CONCLUSIONS

The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall did not mean the burial of Leftist ideals which had united political projects around the world during the 20th Century, but that historical event produced the beginning of a conceptual and functional regeneration of socialism in order to rescue its main objective, which until today is an urgent search for our societies: social justice and equality.

The New Left that is born from the ashes of 20th Century Socialism and from the failures of neo-liberal capitalism, has the historical responsibility to accept that in the 21st Century the means do not justify the ends and that the only acceptable way to start political Leftist projects in our countries is through democracy. The principles and postulates established by Karl Marx have to be applied with transparency under the guide of a deliberating citizenship which builds democracy in the public space and in their daily activities of life.

Socialism is not defeated; it has been transformed to be accomplished in every specific society. Whereas on November 9th, 1989, the people from Eastern Germany fled to Western Germany by crossing the Wall that divided the world in Berlin, the social movements of Latin America started to organize themselves to demand their rights and their inclusion in society as the indigenous movements of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. In 1985, the Movimiento Sin Tierra of Brazil was founded at the national level, proposing agrarian reform; in 1992 Rigoberta Menchu participated preparing the Declaration of Indigenous People’s Rights in the United Nations after years of fighting for human rights and against racial discrimination; and in 1994 the Zapatista Army for National Liberation started to demand social justice and respect to national sovereignty in Mexico.

In general terms, the world is living a moment in which radical changes are being demanded, not exclusively about socialism. The women have increased their political participation in parliaments and local governments around the world, and nowadays they have become Heads of Government or Heads of State. The United States, for the first time in their history, elected an Afro-American president, who is Barak Obama and this is the result of a long process started by Abraham Lincoln and continued by Martin Luther King. The world that we know today is absolutely different from that of the Cold War and it is a world in permanent change.

The Concertación Democratica of Chile, the socialist party, lost presidential elections and the millionaire Sebastian Piñera became president after more than 20 years of leftist governments. The New Left has to be prepared to build democracy from the power and from the opposition and the principle of alternating power is healthy to democracy in order to avoid the Left to be part of the establishment because its political mission consists exactly in upsetting the established order.

The Citizen Revolution of Ecuador had ended the domination of political parties and started the creation of the popular power, which consists of the citizens’ appropriation of their capacity to be part of governmental decisions and the permanent expression of their opinions and thoughts. The challenge would be to turn socialism into a way of assuming life, taking care of the environment, strengthening democracy and social organization, and never hindering people’s liberties and diversity. Silvio Rodriguez, a Cuban protest singer, said in his famous song Playa Giron: “What should say what frontiers I must respect? If somebody steals food and then gives his life, what to do? Until where do we have to practice the truth?” The historical challenge for our times is to accept that there is not an absolute truth, there is nobody absolutely right and there is no problem impossible to be solved. We, the Left and humans in generally, have to wake up from disenchantment, from pain, we have to discover ourselves in our own illusion, not that from fantasy or enchantment, but from the possibility that the infinite provides, as said William Blake, a poet who inspired Jim Morrison’s music: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, all things would appear infinite.”