[Marxism] Aren't the bourgeois democratic tasks substantiallyaccomplished in the countries of S. American ?

[dwalters@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

A very long subject line...

CB asks:
"Seems like the debate over this aspect of the permanent revolution concept
has been mooted out by the passage of time and the establishment of
bourgeois democracy in those countries. What _bourgeois_ democratic tasks
remain to be accomplished in the countries of South America , by a workers'
state ?"

Yes, I think many/some have been. One has to establish what those tasks are.

#national independence
#land to the tiller/land reform
#democracy (in it's broadest sense)

In a formal way, yes, in South America they have. But they haven't, because of
the rise of neo-colonial relationships between the nations of Latin American
and US (and to a lesser extend, UK) imperialism. But...the calls for
Sovereignty: realizing that unless the nation controls, in total, it's national
resources, it can not be free of imperialist domination. The lining up of the
local NATIONAL boureosie with imperialism when "push comes to shove":
capitalists, "patriotic" or not, will always choose the imperial subjegation
over the threat of socialist and workers revolution. Thus, to achieve true
national independence, the bourgeoisie has to be crushed politically and
economically disenfranchised.

Land reform. The history of Mexico and it's 'social' constutution (the first one
in the world, BTW) that helped insitutionalize land reform, and other countries
as well, because they are all *capitalist* means that they will inevitably
adapt to imperialist preussre: overt or indirect, and land will, like Capital,
accumulate into a smaller and smaller number of large land owners Brazil today
(and Mexico) are cases in point...a modern developing country, with nuclear
power plants and an areospace industry, with landless farm workers demanding
land. IF the land reform were carried out without a huge right-wing backlash
(thus portending further confiscations by a workers gov't or nationalist one)
would inevitably see, over the decades, the resestablishment, by debt, by
illegal means, by anymeans, the reaccumulation of that land back into the large
landowners (traditional latifundista or transnational corporate). Thus, only a
workers state that removes the market as the fundenmental economic engine in
society can achieve true land reform: Cuba, for example.

It is also true that some countries seemed to have developed a true land reform
that 'took': Tiwain and South Korea, both of which had smart capitalists who
studied their recent history and undertook the *political* decision to actually
collectivize land (S. Korea) or give it to it's peasants by paying off and
coverting the landed capitalists into industrial ones. They had large amounts
of capital with which to acomplish this and structurally changed the land laws
to perserve it.

Democracy in it's broadest sense, national development, etc. Argentina is an
interesting example of a country that thought it could 'make it' into the big
boy's club of imperialist powers. Yet, most of it's capital accumulation was
based on imperialist investment and, as important, imperialist control of the
market in Argentina and for Argentine products. The whole thing collapsed as a
house of cards and the standard of living was rolled back, unions getting
killed in low wages and mass unemployment.

I think the entire history of Latin America proves that without the democratic
revolution growing into a socialist one, the whole idea, as Joaquín has
implied, that socialist revolution is not on the agenda to solve the problems
of national development, ending racism, etc, is baloney. That we need periods
of capitalist development actually works *against* what he was advocating.

The "national question" is the question of questions in Latin America, the
answer, however, is not in more 'nationalism' but a nationalism that sees
working class power as the solution to the national question....

David



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