Socialism in Latin America is now called “pragmatism,” writes Colin McNickle in the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review in a column that borrows heavily from Mises. The hook here is the installation of Tabare Vazques as president of Uruguay. McNickle says old-fashioned anti-capitalism is the cultural force behind the rise of these types, but one wonders, too, whether and to what extent these populist-leftist governments in Latin America are riding the wave of a wholly justified resentment against American imperialism (trade hypocrisies, drug wars, policy impositions, political manipulations), which then gets all mixed up with socialist ideology. Certainly these silly overtures that these governments make to Castro can only serve a symbolic purpose of showing political independence from the US.
New Names for Socialism
