Where the Rubber Meets the Road

We progressives talk all the time about the problems of the world. As I've pointed out before, we don't spend enough time talking about how to solve them. The old socialist paradigm isn't really functional anymore. The fall of the Soviet Union, flawed as it so obviously was, at least gave us some kind of alternative to capitalism. That's gone and dead now and probably that's a good thing. But we need something else. And we need to start thinking about it now.

Here's a good example. Read this New York Times article on the struggles Latin American nations are having. In the 80s and 90s, many of these countries embraced privatization as the future. But privatization did not fit societies that were struggling with poverty and who believed that things like water should be human rights and not something to make a profit on. So over the last few years, many of these nations, particularly Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina, but also Bolivia, Uruguay, and to a lesser extent Chile have rejected privatization. But now that they've done it, they are really struggling economically. Investment has fallen at a rapid rate and economic problems rack the region.

They've rejected privatization but there's no real alternative for them to turn to. We as progressives around the world, need to start thinking beyond Marxism-Leninism and way beyond postmodernism about what these nations are supposed to do. What is the alternative to global capitalism? What is Bolivia supposed to do? What role should governments play in economic systems? Should the left-leaning South American nations form a European style federation to pool their limited economic resources?

I don't know what the answers are. But this my friends is where the rubber meets the road. We can bitch about how bad capitalism, Bush, the war, globalization, etc. is all we want to. But we need to come up with legitimate alternatives if we really want to change the world. And now's the time to start.