 Welcome everybody to tonight's Development Studies Seminar. We're delighted to have with us Professor Henry Veltmeyer, Research Professor in Development Studies at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico and Professor Emeritus of International Development Studies at St Mary's University, Canada. Anybody who's studied Development Studies at SOAS will of course be incredibly familiar with his work, or you soon will be, as he's a leading theorist in the field of critical and post-development studies, authoring over 40 books and countless articles. His highly influential contributions to the field encompass work on neoliberalism and alternatives to it, imperialism, globalisation, popular resistance including social and peasant movements, the state and democracy, extractivism and development, social change and class structures in Latin America and beyond. His most recent works, all of them published in the last two years, include critical development studies and introduction, the essential guide to critical development studies, co-operativism and local development in Cuba, an agenda for democratic social change, class struggle in Latin America making history today. Today he's going to talk to us on the topic of beyond neoliberalism or capitalism, the Latin American experience. We're delighted to also have with us, during Henry, to discuss this topic. I've talked to Leandro Bagaia Camus, senior lecturer in the theory and policy and practice of development, here at the Development Studies Department at SOAS. Leandro's expertise includes theories of development, the political economy of development and the historical sociology of state and class formation. His work on the Latin American left and history of land struggles includes the important 2014 book, land and freedom, the peasant development alternatives to neoliberalism of the landless people of Brazil and the Zapatista movement in Chiapas. Before we start, if you want to tweet tonight and I would encourage you to do so, the hashtags are SOAS Dev Studies and ESRC. Our speaker will speak for around 45 minutes and then Leandro will respond. And then we'll take a good chunk of time for your questions and have a discussion on these issues. So I'd like to hand over to you. I'll get some elevation from my laptop with my aging eyes. Can't have it too far away from that. Ah, it should work. Well, good afternoon everyone. I'm very pleased indeed to be here with you all to be invited by SOAS to share some ideas based on some recent research conducted in Latin America, but that I believe to be highly relevant for students of development elsewhere more generally as well as Oriental and African Studies related to development. Especially for those who are concerned as I am with the systemic foundations of development, of development whether understood as a project consciously designed to improve the social condition of a defined or targeted population or understood as a process based on the workings of a system, some call the world capitalist system. A system that more or less disappears. I'm sure you've noticed in mainstream studies of development from discourse, from analysis. It's virtually as if capitalism, it's so taken for granted that you don't have to talk about it. It's unmentionable and is not mentioned or discussed in most studies in the mainstream, which is why it's so central for what we call critical development studies, which is a network of activist scholars concerned to give development a more critical edge. For that it means shifting the focus from institutional development within the system or policy strategies, changes within the system to the system itself, to its pillars. It's fundamental dynamics that relate to the workings of that system. We argue that system should be the primary unit of analysis for development studies. I propose today to explore or at least overview the dynamics of a development process that has unfolded over the last three decades of what David Harvey, among others, has labelled the neoliberal era. My proposal is to review these dynamics in the Latin American context because the neoliberal agenda has had its greatest impact in Latin America as opposed to other macro regions of the world system. As a result, the forces of resistance to the capital development have been more powerful in Latin America than anywhere else. That's because the neoliberal policy agenda has been implemented with such force and devastating negative impact. It's also possible in the Latin American context to review the experience, a development experience the last couple of decades, to trace out the contours of what an alternative development pathway, a world beyond neoliberalism or hopefully capitalism, might look like. Latin America, in fact, is sort of like a laboratory, a virtual laboratory for the study of the contemporary dynamics of both the forces of capital development and the forces of resistance to that development. At the moment, one could argue that Latin America is sort of caught up in the vortex of these conflicting forces, forces of development, forces of change that push towards change and forces of resistance, forces that can be mobilized to the right or to the left depending on the correlation of force in the class struggle. So you cannot determine theoretically the outcome of this development. It depends on understanding the correlation of force and the specific conditions found in different situations. But it is possible to analyze this process backwards, if you like, in hindsight, looking over the last couple of years. This is what we have attempted to do. To elaborate on this point, every advance of capital in the development process, and I say that's what development is basically about, can be analyzed in two levels. First, at the level of development, which is to say the development of the forces of production or the capital development of the force production, capital development in short. And secondly, at the level of the social relations that correspond to that development, as well as the forces of resistance generated by each advance of capital in the development process. So the argument basically is that as capital advances in the development process, it generates forces of resistance. So it's possible to trace out the history of development through a series of cycles, cycles of development, cycles of resistance to that development. And what I would try to do is just briefly summarize some of the salient features of the last three cycles of development resistance, which have unfolded in over the last six developmental decades, since the Second World War, when the development project was invented. Invented, as we'll see, in order to prevent countries that were trying to liberate themselves from the Yoga of Colonial rule and British imperialism from pursuing a socialist path towards development and to lead them to pursue a capitalist path. As a project was designed to prevent that, to ensure that these countries who are in process of liberating themselves from colonialism would pursue a national, a capitalist path towards nation building and economic development. As I said, I propose to focus on the working of these forces, development and resistance, in the context of what we understand as the neoliberal era, which can be dated from construction in the early 80s, 1980s, of New World Order. That was designed, and here I will quote from the National Security Report 2012 of George W. Bush, who talked about the need to liberate the forces of economic freedom and democracy from the regulatory constraints of the developmental and welfare state. The aim is to basically take the government out of the development process, the state out of the development process, relying based on this belief in the virtues of free market capitalism, that it can basically liberate these forces of development and create conditions of economic growth and prosperity for all. It's interesting that this was presented in the National Security Report, since one could argue from the very beginning that development was basically seen by the U.S. state public officials as a security issue. The reason for my focus on Latin America, apart from the fact that it's my major area of interest and research, is, as I said, in no other macro region of the world system has the neoliberal policy agenda been implemented with such a devastating force, and no other region has the force of resistance been. So, let's say, resilient and powerful, popular resistance. Popular resistance in the form of not only collective actions of protest, but particularly in the form of social movements, social movements that, in the neoliberal era, were targeted against the implementation of the neoliberal policy agenda. The neoliberal era, then, basically includes three decades, one under the so-called Washington consensus on the need to take the state out of the development process, and then two decades under the post-Washington consensus, formed in the early 90s, of the need to bring the state back in and to generate a more inclusive form of development. By inclusive development, they basically mean reduction of poverty. This followed three decades of development under the agency of the state, the so-called old developmentalism for 50s to the 70s. Whereas in the 90s, in this neoliberal world order, you have this project that Latin America fears at the economic commission for Latin America. You have an economic commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, what they call neo-developmentalism. As I said, which is basically neoliberalism in terms of macroeconomic policy, but adding to it a new social policy targeting poverty, as well as a policy of administrative decentralisation that brings government closer to the people and that allows for popular participation or social participation in the development process. By social participation, they basically are referring to the engagement of civil society, non-governmental organisations in the development process as a strategic partner. In Bolivia, they would call this popular participation. There was even in the mid-90s a neoliberal law called the law of popular participation. That's because in Bolivia, you have not much of a civil society, but you have a very large society of indigenous communities. That's why the reference to popular rather than social participation. As I said, I've made reference to three development cycles in the post-war period, but I will concentrate on the third in the neoliberal era, but let me just say a couple of things about the first cycle. I am forgetting to see, let me just see where we are. We've covered this, we've covered that, we've covered that. Oh, no, we haven't. Okay, I'll see if I can catch up to there. Sorry about losing that there. This third cycle, I'll go straight to the third cycle of development and resistance, is related to the advance of capital in a specific form, called of course direct foreign direct investment in the acquisition of land and extraction of natural resources. Minerals, metals, fossil fuels and the like. And for the purpose of exporting these resources on the world market to take advantage of a primary commodities boom, a great demand for these resources by China and other emerging markets in the, et cetera, but particularly China. Both in terms of its industries and its middle class were demanding these resources to which then the multinational corporations in the extractive sector responded by investing heavily in these natural resources. And throughout the 90s you can see a sectoral shift from investment in manufacturing industry and services towards natural resources. They have sort of resourced, seeking extractive capital, we might say. So the development process in Latin America anyway was sort of bound up with this emergence of a new form of capitalism, extractive capitalism. And I say a new form of capitalism because it is. Capitalism takes various forms. The normal form, the form of capitalism, as you know it probably, is based on the construction of industry on the exportation of surplus labour generated by the capital development of industry. As Arthur Lewis once said, you know, is to take advantage of the unlimited supply of surplus labour presented by agriculture for urban-based industry. So that capital development is very much based on a core role of labour which not only added value to the product, but is basically the source of the value of the product on the world market. But under extractive capitalism you have exploitation, not just of labour, but of nature, which is to say the value of the product on the global market can't be calculated just in terms of the amount of labour expended in the production of that commodity, that there's sort of a natural value, the wealth of nature, which then is appropriated, not as surplus value by capital for profit, but as rent, resource rent, subsoil resource rent, ground rent, etc. And it's very important because the dynamics at all and political dynamics of extractive capitalism are different from the dynamics of industrial capitalism. For one thing, as I said, labour plays a much smaller role, maybe constituting maybe 10% or less of value of the product and which is then returned to it in the form of a wage which then represents about 10% of the product. The state captures another 10% of the product in the form of rents, royalties and taxes, etc. That means that at least 80% of the value of the product on the world market is appropriated by groups outside the country. In other words, there's very little developmental sort of multiply effect to the employment and income or development spread that industrial capitalism brings. And industrial capitalism, labour can participate up to 60% of the value of the product. So that makes a huge difference both economically and politically. So we are talking of the emergence of essentially a new form of capitalism. This is not to say that it's just a shift from one form to another because different forms of capitalism always coexist in combination in different forms. But what happens is that extractive capital begins to play a more predominant role. In Latin America you also have elements of what could be called what we call in our most recent book, Nacrocapitalism which is basically based on accumulation of capital accumulated in the drug trades which creates enormous fortunes which like any kind of form of money, if it's invested productively in the employment of labour, etc. it is converted into capital and then you have a different form of capitalism. So the point is one should distinguish between different forms of capitalism in order to be able to identify the differences in dynamics and there's also a difference in the forms of resistance to this development. So for example in the 50s and 60s the resistance took the form of a labour movement and a land struggle against the advance of capital but these forces of resistance were destroyed by the end of the 70s by a combination of two strategies development which was basically a project offered the poor as an alternative to joining revolutionary social movement movement that demanded revolutionary change and national liberation so in order to avoid the little conflicts and the politics of the social movements the revolutionary politics they designed an alternative what was then called development in terms of community delivered community based development projects and a state program of land reform and technical financial assistance, foreign aid they called it. So this is how in fact development originated as a project of international cooperation with the efforts of nation building of countries trying to escape colonialism but then in the 60s with the advent of Cuba which is basically the successful advent of a revolutionary movement one of the armies of national liberation that were found all over the world at that time came to state power and the guardians of the system were concerned to prevent another Cuba so in order to prevent another Cuba they turned towards development at that time it was called integrated rural development as an alternative to joining the social movements when the peasants who were dispossessed many of them from the land through a process of capital development of agriculture you have these dispossessed peasants who were in development discourse called the rural poor they were impoverished by the system and then helped by them then encouraged by the World Bank and other development agencies to take the development pathway out of rural poverty namely migration and labour that was the development process in the first cycle and the land struggle and the labour movement represented the cycle of resistance at that level but by the end of the 70s the force of resistance were destroyed weakened, decimated, dispersed so a combination of two strategies development strategy rural development and state repression and that was when the peasants didn't take debate they didn't take what was offered to them they didn't take the development option then the option was given to them was to confront the state in armed force and most of these national liberation movements all except in Colombia the FARC were destroyed in the 60s and 70s through a combination of state repression and development development representing sort of like the soft side of what some call US imperialism in other words the velvet glove which is then offered to the peasants to the rural poor and when they rejected velvet glove then iron fist comes out the state comes in that was development in the first cycle resistance as I said then and later has generally taken the form of collective actions in protest and social movements different forms so you have different cycles of social movements that provide and as well as the construction of alternative models of development so when you look at the resistance in Latin America today it's not only the question of analyzing the dynamics of social movements resisting the implementation of the advance of capital or the implementation of neoliberal policy agenda but it's actually in the act of construction and search for alternatives to capitalist development so a major feature of the resistance in the Latin American contemporary context is the search for a way out not only of the crisis of capitalism but search for an alternative alternatives to neoliberalism sort of with the construction of various post-niliberal models we call post development and even alternatives to capitalism in the discourse of critical development studies which I'm a part of this is called post development where development is sort of understood or equated with capitalism as I said it's not mentioned when you discuss development in the mainstream capitalism disappears but when you talk of development you're talking of capitalist development not social development or etc so in other words it's development that based on a program constructed within a frame of a particular system with certain dynamics so I'll use the word development what I'm talking about is capitalist development just a brief footnote by reference to this critical development studies I referred to, I might have mentioned already a network of scholars concerned to give development a critical edge I might just take the opportunity here to provide a brief commercial about a recent book you might have even seen it some of you might even have used it what is it called? The Sensual Guide to Critical Development Studies which represents a collaborative venture and collective effort of some 38 scholars around the world including several here at SOAS like Elisa van der Wegem who is one of the three editors of the critical development studies book program at Rutledge so Rutledge publishes for this network a series of books on the theme critical development studies so if anyone has a project, book project talk to me, email me and we'll see what we can do with it and of course we have Leandro who is part of this network and he's part of that book Having trouble following my power point here so cycle one, we just finished discussing that or just one yes, I would just like to pinpoint the importance of this book no, forget that book this you have seen this book I would strongly recommend for people who want to trace out the resistance cycle in the first period the first cycle the era of the development state this book is excellent very, very good it is the major resource of resistance not just Latin America but all over the world in Asian Africa as well and a number of SOAS scholars contributed to this book I mentioned that the end of the resistance in the first cycle second cycle let me just see if I can catch up to you as I mentioned, the 1980s saw an epoch changing epoch defining change in the system of global governance that is the rules used to govern international, economic and political relations and new world order as I said, they provided not only new set of rules for global governance but the institutional framework of a neoliberal programme of structural reforms in macroeconomic policy based on what I mentioned earlier known as the Washington Consensus we also, at the time we also had or saw the emergence of a new economic model model used to guide public policy this model of structural reform which basically included globalization, privatisation deregulation of markets liberalisation of the circuits of capital and trade etc and administrative decentralisation which was a reform a neoliberal reform which is often not mentioned but very, very important this was a reform invented by Agosto Pinochet a military dictator in Chile in the 70s who argued that he was going to teach the world about democracy how to bring about democracy and he was going to bring about democracy more democracy through this policy of administrative decentralisation so it is important even though the left can't oppose it it's not a left policy it originated as a neoliberal policy anyway, the aim of the structural reform agenda was to promote economic growth but what you have instead of economic growth you have the destruction of forces of production in agriculture and industry which resulted in how do you say the disappearance of an industrial polytheriot a government policy in Brazil and Argentina had the industrial policy of this government were generating an industrial working class but in the 80s this industrial policy was against the rules and the elimination of this policy and the invasion of foreign direct investment in takeover of a lot of these privatised firms etc you have the virtual destruction of forces of production built up over decades both in agriculture and industry resulting in ironically Orthodox Marxist theory had it that the end result would be the disappearance of the peasantry the argument is that as capital advances in the development process it would bring about a process of productive social transformation of a traditional agrarian society based on pre-capital relations into a modern industrial system and then a transformation of the peasantry into a working class or polytheriot which refers to a class of people who own nothing but the capacity to labour which therefore they have to exchange against capital for a living wage so the polytheriot becomes the source of the working class so basically a company development is the history of the transformation of the peasants into an industrial working class or polytheriot that's actually Marxist theory but it's also Orthodox economic development theory which we haven't got time to go into so there's been a lot of debates in that America and elsewhere about this what's called the agrarian question the disappearance of the peasantry which will be brought about inevitably by the forces of capital development so some argue you know you have the proletarianist who argue that this is inevitable the peasants are fated to disappear in the dustbin of history etc and you have the polytherianisation of these peasants and then you have others the peasanters who argue no agriculture provides obstacles to the advance of capital and peasants and rural poverty based on peasant economy will persist and still persist and you have very recent ongoing debates on this question so the primary focus is always on the disappearance of the peasantry but what you have ironically in the 80s in Latin America was the disappearance of the industrial polytheriot which you can see in for example the fact that over 80% up to 90% of all new jobs formed throughout the whole decade were formed in what's called the informal sector of the urban economy where rural migrants then for themselves and well work on their own account in the streets rather than for wages in factories, offices etc so you have tremendous growth of the informal sector and associated with it with what the sociologist Mike Davis called a planet of slums so what you have rather than rather than having the formation of the industrial polytheriot based on industrial capitalism which was expected which was the theory of both modernisation theorists and Marxists what you have is the formation of what we call a semi-proletariat which is a group of people, a class of people with one foot in the countryside and one foot in the urban centres on the margins of the modern capitalist system so take the case for example a city like in Bolivia, El Alto which is the biggest city in the country with a capital, very high, hard to breathe people like me million people 80% of the people who work there on the streets during the week go back home to the rural communities on the weekends so in other words they have not totally abandoned or come disconnected from the rural communities or agriculture they are still able to mix agriculture in with some labour in order to make ends meet so they are able to diversify their household incomes to include some labour income some agricultural income some remittances which is from the migrants abroad who are sent back to the families back home part of their wages etc and these remittances are huge in countries like Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador there is a second highest source of foreign exchange used to balance the trade account in the country it is based on this income remitted by these migrants we also have now a development project part of the mix with international cooperation and you have a new policy created invented by the ex-president of Brazil Lula, leader of the workers party which was to transfer directly to the poor income conditional cash transfer conditional because the income was transferred directly to poor families to the female head of household for all these reasons you can't transfer to the male head of the household because you have to ensure that the children would go to the school or to the clinic, that was the condition for getting that transfer of income well if you define poverty like the World Bank does as $1.25 whatever, same poverty a day now you are looking at about $30 a month if you then get a bonus from the government of $30 a month transferred directly to the household you eliminate overnight poverty, same poverty eliminated and that's what happens supposedly in Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina etc. in the first decade of this new century what you have in that period you have come to power the political left in information in what's called a pink or red wave of regime change in which the governments were then taken over by the center left parties who then pursued a post neoliberal program of inclusive development oriented towards the reduction of poverty which was then financed this is called the new developmentalism financed by the proceeds of the exports of these raw materials now the minerals, the metals the agrifood products etc. so these Latin resource wealth was exported in primary commodity form, not processed, not industrialized this exported it was based on direct foreign investment capital multinational companies in this extractive sector who then came to the country, was given the license by the government to extract these resources under 30 year contracts etc and to export them on the world market or as I said with most of the wealth leaving the country and all the problems social environmental problems left to the communities close by the extractive sites because extractive capitalism takes an enclave form in the countryside, mines etc in territories inhabited by indigenous communities and people etc who are obviously impacted directly and as I said some are convinced to support, provide a social license to support these extractive activities with the offer of some jobs some other crumbs like development projects where these companies offer $60,000 to this municipality to build a bridge or a school a condition of course that they consent to the operation of these mines so anyway, there's a lot of issues here which we can't get into in 5 minutes suffice it to say that this development has generated tremendous sources of resistance on the extractive frontier new forms of resistance not like in the 60s and 70s where resistance took form of social movements to demand improvement in labour wages and access land nor in the second cycle which is in the 1990s where resistance took the form of social movements mobilized where the resistance mobilized against a government neoliberal policy agenda these movements, peasant movements in the 90s it's been studied by a friend here in Mardu were so successful in halting stopping the neoliberal agenda that by the end of the decade the neoliberal policy agenda in Latin America was more or less dead so creating the conditions which allowed for the emergence of the center left in political power forming these post neoliberal regimes of course once the center left came to power they turned their backs on the social movements and did their thing and of course this primary commodity cycle which began in 2023 finished more or less in 2000 came to an end in 2012-13 the 10 year cycle and with the end of that primary commodity cycle was the end of the progressive cycle in Latin American politics resulting in another pendulum swing on the left to the right on the last five years there has been a dramatic Mexico is an exception for an interesting case but generally you have this shift back from the left to the right but within that electoral policy, the swing to the right you still have on the popular level in the countryside you still have these very active forces of resistance resistance which take the formal movement social environmental movements of protest opposition to the negative social environmental impact of extractivism, extractive operations and also resistance against the forces of development capital development that are once again pushing them off the land out of the communities basically because of contamination of the air of the water of damage to their health and other problems associated with basically operating minds extracting activities in their territories which then also has led to what's called a new form of enclosures in other words preventing access to the commons the global commons of land, water, territory subsoil resources etc and as you know that's where capitalism began in the 19th century in England the enclosure movement with the preventing access to the global commons while you have now a repeat of that process what some David Harvey's called accumulation by this possession so we have new forms of resistance and the big question is can this resistance connect with resistance that's occurring in the urban centers like resistance against the neoliberal policies in Argentina and Brazil that's happening right now in the urban centers there's always been a problem how to bring the real struggles and the urban struggles together some people look at these forces of resistance in the countryside like David Barkan looks at them as a new revolutionary subject in other words with the potential to think about transformative social change I myself much more skeptical in that they don't seem to be a revolutionary force Leandro may disagree on this I don't know but for sure once again the struggle it's no longer a class struggle now it's a territorial struggle a class struggle into a territorial struggle is being led by the rural poor anyway a bitter end there since a amount of time Leandro, over to you I guess we just speak to the table I'll move to the table All right Yes, well thank you very much to the organizer for inviting me to participate, Faisie Jo it's a pleasure and an honor to be discussing in every Veltmeyer's talk when I was doing my PhD only a few years ago when I was doing my PhD on peasant movement in Latin America his work was very very important I was arguing in the early 2000 or late 90s that the new peasant tree or the new peasant movement in Latin America were completely different than the previous one and was arguing that this idea that the peasant tree was going to disappear was actually not true and that the peasant tree was at the forefront of many struggles and it has proven true that they've been at the forefront of many struggles he has 40 books more than 40 books published he's always intervening in the debates he has a very good book on alternative to neoliberalism in Latin America where he analyzes critically the different theorization on alternative development post development that was also extremely useful for my own work and recently has worked a lot on a new extractivism and especially the contradictions of left wing governments in Latin America relying on extractivism for their model of development I agree with several of the things that he mentioned today especially this process of disappearance of the working class in Latin America during the era of neoliberalism and the centrality of course of peasant community, indigenous people in the struggle against neoliberalism I also think that as he argues Latin America is kind of a step ahead in this process of neoliberal restructuring I very often with my colleague that work on South Asia in our discussion on neoliberalism today we sort of came to the conclusion that what India is going through Latin America went through in the 90s and I'll explain a bit why I think that and maybe to open the discussion to people that work on other regions of the global south but Latin America is a kind of experiment for neoliberalism if you all remember your history Allende was trying to establish a socialist regime through democratic means through radical reforms, land reform, nationalisation of copper many types of radical policies that were leading to a kind of democratic path where socialism and you have a military coup in 1973 supported by the US were actually led by the dominant classes and the landed classes in Chile and establishes a neoliberal regime very early on in the late 1970s already so I think we have to look at Latin America with that in mind that it is an experiment of neoliberalism that can teach us a lot on the different moments of neoliberalism but also as Henry is saying of the different forms that resistance to neoliberalism has taken and I more or less going to agree and add to his periodisation of neoliberalism and I would say I'm going to use actually his own work against him very often I say when I teach about Marx that there's two Marx there's the structuralist Marx and there's the agency-focused class struggle Marx or structuralist Henry instead of our social movement Henry because he has worked a lot on social movements and today gave us a very broad overview of the different phases of capitalist development with a very capital-centric kind of point of view looking at the models of development and in only towards the end of the talk he started talking about the different forms of resistance and especially the territorial battles are going on in Latin America around this expansion of extractive industries in indigenous territories which is really a the form of struggle is a defence of the commons and I wouldn't say that it's no longer about struggles about land I think we have an overlap here it is a struggle for territory but it's also a struggle for land many of these communities are peasant community they rely on land for their livelihoods and land is at the central of those territorial battles but it also goes beyond a land water the control of water is very often one of the trigger of these forms of resistance so I think I'm going to say what I think is missing in the analysis that Henry presented to us is a kind of analysis of the evolution or the learning process of social movement and the resistance to capital capitalist development in these different periods of these different cycles of capitalist expansion that he mentioned so he mentioned three different cycles the ISI cycle which is basically very similar to other regions of the global south where the struggles are for access to land for access to jobs unions, political parties, socialist, communist parties are at the center of these struggles in Latin America there are basically many of them influenced by socialist thinking many of them led by communist parties socialist party many of them Cuba for example taking the radical path of arms struggles for establishing socialism then you can also think of Nicaragua within that kind of also socialist era and basically the form of resistance is through the political party the mass party is the emblematic form of organization of the radical left since the Bolshevik revolution more or less a mass party that is led by a small group of radical intellectuals but also able to mobilize and activate popular mobilization that's the sort of form of the ISI let's say until the 1980s and then we have neoliberalism and I would say that within neoliberalism we actually have two different cycles and the first cycle in Latin America is a cycle that is very violent if you think about the region the first experiment of neoliberalism comes in the period of authoritarian regimes military regimes that are actually trying to annihilate the social basis of mobilization so human rights violation repression, disappearances unions, political party are made illegal and basically the form of struggle in that first era of neoliberal restructuring is a sort of battle for liberal democracy actually a battle for just simply establishing liberal democracy again some of the movements with it I have an idea of establishing a different kind of democracy a radical democracy, more participatory not only focus on electoral electoral process but basically a battle is for bringing back liberal democracy in elections at the grassroot level it is about reorganizing communities reorganizing neighborhoods a lot of these processes are about self help organization common soup kitchens these kinds of movements they're basically everyday form of resistance, self help and they move away from the state they're less interested in the state they create something common in working class neighborhoods and then on top of that you have the electoral sort of game of political parties then the second moment within neoliberalism I would say is the moment of failure, the first failure of neoliberalism think of Latin America at the end at the early 90s and think about who's arriving it's a moment where the radical reforms of neoliberals did not work, did not bring back growth, did not create jobs and people already don't believe the discourse that neoliberalism is putting forward and you have a crisis of legitimacy and people start saying well the politicians are the problem politicians are all the same, they're corrupt looks very similar to what is going on today globally but Latin America lived that in the 90s and then who came to power? Menem, populist right wing Fujimori populist right wing Collor de Melo populist right wing all of them coming to power in the early 90s in Latin America coming with this sort of a mantra of being businessman not being politician we are going to solve the problem we're not politician we know how to make profits we're going to reorganize the state into a competitive entity on all that and that is the moment of crisis of neoliberalism but it's one path, it's the right wing path but then towards the end of the 90s comes the new left and comes and that path is opened by Chavez in Venezuela also a kind of socialist populist leader but with an objective of creating a social movement around him, creating a different form of democracy and mobilizing civil society and then you have in the mid 2000 again on the wave of this crisis of legitimacy of neoliberalism left wing governments that come in Evo Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador Lula in Brazil etc etc who present themselves as again we're going to solve the problem of neoliberalism by creating a more inclusive kind of capitalism and in that sense I think we have to make the distinction between anti neoliberalism struggles in Latin America and anti capitalist struggle the most recent wave of resistance to neoliberalism was not anti capitalist that was only a few movements that were anti capitalist the sapatist movement in the late 90s and the MST to a certain degree but most of them were basically anti neoliberal I would say and that was one of the limit I think of the pink tide and I'd like to hear a bit more on your critique of the pink tide and you sort of mention it towards the end that the problem with the pink tide is that it basically was riding the wave of commodity booms and that was simply did not change the model of development just continue extraction but use part of it for redistribution and reduce extreme poverty so in terms of this period of crisis of legitimacy of neoliberalism you also have a different form of resistance coming from the grassroots movements and it's when the movement becomes much more powerful and start talking about autonomy start taking control of the means of production land factories they start organizing in a relationship of equal to equal with political parties they no longer submit themselves to political party as in the earlier waves of mobilization but then comes in the left wing governments and everything that was happening in terms of mobilization participation self governance at the level of grassroots social movements sort of disappears with left wing governments and then we have the end of this cycle that cycle the pink tide is basically over and now we have the rise as was discussed two weeks ago by colleagues on talking about Brazil of the tide turning. We're now in Latin America are in a period of right wing reemergence and the movements no longer have the capacity to fight this right wing wave I would say so I would like to hear Henry's point of view on especially the left wing governments the limitation of the left wing governments and the way these governments sort of were not able to use the if you want to use a mainstream social capital that social movement had built this political capacity that movement had built in order to radicalize what they were trying to do in the years that they were in power fantastic so Henry would you like a few minutes to respond perhaps with your class struggle hat on I told you I used you against you use a new book for our series that elaborates on this critique now I'm serious just a couple of smaller points probably don't need it anyway just a footnote a footnote on the concept of territory I think it's very important to distinguish between land and territory land was the major struggle in the 20th century and the 21st century the major struggle was going to be for water and other elements of territory indigenous communities in particular they're concerned not just with land as a resource for agriculture but territory they have a different conception of nature of the world and territory is at the base of that and territory for them is it's an area of resistance it's an area for them of subsistence you know like for the global commons so it's much more than land so I would just point out the importance of distinguishing in the struggle for land and territory the difference because now the major struggle the land struggle continues certainly but it's a much broader struggle now for territory rather than land and I think that is in the context of extractive, the operations of extractive capital okay the second point you're making some mention about of course theory no question of structure versus agency in analysis right in social movements etc it is true I provide a structural analysis of the development question but I would argue that structural analysis is the first step then it has to be followed by a political analysis and this is why my emphasis on not just on the forces of capital development and what it creates and the conditions that it creates but the resistance to that capital development and when you're talking of resistance you're talking not just of structure but you're talking of agency you're talking of sort of class conscious actions taken on certain ideas of course in sociology we have these debates on the relative weight or role of structure versus agency with some focused on looking at development basically the action on ideas or beliefs based on the assumption that there are virtually no structural limitations on that action that people are free to think and act as they would wish etc so for example the reason why women are often found at the bottom of the hierarchy of work is because they are free to choose and they choose shitty jobs right so me and Libos basically believe in the freedom of the individual to act and to think and look at development as the result of actions taken you know the choice of people have choices of opportunities and they act on them that's certainly the neoliberal approach to development which is to downplay the working of structural factors systemic factors based on sort of an idealism idealism of a subject idealism that people can be whatever they want can do whatever they want so that's at one end of the spectrum sort of an idealist belief in the power of ideas to determine reality to bring about its own development etc then on the other side you have a structural analysis which can also be taken to the extreme to the extreme of believing that the structure is so omnipotent so powerful that there's no room for act and this is like Anu Gwynir Frank he was an extreme structuralist structural determinist who basically believed that the system is so powerful that you can go to the deepest parts of the Amazon and the system will get you that there's no capacity to act to resist because the forces systemic forces are just too powerful now that is an absurd position of course marshes also have their equivalence to that sort of what we will call structural over determination an over belief in the power of structures to in general the idea of a structure is that a structure creates conditions that are independent peoples wills and that are objective in their effects on people and countries according to the location in the system so that's a structural analysis we refer to forces to which people have to resist to act against but many of these conditions are beyond peoples control I say like Cuba pursues a certain model of development it doesn't pursue the model as it would wish it experiences conditions over which it has no control and it has to adapt to that and has to do what it can within those limits and that's the basic problem of development people can act but act under conditions not of their choosing and conditions that limit the form that the actions take so structures don't totally determine but they do shape often actions and in any case it's only the first step in analysis I would always begin and I agree I downplay the subjective political side of the struggles et cetera but in my analysis that was implicit or implied in resistance because people don't resist blindly in response to forces that they don't understand but they are conscious of those forces and they may misunderstand them but they act consciously and they act based on certain beliefs that's why in any movement it's based on an ideology that people subscribe to so the subjective and the political yes very important dimensions of analysis I'm not quite sure what point I was making there but two minutes I also agree that I totally left out forms of struggle and resistance in the 1980s which is the first decade of neoliberalism I jumped to the Basin movements in the 90s because in the 80s there was sort of not only did you have anti-IMF riots protests et cetera but you were saying at the community level there was a very conscious attempt to basically to step in where the state stepped out where the state reviewed the community stepped in and like sort of created soup kitchens et cetera like in Chile and Lima et cetera to help people deal with their problems in Mexico after earthquake 1995 the state was totally absent in its response to the massive earthquake thousands of people killed it was the people organising at the community level that responded so here you have the formation of what some theorist in Europe called sort of new social movements which are basically not class based but are basically concerned with certain issues protecting the environment one movement after another I've written a paper on that but I totally disagree with the steer of new social movements what happened was that these movements were transformed in the 1990s the new social movement disappeared and was replaced by discourse in civil society which refers to non-governmental organisations in the development and in the 1980s was a mushrooming of thousands and thousands of non-governmental organisations so what we call civil society in general emerged and in fact in the development discourse the steer of new social movements disappeared and in the 1990s they picked up on this discourse on civil society but that relates to another debate on the role of NGOs in development and I have a position on this which is very often criticised by people who are wrong on that issue one last little point does anti-need liberalism post-need liberalism I agree and I do not generally argue that the movements of resistance in Latin America are in general post capitalist but post-need liberal but post-need liberal certainly in terms of the regime that came to power the objective was not by any means to move beyond capitalism but to move beyond neoliberalism so this is why I referred to as post-need liberal neol developmentalism is a post-need liberal strategy on the other hand there were some precious movements to push beyond not only neoliberalism but capitalism and here is the question what capitalism and here is where post-development comes in so like for example the indigenous conception of bien vivir to live well in harmony with nature and social solidarity which is the indigenous community's intellectuals in Ecuador and Bolivia have propagated this idea and the governments in Bolivia and Ecuador even try to institutionalise it in the constitution protecting the rights of nature as well as humans et cetera et cetera the idea of bien vivir like living well in harmony with nature and social solidarity obviously it's not only post-need liberal but it's post-capitalist, post-development because you cannot live in harmony with nature and social solidarity within capitalism so in fact of course maybe they have not been able to sort of put it into practice but there was certainly especially in Ecuador and Bolivia but also Venezuela there was an orientation to move not only beyond neoliberalism but beyond capitalism towards what they call socialism what Chavez called socialism in the 21st century and of course and Morales calls socialism who knows basic communalism anyway whatever socialism is it's very different from socialism in the 20th century like in Cuba which is sort of like the old socialism but it's certainly a form of post-development anyway I better stop on the floor and in the interests of being as inclusive as possible I'd ask you to keep your questions relatively brief we'll take three or so at a time so if you want to put your hand up we've got some mics coming round if you want to do the girl in the pink for me first hi so I was curious just your thoughts where you position sort of Honduras sort of the northern triangle area where you have a lot of rural peasants leaving because of the violence there so there's no state action so if you could just sort of comment on okay great I think there was one behind you hello I just wanted to know if you could develop a bit on why with the rise of the left wing governments in the late 90s the grasswood movement disappeared I didn't really understand what was the link between them okay yeah I was exactly great and then the one hand yes I'd like to ask a more open version of the previous question about how you evaluate the contending forms of development agendas during the period of the Maria Rosa the red tide and just to explain the question I mean as you say in that period in particular those governments had support from movements which saw themselves as either anti-capolis or at least anti neoliberal and I think they went beyond civil society in the sense they were trying to create collectively organized forms of livelihood to create an economic base for themselves somehow independent of neoliberalism whether that's through workers cooperatives land occupations and so on and they did obtain some support measures from the state in order to create that alternative at the same time as the income the expenditure depended on the state continuing an extractivist model which was dispossessing some of the same people so I went to ask you how do you see conflicts between different forms of development and how you understand the demise of that whole phenomenon around the what's called the Maria Rosa Do you want to respond and then we'll take a few more Sure I think the last two were towards Leander, right? Honduras is a very tragic case of what I mentioned is narco capitalism which is generated so much not only violence and for one reason or another very little resistance to that violence because in Mexico at least you have resistance on part of the government but in the right the neoliberal right came back to power some years ago through a coup engineered with the help of the United States and it was actually the institution of this right wing regime which basically made it very very difficult to deal with the violence the conditions of which and of course we also talk of the violence of capital in various forms moving into the countryside creating conditions that lead to out migration and as I said until a few years ago these from Guatemala, Honduras Nicaragua et cetera these are the poorest regions on the whole continent as I said they were in Salvador they were encouraged to take the development pathway out of rural poverty to migrate to participate in the labour market and to migrate it is only now under this lunatic Trump that the conditions that have led to this flow of migrants out the causes of it and the US has a lot to do with it there is a lot of blame on the US but of course there is no understanding of the causes the conditions that led to it the forces that forced people to abandon not on the community but their countries it is a very sad thing because these people they have no choice but to leave the country to escape the conditions of that violence in terms of one issue about the red tide people refer to the red tide versus the pink tide the red tide referring more to Ecuador, Bolivia and so on where the assumption is that it was pushing for more radical change whereas the pink tide was basically a form was basically a form of pragmatic neoliberalism post neoliberalism was very pragmatic with very limited change based on a model we call it new developmentalism with two pillars one was inclusionary state activism right and that replaced the neoliberal agenda to reject the neoliberal approach based on the reliance of the free market and to bring the state back in in what is called inclusionary state activism combined with extractivism that was an economic model pursued by all of these countries in South America we talk only South America here you know well someone mentioned social movements at the base of it what happened was social movements created the conditions that brought the center left to power but once they came to power and every case except Bolivia the social movements were shoved aside so they were not based on social movements nor was the development in Venezuela based on the social movements not at all Bolivia, yes there was of course a lot of manipulation by the government of the social movement but it has a social movement base to the policy, to the strategy pursuit but in the so called pink tide regimes Argentina, Brazil etc there's no social movements behind not even like the workers party in Brazil they did not have the most powerful movement in the country, the MST behind them in fact there's a lot of contradictions between the movement and the party I'd just like to make a point that is not based on a question but that I totally forgot to mention that the resistance in the current form I mentioned is taking the form of construction of alternative models which you can look at as post development or post neoliberal mostly post neoliberal but one of the most important models that has been constructed all over Latin America is called, can be seen in various experiments in the construction of a social and solidarity economy based on corporativism workers self management like in Brazil and Argentina and local development so the aim is like with the Zapatistas is not to confront capital what they basically argue is if you fight the beast it's like a hyder in fact this is the book that they just recently published how to confront the capitalist hyder so if you fight capitalism you only strengthen it if you cut off one head it will grow another head so to resist capitalism don't fight it withdraw from it it's a bit like Sami Amin at the international level in terms of his theory of withdraw so you withdraw from the system by basically not relying on either capital or the state or the market you might have to engage with etc based on the construction within or from below of what they call a social solidarity economy and it is this movement is very powerful you don't hear much of it but it's all across Latin America and again while you construct this economy either in the interstices of the system or on the margins so sort of like in Argentina where the workers have taken over the factories and running the factories by themselves etc they still have to deal with a broader capitalist system but they're trying to create little islands of not socialism but islands of solidarity economy within the broader capitalist system so what I'm saying is this is a very important form of contemporary resistance that goes beyond the extractive frontier where the main struggle is against the negative impacts of extractive operations Leandra, would you like to respond? Yes What I think happened to movements under left wing governments in order to explain it we have to go back to what the movements were in this first crisis of legitimacy of neoliberalism in the late 1990s I agree with Henry that the parties that we see taking power in the mid 2000s are no longer parties that represent movements but they did get to power on the back of social movement mobilisation even in Argentina if you think of Argentina the currency crisis at the beginning of 2000 created massive movements within the middle class, the working class peasant movements in order to try to create a space for generate income getting back control of the means of production the occupation factories all these kinds of movements also talked about autonomy trying to organise self-organise away from the state but they never really completely were autonomous from the state a lot of their demands were very often demands towards the state but what they didn't want was to completely subordinate their objective, their struggles to the state or to political parties the other important characteristic of all these movements put piqueteros, landless movements, zapatista in this movement against the water privatisation Bolivia et cetera all of them were internally organised in assembly participatory decision kind of mechanism consensus building all these movements the strength of these movements was based on the fact that they politicised their membership so they were not only movement that were able to mobilise people in a march but they were also able to create political activists in constant renewal depending on the years of struggle so that was what the strength of movement but towards the mid-2000s many of these movements had already exhausted their capacity a lot of them had started establishing alliances with political parties because they still saw the state or taking control of the state in one way or another as an option or a possibility as a need even the MST I don't alliance with the PT every election and the PT right now the MST is trying to defend the PT so all the movements were sort of septics against political parties but they still had connections and participated with political parties but political parties during that era become very much electoral machines and they're not a type of they don't do the same kind of internal action or they don't lead to the same kind of process that a social movement does and what happens in these governments is that social movements sort of leave the space to the state they basically retreat and they actually lose their capacity to mobilise during these movements and we're now in the situation in Latin America what movement are don't no longer have the ability to resist the right wing wave so we're going to have very difficult years I think in Latin America in the coming years because all what existed in terms of magma if you want social magma in the movements has gone and it has to be recreated I think we look at it in the same way because as my whole point was that the social movements created the conditions for the emergence of these progressive regimes but once they came to power well you can either say they lost steam the movement or they're pushed aside or many of their leaders are actually government position certain if you look at the agricultural side but in any case a lot of the states operated to demobilise the same movements so that it is not correct look at these movements the left regimes association movement based that's my point except in the case of Bolivia okay great well we'll take a final round of questions but luckily we are having a reception after this where we can continue the conversation so we're going to go to the senior common room for some drinks and some nibbles so if you don't get the chance to ask a question now bring it have a drink and ask it there somebody over there who had their hand up very strongly then I'm going to go to the girl in the red at the back and then I'll go to you so I have two brief questions you might have touched upon them a little bit but I want you to expand the first one is what is your assessment on Venezuela under the Maduro regime right now do you see as a case of the resurgence of right wing neoliberal forces or still you see as a case of post neoliberalism because surely it's not a post extractivist as they are still relying on the infiltration of extractive capital the second question is about the resistance and the social movements I'm not sure you are aware of this dynamic initiative led by the MST and some other album movements to construct an alternative to the word social forum I have been involved in it for the last two years and they are going to organize an international people's assembly in Venezuela in February 2019 I'm conflicted about it they see it as a way to build a radical alternative truly anti imperialist and anti capitalist word social forum but at the same time it seems to me that it is non-autonomous and it is subordinated to the states and the elites they are defending like PT, Lula and the Maduro regime so I wanted to get your opinion on that OK, thanks Hi I was just wondering as Mexico is an exception to the current trend in terms of the political pendulum with the recent election of López Obrador Amlo I was just wondering why what it is that you think is particular to Mexico and its history of neoliberalism and the particular stage that it is at that has allowed it to be so that's all, thank you I would like to ask you if you can if you can tell us do you have any definition when it comes to post-developmental alternatives to development what would be the sort of political or ethical framework for them because I understand post-development is very much open, radically open because it wants to avoid those sort of falling into the trap of coming up with predetermined blueprint solutions of like development does but can we come up with some sort of ethical political framework and relatedly would you say that for instance what I am looking at is how to bring anarchist philosophy and post-development closer together because I feel that would offer one such framework Okay, great Do you want to offer some answers to those? Well, in the case of Venezuela another sad situation Venezuela is in the crosshairs of US imperialism and the US is doing everything to destabilise undermine and get rid of the regime to the point that they have financed to incredible amount a lot of the so-called actors, economic groups in the country for them to basically take off the market food and basic food and warehouse them taking off the market to generate not only quote food shortages but to provoke the protest of the urban poor which was the base of the whole movement so there's a lot of things like that going on and there's a lot of machinations so it's very difficult for a regime that is based its development on extractive and it's one of the most extractivist regimes in all of Latin America 95% of public funds come from the export of oil the prices of which has plummeted over the last four or five years so you have that problem you have the problem of US imperialism and you have the problems of a lot of mistakes on how to deal with all of these pressures and all these forces so they made a lot of mistakes so it's been difficult to implement what they call a socialist agenda a socialist agenda from above which is basically to socialize and nationalize the means of production but on the other hand there's a very interesting another side to what's been happening in Venezuela what people don't often hear about which is the conscious effort of the government to promote let's say socialism from below by creating a set of community-based institutions like communal councils etc and co-operative forms of organizing production both in agriculture and in other sectors so for example when Chavez took power there were 80 co-operatives in the country now there's over 20,000 co-operatives so that's a lot so you have to realize there's a lot of energy a lot of spent by people in the grassroots, in the communities in bringing about development under their own control in their attempt to basic construct as I say a social solidarity economy from below so in theory the socialism that takes form that is the project is to create socialism from above what is mainly is to bring it from below with state support from above to create an institutional framework that allows socialism to emerge from below but you can imagine the difficulty of creating socialism in any form under these absolutely horrible crisis conditional economic crisis which basically for which the US government or what they call the US imperialism is not fully to blame but it is to blame to an incredible extent apart from that the government made all kinds of mistakes as many all governments do like all of us do because you know if you're dealing with these kind of problems you're likely to make mistakes because you have very few options for structural forces operating on you beyond your control you can't do anything about them even the condition that is leading to this super super inflation it's very difficult for the government to do anything about that as long as it's tied into a global economy based on the dollar and the ability to sell oil for dollars so a solution would be to have this very solutions but these solutions the Venezuelan government can't beyond the control of the Venezuelan government it would have to rely on support from Bolivia and other governments that is no longer there my thing keeps coming out there was another question what happened here it says no one Mexico Mexico we've been talking about the pink and red wave and extractive capitalism and the neo-developmentalism all has to do with South America Argentina, Brazil Chile, Uruguay Ecuador Venezuela etc so two countries in particular continue to push the neoliberal line aligned with the United States Colombia and the United States so they've been pursuing a neoliberal program all along so when we're talking of now the emergence of this the left in the form of Amlo we have to remember well for one thing this is I think his third attempt to come to power and he came to power once but he was it was taken from him through voting fraud etc but there's been there's always been let's say this political force against the neoliberal agenda of governments we've been pursued since 1982 since Salinas way back way back so so the dynamics that we talked about the whole talk has really little to do with Mexico except for the first the second phase in the early 90s the neoliberal agenda which is led by Mexico but I think precisely because it has pursued that agenda all along that eventually the political force of opposition to that agenda and it's only mildly opposed to it he's not a socialist anything people don't even know what his agenda is but I should also keep in mind that in the last year or so and the next year 18 month period I think the 17 governments changing governments presidential elections going on in 17 different countries and in many cases you have a shift to the right but even like in Colombia where you have this shift to the right or a right winger came to power the second political force was based on a center left coalition and it almost came to power it wasn't far behind the same thing in Peru and in Chile in other words there are actually political forces in electoral politics it's not all just you know move to the right sort of even in Argentina and Brazil hopefully well of course you have the PT in Brazil you have other forces progressive forces that are continuing to operate and under what conditions they might even come back to power as I said before at the very beginning it depends on the correlation of force in the class struggle and that's difficult to determine just on the question on the social forum and the need for a new sort of international for social movement the problem that when we use the term autonomy we tend to associate that term with a radical idea of it that is very much influenced by the anarchist tradition where you actually block or avoid or reject any relationship with the state or the market but in reality the practice of autonomy and especially in the case of the MST is negotiated, it's pragmatic the MST has had a very pragmatic relationship with the state and with political parties if you think about it's a struggle for land so it asks the state to redistribute land so their basis for mobilization is directly asking the state for something it doesn't mean that they have accepted everything from the state even when they receive land they negotiate what a state intervention is going to look like on their territory on the settlements so they will accept a credit scheme they will reject it, they will oppose it or they will negotiate on education for example they negotiate the type of education they want on their settlement pedagogy pedagogy of the oppress that they use and they force the state to fund their school which is run with a completely different methodology it's only a few movements for example like the Zapatista that really radically break with the state and the market, the rest of us actually negotiate our way with the state so if that organization that is being put forward receiving funds from Venezuela or from the PT well you need funds from somewhere MST activists will say the thing is that you don't need to support to subordinate yourself to the commands of these organization and the world is in need for something different than the world social forum I would say and even the world social forum has been in a process of critique internal critique and rethinking itself for the at least past five years and something has to come out that is stronger that can take position on the struggle that we have in front of us than the place where simply people meet and exchange ideas you know okay fantastic well thank you all so much for coming tonight thank you to us thank you so much Henry