In my recent
article in Critical Sociology I explore
the role that passive revolution has played in the process of subnational state
formation in Chiapas, Mexico. The concept of passive revolution, formulated by
Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks,
has been used by a variety of
scholars to interpret different processes of national and
regional state formation. However, in this article, passive revolution is
explored in terms of its particular manifestations in Chiapas linked to what Claudio
Lomnitz calls an ‘intimate class culture’. The originality of
the argument is therefore to decentre the concept and to explore the
geographically differentiated manner that it is expressed through ‘everyday
forms of state formation’. In this short blog post, I want to
explain the meaning of the term ‘passive revolution’ and highlight why it is
important for the case of Chiapas (known to most people around the world as the
home of the Zapatistas rebel group). I conclude with the lessons we can learn
from this concept for social movement activity more broadly.
Passive
revolution was a key concept formulated by Antonio Gramsci in the context of
the Italian Risorgimento that he later came to develop as a more generalised
understanding of statecraft. It refers to instances whereby the social
relations of capitalist development are either instituted or expanded. However,
it is a contradictory process which involves both elements of revolution and rupture,
but also a restoration of class
power. Integral to the concept is that the state replaces social groups in
leading the process of renewal. Therefore, while certain gains may be achieved,
such gains ultimately serve to exclude the subaltern classes from meaningful
participation through their resulting demobilization. In contrast to Gramsci’s
more well known concept of hegemony, passive revolution refers less to the
strength of a dominant class, but rather the weakness of their adversaries in
being able to construct alternatives. Gramsci explicitly
developed the concept of passive revolution in relation to Karl Marx’s Preface
to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, declaring
that it was derived from ‘the two fundamental principles of political science:
1. that no social formation disappears as long as the productive forces which
have developed within it still find room for further forward movement. 2. that
a society does not set itself the tasks for whose solution the necessary
conditions have not already been incubated, etc.” Dwelling on the first point, ‘room
for forward movement’ is not simply about the inevitable march of the
productive forces. Rather it about what people are prepared to acquiesce to or
fail to successfully resist and overcome. The accent is therefore firmly on the
process of struggle as Peter Thomas reminds us. This leads
us to consider the case of Chiapas.
Chiapas
famously came to the world’s attention on January 1st 1994 when a
masked, indigenous rebel army rose up to contest the terms of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Taking their name from the hero of the
Mexican Revolution, Emiliano Zapata, the modern day Zapatistas claimed the
government had betrayed the legacy of the Revolution and sought to salvage the
cry for land and liberty in the context of privatization and authoritarianism.
In order to demonstrate how this revolutionary legacy went unrealised in
Chiapas I explore the changing contours of the state post-Revolution, notably
in relation to issues of land and labour.
The
years 1910–17 saw Mexico gripped by revolution. Driven by peasants and workers,
the old oligarchic state of Porfirio Díaz was destroyed. Ultimately, however,
the radical demands of some sections of the peasantry went unrealized, and
instead the Revolution served as a key transformative moment that helped propel
the growth of capitalism within the country (as I document elsewhere).
Chiapas did not play a prominent role in the national Revolution as the
peasantry there remained too weak and spatially isolated. Instead, they were
mistreated by both sides during the upheavals. Whilst the initial fire of the
Mexican Revolution had failed to spread to Chiapas, the Revolution’s
‘institutional’ phase led by Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40) did begin the process of
transforming socio-spatial relations in the region. Cardenismo, however, was a
double-edged sword for the indigenous population, as, while giving them limited
land redistribution, it also tied them further to the state’s corporatist control
and reduced their autonomy. Crucially, land reform was conducted in a manner
that did not adversely affect large land holdings, but did provide land for
some communities thereby serving to quell emergent radical demands. By 1950,
47% of land formerly held as fincas had been transformed into ejidal property
(a collective form of property over which peasant had usufruct rights but which
was ultimately state owned). However, as was frequently the case nationally,
this was done in a manner in which landowners retained power. Far from leading
to the straightforward modernization of the region, it confirmed the existence
of old forms of authority, while also leading to extensive capital investment
in things like cattle ranching, the incipient development of an industrial
sector and the continuation of the export economy, most notably in coffee. In
this manner, despite apparent agrarian reform, the landowning class still
retained their economic dominance whilst the limited land base of peasant
communities served to necessitate poorly compensated wage labour. The state-led
modernization of Chiapas thus enhanced commercialization but without damaging
the traditional elite - ‘la
Familia Chiapaneca’ - in a classic
example of passive revolutionary activity.
As
the peasantry were drawn into the national state building project of
import-substitution industrialization, Chiapas was treated as an internal
colony, providing abundant resources for the national state whilst the majority
of the population continued to live in dire poverty. Subcomandante
Marcos, spokesperson of the Zapatistas,
would later declare, ‘The tribute that capitalism demands from Chiapas has no
historical parallel’. Social stratification along race
and class lines increased and the state struggled to control this volatile
process, evidenced by the forming of independent peasant unions outside of the
traditional tight corporatist control. This was also linked to a broader crisis
in agriculture (hitherto the main form of employment in Chiapas) as guaranteed
prices for coffee and corn began to fall and machinery replaced human labour.
Cattle ranching also expanded at the expense of ejidos during the 1970s. Taken
together this caused a 30% drop in the number of people able to derive their
living from agriculture. This misery was briefly alleviated with public works
programs in the 1970s. However, when the debt crisis struck Mexico in 1982
these were curtailed and the situation compounded by falling subsidies,
fluctuating commodity prices and the lack of access of credit for small farmers.
The final straw for the indigenous peasantry was the repeal of Article 27 of
the Mexican constitution in 1992 (as a prelude to NAFTA), which had promised to
provide land for those without it. This truly signaled the end of the
Revolution (or rather its abdication by the state) and foreclosed the
legalistic options previously pursued.
Declaring
‘Ya Basta’ (enough is enough), the Zapatistas took it upon themselves to
transform the social conditions of Chiapas, not waiting for a state that was no
longer able or willing to listen to their needs but rather launching an armed
uprising to put their demands into practice. In the years that followed, hundred
of thousands of hectares of land, formerly held in as private property, were
taken over, or as the Zapatistas put it, recuperated. This recuperated land is
the territorial and material basis of Zapatismo upon which their project of
autonomous politics, economics and justice is founded (which I wrote more about
here). Over the last twenty years, the Zapatistas have
attempted to construct a new geographical framework of power from that previously
recognized by the state.
However,
the the
Zapatista project has of course been taking place concomitantly with increased
activities of the state to re-absorb this social struggle into its hegemonic
structure. The response by the Mexican state has gone through various phases.
The first of these (supported by international capital) was a direct military attack
aimed at coercing the recalcitrant population and eliminating the Zapatistas:
it failed as civil society flocked to the support of the Zapatistas. The direct
military response has since been replaced by subtler means of economic coercion
and political pressure, in conjunction with the use of state-backed
paramilitary violence against the Zapatista communities, beginning a new cycle
of passive revolutionary initiative. Among the inducements offered to
non-Zapatistas are promises of land certification, aid programs and territorial
reconfiguration, which included the notoriously inept rural cities
development. This has taken place in tandem with a broader drive to
implement an ecological model of capitalism in Chiapas (ignoring the
contradictions between eco-tourism, road-building, air-travel and monoculture).
Intra-communal rivalry has been heightened as a result, due to the fact that the
Zapatistas steadfastly refuse to accept any governmental aid. Whereas other
peasant organisations have, by and large, been successfully absorbed into the
state’s projects, the Zapatistas are the only significant group in Chiapas
still fighting for fundamental land rights.
I believe two interrelated
issues can be learned from this. First, in line with Gramsci’s exhortation to
strip the concept of defeatism and fatalism, we must recognize that any
attempts by the state to forge a passive revolution remain provisional. As
Gramsci stated, “the conception remains a dialectical one – in other words,
presupposes, indeed postulates as necessary, a vigorous anti-thesis which can
present intransigently all its potentialities for development.”
The Zapatistas enduring struggle is testament to these words. However, the opposite
lesson must be learned for resistance movements and their interaction with
state power, with the dangers or absorption and neutralization ever present. Concurrent
with Anne Showstack Sasson, passive revolution therefore can serve, not just as
an interpretation of events, but also as guide and theoretical reflection for
thinking about social change. The concept can thus aid our understanding of
political struggle, not so much in providing an answer to Lenin’s famous
question of ‘What is to be done?’ but rather as a strategic orientation as to
what is to be avoided.
