South Atlantic Quarterly

Ral Ornelas

Counterhegemonies and Emancipations:

Notes for a Debate

The limits of political emancipation are evident at

once in the fact that the state can free itself from a
restriction without man being really free from this
restriction, that the state can be a free state without
man being a free man. The perfect political state is,
by its nature, mans species-life, as opposed to his
material life. All the preconditions of this egoistic life
continue to exist in civil society outside the sphere
of the state, but as qualities of civil society. Where
the political state has attained its true development,
mannot only in thought, in consciousness, but in
reality, in lifeleads a twofold life, a heavenly and an
earthly life: life in the political community, in which
he considers himself a communal being, and life in
civil society, in which he acts as a private individual,
regards other men as a means, degrades himself into
a means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers.
Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question

History will not be kind to rigid certainties: we

propose this as the starting point to approach the
discussion of counterhegemony and emancipa-
tion. There are few ideas as deeply rooted in criti-
cal thought as those regarding what form social
transformation should take. This makes it diffi-

The South Atlantic Quarterly 111:1, Winter 2012

DOI 10.1215/00382876-1472639
English translation 2012 Duke University Press
From Los desafios de las emancipacion en un contexto militarizado,
ed. Ana Esther Cecea (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2006); used with
permission

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cult to engage any debate on the topic, as the positions at stake are pre-
sented as irreducible or at least mutually exclusive.

The Relevance of the Debate

The discussion of the horizons of social struggle is neither an academic
issue nor, in the end, a theoretical one. The historical experience of social
struggle, and especially the history of revolutionary processes, demon-
strates that the points of reference that provide the strength and ideas that
orient struggle and social transformation are of primary importance. While
it is the workers and their organizations that through struggle constitute
the subject of social transformation, what we call points of reference (orga-
nizations, but also newspapers, clubs, and more recently, groups of intel-
lectuals) have been able to make important contributions in formulating
analysis and strategies adequate to the historical moment insofar as they
take into account the realities of the transformational subject.
In this sense, we think it is very important to intensify the debate
concerning the horizons of social struggle. This becomes even more rele-
vant if, following Perry Andersons characterization of the Latin American
social reality, Here and only here, the resistance to neoliberalism and to
neo-imperialism conjugates the cultural with the social and national. That
is to say, it entails an emerging vision of another type of organization of
society and another model of relations among states on the basis of these
three different dimensions.1
The rise of social struggles and the experience of governments self-
identifying as left provide a diverse and contradictory reality that invites
us to innovate in our reflections and to imagine, albeit modestly, new paths
of social transformation in our countries. Such a transformation embodies
the stated desire of movements and citizens throughout Latin America,
but it also seems to be caught in a cycle in whichmoving from the rise of
social mobilizations to a change in the forces of governmenteverything
remains more or less the same.

Background
With respect to the relationship between counterhegemony and emancipa-
tion, it is necessary to address two misconceptions. First, we must recog-
nize that in both lines of thinking the state is presented as the embodi-
ment of hegemony. Thus, rather than asking whether to take the state into

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Ornelas Counterhegemonies and Emancipations147

account, counterhegemony and emancipation pose distinct ways of con-

fronting and relating to the state. Second, we would like to emphasize the
hybrid nature of Latin American social experiences. Some authors have
attempted to establish an exclusive typology whereby particular actors
embody one idea or another (counterhegemony or emancipation). This
is the case especially regarding Zapatismo, which some are determined
to represent as a movement that does not take the dominant power into
account. In reality, in most of the major social struggles currently develop-
ing, we can see both tendencies. Within the Movimento Sem Terra (MST;
the Landless Workers Movement) in Brazil, the indigenous movements in
Bolivia and Ecuador, and the Zapatistas in Mexico, we see the emergence
of proposals, lines of thinking, and initiatives that seek to develop both
counterhegemonic and emancipatory processes. In this sense, it is impor-
tant to emphasize that while their forms of doing politics are different than
the prevailing ones (in institutional politics), the character of the current
movements is both social and political.
Because this analysis attempts to compare the terms and practices
of social actors, we must be attentive to the danger of falling into a taxon-
omy of social struggle in which the characteristics of different processes
are isolated from their historical context, and the contradictions inherent
in the construction of contestatory social subjects are converted into clas-
sifications through which they can be qualified or disqualified. We should
be careful to avoid, from the very beginning of our analysis, the tendency
to essentialize the debate underlying ideas of counterhegemony and eman-
cipation. The challenge we face is to overcome positions that tend to be
merely dismissive and to begin to engage in a real debate that will allow
us to contribute to the elaboration of new paths for Latin American social
struggles. This contribution begins with the idea that counterhegemony
and emancipation share common elements, and it seeks to approach, with
clarity, the limits of both, including their inherent contradictions and ten-
dencies. In general terms, it appears that capitalist domination has reached
an extremely high level of development, expressed both in its tendency to
convert the entire planet (nature and social relations) into commodities
and in the absence of alternatives or viable ruptures with such domination
in the present moment. In what follows, we outline those elements of the
contemporary context that bear directly on the pursuit of avenues for social
transformation.2

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The Characterization of Hegemony

Some argue for the validity and strength of US hegemony. Among those
who contend that this hegemony is in decline, there are two opposing argu-
ments. The first pertains to the correlation of forces: if US hegemony is,
in fact, weakening, it should be not considered relative to the place that
the United States once occupied (for instance, at the end of World War II),
but rather it should be considered with respect to the actually existing
opposing forces. Thus, because no rival capitalizes on the hegemons weak-
ness, we live in a state of unipolarity: The weakening of North Americas
hegemonic capacity corresponds not to the strengthening of the other pole,
but to a rise in worldwide disorder.3 The second argument, by contrast,
refers to the multidimensional character of hegemony, such that even if
the United States suffers significant recessions in the economic realm, we
must still take into account its absolute dominance in the military sphere
and, especially, in the cultural arena. Regarding the latter, the American
way of life is the world paradigm of sociality, with no rival other than that
of an unattractive Islamic fundamentalism.

The New Terrain of Class Struggle

The level of development attained by capitalist hegemony, particularly
when new technologies combine with the absence of a noncapitalist alter-
native to that hegemony, has meant a dislocation of the boundaries of
social conflict. As capital has tended to exceed the limits of nature (for
instance, through genetic engineering) and even the limits of the planet
(for example, through space exploration), the substratum of social conflict
moves through the spaces of exploitation (the market, the factory) toward a
politics of territory as suchthat is, social conflict expands to all spheres of
social life and tends to express itself most acutely in those areas that consti-
tute the very basis of life: communities, their conditions of existence, and
their geographical spaces and symbols.4
The transformation of capitalist hegemony signals profound changes
in forms of social struggle. Institutions constructed through class struggle
since the Industrial Revolution have tended to disappear, especially those
related to social status and the populations living and working conditions.
Today, from the perspective of power and from that of the subjects who
resist it, conflicts are presented as irreducible. Thus, as the temporality of
resistance takes on more radical forms and strategies, repression increas-

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ingly becomes the recourse of power. At the same time, there is a tendency
toward increasing political polarization. In effect, new forms of domina-
tion leave scant room for those forms of opposition that emerged along the
lines of social democracy, a form of politics that would seek to reinvigorate
a form of capitalism that no longer exists.
In this context Ana Esther Cecea speaks of the militarization of
social life, systematic counterinsurgency, and the diffusion of disciplinary
spaces throughout the whole of society as the typical responses of hege-
monic subjects.5 If hegemony becomes accentuated, the level of exclusion
created by contemporary capitalism tends to increase its fragility: in truth,
we are entering a period of latent insurrection. In a dispute that is as much
for life as it is for territory, new forms of social conflict gradually acquire an
anticapitalist horizon as the form of resistance.
Addressing the fragility of hegemony reveals the force of resistance in
social struggles. For authors such as John Holloway and Ral Zibechi, the
increasing aggressiveness of capital is a demonstration of its own weakness
in the face of the excluded and of social struggle.6 Similarly, Cecea argues
that social struggles are the primary limit to capitalism, given that from the
technological point of view it already has the resources to acquire massive
profits and to intensify its domination.7 This perspective supports the view
of hegemony as a social construction and social relation. It is important to
emphasize this aspect so as not to become trapped by sole consideration
for the strength and solidity of contemporary hegemony. Similarly, the pro-
cesses of social insurrection and insurgency constitute the possibilities for
rupture with capitalism, possibilities that, in the normal scope of struggle,
cannot be observed.8 Yet, there will be no exit from the contemporary form
of domination, referred to as neoliberalism, if there is no real and profound
rupture with the prevailing situation.

Threads of Discussion
Such is the context for the following lines of discussion and debate regard-
ing counterhegemony and emancipation. Schematically, counterhegemony
seeks to create an alternative power, while emancipation seeks to end
the relations of power. Such characterizations are clearly inadequate for
describing the complexity of the processes of social struggle.
The first line of discussion concerns the characteristics of the social
subject of transformation. Counterhegemony seeks the creation of a social

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subject that can successfully confront constituted power. As such, it seeks

a multifaceted subject who would construct a unitary political organization
and propose generalized alternatives, both in terms of substantive themes
for a national agenda and also at the territorial level, aspiring to create a
force operating at the national level.
The process for the construction of this subject follows the general
lines proposed by Antonio Gramsci regarding the struggle for hegemony.9
First, the goal is not simply to take state power from the dominators but
rather to construct within civil society the foundations for a new society and
a new state that destroys the hegemony of the bourgeoisie. Here, the idea
of taking power is not seen as a point of departure for social transforma-
tion.10 In the process of social struggles, partial and corporatist battles are
said to find a general conduit in the action of political organization. Accord-
ingly, the Gramscian logic of a war of positionsthat is, the gradual cre-
ation of a worldview that would gain acceptance as a new understanding
of truthis essential for the horizons and rhythms of the construction of
the transformative subject. The authors who defend the necessity to build
a counterhegemonic project see continuity between the Paris Commune,
revolutionary experiences (Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and Central
America), and attempts to democratize capitalism (for example, the Popu-
lar Unity in Chile), to the degree that each of these attempted to create new
visions of the world that spanned the whole of their societies. Finally, there
are versions of the argument that insist on the validity of the Leninist idea
of organizationthe construction of the party as a specialized organ for
strategy and political directionas fundamental to the counterhegemonic
process.11
From the perspective of emancipation, the subject to be constructed
is also multiple, though characterized by diversity and rooted more in civil
society (in popular struggles) than in the political sphere. Its essential differ-
ence with the counterhegemonic project is that emancipation emphasizes
the idea of recuperating control over the production of the transformational
subject. Above all other objectives, the emancipatory project confronts the
daily dependencies and oppressions lived by individuals and communities.
For that reason, it tackles an essential aspect of capitalist domination: the
destruction of community. In effect, building community ties or defending
existing communities is a constituent project of the transformative subject;
the community is the space and the vehicle of the emancipatory project. In
this sense, the affirmation of difference as a constituent project of the sub-
ject of emancipation is posed as the aspiration to overcome the separations

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that characterize social life under capitalism. The struggle must therefore
cover all practices and social spaces.12
Turning inward, in addition to their political tasks, these communities
also undertake a survival effort that prioritizes the occupation and resigni-
fication of a territory. The efforts of communities in struggle aim to satisfy
their basic needsfood, health, education, and self-defenseas elemental
conditions of existence for subjects resisting power. The essential politi-
cal activity within an emancipatory project is the constant and dynamic
process of self-affirmation. As a consequence of exclusion and increasing
overexploitation, the affirmation of difference becomes the spontaneous
mode of subject construction. The emancipatory project has one of its roots
in the dilution and near-inexistence of the traditional political sphere, and
for this reason its immediate context is defined by abandonment by the
state, the absence of capital, the lack of expectations, and the experience
of repression as the principal state expression toward the marginalized.
Thus, in contrast to counterhegemonic projects, rather than prioritizing the
construction of totalizing ideas that span the whole of society, emancipa-
tory projects seek to subvert the predominant political culture (both of the
dominators and of the Left) in favor of the proposition of unity in diversity.
The many forms that self-affirmation takes (looking inward, walk-
ing the speed of the slowest member, arriving late but together) reveal one
of the most novel and controversial elements of the emancipatory project:
uncertainty regarding the dilemmas posed by power and domination. The
first decision to break with immediate dominations and dependencies is
drastic and clear (largely because it is in principle a gesture of survival),
but the future of the struggle appears random and indeterminate, with
only very general guidelines, such as the search for transparency within
and between organizations, coherence between discourse and practice, the
search for horizontality, and the rejection of the application and method
of traditional representation (parliamentary democracy, hierarchical social
organizations, and the logic of efficiency).13 In other words, emancipation
is a method rather than a program or a policy strategy.
A second line of discussion concerns the problem of the state. For the
counterhegemonic project, the state functions as one of the fundamental
spaces of any political strategy. In keeping with the Marxist legacies (Lenin-
ist and Gramscian, as well), it suggests that overcoming domination neces-
sarily involves the destruction of the state and the construction of another
one. Among the principal arguments made for the centrality of the state in
social transformation are the following:

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Violence is the result of the insubordination of the subaltern

classes and is the recourse par excellence of the dominators to con-
tain that insubordination. The state is a fundamental space in which
the repressive recourses at the disposition of dominant groups are
concentrated. Thus, the construction of another social order would
require military action and repression on the part of the new state,
against both reactionary national forces and foreign ones.
Given the social atomization that characterizes capitalism, the state
plays the crucial role of synthesizing the social relations in which indi-
vidual agents are engaged. As much in the economic as in the politi-
cal sphere (and including in the social sphere), the state organizes and
mediates social relations. It is the final cohesive factor of a society
structurally divided into classes.14 In the counterhegemonic project,
the construction of another social order can happen only through the
state, because only the state connects and unites actors who would
otherwise be dispersed. As concentrated power, the state is a funda-
mental space for hegemony, and as such, it can be a fundamental fac-
tor to promote transformations: States are important to affirm the
rights that have been expropriated from the people: who could res-
cue the universal policies of education, health, health care, housing, if
not states? Democratized states, with participatory budgets.15 In this
sense, it is argued that the new state plays a fundamental role in the
formulation of new notions of truth and of a new hegemonic imagi-
nary that embodies the aspirations of transformative subjects, as in
the formation of (legal and institutional) dispositifs that put into prac-
tice the transformations required for subjects becoming hegemonic.
There is also a practical dimension to this discussion, which
invokes the social-political realities of our countries in order to argue
for the importance of acting in the field of institutional politics.16
Even as it recognizes the major contradictions facing political parties
and forces, this position argues that institutional politics are cru-
cial for opening the road to a counterhegemonic project within the
logic of democratizing democracy, as proposed by Boaventura de
Sousa Santos.17 It is likewise argued that the creation of a world with-
out hegemonies passes through the construction of a counterhege-
monic project, which opens the way for the expansion of a more radi-
cal democracy. According to this logic, counterhegemony, during its
phase of acting in state spaces, enables the passage from the accumu-
lation of forces to the political leadership of society.

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By contrast, the perspective of emancipation emphasizes the role of

the state as a pillar of domination. It is not a question of turning ones back
on the state, because it is clear that the state is, in many ways, an omnipres-
ent reality for all social subjects. Instead, the perspective of emancipation
suggests an attitude of detachment and emphasizes the dislocation of the
state from the center of thinking and activities. The state is a factor, but it
is neither the first, nor is it the most important, in the construction of a
project for social emancipation.
The best-known arguments for this position draw on those historical
experiences, particularly clear in the neoliberal period, where state media-
tions have been so emptied of their content that they become illusory.18
The handover of sovereignty to global hegemonic powers by national gov-
ernments has resulted in the subsequent loss of the means of action on
the part of Latin American states. Thus, the performance of governments
such as that of Luiz Incio Lula da Silva in Brazil or of Cristina Kirchner in
Argentina seems shackled to the neoliberal agenda that the governments
continue to apply and in this regard underpins the attitude of skepticism
regarding Latin American states.
This argument is not, however, sufficient to explain the profound
reversal of perspective posed by the emancipatory project with respect to
the state. This position is rooted, rather, in the work and practice of recog-
nition/knowing [(re)conocimiento] and the self-reflection that characterizes
the construction of the subject on the road to emancipation. It is the per-
sonal and collective synthesis of what the state represents in the life of the
collectives and the communities that forms the basis for developing a dis-
tance from the state.
There are two novel issues regarding the political sphere of the state
that characterize the projects of emancipation: first, the rupture with realist
pragmatism at the center of the political system, and second, the repudia-
tion of the dividing role of the parties. The experience of political culture
rooted in the exercise of power leads to the rejection of the traditional spaces
and forms of politics, as well as a rejection of separations in general (man-
agers from managed, manual work versus intellectual work, etc.). Among
others, these are the arguments that relegate the question of the state to a
lesser status: it is everyday life that transfers to the exterior factors that in
normal political and social struggle are inside of the movements (such as
the party form and the union form). This position represents an apparent
paradox within the idea of emancipation. Critics of this conception argue
that because it cannot block itself out from the actions of the state, emanci-

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pation runs the risk of becoming functional to domination. In response to

this critique, we can affirm that the emancipatory project includes diverse
forms and degrees of dialogue with the state: from the rage of the piquete-
ros19 at being forced to accept state work plans to the Zapatista strategy to
construct a national consensus on indigenous rights and culture. There is
no idealism, understood as the loss of a sense of reality, in the course of
emancipatory projects. The question resides in the scope and possibilities
for expansion of this mode of resistance. This question does not depend
exclusively on the positions adopted by the subjects that embody emanci-
pation but instead on all social forces in contention, especially those con-
testing the prevailing order.
Thus, for struggles in Latin America, it is crucial to understand
whether forms of self-government and self-organization will be able to
arise and develop in the more complex contexts than they have hitherto
encountered. The profound social, cultural, and economic stratification of
large cities stands as an insurmountable obstacle for practices based in
face-to-face encounters. Nevertheless, the first steps made in this direction
appear encouraging: for instance, the organization of the city of El Alto
in Bolivia and the experiences of coordination between neighborhoods in
Argentina and Uruguay demonstrate that innovative forms of politics can
be reinvented in the urban areas.
Regarding the role of the state, the perspective of emancipatory
projects offers three lines of inquiry. First, is the state actually an adequate
vehicle for securing the distribution of wealth and social rights?20 On the
one hand, the erosion of the state as result of the transformations of capi-
talist production and neoliberal deregulation strongly limited its regulatory
possibilities, with the effect that the problem reaches beyond the scope of
the dependent nation-state. On the other hand, it coincides with the fact
that powers accumulation of military force complicates any strategy that
has violence as its first field of confrontation. Therefore, we enter into a
set of paradoxical situations, where only initiatives of rupture allow for the
continuance and the advance of struggle, at the same time that the levels of
confrontation intensify. Second, armed strategies as well as civil and peace-
ful resistance separately appear completely insufficient to confront power;
some historical experiences appear to make progress by combining the two
forms, where the question of organized violence appears as self-defense,
and offensive action is taken only in exceptional moments. The third line
of discussion is the orientation of alliances. In this field, derived from the
above, the differences between the two are less clear.

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For counterhegemony, alliances are dictated by a logic of unity for

the purpose of action; its horizon is the creation of a subject capable of con-
fronting hegemonic forces. Thus, within counterhegemonic projects there
is an individualization of subjects who act in the quest for a new hegemonic
project based in their own conceptions. In this sense, there is a symme-
try between the two processes (hegemonic and counterhegemonic) in that
they seek to create socially acceptable visions of the world, with the effect
that even the transformational project assumes in part a logic of power, in
this case, the logic of efficiency. In sum, the counterhegemonic position
argues for the need to prioritize the struggle against a common enemy over
differences between potential allies.21
One little-discussed aspect that is crucial because of its implications
for the field of organization is that the political cultures of the Left have
adopted the idea of political necessity as the principal mode of relation
between social actors. This necessity makes obtaining results its central
issue and relegates to a second plane the relations constructed through
social action.
The idea of emancipation seeks rather the construction of horizon-
tal and transparent ties, based in affinity, and thus relations with political
institutional actors become quite complicated. Despite this and on numer-
ous occasions, the need to survive or the possibility to achieve some cru-
cial advance leads people to enter into alliances that break with the general
logic of affinity. From the perspective of emancipation, this is one of the
most complex terrains, given the incipient nature of the experiences that
sustain it.22 The primary difficulty stems from the fact that these alliances
of affinity can result in the isolation (and in the extreme, annihilation) of
emancipatory projects, above all in conjunctures (such as the Lula or Kirch-
ner governments) where institutional politics offers certain opportunities
for change or at least the chance to recuperate strength.
The fourth line of discussion is the organizational process. The
counterhegemonic process proposes to construct subjects based in the
political sphere: parties, conventions, governments, and coalitions of states
to oppose US hegemony. In the framework of infinite war, the emphasis is
on the urgency to create political expressions, viable alternatives that can
curb the savagery of war and open the road to the other possible world.23
In this field, a crucial and controversial proposal is the construction
of a political vanguard in charge of delineating strategies, educating the
population, and articulating forces, something that generally implies con-
centrating efforts on the construction of a party. Here the specialization

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and distinction between strategists and militants are thought to allow for
intervention in political events insofar as the incorporation of social leader-
ship into the political organization renews political life and stimulates the
accumulation of force for effective intervention. In particular, the vanguard
should contribute decisively in the qualitative leap toward the unification
of social struggles with political struggles, as it is charged with the inescap-
able task to think strategically about the issues, analyze the social reality,
implement projects of political formation, all that concerns a vanguard.24
In contrast, the idea of emancipation clearly rejects the formation of
new vanguards. The construction of new forms of organization has three
axes: affinity, the quest for horizontality, and assemblies as spaces for the
reunification of social life. These elements provide the basis for a commu-
nal form of organization that opposes the logic of political efficacy with the
strength of times internal to the rhythm of the community and an idea of
change rooted in the everyday life of social actors.25
Within its experimental character, this proposal concerns the unity
of approach and participation, given that it is only in practice and with the
permanent participation of all actors that another mode of organization is
constructed. On this terrain, Holloway proposes that the central principle
of this new political culture is the repudiation of substitution: Strength-
ening the momentum toward self-determination implies a rejection of the
process of substitution, a rejection of the process in which we say to some-
one, you make the decision for me, and therefore a rejection of leadership,
and a rejection also of state forms.26 Logically, this method introduces a
lag between the rhythms of the political institutions and the rhythms of
organization of transformational subjects, giving rise to severe pressures
and disputes, including those with potential allies.
One of the most important open questions here is whether the orga-
nizational forms that characterize both ideas can be compatible. Recent
experience has shown that the hierarchical forms of the parties are opposed
to the more horizontal and directly democratic forms practiced by some
movements. In this way, we can cite the case of the Zapatistas who did (and
continue to do) practically everything possible to achieve a respectful and
productive dialogue with the institutional political forces and particularly
with the left-leaning Partido de la Revolucin Democrtica (PRD). These
attempts have revealed that the logic of resistance and that of institutional
politics end in open conflict, closing any possibilities of unitary struggle.
Bolivia provides us with a different scenario, where the weakness of
the state and the long period of generalized crisis have become the ter-

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rain for the formation of sociopolitical movements. That is, this becomes
the terrain of subjects for whom there is no difference between social and
political movement such that it is they who act directly in determining the
national agenda and the diverse aspects of national management through
the action in the entire terrain of struggle: institutional, union-based, and
insurrectional.27 Beyond the diversity of experiences, both the construc-
tion of the unity of social struggles and the repressive force of the state as
the last stronghold of the governing faction continue to be obstacles to over-
come, raising fundamental questions for social subjects regarding which
strategies to follow.
Ongoing reflection about the tangible existence of new forms of orga-
nizing is also crucial. The experience of recent years demonstrates that
hierarchies exist within movements claiming an emancipatory horizon,
that to lead by obeying [mandar obedeciendo] and horizontality are aspira-
tions, zigzagging tendencies, rather than realities firmly situated in the
communities that give them life.28 In the face of these problems, social sub-
jects vindicate practice as the determining criterion, given that the legacies
of the old political culture are strong and the new political culture runs the
risk of being relegated to mere discourse. Thus it is important to note the
insistence of these actors on the necessity to develop a new political culture
and new political practices. Indeed, the Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacin
Nacional (EZLN) itself has provided the most examples in this regard when
speaking about the obstacles that political-military models of organization
pose to the civil authorities responsible for building autonomy. The EZLN
also has repeatedly presented the necessity for Zapatista communities to
collaborate with other struggles to defeat the armed approach.
Within the same line of debate there is an important discussion
about the process of representation. Social resistance has brought to light
forms of representation distinct from those prevailing in the institutional
political sphere (parliament, parties, unions) that emphasize responsibili-
ties and service rather than positions and representation. If we agree with
Armando Bartra that there are no organizations without representatives,29
we must assume the legacy of the political history of our countries, which
has a disastrous record in terms of the degeneration of the social and politi-
cal leadership.30 This is why we assign such importance to the struggles
of the indigenous people of the continent, who put forward the idea that
a representative should be thought of as a spokesperson, a delegate who
should conform to their mandate, and that accountability is essential for
the health and progress of the organization. Around these axes of horizon-

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tality, the mandate of the assembly, accountability, and the rotation of rep-
resentatives, along with the radical questioning of the individual leader,
they develop an organizational scheme in which there are not representa-
tives but rather referents and where political leadership becomes, little by
little, facilitation. Theirs is a proposal where the vanguard cedes its place to
collective action, a proposal that, it is worth noting, is not unconnected to
revolutionary social struggle.
How far is it possible to adapt this contribution and incorporate it
into the practices of political organizations? In principle, the profession-
alization of politics (the pillar of the construction of the party) appears to
annul the possibilities for radical innovations that would allow us to think
of politics as a quest for collective well-being rather than a means for acquir-
ing wealth. Other practices such as the rotation of representatives, account-
ability, and term limits are proposals that slowly become viable alternatives
to the hierarchical forms that characterize parties and unions.
A fifth line of discussion has to do with the dynamics of the struggles.
For the counterhegemonic project, this is manifested as an urgent dynamic
in which the temporalities, economy, and allocation of activities and priori-
ties are framed by the correlation of antagonistic forces. These are treated
as urgent schedules to which transformative subjects should adapt. The
strategies, rhythms, and alliances of the counterhegemonic project should
satisfy requirements that are almost incompatible: maintain the strate-
gic direction of the antisystemic struggle and at the same time respond to
the needs of the current conjuncture. In these situations what has often
happened is that the conjuncture ends up taking precedence, undoing the
long-term project.
From the perspective of emancipation, what is referenced is another
temporality, another vision of the priorities in the struggle where empha-
sis is placed on the internal process of the subjects. Organizations and
movements with indigenous and peasant roots have advocated strongly
for this view, posing it in direct opposition to a capitalist vision of tempo-
rality. Along the same lines, in different geographies and forms, other sub-
jects have begun to formulate similar approaches, where the cosmology
of originary peoples is substituted by the necessity to regain control over
immediate needs: what the discourse of power calls disillusionment with
politics is actually a concern for internal temporality, and if what appears
as politics does not take them into account, peoples vision and action turn
toward their own spaces, where they can construct the means for collective
action. This is one of the aspects where the two perspectives clash force-

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Ornelas Counterhegemonies and Emancipations159

fully. Counterhegemonic positions insistently reproach those subjects who

do not respond to the needs of the conjuncture and, in effect, sustain the
powers that be. The Zapatistas, the MST, and sectors of the piqueteros have
been classified as extremists, delusional, primitive, reformists, functional
to the system, and many other things because they did not conform to the
logic of the institutional spaces of politics.
In summary, we find that counterhegemonic and emancipatory
thinking converge in the necessity to rupture the hegemony of capital and
its localized agents, as well as in the aspiration to construct a broad unity
around this strategic definition. In contrast, the dynamics of organization
and the construction of the transformational subject imply stark differ-
ences. And in many particular terrains, such as the vanguard, participa-
tion in political institutions, and tactical choices, these differences tend to
become openly contradictory, closing roads to unified action. Taking into
account the convergences and divergences, the counterhegemonic project
privileges political struggle, whereas the construction of autonomy consti-
tutes the central axis of the emancipatory project.

By Way of Conclusion: A Future Scenario

As is clear from this exposition, the discussion about counterhegemony
and emancipation is in its initial stages. The fall of the socialist bloc and
the triumph of neoliberalism on a world scale did away with the theoretical
and political references of the Left, with the consequence that we are now
reopening and initiating new discussions. My assessment is that the efforts
currently under way in both directions are enclosed in impasses without
immediate apparent exit.
With respect to the counterhegemonic project, to the long list of
past revolutionary experiences (whether nationalist, socialist, communist,
or liberatory, their outcome was the restoration of capitalist domination)
and of democratic governments (especially the Popular Unity in Chile), we
should add the complete disappointments of Gutirrez in Ecuador, Lula in
Brazil, the PRD in the various state governments in Mexico, as well as the
faltering performance of Cristina Kirchner in Argentina. Looking back on
these diverse experiences allows us to consider, at least as a hypothesis, that
the construction of a counterpower was not enough to carry out the con-
struction of another world.
From the counterhegemonic perspective, it appears that the unity of
the forces contesting hegemony has been exhausted in electoral triumphs

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or in the removal of the governments. The neoliberal dispositifs character-

ized by control of the financial circuit that enables others to commit black-
mail against the currencies and financial markets of our countries, the
deindustrialization of the productive structure accompanied by the domi-
nation of the multinational corporations, and the extremely high income
concentration that creates socially privileged groups with vast social power
obviate the content of the electoral victories of the counterhegemonic alli-
ances. In the absence of a rupture with neoliberal powers, the governments
of the Left continue to implement neoliberal policies and favor instead the
rupture of unity, pushing for new divisions that weaken the counterhege-
monic bloc in the face of dominant power.
From the perspective of emancipation, the advances attained by the
autonomous projects do not yet allow us to discern a solution for rupture
with capitalist hegemony. Given the relative fragility of these experiences
(fragile in the face of hegemonic power), their expansion depends on social
processes whose occurrence appears unlikely. One of these is the gradual
expansion of autonomy; this process confronts the limits of scant support
from the integrated social strata of society and increasing repression on
the part of the state and the dominators. However important they may be,
these projects continued to be limited to specific sectors of our societies:
their conditions of possibility and their dynamic are alien to the most inte-
grated sectors of our societies. The attempt to construct an alliance only
with the marginalized (which, it is true, are the majority of society) can lead
to the dead ends of the past. In this sense, we speak more of a heuristic for
the transformation of society than of a revolutionary theory. Venturing a
heuristic of social change, we propose that the wager of the emancipatory
project is the most viable in that it attacks what constitutes the base of capi-
talist domination: social stratification. The triumph of capitalism should
be understood as the destruction of any other sense of truth and any other
common interest that is not that of the hegemonic project: hence the stra-
tegic place occupied by the community as the vital space of resistance and
the construction of alternatives.
In the framework of the emancipatory project, social transformation
tends to place the construction of communities and community ties as its
horizon and principal aim, attending as far as possible to the other objec-
tives and urgencies of the conjuncture. This is because overcoming capital-
ist relations demands social practices and constructions that progressively
eliminate social stratification with the goal of creating spaces of action to
counterhegemonic subjects. It requires the construction of autonomous

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Ornelas Counterhegemonies and Emancipations161

spaces that serve as a reference for social struggle and, especially, that serve
as an alternative to capitalism for sectors of workers integrated into the
system. This construction responds to three essential necessities of the
struggle: the creation of bases of survival that are relatively autonomous
with respect to power; the experimentation with new alternative social
realities; and the progressive creation of a common terrain of encounter
and recognition in terms of equality with the integrated workers. And so
the problem is not so much the marginality of autonomous experiences as
the difficulty with which other social sectors may undertake similar prac-
ticessimilar in method but different in content, of coursethat in order
to develop must correspond to the situation of each one of the sectors and
social groups involved.
Addressing this challenge also raises the question of the knowledges
of the Left: the centrality of the state, the need to take power, and the neces-
sity of constructing the party are questioned insistently in the frameworks
of the emancipatory project. In particular, autonomy asserts that hegemony
cannot exist without domination because hegemony is a form of homog
enous power. Thus, rather than constructing new ideas of truth, it pro-
poses the necessity to innovate in the field of the forms, in the methods of
struggle, and in the construction of another world that, drawing on both
historical lessons and recent experiences, should make space for diversity,
respect for the other, and the emergence of values alternative to those of
capitalist society.
Translated by Brenda Baletti

Notes
This essay is an abridged version of Contrahegemonias y emancipaciones: Notas para un
debate (Counterhegemonies and Emancipations: Notes for a Debate) in Los desafios de las
emancipacion en un contexto militarizado (The Challenges of Emancipations in a Militarized Con-
text), ed. Ana Esther Cecea (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2006), 95121.
1 Perry Anderson, The Role of Ideas in the Construction of Alternatives, in New World
Hegemony: Alternatives for Change and Social Movements, ed. Atilio Boron (Buenos
Aires: CLACSO, 2004), 3550. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Spanish
to English were made by the translator of the essay.
2 These arguments are based on Emir Sader and Ana Esther Cecea, presentations (dur-
ing the Latin America in Movement seminar, National Autonomous University of
Mexico, Institute for Economic Research, Mexico City, May 13June 2, 2004); see also
Emir Sader, Hegemonia e contra-hegemonia (Hegemony and Counterhegemony),
in Hegemonas y emancipaciones en el siglo XXI (Hegemony and Emancipation in the 21st
Century), ed. Ana Esther Cecea and Emir Sader (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2004).

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3 Sader, Hegemonia e contra-hegemonia, 20.

4 See Ana Esther Cecea, El zapatismo: De la inclusin en la nacin al mundo en el que
quepan todos los mundos (Zapatismo: From Inclusion in the Nation to the World
Where All Worlds Fit), in Amrica Latina y el (des)orden global neoliberal: Hegemona,
contrahegemona, perspectivas (Latin America and Global Neoliberal (Dis)order: Hege-
mony, Counterhegemony, Perspectives), ed. Jos Mara Gomes and Marie-Claude Smouts
(Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2004), 30120.
5 Ana Esther Cecea, Sujetizando el Objecto de Etudio, o de la subversion epistemologi-
cal como emancipacin (Subjectivizing the Object of Study, or, On the Subversion
of Epistemology as Emancipation), in Los desafios de las emancipacion en un contexto
militarizado (The Challenges of Emancipations in a Militarized Context) (Buenos Aires:
CLACSO, 2006), 1334.
6 See, for example, John Holloway, Change the World without Taking Power: The Meaning
of Revolution Today (London: Pluto Press, 2005), 14054; and Ral Zibechi, Autonomas
e emancipaciones: America Latina en movimiento (Autonomies and Emancipations: Latin
America in Movement) (Lima: Universidad de San Marcos, 2007), 2166.
7 Cecea, Sujetizando el Objecto de Etudio.
8 Francisco Pineda, presentation (in the Latin America in Movement seminar).
9 Antonio Gramsci, State and Civil Society, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed.
and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971),
20677.
10 In this respect, we should be wary of the interpretations that Atilio Boron (Hegemony
and Imperialism in the International System, in New World Hegemony, 13152) has
called caricatures of Gramsci and Lenin, which reduced theorizations of revolution-
ary change to a tactic of coup dtat, thinking that power is a thing and the state is its
instrument.
11 Cecea discusses the most orthodox approaches to understanding the revolutionary
subject, which consider class as a position in production and which limit the construc-
tion of the subject to relations of exploitation. Cecea, El zapatismo, 3035.
12 John Holloway writes, The specific conformation of the proletariat, understood as
a diverse collective antagonistic to capital, and therefore of the spaces of the con-
struction of revolutionary alternatives is located in the historical confluence of all the
dimensions that life develops in society in a particular time and place. John Holloway,
Dignitys Revolt, in Zapatistas! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico, ed. John Holloway
and Elona Pelez (London: Pluto, 1997).
13 In the words of a member of the Movimiento de Trabajadores DesocupadosSolano
(Unemployed Workers MovementSolano), We dont theorize about how we will do
this or that tomorrow. . . . No, what we say is that if today we do not begin to change
this reality and produce a person based in solidarity, capable of giving his or her life and
being a part of the community, then we will stay where we are. We do not need politi-
cal documents or theoretical predictions about possible change. For us, the problem is
today. Tomorrow, we will see. It is today that we need to weave the social laws that will
destroy capitalism. The challenge is this, to work with those at your side. And there is
no library with Marx, Mao, or Foucault that can save us without having done this work.
Mara Esther Gilio, Jorge Jara y Andrs Fernndez, piqueteros del MTD: El poder se

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Ornelas Counterhegemonies and Emancipations163

construye (Jorge Jara and Andrs Fernndez, Picketers of the MTD: Power Is Con-
structed), Pgina/12, October 14, 2002.
14 Atilio Boron, Sobre el poder y el estado (On Power and the State), (in Latin America
in Movement seminar).
15 Emir Sader, presentation (during the Latin America in Movement seminar, National
Autonomous University of Mexico, Institute for Economic Research, Mexico City,
May 13June 2, 2004).
16 See Armando Bartra, Aoranzas y utopas: La izquierda Mexicana en el tercer milenio
(Nostalgia and Utopia: The Mexican Left in the Third Millennium) (paper presented
at the Latin America in Movement seminar); Sader, intervention.
17 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Introduction: Opening up the Canon of Democracy,
in Democratizing Democracy: beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon (New York: Verso,
2007).
18 For example, the Zapatistas affirm, There is a time to ask, a time to demand, and a
time to act. Gloria Muoz Ramirez, Interview with Subcomandante Marcos: A Time
to Ask, a Time to Demand, and a Time to Act, Americas Program (web newsletter),
January 16, 2004, www.cipamericas.org/archives/1120. They also declare that all of
the doors of the political system are closed, leading the struggle to another field, the
construction of autonomy: To turn to the traditional political class as an ally in the
struggle of resistance is a good exercise . . . in nostalgia. To turn to the neopoliticians
is a symptom of schizophrenia. Up there, there is nothing to do, except to act as if noth-
ing can be done. The social ship is adrift, and the problem is not that we lack a captain.
It so happens that the rudder itself has been stolen, and it is not going to turn up any-
where. There are those who are devoted to imagining that the rudder still exists and
fight for its possession. And there are those who make of an island, not a refuge for self-
satisfaction but a ship for finding another island and another and another. Subcoman-
dante Insurgente Marcos, Seven Thoughts in May, Revista Rebelda, no. 7 (2003).
19 Piqueteros is a term used to describe Argentinean picketers most often associated with
the militants of the MTDs.
20 See John Holloway, comment (made in the open debate on The Taking of Power,
Its Validity for an Emancipatory Project seminar, College of Philosophy, National
Autonomous University of Mexico, 2004).
21 For Armando Bartra, autonomous dynamics must be linked with counterhegemony in
order to achieve real transformation. Bartra, Caracoles! Descifrando la teceava estela
(Caracoles! Deciphering the Thirteenth Trail), Memoria, no. 176 (2003): 10.
22 One could explain this aspect, for example, by examining the Zapatistas and their
national and international alliances, many of which have been weak or have failed
to be consistent between discourse and practice. In some of the Zapatista initiatives,
there has been a dependence on people who are not part of the social struggle but who
are key figures in the system of power within their own countries. In general terms, it
is important to analyze the difficulties of the people in all our countries to act in a uni-
fied fashion.
23 See Atilio Boron, Intervention (in The Taking of Power, Its Validity for an Emancipa-
tory Project seminar); and Emir Sader, especially in reference to mobilizations against
the United States invasion of Iraq. He argues, That extraordinary movement wasnt

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able to stop the war, but that would be asking too much of it. But the problem is that
force was not converted into a political organizational force. So we have the progres-
sive public opinion and conservative government. . . . As long as we do not solve this
issue of the relation between social force and politics in a new way, the accumulation
of forces will be lost and become useless. Sader, Hegemonia e contra-hegemonia, 33.
24 Sader, intervention.
25 According to a member of the Solano MTD, To us, it is more difficult to develop the
movement in this horizontal way but it will also be a lot more difficult to destroy. This
stands in opposition to the classical conceptions where consciousness comes from
outside of the people, where a group of militants has the real consciousness and this
consciousness is brought to the people and allows for transformation. I argue, on a per-
sonal level, [that] as messed up as that conception of the world was in orthodox politics,
something new appeared and I am not saying that this new thing is good, simply that
it is new. El Topo, Entrevista al MTD Solano, trabajadores por la autonomia y la dig-
nidad (Interview of MTD Solano, Workers for Autonomy and Dignity), Red de Soli-
daridades Rebeldes, June 10, 2004, www.solidaridadesrebeldes.kolgados.com.ar/spip
.php?article71.
26 Holloway, intervention. The experience of the unemployed workers in Solano gives
us another perspective on this process: Welfarism . . . has marked us very deeply
as a people, and breaking with this was one of the most daring ruptures that we
attempted. . . . It is exactly that passive subject that needs an organizer, a leader . . . to
solve its problem. . . . Even if our principles are those of autonomy, horizontality, and
direct democracy, often there is still an expectation that we attempt to reconstruct a
leader, a manager on whom we place our hopes. . . . If we say that within the move-
ment there are no referents, we would be lying because there are people who due to
their roles become very strong referents, and our challenge is to understand what to do
with these referents, how we can . . . have other members mature into different roles,
and in this way construct something truly collective. Reportaje a Neka Jara: MTD de
Solano (Interview with Neka Jara: Solano MTD), La Fogata, January 2004.
27 lvaro Garca Linera, intervention (at the Latin America in Movement seminar).
28 Zibechi describes how above and below the social subjects that are not Taylorized con-
form and act in different ways with respect to dominant currents in political insti-
tutions, but that within these exist specializations and roles that reproduce hierar-
chies. To complicate the discussion even more, we must note that these hierarchies
among the subjects who seek emancipation can also be seen as barriers, as defenses
against the external that make possible experimentation with noncapitalist relation-
ships within communities. In short, what we wish to highlight is the construction of
a new type of organization that is highly contradictory. Ral Zibechi, presentation (at
the Latin America in Movement seminar).
29 Armando Bartra, question to Zibechi during his presentation (at the Latin America in
Movement seminar).
30 This is an aspect that should be emphasized, since membership in a social movement
does not protect one against the tensions of clientelism, bureaucratic action, or corrup-
tion pure and simple: a clear and dramatic example is that of the corrupt leaders who
for more than thirty years were responsible for control over the Mexican workers and
profited from it.

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