Opinion In Latin America,left vs left
Chavez flagged the moderate-radical divide,the argument carries on
Hugo Chavez has passed away,leaving Venezuela facing an uncertain future and potential for sharper division as both his movement and his opposition bid for ascendancy. Chavez dominated state and society a sharply polarising figure producing intense disputes about both him and his governing project. Even in death,he has left a legacy of disagreement. For example,former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva eulogised him as an unparalleled champion of the poor. Tariq Ali dismissed any criticism of Chavez as stemming from corrupt elites in the grip of Washington. Yet The Guardians Rory Carroll critiqued Chavez as an incompetent manager. He spoke of the countrys collapsing infrastructure,a formal economy disappearing into nothingness,rampant corruption around the myriad programmes to dispense the countrys only source of revenue: oil exports.
The two versions of Chavez will probably never be reconciled. Looking at it from a critical distance,it is hard to understand how anybody can excuse him for the economic mess that Venezuela has become or deny that he centralised power and limited the capacity of the opposition to compete openly. At the same time,it is also true that Chavezs angry politics of polarisation targeted another obvious problem afflicting Latin America: the gross disparities in wealth,income and political rights across the region. These two sides of Chavez,the voice of the disadvantaged and the feckless manager of the countrys political economy,capture the fundamental dilemma of the region: do you work to improve social,economic and political conditions from within the system,or do you break it to attack the root causes of injustice?
This fundamental choice has expressed itself over the 15-odd years since Chavez first won office. By 2009,leftist governments governed over 60 per cent of Latin Americans,but this was not a monolithic trend. Two distinct tendencies appeared to be taking hold. Observers and scholars used different criteria to distinguish between these two lefts. They all boiled down,however,to a more radical left,exemplified by Venezuela,but including at least Bolivia,Ecuador and increasingly Argentina,and a more moderate left,exemplified by Brazil,but including at least Chile and Uruguay.
The more radical left embraced the tenet that true social justice could only come from a concerted attack on the political and economic system. What followed varied across countries,but it included re-nationalisations,changes to property rights,state intervention,hostility to foreign investment (and open hostility to the US),large-scale social programmes financed by natural resource exports (mainly energy),and fundamental changes to the political system designed,ostensibly,to weaken elite influence. The more moderate left favoured working within the existing political structure and therefore negotiating with political elites. Indeed,the economic model that emerged from the moderate left was one that offered capitalism with a human face. States continued to play a role in the economy,but greatly reduced and more in concert with or supporting of the market. In keeping with this approach,moderate leftist governments developed social policies that targeted the poor in ways that were meant to be technocratic rather than political,and financially sustainable rather than dependent on potentially volatile energy prices and revenues.
The evidence to date suggests that the moderates have outperformed the radicals. Chavezs supporters point to the reduction in poverty in Venezuela,but poverty has fallen throughout the region since the early 2000s,driven by the high rates of growth from the commodity boom over the period. In fact,analysis by leading poverty experts suggests that poverty has fallen less in Venezuela than it should have,given the favourable external environment. Moreover,poverty and inequality have fallen farther and faster in countries governed by the moderate left than those governed by the radical left or the right. The moderate lefts social programmes have done more to build human capital for the longer term than the many inefficient and largely ineffective misiones introduced by Chavez. Even some of Chavezs defenders acknowledge that the benefits of these programmes have been primarily political expanding the sense of access and participation among poorer classes.
In political terms,the moderate left has offered slow,steady gains in the quality of representation and governance. Uruguays strong party system works relatively well to transmit the concerns of the populace. Brazils increasingly organised civil society expresses itself through a variety of mechanisms of representation and deliberation. For critics on the left,these gains have not effected a real transformation. For all of Brazils successes,it remains an unequal society with profound shortcomings in its health and education system. Even its economic performance moderate,not spectacular rests on a large-scale and potentially unsustainable extension of consumer credit.
Hugo Chavez is gone. While alive,he was the embodiment of an intense dispute over the best means of achieving prosperity with some measure of equity. Now he will likely join the pantheon of figures evoked to stoke the flames of disagreement. For the defenders of liberal democracy and capitalism,Chavez is the poster child for fiery rhetoric covering economic mismanagement and authoritarian tendencies. For those who believe that slow,incremental and possibly fragile gains are not enough,Chavez,like Che,will be the rallying cry for radical reform of the system.
The writer is professor and co-director,International Development Institute,Kings College London,express@expressindia.com
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