Marcelo Colussi, contributor to Prensa Latina
The last revolution with a socialist flair, in which the masses took to the streets and ousted the ruling class (note that this was not ‘negotiation’, a mode so fashionable today: it was a revolutionary seizure of power), the last revolution, we said, was that of Nicaragua in 1979, when the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship.
Therefore, the global system, always led by the United States, knew how to reorganize itself very well. Through all kinds of mechanisms – systematic ideological-cultural bombardment, bloody military dictatorships with mountains of corpses and rivers of blood, dismantling of popular organizations, neoliberal plans that made working and living conditions brutally more precarious – the idea of the socialist revolution was left the scene. The ideological advance of the right was terrible, which is why they even wanted us to believe that class struggle – a fundamental concept of Marxist thought – had disappeared.
Of course, the capitalist system in no country in the world can solve the historical problems of any unjust class society, even if it shows the opulence of some cities laden with overflowing shop windows as a symbol of ostentatious “triumph”. The reality of the world remains malnutrition, ignorance, exclusion, housing shortages with consequent overcrowding, debasement of prejudice, oppressors’ oppression of the oppressed, environmental catastrophe, racism and poorly disguised patriarchy with “politically correct” discourses, masses of irregular immigrants who you flee desperate, wars everywhere.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the sense of victory on the right was so great that the people’s camp and the left were hit.
Today this avalanche of the conservative right does not stop. Neo-Nazism is installed in many places. Although human rights, freedoms and democracies are talked about endlessly – all high-sounding empty words in capitalist discourse – the actual situation is one of increasing subjugation, exploitation, injustice and social backwardness. Added to this is a conservative discourse on an ethical level with religious elements which, contrary to what has already been achieved in the progress of peoples, shows that retrograde thinking is still very strong.
The law grows. In contrast to past decades, for example in the 1960s and 1970s, when an almost rebellious attitude with anti-establishment elements pervaded global society in various areas, today we experience nihilistic, conservative, hopeless thinking. We see it in various countries with increasingly recalcitrant and ultra-conservative positions on the part of the ruling classes, expressed through their political parties of service.
It’s a trend seen around the world. Many European nations are governed by governments openly pro-Nazi with repulsive xenophobic and white supremacist positions.
In Italy, a fascist party has just won the elections with positions similar to those of Benito Mussolini decades ago. In Russia, now embroiled in a terrible war conflict, a trend has taken hold that replicates everything built up during the Soviet Union, one that rewards personal wealth, encourages a return to clerical positions, and encourages homophobia. In the United States, everything indicates that a neo-fascist like Donald Trump, who allowed himself to speak of “fucking countries” and referred to southern territories, could very likely return to the presidency.
Although recent presidential elections in several Latin American countries were won by centre-left candidates, they came from a moderate left (López Obrador in Mexico, Luis Arce in Bolivia, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, Pedro Castillo in Peru, Xiomara Castro in Honduras, Alberto Fernández in Argentina, Gabriel Boric in Chile), in all these contexts, the right leaves no room for manoeuvre. Radical, racist, conservative right-wingers, in many cases close to the religious postulates of “God, Country, Family” and attacking sexual diversity, are speaking out. Rather: they overwhelm.
But what can we expect from the right? Although some liberties and some other concessions are sometimes allowed (e.g., “capitalism with a human face”), conservative thinking is just that: fear of change. Gatopardismo is a strategy of this. It is worrying that conservatism is now radicalizing and attacking more than before. This is proof that the system as a whole can only be sustained by being self-contained.
When people vote for far-right candidates — say, Bolsonaro in Brazil, or Macri in Argentina, or Vox in Spain, or vote NO to constitutional change in Chile — it is because the media barrage of visceral anti-communism continues to be present. The traditionalist values of a false nationalism, homophobic, clerical, hyperconservative in business, xenophobic are increasingly being imposed.
The only possible solution is not “less right” governments: the only solution in sight is a change of direction.
rm/mc
(Taken from selected companies)