A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

Then there are others, with a more radical discourse, which also have
large-scale social programmes, even dedicating 10 per cent of the national
budget to them and which increase the collecting of taxes. However,
they do not seek a new development programme. They continue,
either through conviction or obligation, the extraction model for wealth
creation, technological and financial dependency on the multinational
corporations, promoting monoculture, especially for the production of
agrofuels, and carrying out policies that are advantageous for certain social
groups possessing banks as well as internal and external businesses.
Many decisions are taken through sheer pragmatism. Some times, as has
been said by Bolivia’s Vice President Álvaro García Linera, it is because
capitalism still has at least another 100 years of life.
In fact, the move is towards a post-neoliberal adaptation of capitalism,
confronted as it is with new demands, through a reconstructed State
and with varying grades of peoples’ participation (in Ecuador and Bolivia,
and partially in Venezuela). Compared with the past or with countries
that are clearly pro-capitalist (Mexico, Chile, Columbia), there has evidently
been considerable progress and, confronted as they are by
rightwing options, such policies are in no way mistaken.
The results achieved, partly thanks to the international economic situation
(the [higher] prices for natural resources which nevertheless increases
the position of the continent in the international division of
labour) and partly due to daring social and cultural policies, cannot be
denied. The fact that millions of people have emerged from poverty is
a positive result: the hungry do not suffer or die in the medium or long
term, but at this very moment. However, this does not necessarily
mean the adoption of a new paradigm. Such policies can be accommodated
within the logic of capitalism, like neo-Keynesian anti-cyclical actions.
Another approach would to link social policies to effective post-capitalist
structural transformations such as agrarian reform, respect for nature,
peoples participation and participatory democracy, recovery of
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