August 17, 2017

     Anti-fascism is not the way; popular education is.  The new form of fascism that has emerged in the United States is a consequence of the fact that a sector of the people is angry about the decline of the nation from its once dominant position as an economic, political, and military superpower; about the increasing percentage of the population is that not white and not Christian; and about the apparent incapacity and indifference of the political establishment in the face of these developments.  Many of our people are angry about these phenomena because they do not understand them.  They do not understand the sources of the nation’s spectacular ascent and recent decline; the causes of uncontrolled international migration; and the narrow class interests that shape the actions of the elite.  They have formulated a neofascist discourse that scapegoats immigrants, persons of color, Muslims, gays, and liberals; and that advocates military strength and economic nationalism.  When they organize demonstrations to promote their causes, the necessary response is not counterdemonstrations, but the education of the people.

      When I speak of education, I do not refer to what occurs in schools, colleges and universities, which cultivate a fragmented and distorted understanding of the nation and the world; nor do I refer to a media advertising campaign with the same limitations.  Rather, what I have in mind is the development of people’s schools, which would conduct classes in homes, churches, temples, mosques, community centers, and other public buildings, with teachers who lead the people in on-going discussions of readings.  The people’s schools would create a cadre of well-informed citizens, comprising fifteen to twenty percent of the people.  The members of the cadre would be present in places of work and study and in neighborhoods, constantly present among the people, explaining and exhorting.  If this educated vanguard can be effectively present among the people, modeling exemplary citizenship and informed understanding, the influence of neofascist tendencies would decline.  Some members of the cadre could present themselves as candidates for public office at all levels, representing an alternative political party that is dedicated to popular education, modeling an alternative form of political leadership.

        Anti-fascist counterdemonstrations escalate the conflict; they do not help the people to acquire the necessary understanding of the alternative road that the nation must find.  At their best, they generate the competitive shouting of alternative slogans; and their worst, they degenerate into violence.  Our strategy must not be to shout, and even less to fight; we must seek to explain, based on a lifetime commitment to deepening our own understanding of the contradictions and challenges that humanity confronts.

      Nearly one hundred years ago, Lenin wrote of what he called the infantile disorder of the Left.  It is an infirmity characterized by radical action based on superficial understanding.  Lenin believed that infantile, unreflective extremism was causing serious harm to the communist movement, which at that historic moment had taken control of the state in Russia and had a significant presence among the political parties in Germany, England, Holland and France (see “The infantile disorder of the Left” 12/19/2016).  In our time, infantile extremism is one of the principal sources of the limited influence of the Left in the nations of the North.  Unfortunately, it is occurring during a historic moment in which the emergence of an intellectually mature and politically effective Left is an objective possibility in the North, given the profound and sustained crisis of the world-system and the renewal of the Third World popular movements.

      When neofascists announce a march, progressive organizations should not organize a counterdemonstration, and they should call upon the people to stay away.  They should use the occasion to disseminate well-formulated critiques of the assumptions and stated objectives of the march.  They should negotiate with law enforcement agencies, ensuring the protection of all citizens from neofascist violence.  They should make clear their respect for the right of the marchers to peacefully assemble and speak, as long as violence does not occur and the march respects legal restrictions.  Similarly, progressive organizations should deemphasize efforts to restrict so-called hate speech, for this enters the murky ground of freedom of speech, and it can place the Left at a disadvantage in what Fidel Castro called “the battle of ideas,” which he defined as the most important struggle of the current historic moment.  In this battle, the Left ought to be able to establish a clear scientific and moral advantage.  Although direct confrontation appears to be more decisive action, it is less politically functional in the long run, for it does little to lead the people toward the necessary road.  The strategy of the Left cannot be endless battles with the extreme Right, while the contradictions that humanity confronts remained unexplained and thus unattended.

     Nor should we attack Confederate monuments, especially in a violent and illegal form.  Let neofascism have its heroes and its public spaces; every cause celebrates its heroes, and this cannot be suppressed.  We should focus on identifying our own heroes and public spaces, formulating a narrative that teaches the important role of leaders of popular movements of all popular sectors in expanding and deepening the meaning of democracy.  With an informed and comprehensive narrative, we should be able to establish a political upper hand over right-wing populism as well as liberal elitism with a politically effective and scientifically informed discourse, efficiently disseminated among our people.  

      In the aftermath of Charlottesville, progressive organizations are being drawn into a confrontation with the extreme Right.  This temptation should be avoided.  The Left should explain the inadequacies of the proposals of the extreme Right, standing above, rather than being drawn into, confrontation.  The Left should focus on the long-term goals of educating the people and leading them toward the necessary road of cooperation and solidarity with the peoples and nations of the world, standing in opposition to the common enemies of humanity, including imperialism, the unconstrained exploitation of labor and of nature, violence, exclusion, and poverty.  

      For further reflection on the failure of the Left and its implications for the emergence of Trump, see my various posts in the category Trump. For further reflections on these and other relevant themes, see my book, The Evolution and Significance of the Cuban Revolution: The light in the darkness.

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August 25, 2017

      At the present moment, the extreme Right in the United States has been able to mobilize significant numbers of people to mass demonstrations, constituting a popular complement to the neofascist policies of the administration of Donald Trump (see various posts in the category Trump).  Liberal and progressive organizations are turning to anti-neofascist and anti-racist counterdemonstrations.  However, it would be an error for the Left to be drawn into counterdemonstrations against the surging populist Right.  The Left ought to take a clear position, not only against populist fascism and racism, but also against the imperialist policies that the U.S. elite has promoted since the end of the nineteenth century.  And it ought to explain to the people the sources of current national and global problems, proposing concrete solutions based on cooperation with the popular anti-imperialist movements and progressive governments of the Third World.

      The U.S. power elite consistently has been imperialist.  However, the emergence of Trump has created anti-Trump faction of the elite, which sees racism and fascism as detrimental to imperialist goals.  On the other hand, there is a pro-Trump sector of the elite, which views a turn toward fascism, in the form of economic nationalism and increased militarism, as necessary for the attainment of imperialist goals, taking into account the sustained global crisis and the relative economic decline of the USA.  The pro-Trump sector appears strong among the military chiefs and perhaps the business sector with less globalized enterprises; it cannot overlook the need for patriotic as well as scapegoating rhetoric in order to mobilize popular support, but the military chiefs will be cautious about blatant forms of racism, given the high percentage of blacks and Latinos among the troops.  

     If the Left were to join the anti-neofascist and anti-racist agenda of the liberal sector of the elite, it would lose the opportunity created by the political division within the elite to mobilize the people into an effective anti-imperialist movement that would seek to take political control of the nation from the power elite.  An anti-imperialist national project, if well explained and presented with political intelligence, would have vibrancy among the people, inasmuch as many are alienated from both elite liberalism and neofascism.

     Let us define terms.  Imperialism is the quest for markets for surplus manufactured goods and agricultural products, as well as the pursuit of the raw materials necessary for production and commerce.  Imperialism uses a variety of methods, including military conquest, military occupation, intervention in the political affairs of nations, economic penetration, and control of finance and banking.  Fascism, in its twentieth century manifestations, was characterized by: the attainment of economic goals through military aggression and occupation; the scapegoating of religious and ethnic groups and homosexuals; and the repression of criticism, directed primarily toward Left-wing organizations and leaders.  Neofascism, the twenty-first century renewal of fascism, grants positions of leadership to selected members of ethnic groups and women, insofar as they support the fascist project, in accordance with post-1965 norms that protect the political and civil rights of all, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender.  Racism involves prejudice and discrimination against persons of color, in accordance with an ideology of white supremacy.  It assumes the superiority of Europeans and persons of European descent; and it views as necessary their control of the most powerful nations of the world-system.

      In the modern era, imperialism was connected historically to fascism and racism.  The European colonial empires that covered vast regions of the Americas, Asia and Africa were established through military aggression and force, which made possible the conversion of the economies of the conquered nations and peoples, so that they became suppliers of cheap labor and raw materials as well as markets for surplus goods in the expanding world-economy.  At first, the conquest of diverse nations and peoples was justified on religious grounds, inasmuch as the conquered peoples were not Christians; but with the emergence of democratic revolutions during the eighteenth century, racism emerged as a justification, rationalizing the domination of peoples of color and their exclusion from the promise of democracy.  Imperialism, racism and fascism were intertwining threads in the fabric of European domination of the world.

     However, during the period 1933 to 1979, in response to the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements of the colonized, the U.S. power elite developed imperialism with a democratic face, a form of imperialism that stood against fascism and racism.  The new form of apparently democratic imperialism proclaimed that all nations are equal and sovereign; and that all persons, regardless of race or color, possess political and civil rights.  It obtained its imperialist objectives indirectly, through diplomatic maneuvering, covert interventions in the affairs of nations, and control of the production, commerce, and banking of supposedly independent nations.  Repression of popular movements in the dominated nations was necessary, but supposedly independent governments, which often were military governments, carried it out. Direct military intervention by the United States was reserved only for moments of breakdown of control, such restraint being necessary to preserve the democratic façade.  The new form of imperialism was possible for the United States when it enjoyed productive, commercial, financial, and military ascendancy in the world.

      The new form of imperialism led to a world-system that was named neocolonial by the newly independent colonized peoples of Africa and Asia and the semi-colonized, economically dependent peoples of Latin America.  The neocolonial world-system attained its height in the 1950s and the 1960s, and it was without doubt the most impressive world-system in human history, far surpassing earlier empires, when rated by economic, political and territorial measures.  American glory was at its height, leading the world economically, politically and militarily; and projecting itself as the defender of democracy against all challenges to the established, supposedly democratic world-system.

     But during the 1970s, the world-system entered into a profound and sustained crisis, as a consequence of the fact that it had reached and overextended the geographical and ecological limits of the earth.  The world-system needed a fundamental structural transformation, basing itself not on the endless competitive pursuit of raw materials and markets, but on a quest for ecologically sustainable economic growth and global political stability.  Such a transformation required abandonment of imperialist policies and a turn to cooperation with popular movements and governments in the Third World, which had been seeking during the 1960s and 1970s a more just international economic order.  

      Coinciding with the structural crisis of the world-system, the United States entered a period of relative decline, caused by spending in excess of productive capacity, overspending in the military sector, and insufficient investment in new forms of production.  Confronting a situation of global crisis and national relative decline, the U.S. power elite, rather than taking an enlightened turn toward cooperation and global political stability, reverted to pre-1933 strategies.  At first, in the 1980s, its aggression was economic, involving the use of international finance agencies to impose the neoliberal project on the governments of the Third World.  Subsequently, in the 1990s, and especially after 2001, it turned to aggressive wars against selected Third World nations, chosen for the especially high value of their raw materials or for the resistance of their political leadership.

     The post-1980 economic and military aggression against the peoples and nations of the Third World has undermined the democratic image of imperialism.  The United States can no longer effectively pretend to be promoting democracy in the world, as it did in the 1950s and 1960s. The great majority of the people of the world have consciousness of the fact that the USA seeks raw materials, markets, profits, and particular interests.  Yet the continued pretense to democratic values and ideals by the U.S. power elite constrains its ability to act militarily and politically in accordance with its interests.  And thus there has emerged within the power elite a movement toward fascism, toward the elimination of the democratic pretense, and toward the aggressive defense of national economic interests, enlisting the support of popular sectors that have been excluded and ignored by liberal elitism.  However, within the U.S. power elite, there continue to be those sectors who believe that the continued pretense of democracy is necessary for global political stability and economic growth.  Thus there has emerged a political and ideological division within the U.S. power elite.

       When the Left takes a position in opposition in neofascism and racism, it unwittingly joins the ranks of elite liberals who promote imperialism with a democratic face.  It is hard to avoid this trap, because the liberal wing of the power elite controls the media of information and is able to shape the terms of the discourse and the debate.  In this difficult context, the Left must be historically and globally informed, and politically intelligent.  It must explain to the people that both liberal elitism and neofascism seek to maintain control of the world by the power elite, but by different means; and that both stand against the historic democratic call of “power to the people” in the United States, and they stand resolutely against the popular movements of the Third World.  The Left must call the people to an alternative to both liberal elitism and neofascism; it must call the people to an anti-imperialist popular movement that seeks to take control of the U.S. government in the name of the people, casting aside both liberal elitism and neofascism.  

       In 1964, Malcolm X, conscious of the limited gains that would result from the protection of black civil and political rights, advocated black community control as the means to economic and social development; and he sought to develop alliances with the governments of Africa and the Third World.  In 1967 and 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, developed a Poor People’s Campaign, formed by blacks, Latinos, indigenous persons, and whites; and he advocated support for the anti-colonial revolutions of the Third World.  In the 1980s, Rev. Jesse Jackson sought to form a Rainbow Coalition of the various sectors of the people, including white workers and the white middle class, for the purpose of taking political power; and he called for a foreign policy of North-South cooperation, casting aside the legacy of imperialism. These proposals remain viable and significant: political coalition among various popular sectors; alliance with anti-imperialist movements and governments of the Third World; and black community control of local educational, law enforcement, and judicial institutions.

     But since the 1990s, these prophetic voices have been forgotten. The Left has drifted into identity politics, post-modernist celebration of lifestyle diversity, and segmented movement from issue to issue, without offering a comprehensive analysis, a programmatic platform, or a plan for the popular taking of power.  Like the U.S. power elite, the U.S. Left is unprepared to explain national and global dynamics to the people, and it is not able to lead them to an alternative road.  However, we should be aware that the myopia of the U.S. power elite is historic, whereas popular movements in the United States have pointed to the necessary road during important historic junctures, thus indicating a possibility for emergence of gifted leaders among the people, capable of discerning and leading the people toward the necessary road.

      The Left must find a way beyond its present limitations.  We must have consciousness of the fact that fascism and racism have been revitalized by structural factors; they will not be brought to an end by street confrontations, but by leading the people to an alternative road. We must search for effective strategies for the education of the people and the taking of political power by the people.  The popular taking of power is necessary, so that a government of and for the people can develop policies and political discourses that respond to the interests of the people, and not the elite.  Such a government can act decisively in defense of the needs of the people, in accordance with the long-term good of the nation, and in cooperation with the peoples of the world.  

     Today, the peoples of Latin America are proclaiming, in word and deed, that a more just, democratic, and sustainable world is possible. We in the United States must share in this faith in the future of humanity. We must envision the solidarity of the peoples of the United States with the peoples and movements of the Third World, whose historic vantage point as colonized provides them with wisdom from below, enabling them to discern the unsustainability of the neocolonial world-system as well as the necessary alternative road.
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     For further reflections on these and other relevant themes, see my book, The Evolution and Significance of the Cuban Revolution: The light in the darkness.

     In recent days, Cuban television has broadcast news coverage of commemorations of the anniversary of the birth of Fidel, in Cuba and the world.  The media attention has included extensive interviews with Cuban academics, speaking on the life and teachings of Fidel.  The great historic leader of the Cuban Revolution was born ninety-one years ago today, on August 13, 1926.  He died on November 25, 2016, at the age of 90.

     Fidel Castro Ruz emerged as an important leader of the Cuban Revolution on July 26, 1953, when he led 126 youth in an armed attack of the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba.  The purpose of the attack was to attain arms for the launching of a guerrilla struggle in the nearby mountains.  If the assailants had succeeded in taking the barracks, they would have proclaimed revolutionary laws, including agrarian reform, profit sharing for workers and employees, confiscation of properties fraudulently acquired, and reestablishment of the Constitution of 1940.

      In deciding to organize the Moncada attack, Fidel draw upon a sensitive understanding of Cuban political culture.  It had been twenty years since the collapse of the revolutionary government of 100 days. From 1933 to 1953, revolutionary hopes and the soul of the nation remained alive, as a result of an intellectual class whose works proclaimed an ethical attitude in the face of government corruption. However, by 1953, there had emerged a profound frustration and a belief that an ethical attitude in response to the corrupt political establishment was not enough.  The people yearned for a move beyond attitude to action.  Their yearnings were fulfilled by the Moncada attack, which they perceived as a heroic action, inasmuch as 70 of the young assailants were killed.  The Moncada attack galvanized the people, and it placed Fidel at the head of a new stage in the Cuban Revolution.       
      
     As the revolution unfolded, Fidel demonstrated an understanding of the importance of unity in the struggle and a capacity to forge unification.  Four historic moments stand out in this regard.  The first was the uniting of the popular sectors and anti-Batista political forces in a unified political struggle to bring down the dictator.  Since 1953, Fidel had called all of the people to the struggle, whether they be agricultural workers, industrial workers, professionals, businesspersons, or unemployed; and he brought them on board with a politically intelligent platform that responded to the grievances of the various sectors of the people.  When the revolution took power on January 1, 1959, Fidel included bourgeois and pro-imperialist members of the Cuban bourgeoisie in the initial revolutionary government, with the intention of keeping the anti-Batista coalition intact until the revolutionary leadership was ready for the inevitable break with the reformist and conservative opposition to Batista.

     The rupture of the anti-Batista coalition came on May 17, 1959, with the signing of the Agrarian Reform Law.  Constituting a decisive break with the neocolonial order, the Agrarian Reform Law defined the Cuban Revolution as a radical revolutionary project, determined to affect a social transformation within the nation as well as a necessary restructuring of global structures that had defined Cuba’s role as a supplier of cheap raw materials and a purchaser of surplus manufacturing goods.  With this historic rupture, the unification of the revolutionary forces became indispensable.  Fidel maintained the support of the various popular sectors through decisive action by the revolutionary government, including agrarian reform, protection of employment, confiscation of property of persons associated with the Batista regime, intervention in foreign-owned utility companies that imposed exorbitant prices, and reduction in housing rents, all steps taken in 1959; and the nationalization of companies, both national and foreign-owned, in 1960.  At the same time, Fidel began to work on the unification of the revolutionary organizations, including the 26 of July Movement, created and led by Fidel; the March 13 Revolutionary Directory, a student organization; and the Popular Socialist Party (PSP), the old communist party.  These efforts culminated in the formation of a new Communist Party of Cuba in 1965, a political structure designed to formulate the necessary direction of the revolution, making recommendations to assemblies of popular power.

      The third historic moment in which Fidel proclaimed and sought to form a necessary political unity came in the period 1979 to 1983, when Cuba served as president of the Non-Aligned Movement.  Fidel called for the unity of the governments, movements, and peoples of the Third World, for the purpose of cooperation in the construction of a New International Economic Order, a project approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1974.  At the 1983 Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in New Delhi, with the global powers turning to the imposition of the neoliberal project on the governments of the Third World, the wisdom of Fidel did not prevail.  But the voice of Fidel remained as an important prophetic proclamation, never forgotten by the neocolonized and excluded peoples of the earth.

      Fidel again played an important unifying role, calling upon the unity of the Latin American anti-imperialist movements, during the post-1994 renewal of the Latin America popular movements.  With Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the head of the progressive Workers’ Party in Brazil, Fidel had initiated in 1990 the birth of the Sao Paulo Forum, an organization of Latin American social movements and political parties of the Left.  And in 2004, with Hugo Chávez, he formed the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which was the first decisive step in a process of Latin American unity, culminating in the formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in 2010. CELAC consists of the governments of the 33 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the revolutionary government of Cuba has played a central role in its initial stages of development.  

     The unifying internationalist vision of Fidel sees the necessity of the unity of anti-imperialist forces, unity in defense of the sovereignty of the neocolonized nations, including cooperation between reformist and revolutionary tendencies, united on a foundation of common goals and with respect for differences.  Here it is useful to distinguish between reform from above and reform from below.  Reform from above is conceived by the powerful, and it either (1) supports concessions to the popular sectors in order to pacify them, deliberately deceiving the people into thinking that it seeks fundamental change; or (2) fails to envision the fundamental structural changes that are necessary to carry out its vision of reform.  In contrast, reform from below seeks long-term structural transformations, but it seeks changes that are limited in the short term, as a necessary political strategy in the existing conditions. The difference between revolution and reform from below is not great, taking into account that a triumphant revolution cannot transform conditions overnight and must move step-by-step.   Cooperation between revolution and reform from below in many cases is possible and necessary.  In accordance with this understanding, Fidel discerned the political advisability of cooperation between anti-imperialist and anti-neocolonial political tendencies of Latin America and the Third World. He was in his final years an important voice calling for the necessary unity of Latin America and the Third World, without rejecting the possibility of North-South cooperation, made necessary by global economic, political, and ecological conditions.

      The understanding of Fidel emerged in the context of political action.  Seeking to accomplish political goals in defense of the popular sectors and of national sovereignty, he formulated understandings of the political, economic, cultural, and ideological context in which such goals had to be attained.  He formulated his theory of a political party, for example, in the context of seeking to form a political party that would guide the nation.  Likewise, he formulated his understanding of neocolonial dynamics in the context of seeking to lead a nation in the defense of its sovereignty, in a world-system that is organized to deny the sovereignty of the nations.  Fidel’s understanding, therefore, profoundly illustrates the relation between theory and practice.

      Fidel understood the need to form a vanguard political party.  As early as 1961, Fidel was speaking of the importance of replacing the direction of the revolution by one person, necessary up to that time, with a collective leadership of a vanguard political party.  This process began in the 1960s with the formation of the Cuban Communist Party.  It evolved for the next four decades, during which time the Party grew in the capacities of its members, but it was constrained by the unavoidable charismatic presence of Fidel.  The process advanced considerably from 2009 to 2016, as a consequence of Fidel’s retirement, for reasons of health.  Today, the revolutionary project is direct by Raúl Castro, who also possesses charismatic authority.  But Raúl has encouraged the increasing leadership of the Party in the revolutionary process, such that the structures of a revolutionary project directed by a vanguard political party are today prepared. 

     Prior to my first arrival in Cuba in 1993, I could not avoid the influence of the political culture and the academic assumptions of the United States, in spite of my persistent commitment to seeking understanding through encounter with the Third World.  Accordingly, I had believed that underlying social forces shape revolutionary processes.  However, as I encountered revolutionary Cuba and studied the speeches of Fidel, I arrived to understand that his capacity to understand is so exceptional that it defies explanation.  And I came to appreciate that many Cubans had discerned this, and thus their own revolutionary commitment was expressed as a commitment to the leadership of Fidel, and today, to the teachings of Fidel.

     Stimulated by the example of Fidel and Cuba, as I studied revolutions in other nations, I could not avoid seeing the importance of charismatic leadership in revolutionary processes.  The paradigmatic examples are Fidel, Ho and Mao.  In their nations today, vanguard political parties lead their nations and educate the people, forging a scientifically based consensus among the people, thus avoiding the politically motivated conflicts that make representative democracies dysfunctional.  Other charismatic leaders have emerged in Latin America today: Chávez in Venezuela, Evo in Bolivia, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador.  Although these revolutionary processes are in the early stages in their development, they have played a leading role in transforming the political reality of Latin America and in cooperating with Cuba, China and Vietnam in taking important steps toward the construction of a more just, democratic, and sustainable world-system.

     We intellectuals of the North must celebrate the charismatic leaders of the Third World.  We ought to study their works and learn from their teachings, with the goal of elevating the historical, global, and revolutionary consciousness of our peoples.  From such a dynamic of popular education, charismatic leaders will emerge to forge policies that break with the legacy of imperialism, thus establishing the foundation for a more just and democratic world.

     Further reflections on these themes can be found in various posts in the categories Cuban History, Cuba Today, and Charismatic Leaders. These themes also are discussed in my forthcoming book, The Evolution and Significance of the Cuban Revolution: The light in the darkness.