A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

d) Building inter-culturalism
As a consequence, inter-culturalism is indispensable as a process in this
period of history. It is the complementary aspect of pluri-nationality in
the Andean countries, Mexico and Central America. It is an important
element in building alternatives to ‘development’. Recovering ancestral
knowledge and combining it with modern knowledge contributes to the
process of learning and unlearning (Diana Quirola, 2009, 107). Nevertheless
it is not only a cultural process, for there are social and political relationships
to consider. Inter-culturalism is an illusion in unequal societies
and where transnational corporations monopolize knowledge. For this
reason a collective vision is necessary.
There needs to be a discourse transmitting the orientations of a criticism
of capitalism and sharing the requirements of post-capitalist construction
in a way that is understandable by everyone and adapted in each language.
The multicultural expression of the message is a condition for
its success: the Left has a lot to learn in this field. There are already the
theoretical bases for this kind of multiculturalism in Latin America – in
the thinking of Mariátegui and in the texts of Sub-Commander Marcos
– but there still remains a lot of work to be done.
3. Deviations of the Buen Vivir concept
There are two kinds of deviations from the buen vivir concept: fundamentalist
and instrumental recovery. The former expresses the defence
of nature exclusively in an anthropomorphic language, as can be seen
in various documents at the Earth Summit in Cochabamba in 2010. It is
what J. Medina calls ‘the postmodernism of buen vivir (cited by Eduardo
Gudynas, 2011, 8) and others, less indulgent, describe it as ‘pach a ma -
mism’. In other words, and as we explained at the beginning, this position
consists of expressing the holistic view of the world – necessary in reconstructing
a new relationship with nature – exclusively through a symbolic
way of thinking, insisting that only such an expression is legitimate.
Evidently this perspective is not easily understood and accepted by other
cultures in a pluralist world. This discourse can be heard among the indigenous
leaders involved in a tough social struggle and who use the
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