​     The world has been convulsed by the separation of children from their parents as they attempted to cross the U.S. border.  Within the United States, the people are divided.  In the political-cultural battles, the bands of the Right and the Left are both partially right, and both have their excesses. Moreover, neither side has a comprehensive historical and global analysis of the causes of the uncontrollable international migration.  Constructive solutions emerge from sound analysis, so in the present situation of division and political conflict, the problem cannot possibly be resolved.  The impasse can be overcome only by a comprehensive and scientifically grounded proposal from the Left, which would constitute the foundation for the national consensus necessary to constructively address the issue.
 
      Both the Right and the Left are partially right.  Conservatives and the Right are correct when they argue that the nation ought to enforce its immigration laws.  All nations have the right to enact and the duty to enforce immigration laws; it is a dimension of the responsibility of the state with respect to economic development was well as the control of crime.  At the same time, liberals and the Left are right when they insist that the human and civil rights of all immigrants must be respected, when they are attempting to cross the border, and once they have arrived and are living in the country. 
 
     Both the Right and the Left have excesses.  Many on the Right on the issue of immigration are motivated by racism and hate, and many have little regard for established national customs with respect for the due process of law.  On the other hand, many on the Left have a tendency to be opposed to any control by the state structures of law enforcement, even those that are necessary for the common good.
 
     Neither the Right nor the Left has a comprehensive proposal, which ought to include two aspects.  First, an analysis of the problem, globally and nationally, is required.  Secondly, concrete practical steps at the global and national levels must be proposed.
 
       Global analysis of the problem.  The structural foundations of the world-system were established by colonial domination of the vast regions of what came to be known as the Third World, forged by competing European colonial empires and including the American and Japanese empires, during the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries.  The resistance of the colonized led to a process of decolonization, during which the colonial powers conceded political independence.  But the global powers adopted imperialist policies, designed to ensure their continued access to the raw materials, cheap labor, and markets of the formerly colonized peoples, resulting in the consolidation of the neocolonial world-system during the period 1946 to 1979.  The world-system, however, had overextended its geographical and ecological limits, and during the 1970s, it began to show various signs of crisis, including lower levels of profits for the large corporations.  The global elite responded to the crisis with economic and military attacks of the Third World, designed to roll back concessions and reestablish firm control.  The economic attack took the form of neoliberalism, beginning in the 1980s, which especially affected the nations of Latin America and Africa.  Subsequently, a series of wars and military attacks were launched after September 11, 2001, especially affecting the Middle East. 
 
      The structures of the world-system were designed to promote the wealth and economic development of the conquering powers, and they had as a consequence the promotion of underdevelopment and poverty in the colonized and neocolonized regions, except for sectors and nations that could insert themselves in an economically advantageous position.  Accordingly, from the outset, global economic structures generated migration from the peripheral (conquered) regions to the core (colonizing) nations.  This tendency accelerated following the post-1980 economic and military attacks by the core nations and their cooperating institutions and allies, which created a situation of social disintegration, extreme poverty, and desperation in various regions of the earth.  As the global crisis deepens, many other symptoms of crisis emerge in the nations of the North, including economic, social, and physical insecurity, such that uncontrolled international immigration has become a major social and political issue.
 
       Analysis at the level of the nation.  The United States enacted stricter immigration laws in the 1920s, and since then until 2016, the national and local governments of the United States were lax in the implementation of immigration laws.  Various factors drove this.  U.S. employers had an economic interest in employing illegal immigrants, inasmuch as they could be exploited more easily.  In addition, the segmentation of law enforcement institutions, as well as increasing requirements to protect civil rights, complicated law enforcement efforts. 
 
      Proposals at the global level.  In order to ensure global political stability and sustained economic growth, the global powers must abandon imperialism and aggression, and turn to cooperation with political and social movements of the Third World.  We must develop the capacity to listen to and appreciate the insights of Third World leaders who are lifted up the by people in their nations.  During the last eighty years, such charismatic leaders have emerged, only to be demonized by the Western press and political leaders.  They include: Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Nasser of Egypt, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Nyerere of Tanzania, Allende in Chile, Qaddafi of Libya, the Iranian Revolution, Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua.  All were proposing national projects of autonomous economic and cultural development, seeking to break the core-peripheral economic structures that were promoting the underdevelopment and poverty of their nations.  But their basic concepts and proposals of their nationalist project were distorted in Western political discourse, facilitating popular support for economic and military attacks against their nations.  Military interventions, economic sanctions, support for opposition groups (including terrorists), interference in national affairs, and dissemination of ideological distortions through the mass media became the standard fair.  By attacking rather than seeking common ground with the leaders that were lifted up by colonized and neocolonized peoples, the global powers were undermining any possibility for a constructive resolution of a fundamental structural problem in the world-system, namely, that its promotion of material wealth among certain sectors was accomplished by taking material necessities away from other sectors. 
 
     The policies of the governments of the United States toward the Third World since 1980 are a new stage in imperialism, more aggressively pursuing U.S. control of raw materials and markets.  Imperialist and aggressive polices must be cast aside, not only because justice demands it, but also because global political stability and sustainable development require it.  The United States should cooperate with the dynamic and creative leaders that are lifted up by the neocolonized peoples of the world, so that they together can search for mutually beneficial solutions to the problems that humanity confronts.
 
     In the past, the popular movements of the Left have provided historical and global analyses, seeking to educate the people, as a result of their being influenced by Marxist, anti-imperialist, and Third World perspectives.  Today, the Left in the United States has the duty to be faithful to this historic legacy.  It should be providing the necessary analysis at this historic moment of crisis, seeking to educate the people.  In doing so, it should be able to completely discredit and delegitimate the historical and current political leaders of the nations of the North, who with their shortsighted and self-interested policies have brought humanity to the brink of chaos.  Calling for the humanitarian protection of the rights of immigrants is not enough; the irresponsible behavior of the global elite should be brought to light.
 
     National proposals: Concrete practical steps.  In addition to disseminating a comprehensive understanding that exposes the moral and theoretical limitations of the global elite, the Left should be proposing concrete steps, informed by historical and scientific analysis.  (1) Inasmuch as the U.S. government had been complicit in tolerating illegal immigration prior to 2016, illegal immigrants should be pardoned.  A program for the legalization of current immigrants in the United States should be developed, as many organizations dedicated to the protection of the rights of immigrants have proposed.  (2) Recognizing the necessity of controlling illegal immigration, support for law enforcement agencies should be increased, accompanied by a greater integration of their functions.  The goal would be to more effectively enforce immigrations laws, and to reduce illegal immigration from now on.  (3)  A foreign policy of cooperation with the nations of the Third World should be developed, so that the United States would be cooperating with the governments and popular movements of the Third World in overcoming underdevelopment and poverty, thus attacking the problem of immigration at its source.  Special attention should be given to those areas from which a number of immigrants come, such as Mexico and Central America.
 
      Parenthetically, I have observed that Cuba has developed such an approach with respect to internal migration.  Aware of the problem that exists in many underdeveloped nations of mass migrations to the capital city, thus overwhelming the resources of the city, the revolutionary government developed a policy of requiring all persons living in Havana to have a reason for being there, be it work, study, or family.  The police would occasionally check the credentials of persons, seeking to verify that they had a legal address in the city.  Not that they would send “illegal immigrants” to a prison farm: they simply would put them on a bus back to where they were supposed to be.  Meanwhile, they made every effort to promote the economic and social development of the provinces, so that the people would have less economic and educational motive to move to the capital.  High quality schools, universities, centers of science and production were developed everywhere.  Basically, it has worked: the provinces enjoy a high quality of life, and the capital city is not overwhelmed.  Cuba never violated the rights of an “illegal” migrant, but neither did the Cuban revolutionary government act as though it believed that migration should not be regulated and controlled.  On the international plane, Cuba calls for something similar: a safe, orderly, and legal international migration, forged through the cooperation of the nations of the world.
 
      The duty of the Left is to search for that pedagogically and politically effective approach that can make possible a consensus among our people, moving the nation beyond its current division, with respect to immigration as well as all issues that concern our people.  Our task is not to take sides against the Right, but reformulate the terms of the debate, so that the nation can move forward in a constructive, positive, and hopeful form.

       In the socialist movements in the world, there is a tendency for idealist criticisms of socialist governments, formulated from a supposedly socialist perspective.  The criticisms maintain that the governments have failed to fulfill the promise of socialism.  They argue, for example, that the political process is not sufficiently democratic, and the political and economic institutions are directed from above.  In addition, they maintain that there are unacceptable levels of income inequality as well as forms of racial and ethnic and gender discrimination.   In general, I view their claims as exaggerations of existing problems, and in addition, their descriptions of the conditions in nations that are attempting to construct socialism often have many omissions and distortions.
 
     Since the late 1990s, with the renewal of the Third World project of national and social liberation (see various posts in the category Third World), humanity has been in the midst of the Third World War.  It is a war between two competing global civilizational projects.  On the one side, there is the imperialist project, which entered in the 1980s its neoliberal stage.  It is led by the United States, the major nations of Western Europe, and Japan; the transnational corporations; and the international finance agencies.  It places profits over people, and it promotes the concept of limited states, maintaining that the market should rule.  It seeks to preserve the basic structures of the neocolonial world-system, with its material benefits for a small proportion of humanity.  On the other side is the project of popular socialism, led by socialist and progressive governments of the Third World, including Cuba, with the cooperation of China and Russia.  Its leading nations are in the vanguard not of a proletarian revolution, as envisioned in classical Marxism, but of a popular revolution, in which leaders and mass participation emerge from all popular classes and sectors.  The popular socialist project maintains, in opposition to the limited-state thesis of neoliberal imperialism, that the state must play a central role in the economy, by formulating plans for the economic and social development of the nation, by regulating the economy, and as owner of major economic enterprises.  Popular socialism believes that all governments have the obligation, first, to defend the social and economic rights of all of its citizens, regardless of class background, race or ethnicity, or gender; and secondly, to protect the natural environment and to seek a sustainable form of development.  The popular socialist project further maintains that all nations have a sacred right to sovereignty, thus standing against the imperialist project and the basic structures of the neocolonial world-system.  For the last twenty years, the governments that have been leading the socialist/progressive initiative have been trying to construct in practice an alternative world-system based on cooperation and mutually beneficial trade among nations and on solidarity among peoples. 
 
        The Third World War is not a nuclear war, as we often imagined it would be.  It is principally a battle of ideas, and Fidel declared it such a few years ago.  But the conflict also includes the use of economic sanctions, military actions, and violent local gangs.  The future of humanity depends on the outcome of this global conflict.
 
     In the midst of the unfolding Third World War, the above-mentioned critical socialist current is an enemy within socialism, undermining the capacity of the socialist nations to offer their examples as the basis of a viable possible future for humanity.  By distorting the reality of developing socialist projects, the critical current seeds confusion and division among peoples everywhere.  I imagine that in most cases these “critical socialists” are sincere victims of idealist conceptions of socialism, which lead them to imagine that the harmonious world that socialism envisions can be constructed in a generation, even though the socialist governments must pursue the fulfillment of the socialist promise in the context of a capitalist world-economy.  However, in other cases, the advocates of critical socialism may be indulging in egoism, oriented to attracting attention to themselves in the ongoing debates.   In still other cases, they may be deliberately attempting, for whatever motive, to undermine the global socialist project.  But regardless of why it emerges, the critical socialist current is a menacing threat to the socialist project.
 
      The other day, I had a conversation with a young Cuban, who appears to me to pertain to the critical socialist tendency.  Among the various points with which we disagreed, one had to do with the Cuban Constitution of 1976.  I maintained that the Cuban Constitution establishes the National Assembly of Popular Power as the highest authority in the nation.  He, on the other hand, citing Article 5 of the Constitution, maintained that the Constitution establishes the Communist Party of Cuba as the highest authority in the nation.  This is not a minor point, for the resolution of the question is central to an understanding of another question, namely, is Cuba democratic?
 
      I would like to provide the reader with some context for the debate.  The Cuban political process has been developing in a form integral to the evolving praxis of the Cuban Revolution.  Its current political structure is based in the insight and moral commitment of a charismatic leader, who possessed authority because of his exceptional gifts, recognized among the people.  With awareness of the ultimate limitations of rule by one person, there emerged in the 1960s an effort to form and educate a vanguard, a group of informed and committed revolutionaries comprising perhaps 15% to 25% of the people, which would lead the people in the development of the socialist project.  The vanguard was institutionalized in the Communist Party of Cuba, formally named as such in 1965, culminating a process of unifying the various revolutionary organizations that had begun during the revolutionary war of 1957-58.  Even though the Party comes from the people, it is not elected by the people, because it is a vanguard party, and the members are recruited by the Party itself.  So other structures had to be developed to represent the people.
 
      During the 1960s and 1970s, the Cuban Revolution developed two kinds of structures to ensure the representation of the people.  The first was the creation or expansion of mass organizations of workers (in all fields, including professional and agricultural), students, women, farmers, and neighborhoods.  Among other things, these organizations elect at the base delegates to higher levels, who elect in turn delegates to even higher levels, so that through a series of indirect elections the provincial and national leaders of each of the mass organization are chosen.   The second structure is Popular Power, which constitutes the actual structures of the state.  In local elections in voting districts of 1000 to 1500, the voters elect from among two or three competing candidates that have been nominated by neighborhood residents in a series of nomination assemblies.  The elected delegates form 169 municipal assemblies, which in turn elect both the delegates of the fourteen provincial assemblies and the deputies of the national assembly.  The national assembly is the highest legislative organ, and it elects the thirty-one members of the Council of State, which is the executive branch of the government. 
 
       There are links between the mass organizations and Popular Power in important moments.   When the municipal delegates elect delegates and deputies to the higher assemblies, candidacy commissions submit proposals of candidates.  Similarly, when the deputies of the national assembly elect the Council of State, proposals are presented by the candidacy commissions.  Who are the members of the candidacy commissions?  They consist of representatives of the mass organizations, chosen by the mass organizations themselves to fulfill this function.  So in the indirect elections to the higher assemblies, both the elected delegates of the municipal assemblies and the representatives of mass organizations play central roles.  There is another important link between Popular Power and the mass organizations.  Namely, in the debates with respect to any legislation, the committees of the national assemblies are required to invite spokespersons for the mass organizations.
 
     The Cuban Constitution of 1976 establishes the constitutional foundation for this Cuban revolutionary approach to the decision making process, involving the Party, assemblies of Popular Power, and mass organizations.  The Constitution establishes the Party as the leader of the nation and the people and their socialist revolution.  At the same time, it establishes structures for the popular election of delegates and deputies to the assemblies, which have full constitutional authority to elect the executive branches and to enact legislation.  The Constitution establishes a fundamental duality: the Party leads, and the delegates of the people decide. 
 
     Accordingly, Article 5 of the Constitution affirms the Communist Party of Cuba as the organized vanguard of the Cuban nation and as the highest directing force of the society and the state, organizing and orientating the common efforts toward the high ends of the construction of socialism (Lezcano 2003:47).  It may appear at first glance that this article grants to the Party the highest authority.  But let us look further.  It does not give the Party the authority to nominate candidates or to elect delegates, deputies, and members of the Council of state; nor does it give the Party the authority to pass laws or to elect the executive branches.  These functions are given specifically to the people and to the delegates of the people.  Article 5 recognizes the authority of the Party as the nation’s vanguard, which has the duty of organizing, orienting, educating, persuading, and convincing, through the power of the spoken work and of example.
 
      Meanwhile, a host of articles grants specific areas of authority to the National Assembly.  Among them are:

​Reference
 
Lezcano Pérez, Jorge.  2003.  Elecciones, Parlamento y Democracia en Cuba.  Brasilia: Casa Editora de la Embajada de Cuba en Brasil.

     There are anti-revolutionary currents of thought among Leftist intellectuals/activists.  These currents of thought are not “counter-revolutionary,” in that, for the most part, their advocates do not consciously seek to undermine revolutionary movements and projects.  But they could be considered “anti-revolutionary,” inasmuch as they are politically dysfunctional for social and political movements of the Left, creating obstacles to the task to obtaining popular support.  I here identify four anti-revolutionary currents of thought in the social and political movements of the Left: anarchism, utopianism, identity politics, and liberalism.
 
      Anarchism is based on Marx’s concept of the abolition of the state (Marx and Lenin 1988) and on Lenin’s call during the October Revolution for “all power to the Soviets” (see “The Russian Revolution (October)” 1/23/2014 in the category Russian Revolution).  The central idea of anarchy is that during revolutionary processes, workers develop popular councils (soviets), in which all issues of concern are debated, and decisions are made in accordance with the will of the majority.  Moreover, as the popular councils develop, they increasingly are able to assume the technical and administrative functions of the companies.  A parallel process of developing popular councils occurs in neighborhoods, where neighbors attend to issues of concern, including housing conditions, education, health, physical safety, and health.  When revolutions triumph, power is transferred from the state and the companies to the popular councils, thus effecting the abolition of the state and the company bureaucracy.  State and company hierarchies are eliminated, as workers and neighbors themselves make decisions collectively and fulfill technical and administrative duties.  In accordance with this idea, anarchists tend to be critical of socialist governments, stating that they have not eliminated the hierarchies of capitalism, but have reproduced them in a different form.  In general, anarchists consider that socialist governments have replaced rule by the capitalist class with rule by the state bureaucracy.
 
      The problem with anarchism is that revolutionary processes, in reality, do not unfold according to the anarchist plan.  When revolutions triumph, they generally have taken partial political power, so that they control some institutions and structures of the state and the civil society, but not others.  This was true even of the Cuban Revolution, which triumphed with the overwhelming support of the people, and with the traditional political and state institutions totally discredited.  Nonetheless, it had to proceed on the basis of partial control of state structures and the institutions of civil society.  It declared the Cuban Constitution of 1940, a progressive constitution ignored by the Batista dictatorship, as the basis of its authority; and it further declared that the revolutionary government was abrogating the executive and legislative functions, because of the emergency created by the collapse of the Batista government.  However, with these declarations, the revolutionary government was assuming directorship of and responsibility for major structures of the previously existing state, such as education and health.  Moreover, there were major institutions that were beyond the scope of the directorship of the state. Important areas of the economy, in both industry and agriculture, were in private hands, mostly foreign corporations.  The mass media also was privately owned.  In addition, the Cuban revolutionary project had many powerful enemies in the world, who were mobilizing to undermine and overthrow it.  In this situation, there was only one possible road.  The revolutionary government had to use its partial control of the state to take decisive steps, with the support of the people, to accomplish a revolutionary transformation of the economy and society, in defense of the needs of the people and the sovereignty of the nation.  That is to say, it had no option but to forge a national project of state-directed economic and social development. 
 
     Prior to the triumph of the Cuban revolution, popular councils had experienced limited development in Cuba.  There were workers’ organization, which to a limited extent indeed did function, in part, as workers’ councils.  And there were organizations formed by students and women.  But the structures of popular council were not sufficiently developed to enable a transfer of power from the state to the popular councils, as envisioned by anarchist theory.  What occurred instead was that the state encouraged and supported the creation of popular councils, among workers (in all fields, including professionals), peasants, students, women, and neighborhoods; and it forged effective links of the popular councils to the state with respect to elections and governance.  But these popular councils never have been conceived in Cuba as a substitute for the state.  The popular councils were being forged by a revolutionary state, as a dimension of its efforts to create structures of popular democracy and to accomplish a revolutionary transformation of the political-economic system and the society.
 
     Utopianism is the advocacy of a particular kind of society that cannot be constructed from the existing political, economic, social or ideological base.  It is idealistic, in that it advocates measures that are unworkable in the current political-economic-cultural context.  North American intellectuals of the Left, for example, are indulging in utopian idealism when they advocate the further development of cooperatives in Cuba; the reduction of state ownership, which they view as hierarchical; and the reduction of a small-scale private property, which they view as individualistic.  They have an ideal notion of what socialism is and ought to be, and cooperatives are, for them, its essence.  But they do not take into account that any nation seeking to construct socialism must do so from a base of existing economic, political, and ideological conditions.  They have observed that Cuba recently has expanded cooperatives, developing them in non-agricultural production and commerce, and they interpret this as signaling a Cuban commitment to reduce authoritarian top-down state enterprises.  But they misinterpret Cuban dynamics.  The Cuban government and the Cuban Communist Party are oriented above all to improve production, in order to satisfy better the material needs of the people.  With this goal in mind, they indeed are expanding cooperatives, but they also are expanding self-employment and small-scale private property as well as the possibilities for foreign investment.    
 
     When these idealists come to Cuba in order to preach their gospel, they imagine themselves to be helping Cuba find the correct road to socialism.  What they do not see is that the percentage of each of the various forms of property in Cuba is a matter of debate and reflection among Cubans themselves.  To be sure, it would not be inappropriate for a visitor to Cuba to express some opinion on the question, formulated from afar.  But above all, Leftist intellectuals from the North should come to Cuba to learn, for Cuba is a nation in which a popular revolution took power nearly sixty years ago, and since its triumph, it has developed structures to ensure that the decision-making process is in the hands of delegates elected by the people.  We in the North should be asking how they did it.  Focusing on this question, perhaps we might learn things of relevance for the popular movements in our own nations, where the popular movements often are divided and weak.
 
     Identity politics.  It is of course the case that all persons, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or gender orientation, possess full citizenship rights.  Perhaps the forces of the Left in the United States ought to join forces for a constitutional amendment to this effect, completing the historic tasks and unfinished work of the movements with respect to the constitutional rights of blacks and women.  However, calling for the constitutional rights of all persons cannot substituted for a comprehensive and scientifically informed construction of an American narrative that places the struggles of the people for democratic rights in a historic and global context.  One must be careful with identity politics, because it can alienate people who do not pertain to the particular identity, or do not see their identities as central to their political proposals.  Our task is to unite our people through the forging of a popular coalition on the basis of a platform defining our common interests and a manifesto proclaiming the meaning and the destiny of the nation to which we all belong.  We must call all of our people to revolution, that is, to the taking of political power, so that from a position of partial state power, the delegates of the people can struggle, with popular support, for the transformation of political, economic, and social institutions, in defense of the needs and interests of the people, and in defense of the dignity of the nation.  It is good to defend the rights of all persons historically excluded.  But we must avoid getting lost there.  When we are stuck at the level of identity politics, we weaken our capacity to move beyond to a larger and greater national agenda.
 
     Liberalism.  The great error of liberalism is to take as given the assumptions of bourgeois democracy and representative democracy.  It assumes that elections among competing parties are ideal, even though the system of multiple party elections in the nations of the North has been corrupted by campaign contributions of the wealthy, placing political leaders in the debt of contributors; and even though the system of multiple party elections has been falling in legitimacy in the eyes of the people.  And it assumes that the press and civil society have roles in tension or in conflict with the government; it is not able to imagine the cooperation of the state, the press, and the institutions of civil society in a national project of economic and social development.  Liberals could learn from the example of Cuba, where non-governmental organizations are not anti-governmental, and where structures of popular power and mass organizations have replaced the bourgeois structures of representative democracy, creating a situation of national consensus and political stability.  When liberals weigh in on Cuba in the public discourse of the nations of the North, they disseminate confusion and misinformation about an important socialist revolutionary project, undermining the educational work of revolutionaries in the North.
 
      The history of triumphant revolutions in the Third World demonstrates that the key to triumph is the unity of the people, which is forged by a charismatic leader and a revolutionary vanguard on a foundation of scientific knowledge, common-sense wisdom, and political intelligence.  In order to establish the foundation for a possible triumph of a popular revolution in the United States, we must critically engage the four anti-revolutionary currents of thought, explaining their defects to the people and establishing a foundation for a politically intelligent social movement that is able to take partial political power.
 
      For more on the Cuban revolutionary project and the possibilities for popular revolution in the North, see The Evolution and Significance of the Cuban Revolution: The Light in the Darkness (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

​Reference
 
Marx, Karl and V.I. Lenin.  1988.  Civil War in France: The Paris Commune.  New York: International Publishers.