Chapter 1: Subjective Figures of the Crisis ... - Negri in English

Latin America. From the 1990s to the first decade of this
century, governments in some of the largest countries in Latin
America won elections and came to power on the backs of
powerful social movements against neoliberalism and for the
democratic self-management of the common. These elected,
progressive governments have in many cases made great social
advances, helping significant numbers of people to rise out of
poverty', transforming entrenched racial hierarchies regarding
indigenous and Afro-descendant populations, opening avenues
for democratic participation, and breaking long-standing external
relations of dependency, in both economic and political terms, in
relation to global economic powers, the world market, and US
imperialism. When these governments are in power, however,
and particularly when they repeat the practices of the old
regimes, the social movements continue the struggle, now
directed against the governments that claim to represent them.
A quasi-institutional relationship has thus developed
between social movements and governments. Throughout the
twentieth century, socialist practices established a typology of
such relationships as internal to the political structure—the
dynamic between trade union and part}', for example, was
internal to the functioning of the part}', and when in power,
socialist governments configured the activities of social
movements as within their ruling structures. That internal
relation derived from the fact (or assumption) that the union, the
part}', the social movements, and the government operated
according to the same ideology, the same understanding of
tactics and strategy, and even the same personnel. The slogan
"fighting and in government" promoted by socialist parties
conceived these two functions as compatible and internal to the
part}'.
The socialist tradition that posits such an internal
relationship between social movements and parties or ruling
institutions, however, has been broken. Instead, one of the
characteristics we have observed in these Latin American
countries during this period is the decisive externality and thus
separation of the social movements with regard to organizational
practices, ideological positions, and political goals. At times the
movements and the governments conduct battles together