Friends, An important article by Klein, and well-timed for our Transformation thread. My comments at the end. rkm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 13:15:30 -0700 To: •••@••.••• From: Sam Lightman <sam_lightman<at>saltspring.com> Subject: Re: Transformation: re/ How deep must the scalpel go? You should be aware of this. This is what happens to "movements" the minute they get beyond the talking stage. Very instructive. -- SL ---<downloaded>--- The Nation column | Posted May 8, 2003 http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030526&s=klein LOOKOUT by Naomi Klein "Elections vs. Democracy in Argentina" THe "V" sign - in most of the world, it's the sign for peace, but here in Argentina it means war. The index and middle finger, held to form a V, means to his followers, Menem vuelve, "Menem will return". Carlos Menem, poster boy of Latin American neoliberalism, president for almost all of the 1990s, is looking to get his old job back on May 18. Menem's campaign ads show menacing pictures of unemployed workers blockading roads, with a voiceover promising to bring order, even if it means calling in the military. This strategy gave him a slim lead in the first election round, though he will almost certainly lose the runoff to an obscure Peronist governor, Nestor Kirchner, considered the puppet of current president (and Menem's former vice president) Eduardo Duhalde. On December 19 and 20, 2001, when Argentines poured into the streets banging pots and pans and telling their politicians, que se vayan todos, everyone must go, few would have predicted the current elections would come down to this: a choice between two symbols of the regime that bankrupted the country. Back then, Argentines could have been forgiven for believing that they were starting a democratic revolution, one that forced out President Fernando de la Rua and churned through three more presidents in twelve days. The target of these mass demonstrations was the corruption of democracy itself, a system that had turned voting into a hollow ritual while the real power was outsourced to the International Monetary Fund, French water companies and Spanish telecoms -- with local politicians taking their cut. Carlos Menem, though he had been out of office for two years, was the uprising's chief villain. Elected in 1989 on a populist platform, Menem did an about-face and gutted public spending, sold off the state and sent hundreds of thousands into unemployment. When Argentines rejected those policies, it was hugely significant for the globalization movement. The events of December 2001 were seen in international activist circles as the first national revolt against neoliberalism, and "You are Enron, We are Argentina" was soon adopted as a chant outside trade summits. Perhaps more important, the country seemed on the verge of answering the most persistent question posed to critics of both "free trade" and feeble representative democracies: "What is your alternative?" With all their institutions in crisis, hundreds of thousands of Argentines went back to democracy's first principles: Neighbors met on street corners and formed hundreds of popular assemblies. They created trading clubs, health clinics and community kitchens. Close to 200 abandoned factories were taken over by their workers and run as democratic cooperatives. Everywhere you looked, people were voting. These movements, though small, were dreaming big: national constituent assemblies, participatory budgets, elections to renew every post in the country. And they had broad appeal. A March 2002 newspaper poll found that half of Buenos Aires residents believed that the neighborhood assemblies will "produce a new political leadership for the country." One year later, the movements continue, but barely a trace is left of the wildly hopeful idea that they could someday run the country. Instead, the protagonists of the December revolts have been relegated to a "governability problem" to be debated by politicians and the IMF. So how did it happen? How did a movement that was building a whole new kind of democracy -- direct, decentralized, accountable -- give up the national stage to a pair of discredited has-beens? The marginalization process had three clear stages in Argentina, and each has plenty to teach activists hoping to turn protest into sustained political change. Stage One: Annoy and Conquer. The first blow to the new movements came from the old left, as sectarian parties infiltrated the assemblies and tried to drive through their own dogmatic programs. Pretty soon you couldn't see the sun for the red and black party flags, and a process that drew its strength from the fact that it was normal -- something your aunt or teacher participated in -- turned into something marginal, not action but "activism." Thousands returned to their homes to escape the tedium. Stage Two: Withdraw and Isolate. The second blow came in response. Rather than challenge sectarian efforts at co-optation head-on, many of the assemblies and unemployed unions turned inward and declared themselves "autonomous." While the parties' plans verged on scripture, some autonomists turned not having a plan into its own religion: So wary were they of co-optation any proposal to move from protest to policy was immediately suspect. These groups continue to do remarkable neighborhood- based work, building bread ovens, paving roads and challenging their members to let go of their desire for saviors. Yet they have also become far less visible than they were a year ago, less able to offer the country a competing vision for its future. Stage Three: Just Don't Do It. Argentina's screaming and pot banging went on, and on, and on. Just when everyone was hoarse and exhausted, the politicians emerged from hiding to call an election. Incredulous, the social movements made a decision not to participate in the electoral farce -- to ignore the churnings of Congress and the IMF and build "counterpowers" instead. Fair enough, but as the elections took on a life of their own, the unions and assemblies began to seem out of step. People weren't able to vote for the sentiment behind December 19 and 20, either by casting a ballot or by boycotting the election and demanding deeper democratic reforms, since no concrete platform or political structure emerged from those early, heady discussions. The legitimacy of the elections was thus left dangerously uncontested, and the dream of a new kind of democracy utterly unrepresented. The campaign slogan that won the first round was the astonishingly vague "Menem knows what to do and he can do it." In other words, maybe Nike was right: People just want to do something, and if things are bad enough, they will settle for anything. Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear. ---------------------------------- rkm> In our previous posting re/Tranformation, Janet McFarland shared with us a New Democracy editorial (A REVOLUTIONARY ALTERNATIVE) praising the Agentinian movement. But alas, Naomi tells us now that the movement failed. Why? Naomi diagnoses the problem this way -- she blames the lack of an emerging "concrete platform or political structure". She bemoans that the "dream" was "unrepresented" in the elections. She wanted the people to demand "deeper democratic reforms". I suggest, god bless her, that she misses the point with those words. What if there had been a concrete platform? We know what would have happened then, because it has happened every time in history. Some opportunistic politician would have stepped forward and adopted that platform. Think back to LBJ's "War on Poverty" or to FDR's "New Deal". Perhaps more relevant, consider the popular movements that ousted the Soviets from Eastern Europe. When elections came, we all thought the movements had won. We hoped a better society would arise. Instead we have collapsed economies, exploitation, and neoliberalism. We have parents by the hundreds abandoning their children to prostitution because there's not enough money to feed them. The web is filled with child porn sites originating in Russia, the Czech Republic, and the Ukraine. Nothing like that happened under the Soviets. What if there had been democratic reforms? Think back to the Freedom of Information Act, campaign-contribution reform, and the impeachment process that led to Nixon's resignation. Us flower children of the sixties thought we had won. People wrote books about the emerging new age. In the end, it all vanished like so much smoke. It was all an illusion, a holding action, a deception. And again -- this is entirely typical of the historical experience generally. A reformed predator is still a predator. You might force it to eat vegetables for a while, but as soon as you turn your back it will attack you from behind. When will we ever learn?? Elections of centralized governments are in the long run autocratic. Always have been and always will be. --- Naomi makes a great deal more sense when she talks about "a whole new kind of democracy -- direct, decentralized, accountable". The question is not "Why didn't this spirit influence elections?", but rather "Why didn't this spirit do away with elections?". Let's reconsider Naomi's "three stages" in this light. Her first two stages tell us about sectarian parties pushing their programs, and the popular response to that. Wary of co-optation, the "autonomists" avoided any attempt to move from "protest to policy". By "policy", apparently, she is making her later point about a "concrete platform" -- something to bring to the table during national elections. Here's where she and I start to see things differently. Consider this paragraph: "These groups continue to do remarkable neighborhood- based work, building bread ovens, paving roads and challenging their members to let go of their desire for saviors. Yet they have also become far less visible than they were a year ago, less able to offer the country a competing vision for its future." I see the problem this way. Rather than a "platform" of national policies, it seems to me the focus of the neighborhood assembles should be to insist on their right to govern. It is not their program that matters, but their sovereignty. Their program is what they actually DO: "They created trading clubs, health clinics and community kitchens. Close to 200 abandoned factories were taken over by their workers and run as democratic cooperatives." The vision they needed was a process for generalizing this kind of direct action. Something along these lines: "These movements, though small, were dreaming big: national constituent assemblies, participatory budgets, elections to renew every post in the country. And they had broad appeal. A March 2002 newspaper poll found that half of Buenos Aires residents believed that the neighborhood assemblies will 'produce a new political leadership for the country.'" Here, I suggest, we are getting to the crux of what real democracy is about. Neighborhood assemblies is where it begins... but how does this generalize? I think the answer lies in the definition of "constituent assemblies", and in the purpose of such assemblies. At the beginning, I believe the purpose of a constituent assembly should be to consolidate the power of the neighborhood assemblies. At first, it is too early to focus on "policy" either at the local or the national level. Power comes first, policy later. This is in fact true whether we like it or not. In our current political systems, for example, the promises of politicians have little to do with their actions in office. If the people truly have power, then we must trust them (ourselves) to develop sound policy. If we don't have this trust, then we don't really believe in democracy and we might as well resign ourselves to what we have now -- being ruled by one elite or another. How to consolidate power? I can't give you a blueprint. It's open for discussion. But it begins with the understanding that power is the name of the game. In fact, the political leaders must have realized that for a time the people DID have de facto power. Otherwise the leaders would have called out the troops to disband the neighborhood assemblies and retake the occupied factories. Evidently, the troops would not have obeyed such orders. After all, it was their own families who made up the local assemblies. This brings us to Naomi's next stage: "Stage Three: Just Don't Do It. Argentina's screaming and pot banging went on, and on, and on. Just when everyone was hoarse and exhausted, the politicians emerged from hiding to call an election. Incredulous, the social movements made a decision not to participate in the electoral farce -- to ignore the churnings of Congress and the IMF and build 'counterpowers' instead." I wasn't there on the ground, and I could have it wrong. But what I take from this is that the movement wasn't focusing enough on the power issue. "Screaming and pot banging" is about influencing someone else to listen to you. You don't waste time with that if you see your neighborhood assembly as the origin of power -- as the fundamental unit of sovereignty. When you see that you don't ask for things -- you do things. Perhaps that was what was meant by 'counterpowers' and the question then becomes, "What is the agenda of these 'counterpowers'?". I agree with Naomi that it was a mistake to ignore the electoral farce. But I disagree that the options were to either participate or to protest. Instead, I suggest something else was needed -- something that invalidated the elections totally. Perhaps occupying the polling places and destroying the ballots...and occupying the government offices and establishing communication with the military to stand down. These kinds of acts would be the beginning of actually seizing power -- the beginnings of a true counter power, of we-the-people power, of true democracy. imho, rkm -- ============================================================================ For the movement, the relevant question is not, "Can we work through the political system?", but rather, "Is the political system one of the things that needs to be fundamentally transformed?" cyberjournal home page: http://cyberjournal.org "Zen of Global Transformation" home page: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ QuayLargo discussion forum: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ShowChat/?ScreenName=ShowThreads cj list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=cj newslog list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=newslog 'Truthout' excellent news source: http://www.truthout.org subscribe addresses for cj list: •••@••.••• •••@••.••• ============================================================================
