Walking the Tightrope of Socialist Governance: A Strategic-Relational Analysis of Twenty-first-Century Socialism

Abstract

The process of socialist transformation in a democratic context presents many quandaries including walking a tightrope between pursuing substantive transformation that challenges existing social relations and remaining in power in view of political opposition stemming from such a challenge. The experiences of twenty-first-century socialism in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela provide different examples of ways of balancing the two imperatives. Nicos Poulantzas’s writings on the state shed light on the importance of deepening democracy as part of any process of socialist transformation and on the limits of such a strategy. El proceso de transformación socialista en un contexto democrático presenta muchos dilemas que incluyen caminar en la cuerda floja entre perseguir una transformación sustantiva que desafía las relaciones sociales existentes y permanecer en el poder en vista de la oposición política que surge de tal desafío. Las experiencias del socialismo del siglo XXI en Ecuador, Bolivia y Venezuela proporcionan diferentes ejemplos de formas de equilibrar los dos imperativos. Los escritos de Nicos Poulantzas sobre el estado arrojan luz sobre la importancia de profundizar la democracia como parte de cualquier proceso de transformación socialista y los límites de dicha estrategia.

¿Abandonar la revolución o tejer la paz? Migración sur-sur, socialismo y geopolítica decolonial feminista en Suramérica

“…Pese a la cooperación económica, gran parte de la actual solidaridad entre los Estados "progresistas" en Latinoamérica se ha rebajado para convertirse en una defensa acrítica de sus respectivas administraciones, ignorando la corrupción, la represión política y la devastación ecológica ligada a sus economías extractivistas, que reproduce, en vez de socavar, el capitalismo (Lander, 2019). Inmersos en un orden global capitalista, los gobiernos socialistas se ven obligados a "caminar sobre la cuerda floja" al haber fracasado, con frecuencia, en el intento de generar progresos democráticos y una transformación socioeconómica por tener que, por un lado, esquivar el sabotaje de las élites burguesas existentes y, por otro, doblar las apuestas de los sistemas rentistas de bienestar para mantener el apoyo popular (Nelson, 2019).…”

Mapping terrains of struggle: State space and the spatiality of oil mobilisation in Ecuador and Peru

“…Andreucci (2017) and Andreucci and Radhuber (2017) argued that initial changes to resource governance in Morales' Bolivia were partially reversed as a result of shifting power relations between social movements, the hydrocarbon industry and the state and that resource governance is a 'condensation' of such shifting power relations. Nelson (2019) utilised the conceptualisation of the state as an arena to argue that the leftist governments in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela had to 'walk a tightrope' between transformative political programmes and challenges from dominant classes and that this resulted in the redistribution of resource rents rather than a more profound transformation of the economy. The spatial consequences of evolving relations between interests are discussed by Kristoffersen and Young (2010), who examined how a closer alignment between state and oil industry interests has shaped representations of state space in the context of the Norwegian Arctic.…”

Introduction: Salient Characteristics of Mexico’s Neoliberal Turn and Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Critique

“…During his first year and a half in office, AMLO appeared to be following a strategy that the Marxist theoretician Nicos Poulantzas called "walking a tightrope" with reference to social democrats in power—a metaphor used by some analysts to describe the Pink Tide governments (Nelson, 2020: 60–61; Poulantzas, 2014: 197–198). On the one hand, he had to demonstrate adherence to principles in order to lend credibility to his commitment to the fight against corruption, which was for him a point of honor.…”