We Are Not in Possession of Power, We Are in Possession of the Government: The Long Goodbye of Social Democracy in Latin America
The Brooklyn Rail, 2017
In the last year the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela has come to crisis, with its United Socialist Party (PSUV) on the brink of collapse; the Workers’ Party has been unseated in Brazil; and Evo Morales has lost his referendum bid to maintain his hold on the Bolivian presidency. U.S. newspapers are sounding the habitual refrains with which they always greet the fall of leftist governments. The usual pull quotes and tropes are back in the headlines: “anyone who has taken freshman Economics could tell you,” “Econ 101,” “the Maduro regime,” “but it’s the poor who suffer most under [x]’s brand of socialism.” To throw another cliché into the mix, history is written by the victor, in this case by the neoliberal press, as they sermonize over the ruins of the South American left. But it is not the left itself which has been defeated, but rather Social Democracy which has died another death in its long and pernicious zombie campaign....