"A PERILOUS WAY TO SOCIALISM"

Click here for a perspicacious (yes! I`ve finally got to use that word! I can die a satisfied man!) analysis of Latin-left politics from Counterpoint´s Vijay Prashad :

"Every country gets the left political force that it deserves. Each social formation has a different class composition, a different relation of ethnic minorities to a majority population, has a separate colonial history with differential capitalist development, and has very distinct progressive political traditions. A broth of Anarchism, Anarcho-Syndicalism, Marxism, Communism, agrarian Populism, social Catholicism alongside messianic great leaders (from Bolivar to Peron) and indigenous communitarianism created a stew of ideas, traditions and resources for the political struggles across the region.

In 1959, Silvio Frondizi, who founded Argentina's Revolutionary Left Movement, put the notion of the "left" plainly, "Although the word 'left' does not have much scientific value, its use has conferred on it the meaning of a critical revolutionary position vis-à-vis the current capitalist society, aiming at its transformation into a future socialist society." Frondizi's impatience with reform belied his own catholic understanding of the left tradition, whose parties had to tread a fine line between the alleviation of immediate grievances and the creation of a collective will decisive enough to risk total social transformation. Brazil has its own history, as does Venezuela.

In one place, revolutionary time moves faster than the other. That does not mean that the leadership is to be exculpated for its own failures: Lula's regime, for example, has smothered any state and non-state institutional forms that might have kept his delegates honest. Nevertheless, those who carry around a litmus paper to gauge the acidity of a regime will surely always be disappointed."