Chao Antanas!

Hasta que llegó el entierro de tercera a las famosas alianzas del Polo. Hoy Antanas decidió que no la jalaba al asunto así que ya se acabó el tema.

En cierto modo me alegro. Claro, yo hubiera preferido, y lo dije en su momento, que Antanas se mostrara receptivo hacia las propuestas de izquierda del Polo. Creo que tanto él como el Polo se hubieran beneficiado de una colaboración creativa. Pero si eso no va a pasar, tampoco es el fin del mundo. 

El Polo ha demostrado que es un buen partido de oposición así que está preparado para seguir cumpliendo ese papel ante una eventual victoria de Antanas. Razones no van a faltar. Antanas parece haber decidido que esta elección la va a ganar moviéndose tan a la derecha como sea compatible con tener barba y no tener apellido de expresidente. En materia de paz ya está dejando claro que no se debe esperar de él ningún cambio de política. En materia económica a veces dice cosas interesantes pero no profundiza. 

Su cuento de "recursos públicos, recursos sagrados" tiene un efecto positivo y uno negativo. El efecto positivo es que, obviamente, está muy bien que los administradores públicos no se roben la plata. Pero el problema de ese discurso es que sigue perpetuando una ficción muy común en Colombia (y en América Latina) pero que a la vez es muy dañina: la idea de que todos los problemas económicos se pueden arreglar con acabar con la corrupción. Cada cuatro años a la opinión pública alguien le vende la idea de que hay en alguna parte unos ríos de leche y miel secretos que nadie ha visto excepto los funcionarios del gobierno que se los roban. La verdad, aunque duela, hay que decirla: Colombia es un país pobre, o por lo menos de clase media y eso no se debe a la corrupción sino a muchas otras causas profundas que no se van a arreglar con solo meter a la cárcel a unos cuantos funcionarios inescrupulosos.  En fin, me desvié del tema, pero es que es algo que me molesta desde hace años.

Volviendo a lo que venía diciendo, Antanas se perfila cada vez más como un candidato de centro-derecha. Como van las cosas, es más progresista Rafael Pardo (y de pronto más preparado???). Así que el Polo debe prepararse para criticar a Antanas desde la izquierda ya que él no muestra intenciones de ocupar ese espacio.

Aunque para muchos esto es tema de un día, máximo de una semana, para Petro es el fin de una estrategia que él vino elaborando desde hace ya varios meses, e incluso años. Acordémonos que el Polo casi se desbarata en su último congreso en torno al tema de las alianzas. Quienes me conocen saben que en su momento dije que ese debate era una pérdida de tiempo, entre otras cosas porque no había ningún socio claro para las tales alianzas. Los hechos terminaron dándome la razón. (Si me jacto es porque esto me pasa muy pocas veces así que hay que aprovechar; mis pronósticos casi nunca salen.) 

Espero que este sea el fin de ese debate bizantino entre "aperturistas" y "recalcitrantes" que tanto daño hizo. El Polo solo cuenta consigo mismo. Es EL partido de izquierda en Colombia y tiene que dedicarse a crecer y madurar en torno a esa idea. Es un partido joven pero que ha logrado mucho. Tiene disciplina, tiene cuadros, tiene bases e incluso, aunque no parezca en este momento, tiene votos. No es chiste. Independientemente de lo que saque Petro en las elecciones, creo que no es exagerado decir que la "capacidad de carga" del Polo, es decir, su base electoral inamovible de mediano plazo está entre el 15 y el 20% del electorado. A veces cae por razones coyunturales (como el efecto Antanas y los errores del partido) a veces crece, tambien por razones coyunturales (como el desbarajuste del Partido Liberal en el 2006). Pero en general, cuando el Polo juega bien sus fichas puede contar con un porcentaje en ese intervalo. Eso vale mucho y no se puede dejar perder.

Así que el Polo debe dedicarse en estos años a profundizar sus logros. Para eso, creo yo, tiene que hacer dos cosas (entre otras): a. una buena oposición y b. articular un programa económico de izquierda que sea una alternativa real a lo que se está ofreciendo en estos días. (Espere en este blog: renta básica!!) Si logra esto y conserva su "capacidad de carga" manteniéndose unido, se ratificará como uno de los partidos más importantes de la política colombiana de las últimas décadas.

Entre tanto, sin ningún pesar, chao Antanas! Te veremos desde la oposición. 

Hacia una Teoría General del Uribismo (IV)

¿Por qué se me han ido tres días para decir algo que muchos ya saben, es decir, que la Administración Uribe ha sido tolerante con el fenómeno paramilitar? Porque aquí no me interesan solamente los hechos sino desarrollar un marco analítico para interpretar no solo lo que ha ocurrido sino lo que puede llegar a ocurrir más adelante, en especial ahora que Uribe no va a estar y, al parecer, tampoco Santos.

En toda la perorata que he escrito en estos días me la he pasado usando el término de "poderes fácticos" en forma un tanto vaga. No voy a poder precisar mucho porque yo mismo todavía no logro clarificar totalmente el asunto. (Sí, ya sé que mucha gente utiliza el mismo término sin que les produzca dificultades. Yo creo que lo que pasa es que no se han detenido lo suficiente para darse cuenta de las enormes complicaciones que tiene y por eso se sienten tan seguros.)

Para explicar un poco mi confusión al respecto, permítanme volver a un debate entre izquierdistas que parece ya superado: el debate sobre la "democracia formal." En los años 60s y 70s en toda América Latina, y Colombia no fue la excepción, la izquierda se enfrascó en el debate de si las instituciones democráticas ofrecían una posibilidad de cambio social genuino. Puesto crudamente, ¿era posible una vía legal al socialismo? 

La respuesta, obviamente, dependía de cada país. En Chile había razones para creer que sí. Al fin y al cabo, tenía una tradición de normalidad constitucional ininterrumpida, el Partido Socialista era un partido histórico, tenía el Partido Comunista más grande del hemisferio occidental (fuera de Cuba, por supuesto) y era fácil creer que con un poco de esfuerzo la izquierda llegaría al poder, como en efecto sucedió. 

En países bajo perenne dictadura militar, como El Salvador o Nicaragua, esto era un debate meramente académico ya que no había ninguna vía legal. (Los militares salvadoreños ni siquiera aceptaron el triunfo de los Demócrata-Cristianos con José Napoleón Duarte en el 72). Colombia era uno de los casos más complejos. Al igual que Chile, tenía una tradición constitucional larga (aunque interrumpida), pero a diferencia de Chile, los partidos de izquierda no habían podido romper el duopolio Liberal-Conservador, a veces por pura cuestión electoral, pero a veces tambien por efecto de la represión. (No me voy a meter ahora en el enorme debate de cuáles de los factores pesó más.) 

Este debate se volvió obsoleto porque ambos campos sufrieron golpes traumáticos. Primero los legalistas vieron como el experimento de Allende sucumbió. Si ni siquiera Chile era capaz de avanzar al socialismo por la vía legal, ¿qué podían esperar las izquierdas del resto de América Latina? Pero luego vinieron los golpes hacia el otro lado. Excepto Nicaragua, ninguna revolución armada triunfó. Nicaragua se sumió en una guerra civil costosísima, patrocinada por Estados Unidos, sin duda, que hizo naufragar la transición al socialismo. Finalmente, colapsó el modelo comunista de planificación central.

Es decir, a. las revoluciones no ganaban, b. si ganaban, el enemigo iba a desencadenar una guerra civil que se iba a perder o, máximo a empatar y c. si se ganaba la guerra civil, el resultado era un régimen que nadie podía defender. Así que todos nos volvimos demócratas. (Sí, me incluyo.) ¿Y la lección de Allende? No había problema. La verdad es que a Allende se le había salido la economía de las manos. La izquierda solo tenía que ganar las elecciones, mantener la inflación bajo control, garantizar que no iba a haber expropiaciones para evitar que los ricos y los gringos se unieran en un golpe de Estado y listo. Excelente. Solo había un problema: eso no era socialismo.

Para muchos el problema se podía resolver fácilmente si simplemente se abjuraba del socialismo. De ahí el surgimiento del neologismo blandengue y gramáticamente discutible de "lo social." En vez de socialismo, se tendría un mayor énfasis en "lo social." Mayor "gasto social," más educación, más salud. Tengo varios amigos que hicieron ese tránsito. (Si están leyendo, les mando un abrazo afectuoso. Uds. saben quienes son.)

Me tengo que ir. Sigo mañana. 

Hacia una Teoría General del Uribismo (III)

En su manifestación más pura, la "seguridad democrática" es, como decía ayer, simplemente el intento de un Estado democrático por impedir la acción de sus enemigos a la vez que se integra a la ciudadanía de manera que ni la legitimidad ni las libertades individuales sean vulneradas. La "mosca en la sopa" de esta fórmula es que, en la práctica, la "seguridad democrática" fue una política construida sobre la base de una guerra sucia de casi veinte años. Pero surge una pregunta: ¿había alguna otra alternativa?

En principio sí. En teoría, el gobierno hubiera podido llegar a un acuerdo político con las FARC que concluyera con la incorporación de éstas a la vida civil y la dejación de armas. Así, supuestamente habría desaparecido toda necesidad de las AUC y el Estado hubiera podido dedicarse a combatir a las bandas de renegados, tanto de la guerrilla como de las autodefensas, ambas reducidas ahora a su mínima expresión. 

Todos sabemos que eso no pasó y, por interesante que sea el tema, no me voy a detener aquí a discutir por qué. (Otro día.) 

Lo importante aquí es notar que ambas opciones, no solo la "seguridad democrática" son compatibles con la preservación de la legitimidad del Estado colombiano emanado de la Constitución del 91. Esto es importante porque uno de los artículos de fe del uribismo, como lo expresa el mismo Restrepo, es que sólo ellos han sido los que han preservado la institucionalidad. (Ya tendremos ocasión de ver que ni siquiera eso, pero en fin...) 

Todo esto es un desvío larguísimo para llegar a un punto obvio: la "seguridad democrática" (y no, no le pienso quitar la comillas) no es un simplemente un mecanismo neutral de defensa del Estado. Es un mecanismo de defensa de un tipo de Estado particular: el Estado que resultó de la guerra de los 80s y 90s. Es decir, no es solamente la defensa de unos principios formales de democracia política y del imperio de la ley, es tambien la defensa de un sistema de poderes fácticos que se consolidó como resultado de la guerra sucia de los paramilitares.

En cierto modo me da algo de pena gastarle tanto tiempo a algo tan obvio. Pero resulta que no es obvio para todos. En particular, este es, a mi juicio, el error fundamental del "uribismo de izquierda" (que lo hay).

Con esto llego a la "parte congrua" de esta serie de apuntes. ¿Cuál es el papel de dichos poderes fácticos? ¿Qué implicaciones tienen para la democracia y el posible fin del conflicto? Preguntas interesantísimas todas ellas que, lamentablemente, tendrán que esperar hasta mañana. 

Hacia una Teoría General del Uribismo (II)

Ayer terminé con una pregunta: si la Administración Uribe comenzó las negociaciones de Ralito con las AUC reconociendo las afinidades entre ambas partes, qué quiere decir esto acerca de la naturaleza del conflicto con las FARC?

La respuesta depende en parte de cuáles son dichas afinidades. Pero sobre este punto existen unas ambigüedades fascinantes. Si las AUC hubieran sido simplemente una organización de autodefensa, entonces las afinidades son automáticas: tanto el Estado legal como las autodefensas quieren impedir las acciones de quienes violan las leyes de la República. Pero, como decíamos ayer, esa no era la única actividad de las AUC. La labor de definir, detectar, perseguir y, en últimas, matar "colaboradores" y "simpatizantes" de las FARC va mucho más allá de la simple autodefensa. 

El resultado es obvio: el accionar de las AUC las convirtió, de hecho, en un actor político. Con sus actos estaba defendiendo no solamente el derecho de los finqueros a no ser secuestrados, sino que terminó defendiendo un proyecto político particular. Por su naturaleza, una labor de contrainsurgencia como la que hicieron las AUC tiene que ser de amplio espectro. Para "limpiar" una zona de presencia guerrillera era necesario acabar tambien con la posible base política de la guerrilla y esto a su vez implicaba la persecución y eliminación física de simpatizantes así no estuvieran directamente involucrados en la actividad guerrillera.

Este punto era clarísimo en Colombia en los años 80 y 90. Quienes ya teníamos uso de razón en los 80s, nos acordamos de que los paramilitares crearon escuadrones de guerra sucia política matando millares de sindicalistas, activistas políticos, líderes comunitarios, etc. todo por ser de izquierda. La contrainsurgencia de las AUC era, en la práctica, la creación de enclaves totalitarios en sus zonas de operación.

Pasemos ahora a los 2000 cuando el uribismo presenta su propuesta de "seguridad democrática." Si le creemos al comisionado Restrepo y a la línea oficial del uribismo, la "seguridad democrática" es un intento de hacer contrainsurgencia pero sin necesidad de implantar dictaduras locales sino, por el contrario, permitiendo la libre expresión de todos los ciudadanos. Este es el meollo del asunto: ¿es posible, y bajo qué condiciones, una contrainsurgencia democrática?

En teoría la respuesta es "si." Un Estado legítimo es capaz de enfrentar y derrotar a sus enemigos sin necesidad de atropellar las libertades políticas del resto de los ciudadanos. Las grandes democracias occidentales lo han logrado. Con algunos problemas, cierto. (Por ejemplo, las GAL en España.) Pero en general, los grupos terroristas en Europa Occidental y en Estados Unidos han sido derrotados sin que se afecten las libertades democráticas de la inmensa mayoría. (No estoy idealizando esos casos, pero hay diferencias de grado y naturaleza clarísimas entre la lucha de Alemania contra las Baader-Meinhoff y la lucha de la dictadura Argentina contra los Montoneros.) 

En el caso colombiano surge un matiz interesante: aún si es posible en el 2000 lanzar una estrategia contrainsurgente democrática, es innegable que esto ocurre sobre los escombros totalitarios de los 80s y los 90s. La Administración Uribe, en especial el inefable José Obdulio, ha insistido siempre en que las FARC son simplemente un grupo terrorista que no tiene ningún apoyo político en la población y que, por lo tanto, se parece más a las Baader-Meinhoff que al FMLN salvadoreño. Puede que sí, aunque yo no estoy tan seguro. Pero aún suponiendo que esto es cierto, la base política de las FARC en los 2000 es resultado, para bien o para mal, de las incidencias de la guerra en los 90s y en los 80s. En ese sentido, la "seguridad democrática" de los 2000 constituye de hecho, e independientemente de las intenciones de sus creadores, una ratificación del resultado de la contrainsurgencia de las AUC en los años anteriores. 

Este punto tiene enormes consecuencias que discutiré más adelante.

Ralito: Hacia una teoría general del uribismo (Parte I)

Esto me va a tomar varios apuntes en este blog. Es un tema que me ha dado vueltas en la cabeza hace mucho tiempo y que tiene muchísimas ramificaciones así que, paciencia.

Ahora que la Administración Uribe llega a su fin, vale la pena preguntarnos qué viene ahora. Pero para eso hay que entender de dónde surgió el uribismo, qué logró y cuáles de sus aspectos tienen la probabilidad de sobrevivir al retiro de su líder. 

En mi caso, esto se une a un interés teórico que me viene desde hace rato: el papel de los "poderes fácticos" en una democracia. Lo peor no pasó: Colombia no se volvió una dictadura, Uribe va a salir de la presidencia sin más marrullas constitucionales y, para sorpresa de propios y extraños, es bien probable que su ungido sucesor sea derrotado en elecciones libres y limpias.  

Pero si uno cree, como creo yo, que el desempeño de una democracia depende no solamente de que haya elecciones sino de cómo funciona su estructura profunda, entonces las consecuencias políticas del uribismo aparecen como algo más duradero y más inquietante. Me va a tomar tiempo explicarlo. Aquí va la primera parte.

Comencemos por los documentos que publicó Semana recientemente con las conversaciones entre Luis Carlos Restrepo, en aquel entonces Comisionado de Paz y las AUC. Curiosamente, si se leen con malicia, son unas conversaciones un tanto aburridas. Es decir, si uno cree que se trata de un "embuchado," que Restrepo es un aliado de los paramilitares y que todo este diálogo sobre el Estado es para la galería, no hay mucho que pensar aparte de admirarse por el cinismo de los participantes.

Pero, ingenuo que soy yo, a mí me cuesta trabajo creer que se trate de conversaciones fraudulentas. Al fin y al cabo, era un documento secreto que no se pensaba publicar. Entonces, no queda claro por qué Restrepo insistiría todo el tiempo en marcar distancia de los paramilitares. En un pasaje interesante, Restrepo reconoce que desde la campaña presidencial de Uribe en el 2002 ya circulaban muchísimos rumores sobre los nexos de aquel con los "paras" y sin embargo él (Restrepo) se toma el trabajo de desmentirlos. 

A mí, al igual que a muchos otros, me cuesta trabajo creer que Uribe no ha tenido nexos con el paramilitarismo. Hay demasiadas coincidencias. Pero eso no es lo importante aquí. Lo que me interesa analizar es la dinámica del proyecto político uribista más allá de las personas, es decir, tratar de entender cómo funciona el uribismo aún si suponemos que sus participantes son inocentes. Por eso, supongamos que, independientemente de que Uribe fuera o no culpable de todo lo que le endilgamos, el Comisionado Restrepo estuviera convencido de la inocencia de su jefe. Entonces las conversaciones se vuelven más interesantes.

Para empezar, aunque no soy abogado, estoy casi seguro de que en Colombia existe el derecho a la legítima defensa. Si se va a meter un ladrón a mi casa, yo tengo el derecho de dispararle, matándolo incluso si así resulta. Si alguien me va a secuestrar en mi finca, yo tengo el derecho de repeler el intento con las armas si es necesario y así termine matando al agresor. En ese sentido, el gobierno no tiene por qué reunirse con un grupo de ciudadanos que están involucrados en actividades de autodefensa. Entonces, preguntémonos ingenuamente, ¿por qué la reunión? 

La respuesta es obvia: las AUC, contrario a lo que decía su nombre, no eran un grupo de autodefensa en el sentido estricto del término. Siguiendo con mi ejemplo, aunque yo tengo derecho a repeler un intento de secuestro en mi finca, la ley colombiana no me da el derecho de hacerle seguimiento a un trabajador de la finca para ver si le está pasando información a la guerrilla y luego matarlo. Eso ya no es autodefensa, eso es un ataque "preventivo" (en un sentido muy laxo del término) que en Colombia sólo el Estado puede decidir si lo lanza o no. Extendiéndonos más, si la ley no me permite buscar y matar a colaboradores activos de la guerrilla, mucho menos me permite decidir a mí cuál es la definición de "colaborador" y pasar de allí a "simpatizante" y proceder a matar a todo el que ma parezca que cae en la segunda categoría. A todas estas, conviene recordar que en Colombia la Constitución del 91 no contempla la pena de muerte bajo ninguna circunstancia. Así que las actividades de las AUC no eran actividades de autodefensa, eran algo distinto: se trataba de crear un orden estatal embrionario en sus zonas de dominio, un orden diferente al que existe consagrado en la Constitución.

Desde esta óptica, las conversaciones Restrepo-AUC son conversaciones entre dos Estados. El nacional, legítimamente constituido, y el Estado de hecho creado por los paras. Lo curioso es que en estas conversaciones queda claro que, a pesar de las diferencias que existen entre ambos Estados, ¡ambos se perciben como aliados! Restrepo les pide a las AUC que le den la oportunidad de demostrar que el Estado nacional puede llevar a cabo las mismas tareas que ellos cumplían, en especial, tareas de contrainsurgencia.

En principio, esto no sorprende. Pero imaginémonos por un instante que el Comisionado Restrepo le dijera algo así a las FARC. Imaginémonos que Restrepo le dice a las FARC que reconoce su labor de pacificación en las zonas de frontera agraria y que de lo que se trata ahora es de normalizar y legalizar el tipo de control político que las FARC ejercen allí. 

Absurdo, ¿cierto? Pero ¿por qué es absurdo? Por la sencilla razón de que el orden político que estaban defendiendo las AUC es el mismo orden político que defiende el gobierno, pero no ocurre lo mismo con las FARC.

Voy a interrumpir aquí. Pero a quien esté leyendo esto le dejo una pregunta de tarea: si lo dicho hasta ahora es cierto, ¿en qué queda el cuento de que el conflicto con las FARC no es ideológico?

Soy Famoso!!

Lo logré! Lo logré! Me citan en Revista Semana. Para los que quieran ver el documento completo, al que me refería antes, aquí está.

Antanas? Date una vuelta y hablamos.

En estos dias la pregunta obligada en Colombia es qué piensa uno de Antanas. Acabo de escribir un ensayo para algunos amigos en el Polo Democrático donde fijo mi posición. Resumiendo:

Aunque Antanas, en caso de ganar, podría llegar a formar un gobierno mejor que el del uribismo, esto no está garantizado porque él insiste en no definirse en torno a los temas fundamentales. Así, es mejor que el Polo espere un poco, hasta la segunda vuelta si la hay, y luego le entable a Antanas una negociación firme. Si en ese momento él se compromete con algunos principios saludables y que representen un avance para la izquierda democrática, pues adelante con la alianza. Pero si sigue con el desdén que ha mostrado hasta ahora, pues hay que pararse de la mesa. Al fin y al cabo, si sigue como va, Antanas va a terminar convertido en una versión hippy del uribismo y a eso el Polo no tiene por qué gastarle energías.

Voy a ver si aprendo a colgar archivos en el blog y entonces pondré mi ensayo. Entre tanto, este es el resumen ejecutivo.

From the Polish airplane crash to Stalinism and back.

This is one of those instances where blogging is real fun. I get to write stuff that just crosses my mind and take it wherever it leads unconstrained by the obligation of being right, consistent or anything.

So these days the Katyn massacre is again in the news. Apparently it is still the kind of event that qualifies as "forgotten." I can't speak to this because I have known about it for a long while. Anyway, the facts are there: the Soviet Army captured more than 20 000 Polish POW's, then Stalin and Beria decided that they could become the ferment of future anti-Soviet activities in Poland and, thus, decided to just shoot them one by one. All in all, probably one of the greatest violations of the "ius in bellum" ever (well, there's stiff competition for that...).

Of course, as we all can imagine, the Poles have been really upset about this, justifiably so. I'm not going to go into the whole discussion about the Soviet POW's starved by the Poles in 1918-1919. In Europe for pretty much every atrocity you can always find a previous one for which this one was seen as a retaliation. 

But I want to go elsewhere. It occurred to me to run a small "experiment." I have an Argentinean friend (wait, wait, it makes sense at the end) and decided to ask him some questions about Katyn. Why? Because in his youth he had very close friends in the Argentinean Communist Party and the Argentinean Communist Party was at that time made up heavily of Jews of, you got it, Polish background. Based on an observation of one (not a very scientific sample, I know) I can conclude that, by his recollection, this particular bunch of Poles simply did not care about Katyn. The issue was not even mentioned. Notice, this was the 1960s and 70s. At that point it was OK in the Communist movement to say that, you know, Stalin may have committed a few crimes. True, the official line was that Katyn was a Nazi atrocity so maybe that's what they believed. But even without Katyn the Soviet occupation of Poland was no picnic so you would have expected them to harbor at least a teeny-weeny grudge against the Russians. The interesting thing is they did not care.

Remarkable? From the point of view of American political culture it is remarkable because of one feature that I've noticed over the years: American anti-Communism. It is not like the anti-Communism of other places. In the US even the left is anti-Communist. What I mean with this is that in the US anybody in the Left must be able to prove that he or she is in no way at all associated with anything that can remotely, even in the most oblique way, be construed as related to world Communism. Belonging to a Communist party, or to a party that might have at some point being close to the Communist movement, no matter the time and place is considered in American public discourse a cause of moral opprobrium that puts the person beyond the confines of the acceptable. 

In my limited experience with the Latin American left, if I had asked anybody in any left-wing movement in the heady days of the Cold War to take a position about the Ukrainian famine, he would have, at best, turned a blank stare. The attitude there was "Let by-gones be by-gones. Right now we have more pressing issues to worry about." In fact, according to my Argentinean friend, his acquaintances were much more worried about US foreign policy in Latin America at that precise moment than with events that had happened in Poland 30 years ago. 

Interestingly, this is one exception in American political culture to its wonderful pragmatism. One thing I've come to embrace about public debate in the US is the way in which it tries not to get sidelined in discussions that do not pertain to the problem at hand. But there is "Cold War exception" to this. The monstrous history of Communist crimes is not over. It has to be replayed over and over again to be able to demarcate lines of alliances and so on. This is all the more interesting when you consider that of all the millions of victims of these crimes, only a handful were Americans (and this mostly as POW's). 

Just to put an example of someone I admire deeply, consider the eminent economist and historian Brad de Long, whose blog everyone should read. I won't point to specific instances, but you will find many if you go through his blog. Here is a center-left intellectual, a person with whom more often than not I agree (he describes himself as a "weak-tea social-democrat" and maybe that's the source of our substantive differences), but his attitude toward the history of Communism is hard to comprehend for someone who, like me, comes from a different political culture. I come from a milieu where it was normal to become a Communist and to stop being one while remaining a leftist without Stalinism, the Gulag, the Great Purge and so on looming too large in the debate. In the Colombian left, as far as I can remember from the distance of my non-committed college years, Communists were regarded as overbearing, dogmatic, boring, obsequious etc. but nobody in the Left saw them through the prism of events of mass murder that had occurred several decades ago thousands of kilometers away. If needed and possible, it was perfectly fine to associate with them.

Of course I do not wish to imply that there is something wrong with the American left. Over my years in the US (coming soon to an end, more on that later), I've come to admire it greatly. But the alternative reading, which I cannot accept, is that there is something morally corrupt with leftists in other parts of the world. I guess this is a cultural difference that points to deeper currents. I'll have time to think about this at more length.

In which I am a terrible, terrible blogger.

It's been more than two months without any post. Bad, bad blogger. In the meantime health care reform passed, Colombia had Congressional elections and its two-party system is now mortally wounded. And yet no blogging!! Yeah, guilt, guilt, guilt.

Problem is, I don't like blogging to repeat stuff that I'm picking up on other blogs. To me it's only fun when I have something to say that, to my knowledge, hasn't been said before or not with the nuance I want to give it. This has happened with these latest events. But as the dust settle, I might come up with new things to say. Let's see.

What is a Social Structure? Please, anyone!!

Over the years I've become convinced that this is one of the central questions in all social sciences. If I didn't know it would be a counterproductive strategy, I would simply stop everything else to work on it. I think this is the heart of the distinction between "Continental" and "Anglo-Saxon" social theory and of many other crucial questions. Problem is, I don't think I'm getting any closer to a satisfactory solution. This is really the first of a bunch of posts that are little else than a cry of despair.

Human life (and, for that matter, non-human life as well) flows through structures. In my University, we just changed President, recently in our school we changed Dean and we will soon have a new Department Chair. No one believes that these new individuals will remake the University, the School or the Department in ways that will make the current ones unrecognizable. We experience our surroundings, the institutions around us, the organizations to which we belong, even our familiar life as structures where individuals are replaceable at least to some degree. 

This is nothing new. Phenomenologists have made a living out of this (at least since Berger and Luckmann if not since Husserl himself), this is Sociology 101. 

The problem is that, to my knowledge, we don't have:

a. A good definition of what IS a structure.

b. A good account of how structures emerge, change and collapse.

I'm enough of a rational-choice theorist to try a crack at b. In that capacity, I could try to show that structures are necessary for social life because they, for instance, reduce our cognitive demands. In a world of bounded rationality, it is easier to navigate our social milieu if we are surrounded by structures so that we don't have to start from scratch everything each time the teller at a bank calls in sick. But this may explain why we need structures, not how they emerge. Similarly, Searle has argued that institutional facts (a topic akin to what I have in mind) operate on the basis of our Background abilities. (Here "Background" is capitalized because it is a technical term for Searle.) But, again, this doesn't tell us why we have this structure or that one, and not the other one out there. 

Continental social theorists may say that the very question is unintelligible. After all, they point out that these things exist, in the elegant phrase, "always already." In other words, it may seem futile to try to DERIVE a structure from something else because everything exists within a structure. There is nothing prior to a structure. For people who believe this, and, to be sure, it is a good point, the exercises we do in economics of imagining exchanges between two agents, economies with one or two goods, two or three traders and so on, are pointless because they will never be able to generate a structure; those traders, agents, citizens, voters, what have you, always already exist against a structure that makes them traders, agents, citizens, voters and what have you.

Granted. But if we take this to its logical conclusion, it means that we can never offer an account for the emergence of structures. I can offer a "genetic account" that is, I can tell how one specific structure in history developed out of another one. But notice what we are giving up if this is all there is to it: we are giving up the possibility of knowing the roads not taken. A full understanding of a structure should tell us what other possible forms it might take and why it doesn't take them.

Let me illustrate with a nagging question I've been pondering about. Bourdieu convinced me that power is the central social phenomenon. And, sure enough, power always exist within a structure. There is no power outside of a structure, except perhaps for the power of brute force. So, as far as I can follow it, the literature influenced by Bourdieu has taken up the task of describing how power is transformed from one type of capital to the next, from one field to the next. I like the way Bourdieu makes power fungible so that you can transform physical capital into symbolic capital and into political capital and so on. He does it much better than what I just said, of course. 

But the question that, as far as I can tell he cannot answer is: what determines the total amount of power/capital? Is power like matter-energy that it can only be transformed? That seems unlikely. More likely is that different structures generate different amounts of power. I surmise that modern bureaucracies have enormous levels of power that were undreamed of in previous eras. But if we want to know how this happens, we need to know how is power generated, how is capital generated. But this is not a historical question. It is an analytical one. We need an analytical account of how structures come into being to answer this.

It's getting late and I'm not coming across as lucid as I thought I would. Anyway, I'm sure I'll keep wrestling with this for a long time so there's no harm in stopping now.

A Philosophical Take on "Liberal Condescension"

Oh well, I though I would just sit this one out because it involves a colleague I admire and like but, since no one reads this, then what the heck. I can make some other philosophical point in the process. Gerard Alexander recently published a high-visibility piece in the Washington Post which you can find here. If you ask me, I think it is an appalling piece of nonsense and many other liberals and progressives are saying that. Now, before I go on, I should add that I have mixed feelings about the whole affair. At some level, I'm glad that Gerard is getting notoriety. I honestly like him. On the other hand, I don't think this is the notoriety he deserves. Probably I'm not in the best position to evaluate his work, but I've interacted with him in several professional settings and, believe me, he is one very smart and articulate scholar. It somehow pains me that he is coming under fire as if he were a regular party hack. (Well, the piece definitely reads as if it was written by a party hack, there's nothing I can do about it.) 

I don't want to spend a lot of time commenting on the obvious problems of the piece but there are a few that stand out. First, Gerard lumps all "liberals" and all "conservatives" together. So all liberals have the same narrative about all conservatives. Baloney. For instance, Thomas Frank has generated a lot of discussion among liberals. Larry Bartels, who I suspect is a liberal, and has definitely influenced Krugman, has little time for Frank's thesis. Then, whenever a liberal says something rather untoward, even if it refers to one specific conservative, it is presented as the ultimate liberal gospel. But if a conservative says that, I don't know, that liberals are traitors (as Ann Coulter does for a living), that's just an occasional "media gadfly". Gerard cries foul because liberals accuse conservatives (some conservatives, I would hasten to add) of practicing the "paranoid style of politics." But when Jim De Mint says that under Obama the US is in a situation reminiscent of Germany in 1933, isn't that paranoia? When James Inhofe gets waist-deep in conspiracy-theory territory to deny climate change, isn't that paranoia? What is one supposed to do? If Gerard is concerned about the style of debate, he could have told Senator De Mint to S.T.F.U. Gerard is an expert on Western European politics, and I mean it. (Again, he is a serious intellectual.) He could have told De Mint what it really was like in Germany in 1933. 

Then, at the end of the day, Gerard's complaint is that liberals don't listen to conservatives. Let's see. The stimulus package included 30% of tax cuts suggested by conservatives. The health care reform bill is designed to keep intact the employer-provided system and, from the get-go, avoided single-payer. At every turn, the health care reform effort of the Democrats has tried to give as much as possible to the market. The cap-and-trade plan is the mainstream, textbook, market economics solution to an externality problem. You may disagree with the specific contents of these policies, but they have an unmistakeable input from conservative thought. 

I guess the problem Gerard has with liberals is that they are not as conservative as he is. Well, that's hard because most people aren't. I also whine that liberals are not as socialist as I am and, again, most people aren't. But that's my problem. And Gerard's. But then neither he nor me should go on hectoring liberals to stop being... liberals.

Anyway, that stuff has already been picked apart by many commentators. What I'm interested in is something else. There is definitely something to the self-perception of liberals and, in general, the left-of-center as the "party of reason." 

I am a leftist, but also a social scientist, so I don't want to take the facile view that "well, you know, the left is rational because it's rational and so, by exclusion, the right isn't." I want to probe the idea that there are some socio-historical reasons that ground this.

First, the left is over-represented in academia (yours truly being an example) at least in the US but also, I believe, in many other countries. It's not that leftists are smarter. It has to do with well-known facts. For instance, leftists are less likely to go into the private sector. (This was a point made by Hayek and I'm shocked that Gerard didn't mention it.) In many places academia was a relatively free and secure outlet for left-wing political expression. Whatever the causes, yes, a lot of science is done by people a bit to the left of their respective citizenry. 

Second, and here I get more to what I believe is not often remarked, there is a strong tradition in the left that tries to make up for lack of political and economic resources by marshaling intellectual resources as a legitimizing device. The early generations of socialists resembled a bit the early Christians in that they had to burnish their scholarly credentials in front of an establishment that was very hostile and that looked down on them as an unwashed and uneducated rabble. 

Notice what I'm trying to do here: I'm trying NOT to take for granted that appeals to reason are sufficient grounds for legitimation. Precisely that is the interesting question. I'm trying to avoid taking for granted the primacy of reason, something that is hard for me to do because I am, to the bone marrow, a social scientist and rationalist. But the fascinating thing here is that social sciences as a vehicle for legitimation are a relatively recent thing. 

As a matter of fact, sometimes I wonder if the left isn't too secular and too rationalistic. There was a time, not too far back, when Catholicism was a hotbed of socialist mobilization, led by the Liberation theology. As much as I am a secular bourgeois, I have to admit that it was a potent force and the socialist movement is all the poorer for its lost.

This leads me to another consideration. Both the left and the right can try to appeal to rationality to legitimize their views. Both the left and the right can try to appeal to some notion of religion to do the same although, at least in the current Western culture it is more the right that does so. But there is one source of legitimation that is available only to the right: the appeal to tradition and it so happens that that is particularly salient in the US. As a foreigner I'm always amazed at how far you can go in American political discourse simply by saying "here we don't do that." Just stating, without any further argument, that, say, nationalizing banks is "not American" is good enough. The same goes for things such as "class warfare," "socialism," "equality of outcomes" and so on. Unlike Gerard, I'm not claiming that all conservatives appeal to this kind of thing, but some do. And not because of some particular perfidy, but because it works, because it is a respectable way of legitimizing your own discourse in American society. If I was not so intent on playing nice, I would even call this "volkisch" because to some extent it coincides with the old, innocent definition of the word. I know that "volkisch" is now a contaminated term so I'll drop it here. But the point is that, given the way American political culture works, it is no wonder that one side is disproportionately more "rational" than the other one. After all, one side has more choices of legitimizing language than the other for which rationality is almost the only game in town.

Concepts of Rationality

This is really a "note to self." (Well, this entire blog is a note to self, I know.) It's an idea that I've been thinking for a long while and whose implications are, I think, potentially far-reaching. 

A few days ago I was teaching my seminar on "Rationality and Collective Action" and we got to the inevitable question of what is rationality. The answers I got were not surprising, or wrong. The odd thing was that they were the answers an economist would give, and this in a room where most students were not Economics majors. So, they would fall back to the standard definition of rationality in economics that equates it to maximizing behavior or, if you like "thinking outside the box", "bounded optimization" a la Herbert Simon.

Like I said, there's nothing wrong with this notion of rationality. The problem is that it is a recent historical creation and it is crowding out many others. Whatever happened to the definition of "rational" as "logical"? There used to be a time when we said that an argument was "rational" if it followed from the premises. Whatever happened to the definition of "rational" as "grounded on careful examination"? When we talk about an "irrational fear of spiders" we're not saying that there's anything suboptimal about running away from spiders if one is afraid of them. We're saying that the fear itself is not grounded on any realistic assessment of what spiders are.

I think none of this would be a problem if we were thinking about economic issues. But economic discourse keeps penetrating other spheres (and, for the record, I don't think that's entirely bad; I myself do it) so we should be mindful that in those other spheres it would be very limiting to equate rationality to efficiency. 

For example, in the seminar we were trying to make sense of what Hegel could mean about "rational laws" in his essay "On the English Reform Bill." He was clearly using the idiom of the XVIIIth Century enlightened thinkers in which rational laws are laws that derive from some process of reasoning that is transparent, open to scrutiny, not driven by fear of some hidden deity and so on. In that sense, a "rational law" is not necessarily efficient. Moreover, I can think of many laws that I would call rational that are inefficient. (Don't they always say that us socialists love screwing up the economy?)

If we want to understand politics and, more broadly, to build a "rationalist" social theory, something I'm committed to, we must start by addressing the fact that rationality is much more than efficiency. One place where this is particularly notorious is in the debate about deliberation in politics. Politics, like it or not, requires language. You don't have to agree with everything Habermas has ever said to recognize that. So, a rationalist research program of politics must be able to make sense of language as a rational activity. Which it is. Right now as you read these lines (well, no one is, but just pretending), you are trying to make sense of them using rationality. You're not optimizing anything in the process. You're simply trying to go from premises to conclusions in a way that makes sense. That is every bit as rational as maximizing a profit function.

I still don't have the faintest idea of the implications this might have. But it's been nagging me for long enough to put it here.

Waxing Philosophical about the Health Care Debacle (II)

Democratic fetishism, you may call it or, given that I'm thinking about Marx, I guess his own expression is also apposite: "parliamentarian cretinism." This is how I see what's going on and, if I'm right, it has profound implications for the notion of democracy. 

Before I go on, some background. At this point it is pretty obvious to anyone not in Washington that the Democratic Party needs to vote for the Senate Health Care bill, send it to the President's desk and take it from there. Anything else invites disaster. Now, as much as I've been trying to find out, it's hard to know who exactly in the House is digging in his/her heels against this plan. One House member is on record: Progressive Caucus member Grijalva. If I had him near, I would slap his face trying to bring some sense into him. But, disagreements and all, Grijalva and left-wing opponents of the bill are not incurring in "democratic fetishism." Theirs is a different kind of problem, probably just plain old wishful thinking.

The ones I'm thinking of right now are the self-styled "moderates" that claim that with the election of Brown "the people have spoken" against health care reform. Sure, that's what people like Evan Bayh would say to justify themselves. But, at a deeper level, isn't there something wrong with our notion of democracy when a special election in Massachusetts, again the state that has more consistently than any other supported health reform, so much so that they have one of their own, is taken to represent "the will of the people"? 

It's plain nuts to believe that the will of the people can be found this way. OK, in the case of Bayh it may be bad faith, but in the case of those who believe him, it's idiocy. Trying to determine the will of the people on the basis of the latest election, or the latest poll, or the latest pundit-approved interpretation of the latest poll about the latest election is just chasing ghosts. So, why is the Democratic party in the business of chasing ghosts?

I think the answer is because it is not a party, it just plays one on TV. The Democratic party is a confederation of politicians that on some occasions happen to hang out together. But else than that, it has shown repeatedly that it has no coherence of its own, it doesn't stand for anything. I thought that it stood for universal health care (an important goal but, in the scheme of things, a modest one) but now apparently not even that. So instead of defending its core values it has to be constantly seeking the "will of the people."

I could go on venting about the US Democratic Party but I think there is a deeper problem at hand. The institutions of modern democracies resemble market institutions in several ways. That much is clear and has been noted at least since Schumpeter or Anthony Downs. Within that structure, it is possible to think of the "will of the people" as some aggregate of preferences akin to the consumer preferences in economic markets. 

There are many problems with this way of thinking, problems that hit close to home in my case because they pertain the way rational-choice models of politics are built. The first and most salient problem is that, although political preference may be represented, for analytical purposes, in much the same way we represent consumer preferences, such representation captures just the end product of a much deeper and more complex process.

To see what's wrong with this, let's look first at a non-democratic regime, say, the long-disappeared East Germany. People, even political scientists, operate under the stereotype that dictatorships do not consult the preferences of the populace. But this is inaccurate. In fact, the East German regime went to great lengths to consult the citizenry. It created an elaborate system of "Eingaben" which were, at least nominally, input offered by the people about how to improve the regime. An apolitical East German could, without risk or harm, write letters about this or that complaint affecting his daily life and on some occasions the complaint would be processed which is more than you can say of many democracies. 

The trick here was how to operate within the limits of the acceptable. In terms of form, it would help if you prefaced your complaint explaining how it would help in the "construction of socialism" or something to that effect. More importantly, in terms of contents, there were some things off-limits. Suggesting multi-party elections, or freedom of travel, or the introduction of free markets would not be welcome and could land you in trouble. But there were lots of "safe" issues as long as you were not questioning the pillars of the regime.

The point of this example is that you can have a political system that relies on the "preferences of the populace" but that makes sure that those preference are rather flat and simple. Stuff like reporting pot holes in the streets, the appalling food at the factory's canteen, etc. But a vigorous democracy needs more than this. A vigorous democracy needs to take into account preferences that pertain to deep, structural aspects of the social pact. Health care is a good example. In the US the social pact does not include right now a principle of universal availability to health care; it is not considered a right. Health care reform is, above anything else, about that. Cost and deficit issues aside, the question is whether the US will ever become a society where health care is a right. There might be good arguments on both sides (although you can imagine where I stand on this issue), but the point is that a democracy needs to be able to have such kind of debate.

To some extent, the American democracy IS having such debate, although a lot gets obscured. But the thing is, and here I am getting into more speculative territory, regular citizens don't often go to work thinking "gee, it's amazing the ways in which the deep, structural aspects of the social pact we live in are screwing up my life." To pose deep, structural questions and, even worse, to come up with deep, structural answers requires an elaborate process of political socialization, it requires deliberation and collective action. In other words, it needs social movements, parties, things of the like. 

That's what's so problematic about the American party system. If the Democratic party gets out of the business of bringing people together to arrive at a collective view of where they want to take society, if it insists on just chasing the latest polls, over time it becomes a kinder, gentler and more efficient version of the East German SED, a party that is good at keeping the customers satisfied. (The SED could only keep the customers satisfied for 40 years until they decided that they wanted an altogether different menu.)

Without political organizations and institutions that can bring citizens together to question the social structure they inhabit, democracy becomes inherently conservative and that, I believe, is the reason why many sectors in the left have been uneasy with democracy. These days in the US you hear a lot that "you need 60 votes in the Senate for anything." That's not exactly true. If you want to cut taxes for the rich, illegally invade countries, spurn global efforts at tackling global warming, wiretap and torture suspects, and other great accomplishments of the Bush administration, you don't need supermajorities. It's only progressive change that needs them. And the reason this is so is, again, because the Democratic Party is not a true party or, if it is one, it is every bit as conservative as the Republican only that it strikes a classy pose every now and then. 

Have I become a Naderite? Oh, my. I don't know. I think that, given the institutional constraints of the US electoral system, the best shot for leftists in the US is still to collaborate with the Democratic Party and sometimes probably to work within it, much in the way they have done it. I still believe that it was folly for Nader to run in 2000, let alone in 2004. But I'm with the usually mild-mannered Ezra Klein that has been working himself into a rage these days: if the Democratic Party drops the ball on health care this time, the right thing to do for leftists might be just to sit on their hands in November and send it back into minority status.

Since I'm not a political blogger (well, we already established that I'm not a real blogger, but that's another thing) but rather a social scientists, my issue of the day is not electoral strategy. What I'm trying to argue is that those of us who work within the rational-choice paradigm must acknowledge that the concept of political preferences, while useful for some purposes, is badly flawed. 

I'm proud to say that this is not a sudden epiphany for me. I've been thinking about this for a while only that the current crisis brings my thoughts into focus. I have a whole book to prove it. You'll have to wait for it, though, it's gonna be spectacular!

Waxing Philosophical about the Health Care Debacle

Like most left-wing intellectuals, I belong to the upper decile of the income distribution and, since I've always worked for big employers (universities), I have very good health care. So, the health care debate doesn't affect my pocketbook. Maybe that's why I can afford to get philosophical about it unlike all the people who struggle without health care for which this is a real disaster. So here I go.

In Colombia we have a saying to describe the attitude of the Democratic Party: they killed the tiger and ran scared from the hide. It is still possible that the Dems will pass the Senate bill and accomplish something. But the more time passes, the more unlikely it seems. So, for the purpose of intellectual stimulus, I'm writing as if they had dropped the ball because, even if that doesn't transpire, the very fact that it was a possibility says a lot.

The Democratic party has majorities that would be the envy of most parties in the advanced, industrialized democracies. It has majorities that are larger than anything it has enjoyed in the past 30 years and, probably, it will take another 30 years before they have something like it again. And still they can't get through the single most important initiative they've come with which, when all is said and done, is basically a set of incremental changes designed to preserve as much as possible the status quo of health care. It's not like they are nationalizing the banking sector, or dismantling the military-industrial complex or abolishing private property. They were just changing, nudging to be more precise, health care delivery a little bit in the direction of other industrialized democracies. The level of impotence is just breathtaking. 

Before I get into the crux of my arguments, I'll vent a bit more. Let's consider first the disproportion between cause and effect. A handful of voters in Massachusetts give a Republican a slim margin of victory and, next thing you know, THE SKY IS FALLING!! THE PEOPLE HAVE REJECTED HEALTH CARE REFORM!! 

To repeat what others are saying: Massachusetts already has health care reform. And they love it. If they wanted to reject it, they would have killed it in their own backyard. Furthermore, they've been voting for Ted Kennedy since forever. If that doesn't count like supporting health care reform, I wonder what counts. Even the guy they elected supports health care. So, of all the times that Massachusetts has spoken about the issue, of all the times when it has consistently sent the message that it likes universal health care, the one time it waffles a little bit is the one that counts. 

In any private matter, this would be considered completely ridiculous and irrational. So, why is it that this can happen in "the world's greatest democracy"?

They're kicking me out of the cafe so I'll answer this question in my next post.

Poll ratings, Schmoll ratings

I've tried to stay away from American politics in this blog because I don't think I have much to contribute that you can't find anywhere else. But since yesterday's special election in Massachusetts, lost by the Democrats, there has been a huge uptick in political idiocy that now I feel that even I can contribute something.

Basically, the Democratic party has a few hours (probably not more than 100) to show that it deserves being a major party. So far its reaction to the defeat is one of the most embarrassing things I've seen in politics (and, remember, I'm Colombian, I've seen a lot!)

Since the dust hasn't settled yet and the Democratic party may, against its best instincts, pull itself together and by dumb luck do the right thing, I'll comment on a related issue that actually predates the election: the allegedly alarming fall of Obama's approval rate.

A few days ago some wag said that with his approval ratings, Charlie Manson could defeat him. Baloney. The Democrats have nothing to fear so far about Obama's approval ratings. Let's see why.

At his inauguration he had approval ratings above 70%. But he won the election with something like 53% of the vote (as opposed to whatever people say to a pollster). Just like any other recently inaugurated president, he generated a lot of good will even among people who voted (again, voted, not responded to a poll) against him. That's normal. Now his approval ratings are comparable to the vote share he got. In essence he has alienated two types of people: some who voted for Mc Cain but were hoping against hope that he would not be a Democrat (what were they thinking?) and some to his left that got all worked up over the new Community-Organizer-in-Chief. 

This second group (and yes, that would include me if I had the right to vote) has nowhere to go. Many things would have to go horribly wrong for the Obama presidency for we to have a significant challenge from the left come 2012. In the US incumbent presidents run, period. So in 2012 it will be Obama vs. some variant of Palin-Limbaugh-Beck you name it. I wonder how many leftists will not vote for Obama in that contest. 

The first group could swing things against him if it were large enough. But so far it isn't. Again, Obama is still having above majority approval rates. And everybody else is doing much worse. It is fair to say that right now he is the most popular politician in the US and that, were the US to hold elections today he would win again. 

So, Dems, chill out! You're guy is still running the country and the country still loves him back. What the Democratic party cannot afford is to cripple his presidency with the kind of tantrum they're throwing today. Because if they do, not only they will lose, they will deserve to lose. 

Real Bloggers Don't Take Holidays...

...then again, I'm not a real blogger.

That said, I'm back.

Vargas Lleras: A palabras necias...

Y dale con el temita. Ahora es Vargas Lleras, fundador del uribismo vergonzante, el que sale a decir que el Polo Democrático se ha identificado con las FARC. En principio el asunto no tendría mayor importancia, y de pronto no la tiene. Al fin y al cabo, es la esencia del uribismo, su justificación existencial. Si el uribismo no se presenta como el único baluarte anti-FARC, pierde sentido. 

Pero en este caso me molesta particularmente por la pregunta que en el artículo le hacen a Vargas Lleras acerca de la posibilidad de que el Polo Democrático acoja la política de "seguridad democrática." No por la respuesta de Vargas Lleras que es correcta: si el Polo lo hace, no tiene credibilidad. Me preocupa es porque de pronto esa pregunta responde a algún intento dentro del Polo de cometer precisamente ese disparate. Al fin y al cabo el mismísimo candidato Petro se ha pronunciado en ese sentido.

A mi juicio, el Polo debería dejar en claro tres puntos básicos en este debate:

1. Nadie que venga del uribismo tiene autoridad moral para criticar nexos políticos con grupos armados. Ninguna fuerza política ha hecho tanto como el uribismo para legitimar milicias irregulares. No existen ni 5 senadores de las FARC, mientras que hay más de 30 de los paramilitares, casi todos en partidos uribistas. Si a Vargas Lleras le preocupa la "combinación de formas de lucha" hay que recordarle que tiene un retraso de ocho años en ese tema. Si le preocupa que un grupo político tenga afinidades con las FARC, pero le parece bien que las tenga con los paras, entonces que lo diga de frente.

2. El Polo no tiene nexos con las FARC. Probablemente habrá miembros individuales que los tienen, pero el Polo, como partido, no tiene nexos con las FARC. Si alguien confunde una agenda de reformas sociales y económicas con un apoyo a la lucha armada, esa persona no tiene nada que hacer en una consulta interpartidista. 

3. El Polo no debe tratar de "uribizarse" con gestos como el de apoyar la "seguridad democrática." Obvio, nadie está en contra ni de la seguridad ni de la democracia. Pero la política de "seguridad democrática" tal como la ha concebido y ejecutado el gobierno Uribe no tiene por qué estar en la plataforma del Polo. El Polo debe producir su propia política de seguridad y mostrar en qué se diferencia de la actual. Lo demás es tratar de contemporizar con el uribismo sin obtener ningún beneficio a cambio. En eso tiene razón Vargas Lleras: si el Polo trata de moverse en esa dirección, se queda sin credibilidad.

Tilly y Venezuela

Limpiando mi oficina ayer (estamos de trasteo) me encontré con un ensayo de hace algún tiempo por el eminentísimo y recientemente fallecido Charles Tilly acerca de la "Democracia Bolivariana." Naturalmente vale la pena leerlo. Contiene una reflexión muy interesante sobre las condiciones socioeconómicas necesarias para la construcción de un Estado democrático. Es relativamente breve de modo que no lo voy a resumir aquí. 

Lo que me llama la atención es que Tilly comienza adoptando una postura muy crítica contra Chávez pero luego el ensayo toma un giro que, probablemente sin que Tilly se lo propusiera, socava dicha posición. En efecto, durante buena parte del ensayo Tilly reproduce el punto ya bastante conocido de que un "Estado rentista" en posesión de abundantes recursos propios (digamos, petróleo) no tiene que negociar con la ciudadanía lo cual entorpece la democratización. Pero al final Tilly especula con la posibilidad de que una revolución pueda combatir sus propios impulsos autoritarios y conducir a una apertura y democratización del sistema político. 

Es una lástima que esta sea la última reflexión del ensayo ya que esa es la pregunta clave. A mi juicio el proceso político venezolano es tan complejo y polifacético que todavía hay muchas alternativas sobre la mesa. 

No hay duda de que muchas de las actitudes de Chávez y del gobierno venezolano sugieren que, como dice Tilly, el proceso de reforma política ha sido "de arriba hacia abajo" atrofiando los mecanismos de consulta y de intermediación política que toda democracia necesita. Pero a veces pareciera (o al menos le parece a este observador distante) que a la sombra del chavismo se han activado (o reactivado) muchos movimientos populares que quieren asumir un papel más activo y autónomo que el de simples acólitos del coronel. No hay que olvidar que dentro del PSUV hay voces que critican a la "derecha endógena" precisamente por su carácter autoritario, no pocas veces corrupto, y por su intención de que la V República se convierta en una enorme red de petro-clientelismo. Si este segundo proceso se consolida, se estarían dando, justo en medio del chavismo, las condiciones que planteaba Tilly de una revolución democratizadora. 

El problema es que es muy difícil saber si realmente hay una revolución en Venezuela o no. Y si la hay, es muy difícil saber si entrará de lleno en su fase jacobina, volviéndose autoritaria, militarista y, luego, burocrática, o si conducirá a una verdadera democratización. Siempre he creído que uno de los acertijos más grandes de la política es ese: empezar revoluciones es relativamente fácil, comparado con lograr llevarlas a puerto seguro.

Yo no sé la respuesta en el caso de Venezuela. Por eso no puedo ser chavista ni anti-chavista. Pero si los sectores populares del PSUV logran salirse con la suya, adquieren una identidad política propia más allá de la de Chávez y logran que la V República consolide lo que ha ganado, Venezuela habrá logrado un tipo de revolución que no se ha conocido en América Latina.

Irónicamente, para poder aclarar que está pasando en Venezuela se va a necesitar que el chavismo reciba ciertas derrotas electorales. Solo así se podrá saber qué dirección toma el PSUV en momentos de dificultad. En la época de bonanza, cuando hay para todos, no hay necesidad de tomar decisiones. Todo apunta a que en las próximas elecciones el PSUV va a perder participación. Habrá que ver quiénes salen fortalecidos y cuáles son los sectores en los que Chávez va a buscar apoyo. Pero para eso se necesitaría que la derrota no sea catastrófica porque entonces el proceso en su conjunto colapsa. Es triste que la suerte de un país dependa de que el capricho de la aritmética electoral produzca un resultado tan finamente calibrado.

The American Right, that most singular bird.

Way before beginning this blog I was wondering if I should spend some time discussing the recent writings of the American right. I have mixed feelings about the thing. On the one hand, it can become addictive but with little benefit. I can't remember who said that Ann Coulter's pieces were fascinating in the same way a gruesome car accident is: you can't avert your eyes although you know how ugly is what you're looking at. Same for some other people. On the other hand, the American right is an interesting and important ideological phenomenon and, as such, a social scientist should pay attention to it. 

American conservatism often combines free-market ideology, religious faith and patriotism in ways that you can hardly find anywhere else. Conservatism in other latitudes often has to compromise in one of these. Just for that, it's interesting to think about it. 

Anyway, the point of all this throat-clearing is that today I succumbed to temptation. This piece by Charles Krauthammer is just the kind of train-wreck that one cannot stop noticing. So, what the heck, I'm gonna start every now and then yielding to the guilty pleasure.

Even by Krauthammerian standards, this is pretty deranged. I don't have time for a point-by-point take-down. I think the piece is pretty much self-combustible. What I want to single out is how Krauthammer reaches back into the old topic of the "hardworking citizens of democracies" taxed by the Third World. You know, those cunning, brown peoples that always find a sneaky way to make hard-working, civilized Westerners to feel guilty and part from their hard-earned money! And to think that those people in the Third World have it easy! They don't suffer from low-back pain, or carpal tunnel syndrome as those of us in the industrious West do because all they do is to lay in their hammocks all day long. While we produce the world's wealth, they enjoy toiling in the outdoors, watching beautiful landscapes and rare animals (often vultures, but never mind), spending quality time with their kids that help them rummage through heaps of the products of civilization that they, ingrates that they are, call "garbage" and so on.

I could pile more sarcasm, but what matters is something else: seemingly there is no such thing as a defeated ideology. There was a time when I thought that plain ol' imperialism, justified with unapologetic racism was gone for good. A while back I wrote of Leopold II as the mass-murder version of a defunct ideology. I was wrong. That ideology is not dead. You can find it brought to you by the Washington Post.

A Rationalist Mea Culpa

Since long I've regarded myself as a critical member of the rationalist tradition, especially of that nasty, uncouth tribe called rational-choice theory. So it doesn't pain me at all to say that rational choice theory is wrong about certain things. I've said it before about many topics and will say it again. But there is one topic I didn't see coming and that reading Zizek helped me get straight. (I've slowed down my progress with Zizek's book so, instead of one review, I'll comment little by little.)

You see, one of the standard tricks we rational-choice theorists use to entice young, impressionable minds is the magic word of "microfoundations." We tell our students that, unlike other paradigms in social theory, ours do have them, that is, we can explain social phenomena all the way down to the actions of individuals. (This is a topic I'm thinking about a lot these days so I'll post much more on this.) 

There are many difficulties with the microfoundations we rationalists proffer and that is a subject of lengthy debate. (For the record, I don't think the problems are so damaging as people often think. In fact, in my work I am fairly orthodox in this regard.) But one thing I had not realized fully, but should have suspected is that microfoundations are not the monopoly of rationalists.

It is a bit embarrassing for me to say it, but before reading Zizek's book I had no serious exposure to the work of Lacan and other social theorists influenced by psychoanalysis. Yes, I am a long-standing sympathizer of the Frankfurt School, but that's mostly with regards to the new generation, especially Habermas, that has little use for Freud. (By the way, whatever happened to Alfred Schmidt? His book on Marx's concept of nature was pretty good and I imagine that now, with all the talk about the environment, could use a rereading.) 

One thing that becomes pretty clear from reading Zizek's book, and his presentation of Lacan's ideas, is that these people, like it or not, DO have microfoundations. Lots of them. Their theories of society are based on an account of how the self develops. It doesn't get any more "micro" than that.

That is not to say that I agree with their microfoundations. I'm very much doubt that they are getting the mechanisms right and sometimes I just can't understand what's going on. So, don't worry, I'm not going to become a convert to post-modern, Lacanian, psychoanalitic social theory any time soon. But one thing I will do is to change my sales pitch. I promise I will never again tell my students that the good thing about rational-choice theory is that it has microfoundations. I'll try to argue that it has the right ones (or the less wrong ones) but not that it has the only ones.