ABSTRACT
Clearly the pendulum of regime change in Latin America has swung to the right in the past few years. This raises numerous questions. What kind of right? How far right? How did the right gain power? What is their appeal? How sustainable are the right-wing regimes? What is their social base, and who are their international allies and adversaries? Having taken power, how have the rightist regimes performed, and by what criteria can success or failure be measured? While the Left has been in retreat, they still retain power in some states. Here numerous questions also arise. What is the nature of the Left today? Why have some regimes continued while others have declined or been vanquished? Can the Left recover its influence, and under what conditions, and with what programmatic appeal? In this book we provide answers to these questions with reference to the conflicting dynamics of the capitalist development process (i.e. the forces of change and resistance released in this process).
