The People Want a New Regime

Translated article written by Rodrigo Karmy Bolton, published by El Desconcierto (19.11.2019). Find the original article here.

Almost ten years ago the Arab countries were filled with only one mandate: “the people want the fall of the regime”. A potent dismissal engulfed them and with that various governments fell, but not the “regime”. The Arab term “nizam” is fundamental here: it doesn’t refer to “government” but rather “regime” or “system”. It’s about making the “regime” fall in all of its totality.

Unlike Tunisia which actualised the process of Constitutional Assembly, all the rest of the countries encountered strong resistance by de facto powers, which derived from the application of neoliberal-focused politics in order to neutralise the protests (Saudi Arabia and the monarchic regimes), to accept certain reforms (Morocco) or simply to militarise the revolts to eventually succumb to a civil war (Syria and Libya) or to well justify the business-military symbolic shift of power with the arrival of General Sisi in Egypt. This ousted Mohamed Morsi, historical leader if the Muslim Brotherhood who won elections in the year 2012 and, once arrested by Sisi’s armed forces was imprisoned without any communication during all these years until, finally, ended up “dying” this year exactly on the day on which he was to give his tribunal testimonies.

The Arab revolts were marked by the formula: “the people want the fall of the regime”. Those who participated in said events referred to them in terms of “intifada” (revolt) or “thawra” (revolution) in an interchangeable way. Is this about a lack of theoretical precision? or, rather, of a decisive moment in which the “revolt” and the “revolution” begin to be presented as possibilities within each other. Frio Jesi states that a revolt implies a “suspension of historical time” which defines the new regime; a revolution is the establishment of a new historical time which defines the new regime. The revolt does not know of “today” or “tomorrow” because it is not calculating the action of the former in relation to an already suspended chronological time. The revolution does, because it should act exactly in order to confront the “today” and “tomorrow” of the newly established chronology. Hamid Dabashi termed the event of the Arab Spring as an “open-ended revolution”: it’s not about a simple revolt, but also not about a consummated revolution, but rather a hybrid that exceeded the notion of both revolt and revolution.

But since a long time ago, the notion of “revolution” originally comes from the astronomical sciences with which Nicholas Copernicus termed the perfection of the celestial orbits, and which turned into a term articulated from a certain historical philosophy that could guarantee success and was able to justify terror. The Russian Revolution of 1917 followed the paradigm of the French Revolution which constituted the modern pretext under which all possible revolutions were understood. In other words, the French Revolution acquired a “normative” sense, by which its paradigm was able to bring emancipation to all people. If revolt suspends historic time, revolution can establish a new one. According to Jesi, a revolt opens a “beginning” and a revolution gives it consistency and direction because it installs and conserves a new order, a new regime.

What is the uprising of the Chilean people? What do they desire through their signs, graffiti and chants? A new political regime. It not only aims for the “fall of the regime” but also another possible regime. In this sense, its position is revolutionary: leave behind the judicial framework of the 1980 Constitution together with its Oligarchic Pact in order to initiate a new regime exempt from said Pact, based on the communal commitment of a Constitutional Assembly. In other words, it is not just about “the people want the fall of the regime” but also, and above all, that “the people want to initiate a new regime”.

So this is about a revolution? It certainly is, but a revolution exempt from the philosophy of history, that knows that there are no guarantees of anything because everything burns in the passageway of a constantly uncertain historicity. Let’s say it is about a revolution. But a revolution in the 21st century has entirely different dimensions than the classic revolutions of modernity: it does not have a vanguard as a driving force, it does not maintain representative leaders and, as Dabashi would say, it is concerned with open-ended revolutions that certainly lack the classic revolutionary terror once they have won power — that is, if they do win.

The Chilean process has entered into a “second era” — without a doubt. The institutionalism of the Ancien Règime has offered an “Agreement” filled with tricks which are not present in the devices of a Constitutional Assembly. If the Chilean people have declared “constitutional assembly” in the streets and not “constitutional convention” it is because they seek “to initiate a new regime” without the current “parliamentary” shelters. But this process cannot comply with a representational application, so the people want a new regime with the people, not without them, decided by them and not simply on their behalf: Will any new parliament be able to assure the representation of the people today? Not in any way, this is precisely what opens a hiatus between both places. So its constitutional commitment is cast as “revolution” in an entirely novel way: it is capable of initiating another era, but under very different premises than those of the modern revolution in that its means are not concerned with “seizing State power” but rather, maybe, of re-imagining its own formation.

The recent experience in Latin America shows some experiments in this regard: the use of the term revolution in Bolivian, Venezuelan and Ecuadorian versions — distinct experiences of which the classic formulation of the 60s in which the Cuban experience was inserted. The revolutionary orbits are not far from the boulevards. Rather, these experiences — failed or not — implicated an emergency of an old conclusion for a new experiences: the constituency.

Is the current “Chilean experience” not permitted to be qualified as a “revolution” if its objective is the establishment of a new regime? Well, the difference with the Bolivian, Venezuelan or Ecuadorian cases is that these experiences had the face of a leader: Evo, Chávez and Correa tie in these processes to still prevalent “modern” remnants. That is not to say that one may not suggest some leadership in the process. But for now, the subject has been collectively desired without the need of any leader. The desperate attempts of the political parties to manage or capitalise on these events show their abysmal impotence and their supposed exit from the process that we attend to.

Can there be a constituent process without leadership, without a vanguard? Maybe that defines the current Chilean experience: beyond a revolt and a revolution, it all turns into a revolt of constitutional framework and a revolution without vanguards. As Dabashi defines the Arab Spring, maybe it’s about an open-ended revolution in the 21st century — in virtue of its political experiences, it begins to imagine a non-modern conception of revolution. Such a conception implies powerful moments of deprival that are unable to neither reason nor inscribe itself to the core of the whole constitutional process that depends on the State, but which interrupts it each time that this latest threat tries to do away with popular imagination. This possibility was present in the Arab Spring, and for some time now has been prowling around the Latin American stage.