THE NEW LEFT AS AN ALTERNATIVE FOR DEVELOPMENT

The Left Ideology has determined the life of a lot of societies around the world, and it is a process based on historical materialism, a theory which tries to explain the history of humanity through the class struggle between those who owned the means of production and the oppressed class. However, the world witnessed the failure of the Soviet model but also that the fall of the Berlin Wall did not defeat socialism and its attempts to achieve social justice and equality.

This monograph wants to proclaim that the new projections of the Left are based on democracy as a principle of relation and life. In the past the left thought that the traditional socialist prescriptions were applicable to all societies but now we know that every country has different social characteristics and that the world does not bear violent changes any more. The New Left has to practice a new vision of development based on satisfying people’s basic needs, not on market destruction. The socialist political projects are winning elections around the Earth and that constitutes the historical affirmation that the left can come to power by democratic means and start social revolutions as Salvador Allende dreamt.

Socialism has to accept that democracy is the recovery of everyone’s rights, that everybody’s liberties are the condition for one person’s liberties. The Left as an Alternative for Development is a declaration that tries to guide the leftist political actors in order to assume that power is a tool for service and has to be exercised guaranteeing deep democracy and people’s liberties. Also this monograph tries to explain the role of young people while improving our democracy and development.

INTRODUCTION

The birth of what is called the “21st Century Socialism” has different shades worldwide. But, what do this and the concept of ‘New Left’ mean to our societies? Did the fall of the Berlin Wall destroy all the ideas of Karl Marx? And, what are the implications of these new political trends in the daily lives of our people? We need answers to these doubts; but the most important thing for the future of humanity is to never stop seeking and inquiring how to improve living conditions for all humans.

“We have maintained a silence closely resembling stupidity,” said the Insurrectional Proclamation of La Paz on July 16th, 1809. Of course it was so and we have kept that silence for almost two centuries. During all this time, our countries have accepted as true the statements that the Established Order issued for us. We didn´t search for our own answers. But Latin America is now facing the opportunity of waking up from historical blindness which has obstructed us and kept us from struggling against an unfair and unequal political and economic system. So, let’s ask ourselves: Are Latin Americans ready to confront this challenge? Are the political actors of the left parties prepared to assume power?

According to the World Bank, the global crisis forced 6 million Latin Americans to fall from the middle class to poverty during 2009. The United Nations established that 70 million people from this continent live in extreme poverty; this means that 13% of our population has an income of less than 2 dollars per day. Those are some of the unfortunate statistics that Latin American societies generate and, because of this reality, we now doubt that capitalism and the free market economy are the only alternatives for development.
Consequently, another important question for us is: what kind of development do we need to guarantee better living conditions for our population? People are witnessing how the Earth is being devastated; we are witnessing a global warming, weather changes, and pollution as a result of wild capitalism and irresponsible industrialization. So, the next doubt we have to resolve is if our present system of production is the right one to improve environmental management. What will happen if we continue using natural resources the way we have done until now? These are other questions that the New Left and the 21st Century Socialism should answer.

The explanation for the Spanish Conquest of the Incan Empire was summarized by the ancient cultures of the Andes with this phrase: “The day turned dark at noon.” That statement became the reality of our nations. Even though we can remember the exploitation and plundering in the city of Potosi, Bolivia, during Colonial times, we now know that Evo Morales is the first indigenous president of Bolivia; that his popularity is over 60% and that putting aside the critics to his policies, Bolivia, for first time in its history, has a fiscal surplus because of the nationalization of their natural resources.

Since 1990, our nations started searching ways to struggle against the Established Order. The Colombian experience taught us that political agreements are possible and, after their Constituent Assembly, which also incorporated former members of the M-19 guerrilla movement that laid down the arms in 1990, they wrote one of best constitutions of Latin America. Subsequently, other countries followed Colombia in the attempt to change the structures of power by legal means. Nowadays, the Colombian people prefer to practise their democracy with a conservative president but, as never before in our region, many Latin American countries have turned to the left trying to achieve a new way of development.

Ecuador has had a very complex social process and came to accept the necessity of political and constitutional reforms, as well as of conceiving a new way of development. This process started with social indignation when we, the citizens, refused to continue tolerating political degeneration, corruption, and endless deception caused by politicians. The “Revuelta Forajida” of April, 2005, was an attempt to promote this process. On this occasion, the people of Quito didn´t protest because of unemployment or the lack of food, we fought for our dignity; we protested against a shameless government, against a congress which did not represent us but became the center of the political mafia. We wanted to start again. On September 28th, 2008, Ecuadorians approved a New Constitution proposed by the Constituent Assembly of Montecristi, through a referendum. The Sumak Kausay, which means “good living” in Kichwa, is one of the principles from the Constitution of Montecristi and one of the ideas it provides is that social development has to be fulfilled in harmony with nature; and that the main objective of that development is to give people dignified living conditions.

Dignified human living conditions have to be the main objective of the New Left in order to achieve the development that we deserve. This is why this paper was not prepared as a research: it is a political proclamation that tries to inspire the roads that Latin America is looking for. The Left was not destroyed by the fall of the Berlin Wall; some of their ways failed, but its principles and aspirations to achieve social equality and justice are a fundamental quest to be achieved in our times. Socialism exists; it is being developed and consolidated as a global system.

Chapter #1: - HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

According to Karl Marx, the history of Humanity is the history of class struggle. The materialist conception of history is the instrument to analyze social formations, its changes and laws. Historical Materialism promotes the idea that the material world is modified by human work, which depends on the mode of production and the relations it establishes in the world. So, the changes of human societies are produced by the eternal class struggle between oppressors and the oppressed, but the modification of these relations results in evolutionary steps. Marxism based the history of humanity on 5 stages: primitive communism, oriental despotism, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. The next revolutionary step was Socialism, whose goal is to overthrow capitalism through the Proletarian Revolution and that, for Marx, is “historically unavoidable.”

Through all the phases of history, Marx saw antagonism between the major social classes: the dominant class and the oppressed class. During the Old Ages of slavery, the opposition was between the free citizen and the slaves; in the Middle Ages, the distinction was marked between the feudal lords and the Vassals. Subsequently, at the end of Feudalism, the antagonism was between the nobles and the merchants. However, historical events, such as the Discovery of America in 1492, which was fundamental to encourage transatlantic trade and mercantilism, determined the new productive relations that resulted in a new social order where the merchants became the embryonic bourgeoisie and the dominant social class. We can say, thus, that antagonism among social classes existed between those who owned and those who did not own the means of production.

The Enlightenment was one of the most splendid periods of our history. During that time, the French Encyclopedia, Humanism and Renascence accomplished great changes in art, culture, knowledge and politics. The bourgeois revolutions, as the French Revolution in 1789, brought important advances to Humanity such as the principles of liberal democracy, freedom of citizens, and the first ideas of human rights. But at the same time, it was the historic moment in which the bourgeoisie assumed the political power in addition to the economic power. This new dominant social class became the owner of the means of production to the detriment of their workers, a practice that came to be known as ‘exploitation’ because of the endless work shifts, the meager food and exiguous wages the latter received in exchange. This exploitation created a new antagonist social class: the proletariat.

The Industrial Revolution created the material conditions for the exploitation of proletarians. During the first half of the 19th Century the worker usually had a work day of 12 hours in totally unhealthy factories. The remuneration was extremely low and it did not even cover the basic needs of the workers and their families, while the owners of the means of production lived in luxury and extravagance. The bourgeoisie obtained enormous benefits from their capital with a less than minimum investment in the direct producers, the workers. The capitalist bourgeoisie decided what was wrong or right; they imposed their moral values, beliefs, and their interpretation of life, besides determining, of course, social relations.

Marx and Engels wanted to demonstrate that spiritual human conditions do not create material changes, as promoted by Hegel. They thought that material changes create the spiritual conditions of societies. Marx called these material, economic, and social conditions the bases of society, referring to the way of thinking, the political institutions, and other human facets, such as religion, moral, art, philosophy and science, as the superstructure of society. In Marx´s days, the work of the proletarians was an alienating work because they gave away their workforce to capitalist production for an unfair salary. Alienation was granting the rights of property to people who, through oppressive methods, controlled society. As Marx thought that the reason for all this was the private property of the means of production, he wrote that the solution was the general workers’ emancipation to eliminate private property and create common, human and social means.

According to Marx, there were entities that helped the survival of this contradiction in favor of the dominant class, and that generated the prevailing political and economical ideologies; religion was one of the leading institutions. In fact, the State and the Church were in charge of justifying the economic structure. The State used all the instruments to conceal the workers’ exploitation in the capitalist system and the Church was its accomplice.

In view of these concrete historical conditions which produced the appropriation and accumulation of capital in the hands of the bourgeoisie, Marxism proposed to transform that reality and overcome the contradictions. To make it possible, Marx saw that the only way out was through a violent revolution of the proletarians because the dominant class never was going to give up their privileges. According to Marxism, capitalism is an auto-destructive economic system because it does not have a rational direction. Its destruction is inherent and it is to be executed by those who are against the injustice and inequality; so it is a phase in the road to communism that has to be led by the Proletarian Dictatorship, a transitional period in which proletarians must defeat the bourgeoisie. Ultimately, this stage would be substituted by a classless society.

- PROLETARIAN REVOLUTIONS

The socialist ideal was spread by the Communist Manifesto and many other books written by Marx and/or Engels. It was the beginning of a sequence of events that changed History and inspired many political and social movements in Europe and, later, around the world. The first of those movements was that of the Bolsheviks. While the 19th century was fundamental for the modernization of the great European economies, Russia continued depending on agrarian economy and feudal relations of vassalage between lords and peasants. The social Russian structure was pyramidal with the Czar on the top, always ignoring the people’s situation that in most cases were in complete poverty. The unsustainable Russian social situation made people organize a popular protest in front of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg –they wanted better labor conditions. Czar Nicolas II, afraid of the thousands of workers congregated in the protest, ordered to open fire against the people. Many people died because of the military repression. After this, the revolutionaries started to conspire against the monarchy and the light of the revolution was burned. After a first attempt in 1905, the climax of this revolution took place in 1917, with a new revolutionary movement conducted by the Bolsheviks, a group of peasants who wanted an absolute revolution of the Proletariat, which shed the blood of thousands of people. The Czar ordered the Army to eliminate the revolutionary groups, but the soldiers’ misery resulted in divisions inside the Army; part of them decided to help the revolutionary cause. This situation forced the Czar to resign and a civil war started in the country. In 1918, the Royal Family was killed and, in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was born.

Vladimir Lenin was the first leader of the new nation and of the Communist Party; he was also the most important leader during the Revolution. After the war Lenin issued the New Economic Policy, and placed the Soviet Union in the market economy, being then a pluralistic society of early Soviet rule. At the same time, however, he prohibited factionalism and insisted on the principle of the one-party rule. Lenin suffered a series of strokes and, in March 1923, the last one left him without speech and effectively ended his political career. Lenin died in Nizhny Novgorod on Jan. 21, 1924. After his death, Stalin took power and began an era of repression and harassment against his opponents. His management of the economy consisted of five-year plans with which the capital obtained by the industry was invested in other industries that helped modernize the weapons and the army, instead of providing for the wellbeing of the Russian society. During the Second World War, Stalin defended his territory using the freezing weather as his best ally to destroy the German invaders. When Hitler was defeated, and after the Yalta Agreement held among the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin), Stalin started what was later called the “Eastern Block”, formed by the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania & Albania) and Yugoslavia. Although each country had a different process towards communism, they were known for its strict State control, violation of human rights, persecution of the opponents, and the lack of freedom. In other words, they created societies based on fear.

In its turn, China’s road to communism was different because of its geographical, cultural, and political history. The Chinese Communist Party was created at the beginning of the twenties. Although it was inspired on the Soviet Revolution, its leader Mao Zedong, soon chose his own way of communism, keeping harsh control over the people and their minds, and policies that were later known as ‘Maoism’. Mao controlled the People’s Republic of China until his death, in 1979. One of his most controversial policies, the ‘Cultural Revolution’ implemented since the 60’s, was the cause of nationwide famine and terror – Mao is said to be responsible for the death of 50-70 million persons. Mao’s death enabled pragmatism in social, political and economic Chinese polices and the deconcentration of power from one person’s hands, although his practices were replicated in the massacre of Tiananmen Square, in 1989, the same year of the ‘Fall of the Berlin Wall.’

- SOCIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA

The socialist ideal also appeared in Latin America. Although our continent was not an industrial territory, the great differences and inequalities between the rich and the poor built the material conditions to accept the necessity of the revolution. January 1st, 1959, was the day of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution that after years of fighting came to power under the leadership of Fidel Castro and the legendary Ernesto Che Guevara. After the United States refused to accept Fidel Castro as the official president of Cuba, in 1962, Castro turned his eyes to the Soviet Union, a fact that lead to the Missile Crisis in which the world reached its most dangerous moment of the so-called Cold War, after which the USA declared the embargo that lasts to our days. From 1962 to the beginning of the 90’s, when the USSR disappeared, Cuba maintained all kinds of cooperation agreements with the USSR, including assistance in security, health and production, which were essentially economic agreements. During this relation, the main achievements of the Cuban Revolution were its education and health systems, especially devoted to children. In two years, Cuba became one of the few illiteracy-free countries. But after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Cuba stopped receiving the average yearly amount of 6 billion dollars and Cubans no longer had basic products for their daily survival. This, together with the US embargo, impoverished even more the Cuban population. In June 2006, Fidel Castro made a provisional transfer of the power to his brother Raul, and has never taken back the power since then. At present, the high number of people who have fled the island, the lack of food, the weak economic system, and hundreds of complaints of oppression, lack of democracy, and the lack of transparency in providing the true situation have made people doubt about the success of the revolution.

Another example of a socialist government in Latin America was Chile, where socialist President Salvador Allende came to power after winning the elections in 1970, after being defeated in 3 previous attempt. The workers’ government headed by Allende nationalized the mineral resources and the monopolist companies, and immediately sped up the agrarian reform. In addition, President Allende started a plan to redistribute income, increase salaries, and control prices to fight speculation. Opposition against Allende was strong and supported by the USA. The difficult situation led to an unmanageable economic crisis which, together with the strong opposition working together with the CIA (something which was discovered in recent years), ended up in the sad events of September 11th, 1973, when the Army, conducted by general Augusto Pinochet, destroyed Allende’s government and caused his death. In President Allende’s last speech, few hours before his death, he said: “Other men will surpass this darkness and painful moment in which treason attempts to be imposed. You have to continue knowing that, sooner than later, the great poplar groves through which the free man is going to pass are going to be opened again to build a better society. ¡Long live Chile! ¡Long live the people! ¡Long live the workers!” From 1973 to 1998, Augusto Pinochet ruled as a dictator who killed, tortured, or disappeared 100 000 people. Besides these crimes against mankind, Pinochet and his family have been accused of corruption with millions of dollars in Swiss banks. Pinochet died without being sentenced.

The Sandinista Revolution of Nicaragua was also a call to expand the left ideas in Latin America. The dictatorship of the Somoza Dynasty (1937-1979) increased poverty and corruption to extreme limits and this led, 42 years later, to the creation of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (“FSLN”), which took power in Nicaragua in 1979. (The Front took the name from Augusto Sandino who opposed Anastasio Somoza in the 30’s and was finally killed by him.) Although the Government of the United States, specifically Ronald Regan, supported the “contrarevolución” (“contras”) to combat socialism in the continent, the Sandinistas took office and received the support of Cuba and many countries of the world to start their own socialist revolution. However, the economic, political, educational, and social instability lead to a civil war and the end of the “FSLN” Government. Elections were made and Violeta Chamorro, the widow of a former conservative journalist who opposed Somoza and was assassinated in 1978, became the new president of Nicaragua. In spite of the corruption discovered within the “FSLN” and in Daniel Ortega’s own life, he won the presidential elections in 2006 and is in office until now.

- THE FALL OF SOVIET UNION

Mikhail Gorbachev took the power of the Soviet Union in 1985 and he promoted two important decisions – to finish to Cold War and also to modernize the Soviet Union. The first one was called ‘Glasnost’ that consisted of transparency in political decisions and in giving more freedom to the society. The second and the most important measure was the ‘Perestroika’ which consisted of economic reforms that allowed private investment and property, and opened the country’s economy.

Together with Gorbachev’s actions in the USSR, a Polish politician and union leader, Lech Walesa and his Solidarity Movement, supported remotely by Pope John Paul II, was also protesting against totalitarianism in Poland, one of the poorest and most repressed countries in the Eastern Block. The world supported these three actors but never could have imagined what was about to happen in such a short period of time: On November 9th, 1989, the Berlin Wall, which divided East and West Berlin and was the symbol of the division between communism and capitalism, was torn down. As a matter of fact, at that time it was impossible to stop the avalanche of people fleeing from the east to the west, therefore the Soviet economy was not sustainable anymore and collapsed. In 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved the Soviet Union and freed the satellite countries.

At present, in the first decade of the 21th Century, the world is in despair with the most difficult economic crisis that capitalism has undergone and that has demolished the neo-liberal thoughts of the 90’s which assured that capitalism was the only way to live. We are now undergoing, enduring, and observing that the free-market system and neo-liberalism not only is not a solution to poverty, inequality, and disease in the world, but that it has caused tremendous economics gaps, not only between North and South, as researchers wrote before, but among societies in the same countries, cities, and towns. The differences between classes, regions and countries are huge now.

Although history shows us that communism, as put in practice before, has failed, it is urgent to reinvent a new left and give a radical and deep democratic significance to Socialism in order to bring about a real alternative to capitalism. Our societies are devastated by social injustice, global warming, and the actions of those who are opposed to change. The Establishment is creating a society of ambition in which people who has more want more and, thus, accumulation around the world takes place in front of 250 million persons living below poverty levels in the world. We are not only talking about workers as in the past; the new concept has to evolve to citizens who have the right to live in happiness and dignity. The New Left Socialism has been reborn around the planet from the ashes of its own mistakes and its goal is to build democratic societies with liberty, education, health and justice for all.

Chapter #2: - DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE OLD SOCIALISM AND THE NEW LEFT

During the 20th Century, humanity witnessed Classic Socialism. Nowadays, there is no doubt about the necessity to build a type of Socialism applicable to our times and to our specific societies, not just to the ancient realities that prevailed at the time of the Industrial Revolution in Europe during the 18th Century. The Left is still alive because the world is still deficient in social justice and equality in contrast to the system of capital accumulation in a few hands which still prevails. Therefore the socialist principles and convictions are quite pertinent – the supremacy of human work over capital; the importance of collective action for development versus individualism as society’s engine, competition as an example in life and selfishness as the main social value. According to the members of the Left, the invisible hand has not brought the joy it promised the world. Socialism continues believing that the use values surpass the exchange values and, most importantly, socialism fights to achieve social justice. But, in what aspects does the New Left differ from the Old Left?

1) The New Left is not expecting to implant the Proletarians’ Dictatorship as a way to achieve a classless society. In other words, the orthodox left conceived democracy as an instrument to take over power but that conception now is unacceptable considering that democracy implies observing the law, human rights and individual liberties. For Maria Paula Romo, a member of the National Legislative Assembly, Socialism of the 21st Century has to be deeply and radically democratic, and conceives democracy as a principle for social relations and life.

2) Principles and not models. For Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, classic Socialism sought the absolute, unalterable and dogmatic truth, whereas for the New Left a specific objective is to surpass dialectical materialism, because today’s world does not bear violent changes. In the past, the socialist countries copied their economic, political and social policies, and thought that the same prescriptions were applicable to all societies. Now we understand that each reality is different from the other and that we must find an Ecuadorian, Chilean, Brazilian, or Bolivian socialism, with no fundamentalism.

3) In the old socialism, the means of production belonged to the State. Now, we talk about their democratization. The New Left must seek proposals that are alternatives to nationalization and privatization and alternatives to property modalities, including business operating and friendly arrangements. According to Alain Caillé, the challenge for the 21st Century Socialism is not to destroy the market but its subordination to the last objective in order to guarantee dignified living conditions for human beings. Currently, the new issue for the economic debate is how to enable the State and the Market to provide a better life for persons and societies in harmony with the environment. The New Left seeks to build a society of owners and producers.

4) The notion of development in the classic socialism does not differ from that of capitalism – both look at industrialization and modernization as synonyms of development. The current development model is simply unbearable and the great challenge for the New Left is to build a new vision of development that excludes accumulation as an paradigm of life, but that is capable of covering people’s basic needs. As proposed by the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, we need a new social scheme in order for the people to have fewer worries. This development has to be achieved in absolute harmony with the environment and its care. It implies a development that includes gender equality and respect to native cultures.

- EUROPE: NORDIC SOCIALISMS AND SPANISH SOCIALISM

The differences between the classic socialism and new ways of understand the left principles were showed in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) that have gone through a very different process from those in Eastern Europe. Their road to socialism differs mainly in the absence of violence. The Nordic socialism – also called social democracy – consists in a system of wide social benefits for the population which is financed by the State through taxes on capital, properties, and natural resources with the aim of achieving an efficient and responsible management of public expenditure. During the process they achieved their own view of what was happening in the world and understood the need to practise full democracy in their political, economic, and social relations. Other important progress of the Nordic Socialism was the labor legislation which increases the workers’ rights and assures optimum working conditions for them. The Nordic societies are characterized for being nations with short class differences, where education and social insurance are available for everyone, as a result of the search for equality that those countries inherited from the Declaration of Men and Citizen Rights from the French Revolution.

The socialism applied in the Nordic countries maintains the main leftist principles of social justice and equality, but it was not the same in all the European nations. What was later called ‘Social Democracy’ was actually a soft Socialism that used a leftist speech to come to power, but that did not bring forth a real transformation of social relations and society, since it was developed according to capitalist structures, which maintained the bourgeois-established order. Their postulates affirm that social changes can be achieved by political reforms in the State. This trend has suffered an ideological crisis which made it refuse its Marxist origins, and it has slowly been placed in the center. Social democracy or democratic socialism is, thus, no more than liberalism with minimum regulations on productive activities imposed by a subsidy-granting State.

Spain is a very complex nation where regionalism tries to break the unity. For 38 years, the Spanish society suffered a fascist and despotic dictatorship under the rule of General Francisco Franco. After his death, the monarchy supported a democratic process. However, Socialism started in Spain before Franco, with the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party born on May 2, 1879. Since the return of democracy in Spain, the Socialist Party has been a key participant in the national politics. The first socialist government that came to power in the Spanish history was conducted by Felipe Gonzalez, who ruled for 14 years, from 1982 to 1996. Under President Gonzalez’s leadership, the Socialist Party achieved the first absolute majority in Parliament, an election that was replicated in 1986. He based his administration on a Welfare State which included policies with strong social programs, like that for the generation of employment for young people. In 1996, President Gonzalez lost elections to Jose Maria Aznar, from Partido Popular, with barely 18 votes.

During Aznar’s government, the young politician Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero strengthened an undermined Socialist Party by opposing the Government. In the year 2004, Zapatero became the second socialist president of Spain. The first great achievement of his government was the retreat of troops from Iraq, and later the extension and advance of civil rights, equality, educational reforms, and the amendment of the territorial model to modify the statutes of the Autonomous Communities. His proposals were the center of a great social debate, such as the legalization of the homosexual marriage, the law of personal autonomy, promotion and attention to the people in situation of dependency, the law for the effective equality between women and men, the creation of the judicatures on violence against women, the new regulation on migrants, and a proposal to advance a peaceful retreat of ETA. Spanish Socialism is the historical affirmation that the left wing can come to power and be successful by means of elections and democratic practices.

- LATIN AMERICA TURNING TO LEFT

After the independence processes, Latin American countries had been trying to practice their sovereignty and achieve development. But the 20th Century was full of abuses, interventions and impositions by the First World. The United States, in their anti communism campaign, was decisive in the past history of our continent as it sponsored reactionary dictatorships which were loyal to the White House, such as those of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Videla in Argentina or Strossner in Paraguay. Washington was afraid of the idea of more countries following the Cuban or Nicaraguan example; they also wanted to avoid the repetition of a phenomenon similar to Salvador Allende in Chile. These servile governments used to represent the U.S. interests and defend the privileges of the Latin American elite classes who ruled the society far away from the poor. The dictatorships were strong and criminal in countries like Argentina, Chile or Paraguay, and more disorganized and coward in countries like Ecuador or Venezuela. Then, a fervent hope haunted our continent and promised to bring us security, human rights, development and peace. It was democracy.

From the end of 70’s to the end of the 80’s, most Latin American countries had returned to the Rule of Law in Democratic Regimens. But it didn´t mean that the common people were going to govern. The new civil governments started to implant in the continent the neo-liberal model of production that enlarged the social differences. In most cases, the new leaders who won elections represented exactly the same interests as the previous dictators; through hidden pacts the political right parties distributed between them the control organs, the courts and the power of the State. Then, the democratic hope was reduced to the populism of the parties and their leaders that during their electoral campaigns offered the paradise and delivered gifts. Most of those democratic governments acted under the prescriptions of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Government which imposed its whishes through the Consensus of Washington.

At the end of the 20th Century Latin American people realized that those who said the neo-liberalism was going to be the solution for our entire problems were wrong. For the first time in continent’s history, after Salvador Allende, left political projects started to win elections in Latin America and the search of changes was clear and likely. Our nations stated constituent processes to abolish the established order imposed by the right side; the first one was Colombia that met a Constituent Assembly after defeating the Status Quo defenses by 1991. Then, Venezuela and Ecuador followed Colombia, but in the Ecuadorian case the traditional right parties kidnapped the Assembly in 1998 and consolidated their political pact.

Nowadays, most Latin American nations have governments which defend left principles, so according to the political speech of the media and of neo-liberalism, the social process that Latin America is living has two sources: the good left and the bad one. The Chilean model followed by President Ricardo Lagos and his successor President Michelle Bachellet, the Brazilian model led by President Luis Ignacio Lula Da Silva and the Uruguayan model promoted by President Tabaré Vasquez and followed by President Jose Mujica, are considered by the moderate right side and most of the media as successful examples of the good left, as they include respecting the juridical security, calling international investment and maintaining good relations with the media. On the contrary, the bad left is represented by Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Paraguay and Ecuador, but this last one has been also in the middle of both lefts, as well as Argentina. The political speeches of the opposition can’t understand that the proposals of President Hugo Chavez definitively can’t be applied on other countries because each one responds to a different reality. In the case of Bolivia, it is one of the poorest nations in the continent and after decades of neo-liberalism, for the first time in their history, the segregated indigenous groups, which are the majority of the country, came to power and are developing a different economic model in which the low-class people is the center of production. Thirty years ago, the highest aspiration for a Bolivian indigenous child was to be a peasant as his parents, now, they aspire to be company managers, congressmen and the President of the Republic.

It is important to know that when the new left came to power, it was in front of a series of challenges to demonstrate that the socialist practices had changed, but, some of the new leaders lost their perspective. What is happening in Venezuela is the result of an irresponsible left blinded by power, unable to accept different thinking and their government can become a danger for freedom and democracy. But it is not a reality that is too far from the Colombian one conducted by President Alvaro Uribe.

It’s worth pointing out that we have a very diverse continent with a lot of cultural, social and political characteristics in common, that is trying to find a way to achieve a different conception of development and share it to the rest of the world. But, the established order is not going to give up easily; all the powers of the old structures are fighting against the change as we saw it in Honduras, when the Status Quo overthrew President Manuel Zelaya to avoid his attempt to call for a Constituent Assembly in order to assure a real Social Pact through a new constitution.

- ECUADOR: A CITIZEN REVOLUTION

In 1979 Ecuador returned to a democratic regime when President Jaime Roldos took office, but the people’s expectations were higher than the governmental capacity to make them real. The doubtful death of President Roldos determined the beginning of the Political Parties Dictatorship, a period that was called: The Partidocracia Age. After a deficient government of Oswaldo Hurtado, Roldos’s Vice-president, a powerful politician named Leon Febres Cordero came to power representing the “Partido Social Cristiano” (“PSC”). This government was characterized by authoritarian policies, disrespect of the other functions of the State and social conflict. Alfaro Vive Carajo, a revolutionary guerrilla, started to fight for social justice in the country with violent means following the Nicaraguan example; in turn, the government began a battle against “terrorism”, in which human rights were not respected. In 1988, Rodrigo Borja, another important political leader came to power with the “Partido Izquierda Democratica” (“ID”), which proposed a social democratic tendency but that in practice maintained the neo-liberal system. For the following years these two politicians who were opponents for each other, decided Ecuador’s political history and that period of time was called “Febresborgismo”.

The Political Parties Dictatorships led by “PSC” and “ID” were strong and Febres Cordero was called the Owner of the Country. In 1996, Abdala Bucaram won the presidential elections and the most ashamed chapter of the contemporary history of the country was written by a populist politician without any working plan but his insults and explosive personality. Common people started to protest against the economic policies that increased the price of basic services, but also the protests were in the name of national dignity. In February 5th, 1997, the Congress removed Bucaram adducing mental incapacity and the political parties, showing their unlimited power, appointed Fabian Alarcon, who was the President of the Parliament, as provisional President, however the Constitution established that the vice-president had to assume power. The chauvinism of parties violated the legislation against the ex Vice-president Rosalia Arteaga. That was the beginning of an irrational historical period of weak governments, strong oppositions and total social inconformity. Alarcon called a Constitutional Assembly to write a new Constitution and through a seat distribution method the neo-liberal political parties won majority. In the Assembly of 1998 the political pact of the “partidocracia” was consolidated in the new Constitution which also incorporated an advance in some rights.

No elected government could rule the country under the Constitution of 1998. Jamil Mahuad from the “DP”-“UDC” was removed from power in 2000 by a military and indigenous revolt. In 2002, Lucio Gutierrez, a colonel who participated in Mahuad’s overthrowing, won the presidential elections showing a left tendency that questioned the old political parties. However in the government he showed his real face, isolating Pachakutic and then breaking their alliance. A pact was signed without any condition with the IMF; Gutierrez appointed bankers as economics ministers, external debt was paid in advance, even thought he was opposed to that during the campaign and finally he declared his government the best ally of the United States in Latin America.

On December 9th, 2004, a majority in the Congress controlled by Gutierrez removed the Supreme Court of Justice and named another one according to his own interests, which acquitted Bucaram who returned to Ecuador from his political exile in Panama. Gutierrez’s absolute control of State Institutions and the repression on those who protested against him were the detonating factors that started the “Revuelta Forajida” which constituted a national rejection to the corrupt government. The capital city of Quito was the center of the protests that finally resulted in the overthrowing of Gutierrez who cowardly escaped from the palace and then from the country. The Vice President Alfredo Palacio took on the power promising to refund the Republic with constitutional reforms, but he failed. During his government a new political figure appeared as his first Minister of Economy: Rafael Correa.

Facing the certainty of the collapse in the institutional system and the failure of the Constitution of 1998, Rafael Correa won the presidential elections of 2006 against the multimillionaire Alvaro Noboa who was a defender of Neo-Liberalism. Correa promised a Citizen Revolution through a new Constituent Assembly but the Congress were in absolute opposition to that idea. So the social sectors that supported the idea of a new Constitution started to fight against the Congress and after a complex political process the National Constituent Assembly was inaugurated in the city of Montecristi on November 29th, 2007. The first decisions of the Assembly were the confirmation of Rafael Correa as president and the Tributary Law that was indispensable to begin a culture of taxation, apply progressiveness, sanction evasion, establish the possibility of subtracting personal expenditures from the Income Tax and, with this all, strengthen the Rule of Law. On September 28th, 2008, the Ecuadorian people approved the New Constitution of Montecristi through a Referendum and the great advances of this political letter consist of radical changes to the old structures of power. The Constitution of 2008 guarantees free justice, health and education until the third level, improving the rights of people with disabilities, recognizing the facultative vote for adolescents, nature rights, and the food sovereignty principle.

The Constitutional State of Rights and Justice provided by the Constitution is the guarantee for a country ruled by the citizen power; consequently, the State involves two new branches apart from the three classical ones: The Function of Transparency and Social Control and the Electoral Function. The first one is in charge of citizen participation in the public administration and their responsibility to control power decisions. The Electoral power was reorganized in order to democratize political parties and to avoid this political organizations to be the judge and an interested party. In order to surpass the traditional political conflicts and to warn politicians to achieve transparent political agreements, the New Constitution also provided the Crossed Death which means that the presidential dismissal or Congress dissolution results in general elections for both. And one of the most important advances of the Montecristi Constitution is the new view of development based on people’s necessities instead of marked necessities; the free-market economy model is changed by the joint economy and the Sumak Kawsay, that means Good Living and refers to the principle of living with dignity, satisfying our basic needs and wants in harmony with the environment.

The Citizen Revolution has three years in power and until now the achievements are overwhelming: 146 thousand popular houses have been built; free education and health permitted an increase in school registration and external consultations of 11% and 12% respectively, in 2008. Ecuador is advancing to be a territory free of illiteracy as the percentage was reduced from 9% to 6%. Thirty thousand property tittles were given to peasants. In the middle of the Global Economic Crisis, our poverty was reduced from 37% to 35%. In economic terms the refloating of the small and medium industry and the protection and incentive of the national production were successful. The renegotiation of the External Debt was a world level achievement because it was reduced in 93%; in the medium term this reduction is translated into more o less 10 thousand million dollars in savings. The U.S. Military Base in Manta left the Ecuadorian territory when Correa’s government refused to sign their treaty. The dependency on the oil industry was also reduced from 50% to 30%.

Under the Citizen Revolution government a new way of measuring development has been implanted based on poverty reduction and a major income distribution instead of the economic growth itself, which is important but not the center of the economy. The constitution based on a joint and popular economy also incorporates the informal work as part of production. The Citizen Revolution has a lot to do yet, its achievements are short compared to Ecuador’s problems, but our country knows that this process of change supposes hard times before the society is freed from misery, as dreamt and offered by Rafael Correa; the Established Order was defended by the strong force whose privileges were affected by a leftist government that for first time in Ecuadorian history has returned the power to the common citizen. Jorge Enrique Adoum, one of the great Ecuadorian and Latin American writers wrote his ideal Ecuador that we should achieve some day: “I believe in a country where we can be capable of seeing over the shoulder the ruin that put a curfew on our back, and build a luminous landscape for all, because we go to the light that is forward and is waiting for us at the end of the large tunnel. I believe that that country is this one. I believe in this country.”

Chapter #3: - DEMOCRACY AS A DEEP CONVICTION

Democracy is a term that comes from the Greek civilization and means “the government of the people.” But democracy involves a lot more than the way to govern a country, as it is directly related to the way in which humans assume their life. In Ancient Greece, the rights and liberties of citizens did not include foreigners, slaves and women. They weren´t able to practice the Greek democracy. After the fall of the Greek culture and the uprising of the Middle Ages and Feudalism, the new ideas of Illustration gave life to the Liberal Democracy idealized by philosophers like John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Montesquieu, which consisted in strong institutions and periodic elections. The Liberal Democracy brought the principle of the division of power into three branches to conduct the modern State, but at the beginning it denies the possibility of building a democracy connected to the daily life of the people. Therefore, during the French Revolution women were not admitted at the Assembly which was writing the Declaration of Men and Citizen Rights, so a French woman called Olympe de Gouges pushed for the Declaration of Women and Citizen Rights and for that reason the French revolutionaries condemned her to the guillotine shortly after.

The construction of Democracy and its meanings have been an arduous mission for humanity through time. Ecuador was born with a constitution that just allowed the vote of literate men, older than 22 years old, owners of properties assessed in 300 pesos or more and that have a non servile profession such as a physician, lawyer or priest. In 1869, Gabriel Garcia Moreno promulgated a constitution which gave unlimited power to the President, created the Death Penalty to political offenders and imposed the Catholic Religion, not just as the only religion allowed by the State, but also as a requirement for citizenship. The conception of democracy had changed with the time in all parts of the Earth, as in Ecuador, but the radical and deep democracy has the same meaning for the entire world: Respect to other people´s thinking, rights and liberties.

Throughout history the world attested that not only the Established Order violated the democratic principles because the Left didn´t understand for many years the real meaning of democracy. The Left was slanted. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union prohibited its members to write poetry because they denominated that gender of literature as a “bad bourgeois habit” and they consider that the Leftist writers had to write just the literature of the leaflets. The situation of the women didn´t change a lot under the socialist regimes of the 20th Century; in some countries of Eastern Europe women had to ask for permission from the Party to get married. The socialist women wanted to combine the class struggle with the emancipation of women but the answer they received from the socialist leaders were indifference, chauvinist and hostility. For these reasons, the leftist precursor of Feminism, Flora Célestine Therese Trsitán, said: “Women are the proletarians of the Proletariat.”

Thus, the obsolete point of view of the Old Left wanted to manage the great issues, not the daily and common ones of the people; politics does not embrace all topics of life. Democracy is more than a speech. The Chilean feminists used to say while they fought against the dictatorship: “Democracy in the house and in the bed.” That is the objective of the New Left; socialize democracy as a permanent practice in all human activities. The class struggle and economic relations are not the only forms of discrimination: the lack of democracy supposes the political, social, educational, labor and family violence, and abuses of different types of power, which are shown in every human activity. Democracy is the recovery of everybody’s rights.

Rosa Luxemburg thought that the true democracy would be the revolutionary power of the workers. Now, in the 21th Century, it is urgent to accept that power would not be just for workers, but for all the citizens. The New Left has to accept that the problems of democracy have to be solved with more democracy, obviously questioning the old paradigms of the Liberal Democracy exclusively reduced to electoral competition. The New Left believes in democracy and accepts that the way to come to power is through the existing democratic mechanisms. The principles of Democracy should not only be applied for the institutional life of the State, but also for our private lives, in that way the democratic values could be applied on economic opportunities as well.

- THE NEW LEFT AS A LIBERATING PROPOSAL

The Left Ideology appeared in Humanity as an opposition to the power. During the history of our civilization the Left was born and reborn from humans’ indignation against injustice and abuses, questioning the power relations that resulted from the economic and class differences with the hope of transforming the reality of societies. At the Popular Assemblies of the French Revolution the clergy, landowners and the aristocracy used to be sat at the right side of the person who presided the meeting, and the peasants, workers, and the poor people used to be sat at the left side of the room, then the social fights and aspirations of the needy people became the ideals and principles of the Left. The Left attempted to upset the established order because the old social structures are the bases of social injustice and inequalities, then the Left started searching for freedom and wellbeing. The Libertarian tradition of the Left has to be recovered in order to make socialism a libertarian proposal.

The meaning of freedom has different conceptions and interpretations; for the bourgeois liberalism and conservative parties, to be free is to possess property without obstacles or interferences for its enjoyment. For them to be and to have are extremely related. Freedom is where the private property is. But on the contrary, for Marx, freedom does not depend on the private property, the human being is authentically free when he is genuinely autonomous, when is not forced to be sold as a merchandise. Capitalism gives the market, people’s autonomy and transforms humans into objects, as a result of fetishism. The material necessity and forced work are far from real freedom.

The Left needed for the 21st Century doesn´t hinder liberties. On the contrary, it searches the conditions to achieve real freedom, but socialism does not confuse, freedom cannot be a word exclusively to the market and capitals. The freedom that the New Left tries to build is for the people and societies, to build and decide our present and future. The Left of the past justified authoritarianism and mechanisms to hinder the liberties; the problem stems from the fact that the old global left adopted the thesis of Nicolas Machiavelli which states that the end justifies the means, the same archetype that built the bourgeois polices and that embraced the totalitarianism from the Left and the Right in the 20th Century . Something we have to understand in the 21st Century is that the end doesn´t justify the means and if antidemocratic means are used, the end is absolutely condemned. The bad or long term use of the guns drowned the leftist political project, guns as an end feeds the authoritarianism and kidnaps freedom, justice and democracy. The New Socialism implies the maintenance of the Rule of Law, rights and liberties extended to the citizens, protection of individual identity, of the diversity of the human kind, and the supremacy of the citizen over the State. The conquests of the 17th Century Liberalism can´t be disdain, are a part of the conquests of socialism.

The new left appeared in Ecuador as a libertarian Left. The recent political disputes confront the progressive sectors with the most conservative sector of the Catholic Church about women’s right, specially sexual and reproductive rights, which constitute a debate of individual liberties. We saw the bishop of Guayaquil making a church campaign against the project of new constitution that was approved in 2008, which according to them was an attempt to moral values, was going to legalize the abortion, homosexual adoption and will destroy the family. In any case, that conflict forced many sectors to assume a position about those issues and discussed them in a national debate. Fourier was right when he said: “Society’s freedom can be measured by woman’s freedom.” The New Left has to include in its agenda the recognition of women’s rights as a political proposal.

Eloy Alfaro, the most progressionist and reformist of Ecuadorian presidents, said: “Freedom isn´t achieved imploring on one’s knees; it is conquered in the battle field.” And it is. The battle field in the 21st Century is in our homes, cities and parliaments which make the country legislation. Latin America is surpassing a very complex political process in which we witness how Hugo Chavez’s government closed RCTV Chanel, which opposed his administration, and now, the same government is attempting against the media and repressing cowardly the opposition protests. In the same order, Ecuador has a burning debate about the freedom of expression: in 2009 a governmental organism penalized some programs of Teleamazonas, a TV Channel of the opposition, without any technical study or a clear public police. The hostility between the government and the media in Ecuador is a bad symptom of intolerance and lack of respect for opinions differing from the power.

The New Left has to recognize that power is a tool for service not an end, also that individual liberties are guaranteed when the power is curtailed by the law. The archaic structures of the state are the ones which obstruct liberties, for that reason the objective of the Left shouldn’t be to come to power; on the contrary, it has to be broken up.

- YOUNG PEOPLE IMPROVING DEMOCRACY

The young people have been the hope of societies since immemorial times but what is absolutely demonstrated is that our lack of prudency and our ignorance about what is impossible to achieve has constituted the force which made the world change throughout history. According to Victoria Dávila, if we want to know if politics are defined by generations, or generations by politics, we must make ourselves the oldest question of what came before, the chicken or the egg. But that irreverent force which inspired young people from all times to dream and to fight was the “capacity of indignation” in front of injustice. And that is currently the hope to consolidate democracy as a way of living for humans and socialism as a project to bring equality and social justice to humanity.

Almost 42 years ago, a protest poetry invaded Paris’ walls in order to recover the youth’s conscience. “The revolution is incredible because it is real” said one of the many graffities that appeared in May 1968. The most intense part of that experience consisted in that the young people were the protagonists of those events that started in Paris and then traveled to many cities around the world. It was the young people who gave up on everything for the peace in Vietnam and that weren’t afraid about confronting authoritarianism. It was the beginning of questioning the expired social systems of that period and the hippie movement was expanded to all the countries; the common point which characterized them consisted of young people who started to dream, demand their rights and fight for their causes. Margaret Thatcher, who never understood the socio-political and cultural moment, declared: “This is the result of denigrating the old values of discipline and moderation.” She and the world were too old to be compatible with young people charged with refreshing ideas.

Therefore, the question that comes to us is: What is our role in society? Young people’s role in society gets bigger and bigger with time but first of all we have to know that the conservative society conceptualizes us as unreliable people, and this stigmatization and prejudice has become so strong that a lot of young people think the same as the establishment. That is something that we have to avoid as a society in order to promote the participation of the young people. The Established Order wants to think for us, but we are not going to conform ourselves with that imposition. We are still touched in our deepest part that turns on rebelliousness, we still dream utopias, we still cry broken loves and we conserve the capacity of indignation. We are those who are fighting the most urgent battles of our time as the fight to preserve the environment and the care of animals. We, the young people with all our kinds of expressions, are permanently questioning the relations of power and making society think about their prejudices and fears.

Ecuador is a country of young people considering that 60% of the population is less than 28 years. Juan Montalvo, one of the greatest Ecuadorian writers said: “Unfortunate the nation where the young people are humble with the tyrant, where the young people don’t make the world tremble.” The Constituent Assembly approved the optional vote for teens between 16 an 17 years, and that is a great opportunity to show our own capacity and decision-making ability to built better days for our country. We can´t wait for other people to make the changes that we need and this is a good way to involve teenagers with Ecuador, our country. The teenagers in the Ecuadorian society are a diverse and dynamic group of people that express themselves in a lot of different ways. At this time, the young people are the most diverse group in the society, and some of their expressions are influenced by different factors such as music. We can have a lot of urban cultures that interact following gender postulates and principles that prevail in rock, punk, metal or hip-hop, for example. And those are ways of building democracy in the public space, demanding tolerance and understanding from society.

The Constitutional State of Rights and Justice born from the Montecristi Constitution implies the active participation of young people in the country’s democratic life and the inclusion of their issues and opinions in the agenda of public policies. Therefore the participation of young people in the public space is indispensable and the structures of power have to be opened to include this important sector of society as we are absolutely capable of giving valid solutions to the world and country’s problems. Ecuador has strengthened the spaces of participation for young people, our country has thinking and critical young people who have to be aware of their rights and obligations, and have to understand that there is not real freedom for citizens if they are not orientated to the public benefit and if they lack social responsibility.

Mario Benedetti, one of the most famous and progressive poets of Latin America, wrote: “What else can the young people do in this world of patience and disappointment? Just graffitis? Rock? Skepticism? Only not saying amen is left for them, as it is not letting anyone kill their love, recovering the speech and the utopia, being young without haste and with memory, placing themselves in a history that is theirs, not turning into premature seniors.” This is the mission of the young people in this complex moment of history.

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.”

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