Webber and Carr 2013

Webber, Jeffery R., and Barry Carr, eds. 2013. The new Latin American left: cracks in the empire.

Introduction: the Latin American Left in Theory and Practice, Jeffrey R. Webber and Barry Carr 1-30

• Social contradictions of the neoliberal model generated a series of crises in the closing years of the 1990s and the opening moments of the current decade (3)
• Authors situate contemporary Latin American Left on continuum of "radical Left" to "izquierda permitida" (5)
• izquierda permitida signals deep continuities with neoliberal capitalism and adapts easily to US impoerial strategies.  In its regime form, it seeks to divide and coopt radical left social movements and parties"
• the radical left sees liberal capitalist democracy as a limited expression of popular sovereignty and seeks instead to democratic rule through all political, social, economic, and private spheres of life" (6)
• admittedly draws on Castaneda for this idea, but repurposes "bad" left as "really really awesomely radical" Left (my words)
• neostructuralism idea:  that commodities aren't what will compete on teh world market, but whole social systems (7)
• rejects market as god of all
• but admits an international market, suggests that the national institutions can be shaped (by heavy hand of government, if so desired) to make the nation as a whole produce things competitively
• somewhere between pure world market and pure national protection
• this is the izquierda permitida
• focus on redistributing wealth, not on undoing the market which causes inequality in the first place (8)