The two principal popular actions of the French Revolution were the taking of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 and the taking of the Tuileries on August 10, 1792.  In both cases, the people were armed (Ianni 2011:37-38, 67-71; Soboul 1975:139, 250-51). 

     The formation of popular militias has been a continuing dimension of revolutionary processes.  Following the February Revolution, marchers in mass demonstrations were armed in order to protect themselves from possible violence from the troops of the Provisional Government.  During the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks were able to take power as a result of the organization of worker’s militias and the placing of army battalions under the authority of the popular councils.  Following the October Revolution, the Red Army was formed for defense against foreign armies and foreign-supported armed forces.  In Vietnam, nationalist forces used both guerrilla strategies and regular army troops in its long struggles against French colonialism and US neocolonial intentions.  In Cuba, the revolutionary movement took power using a guerrilla strategy in the countryside combined with urban sabotage.  After the triumph of the revolution, popular militias were formed that successfully defended the nation against a US-backed invasion.  In Venezuela, after the taking of power through non-violent electoral means, the government of Hugo Chávez, himself a former career military officer, was able to effectively place the armed forces under the authority of the civil government.

      Force has been a central component of human economic and social development for 10,000 years.  We have seen that conquest has been central to the formation of empires and civilizations, and that the existing world-system has been established on a foundation of the conquest of vast regions of the world (see various posts in the August 2013 archives as well as “The dialectic of domination and development” 10/30/2013).  And we have seen that the neocolonial world-system is maintained through the application of military force in those situations that require it (see “The characteristics of neocolonialism” 9/16/2013). 

      Since a popular revolution involves the taking of power by the political representatives of the popular sectors, its triumph generates a counterrevolution led by the deposed elite, which uses any and all means, including the organization of violence and force.  In such a situation, it would be idealist and irresponsible for a revolutionary project to not have a program for the organization of force to protect the people and defend the revolution.

      Therefore, revolutionary governments have the right and the duty to development a plan for the responsible use of force.  But a revolutionary government should not violate the rights of due process in order to attain political objectives, nor should it use force in order to terrorize the people into compliance with the revolutionary project.  In accordance with this understanding, my view is that the revolutionary terror of the French Revolution was a great historic error and historic crime, the consequences of which are present in our time.  This will be the subject of the next post.

     The social movements of the United States could learn some lessons from revolutionary processes in other lands.  The social movements of the United States have an honorable tradition of protest against violence and war.  However, they have not developed an alternative program for the responsible organization of force, either with respect to the military forces of the nation or the domestic criminal justice system.  The movements protest illegitimate violence; they “speak truth to power.”  At most, they hope to obtain concessions from those in power.  But they have not sought to take power with the intention of exercising power in a responsible way.  This limited approach undermines the influence of the progressive social movements among the people.  With their idealist discourse, progressive social movements are not taken seriously by the people as a political force that could govern the nation in a responsible and practical manner.  The governing of the nation thus is left to those who govern in defense of particular interests, a project that necessarily requires the illegitimate use of violence and force, both at home and abroad.


References

Ianni, Valera.  2011.  La Revolución Francesa.  México: Ocean Sur.

Soboul, Albert.  1975.  The French Revolution 1787-1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, French Revolution, popular militias, violence

      During the breakout of French Revolution in 1789, the 407 Parisian eligible voters in the elections for the General Estates met in a public plaza and formed an alternative municipal government.  It consisted of a committee, composed of municipal officials and elected representatives to the General Estates, which was given the charge of leading the popular insurrection.  And a mayor was elected.  The alternative government was called the Paris Commune, a name that would be given to various subsequent similar efforts (Ianni 2011:35; Soboul 1975:135-36, 140).

      With the radicalization of the revolution, the Paris Commune was replaced by the Insurrectionary Commune in 1792.  Under the leadership of artisans, shopkeepers, small merchants, and workers who comprised the so-called sans-culottes, a central committee was established and a new mayor was elected, replacing the mayor elected in 1789, who had since his election authorized a violent repression of a popular protest.  The central committee of the reconstituted Paris Commune coordinated 48 sections.  The most radical sections admitted men who did not qualify to vote under the established income and residence restrictions.  The most active sections met every day at the end of the workday (Ianni 2011:68-69; Soboul 1975:250, 309-11, 407, 411-12, 470).

     The formation of popular assemblies as an alternative to representative democracy has a sustained history in revolutionary processes: the Paris Commune of 1871; the soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers of the Russian Revolution of 1917; the worker’s councils of the Vietnamese Revolution; and the popular power and mass organizations of the Cuban Revolution.  They reflect direct democracy by the people, a more advanced form of political participation than is possible under the structures of representative democracy developed by the bourgeoisie.

      But in the seeing the possibilities of “power to the people,” the people should not be idealized.  The majority of people tend to think in concrete and particular terms, not understanding problems in their larger historical and social context.  Most tend to be orientated to the protection of particular interests rather than the good of the society as a whole in the long run.  And the majority is prone to vengeance and violence, which in their most extreme manifestations include executions with minimal regard for the right of due process.

      The correction to these popular tendencies is found through the vanguard.  The members of the vanguard are of the people and come from the people.  The have the best qualities of the people.  They are disciplined and committed to the values of the revolution and to universal human values.  As a result, they have become theoretically, politically, and historically informed.  Their role is to educate the people, and they play this role through discourses in the popular assemblies and informal discussions among the people.  Their challenge is to persuade the people of the best courses of action for the good of the revolution and the good of society in the long term.

      Although the vanguard educates, the people decide.  Decisions are made through consensus among the people.  If the vanguard fails to persuade, the people may take courses of action that could undermine the revolutionary process and its quest to create a more just and democratic society.  It therefore is necessary for the sustainability of the revolutionary project that the vanguard maintains the confidence and trust of the people.

     The vanguard is not infallible, and it particularly may be vulnerable to limitations in understanding that are established by social and historical context (see “What is personal encounter?” 7-25-2013).  But due to the personal characteristics of the members of the vanguard, it is in the best position to understand the best courses of action.  

      The relation between the vanguard and the people plays out in the popular assemblies.  And in the assemblies, elections to government offices are held.  In these elections, the people are choosing from among nominated candidates whose qualities they have come to know in the popular assemblies.  This is a process different from and superior to representative democracy, where the people do not assemble, and they chose from competing images, and not from among persons that they have come to know and respect.  Choosing from among images, the people under structures of representative democracy are subject to manipulation by the wealthy, which control the media of communication.

 
References

Ianni, Valera.  2011.  La Revolución Francesa.  México: Ocean Sur.

Soboul, Albert.  1975.  The French Revolution 1787-1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, French Revolution, popular assemblies, popular councils      

     The principle actors in the French Revolution were the bourgeoisie, the King, the nobility, and the people.

      As we have seen (“The French Revolution in Global Context” 11/26/2013), the bourgeoisie consisted of the great merchants, the financiers, the owners of the industrial factories, and professionals tied to the state bureaucracy.  They had emerged from an incipient merchant class that had been taking shape since the tenth century, as a result of the expansion of commerce.  They had an interest in pushing the process of modernization that had emerged as a consequence of historic human tendencies toward conquest and centralization of political structures.  Of particular relevance here were: the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula; the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of America; and the formation of nation-states in Spain, England, and France.  In its pursuit of modernization, the French bourgeoisie abolished the feudal privileges of the nobility and the Church and established, as the hegemonic world view, the concept of a society composed of free and equal individuals with natural rights.

     The monarchy emerged as a political force as a consequence of dynamics that had been emerging since the tenth century.  From the fifth to the tenth centuries, following the invasions by Germanic tribes and the collapse of the Roman Empire, political fragmentation and particularism reigned, since the conquering tribes did not have the capacity to impose a centralized order.  Feudal monarchs were weak, exercising little control over the nobility; most state functions were carried out in the local manor.  But from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, re-urbanization occurred, made possible by greater political stability and a growth in commerce.  In three zones (that would become England, France and Spain), the monarchs in alliance with the rising merchant class took decisive political action that led to the formation of modern nation-states.  They used taxes to raise a professional army that imposed monarchial political will on neighboring territories, forging centralized political structures that overcame the local power of the nobility.  This process was tied to nationality formation, which had been continually evolving as a consequence of invasions and conquests.  With the centralization of power attained by the three monarchs, and aided by wars with other states (between England and France and between Spain and the Islamic Empires), a degree of national identity emerged that coincided with the political territories controlled by the centralized state, giving rise to the modern nation-state.  By the fifteenth century, England, France, and Spain had become modern nation-states (Cristóbal 2008).

     In France during the second half of the eighteenth century, noble reaction to monarchical centralization reversed the earlier centralization of power, such that by the time of Luis XVI, little remained of absolute power.  This made the King dependent on the bourgeoisie, which also had an interest in centralization, but it also had an interest in political power in the centralized state.  The constitutional monarchy of 1791 was the practical consequence of this common interest and political alliance (Ianni 2011:11, 18, 20).

     Although they comprised less than 2% of the French population, the nobility owned 20% of the land.  It had regained power that had been lost in the prior centralization of power.  Since the decisions of the Crown had to be registered by the nobles, they exercised a de facto veto.  They had monopoly rights on the production of wheat, bread, wine, and oil.  They controlled the criminal justice system in the rural towns.  They exploited the peasantry through rents and taxes (Ianni 2011:10-12).  They had an interest in the preservation of the old order in opposition to the tendencies of centralization, modernization, and secularization (see “The French Revolution in Global Context” 11/26/2013).  They were allied with the Church, which also enjoyed feudal privileges, although there was a distinction between the higher and lower clergy, the former pertaining to the nobility (Ianni 2011:12-13).

     The people included peasants, workers, craftsmen, and lower members of the professional class.  Peasants comprised 80% of the French population.  The majority of peasants were sharecroppers, obligated to surrender half of their crop in exchange for land, tools, and livestock.  One-quarter to one-third of peasants were proprietors, but their situation was difficult as a result of high payments for taxes and services.  The best-off peasants were tenants, who paid rent for land, but they were able to exploit the day-laborers, who were the worst-off among the peasantry.  The class structure of the peasantry shows how much the countryside had been transformed by modernization; peasants were no longer serfs.  Those peasants who participated in revolutionary action were driven by high taxes and the high cost of bread and other necessary items, which sometimes were hoarded by merchants for purposes of financial speculation (Ianni 2011:13-15).

    Since the modernization of agriculture had occurred earlier, there were no longer significant numbers of serfs.  But the modernization of industry, involving the transformation of craftsmen into salaried workers, was still in process, so there were significant numbers of guild craftsmen.  The guild system was characterized by high-quality production of luxury items.  With its unchanging rules of production, its prohibitions on innovation, and its long years of training to master the craft, the guild system was an obstacle to the advancement of the industrial factory.  Threatened by the force of modernization, the craftsmen envisioned a return to the past rather than an alternative future.  Craftsmen were active participants in the revolution, driven by hatred of the aristocracy, a sentiment shared by other popular sectors (Ianni 2011:15-16).

     The most politically active of the popular sectors were the “sans-culottes,” so named because of their style of dress.  They consisted of shopkeepers, small property owners, workers, and craftsmen.  They had an interest in pushing the bourgeois proclamation of democratic rights to its fullest realization.  They were the most radical element of the revolution, demanding universal male suffrage, the dethronement of the King, and wage and price controls.  The popular movement was ultimately contained by the bourgeois revolution, which replaced a society jointly ruled by nobles and kings with a society ruled by the bourgeoisie, characterized by the formalities and the appearance of democracy, but not the substance.

      The differing class interests created various possibilities for political alliances.  The nobility and the craftsmen were in the weakest position, since the social order from which they emerged was being swept away by the forces of centralization, modernization, and secularization.  In this dynamic situation, there was the possibility of a bourgeois-popular alliance in opposition to the nobility and the monarchy.  But this was undermined by tendencies toward a bourgeois alliance with the monarch vis-à-vis centralization and with the nobility in relation to property rights.  Ultimately what occurred was a bourgeois alliance with first the Napoleonic Empire and later with the restored and reconstituted monarchy.  During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concessions would be made to popular movements and demands, but the people would not rule.  The struggle for popular democratic nation-states would be renewed during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and it would the neocolonized peoples of the Third World who would take the lead in the struggle.


References

Cristóbal Pérez, Armando.  2008.  El Estado-Nación: Su Origen y Construcción.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Ianni, Valera.  2011.  La Revolución Francesa.  México: Ocean Sur.

Soboul, Albert.  1975.  The French Revolution 1787-1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, French Revolution

      Anatomically modern humans evolved from earlier species of the genus Homo roughly 130,000 years ago in Africa.  During the period of 130,000-10,000 B.P., human societies were characterized by continuous economic and cultural development in the context of a foraging (hunting and gathering) economic foundation.  The period was characterized by continuous migration and settlement in new areas as a result of population growth, such that by 10,000 B.P. humans had settled on all of the continents.

       As human migrations reached the geographic limits of the earth, migration as a solution to population growth was no longer possible.  Thus in seven different regions of the world, human societies independently utilized the accumulated knowledge to develop food production (the cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals).  This agricultural revolution established both conquest and political centralization as tendencies integrally tied to economic and cultural development.  Societies that turned to food production had the capacity to sustain specialists, including soldiers and state administrators, who were not directly involved in food production.  This capacity enabled them to conquer neighboring societies and incorporate the conquered peoples and lands into a single political territory, providing a foundation for empire and advanced civilization, characterized by specialists who forged significant achievements in technology, science, the arts and literature.  The empires were ruled by a political-religious elite, and they were systems of social stratification that legitimated inequality with religious concepts.

       In North Africa, the human tendency toward development through domination led to the formation of Islamic Empires and to the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.  Spanish and Portuguese resistance to the conquest accelerated their tendencies toward centralization.  As a result, Spain and Portugal emerged from the reconquest as centralized states with advanced military capacities, establishing the basis for the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of America.

      The Spanish and Portuguese conquest of vast regions of America in the sixteenth century established the foundation for the modern world-system.  The precious metals obtained (through forced labor imposed on the indigenous populations) stimulated the further economic and commercial development of Western Europe, most notably England and France, which also had formed modern nation-states.  The force of the expansion was so great that the traditional forms of production constituted a fetter, leading to the modernization of production.  Modernization first occurred in agriculture, with the enclosure of common lands, the transformation of feudal obligations into rent, and the centralization of land ownership.  Thus serfs were converted into tenants, sharecroppers, and day laborers.  Subsequently, modernization occurred in manufacturing, with the transformation of the craft workshop into the industrial factory, creating the highly specialized form of labor that destroyed work as a craft and that Marx would famously describe as alienation. 

     The bourgeois class in France in the second half of the eighteenth century was formed by these dynamics.  The bourgeoisie consisted of the owners of the emerging industrial factories, the big merchants who profited from the expanding commerce in goods, the financiers who profited from loans to factories owners and merchants, and the professionals who were tied to the expanding state bureaucracy that was necessary for the efficient regulation and administration of the expanding commerce and manufacturing.  The bourgeoisie emerged in the context of a feudal society ruled jointly: by nobles, who had an interest in preserving decentralization and traditional forms of production; and by the monarch, who had an interest in centralization and in breaking the power of the nobility, even though the monarchy itself evolved from feudal structures and dynamics.  The bourgeoisie had an interest in taking power away from the nobility and in establishing an alliance with a state that would adopt measures designed to accelerate the modernization of production.  Thus the bourgeoisie formed a revolution that abolished feudalism and that established a constitutional monarchy, a monarchy recast in accordance with modern institutions.

     Because of the integral relation of the Church with feudal institutions and its intimate ties with the nobility, the further modernization of the society required a reduction of the Church’s power.  Thus the French Revolution was characterized by an attack on the Church, not only with respect to its property and its feudal privileges, but also by the formulation of an alternative to its hierarchical theocentric vision of society.   The bourgeois revolution formulated an alternative vision of society based on free and equal individuals who have natural rights, including the rights of suffrage and property, important components of the struggle with the nobility.  Under bourgeois class rule, legitimation of inequality would be attained not through religious concepts but through democratic values, interpreted in a limited way in accordance with bourgeois interests.  With the power of the Church reduced, the separation of Church and state and religious tolerance emerged as integral components of the new bourgeois-ruled democratic society.

     But the bourgeoisie would not have been victorious had it not been for the direct action of the popular sectors, which themselves for the most part were formed by the process of modernization.  The popular sectors included peasants, who were no longer a class as such, divided as they were among tenants, sharecroppers, and day laborers.  And they included craftsmen, shopkeepers, small property owners, and workers, who had their own organizations and leaders.  These popular sectors embraced the modern concept of democracy, interpreting it in a more radical form than the bourgeoisie, seeing in it the possibilities for not only political participation but also for social liberation.  Thus they pushed the revolution to take more drastic and deeply democratic measures.  Many of the leaders of the radical and populist wing of the revolution were members of the emerging professional class, which was both a lower part of the bourgeoisie as well as a relatively privileged part of the popular sectors.  Radical leaders from the professional ranks interpreted the destiny of their class as tied to the fate of the popular sectors. 

        Thus the French Revolution, seen in a panoramic context, was established by historic human tendencies toward conquest and centralization and by the more recent tendency toward modernization.  In its drive to complete the process of modernization, the revolution stimulated another tendency, namely, secularization.  At the same time, the French Revolution provided a foundation for popular movements throughout the world that would embrace its democratic world view and the implications of secularization in order to proclaim the universal human values that ought to guide humanity, such as protection of the social and economic rights of all persons and respect for the self-determination and sovereignty of nations.  The world-wide popular movements also would come to recognize that the historic human pattern of development through conquest and domination is no longer sustainable, inasmuch as the world-system has reached the geographical and ecological limits of the earth.  Just as humans invented food production when foraging societies reached their geographical limits, humans today must embrace a fundamental change from development through domination to development through cooperation and international solidarity.  The French Revolution did not challenge the historic human pattern of domination, seeking only to exchange domination by the nobility with an alternative form of domination by the bourgeoisie.  The global popular movements today seek to complete the French Revolution, carrying out the democratic revolution in a manner that ends domination in all of its forms.  The movement today proclaims that a just, democratic and sustainable world is necessary and possible.

       The French Revolution stimulates questions that must be addressed by the popular movements today.  These issues for our reflection include:  class structures and dynamics in revolutionary processes; the role of popular assemblies and popular militias; and the issues of violence and of religion and spirituality.  We will be discussing these themes in subsequent posts.


     The reader is invited to take a look at previous posts that have explored themes relevant to today’s post: “The origin of the modern world-economy,” 8/6/2013; “Conquest, gold, and Western development,” 8/8/2013; “What enables conquest?” 8/9/2013; “Food production and conquest,” 8/12/2013; “European feudalism,” 8/13/2013; “The modern nation-state,” 8/14/2013; “Dialectic of domination and development,” 10/30/2013; “Bourgeois revolution in France, 1787-1799,” 11/25/2013.

 
Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, French Revolution

 

 

 

     Like the American Revolution of 1763-1789, the French Revolution of 1787-1799 was a bourgeois revolution that was made possible by the political action of the masses.  In both cases, the popular sectors challenged the bourgeoisie and for a time took partial control of the revolution, but the revolution ultimately was contained by the scope of bourgeois interests, thus postponing to another day the democratic revolutions of the popular sectors. 

     The French Revolution was based on and succeeded in establishing a new concept of society, according to which society consists fundamentally of individuals, each of whom have natural rights.  According to this view, the organization of society should be based on voluntary contract among legally and politically equal individuals; any inequality that emerges should be based on differences in capacities, talents, initiative, or work.  This bourgeois concept of society was fundamentally different from the feudal, which assumed that society is divided into different ranks and statuses, each with its own rights, privileges, and duties (Ianni 2011:32-33).

     The bourgeois concept of society was expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, adopted on August 26, 1789.  It proclaimed that “men are born and remain free and equal in their rights,” and these include the rights to liberty, property, personal safety, and resistance to oppression (Soboul 1975:176-82). 

     The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen also expressed fear of mobilization from below; it sought to end domination by the nobility, but not domination of one class by another.  This perspective can be seen in its proclamation of the right of property, without placing limits to this right on the basis of the needs of society as a whole.  In effect, the Declaration promoted the transformation of feudal property into bourgeois property (Ianni 2011:48-50; Soboul 1975:332).

     The bourgeois character of the revolution is reflected in the Constitution of 1791.  In opposition to the interests of the nobility, it abolished feudal rights and privileges and established a constitutional monarchy.  In opposition to the interests of the popular classes, it restricted the right to vote on the basis of income and permanency of residence (Ianni 2011: 53-54).

     The bourgeois program was characterized by economic liberalism.  It sought to remove taxes and other obstacles to the free circulation of merchandize.  These measures, however, had negative consequences for the people, the protection of whose interests would have required government intervention in the economy with the intention of controlling prices and wages (Ianni 2011:81-82).

      Thus, in spite of the active participation of the popular sectors, the revolution had not established a government that protected popular interests.  This contradiction led to a radicalization of the revolution.  By 1792, the popular sectors had taken control of the revolutionary process, leading to the adoption of more radical measures, including universal male suffrage.  The new Constitution of 1793 proclaimed certain social and economic rights, such as the rights to work, public assistance, and education.  But even the new Constitution did not subordinate property rights to human rights and to the needs of the society as a whole, and it implicitly sanctioned the exploitation of labor (Ianni 2011:71, 87, 94-98; Soboul 1975:315-16).

     By 1794, popular control of the revolutionary process had come to end, and by 1796 the popular movement dissipated, a victim of the powerful forces operating against it as well as its own internal contradictions and errors, a theme that we will be discussing in subsequent posts.  For its part, the bourgeoisie would find its interests consolidated in the Napoleonic Empire (Ianni 2011:119-47).

       All revolutionary processes should be understood in global and historical context, and this theme will be the subject of the next post.


References

Ianni, Valera.  2011.  La Revolución Francesa.  Ocean Sur: México.

Soboul, Albert.  1975.  The French Revolution 1787-1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, French Revolution

     A revolution is the taking of political power by a group that represents the interests of a class or alliance of classes, substituting rule by the previously dominant class with rule by a different class or classes.  The revolutions of the late eighteenth century in Europe and in the European settler societies of North America were essentially bourgeois revolutions, substituting rule by the nobility with rule by the capitalist class, although the bourgeois revolutions had ample popular participation that constituted the beginning of popular revolutions.  A popular revolution is the taking of power by representatives of the popular sectors and classes.  The Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, and the Bolivarian revolutions today in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador are popular revolutions.  The taking of power by the popular classes does not mark the end of the revolution, but the beginning of a new stage in the revolutionary process, in which the new governing group must seek to govern in the interests of the popular sectors and to fend off efforts to destroy it by the previously dominant class and their national and international allies.

     The American Revolution was, in the final analysis, a bourgeois revolution.  We have seen that it was formed and led by the American elite, consisting mostly of large merchants and landholders, who enlisted the support of the popular sectors in their anti-British cause; that during the 1770s the popular sectors had captured control of the revolutionary process at the local level and had established constitutional reforms in each of the thirteen colonies that reflected popular interests; and that the elite was able to reestablish control, reflected in the Constitution of 1787, and to forge a system of democracy that favored elite interests and was more democratic in form than in substance (“The US popular movement of 1775-77” 11/1/2013; “American Counterrevolution, 1777-87” 11/4/2013; “Balance of power” 11/5/2013).

        There was a second American revolution that expressed itself in various forms during the period of 1830 to 1896, when popular sectors sought to establish democratic rights for blacks, women, and small farmers.  It attained the abolition of slavery and culminated in the right to vote for women in 1919.  Its high point was 1867, when constitutional amendments establishing citizenship rights for blacks were established, which were subsequently negated in practice. 

         From 1955 to 1974, blacks, students, women, Native Americans and Mexican Americans sought to expand the protection of political and civil rights to all citizens and to deepen the meaning of democratic rights to include social and economic rights.  The anti-war movement was an important part of this third American revolution, in which anti-imperialism and identification with Third World revolutions were expressed by white middle-class students.  The third American revolution, which Immanuel Wallerstein has called the Revolution of 1968, accomplished the expansion of political and civil rights to include women and people of color, but it did not result in the taking of political power by the popular sectors.  The nation remains in the control of the elite, which today is a corporate and financial elite.

      The Revolution of 1968 had all the necessary pieces of a successful revolution.  Some understood that it was a question of taking control of the political institutions of the nation from the capitalist class and its political representatives, in order to govern in the interests of the popular classes and sectors; some understood that the revolutionary process ought to seek to protect the social and economic rights of all of the people; some understood that the revolutionary process must be anti-imperialist, and that the nation under revolutionary leadership would respect the sovereignty and self-determination of all nations; some understood that there had to be a long process of the education and formation of the consciousness of the people; and some understood that the classical revolutionary theory of Marxism had to reformulated for a different situation, including the emergence of a new middle class of educated workers and of a diversity of popular sectors in the core as well as national liberation movements in the periphery.  But all of these pieces were part of a confused mix.  Some thought that power could be taken by symbolic urban sabotage; some rigidly applied the Marxist concept of the industrial working class at the vanguard; and many confused a political and social revolution with rebellious behavior in regard to sex, drugs, and styles of dress and appearance.  There did not emerge a charismatic leader who had the insight to synthesize the various pieces of understanding in order to formulate a coherent direction that would have the support of the people.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was possibly evolving in a direction that would have enabled him to become the revolutionary charismatic leader, a phenomenon that has occurred in successful revolutions.  He had not yet arrived to be a revolutionary leader, in that he had not yet understood that it is a question of taking power.  But he had by 1968 arrived at an understanding of the need to protect the social and economic rights of the people and to respect the rights of the nations and peoples of the world to self-determination and development.

       When I look at the revolutions that have taken power recently in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, I ask: How did they do it?  In all three cases they formulated a discourse that struck a responsive chord among the people: a connecting of people’s problems with specific policies, framed in a broader historical and global context of understanding; an unmasking of the unpatriotic and anti-popular behavior of the political elite, in spite of its popular and democratic rhetoric; and a commitment to defend the social and economic rights of the people and the dignity and sovereignty of the nation.  They formed not merely movements of protest designed to pressure those in power.  They developed revolutionary movements that intended to take power, and they took power legally and non-violently, utilizing bourgeois political structures of representative democracy and taking advantage of space afforded by bourgeois structures of political and civil rights.

     Why don’t we do something like that in the United States?   The answer, of course, is that it is not possible, for a host of reasons.  I here am reminded of what the nineteenth century Cuban revolutionary José Martí said: “We must make the impossible possible.”  It is a question of finding a way to overcome the various obstacles that a popular revolution in the United States confronts, for the good of the nation and for the good of humanity.

     The old Marxist parties to some extent had it right: an industrial working-class vanguard that seeks to take power.  But their concept was too rigid, literally applying the concept of a proletarian vanguard in spite of the fact that revolutions of the twentieth century were in practice being led by informed and committed leaders of multiple popular classes.  And their concept was too Eurocentric, based on the European experience and not sufficiently informed by revolutions of the Third World.  These errors are understandable in the context of their place and time.  But we can avoid them today.  It is possible today to form a comprehensive and universal understanding of popular revolution.

     We the people of the United States have the duty to renovate and bring to fruition what our foreparents began in 1775 and renewed in 1867 and 1968: a popular revolution that seeks to take political power and to govern in accordance with the interests of the popular sectors and in a form consistent with universally proclaimed democratic values, including the protection of the social and economic rights of all persons and respect for the rights of all nations and peoples to sustainable development, self-determination, and sovereignty.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, American Revolution, Revolution of 1968

     We have seen in eight posts since November 1 that there are several limitations to American democracy.  The American Revolution began in 1763 as a movement led by the American elite, which called upon the masses for support, invoking a rhetoric that was nationalist and anti-British but vague on contradictory class interests within the American colonies.  By 1775-77, the popular classes had emerged as significant actors that were moving the revolution toward addressing the interests of the popular classes vis-à-vis the elite.  However, the elite was able to retake control of the movement, and the Constitution of 1787 was the culmination of the victorious elite countermovement.  Thus in the final analysis the American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, although it did establish the foundation for a popular discourse and movement that could expand and deepen the meaning of democracy to address the interests of the popular classes.

       The Constitution of the United States, as a document of a bourgeois revolution, contained limitations in relation to popular interests.  It established the balance of power, in order that the elite could check the power of the popular classes.  It established larger voting districts, facilitating the dependence of candidates on financial resources.  And it confined the proclamation of democratic rights to political and civil rights.

      In the years since the American Revolution of 1763-87, popular classes in the United States and in the world have sought to expand the meaning of democracy, so as to include persons initially excluded, and to deepen the meaning of democracy, in order to include rights that had not been addressed.  The expansion of democracy involved above all the inclusion of people of color and women, and the struggle for their inclusion essentially had been won by the 1960s, although the legacy of the earlier period of exclusion and denial survives in subtle and indirect forms.  The deepening of democracy has involved the proclamation of rights in new areas as well as the proclamation of the rights of nations and peoples.  Thus humanity has affirmed: the social and economic rights of all persons; the rights of nations to self-determination and sovereignty; and the rights of all nations and peoples to sustainable development.  And the deepening of democracy also has involved the development of popular power, a form of democracy characterized by the direct participation of the people, as an alternative to representative democracy.

     At the time of the American Revolution, the thirteen colonies had entered the world-system in a semi-peripheral role, profiting from a lucrative trade relation with the slaveholders in the Caribbean.  During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, various factors would facilitate the ascent of the United States in the world-system, culminating in its emergence by the middle of the twentieth century as the hegemonic power of the neocolonial world-system (“Slavery, development, and US ascent” 8/30/2013; “Cotton” 9/9 2013; “The military-industrial complex” 8/29/2013). 

      The spectacular ascent to hegemony distorted popular discourse in the United States, as popular interests came to be understood as tied to the rise of US economic and political power.  As a result, constraints were placed on the capacity of US popular movements to reflect on the expanding and deepening meaning of democracy occurring throughout the world.  The notion of the protection of social and economic rights came to be much more widely accepted in Western Europe and in the Third World than in the United States.  And the rights of nations and peoples, such as the rights of self-determination and sustainable development, have been essentially beyond the scope of popular discourse and reflection.

       It is widely believed in the United States that it is the most democratic nation on earth.  There is some truth to this belief.  The Constitution of the 1787 establishes the United States as the longest-standing constitutional democracy.  And the nation has a strong tradition in the protection of political and civil rights, although it also has a record of periodically violating political and civil rights in the defense of its neocolonial interests. 

     However, in reality, the United States has a limited understanding of democracy.  The political culture does not affirm that housing, health care, and education are rights held by all, not conditioned by one’s capacity to pay.  And the political debates concerning foreign policy assume that US economic and political interests in the neocolonial world-system should be defended, with little concern for the rights of nations and peoples of the world to self-determination and sustainable development.  At the same time, US popular culture lacks structures to facilitate popular reflection on the meaning of democracy.  Thus, as the peoples of the world have sought to deepen the meaning of democracy during the course of the twentieth century, the people of the United States have been largely absent from this global process.  As a consequence, both the political elite and the people have a superficial and limited understanding of democracy, which leaves the nation unprepared to act responsibly in the world. 

      There was a time when it was not so.  In the 100 or so years following the American Revolution, the United States of America was viewed as a symbol of the promise of democracy, especially in Latin America, in spite of its recognized expansionism in relation to the indigenous nations and Mexico.  But as the United States rose to neocolonial hegemony, it increasingly intervened in other nations in order to promote its economic and political interests, hypocritically pretending to be defending democracy.  And the American promise of democracy was transformed into the American Creed, a belief in opportunity for material success integrally tied to a consumer society.  Thus the potential for the development of a democratic nation unleashed by the American Revolution has not been realized. 

     We the people of the United States should seek to renew the American promise of democracy.  But how?  I will seek to address this question in the next post.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, American Revolution

       We have seen that in the evolution of the meaning of democracy, the movements and nations of the Third World arrived to proclaim that nations and peoples have rights, and among these are the rights to self-determination and development (“Right of nations to self-determination” 11/8/2013; “Social and economic rights” 11/7/2013).  Since the 1980s, the concept of development has itself undergone an evolution, and it is now understood as “sustainable development,” in which the satisfaction of the needs of the present does not compromise the capacity of future generations to satisfy their needs.   By the end of the 1980s, the concept of sustainable development was diffused widely throughout the world, as reflected in “Our Common Future,” a report emitted by the World Commission on Environment and Development. 

       The evolution from development to sustainable development was tied to what Pearce and Warford (1993) have called the second environmental revolution.  The first environmental revolution of the 1960s had seen economic growth and environmental protection as irreconcilable opposites, always in conflict.  But the second revolution of the 1980s did not question the need for growth.  Rather, it sought to define how to grow, or how to develop in a form that is sustainable.

     The Cuban scholar and environmental specialist Ramon Pichs (2006) maintains that the turn to sustainable development occurred as a result of the participation of organizations and movements of the Third World in the global process of reflection on environmental issues.  From the point of view of the Third World, the ecological revolution of the 1960s, with its call for conservation and for constraints on economic growth, made sense in the context of the developed societies, characterized by over-production and irrational patterns of consumption.  But limiting growth was not a reasonable approach for the underdeveloped societies, which did not have productive patterns that could provide even basic human needs, as a consequence of the neocolonial situation.  However, the Third World discerned from the outset the importance of the ecological revolution as it developed from the 1960s through the 1980s, given its consciousness of the contaminating effects of the prevailing patterns of production and of the global scope of environmental problems.  Thus, Third World participation in the discussion led to a reformulation of the issue, and sustainable development emerged as a new consensual understanding.

     In spite of the emergence of a global consensus on sustainable development, the concept is subject to different interpretations.  In the developed nations, there is a tendency to recognize the immense global socio-economic inequalities, but a failure to understand the mechanisms that have generated these inequalities.  This can lead to utopian interpretations of sustainable development, in which it is imagined that there is a union of interests between the North and South, and the two worlds can together attain social equality, economic growth, and conservation of the environment.  From the Third World perspective, there are indeed common human interests, but to find expression for common interests, the different and opposed interests that emerge from different sides of the colonial divide must be acknowledged and addressed.

     In addition, as the international environmental debate has proceeded, the governments of the North have insisted on treating separately the problems of the environment from those of development, in spite of the fact that the 1992 Summit on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro affirmed that the eradication of poverty and the protection of the environment are connected.  From the point of view of the Third World, this appears to be a maneuver by the governments of the North to avoid their responsibilities.

     Pichs maintains that, in spite of the different interpretations that emerge from the North-South divide, sustainable development is an important and necessary concept, and the emergence of a global consensus embracing the term is a significant step.  The concept assumes that the economic and social objectives of development ought to be defined in terms of sustainability.  It establishes the possibility of a multidimensional global process that seeks sustainable development in economic, social, and environmental terms.  However, Pichs maintains that the creation of a world characterized by economic, social, and environmental sustainability will require a fundamental transformation of the world-system and a restructuring of international economic and political relations on a foundation of equality and social justice.  

     The renewed movements of Third World national liberation that have emerged since 1995 have embraced the principle of sustainable development, and they proclaim sustainable development as a right of all nations and peoples.  They maintain that “a just, democratic, and sustainable world” is possible and necessary.


References

Pearce, D. and J. Warford.  1993.  World Without End: Economics, Environment, and Sustainable Development.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pichs Madruga, Ramón.  2006.  “Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo, 1964-2004” in Libre Comercio y subdesarrollo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, sustainable development, environment, environment and development, ecology, ecological revolution

      The American Constitution made no affirmation of the rights of women.  As Howard Zinn writes in relation to the Declaration of Independence, “The use of the phrase ‘all men are created equal’ was probably not a deliberate attempt to make a statement about women.  It was just that women were beyond consideration as worthy of inclusion.  They were politically invisible.  Though practical needs gave women a certain authority in the home, on the farm, or in occupations like midwifery, they were simply overlooked in any consideration of political rights, any notions of civic equality” (2005:73).

     Seeking to expand the meaning of democracy, women in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries formed a movement that sought the affirmation and protection of their rights as women.  The movement included liberal reformist efforts to extend the concept of individual rights and liberties to women, radical critiques of the structures and ideology of patriarchy, and syntheses of feminism and socialism.  The movement was able to attain the constitutional right of women to vote in 1919.  And it had a significant impact on the dominant US culture from the 1960s to the 1980s, as many feminist ideas, especially from liberal feminism, became widely disseminated.  Fundamental principles of the movement, principles such as equal educational and occupational opportunity and the right of women to full participation in the public sphere, became widely accepted (Buechler 1990; Madoo Lengermann and Niebrugge 2008). 

   But the feminist movement encountered organized opposition in the 1970s, blocking the passage of a proposed constitutional amendment.  Successfully exploiting issues such as abortion rights and gay rights, the anti-feminist counter movement portrayed the women’s movement as opposed to “family values” and as contributing to a moral decline in the nation.  By the 1980s, a conservative mood was ascendant, and there occurred a de-radicalization of the movement, in which its potential to attain a social transformation was lost (Buechler 1990:120-25, 186-98).

     The inability of the movement to protect itself against the counterattack of the right is related to its limitations.  The movement never organized women into a mass organization, in the context of which intellectual work could have been tied to the practical concerns of women, leading to the formulation of a proposed national program of action that would have the recognized support of the majority of women.  At the same time, issues of gender have been fragmented from other issues, such as poverty, class inequality, race and ethnicity, environment, and imperialism.  Social scientists in the 1980s spoke of the need to unify issues of “race, class, and gender,” but this was not accomplished in theory or practice.

     In the presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988, Jesse Jackson tried to unify progressive forces through a “Rainbow Coalition,” a progressive alliance of women, blacks, Latinos, workers, farmers, and ecologists.  In relation to women, his 1988 campaign proposed a reform of salary structures in accordance with the principle of comparable worth and funding for child care, and it affirmed the right of women to reproductive choice.  Although overwhelmingly supported by black and Latino voters, he received only 12% of the votes of white women voters in the democratic primaries of 1988, equal to the percentage of votes that he received among white men (McKelvey 275-84). 

     Fundamental principles of the women’s movements of the developed nations were widely disseminated throughout the Third World during the 1970s and 1980s, and they became integrated into the renewed Third World movements that emerged after 1995.  In its global dissemination and integration into Third World movements, feminism was transformed.  The new Third World feminism selected key ideas from liberal, radical, and socialist feminism in order to formulate an understanding that could attain popular consensus.  Taking from liberal feminism its focus on equal rights for women, Third World feminism affirms the right of women to full and equal participation in the construction of a just, democratic, and sustainable world.  Taking from radical feminism the recognition that violence against women is a systemic problem, Third World feminism mobilizes public opinion and engages in political education in relation to the problem of violence against women, and it seeks to establish structures of support for women who have been victimized by violence.  Taking from socialist feminism the need for integration, Third World feminism sees its role as one of redeeming the general social struggle of the people and of bringing the struggle to a more advanced stage. In this process of integration into the popular movement, Third World feminism treats with delicacy the issues of lesbianism and abortion, seeing these issues as divisive and as undermining the possibility for a practical integration of fundamental feminist concepts into the unfolding anti-neocolonial popular movements.  As a result of its creative adaptation to its particular social and economic conditions and its sensitivity to popular sentiments, Third World feminism has become an integral part of a global movement that today challenges global neocolonial structures and that seeks to construct a just, democratic, and sustainable world-system.

     In a series of conversations that I had in 1998 with founders of women’s organizations in Honduras, the principle leaders of the Honduran women’s movement described to me this process of the transformation of feminism.  They had found compelling the fundamental concepts of feminism that had been formulated in the developed nations.  But they understood the necessity of adapting feminism to their particular social and economic conditions.  Thus they gave emphasis to some concepts and rejected others, and they developed an alternative form of feminism.   Their approach was sometimes criticized by feminists from the North as an immature feminism, but they insisted on defending their feminism as valid and as appropriate for the neocolonial situation of their country (McKelvey 1999). 

     Thus we may speak of the internationalization and transformation of feminism.  As a form of feminism that is integrally connected to popular anti-neocolonial movements, Third World feminism could be interpreted as a more advanced formulation that synthesizes concepts that emerge from social struggles against multiple forms of domination.  Perhaps the “womanist” formulations that have emerged in the black community are a particular manifestation of this integral and more comprehensive form of feminism.


References

Buechler, Steven M.  1990.  Women’s Movements in the United States.  New Brunswick:  Rutgers University Press.

Madoo Lengermann, Patricia and Gillian Niebrugge.  2008.  “Contemporary Feminist Theories” in George Ritzer, Sociological Theory, Seventh Edition, Pp. 450-97.  Boston: McGraw-Hill.

McKelvey, Charles.  1994.  The African-American Movement:  From Pan-Africanism to the Rainbow Coalition. Bayside, New York: General Hall.

__________.  1999.  "Feminist Organizations and Grassroots Democracy in Honduras" in Jill Bystydzienski and Joti Sekhon, eds., Democratization and Women's Grassroots Movements.  Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, Pp. 196-213.

Zinn, Howard.  2005.  A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Harper Perennial Modern Classics


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, women, women’s movement, feminism, Third World feminism

     As a result of the influence of popular democratic movements throughout the world, the meaning of democracy has evolved.  Accordingly, there has emerged the understanding that not only individuals have rights, but nations and ethnic and cultural groups have rights, and among these are the rights of nations to self-determination and sovereignty and of ethnic and cultural groups to cultural autonomy and to the preservation of their cultures. 

     V.I. Lenin affirmed the right of the self-determination of the oppressed nations of the Russian empire as well as of the European colonies of Asia and Africa.  He understood that colonial domination of the nations and peoples of Asia and Africa provided markets and raw materials for the capitalist powers, and that revolutionary anti-imperialist movements emerge in the colonies, formed by workers, peasants, and enlightened members of the middle class.  He believed that the proletarian revolution in the developed countries ought to be allied with the anti-imperialist revolutions in the colonies (Lenin 2010; 1968).

     When the young Ho Chi Minh became involved in the socialist movement in Paris in the early 1920s, he encountered the debate between the second and third internationals, and he wanted to know which side supported the struggle of the colonized people.  He was told that it was the Third International, and he was given a copy of Lenin’s “Theses on the National and Colonial Question.”  The affirmation by Lenin of the rights of the colonized people converted Ho into a Leninist, and it would lead to his affiliation with the French Communist Party, to a study of Marxism-Leninism, and ultimately to his creative practical synthesis of Marxism-Leninism with a Third World anti-colonial perspective.   Ho’s “Report on the National and Colonial Questions” at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International as well as other writings of 1924 reveal that Ho was critical of the communist parties of the West for lacking contact with the colonial peoples and for ignoring the colonial question, thus not following in practice the theoretical formulations of Lenin on the national question (García Oliveras 2010:25-27; Bello 2007:xii-xiv; Ho 2007:24-38). 

      Ho Chi Minh illustrates the importance of the principle of the self-determination of nations in the anti-colonial movements that emerged in Africa and Asia during the twentieth century and that culminated in the attainment of political independence by the colonies in the period 1948 to 1963.  Reflecting the new political reality established by the African and Asian national liberation movements, the United Nations in 1966 gave official certification to the right of nations and peoples to self-determination and development.  The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, proclaimed:  “All peoples have the right of self-determination.  By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.  All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation.”

      The right of nations to self-determination is repeatedly affirmed today in the declarations of the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization of governments of the Third World who represent three-quarters of humanity, and in the declarations of the Alternative World Movement, a global social movement that emerged in the late 1990s in opposition to the imposition of the neoliberal project by the global powers and the international finance agencies.  In addition, respect for the sovereignty of all nations is an integral component of the process of integration and union that is occurring in Latin America today under the leadership of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.  We will be discussing these movements in future posts.

     During the course of the twentieth century, US foreign policy has sought to maximize access by US corporations to the natural resources and labor of the world, generally manipulating the idea of democracy as a pretext for its intervention in the affairs of other nations, with the consequence that the sovereignty of nations has been denied in practice.  The United States pretends to be defending democracy in the world, but in fact it systematically negates the democratic right of self-determination of nations, a right affirmed by the peoples of the world.  In opposition to this historic tendency, Jesse Jackson in his presidential campaign of 1988 proposed a US foreign policy of global North-South cooperation that would respect the right of self-determination and that would seek to overcome poverty and underdevelopment in the Third World (McKelvey 1994:284-90).


References

Bello, Walden.  2007.  “Introduction: Ho Chi Minh: The Communist as Nationalist” in Ho Chi Minh (2007).

García Oliveras, Julio A. 2010.  Ho Chi Minh El Patriota: 60 años de lucha revolucionaria.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. 

Ho Chi Minh.  2007.  Down with Colonialism.  Introduction by Walden Bello.  London: Verso.

Lenin, V.I.  1968.  National Liberation, Socialism, and Imperialism: Selected Writings.  New York: International Publishers.

__________.  2010.  “Tesis sobre la cuestion nacional y colonial” in La Internacional Comunista: Tesis, manifiestos, y resoluciones de los cuatro primeros congresos (1919-1922).  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels.

McKelvey, Charles.  1994.  The African-American Movement:  From Pan-Africanism to the Rainbow Coalition. Bayside, New York: General Hall.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Ho Chi Minh