Conclusions

Abstract

Lust concludes that the erosion of the social bases of the socialist Left is principally the product of the particularities of capitalist development in Peru, the accumulation of crisis in the 1980s and the implementation of the neoliberal development model in the 1990s. This erosion is expressed in the changes in the country’s class structure. Although the erosion of the social bases is the principal cause of the erosion of the socialist Left’s political bases, Lust identifies several other political, economic, and social factors that contributed to this erosion. The author argues that the lack of adequate strategic and tactical responses to the process of erosion disabled the socialist Left to maintain and even broaden their political and social bases. As a consequence, the socialist Left has been thrown back to the stage of primitive accumulation.