“Utopia is on the horizon. I walk two steps, it moves two steps away and the horizon runs ten steps further. So, what is utopia for? That’s what it’s for, it’s for walking.
This famous phrase, popularised by Eduardo Galeano, has its origin in the answer given by the Argentinian filmmaker Fernando Birri on the occasion of a conference they both gave in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, when a student asked him what utopia was for.
No change is possible without the mobilising force of a felt image, that of a desirable and possible future towards which the shortcomings of the present can be directed. Such is the power of utopias, which help to create projects of collective happiness through action, turning the indignation and resentment provoked by injustice in a positive direction.
It is precisely for this reason that the right-wing targets utopias as a favourite target. Without them, the people would languish in tragic impotence.
The people towards the increase of their real power
There are no “perfect” governments. The very notion of “governing” – and its inseparable counterpart, that of being governed – entails a share of loss of personal and collective autonomy. In order to avoid misunderstandings, the idea that animates these lines is not that of the Hobbesian Leviathan and much less those of its barely refurbished followers, the “libertarians”, tributaries of the Tea Party, a faction of the US Republican Party driven by corporate billionaires like the Koch brothers and whose schemes refer to the neoliberalism of Hajek and the Austrian School of economic thought. Schemes that of course try to avoid at all costs the taxation of the extracted social surplus value, taking (in)justice into their own hands through tax evasion and avoidance and taking advantage of the state itself to increase their astronomical wealth.
On the contrary, the author of this note adheres to a societal ideal of solidarity-based autonomy, federative decentralisation, self-government, in short, participatory democracy and popular power. Far from being a distant utopia, the people’s rejection of centralism, the falsity of top-down politics and its betrayal of pre-electoral programmes, the growing clamour for new constitutions that guarantee direct citizen participation as a guarantee of rights, together with recent experiences such as the Zapatista caracoles, the communes in Venezuela or indigenous autonomy in Bolivia and other countries, show the growing historical relevance of this political programme.
However, the construction of historical processes makes it necessary to bear in mind the current situation, in which the dispute over institutional power plays a relative but still relevant role due to the social consequences of its orientation in one direction or another.
In relation to governments today, in order to avoid the permanent disappointment that prevents us from valuing and celebrating partial achievements in the direction of a growing humanisation of the world, and as in other spheres of life, it is necessary to recognise and separate the ideal models that guide action from the level of social and political events, which are always subject to conditions. Confusing the two and acting in reverse can lead to frustration, resentment and, ultimately, passivity.
This, which might seem a pragmatic statement in clear contradiction to the above, only reaffirms it and places utopia, without ever abandoning its horizon, in a structural framework that allows it to become viable, appreciating the resistance that stands in its way.
The difficulties of transformative governments
Any progressive or revolutionary government has to deal with countervailing drags that have their roots in two hundred years of elitist republics and five centuries of colonial and neo-colonial domination, condensed in state structures that are averse to the capacity for social transformation. It is therefore right and necessary that these governments, when they come to power legitimised by popular vocation, make it a priority to refound these outdated structures. Amongst these, the reformulation of constitutional texts containing guarantees of rights that were previously non-existent, denied or withheld from the majority of the population.
The difficulty in gaining access to this renewed social contract, the obstacles and tricky clauses established in the old constitutions, show the self-preservation characteristics of this state model, essentially at the service of the continuity of the status quo of appropriation and economic violence and not of its transformation.
On the other hand, conquering political power does not guarantee access to real decision-making power, but merely prevents this power, which is fundamentally economic, from continuing to use the institutional reins for its own benefit, while pretending to do so in favour of the common good.
As if that were not enough, accumulated deprivation and the demands of immediacy place popular governments before the imperious judgement of popular urgencies.
Hence, among other things, significant numerical accumulations of organised force (movements, coalitions, alliances of various sectors) are necessary to promote and support root-and-branch transformations.
However, when unity in diversity achieves its minimum objective (winning elections), as in the recent cases of Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, Honduras and Chile, the complexity of such pacts – in turn a product of the difficulty of achieving decisive hegemonies in unstructured societies – leads to the accumulation of internal contradictions, which are foreseeable but often unavoidable.
But the difficulties of a popular and transformative government do not end there.
A serious problem for any government that aspires to represent the majorities is the paradox of its progressive disconnection with the organised social base, as its leaders (due to the need for technical cadres, political quotas, individual aspirations for job security or social “promotion”) move into official positions.
The demands of a state that requires the activity of thousands of individuals aligned with a political project quickly collides with the need to keep the population mobilised and organised in firm demand and support for the desired changes.
On the other hand, in a context of convergence and accumulation of forces, it is logical that the different component factions claim for themselves a sub-space of power in the state, since in this region, the enormous precariousness and marginalisation generated by the capitalist system means that the state constitutes a possibility of access to formal work with a good salary, a commodity that is more than precious for the majority today.
This is even stronger when sectors long relegated from political positions gain access to a share of political power, and it is thus that in the real popular revolts, some profiteering elements see their “opportunity” arrive. The revenge of the commoners sometimes leads to cases of corruption within progressive governments, especially in societies where the immorality of previous governments, the pre-existing righteous indignation of the people against the abuse of decades of systematic corruption, and even the installation of favour and accommodation as common social practice, make a dent in the emergence of a new culture, in line and coherent with the desired transformation.
Far from being a justification, this observation – which would be anecdotal, were it not for the enormous publicity amplified by the mass media to defenestrate the public image of the transforming government – is a preventive measure to understand the need for a profound change in values to accompany the actions that modify the external landscape of societies.
Beyond this, perhaps the most serious problem of progressive or revolutionary governments is their resistance to understanding the historical dynamics that produce the emergence of new generations and sensibilities born in an environment modified (even benefited) by the previous one, and which in turn hold ideals of transformation. Without a renewal of objectives and protagonists, including these demands and favouring change, these governments inevitably become backward and anachronistic.
Division and disillusionment: the central strategy of the right-wingers
Immobilist right-wingers use all their arsenal to stop change at its roots. To do this they need to divide the forces promoting change, demobilise their militancy and undermine public support for their ideals.
In order to hinder the necessary popular unity, the groups of concentrated power tend to operate either by favouring candidates who promote their objectives in the media and financially, or by generating a myriad of acronyms that prevent solid majorities in presidential elections or in the formation of parliaments, which then act as a blocking factor in the event that the popular option gains access to the executive.
At the same time, the attachment to a psychosocial background of personalised leadership in Latin America means that the leadership of processes depends on key individuals.
Rooted in cultural habits of veneration of ancestral leaderships, and even later reinforced by the iconography of saints and patron saints of Catholicism, popular faith in transformations tends to be deposited in charismatic figures, who are therefore the target of right-wing darts aimed at taking the mystique out of rebellion.
This objective is achieved through the persecution, defamation and political proscription of those leaders who condense the transforming energy of the people.
This can be clearly seen in the cases of Lula, Correa, Cristina and Evo, among others. The cases of corruption against the leaders, or those invented or exposed in their close or distant surroundings, not only have the function of prohibiting their decisive participation, but also of lowering the militant morale of their followers or sympathisers, taking the wind out of the sails of possible changes and the demonstration effect they contain. The press paid for by capital is a first-hand tool for this purpose, because of its capacity for defamation or suspicion.
In the continuity of this tactic, in 2018, the United States government, through the OAS, its diplomatic apparatus of hemispheric domination, organised the VIII Summit of the Americas under the title “Democratic Governance against Corruption”, precisely in the former viceregal capital, Lima. The outline of this geopolitical strategy is completed with training courses and interference by the judicial and journalistic apparatus financed by various US agencies as a battering ram to put an end to any progressive or revolutionary attempt in the region.
Another conservative tactic is to divert the community’s attention to secondary issues. Whether the candidate, his wife or cousin dresses this way or that, what they say, where they dine or celebrate their birthday, what they answer or keep quiet, and so on and so forth in an endless stream of stupidities that only aim to hide the transcendent from the public eye.
Setting red lines, threatening risks, destabilising, impeding, the conservative arsenal is varied and it would be important to draw up a detailed catalogue to educate public opinion.
When all this is not enough, the respective governments are then labelled tyrannical, authoritarian or anti-democratic, and the term “regime” is used to describe them.
A strategy of transformation
As a strategic positioning in the current Latin American conjuncture, it is necessary, as we mentioned in a previous article, “to coin the necessary unity from the convergence of diversity, to prevent local and international concentrated power from using the pulleys of state institutionality for its own benefit and to the general detriment”. This is an issue that is clearly central in the upcoming legislative and presidential elections in Colombia and Brazil.
On the other hand, aware of the barrage of attacks aimed at undermining popular confidence in progressive candidates (in the aforementioned cases, Gustavo Petro and Lula da Silva), whether with the usual right-wing or left-wing arguments, or even using motifs from emancipatory causes such as feminism or care for the ecological balance, it is necessary to develop an anti-disillusionment strategy.
This strategy, the detail of which goes beyond the scope of this article, should not only contain techniques to counteract the proliferation of false accusations and insidious mentions in the media and digital networks, but also include a broad campaign to raise awareness among activists and raise public awareness of the manipulative tactics used by those in power. In the same vein, progressive programmes must adopt, even at the risk of generating greater polarisation with the media apparatus and corporate digital platforms, a determined commitment to the democratisation of communication that goes beyond the mere electoral juncture.
Consistent with the above, the design of power-sharing models in each sphere to promote multidimensional democracy must be an explicit maxim, so that the people actively participate in and identify with the transformative process.
This deconcentration of power towards decentralised entities with greater popular influence will in turn forge a counterweight to the demobilisation produced by the distance between the bureaucratisation of the leadership and the social base.
Finally, and of fundamental importance, it will be to stimulate transformation in the field of subjective values on which individual and collective existence is based, an aspect that is crucial to provide coherence and allow the changes that could be achieved on the social surface to take lasting root.
In other words, the utopia of bringing about the emergence of new women and men to accompany social change inseparably becomes an urgent mission.
