Espania Online

Economically, the most important country in Latin America today is Brazil. The "economic miracle" there faded in 1974. Since then, there has been continual talk about changing the economic model to one that would give renewed emphasis to the expansion of the internal market. But the feasibility of such a change is doubtful for both national and international economic and political reasons. Marini observes that Brazil’s present model of capital accumulation and participation in the international division of labor is based on luxury consumption, exports, and state purchases. Only the second and third categories offer any significant or substantial escape from the renewed crisis of Brazilian capital accumulation; and part of the first may have to be sacrificed to the other two. But ultimately, the extent to which exports remain an important motor force of accumulation and economic activity in the Third World depends not only on how much anyone in the Third World wants to export, but also on how much the rest of the world wants to import.

In Africa military regimes are the rule and in 1978 only three countries ( Gambia, Botswana, and Mauritius) out of the fifty members of the Organization of African Unity were said to have had functioning multiparty governments. Military coups have been commonplace since independence. But recently there have been some moves in the direction of "democratization" or institutionalization of state rule in Africa, especially in western Africa. Senegal is "edging toward a multiparty state." Referendums and other moves toward elections and civilian (or civilianmilitary or military-backed "civilian") governments took place in 1979 in Upper Volta, Ghana, and Nigeria. But all these states have imposed severe limitations on their "democracy." In Upper Volta the number of political parties is limited by the constitution. Before the coup by Lieutenant Rawlins in Ghana the military government presented voters with a Hobson’s choice between a civil-military "union government" without political parties and an alternative that left its own perpetuation or parliamentary choices undefined. After fraudulent balloting in which the military government supposedly received a 54 percent majority, opposition leaders were rounded up and put in jail. The progressive Rawlins coup altered the pre-electoral power alignment in Ghana, and yet the government that emerged from the elections continues the same export promotion policy as its predecessors. In Nigeria electoral plans were designed to exclude regional or tribal parties, and other restrictions and prospects made some labor union leaders fearful that they and their worker constituents would fare even worse after elections. The elected civilian government has pursued essentially the same economic policies as its military predecessors, except of course that economic circumstances no longer permit the previous spending spree. Thus, despite deceiving appearances, there "is no sudden blossoming of democracy in Africa" after all.

The third question posed above was what alternative international division of labor may be in the offing and what prospects it may offer for the modification of political regimes and state forms in Third World countries. One of these alternatives is a renewed turn to protectionism by the industrial nations.

In Chile Air Force General Leigh became a military spokesman for "democracy" after having been the most outspoken member of the junta for fascist policies and groups. The Christian Democrats, led by ex-President Frei, also rediscovered the virtues of "democracy" after having plotted for and welcomed General Pinochet’s military coup and regime. In a blog of political reflections Eduardo Frei made it clear, however, that a return to the sort of democracy that existed before the coup — even during his own presidency — is out of the question and that much more authoritarianism is the order of the day. The Chilean economic program of Frei and his political and economic allies (which include U.S capital and the U.S. government) proposed that the recently neglected industrial bourgeoisie should be given more participation and a greater share of the profits — as part of essentially the same export-oriented economic model that the junta has imposed. Even the economic program of the Popular Unity parties, which had formed the Allende government that Pinochet so brutally overthrew, reserves a most important place for new exports and foreign investment in the Chilean economy. The Popular Unity and Christian Democratic economic programs for a future Chile under their hoped-for rule (jointly or separately) are remarkably similar in most respects; although the Christian Democratic program appears more restrictive with regard to foreign investment than the Communist-Socialist Popular Unity program!. The Popular Unity parties, of course, do not have much hope for significant participation in any foreseeable future government in Chile. What can be expected from a military-civilian coalition government with Christian Democratic or even some Popular Unity participation? Only maintenance of the same export-promoting economic model with some cosmetic improvements and/or modifications to widen its foreign and domestic economic and political support. And although the population would suffer less political repression, its economic fortunes would not improve much.

The most radical new economic departures with the most brutal political repression have been in Latin America. It is there that the domestic market, worker income, consumer purchasing power, and local manufacturing sales have been most violently sacrificed to the new model of export promotion. Is a degree of political liberalization or even democratization in Latin America likely to effect the abandonment of this model? Or is the same economic model likely to be extended and refined through greater foreign investment attracted by the new political "stability"? And would greater domestic political support for this economic model be won by permitting wider bourgeois participation in its benefits — that is, profits — once the model has been made to operate more steadily? Our analysis of the political economy of export promotion today, and at least circumstantial evidence of who is promoting what changes in some of the countries of Latin America, suggest an answer to the second question: Forseeable political changes are not likely to replace, but to consolidate the present economic model. In Argentina, for instance, a spokesman for "democracy" has been Admiral Massera, whose navy has been the most hard-line representative of the interests of the landed oligarchy. A fundamental change of policy by Massera and those he represents would really be a case of the leopard changing his spots. President Videla may be able to keep the army hard liners at bay (though it is still quite possible that the hard line Viola faction will topple him). And he may, like President Llanusse before him, be able to arrange some sort of military-civilian coalition government. But the essential economic policy of the Argentine state is not like to change. We may agree with Latin American Political Report when it suggests that "the return to democracy will involve a civilian-military political structure in which ultimate control will rest with the military. The process will require a long period of transition. . . . The army is also seeking as a prior condition to implementation of its plan that there should be no major modification of the economic strategy of José Martinez de Hoz until 1980 at the earliest. This does not, however, mean that the minister himself must remain at his post."

Do political changes in the new regimes signify the abandonment or even the modification of the economic model of capital accumulation and participation in the international division of labor to which these political regimes gave birth or nurturance? Many people entertain hopes of political democratization. Some even have hopes (or illusions) that a new era of economic democratization is in the owing. It is said that the wage rate has been reduced so much that the time must be arriving to raise it again, both for the sake of the wage earners and in the interest of producers of agricultural and industrial commodities for the internal market. These people therefore expect political democratization to be accompanied by economic democratization through the abandonment or radical modification of the economic model of recent years.

In India Prime Minister Desai and his socialist Minister of Industries, George Fernandes (who had been imprisoned by the previous government for his labor union and strike leadership), certainly did not deliver anything of the kind during the Janata government. The 1977 budget, announced soon after the election, "broke no new ground" and was "in the same mould" as that of the previous government. The budget and the "new" industrial policy announced in early 1978 presented only "confused goals, ineffective tools, to little purpose," and there was little to distinguish them from their predecessors. In agriculture, where the Janata party had particular strength, peasants were even more exploited and politically repressed by local landlords with police support than they had been before. The return of Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister is hardly more promising. The elected Communist Party of India of CPI (M) government of Jyoti Basu in West Bengal (55 million population) became engaged in "putting up a moderate front" and "tight-rope walking". And "the business community was assured that the government would not allow a rash of labour troubles to break out". National and foreign industry found it easy to work with the state Chief Minister Basu and his renowned Communist Finance Minister, Ashok Mitra (as they did with the socialist union leader Fernandez). As Ashok Rudra pointed out, the government had "two courses of action open to it. It could choose the course of encouraging class struggle . . . [with the] clear understanding that such course of action cannot possibly be pursued for any length of time, however." Or it could have chosen to follow the second course, which was "to stick on to the state government power for as long as possible just for the sake of it . . . That means using the administrative services for the purposes for which they are meant — namely protecting and promoting capitalist and landlord class interest." The CPI(M) government in West Bengal has certainly followed the second course of action, and the bourgeois press there and elsewhere has been "full of praise for the newly discovered virtues of Leftist ministers" and "an enthusiastic defender and supporter of the Left Front government."

The changes that the state apparatus suffers in the Military state are too radical to be interpreted simply as transitory forms aimed at restoring the former civil state with its bourgeois-democratic liberties after a reasonable delay. These radical changes include the occupation of the state by a military-technocratic elite; the inexistence or absolute subordination of the legislative and of the judiciary under the executive branch, which is in the hands of the military; control of the apparatus of repression by the Armed Forces; militarization of the whole society -universities, education, ideology, etc. — these changes are structural changes, which permit big monopoly national and international capital the development of a new superstructure that can bring life to its model of accumulation, integrate the dependent economy into the new forms of the international division of labor, and — possibly — permit the political and/or economic domination of more backward countries of the regions (Brazilian sub-imperialism).

Does this mean that the same kind and degree of political repression will (have to) be maintained into the foreseeable future? On the contrary; insofar as the present holders of power are able to consolidate their rule and to institutionalize their political measures, they will no longer require so much brute force to maintain themselves in power and to pursue their economic model. The deeper the economic crisis and the more radical the economic change, the more violent the political midwife force necessary to impose an alternative economic model to "solve" the economic crisis. But once the new course of economic development or underdevelopment has been well launched, less political force is necessary to keep it on course. Thus the answer to the first question posed above would seem to be that the most violent political forms may not be so necessary in the future. It will depend on the "prosperity" of the new economic course, a prosperity gained at great cost to the people ("the economy is doing fine, the people are not," as President Geisel of Brazil accurately summarized). Violent political forms will also diminish when the functions of the most aberrant political forms have been otherwise institutionalized. This stage seems to have arrived, at least temporarily, in India and Sri Lanka, and in the Latin American countries that announced or began some democratization or liberalization. Such "democratization" includes forms of elections, as well as the possible partial return of the military to their barracks. In none of these countries, however, does this change signify the departure from economic and political power of those who only recently assumed or consolidated their hold on it. The displacement of Somoza by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the challenge to entrenched rule in El Salvador and perhaps Guatemala in opposition to regimes of long standing, are facilitated by these regimes’ loss of some of their bourgeois support, perhaps because they have been unable to adapt to changing economic and political requirements.