Post-Neoliberal Left Turn: Did Latin America's 'New Left' Completely Break with Neoliberalism during the 4th Industrial Revolution?

The economic crisis of the 1980s, generated by a decline in production in the global economy, was expressed in stagnation of GDP, hyperinflation, rising unemployment, growth in foreign debt, while foreign capital inflows in the countries of the Latin American region were reduced. The main source of the crisis was the state, whose excessive intervention in the economy undermined it from the inside. In this situation, the search began for new models of development, the result of which was the introduction of economic neoliberalism, first in such pioneer countries as Chile and Mexico. And after the emergence of the principles of the “Washington Consensus”, neoliberal reforms began in many countries of the region. On this wave, such populist neo-liberal leaders as Alberto Fujimori appeared in Peru. The distinctive features of neoliberal populism in Latin America were the weakness of political institutions with a strong leader, the existence of public debt, reduced (reduced) government apparatus, reliance on the informal sector (rather than on organized labor), economic growth without employment growth, one-time financial injections into social programs. The national economies of Latin America, due to openness in the face of the world market (here implies an uncontrolled flow of foreign investment, mainly TNK and TNB), were forced to focus the economy on the export of raw materials (while the share of exports of goods with low value added remained high) while expanding import finished products. The peculiarity of this period was the policy of extractivism, i.e. This type of resource extraction, which can be traced: 1) large-scale and / or high-intensity extraction of resources; 2) focus mainly on the export of resources; 3) extremely low or complete lack of industrial processing of the extracted raw materials (Diego Andreuccia Isabella M. Radhube. 2017,). To the extent that “post-neoliberal” Latin American governments set themselves the goal of overcoming neoliberal development based on exports, the expansion of resource extravivism in these countries is considered paradoxical (Svampa, 2013). Bolivia is a good example. Since 2006, the government of Evo Morales and his party “Movimiento Al Socialismo” (MAS, “The Movement to Socialism”) have implemented a political project, which was presented as a radical alternative to neoliberalism. An important goal of this project was to diversify the economy and strengthen community-based production forms as part of a tangible need to move away from basic export-based development (Government of Bolivia, 2007). However, in eight years, the Bolivian economy is more dependent on primary exports than before. This is in line with the general trend in the region, driven by high commodity prices; however, he points to problems associated with the use of resource rent to finance economic diversification. “New Left” are leaning towards greater state participation in the economy, nationalization of key industries, narrowing opportunities for economic and financial influence from outside, the predominance of the real sector of the economy over the financial sector, the redistribution of income among as many members of society as possible, and not only the increment of the state of large players.