Chapter 12 Local Governments: Signposts to an Alternative Path
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I have spoken above of the crucial role that local governments can play in Left strategy. But not everyone on the Left shares my view of the tremendous importance of the work done in local governments. The more radical sectors are very sceptical about the role these governments can play in accumulating forces for social change.They claim that what these governments do is simply ‘manage’ capitalism; that they only serve as shock absorbers for neo-liberal policies; and what is more, they accuse them of attempting to co-opt the leaders of the popular movement, so that instead of the movement being strengthened by the experience it is in fact weakened. 489 These sectors believe that the conditions for an insurrection could arise and that what we have to do is demolish the bourgeois state; in other words, they believe that the revolution is at hand.Those of us, on the other hand, who believe that we are living in an ultra-conservative era and are at a great disadvantage with regard to the local and global balance of power also believe that what it boils down to is that we have to begin to act within existing structures with the aim of changing them; we therefore view running a local government as something positive.We look on it, moreover, as a space that could also be used to create the cultural and political conditions needed if we are to advance towards an autonomous organisation of society. 490 Next I would like to spend some time looking at the social experiments that a sector of the Latin American Left has been carrying out in various municipal governments there. 117