Among the revolutions? The conservative ones
By: Luis Beltrán Guerra G. - 13/10/2024
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Humanity has been searching for rational criteria regarding “the right” and “the left” for a long time, and it can be said that to date the diatribes have been in a kind of “up and down”, but they do not end. Rather, they continue and even with a disdainful sense, since the “rightist” believes that he is more even-handed than the “leftist”, whom he describes as an “uncoupled communist” and the latter calls the former “bourgeois, rich and reactionary”. But there is also reference to “democrats of the right and left”, categories looking more towards “socialism”, defined as “a system of social and economic organization based on collective or state ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods”. But let us keep in mind that, as far as “nomenclature” is concerned, human creativity is and has been intensely dynamic, so the variability of grammatical forms exceeds traditional denominations, at least, the trilogy that we try to learn in the first years of school: “subject, verb and predicate.”
In these terms, Professor Juan Martínez begins his class at the “Socialism of Christ” Chair of the Sao Paulo Forum. The place, the University of Pinar del Rio, in Cuba. He graduated with a degree in sociology from the Bolivarian University of Caracas. But he tried to get a doctorate from the Javeriana University of Colombia, without success. He is the author of the book What is progressivism?, which unfortunately has not sold as he had imagined. The professor, affected by his false expectations, used to repeat the pages of his work almost by heart. Such were his lessons, until his wife, the Chilean Julieta Sepúlveda took over the position by order of the university authorities, becoming the head of the chair.
The professor, with a pretty face, good height and attractive body, begins her 5-hour session from 7 to 11 in the morning and from Monday to Saturday, as agreed with the university, interested in the seriousness of the quality of the teaching she offered. Good morning, respected students, here I am, having assumed the commitment of my husband, unfortunately, clinging to traditional analysis of the world. We are of a different style, disdainfully opening and closing the book “What is progressivism” by Juan Martinez, which she ironically places in the bag she has destined for academic material. And she adds “the analysis of the cited text closed and hidden because it is old, let us turn to the “aggiornamento”. Agreed? Go ahead! It is heard clearly, optimistically and as if in a single voice in the classroom.
The prestigious academic Daniel Bell, a professor at Harvard, says the academic, wrote “The End of Ideology”, a statement formulated by Francis Fukuyama, a scholar at prestigious universities in the USA. The message: 1. History must be conceived as an evolutionary process, 2. Throughout the years history must reveal a result, positive or negative, 3. In Fukuyama's opinion, at the time he wrote his essay, “liberal democracy” had become the most appropriate regime to govern, at least with respect to a majority of countries. That's how you teach a class! you can hear at least half a dozen students say it almost in unison.
Let us ask ourselves, then, dear disciples, about the rationality of the prestigious Francis Fukuyama's assessment of "an end to the ideological evolution of the world. But, furthermore, based on what criteria?" Analysts are more inclined to maintain that "ideologies" are alive and kicking and that from time to time we resort to "glottology" in search of a new expression. I promise that in these lessons you will emerge knowledgeable on the subject.
For us, and I have studied it in depth, Fukuyama's approach "limits our exhortative capacity to provoke, to shake and test convictions and the end in relation to the debate of ideas." And in the same sense the assertion "We were reaching the "final point of our ideological evolution," an appreciation, in principle, at least contradictory with the very meaning of the word "ideology," for grammar "Set of fundamental ideas that characterize the thought of a person, collectivity or era, of a cultural, religious or political movement, etc. (Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy)". The circumstance, emphasizes Professor Julieta Sepúlveda, is still a serious error, at least, in my opinion. She does so with the Chilean accent that she still retained, despite having lived in California to get her doctorate in Berkeley and marrying a Venezuelan. More than once she had gone to dictionaries in an attempt to identify the reason for her marriage, confirming that it must be selected with pragmatism in terms of categorization, namely: 1. Close friend, inseparable companion, 2. Person of low social status, marginalized, and 3. Stupid or of little understanding. Her desire to ask Francis Fukuyama about the “end of ideologies” increased. And each time she closed the encyclopedia more quickly, falling into despair, because she did not understand the reasons why in her love for Juan Martínez she had stopped only at the first linguistic meaning, that is, that of “close friend and inseparable companion,” discarding the rest. Perhaps it would be decisive for the advancement of peoples that married and single people are not in the other two categories. She does not stop smiling.
“The universalization of Western liberal democracy” for Francis Fukuyama, in the opinion of the Professor of the Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences of the University of Chile, Carlos E. Miranda, constituted the consolidation of a political system, based on freedom, an assessment that is evidently true, but impregnated with a deep “rhetoricism”. We do not deny, the teachers reiterate, that it was an important step, but not the end to sustain that we had arrived at the “end of history”. Evidence?, among others, countries with stable democracies, among them, the USA, one of the most. However, today with a democracy shaken by human diatribe, which feeds serious conflicts, among them, political, which from the other world must be watching “the Founding Fathers” and looking for tickets to return from the wrongs.
In countries like Spain, as we read, more than half of young people would vote for right-wing parties, and according to the Financial Times the same thing happens in the US, Germany and the United Kingdom. And Ernesto Bohoslavsky and Magdalena Broquetas mention that many politicians, intellectuals and businessmen in Latin America who had accompanied the dictatorships of the seventies and eighties, reformulated their speeches and their image, achieving a right-wing that promoted neoliberal policies supported by international credit organizations. A short pause is perceived by Professor Sepúlveda, ignored by the audience as the academic takes a breath to read the book “El constitucionalismo fundacional” by the Colombian Isidro Venegas, who states that “constitutions were conceived as a catapult, that is, a tool to propel the break with the old order.” My question for the privileged analyst Fukuyama would be if this was achieved, because our answer is “not even remotely.” In attempts "for now", some more hopeful than others, would be my final assessment regarding the assertion. Venegas has a PhD in history from the Sorbonne in Paris, warns the Chilean professor.
Let me bring up today, Saturday, our last day of classes, the reference made by Miguel Jiménez (Diario El País, Spain), a journalist based in the US capital, to “conservative revolutions,” asking himself, even ironically, about the noun (subject) and what it qualifies (the predicate), the two synthetic forms that form a sentence (DRAE). For the seasoned journalist, “The US Supreme Court begins its fourth year of conservative revolution” and continues, “the death penalty, firearms, pornography, nuclear waste and trans rights are some of the issues on the menu of a judicial course that can decide on the former president and on the elections. For Jiménez, the judges (and he repeats that they have been undertaking a conservative revolution for three years) will analyze cases related to firearms, access to pornography, the environment, trans rights and one whose mere admission says a lot about the orientation of the Court: discrimination against heterosexuals. The judges may also end up deciding on hypothetical challenges to the results of the November 5 elections. And finally, with respect to what concerns us, let us ask ourselves if the prominent journalist is right when he refers to a “conservative revolution (Oct. 06, 2024).” Is Miguel Jiménez conservative or democrat, the two typologies that have accompanied “the most stable democracy in humanity?” And it is also very interesting, if one investigates whether or not it is erroneous and even contrary to the Magna Charge, to rule that when the presidents of the United States enjoy “impunity,” in light of the analysis of the journalist Jiménez, “non-imputability” operates in their favor.
The academic Julieta Sepúlveda, who is perceived to be very satisfied, asks: What is the assessment to end these 5 days of classes? We begin again with the French Revolution and other events that scholars have added as sources of liberal democracies. And with regard to Francis Fukuyama, rather than talking about the “End of Ideologies”, he says that it would be healthy to “work more and think less”. Well, it seems necessary, even, to start from scratch.
The academic leaves with cheers from the students. She says nothing. She feels a mixture of joy and sadness.
A divorced student managed to ask him, “How is Professor Martinez?” The answer, “I support him even though we are abysmally different.” He lives like democracy, that is, “on an ups and downs.” I call him “the parrot.” He receives a hug from the student.
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