A. Negri and G. Cocco are engaged in this work to a radical criticism of development policies as they have been implemented in Latin America since the 1930s. But their remarks suffer from a blatant absence of demonstration and historical perspective. These deficiencies harm the militant discourse that this criticism intends to carry and the movements that claim it.
In his latest test written in collaboration with Giuseppe Cocco, sociologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Antonio Negri applies to Latin America the theses presented in Empire and multitudes, published respectively in 2000 and 2004. both research method and willingness to fight “, The work is more like the second category and must be read for what it is: an ideological and non-academic analysis of Latin American reality. This is based on the familiar concepts of Negri (“ Empire “,” multitude “,” living work ), As well as on the axioms from which he develops his thinking: the driving role of social struggles in the evolution of capital, the exodus as a figure of proletarian resistance, the policy of biopour.
Negri and Cocco’s work is a clearly directed load against the proponents of the moderate left (Michelle Bachelet trend) in current Latin America. They claim that they are mistaken by continuing to play the map of national development and sovereignty, even though the time is for another type of development, produced by globalization, based on interdependence and generalization of intangible work. In the development policies implemented in Latin America, the authors distinguish the “ cépalism “And the” National-developmentism “, To which they accuse of having perpetuated the existing forms of social domination and of having prevented – including by the state repression – the emancipation of the new forces. These currents would have mystified citizens by presenting underdevelopment as the product of exogenous causes instead of resolving the blockages inherent in Latin American societies. In short, they would have been only the new clothes of a state qualified as “ patriarchal and racist “, Which leads the authors to devote a whole chapter to this question. After having presented the current situation and the beginnings of their reasoning (the so-called obstacles to development, the foundation of biopour), they resume the historical analysis of the three sequences considered: the so-called developmentism stage (1930 to 1968), that of National-Developmentism (1968 to 1985) and that of neo-liberalism (1985 to 2001).
The main problem posed by this criticism of Latin American developmentism is that it presents a reified vision of the process, ignoring the contexts in which these policies have been developed as well as the conflicts they have generated, especially within the elites. In this regard, it is difficult to put on the same plane the policy of Perón or Vargas, which relies on a state locking of unions and corporations, the “ developmentism »Much more democratic from the 1950s (Frondizi, Kubitschek, Betancourt) and the policies of” national development », Much more liberal, implemented by the Chilean and Argentina junts. In detail, the projects differ as much by their content as by their implementation and their social cost. Furthermore, the authors never evoke the resistances opposed to these policies by part of the elites, proof if these are that these projects were far from defending the only interests of a “ the oligarchy “Decided to let the popular classes are ranging in misery.
Even more embarrassing, this developmental trial is due to acquire a continuity of social domination which dates back to the colonial era. Everything happens as if Latin America had had no evolution between the end of XVIIIe and the end of XXe century. The construction of the nation state would be a kind of hybridization between the power known as “ colonial “And a said power” modern and national ». Qualify as “ oligarchic Colonial power is a perfect misinterpretation since the term, precisely, is a product of modernity: it denounces the persistence, in societies based on the sovereignty of the people, of a caste of wealthy monopolizing economic resources and command functions. Using this term therefore necessarily leads to evoke the social and political movements that have opposed, since the beginning of XXe century, to this heritage conception of power. If it is undeniable that it has existed since during the rich and the poor as well as forms of racial discrimination, it is abusive to deny all historical evolution, since proclamation and application – conflictual, limited, but effective – of the principles of political modernity XIXe century until the appearance of new social forces irrigating reformist or revolutionary impulses of XXe century. Social movements are also mentioned in a very imprecise, even caricatural way by the authors, and it is only for the most recent period that specific examples are finally mentioned.
But the substantive problem lies, in our opinion, in the use of the authors of the concept of biopouvoir applied to Latin America. There has been an occupied oligarchy in this region of the world for three centuries to “ Conduct a war of extermination against minorities (P. 120), which must be said loud and clear that it is a untruth. Objective ally of this class, of which it would be the emanation, the State is accused of exercising a repression against the masses resulting from the rural exodus. As a result, not only is the State category reified (since nothing is said on the actors who constitute it and legitimizing, nor on their projects and their achievements) but social reality, itself, is in a way evacuated: the urban middle classes, so important in the political evolution of Latin America XXe century, are purely and simply thrown away. The vision of the social is reduced to a face-to-face between an oligarchy perpetuating its domination by the conscious and systematic practice of racial exclusion, and native, black or mixed masses, thwarting these traps by the exodus or the struggle. To affirm in this regard that Brazilian interbreeding is a strategy of reproduction of patriarchal society supposes the existence of a deliberate project that nothing, neither in this book nor elsewhere, allows to attest. If such assertions were a little founded, one would be entitled to wonder why Brazil never established apartheid. In addition, Brazil is not all of Latin America and the observations taken from the Brazilian case are far from serving as a valid explanation model for the whole continent. This confusion between the game and the whole, distilled throughout the book, leads again to several untruths.
In the end, there is hardly only the analysis of the most recent period which arouses a certain interest, although the subject is not completely original. The authors emphasize that the joint effects of neo-liberalism and globalization in Latin America have been able to have effects “ positive In view of the policies carried out until then. The neo-liberals have indeed contributed to opening up Latin American societies by creating elements of interdependence, by advancing the universalization of rights and by initiating integration into the “ Empire ». The supremacy of “ Oligarchic and corporatist block »Was cracked, the new leaders having opened spaces of popular participation. To make it possible to consolidate these achievements in a truly democratic sense, current rulers, from social struggles, must therefore operate a “ New Deal constituent “Based on regional integration (“ interdependence ) And the interaction between governments and social movements (“ social governance »). The regime of Lula Da Silva in Brazil and Nestor Kirchner in Argentina would indicate, in a way, the procedure to follow. However, it seems again that the authors force the line: the Argentinian movement of 2001, for example, represents for them the advent of the “ multitude », New representation of the social marked by subjectivity, when it has been shown that this movement had very old and ambiguous class conceptions. Furthermore, we would like to be able to subscribe to the hypothesis according to which the mixture had ended up triumphing a “ Revolutionary anti-modernity », Ringling the continent from the domination of Europeans and the elites» white And helping to renew the concept of democracy in depth. It would still be necessary to be able to base these assertions on objective elements of demonstration, which do not appear in the text.
To conclude, it is infinitely regrettable that a militant remarks in Vienna to produce untruths, such as those concerning the use of certain concepts (biopour, oligarchy and slavery) in this book. The audience enjoyed by Antonio Negri in alterglobalist circles suggests that the aporia having fed, in their time, the anti-imperialist and revolutionary speeches of the Latin American left movements. Although pretending to escape this trap, the authors do nothing but place exogenous conceptions on a reality which deserves to be analyzed for itself. The vigor of a political struggle does not claim that the step is sold on the intellectual field, quite the contrary: the theses of the alterglobalist movement deserve to be based on informed analyzes, and thereby difficult to dispute. We can therefore only be irritated by the lightness shown by the authors vis-à-vis their object: proof of their negligence, the way in which they mistreat the language (certain terms in Spanish do not exist or are used in an incorrect manner) or scraps certain proper names. Latin America does not seem to deserve the status of scientific object ; It remains, again and again, the big screen on which European intellectuals project their fantasies and their utopias. The case during the XVIIIe century, even since the conquest, it may be time to end this Latin declination of the “ Orientalism And to talk about things as they are, or as one can think of them, on the basis of a documented reflection and a consideration, necessarily nuanced, of complexity.
To go further:
See the article by Annick Lemperière, “ There “ Colonial cuestine »» “, Nuevo Mundo Mundos NuevosNúmero 4 – 2004 ; and that of Raúl Fradkin’s article, “ Cosecharás you siembra. Notas sober La Rebelión Popular Argentina de Dicress 2001 “, Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevosn ° 2 – 2002, posted on February 9, 2005, reference of October 4, 2007.