Posted November 8, 2013

     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

Posted November 11, 2013

      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 principal 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

Posted November 12, 2013

       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

Posted November 13, 2013

     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

Posted November 14, 2013

     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 by 1968, he had 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