Conventional… new development model?

Looking at the historical perspective, the social and political crisis that has been experienced in Chile since October 2019 can be considered as the straw that broke the camel’s back of the prevailing neoliberal model. We had had demonstrations of popular discontent from the Penguin Revolution of 2006 onwards. But never, since the dictatorship, mobilizations as massive and profound as those of the social explosion.
The immediate cause was the rise in subway fares, but the various mediate causes, the rise in the cost of living, welfare, privatized health and education, abuses of power, corruption and collusion, social inequalities, pollution and sacrifice zones, can be summarized in a deep discomfort of individuals and families with the harmful effects on their dignity, of a neoliberal development model that generates injustices, arbitrariness, discrimination and abuse, injuring the middle and popular classes and especially the most vulnerable. We all know what happened in the months and years that followed, the demand for human rights and gender parity, the clamor for the inclusion of indigenous peoples and overcoming the environmental crisis, themes that emerged along with the previous ones and that the course of events has made it possible for them to converge in the search for a new constitution for Chile.
The crisis experienced so impacted Chilean society, and its political class, that even emblematic managers of the Chilean neoliberal model such as the leader Joaquín Lavín, declared themselves “social democratic” abjuring the postulates that he would have defended for decades.
At this historical crossroads, the debate around the New Constitution is not only about the model of the political system, about the democratic principles to be emphasized, the constitutional vindication of freedoms and human rights, and the areas of conformation of the state and justice systems. The debate around the development model that the country seeks and needs is also very relevant.
It is significant that the Knowledge Systems Commission of the Constitutional Convention has just approved, these days, an article that points towards a new development model that overcomes the neoliberal model protected by the subsidiary state legitimized by the 1980 Constitution, which is intended to be overcome. It is an important step but there is still the discussion for approval in plenary.
In its substantial part, the text affirms that the State must promote “an equitable, integral and intercultural development of all territories, from an intergenerational perspective focused on good living, the reduction of inequalities, ensuring the principle of non-regression, respect for human rights, nature and the limits of the biosphere.”
This new development model to which the Commission is aiming has three characteristic notes that give it its own stamp:
a) Integral and equitable development suppose a set of basic principles that conceive of development overcoming both economic and technocratic reductionisms. When the main arguments of the current neoliberal model focus on the defense of economic freedom, understanding it only guaranteed by the free market, reference is being made to the utilitarian foundations of economic science. We know that this type of argument tends to the privilege of the market as the primary agent of regulation of society. This has two consequences that have negatively impacted the lives and dignity of millions of Chileans for decades: consumerism and the withdrawal of the State. Consumerism with its lifestyle focused on success and material well-being, having over being. Money, and the power it generates, is a perverse incentive that corrupts the political world and the private world, generating abuses and destructive arbitrariness of the social fabric. And the absence of the State as a provider of social goods such as health, welfare, education, housing and other services, which generates unequal access to common goods and no or little satisfaction of social rights.
The greater intervention of the State implies not only a more adequate regulation of the market, but also, as the text affirms, a policy aimed at the “reduction of inequalities”, which must then be seen by each legislator and executive to see how it implements.
(b) The article also mentions an ecolode approachfocused on environmental challenges. Development must be “from an intergenerational perspective (…) (…) ensuring the principle of non-regression, respect for human rights, nature and the limits of the biosphere”. This approach is deepened by the following wording: “The State must ensure that measures for the protection and conservation of nature and its biodiversity are implemented considering the particularities of territories and communities (…) with an anticipatory, preventive and precautionary approach”. And it adds the concern for actions “that allow prevention, mitigation and adaptation to the climate and ecological crisis (…)”.
It is clear that in the pen of the conventional ones a privilege of an environmentalist, even conservationist, legal approach is reflected here: “protection and conservation of nature and its biodiversity”…”limits of the biosphere” and “principle of non-regression”. In particular, mentioning the principle of non-regression, as well as anticipatory, preventive and precautionary approaches, and raising them to the Constitutional level, are a clear manifestation of the will to overcome a State whose environmental legislation has proved insufficient to face the serious negative environmental impacts on countless populations, territories, cities and coasts of the country. But in addition, the proposed text mentions the intergenerational principle, a key issue when it comes to conceiving an authentic and real sustainable development for the future.
c) Thirdly, the proposed text is quite novel (although consistent with other articles already approved by the Plenary) in that it proposes a model of development “integral and intercultural of all territories, from an intergenerational perspective focused on good living”. When for decades development has been conceived according to the variable growth to the detriment of cultural and social dimensions, it is necessary to highlight the fact that in our country (to a greater extent in the context of the ethnic crisis, migration, denial of diversities) to conceive development in a multidimensional way is not only necessary, but strategic. The concept of “intercultural” comes not only to recognize the fact that diverse peoples and socio-cultural identities coexist – in a way that is not always harmonious, and often conflictual – but it is also normative in the sense that it proposes a democratic path of coexistence centered on dialogue between cultures, knowledge, experiences, religions and philosophies. The focus on “buen vivir” is an ideal that comes from ancestral cultures and has to do with a holistic conception of life, in a solidary and community framework, around which human and non-human beings coexist in a context of harmony. Ideal of life and coexistence that is in the antipodes of the market and its consumerist lifestyle.
This proposal for a constitutional text comes to provoke a drastic change in the way we are accustomed to understanding development in our country. It is consistent with several texts already adopted by the plenary. It is worth noting that it is an integral and balanced conception that moves away from extremes: by the way, it overcomes neoliberalism and its economistic reductionism of life, but neither does it lean towards collectivist statism, nor towards green environmentalism.
The sensitivities represented in the Constitutional Convention are very varied. We might expect far-right ideological alternatives, which defend neoliberalism, to reject this text. But hopefully the other aspects, from liberals, secular and Christian humanists, socialists, communists, environmentalists, ecologists, movementists, understand that the country would do well to focus its next years towards a development model that has at the center the integral and sustainable development of people and the environment, in a context of global challenges against which we must aspire to overcome the current patterns of development, for better ones.

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Original source in Spanish