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Gramsci and the Twenty-first-Century Latin American Left

Marxist social scientists, among others, have used various theoretical frameworks to explain the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s and the popular reaction against it. Marxist economists, for instance, use the theory of the falling rate of profit (which Marx viewed as an eventual consequence of technological development) to explain the economic crisis in the 1970s and capitalism’s response in the form of globalization and neoliberalism. (Marxists are divided as to whether the same tendency continues to this day, a debate with important implications for anti-neoliberal strategy.) In another example, the political scientist Eduardo Silva (2009) in Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America applies Karl Polanyi’s “double movement” concept (in which laissezfaire formulas generate popular resistance) to the emergence of anti-neoliberal movements in Latin America beginning in the 1990s. In the book under review, Tom Chodor relies on theories formulated by Gramsci to shed light first on the phenomenon of neoliberalism worldwide and then on the distinguishing features of Venezuelan politics in the age of neoliberalism in the 1990s and in the twenty-first century. For this purpose, Chodor contrasts Venezuela under Hugo Chávez, whose movement he characterizes as “counter-hegemonic,” with the changes under President Lula designed to favor the Brazilian bourgeoisie, which he labels a “passive revolution.” Both concepts are derived from Gramsci’s writings. In keeping with Gramsci’s perspective, Chodor focuses on the dominant discourses associated with different historical stages of capitalism and the breadth of their appeal. Thus the post–World War II period of “Pax Americana” based on the “Keynesian consensus” (45) sought to achieve widespread acceptance of the state interventionist model by appealing to what Gramsci called “common sense” rooted in popular beliefs and myths. Chodor invokes another Gramscian term, “historic bloc” (46), to refer to the attempt to build a coalition around support for the Keynesian model. The celebration of Keynesianism, however, was deceptive in that it was defined differently for developed and underdeveloped nations. In the United States it signified welfare capitalism, but in Latin America it was translated into “embedded liberalism,” which combined free trade and other policies favorable to U.S. economic interests with an acknowledgment of “the right of governments to protect their own economies from the turbulences of the international economy” (46). The not so perfect consensus began to falter in the 1960s with the rise of “student and counter-culture movements” in the developed countries as well as a new right that feared the “breakdown” (51) of traditional family values. The ensuing political disequilibrium was what Gramsci called an “organic crisis,” which cannot be resolved without far-reaching change and which opens possibilities for counter-hegemonic forces. The