Henry Veltmeyer

What's Left in Latin America? : Regime Change in New Times

Contents: Introduction Paradoxes of Latin American development Latin America at the crossroads: in the vortex of change Argentina: from crisis and rebellion to growth and pragmatic neoliberalism Bolivia: class dynamics and regime politics Cuba: continuing revolution and new contradictions Venezuela: democracy, socialism and imperialism Back to the future or fastforward to the past? Bibliography Index.

Imperialism and capitalism in the twenty-first century : a system in crisis

Contents: Introduction Dynamics and contradictions of capitalist development Latin America at the crossroads of change The land struggle in Latin America Latin America growth, stability and inequality Capitalism in the second decade of the 21st century: from the golden age to the dark ages Labor and migration: a pathway out of poverty or neocapitalism?, Raul Delgado Wise and Humberto Marquez Covarrubias The global crisis of capitalism: whose crisis? Who profits and who bears the cost? Extractive capital, imperialism and the post-neoliberal state The new authoritarianism: democracy in America Anti-imperialism of the fools Imperialism and democracy: notes on an arranged but fruitful marriage Capitalism and democracy in Egypt: dispatches from the frontline of a class war Rethinking imperialism in the 21st century Bibliography Index.

Neoliberalism and the Social Movements: Mobilizing the Resistance

The imposition of the neoliberal imperial order in the early 1980s polarized society and sharpened the contradictions between regions, classes, and ethnic groups. This chapter focuses on the dynamic growth of social movements that organized to recover political space and reverse the regressive market-friendly capitalist “reforms” imposed from above with the blessing and backing of Washington. This chapter analyzes the revival and build up of the new class-based movements and the ensuing class and ethnic struggles that culminated in the new millennium in the overthrow of client neoliberal regimes. From the smoldering embers and the ashes of the Washington Consensus, there emerged a new more pragmatic neoliberal order based on a perceived need to retreat from an unregulated form of free market capitalism and establish a more inclusive form of development.

US Imperialism and the Neoliberal Offensive

The term “development” is generally understood as a combination of improvements in the quality of people’s lives marked by a reduction or alleviation of poverty, an increased capacity to meet the basic needs of society’s members, and the sustainability of livelihoods. Empowerment and changes in institutionalized practices are necessary to bring about these improvements. The “idea of development” can be traced back to the eighteenth-century project of “enlightened” philosophers and social reformers as a means to bring about “progress”—a society characterized by freedom from tyranny, superstition and poverty, and social equality. However, as noted by Wolfgang Sachs and his associates in postdevelopment theory (1992), it was reinvented, as it were, in 1948, in the context of (1) a postwar world capitalist order based on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a free trade negotiating forum; (2) an emerging east-west conflict and cold war; and (3) a national independence struggle by countries seeking to escape the yoke of European colonialism and the reach of imperial power—Pax Britannica in the prewar and Pax Americana in the new postwar context.

Imperialist Dynamics of US-Venezuela Relations

us relations with Venezuela illustrate the specific mechanisms with which an imperial power seeks to sustain client states and overthrow independent nationalist governments. By examining us strategic goals and its tactical measures, we can set forth several propositions regarding (i) the nature and instruments of imperial politics in Venezuela; (ii) the shifting context and contingencies influencing the successes and failures of specific policies; and (iii) the importance of regional and global political alignments and priorities (Petras & Veltmeyer, 2013a).

Reflections on us Imperialism at Home and Abroad

The world political economy is a mosaic of cross currents: domestic decay and elite enrichment, new sources for greater profits and deepening political disenchantment, declining living standards for many and extravagant luxury for a few, military losses in some regions with imperial recovery in others. There are claims of a unipolar, a multi-polar and even a non-polar configuration of world power. Where, when, to what extent and under what contingencies do these claims have validity? Busts come and go, but let us talk of ‘beneficiaries’. Those who cause crashes, reap the greatest rewards while their victims have no say. The swindle economy and the criminalized state prosper by promoting the perversion of culture and literacy. ‘Investigative journalism’, or peephole reportage, is all the rage. The world of power spins out of control. As they decline, the leading powers declare that ‘it’s our rule or everyone’s ruin!’

Canadian Resistance to the Northern Gateway Oil Pipeline

The global commodities boom of the first decade of the twenty-first century has focussed attention back to extractivism as a development path. While this debate has specific local characteristics—for example, ‘re-primarization’ in some Latin American countries, ‘land grabbing’ in parts of Africa, and a quest for ‘energy superpower’ status in Canada—they can all be seen as part of a wider concern over, and resistance to, the global dynamics of extractivist capitalism. This paper has two purposes. The first is to provide a theoretical framework in which extractivism can be understood globally and within which specific country and regional debates can be situated. The second is to analyse resistance to a specific form of extractivism—re oil pipeline construction—in Northern British Columbia and to illustrate how it can be understood within the context of the turn of many countries towards natural resource extraction as a model of national development. While resistance to extractivism has been the subject of much analysis in the Latin American context, less is available on resistance in the global north (in fact, the global south in the northern hemisphere) and less still on a comparative analysis. This paper seeks to fill this void and, in doing so, demonstrates the similarities in extractivist resistance in both north and south. Canada, we argue, provides a good case study for exploring such similarities as it engages in ‘extractivist imperialism’ abroad at the same time as the natural resource development on the unceded territory of indigenous groups in Canada represents a form of neocolonialism. As an entry point into the analysis, we provide a brief overview of Canada’s extractivist push before turning to the general framework and the dynamics of resistance to the construction of pipelines to transport oil from the tarsands of Alberta to Asian markets.

Trade and Development in an Era of Extractive Imperialism

<UN> 1 There are a number of theories regarding the propensity of capitalism towards crisis, including the proposition of a built-in tendency for the average rate of profits to fall, which sets up a cyclical pattern of development induced by the efforts of capitalists to offset this tendency, and the associated ideas of a tendency towards overproduction (vis-à-vis the market) or underconsumption (due to lack of purchasing power). The dominant idea, however, is that a systemic crisis is normally not terminal, but is in fact functional for the system in bringing about needed periodical ‘restructuring’ that weeds out inefficient operators. The one idea that can be added is that crisis, whether systemic or merely financial, weakens the institutional structure of the system, generating forces of change that can be mobilised in different directions, to the right or the left. 2 The neoliberal doctrine of the virtues of free market capitalism and the evils of government intervention was elaborated by a group of intellectuals, mostly economists, associated with the Mont Pelerin Society, a thought collective founded on the initiative of Friedrich Hayek, a classical liberal and advocate of ‘Austrian economics’ back in the 1ate 1940s. In 1947 Hayek invited 39 scholars, mostly economists, with some historians and philosophers, were invited to gather to discuss the dangers facing ‘civilization’ (i.e. capitalism and democracy). 3 This consensus was famously summed up by Williamson (1990) in the form of a 10-point program of structural reforms in macroeconomic policy. Chapter 4

A Turn of the Tide: The Center-Left Comes to Power

Today, so-called leftist or “progressive” political forces have formed governments in eleven Latin American nations, and social movements continue to challenge neoliberalism in several other countries. This situation contradicts the prognosis of Jorge Castaneda (1993: 3) made in the opening of his well-known but misbegotten and now largely forgotten book on the Latin American Left: nThe Cold War is over and Communism and the socialist bloc have collapsed. The United States and capitalism have won, and in few areas of the globe is that victory so clear-cut, sweet, and spectacular as in Latin America. Democracy, free-market economics, and pro-American outpourings of sentiment and policy dot the landscape of a region where until recently left-right confrontation and the potential for social revolution and progressive reform were widespread. Today conservative, pro-business, often democratically elected and pro-US technocrats hold office around the hemisphere. The US spent nearly 30 years combating nationalist Marxist revolutionaries where the Left was active, influential, and sometimes in control, and where it is now on the run or on the ropes (quoted in Barrett, Chavez, and Rodriguez-Garavito, 2008: 1).

Turning the Social Movements: Civil Society to the Rescue

The term “civil society” denotes all manner and types of social organizations found between the family at one pole and the state at the other.1 The idea of civil society has achieved prominence in liberal and conservative political and development discourse over the past two decades, particularly in connection with successive waves of “political transitions,” beginning in Eastern Europe and Latin America (in the 1990s) and spreading across the developing world. In normative and organizational terms, “civil society” is described by liberal and conservative advocates as a crucial agent for limiting authoritarian government and empowering individuals, reducing the socially atomizing and unsettling effects of market forces, enforcing political accountability, and improving the quality and inclusiveness of governance, a term that denotes a particular set of interactions between civil society and the state.2