There are various factors that facilitate that, in the societies of the North, we find it difficult to appreciate that we should turn to a study of Lenin to discern what should be done.  

      (1) The fall of the Bolshevik revolution after the death of Lenin. Lenin’s final struggle was against the state bureaucracy, many members of which were oriented to attending to their interests as a class, rather than the interests of society as a whole.  When Lenin died, the Russian Revolution fell to a bureaucratic counterrevolution that put Stalin at the head, creating a situation in which a ruling class pretends to represent the interests of workers and peasants, when in reality it promotes its own class interests.  Without an adequate understanding of these dynamics, we tend to believe that Lenin’s concepts were indirectly responsible for the subsequent emergence of Stalinism.  The teaching of political science in U.S. universities in the post-World War II era reinforced this view, inasmuch as it was based on a frame of reference that contrasted liberal democracy with communist and fascist totalitarianism, brushing aside reflection on the bureaucratic counterrevolution against Lenin (Katznelson 1997:234-37).  But the writings of Trotsky and the Trotskyites provide a basis for making a distinction between Leninism and Stalinism (Grant 1997; Lenin 1995; Trotsky 1972, 2008).  

     (2)  The undemocratic result of the democratic revolutions.  Led by the emerging bourgeoisie, the democratic revolutions of the West triumphed because of the ample participation of artisans, workers and farmers, who had been recruited to the revolution by a discourse that promised liberty and justice for all.  Following the triumph of the democratic revolutions, the bourgeoisie was able to consolidate its control, although it maintained a rhetoric that pretended to be committed to a democratic system of government, limiting its definition of democracy in order to effectively accomplish this ideological deception.  On such foundation, there emerged a system directed by politicians who were skillful in adopting a discourse that pretended to promote the interests of the people, while they in reality were defending bourgeois interests (see “American counterrevolution, 1777-87” 11/4/13 and (“Class and the French Revolution” 11/27/2013).  

       At the same time, the principles of the bourgeois democratic revolution were appropriated by the Third World project, expanding and deepening their meaning (see various posts on the Third World project).  However, in the societies of the North, we have a limited understanding of the Third World project.  We often fail to make a distinction between the accommodationist Third World politicians, allied with neocolonial interests; and revolutionary Third World political leaders, who were committed to a project of national sovereignty and social transformation.  If we take the accommodationist project as representative of the Third World project of national liberation, we cannot see the unfolding revolutionary project in an alternative form, and it appears that the democratic revolutions of the Third World, like the democratic revolutions of the West, failed to attain their proclaimed goals.

       If we are aware of the undemocratic character of Western political institutions, if we combine this with a superficial understanding that does not distinguish consistently between accommodationist and revolutionary Third World political leaders, and if we do not distinguish between Leninism and Stalinism, we tend to believe that revolutions promise a just and democratic world but ultimately fail to deliver on this promise.   This belief undermines the potential viability of the Leninist concept of a vanguard political party that leads the masses toward emancipation.

     (3) The bureaucratization of society.  For the bourgeoisie, the expansion of bureaucracy is a mechanism for the recruitment of the petty bourgeoisie and the upper levels of the proletariat and the peasantry to the side of the bourgeoisie; and it is a mechanism for the prevention of a revolution from below, channeling the revolution in the direction of reform.  The petty bourgeoisie has an interest in reform and in the expansion of public and private bureaucracy, as it seeks to consolidate its position in the bourgeois order and the developing capitalist system.   Thus the expansion of bureaucracy is intertwined with reform, and this expansion serves both bourgeois and petty bourgeois interests.

     From the point of view of the development of productive capacity, the expansion of bureaucracy has both advantages and disadvantages.  On the one hand, it is inefficient, in that the bureaucracy becomes bloated with parasites, as it seeks to expand without limit, in accordance with the interest of the petty bourgeoisie, the members of which occupy the higher and lower positions of the bureaucracy.  On the other hand, bureaucracy aids efficiency, in that it is a system of labor organization and hierarchical control from above, and in this respect it serves the interests of the bourgeoisie.  In times of economic growth and expansion, the bourgeoisie will tolerate the inefficient aspects of bureaucracy, as a concession to the petty bourgeoisie.  But in times of crisis, the bourgeoisie will attack the parasitic bureaucracy, and it will act to reduce the size of public and private bureaucracies.   

      The popular sectors of the societies of the North experience bureaucracy as a centralized structure, controlled from above, that constrains creativity, innovativeness and personal initiative.  This experience leads to a rejection of authority in all its forms, including the legitimate distribution of authority, necessary for all social organizations if they are to attain their goals (see “Authoritarianism vs. legitimate power” 5/16/2016).  Such an unrealistic rebellious attitude undercuts the credibility of the Leninist notion of a centralized and disciplined political party, necessary for challenging the centralized rule of the bourgeoisie.

     (4)  The counterrevolutionary and bureaucratic university.  British political economy had emerged during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to formulate a systematic analysis of modern capitalism, thus applying the modern scientific principle of knowledge based on empirical observation to economic and social dynamics.  But British political economy was limited by its ahistorical character, and by the fact that it looked at reality from a bourgeois horizon.  Marx, by synthesizing British political economy with German philosophy, and by analyzing from a proletarian point of view, moved the science of political economy to a more advanced stage.  Marx’s work demonstrated that knowledge of social dynamics emerges from a comprehensive response to philosophical, historical, economic, and social questions; and that advances in knowledge are integrally tied to the movements of the exploited and the dominated.  From the vantage point of the evolving capitalist world-economy, the form of knowledge developed by Marx was a serious threat, for it implied a knowledge that would be integral to social reconstruction in accordance with the needs and rights of the exploited classes.  

     Western universities functioned to contain the Marxist threat, developing an approach to knowledge of social dynamics that prevented the implications of Marx’s analysis from emerging.  There were four elements to the containment of Marxism in the universities. First, fragmentation, separating philosophy and theology from analysis of social dynamics, and dividing the latter into separate disciplines of history, economics, political science, sociology, Eastern studies, and anthropology.  Secondly, “society” became the unit of analysis, assuming that the world is composed of autonomous societies with overlapping political and cultural boundaries.  Thirdly, scientific objectivity was understood as the bracketing of values, as the leaving aside of ethical, moral, philosophical, and religious questions.   Fourthly, the university became bureaucratized, with professors organized into separate departments, each with narrow questions of investigation and with limited scope (McKelvey 1991:3-21; Wallerstein 1974:4-7, 1996, 2004, 1999, 2011:219-73).  

     The fragmentation of knowledge, the restriction of investigation to narrow questions, the epistemological assumption of society as the unit of analysis, and the concept of objectivity as value neutrality, organized in a bureaucratic structure controlled from above and allied with political and economic elites, meant that the university had become a legitimating servant of dominant particular interests.  With the pursuit of knowledge eclipsed in the universities, the development of knowledge would emerge in the social movements formed by the dominated, a knowledge formulated in the fashion of Marx.  The Third World movements of national and social liberation would become not only political agents of social change but also the depositories of an accumulating wisdom with respect to social dynamics.  Charismatic leaders with exceptional gifts would study the received intellectual and moral tradition and would creatively apply it to a new historical and social context, thus developing it further.  

      The development of the university as a counterrevolutionary ideological structure and bureaucratized social system undermined the possibility for the popular appreciation of the role of Lenin and other revolutionary leaders in the formulation of a knowledge of social dynamics necessary for human emancipation.  To the extent that the peoples of the North were disconnected from the Third World movement of national and social liberation, it was difficult for them to see the profoundly counterrevolutionary character of the structures and epistemological assumptions of the Western university.

       Fidel has said that revolution in our time is above all a battle of ideas, and the central idea that we of the Left must grasp and teach to our people is that we have been denied our human right to knowledge and cultural formation, as a consequence of ideological distortions and the bureaucratization of education and society.  To break with this ideological enslavement, the fundamental first step is personal encounter with the social movements of the Third World, where the spirit of Marx and Lenin is alive.

     As the universities were turning to the structural marginalization of Marx, Lenin developed Marxist knowledge further, on the basis of his observation of popular struggles.  Observing the capacity of workers and peasants to form soviets (or popular councils), he discerned that the key to the struggle of the workers against capitalists and of peasants against landlords was the taking of political power by the workers and peasants through the formation of soviets and the substitution of soviet power for parliamentary power.  And observing the resistance of the oppressed nationalities of the Russian Empire, he discerned the importance of the self-determination of peoples.  When he discerned that the revolutions in the West were not going to triumph, which he considered necessary for the survival of the Russian Revolution, he anticipated that the center for the global socialist revolution would pass from the Western proletariat to the oppressed and colonized peoples of the world (Lenin 1943, 1968, 1972, 1995).

     The prediction of Lenin came to pass.  The Bolshevik revolution fell, and the Third World revolutions of national liberation would arrive to take central stage in the world arena.  The global powers were able to channel many of these revolutions to reform, using a variety of amoral means, including alliances with the opportunist accommodationist politicians.  But there are a number of cases in which a popular revolution has taken power, and the leadership of the revolution in power has defended the people and the nation, putting into practice revolutionary values and ideals.  The charismatic leaders of the Third World revolutions that sought both national sovereignty and social transformation are most clearly exemplified by Ho Chi Minh and Fidel. Ho was attracted to Lenin from the moment when, as a young man in a meeting of the French Socialist Party in Paris, he learned that Lenin defended the rights of the colonized peoples; and he subsequently studied the works of Lenin in the Soviet Union, in an institute for revolutionary leaders from Asia (“Ho encounters French socialism” 5/5/2014; “Ho the delegate of the colonized” 5/6/2014).  Fidel studied the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin at the library of the Cuban Communist Party, reading on his own, independent of his university studies and of the party (“Fidel becomes revolutionary at the university” 9/11/2014).  Both Ho and Fidel would adapt the insights of Lenin to their particular national conditions, forging a synthesis of Marxism-Leninism with the nationalist traditions in their particular nations (“Ho reformulates Lenin” 5/7/2014; “Ho synthesizes socialism and nationalism” 5/8/2014; “Ho’s practical theoretical synthesis” 5/9/2014; “Fidel adapts Marxism-Leninism to Cuba” 9/9/2014).  With exceptional mastery of the art of politics, they would lead their peoples in the taking of power, and they would forge new nations on a basis of revolutionary values and ideals. Their revolutionary projects continue to exist to this day, defending the dignity and the sovereignty of the nation and the rights of the people, and participating with other Third World nations in an international effort to construct a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  These Third World projects are the true heirs of Lenin, not Stalinist Russia, even though we must be aware that the Soviet Union after Lenin, until its fall in 1990, continued to have important dimensions that were a consequence of the legacy of Lenin (Grant 1997).  And the Third World project of national and social liberation is the true heir of Marx, further developing knowledge of history and social dynamics on the basis of insights developed by social movements that seek human emancipation (see posts on the Third World project of national and social liberation).

      We of the Left must appreciate the legacy that has been Left to us by our historic leaders.  The speeches and writings of Lenin form part of the body of sacred texts that are the intellectual and moral heritage of the Left.  They also pertain to the cultural heritage of humanity, for they are part of the evolution of knowledge of social dynamics, developed by the peoples in movement and by the charismatic leaders that they have lifted up.  We should study these sacred texts, always seeking to creatively apply their insights to our social and historical context.

     Lenin taught that it is necessary to form a vanguard political party that leads the people in the taking of political power.  He maintained that a vanguard political party, characterized by democratic centralization and discipline, is necessary for protecting the masses from the centralized and amoral power of the bourgeoisie (Lenin 1920; see “The infantile disorder of the Left” 12/19/2016).  

      We have alternative values, but we cannot implement them if we eschew the necessary dynamics of human social organization.  It is idealist to hope that persons of good will in the United States could contribute to the development of a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system without forming an alternative political party that is directed by visionary and committed leaders and that is characterized by the discipline of its members.  Without such a party, good work can be done in local communities; but such efforts will not be enough, as long as the national government remains in the hands of those who are committed to the defense of the short-term interests of the financiers and the large corporations.  We have the duty to develop a political structure that ultimately will be able to take power, confident that, if it is formed in accordance with universal human values, it will fulfill its historic duty to the people, the nation, humanity, and the earth.  

     We must form an alternative political party, look for leaders with exceptional gifts and with high moral commitment, lift them up, follow their lead, accept their direction, and defend them when they come under attack by the powers-that-be, all the while calling upon others to become a part of the process, which they can do if they have the discipline to study, to learn, to teach and to organize.  We cannot refuse to do this in the name of an idealist purity, accepting the material comforts that the neocolonial world-system unavoidably confers, and leaving the weak without defense before the barbarity of the global powers.

      Lenin taught that a revolution succeeds when the people have rejected the established order and when the rulers are unable to govern in the old way, and it is stimulated by a crisis that affects all, exploiters and exploited alike (1920:65).  These are precisely the conditions in which we live today.  But Lenin also taught that a revolution requires that a “majority of workers, (or at least a majority of the conscious, thinking, politically active workers) should fully understand the necessity for a revolution, and be ready to sacrifice their lives for it” (1920:66).  The mission of an alternative political party of the Left, a popular democratic socialist party, is to establish such consciousness and sacrificial dedication among significant numbers of the people, through a commitment to popular education and to acquiring mastery of the art of politics.

     That it can be done is the fundamental and most important teaching of Fidel.

References
 
Grant, Ted.  1997.  Rusia—De la revolución a la contrarrevolución: Un análisis marxista.  Prólogo de Alan Woods.  Traducción de Jordi Martorell.  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels.

Katznelson, Ira.  1997. “The Subtle Politics of Developing Emergency: Political Science as Liberal Guardianship” in Noam Chomsky et al., The Cold War and the University.  New York: The New Press.
 
Lenin, V. I.  1920.  Left Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder.  London: The Communist Party of Great Britain.
 
__________.  1943.  State and Revolution.  New York: International Publishers.
 
__________.  1955.  To the Population; On Democracy and Dictatorship; What is Soviet Power?  Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.
 
__________.  1968.  National Liberation, Socialism, and Imperialism: Selected Writings.  New York: International Publishers.
 
__________.  1972.  Speeches at Congresses of the Communist International.  Moscow: Progress Publishers.
 
__________.  1995.  Lenin’s Final Fight: Speeches and Writings, 1922-23.  New York: Pathfinder Press.
 
Trotsky, Leon.  1972.  The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it going?  New York: Pathfinder Press. 
 
__________.  2008.  History of the Russian Revolution.  Translated by Max Eastman.  Chicago: Haymarket Books.
 
McKelvey, Charles.  1991.  Beyond Ethnocentrism:  A Reconstruction of Marx’s Concept of Science.  New York:  Greenwood Press. 
 
Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1974.  The Modern World System, Vol. I.  New York:  Academic Press. 
 
__________.  1999.  The End of the World as We Know It:  Social Science for the Twenty-First Century.  Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
 
__________.  2004.  The Uncertainties of Knowledge.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 
 
__________. 2011.  The Modern World System IV: Centralist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789-1914.  Berkeley: University of California Press.
 
Wallerstein, Immanuel, et al.  1996.  Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences.  Stanford: Stanford University Press.

     In “The Left’s Secret Identity,” Ethan Young writes:

      Writing in April 1920, two and one-half years after the taking of power by the Bolshevik Party, Lenin wrote of the “infantile disorder” of “‘Left Wing’ Communism.”  For Lenin, the disorder is much more than “an inability to recognize setbacks,” as defined by Young.  For Lenin, the disorder involves a radical extremism not based on participation in a real revolution, in the study of the history of revolutions, or in objective analysis of existing national and world conditions; and it is an idealism that projects a future society that could not possibly develop from existing conditions (Lenin 1920).

     In Lenin’s vision of the future communist society, popular councils (soviets) formed by workers and peasants would replace parliaments, and the organization of all workers in their places of work would replace organization of workers by trades.  But it is childish to believe, Lenin maintained, that a proletarian revolution can proceed in an advanced capitalist society without participation in the parliament, without coalitions with bourgeois political parties, and without communist presence in trade unions.  Awareness of the reactionary character of these institutions does not abolish them in practice.  In the context of a reality in which these institutions continue to exist, one must master the arts of politics and compromise in order to advance the revolution (Lenin 1920).

     In the German communist movement of Lenin’s time, there emerged an extreme radicalism that was opposed to the formation of political parties and to participation in the parliament.  Invoking the slogan “down with leaders,” the extreme radicalism implied an opposition to leadership itself.  Lenin acknowledged that there were opportunistic leaders and parties that had broken away from the masses.  But Lenin viewed the extreme radicalism of the “Left wing” as childish nonsense.  He maintained that to eschew the formation of a disciplined political party is to disarm the proletariat before the centralized power of the bourgeoisie.  It would result in the demoralization and corruption of the proletariat, causing it to lapse into individualism, lack of integrity, and alternating moods of exhilaration and dejection (Lenin 1920:25-29).

     Lenin maintained that the communist parties of the various nations ought to participate in parliamentary elections, in order to have a platform for the education of the people.  Through this strategy, communists could form a parliamentary faction of committed leaders that would develop a new form of parliamentarianism, oriented to the education of the people.  The communist faction would form alliances with other parties, in order to demonstrate to the masses that it understands the art of politics and that it is sensitive to the concrete needs that are important to the masses (1920: 42, 47, 74, 77).

     Lenin criticized the German Left Communists for their opposition to participation in bourgeois parliaments, noting that such opposition previously had been criticized by the eminent leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.  He observed that by persisting in this mistake, “the ‘Left’ in Germany (and some in Holland) proved themselves thereby to be not a class party, but a circle, not a party of the masses, but a group of intellectuals, and a handful of workers who imitate the worst characteristics of the intellectuals” (1920:41; italics in original).

     Lenin also criticized the British communists for their refusal to participate in parliament.  He proposed that the four small British communist parties unite into a single communist party, and that it negotiate an electoral compromise with the British Labour Party, which was a reformist “socialist” party that had the support of the majority of workers.  The Labour-Communist compromise should include concessions to the communist party, such as proportional parliamentary representation and the right of the communist parliamentarians to freely criticize the Labour-dominated government. Such an alliance of the parties of workers would prevent a Conservative-Labour alliance against the communists, and it would ensure the removal from political power of the representatives of the bourgeoisie.  A Labour-dominated government ultimately would demonstrate its lack of commitment to the workers, who then would flock to join the communists.  If the Labour Party were to reject the offer of compromise by the communists and join with the conservatives, its lack of commitment to the working class would be exposed, to the benefit of the communists.  Lenin praised the young British communists for their understanding that the parliamentary system must eventually be replaced by popular councils, and for their appropriate disdain for the “socialist” politicians.  But, he maintained, they demonstrate a total lack of understanding of the art of politics (Lenin 1920:59-69, 74-76).   

     Infantile left-wing communism also was opposed to participation in reactionary trade unions.  It maintained that the workers should leave the craft unions and that communist workers should create separate workers’ unions.  Lenin acknowledged that trade unions have reactionary traits, such as a tendency toward non-political action, and that the leaders were reactionary and opportunistic.  But he viewed the creation of separate workers’ unions to be an unpardonable error, for it left the least politically conscious workers to the influence of reactionary leaders.  He maintained that communists must be present in all social institutions, however reactionary, where workers are found, patiently and persistently educating them.  This is difficult, because the reactionary leaders resort to all methods of attacking communists; but it is necessary to remain in the trade unions and carry out educational work inside them.  Lenin here criticized not only the German extreme leftists but also the American Industrial Workers of the World (Lenin 1920:32-39).      

     Lenin also noted that infantile left-wing communism opposed the 1918 Peace Treaty that Russia signed with the imperialist powers. Infantile left-wing communism rejects all compromises with imperialism on principle, even compromises made imperative by conditions.  Lenin maintained that a party and party leaders fulfill their duty when they maintain a distinction between compromises made necessary by conditions and treasonable compromises, which are rooted in opportunism (1920:22-23, 50-51).  

     Lenin observed that communism must struggle not only against reformist social democracy to its Right but also against the infantile disorder of unreflective extremism in its own ranks.  It must develop the art of politics, capable of making necessary compromises with imperialism and forming alliances with reformist bourgeois parties.  It must display flexibility in tactics, developing them on the basis of objective analysis of national and international conditions as well as on reflection on the experience of other revolutionary movements (Lenin 1920:22-23, 36, 46, 66-71, 80).

     Lenin believed that reformist social democracy, with its opportunistic leaders who pretended to be socialist but were not committed to the defense of workers, was a greater threat to communism than infantile left-wing communism.  Nevertheless, he believed that the childish extreme radicalism of the Left had brought “the most serious harm to communism.”  He believed that the lack of an intelligent flexibility in tactics was preventing the communist vanguard from bringing the masses over to its side (Lenin 1920:66, 72-73, 80-81). 

     In their analyses, Marx and Lenin believed that the working class, by which they generally meant the industrial working class or the factory workers, is and will be at the vanguard of the socialist revolution.  They had good reason for this interpretation.  Based on his observations of the economic development of capitalism, Marx believed that technological development would increasingly forge the industrial working class as a revolutionary class (see “Marx on automated industry” 1/13/14).  Moreover, Lenin observed that, in the Paris Commune of 1871 and in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the workers created popular councils as an alternative to the bourgeois bureaucratic state (Lenin 1943:32-48).  In addition, the particular conditions of Russian industry had created a working class in Russia that was characterized by advanced political consciousness (Trotsky 2008:7-10).  Furthermore, Lenin found that middle class “socialists” in Russia and Western Europe distorted Marx and turned against the proletarian revolution (Lenin 1943:7-9, 22-3, 26-27).  

      But we live today in a different world historical context.  Materially benefitting from colonial domination and imperialist penetration of vast regions of the Third World, the United States and the nations of Western Europe were able to make significant concession to the concrete demands of industrial working-class organizations, channeling them in a reformist direction.  During this time, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements in the Third World emerged to the forefront of the global revolution, with the middle class playing a decisive role, as a result of its objective interest in transforming the neocolonial situation.  At the same time, the technological and commercial development of the advanced capitalist economies led to the expansion of the middle class, which played a vital role in the popular revolution of 1968, a revolution that gave issues of race and gender a more central place in political and social consciousness, and that included a historically significant anti-imperialist dimension. Beginning in the 1970s, the neocolonial world-system entered a sustained and multi-dimensional structural crisis, demonstrating its unsustainability, a phenomenon that coincided with the relative commercial decline of the neocolonial hegemonic power.  Responding to the global crisis and to the relative decline of the United States, the global elite has broken its alliances with the popular classes of the core and with the national bourgeoisie of the Third World, and it is leading the world toward chaos or a new form of fascism, creating the conditions for the possible extinction of the human species.  In the context of this dark scenario, Third World movements of national and social liberation have renewed since 1994, and they are proclaiming that a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system is possible and necessary, and they are developing an alternative world in practice.

      As a result of these conditions, all of the world’s peoples and all of the popular sectors of the core nations have an objective interest in the establishment of governments that are controlled by the people and not by the corporate class; and there is today no reason to believe that the working class will lead the popular revolutionary movements in the core.  Recognizing the common interest of all the popular sectors of the core in the taking of political power, the Left needs to focus today on all of the popular sectors, and on the need to form a coalition of the popular sectors, understanding and responding concretely to the different ways in which each sector is dominated and excluded.  Thus, when we seek to apply the insights of Lenin to our social and historical conditions, when Lenin speaks of the workers, we should immediately think not merely of workers but of the people.  

      With recognition of this appropriate adaptation from “the working class” to “the people,” Lenin leaves insights for us concerning what we should do.  We should form an alternative to the bourgeois political parties, a popular democratic socialist party.  The principle mission of the party would be to take political power, with a long-term plan of taking power in twenty or twenty-five years.  During this period, the party would give emphasis to the education of the people, generating pamphlets for the education of the people, distributed by party members in their places of work and study and in their neighborhoods.  The party should not run a candidate for president, but candidates for the Congress in favorable congressional districts, such as those with high percentages of blacks and Latinos.  The party faction in the Congress would form alliances with other parties with respect to particular legislative proposals, showing to the people its appreciation of the issues that the people define as important, and demonstrating its consistency in taking a position in defense of the people.  Thus, the Left would be participating in the established bourgeois electoral system, but it would not be doing so as individuals in the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, but through an alternative political party (or an alliance of alternative political parties), constantly giving emphasis to the education of the people, seeking to lead them toward the taking of power.  With its emphasis on education, the party would promote its Congresspersons as speakers in all of the places where the people are found, accompanied by an organizer who would recruit people to the party, seeking to develop and strengthen party chapters in a variety of social places.  Through this process, the party would be forming its Congresspersons as leaders, with the capacity to educate, exhort, and convoke the people to political action in their own defense and in defense of humanity.  The party should run a candidate for president only when it has a possibility of winning and has sufficient popular support to also capture control of the Congress.  When that triumph occurs, the construction of a popular democratic socialist political-economic-cultural system would enter a new stage, for the party would control the executive and legislative branches, but not the judicial, nor would it have control of the military nor the mass media.

     But why should we listen to Lenin?  I will address this issue in my next post.

​References
 
Lenin, V. I.  1920.  “Left Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder.  London: The Communist Party of Great Britain.

__________.  1943.  State and Revolution.  New York: International Publishers.
 
Trotsky, Leon.  2008.  History of the Russian Revolution.  Translated by Max Eastman.  Chicago: Haymarket Books.

     Ethan Young, a Brooklyn-based writer active in New York's Left Labor Project, has posted an essay on Portside.org, “The Left’s Secret Identity.”  It was distributed on the Radical Philosophers Association list by Mitchel Cohen, who observes that it contains food for thought.

      The article is full of insight with respect to the limitations of the Left in the United States.       It maintains that the Left is oriented to speaking truth to power, rather than speaking truth to the powerless, and organizing them in order to isolate the Right..

     The article identifies the Left’s fragmentation.  It maintains that the Left “lacks any recognizable center . . . .  It appears in and around the Democratic Party in unconnected, isolated circumstances, fragments of the population.”  

     And the article notes that the Left today is disconnected from the struggles of the past.  “Not only are the fragments disconnected from one another, they also suffer from isolation from the previous generation, which in turn had lost touch with its own predecessor.”  I would elaborate: The Left today has not sufficiently reflected on the popular movements of the 1960s, analyzing their successes and failures, discerning lessons for today.  The Left of the 1960s, however, was not disconnected from its past in the same way; rather, it defined itself as a New Left, deliberately rejecting the thinking and strategies of the generation of the Left that came of age during the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the birth of the Cold War.  I view the disconnection of the Left today from its past as a dimension of the more general problem of the lack of historical consciousness of much of today’s Left.

     Young maintains that the Left has a self-righteous attitude, giving rise to a focus on language as an indicator of membership in the club, rather than giving priority to the development of effective organizing strategies.

​This subculture, making a fetish of its marginality, creates a “secret identity” that is suicidal, inasmuch as it “reproduces its own powerlessness.”

     For Young, what is going on here is not the sectarianism that has periodically plagued the Left.  Rather, it is “a cultural phenomenon that is part of the quest for safe spaces by newly radicalized individuals with no political home to call their own.”  Although it is understandable that people will search for safe spaces, it has dysfunctional consequences when it becomes a substitute for organizing and effective political action.

      Young has a good grasp of what is wrong, and his essay reveals the pain and frustration of the Left in the aftermath of the electoral victory for Trump, which may turn out to be the triumph of a new form of fascism.  But when Young concludes the article with some indications of the task that lies ahead, I do not think that he is going in the right direction.  

     Young maintains that the Left must form a united front against capitalism.  I, however, would like to express differently what the Left must do: we must form a popular coalition in opposition to the neocolonial world-system.

      In renaming the system against which we must struggle as a “neocolonial world-system,” I am taking the vantage point of the majority of the peoples in the world, who have experienced modern capitalism as an economic system imposed by European colonial domination, and who experience domination and superexploitation through global economic, political and cultural structures that evolved during the twentieth century to a neocolonial world-system.  The neocolonized peoples of the world perceive the systemic enemy today as both capitalism and colonialism, such that Third World revolutionary movements struggle against both class exploitation and imperialism and for both socialism and true national sovereignty; they seek a world in which the people control the governments, the governments protect the social and economic rights of the people, and the international system respects the sovereign equality of all nations.  

      Why should Third World revolutionary movements matter to the popular movements of the North?  In part, it is a question of appreciating that wisdom emerges from the oppressed and that social scientific knowledge is developed on a foundation of encounter with movements from below, as Marx implicitly understood.  A global and integral social scientific knowledge, based in encounter with the movements of the neocolonized, would enable us to understand (1) how colonial structures promoted the underdevelopment of some regions of the world and the development of others; and (2) how some nations of the North, for a brief period, were able to provide a relatively high standard of living to a good part of the people, through the exploitation of the natural and human resources of other lands, supplemented by government deficit spending.  And it would enable us to understand that the conditions that made possible concessions to the popular classes of the North and to the governments of the South are no longer present, thus pushing the global elite toward a rollback of these concessions; and that the neocolonial world-system is no longer sustainable, because it has reached the geographical and ecological limits of the earth, and because the neocolonized peoples of the planet are in movement in opposition to it.  

     We in the North must develop structures of popular education in order to de-legitimate the ideological distortions of the corporate elite, their political representatives, and the Right; and we must develop such popular education on a solid foundation of integral historical social science.  Through such structures of popular education, we must seek to explain to the people that the neocolonial world-system has reached and overextended its limits, and that is why the global elite has abandoned the popular classes in the nations of the North.  If we can effectively teach our people these fundamental historical facts, they would have the foundation for taking effective political action on their own behalf, led by charismatic leaders whom they have lifted up, precisely for their clear articulation of these fundamental facts, as well as for their commitment to a more just world order.  Our people already understand that the global elite has never cared about them nor the peoples of the Third World, so when they understand the global dynamics that have led to systemic global crisis, they certainly will be able to grasp that the global elite has responded to the crisis in amoral ways that have ignored the rights and needs of the peoples of both the global North and global South, have violated the sovereignty of nations, have damaged eco-systems of the planet, and threaten the survival of the human species, all in defense of its particular interests. With such popular consciousness, the people would understand the need to mobilize for the taking of political power, so that power can be placed in the hands of delegates of the people, who are from the people and are committed to the defense of the people and the earth.

      When I say “popular coalition,” I mean to imply two things.  First, the revolution is formed by all sectors of the people, and its leadership can come from any and all sectors.  In today’s conditions, there is no reason to give emphasis to the working class, as did Marx, Lenin and Trotsky; nor to blacks, Latinos, indigenous persons or women, as does today’s identity politics.  All of us have a common interest in the establishment of a government that develops domestic and international policies that are faithful to universal human values, regardless of the sector of the people to which we belong.  If the emerging revolution is to succeed, all of the people will be invited to the party, and leaders from all sectors will be lifted up by the people, in accordance with their gifts and commitment.  

     Secondly, when I use the phrase “popular coalition,” I intend to emphasize that the people of the United States are diverse; we are many peoples who also must form one people.  So we must unite in ways that do not deny our diversity, that is to say, we form a coalition, a popular coalition.

      The people have said of the Left that we are idealistic, and they are right.  We are naïve, for example, when we propose peace without recognizing the short-term benefits of wars of aggression against recalcitrant Third World nations, given U.S. economic dependence on a permanent war economy and on the exploitation of the natural and human resources of the planet.  Often, we are hoping for peace, but we expect to maintain the material advantages that war and conquest have brought us.  And the people discern our naiveté.  The people are more connected to their concrete needs, and they want to protect what the nation has won through conquest or through its positioning itself to benefit from wars of conquest undertaken by other nations.

     We must win the confidence of the people by demonstrating that we understand how the world-system works.  We must explain to our people that the system of war and exploitation is no longer sustainable, and that we are capable of forging of world of peace and material security through cooperation with the peoples of the world, who have been organizing themselves in a revitalized form for the past twenty years, organizing not against us, but for a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  We must demonstrate to our people that we understand the sources of the denial of their rights, and that we know how to address them; that the elite does not know how to respond to the sustained global crisis, because it has looked at it only from the vantage point of its own short-term interests; that we know how to respond, because we have looked at the world-system from the vantage point of universal human values and the needs of the people; and that we could lead the nation toward the development of a more just and sustainable world-system, in cooperation with other nations, if we were to have the support of the people.  We must convince our people that we have an understanding that is rooted in commitment to the people and that is capable of responding to the challenges that humanity confronts.  We must ask our people for their support in an alternative project to save humanity.  And even though we are convinced that we are right, we must be patient with the people, for they have been victimized by ideological distortions, as many of us have been.  We must not shout, but patiently explain.

     Young hopes that the Left will be able to build itself as a political force.  Its form will likely be determined by “the ways social movement activists move towards serious politics working through existing institutions.”  The difficulty here is that movement activists do not do enough intellectual work, through which they could obtain insights from revolutions in history, from historic and present-day revolutions in the Third World, and from the speeches and writings of revolutionary charismatic leaders.  The Left in the United States is not only ahistorical, un-theoretical, fragmented, self-righteous, orientated to finding safe spaces of solace, and given to self-expression rather than reflection on effective political strategies, as Young maintains; it also is Eurocentric, examining mostly developments in the North, and not giving sufficient attention to what can be learned through encounter with the renewed Third World movements of national and social liberation.

      For further reflections on the meaning of socialism and on the possibilities for socialist revolution in the United States, based on observation of and encounter with Third World movements, please see previous posts: “A just, democratic & sustainable world-system” 1/12/2016; “The twelve practices of socialism” 1/14/2016; “Popular democratic socialist revolution” 1/15/2016; and “A socialist revolution in the USA” 2/1/2016.

     In yesterday’s post, we noted that the Dean of Communications of the University of Havana maintained that the Cuban people are united in believing that “Fidel is sacred,” and that, in a similar vein, I had previously maintained that the discourses of revolutionary charismatic leaders constitute “sacred texts.”  These reflections bring us to the question of the character and the role of prophets, especially in light of the fact that many persons in Cuba and Latin America have referred to Fidel as a prophet.

      The sacred texts of ancient Israel teach us that Moses, on the basis of an experience that he interpreted as an encounter with God, came to understand and to teach a vision of God as one who acts in history in defense of the oppressed.  As the chosen people of God, Ancient Israel was assigned the mission of developing a just society, unlike other nations.  But Israel as it evolved became a kingdom like others, reaching its heights under the reigns of David and Solomon. As a result, prophets emerged, denouncing the turn from the covenant between God and the people of Israel in the time of Moses, some of them focusing on the demand of God for social justice.  Among the prophets of Israel, Amos stood out as a voice condemning the social injustices of his day.  He decried corrupt public officials that reveled in luxury, wealthy merchants that trampled on the poor and the defenseless, and laws that served the interests of the commercial class.  He prophesied that if the people do not change their lifestyle and return to faithfulness to the Mosaic covenant, God, acting in the arena of history, would unleash terrible events upon them, including the destruction of Israel as a nation, a prophecy that came to pass (Anderson 1986:212-316).  

      Fidel is like a modern day Amos.  He condemns the global political and economic inequalities of our time, and he defends the rights of the poor, the neocolonized, and the excluded.  But unlike the prophets of old, Fidel did not merely denounce with words, predicting the punishment of a God angry with an unfaithful people.  In addition to denouncing the global elite, Fidel led the peoples toward the construction of an alternative world-system, proclaiming the duty to maintain hope for the future of humanity.  His exceptional capacities for political leadership were evident in various stages: his discerning the necessary strategies for toppling the U.S.-supported dictator in the late 1950s; his understanding of the decisive steps necessary for establishing basic revolutionary structures in Cuba in the early 1960s; his leadership of the nation toward the development of alternative structures of Cuban popular democracy in the 1970s; his condemnation of the short-sighted economic policies of the global elite and his scientifically-informed support of the Third World proposal for a New International Economic Order in the early 1980s; his formulation of Cuban structural adjustment policies in the early 1990s, demonstrating the possibility of adjustments in the post-Welfare State era that did not ignore the needs of the people; and his active participation as Cuban head of state in the process of Latin American unity and integration in the early twenty-first century.  This modern day profit possessed not only the gift of discerning God’s will for social justice, like his ancient forebears, but he also was gifted with the capacity to teach and lead the peoples toward the construction of a more just and sustainable world-system.

      The ancient prophets condemned the ways and the policies of the elite, but the conditions did not exist for the formation of social movements.  The prophets possessed the insight and the commitment to condemn the kings, but they could not mobilize the people for the taking of power from the kings.  

      The incapacity of the people to form sustained social movements persisted throughout the ancient and feudal periods in human history. Slaves, serfs and peasants sometimes revolted, but urban-rural ideological and cultural differences as well as difficulties in communication and transportation prevented the formation of a coalition of popular sectors, necessary for sustained social movements.

      The bourgeois revolutions of the late eighteenth century in Western Europe and North America established the foundation for modern popular social movements.  The bourgeois revolutions were led by a rising merchant class, which enlisted the support of farmers, peasants, artisans and workers, who became actively engaged in the bourgeois revolutions, which ultimately were successful in establishing bourgeois control of Western political institutions.  Excluded from effective political power by the new bourgeois institutions, the popular sectors formed their own movements and organizations, sometimes organized by gender or race as well as class or occupation.  In the developed economies of the West, however, these movements could be channeled toward reformism, thus maintaining bourgeois control.

        Modern capitalism was built on a foundation of colonial domination, and the ultimate destiny of the popular movements formed by the colonized would be different from the popular movements of the West.  In the colonized regions, anti-colonial movements emerged, formed by an alliance of the national bourgeoisie and the popular sectors of peasants, agricultural workers, artisans, urban workers, and middle class merchants and professionals.  Once the colonies attained political independence, the conflict of interest between the national bourgeoisie and the popular sectors became manifest.  The national bourgeoisie had an interest in the preservation of the economic and commercial relations developed during the colonial period, with political control of the formally independent nation by the national bourgeoisie, the sovereignty of which was limited by the rules of the neocolonial world-system.  In contrast, the popular sector had an interest in a fundamental social transformation, in order that their social and economic rights would be protected; such transformation necessarily implied true independence of the nation from the colonial powers. Inasmuch as the world-system depended on the superexploitation of the people in the neocolonies and the unregulated exploitation of their natural resources, reformist concessions to popular demands were necessarily limited, and as a result, the popular movements in the neocolonies could not be channeled toward reformism.

       In this panorama, there emerged during the second half of the twentieth century a number of Third World charismatic leaders, the prophets of our time.  They were mostly young men of the middle class of the colonies/neocolonies.  Their social condition as middle class men afforded them some possibility for study and reflection, and at the same time, they found that their condition as colonized limited the possibilities for their own class, for other popular sectors, and for the nation.  They were and are exceptional leaders, with a capacity for understanding national and international economic and social dynamics, an ability to mobilize and lead the people, and a highly developed sense of social justice.  They condemned the aggression and imperialism of the colonial and neocolonial powers and the morally unjustifiable inequalities between rich and poor.  They have maintained that the neocolonial world-system is not sustainable, and that the future of humanity requires the development of a New International Economic Order, or what they today call a “just, democratic and sustainable world-system.”

      They are the legendary figures of the Third World: Toussaint of Haiti; Zapata of Mexico; Mao, Zhou En-lai and Xi Jinping of China; Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam; Sukarno of Indonesia; Gandhi and Nehru of India; Nasser of Egypt; U Nu of Burma; Ben Youssef of Algeria; Nkrumah of Ghana; Nyerere of Tanzania; Martí, Mella, Guiteras, and Fidel of Cuba; Allende of Chile; Sandino and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua; Mandela of South Africa; Chávez and Maduro of Venezuela; Evo of Bolivia; and Rafael Correa of Ecuador.  They have been found in the United States as well: DuBois, Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King.

     Fidel is perhaps the most legendary of them, because of the persistence of the Cuban Revolution in the face of the hostility of the neighboring neocolonial hegemonic power; the leadership of Fidel and Cuba in the Non-Aligned Movement; the concrete support of Cuba for the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle in Africa; the consistently dignified participation of Cuba in international fora in defense of universal human values; the presence of Cuban missions in many nations in health, education, and sports; and the vibrancy and openness of the Cuban people. 

     Like the prophets of Israel, who offered the people a choice between repentance and the wrath of God; the prophets of our time offer humanity a choice between, on the one hand, seeking to maintain an unsustainable neocolonial world-system, based in domination and superexploitation; and on the other hand, cooperative participation in the development of a more just and sustainable world-system.  Like the prophets of old, the profits of our time maintain that the existing patterns of human behavior cannot be maintained without threatening our very survival.  As expressed by Rosa Luxemburg, a prophet from another place, yet widely cited by the prophets of the Third World, it is a question of socialism or barbarism.

      We the peoples of the North should appreciate the prophets of our time as the authors of sacred texts that we should study, so that we can better discern the true and the right, and find the path toward cooperative participation in the development of that more just world that they have maintained is both necessary and possible.  As Raúl said in the eulogy to his brother, “The permanent teaching of Fidel is that it can be done.”   

​Reference
 
Anderson, Bernhard W.  1986.  Understanding the Old Testament, Fourth Edition.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
 
 

     On December 5, 2016, the daily evening Cuban television program, The Roundtable, featured an interpretation of the enormous popular tribute to Fidel Castro by persons of all ages, with noteworthy participation by Cuban youth, from November 26 to December 4, following his death on November 25.  The panel was formed by two well-known television commentators, the assistant director of a Cuban digital news site, and a professor of journalism; two men and two women, who ranged from forty to sixty years of age.  The panel was directed by Randy Alonso, coordinator of the program, who regularly makes succinct and insightful commentaries, and demonstrates a keen listening capacity.

     Raúl Garcés, Professor of Journalism and Dean of the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana, began his comments by noting that he had never seen such enthusiasm, one indication of which was the number of people who were asking what they could do to pay homage to Fidel.  There is, he observed, a personal connection between Fidel Castro and the people of all ages.  He noted that the nation has passed in recent years through a difficult economic situation, and every Cuban has his or her opinion concerning what policies ought to be adopted.  But, he observed, these recent days have demonstrated that all Cubans are in agreement on one point, namely, that “Fidel is sacred.”  In his view, the people in recent days have overwhelmingly affirmed their commitment to the revolutionary project, constituting an historic moment that represents a new point of departure.

       Garcés’ observation that “Fidel is sacred” is consistent with the concept of revolutionary charismatic leadership that I have previously expressed (see various posts in the category Charismatic Leaders). As we observe revolutionary processes, we see that they are characterized by the emergence of charismatic leaders with unusual capacities for understanding national and international dynamics, with exceptional leadership abilities, and with a profound moral commitment to social justice and to the defense of the poor, oppressed, exploited and marginalized.  I have maintained that the speeches and writings of such charismatic leaders constitute “sacred texts” that should be studied by all who seek to understand and do social justice.

      The notion that “Fidel is sacred” would be, without doubt, an unacceptable idea to many intellectuals, activists, and commentators in the societies of the North, where notions of revolution have been developed without careful observation of the characteristics of revolutions.  Such observation is necessary, and it ought to include revolutions that have been successful in creating an alternative type of society, in which there is political control by delegates of the people and a political will to respond to the needs and interests of the people and the nation.  

      Without benefit of such observation, there has emerged in the North notions that contribute to confusion.  Among historians, there has emerged a rejection of the “great white man” interpretation of history, prevalent prior to the popular revolution of the 1960s, resulting in a focus on social processes, de-emphasizing the role of individuals. However, the error of the previous historiography was not that it focused on the exceptional capacities and consequent high degree of influence of some individuals.  Its error was its writing history from above, rather than from below, and thus not seeing the movements formed and led by persons of color in the world, including some leaders who were women of color.  But the old historiography indeed was correct in discerning the exceptional capacities of some persons. 

      There also has emerged in the North a distorted understanding of democracy, according to which no person should have too much power, guided by the maxim that “power corrupts.”  This distrust of the corruptive influence of power gives rise to an insistence on term limits for officials in revolutionary organizations and governments.  And it also leads to a rejection of hierarchies of power in society and social organization, including necessary structures of legitimate power in the forms of rational-legal authority and charismatic authority (Weber 1947:324-63; see “Authoritarianism vs. legitimate power” 5/16/2016).  

      When we observe the alternative structures of popular democracy that have been developed by revolutionary processes, we see that democratic revolutions do not eliminate power and the need to develop just and reasonable structures for the distribution of power.  Rather, what occurs is that popular democratic revolutions transform structures of power, so that delegates of the people, rather than representatives of the elite, have political power.  In such revolutionary democratic societies, the forces that defend the people are given full expression, and such forces include charismatic leaders who are committed to speaking and acting in defense of the people.  Popular unity in defense of charismatic leaders is indispensable, inasmuch as true democracy has many enemies in the world, constituted by powerful sectors that seek to defend their particular privileges.

     When we recognize the sacredness of charismatic leaders and their words, there is the danger of formalism, a rigid and uncreative repetition of the words and strategies of the charismatic leader, ignoring the responsibility of critical reflection.  To avoid this error, we must follow the example of the charismatic leaders, who critically analyzed the social situation and creatively developed new understandings, embracing the tradition formulated by previous charismatic leaders and intellectuals, but pushing the received wisdom to a new stage.

     We have to study the sacred texts of the charismatic leaders, in order to discern their insights, and to creatively apply their insights to a social context that is different from the ones in which they spoke.  This requires constant critical reflection and creativity, following the example of the charismatic leaders, guided by their insights, but at the same time forging new insights and new strategies as the social context evolves, or in creatively applying the insights of charismatic leaders in different national social contexts.

      Seeking to avoid the danger of formalism, Fidel spoke against the “cult of the personality” and against the display of images of any living person.  In his final testament, Fidel requested that no monument be constructed to him, and that no street, school or hospital be named for him.  Raúl has noted that he will soon request the National Assembly for legislation to this effect.  

      My reaction to the announcement was that charismatic leadership can be extreme.  Not one monument in the entire city?  Such is the nature of charismatic leadership; it demands, and it challenges.  We of course will comply, out of respect for his insight, and for him as a person.  
       
      Rather than constructing monuments, we should be studying sacred texts and arriving at insights, so that that we do not fall into ritualistically repeating words and formulas.  This is the challenge that we confront.  

     On the other hand, we would be blind to an important dimension of the human condition if did not see that there has been among us exceptional leaders with penetrating analytical and moral insights, which can provide the basis for advancing human understanding.  The gift of charismatic leadership must be seen and appreciated, if humanity is to advance.  Its central role in revolutionary processes should be understood.

Reference
 
Weber, Max.  1947.  The Theory of Social and Economic Organization.  Translated by A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons.  Edited with an Introduction by Talcott Parsons.  New York: The Free Press, Macmillan Publishing Co.


​

     With tears, with commitment to the principles that he taught, with determination to carry forward with the revolutionary project that he led, and with hope for the future of humanity, the people of Cuba have laid to rest their eternal commander-in-chief, Fidel Castro Ruz.

      The nine days of expression of affection for Fidel and support for the revolutionary project was the essence of dignity.  It was well-conceived and well-organized.  In addition to the Mass Act on November 28 in the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana and the Political Act on the evening of December 3 in the Plaza of the Revolution in Santiago de Cuba, the people had three opportunities to express their sentiments, including filing by photos of Fidel at 286 designated centers across the island, signing a pledge of commitment to the revolutionary project at 11,512 locations, and greeting the caravan transporting Fidel’s ashes from Havana to Santiago de Cuba.  This structure prevented that the people would run in a chaotic and overwhelming manner to the two principal activities in Havana and Santiago de Cuba.  

     The caravan transporting Fidel’s remains stirred the entire nation, as the people lined the streets and highways of the caravan route, waving Cuban flags, and chanting in unison, “I am Fidel.”  On December 3, the caravan was greeted with an incredibly tumultuous reception as it entered Santiago de Cuba, an historic center of revolutionary activity and a city that Fidel called “the moral capital of the revolution.”  On January 1, 1959, Fidel had entered Santiago de Cuba with a triumphant rebel army, promising to make fundamental changes in defense of the people.  On December 3, nearly fifty-eight years later, Fidel triumphantly returned, with the people proclaiming, “Mission completed; promise delivered.”

     It has been an emotional nine days.  The people, journalists, and international personalities repeatedly and passionately have expressed their sadness and their commitment to the teachings of Fidel.  

     During these days, Cuban television has been running repeatedly the mass chanting, “I am Fidel,” at the Mass Act in Havana on November 28.  The video is followed by a young person explaining why she or he “is Fidel,” and each repetition features a different person.  In their commentaries, many of the young people are demonstrating maturity of reflection and a strong commitment to the revolutionary project.  The TV spot exemplifies the use of television to promote the political and cultural formation of the people as an integral part of the forming of a revolutionary people.  In socialist Cuba, television functions primarily to educate, and only secondarily to entertain; in contrast to capitalism, where television gives emphasis to entertainment and the selling of consumer goods.

     I have observed during the last ten or fifteen years that some Cubans complain about material conditions in the presence of international visitors.  The visitors often interpret such complaining as indicating dissatisfaction with the Cuban revolution or with Cuban socialism.  But I have not viewed it in this way.  I view it as bad behavior by the people, a manifestation that they are not perfect.  The people ought to view an interchange with a visitor as an opportunity for international diplomacy, and they should conduct themselves with a sense of responsibility, explaining things that they know very well to be true, and that visitors for the most part do not know.  But they have a right to be normal, and such complaining reflects a normal human tendency to imagine that life is better somewhere else, a tendency given strength in Cuba by the presence of many international visitors from the consumer societies of the North.  

     I have never forgotten what a Cuban friend said to me many years ago, when I was new to Cuba, and I was taken aback by the way a Cuban store clerk expressed her desire to go with me to the United States.  “We Cubans speak ironically,” my friend said.  “The clerk was indirectly criticizing you, for being unable to break the U.S. blockade against us, making life here difficult.”  Regardless of the validity of this interpretation, my friend’s comment points to a general phenomenon, in which the people are framing their comments in ways that are conditioned for reception by international visitors, with various intentions and personal motives. I also have never forgotten what the international affairs official of the National Assembly of Popular Power said to my students a number of years ago.  “The people talk, but they are with us.”  

     Thus, in reflecting on the manner in which some of the people speak to international visitors, I have arrived at the conclusion that, in spite of the irresponsible talk by some, there is a deep fund of support for the revolutionary project among the people, which has continually expressed itself in a number of observable ways, including an electoral participation rate in excess of 90%, a membership of 85% in various mass organizations that are central to the Cuban system of popular democracy, the total absence of a formulation of an alternative national project, and the evident advanced understanding and strong commitment of the vanguard formed by the Cuban Revolution.

      In these days of mourning, this popular fund of support for the revolutionary project has fully and powerfully expressed itself.  The comportment of the people, their discipline, their commitment and their emotion has been incredible to behold.  I personally have been moved by it, as have been many, Cubans and international residents alike. We wonder if such a thing could possibly occur in any other nation, or if any person has ever received such a departure from this life.  

     In these days of mourning and of expressions of gratitude for the life, teachings, and commitment of Fidel, the people have demonstrated that they are a revolutionary people and the people of Fidel.

     U.S. President Barack Obama has said that history ultimately will judge concerning the legacy of Fidel Castro.  Obama previously demonstrated, in his addresses to the people and leaders of Latin America, that he has no appreciation of history.  Therefore, he is not aware that history already has judged: it has absolved Fidel, and it has condemned U.S. imperialism; for in the final analysis, the true history of humanity is not written by the powerful, but by the peoples in movement.

     In an incredible display of affection for the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution and of support for the Cuban revolutionary project, the people are chanting, “I am Fidel,” as the caravan containing the ashes of Fidel moves from town to town across the island.  The phrase emerged from the repeated affirmation, in these days of mourning, of commitment to the principles taught by Fidel.  For those who proclaim it, the phrase represents a way of saying that he or she has internalized the principles taught by Fidel, so that Fidel has not died, but lives in each person committed to the revolutionary project.  The use of the phrase may have been given a boost by Daniel Ortega, the President of Nicaragua and leader of the Sandinista Revolution, when he asked at the beginning of his oration at the Mass Act on the evening of November 29, “Where is Fidel?”  And the congregated mass chanted in response, “Yo soy Fidel.”

     The people are lined, sometime more than ten rows deep, along the streets and highways as the ashes of Fidel are transported in a caravan from the City of Havana to Santiago de Cuba, retracing in reverse the Caravan of Liberty of the triumphant rebel army during the first week of January 1959.  As the caravan passes, some are in silent solemnity.  Some make a military salute.  Many are clapping in unison, and/or are chanting, “Fidel” and “Viva Fidel” as the caravan passes. But it is the slogan “Yo soy Fidel” that is increasingly being chanted in unison, and it is becoming the signature of the historic moment.  

     Some have waited patiently for hours for to pay their respects.  At the end of the first day, the caravan arrived in Santa Clara, where the ashes of the historic leader of the Cuban revolution passed the night near the remains of the heroic guerrilla Che Guevara.  The caravan is expected to take four days before it reaches Fidel’s final resting place near the burial site of José Martí in the famous Santa Ifigenia cemetery in Santiago de Cuba. 

     The discipline and revolutionary commitment of the Cuban people is impressive and moving to behold.  Cuba is today demonstrating once again that it is the land of Fidel and of the people that Fidel has formed.

     The bourgeois press asks what will happen now that Fidel has died.  It understands nothing of Cuban reality.  

     A society is a social organism, and like any living organism, it evolves.  There can be breaks or ruptures in the evolution of a society, as can occur with a revolution or an invasion.  In the case of Cuba, the first rupture since the Spanish conquest occurred in 1898, when the United States intervened in order to prevent the triumph of a revolution committed to true independence and to a society made by all and for the good of all.  The second rupture occurred in 1959, with the triumph of a revolution led by Fidel, formed by various popular sectors and seeking national sovereignty and social transformation, standing against US imperialism and the national bourgeoisie.

    Since 1959, the Cuban revolution has evolved through different stages, always with continuity.  There have been decisive moments in its evolution:  the first revolutionary steps in the early 1960s, establishing the revolutionary socialist character of the revolution, provoking the permanent hostility of its powerful neighbor to the north; the establishment of a constitution and structures of popular power and democracy during the 1970s, with a single political party as a leadership vanguard and not as an electoral party (which were permanently eliminated as conflictive and dysfunctional); the Cuban presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1979 to 1982, during which Cuba defended the Third World project of national and social liberation, as the global elite turned to the imposition of neoliberal policies, thereby demonstrating its incapacity to resolve the structural crisis of the world-system; the collapse of the socialist bloc led by the Soviet Union, making necessary the formulation by Fidel of structural adjustments; the entrance of Cuba in the process of Latin American union and integration, as the political reality of Latin America was transformed on the foundation of renewed popular movements after 1994; the retirement of Fidel in 2006, with Raúl assuming leadership, and with the party increasingly demonstrating its capacity to function effectively as a vanguard political party; the new social and economic model of 2012, as the leadership came to conclude that further concession to foreign capital and small-scale domestic entrepreneurship could be made without jeopardizing the socialist revolution, a process that was led by the party and that was developed in response to inquietudes among the people concerning the material standard of living; and now the death of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, at which time the Cuban people are reaffirming their commitment to the Cuban revolutionary project.

      As the Cuban revolution evolved, it established structures of popular democracy, and it was able to accomplish the institutionalization of the charismatic authority of Fidel (and Raúl) in the Communist Party.  Accordingly, with the establishment of structures of popular democracy, and with the party able to assume its role as a vanguard party, the Cuban revolutionary project will continue its evolution as a popular anti-imperialist and Fidelist revolution, with a capable vanguard formed, and with the people appreciating what the revolution has accomplished, and actively participating in the revolutionary process through structures of popular democracy.

       The bourgeois press fails to understand that nothing will happen now that Fidel has died, except that Cuba will continue on its revolutionary road, for the people are committed to the principles taught by Fidel.  It will continue to develop its society on a foundation of socialist principles, and it will continue with a foreign policy of international solidarity with the peoples, social movements, and socialist governments of the world.

       The distortions of the bourgeois press limit the understanding of the peoples of the North, particularly in the United States.  So the people do not understand Cuba, and even more importantly, the peoples of the North cannot understand the meaning of the Cuban Revolution and the lessons that it can teach the world, namely, that a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system can be created by charismatic leadership and a unified, educated and committed people.

      The intellectuals of the North have the moral duty to encounter Cuba, to arrive to understand its meaning, and to search for ways to break the ideological barriers of the societies of the North, so that the peoples of the North, armed with understanding and moral commitment, can arrive to effective political action in their own behalf and in defense of humanity.

      As for Cuba, it will persist.  Cuba is Fidel; and Fidel is Cuba.