned into a feeding trough for the Boliviarian elites. Billions of dollars were provided to creating anti-imperialist alliances such as ALBA, the anti-capitalist trading bloc that was supposed  to counter MERCOSUR and which never got off the ground. Billions in subsidised oil was sent to Cuba to prop up the Castro regime as a form of anti-US solidarity. After Chavez died, under Maduro, Venezuela has become an economic basket case where shortages of basic staples and power outages are the norm and where both government services and private industry have nearly ground to a halt (in a country with one of the world’s largest oil reserves). In Venezuela and elsewhere there was a conspicuous lack of foresight or public planning. Few sovereign wealth funds were created to save during times of plenty for the inevitable lean times that come with the boom and bust cycles of the commodities trade. Once the lean times came, the response of the neo-socialist Left was to blame anyone but themselves and to grab as much of the dwindling public reserves for their own benefit.

In some cases, the actions of disloyal oppositions and foreign powers hastened the authoritarian response and increased self-enrichment of Leftist leaders. This was very much true in Venezuela. In other cases the sheer weight of historical patterns of political patronage and private nepotism wore down the resolve of Left politicians to resist the temptation to do things “as usual.” That was and is the case of Brazil. In Chile the strength of the military-business network has impeded anything but incremental reform by the most determined Left governments. In some cases (Bolivia and Ecuador) long tenures in power slowly insulated Left governments from the masses and allowed for the development of cultures of impunity in which public officials were no longer responsive to the commonweal and instead focused on maintaining themselves in power. In virtually all cases, again with the exceptions of Chile and Uruguay, public officials treated national treasuries as individual and collective ATMs.

In some countries Left governments have been electorally replaced by Right ones (Argentina and Peru). In Brazil the Left PT government has crumbled under the weight of corruption scandals and succumbed to what amounted to a constitutional coup carried out by no less corrupt right-wingers. In several others such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, the Left continues to rule, however sclerotically and increasingly autocratically. In Chile the Concertacion government of Michelle Bachelet that preceded and replaced the one-term Right government of Sebastian Pinera is more establishment-friendly centrist than anything else (because it has to be in order to keep the coup plotters at bay). Only in Uruguay has the Left, in the form of the Frente Amplio governments of Tabare Vazquez and Jose Mujica, been true to its socialist and democratic principles.

This is just an broad overview. The extent of mismanagement, incompetence, ineptitude and outright criminality undertaken by the neo-socialist Left when governing in Latin American during the last decade and a half has been astounding. The hard truth is that the Latin American Left had its golden windows of opportunity in the 2000s and with some notable exceptions squandered it all.

In a sense, that is a fate they share with Fidel. Had he passed from the scene in the 80s or even 90s he would still be revered in many progressive circles. But he has lingered too long, well after the contradictions and frailty of his revolution have been exposed. In fact, an entire generation of Cubans have been raised in the “special times” of austerity and deprivation that have marked the last 25 years of Communist rule in Cuba and which has forced his brother to open the national economy and seek rapprochement with the US. This has made that generation much less committed to revolutionary ideals and much more committed to materially improving themselves. As an old friend said to me upon returning from Cuba: “Ideology goes out the window when you are hungry.”

Worse yet, it now appears true that Fidel was less a committed revolutionary as he was a Cuban nationalist who used the context of the Cold War to bolster his rule and burnish his credentials as a committed internationalist. Mutatis mutandis, that is a trait shared by many neo-socialists of the Pink Tide: they were and are socialists more in name than in deed, and are more interested in enshrining their rule than in truly re-making their countries into viable socialist (or social democratic) societies in which political power is exercised by the people for the people. Revolutionary rhetoric is no substitute for revolutionary praxis and is a poor cover for political and economic mismanagement.

I say this with much regret. One never expects the Latin American Right (or pretty much any Right) to do anything other than enrich themselves and their cronies. But one certainly expects that self-professed socialists will behave differently, especially more fairly and less venally, when in power. Many people, myself included, wanted to believe in the promise of the Pink Tide just as we previously wanted to believe in the transformational impact of the Cuban Revolution. And yet, like the neo-liberals before them, the majority of Pink Tide neo-socialists have been exposed as charlatans, thieves and frauds.

On those grounds Fidel has one thing over them. He may not have accomplished all of the things that he promised that he would, and his “revolution” may have been much less than he promised and more dependent than he admits, but at least he has remained true to himself in his declining years. That cannot be said for the likes of the Boliviarians and their erstwhile regional comrades.

That is why I felt sadness when I watched his birthday celebrations. In the autumn of his life, el Comandante is condemned to the unique solitude that goes with being the last of his kind.

PS: Looks like I am not the only one who thinks that the Pink Tide failed to deliver on its promise (although this author puts a more positive and hopeful spin on things).

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No Hard Feelings?

Sources in the US Navy have revealed that it will send an Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer to the RNZN 75th anniversary celebrations in November. The details of the participating ship have been sent to the New Zealand government but have not yet been released. However, I have it on good information that the ship will likely be the USS William P. Lawrence (DDG110). It is part of Pacific based Destroyer Squadron 21 and home ported at Naval Station San Diego. It is a relatively new ship, having been launched in 2009, christened in 2010 and entered into service in 2013.

Arleigh Burke class destroyers are gas turbine propelled and under peacetime conditions carry no nuclear munitions. So whether it is the USS Lawrence or a sister ship, the requirement that the visiting US grey hull be neither nuclear propelled or armed will have been met.

If indeed it is the ship being sent, the USS Lawrence has an interesting recent history. In May 2016 it participated in the freedom of navigation exercises the US Navy conducted in and around the Fiery Cross Reef in the disputed territories of the South China Sea that China has been building a reclaimed island upon. It has also conducted anti-poaching patrols and fisheries inspections in the Western Pacific in conjunction with local and regional fisheries agencies as well as the US Coast Guard, and undertook a recent port of call in Suva, Fiji. It most recently participated in the 30-nation Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises off of Hawai’i. In its present deployment it serves as something akin to a regional USN “guard ship” for the Southwestern Pacific. It even has its own Facebook page.

Readers will know that I publicly suggested that the US send the USS Mercy, a hospital ship home ported at Pearl Harbour. My reasoning was that the hospital ship could symbolise the humanitarian side of US naval operations (something that is a core mission of the RNZN) and could even do stop-overs in island states on the way to and from Auckland in order to offer check ups and exams, vaccinations and other medical assistance to disadvantaged Pacifika populations. Sending a hospital ship would be good PR for the US Navy and would also help defuse some of the opposition to the visit because it would look pretty silly for an activist flotilla to try and block an unarmed humanitarian vessel when other nation’s gunships received no such hostile welcome.

But no. That would be too much to ask of the US Navy. Instead, what they are sending is a ship of the destroyer class that succeeded the class of which the USS Buchanan (DDG-14) was part. In 1985 the USS Buchanan had pretty much the same role that the USS Lawrence does today. So after all of these years of acrimony, the US Navy has decided to send NZ the same, updated version of the boat that it tried to send in 1985.

Symbolism, much?

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I Wanna Be Dirty: James Shaw and Greens

I write this only partially tongue in cheek and my original title was going to be a reference to a Kermit the Frog song*

A final piece of the puzzle fell into place this week with the announcement in the paper that Andrew Campbell, the Green party chief of staff, was leaving to allow “some fresh ideas and new legs” to take over in his role.

The funny thing was that he had been in the job less than a year after replacing Ken Spagnolo, the previous chief of staff for over eight years, in a direct move by co-leader James Shaw, to bring in new blood and ideas in preparation for the expected 2017 election (and probably clear the decks of any not down with Shaw’s new business friendly approach to the environment).

But that comment flies in the face of co-leader Metiria Turei’s statement about Andrew wanting to leave after the 2014 election but agreeing to stay on to help Shaw settle into the role. Has James settled in yet? If so why is Campbell the third senior party staffer to leave in short order? Coms and Policy Director David Cormack (a person some believe to be the actual brains behind the Greens) and Chief Press Secretary Leah Haines both immediately preceded him.

Personality conflicts in politics are not new and party staff generally know not to contradict the leader but when key staff are either removed (as in the case of Spagnolo) or leaving in droves (as with the other three) it takes more than claims of “coincidence” to assuage the growing feeling that something is not right in the good ship Green.

The obvious cause is new male co-leader James Shaw himself, who with his corporate background with HSBC (the money launderers bank of choice) and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (an organisation with so many scandals attached to its name I will not relate them here but encourage any who are interested to have a dig themselves) seems an extremely unusual choice for a party whose charter explicitly states “unlimited material growth is impossible” in two of its four articles.

Shaw won the co-leadership showdown in mid-2015 when Russell Norman moved off to greener pastures (pun intended) to work for Greenpeace NZ. An impressive feat for a first term MP and one, at least in my mind, had shades of the Brash Coup run on National in the 2000’s about it.

Shaw himself is pro-market and believes that it can be reformed to be sustainable, which is a laudable sentiment for a member of the young Nats but not in a party like the Greens. These kind of ideas, Shaw’s background and the recent statements from the party about doing and end run around Labour to work with National on some issues show that the Greens of the past may soon be replaced by the “Greens” of the future.

But perhaps it’s just my paranoia that I see all of these things as being connected, perhaps it’s just me, but somehow I don’t think so as various other in the blog sphere have also noted these changes and the fact that it warranted mention in the mainstream media leads me to think that we are on the cusp of a major change in the Greens.

In my previous “analyses” of Labour, National and NZ First I focused mostly on the failings of the past to illustrate the potential/possible issues in the future but in the case of the Greens I can’t do that.

The Greens currently stand alone in NZ politics as being an actual party of virtue in a parliament full of corruption, incompetence, nepotism and just plain criminality. They are a party which has a genuine political agenda which it has been willing to stand up for, which is why almost every other party in parliament hates them and why several sections of government keep their eye on them.

If any political party has ever been under watch by the SIS; monitored by the GCSB, infiltrated by the SIG, loathed by the Police and hated by Labour it’s the Greens. It’s a party which grew from the Values party in 1972, lived through the tumultuous years of the Alliance in the 90s before going it alone in the 2000s. This is a party that has explicitly argued for the removal of the Security Services as they currently are and our exit from the Five Eyes agreement as well as being an active and persistent thorn in the side of any government which doesn’t prioritize the environment or fails the social contract (Gareth Hughes blistering rebuttal to John Key’s recent parliament commencement speech is a fine example of this).

The Greens are a party which has taken the moral high ground from Labour in the wake of the leadership squabbles after Helen Clark departed (although some say Labour just gave it up when they started the reforms of 1984) and has wielded it ever since, using it like a magic cloak to deflect any criticisms.

And there have been criticisms aplenty over the years from the usual pat dismissals by politicians of their policy or position (often with no actual substance to back up why they don’t agree with them) to the all but outright taunts of being “governmental virgins” to the “bloody hippie tree hugger” comments which spew forth from many regular Kiwis when asked about the Green party or their policies. And that’s not even discussing the hate Labour has for the Greens.

If John Key could have all dissenting views in parliament rounded up and shipped off to a re-education “resort” the Greens would certainly be on that list but it would be “just business, nothing personal” to him. And, with only a small sprinkling of fantasy dust could one imagine members of the Greens and National meeting for a beer in Pickwicks after a “hard day” in the debating chamber. One could not imagine such a picture between the Greens and Labour no matter how much magic dust was going round.

If Labour could have all Greens rounded up it would not be “re-education” that they would receive but low altitude skydiving lessons from Air Force helicopters sans parachute out over Cook Straight at night, if it is business with National its personal with Labour.

The Greens owe a large part of their vote base to disgruntled Labour voters and Labour knows it. Labour has treated the Greens like vassals from the earliest days and given their position on the political spectrum expected them to back Labour no matter what (which is why the Greens extension of the hand of friendship to National, even on minor issues has further enraged Labour and provided a pragmatic, but also very dangerous, way to cut through the Gordian knot of being to the left of looser Labour on the political spectrum.

Worse still, the Greens are almost certainly going to gain at the polls as the 2017 election approaches (current polls have them riding high along with NZ First while Labour sags to 26% and National slips closer to 40%) and have proven to have no concern about exposing Labours (and specifically Helen Clark’s) hypocrisy (as its widely believed that they were responsible for the leaks that led to Seeds of Distrust; Nicky Hagar’s expose of Labours cover up of GE contamination in NZ) to get votes.

So in dissecting the Green party at this current time it’s not the past to which I am concerned but the future and to put it simply it looks like the Greens are about to (take a deep breath and say it with me) compromise. In daily use compromise is not a bad term but in politics it almost always means abandoning your principles to reach a short term expediency at the cost of both your long term supporters and policy goals.

For parties like National and Labour compromise (also known as sitting on the fence, seeing which way the wind blows and “flip flopping”) is easy as both have no morals and long since abandoned their core principles in pursuit of power for individual party members and rabid accommodation of whatever orthodoxy is being touted at the time but for the Greens this will not be so easy.

To begin with the Greens capture of the moral high ground is a strategic part of their appeal. They can take positions and advocate issues which would get other parties in hot water; lambaste the government of the day and catch the wind of popular but politically problematic issues (like the TPPA) only because they have this high ground, without it they would be another fringe party which would get whipped senseless with their own past faults and misdeeds if they dared to speak out. Truly they are the hand which can cast the first stone.

Another is that while Shaw himself may be a champagne environmentalist (the 21st century equivalent of Labours champagne socialists) many of the core rank and file are not. Every new voter to the Greens that is merely running from the nitwit antics in Labour will run straight back if either Labour shapes up and flies right (geddit?) or the “sustainable” future Shaw is presenting doesn’t allow people to continue to live their lives under the economic and social model they are accustomed to (for example if rising sea levels did actually require we give up driving cars and banning dairy farms). The core supporters of the greens will likely support the policy measures which reflect the party’s charter but angry voters seeking revenge on Labour or National by voting Green will not.

So the Greens are now at a crucial juncture and with the 2017 election approaching its clear that the Green brain trust has decided get into the game and dispense of the one thing that holds them back which is (pardon my French) governmental virginity. By taking the sandals off, combing the dreadlocks out and with a nice suit or sweater/skinny jeans combo from Hallensteins the Greens will be ready to go to the 2017 Ball and get their cherry popped by that nice Jewish boy from Christchurch or any other potential suitor (perhaps even giving a second chance to that boy next door after his previous sweaty fumbling’s and cloddish behavior).

But there are a few problems with this scenario and Shaw would do well to heed the lessons of history when it comes to playing with fire. The fate of the Lib Dems in the UK, the Maori Party and NZ First should serve as warnings to any minor party leader willing to put short term expediency ahead of long term progress.

Of the three the fate of the Lib Dems is probably the more pertinent. They spent 20 years building up a respectable position in UK politics, under a FPPs system no less, getting 20% of the vote and seats in the house only to piss it all away when in 2010 they supported the Tories in a hung parliament and began to abandon their core principles (as well as break a few key election promises). The voters, predictably, did not like this new direction and the party was slaughtered at the polls in 2015.

In retrospect it probably looked like a bad move to the Lib Dems, but only in retrospect. To everyone else it was clear from the get go that it was a bone headed move and a clear sell out.

Closer to home Winston Peters brainless stunt in 1996 (discussed in my earlier post) and the Maori Parties deal with the devil in 2008 saw both suffer for letting their leadership sell out the voters for a seat at the cabinet table.

It would be unfair though to pin all the blame on Shaw though. He was elected through the Greens relatively fair leadership selection process (one not as convoluted as Labours or as secretive as Nationals) so it appears that he is not the only Champagne environmentalist in the Greens and perhaps many in the party itself want to stop being the wallflower of NZ politics and run naked through the streets singing “Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch Me!”

If this is the case then James Shaw and Metiria Turei are the Brad and Janet of NZ politics while Key is Frank N Furter (with possibly Winston as Riff Raff, Andrew Little as Dr Scott and yours truly as the Narrator). I will leave you to fill in the rest of the cast roles as you see fit.

But the puzzle I referred to at the start of this post has not yet been solved but I think the picture is becoming clearer. If we discount the “coincidence” argument in favour of a more holistic approach we see that new leadership with new ideas, mass changes in key staff and indications of attempts to exit the political corner that the Greens have painted themselves into shows a party on the cusp of a major political shift, a party that is smelling the winds of change and planning to take full advantage of them.

The dangers of this course of action are not always clear and while I personally don’t subscribe to the following rumors (at least not yet) I feel they are worth mention here just to add some zest to an otherwise dull analysis and to indicate just how problematic the issue is.

They are: a) Shaw is a corporate Trojan horse (ala Don Brash in both the National and ACT coups); b) Shaw is an agent provocateur in the pay of the security services (not so astounding once you realize that it’s a known fact that the security services have had paid informants in environmental groups since the 90s; or  c) the Greens have a serious case of political blue balls and are now prepared to do anything (and I mean “anything”) to get into power (this one could be answered a lot easier if we knew who exactly is funding the Greens, not something I have had time to do yet but if anyone wants to let me know I would be grateful).

But at the end of the day the Greens are still a party which is currently fighting the good fight and with an entirely justified moral stance and matching policy prescriptions. When you match up any doubts about the party with the generally disgusting and loathsome behavior of the rest of the rabble in parliament a few potential worries about their direction pale into significance. Only time will tell if it stays that way.

* Its Not Easy Being Green/Bein’ Green.

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Idle chatter.

Last year I wrote a series of posts outlining what in my view were the reasons the NZ Left was in major if not terminal decline. The posts began before and concluded after the 2014 election and can be found in chronological order here, here and here. There were plenty of people who disagreed with my take on things, with the most vocal detractor being that doyenne of the NZ Left, Chris Trotter. The second of my posts answered his original critique (link to his critique in the post) and he followed up some time later with another post in which he takes me to task for saying that the Left should not resort to Dirty Politics style tactics in order to prevail. He chided me for my idealism and noted that he dealt in pragmatics and pragmatism dictated that the Left should play dirty if it was to defeat the forces of darkness now reigning triumphant in this land.

Given that I have a fair bit of past practical experience with direct action politics, albeit not in NZ, I found the charge of idealism a bit odd. Given what he said previously about the Left’s continued viability and strength, even odder was Chris’s admission that Dirty Politics works and needs to be used by the Left if it is to succeed in the contemporary political arena. If the NZ Left were truly viable would it need to resort to playing dirty? I thought that was the province of pro-capitalist parties whose policies hurt the masses and have little popular appeal due to their elite focus.

Be that as it may, imagine then my surprise when I read this from the redoubtable Mr. Trotter. Therein Chris draws the parallel between the “clever and artistic” denizens of cabaret society in the Weimer Republic and what Dave Brown (in a comment on the post) pointedly calls the “chatterati” assembled to watch a panel discussion of media types–not all of them of the Left–gathered at a restaurant part owned by Laila Harre in order to to lament the demise of Campbell Live. Beyond noting that a well placed bomb would have eliminated the “cream” of Auckland’s chattering Left, he goes on to note the distance between them and the “very different New Zealand” that exists outside of Ms. Harre’s fine dining establishment and whose TV viewing preferences may not be akin to those sipping chardonnay’s inside. His tone is implicitly insulting of those he broke bread with as the media commentators opined about Mr. Campbell, other talking heads, themselves and the state of the NZ media landscape.

Now, I am not one to gleefully point out contradictions or reversals by others, such as that done by some Left commentators on the subject of the Urewera Raids. And I must confess that I am little more than a chatterer myself these days. But given the thrust of Chris’s latest post in light of what he has said before about the NZ Left, I have just one question to ask:

Is he still steering by the real?

Because if he is, then it appears that he has joined my side of the argument about the NZ Left and for that I salute him. Belated as it may be, it was time to wise up.

The issue now is how to move beyond the parlour talk of the chattering Left and into organizing a counter-hegemonic project grounded in effective praxis.  As I have said before that is a very big task and needs to be oriented around a discernible class line. The UNITE union is a small beacon of hope in this regard, but there is much more that needs to be done if anything remotely close to a Left resurgence is to translate into contestable politics. Labour and the Greens are too committed to centrist politics and working within the system as given to be anything other than reformists and passive revolutionaries. Real change can only come from the grassroots and rank and file, and those need to be cultivated via ideological appeals that feel immediate and achievable and which transcend the diversionary rubbish pushed by popular culture, corporate media and a government hell bent on dumbing down the quality of political and social discourse.

What is needed, in other words, is a legitimate war of position, however incremental it may have to be fought.

That is something the chattering Left simply cannot do.