Neoliberalism’s Latin American Struggle

Weekend Edition January 9-11, 2015
What of the Rest of the World?

Neoliberalism’s Latin American Struggle

by ROBERT HUNZIKER

“For example, when we say that the Chilean state should become a true guarantor of material rights, that is certainly antithetical to the neoliberal capitalist vision which turns rights into a business to be regulated by the market,” — Camila Vallejo (former Chilean student protest leader) interview by Zoltán Glück at CUNY Graduate Center, Oct. 15, 2012.

Neoliberalism has been an “occupying force in Latin America” for over three decades while it has stripped the nation/state(s) of the functionality of a social contract, pushed through wholesale privatization of public enterprises, and expropriated the people’s rights to formal employment, health, and education, all of which are crowning glories for “free-market determinism.”

Throughout Latin America (as well as around the world), neoliberalism’s motif consists of assault on the state, in favor of the market, on politics, in favor of economics, and on political parties, in favor of corporations. Singularly, neoliberalism brings in its wake a “corporate state.”

Henceforth, the corporate state, shaped and formed by neoliberal principles, pushes the social contract backwards in time to the age of feudalism, a socio-economic pyramid with all of the wealth and influence at the pinnacle, but, over time, like an anvil balanced on balsa wood.

Albeit, the Left, with renewed vigor, has pushed back against neoliberalism’s robbing the poor to enrich the rich. And, there are clear signals that this pushback has gained traction throughout Latin America.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/09/neoliberalisms-latin-american-struggle/