The Reforma

I am somewhat coincidentally reading a chapter about a period in history ( Mexico's) that is relevant to the last thread. Many serious interlocutors on this blog and elsewhere sense a convergence of forces that will lead to accelerated change. Reform. rupture, revolt, just as in the late 80s in the Soviet Union, or Latin America more recently no one gets to know and few can predict accurately.

Triumphs and Tragedy by Ramon Eduardo Ruiz describes the Reform struggles of the 1850's beginning with ideology : "For Mexican Liberals, the capitalist blueprints ( witnessing the Industrial Revolution of Europe and U.S.) had the bewitchery of patristic articles of faith.One of the most conspicuous features of this bunch of copycats was the way it mesmerized itself, 'like a rabbit practicing self-hypnosis in the absence of a stoat.' That left just one option: to echo the Western model, to copy it's institutions and,above everything,embrace it's values...." basically,competitive enterprise; buying cheaply,paying labor poorly and selling dearly.

This middle-class revolt against the Catholic Church and it's Conservative supporters replicated bourgeois movements in Europe and elsewhere with roots in Bourbon reforms and the independence struggle with Spain.But by the 1850's "Mexico stagnated and wallowed in despair. With a mixture of resignation and fatalism,Mexicans had come to believe that in politics there were onlycrooks and knaves.They spoke harshly of their neighbors, accepting as truth whatever malicious tale was said of them.No one trusted anyone..." Sound familiar?

So what might then be the "verdict of history" on Mexico and its process of development? What should we look to in order to judge whether it is retarded, advanced, humane, brutal? What "verdict" might we deliver on Gorbachevs attempts at pluralist democratization or Chinas evolution toward State capitalism and liberal reforms? What "verdict" will come down from on high as to the Wests headlong rush into post-industrial late capitalism?

It is of course an absurd question because history is a fluid, continuous process of unfolding and any judgement rendered today can be made ridiculous at any moment tomorrow. Nothing is settled. A "verdict" would suggest Mexicans were just destined to provide labor and raw materials to various Empires or that Chinese hierarchical authority combined with private investment and loyal subjects creates a miraculous political-economy or liberalizing a State bureaucratic autocracy into democratic socialism can never succeed because people ( Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia) will demand all their freedom at once.None of these were inevitable nor do we know how it will end.