AGL

There has been a curious kind of marriage or philosophical coincidence between the discourse of the end of history, put forward by liberal currents in the 1980s, and certain leftist or progressive currents who have spoken of the end of the progressive cycle in Latin America.

I say “coincide” because they share a teleological view of history, as if based on laws that stand above human action. Yet the evidence of history is that it does not move according to laws, and there can be no teleological philosophy of history without contingency. History always also includes the novel, the unpredictable, the sense of possibility.

Hence even when some people were already repeating that the left-wing cycle was over and that a new conservative era was on its way, there came the victories in Mexico. So they said that even this was just the last hurrah of the progressive cycle. But then came Argentina, and we may expect victories in Bolivia and Uruguay, too.

What these fantasy readings do not understand is that historical processes do not move through cycles, by way of “laws” independent of human action, but rather in tides. Collective actions and social struggles arise in tides — they arrive, they advance, they make ground, conquer, reach a limit, stop, retreat, but then they can come back again to drive a fresh tide and then another one.

I believe that we are seeing a fresh tide of progressive processes in a world and a Latin America which are looking for alternatives to inequality, misery, and exploitation. We should see that concretized later in October.

The second aspect of this reading is that it conceives of conservative victories — this return of neoliberalism — as the beginning of a long cycle that could last for ten or twenty years. Yet that is not how things really are.

The big problem of this neoliberalism 2.0 is that it is not a project for society but, above all, a kind of revenge, an attitude of settling accounts. It is not about enthusing people but rather agitating people’s harshened emotions in order to offer easy scapegoats for their problems. Yet this is thin gruel.

It is not possible to build a lasting hegemony — a moral tolerance of the governing by the governed — on the basis of hatred and resentment alone. So this neoliberalism 2.0 has very limited possibilities, for it has not created a new proposal for society and how we should live.

That’s what it did in the 1980s — and that was its strength. While others sought to conserve what already existed, the neoliberals said, “We’re going to change the world, with free enterprise, globalization, the free market economy, and free trade deals.” This was a proposal for life, for society, which captured the enthusiasm, the agreement, and the active support of subaltern sectors of the popular classes. But today the neoliberals are not doing that.

Moreover, this neoliberalism 2.0 emerged in a moment in which the whole world is seeing a collapse in the belief in the end of history — a belief based on the neoliberal precepts of Britain and the United States. Thirty years ago they were the champions of free trade but today they are protectionists while China, with its one-party state and planned economy, is the standard-bearer of free trade.

The communists have become free-traders, and the champions of the free market and liberal democracy have turned into protectionists — everything is upside down. So the neoliberal offer and its models are not attractive. If the United States and Britain were once used as the horizon we ought to chase, now they are rather more against the current.

In this scenario of generalized chaos and the collapse of the neoliberal, pro-globalization narrative, the neoliberal projects developing in certain countries no longer have the same sparkle, the strength, the sense of conviction, or the all-encompassing that they once did — and nor are they firing people’s enthusiasm.

They may last for years in order to settle accounts, so that the upper classes can take revenge on the middle or popular classes. But they cannot attract the collective spirit of society in any enduring way. They are short-term projects, and sooner rather than later they will be confronted by new waves of popular discontent, for what they are creating is rising poverty.