special articles_retreat of the intellectuals

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SPECIAL ARTICLES

Retreat of the IntellectualsJames Petras

The world-wide retreat of the intellectuals is intimately related to the declining power of the working class move

ment and the rising power of capital-in the cultural as well as economic sphere. Intellectuals are very sensitive

to changes in power. Intellectual shifts between the 1960s and 1980s reflect the changes in the relationship of power.The fundamental paradox of our time, however, is that the tilts in power are not accompanied by the consolida

tion and expansion of capitalist economic and social systems: the fragility of western economies, the disintegra

tion of the inner cities, the volatility of the financial markets, the polarisation of classes and regions of the world

economy, the destruction of the environment all speak to the failure of capitalism to solve any of the basic pro

blems posed by Marxism.

If the retreat of the intellectuals is largely a product of shifts in power and if the economic foundations of

that power are indeed fragile, we can expect a new cycle of radicalisation with the next economic crises and

resurgence of popular power.

I

I n t r o d u c t i o n

IT is painfully evident that intellectuals nolonger play a major role as protagonists ofworking class politics. Indeed, for some the'working class' no longer exists; for others,the very notion of class is 'problematical'. 1

Marxism has become a term of opprobrium,imperialism has been replaced by 'dis-courses', socialism is usually put in quotation marks and the loud cries of crisis havebeen replaced by claims of failure,disintegration and demise.

The paradoxical posture struck by theseintellectuals is that they claim to have un

covered new social, political and economicrealities that make the Marxist categoriesoutmoded, while proceeding to dredge upa melange of mainstream concepts from themost commonplace orthodoxies: 'rationalindividua ls ' , economic equi l ibr ium,distributive equity, procedural democracies,individual preferences.2 The retreat fromMarxism is accompanied by a reversion toliberal democracy and neo-classicaleconomics. We are back to the debates ofthe 1950s (or is it the 1850s) with one proviso: the intellectual optimism that accompanied the earlier orthodoxy was anchored

in an expansionary capitalist worldeconomy, in which industrial growth, astrong labour movement and welfare statepolitics still held sway. The orthodoxy of the1950s, based on an upswing in the capitalistcycle could be excused for proclaiming an'end to ideology'. The conformist intellectuals of the earlier period could point to asemblance of 'equilibrium' and democracy,particularly if they excluded women, blacksand third world nations. They could pointto Stalin's Russia and argue about themonolithic, unchanging and repressive col-lectivist regime as an unattractive alternative.

Today's intellectuals' flight has little basisfor proclaiming the failure of Marxism,despite the pseudo-scientific pretensions ofsome. With ten million unemployed in theEEC, and three-quarters of the new jobs in

the capitalist wo rld of a temporary, low paid ,low skill service variety, with the Latin

American market economies in a decadelong crisis that has brought living standardsbelow those of the early 1960s and financial leaders waiting for the next economiccrisis to happen, there is scant basis for anyoptimism rooted in the fragile structures ofwestern capitalism. The successes ofcapitalism are elsewhere: in the spheres ofthe paper economy, speculation and pillageof the state. The ex-radical intellectuals contribute to strengthening the power ofspeculators and neo-liberals in their out ofhand attacks on 'statism'. .. in the name ofa chimerical civil society.

The retreat of the intellectuals from Marxism in particular and the end of ideologyscientific posturing occurs precisely whentheir rulers are most robustly ideological andmince no words in defending class powerwith straightforward expositions of doctrinaire unregulated capitalism and incomereconcentration at the top. Corporatepolicies increasingly bind owners andmanagers through bonus and stock plansthat bring them closer together, undermining notions of managerial dominance. Neverin this century have the bonds betweencapitalism and the state been so transparent

as during the 1980s; and never has controlover the state and production had such adirect impact on 'di stri buti on' of income. Yetin what must rank as world-historic perversity, it is precisely in this period that the ex-Marxists choose to emphasise the autonomyof the state from class power, the autonomous role of ideological discourses inshaping historical development, whiledissociating 'distribution' from capitalistownership of production.3 One of the principal issues facing any analysis of the ex-radical is the striking divergence betweentheir new ideological positions and the unfolding political and socio-economic relations and processes of the present period.

The 'demise of Marxism' thesis is largelybased on a series of invented straw-personscaricatures of Marxist positions-

sloppy theoretical and methodologicalreasoning and an unwillingness to apply the

test of facts to their propositions.A careful reading of the financial pages

of leading newspapers and magazines confirms the Marxist prognosis and analysis ofthe inner logic of capital: the concentrationand centralisation of capital, the massivemerger movement into ever larger conglomerates, the increasing power of financial power over industrial and the increasing subordination of national competitivecapital to these movements.4

The Marxist proposition concerning theincreasing division of society into wage andsalaried workers and capital has advanced

even furtherwith the enormous growth oflow paid wage workers increasinglydominating the labour force in the so-calledservice sector.5

Thir dly, Mar xia n analysis of the tendencyfor capital to intensify the rates of exploitation under competitive pressures has beenborne out by the dismantling of the welfarestates, the declining share of income accruing to labour as against capital and the increasing transformation of labour into temporary labour, burdened with the increasingcosts of social reproduction, increasing costsof health care, loss of pension, etc.6

Fourthly, the class nature of the state, itsrole as the manager of the ruling class is evident in the confrontational position it hasadopted against the trade unions. FromReagan's smashing of the air controllers'strike, to Thatcher's police-state savaging ofthe miners' unions, to Gonzalez's efforts tobreak the general strike of the labour confederations (December 1989), and in a hostof other circumstances, there is overwhelming evidence that the class-state is a far morerigorous analytical tool in understanding thedecline of labour and the dissolution ofworkers' power than notions of stateautonomy and 'mediation'.

By avoiding an analysis of the major processes of large-scale, long-term structuralchange, that confirm the Marxist analysis,the ex-radical intellectuals focus on the

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behaviour of the working class (their lackof 'class identification', the influence of non-class factors), and the existing socialist andcommunist parties.7

There are several problems with theseanalyses. Firs t, they all tend to conf late classformation with class consciousness: bydenying the latter, they deny the former. Ifyou don't hear the workers yell revolution,they don't exist. The social division of

labour, the interdependent position of producers separated from the means of production is obscured and in its place we arepresented with 'rational individuals' subjectto a multiplicity of determinations.8 Thesocial relations which exist independent of(he will of the producers or employersintheir individual capacitiesis a product ofthe operations of the profit motive in themarketplace. Against this, the ex-Marxistcounterpose abstract notions of individualfree choice to the realities of the market compulsions to sell labour power or starve.

Marxism's multi-level dialectical analysisof politic al and social action is caricaturedinto a singular mechanical-structuralsimplismo: class position equals class consciousness equals revolutionary action. Thetechnique of the Big Distortion is to attributethis to some anonymous Orthodox''classical' Marxist who probably only existin the polemical fantasies of the apostates.A brief survey of Marx's lifethe long,tedious hours spent trying to build theorganisation of the First International, thepedagogical efforts and travels to workereducational conferences, the ideologicalstruggles devoted to clarifying theoreticaland practical issues for the workers'

movement9should suggest to even themost devout true believer of post-Marxismthat for Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci andcontemporary Marxists, the transformationof a class in itself to a class for itself requiredpolitical organisation, education andideological debates. These interrelated processes, however, are situationally located inthe context of the class divisions of societyand within the process of class struggle-located in a variety of social sites (workplace,housing, political movements for democraticrights).10

The works of Lenin have suffered from

a dual distortion. On the one hand, he is accused of being an economic reductionist, onthe other a 'voluntarist organisation man'.Both are false. On one level, Lenin's discussion of revolution revolves around a detailedconcrete analysis of the impact of capitalismon the specificities of the Russian class structure, and, on another, the problems of highlydifferentiated and uneven development ofclass consciousness. And, on a third level,an analysis of the political condition(nature of state, levels of repression) that influence the type of political organisationand, fourth, the centraiity of ideological and

programmatic debate and clarificationwi th in the workers' movement Lenin's complex multi-level interactive 'model' ofanalysis cannot be forced into any of

the crude boxes fabricated by the anti -Leninists.11

The same could be said for the apostates'treatment of contemporary Marxists. Theirefforts to repudiate Marxism rev,olvesaround their discovery that the workers'movement is reformist with limited or weakclass consciousness and that 'non-classfactors' are determinants of working classbehaviour. Contrary to the 'reductionist'

charges, Marxists combine an analysis of theobjective processes of class formation(capitalist accumulation and reproductionbased on class differentiation and exploitation) with an analysis of the subjectiveresponses in the most varied social andpolitical situations, with the proviso that theonly means to transform capitalism isthrough the development of a class conscious, organised working class. Thus, Marxism is analytical and prescriptive. Its purposeis not only to describe but to change theworld and the two are interrelated. The ob

jective processes fo rm the basis for theprescriptive action. Inherent systemic processes establish the basis for politicalintervention. In that sense, Marxist theoryof revolution is both historically determined and politically problematical.12

The apostates ignore the structural processes and caricature the political problematic. Insofar as they talk of capitalism,they provide a laundry list of social problemsand economic successes and prostratethemselves before its enduring qualities.Dissociated from their larger structuralcharacteristics, the 'problems' are thenreduced to 'policy' issues, which, in turn, aresuject to regime mani pula tion , which in

is equated with the state, and providedwith a permeable character allowing elec-totral politicians, intellectual discourses andwhoever has a political agenda to shape thepolity.

13

The most elementary distinctions betweenregime and state are absent from thisanalysis.14 The state functionaries, the permanent body of non-elected officials linked to the enduring class institutions, whocontrol the means of coercion and fashioneconomic policy are subsumed with the rrau-sitory electoral officials who operate withinthe boundaries of the state and define the

pol iti cal regime. Hence, we have the chronicintellectual muddle in which most of 'statetheorising' finds itself: describing regimebehaviour and character and calling it thedemocratic state.15 By focusing exclusivelyon competitive, interest group based regimes,they fail to grasp the authoritarian, hierarchical, class dominated state and how thelatter constrains the former, and alwayscreates the possibility of reversing whateverworking-ciass gains a welfare regime mightevoke in a period of upsurge.

if the apostates have forgotten the mostelementary analytical political distinctions

in then haste to assert the 'autonomy' and'specificity of the political', in the economicrealm their redefinition of exploitation outside of the realm of productio n to 'di stribu

tion', and the (accompanying rejection of thelabour theory of value) strip politicaleconomy of its most fundamental analyticalpoint of departure: the social relations ofproduction.16 The capital-labour relationsand the issues of power, alienation, insecurity, domination get shoved aside and the problems of income distribution and consumption are artificially inserted. Artificiallybecause income is correlated with power

derived from ownership of capital-productive and speculative. Moreover, thesocial relations of production have been andare today the major point of contention between capital and labour, and has been thesite for most of the significant organisationthat has challenged in one form or anotherthe organised power of capital. 17

The redefinition of exploitation to therealm of distribution, conflates labour andcapital's position in production and becomesthe formula for the policies of class collaboration and 'social contracting': both areinterdependent 'productive factors' involvedin producing income. Conflicts are over theappropriate income policies. The brutaldeterioration of workers' power in relationsof production has been instrumental inchanging the conditions for the reproduction of labour, the structure of socialorganisation and social action, as well asshaping family relations, personal worth andidentity and qualify of neighbourhood life.In the lexicon of the apostate, these consequences of capitalist relations of productionare 'theorised' as 'new sites' of action stripped oftheir systemic attributes. 'Movements'and 'actors' intervening against these derivations from the capital/labour relationship

are counter-posed to labour/capitalist'workplace' conflict as if they could beseparated by a Chinese Wall. 18

The fragmentation of knowledge is thehallmark of the apostates-the emphasis ison self-contained and generated phenomena,'indeterminacy' and elaborate mathematicalexercises based on oversimplified assumptions.14 The procedure of 'methodologicalindividualism' involves the dissolution ofsocial reality in to abstracted individuals andsubsequently the imputation of a liberaleconomic calculus stripped of all prior socialbonds, traditions and struggles. This

becomes the point of departure forreconstructing social reality. Any relationbetween this method and social reality ispurely coincidental. Marx ism focuses on thedynamics of collective interaction with crisis,ofstate action (repression, war, etc) on socialmobilisation and social power. This is thereal world in which 'individuals' live andwork and cannot be understood throughdiscussions of social identity based oninterviews of isolated indi viduals in privatesettings: the results reproduce the method.

Hyphenated Marxism is a half-way housebetween the radical past and a final recon

ciliation with orthodox neo-classicaleconomics, mainstream pluralist politics andmicro sociology. Having gutted the structural foundations of radical change, their

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reform proposals emerge as pious Normative' wishes operating and conflictingwith the dominant market and state imperatives. It would not be surprising to seethe ultimate extension of this logic andresolution of this tension in the direction ofmarket rationality and the celebration ofcapitalist democracy.

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R e t r e a t i n g I n t e l l e c t u a l s :

T h e n a n d N o w

Retreating intellectuals are not a newphenomena. During the 1930s and 1950s asimilar process took place. Under thepressure of events, whole contingents of ex-Marxists abandoned working class politicsand began the sojourn to the centre andbeyond. In a brilliant essay, Leon Trotskydissects and analyses the retreat of James

Burnham and a host of New York intellectuals who discovered the 'autonomy' of thestate in the bureaucratisation of world

politics, the convergence of social systems,and the irrelevancy of class.20 The ex-Marxists ended up supporters of the coldwar, some joined in the McCarthyite purges,while others retained residual welfare commitments with their visceral anti-communism.12

In the 1950s, Isaac Deutscher described anew wave of apostatesthe ex-communistswhich included those who began as left-wingcritics of Stalinism and eventually dissolved their left positions and became eager collaborators with the most rabid imperial ventures of the west.

22The process of ex-

leftists' conversion to liberalism was not theend of the process. In the 1960s, during thestudent, civil rights and peace movement inBerkeley, Chicago and New York, a numberof leading academic ex-radicals becameardent defenders and intellectual spokespersons for police repression and vilifiers ofmass democratic movements. Lipset, Glazer,Feuer, Bettleheim, to name a few, equateddemocratic rriass politics with the Nazis andput forth the idea of democracy as a process of elite negotiations and contracts.23

They argued that imperial intervention inVie tnam and 'S ta l in i s t ' l ibe ra t ion

movements were equally condemnable, butthat 'western values' were still preferable.This melange of ex-Trotskyist and ex-communist intellectuals was the immediateforerunner of the present crop. They, too,claimed to have gone 'beyond Marxism' andclass reductionism, discovering the intrinsicvalues of capitalist democracy and the success of free enterprise, while criticising'pockets of poverty' as part of a faultydistributive system. None of them anticipated the burnin g of the 50 major urbancentres in the US, the ki lli ng of three mil lio nAsians by the democratic bombs or the

massive dismantling of the welfare state thatthey so comfortably assumed was so intricately bound up with 'mature capitalism'and the enduring social consensus. The flawed analysis of one generation of apostates

has been handed over to another: thepostures, rhetoric and discoveries of onegeneration of post-Marxists is repeated byanother.

The intellectuals' retreat from Marxism isnot merely a west European and NorthAmerican phenomena, but it is evident ineastern Europe and the third worldparticular ly in Latin America. W hile the intellectual shifts in each region reflect the in

fluence of specific conditions, many of theideas and theories seem to originate inwestern Europe and North America and tobe diffused toward other regions, with theaid of foundation funding and state subsidised intellectual joint ventures.

The 'internationalisation of capitalism'and the rapid diffusion of capital throughthe electronic networks is accompanied bythe 'internationalisation' of post-Marxistideologies, rhetoric and scientistic 'discourses'. With a striking and almost banalregularity, the same unfounded criticism ofMarxism are levelled from Paris to BuenosAires, from Warsaw to Chicago. The retreathas become a routcelebrated in the mass

media as further confirmation of thesuperiority of the free enterprise system.

The style and substance of the retreat hasseveral characteristics which are generallyfound in all regions. First, there is the turnfrom public to private discontents: thedisconnection of private anxieties and decisions from their systemic sources. It is notthe structure of capital but the structure oflanguage that is the key to understanding thecondition of classes in society: symbols preempt substance as the retreating intellectualsseek to dominate centrestage, relegating the

uninitiated masses to passive spectators.24

The critical role of the intellectuals in'naming the system' and the processes-capitalist democracy, imperialism, exploitative relations of productionis replaced by evasion and the vacuous language ofdiscourse babble. The style of languagereveals the substance of the perspective. Theretreating intellectuals no longer address aclass specific constituency (the workingclass), but 'democratic' forces, Europe, themanagers of the status QUOthe culturalwatch-dogs, the political rule-makers, theelite negotiators of social and political pacts.

In their declaration of the 'failure ofMarxism' they are announcing their surrender to and immersion in bourgeois parties and their rules of their game. Thecelebration of bourgeois democracy occursthrough the invention of a reality withoutautonomous class action, class struggle anda vision that transcends the existing configuration of power. In the east the dissidentintellectuals have moved from anti-Stalinistrituals to blind eulogies of the west. Somehave substituted their earlier docile submission to the productive forces of bureaucraticcollectivist society for the imitative submis

sion to the consumer forces of 'free market'capitalism. The thought processes of thepro-west eastern intellectuals is a mirr or im age of their former Stalinist tormentors: undifferentiated, non-contradictory, Utopias

laden with good tidings. The escape fromclass contradictions of the east into themirage of classless consumerist west is theopium of eastern intellectuals.

For others, the 'realists', the retreat fromrevolutionary Marxist opposit ion toStalinism has carried them onto the terrainof neo-liberal orthodoxy. Enfant terribleJacek Kuron, the Solidarity labour minister,speaks to the interests of the working class

in terms of unemployment and soupkitchens to 'cushion' the post-Marxist'reforms'25 Kuron knows his capitalismbetter than most of the Polish workers whovoted for him. The eastern intellectuals'embrace of soup kitchen capitalism for theworkers and state subsidised public enterprise sell-offs to private investors, spells nothe end of Marxism, but the end of westernradical illusions about Solidarity's leadershipand direction.

The Gorbachevian intellectuals, themselves, have few claims to intellectualoriginality in post-Marxist 'rethinking'. Theymove within the narrow bounds of simple-minded evolutionism: from vulgar theoriesof automatic breakdown of capitalist societyand the pre-determined transitions to theassumedly superior Soviet socialism, to thenewer incarnation of the automatic growthand assumed superiority of free marketcapitalism. From defining human progressas a conflict between state blocs, they nowdefine it in terms of global classlessco-operation.

In many cases, the 'retreat' from Marxism has never occurred because most of theeastern intellectuals were never there. Theynever reflected on class struggle and class

movements Today and yesterday they were'state-centricthe only change is in the stateand states that dominated their thinking.

The eastern intellectuals demonstrate lit-tle evidence of having studied the behaviourof real existing free market capitalism (andnot the ideological constructs of neoclassical propaganda). Otherwise, theywould have examined how in the US it hasdestroyed working class security, tradeunions, communities, and families; drivenmillions of farm families into bankruptcyevery bit as brutal as Stalinist fiat. Theyignore the massification of mental illness,

destitution, lumpen-classes and homeless-ness which dominate whole areas of majorcity thoroughfares. They pass over the tensof millions of workers in third world countries who, following free market prescriptions have seen their incomes decline 50 and60 per cent over a decade. But that wouldbe asking too much, we are told. They arefight ing Stalinism and we should be tolerantof their illusi ons . . . while they fasten thesame yoke of market tyranny on theirliberated followers.

If in Poland the ex-Marxist intellectuals-turned-government functionaries are

discussing the virtue of markets and thenecessity of unemployment and soup kitchens, in Spain ex-communists like FernandoClaudin and Ludolfo Paramio are the maindefenders of NATO-democracy, liberal

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economies and the vitriolic supporters of theGonzalez regime's effort to break the tenmillion strong general strike in this time ofpost-modern working class decline.26 Inother words, if Felipe's discourses won't convince striking workers maybe a little nudgefrom the Guardia Nacional wil l help speedthe historical process toward the realisationof the post-modern society.

In France, the retreat from working class

politics has been wholesale. Ranging fromex-Maoists- turned ultra-r ightists andlinguistic hair-splitters (Derrida) to enthusiasts of US positivism (decision-makingstudies), to defenders of the independent andfreedom-loving French nuclear arsenal(Debray). In Latin America, the retreat takesthe form of splicing quotes from Gramscibetween defences of electoral regimescohabitating with military torturers andpackaging the ensemble as 'democraticrealism' while debunking popular oppositionas 'Jacobin'.2 The Anglo-Lati n foundationintellectuals add to the mystification by emptying democracy of its institutional andclass context and reducing it to a set ofprocedures.28

In the US, the retreat takes the form ofan abandonment of working class struggleand socialist politics for an agenda based onmarkets and liberal reform (Bowles/Gintis).29

A retreat from class analysis tomethodological individualism and rationalchoice (Roemer and Wright),30 from humanagency to neo-Hegelian state-worship, frompolitical struggle to elite directed change(Skocpol).31 The worldwide intellectualretreat is best understood as a response toa common political-economic context in

which there has been a decisive shift in thebalance of class forces.

I l l

D e c l i n e o f W o r k i n g C la ss

Po wer an d th e R e t r ea t

As has been noted above, the tendency inrecent years has been for capitalist development to extend wage labour relations(salaried professionals, incorporation ofwomen, expropriation of farmers, etc) andto deepen the polarisation between classes(speculator real-estate mi llionaires versus lowpaid temporary service workers), thus confirming the orthodox Marxist analyticalframework for analysing capitalism. Clearly,the retreating ex-Marxists to not addressthese structural developments in theiranalysis. Their analysis grows out of a different matrix of 'facts'the obvious declineof working class power (at the firm, national, international level, as well as in theeconomic/social and political spheres); therise of right-wing business influence accompanied by the all pervasive extension anddeepening of neo-classical economic doctrines and liberal democratic ideology.

Accompanying the ascendancy ofcapitalist power in the west has been thecrisis in the bureaucratic collectivist societies(existing socialist states) and the growing in

fluence of pro-western capitalist politicalforces (Solidarity, Hungarian 'reformers').The new eastern liberal ideologists exploitthe issues of corruption and authoritarianpractices and structures, amalgamatingbureaucratic politics with Marxist concepts,laying the groundwork for the profoundlyanti-working class policies favoured bywestern bankers and investors (austerity inwages, permissiveness in profit-taking,

supply-side state incentives and state-enforced demand-side contraction).

In the third world, the western-financedstate terrorist regimes (Argentina, Uruguay,Chile, Indonesia, Zaire, Guatemala, etc)exterminated a whole generation of Marxistintellectuals and activiststhey have beenreplaced by western funded 'institutionalintellectuals' who are more 'open' to thenotions of market-based development and'non-class' democracy. In the case of radicalstates like Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia,Nicaragua, Mozambique and Angola, eitherterrorist wars waged by western-backed sur

rogates have destroyed their productive baseor global economic embargoes have servedthe same end, forcing them to seek economicand ideological compromises on termsfavourable to the capitalism countries. Theseshifts in the south and east have, in turn,limit ed the options available to ongoing thirdworld liberation movements, creatingpressures for accommodations with reactionary pro-Western regimesas in ElSalvador and Namibia.

It is clear that the contemporary political-ideological matrix created by westerncapitalist and bureaucratic collectivistregimes is as unfavourable to Marxistanalysis as the socio-economic developmentsarc favourable. The retreating intellectualsare responding to the formerbeing moresensitive to the political-ideological pressuresand substantially less influenced by the impact of the economic system on the classstructure. Under conditions of maximumcapitalist power (as exists presently, withlittle in the way of organised working classpower), the cost to the intellectuals of retaining their Marxist commitments goes up andthe benefits go down, increasing the incentives to rationally choose to operate withinthe framework of neo-liberal political

economics.

The divorce of the ideological discourseof the intellectuals from the socio-economicdevelopments among wage earners revealsa 'class gap'. The profile of many of theleading lights among the retreating intellectuals reveals a cohort of white-males fast approaching middle age in senior academicpositions seeking professional recognitionand acceptance (and publication) by therespectable mass media and thus eager to putpolitical distance to their past. By trashing'orth odx' or 'classical Marx ism', by attacking economic or class reductionism and

truckling to a variety of ether intellectualprejudices, they are demonstrating to theideological watchdogs of the profession thatthey are ready for admission to the inner

sanctumthe prestigious universities, foundation funding, etc. They become theideological and career role models for theiryounger upwardly-mobile ju ni or colleagues,who mimic their intellectual style.

Dissociated from wor kin g class struggles,striving for upward mob ilit y, the retreatingintellectuals incorporate the values andnorms of neo-liberal hegemony and transmitit into left-wing intellectual arenas. The

retreating intellectuals do not respond to thefailures of capitalism, the rigidity of the statein enforcing wholesale downward 'restructuring' of the working class, rather they res

pond to the political-ideological power ofcapital. The fragmentation of the workingclass is rather inelegantly repackaged as 'individual' preferences; the ideological impositions of ascending capitalist power over aweakened working class movement aredescribed as the non-correspondence ofworking class 'positions' and 'interests'.32

The partial transformation of the workingclass from indus tria l to service employment

is described as the decline of the workingclass and the growth of a post-industrial service economy.33 The decline in the labourmovementa result of its bureaucratisationand class-compromise policiesbecomesthe basis to question the very existence of'classes' and to make their existence contingent on their actionan illogicalimpossibility.

While some deny the restraints imposedupon 'democracy' by capitalist power, othersincorporate those restraints and argue thatthey could or should work to the advantageof workers.34 The elasticity of formulationbelies the dubiousness of the assumptions.

The importance of social power increating cognitive dissonance among theretreating intellectuals is manifest in their inability to theorise the major transformationof capitalist structurefrom industrial tospeculator, from US dominant to inter-imperial rivalrie sin their analysis of 'post-Marxist' non-class politics. Instead, what wehave is an undifferentiated capitalism,operating in an undifferentiated capitalistwor ld system. Rising or falling empires, imperial and non-imperial states, fall into thememory hole. Massive capitalist pillage ofthe state does not inhibit the use of market

centred neo-classical assumptions; thedegradation of labour as the basis for theirdeclining purchasing power does not preventthe focus on 'distribution'.35

If there are no classes because there is no

class struggle, what emerges is a plurality of'social groupings' and free floating individuals, the stuff of pluralis t interest grouptheory.36 The universe, the forces that shapethe rules and fragment the class and definethe boundaries of issues, are left unexplained. If the analytical categories of the post-Marxists are warmed over recitals of DavidTruman, orthodo x US poli tica l science resur

faces in their discussion of 'political con-sciousness': from a notion of 'action'theydeduce/impute consciousness. If we substitute 'behaviour' for 'action', we can see the

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methodological affinity between our post-Marxist and the behaviouralist ideologies ofan earlier period.37 We are told that whenworkers act as if they can improve theirmaterial conditions within the confines ofcapitalism, they consent to it. 3 8 Action inconformity with the capitalist system can bethe result of coercion, intimidation,manipulation or limited choices. It isretreating intellectuals who arbitrarily im

pute their notion of 'consent' to the action.And, of course, it is a weakened andfragmented working class that is the objectof their theorising. The retreating intellectuals contribute to the strengthening ofcapitalist hegemony through their ideological construction of capitalist Utopia basedon reified individuals bargaining over constantly rising incomes in a world ofexpanding 'oppo rtuni ties. The vir tualabsence of trade unions in m ost states of theUnited States, the subsumption of union officials in management-controlled teams, theundemocratic nature of almost all nationaltrade union conferences (the predominanceof appointed officials) and the socioeconomic differences between bureaucraticofficialdom and the members suggest thatthe basic issue facing the working class isnot whether they have class consciousness,but the inexistence of representativedemocratic organisations to articulate theirinterests. And if there is an absence ofrepresentative institutions of the workingclass, the apostates' key concept 'civil society'is bereft of substance. The issue of the relationship between state and civil society isovershadowed by the overpowering reality ofa state exclusively responsive to capital con

fronting an almost atomised working class.Problems of 'class compromise', workingclass consent, take on different meaning withthe concrete parameters of real existingcapitalist society.

I V

R e t r e a t : R o u t e s , D e s t i n a t i o n s

a n d R e g i o n a l V a r i a t i o n s

There is no single line of retreat thatdescribes the apostates' intellectual trajectory. Diverse routes have been taken, reflecting the particular academic disciplinarypressures that they adapt to and the professional orthodoxies they accommodate Insome case, they have traded in their criticalintelligence for elaborative quantifi cation (oralgebraic formulas) based on orthodoxassumptions. The apostate assault onMarxism embraces a variety of theories andmethods and extends across the map.Moreover, the politic al-intell ectual destination of the intellectuals in flight is stillunclear as they are still in flux. Some have,at least temporarily, settled in liberal orsocial democratic positions. Others havemoved on to neo-liberal and right -wing na

tionalist perspectives. Not infrequently, theyquote each others' work to reinforce theircommon position while others engage inbizarre polemics among themselves, purpor

ting to detect residual influences of the'reductionist' doctrine.

Among the many routes away from Marxism, several stand out: Gramscian revisionism, the doctrine of indeterminancy,neo-classical economo-Marxism (to be referred to as hyphenated Marxism) and thepolicy advisory perspective.

Undergirding the retreat is the assumptionof the underlying stability and flexibility of

capitalism. From this perspective it is a shortstep toward anchoring politics in culturalcontradictions, and cross class socialmovements that reflect fragmented, partialconflicts within capitalist society. From thiscock-roost they seek to provide the governing class with prescriptions on how tomanage the system better, gratuitous adviceto save capitalism before it self-destructs.

GRAMSCI AN RE VI SI ONI ST S

One of the principal victims of theideological apostates is An ton io Gramsci. Inwhat is perhaps the most thoroughgoing

piece of dishonest cut-and-paste quotationwringing of our times, the revolutionarysocialist writings of Gramsci are put at theservice of neo-liberal political regimes. InArgentina, the Gramscian revisionists provided the intellectual defence for theAlfonsin regimethe same which reducedworkers' incomes by 50 per cent, pursuedIMF austerity and free market policies andexonerated hundreds of police and militaryofficials implicated in gross human rightsviolations.39 In Spain, the revisionistGramscians have been busy defending themost doctrinaire neo-liberal-speculator

regime in recent memorythe Gonzalezgovernment.

The process of falsifying and distortingthe Gramscian intellectual legacy follows twoprocedures. In the first place, they ignore hispolitical practice and writings during hisyears as a Communist leader in the workingclass struggle. Secondly, they focus onreinterpreting his metaphorical and ellipticalwriting during his imprisonment. Metaphorical and Aesopian language is muchmore amenable to various constructionsand distortions. Gramsci, forbidden by thefascist regime from writing directly on class

society and struggle frequently incorporatedthe language of the permissible. ForGramsci, 'civil society' became an indirectmanner of discussing oppressed classes; the'prince' became a metaphor for the classparty; 'hegemony' became a euphemism forclass domination. In the hands of theapostates, civil society became synonymouswith an amalgamation of classes (exploitersand exploited); the 'prince' became an eclectic social ensemble; hegemony became an expression of cross class alliances. Throughthese 'interpretations' the revisionistseviscerated Gramsci's politics based on hisanalysis of the most momentus event of hislifetimethe formation of the workers'council movementand his strategic conception anchored in a 'class against class'perspective.40 The revisionists resurrect the

'permeationist' conception of state transformation of Gramsci's arch-enemy, Giolitti,and attribute it to Gramsci. The apostatestransform Gramsci's metaphor 'war of positions' (used to describe the construction andconquest of working class institutions byrevolutionary working class party) into a rationale for taking positions in the capitalist-state apparatusup to and includingministerial advisors in bourgeois regimes.

Violent class confrontations that were the attributes accompanying Gramsci's concept of'positional warfare' and independent classorganisations upon which positions of classpower were established were eliminated fromthe apostate analysis and vocabulary, seeingthat they had nothin g in common w ith theirmarch through liberal electoral institutions.

Gramsci's politics drew heavily on the experience of the factory councils and hiswritings in Ordine Nuovo capture hisintransigent rejection of 'class compromises'with bourgeois structure, culture andideology.41 In contrast, in the writings ofthe apostates, Gramsci emerges as a liberalsocial historian embracing eclectic andidealistic conceptions of political analysis.

Perhaps the most striking difference between Gramsci and the epigones is theirrespective conceptions of political praxis.Gramscian praxis begins from a recognitionthat the basic parameters of politics andideological analysis and struggle are anchored in the class structure and that thepolitical and ideological do not operate asdisembodied autonomous elements. Thestrategy and rhetoric of the post-Marxistsrevolves around the attempt to drive a wedgebetween discourses and class. The trend

began by putting them on the sameanalytical level and culminated by invertingtheir causal connections. The revisions anddistortions of Gramsci's writ ing was pivotalto this process. Gramsci's notion of working class hegemony originally intended todescribe working class influence over otheroppressed classes, in the context of a confrontation with the capitalist state, isrelocated into a matrix of multi-class coalition politics rooted in cultural discoursespropagated and organised by detachmentsof intellectuals and electoral politicians.

The starting point for Gramsci's analysisof tactics and strategy is the violent natureand class exclusivity of the state and thesubordination of electoral regimes to therules established by the state. For Gramsci,the pursuit of electoral competition in theparliamentary arena is a tactical issue contingent on the strategic struggles centred inthe mass organisations challenging the state.In the apostate version, Gramsci's distinction between state and regime is conflated,and the relationship between strategic extra-parliamentary and tactical electoral movesare inverted. In the hands of the apostates,the Gramscian notion of praxis is divorced

from self-organised and autonomous classpower and made synonymous with 'realism'and 'possibilismpolitical formulas utilised to rationalise class collabo ration. Political

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institutions stripped of their class-matrixare presented as 'terrain of action'institutions without classes for classes withoutinstitutions.

H Y P H E N A T E D M A R X I S T S

Besides those intellectuals who haveopenly and totally abandoned Marxism (the'post-Marxists'), there is another group whohave attempted to hitch Marxist analysis/

concepts/prescriptions to a variety of non-Marxistand let us state it anti-Marxisttheoretical frameworks. Purporting to combine neo-classical economic frameworkswith Marxism, the self-styled 'analyticalMarxists' have emptied Marxism of essential theoretical and analytical elements.42

The common denominator of thesehyphenated Marxists is their opposition torevolutionary class politics and their effortto anchor their embrace of liberal-democratic politics and market economicsin some sort of normative framework.Hyphenated Marxism is a transitional stop

over between classical Marxist and orthodoxbourgeois political-economy. Having abandoned the former, their sensitivities to thevisible deterioration of working class life attendant on the operations of the marketplace force them to move to the right withcautionthus, they retain some of the socialbaggage of the past, repackaged as redistri-butive justice, while embracing themechanisms and institutions that undermineit: the price system and the marketdivorced from the social relations and theinstitutions of power through which theyoperate.

Intellectual untidiness accompanied theju xt apos it ion of concepts from competingand incompatible systems of thought (andwe might add divergent and conflicting classperspectives). The hyphenated Marxists aresaddled with the neo-classical reduction oflabour to just another 'factor of production'rather than the source of valueandare forced to derive their welfare programmes from ethical concerns that have notheoretical status in their economic analysis.By dissociating exploitation from productionand redefining it to the sphere of consumption, the hyphenated Marxists have sanctioned capitalist power in order to focus on itsdistributive functions.43 But as we seearound us today, distribution cannot bedissociated from production: the inter-nationalisation and transformation ofcapital toward non-productive activityundermines the sites and basis for 'redistri-butive polities'. Moreover, increasing competitive pressures inherent to the marketplace have turned almost all 'distributiveliberals and social democrats' into supplyside export promoters.

The abstract individualismor whatC W Mills called abstract-empiricism44that characterises the hyphenated Marxism

dissolves social structures and the social divisions of labour around which the real worldeconomy and society is organised into unreal'individual' entities which are imputed

'choices', 'preferences' and 'identities' as ifthere were not pre-existing systems of power"that determined them.

C H A N G I N G I N T E L L E C T U A L P I V O T

In the past Latin America possessedinthe best of caseswhat Gramsci called'organic intellectuals', writers, journalists,and political economists linked directly topolitical and social struggles against im

perialism and capitalism. They were integralparts of trade unions, student movements,or revolutionary parties. Che Guevara,Camilo Torres in Colombia, Luis de IaPuente in Peru, Miguel Enriquez in Chile,Roberto Santucho in Argentina, Julio Castroin Uruguay, were a few of the hundreds ifnot thousands of intellectuals who integratedtheir intellectual work with the social struggles of their countries. And the consequential organic intellectuals established thenorms of behaviour for the rest of the intellectual class. For thousands of otherintellectuals, the political and personal

example of the organic intellectuals servedas a measuring rod which they approximatedto a greater or lesser degree. There was a continual 'internal' struggle between professional opportunism and political commitments, as Latin American intellectuals stroveto make existential choices. This strugglehardly existsit has been resolved andforgotten among the new breed of researchinstitute oriented intellectuals. One of thegreat ironies of our times is found in the factthat the Latin American institutional intellectuals have made a fetish of Gramsciciting and distorting his writings to covertheir retreat from Marxism and attack onclass politics. The problem now is how bestto secure the biggest sum of money from themost accessible outside funding agency.

Today the institutionalised intellectuals arein a Foucaultian sense prisoners of their ownnarrow professional desires. Their links withthe external foundations, internationalbureaucracies, and research centres dominatea vacuous and vicarious internal politicallife. In the past, the organic intellectualsstruggled with a self-sustaining, self-financing intellectual existence. They livedand suffered the economic cycles of theircountries. Today the institutional intellectuals live and work in an externally dependent world, sheltered by payments in hardcurrency and income derived independently of local economic circumstances. Thedeep internal horizontal linkages betweenthe organic intellectual and oppressed classescontrasts with the vertical linkages betweenthe institutional intellectual and the external funding agencies and, with the adventof civilian regimes, with the local state andregime.

The period from the late 1970s into the1980s witnessed a major transformation ofLatin American intellectuals: a shift from

Marxism to liberal-democratic politics, fromsupport of movements of popular power tobourgeois parliamentary institutions, fromegalitarianism to social mobility, from col

lectivism to a very spare 'welfare state', fromanti-imperialism to 'inter-dependence'.Structurally, Latin America's intellectualshave shifted from being organic intellectualsconnected and dependent on popularmovements to institutional intellectuals tiedto overseas funding agencies and their intellectual agendas.

Three factors account for the shift: (1) themilitary dictatorships smashed 'he previous

ties between intellectuals and massstruggleskilling many of the organic intellectuals and dispersing the rest; (2) European and North American funding agenciesprovided a haven and/or financial support;and (3) those intellectuals that remainedestablished institutes that flourished on thebasis of external funding. As a result of theselinkages at the top and the outside, a newtype o'f intelligentsia with a different politicalagenda emerged.

A direct connection was established between the institutional integration of thedisplaced L ati n Amer ican intellectuals into

the liberal/social democratic welfare stateand their increasing consumption of post-Marxist intellectual currents. Upon theirreturn to Latin America, these overseasstructural and ideological networks becameessential ingredients in the further expansionof new institutes. These networks werecrucial because the economic conditionswithin Latin America in the post-militaryperiod were highly unfavourable.

The dictatorships indirectly created a newclass of 'internationally' oriented intellectuals, ostensible critics of the neo-Iiberaleconomic model, but just as deeply embedded in dependent relations with overseas networks as their adversaries among the exportoriented and financial elites. This new classhas a life and work style that contrastssharply with preceding generations oforganic intellectuals.

The first wave of external funding wasdirected at criticising the economic modeland human rights violations of the militarydictatorships, the second wave was directedat the study of new social movements, whilethe third wave of funding centred on thedemocratisation process and debt problems.The studies that emerged form a general pattern: the studies of the dictatorship focusedon its politically repressive features and noton its economic and military ties to westernEuropean and North American elites. Stateviolence was analysed in terms of humanrights violations, not as expressions of classdomination, as part of the class struggle, asclass violence. The political alternatives thatemerged from these studies posed the alternatives as a conflict between liberaldemocracy or military dictatorship. Thedeliberate dissociation of the class structurefrom state power was justified by the notionthat the political sphere was 'autonomous'from civil society.

Studies of social movements continued inthe same fashion. These studies claimed thatthe social movements were counterposed toclass politics, that the class structure from

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which they emerged was 'heterogeneous',and that the struggles of the socialmovements were far removed from olderideological po litics.45 The politic al line inregard to social movements was in the firstinstance that they should separate themselvesfrom the ideological (radical) political parties. Later, with the rise of liberal electoralparties, the political line shifted and themovements were described (and/or advised)

to turn their attention toward the 'strugglefor democracy'. The 'autonomy of socialmovements' was promoted when the researchers sought to separate them from therevolutionary left; 'participation in broaddemocratic fronts' became the formula theresearchers promoted when liberal electoralpolitics came to the fore.

The third phase of fundingon demo-cratisationwas the most blatantlyideological: international research teamsfocused on a set of formulas which justifiedaccommodation with local and foreignmilitary and economic elites as the only'possible' viable option, thus freezing theprocess of transformation to a transactionbetween conservative civilians and themilitary.

46

The overt consequences of economicdependence manifest themselves at theideological level, setting the politicalparameters of intellectual discourse. Hencethe importance of retaining a semblance ofintellectual autonomy to dissimulate thedependence. Critical research on popularparticipation, grassroots organisation,incomes policies, etc, is essential in fostering an image of intellectual autonomy, whilethe dissociation of these conditions from

their imperial-class context further enforcesthe long-term structural linkages to theexternal benefactors.

For those institutional intellectuals insidethe international foundation circuit have agreat deal to lose, but not in the way of anyprofound commitments to the popularstruggle to transform the socio-economicsystem. Today's institutional intellectualslook with disdain at the previous organicintellectuals-mere 'ideologists'and lookupon themselves as social scientists. Thereis, of course, no such distinction betweenscience and ideology. The institutional

ideologists are just as ideologically orientedas their predecessors: their 'science' isharnessed to a world of managed conflict,electoral elites, private markets, and socialengineering. They are the ideologic al watchdogs who have banished the politics of anti-imperiali sm to the netherworld of forgottenlanguages. They have described their ownmetamorphosis into intellectual functionaries as the culmination of a scientificrevolution that transcends vulgar andparochial ideological preoccupations. Theposture of objectivity (the necessarymethodology for external acceptance) pro

vides the proper distance from which toobserve the struggles as objects to be contracted, managed, and governed.

The problem of intellectual engagement

is related to the audience to which each isdirected: the institu tiona l intellectual writesfor and works within the confines of otherinstitutional intellectuals, their overseaspatrons, their international conferences. Aspolitical ideologues they establish the boundaries with the liberal political class. Theorganic intellectuals moved in the wor ld ofthe rank and file political activists andmilitants, with a global vision that challeng

ed the boundaries of the bourgeois liberalmarketplace. Their work links local struggles in the mines, banks, and factories, asconcrete instances of global imperialistdomination. They link social discontent topolitical struggles against a clearly determined class state.

The ascendancy of institutional intellectuals has banished the key concepts whichillumin ated popular struggles. Imperi alism,socialism, popular power, and class struggle have disappeared down the memory hole:they are unfashionable. In place of theseprecise formulations, vacuous notions of

'popular participation', disembodied 'debtproblems', and 'social contracts' have surfaced in the conceptual apparatus of the institutional intellectuals. The new languagecodes of the institutional intellectuals havea double function: they provide theideological watchdogs with the symbolicsignals to evict ideological trespassers, andthey legitimate in the intellectuals' own eyestheir role as caretakers of the hegemonicideology of the liberal funding centres.Among institutes engaged in ideological diffusion through popular promotion andtraining, the negative effects of this style ofintellectual work is magnified, in their pro

motio nal activity among the popul ar classes,problem-solving is localised and dissociatedfrom any notion of state power and the construction of an alternative class-based visionof a democratic collectivist society, theoriginal and creative project of the organicintellectuals.

The conceptual and linguistic transformation that accompanies the conversion oforganic to institutional intellectuals ismanifest in several distinct forms. Thepolitics of language is the language ofpolitics: as striking as what is written andpublished by the institutes is what is absent.

In the present period when the major European and North American banks and corporations are engaged in a massive and sustained extraction of economic surplus, thereis not a single externally funded researchcentre in Chile, Argenti na, Peru, Colomb ia,or Uruguay elaborating and deepening ourunderstanding of the theory and practice ofimperialist exploitation. Instead, we find thelanguage of evasion, the social science ofeuphemism; the problem is posed as abalance of payment or 'debt problem'. Theinstitutional intellectuals engage in an ingenuous and clever abstraction of 'debt'

from class politics and even more from classstruggle. From their vantage there are onlydisembodied classless 'states' whichnegotiate with other 'states': the institutional

intellectuals have created the metaphysics ofpost-politics.

In its broadest sense, the ascendancy ofthe institutional intellectuals and the declineof the organic intellectuals represents acultural counter-revolution, a great leapbackward. It is the worl d of the intellectualas 'inside political advisor', the managers ofpolitical conformity (or, in their language)of political consensus. For the repentant ex-

radical intellectuals (those who convertedfrom a political to an institutio nal vocation)the essence of politics is bureaucracy. Theaxis of politics revolves around narrowinstitutional interests, developing ties withthe chieftains of bureaucratic power centres.In this context, the main intellectual concernis the renovation of formalism and legalismand the marginalisation of substantivepolitics.

There is no relationship between thepolitical options of the institut ional intellectuals and the reality of Latin America in the1980s. Under conditions of absolute and sus

tained socio-economic regression, of massivepopular misery and growing social discontent, the language and conceptual practiceof social and political reconciliation are surreal. They do not reflect objective LatinAmerican realities; they mirror the reconciliation of the intellectual with theideological parameters of overseas fundingagencies.

The in stitu tional intellectual entrepreneursnot only know how and where to get abundant external funding, but they also knowthe dangers involved in posing social alternatives anchored in popular power to the

existing decaying liberal democracies. Facedwi th this d ile mma , the most" convenientposture adopted is to claim that the post-dictatorial situation is very difficult andcomplex, 'indeterminant' and that there areno easy alternatives. This posture allows theinstitutional intellectuals to continue toreceive outside grants, while passing over theless attractive features and policies of theircolleagues in the state.

I N D E T E R M I N A C Y : E S C A PE C L A U S E S FO R A

B ANKR UPT IDEOLOGY

One of the recurring notions which has

been inserted where profound lacunae haveemerged in the 'discourses' of the retreatingintellectuals is the notion of indeterminacy'.The term itself has been used in several different and contradictory senses. Logically,it calls into question the entire logic of anyexplanatory modelsince all prior assumptions and deductions are subject to the sameuncertainty and contingency, leaving us wi tha universe of facts in constant flux and completely arbitrary deductions. This is particularly amusing because some of theexponents of uncertainty have made greatefforts to ground their analysis in

mathematical models and survey research.It is a peculiar match of trans-logicalmysticism and vulgar empiricism.

The apostates, having rejected a class

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analysis of the state and recognising thefragil ity of their regime-focused analyticalapproach, buy intellectual insurance in caseof the bankruptcy of the democratic enterprise by introd ucing the not ion of uncertainty: uncertainty of the transition to democracy based on pacts with the military;uncertainty about the viabil ity o f social compromises of workers under capitalism. 47 Inplace of an analysis of the non-electoral

power centres that shape the parameters ofcapitalist electoral systems, one finds outcomes contingent on 'accidents' and 'unpredictability'. Uncertainty is largely anartefact of the apostates opting for a methodwhich focuses on individual political choicesand calculations in place of the structural-class-institutional interests in shaping thedirection and substance of political change.The rules and necessities of capitalistreproduction are clearly not in flux and sub

ject to uncertainty whatever the vagaries ofthe marketplace. Nor is the role of the statein upholding those ruleswe have yet to findone capitalist state in over two hundred yearsthat was uncertain and 'indeterminate' aboutits relationship to capital.

Political and productive systems and classstructures are not the sum of individuals ortheir decisionseven if we assume for a second that all 'individual preferences'counted the same. (Both the rich and thepoor can choose to sleep on the grates ofNew York city, but only the poor do.) Realityis the reverse of the Robinson Crusoemethod: shifts in individual choices andpolitical calculations reflect the sustainedand continuing pressures emanating fromstable socio-economic configurations.48 The

method of focusing on indivi dual decisionmaking fails to explain the universe in whichthose decisions are made. By relegatingstructures and classes into limbo and focusing on the routines of 'polities', they buildthe existing universe of power into theirassumptions without explicating the classconstraints and determinants in shapingpolitical agendas.

By ignoring long-term, large-scaleinterests and focusing on idiosyncratic contingencies, the apostates undermine anytheoretical position or coherent methodological perspective for understanding

political transitions. Disembodied 'decisionmakers'the ghosts of powershape thedemocratic process without having to confront regional hegemonic powers, international banks, autocratic military chieftainsor local speculators. As one team of writersputs it: 'The short-term polit ical calculationswe stress here cannot be deduced from orimputed to such structures [macro-structuralfactors] except perhaps in an act of misguided faith.49 The big issues of democracy areanalysed best by studying decisions yesterday,today and maybe tomorrow, the rest isreligion, according to this variant of

apostasy. Clearly, the uncertainty of theauthors about the stability of their democracy, the durability of class compromisesand the viabi lity of neo-classical equi librium

models is the tribute that vice pays to virtue: lurking behind, above and below is thedestabilising effects of class struggle in itsvarious manifestations: class polarisation,inter-impe rial rival ries, ru lin g class reversionto dictatorial rulership, etc. But once youhave dismissed classes, and reduced class interests to the status of an artefact of subjective individual preference, how do you bringthe class struggle back into the explanatory

model except as a product of every availablecontingency.

D E M O C RA C Y : W I T H O R W I T H O U T

ADJ EC TIVES

One of the major themes of many of theretreating intellectuals, north and south, isdemocracy and the process of 'democratisa-tion' , particu larly as it unfolded in manyparts of the third world. A good example isthe discussion found in the influentia l mu lti -volume series edited by O'Donnell et al, onTransitions from Authoritarianism in Latin

America. The theoretical and conceptual

arguments found in these volumes sum upmost of the deficiencies of the currentdebate. There are at least six major problemswith their discussion. The writers (1) conflate the concepts and analyses of state andregime; (2) exaggerate procedural politicalchanges relating to regime behaviour andunderestimate the importance of authoritarian institutional continuities and theboundaries and rules they impose on theformer; (3) ignore the convergence betweenelectoral regimes and the authoritarian statestructure; (4) obscure regime and classlinkages, their impact on socio-economic

:-. and the subsequent negative impactthe has on political freedom for non-elitegroups; (5) ignore the centrality of state classrelations in shaping electoral regime agendasand prospects for democracy through theevasive notion of indeterminancywhichreduces their discussion to little more thana journalist ic commentary on politic al personalities, rules and events; and (6) simplifythe politic al process by dichotomis ing it intothe categories of authoritarian-democraticon the basis of formal political proceduresignoring the complex interplay betweenrepressive practices and structures and elec

toral rules.Though it has become fashionable to

write about the state, most of the writing isbased on a great deal of confusion of essential concepts. The state refers to the permanent institutions ofgovernmentand the concomitant ensemble of class relations whichhave been embedded in these same institutions. The permanent institutions includethose which exercise a monopoly over themeans of coercion (army, police, judiciary ),as well as those that control the economiclevers of the accumulation process.

The 'government' rulers those pol iti cal

officials that occupy the executive andlegislative positions and are subject torenewal or replacement. There are varioustypes of government classified along several

dimensions. For example there are civilianor military regimes; elected or self-appointedregimes.

In analysing the process -of po lit ica lchange it is important to recognise the different levels at which transformation takesplace in order to determine the scope anddirection ofpolicy as well as to be able toadequately characterise the process. Forexample in the present period in Latin

America, there have been a number ofpolitical changes that O'Donnell, et al,dubbed a 'democratisation' process whichproduced 'democratic states! In terms of ourconceptual distinctions, however, these political changes have not in the least changedthe nature of the state but rather have ledto changes at the level of government orregime. The military, police and judicia l officials -in the overwhelming ma jor ity of caseshave remained in place, with the same controls over 'security', with the same values andideologies and w ith out having been broughtto justice for their terrorist behaviour.Moreover, the same class linkages that defined the state before the political changes continue under the new regimes. The continuities of the basic state structures define theessential nature of the political system: theboundaries and instrumentalities of socialaction. The new political regime exercises itsprerogatives, executive and legislative initiatives within the framework established bypre-existing configuration of power. Thismeans that any characterisation of the process of political change and the political configuration must include both the continuitiesof the state as well as the changes at the levelof the regime. Moreover, since the state is

prior and more basic than the regime in thefunctioning of the social system, it is thenature of the state which is the 'noun' andthe regime which is the adjective in characterising the poli tica l configura tion. Hence,for example, in the case of Guatemala thecontinuities in the state apparatus-organisationally and ideologically intactfrom the period of terrorist rulershipprovide the key to defining the politicalsystem, while the change from an appointedmilitary to elected Cerezo regime providesthe modification. Hence the Guatemalanpolitical system could be referred to as an

elected-civilian police-state O'Donnell et al'sdiscussion of democracy without adjectivesconflates the different levels of analysis andover-simplifies the state-regime relation.

The accommodation between elected-civilian regimes and the terrorist-militarystate is based upon converging socio-economic projectsand not as O'Donnell, et alwould argue circumstances 'forced' uponreluctant reform-minded civilians. Both inthe cases of Argentina and Uruguay, the incumbent civilian regimes have elaborateddevelopment strategies that are essentiallydirected toward integrating the export-

oriented growth projects of their predecessorto more 'rational management' of thedomestic economy and the more effectivemobil isat ion of outside economic resources.



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Since the civ ili an regime's economic modelsare built on supply side incentives andpremised on creating a favourable climatefor external funding, it engages in the samerestrictive domestic income policies as theirpredecessors. Upon taking office the civilians are very aware that their popular'political capital' based on their displacement or the terrorist-military regime willsooner of later begin to dissipate. In anti

cipation of popular protest and in defenceof their economic strategy, the elected-civi lian regimes choose to retain thei r ties tothe existing state apparatus. The socioeconomic continuities serve to bridge the

political differences between the military andcivilian, particularly as the former retainsthe state while the latter are relegated tomanaging the regime.

The composition, orientation and classrelations of the state shape the long-termlarge scale policies of a political system. Thatis why Washington is willing to acceptchanges in regime (be they from military tocivilian) in order to preserve the continuityof the state; conversely and for the samereason, Washington is adamant in opposingpolitical changes that dismantle the existingstate, particularly when the new state isorganised to sustain a regime with a nationalist and socialist project. Washingtonis wil lin g to sacrifice the Marcos, Duvalierand many other regimes and accept civiliansas long as it can preserve the state apparatusa policy that was tried and failed inCuba and Nicaragua.

There is no question then of discussing inthe O'Donne ll et al fashion polit ical regimes,electoral-civilian or other, without referringto the state-class relations upon which theydepend. Regimes cannot defend themselvesor promote the accumulation process whenthey act contrary to state interests. This isunderstood by incoming civi lian politicianswho proceed to fashion development agendas and political relations adapted to theseinstitutional realities. In many cases the needto 'adapt' is very minimal since the civiliansshare a common perspective with the stateelites. This agreement over policy betweenthe regime and state is obscured by theideologues of the civilian regime like O'Do n-nell et al who promote the notio n of 'demo

cracy without adjectiveswho attempt tonarrow the discussion of the pol iti cal systemto regime changes and the accompanyingelectoral procedures, without examining thelarger historical-structural configurationwithin which those changes take place.

A major problem in this neo-liberal discourse is the marked tendency to dichotomise the political process in terms of thecategories of authoritarian/democratic. Atseveral levels this analysis is flawed. First isthe fact that the authoritarians are activenegotiators and facilitators of the transiti on.Second, the authoritarians continue to ex

ercise power and control over the instruments of violence. Thirdly, there are issueareas (punishment of milita ry human violators, debt obligations, reform) which are off

limits to the civilian regime. Fourthly, insome cases under the civilian regimes humanrights violations continue and in some casesincrease massively (Peru under Belaunde andEl Salvador under Duarte are two clear examples). In other cases, political terror hasbecome more selective: in Brazil underSarney, killings of peasant advocates ofagrarian reform continues, while over 200polit ical murders took place during the first

eight months of the Cerezo regime inGuatemala. The continuation of repressiveinstitutions, policies and practices expressesthe inter-penetration of electoral-civilianregimes and authoritarian institutions, nottheir mutual opposition as O'Do nnell argues.

The facile equation of elected-civilianregimes with 'democracy' or 'democratisationand the concomitant respect for elementary rights (security of one's physicalstate)is contrary to numerous examples inrecent Lati n Americ an history. The civil ianBalaguer regimeelected in the aftermathof the US 1965 invasionoversaw the

emergence of para-military death squadsresponsible for several hundred politicalmurders. The Mendez Montenegro regimein Guatemala elected in 1966 presided overone of the bloodiest chapters in that country's gory history. If we add the Belaunderegime in Peru with its over eight thousandcivilian deaths and the Duarte regime, withover 60,000 deaths, we get some notion ofthe gap between electoral processes and theelementary ingredients of citizenship.

The political changes in regime have takenplace almost totally divorced from any profound changes in the totality of society, apoint that O'Donnell et al argue as necessaryand realistic to stabilise democracy.50 Therestructuring and reorganisation of societyand economy which was completed by themilitary has become the point of departurefor the new civilian regimes and the elaboration of its socio-economic policy. In fact thecivilian regimes have assumed the burden ofsecuring financial assistance which wasunavailable to the mili tary regime to financethe 'modernisation' of the elitist development model. Moreover, faced with the broadsocietal delegitimation of the military thecivilian regime has assumed the task of absolving the mil ita ry of all responsibility for

massive criminal offences through quasi oropen amnesties.

What O'Donnell et al describe as the'democratisation process' has the dualcharacter of reconsolidating authoritarianstate powerboth the military institutionand accumulation modelwhile concedingpolit ical space for in dividual expression andlimited social mobilisation. The contradictorynature of this conjunctural process createsthe basis for deepening the alienation ofthose majoritarian social movements whichconceived of democratisation as a processin which regime change would be accom

panied by profound change in the stateapparatus and the accumulation model.O'Donnell et al's acceptance of the electoralsystem based on the elite export model leads

them to attack the class content and programme of the labour unions and left parties for destabilising and lacking in realism.By removing class conflict fro m politics andobfuscating the role of political structuresas apparatuses of bourgeois domination,they fashion an ideology to legitimate thenew amalgam of authoritarian 'state andcivilian liberal regime.

Cutting off 'political analysis' from its

long-standing and deeply entrenched powermatrix, the neo-liberal theorists focused onthe epiphenomena of narrow electoral interests, personalities and partisan partyconcernsthe stuff of North Americanpolitical science vintage 1950 (passed off asthe latest up-to-date post-Marxist intellectual innovations).

O'Donnell et al neo-liberal concepts ofpolitics emerge in a transitional period: inthe aftermath of the military terror and atthe beginning of the revival of mass socialmovements. The new c ivil ian regimes capitalise on the temporary mutual impotence: thebourgeois-military can no longer directlyrule, the mass movements cannot yet pro

ject the ir own poli ti ca l programme. In thistransitional context, neo-liberal theoristsdelve deeply and ponder seriously about the'durability of democratic institutions', the'intrinsic value of democratic freedoms', the"autonomy of the individual'. Meanwhiletheir colleagues in the civilian regime promote 'democracy without adjectives' by imposing class selective austerity programmesto pay foreign bankers, promote multinationals to 'modernise' the economy and promulgate amnesties to absolve their militarycohabitators of terrorist crimes. The work

ing class and peasantswho fortunately donot read the texts about classless democracy,but feel the painful class effects of theirpoliciesengage in growing numbers ofclass action: over a dozen general strikes inArgentina, continual confrontation in Braziland Uruguay and growing popular insurgency in the Peruvian countryside.

In the face of the re-emergence of classpolitics and the militarisation of politicallife, the proponents of neo-liberal doctrinesof democracy can be expected to retreat further toward ahistorical notions of political'cycles'. What is clear is that the debate that

is taking place goes far beyond the confinesof academia: today for the left to be heldhostage to a claim of democracy built on thetwin pillars of the terror state and supply-side economics is to abdicate their role inthe emerging class struggles which conflictwi th the real basis of politicsthe state andcapital.

With growing intensity from CentralAmerica to the Andean countries to Brazil ,powerful mass extra-parliamentary sociopolitical movements have emerged as thecentral axis to any democratisation processand beyond, and prominent actors in the

redefinition of the relationship between stateand society. The movements have createdthrough their action a new political experience which shapes a new tradition of

Econo mic and Pol iti cal Weekly September 22, 1990 2153


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polit ical practice, one profoundly alien to thepost-modernist discourse. We are not in aperiod o f the end of ideology, but in the ageof ideology linked to direct popular participation. Class politics have not been replaced by 'modernisation'. It has been reinvigorated and found new sites for struggle, newforms of organisation. The practical consequences of the political discourse of thepost-modern ideologues has been catastro

phic for the populace: 'social contract' hasbeen a formula through which liberal-eiectoral regimes subordinate labour toregressive neo-liberal economic strategies.After several social pacts ended with thefreezing of labour incomes, while pricesspiralled upward, movement confidence inregime commitments to 'equal sacrifice toconsolidate democracy' ebbed and flowed.

In Latin America, efforts by post-modernists to patch together a new synthesis ofliberalism and democratic socialism on thebasis of neo-classical economics, electoralprocesses and vague references to the positiverole of civil society has come apart as themarket has polarised 'civil society' and theconfrontations between the electoral politicalclass, playing according to the capitalist-democratic rules of the game has come into conflict with the social movements playing according to the needs of their impoverished social constituents. The deepcontradictions between the concentrationand centralisation of financial and exportcapital and the declining incomes and increasing precariousness of the working classhave exploded the consensual politics thatthe post-modernist ideologues postulated asthe realist conception of democratic con

solidation and popular advance. The postmodernist ideologues also bear considerableresponsibility for the growing disenchantment with the electoral regimes. Theydefended the subordination of electoral processes to political pacts with the departingmili tary, accepted the debt obligat ions andthe neo-liberal export model as the newrealism and thus provoked the deep socioeconomic fissures that agitate LatinAmerican society from bottom to top.

RETREAT IN THE EAST

Today the most striking characteristic ofeastern European and Soviet intellectuals isthe inversion of their polit ical formulas andcontinuity of their logic of reasoning. Wherein the past they saw the inevitability ofcapitalist collapse, today they posit its continuing success; yesterday they saw socialismresulting from the exhaustion of technico-material development under capitalism,today they describe capitalist stability based on the continuity of technical progress.In the past, they described the absolutepauperisation of the working class, todaythey see cont inui ng improvements in livi ngstandards. Yesterday they promoted Sovietcollectivism as the model for third worlddevelopment, based on the power of thesocialist bloc, today they speak of the

development of capitalist relations in newstates as historically progressive: the samemechanical deductive logic from questionable premises. What makes the Soviet intellectuals' defence of capitalism in the thirdworld so peculiar is that it occurs at theworst possible moment: with mass hungerin sub-Saharan A fri ca, wi th a decade of lostdevelopment and mounting debt burdens inLatin America, and with increasing class

warfare in some of the NICs. Givingcredence to a popular Argentine saying: tellme what the Communists are supportingand I will tell you what I am against.

The Soviet born-again celebrants ofcapitalism retain some of their polemicalspleen from their Stalinist pastits eithercapitalism or barbarism: 'Attempts to prevent it (capitalism) where there is no alternative [as in underdeveloped countries] canmerely prolong the existing backwardness.Thus the job of the proletarian is to organise,to defend the freedom of the proletarian tostruggle, which does not retard the develop

ment of capitalism, but accelerates it. .. '

51

This strange new Soviet version of the classstruggle could be enshrined on the bannersof Thatcher, Reagan and the IMF. It is ashort step from the general praise of themagical powers of the market place toeulogies for the multi nat ion al corporationswhich might embarrass Lee Iaccoca: "Therelatively rapid growth of capitalism in thethird world over the past two-odddecades... has been expedited by theeconomically more powerful and dynamiccapitalist system... above all, with theemergence of transnational companies as aneffective instrument for promotingcapitalism in the third world!'52 The pillageby the multinationals of nature, the masspoverty and the debt crisis induced by thebanks is passed over today in the same glibfashion that in the past Soviet ideologuesglossed over the agrarian crisis and themismanagement that characterised mindlessStalinist collectivism. The failure torecognise internal differentiati on w ith in thethi rd w orld , the misleading generalisationsfrom aggregate growth data, the incapacityto look at long-term and now visible adverseconsequences of externally funded growthspell trouble not only for Soviet-third world

relations, but for Russia itself. The prospectsfor growth, equity and democracy are dimindeed if the Soviets begin to operate underthe assumptions that dependence on external investors will dynamise Soviet society.

The doctrinaire liberalism that has takenhold among Soviet intellectuals exends totheir discussion of the relationship betweencapitalism and democracy: private capitalism's progressive role goes beyond providingmaterial prerequisites for socialism. According to one writer, it is in this phase ofcapitalist development in the thir d wor ld that"the basis for bourgeois democracy is laidand a civilian (sic) society formed".53 Thesescientific observations from the new Sovietintelligentsia must come as revelations to the

workers and intellectuals who have sufferedfifteen years of dictatorship under the mostmarket-oriented capitalist regime in Chileanhistory, the thirty years of markets andmachine guns in South Korea or the fortyyears of one-party rule in Taiwan. While itis all to the good that Soviet intellectualsrevise their traditional ideas on the transition to socialism, their method and theoriesreflect the same global impressionism, and

incapacity to deal with autonomous classpoltics. All that the revisionists have doneis to substitute one regional power bloc foranother. The social-relations of production,the complex processes of uneven development with a variety of different levels andtypes of class struggle get washed out:Stalinist dogma is replaced by liberal dogma.

EUR OPE: M AR XISM FOR R ULING C LASS

From enfant terrible of] the revolutionaryleft to mainstream policy coach to rulingclass Europe, Andre Gunder Frank is theepitome of the apostate as political realist.

At least as early as 1983, when he publishedThe European Challenge, Gunder Frank hadabandoned any pretence of class politics andbecome a publicist for an independent,unified capitalist Europeas an alternativeto US imperialism. His original proposalsare, of course, forty years late, having beenput forth almost 30 years early by JeanMonnet, the father of the EEC. What isparadoxical is his defence of a unitedEuropean capitalism occurs precisely whenEuropean imperalism is increasingly challenging the declining US empire and risingJapanese imperialism. More particularly,

Frank has little or nothing to say how aunified European capitalism, which will beclearly under German hegemony, can continue its current dynamic push in the worldeconomy without taking on the characteristics of a revitalised imperial centre.European imperialism has been replaced byanother Frank ism: 'the Europeanisa tion ofEurope'.54 In Frank's new role as policycoach for (non-class defined non-imperial)Europe, the west's increasing do min ati on ofeastern Europe is discussed as ".. .economicand perhaps political co-operation necessarythroughout eastern Europe and the SovietUnio n to minimise their own domestic socialand polit ical costs of restructuring and transition".55 Frank's notion of 'economic cooperation' between the two Europes leavesout the imperial structures and mechanismsthat are exploiting Poland, Hungary andYugoslavia through interest payments andunequal exchange. Within Frank's Europe',he opts for the West German imperialvariant over the French; apparently prefer-ring hegemony based on market power overthe French nuclear-military version. Frank,having abandonedat least in relation toEuropehis metropolitan-satellite analysisnow argues in the context of inter-imperial

rivalries for a 'European policy of its own'.Hence, his support for western Europeanintegration and the incorporation of eastern



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Europ is largely directed to 'strengthen'European imperialism against its competitors.

There is in Frank's current embrace of aregional power' and his globalist reasoning,similarities with his conception of the contradictions in his earlier radical period. Inboth instances, he ignored social relationsofproduction and the class basis of exploitation in favour of looking at regions. In thepast, he focused on centre and periphery,

metropole and satellite and the extraction ofSurplus'; in the present, he describes world-blocs of capital. The subsuming of class differences in his earlier radical dependencyanalysis resurfaces in his mainstream imperial 'co-operative' framework of the present. It is not surprising that Frank, whonow visualises Europe as an alternative andnot as a revived imperial power, looks withfavour at those measures taken by the formercommunist countries that open them up toEuropean imperial penetration. He welcomesthe transition to capitalism and democracyunder Deng Xiaoping with the followingrather mindless optimism: "China alreadymade enormous strides in the sameeconomic and political reform directionsince 1978. Deng Xiaoping managed to install a new reformist leadership at the 1987party congress."56 Frank's vision of ademilitarised, unified capitalist Europe,strengthene

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