Interview by Hugo Parra Munoz, Doctoral Student, School of Education University of Bristol (Long read)
Picture 1. Dr Carlos Ruiz Encina during the interview. After a week from the interview, Professor Ruiz Encina has been nominated by prominent politicians and social activists to be a candidate for elaborating the new Chilean constitution.
Exciting changes are coming from the South of Latin America. We have a conversation with Dr Carlos Ruiz Encina. His book The politics in neoliberalism, experiences from Latin America (2019, LOM) remarks his in-depth revision of the current social context in that part of the globe. While, his last book, Chilean October: the emergence of a new people (2020, Taurus), addresses the crisis of neoliberal subjects depicted by the Chilean current social uprising. Dr Ruiz-Encina’s works in the Latin American Studies Programme and the Social Sciences Doctoral Programme at the Universidad de Chile, along with his participation in Fundacion Nodo XXI, transform him in one of the most interesting critic scholars of the region. The conversation is realised in the eve of the Chilean referendum for changing the constitution. The referendum has brought together international interest, since it could represent the end of the neoliberal experimentation in Chile. Neoliberalism was born in Chile, could it die there; and what this entails for the educative system?
Hugo Parra Munoz (HPM): We are upon a day that could be another milestone in Chilean history. However, at the same time critic scholars, such as Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, and Naomi Klein expressed their engagement on what is in play in the tomorrow-constitutional referendum[i]. How, from this side of the Pond, we could understand the trajectories that flow into the Chilean process?
Carlos Ruiz Encina (CRE): Following Enzo Faletto’s (1935-2003; a Chilean sociologist) ideas, I open the dialogue between sociology and history, a discussion which is not usual. You cannot understand Chile if you do not observe it from Latin America and its history. With Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990) it was created a sort of epistemic barrier, as if Los Andes mountain chain separates us from the rest of the knowledge produced in the region. Chile was isolated, and it has been thought from that epistemic insularity. That is the reason why I compare the Chilean neoliberal experience with the Latin American neoliberal experiences. To understand its process, I attempt to adopt a Weberian perspective of typologies; the school of Dependency and Development has constituted those categories. However, I assume a view closer to Gramsci, in the sense of thinking how different dominant historical blocs and scaffoldings generate further variants of capitalist development. From that perspective, one could observe that it is not coincidental that Brazilian issues differ from the difficulties that we have in Chile. Brazil had a national Bourgeoisie defending specific control over the banking and it did not relinquish all the national wealth and resources. Brazilians looked for a deal, an agreement, they called it liberal developism. Conversely, in Chile, we have a country of enclaves, where technocrats which privatised became into the people who appropriated the wealth of the country. In this vein, the Chilean process is an inversion of that social course of action. I conceive it as a robust procedure of constituting particular social classes, in my book with Giorgio Boccardo (Chileans under neoliberalism, 2014, Nodo XXI) we addressed how during the neoliberal trajectory the features of the Chilean social classes have mutated under neoliberalism. This approach determines my perspective on the current conflict; it steered me to the comprehension that it exists a profound transformation expressed in this social uprising. I suggest that we are experiencing changes in the classes structure, a mutation which explode, it is making that new social geography expresses, and the left is not capable of apprehending that novel geography. The left and the critic scholars are still speaking to the people of the XX century. They are, even now, thinking and talking to the old social bases of supporting political projects.
Picture 2. Illustration by Alen Lauzan, originally published at GuionBajo. It represents the social uprising in Chile and the ballpoint pens used in the constitutional referendum on 25 October 2020.
HPM: What are you saying about social scientists reminds me Hugo Zemelman’s (a Chilean-Mexican critic epistemologist) words. Notably, when he stressed the idea that critic-social scientists did not understand the subjectivity of Chilean people in the Coup d’Etat (1973). They were waiting for the people’s uprising against the Bourgeois’ reaction, a defence that never came. He attributed that distance, of the analysis from what finally occurred, to the fact that social scientists were positioning theories upon the study of reality, the analysis of real subjects. In this line, to continue with your critic stance. Concerning this rupture with the epistemological barrier, it is interesting to analyse your ideas regarding the contributions of Latin American experiences to rethink neoliberalism.
CRE: This is inherent to historians. They are always attacking us, the sociologists, with these ideas of applying theories to reality. They accuse us of speaking more about views than reality. Indeed, they laugh on us saying that in the case when the reality does not fit with the theory, we cut reality until to work with the ideas.
Here I defend the particularity of the Chilean case; it generates a situation that I have named advanced neoliberalism. Chile is the pioneer in the instalment of neoliberalism; it was not installed with the Washington Consensus. A contrary, when the Consensus is produced in its two formulations, around 1988-1989, in Chile neoliberalism was working by 15 years! Indeed, some scholars have conceived the Consensus as the systematisation of the Chilean process. From that perspective it emerges a consideration that one might be aware of the trajectory of neoliberalism in Latin America. Chileans have the most re-foundational dictatorship in Latin America. Although it is true, the coactive dimension and the disarticulation of old socio-political subjects, of the national-popular period, are common to all dictatorships in the region. However, capitalist reformulation is not a shared component. In this line, Chilean neoliberal trajectory requires a specific revision. Until 1975 the military Junta (board of government), expressed their intentions of following the Brazilian dictatorship economic model. As I mentioned, Brazilians insisted on seeking a type of development, which did not possess the distributive component. Still, it counts with the feature of intense state industrialisation. With the particularity of the military authority. Thus, Brazilian miracle appears inspired by the old model, but without its inherent distributive elements.
Conversely, Chilean dictatorship left that perspective in 1975. On the other hand, the Argentinian initial rejection of the neoliberal ideas was caused by the fact that they had a Bourgeoisie that was not arranged to cede the national control regarding specific resources. Whereas in Chile, all the system of protection related to the national resources was dismantled. This vulnerability implies the necessities for sociologically analysing the different variants of neoliberalisms generated. If we start from that ground, it emerges other issue which suggests new questions, and the point is: the neoliberal turn is installed in the rest of Latin America in the 1990 decade. It was with Carlos Menem’s administration in Argentina (1989-1999); with Alberto Fujimori in Peru (1990-2000). It was during the presidencies of Fernando Cardozo in Brazil (1995-2002), and Carlos Salinas de Gortari in Mexico (1988-1994); in Chile it began in 1975. All of these periods were democratic governments, in Chile it was under dictatorship. Thus, in the rest of Latin America, there exist a relationship between neoliberalism and democracy, rather structural change and democracy. This element might be thought in terms of the character of the democracies in Latin America.
Conversely to that scenario, Chile had a transition which did not have to review the structural transformation. From this perspective, the comprehension of social conflicts is reduced, as Norbert Lechner emphasises, to a procedural dimension of the politics, to a retrieving of political Rights; but, not a retrieving of social Rights, which have been violated. This trajectory is what is ending in the current outburst in Chile. The political sphere in Chile is opaque.
HPM: In which sense you conceive it opaque, how does the social conflicts reduction operate?
CRE: In the rest of Latin America, the transit to democracy was different. All their social movements that were projected to the political sphere became into political parties; such as the Brazilian Partido dos Trabalhadores (tr. workers’ party), or complicate the Uruguayan Frente Amplio (tr. Broad Front), the Bolivian Movement to Socialism (MAS). Indeed, even Hugo Chavez’s process in early 1990 in Venezuela. All these movements began to constitute political expressions which struggle with the neoliberal transformations. With this, I suggest that the standard rule for Latin America is: the neoliberal transformation is zigzagging, with advances and retreats; a massive political crisis accompanied it. In that period, the majority of civic and democratic elected governments did not finish their mandates; they were relieved of the position of the government. In those years Argentinians had three different administrations, in a lapse of ten days! Equator was a madness. Mexico suffered a crisis and subsisted under the decline of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Meanwhile, in Chile, we had cyclic stability; every government began and finished their periods; this aspect brought the idea of the current president, Sebastian Pinera, about the Chilean oasis. We had more stable neoliberalism, that is the specificity of the Chilean case. Neither in Brazil or Argentina can conceive the levels of privatisation and commodification of social life reproduction reached in Chile.
HPM: You have mentioned that Chile was a pioneer in adopting neoliberalism as the basis of its State formation, creating with these changes in how we might consider the social structure. Could you explain that idea of new social geography and what it entails?
CRE: Chilean society has become in a large laboratory. In this line, we can observe new neoliberalism of almost half a century. It provides the conditions for examining the advanced and critic state of the neoliberal contradictions, along with the possibilities for analysing the subjects who produce this pole state of those contradictions. Subjects who are still formulating particular protecting defences, they are still resisting. The nomad worker falls in the rate of Laboral rotation; they do not have places in unions; those forms of organisations do not represent them. The nomad workers of this half-century-neoliberalism are not more related to the old-fashioned modes of identities associated with the profession. This process commences suggesting new social geography. Chile has been a laboratory, the neoliberal experiment –with a high human cost– entails not only the revision of neoliberalism. It implies the rethinking of the possibilities and necessities for updating or correcting the emancipatory horizons. In this vein, my last book, concerning the Chilean uprising in October 2019, suggests that issue. We must resolve the equation between equality and freedom, in a different way than how the emancipatory horizons of the XX century fixed it. The explosion of this advanced neoliberalism in Chile offers the individuals commercial freedom; but, it takes this promise and carries it out further. It became in the overflowing of the economic sphere; in this, it is interpellating to the left and critic scholars. The new social geographies and the advanced forms of neoliberalism suggest a complexity that might be conceived as transcendent in historical terms. Thereby, it is a historical process which is not inevitable.
Picture 3. Chileans massively voting in the constitutional referendum at the Embassy in London the last 25 October. Photography courtesy of Jose Fourt.
HPM: Bringing the conversation to the educative space. You have posited the understanding of two waves of privatisations, one standard for the Latin American countries, constituted by the liberalisation of industries, such as airlines, telecommunications, etc. And a second wave where the essential services and national resources have been privatised. You also stressed the idea of the second wave ferocity in the Chilean case; which became, in your words, in the configuration of a “public service capitalism”. Now, following your ideas and thinking in this capitalism of the educative service and considering the particularities of Chile –densely populated territories in urban centres, where the enrolment in the public sector is low and in constant dip, while in the periphery (rural context, small towns, etc.) the public school has a strong presence in the enrolment–. How does this “public service capitalism” attend to and consider those differences of realities or how does this Advanced neoliberal State take the responsibility of national public education?
CRE: The issue of resolving that complexity is not a matter of interest to this public service capitalism. The eagerness for profit has captured the State. It is no coincidence that where perspectives of profit do not appear, capitalism does not take attention; such as the case of rural areas. Chilean social-democrats governments must assume the responsibility of this disinterest and dismantling of the public apparatuses. Until 1990, basically and in broad terms, we have a 60% of enrolment in public educative institutions, and the rest 40% in private offerors (subsidised and non-subsidised). There is a remaining 8% of enrolment in elitist private institutions, but they are not relevant for this analysis. The problem that we might study is, achieving the democracy in Chile began a process of inversion of this 60%-40% relationship. Those levels of privatisation were reached in 2006 during the secondary students’ revolution. For this reason, the current popular claims regarding the 30 years of democratic governments are so significant to me. Those claims point to the deepening of neoliberalism in Chile during the democratic period. A period where the capitalist relationships were deepening in the areas of individuals’ reproduction, it achieves limits not ever dreamt by the dictatorship, under this mode of capitalism of public service, the State is intervening in the political production of the inequalities, not only is an economic intervention. It was created a political monopolisation of the opportunities, an oligopolysation that indeed feels threatened by the competition.
The level of the State’s capture for politically producing the concentration of the incomes is enormous and brutal, and this is also applicable to the educative system. The proliferation of private offerors in Higher Education goes berserk the issues associated with educative quality. You have to consider that, before the pandemic, in Chile the 10.5% of the total population is attending to Higher Education, if you put that rate in Brazil or any country would be a madness! This situation happened in Chile due to the profit scheme was installed brutally. Large transnational educative corporations disembarked in Chile, such as Laureate, which controls four universities in Chile, each one oriented to different segments of the society. The misunderstood “free-of-charge” [Chilean State has created a sort of voucher system], used by the lowest quintiles for accessing Higher Education, ended subsidising the educative demand. At the same time, it is not operating a reconstruction of the old public university, which was centred in the public interests. Instead of this, it favours the proliferation of private institutions. Education became in an area of accumulation, and universities became in a zone for the reproduction of capital. They were politically protected, creating a space where any invisible hand can operate. Conversely, with students demonstrations and when this protecting political circle began to be threatened by social movements in the ongoing uprising, Laureate group decided to leave Chile, foreseeing the end of the profit in education.
The public school system has profoundly deteriorated. Enclosed in the decentralised structures of the state, created during the dictatorship, which cede the administration to local municipalities. Only maintain specific levels of quality in those districts with higher incomes. This learning crisis forces the families to abandon the public system. The problem resides in the fact that left does not understand those subjects, the left considers them as individualist; without contemplating that are areas of society that have been discarded, abandoned to the disaster of the public schools. Indeed, some of those schools have metal detectors in their entrances. There are areas where the State does not reach, without hospitals, schools, banks, and even police stations. I will utilise a rough Bauman’s concept; the neoliberal State has determined those sectors as wasted lives. To this type of capitalism, these zones of society are not part of its interest due to they are not profitable; it is concentrated in the prosperous areas.
HPM: Therefore, you are suggesting a critic mutation of the educative purposes, in terms of the narrative associated with progress and development, in national scale; but, more significant in individuals levels. How do you explain this
CRE: Educative system is producing a new type of professional. A system forced to the massification and its marketisation. I conceive those emerged universities as a sort of McDonald’s Universities, they look for duplicate and triple their enrolment. Gramscian speaking, one could say the moral and intellectual orientation of the educative training has changed. We are witnessing the configuration of a new type of domination which rules the curricular design for training a professional who hardly we could nominate as middle class. Also, this could be a factor for explaining the failure of the neoliberal narrative of success. Since the subjects who got into the game still are bearers of cultural expectative associated with the professional training. Expectations which are linked to the imaginary of 50 years ago; they are the image of workers, as public servers, as an owner of a significant socio-cultural position in the political system, with a robust Laboral certitude which allow the projection of their life. A contrary, the educative system has trained an individual for a completely different context. The individual is a nomad worker in an internally stratify system –where, formerly, we have a homogeneous layer with a high rate of self-recruitment–, now we observe an unstable individual. Furthermore, this subject drags a heavy backpack, the cost of education which reaches levels similar to initiate the Laboral life with a mortgage as a debt. It is false that neoliberalism created a new middle class, only it destroyed the old ones.
HPM: There is an exciting element that appears in your words, associated with the position of the public University. The ongoing Chilean uprising marks a mutation within the universities, in so far territories for revising and reflecting the history, present; and where the country’s future is forged; a sense that seems to be abandoned. The assemblies on the streets and squares now occupy its position; those spaces emerged as territories for social self-convene and the reformulation of parameters and categories. In this vein, what occurred with the public universities’ raison d’ etre?
CRE: First, I address the subject of the university, but it underlies a more significant issue related to the decline of the public subject. The individuals trained on those mentioned institutions constitute a society which interpellates the universities. They question the understanding of Higher Education as the delivery of instrumental skills for the production, with the purpose of those trained subjects could defend their projects of mobility. It is a tension which shakes the educative structures in Bourdieu’s sense of how those subjects are re-connected to the public sphere, which is not a state one. The meaning of “public” is crossing a resignification, it is broadening its definition, and it is utterly changing the matters of the social agenda. Thereby, the universities are being stressed and accelerated by that broadening of the meaning of non-State-public in society. This feature is behind the scenes. It is represented by the ideological conflict of State and market, a match which in specific ways was comprehended as the struggles between equality and freedom. The overflowing of this meaning of “public” entails a resignification between the private and the public spheres.
[i] The Referendum was realised on 25 October 2020, after a massive participation of Chilean population the result was an overwhelming victory for changing the neoliberal constitution (78.27% against 21,73%). Uncannily, the option for maintaining the neoliberal constitution only won on the most elitist districts of the country.
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