A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

The Asian movement that talks of ‘transformative’ social protection advocates
linking social policies to a transition towards another paradigm.
In other words it is not considered as a mere re-distribution policy, which
creates clients and not actors, but as a project that forms part of another
kind of development.
Several of these elements are included in the new Latin American constitutions
and in some genuine policies which, according to Samir Amin,
can be considered as ‘revolutionary advances’, for example in Venezuela.
However, up until now there does not seem to be a real change of paradigm.
And one might wonder whether there is, subjectively, another
perspective among the progressive countries of the continent, the first
in the world to have had new anti-neoliberal orientations.
In fact, the definition of development has not changed much: it continues
to promote the growth of productive forces, production and consumption
through traditional means. Many politicians still stick to the
capitalist development culture, even if they want to combat its most
negative effects and integrate social and cultural perspectives on a large
scale. They share the view that productive forces cannot be developed
without using the logic of the capitalist market. This is also the view also
of the leaders of the Chinese and Vietnamese communist parties, who
have a very special theory of the transition towards socialism. In various
parts of the world, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka, from Angola to Mozambique,
experiences with a socialist orientation have ended with the adoption
of neo-liberalism. This was probably in large measure due to the
international strength of the system. The socialist countries of Europe
lost the Cold War and adopted the worst form of development of the
capitalist model, the effects of which were rapid but unequal.
At first sight, the Cuban experience also seemed to confirm doubts
about socialism, as it was a rigid system of the Soviet type adopted or
imposed from the end of the 1960s, preventing a full socialist development
of the productive forces. There were social and cultural achievements
that were genuinely revolutionary and solid enough to persist
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