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.
