Ideology, Modernization and Politico- Economic Development in Latin America

Antonio Jorge Jorge Salazar Carrillo

The authors state that social and political processes are continuously interre- lated and modify each other in a circular fashion. The economic variable seems to be the most independent and strategic one in the complex and circular causal process of contemporary history. Its importance is due to the fact that economic forces have become the means that contribute the most to the attainment of varied social and political goals.

The authors also analyze the two ideological archetypes that have influenced most of the ideas of the Latin American and the world elites: 1) the political- economic liberal model, based on market competition and on the individual political representation of citizens and 2) the socialist economic and political model based on economic planning and political collectivism. The case of Latin America is a culturally hybrid one due to the fact that it is the only region of the Third World based on traditions and subcultures of western origin. In examining the two above-mentioned archetypes, the authors conclude that they represent the foundation for the rhetoric of political liberalism in the area, as well as for the protectionist, nationalist and authoritarian tendencies that have served to largely displace classical liberalism.

Antonio Jorge, Ph.D., is a professor of political economy at Florida International University, Miami, holding appointments in the Department of International Relations, Economics, Political Science and Sociology/Anthropology. He is also a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Miami's Graduate School of International Studies. Address for correspondence: Florida International University, Intl. Relations Dept., University Park, Miami, FL 33199. Professor Jorge Salazar teaches economics at Florida International University, Miami and is the Director of its Center of Economic Research. He has been a Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution and is presently a staff member there. He has published more than thirty books and over one hundred articles.

Knowledge and Policy: The International Journal of Knowledge Transfer and Utilization, Summer 1993, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 46-53.

Jorge and Carrillo 47

The title of this brief article is deceivingly comprehensive. In fact, neither the authors' knowledge nor the space assigned by the editor, will allow more than an outline of some ideas and opinions which, in one way or another, touch upon the indicated theme. We are not attempting, therefore, to present an integral theory or explanation of modernizat ion and development. Even more modestly, we are not even aspiring to a systematic exploration of some of the many facets inherent within the chosen topic. The reason why we chose to use such ambitious terms as ideology, modernizat ion and political development was that we wished to reserve the freedom to present some general comments and speculations in this vast conceptual field, al though explicitly noting the impossibility of doing it in a systematic or even demonstrable form, in the present context.

As it is known, the very definitions of ideology and modernizat ion are abundant and varied. With regard to the concept of economic development there exists less disagreement and even so, there does not exist a conceptual unanimity. It is interesting, however, that at a practical level, or as the British say, at the level of common sense, we all know that there exists a close interrelationship among these phenomena. The difficulty lies, of course, in the equally acknowledged fact that, independent of the semantic sets that we may choose for our concepts, we do not actually know the nature of the relationship among them. That is, in our quest for definitions, which are substantive and relevant to reality and not mere tautologies and super- ficialities, we discover that the social sciences and those dealing with h u m a n behavior can contribute very little in the form of firm and objective knowledge about the nature of the relationships among ideology, modern- ization, and politico-economic development. If this is the case, as far as simple theoretical models built wi th a scarce number of variables is con- cerned, we can imagine how very little can be stated with authority in respect to complex, real situations with a historically singular structure.

Therefore, in the final analysis, much of what can be definitively said in these areas consists of: 1) probabilistic generalizations by way of induction, a product of the observation and interpretation of different facts and histori- cal situations; 2) explanatory or working hypotheses (whose purpose is to establish a f ramework for rational discussion in the former case, or a point of departure for empirical verification in the latter), about particular or specific aspects of the relationship among the recently ment ioned concepts and of the processes that they generate in a society; and 3) speculations based on alternative deductive models of purely theoretical style.

Keeping in mind the preceding observations, let us proceed to make some comments of a substantive nature.

If we define as ideology an ideal-typical, intellectual vision (utopia) of the social structure and its functioning, we then unders tand that the concept is composed of an amalgam of axiological and prescriptive concepts and abstractions. In contrast to our perception of the world as we believe it is (Weltanschauung), ideology reflects, value wise, the world as we believe it should be. Intellectually speaking, ideologies are very complex phenomena. Tacitly or explicitly, they encompass a variety of politico-philosophical, socioeconomic, psychoanthropological and historico-cultural elements.

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These, especially at the level of popular discourse, frequently do not coherently and consistently intertwine, showing serious internal contradic- tions.

From St. Thomas Aquinas on, and especially after the establishment of modern European nation-states, ideologies acquired a clear content of an economic, social and political character. The end of the Middle Ages and the coming of the Renaissance visibly heralded the accelerated advance of secularism and individualism and the proportional and consequential loss of social acceptance of the communal-religious perception of the world in contrast with its individualistic-secular antinomy.

Certainly, we will not try to attempt to evaluate in this piece the causal interconnection subsisting among the ideological, political and economic variables in the social processes characterizing the history of the old European world. It suffices to note that, al though these factors have always been mutual ly influential, it is the economic phenomenon that superficially appears to have gradually acquired greater visibility and relevance in the definition of the contents of ideologies in Western modern and contem- porary history. Let us make haste to say that this does not mean, in our view, that the economic element necessarily takes precedence in its relative im- portance over the socio-political factors. In fact, historically speaking, the economic, social and political processes mutual ly and ceaselessly influence and variably modify each other in a circular manner, even though, wi thout a doubt, not in a linear, constant relationship. What apparently seems to give a progressively greater importance to the economic factor is the technologi- cal and scientific advance accumulating at a compound rate since the closing of the early Middle Ages, in conjunction with the increasing volumes of production and rising absolute and per capita income levels, which started to take place in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The inevitable sequel of these events in an individualistic world which seeks to continuously expand processes of production progressively more differentiated, indirect and capitalized, directed towards the satisfaction of economic needs which are being constantly generated, is to create the impression of a wor ld which is irreversibly more economical in its very essence.

In fact, and without wishing to make definite assertions on such a com- plicated subject, it is possible to maintain that societies characterized by advanced consumerism may gradually exhibit a growing "economism" on the part of a population atomistically individualized by the self-centered nature of the decision-making processes of its citizens. It is also possible to affirm that economic intelligence, not only as an op t imum or efficient med ium of decision making, but also as an end and substance in itself, may have begun to influence, on an increasing level, an ever larger number of people in those societies. What we posit here, however, is that it would be deceiving to judge the historical course of the Western and westernized wor ld as exclusively characterized by a monotonically ascending economic tendency. We believe it would be relatively easy to prove that this has not been the case. As an example, an analytical dissection of the formative ingredients of the mercantilistic, liberal and socialist ideological variants in the context of the dynamics of development would show the preponderant

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role that has been frequently played by the political variable in the condition- ing of the economic factor in a great number of historical processes. We believe this applies with equal validity to the start of the process of economic development in the Europe of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as to the efforts in the last four decades of the so-called Third World countries to bring modernizat ion and implement economic development processes in their respective societies.

Summing up, it is interesting to point out that another reason w h y the economic variable appears to be the most independent or strategic one within the complex, circular processes of causation in the contemporary historical phase, lies in the fact that economic activity has been doubling in the societies in transformation as a med ium or instrument to facilitate their many political and social ends. It is also worth noticing that political and social institutions in developed nations have crystallized in historical stages prior to the completion of their economic development process. The same can be affirmed about the countries of Latin America. As a consequence, the sociopolitical element appears to be more static, infrastructural and sedi- mented than the purely economical that is subjected to continuous growth, change and innovation.

Two ideological archetypes have surfaced in modern times influencing the minds of Latin Americans and Third World elites: 1) the liberal, politico- economic model, based on competition among markets and the individual, political representation of the citizenship and 2) the socialist, politico- economic model based on the conscious planning of the economy and on political collectivism. The first one had its origins and expanded primarily within the Anglo-Saxon world. The second one, al though not rigorously formulated by Marx, found followers, in greatly variable degrees, in a mult i tude of fascist, socialist, communalist and anarchist movements, pre- and post-Marxian.

Of course, no real economic system answers to prototypical models. A fortiori, if this is the case for the economic subsystem, so it will be also for the entire social system. This latter being the result of an intricate and changing mesh of qualitatively different variables, it manifests itself as a singular phenomenon in each specific historic instance. It is for this reason that the systems of political economy are also unique occurrences in their concrete manifestations. Al though they may be susceptible to being catalogued as types of categories that are more or less defined and coherent, each specimen is an individual member and different from the family to which it belongs.

With these generali t ies in mind one may venture to say that the democratic capitalist model took shape, institutionally, organizationally and structurally, only in the English world and its direct genotypical exten- sions. The spirit of the social, economic and political culture, in conjunction with the specific characteristics of the materialistic civilization (including science, technology, markets and economic geography) of the English world, in its long and differentiated evolutionary process, permitted special socioeconomic and political formations. These are basically irreproducible

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by other cultures possessed of a different spirit and marked by sociohistori- cal processes of opposite meaning.

The Germanic world is a good example of the rejection of the previously mentioned model. The imperial Germanic feudalism and the experiences of the Holy Roman Empire of Germanic nationality were very different in their political, economic and social context to those characterizing the English world. The same can be said, although in a different sense, of the Iberian world. Caudillo feudalism and the spirit of the Reconquista certainly did not promote political and economic institutions analogous to those of the British style.

Economic conceptions of public, communalist or collectivist stamp, ac- companied by authoritarian political structures (always touted as being of temporary and transitional nature and lasting only until the coming of the millennium) in closed societies, represent the antithesis of the Anglo-Saxon model. The eschatological elements of these ideologies which, in the end, are intellectually occidental, are always formally individualistic. However, those individualistic elements do not possess, logically or in fact, any operational opportunity in those societies.

As for Latin America, it constitutes a hybrid cultural case of a very interesting nature. It is the only region of the Third World, or insufficiently developed world, that is founded on dominant traditions and subcultures of clear occidental filiation. This statement can be equally applied to the colonial period when institutions were taking shape, as well as to the subsequent era that begins with the wars of independence and extend to the present time. It may be accurately said that the colonies of the New World initially reflected, in their economic and sociopolitical realms, the distinctive characteristics of Hispanic Caudillo feudalism and the absolute monarchy. Gradually, as the primary activities of production gathered strength outside the subsistence sector, and the economic infrastructure typical of a commer- cial and urban economy was being built, supported by an important sector of foreign commerce oriented towards the Metropolis, the developmental ideology of the continent began to take shape along basic mercantilistic lines. As far as the political system is concerned, with the exception of brief periods of liberalization in the Iberian peninsula, the fundamental style was set down by an unyielding monarchic absolutism (Bourbonism).

At the conceptual level, the European currents of political ideology, which influenced the abstract declarations and manifestos of the wars of inde- pendence in the New World, served to inject a liberal element in the intellectual framework of reference of the reduced creole elite.

Political liberalism in Latin America manifested itself in two different currents. The individualistic, Anglo-North American and the French populist. The first one produced the Latin American obsession with the formalities and appearances of the Anglo-Saxon representative democracy. The second one is the source of so many general declarations on the rights of man, the exaltation of such values as fraternity and social solidarity and the unlikely presumption that individual freedom and social justice for all can stem from popular, collective action.

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In the economic order we also observe a fundamental dichotomy. The increasing contact with North America, foreign commerce with England and European countries, as well as the influx of capital from those nations, has had the tendency to promote an acceptance, at least intellectually, of market mechanisms, the concept of competition and the price system. On the o the r h a n d , the H i span i c Caudillista f euda l i sm that g radua l ly degenerated into the familiar Latin chieftain, together with the old roots hailing from the moral philosophy systems of the Middle Ages (systems of Justitia et Jure), and the state-centered economic policy of mercantilism, strongly favored detailed governmental interventionism and imposition of direct economic controls.

In the Hispanic world, as was the case in the Middle Ages, considerations of social justice and the actualization of material and social common welfare, had a direct impact on the functions and structures of the economic system. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, on the other hand, controls and market regulations are almost always indirect in nature. In these societies, legisla- tion directed towards setting restrictive parameters and conditions in the area of individual negotiations or of possible competitive solutions are preferred. Matters of distributive and contributive justice have the tendency to be resolved in the area of fiscal policy or in the social compensatory sector.

In this context it is important to remember that the significance, scientific as well as social, of the mechanisms of markets and prices has been under- stood in very opposite ways in the Anglo-Saxon and Hispanic worlds. The concept of the invisible hand and of the existence of a teleological deism in the economic world is the product of the Scottish and British philosophers and economists, especially those of the eighteenth century. The Hispanic and Romanic world, in the practice of the Middle Ages and thereafter, interpreted Divine Will in the Natural Social Order (i.e., The Social Cosmol- ogy vision contained in Jus Gentium and Jus Naturale) as a rationalist providence, which had to be put into practice by those who were responsible for the Social Common Good. Contrariwise, the Anglo-Saxon world opted for an objective rationalism in the economic order and for a subjective rationalism in the social and political orders (social stratification and politi- cal institutionalization through the free participation of the individual agents in the economic processes and by means of direct or indirect repre- sentation in the political decision-making mechanisms). In a symmetrically antithetical fashion, the Hispanic and Romanic worlds opted in the sociopolitical order for objective rationalism. As a consequence, they created a rigid and hierarchical order of social classes, the status and social functions of which were clearly defined and articulated in an invariable structural scheme.

In order to truly understand a society it becomes necessary to consider besides its plexus of religious-philosophical, socio-economic, political ideas, institutions, historic fabric and cultural ethos, also the presence of those values, beliefs, motivations, activities, norms, habits and preferences that result, in a circular causal process, from the interaction of the purely psychological elements with the structural ones. From this dynamic process stems, in the end, the cosmological and axiological visions that we find

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among the members of a society. That is the prevalent Weltanchauugen and ideologies in given socioculture media.

In the case of Latin America (considered as a unit that possesses in its contexture common characteristics of enough importance as to justify a valid, conceptual clustering), the area's historical-institutional f rameworks of reference, as well as its psychosocial characteristics, mark certain preferential and natural unfolding paths to the process of politico-economic development and modernization.

Certainly, the slow, dualist evolution (exchange markets vs. subsistence sectors; urban areas vs. rural areas; cosmopolitanism vs. nativism and indigenism; technical and modern activities vs. traditional activities and techniques) of the societies and economies of Latin America, ceased with the end of the nineteenth century or, more precisely, at the beginning of the wor ldwide Great Depression of 1929. The collapse of the free trade system and of unregulated international capital and investments flows, marks the end of the Victorian age in the economic world. Protectionist policies and economic nationalism began to vigorously resurface while the wor ld ad- vanced towards the global conflict, which would put an end to the last remnants of the classic, liberal era. All of this served to stimulate in Latin America the introspective policy of import substitution and the enthusiasm, frequently exaggerated and not justifiable, for the rapid and indiscriminate industrialization of the area.

The decade of the sixties finds Latin America in full experimental effer- vescence. The deve lopmen ta l phi losophy, f i rmly anchored in Latin American nationalism and the autistic, if not autarchic conditions of the postwar period, had its principal spokesman in the Pan-American tech- nocracy, which integrates the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). This organism was successfully in charge of the elaboration and dissemination of a new Latin American Political Economy. With this purpose in mind it created a wide, conceptual panoply of politi- cal-economic and ideological style. The program was originally in tended to promote development by internal or domestic methods. In the decade of the sixties and until the present, the emphasis of development policy has been displaced in the direction of an apparent return, which is only of formal character, to the neoclassical world of the international division of labor and specialization within the framework of multilateral international commerce. The supporting conclusions of the various conferences sponsored by UN- CTAD on these themes correctly reveal the ideological and politico- economic positions of the technicians and of a wide spectrum, from center to left, of the Latin America intelligentsia. In the order of a pure strategy of economic development, as well as in the ideological realm, those interna- tional prescriptions are complemented by an integrationist internal (intra- Latin American) vision, based on the theory of common markets.

In the same context of the previous comments, it is very interesting to observe how traditional ideological disputes, imported from Europe or the United States, have had a less-important impact on Latin America than one would have been inclined to imagine. Marxist recipes, as well as the com- petitive model of the market, began to be seriously considered as possible

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instruments of a national developmental policy only since about the decade of the twenties and up to the present.

Judging from experience, there would not be great difficulty in conclud- ing that none of the variants of those models have really succeeded in establishing themselves as the paragon of modernizat ion and development for Latin America. The traditional society certainly has now disappeared in a large part of the continent, but there is no consensus about the nature of the institutions, organizations, structures and policies that should substitute it.

Fragmented and formally inconsistent models of political economy con- ceived by notable political movements or national leaders in the twentieth century have not been able to reclaim for themselves a universal, ideological acknowledgement in the Latin American pantheon. These include the Bolivian, Cuban and Mexican revolutions; Aprismo, Peronismo, Brazilian nationalism, Venezuelan democracy and other attempts of less transcen- dence.

All of this poses the question of the existence, even if potentially, of a political and economic "Latin American way." The answer to this interesting question would suppose a number of previous considerations.

We could start by stating that all conscious and continuous efforts of a more or less congruent character on the part of an elite or other people in general to achieve predetermined social, economic or political objectives, necessarily presupposes the articulation of thought and action in a series of concatenated levels: 1) philosophical, anthropological and cultural ele- ments; 2) Weltanschauung; 3) ideology; 4) motivations, attitudes and incen- tives; 5) institutions, organizations and structures; 6) praxeology.

The acknowledgement of the systematic character of the previously men- tioned structural and functional elements leads us to the conclusion that all social reality endowed in its component parts with a perceptible degree of uniformity and homogeneity, can be integrated in a rational, intellectual scheme, logically consistent and intelligent.

The Latin American ideological, political and economic systems, which would optimally achieve the objectives of modernizat ion and development in an effective fashion, while maintaining conditions of cultural continuity, preserving fundamental values and at same time not exceeding an accept- able level and rhythm of social change, has yet not been formulated.

The theme of a forthcoming essay will be that of exploring, in a closer and more detailed manner, the necessary ideological, political and economic traits and institutions that such a social system must possess in order for it to be successful in the monumenta l task of modernizing Latin America.