Preface to “O Canto da Sereia”

James Petras



This book “O Canto da Sereia” is a major contribution to the clarification
of several important political and scholarly issues. In the first instance
the essays critically analyze the new ideological, political and social
instruments utilized by ruling classes to undermine the class struggle.



Specifically the contributors focus on the ruling classes’ engagement in
the class struggle from below: the use of so-called non-governmental
organizations, (NGO) and the manipulation and co-optation of “progressive”
slogans (“empowerment”, “democratic participation”).The opening
theoretical essay by Carlos Montaño provides an insightful framework. His
essay “The illusion or self-representation of civil society” links the
rise of neo-liberalism and the assault on class organizations and social
welfare , to the states’ sponsorship of NGOs designed to compete, co-opt
and undermine class organizations engaged in the class struggle.In the
face of the demise and decay of conventional neo-liberal ideology and the
rise of class politics, following the retreat of authoritarian regimes in
the 1980’s, imperial and national ruling classes, understood that they
could not rule by force and violence alone. They looked for and found a
small army of ex-leftist activists, “renovated” post-Marxist
intellectuals, repentant guerrillas and compliant academic entrepreneurs
willing to perform the role of diverting class organizations from the
struggle for state power, to class collaboration for micro-changes within
the neo-liberal system. The ruling class counter-insurgency strategy was
designed to “repackage’ the neo-liberal regime as a “Third Way” between
“rapacious capitalism” and “authoritarian state socialism”. The
“post-Marxist” academics and activists secured lucrative positions, access
to imperial foundation and state funding and regime protection from
repression. The NGO’ers received generous grants to purchase 4×4 vehicles,
hire ‘staff, rent or buy well- furnished offices and buildings all in the
name of “organizing and empowering the people”. They were paid to develop
an ideology and organization that substituted class collaboration for
class solidarity by evoking individual empowerment.They promoted
“self-employment” over collective ownership of the means of
production.They focused on “poverty” not exploitative class relations that
resulted in poverty.Through state intervention influential research
centers were funded and prominent ex-leftist intellectuals’ provided the
conceptual tools that led to neo-liberal “social reforms’ which
perpetuated the power and privileges of the ruling class. Multi-national
extractive capital and banks flourished; the imperial state colonized
cyber space, but the “Third Way” , academics excluded imperialism from
their research agenda.With the demise of the first wave of neo-liberal
rulers (Cardoso in Brazil, Menem in Argentina, Sanchez de Losada in
Bolivia, Gutierrez in in Ecuador) a second wave of so-called
“post-neoliberal” rulers emerged on the bases of mass popular upheavals
and struggles.The new “post neo-liberals” deepened their ties to
extractive capital and expanded the role of financial capital to develop
the economy and sought to retain mass support by financing vast
clientelistic anti-poverty programs. Social neo-liberalism found in the
ex-Marxists the ideological soldiers to justify and promote the myth of
radical changes. CLACSO patron, Emir Sader and PT ideologue Walter Pomar
in Brazil, Garcia Linares in Bolivia and a string of others provided an
intellectual gloss to justify the accommodation between regime and
capital.Following in the footsteps of the originator of the “Third Way” ,
British sociologist and adviser to Tony “Bombs over Baghdad” Blair,
Anthony Giddings(Baron Giddings), Latin America’s ex-leftists sought to
denigrate, exclude and dismiss the critical Marxists who challenged the
‘post neo-liberal’ regimes.Fortunately they were not successful for two
important reasons;, one “objective” and the other “subjective”. The
economic crises beginning in 2008 and continuing to the present and the
pro-capitalist policies of the post neo-liberals generated mass protests
and mobilizations undermining the progressive assumptions and claims of
the academic defenders of ‘post-neo-liberalism’.Equally important,
critical scholarship, like the present collection of essays demonstrated
both theoretically and empirically, the intellectual bankruptcy of the
“Third Way” and the failures of its political-economic projects.A Complete
Critique of Post Neoliberalism Project and the Third Way IdeologyThe Siren
Song is the best single comprehensive critique of “counter-insurgency from
below” – the ideological war to win the hearts and minds of the masses
through ruling class controlled “grass roots organizations”.The structure
and ideology of the ruling class directed “counter-insurgency” rests on
five pillars: NGO’s, micro politics, micro-enterprise, social
neo-liberalism and depoliticized subjects. The essays in this collection
systematically demolish each and every ideological pillar sustaining the
Third Way argument. Andre Dantas and Ivy Carvalho demystify the notion of
“democratic participation” and “empowerment” – by locating the concepts in
their larger political and economic context: how oligarchical power
contains and reduces the time and space of their operational meaning,
emptying them of any substantive content.Carlos Montaño provides an
historical and structural analyses of the NGOs linking them to the crises
of post-military rule and to their function as neo-liberal “firemen” –
organizations designed to undermine emerging class organization and divert
class struggle to class collaboration.The micro-enterprise policies of the
Third Way, embodied in the “self-employment” and “solidarity economy”
programs of the PT which were designed to reduce unemployment and
inequality are shown to have failed in three rigorously documented
articles by Soares, Martins and Wellen. The continuities in economic
structure and strategy between the past (Cardoso) and the present
(DaSilva/Rousseff) has resulted in temporary limited gains at the cost of
strategic structural losses.The growth in “start-ups” of micro-enterprises
is more than matched by the high rates of bankruptcy. “Subsistance
economies” in the context of growing wealth concentration is not
historical progress.The fourth column of the Third Way edifice:
“development with social justice” is brilliantly critiqued in two articles
by Maranhaõ and Sigueira. Debunking the notion that Brazil’s development
model has broken new ground by combining extractive capital and
anti-poverty programs, the authors’ document how the ruling class’s
ideological manipulation of the concept of poverty has preserved the power
structures which generated and perpetuate poverty.The fifth column of the
Third Way ideological construct are the concepts of “autonomous subjects”
and “new social movements”. Martin effectively demonstrates that the most
dynamic and influential movements bringing about structural changes are
those led and directed by class-oriented ideologies and leaders.The “new
social movements” were ephemeral phenomena which remained at the margins
of the major political struggles and played no role in regime changes
during the past decade and a half. In their two essays Martino and
Zacarias provide data and theory which demonstrates that the dynamics of
class struggle and class consciousness were the determining factors in the
realization of consequential changes in the correlation of political
forces. Zacarias focus on environmental movements, highlights the
importance of class analysis in identifying the (ruling) classes as the
main agency mainly responsible for climatic degradation and the working
and peasant classes as the most adversely affected by environmental
pollution.Together these essays demonstrate how the Third Way ideology and
the neo-liberal project complement each other; how the neo-liberal ruling
class privatizes the economy and repress the masses, while the NGO’s
de-politicize and divert the workers and urban sub-proletariats into class
collaborationist organizations.These essays collectively vindicate Marxist
class analysis and serves as a model of critical scholarship at its best.
After reading these essays, the entire project of the “Third Way” lies in
ruins. And in its place, we have a brilliant new intellectual paradigm and
project, rooted in class analysis, which combines classical Marxist theory
and its creative application to a new set of political and economic
conditions.

In
The James Petras Website
http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1962
20/11/2013