Contradictions of Capitalism and Social Transformations in Latin America

Abstract

Latin American societies today are crackling with the emergence of new forms of political radicalization which, far from challenging capitalism, seem more like channels for occluding their democratic boundaries. How can we understand this process in which there is a mysterious intertwining of neoliberalism and the darkest forces opposed to the fundamental principle of equal freedom for the members of a political community? In this paper we approach this problem by interpreting the social transformations that have taken place in the region since the last great economic crisis of capitalism. In order to do so, we examine some discussions of contemporary Critical Theory about these effects on the specific level of the forms of integration that structure our social world. In this sense, we are guided by a question that has accompanied Sociology since its beginnings, namely: how the infrastructure of the collective supports of the individual can be eroded by the historical transformations of the capitalist economic system. The article ends with an analytical approach to the role played in our present by recent reconfigurations of neoliberal culture for contemporary subjectivity.