The Mexican Revolution and the 1917 Constitution that emerged from it are the source of an innovative, self-confident grammar for articulating the struggle for social justice. Indeed, the forward-looking vision of “modernity” embodied in Mexico’s revolutionary past may be just what we need today to revive faith in democratic revolution and socialist liberalism at a time when democracy, revolution, socialism, and liberalism are all at risk of falling by the wayside.
The Mexican Constitution calls to us from a time at once before the Russian Revolution and after the end of the Cold War. It was promulgated on February 5th, 1917, only weeks before the February Revolution, and it has come surging back into force over the last three decades, just after the historic battle between really existing neoliberal capitalism and bureaucratic communism came to an end. This surprising historical bridge offers an invaluable opportunity to mend the great rift of the twentieth century between liberal democracy and social revolution, opening space for the construction of a new “third way” which avoids the pitfalls of the “radical center” (Halstead and Lind 2002).
The key contribution of Mexican constitutionalism is the ability to hold together both strict liberal principles of individual freedom and radical visions of the transformation of social power. Instead of envisioning these two projects as fundamentally opposed or even in tension, the Mexican approach sees them as naturally joined together. The Constitutional “framers” and the early implementers of the Constitution, like President Lázaro Cárdenas, freely plucked what they considered to be the best elements from both communist and capitalist systems, and from both Marxist and liberal political theory, without pledging their allegiance to either. Their eclectic, creative vision of economic development, democratic process, and social justice defies contemporary frames of reference and inspires us in the common task of constructing new alternatives for the future.
Indeed, from the very beginning of the existence of “Mexico” as an independent nation, the struggle for popular sovereignty and individual rights has always already been imbricated with the dismantling of the economic power of oligarchy and the political institutions of despotic power in order to redistribute wealth and agency among the most humble citizens (Villoro, 2014). During the Mexican War of Independence, Article 12 of the Sentimientos de la Nación, written by José María Morelos, called directly for the passage of laws which would “moderate opulence and indigence.” And only a few years before the beginning of the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican Liberal Party, led by the Flores Magón brothers, announced that “upon the triumph of the Liberal Party, the possessions of the functionaries enriched by the present Dictatorship will be confiscated, and the product will be used to comply with the Land Chapter––especially to return the lands which were stolen from them to the Yaquis, Mayans, and other tribes, communities, and individuals––and to the service of the payment of the national debt.”
The revolutionary Constitution of 1917 faithfully reflected this expansive vision of democracy and social justice. Then, under the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940), this vision was brought into practice, setting one of the most important world-historical examples of how to fuse liberal rights and the radical transformation of social, economic, and political power. In this brief essay, I will share some of the most innovative elements of the Mexican synthesis with the hope that it may inspire contemporary political theory and practice.
The Constitution of 1917
The Mexican Revolution was the first great social revolution of the twentieth century. Just as France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen stands as the crowning achievement with respect to the defense of first generation civil and political rights in the eighteenth century, the Mexican Constitution stands with respect to the institutionalization of third generation social and economic rights in the twentieth century. This Constitution, still the law of the land and deeply ingrained in popular consciousness, is revered by comparative constitutional law scholars as the first in the world to formally grant citizens a wide array of substantial rights, including the right to work, education, land, and healthcare (Serna de la Garza 2013). It also established a radical separation between church and state which goes far beyond that in existence in the United States or Europe, a firm commitment to popular sovereignty and civil liberties, and an innovative property rights regime which does not abolish private property but ascribes it “originally to the Nation” as a collective good.
The historical progression of the Mexican Revolution gives clear testimony to the intimate link between political and economic struggles. The bourgeois “liberal” elitist revolution originally led by Francisco I. Madero quickly found its limits and was overcome by the forces of radical, popular revolt. The Constitution of 1917, which resulted from the Revolution, went well beyond any other constitution of the time by daring to swim into the uncharted waters of social justice (Rouaix 2016). Indeed, the Mexican Constitution is the original historical referent for the wave of social rights constitutions and international covenants which spread throughout the globe during the rest of the twentieth century (Hodges & Gandy 1983). And it has recently been updated to include highly advanced principles regarding rights to a healthy environment, access to culture, defense of human rights, free and fair elections, public accountability, access to information, and plurality of media and communications.
The Mexican Revolution has long been looked down at for its supposed lack of “theory” and dearth of grand ideologies. While the French Revolution had Robespierre, the Russian Revolution was led by Lenin, the Chinese Revolution was inspired by Mao, and the Cuban Revolution by Ché Guevara, the Mexican Revolution is often portrayed as a simple attempt by peasants to return to the past, or as a chaotic struggle between powerful caciques. But what previously appeared to be the great weakness of the Mexican Revolution is today perhaps its most important strength. Instead of a single leader espousing a grand unified ideology, there was a broad diversity of leaders who constructed, in a decentralized manner, a plural, eclectic approach that brings together the best of the different ideologies available at the time and escapes the conceptual hardening product of the superpower disputes that dominated the past century.
For instance, in really existing capitalist and communist systems, the principal function of the state is the maintenance of the political stability and economic coordination necessary to assure national development. Under capitalism, the state regulates the economy and controls political and social protest to maintain the proper conditions for capital accumulation. Under “really existing” communism, the state achieves the same objectives of law and order by directly controlling the economy and maintaining social and political activism within official channels.
The Mexican Revolutionary project differs from both frameworks. For these revolutionaries, the principal function of the state was not to maintain political and economic stability, but to push for and progressively achieve social change. They envisioned the state as a tool for intervening on the side of workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, the poor, and the marginalized in general, in their struggles against exploitation and domination. For the Mexican revolutionaries, the role of the state was to actively combat the concentration of political and economic power and confront those actors who seek to place themselves above the rule of law.
The Constitution in Action
The Mexican Constitution by no means remained a beautiful, aspirational poem. During the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-40), it was brought into practice, making Mexico stand out on the global stage for the institutionalization of social gains. Cárdenas was not an ideological “populist” in search of personal glory, like Argentina's Juan Domingo Perón. Nor was he a liberal welfare statist trying to perfect the capitalist system, like Franklin Roosevelt in the United States. In contrast, Cárdenas was a remarkably innovative and eclectic leader committed to political pluralism, grassroots mobilization, and structural change whose legacy lives on today both in Mexico's political institutions and its political culture (Ackerman 2017).
Extensive land reform, the prioritizing of labor rights over industry objectives, a radical overhaul of public education, the collective management of strategic industries, and the nationalization of the oil industry were all achieved by Cárdenas in a pragmatic fashion through strictly legal, institutional channels. The Expropriation Law, passed by President Lázaro Cárdenas and still on the books today, recognizes as a legitimate basis for expropriating land and property the achievement of “the equitable distribution of wealth concentrated or monopolized for the exclusive advantage of one or various people and which harms the general collectivity, or a particular class.”
Cárdenas is the father of the modern Mexican nation and state. As Samuel León y González (2010) has written: “antes de 1934 todos fueron antecedentes y, después de 1940, consequencias.” The exceptional stability of the Mexican political system throughout the twentieth century is to a great extent due to the achievements of Cárdenas. Without his successful materialization and institutionalization of the principles of the Mexican Revolution, it is hard to imagine how Mexico could have avoided the constant series of coups, counter-coups, civil wars, foreign interventions, and social revolutions that marked the political history of almost every other Latin American and Caribbean country throughout the twentieth century. And even after Cárdenas's departure from the political scene, waves of powerful grassroots movements organized by rural teachers, students, peasants, and workers inspired by and often even directly created by the Revolution, the Constitution, and Cardenismo, consistently held in check the abuses of the post-revolutionary authoritarian state founded by the PRI in 1946.
“Otorgar tratamiento igual a dos partes desiguales, no es impartir justicia ni obrar con equidad,” was one of Cárdenas's favorite dictums. For him, the State should not remain above the fray in “neutral” territory as a centralizing, stabilizing, and mediating force, but should participate directly in the great historic battles for social and economic power.
An early speech by Cárdenas upon ending his term as Governor of the State of Michoacán in 1932 captures this approach well:
En una etapa del devenir de la humanidad en el que el giro de la evolución oscila fatalmente entre el egoísmo individualista y un concepto más amplio y más noble de la solidaridad colectiva, no es posible que el Estado como organización de los servicios públicos permanezca inerte y frío, en posición estática frente al fenómeno social que se desarrolla en su escenario. Es preciso que asuma una actitud dinámica y consciente, proveyendo lo necesario para la justa encauzación de las masas proletarias, señalando trayectorias para que el desarrollo de la lucha de clases sea firme y progresista. La Administración que hoy concluye no quiso limitarse a ejercer una intervención ocasional…para discernir la justicia social dentro de un formalismo abstracto de las leyes, sino que, penetrando derechamente en la profundidad misma del problema, adentrándose en las realidades, puso todos sus empeños en la polarización de las energías humanas, antes dispersas y en ocasiones antagónicas, para formar con ellas el frente social y político del proletariado michoacano. (Cárdenas 1932)
Cárdenas adamantly defends the concept of the activist, combative state. He rejects the suggestion, or even the “possibility” that the government can “remain cold and inert” or “static” in the face of social problems. The state should be “dynamic and conscious.” In addition, to achieve social justice, it is necessary to break with the “abstract formalism of law” in order to “penetrate right down to the depths of the problem itself.” This final aspect is crucial since it demonstrates Cárdenas’s break with traditional conceptions of the rule of law as a simple respect for the letter, or even the “spirit,” of the law. Instead, it places the law at the service of the social “problem itself.”
This innovative understanding of the law was in strict accordance with the law itself. The president's actions in favor of workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, and national sovereignty were always firmly grounded in the text of the Constitution of 1917, which goes far beyond the simple organization of bureaucratic authority and the definition of fundamental rights to project a utopian vision of the reorganization of social power. In Cárdenas's own words:
“Las actuaciones del gobierno nacional…derivan de la Constitución y por ella se norman. Si se percibe alguna característica que distinga al actual período del gobierno, ella no es por cierto el abandono de las causas legales, sino la inflexible insistencia de dar fuerza efectiva y aplicación pareja a todos los preceptos de la ley” (Cabrera 1938).
There is an enormous difference between holding to the “strict interpretation” of a “classic” liberal constitution like that of the United States and to a revolutionary constitution like that of Mexico (Ackerman 2015).
Cárdenas’s legacy would later be cynically distorted and, in one of the ironies of history, put at the service of the forces that had been his principal adversaries. Once he stepped aside from power in 1940, his institutional achievements were used to combat his social and political successes. First picking up steam under President Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940-1946), and then taking hold with the creation of the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) in 1946 and the arrival of the first president from that party, Miguel Alemán (1946-1952), Cardenismo was ultimately turned against itself. The members of the ruling party launched an aggressive campaign to empty the Cardenista legacy of its revolutionary, socialist, and radical liberal content and to invert the functionality of the institutions created during his presidency.
Alan Knight has put it well: “The civilians and técnicos of the Alemán sexenio, imbued with a modernizing, Cold War ideology, and a get-rich-quick ethic, quarried the rubble of Cardenismo and utilized the material––the corporate party, the mass institutions, the powerful executive, the tamed army, and subordinated peasantry—to build a new Mexico. The material was Cardenista, but the ground-plan was their own. It was built to last” (Knight 1991) But the later defeat and inversion of Cardenismo does not reduce in the least the enormous value of the project itself.
Final Thoughts
In the United States, the dominant political ideologies still harken back to the historical confrontation between “liberal” landowners and monarchist “conservatives” of eighteenth-century England. From this perspective, modernity and historical progress are grounded in the defense of private property, individual voting rights, and the “freedom of expression” of corporate interests against a despotic hereditary state. “Democrats” and “Republicans” put different emphasis on and value for different reasons each of the key elements of the dominant ideology, but neither put into question the underlying terms of debate.
The French moved beyond the traps of Anglo-liberalism a long time ago. There, classic liberalism is widely accepted to be a right-wing ideology that privileges the “freedom” of the few over justice for the many. While the US Revolution of 1776 was led by wealthy slave and landowners in search of independence from the British Parliament (Nelson 2014), the French Revolution of 1789 was driven by a grassroots, popular uprising which put issues of class at the forefront from the very beginning (Gauthier1977). The line of historical and philosophical critique which runs from Jean Jacques Rousseau through Robespierre and Jean Jaurés embeds the historical struggle of the bourgeoisie against despotic monarchy within a radical vision of popular sovereignty, working-class empowerment, and grassroots participation.
Mexico has gone even further than the French. The social vision and political action of figures such as Miguel Hidalgo, José María Morelos, Benito Juárez, Ricardo Flores Magón, Emiliano Zapata, and Lázaro Cárdenas have left a legacy of revolutionary institutionalism which joins together the defeat of royal despotism with the struggle for social justice and popular power (Velasco 2022). Although the way in which the Revolution finally played out did set the stage for authoritarianism, this vast social movement also fixed in place principles of equality, secularism, popular participation, community resistance, national sovereignty, and honesty in public discourse. In today’s world, so desperately in need of new political horizons, perhaps Mexican historical political praxis can serve as an inspiration.