We have seen that, although the concept of exploitation was central to Marx’s theory of surplus value, socialist Cuba has not devoted primary attention to the abolition of exploitation (“Exploitation in Cuba” 9/10/2018).  For some Marxist intellectuals of the North, this is a serious and problematic shortcoming of the Cuban revolutionary project.  This tension between the priorities of the Cuban Revolutionary and the expectations of Marxist intellectuals of the North is a manifestation of the differences in perspectives between the global North and South. 
 
     Socialist revolutions did not triumph in the advanced industrialized nations of the North, as Marx, Engels, and Lenin had anticipated.  Rather, when they triumphed, it was in the neocolonies of the world.  Of particular importance with respect to the above-mentioned post on “Exploitation in Cuba,” the great majority of the people in the neocolonies suffered not only exploitation, but also superexploitation.  That is, the people endured not only being paid less than the value of what they produce (exploitation), but also earning less than what is necessary for purchase of the minimal necessities of life (superexploitation).  In the North, superexploitation exists, but it has pertained to the minority of workers, and it often is transitional.  But it is more pervasive and more systemic in the South, because the superexploitation of workers in semi-peripheral and peripheral zones is central to the core-peripheral relation of the world-economy, and the structures of the world-system are designed to guarantee its preservation.
 
       Not only did the revolutions triumph in places not anticipated; they also assumed characteristics not anticipated by classical Marxist theory.  The revolutions of the neocolonies were not precisely proletarian revolutions against the capitalist class; rather, they were popular revolutions in opposition to the national bourgeoisie and in opposition to the imperialist powers to which the national bourgeoisie was subordinate.  Further, when these revolutions triumphed, they faced conditions of underdevelopment, and they found that the sovereignty of their nations was curtailed by colonial economic structures and by the actions of the imperialist powers.  In this context, the popular revolutions in semi-peripheral and peripheral zones reformulated the concepts and the goals of classical Marxism, even as they appropriated from the socialist revolutions of the North in imagining and forging a reformulation from the Third World.
 
     Marx and Engels had formulated their understanding in a particular historical and social context defined by the awakening of a proletarian revolution in the context of bourgeois dominated political-economic systems in the core zone of the developing capitalist world-economy.  From that vantage point, Marx interpreted human history as the history of class struggles, a story reaching culmination with the triumphant proletarian revolution. 
 
      But the proletarian revolution did not triumph.  The bourgeoisie was able to contain the proletarian revolutions of the core through reformist concessions, made possible by wealth attained on the foundation of colonial and semi-colonial domination of vast regions of the world; and through political repression and ideological manipulation.  During the course of the twentieth century, the proletarian movements of the core evolved from revolution to reform, and revolutionary thought became increasingly alienated from revolutionary practice.
 
      At the time of Marx, the popular revolutions in the colonized regions were still in an early stage.  Most of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in America had become independent.  But with the popular revolutionary impulse contained, the Latin American republics settled into a semi-colonial relation with Great Britain, an expanding colonial power.  Marx insightfully discerned some of the implications of all of this, but he was not in a social situation that would enable him to apply these insights consistently to a formulation of the meaning of human history.  Lenin began to see the future importance of the popular struggles in the colonized regions of the world, but like Marx, he was not socially positioned to fully grasp its implications.
 
      During the course of the twentieth century, the full implications of the early projections of classical Marxist theory were developed on the foundation of the revolutions in the colonies and semi-colonies.  In China, Mao drew upon nationalist resentment toward the unequal treaties imposed by the Western imperialist powers to forge an adaptation of Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions.  In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh synthesized the anti-French nationalism of Confucian scholars with Marxism-Leninism.  In Latin America, anti-imperialist popular movements influenced by Marxism-Leninism evolved during the course of the twentieth century, receiving its most advanced formulation in Fidel’s synthesis of the Cuban revolutionary nationalism of José Martí with Marxism-Leninism.  In the Arab World, Nasser’s nationalist vision of Arab secular republics expressed anti-imperialist hopes for the region.  In Africa, Kwame Nkrumah sought to establish the unity of the newly independent states as a counter to the economic stranglehold in which they found themselves in the neocolonial stage; while Julius Nyerere sought to synthesize modern socialism with traditional African values.
 
      The epicenter of the global socialist revolution had shifted from Europe to the region of the world that called itself the Third World, implying a political realignment beyond the Cold War, and implying a Marxist theoretical formulation that went beyond Marx.  In his time, Marx went to the places where the emerging proletarian revolution was expressing itself, and from that vantage point of the worker, he analyzed the capitalist economy, previously analyzed from a bourgeois point of view.  And from that vantage point of the worker, he grasped the importance class division, seeing the struggle between classes as the primary dynamic in human history.
 
     If we were to follow the example of Marx, we would go to the epicenter of the global revolution today, and we would allow the formulations of today’s revolutionary subjects to shape our own understanding.  If we do not do so, we become dependent on concepts that have ossified, because they were formulated in an earlier revolutionary moment.  They have not been nourished by continued revolutionary practice, inasmuch as the revolutionary force of the North has been overwhelmed by a confused and divided mix of revolution and reform.
 
        But if, like Marx, we were to go to the epicenter of the popular and socialist revolution, and we were to take seriously what they are thinking and doing in that revolutionary climate, we would reformulate our understanding.  We would see that human history is indeed the history of class struggle, but it is, more fully, the history of domination.  Looking at human history from the vantage point of today’s conquered and colonized, we would see that conquest and domination is the basis of empires and civilizations in human history.  And we would see that it must come to an end, because the neocolonial world-system has reached the geographical limits of the earth and overextended its ecological limits, and thus it is neither politically nor ecologically sustainable.
 
     Not that the dimension of class would be absent.  Taking into account and reflecting on Marx’s insight, we would see that class is a dimension of conquest.  On the one hand, when the conquered people is assimilated in an expanding kingdom, it is incorporated as a marginalized lower class, thus integrating in practice the theoretical constructs of race/ethnicity and class.  On the other hand, in cases in which the conquered nation is permitted a degree of autonomy in the empire, the upper class of the conquered nation is subordinated to the imperial power; it receives material rewards for representing imperialist interests, thus accentuating class divisions with the conquered society. 
 
      But personal encounter with today’s epicenter of the global revolution implies an alternative frame of reference, different from the frame of classical Marxism, even though it has appropriated from the insights of classical Marxism.  Central to the narrative from the Third World is not class exploitation but colonial and neocolonial domination, even though class exploitation is a component of the dynamic of domination.  And the primary expression of abuse is not exploitation but superexploitation, and it is the latter becomes the central motif of emancipatory projects.  In accordance with this alternative frame of reference, political projects emerge that demand national liberation and sovereignty against neocolonial political and economic structures, and that demand the right of sovereign states to take decisive action in defense of the social and economic rights of the people, standing against a legacy of superexploitation.
 
     In addition, central to the Third World reformulation of Marxism is the concept of the nation.  It has maintained that, with respect to the regions of the world that had been colonized, the structures of the neocolonial world-system negate in practice the principle of the sovereignty of nations.  It proclaims that Third World states, as sovereign states, have a right to act decisively as the regulator and principal subject in their economies, in order to strengthen capacity to provide for the needs of their peoples in such areas as education, health, housing, and nutrition.  Accordingly, the Third World reformulation reflects a quest for both national liberation, standing for sovereignty and against imperialism; and for social liberation, seeking to overcome the legacy of underdevelopment and superexploitation.  The revolutionary Third World project is a project of national and social liberation.
 
     In addition, the Third World revolution in defense of the nation and in defense of the social and economic rights of the people is a popular revolution, that is, a revolution of the people, and not only workers, or workers aided by peasants, or workers plus other sectors.  It is a popular revolution against the national bourgeoisie and against the imperialist powers to which the national bourgeoisie is subordinate; it seeks the sovereignty of the nation, in order to protect the social and economic rights of the people.  There is evident here a reformulation of the classic Marxist narrative.   
 
     The Third World revolutionary project of national and social liberation, therefore, has formulated a series of principles, which have been disseminated in popular movements today in the Third World.  Central to these principles is the nation: the right of the nation to be sovereign, to create an alternative political system that responds to the persistent hopeful voice of the people; and to construct an autonomous economic system, in which the state is the regulator and principle actor, and which responds above all to the material needs of the people.  In forging these principles, the Third World project has been pushing forward an evolution of understanding in the concepts of Marxism-Leninism, and on the basis of revolutionary practice.  Unlike the nations in the core, the leaders and intellectuals in the Third World have not been trying to understand things in a social and political context removed from revolutionary practice.
 
        Any Marxist from the North who listens to and reads what Third World leaders and intellectuals have been saying and writing could not fail to notice: (1) the consensual basic understanding in the various regions of the Third World, in spite of differences in particularities; and (2) the difference of this consensual understanding from the classic formulation of Marx and Engels.  The centrality of the nation is primary, inviting the formulation of national narratives that place the struggle of the people(s) in the nation in a world historical context.  That world-historical narrative does not see exactly a history of class conflict, but a history of conquest and domination as the foundation of human advances in knowledge and culture, with class divisions understood as integral to this dynamic of domination.  It calls not the proletariat to revolution, but the people, all of the sectors of the people: workers, peasants, students, women, professionals, and ethnic minorities.  It calls the people to unity, standing against the national political-economic elite that is subordinate to foreign interests; it teaches that unity is the key to establishing the dignity of the nation.  It does not focus on exploitation, as defined by Marx, but on superexploitation, defined as working for less than what is necessary to live.  Inasmuch as the majority of the people work in various economic sectors in conditions of superexploitation, attention to their human needs is the highest priority: housing, nutrition, health care, and education. 
 
     The revolutionary leaders of the Third World have dominated the art of politics, focusing on strategies that would lead the people to the taking of political power.  Once in power, they have taken decisive steps in defense of the people’s needs, showing the people that the delivery on promises by leaders with political power is within the realm of human possibilities, if the leaders owe their power to the support and action of the people and not to the support of wealthy interests.  The leaders continually exhort, calling the people to a secular and inclusive society with full equality for all.  But they know the people intimately, and they understand that its characteristics have been formed by centuries of abuse and exclusion; the people cannot be transformed in a day.  Revolutionary leaders in power take measures designed to teach the people its own capacities, but they understand that only the people themselves can construct the new society they envision; it cannot be imposed.  If some of the people want to indulge in a level of frivolous consumerism, if some want to become small-scale entrepreneurs, if some display religious objects to protect themselves from evil spirts, let them be, at least for the present historic moment.  This is politically intelligent: the people must be kept on board in a unified resistance against the powerful world actors that have declared their intention to destroy the unfolding revolution; they cannot become divided within, arguing about issues that in the current historic moment are of secondary concern.        
 
     For those of us who are Marxists from the North, our basic premise has to be that we have much to learn from the unfolding popular revolutions in the Third World.  We have been shaped in a social context not of revolution but of reform.  Understanding emerges in the context of revolutionary practice, and our revolutionary practice has been limited.  We have not yet learned what revolution is, and our activists often seem to think those most dedicated to social change are those who shout the loudest, who express frustrations without editing, and/or make the most extreme proposals, without evaluating their impact on the people, to whom all that we propose and do must be explained.
 
     We ought to go to any of the innumerable social spaces of the world where the Third World revolutionary process is unfolding.  We must go not to educate, to analyze, or to evaluate on the basis of concepts that we have learned in our context of limited revolutionary understanding.  We must go to listen and learn.  Of course, we are all human, and we will have some tendency to say, “Listen, you are proposing thus and so, and I am not sure I am in agreement with that, because . . .”.  But our basic orientation has to be to listen and learn, permitting their understanding to shape our own, because Third World leaders and intellectuals have been formed in a context of sustained revolutionary practice, and we have not.
 
      On the foundation of our more universal understanding formed on a foundation of encounter with the Third World revolution, we can return to our own nations, critically reflecting on our own reformist and revolutionary popular movements, discerning their limitations, and discerning the steps that must be taken from here and now.  Something like this would be necessary, if we are to become revolutionary subjects acting in solidarity with the revolutionary movements of humanity, which have been emerging in an historic moment in which the capitalist world-economy is demonstrating its unsustainability.
 
      We are speaking here of the need for a horizon shift, a shift in the basic assumptions, concepts, and narratives of the nations of the North.  Only the Left in the North has the possibility of formulating it, because of its legacy of Marxism, progressivism, and commitment to social justice.  However, the Left itself would have to undergo horizon shift, reformulating its understanding through cross-horizon encounter with the movements of the Third World.  And it has to combine the reformulation with political intelligence, effectively educating and organizing the peoples of the nations of the North, leading them to the taking of political power.  With the recognition that, once in power, the revolution would begin in earnest, as the revolution would use its base in executive and legislative political power to forge a process of political-economic-cultural systemic change.  Integral to this change would be the destruction of global neocolonial structures, so that the nations of the North can move beyond their colonial heritage and cooperate with the nations and peoples of the world in the development of a just, democratic, and sustainable world-system, constructing the alternative world-system on the foundation of the established world-system, rebuilding it step-by-step.

     In my dialogue with Ken Megill (see “What is a revolutionary?” 2/8/2018), Ken writes:

     Ken is right.  Marx was aware of the importance of the colonies in promoting the capitalist development of Europe.  He and Engels wrote extensively on Ireland and India.  He envisioned a global struggle that would culminate in emancipation in a variety of forms, including the abolition of slavery.

      Marx achieved a synthesis of German philosophy, British political economy, and French socialism, which constituted the most advanced currents of Western knowledge at the time.  And he forged the synthesis from the vantage point of the worker, thus providing an analysis from below of human history and modern capitalism.  In doing so, he pushed scientific knowledge of social dynamics to a more advanced stage.  This more advanced knowledge recognized that modern capitalism represented only one stage in human history, and as it evolved, it would generate the technological and social conditions that would make possible as transition to a society that would affirm and protect the human dignity of all.  The transition to a new epoch was to be led by the industrial working class of the advanced nations, inasmuch as they possessed the interest and the capacity to do so.

       The scientific breakthrough of Marx constituted a threat to the capitalist class, which had an interest in preserving a system that gives priority to the maximization of profits to the capitalist.  High members of the capitalist class therefore supported an organization of knowledge in higher education that was favorable to their interests and that marginalized the work of Marx.  Whereas Marx’s breakthrough implied an integrated philosophical-historical-social social science connected to the social movements from below, the universities established academic disciplines that fragmented knowledge and that were disconnected from the social movements.

      With the blocking of the development of knowledge of social dynamics in the universities, the further development of scientific knowledge of social dynamics was left to the charismatic leaders of revolutionary movements, who were leaders in practice but who also made important contributions to theory.  When Lenin observed in Russia the revolutionary action of the peasantry, he reformulated Marx with the concept of a revolution forged by workers and peasants, led by a vanguard of workers.  When Lenin observed that the European proletarian revolutions of the period 1919 to 1922 were not going to triumph, he projected that the vanguard of the global revolution would pass to the oppressed nations of the world.  In China, Mao formulated a concept of a revolutionary peasantry in opposition to the Chinese landholding class, a relatively weak Chinese bourgeoisie, and foreign capitalist penetration of China.  In Indochina, Ho Chi Minh synthesized the Vietnamese tradition of Confucian nationalism with Marxism Leninism, leading a revolution of peasants for both national and social liberation.  Similarly, Fidel in Cuba forged a synthesis of Marxism-Leninism with the revolutionary nationalism of José Martí, conceiving a revolution by the people against the national bourgeoisie and international capital, seeking national sovereignty as well as social transformation.  In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, responding to the neoliberal attack on Latin America, synthesized Mao and Fidel to proclaim a new form of socialism adapted to the conditions of the twenty-first century.

       However, Western Marxists were paying insufficient attention to the evolution of Marx’s theory in the context of the revolutionary practice of the Third World.  This oversight was a consequence of the evolving economic and social conditions of the capitalist world-economy.  Western colonial and neocolonial domination enabled significant concessions to the middle class and working class movements in the West, facilitating the predominance of reformist tendencies in the working class movements, undermining the revolutionary potentiality that expressed itself in Western Europe from the 1830s to 1922.  Thus, Western Marxists became disconnected from revolutionary practice, which constrained the development of their understanding.  To be sure, they have been able to understand partially the structures of neocolonial domination, thus they tend to have an anti-imperialist perspective.  However, they have limited understanding of the processes of revolutionary change from below that have emerged in China and the Third World, and thus they have an undeveloped concept of the meaning of socialism in practice. 

     So our limited understanding today is not a consequence of the work of Marx, who established the foundation of modern scientific knowledge of social dynamics.  Our limitations are a result of the universities, which have marginalized Marx, and the supposed followers of Marx, who have not been connected to the most advanced revolutionary movements that emerged after Marx.

      The Left of the United States today must arrive to understand the evolution of historical social scientific knowledge in the praxis of Third World revolutions in order to have the capacity to formulate a foundational response to the Trump project, as we will discuss in the next post.

     See various posts on the evolution of Marxism-Leninism:
“The social and historical context of Marx” 1/15/14; 
“Reflections on the Russian Revolution” 1/29/2014; 
“Ho reformulates Lenin” 5/7/2014; 
“Ho synthesizes socialism and nationalism” 5/8/2014; 
“Ho’s practical theoretical synthesis” 5/9/2014; 
“A change of epoch?” 3/18/2014; 
“Is Marx today fulfilled?” 3/20/2014; 
“The alternative world-system from below” 4/15/2014; 
“Mella fuses Martí and Marxism-Leninism” 7/9/2014; 
“Fidel adapts Marxism-Leninism to Cuba” 9/9/2014; 
“What is revolutionary socialism?” 5/4/2016; and
“The legacy of Lenin” 12/22/2016.

     For reflections on Mao, see various posts in the category China.

     For a description of the characteristics of socialism that takes into account its evolution in practice in Russia, China, and the Third World, see Chapter 9, “Socialism for the Twenty-First Century,” in The Evolution and Significance of the Cuban Revolution: The Light in the Darkness.

      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 response to my post criticizing Jeffery St. Clair’s article on Bernie Sanders (“What should Bernie Sanders have done?” 5/2/2016), Rich Daniels posted the following comment on the discussion list of the Radical Philosophy Association:

     Revolutionary socialist movements are in essence struggles formed by the people that seek to take power from the bourgeoisie and its political representatives.  They are not defined by the method through which they arrive to power, which is dependent on particular conditions.  When socialist revolutions arrived to power, they did so through the leadership of exceptional persons who mastered the art of politics, and thus discerned the road to power.

      In the cases of the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions, the armed struggles took three different forms.  The Russian Revolution was not exactly an armed struggle, but rather a movement for the formation of soviets (councils of workers, peasants and soldiers), accompanied by the formation of popular militias and the placing of some government military barracks under the authority of the soviets. The Chinese Revolution involved a long guerrilla war in the countryside.  The Cuban Revolution was a short guerrilla struggle that was able to move from the mountains and the countryside to the city. In all three cases, the charismatic leaders adopted intelligent strategies that were appropriate and necessary in the context of the particular conditions.

    Political conditions following the triumph of the three revolutions were sufficiently favorable to enable the revolutionary governments to effect a fundamental reconstruction of political, military and cultural institutions. Nevertheless, the power to which they had arrived was partial.  They confronted powerful internal and international enemies, and the obstacles to economic transformation were enormous. Seeking to construct socialism in a global context shaped by a capitalist world-economy, they were compelled to promote the interests and needs of the people on a step-by-step basis, limited to the possible.  In the case of Russia, the contradictions were such that with the death of Lenin, the revolution fell to a bureaucratic counterrevolution, and it subsequently developed in a distorted form.

      In the case of Cuba, the revolution at the moment of its triumph enjoyed significant political possibilities.  The military dictatorship was totally discredited, as a result of its alliance with US imperialism and its oppression of the people.  Representative democracy also was lacking in legitimacy, as a result of its service of US imperialist interests during the neocolonial republic.  Moreover, the national bourgeoisie emigrated rather than remaining in the country to defend its particular interests.  These factors enabled the Cuban Revolution to develop structures of popular democracy, institutionalized in the Constitution of 1976.  

      But the Cuban Revolution confronted major obstacles.  It was an underdeveloped nation, dependent on the exportation of raw materials to the United States and on the importation of US manufactured goods.  Its national bourgeoisie had been a “figurehead bourgeoisie,” totally subordinate to US capital and incapable of leading an autonomous national project.  And its proposal for independent development and true sovereignty provoked the hostility of the United States, which considered the island to be its possession.

      As the Cuban Revolution sought to construct socialism under these difficult conditions, it took decisive and necessary steps, according to what was possible, and it took further steps and adjustments as the revolution evolved.  Many of the measures are understood generally to be socialist: nationalization of agricultural plantations, industry, education and the mass media.  Other measures in health, education, housing, transportation, tourism and international relations are reformist, involving steps that any progressive government should take, including joint ventures with foreign capital.  But such reformist incrementalism was tied to decisive revolutionary steps, and it was part of a national development plan directed by popular power.  It was very different from reform from above, which involves concessions by the elite to popular sectors in order to pacify them.  Cuban reformist incrementalism was reform from below, constrained only by limitations in real possibilities.  All political decisions have been made by delegates of the people and not by representatives of the bourgeoisie, national or international.  Concessions of the Cuban revolutionary government are made not to powerful classes but to the people and to the possible.    

     The relatively favorable conditions for the taking of power through a guerrilla struggle and the reconstruction of political, military and cultural institutions, which existed in Cuba in the period 1956 to 1963, did not exist in the Latin America of 1995, a region defined at that time by representative democracy, neoliberalism, and corporate control of the media.  In these conditions, fundamentally different from Cuba of 1959, an armed struggle would not have been an effective strategy.  

      In Latin America in 1995, the people were confused by the collapse of a progressive agenda and the imposition of neoliberalism, but they knew enough to know that they were excluded and abandoned.  They began to protest over particular aspects of their situation, such as the high cost of water.  In this context, leaders emerged to direct the people toward a more comprehensive rejection of the neoliberal project, a discrediting of the political representatives that had participated in the implementation of neoliberalism, and the formulation of a more dignified project of national independence.  

      In this changed Latin American political reality at the dawn of the twenty-first century, three charismatic leaders emerged in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.  They formed alternative political parties that took partial political power and led the people in the development of new constitutions, which were more progressive than those of bourgeois democracy, inasmuch as they included protection of the social and economic rights of the people, the sovereignty of the nation and the ecological balance of nature.  However, political conditions have not permitted the establishment of popular democracy as against representative democracy, nor have they permitted structural economic transformations of a kind that would break the neocolonial relation with the United States or destroy the political power of the national bourgeoisie, which remains politically active as a class, cooperating with imperialist interests in projects of political destabilization and the restoration of the Right.  In addition, the media remains for the most part in the hands of private capital.  In spite of these limitation, Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa proclaimed the popular revolutions in their nations to be revolutions of socialism for the twenty-first century, with characteristics different from twentieth century socialism, yet in full solidarity with socialist Cuba.

     What interpretations can we make of the revolutions in Latin American today that have proclaimed themselves to be socialist revolutions for the twenty-first century?  In addressing this question, we should not overlook the context in which they emerged in the 1990s.  It was a time in which the unipolar power had proclaimed the end of history and ideological debates, and that only one model was possible, that of liberal democracy.  It was a time in which the Left was weak, divided and demoralized, and some prominent members of the Left jumped ship.  Indeed, the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization of Third World governments, had abandoned the radical Third World project of national and social liberation in favor of an accommodation to neoliberal assumptions, although Fidel led a minority opposition to the movement’s accommodation.   At that time, no one predicted that in the next fifteen years the politics of Latin America would be completely transformed, with the emergence of self-proclaimed socialist governments in three nations, the electoral victories of progressive governments in other nations, the formation of regional associations that seek to break the neocolonial relation, and the solidarity of the region with socialist Cuba.
 
     The three charismatic leaders played a leading role in this stunning and unanticipated process of change.  They therefore should be appreciated as exceptional persons whose gifts include mastery of the art of politics.  Their leadership has included the formulation of the idea that in the epoch of neoliberal globalization, socialism has been born again, a socialism with different characteristics from before, a socialism that discerns a different road to power and a different vision of the characteristics of the socialist society, but which sees itself as carrying forward the banner of socialism hoisted by socialist revolutions of the past, for like its forebears, it is convinced that the capitalist world-economy is unsustainable.

     Thus, the Latin American revolutions of today signify an evolution in the meaning of revolution and of socialism.  They have followed the example of the socialist revolutions of Russia, China and Cuba, but they have not imitated them.  Practicing the art of politics, they have discerned a road to power adapted to the present epoch of neoliberal globalization and global crisis, in which the world-system is increasingly demonstrating its unsustainability.  

      In the three socialist revolutions in Latin America today, we can see in outline form the characteristics of a socialist revolution in the United States: the formation of an alternative party that proclaims the intention to construct socialism and that unites the various popular sectors; the formulation of specific proposals that respond to the concrete needs of the people; the formulation of constitutional amendments that project the goals of the socialist revolution; and the use of the structures of representative democracy in order to take control of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, and to struggle from that position to take control of the judiciary, the military and the mass media, and to establish structures of participatory and popular democracy.

      Rather than analyzing the popular revolution in Latin America today from a perspective shaped by the socialist practice of an earlier epoch, we should appreciate the revolutionary spirit alive today in Latin America and join in the construction of socialism, redefined for the present historic moment, but with understanding of its historic roots. 

     Posts reflecting on the meaning of revolution can be found in the category Revolution.
        

Key words:  revolution, socialism, armed struggle, reform

     Among the articles posted on the list of the Association of Black Sociologists in the aftermath of the visit of President Obama to Cuba was “Race and Sex in Cuba” by Paul D’Amato.  The article was published in the International Socialist Review in 2007; D’Amato is the Editor of the Review.  

     D’Amato maintains that the achievements of the Cuban Revolution are limited.  The Cuban Revolution, he maintains, has achieved national independence, but it is not a socialist revolution, inasmuch as its economic system is based on the exploitation of wage labor. Having not liberated the working class, Cuba is incapable of attaining full liberation with respect to race and gender, he maintains.

      Beyond noting that nationalization is not identical with socialism, D’Amato does not, in this article, explain the characteristics of a system that has eliminated the exploitation of the worker.  He notes that societies that have called themselves socialist are not in reality socialist, and he refers specifically in this regard to the former Soviet Union and the former nations of the socialist bloc of Eastern Europe as well as China and Cuba.  D’Amato maintains, moreover, that Marxism should not be criticized on the grounds that various forms of oppression continue to exist in socialist societies, inasmuch as the self-proclaimed socialist nations are not truly socialist.        

     D’Amato represents a tendency in European and US Marxism, in which there is a fixed idea of the meaning of socialism, on the basis of which the various socialist projects of the world are found lacking. Such a perspective appeared to receive empirical support with the collapse of “real socialism” in Eastern Europe.  But the recent triumph of self-designated socialist revolutions in Latin America provides empirical basis for a reformulation of the meaning and characteristics of socialism.  In this situation, I maintain that all of us who carry the banner of socialism should permit the triumphant revolutions calling themselves socialist to define in practice the characteristics of socialism.  These include the triumphant revolutions in Russia (1917), Vietnam (1945), China (1949), Cuba (1959), Chile (1970), Venezuela (1998), Bolivia (2006), and Ecuador (2007).

      Studying the characteristics of these socialist projects, we can discern that they all involved the taking of political power by an alternative political formation led by a charismatic leader and supported by various popular sectors.  In these cases, the working class was not in the majority, and it was not in the vanguard.  The leaders in the revolutionary processes came overwhelmingly from the radical wing of the petty bourgeoisie; and the popular sectors included peasants, students, workers and women.  Once in power, the triumphant revolutions confronted enormous challenges with respect to the production and distribution of necessary goods and services.  Of necessity, their orientation was not so much toward the emancipation of the worker but the marshalling of labor to provide for the needs of the people.  They relied heavily on nationalization, but they sanctioned various forms of property in addition to state property, including cooperatives, small scale private property, and joint ventures with foreign capital.  They all believed that the state should be the author of a national development project and that the state should be a major actor in the economy.

      As socialism evolved in practice, it assumed characteristics that were different from what was projected by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.  But the formulators of classic Marxism-Leninism understood that their theoretical formulations were tied to observations of particular conditions and social movements, and that revolutionary theory would continue to evolve, connected to practice.  Lenin, confronting immense challenges with respect to providing for the needs of the people in the aftermath of the Civil War, adopted out of necessity the New Economic Policy, which could be interpreted as violating some of the theoretical tenets of Marxism.  Moreover, observing the failure of the proletarian revolution in the West to triumph, and seeing as well the anti-imperialism of the oppressed nations, Lenin discerned that the vanguard of the socialist revolution would move from the Western European working class to the oppressed peoples of the East, which we today call the Third World or the South.

     Marxism-Leninism should be understood as an evolving theoretical project, linked to practice.  It has evolved since the Lenin’s time in the form of revolutions of a dual character in the colonized regions of the world, characterized by a quest, on the one hand, for national liberation from European colonial domination, and on the other hand, for social liberation from class exploitation and related forms of social oppression.  Paradigmatic charismatic leaders that have formulated the evolving theory of Marxism-Leninism include Ho, Mao, Fidel and Chávez.  And it is they who define the characteristics of socialism, an authority that they possess because of their demonstrated capacity to mobilize their own peoples in defense of the national and social liberation that their peoples seek.  The characteristics of socialism cannot possibly be defined by those who are removed from the evolving global popular revolution.

      The current epoch is characterized by a structural and terminal crisis of the world-system and by a turn of the global elite to neoliberalism.  And it is characterized by anti-neoliberal protests and popular movements and revolutions in all regions of the planet, attaining its most advanced expression in Latin America.  To understand the meaning of socialism for our time, we must appreciate that theory is tied to practice, and that the peoples and movements of the Third World have taken the role of the vanguard in revolutionary practice.  We must seek to understand Third World movements and the insights of their charismatic leaders, just as Marx sought to understand human history and modern capitalism from the vantage point of the Western European worker, who constituted the vanguard of revolutionary practice in Marx’s time. 

     In tomorrow’s post, we will discuss D’Amato’s observations concerning race in Cuba.


Key words:  socialism, Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, theory, practice, Third World

Posted July 9, 2014

    José Martí had forged a movement that responded to the two issues of colonial domination and social inequality: a movement that was anti-imperialist, seeking to establish a truly independent nation; and that sought social equality, in which all would be included as full citizens of the nation, regardless of race or class.  Julio Antonio Mella (see “Julio A. Mella and the student movement” 7/7/2014) was formed in the moral and intellectual environment established by the powerful teachings of Martí (“José Martí” 6/26/2014).  But Mella had experienced the “rotten fruit” of representative democracy, and he therefore lived in a different historic moment.  He had seen what Martí could not possibly have imagined: the participation of the Cuban national bourgeoisie in the imperialist project of the United States, reducing itself to a figurehead bourgeoisie; the participation of ample sectors of the middle class in the corruption of the republic; and the loss of direction, the “moral blindness” and the “inertia of the soul” that defined the society of the republic (see “A neocolonial republic is born” 7/1/2014).  From Mella’s vantage point, Martí’s formulation of a society made by all and for the good of all seemed impractical.  Mella discerned the need for a struggle by workers, peasants, and the poor that would take power from the political class that had surrendered its dignity to the interests of US corporations and that had forgotten the needs of the humble. Thus, Mella gave a Marxist reading to Martí.  By deepening its awareness of the dynamics of class differences and contradictions, he pushed the legacy of Martí to a more advanced stage.  But he also preserved essential dimensions of Martí, such as anti-imperialism in defense of national independence as well as the ethical messages of Martí, like the need for personal sacrifice in defense of ideals.  Mella therefore also contributed to the evolution of Marxism-Leninism, in which its political theory and practice would be integrally tied to the struggles of neocolonized peoples for full independence.  This synthesis and fusing of Marxism-Leninism and Martí, initiated by Mella, would be brought to fruition in the 1950s and 1960s by Fidel Castro and the “generation of the centenarians,” so-called because they inaugurated a new stage of armed struggle during the year of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Martí (Vitier 2006:124-36; Instituto de Cuba 1998:223).

       Mella was the most advanced leader of what has come to be called the “Generation of 1930.”  He represents an important step in the evolution of a Cuban ethic tied to political practice, which has had four important moments: Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and the first independence struggle of 1868 (see “The Cuban war of independence of 1868” 6/17/2014); José Martí and the second war of independence in 1895, which turned to anti-imperialism and an inclusive concept of democracy; Mella and the Generation of 1930, which, influenced by the Russian Revolution, took the first steps in the fusing of Marxism-Leninism and the revolutionary ethic and analysis Martí; and Fidel Castro and the “generation of the centenarians,” which brought the revolution to a new stage of armed struggle, the triumph of which made possible a deepening of the theoretical-practical synthesis of Marxism-Leninism and the teachings of Martí that had been initiated by Mella.

      The evolution in Cuban political practice and theory was a part of the evolution of the political theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism on a global scale, which has had five important historic movements: Marx and the Western European workers’ movement of the 1840s; Lenin and the Russian Revolution of 1917-24; the adaptation of Marxism-Leninism to China by Mao; the synthesis of Marxism-Leninism and the Third World anti-colonial perspective, represented by Ho, Fidel, and others in the period 1946 to 1979; and the post-1995 renewal of socialism in the Third World, represented by the Bolivarian Revolution in Latin America (see “The social and historical context of Marx” 1/15/14; “Reflections on the Russian Revolution” 1/29/2014; “Ho reformulates Lenin” 5/7/2014; “Ho synthesizes socialism and nationalism” 5/8/2014; “Ho’s practical theoretical synthesis” 5/9/2014; “A change of epoch?” 3/18/2014; “Is Marx today fulfilled?” 3/20/2014; “The alternative world-system from below” 4/15/2014).

     Assassinated at the age of 26, Julio Antonio Mella is remembered and appreciated in Cuban popular consciousness today for his important contributions in the development of the Cuban Revolution and as a symbol of the revolutionary tradition of Cuban students.  At the entrance to the University of Havana, one can find Mella Plaza and monument, where each academic year begins with a ceremony presided by the elected officers of FEU, the student organization that he created.


References

Instituto de Historia de Cuba. 1998.  La neocolonia.  La Habana: Editora Política. 

Vitier, Cintio.  2006.  Ese Sol del Mundo Moral.  La Habana: Editorial Félix Varela.


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, Cuban Revolution, neocolonial republic, Julio Antonio Mella

Posted September 9, 2014

    We have seen in previous posts that there is a tradition in Marxism-Leninism of interpreting the popular revolution as a proletarian revolution or as led by a proletarian vanguard (see posts on The Vanguard).  In “History will absolve me,” there is no notion of a proletarian revolution or a proletarian vanguard.  Instead, we find a concept of a people prepared to support a revolution, a people coming from various social classes (see “The Moncada program for the people” 9/5/2014).   . 

      As he explained in an extensive interview in 1985 with the Brazilian Dominican priest Frei Betto, Fidel already had a Marxist-Leninist formation at the time of “History will absolve me.” During his third year at the University of Havana, he had begun to study the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, using books obtained at the library of the Communist Party.  In his study of Marxist literature, The Communist Manifesto had the most impact on him, because of its simplicity and clarity, and particularly important was its understanding that human societies are characterized by class division.  Fidel’s life experiences, in which he had “seen up close the contrasts between wealth and poverty, between a family that possessed extensive land and those that have absolutely nothing,” (Castro 1985:161), confirmed the truth of Marx’s insight into class division.  And the insight, for Fidel, had explanatory power, for it made clear that social phenomena are not consequences of the evil or immorality of men, but of factors established by class interests (Castro 1985:157-70). 

     In this description of his reading of The Communist Manifesto, we can see that Fidel was making immediately a Cuban interpretation of Marx.  In confirming the validity of Marx’s insight for the reality of Cuba, Fidel was focusing not on the exploitation of the industrial workers, which was the social context in which Marx formulated the concept, but on the unequal distribution of land, rooted in the colonial and neocolonial situation of Cuba.  Thus, Fidel was beginning to appropriate from Marx in a form that reflected the neocolonial conditions of Cuba. 

      Fidel was not studying the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin as an academic exercise.  He was seeking to understand how to further develop the Cuban Revolution and the revolutionary theory and practice that was the heritage of Céspedes, Martí, Mella, and Guiteras. As a result of this intellectual work and political practice, Fidel had formulated, even before the Batista coup, a revolutionary strategy for bringing about a profound social revolution in Cuba.  Having observed the isolation of the Communist Party, in spite of its considerable influence among urban workers, and the dissemination of anti-socialist and anti-communist ideas, he concluded that it would be necessary for the revolution to develop in stages.  The first stage would involve a mass rebellion by the majority of people, focusing on concrete demands that would respond to the sources of popular discontent; and a subsequent stage would be characterized by the formation of the political consciousness of the people, during which the socialist character of the revolution would be understood (Castro 1985:164-65).

      Thus, Fidel had become a Marxist-Leninist by 1950, the year of his graduation from the university.  But his understanding of Marxism-Leninism was shaped by Cuban revolutionary practice, and it adapted the key insights of Marx and Lenin to Cuban reality. Accordingly, he did not speak of a proletarian revolution, but a popular revolution formed by various classes and social sectors, including the unemployed, agricultural workers, industrial workers, tenant farmers, teachers and professors, small businessmen, and young professionals.  He did not refer to a proletarian vanguard, but instead implied that the popular revolution would be led by members of the various popular classes who possess the courage to act in defense of the revolutionary ideals defined by José Martí.  And he conceived and envisioned a socialist revolution in stages.  Based on an appreciation of the insights of Marx as well as observation of Cuban reality in a context of political practice, Fidel’s formulation represented a synthesis of Marxism-Leninism with the Cuban revolutionary struggle for national liberation. 

     Fidel’s formulation was an important theoretical advance in the evolution of Marxism-Leninism.  But Fidel did not present it as such.  He did not offer a theoretical analysis of the development of the concept of a proletarian vanguard, describing the social context in which the concept emerged and explaining why a reformulation is necessary. Rather than making a theoretical defense of his reformulation from proletarian to popular revolution, he simply presented the new formulation.  And this creative formulation made sense to the people, for it described what they already knew in experience, and it included concrete solutions.

     An English translation of “History will absolve me” can be found in Fidel Castro Reader (Deutschmann and Shnookal 2007).

References

Castro, Fidel. 1985.  Fidel y La Religión: Conversaciones con Frei Betto.  La Habana: Oficina de Publicaciones del Consejo de Estado. [English translation: Fidel and Religion: Conversations with Frei Betto on Marxism and Liberation Theology.  Melbourne: Ocean Press].

__________.  2007.  “La historia me absolverá” in Fidel Castro: Selección de documentos, entrevistas y artículos (1952-56).  La Habana: Editora Política. 

__________.  2014.  History Will Absolve Me: Speech at the Court of Appeals of Santiago de Cuba, October 16, 1953.  La Habana: Editora Política.

Deutschmann, David and Deborah Shnookal, Eds.  2007.  Fidel Castro Reader.  Melbourne, Australia: Ocean Press.


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, Cuban Revolution, neocolonial republic, Fidel, Moncada

     For Ho Chi Minh, there was never a question of having to decide between nationalist and class revolutions, or between nationalism and socialism.  His instincts were clear from the first moment of his encounter with French socialism in Paris:  both traditions and movements were valid.  The fulfillment of the one would require the fulfillment of the other.  Although the two traditions had different assumptions and concepts, with different understandings of structures of domination and different proposed projects for human liberation, he believed that both had formulated self-evident truths.  For a philosopher, this situation might have created an epistemological dilemma, requiring the study of philosophers of knowledge.  But Ho Chi Minh, a political activist emerging as a known political leader on an international level, worked through the epistemological dilemma by developing a program of action, thus forging what we might call a “practical theoretical synthesis” of the two traditions.  His program of action was straightforward: national independence and national reunification, establishing the political independence of the nation and control over the territory of the empire of Vietnam prior to French colonialism; agrarian reform, taking land from the landholders and distributing it to the peasants; popular assemblies and popular democracy, establishing structures of popular authority over the political process; a vanguard formed by the most politically conscious intellectuals, peasants and workers, in order to educate the people in the correct path; decisive state action to protect the social and economic rights of the people; and the formation of strategic alliances both within the nation and on an international plane, so that necessary support can be obtained as the revolutionary process unfolds.  It was a program of action that incorporated the insights of both socialism and nationalism.

     Such is the style of the formulations of charismatic leaders.  Their insights are formulated in the context of the need to address practical situations, such as the need to formulate a program of action in a call to the people, or the need to define a strategy or program in response to internal debates in the movement.  Thus, the formulated understandings of charismatic leaders can be described as “practical intellectual formulations” or “practical theoretical formulations.”  They have a style that from an academic point of view may appear to be overly succinct.  Or they may be formulated piecemeal, partially expressed in one context and further developed in another.  But their style, a consequence of their being formulated in political practice, should not prevent us from appreciating their insight.  Indeed, the fact that the insights of charismatic leaders are formulated in the context of political practice is the key to their wisdom.  Advances in human understanding of social dynamics are attained when charismatic leaders, drawing upon a received political-intellectual-moral tradition and committed to universal human values, arrive at new insights as they seek to understand what to do in the context of problems, dilemmas, and new situations confronted by the on-going social movement.  

     As we reflect on the intellectual development of Ho Chi Minh,  what is of most importance is that Ho, when he first encountered socialist currents in Paris, did not reject Western socialism for its prevailing Eurocentrism, in spite of Ho’s formation in the nationalist perspective of the colonized.  Rather, he embraced Leninism as the current within European socialism that most fully affirmed the validity of the anti-colonial struggles in the colonies, and at the same time, he adapted Leninism to the colonial situation.  Through this process, he was able to reaffirm the basic principles of the nationalist movement, while at the same time appropriating for the nationalist movement important insights of the European socialist movement, thus enabling the nationalist movement to become more theoretically advanced and therefore more politically advanced.  And he endeavored to push European socialism toward encounter with the Third World revolutions and to a greater level of consciousness of the significance of the Third World revolutions for the global socialist revolution.  He thus sought to bring both communism and Third World nationalism to a more advanced theoretical and political stage. 

     Ho’s creative synthesis of Marxism-Leninism and a Third World anti-colonial perspective was appreciated by Fidel Castro.  As we will see in future posts, Fidel also would formulate a synthesis of Third World nationalism and Marxism-Leninism in the practical context of social struggle.  In an address in Vietnam on September 12, 1973, four years after Ho’s death, Fidel declared:

     Ho’s practical theoretical synthesis of two revolutionary intellectual-moral-political traditions that emerged in different social and historical contexts illustrates the exceptional intellectual capacity of the charismatic leader.  And his role as the historic leader of the Vietnamese Revolution illustrates the pivotal importance of the charismatic leader, who is able to creatively formulate the necessary direction of the revolutionary movement, and as a consequence, possesses widely recognized moral authority, thus making possible the political unification of the revolutionary movement and the people. 


References

Castro, Fidel.  2008.  “Discurso de Fidel Castro en Vietnam" in Agustín  Prina, La Guerra de Vietnam, Pág. 173-80.  Mexico: Ocean Sur.


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, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh

     The tradition of Marxism-Leninism focused on the class struggle, on the need for the workers to take power from the capitalist class, to form alternative structures of popular democracy, and to direct economic development in accordance with the interests of the workers and the popular sectors.  In contrast, the tradition of national liberation focused on the struggle of the colonized and neocolonized peoples against colonial domination, seeking self-determination and sovereignty (see “Third World and Marxism-Leninism” 7/24/2013). 

      Ho Chi Minh, having been formed in the Third World anti-colonial tradition of the Confucian scholars, and having encountered Marxism-Leninism in Paris and Moscow from 1917 to 1924, formed a synthesis of the two traditions.  See “Confucian scholars and nationalism” 4/29/2014; “Who was Ho Chi Minh?” 5/2/2014; “Ho encounters French socialism” 5/5/2014; and “Ho the delegate of the colonized” 5/6/2014. 

     For Ho Chi Minh, Marxism-Leninism had formulated self-evident truths: workers could not protect their interests without taking power and directing the political-economic system.  But these truths should be applied to Indochina with flexibility, because in the colonial situation, it was principally a class struggle not between workers and factory owners but between peasants and landholders, some of whom were Indochinese, and others of whom were French, as a result of colonialism.  So Ho understood the need to adapt Marxism-Leninism to the colonial situation.

     Ho discerned that the anti-colonial struggle and the class struggle were intertwined.  The anti-colonial struggle could not succeed in establishing the true sovereignty and independence of the nation without taking on the land question, because land was used to produce raw materials for export, in accordance with the interests of core capitalists, with whom the landholders were allied.  Thus, in order to break foreign control over the resources of the nation, it would be necessary to develop a program of agrarian reform that would take land from the landholders and distribute it to peasants, under one form of property or another.  This necessarily involved dislodging the national estate bourgeoisie and its allies in the Vietnamese imperial court from power, and placing the land and the political-economic system under the control of the peasants and their nationalist allies. Therefore, the national struggle for independence could not succeed without it including a class struggle of peasants and their allies against the landholding bourgeoisie. 

     For Ho, this intertwining of the anti-colonial and class struggles occurs not only in the colonies but also in the advanced societies.  He understood that the proletarian movement in the core could not take power without allying itself with and defending the interests of the colonized peoples, because imperialist exploitation of the colonies gave the international capitalist class the capacity to contain the worker’s movement in the core through reformist concessions. 

     In 1917, Lenin had initially believed that the proletarian revolution in the West would triumph first, and the politically triumphant working class in the core would support workers’ revolutions in the colonized regions.  But by 1920, Lenin understood what was beginning to emerge.  An alliance between core workers and national liberation struggles had not been formed, and core capitalists were beginning to utilize resources emerging from the superexploitation of colonized zones to channel the workers’ movement in the core toward reform, thus maintaining control of the political-economic system.  Lenin, therefore, advocated alliance of Western communists with the national liberation struggles of the colonized peoples, even when these struggles included the national bourgeoisie.  Ho Chi Minh would push Lenin’s concept of alliance to its fullest implications.  He envisioned a global democratic revolution consisting consisting of complementary movements of class struggle in the core and national liberation in the colonies, with both movements working in alliance, mutual support, and solidarity (see “Ho reformulates Lenin” 5/7/2014).  He saw the world of his time as divided between a democratic camp, formed by the socialist nations, the progressive forces in the advanced capitalist countries, and the movements of national liberation in the colonized regions; and an anti-democratic, imperialist and reactionary camp, headed by the United States.  He considered it certain that the democratic camp would eventually prevail, although he believed that the struggle would be long and hard.

      The creative synthesis of Ho Chi Minh was forged in the context of political practice, as we shall discuss 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, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin

    Ho Chi Minh possessed a double social and experiential foundation for his understanding.  On the one hand, he was an intellectual and activist of the colonized world, formed in the tradition of the patriotic nationalism of the Confucian scholars.  On the other hand, he had experienced encounter with Marxism-Leninism and the communist movement in Paris and Moscow from 1917 to 1924 (see “Ho encounters French socialism” 5/5/2014; “Ho the delegate of the colonized” 5/6/2014). 

     Thus, Ho Chi Minh possessed the social foundation for a synthesis of Third World nationalism and Marxism-Leninism, and he had developed the basic components of this synthetic perspective by 1924.  Although his perspective necessarily involved a reformulation of Lenin on the basis of the colonial situation of Indochina, Ho did not announce a reformulation of Lenin’s thesis.  Rather, his strategy was to invoke Lenin, calling upon the international communist movement to take seriously Lenin’s thesis on the colonial question, and providing interpretations of Lenin’s thesis that were subtle reformulations.

       In its classical formulation, Marxism-Leninism viewed the industrial working class as the vanguard of the socialist revolution, since the factory workers had the most advanced revolutionary consciousness.  And it viewed the peasantry as prepared to support a worker-led socialist revolution, if the revolution unequivocally supported peasant interests in obtaining land (see “The proletarian vanguard” 1/24/2014).  

     At the time of the triumph of the October Revolution, Lenin believed that in order for the Russian Revolution to be able to sustain itself, a triumph of the proletarian revolutions in the advanced nations of Western Europe would be necessary (see “A permanent global revolution” 1/27/2014).  When the proletarian revolutions in the West did not triumph, Lenin reformulated his understanding of the global revolution, giving greater emphasis to the revolutions of national liberation in the colonies.  He understood that the profits obtained through the exploitation of the colonies increased the capacity of capitalism to make concessions to core workers, thus enabling the system to create a labor aristocracy in the advanced nations, thereby undermining the possibility of revolutionary transformation to a political-economic system governed by workers.  Lenin therefore called for the formation of alliances between the proletarian movements in the core and the national liberation movements in the colonies, even when the national liberation movements include the national bourgeoisie, with the intention of struggling against international imperialism and the imperialist exploitation of the colonies.  He believed, however, that the revolutions in the colonies ultimately must be led by a proletarian vanguard (Lenin 2010:130-37; 1972:55-60; 1993:261-65).

     Lenin’s “Thesis on the national and colonial questions” converted Ho Chi Minh into a Leninist.  Ho invoked Lenin’s concept in order to criticize the Western communist parties for ignoring the national liberation movements in the colonies.  Like Lenin, Ho believed that the colonies were decisive, because most of the strength of the capitalist class was derived from the exploitation of the colonies.  As we have seen (“Ho the delegate of the colonized” 5/6/2014), Ho believed that attacking capitalism via the industrial working class of the advanced countries was like trying “to kill a snake by stepping on its tail.”  He did not make the reverse error of believing that the capitalist snake could be killed by the movements of national liberation of the colonized. Rather, he advocated the forging of a global revolution through complementary movements of workers in the core and of national liberation in the colonized regions, working on a basis of alliance, solidarity, and mutual support.

        But Ho’s understanding involved a subtle reformulation of Lenin.  Lenin considered support for national liberation movements as a tactic in the global transition to socialism, which ultimately would require revolutionary movements in the colonies led by a proletarian vanguard.  Ho, however, viewed the global revolution as a having complementary dimensions: a proletarian struggle in the core, which would embrace and support national liberation movements; and national liberation struggles in the colonized region, which would seek not merely political independence but would pursue a class revolution within the nation.  For Ho, they were different but equal partners, and they would support each other in order to kill the capitalist snake.

      Ho Chi Minh’s view of the global revolution implied a reformulation of the concept of the vanguard, and here too Ho was subtle.  The vanguard in the Vietnamese revolution was composed of “workers,” but Ho had a dynamic concept of workers.  In his view, during the transition to socialism, agriculture would be modernized, and peasants therefore would be transformed into agricultural workers.  At the same time, intellectuals would learn to complement their intellectual work with manual labor (as Ho himself did during his life).  Thus peasants and intellectuals were workers, even though they were in a sense workers in formation.  But as potential workers, they could become part of the vanguard, if they possessed advanced political consciousness.  In practice, the Workers’ Party of Vietnam was composed of intellectuals, peasants, and workers, with intellectuals being in the majority, but with peasants and workers also playing a significant role.  In this way, Ho subtly reformulated the Marxist-Leninist concept of the proletarian vanguard, adapting it to the colonial situation of Vietnam (Ho 2007:155-57, 168, 170-71).

      Ho always presented himself as a disciple of Lenin, and he was.  But he reformulated Lenin’s insights in accordance with the colonial situation of Vietnam.  Whereas Lenin envisioned a proletarian vanguard, Ho developed a vanguard consisting of enlightened intellectuals, peasants, and workers.  Whereas Lenin distrusted the peasant as susceptible to bourgeois thinking, Ho discerned the revolutionary spontaneity of the peasant.  Whereas Lenin believed that petit bourgeois socialists betray the revolution (see “The role of the petit bourgeoisie” 1/28/2014), Ho saw the central role of the Confucian scholar-gentry class in the origin and development of Vietnamese revolutionary nationalism.  Whereas Lenin saw patriotism as an instrument of the bourgeoisie in manipulating the working class into participating in imperialist wars (see “Revolutionary patriotism” 8/15/2014), Ho saw genuine patriotism as a necessary component of the struggle against colonial domination. 

     In adapting Lenin to the colonial situation of Vietnam, Ho was following the recommendations of Lenin himself.  In his message to the communist organizations of the East, Lenin asserted, “Relying upon the general theory and practice of communism, you must adapt yourself to specific conditions such as do not exist in the European countries.  You must be able to apply that theory and practice to conditions in which the bulk of the population are peasants, and in which the task is to wage a struggle against medieval survivals and not against capitalism” (1993:263).

     Ho Chi Minh, therefore, was both Marxist-Leninist and nationalist, who forged in practice a theoretical synthesis of the two political-intellectual-moral traditions, a theme to which we discuss further in the next post.


References

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

Lenin, V.I.  1972.  “Report of the Commission on the National and Colonial Questions” in Speeches at Congresses of the Communist International.  Moscow: Progress Publishers.

__________.  1993.  “Address to the Second All-Russia Congress of Communist Organizations of the Peoples of the East” in John Ridell, Ed., To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920—First Congress of the Peoples of the East.  New York: Pathfinder Press.

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


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, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin