Ignacio Sandoval Marmolejo ias2117Power and Hegemony - Anthropology G6023Prof. Partha Chatterjee

The Politics of Denizens and Citizens[footnoteRef:1]: [1: This paper was submitted on December, 2013. Rewrites had been done in order to reflect new events in Chile and to clarify some of the arguments. However the main argumentative arc is still present, and actually its reinforced by the development of the situation in Chile. ]

Why Chilean Popular Classes are indifferent to the Constituent Assembly?

Introduction: Why a new constitution? For the first time in this democratic cycle (1990-present), a social movement is seriously trying to gather support for a Constituent Assembly; however their efforts are being hindered by the indifference of popular classes to their cause. They remain as mere commentators and spectators of the political demands about constitutional change. Why popular classes dont care about political transformation that may ground stronger and wider social policies? This paper will try to find the reason for this kind of political indifference. However, for that we need to understand what kind of political indifference we are observing as a trend. Leftist scholars usually push forward the idea that popular classes lack something. This could be emancipatory consciousness, political identity or awareness of their vested interests. But the argument between lines is that political indifference is irrational and usually a negative, the absence of action. The following paper dwells on popular classes life projects and the Chilean political system, putting in question these modernist premises to understand indifference as a form of action. But at the same time, Im looking for a way to assess the limits of these politics of indifference (and spectatorship). The Chilean constitution was created during Augusto Pinochets military dictatorship. During 1974-1980, a special constitutional commission was formed by the military government[footnoteRef:2], and in 1980, the military junta approved a constitutional draft that was ratified by a dubious democratic plebiscite. The Chilean electorate voted 67% in favor, hence approving the text. The constitution was promulgated on October 21, 1980 and came into force on March 11, 1981[footnoteRef:3]. This constitution legitimized the dictatorships politics of repression and disassembly that defused political organizations and political parties. The legal text even foresaw the possibility of the return of democracy, establishing the rules of the democratic regimes within this autocratic matrix. The main political inheritance of that matrix is the so-called sistema binominal (binomial system). This system has been the mechanism used during the democratic regimes for the parliamentary elections. While the legalities are interesting, the practical outcome of this mechanism is more important. Within this system, most of the representatives were members of two political coalitions that were in favor of grand political consensus and the maintenance of neoliberalism as the development model. Thus, excluding minority parties and the possibility of critique within the formal politics[footnoteRef:4]. The second outcome was that despite having less support than the centrists[footnoteRef:5] (La Concertacin, the concert), the right coalition (La Alianza, the alliance) has maintained almost the same quota of power in the parliament during the last twenty-five years. Thanks to this, the already modest and self-restrained political program of the centrist governing parties has been further hindered and constrained by the neoliberalism ideology through the rights representatives in parliament[footnoteRef:6]. [2: Claudio Fuentes, La transicin auto-contenida: Elites polticas y reformas constitucionales en Chile (1990-2010). In XXIX Latin American Studies Association Congress (LASA), Toronto, Canad, 6-9 Octubre (2010)] [3: Christian Viera, Anlisis Crtico De La Gnesis De La Constitucin Vigente. In Revista de Derechos Fundamentales, Universidad Via Del Mar, N5, pp. 151-171 (2011), p.156.] [4: Patricio Navia, La transformacin de votos en escaos: leyes electorales en Chile, 1833-2004. In Poltica y Gobierno, Vol. XII, N2, II semestre, pp.233-276 (2005), p.273. Navia argues that minority parties have no access to legislative representation due to veto power that the right wing parties currently hold, but also, because the social actors that are opposed to this system have not created a unitary front until today.] [5: Formally La Concertacin is center-left coalition, but most of their policies are more oriented to reproduce neoliberalism, and less to mitigate its effects. So they have a more de facto centrist position in the Latin-American political spectrum ] [6: Fernando Atria, La Constitucin Tramposa, (Santiago: Lom, 2013), p. 61.]

This political deadlock leaded the leftist parties and the more critical groups within La Concertacin to perceive a situation where any constitutional changes seemed utopic. Any aspiration to make political structural changes, especially by minority parties, was impossible due to the ambivalence of the governing centrist coalition and the complete refusal of the right-wing parties and the bourgeoisie[footnoteRef:7]. [7: By November, 2014, a reform to change the binominal system for a more democratic process, however the possible outcomes of the process are unknown. ]

At the same time, the constitution created the legal circumstances that secured the privatization of strategic sectors within the Chilean economic system, deepening the neoliberalism that was already established in Chile. The initial economic program that the military dictatorship put in motion was based on the economic philosophy of a team of civilian young economists known as The Chicago Boys[footnoteRef:8]. The de-facto leader of that group was Jaime Guzmn, far-right wing lawyer and catholic activist. He not only headed the economic team under Pinochet tyrannical rule, but he was also the main architect of the legal structure contained in the constitution. He is actually seen as the direct responsible of the legal constitutional entanglements that begot the particular Chilean style of democracy discussed above[footnoteRef:9]. The careful intertwine between economic and political plans breed a kind of neoliberalism that not only erased the possibility of overcoming capitalism, but actually unhinged all the mechanisms that allow the growth of capitalist accumulation. While its true that some changes were made during the Aylwins, Freis and Lagoss administrations, its only during Michelle Bachelets government (2006-2010) that more radical changes were suggested to counter some aspects of Chilean neoliberalism[footnoteRef:10]. However, these political intentions never materialize in a new constitution. After Bachelets term, the right-wing took the presidency and the parliament under the leadership of Chilean billionaire Sebastin Piera (2010-2014). [8: Andrs Solimano, Chile and the Neoliberal Trap: The Post-Pinochet Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 31. ] [9: Tania Busch Venthur, El Concepto de Constitucin y la Incomodidad Constitucional en Chile, In Global Jurist, Vol. 12, Iss. 2 (Topics), Article 5, (2012), p.12] [10: Claudio Fuentes, La transicin auto-contenida, p.22. ]

During 2014, Michelle Bachelet won a second team as president, riding in a wave of social unrest engendered by massive student protests. The initial demands focused on college tuitions and the quality of public schools and private colleges. But in short time, the social critique that the student movement held was transformed in a wider, but vaguer rally against the old political class and economic inequality. In that context, a coalition of student groups, lawyers, leftist parties and newly founded organizations raised the idea that the only possibility for deeper changes was a Constitutional Assembly. Partially inspired by other Latin-American constitutional process and experiments that happened during the 2000s, they sought to position the possibility of a new constitution through new forms of participative democracy within the public sphere. As for today (November, 2014) the idea of a new constitution has gained some traction within the new governing coalition Nueva Mayora (New Majority[footnoteRef:11]), which is in fact an alliance between La Concertacin and the communist party. However, the ambiguity of the centrist spirit is also actualized in the constitutional issue. Their official position is that they are open to a new one, but until 2014 they have rejected any mechanism that would deploy constitutional assemblies or any other forms of radical participative democracy. [11: The change of name is an effort to disavow La Concertacins centrist and passive politics, and to build a new imagine that relate more closely to the progressive policies planned]

The Constitutional Problem From the perspective of the centrist and progressive forces, the main problem with the constitution is twofold: this constitution seems to be illegal and illegitimate. On one hand, its illegal because some allegation of electoral fraud[footnoteRef:12] remains unresolved, and on the other hand, its illegitimate because, in a schmittean move, the military government attributed the constitutional power to itself[footnoteRef:13]. [12: Claudio Fuentes, El Fraude (Santiago: Editorial Huerders, 2013) p.11. ] [13: Fernando Atria, La Constitucin]

Moreover, the more pragmatic social movement adds a third dimension. The critical problem with the constitution for them is that their proposed reforms in education, political participation and health are bound by the constitution or leyes orgnicas (organic laws). As we have seen, the deadlock precludes the large quorums required, as they are impossible to obtain under the current electoral system. In this context, current efforts of these actors had been oriented (1) to create a social and political base promoting a new constitution and a new election system, (2) to allow the participation of minority parties, and (3) to unbind the legal cage that restrict the creation of a welfare state[footnoteRef:14]. In other words, the public objective of this social movement is to create a new political system that fosters a series of reforms that could be beneficial to all classes, with the exception of the more powerful and rich faction of the bourgeois class. This movement has used the language of 99% vs the 1% as the base of what they perceive as the basis of social antagonism, in other words, radical inequality. [14: Some key reforms are the nationalization of the cooper mining industry, the state control of education and health services, and the creation of a state-owned agency to manage workers pensions.]

One could think that these reforms could represent the demands of the people, this wide category omnipresent in Latin-American history and clearly tied to the spirit of the populist reason[footnoteRef:15]. However, in Laclaus words, the idea of Constituent Assembly is not working as an empty signifier that allows to conglomerate all the demands in a chain of equals against the elites. Most of the popular classes are fairly indifferent and take a position of spectator regarding these issues. Chilean low-income groups[footnoteRef:16] are usually opposed to the idea of this particular kind of political mechanism (37 percent in favor)[footnoteRef:17], even if they have a positive opinion on reducing the income difference (83 percent in favor), promoting universal and free college education (73 percent in favor) and the nationalization of the cooper mining industry (81 percent in favor). Actually, the constituent assembly has almost the same level of rejection as the legalization of marihuana (33 percent in favor) and same-sex marriage (33 percent in favor). In that sense, we have to remember that this kind of legal transformations are usually opposed by Chilean conservative culture sustained by lower urban and rural classes. After the dictatorship, left wing politics retained some power within these classes, especially from a geographic point of view, but they dont have a hegemonic nor commanding leadership of them[footnoteRef:18]. [15: Ernesto Laclau,The populist reason (London: Verso, 2005)] [16: Im using here low-income groups as a proxy of popular classes. ] [17: CEP, Estudio Nacional de Opinin Pblica N70. In [http://www.emol.com/documentos/archivos/2013/10/ 29/2013102914143.pdf] [12/15/2013] [Online]. This survey is highly interesting because it was applied during the more algid moment within the campaign period of the 2014 general election. ] [18: Carlos Molina Bustos & Manuel Cabieses Donoso, Voices from the Chilean left. In NACLA Report on the Americas 37.1, (Jul/Aug 2003): 14.]

I have learned through my ethnographic experience that popular classes are clearly divided on the issue. A more-oriented small minority welcome any effort to lessen the gap between social groups. The great majority are wary of something as a constitutional assembly. I would argue that is not pure rejection as abjection what we find in the popular classes, but something a little more terrifying for progressive middle classes. The former have an attitude of rejection as indifference about the formal (i.e. middle class) political mechanisms, even as powerful as the constitutional one. Of course, some groups of the popular classes are optimist about the possibility of a new constitution, and even, a constitutional assembly, but the main feeling that permeates them is that this kind of discussion is irrelevant for them and their lives. And even if it could be relevant, the possibility of them as an intervening force is minimal. We have to remember that during the last presidential election (2013-2014), the electoral participation was 48,1 percent during the first round, and 41,1 percent during the run-off election. This was clearly a disappointment for the progressive aspiration of political mobilization, but also it would translate into a parliament that didnt have enough votes to enact laws with long and complex negotiations with right-wing parties[footnoteRef:19]. [19: Roberto Mardones & Sergio Toro, Chile frente al Cambio de Ciclo, Participacin y preferencias electorales en las elecciones chilenas de 2013. In [http://www.nuso.org/upload/articulos/3999_1.pdf] [12/15/2013][Online]]

So, we finally arrive to an important paradox: why is that Chilean popular classes tend to be indifferent to the efforts of Chilean middle classes to implement legal reforms that could be beneficial for both groups? The traditional left-center political classes say that this phenomenon is explained due to the lack of civic education or political participation culture in Chile[footnoteRef:20]. In contrast, the leaders of the educational social movement say that this indifference is an effect of a depoliticization of Chilean civil society[footnoteRef:21]. In both cases, the combination of neoliberal policies and repressive regimes during and after the military dictatorship seems to be the main causal factor. While its true that the dictatorship and neoliberalism are important forces that shape Chilean society, their opinions still reflect the discursive trope of the modern barbarians. [20: El Mostrador, Lagos descarta Asamblea Constituyente y propone comisin bicameral para reformar la Carta Magna. In [http://www.elmostrador.cl/pais/2013/12/02/lagos-descarta-asamblea-constituyente-y-propone-comision-bicameral-para-reformar-la-carta-magna/]. Ricardo Lagos is one of the ex-presidents of the country and one of the traditional leader in the center-left coalition. ] [21: Francisco Carreras & Camilo Lagos, El camino para la Asamblea Constituyente. In [http://www.elmostrador.cl/ opinion/2013/12/04/el-camino-para-la-asamblea-constituyente/][12/15/2013][Online]]

Elites and middle classes usually tend to see popular classes as children or barbarians when they dont comply with their cultural political practices, even in modern societies[footnoteRef:22]. They push this idea of modern barbarism so they can highlight the difference between them. Arguably, part political shaming and part expression of frustration, they try to point out that something is missing within popular classes. Whereas this could be rationality, consciousness, political participation or education, popular classes are faulty. These modern and liberal values are regarded as monolithic and patrimony of civil society and middle classes (even in the leftwing parties), and when popular classes dont bend to their political project, they explained it through this lack. Thanks to the argument of deficiency in modern values, popular classes are reduced to unruly and temperamental beings or cultural dumbs that blindly hold on to their own irrational beliefs. This lack and their indifference appears as a burden for progress[footnoteRef:23], therefore the middle emerges as the illuminate class that shall save them and civilization. [22: Michel-Rolph, Anthropology and the Savage Slot: The poetics and Politics of Otherness. In Fox, R (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology, working in the present (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1991). p.33] [23: Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004) p. 30-33]

So, against these theories, I would like to argue that Chilean popular classes engage with civil society and its main institutional course of action and rituals (election and party participation) from a very instrumental and non-normative political way. Its not the lack of modern values, as they are interpreting modernity is a different way. They are as pragmatic and rational as middle classes leaders and their instrumental logic is not a reflection of the impossibility to understand and practice a modern normative logic (as the theory of deficiency claims). The basis for their different political practices are the result of the historical transformation of their positions vis-a-vis the state and the political system. But if they refuse to act within civil society and state, where could we find them? This question takes us to a discussion on politics and the western idea of politics. The imagination of an alternative interpretation of the functioning of Chilean politics obliges to briefly develop a theory of the political that is not reductive to the western institutions, or what the different versions of what capitalist societies have considered the transcendental logic of the political function. After we examine the error of the western self-homogenizing imagination, especially about the more peripheral countries such as Chile, we can reconstruct the political from that pieces. After all, there is no reason to throw out the baby with the bath water. Finally from that standing point, I will try to resolve the paradox and comment on an essential distinction on political subjectivity: denizens as opposed to citizens. This duality is initially inspired by Chateerjees civil society and political society[footnoteRef:24], but I would like to propose some precisions on how to read the issue of political subjectivity in the Chilean case. For that, its necessary to rework some metatheoretical assumptions about human subjectivity and agency along the works of Margaret Archer and Alex Callinicos. The idea is to underlabour Charteerjees distinction, through a critical realist interpretation of the duality citizen and denizen. [24: See Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed p.41, and Partha Chatterjee, Lineages of Political Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011) ]

Regardless of who wins the election, I still have to work tomorrowFor a general picture, I would start describing the popular classes as mainly composed by five groups: formal and casual workers in low positions of (1) the mining industry, (2) construction sector, (3) agro-industrial sector (fruits, fishing, wine and salmon), (4) services sector (retail, food and facility services, and global services as call-centers) and (5) Forestry. Almost all of member of these classes are urban or semi-urban populations. Moreover they usually develop irregular trajectories between different job markets: self-employment, formal-seasonal jobs, formal-permanent jobs and the informal market[footnoteRef:25]. [25: Also, I included here the small peasantry. The peasants sector usually mix strategies of domestic agriculture work and seasonal jobs in the agro-industrial sector, therefore taking the form of a hybrid rural proletariat. ]

Of course, this short description doesnt do justice to the complexities of Chilean social relations of production, or even which groups are best deemed to be part of this idea of popular classes. However its important to note that the traditional industrial workers and the rural peasantry are minorities between all the classes that could be considered as popular or exploited classes. One striking feature is that Chilean popular classes havent been able to create alternatives to the mainstream discourses or to constitute themselves as a contra-hegemonic force during the recent democratic years. Peasants, workers and slum dweller movements still have not recover from the violent repression suffered during the dictatorship and the depoliticization under the democratic neoliberal governments[footnoteRef:26]. This doesnt mean that relevant massive protests are not to be found during the last twenty years, but these forms of movement were highly inorganic and focused in their immediate demands and contexts. Mining workers, docks workers, or forestry workers could not reach the level of mobilization to constitute themselves as a wide social movements with societal scope or to have material resources to build a strong bid for hegemony. [26: Manuel Garcs, El mundo de las poblaciones (Santiago: LOM, 2004)]

However during the last decade, a strong middle class student movement have shown its force. As they were capable to build a social movement that encompassed middle and popular classes political actions, the study of these recent events opens a door to apprehend more deeply political popular subjectivity.This movement was originated from elite undergrad colleges (Universidad de Chile and Universidad Catlica) and some of the elite public schools in Chile[footnoteRef:27]. Built upon a tradition of student organization during recent democratic decades, student organization and networks were able to exert some hegemony in weak territorialized organizations that were germinating in poorer semi-private and public schools. In that way, a wide coalition of students, coming from middle-upper classes to popular classes was able to strike the political status quo in 2006 (under the leadership of secondary education/high-school student organizations), and again during 2011 (under the leadership of college organizations). These protest were affectionately called La Revolucin de los Pinguinos (The Penguin Revolution), because official high school uniforms resemble the color and shapes of the penguins. After all the movements deliberative process, a central demand/slogan was reached: to end the profit in education (fin al lucro). [27: Chilean educational system is divided between public, private and semi-private schools. The public schools are part of the government on the district level (municipalidad), thus the central state is not responsible for managing public schools. Upper and upper-middle classes parents usually send their children to private schools, and popular classes send theirs to public schools. However, there are several elitist and high demand public schools (similar to grammar schools or public chatter schools) that select their students and have good results in educational evaluations tests. So, these schools are able to attract children from the middle and upper-middle class. In general, the enrollment of the top five universities in Chile (at the same time, the only research universities on the country) comes from these schools (private and elitist public school). ]

The important thing is that while the middle classes could exert hegemony over the popular classes, tensions between classes were maintained. Disagreements over the objectives, the nature of political alliances and the popular groups violence in protest were regular contentious points between different groups, even during the more active and organized period. Conflicting opinions between leaders of the fractions of the movements were added to the problems already seen during the protests. During those, the more violent actions were conducted by young people from public high schools, which were profoundly criticized during and after the events from middle class organizations. Not all college students were middle class, nor not all high schools students were from popular classes, that is a truism. However it seems clear that whereas middle classes pushed forward a language of citizenship and peaceful and creative protests, popular classes organizations also had more violent interventions within their repertory of political practices. At the end of 2013, it was clear the middle classes commanded the movement, and their demands and tactics had become the central spine of the social movement. However the strong trends of these in which these empirical difference appeared, allows us to find a window to the political subjectivity of the popular class. In this way, we could use these observations to relate the data to other ethnographic endeavors that look at these classes[footnoteRef:28]: [28: The descriptions that follow are the results of two research projects: NAEs Class Subjectivities and Life Projects of Heads of Household in Santiago: Exploring the constitution of agency in Urban Chile (Student research project funded by Universidad de Chile) and Fraguas Chilean contemporary Leftist movements and the construction of power (self-funded). Im deeply grateful to both research teams. ]

(1) There is an important orientation to demand opportunities for social mobility, as opposed to the general political philosophy of strengthening of the state and the creation of a welfare state. While, there is some germens in their subaltern theories of radical social malaise (anti-authority attitudes) and leftist philosophies (anti-capitalist attitudes), the main goal for individuals of popular classes is the establishment of institutions that enable them to achieve social mobility for themselves or their children (when they grow up). For example, a fair education system, easy access to entrepreneurship and the market of micro-firms and higher taxes for the rich. In contrast, objectives as political participation, democratization of the political process or other similar ideas are not part of their current concerns. (2) Their political practices are heterogeneous. While young people are learning to promote assemblies and public manifestations; older people continue to rely upon clientelism with local authorities and political parties, direct access to public resources through kinship networks or compadrazgos ties that are embedded in local government, or voting during elections. However, they dont necessary have a permanent relation with political parties or ideologies, and at the same time, they are open to political undefined territorial movements that are articulated by formal and informal political networks and charismatic leaders. These movements are oriented to local problems and dont have the arguments, the resources or the intention to become hegemonic. A good summary of the popular class attitude is the leiv motif: Regardless of who wins the election, I still have get out of bed to go work tomorrow (Da lo mismo quien gane, maana me tengo que levantar a trabajar igual). The key feature in this formula is the indifference to the result of election, as opposed to indignation or anger. People are building their world vis--vis the state and the middle class civil society. If they intervene in them is mostly as denizen, not citizen. In general, they accept social programs and benefits, but they fill identifications or compromise with politics for it. This is even clearer between young people that have rejected the modernist ideal of citizen as college professional. Of course, there are young members of the same classes that fill the calling of social mobility, but unsurprisingly they have good grades or a social environment that deposited the aspiration of social mobility on them at a young age. Chilean popular classes (or lower classes used as proxy[footnoteRef:29]) dont have a particular low participation in elections, and they even participate in political parties. I would argue that they have good reasons or as critical realist says, causal effective reasons to choose in which traditional political institutions they are going to participate, while they reject others institutions. How we could understand this selective indifference? [29: Alonso Bucarey, Eduardo Engel & Miguel Jorquera, Determinantes de la Participacin Electoral en Chile. In [http://www.econ.uchile.cl/uploads/documento/e76e75205a2432aaad6bf6bf27db619765aa589b.pdf] [12/15/2013][Online]]

I think that a large part of the problem is that political theory considered the political as a fully normative or fully instrumental affair: the foundation of a polity or the war through other means. I would like to propose some hypothesis to understand why humanity needs political institutions, and why social scientists need to differentiate between this function (and their historical transformation), the historical development of political institutions and the political identities and projects that people have. Beyond Traditional PoliticsChatterjee, in the first lines of one of his books, argues that political theory superficially appears as employing a timeless and space-less language, thus universal valid for all societies, but they really are within an epic time, which is signed by the formal end of an arbitrary and illegitimate modes of power (absolutist, despotic or tyrannical power[footnoteRef:30]). [30: Partha Chatterjee, Lineages of Political Society, p.1]

Modernity presents itself as the triumph against the irrationality of arbitrary power, and the invention of rational procedures to deal with ideal and material laws of functioning (mathematics, theology, political theory, utilitarianism, logic, social science, so on and so forth) and foster progress. Politics, as the craft of government, emerged as the creation of procedures to orient the process of rational government and the common good. This aim, real or apparent, is really problematic from an historical point of view. Several authors had shown that this form of politics presents a series of insufficiencies or risks": it fails to conceal arbitrary power[footnoteRef:31], class struggle undermines its transcendence[footnoteRef:32], society threats democratic liberty[footnoteRef:33] and the democratic process of consensus production is not secured[footnoteRef:34], among others. However, it seems that the juridical-political regime based on the dual and relational structure state-civil society still remains as the most powerful blueprint for society to deal with social integration, government, social consensus and organization of the means of violence. The factuality and effectiveness of the duality state/civil society is almost a truism. All these theories, even if there are critical of the current form of politics, would agree that modernity effectively puts an end to the naked arbitrariness of the Kings sovereign (casual) power, constituting politics through both of the discussed institutions. [31: Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, tr. Alan Sheridan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979),] [32: Karl Marx, El Manifiesto Comunista (Madrid: Akal, 2004)] [33: John Stuart Mill, On liberty and other essays. (London: Digireads.com Publishing, 2010)] [34: Jrgen Habermas,Tres modelos de democracia: sobre el concepto de una poltica deliberativa. (Madrid: Episteme, 1994)]

I will try to explore this principle with the theoretical insights of Gramsci and Foucault, to understand the transformation of the functions of power and/or political institutions, while trying to expose the limits of this understanding of politics. To say that Gramsci is like a mirror and each author sees himself to see is an understatement[footnoteRef:35]. But, I would like to highlight what is for me the central problem that Gramsci tried to address: how to think a theory of politics without resorting to the liberal (and arbitrary) distinction between State and civil society, and at the same time, how to understand the emergence and power of the state, without reducing it to a epiphenomenon of the class struggle that lives on the civil society[footnoteRef:36]. Gramscis famous distinction between East or West (and War of maneuver and War of position) is trying to expose this primary problem of homogenization: despite the power that the economy content could have over the political form, the latter one remains partially indeterminable by the former. We cannot know a priori the level of autonomy of political institutions (the state and civil society), nor the relations that they have between them. Therefore, the next step that Gramsci had to take was to describe what the capitalist state really does. [35: See Timothy Brennan, Antonio Gramsci and Postcolonial Theory, Diaspora, 10, 2 (Fall 2001), pp. 143-87] [36: Paul Thomas, The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p.41.]

The more obvious response is that the state is one of the capitalist class instruments to dominate the proletariat; even this thesis could be further degenerated in the assumption that the main function of the state is the coercion of the working class. In contrast, Marx showed interest in the army and the role that they play in strengthening the state[footnoteRef:37], but Gramsci knew better[footnoteRef:38] and retained some question in a particular feature of the state: the normative capacity to position itself as universal, in direct opposition to the particular interests and needs (class interests) that create the civil society. In that sense Croce[footnoteRef:39] and Hegels idealism is essential to understand how the state could present itself as the enactment of an ideal principle as freedom or ethics, and why Marx and Gramsci would doubt this thesis. [37: Karl Marx.El 18 Brumario de Luis Bonaparte (Madrid: La Oveja Negra, 1974)] [38: Paul Thomas, The Gramscian Moment, p.175 ] [39: Perry Anderson, The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci. In New Left Review, 100 (November-December), pp. 5-80, (1976), p. 37]

From Gramsci, Hegemony, as the concrete manifestation of universality, is going to be the central in the understanding of the political and the state. Gramsci proposed two types of hegemony: civil hegemony would be the organization of claims of universality outside the state (i.e civil society), that differs from political hegemony, which is the reproduction and rearrangement of a historical claim, encoded in the law[footnoteRef:40]. The universality of these claims has to be twofold: valid for everyone and valid in any moment in this modern epic-time. The legitimacy cant present itself as a correlation of forces or a practical arrangement between parts, but by rational procedures, transcendental principles or both. The capitalist state uses a language that reflects the premises that this political form is the unique historical possibility for all this epic time (i.e forever) and at the same time, as the better answer possibly to everyones needs. Evidently, Gramsci, as Marx, knew that the civil society was the secret of the state[footnoteRef:41], so the latter institution had to extend itself to incorporate the political institutions and class segments that were present before the states capitalist form. In Gramscis case, the southern landowners and traditional intellectuals (rural bureaucracy and/or clergy)[footnoteRef:42]. Therefore this incorporation was historically mediated by this language of universality. [40: Paul Thomas, The Gramscian Moment, p.194] [41: Paul Thomas, The Gramscian Moment, p.180] [42: Antonio Gramsci, Algunos Aspectos de la Cuestin Meridional. In La Cuestin Meridional (Buenos Aires; Quadrata Editor, 2002) pp. 72-96]

In this approach, the emergence of new stable forms of political practice within capitalism is a reflection of the irrationally contained within the new social relations of production. As they cant solve within their economic logics (wage, bonus, contractual negotiation) fundamental contradictions that are essential relation labor-capital and his enactment as exploitation, the economical has to reorder the political to cater to their new systemic needs. When subaltern classes become more political, their organization will reveal the truth about the state: the capacity for self-organization and self-regulation[footnoteRef:43] of (socialist) society would erase the necessity of politics as autonomous practices. In other words, the politicization is the precondition for the re-absorption of the political within the social[footnoteRef:44] and the end of the state[footnoteRef:45]. [43: Paul Thomas, The Gramscian Moment, p.195] [44: Ibid.] [45: Karl Marx, El Manifiesto Comunista (Madrid: Akal, 2004), p.43]

The precondition of politics in the capitalist society for Gramsci, and its reenactment in social formations, is the fact that social relations of production (a part of the economy) conditions the economy and the political, but also another precondition is the double historical nature of the state and the political institutions. Historical in the sense that several political institutions existed previous to the development of the key features of capitalist society and their systematization[footnoteRef:46]; and historical again, because the reproduction and transformation of the capitalist state depends on acting subjects, making historical decisions[footnoteRef:47]. So the function of the political is the creation of social order, that is threatened by the economic positions and their tendency to have a particular or corporative attitude; civil society and the state are two moments of the political in which the particular is transformed into a universal, which could be any of the following: (1) an unstable negotiated universal based in class alliances and the compromises between them to produce historical blocs; (2) an also unstable ideological universal based on the subaltern consent that is produced by an ideologically inflicted common sense; (3) and a true ethical universal that is the final form of the socialist political theory: when politics is dissolved again in the social. [46: Paul Thomas, The Gramscian Moment, p.195] [47: See Alex Callinicos,Making history: Agency, structure and change in social theory Vol. 3 (London: Brill, 2004)]

So, the problem that Gramsci has with the political are relations between political institutions and their functions. For Gramsci, the central institutions are the state and civil society (and other modern institutions as schools and political parties), but their functions are obscured and needed clarification. With Foucault, we have a deeper question of power and their functions, which is contextualized in a tense relation of break and tactical alliance with Marxism[footnoteRef:48]. Foucault is asking how people seem so ready to engage with capitalism that their bodies, their movements and their identities are functional to the capital[footnoteRef:49]. For him, that philosophers dont know what the function of the political and the power is are arguably irrelevant matters; because what remains obscure are the diffuse and institutional regimes that are created by power. Ill refrain to comment on the epistemological and ontological fallacies that Foucault committed; mainly because they are known and discussed[footnoteRef:50], and my objective is to highlight some of Foucaults historical discoveries and comments on power. [48: Bob Jessop, State Power: A Strategic-Relational Approach (London: Polity, 2008), p.144-145] [49: See Balibar, Etienne. "Foucault and Marx: The question of nominalism". InMichel Foucault philosopher, New York: Routledge, pp.38-56 (1992)] [50: Margaret Archer,Being human: The problem of agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) (Chp.1) and Alex Callinicos, "Contra el postmodernismo."In Una crtica marxista (Bogot: Ed. El ncora Editores, 1993) (Chp. 3)]

In one of most interesting philosophical tactics of the XX century, Foucault established that to understand power, its necessary to dissolve the state from the bottom, through the examination of its practices. Therefore, he would reject the Weberian thesis on the state and the opposition between coercion and consensus[footnoteRef:51], while creating a methodological principle, in which, he understood social relations as large networks of practices that are integrated in historical regimes of power. This turn would override the ideological distinction between public and private, as Althusser did in the sixties[footnoteRef:52]. [51: Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, tr. Alan Sheridan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), p. 28 ] [52: Louis Althusser, Ideologa y aparatos ideolgicos de Estado: Freud y Lacan, tr. Jos Sazbn, and Alberto J. Pla (Buenos Aires: Nueva visin, 1988)]

However as useful this perspective could be, his insights are mildly successful. He correctly decenters state and civil society, but the other institutions that he researched remain strangely modern and formal: schools, prisons, hospitals, modern sexuality, political economy and so on. When hes dealing with other political institutions that are outside the modern imaginary of the political, they are explained as diffuse power or resistance. So, the political remains theoretical trapped between a diffuse form of contingent actions and the rigid structure form of modern liberal institutions. Where are the non-modern institutions? Does power only take an institutional form in modern institutions and the traditional understanding of the state?Another of Foucaults suggestive insight is the discovering of the technologies of power. In this line, he understands the modern power regime through three coexisting technologies of power: sovereignty, discipline and biopolitics. They combine cultural and material aspects to produce different kinds of affects and subjects. I doubt that there is only one relation between these technologies and their organization into historical regimes; however, discipline and biopolitics are central to the power of political institutions[footnoteRef:53]. Nevertheless, the difference with the traditional understanding of power is the fact that these powers are not based in epic-time or ethical normative claims; they dont engage with people in the epic time that requires claims of universalism to create and mobilize people inside the civil society or the state. Actually, they function in a practical and instrumental way (norms as average), producing docile individual bodies and docile populations. These technologies of power escape the traditional normativity of civil society and the individual political participation of sovereign subjects[footnoteRef:54]. [53: Michel Foucault, Society Must be Defended, tr. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003)] [54: Michel Foucault, Society Must be Defended, tr. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003). P.249-255; see also, Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, tr. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave, 2007)]

However at this point, we encounter a new problem. While Foucault invites us to extend our view to see the political, he radically dissolved all institutions into this category. Now every regular set of practices (even the economic ones as factories) are political, the mere idea of institutional form (the social relations) is power. I will argue that there is a difference between the political sphere and the political institutions. As I said earlier, our understanding of modern politics was captured between a set of functions and a set of institutions. Gramsci and Foucault extended the understanding of the political sphere and the function of power; however both were trapped between modern institutions and the diffuse and informal dimension of power. So to understand power as a sphere and their normative, we need to establish why we have political institutions and what the normative function that creates power is. Allow me to open the question with a little of philosophical speculation.We could presume if economic institutions, the ones who deal with the production, destruction and exchange of things, could create things and resolve their problems with only production, destruction and exchange of other things, we wouldnt have the need of external and conventional norms. So the economical would be a closed system and its problems would be resolved through the discovering of the logic of things. All the components of the economy are part of the system of things, so economic practices are part of the same species of practices, and different logics (as for example, Polanyis reciprocity, redistribution and mercantile exchange) would be only separate genus[footnoteRef:55]. All economical practices and our relation with things would go soothingly in this scenario. As with things, we could say the same thing about ideas[footnoteRef:56]. All the ideal/intellectual practices would belong to the same species, only existing differences in the level of genus. The system of ideas would close itself, and resolve its problems through more intellectual practices. [55: This class of arguments seems to be the basis of neo-classical economic theory.] [56: These arguments are very similar to Luhmanns Systems Theory and other radical constructionism authors, as Rorty]

Contrary to this mechanical and elegant society, the social process seems to be more chaotic; in other words, society is an open system[footnoteRef:57]. I proposed that to understand the domestication of openness; we should admit that humanity has a practical knowledge that allows us to differentiate between three things: things, ideas and anima (people)[footnoteRef:58]. These are not Kantian transcendental a priori categories, but the direct result of our practical activity in/with the world[footnoteRef:59]: (1) things are usually unresponsive, malleable, are outside of ourselves, and they cannot be duplicated at will, (2) ideas are usually images, feelings or concepts that I have and I could share with others without losing them, and (3) people are things that are outside myself, but it seems that they have independent will, so theyre responsive and un-malleable. Of course, this practical knowledge is fallible, and sometimes contradictory and ambiguous; animals, small children, spirits, corpses, unmalleable geographic phenomena (as forests, mountains, stars and the sky), souls, words, slavery, rituals, food are all liminal phenomena that were and are open to different interpretations. Im not claiming that the human species has a linear cognitive evolution on these distinctions; western culture treats a cluster of cells as a human with rights, has a curious approach to animal rights, imagines the universe as strings, and legally accepts corporations as people. [57: Roy Bhaskar, The possibility of naturalism a philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences (3rd ed.). (London: Routledge, 1998) p.23] [58: Here Im starting the argument from the transcendental categories of Husserl. But my interpretation is put in motion though the argument of the conditions of possibility and transcendental critique following Bhaskar. See Frederic Vandenberghe, Posthumanism, or the cultural logic of global neo-capitalism. In Whats critical about critical realism? Essays in reconstructive social theory (New York: Routledge, 2014)] [59: On the importance of practical knowledge, see Margaret Archer, Being human]

I argue that because we recognized these practical differences between entities; we put in motion mechanisms to specialize, automate and differentiate[footnoteRef:60] our practices and institutions. When humanity detects some empirical patterns that are productive (logical patterns, symbolic patterns, ecological patterns, productive patterns, exchange patterns), we employ them to create situations of greater well-being and flourishment, but also control and destruction. [60: From these, It dont follow a clean transcendental differentiation between institutions as Malinowski [Bronislaw Malinowski, Una teora cientfica de la cultura (Madrid: Edhasa, 1981)] or Parsons [Talcott Parsons and Edward Albert Shils, Hacia una teora general de la accin (Buenos Aires: Kapelusz, 1968)], nor a lineal evolution of functions and systems as Luhmann [Niklas Luhmann, La sociedad de la sociedad (Mxico: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2007)]. Again the differentiation is a non-lineal history and all institutions have material, political and cultural process; however modernity establish a system of differentiation that actively try to separate these three spheres, and Marxism acknowledges this through the infrastructure-structure-superstructure metaphor.]

However, humanity is confronted to contingency[footnoteRef:61], especially due to peoples sense of freedom[footnoteRef:62]. Thus, we try to learn from our practical ignorance and try new ways to organize ourselves. While economic and cultural organization fosters innovation to understand more stable logics of things and ideas, political organization is oriented to direct people without a clear (economical o logical) argument. The political is the need to respond to contingency and to do something, under arbitrary but conventional ethical norms[footnoteRef:63], which are historically accumulated. For Marxism, the main human contingency is class contradictions, for post-structuralism it is semiotic indeterminacy. [61: That could be product of our fallibility or the transformation of the patterns, as nature is an open system [Roy Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 [1979])]] [62: This is reinterpretation of the Hegelian arguments in Elements of the Philosophy of Right [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991]. ] [63: Religious institutions and domestic households are also political in this sense. However, the domestic household is highly undifferentiated, unspecialized and non-autonomous, so its orientation is harder to define. While Religion is truly a different way to wage war in Foucaults words, and Asad cleverly shows the complex relation between securalism and religious thinking on the political sphere [Talal Asad, Secularism, Nation-State, and Religion. In Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003)]]

During modernity, political elites and economical elites fought, negotiated, collaborated and established dominance, therefore transforming the political institutions, inside the function of the political. After these convoluted times, it was determined that the state would no longer direct the economy in western society; creating the liberal distinction between state and civil society. Furthermore, the state couldnt restrict the cultural institutions, so the right of public speech and the public sphere were born[footnoteRef:64]. These double attack on the political (including the religious) would be contested and new limits would constantly be transform. [64: Is not that the Kantian promise of Enlightenment? [Immanuel Kant, "What is enlightenment?". In On History, pp.3-10, (1784)]

Denizens & Citizens: on the identity question and the participation on normative spheres Currently, the Latin-American capitalist state maintains some juridical powers, its military sovereign power had to be retransformed into liberal and representative democracies, and the disciplinary apparatus has to be held accountable by the public opinion or sphere[footnoteRef:65]. The return of democracy however dont imply for the state to lose its most important technologies/powers: biopolitics and coercion[footnoteRef:66]. Within this scheme, capitalist states are going to develop a historical matrix to shape the control of contingency, therefore forming population and correlating its old and new functions to them. All the population will be treated as population and subject to the law; discipline should appear as justified and necessary; and while people would be called to participate in the democratic process and civil society, the particular interest is in middle classes (or the allied classes of the ruling class). Popular classes would be treated more as biopolitical subjects and sometimes as exceptions of the law; and if these classes became unruly, they would confront the coercive apparatus of the state. However, these matrixes are not eternal, because the state has to confront one basic fact: people learn and react to these institutions, and construct their life projects in/through/against/around political institutions. [65: Hans Joas, The Sacredness of the Person: A New Genealogy of Human Rights (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2013), p.47] [66: Clara Han, Life in debt times of care and violence in neoliberal Chile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012)]

The interplay between the state and peoples practices would produce two normative spheres. One of them is the civil society[footnoteRef:67], which as an ideal form still represents the epic time, the nation and the all-encompassing social formation; but at the same time, as a sphere (or a set of institutions) it is restricted mostly to the educated classes (middle classes and traditional workers classes). The other sphere is the political society[footnoteRef:68] in which active collective actors recognized the illegality of some aspects of their ways-of-life, and for that reason, they demanded entitlements and law exceptions to achieve social reproduction and their life projects. They usually engage with public services and try to negotiate with them, using their means of destruction as strikes, illegal land occupation, corruption, mobs or gangs. When no point of negotiation is encountered, they have to confront with the states coercive institutions. [67: Partha Chatterjee, Lineages of Political Society, p.13-14] [68: Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed, p.40-41]

I would like to take this distinction between political society and civil society one step further. I argue that civil society is the network of institutions outside of the state, that work in the epic time of modernity; in which the social relations of political production are oriented towards the creation of law, rights and general policies for society. People in this sphere have to choose the political and legal mechanisms that are the customs of the correct political imaginary. The political society is composed by a series of institutions that could be diffuse or have an institutional (regular) form, from an empirical and historical point of view. The unity between them is the issue that all these institutions are oriented to a different time: instant, short-termed o larger that the epic time (as in revolutionary politics or the millennial movements). To accomplish this different temporality, they have to maintain themselves and their claims of universality outside of the law and modern framework. This understanding of political society and civil society as normative sub-spheres of the political could explain why sometimes revolutionary parties are external to the capitalist state, however they participate in politics; why a clientelism network functions inside and outside the law; or lobby could also be civil o political depending on their recurring and historical feature in a particular social formation. However with this distinction, we could encounter the premise that people are under-socialized agents that are all powerful, freely can enter and get out of institutions, and could instrumentally react to all aspects in their lives[footnoteRef:69]. I would argue that while agents are structured in their resources, opportunities and mental schemes, as they are involuntary positioned, but they have also an internal conversation that yields ultimate and personal concerns. These commitments are moral and non-interchangeable (theyre not rational preferences) and they motivate us to build projects and life projects that are reflection of these concerns. Of course, these commitments are malleable and historical, so they could be transformed; but this is a personal decision, because humanity is endowed with reflexivity that is subjective, internal and has causal powers[footnoteRef:70]. This means that while people and their engagement with political institutions is enabled and constrained by these entities, humanity can reproduce and transform them under certain circumstances. [69: For the notion of undersocialized, see Margaret Archer, Being human, Chp. 2 ] [70: Margaret Archer,Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Chp. 3 ]

In this scheme[footnoteRef:71], Archer thinks that social scientists should differentiate between personal identity and social identity. Personal identity is our self-perception that is based on our ultimate concerns (I am my commitments) and social identities are the institutional or positional roles that we take. Thus, while the social identity of citizen is produced in the more defined roles of civil society; the social identity of denizen is a negative or non-positivist construction on people that dont engage with the state through civil society, and dont find enough enabling for their projects in the hegemonic role of citizen. Thus, people escape to other roles and categories, sometimes embracing the economic category as consumer or worker; other times embracing the stigma of marginal, squatter or poor. People would sediment their social-political identity in their personal identity, and their political practices would become commitments: necessary, effective or morally correct. [71: Margaret Archer, Being human, pp. 222 and following]

This cleavage on personal identities between the citizen and the non-citizen/denizen maintains the difference between civil and political society, because acting and deciding subjects give to them regularity on the basis of their commitments. At the same time, people would engage instrumentally with institutions that are historically situated in the other sphere. For example, citizens can participate in clientelism practices or popular mobs; while denizens can vote and engage even with traditional political parties. But this crossing to other sphere, fostered by instrumental action, produces a sense of corruption and shame because it would contradict their commitments. So people have to justify, hide, publicly reject or lampoon their actions as a way to protect their moral coherence. In these context, all the efforts of the middle class (usually citizens) seem alien to the popular classes (usually denizens), especially the ones who dont believe in the institutional availability of upward social mobility. They reject the Assembly because not only it seems ineffective for them, but also these current changes could have a negative impact on the political society, modifying the rules on the popular institutions, and bringing an unwelcome disorder. We have to consider how historical action sediments premises that form the current bases for the beliefs of both middle and popular classes. Neoliberalism as the form of/for political organization has closed the state and civil society for popular classes. Moreover, the more traditional form of organization for the popular classes (junta de vecinos neighborhood associations-, unions and territorial organizations) remain dismantled and depoliticized since the dictatorship. The ones that have reach a point of political contention are oriented by progressive logics of citizenship that are defined by the middle classes form of life and resources. Indifference to the formal politics signals a more complex issue that irrationality. On one hand it reflects the rejection to the middle classes demands and political method, which they perceive as antagonistic to their own emancipatory efforts. Middle classes (by their concrete proxies as emergent political parties, college students and traditional organizations) appear as insincere, as its expected that they dont really show a compromise to improve everybodys life situation. Another form of indifference to the constitutional efforts is the mere pragmatic approach to the instrumental actions necessary to reproduce their form of life. Important parts of the popular classes defend the political society institutions because they represent the framework and mechanism that allows them to interact with their Lifeworlds. Participation on networks of clientilism, small looting activities, exchange of political favor on the municipal level, informal and unspoken agreement with low-level and middle-levels drug dealers are all forms of political institutions that are outside of the formal political system. Constitutional assemblies could mean new rules that are not welcome as their risks dont outweigh the perceive benefits. The resistance takes the form of spectatorship and taunting attitude. This type of indifference remains in the periphery, takes care of their businesses, meanwhile joking about the utopic naivety of social change. The interesting thing here is that this is not blind indifference, because they dont base their political judgments on unexamined and unproven beliefs. They explore and test the world, and right now, the option that middle classes offer is unsatisfactory and inviable. However, these judgments are the product of reasonable interpretation of a practical engagement with the world, but if conditions could change, the indifference could be reversed. That hypothetical moment wouldnt mean the middle classes and popular classes are going to be assimilated in a mass or a multitude. Popular classes could use the constitutional field as an instrumental way to fortify the political society or to advance a popular bid for hegemony. The discussion of everyday life reflects those ideas, as people discuss if these political actions would bring ventajas (advantages), but this is only framed as practical improvement for their current conditions, mitigating a little the misery that they feel as a form of live. This duality between denizen and citizen subjectivities that dwell in a different real set of institutions is cardinal for the urban life in Santiago. The denizen is the language of the popular and excluded, not as abstract or arbitrary schemes, but as the product of the historically aware practical engagements with Chilean modern political economy. The thesis that popular classes lack something modern that middle classes have is not only false, but reversed. Popular classes are rational, cautious and aware of their interests and possibilities. Hence they arguably have more reasonable and modern interpretations than the idealist communitarianism approach that middle classes held. We have to be careful with this positional consciousness. This does not mean productive class consciousness (the traditional sense of proletariat consciousness), nor that they are inherently individualistic or corporatist. It is true that all in Chile felt strongly the process of individualization and the colonization of utilitarian reason, Chilean people is not only concerned with themselves and dont consider any form of collective action or moral considerations. I would argue that popular classes are not trapped in pure individualistic or corporatism behavior, because they can produce their own ethical claims that are manifested in national and local forms of solidarity. Media, creative consumption, religious practices, human rights talk, the daily search of the meaning of decency, and the arts are important sites to understand the ethical production conducted by popular classes. Callinicos argues that the double consciousness characteristic of the western capitalist class, which combines both a sense of class antagonism and the pragmatic acceptance of capitalist society, is therefore not simply a reflection of a workers situation. Its sustained by the active intervention within the workers movement of a social layer whose interests spring from their roles in negotiating the terms on which labor is exploited by the capital[footnoteRef:72]. Here we can expand this double consciousness to Chilean popular classes, but we find a common organizing principle for that duality through life projects. The active intervention is not only transformed by the workers movement, but by everyday practical probing of the social world. Project-building and practical probing apparently could be not so common, however there is a social context that breaks expectations and sizes the resources. I would argue that immediate conditions of inequality and misery in Chile hinder the possibilities of practical engagement (probing the world) and the capacity to build projects, even personal or familiar. An important part of the popular classes, are individuals with fractured projects, an incomplete sense of direction within the world. However, life projects are the foundation that allows social assessment, beyond utilitarian or semiotic reason. And right now, the judgment is indifference. [72: Alex Callinicos, Making history, p.262 (emphasis mine)]

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