Seventeen years after the Paraguayan War, which pitted the army of Paraguay against those of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, ex-combatant Bernardino Caballero and a group of men founded the National Republican Association (ANR) in 1887—also known as the Colorado Party. In the party’s founding manifesto, there was a clear intention to lift Paraguay out of the situation in which it still found itself after the devastating war:
Linked by honored traditions, united in a single purpose to raise the country from its painful and prolonged prostration, consecrated to the arduous tasks of a common labor to ensure the general welfare of the community, there is no power that can break the chain of union that binds us, because it is strengthened by the duties of fellowship in the persistent struggle for the good, it is nourished by the feelings of the same faith and fortified by the indissoluble bonds of concord and fraternity.
The manifesto embodied the objective to make effective “the great purposes set forth in the beautiful preamble of the Constitution of the Republic.” Other highlights of the manifesto include:
- The constitution as “the sacred decalogue of free peoples,” while venerating this “political gospel” and complying with its prescriptions is “to love and serve the true cause of freedom, is to render the most outstanding service to the country by giving a high example of civic virtue and patriotism.”
- Popular sovereignty as “the great foundation of the republic,” where the people have the right to elect their leaders and elevate to public office honest and suitable citizens, capable of establishing in the country “the reign of justice and political morality.”
- The proposal of bringing to representation those who “are the genuine expression of the popular will, making public opinion predominate.”
- The goal of achieving the republican motto: the government of the people by the people.
Ideology and Communism
The republican creed of the ANR emphasizes a Christian conception of democracy and nationalism as defense against internal and external enemies, endowing democracy with a “revolutionary and combative” mystique. According to the creed, the wealth extracted from the earth “only has economic and social validity when it is applied to the principles of a more just popular distribution of its benefits.”
Separated by more than a century, the Declaration of Principles of the ANR (TDP), approved in 1967, shares many similarities with the Communist Manifesto (TCM) published in 1848.
TCM aspires to the eradication of class distinctions and the establishment of a society where wealth and resources are shared equitably, eliminating exploited classes. TDP argues that democracy ensures a growing participation in the benefits of wealth and culture and guarantees the orderly evolution towards an egalitarian society, without privileges or exploited classes.
TCM advocates for the abolition of private property (particularly the private ownership of the means of production), holding that it perpetuates class oppression and exploitation. TCM seeks to dismantle capitalism and its associated systems of inequality. TDP aligns with Marxist critiques of unchecked capitalism. It opposes any dictatorship, but upholds legitimizing state intervention in private economic activity for the general interest, subordinating private property and intervening in economic social life to avoid the abuse of private interest.
TCM wants a planned economy with measures like centralizing control of production, credit, and communication by the state to serve collective needs. TDP proposes adopting global, sectorial and regional plans to ensure the balanced development of the economy, while integrating fiscal policy with the exchange, credit, foreign trade and public enterprises’ regimes. TDP intends to implement tax measures to influence consumption, savings and investment and thus direct income towards economic and social development, along with higher progressive taxes on luxury items.
TCM centers on empowering the proletariat, establishing collective ownership, and ending wage exploitation. TDP hopes to consolidate the social and economic conquests of the workers, strengthen unions, and create a Workers’ Bank to encourage savings and meet their credit needs, while protecting workers against usury.
TCM envisions a society where education and resources are accessible to all, such as free education for children. TDP sees work, social security and economic welfare are fundamental rights. It commits to financing education at all levels, building hospitals to improve medical care and education, while also establishing a comprehensive social security system for all. Likewise, TDP pretends to build housing for the less favored and integrate national health into the economic and social development.
TCM calls for the abolition of landed property and the equitable distribution of land to eradicate feudal structures. TDP puts forward the progressive disappearance of unproductive large estates, the introduction of compulsory agricultural insurance, and the fair remuneration of farmers.
Without TDP going as far as TCM in everything, and with some differences in between, both:
- prioritize the workers’ welfare to balance the dynamics between labor and capital
- share a vision of reducing social hierarchies and ensuring fairness in wealth distribution
- endorse structured economic planning and widespread state intervention
- reject systems that favor elite interests over the collective good
- aim to restructure land ownership and embrace agrarian reform
- commit to universal access to essential services to uplift the population
TDP operates within a reformist framework, without explicitly dismantling capitalism. It is decisively less revolutionary and less materialistic than TCM. Considering, for example, its commitment to human dignity and people’s spiritual well-being, as well as to all freedoms compatible with the freedom of others and collective happiness.
Democratic Republicanism and Statism
The republican form of government adopted by the ANR implies that the state apparatus and the benefits derived from exploitation are owned by a privileged, albeit changing, group of people who live and prosper at the expense of those they govern. Additionally, while republicanism claims equality before the law, this really means equality of private individuals before public law. In other words, state agents enjoy immunity from the provisions of private law. However, true equality before the law is only possible with the end of the public sector altogether, that is, of people legally protected to receive benefits that are not obtained through voluntary transfers and agreements between private property owners. Hence, ending the exploited classes is impossible with republicanism, since the republic leads to the existence of an exploiting class.
Of course, extolling patriotism is paramount for political power to induce popular devotion to the nation-state. Thus, by clinging to the people’s identification with a common language, culture and history, the combination of nationalism and democratic republicanism strengthens the public’s acceptance of statism. And by further blurring the difference between the rulers and the ruled in favor of the idea of self-government, democratic republicanism diminishes the public’s resistance to abuses of political power.
Yet, a democratic republic does not necessarily equate to a less powerful and less exploitative government. Rather, it is a publicly owned government that is systematically predisposed to be the opposite and, therefore, to be more harmful to the institution of private property than a privately owned government.
Theory and History
The ANR’s doctrine is riddled with central planning and socialist measures of almost every kind, basically offering the state a blank check to aggress private property. In order to fulfill the ANR’s creed, the ruling class should dictate the principles of a fairer popular distribution of wealth, with which such economic and social validity would make sense. But a growing popular distribution in the benefits of wealth is not the same as a growing participation in social cooperation and division of labor for wealth creation. And just as with the general interest, which is in reality the interest of the ruling class above the interests of ordinary citizens, dignity and the conditions of social existence would also have to be defined arbitrarily by the ruling class.
Furthermore, since social responsibility is imposed with respect to what social justice means in the eyes of the rulers, and not in accordance with universal principles of justice and private property acquisition, social justice ends up unequivocally unjust.
A republic, being publicly owned, was bound to show a tendency toward adopting universal suffrage. So it comes as no surprise that under the ANR’s rule, women gained the right to vote and be elected in 1961, and also for the time the most significant positions in government, including the first candidacy for the presidency of Paraguay in 2008.
In the much richer Europe, centuries of wealth and capital accumulation and free markets preceded the emergence and expansion of democratic republicanism and the welfare state, but Paraguay cannot boast of the same past. It could not bear to deplete a long-built reserve fund that it does not have in the name of achieving a European welfare state. So the ANR’s failure to fully implement its principles has actually been positive for the well-being of the Paraguayan people.
Finally, what the Colorado Party has delivered for most of its history—including the 35-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner—is: The government of mafiosi and the disregard for the constitution. The sovereignty of popular ignorance as the great republican foundation. The rulers’ entitlement to adjust the chains of the citizens. And the elevation of dishonest and corrupt individuals to public office, unwilling to establish the reign of justice and morality. All this has shown that democracy was suitable from the start for the genuine expression of demagoguery, persuading the public, while essentially racketeering and assuring mob rule by the mob.
