From post-neoliberal laboratory to a neoliberal resurgence: Toward a creative revision of polanyian double movement in Latin America.

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From post-neoliberal laboratory to a neoliberal resurgence: Toward a creative revision of polanyian double movement in Latin America. A great transformation?

1 From post-neoliberal laboratory to a neoliberal resurgence: Toward a creative revision of polanyian double movement in Latin America. A great transformation? Global Perspectives on Contemporary Capitalisms. International Conference. Johannes KeplerUniversity.Linz/Austria January 2017 Víctor Ramiro Fernández Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Argentina)

2 Since the beginning of the century, Latin America has experienced major geo-economic and geopolitical changes, dominated by two contrasting facts: On the one hand, a set of reactions against the Washington Consensus that promoted the insertion of the region in a multi-polar strategy. On the other, beginning in the first half of the second decade, these reactions seem to give way to a new offensive of marketisation without redistribution, reflected in the progress of the Pacific Alliance (but under the still relevant and increasing role of China).

3 Four questions arise from the above described scenario: What have been the factors that have restricted the developmental reactions and limited its scope as postneoliberal alternative? What are the reasons/fundamentals of the reemergence of neoliberal experiences [counter-movements?]? What role has the state played in the reemergence of neoliberalism? What role should the state play to develop a consistent state project, capable of gestating a post-neoliberal strategy?

4 I those questions? Analyzing inside these reactions and in particular their states, in order to show both the survival of the neoliberal construction under new forms- as well as the weaknesses contained in the neo-developmentalist reactions. Appealing for a recreated and redefined Polanyi s double movement concept for observing the process that goes from the beginning of the century as part of a second movement in which both the reinstallation of the neoliberal project and the neodevelopmental reaction take place

5 II The questions? Notwithstanding the national specificities the proposal is to see the developmentalist reactions not as "phenomena in collision" with the neoliberal projects, but as parts of a stealthy process of neoliberal recapture of the state and a permissive and transitory coexistence of political and economic transnational actors -using the state to amplify their reproductive and dominant logic- with redistributive and de-mercantilizing forms promoted by the State through areas that do not directly affect the accumulation process.

Transnational actors and processes linked to recapture the state ( the poison ), boosting the processes of commodification that dominate the neoliberal project, have coexist with actors and reactive

6 Transnational actors and processes linked to recapture the state ( the poison ), boosting the processes of commodification that dominate the neoliberal project, have coexist with actors and reactive processes ( the antidote ) focuses on the redistributive dynamics. That coexistence prevent the construction of an organizational and implicative State project able for transforming and redirect the cumulative pattern (AP). On this stage, the class project which drives the neoliberal process became capable of reaffirm the subordination of the periphery.

7 The verification of this hypothesis, opens the way to understand that the main challenge in terms of building an alternative is focuses on the capacity of transforming the reactions in a superseding state project, able to successfully deploy a qualitative alteration of the accumulation process.

8 In the following two parts: I present the facts relating to economic and geopolitical dynamics that jointly account the "change of scenery" and shoot the central questions. After returning on the questions and hypotheses, I deploy the conceptual tools used for the development of this hypothesis and some empirical elements that support it.

9 I: The facts

10 Where all

11 The starting point was the capitalist crisis and the deployment of financialized capitalism since the beginning of 70s. and the reinstallation of the ideology of self-regulated market

12 Under such global context Latin América suffered the entry of an unbridled process of marketization

13 Before the debt crisis related also to many authoritarian regimes in the 70s and 80s Latin America became the privileged place RESULT OF THE CONFLUENCE OF TWO CRISES Import substitution crisis In Latin America Global crisis and reestructuration at global scale as financial capital expands to periphery

14 Commodification and accumulation by dispossession (displacing local capital and public enterprises through privatizations and deregulation)

15 A world plenty of promises!!

16 Growth? Deregulation Privatization Capital inflows Washington Consensus promises! Poverty reduction? Trickling down proccess

What happens when we compare the promises

Social and economics effects of Washington

disappointing Growth of GDP was smaller than

17 What happens when we compare the promises with facts? Social and economics effects of Washington Consensus at the end of the XX Century are disappointing Growth of GDP was smaller than in the 70s Growth of Capital Flow was relevant The reduction of poverty was insignificant Growth was visibly smaller than in the 70s

18 And what happened with social/economic equalizations? Average Gini Coefficient, Latin America, Washington Consensus The trickling down effects does not exist!

19 The combination of low growth, persitent poverty and growing unequalities pave the way for a change in the new and current century The facts:ii

20 Neodevelopmentalist reaction in Latin America (a part of the continent s turn to left)

21 A new century: Two different moments Euphoria of the first decade The beginning of the descent in the first half of the second decade

22 Euphoria of the first decade Came from a strong intervention of the State Expansive monetary policies and Floating exchange rates Expansive and inclusive social policies renationalization s

23 Results under the euphoric first decade : Growth Reduction of unmployme nt results Reduction of unequalities Deb reduction

24 The first outcomes has been growth and equalization Growth Reduction of unequalitie s

26 In the external front: a remarkable improvement Debt reduction International reserves

27 But. starting the second decade..we have been experimenting a big change and a dangerous decline..

28 Reduction of Growth No new employment No reduction of unequalities results External unbalances Falling prices of commodities

29 sharp drop in commodity prices in the start of the second decade

30 Latin America: the current account balance has become increasingly negative

31 Latinamerican GDP growth was reducing since 2010

33 Reduction of poverty and income unequalities were stopping No more reduction of poverty Remains as the most unequal in the world

35 Why all this decline?:..returning to the hypoth

36 Repenetrating neoliberal process Redistributive lógic

37 In order to explain this. we need to clarify some concepts.

38 GLOBAL NETWORKS NEOLIBERALIZATION STATE PROJECT

39 What do we mean when we talk about neoliberalism?: The tendential extension of market-based competition and commodification processes into previously insulated realms of political-economic life that have been taking place particularly since the capitalist crisis of the 70s. Who represents? This process represents a class project (capitalist), led not only by the transnationalized fractions of capital that break national barriers and acquire ability to operate in a multilocalized way at global scale, but also by an amalgam of institutional actors that operatively enshrine these fractions and are projected as a "transnational class"

40 How neo-liberalism works? Marketization processes that took place rapidly after the crisis of the 1970s, have been constituted and expanded through global economic networks (GEN), controlled by those trasnationalized fractions of (productive and financial) capital Likewise GEN expand supported by a transnational regulatory complex involving supranational organizations -supported by "strong dominant and central nation states"- acting in the form of global political networks (GPN)

41 What GEN and GPN really do? GEN and GPN operate together on the periphery procuring: a. To dismantle state regulations that restrict their expansion. b. To shape within national spaces state and non-state institutions capable of facilitating the penetration of those economic networks and transnational actors that control them. c. To reorder scalar functions of state, adapting its spatial and functional organization to the requirements of transnational economic actors and supranational institutions that dominate both GPN and GEN d. To develop within the state as well in the civil society a paradigm of interpretation on the advantages of incorporating the national and regional spaces to the action of these networks e. To prevent a social and institutional counter-organization of those that will be selectively and subordinately incorporated or those excluded from the economic and political networks

42 What are the effects of the economic and political global networks at the periphery and its state penetration? Selectivity and adaptation of activities, sectors, actors and spaces of the periphery to those networks externally controlled by corporations, financial Institutions and central states High heterogeneity, fragmentation, exclusion and subalternity/desequalization for those included. Inability to generate autonomous processes of accumulation and recreation of dependence

43 How this process and its effects took place in Latin America recently?

44 actions and reactions that have been taking place cyclically shaping a double movement

46 placing these movements in Latin America FIRST In the 90s:WC

47 Invoking Polanyi Latin America went through an anprecedented process of marketizatio during that period

Central and peripheral state operate (mainly) through

global order- Central States (hegemon) GEN Led by

supranational /financial institutions The three elements

48 Central and peripheral state operate (mainly) through global networks in the reproduction of hierarchical global order- Central States (hegemon) GEN Led by Transnacional corporations/capital GPN Led by supranational /financial institutions The three elements work togheter in the periphery configuring a disputed and dynamic State project

49 State project at the periphery organizacional-funcional-competencial-decitional complex developed within state structures for allowing two types of neoliberal strategies/practices disciplinary neoliberalism Ofensive period of global capital consensual-inclusivist neoliberalism Starting a defensive period Both forms of neoliberal constructions share a constant and non-negotiable objective: To consolidate actions -and control those reactions- to maintain and recreate the marketization process and the dominant reproduction of global capital

IN THE FIRST MOVEMENT WASHINGTON CONSENSUS DEVELOPED A double and negative disciplinary neoliberalism FIRST

financial assistance on the state along with a conceptual apparatus focuses on the virtues of self-regulated

Rest of ministers.subnational scales of states.

50 IN THE FIRST MOVEMENT WASHINGTON CONSENSUS DEVELOPED A double and negative disciplinary neoliberalism FIRST DISCIPLINARY PROCCES Supranational institutions: IMF WB IDB (implemented) Vertical conditioning system for financial assistance on the state along with a conceptual apparatus focuses on the virtues of self-regulated market NATIONAL STATE Ministries of Economy SECOND DISCIPLINARY PROCESS VERTICAL ALINGMENT OF:.Rest of ministers.subnational scales of states. Civil society Aim (2) Dismantling of redistributive conditions and regulations to the process of commodification hindering the action of global capital EFFECTS ACUMULATION: SOCIO PRODUCTIVE:

51 What were the effects at the level of accumulation and the socio-productive structure? ACCUMULATION: Trasnationalization Concentration Desarticulation financialization Productive structure SOCIO PRODUCTIVE STRUCTURE: Growing unequalities (consolidation of the most unequal region in the world) No reduction of poverty Social Exclusion

52 As result of that emerged in the second part of 90s an increasing form of consensual-inclusivist neoliberalism (promoted by the same International Financial Institutions that impulse the disciplinary form) Decentralization and participation: Micro-finance Micro-credit Local development programs SME support Programs Social and spatial inclusivism (always associated with marketization practices and ideas) under the persistence of a the same pattern of accumulation

53 But the introduction of these reformist economic and political actions represented by sensible/micro programs oriented to those more vulnerable actors and space- was not enough for preventing the social and economic legitimation crisis emerging from the WC

54 SECOND In the begining of the new century:

55 Post-neoliberal reactions? What have they meant in Latin America?

Global capital (GEN) and concentrated local capital- Financial Institutions (GPN) Persistence of the poison THE SECOND MOVEMENT Emerge as a reaction to the first movement It is not an homogeneous

neoliberalism, fragmentarily introducing micro productivist programs, ideas and strategies that are functional to a process of accumulation in which the global capital preserves its concentrator

56 Global capital (GEN) and concentrated local capital- Financial Institutions (GPN) Persistence of the poison THE SECOND MOVEMENT Emerge as a reaction to the first movement It is not an homogeneous response but a contested proccess -with centrality in the state project- made by: PERMISIVITY OF REDISTRIBUTIVE LOGIC State Structure Ejecutive Economy Minister Seek to develop: Stealthy presence of neoliberalism, fragmentarily introducing micro productivist programs, ideas and strategies that are functional to a process of accumulation in which the global capital preserves its concentrator action and is not disciplined Seek to develop: De-commodification and Social reditribution thorugh universal programs of assistance amplifying the consume (and boosting the internal market) Sub-altern and national actors Weaknesses of the antidote Fragmented and non coherent state structure that prevent the acumulation proccess addressing and dicipline the global capital

57 Steady growth in public social expending in Latin America (grew up 4.2% of GDP in the last decade)

58 In this second movement: Dynamism/Growth took place temporarily, but under these organization and implication of the state the structural properties of the accumulation process remain: Concentration Tras-nationalization Under-industrialization Primarization limits on the generation, retention and distribution of surplus That make the inclusive and universalist distribution strategy unsustainable That properties in the accumulation process are at the base of the progressive loss of (macro economic, social and political) legitimacy that has affected the neo-develomentalist experience and the return of first movement proposals

neoliberal strategies and the class project behind the scene- has not been altered but recreated And this has been essential to allow the return of this new

59 Why the neoliberal first movement is back?? Because under such strategic organization and implication of the state (its structures and functions) in the Latin-American neodevelopmentalist experiences neoliberal strategies and the class project behind the scene- has not been altered but recreated And this has been essential to allow the return of this new "first movement" with a new neoliberal state project -expressed in the Pacific Alliance-, socially more primitive and regressive that the second movement, but completely engaged in the class project operating at global scale promoting the benefits of the reposition of the self regulated market.

Some final reflexions for The current return of a first movement en LA should be read it not only as a lost opportunity for the construction of more equals and autonomous societies at the periphery

60 Some final reflexions for The current return of a first movement en LA should be read it not only as a lost opportunity for the construction of more equals and autonomous societies at the periphery but also as a challenge for rethinking the way in which the second movement need to be thought for being an alternative to neo-liberalism In such an alternative a more robust and consistent state project is necessary for overcoming the always present attempt of neo-liberalism of capture the state and direct the accumulation process beyond the recidivist attempt of distributive strategies of the neo-developmentalism It is a challenge for intellectuals and social scientist of the global south to know how the current return to the first movement will take place and even most importantly- to imagine an alternative new second movement with an alternative state project

IMPERIALISM IN THE NEOLIBERAL ERA: ARGENTINA S REPRIEVE AND CRISIS

IMPERIALISM IN THE NEOLIBERAL ERA: ARGENTINA S REPRIEVE AND CRISIS Gérard DUMÉNIL and Dominique LÉVY EconomiX-CNRS and PSE-CNRS Version: March 11, 2006. This paper has been prepared for the session False