Consolidating States, Restructuring Economies, and Confronting Workers and Peasants: The Antinomies of Bolivian Neoliberalism

Abstract

The neoliberal reforms sweeping the globe are generating strikingly analogous transformations in diverse politico-economic and ideological landscapes, especially through the spread of democratic-liberal political regimes and an emphasis on the “virtues of the invisible hand”—rather than the state—in the investment of a huge mass of mobile capital (Fishlow 1990:64; Amin 1995; Gill 1993). We are witnessing an increasingly dominant and profitable global capitalist economy with a “highly coercive capacity to ensnare enormous numbers of peoples within its grasp” (Blim 1992:5; Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994; Sachs 1995; Mittelman 1996; Dirlik 1994; Diskin and Koechlin 1994; Hojman 1994).