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l collapse of “really existing socialism” in Eastern Europe and the USSR was a severe blow to the world left. The debate on the crisis of that socialism, years before it occurred, generated a strong division between those who accepted that it was the only one that had been able to be built; those who, like Bettelheim, considered it to be state capitalism; those who, like the Trotskyists, said that it was “a degenerated workers’ state”; those who claimed that they were socialist because of their economic base, but not because of their superstructure (Adam Schaff), and who said that it was a non-capitalist form of transition, but not socialist either because there was no radical democracy (Sánchez Vázquez), among other positions.
On this topic I published a book in 1994 entitled Beyond the collapse (21st century editors). What should be accepted, in my opinion, is that a bureaucracy was formed that was not capable of dealing with the problems derived from having to attend to all social needs, such as its inability to introduce the necessary reforms. With the collapse came a tremendous media offensive that the left could not or did not know how to combat and neutralize, but neither did it go into depth, as Luis Villoro or Norberto Bobbio did, about the scope and limits of liberal democracy.
Despite everything, Cárdenas ran for president again in 1994 and lost to Ernesto Zedillo. Despite this, he achieved an electoral victory as head of Government of the capital in 1997, a victory that was a product, on the one hand, of the corruption of the official party and, on the other, of the fact that the capital has been the scene of great struggles for the nation. This victory encouraged Cárdenas to present his candidacy again in 2000, having been rejected again by the neoliberal power structure.
Meanwhile, Andrés Manuel López Obrador managed to access the leadership of the DF that year, obtaining great public approval and avoiding the strong offensive of the right, which sought to prevent, at all costs, his running as a candidate in the 2006 presidential elections. On this occasion and the next in 2012, the group in power did not allow him to access the presidency either. AMLO had founded, on October 2, 2011, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) in the face of the decomposition of the PRD. By the way, that party was created by Cárdenas and his group through a coalition of left and right forces but, instead of achieving unification, it divided into “tribes”, which distributed the spaces of power that had been achieved and finally expelled its founder in 2014. What happened here with the socialist left? It was overwhelmed by pragmatism.
AMLO then took up the initiative and presented his party, which was also another mix of dissidents from the right who had given themselves over to neoliberalism, social democracy and the socialist left. AMLO acceded to the Presidency because, on the one hand, neoliberalism had achieved the jewel in the crown (the sale of oil); because the PRI entered into crisis at the end of Peña Nieto; because López Obrador assumed an anti-neoliberal and pro-poor stance, and built a narrative around the country’s fourth transformation that raised the hopes of the majority, but he also carried out a series of alliances with parties, movements and people who were not left-wing, such as the PVEM or the La Luz del Mundo church. But where was the left? The anti-capitalist left was subsumed into the new party and dependent on the pragmatism of the alliances.
The six-year term ended and Claudia Sheinbaum, who has a left-nationalist position, was elected president. The problem is that the government currently faces double pressure: at the international level, President Donald Trump has initiated a strategy that aims to regain the leadership of the North American empire through military threats and the imposition of tariffs, as well as through the application of an extreme right-wing policy that involves the repression of anyone who opposes his policy, whether it be the genocide that Israel is carrying out against the Palestinians as the savage and inhumane hunt for undocumented Latinos.
On the other hand, in our country the violence of drug trafficking and the discovery of numerous frauds continue. Faced with all this, the left, inside and outside of Morena, requires, first of all, to vindicate all that fight they have had to achieve a just society and that has involved the vital sacrifice of many people who have defended their values, but they also need to deepen the fight against the reification, alienation and exploitation produced by the system; in favor of a humanism; a critical education for children, adolescents and adults; against the harmful effects of new technologies; in favor of the defense of the rights of women, of indigenous peoples, of ecological balance and of relations with Latin America, but, in addition, authentic democracy is required to be carried out. The left must fight the wave of neo-fascism and conservatism that is already appearing in several places. The future depends on all this.
* Professor and researcher of political philosophy at the UAM-I
