From Neoliberalism to Social Liberalism Situating the National Solidarity Program Within Mexico's Passive Revolutions

Abstract

Launched by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1988, Mexico's Programa Nacional de Solidaridad (National Solidarity ProgramPRONASOL) has become the organizational center of an ever-changing, complex web of education, health, productive, and infrastructural projects aimed at improving the living conditions of the poor (PRONASOL, 1991). This de facto welfare program, which embodies Salinas's third-way doctrine of social liberalism, basically claims to be more humane and democratic than unfettered free-market capitalism and heavy-handed state interventionism. The objective of this article is not to supply another policy assessment of PRONASOL but to address a gap in the literature by providing a historical materialist account of its emergence. Seen through the lens of historical materialism, PRONASOL is neither an attempt to alleviate the poverty afflicting well over half the population of Mexico nor a move toward constructing a stronger civil society in a top-down fashion (cf. Salinas de Gortari, 1990). Instead it is a reflection of new forms of ideological and political domination targeted at preserving the hegemony of the ruling classes while excluding the majority of Mexicans from participating in the formulation of state policy. In the face of the increasing poverty brought on by modernization, PRONASOL aims to weaken counterhegemonic movements in civil society as Mexico further deepens its dependent relations with the United States. Antonio Gramsci once referred to these expressions of political and ideological retrenchment in the relations between state and civil society as a revolution (1992). This article will suggest that there have been two passive revolutions in Mexico. It can be argued that the first of these passive revolutions, neoliberalism, emerged after the 1982 debt crisis whereas the second, social liberalism, took place during the late 1980s. The argument presented here will proceed as follows: First, it will explore the political and ideological implications of the relative autonomy of the state