Beloved former Uruguayan
President,José Mujica,
known as “Pepe” — the
ex-guerrilla who governed Uruguay from 2010 to 2015
— has died at the age of 89. This short homily fromJacobincould serve
as his valedictory. We would do well to reflect long
and hard on it’s message, and the spirt behind it.
~ Brian
___________________
“ ...when I
speak of culture, I am referring to human relations, to the
set of ideas that govern our relationships without us
realizing it. It is a set of unspoken values that determine
the way in which millions of anonymous people around the world
relate to each other. Consumerism is part of that culture. It
is an ethic needed for capitalism in its struggle for infinite
accumulation...The Left must be faithful to another set of
values, and that is why I insist on the problem of culture, on
the problem of commitment, and on the problem of valuing
certain areas of life that capitalism does not value...We must
propose another way of living! For me, the Left has to be more
revolutionary than ever … my generation did not place
enough emphasis on…the culture inherent in the common and
ordinary relationships that people have...We must
build a new system and, in parallel, a new culture, a new
ethic…”
The late Uruguayan statesman
José “Pepe” Mujica argues that capitalism is not just
property relations but a set of cultural values that the
Left must confront with a culture of solidarity.
Former
president of Uruguay José Mujica speaks during a
campaign rally on April 6, 2024, in Montevideo,
Uruguay. (Ernesto Ryan / Getty Images)
My
generation made a naive error. We believed that social
change was only a matter of challenging modes of
production and distribution in society. We did not
understand the immense role of culture. Capitalism is
a culture, and we must respond to and resist
capitalism with a different culture. Another way to
put this: we are in a struggle between a culture of
solidarity, and a culture of selfishness.
I
am not thinking of culture that is sold, like
professional music or dance. All that is important, of
course, but when I speak of culture I am referring to
human relations, to the set of ideas that govern our
relationships without us realizing it. It is a set of
unspoken values that determine the way in which
millions of anonymous people around the world relate
to each other.
Consumerism
is part of that culture. It is an ethic needed for
capitalism in its struggle for infinite accumulation.
The worst problem for capitalism would be for us to
stop buying or to buy very little. And this has
generated the consumerist culture that envelops us.
But a capitalist social system is not only property
relations; it is also a set of unspoken values common
to the society. These values are stronger than any
army and they are the main force maintaining
capitalism today.
My
generation believed it was going to change the world
by trying to nationalize the media and distribution,
but we failed to understand that at the center of this
battle must be the construction of a different
culture. You cannot build a socialist building with
bricklayers who are capitalists. Why? Because they are
going to steal the rebar, they are going to steal the
cement, because they are only looking to solve their
own problems, because that is how we are formed.
My generation, rationalist
with a programmatic vision of history, did not
understand that humans often decide with their guts
and then their conscience constructs arguments to
justify their decisions. We choose with our hearts,
and here culture becomes a vital issue because it
tempers our irrationality.
For example, what happened
to our left leaders? Left leaders are sick and
immersed in that same culture, and that is why their
way of life is not a message coherent with their
struggle. Look, they said I was poor when I was
president, but they didn’t understand a thing! I am
not poor. Poor is the one who needs a lot. My goal
is to be a stoic. And the fact is that if the world
does not learn to live with a certain sobriety, not
to squander, not to waste, if it does not learn this
soon, our world will not survive.
The lust for money incites
us to keep on buying new things, but sustaining the
life of the planet means that we must learn to live
with what is necessary and not to squander our
resources. Now, as you can see, this struggle is a
cultural epic. We, the Left, must construct a line
of thought that is different from the one we have.
This means throwing out our
connection to capitalism. We ran out of creativity
in terms of ideas. We wanted to do the same as
capitalism, but with more equality. And in the end,
this all has to do with what we consider to be the
good life, the values that we can cherish in life,
the things that we can aspire to. It means having a
sense of limits. Nothing too much, as the Greeks
used to say.
The Left must be faithful
to another set of values, and that is why I insist
on the problem of culture, on the problem of
commitment, and on the problem of valuing certain
areas of life that capitalism does not value. There
is much sadness in our societies even though they
are full of wealth. We are an overfed people with
societies choked by the amount of garbage we create.
We infest everything, we buy things we don’t need
and then we live in despair paying bills. We must
propose another way of living! For me, the Left has
to be more revolutionary than ever.
It means to live as you
think. Otherwise we end up thinking as we live. The
struggle is for a self-managing society, to learn to
be our own bosses and to lead our common projects.
These things will have to be discussed by a new
left. I believe in the permanent existence of the
Left, but it will not be the Left as it was. What it
was is gone, has passed! The Left will have to be
different because time changes. The only permanent
thing is change.
I’m not going to suggest
obstacles to the creation of new revolutionary
programs. On the contrary! But I don’t have a magic
formula. It seems to me that creativity must be
encouraged, because we are in a world with an old
left that lives too much on nostalgia, a left that
finds it hard to realize why it failed and has great
difficulty in imagining new ways forward.
I believe that this is a
time of much rehearsal, a lot of experimentation and
creativity. And for that there are some parameters
we can follow, because, as I said, my generation did
not place enough emphasis on culture. I am referring
to the culture inherent in the common and ordinary
relationships that people have, which, under
capitalism, now uses the events of daily life only
to ensure further accumulation.
The culture in which we are
embedded, in which we are surrounded, is functional
only for the multiplication of individual profit.
And that culture is much stronger than armies and
military power and everything else, because that
culture is determining the permanent relationships
of millions of ordinary people all over the world.
And that is much stronger
than the atomic bomb! So, to change a system without
facing the problem of a change in culture is
useless. We must build a new system and, in
parallel, a new culture, a new ethic, because, if
not, what we saw with the Soviet Union will happen
again, where a revolutionary movement made a perfect
360 degree turn to be in the same place — but much
worse!
We have to learn from that
defeat, right?
______
Adapted fromSurviving
the 21st Centuryby
Noam Chomsky and José Mujica, edited by
Saúl Alvídrez, forthcoming from Verso in
September 2025.
