By LUIZ RENATO MARTINS*
First part of an article on the situation and impacts of the coup that overthrew Chilean President Salvador Allende
Thank you for the welcoming and fraternal act – of entrusting a Latin American with the first moment of this examination by an international college of researchers of the most traumatic chapter in the modern history of Chile.[I] I come as a brother, which does not exclude the difficulty: – How to speak in the face of a tragedy and, even more so, if today it is confused with the calm appearance of a new routine? How and from what place can I address you?
I have been working as a university professor and researcher for 33 years [in 2015]. But I will also speak to you from the heart of someone who was twenty years old in September 1973. I remember well the gray and cold morning in São Paulo (as I also did in Santiago) when I heard on the car radio that La Moneda was being bombed by planes. of the Air Force.
We had been living, in Brazil, under the dictatorship for almost ten years. My second semester at USP then began. A few weeks after I entered the university, a student leader (Alexandre Vanucchi Leme, 1950-1973) had been arrested, tortured and murdered by the police…
The bombs dropped on La Moneda and the volleys of gunfire that destroyed Allende (1908-1973) hit me too – as well as friends and colleagues from the generation – and ripped pieces of my heart out. I have in my memory the traces of those bludgers.
Since then, I have sought to convert such feelings into systematic historical reflection, integrated into a larger process. But even today when I see it again - as I saw it in your extraordinary Memory Museum[ii] – the videos of the attack, and listening to the record of the president's last speech on Radio Magallanes, I instantly feel them as internal and immediate facts, before being historical and objective. A tear opened then in my perception of the world. I wasn't the only one.
I am grateful for this new opportunity to recall and rework these traumatic and heartbreaking memories – not as an individual chance, but to convert them into historical learning.
Neoliberalism and subjectivity
I will deal here with what Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval call capitalist subjectivation. I will focus on it in connection with neoliberalism's modes of implantation. Dardot and Laval are two contemporary researchers, of Foucauldian extraction, to whom we owe systematic studies on the forms of neoliberal discourse.[iii]
The Foucault question
But first, allow me a preliminary parenthesis: my object is not the thought of Foucault (1926-1984), but neoliberalism. Therefore, I will not go into the merits of arguments, even if they are plausible and founded, such as those of Serge Audier's study on Foucault's original perspective on neoliberalism, in his 1979 course. This, according to Audier, was ambiguous and possibly interested – unlike the position of the “neo-Foucauldians”, among whom Dardot and Laval stand.
For Audier, the “neo-Foucaultians” come from a new generation of researchers, formed after the publication, in 2004, of Foucault's 1979 course notes. Twenty-five years separate the two events. Thus, the “neo-Foucauldians” derive, says Audier, from the second generation of “governmental studies”, originating from the Anglo-Saxon interpretations of the posthumous edition of the lecture notes in question.
Dardot and Laval are landmarks of the new intellectual current, which is frontally opposed (Audier dixit) to neoliberalism. This current descends from Judith Butler (1953) and Wendy Brown (1955), the two researcher-activists at the University of Berkeley, California, who translate “neoliberal governmentality”, highlights Audier, as a “process of 'de-democratization ' of current democracies”.[iv]
In the end, Audier concludes: “Contrary to the dominant view, it is not even certain that Foucault was totally hostile to liberalism and even neoliberalism”.[v] That said, I leave this dispute and its punctual polemics to Foucault's exegetes.
against neoliberalism
Rather, I am interested in discussing the mutation of subjectivity, under the impact of neoliberal shocks; and compare, I add, the different criticisms constructed in confrontation with neoliberalism.
“What to do” against diktat neoliberal? This is where the fundamental question that brings us together begins – and it is also from this point that the contribution of Dardot and Laval's writings can best be distinguished.
To highlight the novelty and complexity of the neoliberal device, Dardot and Laval begin by evoking a boutade irony of Michel Foucault, about the current cliché about neoliberalism: “c'est toujours la même chose et toujours la même chose en pire";[vi] I mean, something like [nothing but the same old thing, and the same old thing made worse].
Around an epigram
Foucault's epigram has its own flavor and is certainly ironic. But what is the purpose of Foucault's irony? Caricature the position of those who maintain that neoliberalism consists of an updated reproduction or replacement of original liberalism.[vii]
In this sense, when Foucault alleges a dichotomy between neoliberalism and “classical” liberalism – and thereby exalts the novelty and uniqueness of its object in the face of precedent –, Foucault reifies its characteristics and thus obscures the dynamics of the historical transition that implanted the neoliberal regimes.
But how and where to find social forms independent of their implantation process? Is this, after all, a blind spot or a methodological strategy by Foucault, obviously with rhetorical and political implications?
Contrary to Foucault's taxonomy, with a positivist background, the dialectic dynamics of forces and classes subsists in the transition in question. Let's go to her. I prefer, therefore, to take Foucault's ironic phrase against the grain, and, instead of the original intention, to pick up the suggestion of the dialectical view, which outlines two simultaneous points of view: that which distinguishes "the same old thing" and, at the same time, time, as this gets worse each time.
Thus, starting with the suggestion of continuity, I will consider neoliberalism (certainly now in Foucault's absence) as a moment in the processes of “accelerated modernization”.
accelerated modernization
Why do it? Why take neoliberalism as a contemporary mode of accelerated modernization? Because that way it will be possible to think about it historically. The reflection will then be able to critically combine the unprecedented current devastations with previous devastations – typical of late modernization cycles, which are characteristic mainly of peripheral economies.
We may also have critical studies of previous cases of accelerated modernization. For example, Marx's essay (1818-1883) about the coup that constituted the Second French Empire and the Bonapartist model of State, linked to a certain cycle, accelerated and late, of modernization.[viii]
And we can also count, among the tools, on the study of Benjamin (1892-1940) on the urban modernizing developments of the coup in question: the shock strategy of the Paris reforms during the II Empire; reforms that expropriated housing and workplaces, transforming craftsmen and citizens into a simple workforce without roots and adrift.[ix]
Shock treatment
In order to discuss the recent cycle of global modernization, in addition to Dardot and Laval's analyses, we also have other critical constructs, in this case, contemporary with the beginnings of the process. Thus, the German economist and former student of the Chicago School André Gunder Frank (1929-2005) wrote two open letters to Milton Friedman (1912-2006) and his followers, about the monetarist project implemented in Chile after the coup.[X]
Frank extracted from Friedman's speech the notion of “(economic) shock treatment” and dialectically transformed it into a critical weapon.[xi] Thus, he correlated “economic genocide” and “shock”. Frank's gesture inspired Naomi Klein's investigation thirty years later.[xii] The result demonstrated the historical kinship between the “economic shock treatment” method and the application of electroshock in torture sessions, which were planned to trigger regression and depression outbreaks, in order to break the victims' resistance.
The critical benefit thus obtained allowed Naomi Klein not only to elaborate two new critical constructs, “shock doctrine” and “disaster capitalism”, but also to synthesize – in a single systemic logic – neoliberal operations, understanding the underlying unity between the operations carried out in peripheral economies and those carried out in central economies (such as the US) when subjected to the pressure of a war or a catastrophe, that is, a “shock”, in Klein's terminology.
Under such a synthesis, the connections between neoliberal ideas and war management became evident. Putting it mildly, the unity between the strategies of economic reorganization and the logic of the shock – which brought extermination operations and massive trauma management on an industrial scale – was clarified.
The first alerts
Thus, having set up microscopes and telescopes to examine from near and far the chapter of modernization typified as neoliberal, I must tell you that I intend here mainly to examine a distinct critical archeology. It resides in the cinematographic and journalistic works of Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) and, in particular, in his last film: Salò at 120 Giornate di Sodoma (1975)[xiii] completed shortly before he was assassinated.
Such works focus on the impact of late and accelerated Italian modernization in the 1960s and 70s.economic miracle) Italian”.
Pasolini was not the only one, but he was certainly one of the first – after 68 – to notice the reversal of revolutionary and libertarian expectations. So, even before the coup in Chile, he warned of a right-wing revolution, underway since 1971-72, he said.[xiv]
It is true that in 1973 dictatorships predominated in South America, while in Chile, long before September, omens and preparations for the coup were already coming to light.[xv] However, in Europe at the time, it seemed to many – including conservative sectors – that the right was on the verge of losing power. Thus, in countries like England, France and Italy, and then in Portugal, in the following year – 1974 –, the possibility of a triumph of the left and this radiating to other countries was concretely considered.[xvi]
In turn, what was Pasolini's dissonant pessimism based on? From what and with what criteria, did he distinguish a right-wing revolution (supposedly on the march since 1971), he denounced a genocide in Italy (in execution since 1961), and he warned against “a completely new form of fascism and even more dangerous”, which “sweeps a sponge”, asserted Pasolini, “on traditional fascism, which was based on nationalism or clericalism”.[xvii]
Genocide
The issues of genocide and the new fascism are inseparable from Pasolini's critique of the accelerated modernization in Italy and the ongoing right-wing revolution. Let us take a closer look at this critical articulation.
Certainly, the prominence given to the theme of genocide by Pasolini (since 1974) and by Gunder Frank (more precisely since his 1976 letter) is a result of the discussion on genocide initiated by Sartre (1905-1980) within the scope of the Russell Court. , which was formed in 1966 to address US war crimes in Vietnam.[xviii]
Thus, since 1967, Sartre had started to deal with the question of genocide, in intrinsic connection with a couple of concepts, namely: on the one hand, “the imperialist total war” – which Sartre distinguished from the traditional colonial war –; and on the other, conversely, “the people's war”.[xx] Genocide and torture constituted, according to Sartre, the exemplary modes of total imperialist war, which was opposed by the people's war of liberation, then underway on several continents.
However, when Pasolini and Frank return to Sartre's notion of genocide – between six and ten years later –, they do so in a new way. Both place the use of genocide at the heart of the social order and bring it closer to administrative practices, thus presenting it as a routine class act, that is, as a new technique of management and planning, that is to say, of government.
As for Pasolini, he began to insistently use the term as a critical category, ever since an oral intervention at the Festa do Jornal l'Unità, in Milan, in the summer of 1974.
In this sense, Pasolini began to employ the notion of genocide, in an anthropological and cultural sense, as “the destruction and replacement of values in Italian society today [which] lead, even without mass slaughter and shootings, to the suppression of large swaths of of society".[xx]
Gunder Frank, for his part, began to use (in April 1976) the concept of economic genocide, in his second letter on monetarist measures in Chile.[xxx]
One could say that this new prism of examination of capitalism includes the concept of the Argentine writer Rodolfo Walsh (1927-1977) of “planned misery”. Walsh launched it in March 1977 in his open letter addressed to the Argentine military junta.[xxiii]
new rationality
In summary, according to the observations of Pasolini, Frank, Walsh and Oiticica – highlighted through the use of the maximized signifier of genocide – a new capitalist rationality was implanted, which, in turn, assumed, before the unequal dynamics of the mechanisms market, the exacerbated development of an internal war, that is to say, civil or class. In other words, the logic at hand envisaged violent acts, of original accumulation – or “dispossession”, as David Harvey (1935) prefers to say today. [xxiii] –, before or during the usual (unequal, but formally contractual) acts of buying and selling labor power and other goods.
Pasolini returned to the issue of genocide in several texts, and in one of them, on 8.10.1975/1961/1975 – three weeks before he was assassinated – he specified: “Between XNUMX and XNUMX, something essential changed: there was a genocide. A population was culturally destroyed. It is precisely one of those cultural genocides that preceded Hitler's physical genocides.[xxv]
Discrepancies and questions of method
That said, given the precocity of such warnings and critical attempts about a genocidal reordering of capitalism, let us ask ourselves: What does it imply that Dardot and Laval date the beginning of the neoliberal wave to the end of the 1970s and subsequent years?[xxiv]
Undoubtedly Dardot and Laval, in carrying out such dating, had in mind Thatcher's investiture in 1979 and Reagan's in 1981 – the changes that both imprinted on government policies in the United Kingdom and the United States.[xxv] But, let us ask then: – Would Dardot and Laval, on their part, and the critics of genocidal capitalism, on the other, be talking about different phenomena?
Before rushing into an answer, let us scrutinize the implications and connections of what Pasolini says. From the outset, Pasolini's warnings and notes begin before the coup in Chile, without however having criticisms, either from Frank, on the monetarism applied by the Military Junta, or from Foucault, who will deal with the roots of neoliberal discourse only from his 1978-9 courses [xxviii] at the Collège de France – that is at least three years after the film Salò.
What, in such circumstances, distinguishes Pasolini's analytical premises about the genocidal content of capitalist modernization, compared to the other criticisms mentioned here?
Let's start by comparing perspectives. All of them – from Frank's, through Foucault's, to Dardot and Laval's – focus on planning, the discussion of “governmentality” or “techniques of power”, as Foucault would say; or, to put it in Pasolini's terms, they focus the discussion on palace matters.[xxviii] The exception, not to mention Pasolini's position, examined below, is given by the book by Naomi Klein, whose radical and reflective journalism goes and reaches where others do not reach.
As for the book by Dardot and Laval,[xxix] it can be taken as a paradigm for the taxonomic examination of power discourses, taken in a state of objectification. Thus, it begins with a study of “neoliberal rationality”, going back to the intellectual origins of liberalism in the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries. At the end of nearly five hundred pages, the authors address “capitalist subjectivation” in about fifty pages,[xxx] to then, in the last forty, situate “the exhaustion of liberal democracy”.[xxxii]
from below
Em Salò…, conversely, Pasolini examines the subjection of the expropriated. From there, that is, placed among those at the bottom, in Gramsci's terms (1891-1937), he closely observes the situation and perspective of the dominated. In short, it is from below, and not from above (based on palace narratives), that he historically and dialectically analyzes modernization, its managers and the class relations that led them to positions of command and planning.
The starting date of Pasolini's work in question – that is, late 1973 – on Sade's DAF text, Les 120 Journées de Sodome ou l'École du Libertinage (1785)[xxxi] which serves as the basis for the Salò…, is decisive. We'll see why and how.
11.09.1973
Indeed, the date is not at all accidental. When comparing the perspectives, it is soon noticed that another watershed, in the set of analyses, is the holocaust in Chile. In Frank's two letters, from 1974 and 1976, and in Naomi Klein's 2007 book,[xxxii] the tragedy of Chile appears as the cornerstone of the new capitalist wave.
Already in Naissance of biopolitics, the book referred to at the beginning, which transcribes Foucault's course in the period 1978-79, there is no mention of the coup or even naming records of Pinochet and Chile.
Similarly, Dardot and Laval, in their nearly five hundred pages, make only two indirect and irrelevant mentions of Pinochet.[xxxv] In fact, Dardot and Laval, adopting Foucault's perspective, seek to establish neoliberalism essentially as a “new normative logic” – and thus, it can be concluded, as an almost inevitable result of the economic process.[xxxiv]
Indeed, what role could genocide and shock (non-discursive and extra-economic factors) inherent in the Pinochet route have in the abstract course (according to assumption) of the so-called “normative logic”?
Divergences and blind spots
Therefore, at this point and before moving on, we must note both the important convergences and critical contributions and the divergences in methods and limits, as well as the blind spots, in my opinion, of Foucauldian post-structuralism and its derivatives, in particular: (1) absence of extra-discursive historical investigation; (2) absence of a systemic perspective on capitalism; (3) absence of a dialectic perspective linked to the class struggle, in particular, for the “extra-contractual” molds in which it takes place beyond the European space – even when ties are alleged, as in the case of Dardot and Laval , with the critique of capitalism from Marx.[xxxiv]
Two critical aspects
Finally, we are faced with two lines of critical examination of capitalist evolution in the final years of the great post-1945 expansion cycle, as we will see below, and in particular the mutations through which capitalism, as a global system, reacted to the crisis economic 1967; This crisis would be accentuated by the rise in oil prices by OPEC in 1973, but which, before that episode, was fundamentally exacerbated between 1971 and 1973 by the structural crisis of the dollar and its independence from the gold standard – which implied the end of the Bretton Woods system.
It should be noted that, in the midst of all this, the political or hegemony crisis was taking place, which broke out on a global scale in 1968. This crisis, however, did not stop immediately, despite the crushing of the uprisings in several countries (USA, France, Germany , Czechoslovakia, Mexico, Brazil, Greece, etc.) – since in others (Chile, Portugal, Vietnam, Italy, etc.) it lasted until the middle of the second half of the 1970s.
On the one hand, then, we have those who focus on “techniques of power” and neoliberal discourse. And, on the other hand, those dealing with the real historical process: that is, social classes, class warfare, historical regime transitions, and the theme of genocide as an index of a new rationality. And, at this point, in particular, I am referring to those dealing with the intersection that brought together elements from all the above aspects, that is to say, I am referring to the centrality of the problem of the “Chilean case”,[xxxviii] as a cornerstone and condensed, emblematic and bloody sample of the content of the new capitalist cycle.
Two responses to the coup
Pasolini's work, without a doubt, is paradigmatically inserted in the second strand. What role did the Chilean holocaust play in your investigation?
In fact, even though he was a very active polemicist within the framework of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) – of which he was a member – Pasolini did not enter into the party’s debate on Chile, in which the coup against the Popular Unity government was, since therefore, taken as a pretext for proposing a class alliance, called the “historical compromise”, in a series of three articles by Enrico Berlinguer (1922-1984) that began to appear two and a half weeks after the coup. [xxxviii]
On the contrary, one can observe that Pasolini's response – who was born contemporaneously with Berlinguer's – was to start working with his collaborators on the argument and screenplay of Saló…[xxxix] In other words, Saló… from the circumstances of its genesis, even though it results, in broad terms, from a systematic reflective process on the accelerated and late Italian modernization, it also responds as a punctual and specific work – taking this as a hypothesis – to impactful and contemporary political facts to the his appearance. Namely: on the one hand, it responds to the civil and military coup in Chile; and at the same time, on the other hand, it contests the “historical commitment” argument, within the framework of an internal PCI debate.
Therefore, given Pasolini's antecedent writings, Saló… configured itself as the synthetic corollary of the systematic critical mapping of modernization, but not only that. Its appearance occurred, at the same time, as an inseparable reaction to the macabre light of Santiago (which permeated the beginning, as we have seen, of the elaboration of the screenplay of Salò…). In the same way, it constituted a critical response by Pasolini to the PCI strategy in favor of modernization and, from there, the class alliance – that is to say, the so-called “historical compromise”…
The School of Salò and its living laboratory
Indeed, without the premeditated orchestration of the civil-military crime of September 1973; without the sinister semi-Francoist or semi-Prussian rites of terror; without the grotesque pronouncements of the military junta; It is, Last but not least, without the logic of shock of chicago boys, how could Pasolini come to imagine both the pedagogical experiment in villa – externally protected by Nazi troops – how much for the quartet of master planners and their young assistants?
Therefore, the chronology of the facts and the coherence and systematicity of its probable scenic and critical translation, in terms of the script, lead to the assumption that the plot of Salò… be, in some way, imaginarily modeled after Chile after the coup. If so, Pasolini would have elaborated it as a tragic parable and as a demonstration of a thesis. But which thesis? Really the premise, a denial, as a synthetic and absurd demonstration, of the “historical commitment” and of the modernization for this purpose.
What does that mean? In short, that Salò… consists of an allegory of Chile, under the Junta, but not only. Salò… it also alludes, as a simultaneous and critical response to the “historical commitment” alternative, to the entire universe of consumption, that is, to what Pasolini designated, in a March 1974 text, as “a new form of civilization and a long future of 'development' programmed by Capital”.[xl] Long economic development, allow me to insist and reiterate, which consisted of the declared objective of the “historical commitment”, as a political agenda coupled with a program of austerity and capitalist economic expansion.[xi]
Against the “historic compromise”
Therefore, it is necessary to deepen and specify the confrontation between Salò and the terms of the “historic compromise”. But how to do it? In fact, we have Pasolini's previous criticisms,[xliii] as well as his public denunciations of the criminal acts of the leaders of the Christian Democracy (DC).[xiii] On the other hand, we do not have the concrete experience of the model, since the “historical commitment” did not come to fruition, with such a name, in Italy – although, in Parliament, the PCI has supported DC on decisive occasions; for example, in favor of economic austerity measures during the IV Andreotti cabinet (1919-2013), from March 1978 to January 1979.
We do, however, have concrete historical experiences for which Berlinguer's proposal was openly valid as a system and paradigm, namely the fruitful government alliances that took place in Spain and Portugal.[xiv]
The Fallacy of Eurocommunism
In fact, the program of Eurocommunism[xlv] it unified the strategies and general programs of the communist parties in western Europe. Thus, from the proposal by Berlinguer of the model program, in September-October 1973, the set of Euro-Western PCs was reorganized according to similar parameters: proclamations of coexistence and compliance with NATO landmarks and autonomy from Moscow ; it was also based on programs that renounced revolutionary concepts and coexistence with foreign capital; as well as through calls for political fronts with bourgeois forces, around programs of national reconciliation and capitalist development.[xlv]
The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) adopted such a program and played a related role in 1974-75, after the fall of Salazarism. But the paradigmatic case, and the most successful, undoubtedly consisted of the so-called Spanish Transition, in which Santiago Carrillo – then general secretary of the PCE, and, among all, the secretary notoriously closest to Berlinguer – started to negotiate directly, since December 1973, with the Francoist military leadership. Carrillo thus exercised, at the beginning, the role of leader of the Opposition, since the future leader of the “Transition”, the Socialist Workers' Party in Spain (PSOE), then a very minority, still had very little influence.
a programmed hoax
There is neither time nor space to detail here the development of the process, nor to resume aspects and moments of the decisive pact between the PCE and the Francoist leadership, whose role in the said Transition was strategic. As a whole, the process was planned and governed in the shadows by the jurist Torcuato Fernandez de Miranda (1915-1980), interim successor to Prime Minister Carrero Blanco (1904-1973) and tutor to Prince Bourbon. For the sake of economy, I will therefore refer here only to sources and documents for those interested in this transition in the laboratory,[xlv] which became a reference model for subsequent negotiated transitions – such as the Brazilian and Chilean ones.[xlviii]
However, I will allude to three memories that in themselves illustrate the process: first, the speech by the dictator Francisco Franco on December 30, 1969, in which he announced on TV – then under the direction of the promising Don Adolfo Suárez (1932-2014) – that he was leaving things "tied and well tied [tied and tightly tied]”.
Second, the multi-party pacts of La Moncloa, in October 1977, involving salary freezes and other things of that order.[xlix] And, third, the last scene of the palace plot, which culminated in December 1978 with the farce of the Spanish pseudo-constitution, drawn up by just seven deputies from different parties, nicknamed after “The Fathers of the Constitution [The Fathers of the Constitution]”: Gabriel Cisneros (1940-2007), José Pedro Pérez Llorca (1940) and Miguel Herrero (1940) for the Union of the Democratic Center (UCD); Manuel Fraga (1922-2012) for Alianza Popular (AP); Jordi Solé Tura (1940-2009) for the PCE; Gregorio Peces-Barba (1938-2012) for the PSOE, and Miquel Roca (1940) for the Catalan Minority.
“Development and modernization”
On the other hand, something that is worthwhile and that I can cite here in full – even more so because it establishes instigating links with the Chilean process – is the statement of an editor from Bilbao, in the preface to Frank's two letters, about Chile, in September 1976 (therefore thirteen months before the Pacts of La Moncloa). He stated in the editor's note, which presented the texts: “at a time when, before our eyes, here in Spain, the exponents of workers' parties, until yesterday persecuted, startlingly appear advocating measures and policies oriented – as they say – to the development of 'nation', measures that would have no reason to have enemies ('neither among the capitalists nor among the workers'), since they would be aimed at 'reestablishing the confidence of entrepreneurs and investors', at a time of such confusion, in which this type of people pass for 'communist', 'socialist' etc…, the reading of these texts [AGF's letters about Chile] can help to refresh the memory and clarify the understanding (…)”. [l]
Now, what did the anonymous editor from Bilbao suspect then? What would end up under the call of the PCE (partially reproduced below) to release the “possibilities of development and modernization”, and addressed, among others, to the so-called “protagonist business sector of the new industrial society”?[li] Could there be something in common with the genocidal measures implemented in Chile? Why the comparison evoked by the editor?
Finally and in short, what synthetic unity would combine two processes of “accelerated and late modernization”, whose political orientations seemed so different at first sight?
genetic engineering
However, in the wide arc of political differences that extends between the two unequal responses, that of the bloody coup and that of the transition behind closed doors, there is a situation that contains, in an embryonic state and as in a test tube, the combination of the two strategies apparently antithetical policies: that of Santiago (1973) and that of Moncloa (1977-78).
This is the strategic solution found for the vast crisis of hegemony that constituted the French May of 68, and that even led De Gaulle (1890-1970) – faced with the impotence of the police apparatus and the near dissolution, in practical terms, of the his power of command – to disappear from the presidential palace on May 29, to seek protection in military barracks, from which he emerged invigorated the next day.[liiii]
In such circumstances, the French crisis had a conservative outcome due to the combined effects of three factors, which, if taken in isolation, would not have been enough in the face of the fury and scale of the workers' and students' protests.
Such factors were: first, the so-called “Agreements (salary) of rue de Grenelle” (25 – 27.05.68), signed between the government and the employers' organizations with the unions controlled by so-called communist leaders, that is, affiliated to the Confédération Générale du Travail [General Confederation of Labour] (CGT), and others. Such agreements reduced the pre-revolutionary demands of the labor movement – from substantial changes in the organization of work and power – to wage increases; and so they were rejected by the movement (it was precisely amidst the extensive repudiation of the so-called “Grenelle agreements” that De Gaulle disappeared).[iii]
Second, the clear threat of imminent military intervention, presented by De Gaulle in his pronouncement of 30.05.1968 – right after the consultations made in the barracks the day before.[book] De Gaulle was thus on the verge of repeating, almost 100 years later, the genocidal response of the bourgeois government taking refuge in Versailles, in 1871, to the Paris Commune.
And, third, the other decisive dissuasive element was the order issued by the CGT for workers to withdraw from the streets; order that threw into adrift and confusion the other political forces they already dealt with, with the names of Mendès-France (1907-1982) and Mitterrand (1916-1996) thrown forward, openly, of the constitution of a provisional government.
Two or three things about the 1968 counterrevolution and its aftermath
In summary, the pragmatism and heterodoxy of the Gaullist “solution” – typically Bonapartist, according to the molds pointed out in the 18 Brumaire by Marx, by dissecting the strategically ambiguous conduct of Louis-Napoleon – managed to combine two lines of action: on the one hand, the function of the counterrevolutionary ambivalence of the PCF and the CGT, employed as a means of dissuasion and return to order; on the other, the repressive function of the military apparatus put on readiness, in France, for total class war – with the announcement that, if the Grenelle agreement was not applied (to put an end to strikes and factory occupations), and If De Gaulle's threat were not heeded, the workers' movement and allies would be faced militarily by the bourgeoisie and the State (as, in fact, they were later in other countries), that is, they would be treated not as political opponents, but as internal enemies to be liquidated. [lv]
It should be recalled, by the way, that on the other side of the English Channel, the Labor cabinet of Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1916-1995), as he himself declared to two BBC journalists after his untimely resignation in March 1976, had been of two failed coup d'état attempts:[lv] the first in May 1968, and the second in 1974 – both orchestrated by the British secret service MI-5 and by fascist military sectors, linked to repression in Ireland.[lviii]
Snakes: where and how they come from; its proliferation
The concerted and systematic action of the PCs in Italy, Portugal and Spain followed the same steps as the PCF in 1968: that is, it was characterized by a collaborationist attitude towards Capital. Thus, even in the face of concrete political chances, as occurred in France in May 1968, the Eurocommunist strategy, prioritizing the path of institutionality and “progressive democracy”, in the expression of Togliatti (1893-1964), was defined by the refusal to to overthrow in western Europe between 1973 and 1978 the bourgeois regimes, however, beaten down by the economic crisis and already politically decomposed.
This happened after the genocide in Chile and precisely when the serpent eggs of the neoliberal political advance were hatching. In each national context, the interclassist political fronts (architected by the Eurocommunists) functioned as means of containing the class struggle and factors for the reproduction of order – exactly as Pasolini explicitly denounced, in March 1974, when he pointed out who served the “Historic Commitment”.[lviii]
As a result, as “parties of order” and factors in the “restoration of business and investor confidence”,[lix] Eurocommunist parties paid the highest price, as we know today, that a political party can pay – the cost of its own disappearance or irrelevance for succeeding generations.
The other route, that of total class war or genocide through the use of the armed forces against the movements of workers and students, outlined and suggested in the conflicts of May 68 in France, England, Germany and the USA, and already effectively enforced, shortly afterwards, in October in Mexico, against an assembly of eight thousand students,[lx] it was quickly adopted in Brazil in 1969, in Chile in 1973, in Argentina in 1976, and in Latin America in general. But it was also followed globally in the name of order and the preservation of productive relations in Russia, China, post-war South Africa.apartheid etc., whenever social crises were exasperated.
In this way, civil genocide (through the conversion of the armed forces into devices of class wars – after its reactivation as a force of internal classist repression, announced by De Gaulle in May 68 –, and thus aggressively launched on its own territory and population) came to be routinized and adopted internationally as a counterinsurgency strategy in the transition to the new capitalist cycle.
In fact, a direct line – from the point of view of government practices in the face of the dictates of restructuring economic and labor relations – links the genocide in Chile to Thatcher's measures in 1984 against the British miners' strike, and extends to the confiscation genocidal of assets and rights of the Greek population, at issue in the plebiscite of July 2015 (whose mandate was falsified and betrayed by Prime Minister Tsipras), always aimed at “restoring the confidence of investors and creditors”.
Thus, as intuited by the editor of Bilbao (the anonymous author of the editorial note that presented the AGF texts to the Spanish public), the pro-expansion measures and the “restoration of investor confidence” and state creditors have since then been combined with the enactment of states of internal war, or to “shock strategies”, as Naomi Klein writes.
dialectical unity
But what dialectical unit would be capable of synthesizing the unequal relationship, of apparently opposing political devices, but, nevertheless, always combined in the results – invariably alleged as modernizers, and in the name of the same managerial and competitive principles?
I think that Marx's investigation of Louis-Napoleon offers decisive clues for revealing such political devices. sui generis, in which politics, as a civilizing mode of struggle and confrontation between opposing interests, is displaced or eclipsed – “sometimes by the feather, sometimes by the sword”, according to the cliché –, but always by the principles of business and competitive eugenics, of liquidation of the defeated.
However, when it comes to political sui generis, there is no need to return here to Marx's precursor investigation, for it is precisely the same questions that Salò… treats, in another key (equally sarcastic, but certainly more pessimistic) – bringing, in addition, important specific developments on the late modernizations in the peripheral economies, with support, as we will see, in Gramsci's reflections on the phenomenon of the “passive revolution”.
* Luiz Renato Martins he is professor-advisor of PPG in Economic History (FFLCH-USP) and Visual Arts (ECA-USP); and author, among other books, of The Long Roots of Formalism in Brazil (Haymarket/ HMBS).
References
Pier Paolo PASOLINI, Salò at 120 Giornate di Sodoma, 35 mm, 117 minutes, color, vo, in Italian, Italy and France, 1975; DVD version consulted: ditto, British Film Institute copy, ;
________________, Script Corsari, Milano, Garzanti, 1975; ed. Brazilian: Corsair Writings, trans. Maria Betânia Amoroso, São Paulo, Ed. 34, 2020;
________________, Lettres Luthériennes/ Petit Traité Pédagogique (Lutheran Letter, Torino, Einaudi, 1976), trans. Anne Rocchi Pullberg, Paris, Seuil, 2000;
AF de SADE, Les 120 Journées de Sodome ou l'École du Libertinage, preface by Annie Le Brun, Le Tripode/ Méteores, 2014.
I thank the deferences of all the organizers of the event, in the persons of prof. Esteban Radiszcz (Dept. of Psychology/ Faculty of Social Sciences) and Margarita Iglesias Saldaña (Michel Foucault Chair). Thanks also to prof. Gabriela Pinilla (Univ. District Francisco Caldas, Bogotá) for translating the text into Spanish, and for collaborating with the collection of images and historical documents by: Natalie Roth, Rafael Padial and Gustavo Motta (whom I also thank for reviewing and updating bibliography).
Notes
[I] “La Era de los Genocidios” was presented on 04.05.2015 as the opening lecture of the seminar State(s) of Neoliberalism/ IX Escuela Chile-Francia – Michel Foucault Chair, at the Universidad de Chile (04 – 06.05.2015).
[ii] Museum of Memory and Human Rights (2010), designed by the architects: Mario Figueroa, Lucas Fehr and Carlos Dias. For data and collection, access: https://web.museodelamemoria.cl/sobre-el-museo/#menu1.
[iii] See, among others, Pierre DARDOT and Christian LAVAL, La Nouvelle Raison du Monde/ Essai sur la Société Néolibérale, Paris, Éditions La Découverte/ Poche, 2009/10; trans. Brazilian: The New Reason of the World / Essay on Neoliberal Society, trans. Mariana Echalar, Sao Paulo, Boitempo, 2016.
[iv] See Serge AUDIER, Pensar le 'Néolibéralisme'/ Le Moment Néolibéral, Foucault et la Crise du Socialisme”, Lormont, Le Bord de l´Eau, 2015, p. 32. For details of Audier's view of the « neo-Foucauldians », see the introduction “La question du néolibéralisme et la dégradation idéologique du foucauldisme”. In the same text, Audier designates Foucault's political orientation as belonging to what he calls the “second left (double gauche)” – a trend that brought together post-Gaullists such as the former Prime Minister (1969-72) of the Pompidou government (1969-74), Jacques Chaban-Delmas (1915-2000), and exponents of the Socialist Party such as Jacques Delors ( 1925) and Michel Rocard (1930-2016), as well as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (1953). To see Idem, pp. 7-64. For details on the “second left” and on Foucault's contacts with the CFDT trade union, see Idem, note 2, on p. 48. From there, according to Audier, would come Foucault's “great interest” in the contributions of neoliberalism, among which, the ideas of “a social ethics of the company” and of the “I as a company”, and also, possibly, his concern with rescuing neoliberalism from the matrix of classical liberalism. To see Idem, pp. 24-5. For the contrast, according to Audier, between Foucault's and Bourdieu's (1930-2002) views on neoliberalism, see Idem, pp. 29-30.
[v] See Idem, P. 41.
[vi] Cf. Michel FOUCAULT, « Leçon du 14 février 1979 » in idem, Naissance de la Biopolitique/ Cours à Collège de France (1978-1979), Paris, Seuil/ Gallimard, 2004, p. 136; trans. Brazilian : Birth of Biopolitics, trans. Eduardo Brandão, São Paulo, Martins Fontes, 2008, p. 180. See also P. DARDOT et C. LAVAL, “Néolibéralisme et Subjectivation Capitaliste”, in G. Campagnolo, C. Ramond et J. de Saint-Victor (coord.), « Capitalisme: en Sortir? », cities 41, Paris, PUF, 2010, p. 36.
[vii] Cf. P. DARDOT et C. LAVAL, “Néolibéralisme… ”, on. cit., P. 36.
[viii] See Karl MARX, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, trans. Terrell Carver, in M. COWLING and J. MARTIN (ed. by), Marx’s “Eighteenth Brumaire”/ (Post)Modern Interpretations, London, Pluto Press, 2002, pp. 19-109; trans. Brazilian: K. MARX, The 18th Brumaire and Letters to Kugelmann, trans. Paz e Terra revised by Leandro Konder, presentation by Octavio Ianni, Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra, 1969, hereinafter abbreviated by 18 B…
[ix] See Walter BENJAMIN, “Paris, capitale du XIX siècle/ Exposé (1939)”, in idem, Écrits Français, introduction et notices by Jean-Maurice Monnoyer, Paris, Gallimard/ Folio Essais, 2003, pp. 373-400; see also, ditto, Paris, Capitale du XIX Siècle/ Le Livre des Passages, trans. Jean Lacoste d'après l'ed. originale établie par Rolf Tiedemann, Paris, Les Éditions du Cerf, 1993 ; trans. Brazilian: « Paris, capital of the 1939th century / Exposé of XNUMX », in Flights, trans. Cleonice Paes Barreto Mourão and Irene Aron, Belo Horizonte / São Paulo, Ed. UFMG / Official Press, 2007, pp. 54-67.
[X] See André GUNDER FRANK, Capitalism and Economic Genocide / Open Letter to the Economic School of Chicago and its Intervention in Chile, collection “Lee y Discusse”, series V, number 67, Bilbao, Zero, 1976.
[xi] The prescription of submitting the Chilean economy to a “shock treatment”, made by Friedman in a letter (21.04.1975) to Pinochet (1915-2006), followed the trip of the former to Chile and the meeting of both on 21 March 1975. In fact, the letter only reiterated the previous prescription and endorsed what had already been triggered by the coup, according to the economic plan subsidized by the CIA and entitled The brick (about 500 pages), prepared by a group of economists from Universidad Católica, Santiago, graduates of the University of Chicago and former students of Friedman. apud Idem, P. 60-1. See also Esteban RADISZCZ, “Presentación/ 9 a. Escuela Chile Francia 2015; State(s) of Neoliberalism” (cf. 04.05.2015, doc. of the minutes of the aforementioned meeting). For details about The brick, see Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, New York, Picador, 2007, pp. 86-7; trans. Brazilian: The Shock Doctrine/The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, trans. Vania Cury, Rio de Janeiro, Nova Fronteira, 2008, pp. 87-8. See also, by the way, the film by Carola Fuentes and Rafael Valdeavellano, Chicago Boys, digital, color, Chile, 2015, 85', available in: .
[xii] See N. KLEIN, The Shock…, op. cit., especially chapters 1-4, pp. 29-143; The Doctrine…, op. cit., pp. 35-142.
[xiii] Hereafter abbreviated here simply by Salò… The subtitle derives from the free adaptation of the novel's script Les 120 Journées de Sodome ou l'Ecole du Libertinage [1785], by DAF de Sade (1740-1814). See DAF de SADE, Les 120 Journées de Sodome ou l'École du Libertinage, preface by Annie Le Brun, Le Tripode/ Méteores, 2014; trans. Brazilian indicated below. For other writings by Pasolini considered here, see Pier Paolo PASOLINI, Script Corsari, Milano, Garzanti, 1975 (Brazilian translation: Corsair Writings, trans. Maria Betânia Amoroso, São Paulo, Ed. 34, 2020); and ditto, Lettres Luthériennes/ Petit Traité Pédagogique (Lutheran Letter, Torino, Einaudi, 1976), trans. Anne Rocchi Pullberg, Paris, Seuil, 2000.
[xiv] See idem, “15 luglio 1973. La prima, vera rivoluzione di destra”, in idem, Script…, op. cit., p. 24; ditto, “The first true right-wing revolution (July 15, 1973)”, in Written…, op. cit., p. 47. See also idem, “Marzo 1974. Gli intellettuali nel '68: Manicheismo e ortodossia della 'Rivoluzione dell'indomani'”, pp. 35-7; idem, “The intellectuals in 68: Manichaeism and orthodoxy of the 'Revolution of the day after' (March 1974)”, pp. 57-9.
[xv] See Patricio Guzman, The battle from Chile: La Lucha de un Pueblo sin Armas (I – La Insurreción de la bourgeoisie, 1975, 97′; II – El coup de Estado, 1977, 88′; III – El Poder Popular, 1979, 80′), Chile, Cuba, Francia, Venezuela, Equipo Tercer Año (Patricio Guzmán), Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficas (ICAIC), 1972-79, 265′; see also Armand Mattelart, Jacqueline MEPPIEL and Valérie MAYOUX, The spiral: The Preparation of the Coup d'Etat, France, Les Films Molière, Reggane Films, Seuil Audiovisuel, 1976, 138´.
[xvi] A concrete symptom of the concern of conservative sectors in Western Europe, Japan and North America was the constitution in 1973 of the Trilateral Commission and the commissioning of Michel J. CROZIER's report; Samuel P. HUNTINGTON; Joji WATANUKI, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission, New York, New York University Press, 1975, available at: < https://archive.org/details/crisis_of_democracy/page/n1/mode/2up> (Spanish translation available online at:https://revistas.um.es/sh/article/view/165241>).
[xvii] Cf. PP PASOLINI, « Il genocide », in idem, Script…, op. cit., p. 285; “Genocide”, in idem, Written…, op. cit., p. 266 . Analogously, in the following year, when observing in June 1974 the initial course of the revolution of April 25, Pasolini concluded (with less than two months of the new regime) on the current headed by General Spínola (1910-1996), the first to lead the transition to post-Salazarism, which: “this […] would be […] an even worse fascism than the traditional one, but it would not be exactly fascism. It would be something that in reality we are already living (…)”. Cf. idem, “10 giugno 1974. Studio sulla rivoluzione anthropologica in Italia”, in idem, Script…, op. cit., p. 56; idem, “Study on the Anthropological Revolution in Italy (June 10, 1974)”, in idem, Writings…., op. cit., p. 77.
[xviii] See Jean-Paul SARTRE, « Genocide » (« Le Génocide », in Modern Times, 259, Paris, Presses, December, 1967, pp. 953-71), in New Left Review, nº 48, London, March/April, 1968, pp. 13-25.
[xx] On the concept of « total war », see idem, “Genocide”, op. cit., pp. 14-5; on the « cultural genocide », see idem, p. 16; on "people's war" and genocide and torture as imperialist responses to the latter, see idem, p. 17.
[xx] Cf. PP Pasolini, « Il genocide », on. cit., P. 281; ditto, "The Genocide", op. cit., P. 263.
[xxx] The effective application of the concept of economic genocide, by Frank, appeared in AG FRANK, “Segunda open letter to Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger/April 1976”, en idem, Capitalism…, op. cit., pp. 57-92. In fact and looking retrospectively, one can notice the first occurrence of the term – but still colloquially and without the value of conceptual construction, if I am not mistaken – in the penultimate line of the first open letter about Chile. See idem, “Open Letter on Chile to Arnold Harberger and Milton Friedman/ August 6, 1974. Hiroshima Day”, in idem Capitalism…, op. cit. P. 53.
[xxiii] See Rodolfo WALSH, Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Board (March 24, 1977), Buenos Aires, Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti/ Series Resources for the Classroom, Ministry of Justice, Security and Human Rights of the Nation, 2010, p. 11. In the legal scope, in turn, the term genocide has been typified by Argentine magistrates since September 2006 in sentences against state terror, based on a 1946 article of the UN convention on genocides. At the request of Stalin (1878-1953) this article was suppressed by the UN two years later. On the legal discussion of the notion of genocide adopted by Argentine justice, based on the first definition inscribed in the UN charter, see N. KLEIN, The Shock…, op. cit., pp. 124-5; idem, The Doctrine…, op. cit., pp. 126-7. In the same vein, it is also worth noting that, a year after Walsh's letter, the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980), upon returning to Rio de Janeiro after residing outside (N. York) for about seven years, noticed something crucial and declared to a journalist: “You know what I discovered? that there is a program genocide, because most of the people I knew at the Mangueira (Samba School) are either arrested or murdered” (my italics). Cf. H. OITICICA, in “Um mito vadio”, testimony to Jary Cardoso, in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, 5.11.1978, rep. in César OITICICA Filho, et al. (eds.), Hélio Oiticica – Encounters, Rio de Janeiro, Azougue, 2009, pp. 215-6. For a letter from Oiticica related to the issue and the preliminary protocol (albeit handwritten and in draft form) for an installation by Oiticica called the round of death, see idem, work (documentation) exhibited at the 34th Bienal de São Paulo, Bienal Pavilion, Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, 4th set. – 5 Dec. 2021; see reproduction in Elvira Dyangani OSE (ed.), Jacopo Crivelli VISCONTI et al. (cur.), 34th Bienal de São Paulo / It's Dark But I Sing, exhibition catalogue, São Paulo, São Paulo Biennial, 2021, p. 196.
[xxiii] Cf. David HARVEY, “The 'new' Imperialism: accumulation by dispossession”, Socialist Register, no. 40, 2004, p. 63-87, available online: https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5811/2707.
[xxv] Cf. PP PASOLINI, « Mon Accatone à la télévision après le génocide », in idem, Letters…, op. cit., p. 182 (my italics).
[xxiv] As they state: « This inflection occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, not because of any 'plot', but as the effect of multiple and converging processes that at the same pace achieved the 'globalization' of markets and the generalization of the competition. Due to chaining and spiraling phenomena, the accumulation of capital was found to be considerably accelerated. The growing influence of transnational oligopolies with state authorities, as well as the expansion of financial circuits off-shore favored the multiplication of political 'micro-decisions' favorable to their expansion (…) transnational companies appeared as 'models' of performance, capable of sustaining high levels of productivity and profitability due to the planetary extension of their activities. Under these conditions, government policy underwent a significant reorientation: the State committed itself to logistical, fiscal, and diplomatic support, increasingly active in favor of the oligopolies, associating itself with them in the global economic war. This explains why the State has become a pressure gear for global competition, especially as a direct agent for the 'reform' of public institutions and social protection bodies, in the name of 'national' competitiveness. » See P. DARDOT et C. LAVAL, “Néolibéralisme… ”, on. cit., pp. 39-40.
[xxv] For a detailed critical survey of the inflection of UK cultural policies in the period, see Chin-Tao Wu, Privatizing Culture: Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s, London, Verse, 2002; trans. Brazilian: Privatization of Culture: Corporate Intervention in the Arts since the 80s, trans. Paulo Cesar Castanheira, São Paulo, Boitempo Editorial/ Edições SESC, 2006.
[xxviii] See M. FOUCAULT, Naissance…, op. cit.; idem, Birth…, op. quote..
[xxviii] See PP PASOLINI, “Hors du Palais” (Corriere della Sera, August 1, 1975), in idem, Letters…, op. cit., pp. 107-14.
[xxix] See, among others, P. DARDOT et C. LAVAL, La Nouvelle..., op. cit. ; idem, The New Reason..., op. cit.
[xxx] See P. DARDOT et C. LAVAL, “La fabrique du sujet neoliberal”, in idem, La Nouvelle..., op. cit., pp. 402-54; idem, « The fabric of the neoliberal subject », in idem, The new…, op. cit., pp. 321-76.
[xxxii] See idem, “Conclusion/ L'épuisement de la démocratie libérale », in idem, La Nouvelle..., op. cit., pp. 457-81; idem, « Conclusion – The Exhaustion of Liberal Democracy », in idem, The new…, op. cit., pp. 377-402.
[xxxi] Brazilian translation: The 120 Days of Sodom: Or the School of Debauchery, trans. Rosa Freire Aguiar, Sao Paulo, Penguin, 2018.
[xxxii] “From within this living laboratory emerged the first State of the Chicago School [Chile], and the first victory of its global counterrevolution (Out of this live laboratory emerged the first Chicago School state [Chile], and the first victory in its global counterrevolution)”. See N. KLEIN, The Shock…, op. cit., p. 87; idem, The Doctrine…, op. cit., p. 88.
[xxxv] In the first mention (to note 4 on p. 268, of the subchapter “L'État fort gardien du droit privé [Strong State, guardian of private rights”]), the authors focus in passing on an interview with Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992 ), in April 1981, to the newspaper The Mercury (Santiago), in which the Austrian economist claimed to prefer a “liberal dictator(or) [ura] (…) to a democratic government without liberalism”. Dardot and Laval only point out that the declaration dates from the period of the Pinochet dictatorship. Cf. P. DARDOT and C. LAVAL, La Nouvelle..., op. cit., n. 4, on p. 268; idem, The new…, op. cit., n. 101, on p. 184. In conclusion, Dardot and Laval return, in another note, to the aforementioned interview, to emphasize that it “clarifies once again the attitude of Hayek and Friedman towards the Pinochet dictatorship”. Cf. idem, La Nouvelle..., op. cit., n. 3, on p. 463; idem, The new…, op. cit., n. 17, on p. 383.
[xxxiv] Contrary to the view of Gunder Frank – whom they do not even refer to –, as well as to the setback of Naomi Klein – to whom, in turn, they reply, making explicit objections and reservations about the notion of “shock strategy” as a fundamental device for the implantation of neoliberal regimes –, Dardot and Laval affirm: “it is necessary to see in this strategy less the fruit of a world conspiracy than the development, by autonomous and self-strengthening route, of a normative logic that irreversibly shaped the conducts and the minds of all those who have something to do with political and economic powers.” Cf. P. DARDOT et C. LAVAL, « Le retour de la guerre sociale [The return of the social war] », en idem et al., Tous dans la Rue: le Movement Social de l'Automne 2010, preface Gérard Mordillat, Paris, Seuil, 2011, available at:http://1libertaire.free.fr/PDardotCLaval21.html>, accessed on 22.01.2019. This statement resumes and summarizes the contrast between the «new normative logic» and the «plot» that is developed, in favor of the first, in the preamble of the chapter «Le grand tournant [The great turn]», by P. DARDOT et C. LAVAL, La Nouvelle..., op. cit., pp. 274-6; idem, The new…, op. cit., pp. 189-90.
[xxxiv] See, for example: P. DARDOT, C. LAVAL et El Mouhoub MOUHOUD, Sauver Marx? Empire, Multitude, Travail Immateriel, Paris, La Découverte, 2007, and P. DARDOT et C. LAVAL , Marx, Prenom: Karl, Paris, Gallimard, 2012.
[xxxviii] Cf. AG FRANK, “Economic Crisis, Third World and 1984”, in idem, Reflections on the Economic Crisis, trans. Angels Martínez Castells et. al., Barcelona, Editorial Anagrama, 1977, p. 44.
[xxxviii] See, for example, Enrico BERLINGUER, “Riflessioni sull´Italia dopo i fatti del Cile [Reflections on Italy after the events in Chile]”, series of three articles: 1) “Imperialismo e coesistenza alla luce dei fatti cileni [Imperialismo e coexistence in the light of Chilean facts]”; 2) “Via democratica e violenza reazionaria [Democratic path and reactionary violence]”; 3) “Alleanze sociali e schieramenti politici [Social alliances and political coalitions”, published respectively on 28.09.1973, 05.10.1973 and 12.10.1973, in Rebirth, numbers 38, 39, 40, and available on line:http://www.sitocomunista.it/pci/documenti/berlinguer/berlinguercile.htm>, accessed on 22.01.2019; ditto, “Réflexions sur l´Italie, après les événements du Chili”, in Mariangela Bosi et Hugues Portelli (introduction, translation et notes), Les PC Espagnol, Français et Italien face au Pouvoir, Paris, Christian Bourgois, 1976.
[xxxix] On the date, “late 1973-early 1974”, when work on the script began by Pasolini, alongside Pupi Avati and Sergio Citti, see Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, Salò ou les 120 Journées de Sodome/ by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Chatou, La Transparence/ Cinéphilie, 2012, p. 114. I must emphasize that Laurencin's information is purely factual, without establishing any correlation with other facts. The responsibility for the hypothetical opposition that I suggested, between the argument of the film and the facts described above and below, is mine alone.
[xl] Pasolini's pessimistic judgment about the triumph of the “right-wing revolution” and the victory of Capital led him to see the 1968 revolt – as the twilight of an era and its hopes – and in that sense he stated: “Today it is clear that all this was the product of despair and an unconscious feeling of powerlessness. At a time when a new form of civilization was being outlined in Europe and a long future of 'development' programmed by Capital – which thus carried out in its own internal revolution, the revolution of Applied Science (…) it was felt that any hope of a workers' Revolution was getting lost. That is why the word Revolution was shouted so much”. Cf. PP PASOLINI, “Marzo 1974. Gli intellettuali…”, on. cit., P. 36; ditto, “The intellectuals…”, on. cit., pp. 57-8.
[xi] As a corollary of this logic, see Enrico Berlinguer, Austerità, Occasione Per Trasformare L'italia: Le Conclusioni Al Convegno Degli Intellettuali (Rome, 15.01.77) and Alla Assemblea Degli Operai Comunisti (Milano, 30.01.77). Roma, editori Riuniti, 1977.
[xliii] As early as March 1974, that is, about five months after Berlinguer's aforementioned propositional texts, Pasolini stated that the historic commitment presented itself as "help to men in power to maintain order" Cf. PP Pasolini, “Marzo 1974. Gli intellettuali…”, on. cit., P. 37; ditto, “The intellectuals…”, on. cit., P. 59.
[xiii] Pasolini insistently denounced the leaders of the Christian Democracy in six burning texts, published over the course of just one month (28.08 to 28.09.1975) in various newspapers and magazines – about a month before his assassination (02.11.1975). See idem, « Le Procès [The Process] » (Corriere della Sera, 24.08.1975), in idem, Letters…, op. cit., pp.135-46; ditto, « Il faudrait juger les hiérarques de la DC [It would be necessary to judge the hierarchs of DC] » (The world, 28.08.1975), in idem, Letters…, op. cit., pp.125-33; ditto, « Réponses [Answers] » (Corriere della Sera, 09.09.1975), in idem, Letters…, op. cit., pp.147-54; ditto, « Votre interview confirme que le Procès est nécessaire [Your interview confirms that the Process is necessary] » (The world, 11.09.1975) in idem, Letters…, op. cit., pp.155-62; ditto, « Il faut intenter un Procès à Donat Cattin aussi [It is also necessary to process Donat Cattin] » (Corriere della Sera, 19.09.1975), in idem, Letters…, op. cit., pp.163-70; ditto, « Pourquoi le Procès [Why the Process] » (Corriere della Sera, 28.09.1975), in idem, Letters…, op. cit., pp. 171-8.
[xiv] Who highlighted the leadership of the PCI in the new strategy was the secretary general of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), Santiago Carrillo (1915-2012): “Togliatti knew how to touch the critical point: the problem was in the political system (the problem was in the political system). (…) Since the Eighth Congress of the PCI, an autonomous line has already been outlined, which Togliatti made explicit in one way or another at the 1969 World Conference (…) an autonomous line that later asserted itself under the direction of Luigi Longo [1900-80] and which culminated in the conception of the 'historic compromise' with Berlinguer” (author's italics). Cf. Santiago CARRILLO, “Eurocommunism” and the State, Barcelona, Editorial Crítica, 1977, pp.142-3. For testimonials from the PCI men themselves, see G. Amendola, P. Ingrao, L. Magri, A. Reichlin, B. Trentin (entretiens avec/ recueillis et presentés par Henri Weber), Le Parti Communiste Italien: aux Sources de “l'Eurocommunisme”, Paris, Christian Bourgois, 1977. For Weber's sharp critical analysis, which precedes the interviews, see pp. 7-68. For the function of containment of the labor movement exercised by the PCI, in Weber's judgment, see below note 58.
[xlv] The so-called “Eurocommunism” gained a public name from a joint meeting of the general secretaries of the PCI, Berlinguer, and of the PCE, Carrillo, in July 1975 in Livorno, the city of origin of the PCI.
[xlv] For a summary of the “Eurocommunist” program, see Santiago CARRILLO, “Eurocommunism” and the State, Barcelona, Editorial Crítica, 1977, pp. 134-43; on questions of economics in particular, see the beginning of Chapter 4 “El Modelo de Socialismo Democratico [The Model of Democratic Socialism]”, p. 99; on political issues, see the beginning of Chapter 5 “Las raíces Históricos del 'Eurocomunismo [The Historical Roots of Eurocommunism]'”, p. 141; on the discussion of the role of foreign capital, see the beginning of the sub-chapter, “La influenza del envio sobre nuestro proceso [The influence of the environment on our process], pp. 134-5.
[xlv] The Valencian novelist Rafael Chirbes (1949), one of the most authoritative voices on the period, summarized the plot that was called the Transition: “Franco died in bed and the Spanish parties of the Transition were assembled from abroad, with agents and money from abroad. . They did not result from an uncontained democratic wave, triggered by the will of the Spanish people”. Cf. R. CHIRBES, “Franco died in bed and the parties of the transition staged themselves from the outside. Interview [Franco died in bed and the transition parties were assembled from the outside. Interview]" (worker world, April 24, 2013), republished in Sinpermiso and available on line:http://www.sinpermiso.info/textos/franco-se-muri-en-la-cama-y-los-partidos-de-la-transicin-los-montaron-desde-el-exterior-entrevista>, 30/06/2013, accessed on 22.01.2019. See also on the Transition as a plot, its plot and the internal acts of Francoism, the role of Fernandez de Miranda and the complicity of Santiago Carrillo, the investigative report by Gregorio Morán to Antonio YELO, “The priests of the Transición were absolutely impresentables. Interview [The Transition parents were absolutely unpresentable. Interview]” (Jot down, December 2013), republished in Sinpermiso and available on line: , 7, accessed on 05.01.2014; see also the testimony of former general secretary of the PCE (22.01.2019-1982) Gerardo Iglesias (8), member of the CC of the PCE during the Transition, to Alvaro Corazon RURAL, “We are marching a gigantic step a la frontera de lo que fue the Francoism. Interview [We are taking big steps towards the frontier of what Francoism was]” (Jot down, December 2013), republished in Sinpermiso and available on line: , 29.12.2013, accessed on 22.01.2019.
[xlviii] The advice, since October 1972 at least, of the Harvard political scientist and specialist in counterinsurgency, Samuel Huntington (1927-2008), to the Brazilian dictatorship, first together with Minister Leitão de Abreu (1913-1992), of the Medici government ( 1969-74), and later together with General Golbery (1911-1987), minister of the Geisel government (1974-79), suggests, by default and in one way or another, a comparative reading, sometimes parallelisms and anticipations, sometimes retaken that perhaps are not, after all, mere coincidences, but signs of a basic strategic draft, assembled elsewhere, as suggested by Rafael Chirbes (see note above), for a negotiated exit – and mainly above the streets – of dictatorial regimes. See Samuel HUNTINGTON, 'Approaches to political decompression', 1973, available at: http://arquivosdaditadura.com.br/documento/galeria/receita-samuel-huntington#pagina-1. See also about his advice to the next government, idem, 'Letter to General Golbery do Couto e Silva' [Letter to the General….], 28.02.1974, available at: http://arquivosdaditadura.com.br/documento/ gallery/samuel-huntington-recipe#page-17>. Later, as an adviser to the Carter administration, Huntington boasted of the role he played in Brazil. See ditto, American Political Science Review [1988], Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(01), March, pp. 3-10.
[xlix] On the first fact, see: 1) Discurso de Franco, in “1969 Discurso de Navidad de Francisco Franco: Todo Está Atado y Bien Atado. Rey Juan Carlos [1969 Francisco Franco's Christmas Speech: Everything Is Tied and Tied Well. King Juan Carlos]”, in Retroclips, 1969/2014, available on line:www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUfI18rCZPM>, accessed on 22.01.2019; 2) “Juan Carlos I: oath and memory of Franco [Juan Carlos I: oath and memory of Franco (22-11-1975)”, in Country and politics of Spain, available on line:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhj6SaEy4sQ>, accessed on, 22.01.2019. On the second memory see: “Los Pactos de la Moncloa [The Pacts of the Moncloa]” (October 25, 1977), in
Jesús Fernández, available on line:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ok34307QQ>, accessed on 22.01.2019.
[l] See Anonymous, “Editorial Note,” in AG FRANK, Capitalism…, op. cit., pp. 6-7.
[li] By proposing “national reconciliation”, the call was addressed to “the leading business sector of the new industrial society (…), for which the continuity of the Regime would curb its possibilities for development and modernization”. And further on, he stated: “Spanish society wants everything to change so that it can be assured, without shocks or social upheavals (…) the continuity of the State requires (…) the non-continuity of the Regime”. The document entitled “Declaración de la Junta Democrática de España [Declaration of the Democratic Board of Spain]” was officially presented by Santiago Carrillo and Rafael Calvo Serer (1916-1988) in Paris, in day 29 July de 1974. Subsequently, the proposal would incorporate the Work Party of Spain (PTE), the Carlist Party carried in Bolivia by Charles Hugo of Bourbon-Parma (1930-2010), the Popular Socialist Party (PSP) from Enrique Tierno Galvan (1918-1986) and Raul Morodo (1935), a Socialist Alliance of Andalucía, the union Workers Commissions (CCOO), the association of lawyers Democratic Justice and a series of notables, such as the intellectual José Vidal Beneyto (1927-2010) and the aristocrat and actor José Luis de Vilallonga (1920-2007).
[liiii] On De Gaulle's disappearance from the palace, leaving what was left of the government stunned, and on his consultations in the different barracks, see Daniel SINGER, “How not to seize power (May 27 – May 31) [Como not take power ( May 27th – May 31st)]” in idem, Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968, Chicago, Haymarket Books, 2013, pp. 186-205.
[iii] See idem, “The workers take over (May 14 – May 27),” in idem, pp. 14-27.
[book] “Being the bearer of national and republican legitimacy, I have considered in the last twenty-four hours [that is, in the time spent in consultation in the different barracks, including that of the French forces stationed in Baden-Baden (Germany)], without exception , all the eventualities that would allow me to preserve it (…) If then, this situation of strength is maintained, I will have to take, according to the Constitution and to maintain the Republic, ways other than those of the immediate (proposed) scrutiny of the country [ whose call for June had already been launched, 6 days before, on 24.05, without effect, however, to calm hostilities] [ (...) Si donc, cette situation de force se maintient, je devrais pour maintenir la République prendre, conformément à la Constituition, d´autres voies que le scrutin immediat du pays]. » See Charles de Gaulle, “Allocution radiodiffusé, 30 May 1968 [Radio address, 30 May 1968]” transcript available on line: , accessed on 2017/03/3; available in audio on line: , accessed on 00366.
[lv] Although little remembered by liberal ideologues, as it concretely contradicts the proclaimed universalism of rights in the scenic order of bourgeois democracy, the use of national armed forces to repress workers' protests was a decisive and recurrent factor in France in the 1834th century, starting with by the massacre of the workers' insurrection of 1848, in Lyon, passing through the mass summary shooting of June 21, in the Tuileries, etc., not to mention the culmination, the so-called Bloody Week (28.05.1871 – 1944) which ended the experience of the Commune. The formation in 1947 of the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) [Republican Security Forces], launched as early as XNUMX against striking miners and railroad workers (many of whom still had Resistance weapons in their hands), did not escape this rule.
[lv] See Paul Dwyer, “The Plot Against Harold Wilson, BBC 2006”, in Mark Knight, 90', UK, BBC, 2006, available at: , accessed on 3. An observation by Gunder Frank, during a conference in Papua New Guinea in 7 – which took place shortly before Wilson's hushed denunciation – shows that the possibility had become a current theme in the British press of the period: “(...) there will simply be a military coup that will impose a “2” directly, without going through a long and extensive process. In England, this perspective is already being discussed in the press”. For the Orwellian metaphor and the mention of the coup, which serves as an example of Gunder Frank's reasoning, see note 22.01.2019 below. Cf. AG FRANK, “Economic crisis…”, on. cit., P. 55.
[lviii] On a possible conspiracy within the English Conservative Party against the leadership of Edward Heath (1916-2005), orchestrated in favor of the rise of Margaret Thatcher, and which involved the British forces occupying Ireland, see the fictional plot – but openly alluding to real facts – from the film by Ken Loach, Hidden Agenda, England, Hemdale Film Corporation/Initial (II), 1990, 108'.
[lviii] Cf. PP PASOLINI, “Marzo 1974. Gli intellettuali…”, op. cit., p. 37; ditto, “The intellectuals…”, on. cit., P. 59. See also note 42 above. It is worth noting that, although without any political kinship or sign of contact with Pasolini, the investigation into the role played by the PCI in the formation of “Eurocommunism”, carried out by the future deputy and senator of the French Socialist Party – the then professor Henri Weber (1944- 2020, Université de Paris-VIII), at that time a member of the Trotskyist Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) –, shared similar traits to Pasolini's conclusion regarding his analysis of the party. Thus, Weber stated: “On two occasions at least, in 1968-1969 and in 1975-1976, this pre-revolutionary situation condensed into an acute crisis, susceptible of deepening into a situation of dual power (...) and in another, the PCI put all its political power at the service of stabilizing the system. Following the example of pre-1914 German social democracy, it simultaneously offered a framework of expression and national centralization to the rise of workers (...) and channeled that rise towards the ends of rationalizing the established order”. Cf. Henri WEBER, “Introduction,” in G. Amendola et al., on. cit., pp. 25-6.
[lix] See Anonymous, “Editorial Note,” in AG FRANK, Capitalism…, op. cit., pp. 6-7.
[lx] See the lurid images of Carlos MENDOZA, in "Tlatelolco Las Claves de la Masacre. Mexico 1968"in Mr Azhar, documentary, Mexico, Canal 6 de Julio/ La Jornada, 2003, 58′, available on line: , accessed on 1.