Crisis, Democracy and The Left in Peru (Rochabrún, 1988)

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Crisis, Democracy, and the Left in Peru

Guillermo Rochabrn Silva and Anbal Yaez Latin American Perspectives 1988 15: 77 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X8801500306 The online version of this article can be found at: http://lap.sagepub.com/content/15/3/77
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Crisis, Democracy,
and the Left in Peru
by
Guillermo Rochabrún Silva* Translated by
Aníbal Yañez
In Peru, as in most of Latin America, almost the entire left has replaced the themes of class struggle, revolution, and socialism with that of democracy, with all its virtues, problems, and possibilities. How can this shift be explained in the Peruvian case, and how should it be
evaluated?
In our view, this transition must be understood fundamentally as the ideological depletion that the reforms carried out by the military government produced in most of the Marxist left, in particular that which today makes up the legal left, the Izquierda Unida (United Left, or IU). To this must be added the disenchantment with &dquo;existing socialisms.&dquo; The ideological weakening that followed both these processes facilitated the acceptance of various themes and values of liberal democracy that at that time were being put into circulation by the exiles from the Southern Cone and by the Carter government. Upon returning in 1980 to a political system based on elections and parliament, Peru experienced-and is still experiencing-the broadest political democracy in its history. But this is not a symptom of greater stability; rather, it is part of a very profound crisis. The present article is an attempt to support that statement.
result of the
THE PERUVIAN LEFT: FROM REVOLUTION TO DEMOCRACY

THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT
(1968-1980)
political
As in the countries of the Southern Cone, this theoretical and turn toward democracy has taken place after a military
*Guillermo Rochabrdn Silva, a Peruvian sociologist, is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Pontificia Universidad Cat6lica del Peru and a
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue @ 1988 Latin American Perspectives
58, Vol. 15 No. 3, Summer 1988 77-96

77
78
dictatorship. But the cases are not the same. In those countries the army overthrew governments that were trying to carry out a second cycle of transformations, of a populist or socialist character. In Lechners words, this time the military sought to found a new order imposing &dquo;a new norm and order by means corresponding to the logic of war: the annihilation of the adversary and the abolition of differences&dquo; (1985: 59). There the revolutionary and socialist forces suffered a historic crushing that
marked the end of an era. It was from that situation that these left forces
began their current reevaluation of democracy. In Peru, however, the military government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado ( 1968-1975) marked the beginning of a very different process. After they overthrew Fernando Belaunde Terry, invoking nationalist reasons, the military set in motion a series of structural reforms that helped in a decisive way to eradicate a large part of the social order that, according to reformism and revolutionary thought, had to be eradicated. Let us look at some of the most outstanding features. The Peruvian agrarian reform, generally considered to be the most
radical in the Americas except for that in Cuba, eliminated the archaic landowners of the sierra and, above all, the big agrarian capitalists of the north coast; in their place associated enterprises were forcibly created and controlled by the state. The state took control of petroleum, paper, cement, an important part of copper, and banking, as well as the commercialization of food and supplies, and became the main economic agent. With these resources it tried to plan the entire economy and to renegotiate relations with the capitalist world. There were strong clashes with the U.S. government, while at the same time commercial, diplomatic, and military relations were established with countries in the socialist orbit. Industrial production was highly protected and facilitated with tariffs and credits; there was an attempt to enlarge the domestic market. In the main branches of production, &dquo;labor communities&dquo; were instituted as a way for workers to participate in ownership, management, and profits, which was intensely combated by business. All of this was carried out in the middle of an intense campaign that called for the elimination of exploitation (&dquo;the boss shall no longer eat your poverty and that laid claim to complete ideological originality (&dquo;a revolution that is neither capitalist nor communist. An intense
member of the editorial board of El Zorro de Abajo, Revista de Politica y Cultura. In 1986 he published the book Las ideas socialistas en el Peru. Anibal Yanez is in the doctoral program at the Center for Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
79
of society then took place by means of educational reform and increased governmental control of the mass media-the stated purpose of which was to transfer the media to the new workers organizations that the state was setting up in the course of its reforms. With the exception of the Partido Comunista Peruano (Peruvian Communist Party, or PCP), the Marxist left criticized and combated this government and these reforms, mostly in ideological terms, trying to prevent the popular classes from being attracted by the rhetoric of the generals. The countless parties of the left that appeared then sought to demonstrate that such policies were reactionary, or a hoax, or not sufficiently revolutionary. In any case, the greatest efforts on the part of the left were exerted trying to differentiate themselves from the military government. In other words, confusion was possible. Our first thesis is that the military government depleted the ideas of the Peruvian left, since both acted in the framework of the same paradigm: the development of the country following the model of industrial societies and their productive forces. The Marxists used another language: they added the role of the proletariat and the peasantry, although they equated socialism with state control of the economy. But their affinity with the military government is shown not only by their efforts to distinguish themselves from it, but by the fact that when the reforms began to slow down or be dismantled, the left could not but defend them, following and channeling popular protests. It was not able to present an alternative for which to struggle. More recently, important Marxist leaders have held up the figure of Velasco and have more or less explicitly carried out self-criticism for having opposed him. All of this indicates that the left and military reformism traveled along paths that to a large extent were superimposed and that their clashes are to be explained more by political competition than by ideological differences. The fact is that the structural transformations were carried out, and they were not followed by an economic boom, but rather a crisis that has lasted for no less than 13 years; as to the nature of this crisis, there is no agreement. This crisis put an end to a quarter century of almost uninterrupted economic growth and made key themes such as industrialization and growth lose much of their power of seduction. The economic difficulties could not be attributed to the survival of an archaic order that had already been removed, nor could measures that had demonstrated that they were ineffective or counterproductive be invoked as a solution. In other words, to the economic and political
ideologization
80
crisis was added a cultural crisis: the exhaustion of the &dquo;development&dquo; paradigm that had given meaning to the world. In the following years the tune would be called, by economic orthodoxy, &dquo;stability.&dquo;
NEW POLITICAL CLIMATE AND ENTRY TO LEGALITY
The period between 1976 and 1978 witnessed social and political agitation of such magnitude that it led several left parties to diagnose the proximity of a prerevolutionary situation. Powerful movements of wage workers, independents, urban slum dwellers, and regional fronts grew and achieved relative unity in those years, and their demands converged on and against the state. Of particular importance were the national
strikes of 1977 and 1978.

The political result of the strikes was the retreat of the generals to their barracks and the return of civilians to the government by means of democratic elections, which had been a demand of the right. The workers had not sought these goals, but rather a change in the governments economic policy and in its wage and trade-union policy. In that regard its accomplishments were minimal, but the citizenrys hopes were raised by the imminent new political course. The call to elect a new Constituent Assembly and then to have general elections opened the political system; liderazgo [power and influence of political leaders) ] and clientelism reappeared. In other words, real and symbolic mechanisms were created to channel demands and expectations, mechanisms were different than the direct confrontation that had characterized the period of &dquo;class-struggle. &dquo;2 In the midst of these circumstances, a distancing began to develop between the popular organizations and the left parties. Little by little the unions adopted negotiation tactics, while most of the left prepared to participate in the recently announced elections and &dquo;to use the Constituent Assembly as a platform for propaganda and denunciation.&dquo; In practice the clandestine left would become, with few exceptions, a legal left.
THE DISTANCING FROM INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM
The Peruvian left has always viewed the revolution from one or another pole of the international socialist movement. The most important cases are the Peruvian Communist Party, linked to the Soviet
81
orbit, and diverse Pekingese parties that split from the PCP in the sixties. The so-called &dquo;new left&dquo; of the decade of the seventies had a fundamentally Leninist orientation, although gradually Maoism gained very great acceptance. But after Maos death came the Chinese crisis, the war with Vietnam, Cambodia, and Solidarity. In Latin America we witnessed the crushing of diverse left groups in the Southern Cone that were geographically and politically closer than the Sandinista guerrillas. Those years left a taste of the failure of socialism and of the revolutionary ideal, while the popular movements became less radical. Almost at the same time (1979-1980), a debate took place on the question of a &dquo;national left,&dquo; that is, on the dialectics between Peruvian left autonomy and the Peruvian revolutions links with the world revolutionary socialist experience. The figure of Jose Carlos Maridtegui was invoked to uphold the different positions in the polemic, but the term Mariateguismo has been coined as a sort of shield against international &dquo;isms.&dquo; A good portion of the Maoist left assumed a position in favor of autonomization. Undoubtedly, Maoism was a fertile ground for this position because of its emphasis on the peasantry, the nation, and culture-themes that in those years began to be intensely studied and discussed. Mariateguis phrase, so often repeated, of building a Peruvian socialism that would be &dquo;neither a tracing nor a copy, but rather a heroic creation&dquo; is still a long-term historical task waiting to be accomplished. But the construction of a socialist project cannot be done overnight, nor can it be a voluntarist creation. Meanwhile, there is the question of how to fill the ideological void left by having taken ones distance from the international socialist framework? Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path, or SL) filled it by creating a world movement based on itself: &dquo;MarxismLeninism-Maoism-Gonzalism.&dquo;3 The legal left, on the other hand, was influenced by the discourse on democracy and human rights that at that time was current in Latin America, promoted by the political exiles from the Southern Cone and the Carter government in the United States. It wound up recognizing the legitimacy of various concerns and values of liberal democracy, and trying to place them within socialist thought.4 So it was in the absence of a program for the transformation of Peruvian society-once the militarys reform program had been accomplished-that the reduction of the radicalness of the popular movements, the arousal of expectations due to the opening of the channels of political democracy, and the disenchantment with different socialist experiences were able to come together. For the left, the
82
acceptance of democracy was not the only road allowed by savage repression, as in the Southern Cone, nor was it the result of a theoretical development that freed it of sterilizing dogmas and led to the achievement of new political frontiers, as would have been desirable and as some would like to pretend. The left did not conquer the field of democracy; rather, it was captured by it. After 1982, once Sendero Luminoso had to be taken seriously, the Izquierda Unidas need to differentiate itself from Sendero pushed it
with additional force into the framework of the established order. But is this a shameful defeat, or a healthy opening? In other words, what is the validity of democracy as a political option in Peru?
DEMOCRACY IN PERU: THE UNFINISHED EVOLUTION
Historically, the roots of Peruvian society are quite alien to liberal democracy. The pre-Hispanic kingdoms and empires were constituted along the lines of relationships and loyalties of a &dquo;clanish&dquo; type, defined by a hierarchy the bases of which were superhuman. The Spanish conquerors built upon these political, cultural, and psychological structures to constitute a patrimonial society along rigid estate and corporate lines by means of the &dquo;two republics&dquo;-the &dquo;republic of the Spaniards&dquo; and the &dquo;republic of the natives.&dquo; Following the wars of independence, Peruvian society maintained colonial segregation, while politically it assumed the form of a republic designed according to liberal principles having no relation to and even opposed to an economy based on tribute, precapitalist rents, and the commercial profit of mercantile capital. That is, there was no link whatsoever to the relations of production and the social forms of the surplus. In other words, it was not a &dquo;superstructure&dquo; that corresponded to its &dquo;base&dquo; (Rochabrun, 1979). Nevertheless the persistence of republican forms and principles and their having gradually taken root merits an explanation. Might not the last 160 years of Peruvian history be understood as a still-unfinished advance toward a democracy that now is entering a new stage?
CAPITALISM AND SOCIETY
The evolution of democracy in Peru cannot be understood outside of the course that capitalism and its most &dquo;simple&dquo; determinants, such as
83
commodities and money, have taken in this country. Far from adhering to an &dquo;economist&dquo; view, we underscore that insofar as they are specifically capitalist phenomena, these categories include social relations and cultural and ideological contents such as liberty and equality, which at the same time are basic to liberalism and democracy (Rochabrun, 1982). In Europe all these dimensions developed simultaneously, since capitalism, liberalism, and democracy (we would add socialism) have been part of a single, endogenously generated historical process. In Peru, as in most of Latin America, things occurred in quite another way. This is not the moment to discuss how some basic propositions of historical materialism should be understood on the subject of &dquo;de-
pendent&dquo; societies, or to clarify what we mean here by &dquo;dependency.&dquo; We will note only that in the last 80 or 90 years there has been a relative development and articulation and taking root of capitalist socioeconomic phenomena and of fragments of liberal democracy in a contradictory relationship with &dquo;serflike&dquo; ties of reciprocity and undeveloped value relations along with seigniories and estate loyalties. Let us examine the scope of this complex process in a very schematic way.5 As Maritegui (1971) pointed out, capitalism was developing on feudal grounds. The debates of the past decade on the &dquo;character of Peruvian society&dquo; centered on the relative magnitude of capitalism and precapitalism, trying to evaluate them by comparing the respective value of their product or comparing the magnitude of wage and nonwage relations. The study of the respective connections did not go beyond asserting their reciprocal functionality or dysfunctionality for the survival of each. But no one went so far as to raise the question that we wish to formulate here: how well rooted was capitalism? To what extent was the undeniable capitalist expansion accompanied by its deepening? What happened in those places where precapitalist activities, practices, and relations were reduced? Was it possible to establish an internal circuit of accumulation that would tend to homogenize the economic structure? Lastly, what was happening with capitalism as a social phenomenon? Today it is clear that the development of capitalism in Peru has been fragmentary and uneven. It took place first through the export of raw materials, which permitted an initial urban growth. Then it expanded through &dquo;import-substitution&dquo; industrialization, constrained by (a) the foreign exchange that exports could provide, and (b) the so-called
&dquo;narrowness&dquo; of the internal market. However, the size of the market depends upon the division of labor and the dynamic of production, and
84
(Rochabrun, 1977: 10-12). In this case, in its different forms increased the inequality capitalist expansion between capitalist productive forces and those of the rural world, especially the Andean countryside. The result was a town-country relationship that eroded the economic activities of an archaic and stagnant countryside, turning these spaces into a marginal increment of the capitalist market but making the latters thorough-going development impossible. In this sense the reforms of the military government after 1968 &dquo;stretched&dquo; the markets, but the attempts to deepen them failed, as they left the productive relations between town and country unaltered. The labor force as a whole went on to reproduce itself increasingly in contact with this capitalism, but it did not fundamentally grow as a productive labor force. The magnitude of the phenomenon-which has later been called &dquo;underemployment,&dquo; &dquo;marginality,&dquo; and &dquo;the informal sector&dquo;-is pertinent evidence of this. The most visible consequence has been urban growth without urbanization. If, according to Schumpeter, capitalist accumulation is &dquo;creative destruction,&dquo; then in a case such as Peru, the destructive effect is qualitatively superior, for it does not capitalistically recreate the space that it destroys. In this way, one arrived at a block to domestic accumulation. But the corresponding forms of political control are also undermined. It is therefore of interest to evaluate what has happened meanwhile with capitalisms social, political, and ideological dimension, and to what extent it has affected the generation of democratic possibilities and spaces. Capitalist development in Peru cannot be understood without examining its &dquo;extraeconomic&dquo; dimensions.
CIVIL SOCIETY, POLITICS, AND THE STATE
not the other way around
For lack of a better term, we shall call Peruvian society as it emerged
republican life after 1821 &dquo;estate-based.&dquo; Viewed from a democratic society, estates seem to be defined by relationships of hierarchy and loyalty, by ties of personal dependence, or, put negatively, by the lack of
in
autonomy of the social actors. In the case of Peru it would be necessary

social and political domination over the indigenous world. To democratize such a society required at least creating autonomous social subjects-citizens-and extending this citizenship to the peasant world. Well, there is no doubt that all of this has been happening in the
to add
85
of this century. The last 90 years evidence not only the appearance of an important labor contingent, but the development of labors autonomy, first from the dominant classes-as organized labor left behind the mutual aid societies and adopted trade unionism. Later labor became independent of the middle layers when, in a historically rare change of political identity, the trade-union movement abandoned the APRA and its doctrine of &dquo;free trade unionism&dquo; to accept Marxist leaders and &dquo;class-struggle trade unionism.&dquo; The middle layers have likewise developed a social, cultural, and political profile autonomous of the old oligarchy, first through the APRA, then in the fifties through Acci6n Popular and Christian Democracy, and currently moving to the United Left. Correspondingly, the &dquo;oligarchic&dquo; parties have disappeared-the Partido Civil, the Movimiento Democratico Peruano (Peruvian Democratic Movement), and the Union Nacional Odriista (Odriista National Union). Although with difficulty, the peasant movements have ended up fighting for the eradication of all bosses and not just the &dquo;bad boss.&dquo; In the same way, the movements of poor, urban slum dwellers, which initially were clientelized by oligarchic groups, have, since the seventies, consolidated their independence from the 6 dominant classes and the state.6 The state in turn has changed decisively. At the start of the century it was no more than &dquo;the extension in the political field of the corporative economic interests&dquo; of the dominant classes. &dquo;Toward the end of the last decade, on the contrary, the specificities of politics-understood as hegemony, leadership, consensus-take shape within a state that is not merely a prolongation of economic interests but which puts itself forward as a regulator of conflicts&dquo; (El Zorro de Abajo, 1985: 6). Citizenship, the exercise of rights and the mechanisms of the political and judicial system, has been extended, and the proportion of the population that voted, even before the 1979 Constitution granted illiterates the right to vote, has grown. The provision of certain services such as education not only has been broadened, but has already been
course
recognized as a right. Culturally, &dquo;Spanishification&dquo; (castellanizaci6n) has advanced, and monolingualism in native languages has been reduced. The means of mass communication have a much greater reach, and &dquo;public opinion,&dquo; as ambiguous as this term is, is more in effect than
before. The reforms and the processes that took
a
government-formally speaking, edented conditions for democratic functioning, in terms of the incorpora-
place during the military dictatorship-resulted in unprec-
86
tion into
political life of contingents. In summary:

(A) In Peru,
new,
broad, organized, and
autonomous
as part of a social expansion of capitalism, a broad substratum of &dquo;protodemocratic&dquo; social relations has taken shape, if we may use that expression, which has been gradually replacing or in any case superposing itself upon estate-type and corporative relations in retreat. While democracy may have entered Peruvian society accidentally, it has taken root. It is no longer an exotic import. That is our second thesis.
Of course, democracy is, has been, and will be a conflictive reality. As anywhere, the freedoms, rights, and guarantees have been won and are exercised only by means of bloody struggles. Frequently, the development of democracy is more in the objective effects of the struggles than in the formation of a democratic culture. And what the philosopher Abugattas observes about interpersonal relations, anchored in a corporate backdrop, is very true:
A Peruvian thinks of himself and thinks of his relations with his fellow man in terms of bi- and tripolar oppositions, such as &dquo;the right
people/ordinarypeople/Indians, &dquo;orprovincials/Lima-dwellers, or mountain people/coast people, or military/civilian, etc.... The individual, then, upon closer inspection, is, above all, a member of a sort of minicorporation. From this self-perception is derived apeculiar morality, which allows anything in relation to the &dquo;others&dquo;... in such a way that relations[with themJcannot be ruled other than by mutual distrust[1986:
54-SSJ.
But what this reveals is the undermining of a set of particularisms a universality having been constituted in its place.
The aforementioned democratic expansion is the result of struggles by the popular classes and the middle layers that were carried out without the agreement and even in face of the opposition of the bourgeoisie. The latter, culturally heir to many aspects of oligarchic domination, avoided confrontation with the oligarchy-other classes did its work.
without
(B)
In summary, this democracy contains at bottom genuine achievements with a popular content. But how does it function politically in the context of a crisis such as we have presented?
87
(C) While the development of capitalism is blocked by the uneven development of the productive forces in town and country, this is not the case with its sociopolitical and ideological aspects (freedom, equality). We could say that a contradiction arises between the economic dynamic of capitalism and its &dquo;superstructural&dquo; dimension; potentially there could be &dquo;excess&dquo; democracy with regard to what
capitalism could tolerate. This is our third thesis.
POLITICS AND DEMOCRACY

IN A CONTEXT OF CRISIS
Since 1980 Peru has lived not only under a formally democratic but with the broadest political democracy in its history. There are free elections; a constitution drafted by a freely elected assembly is in effect, and the separation of powers works. The only ones outside of the official political scene are the parties that have excluded themselves. It can be said that for the first time all the social classes have organizations and parties that represent them socially and politically, and they have at their disposal various means of communication that function with almost unrestricted freedom. Apparently everything would work in the best possible way were it not for the armed subversion and the economic crisis. And yet,
regime,
the representatives cannot faithfully express the interests, the aspirations, the passions q/~!<Me whom ~c~ The ~e ~M~/Me~~, sentiments, and a~J~cp~M.HO/M of those wAow they rcprM~.... represent.... TTtc have shown themselves of parties incapable fully understanding the !M the ~M economy on~ in how not w society a~J because &ecoM.se of ~o~ been &CPM ccoMOW~ and chaM~s in .soc!e~ and q/~~ that have able to organically insert themselves in the economic and social process.... This explains the absence, not just of national and popular projects that would be too ambitious, but simply of political projects fldpez, 1980 J
the changes
PARTIES AND SOCIETY
The mechanism of political representation has been in crisis in Peru from the moment the political parties showed they were lacking national proposals. Various facts make this evident: the irrelevance of political programs during electoral processes, the absence of ideological debate, the difficulty in distinguishing between the proposals of the different candidates, the preference of the right to call itself &dquo;center&dquo; and of the
88
left to place itself there, the growth of an &dquo;independent&dquo; electorate that decides who to vote for at the last moment, the fragile relations with the social classes.7 The reason is clear. We have maintained that the reforms of the military government exhausted the possibilities of the different developmentalisms. From a capitalist perspective one of the few &dquo;recipes&dquo; still to be tried is the &dquo;Taiwanization&dquo; of the economy, which could not be carried out in a formally democratic regime. The exhaustion is equally clear with regard to the left, despite the Izquierda Unidas very elaborate governmental plan. Although the latter has attracted some attention, the fact is that it does not contain any ideas that can conquer the imagination of its supporters. Citizens enthusiasm for the electoral processes has not diminished, but this is a passing sentiment that later gives way to pessimism and insecurity. The most popular politicians-Belaunde, Alfonso Barrantes, Alan Garcia-are more collective symbols than representative figures of their respective political organizations. By inspiring personal rather than programmatic support, their characters as caudillos is reinforced.
THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE
This lack of projects is not simply a fact that is faced by the parties and their intellectuals. To try to find a way out of the economic crisis is a &dquo;public issue&dquo; that is translated into &dquo;personal trouble&dquo; in each persons life-to put it in the terms of C. Wright Mills (1959: 8). But if the crisis does not seem to have a collective solution, the only option left is the anomic search for individual escapes. After 25 years of almost uninterrupted economic growth, the economic restrictions have reduced the aspirations of the large majorities down to simple survival. In this general context of pauperization, the opposite phenomenon appears: the sudden enrichment that the drug trade provides. Therein lies a reasonable explanation of the current levels of demoralization and corruption, beyond what contemporary Peruvians can remember (Durkheim, 1957: 252-254). Peru is experiencing an increasingly agitated social and political climate, even without taking into account the actions of armed groups such as Sendero Luminoso and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA), the actions of which, combined with the response of the police and the armed forces, have shaken large areas of the country in the sierra and jungle. It is not simply a matter of the unresolved
89
demands of wage-workers, small producers, or regional fronts, which are translated into prolonged strikes and violent methods of struggle. Institutions lose credibility in the face of daily accusations of corruption and crooked dealings, or of political promises that are not kept. There is a generalized malaise, a &dquo;collective fatigue,&dquo; to use the expression of the journalist Cesar Levant, which can be clearly perceived in the aggressiveness of daily life, in the increase of common delinquency on a small and large scale The youth-especially among the popular classes-is going through a critical period: without many possibilities or even a desire to study due to the scant practical value of formal knowledge, without resources to get married, with no idea of the future; as in many other countries it takes a pragmatic attitude and reaches the age of its political initiation in a depoliticized, deideologized, and amoral world. Its choices are between nihilism, delinquency, drug addition, or Sendero Luminoso. The latter becomes one of the few possibilities to give meaning to life, aside from the foreign and domestic millenarian sects that have expanded at the same rate as the crisis.9 The cumulative effect of the crisis and the mass lay-offs of 1977 weakened and demoralized the working class. The latter had been part of several crucial experiences that took place in that decade. On the one hand, it had confronted aprista trade unionism, which was dominant up until the early seventies. The left played a very important role there; the working class, subjected to talks and pamphlets on capitalism and surplus value, lost its fear of the word &dquo;socialism.&dquo; On the other hand, through the experience of the comunidad obrera, to workers began to think for the first time about the ownership and the management of enterprises, even though the workers sometimes said that &dquo;production was the bosses affair, not the workers.&dquo; Third, production became a political goal of the government: it would be the way its reforms would be judged. This led the government to seek control over the trade unions and the labor communities. The workers reaction made these attempts fail, transforming class autonomy into part of their basic demand. What is left of this experience? The labor communities were gradually dismantled and apparently left few traces among the workers. When production was no longer a political goal, the working class ceased to have the political importance that circumstances had given it. Under the blows of the crisis the trade unions considerably reduced their activity; their relations with the political parties became weakened or took the form of technical consultancy by left professionals. But the class
90
autonomy remained. In 1987 agricultural producers, the trade unions,

white-collar workers, and even professionals such as doctors employed by the state have resumed very intense strike activities, including a work stoppage in the countryside and a national strike. If to this picture we add the action of the armed groups, what is preventing a social, if not a revolutionary, explosion? As sociologist and historian Nelson Manrique has written,
Contemporary Peru offers one of the most complex political panoramas of the continent. In our country today there coexist in a single space the ~/! the z /MOVC/Me~~ in M South ~OM~A America, ~ legal ~/M~C~, the ~ro~~ guerrilla strongest ~a/ left ~MC/r~ movement /~ with greatest political presence (Izquierda Unida), and the historically most important reformist political party of the continent in power: the APRA. The ~~Ma~OM 7?!~ situation M is wa~ even /more more ~!~M~r that ~M this ~o~ does zoo not made cvcM singular by ~ ~c~ac~ the fact ~a~ seem to be a precarious equilibrium, likely to break apart in the short run [1986: 5J
It may be that the last point is no longer so true, but the equilibrium does not have to be eternal to require an explanation. One possible answer, sketchily presented, is the following: (a) Unlike it was during the previous decade, this time the parties that make up Izquierda Unida have not placed themselves &dquo;at the head of the popular struggles.&dquo; (b) The survival practices known as &dquo;new social movements&dquo; tend to dilute the conflictive character of the problems they face: food for children and adults, health, vigilance against delinquency, and so forth. Let us examine both points.
IZQUIERDA UNIDA Since the mid-sixties, and particularly in the decade of the seventies, the Peruvian left grew constantly despite its permanent fragmentation. Literally, dozens of mutually hostile &dquo;parties&dquo; were formed, but they were able to win the trust of the popular classes and ended up providing leadership in the trade unions and political field. In Latin America this left is today a singular phenomenon, because of its mass presence, the breadth and diversity of its actions, its relative unity, and the level of its intellectual reflections. Since its first attempt at unification during the elections to the Constituent Assembly, it has formed several electoral fronts with a troubled existence, but it has never again been atomized.
91
The longest lasting and most important attempt to date is IU, formed in September 1980. IU includes most of the Marxist left, the Social Democratic left, Christians linked to liberation theology, and independent figures. It also enjoys the support of most left intellectuals, as well as of a good portion of the two hundred nongovernmental organizations that they have created. This front concentrates the accumulated fruits of 20 years of political, ideological, scientific, and cultural advances.&dquo;l In the different elections that have taken place since 1978, the left has won between one-third and one-fourth of the votes, becoming the second most important electoral force. However, politically IU has evidenced great limitations. These limitations derive, on the one hand, from its precarious unity, and on the other from the seduction that the political powers have exercised over the party leadership. There is no question but that the left must be present in parliament, in the municipalities, or at any other level of power, by means of the best possible representation. But that presence should not define its activity, much less be its primary goal. Nevertheless, with some exceptions, the candidates to parliament have been the top national leaders of the parties. The result is not that they have won a new field of action, but that they have tended to become parliamentarized; that is, they have adapted to the functioning of the powers of the state. The representative becomes a negotiator of various sectoral demands, not by virtue of his belonging to the left but due to his political position. He easily ends up becoming part of what Jorge Parodi calls &dquo;a system of elitized power&dquo;:
7b become To ~CCO/MC incorporated !~0 the ~ political M thus ~M~ not MO~ to ~0 become &CCO/MC MCO~pOra~ into p0/!~ca/ game gWMC is incorporated into a system of representation ofsocial interests, but rather into a political class that shares a system of elitized power. Democratic elections legitimize that system while at the same time they are an access route to the elite. As Izquierda Unida knows, the weakening of the ties to the social bases then becomes a cost that is compensated by the benefits of that power [1987.- 80-91J.
We have argued that the left adopted democracy as a result of its ideological weakening. It did not appraise it in a Marxist way, as the result of the class struggle, but from triumphant liberalism under whose banners it entered into the state. But we must say that some important debates have taken place between different positions on subjects such as
92
democracy, what stance to take towards the APRA, violence, the roads
out of the political crisis-although the intellectuals have participated in these debates more than the political leaders. There is a clear awareness of the shortcomings and of their seriousness. The first congress of IU should take place in September 1988. History goes on.
THE &dquo;NUEVOS MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES&dquo; (NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, OR NMS)
Since the early eighties an extraordinary organizational ferment has been spreading throughout the squatter settlements and poor neighborhoods of Lima. An immense number of spontaneous organizations are appearing through which residents are dealing with the difficulties of daily survival: food, health, child-care, urban services, protection against delinquency, and so forth. A widely accepted perspective today insists that these organizations have created new organizational forms and democratic habits, which taken as a whole are creating a new field of culture. What is specifically highlighted is their tenacious defense of their autonomy vis-a-vis the state and the political parties, and the consciousness of their dignity and citizenship that goes along with it. Lastly, it is said that the NMS develop &dquo;new forms of making politics,&dquo; politicizing daily life. It has even been said that together with the &dquo;informal economy&dquo; they constitute a &dquo;popular upwelling&dquo; that is part of the crisis of the state
(Matos Mar, 1984).

For our part, we agree in large measure with these appraisals, but with different nuances and some discrepancies of a greater scope. Thus, for example, it has become &dquo;common sense&dquo; among social scientists to prefer the study of the NMS to the study of social classes, and therefore to value one and another theory in an analogous manner. However, the NMS are more a continuation of, than a break with, the struggle for &dquo;class political autonomy&dquo; of the previous decade. The deepening of the economic crisis made the defense of wages based on the trade unions insufficient or inoperable, while wages themselves dropped below the value of labor power. This made it necessary to extend the efforts of survival to other economic activities (self-employment) and other arenas (in particular, the neighborhood) in which the struggle to obtain what is necessary takes other forms. Situated outside of the arena of work, in general they face &dquo;circumstances&dquo; and not a personalized &dquo;enemy.&dquo; This forces them to create solutions that they can carry out
93
themselves, rather than to demand them in a conflict with the capitalists or the state. In fact, they draw on welfare programs or charity, and they go beyond confrontation and negotiation as they seek to build alternative life-styles. But, having become assimilated into liberal democracy to a greater or lesser extent, analysts and politicians, when they observe the NMS, have
tended to forget that the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, and imperialism still exist and that the NMS are simply facing some of their consequences. Dazzled by the democratic practices that they observe within them, they infer that they are a step forward in the democratization of society. They lose sight of the fact that the greatest obstacle to that democratization is the ruling class and not the &dquo;authoritarian tendencies of the popular classes.&dquo; They do not perceive that the NMS does not seek to alter the distribution of social power, and that up to this point the state has not felt threatened by their existence: they substitute for the state at a time when it is seeking to transfer many of its social obligations to municipalities and regional governments. In that sense we differ with those who see in the NMS &dquo;new forms of making politics based on everyday life.&dquo; That requires assuming that politics can be based on partial social relations, which is a theoretically erroneous position. While they do constitute a &dquo;popular upwelling,&dquo; more than contributing to a crisis of the state they express a crisis that already existed. None of this diminishes their value as an experience to define alternative ways of life, but by relieving potentially explosive problems they function more as a safety valve than as a source of unrest for the established order. The popular classes increasingly live in a culturally peculiar world. It is not shared with the other social classes. Today, as opposed to 20 years ago, there are fewer common symbols for Peruvian society as a whole that can act as a means of &dquo;social control. &dquo; Today &dquo;popular culture&dquo;-a much-abused term-is a melting pot, the results of which have multiple faces in the midst of transition. In this scenario, legality and illegality, hope and despair, moderation and messianism, Alfonso Barrantes (IUs most important national figure) and Abimael Guzmn (the mythical leader of Sendero) are combined and reconciled. In part, the equilibrium has been maintained not by virtue of its components, but because the disruptive elements have been kept separate. But as this article is being completed, the greatest attempt at centralization of the popular organizations in the countrys history is unfolding: the Asamblea Nacional Popular. Everyone is present in it:
94
the rank and file, the parties, the independents, the armed movements. Twenty years ago, with the model of the &dquo;triangle without a base&dquo; (the disunity of the dominated), Julio Cotler graphically described oligarchic domination. Today, as the sociologist Edith Montero (1987: 9) observes, we are witnessing &dquo;the configuration of a broad base for which the old as well as the new vertices are no doubt too small and insufficient.&dquo; In the light of the current crisis and between the threat of a military coup and the nonrevolutionary violence of Sendero Luminoso, will there be a base and vertices capable of carrying out a revolution that is socialist and at the same time democratic?
NOTES
1. "Popular classes" is a debated and debatable term. With it we refer to all those groups that do not receive part of the surplus value. 2. On the other hand, following the 1977 national strike the government authorized the firing of those trade-union leaders that had participated in it. Estimates of those fired range from 1,800 to 5,000; they made up the broadest and most experienced layer of leaders in all Peruvian history. The struggle for their reinstatement inspired the general strike of 1979 and continued for several years thereafter, but few of them were able to return to their jobs. This decisively weakened the working class. 3. Abimael Guzmán, the founder of the Partido Comunista del Peru "Sendero Liminoso," Peruvian Communist Party "Shining Path," calls himself "comrade" or "Chairman" Gonzalo. This is what the word "Gonzalism" refers to. 4. We consider this an urgent task for revolutionary socialism, but regrettably, though understandably, many adopt liberal democracy by abandoning Marxism. 5. The theoretical foundations for this thought are to be found in the "Preface" to Marx (1970) and in the first pages of Chapter 3 of Marxs Gundrisse. 6. Undoubtedly, political clientelism has been maintained throughout this whole process. However, the "bosses" are not the same as before. The capacity to clientelize, which was monopolized by the oligarchic classes at the start of the century, was extended later to the parties of the center, and finally to the left, while it has been notably reduced for the present-day bourgeoisie. The relationship with the "clients" has also changed; today the latter, for example, may demand that the former participate in their hunger strikes. 7. Thus, for example, Alan Garcia has not been able to present a clear government project. Initially he tried to base his policy on the development of the Southern Andean region. However, a year later he made a complete turn-around, attempting an alliance with the biggest domestic economic groups. This formula in turn was brusquely broken with the nationalization of private banks announced on July 28, 1987, the justification of which was the lack of investment on the part of the capitalists. The result was a surprisingly successful campaign of right-wing agitation, considering the electoral fiascoes of the right. Finally, four months later, as this article is being written, the Peruvian Congress has approved a new petroleum law that broadens the concessions to foreign companies, while
95
are taking place with the World Bank. 8. In 1986 and 1987, the GNP has grown by more than 8 percent, while inflation has been lower than in previous years. However, this growth is not reflected in an improvement in the living conditions of the population, and nobody is confident that it can be maintained in the coming years. 9. This has not prevented the increase of youth membership in most parties of IU and in APRA. It is a new generation that did not live through the experience of the decade of the seventies; therefore its cultural and ideological conformation is very different than that of the members of only 10 years ago. 10. The comunidad obrera refers to workers partial share of profits and partial ownership and participation in management in factories and business enterprises established by law under the Velazco Alvarado regime and phased out under Morales
negotiations
Bermúdez. 11. Outside of IU there is a bloc made up of the Unidad Democrático Popular (Popular Democratic Unity, or UDP) and Pueblo en Marcha (People on the March), which express the style of struggle of the seventies, centered on confrontation. Although they are legal, unlike IU they have not participated in the various elections and usually are considered to have ties to the MRTA (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement).
REFERENCES
Abugattás, Juan 1986 "Ideología

September).
Durkheim, Emile
y ciudadanía
en
el Peru actual."
Quehacer (Lima)
42
(August-
1957 Suicide. A Study in Sociology. New York: Free Press. El Zorro de Abajo. Revista de Política y Culture 1985 "APRA: pasado ambiguo, futuro diferente? (Lima) 2 (September-October). Lechner, Norbert 1985 "De la revolución a la democracia. El debate intelectual en América del Sur."
Opciones (Santiago, Chile) 6.
López, Sinesio
1980 "Resumen de un debate." Amauta 250 (April 10). Summary of El debate sobre la izquierda nacional. Lima: Ediciones Guillermo Lobatón, October 1980. Manrique, Nelson 1986 "Democracia y campesinado indigena en el Peru contemporáneo," in A. FloresGalindo and N. Manrique, Violencia y campesinado. Lima: Instituto de Apoyo Agrario. Mariátegui, José Carlos 1971 Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Marx, Karl
1970 A Contribution Publishers.
to
the
Critique of
Political Economy. Moscow:
Progress
96
1976 Elementos fundamentales para la crítica de la economía política (Borrador) 1857-1858 (Vol. 1, 8th ed.). Mexico City: Siglo XXI. Matos Mar, José 1984 Desborde popular y crisis del estado. El nuevo rostro del Perú en la década de 1980. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Mills, C. Wright 1959 The Sociological Imagination. London: Oxford University Press.
Montero, Edith
1987 "Encuentros populares: una base sin vértice," in Cuesti6n de estado. Temas de análisis politico (No. 1). Lima: Democracia y Socialismo, Instituto de Política
Popular. Parodi, Jorge

1987 "Los sindicatos en la democracia vacia." (unpublished) Rochabrún S., Guillermo 1977 "Apuntes para la comprensión del capitalismo en el Perú." Análisis. Cuadernos de Investigaci6n (Lima) 1. 1979 "Base y superestructura en el Prefacioy en El Capital." Análisis. Cuadernos de Investigación 7. 1982 "Economía y política en el análisis de capitalismo y de la sociedad en América Latina," in H. Pease et al., América Latina 80: democracia y movimiento popular. Lima: DESCO.

Crisis, Democracy and The Left in Peru (Rochabrún, 1988)

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Crisis, Democracy, and the Left in Peru

>> Version of Record - Jul 1, 1988 What is This?

THE PERUVIAN LEFT: FROM REVOLUTION TO DEMOCRACY

58, Vol. 15 No. 3, Summer 1988 77-96

strikes of 1977 and 1978.

DEMOCRACY IN PERU: THE UNFINISHED EVOLUTION

not the other way around

For lack of a better term, we shall call Peruvian society as it emerged

autonomy of the social actors. In the case of Peru it would be necessary

place during the military dictatorship-resulted in unprec-

political life of contingents. In summary:

broad, organized, and

capitalism could tolerate. This is our third thesis.

POLITICS AND DEMOCRACY

PARTIES AND SOCIETY

autonomy remained. In 1987 agricultural producers, the trade unions,

THE &dquo;NUEVOS MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES&dquo; (NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, OR NMS)

(Matos Mar, 1984).

Abugatt&aacute;s, Juan 1986 "Ideolog&iacute;a

Opciones (Santiago, Chile) 6.

Political Economy. Moscow:

Popular. Parodi, Jorge

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen

Abugattás, Juan 1986 "Ideología