In previous posts, I have maintained that the forging of a popular revolution in the USA is an objective possibility, a necessity, and, therefore, a moral obligation.  Utilizing existing constitutional rights and electoral procedures, a popular revolution in the USA would seek to take political power, that is, to take control of the political and legislative branches of the federal government, with the intention of implementing fundamental changes in defense of the rights and needs of the people as well as the sovereign dignity of the nation.  The revolution’s central strategy for taking political power would be the formation of an alternative political party that redefines what a political party is and does, in that its primary task would be the patient and long-term education and the organization of the people, projecting important electoral victories in a period of twenty years or more.  (See, for example, “The possible and necessary popular coalition” 10/10/2016 in the category Third World and “An integral and comprehensive narrative” 03/13/2017 in the category Trump).
 
     An important issue that the alternative political party would need to address with insight and political intelligence is that of the military.  The alternative political party would have to envision and formulate the transformation of the militarization of economy and society, which has been unfolding since the late 1940s, when the Truman Administration created the Cold War ideology in order to justify a permanent war economy and what Truman’s successor, Dwight Eisenhower, called the military-industrial complex.
 
      A recent article by Willian J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (United States Air Force), maintains that for decades the Pentagon has been conning politicians and the people in order to maximize public support for military spending.  Astore mentions several distortions of reality in the history of this con game: the “missile gap” of the 1950s and the 1960s; the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that authorized military action in Vietnam; the “consistent exaggeration of Soviet weapons capabilities in the 1970s . . . to justify a new generation of ultra-expensive weaponry;”  the casting of the Soviet Union as an “Evil Empire” in order to justify increased military expenses in the 1980s; the identification of “rogue states” in the 1990s, thereby avoiding the expected “peace dividend” following the collapse of the Soviet Union; the invasion of Iraq, justified by arms of mass destruction that never were found; and an endless war on terrorism that ignores the actual sources of terrorism.
 
      Although Astore writes of this phenomenon as a Pentagon con, many of the mentioned distortions were sold to the people by prominent politicians, and not by the military chiefs.  In the case of Trump, Astore reminds us that, during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump spoke “against the folly and cost of America’s wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. He said he wanted better relations with Russia. He talked about reinvesting in the United States rather than engaging in new wars. He even attacked costly weapons systems.”  If it is true, as Astore asserts, that Trump is a con man, and that the Pentagon attains support for military spending through the con, then it could be said that the Trump administration’s military defense budget of $716 billion demonstrates that you can indeed con a con man.  But it is our own human weaknesses that enable a con to work; in this case, the weakness might be a lust for power, and the capacity to see an exploitable issue and useful partners in order to maintain, extend, and increase personal power. 
 
       The nation needs military chiefs that place the good of the nation above the expansion of the military branch, and political leaders who are morally and intellectually capable of resisting the seductions of power and the distorted claims of all who represent particular moneyed and powerful sectors.  The task of the alternative political party is to forge a change in the political culture, so it would be possible for principled political and military leaders to rise to prominence, principled leaders who seek not personal power but the authorization of the people to exercise power in their name.  In forging this cultural change, the alternative political party needs to unmask, in the name of patriotism, the conduct of militarist politicians and the Pentagon, who for decades have exaggerated threats to national security in order to justify military expenditures.  It must reformulate the meaning of patriotism, leading the people to the understanding that it is not unpatriotic to oppose imperialist wars; but it is unpatriotic, and profoundly damaging to the nation, to exaggerate threats to national security in order to channel national resources to the military, especially when the exaggeration is driven by the desire to rout economic benefits to companies and individuals who produce and market arms. 
 
      But let us not be naïve concerning the importance of the military.  In the alternative political party, there can be no place for idealism and naivete with respect to questions of peace and war.  The foreign policy proposed by the alternative party must recognize the ancient and modern tendency of empires and nation-states to conquer new territories and to impose its interest on the conquered peoples.  It must recognize that the modern world-system has been forged on a foundation of conquest and colonial domination of the world, and it has been shaped by a system of competing imperialisms, in which global powers compete with one another for control of territories and markets.  In the context of such a world, the government of the USA must be committed to its national security and any threat to its territory and its markets by means of force and violence.  In condemning exaggerations of national security, the alternative political party must propose a genuine concept of national security, and define the necessary role of the military in the defense of national security.
 
     In seeking an alternative to the militarization of economy and society, the alternative party cannot dream of peace in the abstract; it must pursue its vision of demilitarization in the context of existing international relations.  Accordingly, it should support the alternative approach to international diplomacy that currently is emerging in world affairs, one that gives priority to the peaceful resolution of international conflicts.  The peaceful resolution of conflict is the mission of the United Nations and other international organizations; and several governments, including China, Cuba, and Venezuela, have been developing foreign policies in this direction.  Such tendencies are pointing to an alternative world order in which states work cooperatively toward international, multilateral, and bilateral agreements, committing themselves to the reduction of arms, especially nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction; to the peaceful resolution of conflicts; to respect for the sovereignty of all nations; and to refraining from aggression against other nations.  The alternative political party should propose that the nation play a leadership role in this emerging alternative form of international relations, with the understanding that all agreements must necessarily include provisions for the verification of compliance.
 
      Inasmuch as the arms industry is the USA’s strongest and most important industry, the nation has an objective economic interest in war and in the maintenance of global conflicts.  This objective economic condition, forged by both major political parties since the late 1940s, ensures significant political opposition to a peaceful reorientation of U.S. foreign policy.  The alternative political party must manage this situation with political intelligence, and therefore, it must base its proposals for economic and social transformation on recognition of the current dependency of the nation’s economy on military expenditures.  It must propose a gradual transformation of the militarized economy toward an economy dedicated to sustainable forms of production, recognizing that changes that are implemented faster than objective conditions permit would create chaos.  Annual cuts in the nation’s military expenditure must be part of a comprehensive plan that includes new investments in production and education, so that sustainable economic growth is facilitated.  In the transition from a permanent war economy to a peace-based economy, creative strategies could be employed, such as sending the U.S. Army to Central America to work in cooperative projects of infrastructural construction.
 
      The alternative political party needs among its leadership and its advisors persons with knowledge of military affairs and with military experience.  It should be actively recruiting such persons as it develops, so that it can speak with credibility on the military issue in the eyes of the people.  The article by Astore, a retired Air Force officer, is evidence that there are high military officers who would be committed to the development of an armed forces structure that has become liberated from the vicious cycle of imperialist policies feeding the arms industry, and its perverse feedback, the economic interests of the arms industry generating imperialist policies.  With the change in political culture that the alternative political party would seek to generate, there would come to the fore military officers who have endeavored to dedicate their lives to an armed forces that serves the genuine national security of the nation, who could now do so with the full support of a government of, by, and for the people.
 
    Astore’s proposals for “curbing our military mania” are important and worthy of consideration and discussion.  He proposes that the “nation fight wars only as a last resort and when genuinely threatened;” and therefore, “the U.S. should end every conflict it’s currently engaged in, bringing most of its troops home and downsizing its imperial deployments globally.”  He further proposes downsizing nuclear forces; and he advocates responding to the threat of international terrorism through law enforcement and intelligence services.  He believes that with an alternative orientation that is committed to the genuine defense of national security and is not economically and politically driven to exaggeration, it would be possible to significantly reduce the military budget; he cites defense analyst Nicolas Davies in declaring that the Pentagon budget could be reduced by 50%.
 
     Astore’s proposals involve to a considerable extent an ideological shift.  He maintains that the people should understand that current U.S. military actions do not deter aggressive or threatening nations, nor do they defend democracy; in many cases U.S. military interventions are for the purposes of exploitation and dominance.  He further observes that the people should not believe that national strength is measured by military strength.  Above all, he maintains that the people should not be so ready to believe lies generated by the Pentagon and their militaristic political allies in order to justify military actions and imperialist policies.
 
       Such an ideological reorientation with respect to the role of the military in the nation is precisely one of the tasks of an alternative political party.  As I have argued in previous posts, an alternative political party must formulate an alternative narrative of the nation, which redefines the meaning of patriotism, which unmasks the imperialist character of U.S. foreign policy, and which seeks to strengthen the nation by developing sustainable forms of production and by seeking mutually beneficial forms of commerce with other nations.  Astore helps us to understand that such an alternative national narrative would include a genuine concept of national security, leaving behind exaggerations created to justify the militarization of the economy and society.  A politically effective alternative narrative would lead the people to understand that excessive military expenditures undermine the economy of the nation in the long run; and that, when such excessive military expenditures are justified by lies, deceptions, and distortions, they undermine the capacity of the people to understand global affairs as well as the moral fabric of our nation.  An alternative political party must lead the people toward a sounder political, economic, ideological, and moral foundation, thereby fulfilling the historic hope of the nation to constitute a republic that would be an example to the world of human dignity.

Reference
 
Astore, William J.  2019.  “How the Pentagon Took Ownership of Donald Trump: Six Ways to Curb America’s Military Machine.”  Tom Dispatch (April 30).

     In 2005, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez declared the need for “socialism for the twenty-first century,” thus stimulating reflection on the characteristics of socialism.  The question emerges, how are the socialist models of the twenty-first century different from the socialist models of the twentieth century?  In addressing this question, it seems to me possible to identify nine points of current socialist continuity with the socialism of the last century; and seven points of evolutionary change, in which the differences between socialism today and the socialism of the last century become evident.
 
Points of Continuity
 
The taking of power through any means necessary.  The revolutions in China, Vietnam, Cuba, and Nicaragua came to power through guerrilla wars that first attained control of rural territory and then moved to capture control of the cities.  The Russian Revolution came to power through a combination of the formation of popular councils (soviets), mass protests, the arming of workers, and the taking control of some strategic military garrisons; it is evident that the use of arms was a component of its strategy for taking power.  In Venezuela, the taking of power was through the electoral process, but the revolutionary leader was a career military officer who had been working for years on the revolutionary transformation of the military.  In general, the socialist revolutions in political power today have developed for structures of armed defense and armed resistance to a military invasion and occupation, if they were to be invaded by a military power; this preparedness has functioned as a partial deterrent to military intervention by the global powers.
 
The structures of popular democracy.  The triumphant socialist revolutions of the twentieth century for the most part developed structures of popular power as an alternative to bourgeois representative democracy, as well as mass organizations integrally tied to popular power.  Elections at the base are direct elections among multiple candidates, whereas they are second-degree elections at higher levels, elected by delegates elected at the lower levels.  Structures of popular democracy are less developed in the socialist projects that have emerged in the twenty-first century, but their experience confirms the need for the further development of popular democracy, if popular consensus and political stability is to be attained.
 
The vanguard.  The majority of the people think in terms of concrete problems, and most do not spontaneously analyze their problems from a global, historical, and scientifically informed perspective.  The people, therefore, must be led by a committed and prepared vanguard, which plays a central role in the education of the people.  The role of the vanguard in the construction of socialism is often misunderstand in the capitalist societies of the West, where it erroneously is assumed that the people do not decide.  In fact, the people decide, doing so with the guidance of the vanguard.  That is, the decision of the people is based on public debate that is framed or reframed by the vanguard, rather than of the basis of a public debate that is framed by particular elite interests, as occurs in capitalist societies.  In socialism, in carrying out its role of leading the popular revolution, the vanguard checks the manipulation of public debate by the elite.
   
The important and necessary role of the state in the economy.  The government formulates a national plan for social and economic development, and the state itself is a key actor in the economy.  The socialist revolutions in political power in the Third World plus China and in Russia have made important and significant advances through this strategy, largely ignored by Western academics and the corporate controlled media.
 
The protection of the social and economic rights of the people.  The socialist governments played an important role in the formulation of Articles 22 to 29 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which describe the various social and economic rights of the people.  The socialist movements take the view that education and health care are rights, not privileges that are distributed on the basis of capacity to pay.
 
Science, technology and economic development.  From the outset, the socialist revolutions recognized the need for economic development, in order to provide for the social and economic needs of the people.  To this end, they have supported scientific research, especially research that it integrally tied to technological development and economic development.  In addition, they appropriate from Western scientific and technological advances that they see are useful for the project of scientific, technological, and economic development.
 
Women’s equality.  Socialist movements were among the earliest supporters of the cause of full and equal rights for women, and in positions of political power they have been committed to this principle, even though it has taken decades to overcome traditional customs among the people.  This commitment has included full opportunity for women in employment and in political leadership; full funding for the particular health needs of women, including reproductive rights; and the protection of women from violence and abuse.  The commitment is to immediate equality of educational and employment opportunity for women and girls; and to long-term equity, or absolute equity in the distribution of wealth, income, and power.  Equity can take a long time to be realized, because of culture and customs; it should not imposed ahead of educational and cultural advances.
 
Racial and ethnic equality.  Leaders of socialist movements have understood racial and ethnic prejudice and discrimination as functional for the ideological legitimation of prevailing social and economic inequalities; according, they view it as an antiquated relic of the past.  They believe that this view as confirmed by recent development in science, which show that differences in skin color have emerged from ancient differential levels of exposures to the sun, and they have no relation to human capacities and qualities.  As in gender equality, the commitment to racial and ethnic equality involves short-term commitment to full equality of opportunity, and commitment to equity in the long term to economic and cultural development.
 
Public media. The twenty-first century socialist projects in Latin America have permitted private ownership of the principal media of communication, because they did not have sufficient political power and ideological influence to move to state control of the media.  However, the experience of the destructive and counterrevolutionary role of corporate ownership of the mass media make evident the need for public ownership of the principal media of information.
 
Evolutionary changes
 
Power to the people.  In the vanguard of the revolution are found not only factory workers, mineworkers, construction workers, and service workers, but also farmers and professionals.  Indeed, peasants and professionals played the most decisive roles in the triumph and subsequent development of socialist revolutions of national liberation in the Third World plus China.
 
Various forms of property, including private property and foreign investment.  These components were present from the beginning, out of necessity.  As productive needs continued to evolve, and as experience demonstrated that private property and foreign investment were effective in responding to needs, diverse forms of property came to be recognized explicitly as necessary.  Socialist economic theory has arrived to understand the necessary and important role of national and foreign private property, even though complementary to that of state property, in the national plans for economic and social development during the stage of constructing socialism.
 
A nationalist internationalism.  In the West, there emerged a movement of internationalist solidarity among the workers of the world, standing against the manipulation of patriotic sentiments of the workers in order to attain their participation in imperialist wars.  However, in the colonies of the capitalist world-economy, the socialist movement was integrally tied to the forging of a sovereign nation that would exercise control over its own resources.  Accordingly, the great revolutionaries of the Third World, such as Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro, were great patriots.  They forged an understanding of internationalism different from that of the West.  Their internationalism finds space for the legitimate and necessary defense of national interests and for the expression of patriotic sentiments.  Accordingly, socialism for the twenty-first century not only sees the importance of the nation, but moreover, it tends to express the revolutionary project primarily as a defense of the sovereignty of the nation and the dignity of the nation’s people, such that the nation becomes the unifying and integrating concept of the revolution.  Third World revolutionary internationalism, therefore, respects the sovereignty and dignity of all nations, and it expresses and acts in solidarity with all of the peoples of the world.  Such cooperation among nations and solidarity among peoples is seen by socialism today as necessary for the sustainability of the world-system and to ensure the future of humanity.
 
The protection of nature and sustainable development.  The twentieth century socialist revolutions came to power before global ecological consciousness had emerged.  Its subsequent embracing was consistent with its historic commitment to science.  Taking into account its need for economic development, it rejected the tendency of the Western ecology movement toward a pejorative view of development; and it arrived to the notion of sustainable development.  Accordingly, it treats ecological issues in a comprehensive and balanced form, integrated with a commitment to promote the economic development that the people need.
 
The family as a necessary unit of socialist society.  There has been a tendency in intellectual Marxism to view the traditional family as reproducing the oppression and exploitation of women and of restricting the sexual and economic options of men and women, thus envisioning the abolition of the family.  However, in the experience of socialism, the necessity of the family in the construction of the socialist society can to be understood, because in practice, parents, grandparents, and other relatives play an important role in the socialization of values.  At the same time, the diversity of families is recognized: families include single parent families, blended families, heterosexual couples, and gay couples.  And the full equality of women in the family is affirmed.
 
Religiosity as an element of a revolutionary people.  Marx famously wrote that “religion is the opiate of the people,” and there has been a historic tendency in socialist movements for leaders and intellectuals to believe that religious belief is a superstitious and antiquated legacy of the past, which would disappear as the people developed a more mature understanding.  However, experience has demonstrated the persistence of religious beliefs among the people, even as socialist states are lay states that are neutral toward religion.  Socialist projects have evolved to view religious persons as included in the diversity that comprises a revolutionary people.
 
Gay rights and transgender identity, and their inclusion in the socialist revolution.  The socialist revolutions came to power before the question of gay and lesbian rights and transgender identity became issues of public debate.  Indeed, at the time that most of the twentieth century socialist revolutions came to power, psychologists defined homosexuality as an illness, and the socialist revolutions possess a commitment to science.  As science has moved toward affirming homosexuality and transgender identity as a part of nature and humanity, socialism has moved toward recognition of rights, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, including the right of gay marriage.  In the case of Cuba, the Party and the government have indicated that they will not adopt a gay marriage law without the consent of the majority of the people, in accordance with the principal that socialism is attained through education of the people, and it cannot be imposed.
 
Conclusion
 
     When the contradictions of the modern-world system first became evident during the 1960s and 1970s, the global elite reacted with a neoliberal economic war against the world’s poor, beginning in 1980.  Subsequently, it launched new wars of aggression, seeking to assure control of the vital resources of oil and gas.  In taking such actions, with ignorance of or unconcern for their consequences for the long-term wellbeing of humanity, the global elite has made evident the unsustainability of capitalism, the capitalist world-economy, and the neocolonial world-system.
 
     If capitalism no longer can work, perhaps socialism could.  Unfortunately, our images of socialism have been shaped by the Cold War, in which distorted images of a distorted form of socialism were widely disseminated.  We tended to overlook, then, the other forms of socialism that emerged as the Cold War began, in places like China and Vietnam, and then in Cuba, and then in Nicaragua, and then in Venezuela and Bolivia.  Our overlooking of them was in a general sense consistent with treating the world of the peoples of color as essentially unimportant.  However, these socialist projects were, on the basis of their accumulating experiences, deepening the human understanding of socialism, the only practical alternative to a capitalist world-economy in decline and decadence.  They thus constitute an important source of wisdom.  Our duty is to study these continually evolving socialist projects, not only to more fully understand what socialism is, but also to discover what they have to teach us with respect to the possible formation of socialist movements in the USA and the nations of the North.

     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.

     Talcott Parsons, a prominent U.S. sociologist of the 1950s and 1960s, once observed that Western capitalism and Soviet socialism world evolve toward each other.  Indeed, at that time, with workers in the core increasingly attaining the protection of their social and economic rights, and with newly independent governments demanding true sovereignty, one could imagine an enlightened evolution toward capitalism with a human face in the West.  One could interpret global dynamics as involving an evolution toward full protection of the democratic rights of persons and nations; thus creating a world-system that was increasingly, out of necessity, moving to greater cooperation, equality, and sustainability.  In such a scenario, Third World movements would be more oriented to accommodation, rather than revolution, because of the enlightened turn of the global elites.  And in the Soviet Union, which already had undermined its Leninist structures of popular democracy with bureaucratic domination, there would be a greater orientation to the development of democratic structures, either in the form of socialist popular democracy or capitalist representative democracy, in order to facilitate economic relations with the West
 
     Things did not turn out the way Parsons had expected.  The capitalist world-economy began in the 1960s and 1970s to show signs of serious problems, resulting from basic structural contradictions.  Beginning in 1979, the global elite, not understanding the source of its problems, took a turn to the Right.  It rolled back reformist concessions to the working and middle classes in the core and to the national bourgeoisies of the periphery and semiperiphery, and it launched aggressive economic and military actions against the nations and the peoples of the world.  With these actions, global elites has demonstrated their incapacity for taking an enlightened road toward capitalism with a human face.  For China and the Third World, the turn to the Right by the global elite deepened the moral and political unacceptability of the neocolonial world-system.  For the Third World, it became increasingly evident that an alternative road for humanity was the only possible option.
 
     The alternative Third World road has been developed most fully and successfully by China, Vietnam, and Cuba, which have developed sustained socialist projects.  The three socialist revolutions were led by charismatic leaders with exceptional understanding and leadership capacities.   In the case of China, three exceptional leaders have emerged: Mao, who led the people in the restoration of Chinese sovereignty and in fundamental social transformation; Deng, who directed the opening of the economy toward commerce in the capitalist world-economy, promoting the economic development of the nation; and Xi, who currently leads the nation in the “New Reform,” which gives greater emphasis to the protection of social and economic rights, ecological sustainability, and international cooperation.  (See various posts in the category China). 
 
     In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh led the people in the unification of the nation and the establishment of its sovereignty.  Since Ho’s death, the party that he created and formed has led the nation as a vanguard party.  (See the category Vietnam).
 
     In Cuba, the socialist revolution is in transition from personal leadership by charismatic authority to collective leadership by a vanguard party.  The initial steps toward the development of a collective structure to replace the personal authority of Fidel were taken in the 1960s.  For five decades, Fidel formed the revolutionary vanguard party through pedagogical discourses.  When Fidel retired for reasons of health in 2009, the party began to play a more dynamic leadership role.  However, there did not occur a full transition from charismatic leadership to vanguard party leadership, inasmuch as Raúl assumed positions, previously held by Fidel, at the head of the state and the party; and Raúl possesses a level of charismatic authority, by virtue of his leadership capacities, and because of his historic role as second in command of the Cuban Revolution.  Recently, Raúl has stepped down from his position of head of state, and the National Assembly of Popular Power has elected Miguel Díaz-Canel as President of the Council of State.  Although this represents a further step toward vanguard party rule, the transition is not yet complete.  In his initial address to the National Assembly on April 19, 2018, Díaz-Canel proclaimed that Raúl, in his capacity as head of the Party, will continue to make important decisions.  Raúl’s term as First Secretary of the Central Committee of Party ends in 2021, and he has indicated that he will step down at that time.
 
     Leadership by a charismatic leader and a revolutionary vanguard formed by a charismatic leader is a general phenomenon of revolutionary processes (see the category Charismatic Leaders).  Such a political process, an alternative to the political structures developed as a legacy of the bourgeois revolutions, is necessary for the triumph and consolidation of popular revolutions.  In general, the people possess a rebellious attitude, and they often organize protest actions spontaneously.  However, the people must be led, because most do not have a historical and theoretical understanding of the structural roots of their problems, nor do they necessarily understand the art of politics. 
 
      Because the three socialist revolutions have developed alternative political processes, different from those of representative democracy, global corporate and elite actors exploit the differences in an effort to discredit the revolutions.  Such ideological manipulations seek to promote among the peoples of the world the belief that charismatic/party leadership is undemocratic and authoritarian.  This elite propaganda is supported by news media and educational systems, which are structured to prevent the people from observing the structures and dynamics of the alternative revolutionary political process.   
 
     We should not be deceived.  The alternative charismatic/party leadership, far from being an anti-democratic process, is actually an alternative form of democracy, which in most respects is more advanced than representative democracy.  Its foundational structure is the popular council, developed in places of work and study and in neighborhoods, in which the people express their interests, concerns, criticisms, hopes, and desires.  They elect their delegates, who in turn elect higher-level delegates, in a system of indirect elections in various interrelated institutions.  In this process, the party plays an important role in educating and leading the people, but it does not direct the nation without popular support.  It could not possibly do so, because of the highly developed structures that give space to the voices of the people.
 
      The structures of popular democracy facilitate that party members are aware of the desires of the people.  In the three socialist projects of China, Vietnam, and Cuba, this structured capacity to understand the people led to awareness by the party of the need and desire of the people for an improvement in their material conditions.  So the parties turned to the development of pragmatic economic policies that were designed to elevate the general standard of living of the people. 
 
     We can see a pattern here: an evolution of pragmatic socialism in two stages.  During an initial stage of thirty years or so, the definitive sovereignty of the nation and fundamental social transformations are accomplished.  On this foundation, there evolved a second stage, during which leaders in the three socialist nations turned to pragmatic, beneficial relations with the governments, corporations, and organizations of the capitalist-world economy, with the intention of elevating the standard of living of the people.  Various pragmatic policies have been adopted, including the expansion of self-employment, small-scale private capital, material incentives, cooperatives, joint ventures with foreign capital, and foreign-owned enterprises.  These pragmatic reforms, it should be understood, are undertaken in the context of socialist projects, in which the state, rather than the market, rules the economy; in which state planning is fundamental; in which state ownership of the principal means of production persists; and in which the capitalist enterprises, foreign and domestic, are strongly regulated.  These reforms are undertaken with the intention of elevating the material needs of the people, inasmuch as the people have expressed their desire to develop a form of socialism that does not require long-lasting material hardships.  During this second stage, there also emerges rectification of negative consequences of the economic development, such as increasing social inequality.  Such policies of rectification become more common as the economic development proceeds.
 
     The pragmatic economies policies developed by China, Vietnam, and Cuba do not imply that these nations have turned to capitalism, and this is a point concerning which many Western intellectuals do not have a clear understanding.  In a capitalist political economy, the market rules.  Those who benefit most from the market live in obscene wealth, separate from the people; while those who cannot provide for their needs are left to their fate.  The rule of the market distorts the political process, in that the elite and the wealthy finance the electoral campaigns and careers of politicians, who have become adept at pretending to defend the needs of the people while they in reality protect the interests of corporations and financiers.  After decades of this political game, the political processes of the representative democracies have become decadent, characterized by superficial, ahistorical, non-theoretical, and segmented debate.  As the decadence deepens, a spectacle emerges with frequency, in which those who make critical exposés are converted into the issue by virtue of public dissemination of information about their private lives.  To some extent, the people have discerned such decadence, and as a result, “representative democracy” had entered into a crisis of legitimation. 
 
     None of these dynamics of the capitalist political-economic system are found in the political-economic systems that have been developed in the socialist projects of China, Vietnam, and Cuba.  These three nations have developed socialist political-economic systems in which the state is controlled by the delegates of the people, and the state rules, guides, and regulates the market, defending the interests of the nation and the people.  These political-economic structures and dynamics are fundamentally different from the political-economic systems of the core nations of the capitalist world-economy, in crisis and in decadence.
 
     An important consequence of the decadent political system of representative democracy is that the political leaders of the powerful nations are not able to respond with intelligence or morality to the problems that emerge from the contractions of the world-system.  Indeed, there is not even a clear understanding among the global elite that the world-system has been immersed in a sustained structural crisis since the 1960s, as a result of the fact that the world-system, following an international standard of competing imperialisms, had reached the geographical limits of the planet and had overextended its ecological limits.  Incapable of understanding the roots of its problems, the capitalist political economy since 1968 has responded to its sustained structural crisis with economic and military attacks on the peoples of the world.  In doing so, the global elite has demonstrated the unsustainability of the world-system as a capitalist world-economy, thus revealing that socialism is the necessary road for humanity. 
 
      But the socialism that is the necessary road is the pragmatic socialism exemplified by China, Vietnam, and Cuba.  The necessary socialism is not an extreme ultra-Leftist socialism that sees no room in the economy for private capital or for foreign capitalist enterprises, or that expects of the people a level of understanding and commitment that are beyond the capacities of most.  Rather, it is a pragmatic socialism, in which state planning rules; and the plan, with practical and common sense intelligence, defines a role for the market, in response to the productive requirements of the system and the needs of the people.  A pragmatic socialism that appropriates techniques and strategies from capitalism, giving space to private capital in order to enhance productivity, and channeling the surplus that private capital generates to pay the social debt and to modernize the economy.  A pragmatic socialism in which the political process is guided by delegates of the people, whose rise to positions of authority was not driven by money or ideological manipulation.  A pragmatic socialism in which concessions are made to the materialist desires of the people, even as an exemplary vanguard, formed from the most committed of the people, demonstrates the qualities of sacrifice, study, and disciplined work.  Meanwhile, the state stands as the director of the economy and as the expression of the political will of the people, whose delegates constitute the highest authority within the state.
 
    The pragmatic socialism of China, Vietnam, and Cuba differs from Western European social democracy, which was an important political sector in Europe for approximately 100 years, from the last years of the nineteenth century to 1979.  Social democracy attempted a reformist road to socialism, struggling in the context of a capitalist world-economy and political structures of representative democracy.  It had two great weaknesses.  First, it acquiesced to neocolonial domination, accepting material gains that were based largely on neocolonial domination.  It did not see that its gains were economically and politically unsustainable.  Its gains resulted from elite concessions offered in the context of the basic structures of the capitalist world-economy and neocolonial world-system.  The elite would not concede the structural transformations necessary for the sustainability of the world-system, implying steps toward the formation of an alternative more just and sustainable world-system.  Secondly, social democracy or democratic socialism was operating as an actor in political processes that it did not control.  An important actor to be sure, but not the principal actor.  It thus could attain no more that reformist concessions, which ultimately would be proven after 1980 to be unsustainable, in the context of the structures of the capitalist world-economy. 
 
      Like Western European social democracy, China, Vietnam, and Cuba represent a moderate, gradual path in the construction of socialism.  But they do so from a position of political power in their nations.  Although they must operate in the context of the capitalist world-economy, they have political control in their own nations.  From a position of political power in the nation, they proceed decisively when it is politically and economically possible, demonstrating their fidelity to the people.  But they move gradually and with political intelligence when the situation is more complicated, always seeking to proceed on the basis of popular consensus.  From a position of political power in particular nations, they are constructing socialism gradually, with political intelligence, on a basis of popular consensus, and on a scientific foundation. 
 
      So what the socialist projects of China, Vietnam, and Cuba are developing is different from the other models in modern political experience.  It is not capitalism, savage or enlightened; it is not social democracy; and it is not ultra-Leftist utopianism.  It is a pragmatic socialism, based on the popular taking of power in particular nation-states; and proceeding gradually and with political intelligence to protect the social and economic rights of the people and the sovereignty of the nation, in a global context that is organized to negate it.
 
     The tragedies, conflicts, and violence of the last fifty years are showing in human experience and in social and political practice the necessary road for humanity.  The capitalist political economy is demonstrating is unsustainability.  Meanwhile, pragmatic socialism is indicating the necessary road for humanity: a socialism without ultra-Leftism, and a socialism that is pragmatic and not ideological.  
 
     In the 1930s in the United States, the “Russian question” was the subject of intense debate.  Did the purges of the 1930s mean that Russia had ceased to be socialist?  James P. Cannon, who was elected the first secretary general of the Socialist Workers’ Party at its founding in 1938, considered that a full understanding of the Russian question was necessary for a revolutionary party in the United States.  He maintained that it was important to distinguish between Leninism and Stalinism, in order to avoid the confused conclusion that the Stalinist deformations were a consequence of Lenin.  Such a confusion would lead a party member to the counterrevolutionary view that Marxist-Leninist principles are undemocratic, leading to reformism and other errors.  He also maintained that it was necessary for a revolutionary party in the United States to defend the Soviet Union against all imperialist aggressions, in spite of its deformations.  Such a clear international understanding, he argued, is necessary for a revolutionary party, in order to capacitate it to educate the workers toward consciousness of the possibilities that they hold, if, with discipline and intelligence, they were to follow the road of the taking of political power.         
 
     Cannon’s teachings that have significance for us today.  We in the Left must seek to educate the people and to lead them toward the taking of political power.  In order to do so, we must have a clear understanding of what has been evolving in the socialist projects of China, Vietnam, and Cuba.  These socialist projects are showing that the people can take power from the amoral representatives of the economic elite, and it can subsequently direct the state toward policies in defense of the rights of citizens and the sovereignty of nations.  These socialist projects show that socialism, in its pragmatic form, is possible; as the capitalist world-economy, in its savage stage, is showing that socialism is necessary.  We must understand these fundamental dynamics, so that we have the foundation for the organization and education of our peoples.

     In response to my blog post “On ‘ultra-Leftist’ political errors” 2/4/2018, Ken Megill and I have exchanged ideas.  My response to part of his commentary forms today’s post.

     Ken Megill was born in Kansas in 1939 and earned a PhD from Yale in 1966.  His involvement in Leftist organizations and political currents, in both the United States and Europe, dates to the 1960s.  He presently lives in Washington, D.C.  He writes:

      Ken is right: my journey for many years involved observation and reflection rather than practice.  This was driven by a couple of factors.  One was that I had been formed in the context of the U.S. liberal-conservative post-World War II consensus, and when I encountered the student and black power movements in the late 1960s, I was discovering questions that I had not previously asked.  I had a lot to learn, and I sensed this.  Secondly, I found the possibilities for practice to be theoretically and politically very limited, so I was not inclined to full participation.  My orientation was to participate in protests, but mainly as a participant-observer, learning and reflecting.  

     It was in Cuba that I became more connected to practice, and I came to define myself as a revolutionary.  As a result of the triumph of the Revolution, the entire Cuban society is a manifestation of revolutionary practice, so anyone with revolutionary ideas is immersed in revolutionary practice.  Those Cubans who were aware of the intellectual work that I was doing (reading, teaching, and writing oriented to the people of the United States) referred to me as a revolutionary before I myself did.  Subsequently, I recognized the revolutionary character of my work.  I observed that revolutionaries in Cuba carry out a variety of tasks necessary for revolutionary transformation, and one of them is intellectual work, which involves deepening one’s own understanding and seeking to raise the political, historical, and social consciousness of the people.  For a number of years now, I have been working with Cuban academics and intellectuals as we seek to fulfill our revolutionary duties through our intellectual work.

      So my revolutionary self-consciousness, in which I see myself as a revolutionary, has emerged in the context of revolutionary Cuba.  But my work remains oriented to the people of the United States (and other English-speaking peoples of the North).  Although I have published in Cuban journals and I engage in dialogue with Cuban intellectuals and the Cuban people, thereby contributing to the formation of Cubans, my principal work is the intellectual and political formation of the people of the USA and the North.  For this reason, I write principally in English, and my most recent contributions have been my new book on Cuba and the world-system and my blog posts.  

      However, intellectual work, although a necessary part of revolutionary processes, cannot alone accomplish revolutionary transformation.  It must be integrated with political practice.

      Is revolutionary practice possible in the United States?  Given the present mobilization of forces of the Right and the confusions and divisions of the Left, it appears to be impossible.  But when one looks at the political and ideological conditions in nations shortly before popular revolutions emerged, one sees that similar conditions tended to exist, giving the appearance of impossibility.  The cases of Russia in the early 20th century, China and Indochina in the 1930s, Cuba in the early 1890s and again in the 1950s, and Latin America in the 1990s, to mention a few.  The Cuban revolutionary José Martí wrote that our task is to make the impossible possible.  So I have arrived to believe that we do not have permission to conclude that a popular revolution in the United States is not possible.  Our duty is to possess that revolutionary faith that nurtures a committed analysis, which can identify the ideological and political steps necessary for forging the needed changes in the current constellation of political and ideological forces.

     What must be done to forge a popular revolutionary process in the United States?  If we observe the steps taken by triumphant revolutionary processes in other lands, we see that they formed alternative political structures (political parties or social movement organizations) that were dedicated to the taking of power as delegates of the people.  To this end, they called on the people for support, through the dissemination of manifestos and platforms.  The manifestos were characterized by scientific analysis of the structures of domination and exploitation, explaining them in a way that the people could understand; and they were characterized by projections of transformation through the taking of power by the people.  The platforms were full of political intelligence, making specific proposals that were connected to the concerns and sentiments of the people, never alienating them with self-righteousness.  These experiences in other lands point the way for us: an alternative political party that transforms what a political party does, in that it educates the people as it calls them to the taking of political power, constantly demonstrating mastery of the art of politics.

      So this is the basic idea concerning what needs to be done.  But I do not (yet) understand how to implement it.  I would guess that it is a question of putting together a group of people with sufficient consensual theoretical understanding and practical organizational experience, which would collectively understand how to proceed forward.

      In The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy, Minqi Li projects the immanent collapse of the capitalist world-economy.  Li is a Chinese intellectual who migrated to the United States in 1994 and now teaches economics at the University of Utah.  Li believes that China in the epoch of Mao had important gains with respect to the protection of the basic needs of the people (see “Does socialism work?” 12/4/2017).  He maintains, however, that with the death of Mao in 1976, there was a coup d’état that resulted in the triumph of a bureaucratic counterrevolution, which made possible a transition to capitalism in China, beginning in the 1980s and consolidated in the 1990s.  He further sustains that the rise of China since 1980 is intensifying the tendencies that are causing the disintegration of the capitalist world-economy (Li, 2008:55-65).

      With an understanding influenced by world-systems theory, Li has arrived to understand important facts with respect to the capitalist world-economy.  First, he understands that the capitalist world-economy historically has expanded economically through the conquest of new lands and peoples.  In the development of the capitalist world-economy, workers (converted peasants, artisans, and serfs) acquired the capacity to organize themselves in defense of their interests.  As a result, labor costs and taxes rose over time, thus reducing the rate of profit.  Capitalists responded to this problem by acquiring new territories and attaining control over cheaper labor resources.  However, this process of economic expansion through successive geographical expansions ended during the twentieth century, as the capitalist world-economy reached the geographical limits of the earth.  In addition, Li correctly understands that the superexploitation of labor, in which the laborers are paid less than what they need to live, limits the capacity of the global consumer market to expand (Li, 2008:12, 15).

     Clearly, the world-system needs to reform, inasmuch as the world-economy can no longer expand through territorial expansion, and given that the global dual-wage structure limits economic expansion.  Indeed, the popular movements of the world demand such reform.  In the core states, the movements call for a return to the pre-1980 protection of wages, worker’s rights, health care, and education.  In the Third World, the popular movements seek true sovereignty, so that states can act to protect the social and economic rights and needs of the people.  However, as Li discerns, the system is not able to reform.  Financially, it cannot afford to concede to the demands of the popular movements without reducing the rate of profit for capitalists.  A global new deal is not politically possible, given the power of global interests that would stand opposed to such a reformist project (Li, 2008:17, 121). 

     Inasmuch the system cannot reform itself, Li concludes that that a global socialist transformation is necessary.  He projects that by the year 2050 there will be various socialist governments, brought to power by the growing proletarianization of labor and by increasing working-class consciousness.  The future socialist governments will confront various serious problems that are the legacy of a world-system dedicated to the endless accumulation of profit rather than to providing human needs and conserving the ecological balance of the earth.  The socialist governments, accordingly, will have an interest in an alliance that creates a socialist world-government, thus creating an alternative socialist world-system that would replace the present capitalist world-economy, already showing clear signs of disintegration (Li, 2008:23, 139-73, 179-82, & 187-88).

    Li believes, however, that the socialist states that emerged during the twentieth century and that exist today have confronted a basic contradiction that results from the fact that they have had to survive in the context of a capitalist world-economy.  In order to protect themselves, the socialist states have had to compete militarily and economically with the global powers.  This requires them to adopt capitalist structures for the organization of labor, thereby giving greater political space and legitimacy to privileged bureaucrats and technicians that defend particular interests.  A new bureaucratic-technocratic elite forms that is able to take control of the socialist revolution, directing it to the defense of its particular interests and ignoring the needs of the workers.  Accordingly, in the context of the capitalist world-economy, socialist states have a tendency to fall to a bureaucratic counterrevolution, which subsequently invokes intellectuals to defend policy changes with justifications that are framed as an evolution of revolutionary socialist ideology in light of new conditions (Li, 2008:50-65).

     I concur with Li on basic points.  The capitalist world-economy has contradictions that the global elite is unable to resolve.  There are various possible scenarios, including neofascism, various regional world-systems, or chaos.  And possibly, there could emerge an alternative socialist world-system, which would be based on cooperation, solidarity, universal human values, and harmony with the earth; and which is the best hope for humanity.

       However, I am not convinced by Li’s claim that the current socialist states generally fall to bureaucratic counterrevolutions.  To be sure, I have been inclined to believe, since my reading of Trotsky and the British Trotskyite Ted Grant, that the Russian Revolution fell to a bureaucratic counterrevolution with the death of Lenin (see various posts in the category Russian Revolution).  However, if it is true that something similar has occurred in China, we should not conclude that the triumph of a bureaucratic counterrevolution is a pattern for the Third World.  We should keep in mind that Russia and China were both empires, and both were only partially peripheralized by the European powers during the rise of the European-centered world-economy.  In these fallen empires, the remnant industrial and agricultural bourgeoisie, petit bourgeoisie, and bureaucracy would constitute a powerful force, able to unify as a bureaucratic counterrevolution.  But the Third World has had a different historical experience.  The most advanced of the Third World kingdoms and empires were far more limited in territory and in structures of domination and exploitation than were the Russian and Chinese empires.  And the Third World peoples and societies were conquered, colonized, and peripheralized in a form more penetrating than the partial peripheralizations of Russia and China.  As a result, in the Third World colonial situation, the national bourgeoisie possessed interests in common with the majority of workers and peasants, and it often played a key role in the most radical struggles for national and social liberation.  In the context of the Third World revolution for national and social liberation, a counterrevolution by the petit bourgeoisie, the technocrats, and the bureaucrats is a phenomenon, but it has limitations, and it can be contained by the formulation and dissemination among the people of a socialist ideology.  In the Third World, when triumphant popular and socialist revolutions fell, it principally was a consequence of imperialist interventions.

      Moreover, in the case of China, I am not yet convinced that the revolution fell to a bureaucratic counterrevolution following the death of Mao.  I note, for example, that Li is persistently unclear in his description and definition of the “bureaucratic capitalists” who supposedly now rule China (see 2008:27, 106).  Moreover, he maintains that the transition to capitalism involved the opening of cheap Chinese labor as peripheral labor in the world-economy, thus generating new profits and facilitating the rise of China (2008:70-72, 109). However, in the peripheral and semi-peripheral regions of the world-economy, low-wage export manufacturing does not facilitate the rise of a nation.  Thus, questions emerge.  Did China’s incorporation in the world-economy in the 1980s and 1990s have characteristics different from the general phenomenon of peripheral low-wage export manufacturing?  If so, were these unique characteristics conceived by the Chinese Communist Party as part of a strategy for the long-term economic development of the nation?  Would not such a strategy be consistent with a project of national and social liberation?

     I will keep these questions in mind as I continue to study the Chinese Revolution, which stands as an important historic example in the current historic moment.  The peoples of the world, experiencing the negative effects of a world-system in terminal crisis, are increasingly arriving to consciousness of the need to construct socialist nations and a more just, democratic, and sustainable world-system.  Therefore, it is important for us to understand the gains and limitations of the historic socialist projects.  Moreover, China is especially important, because the renewed Third World popular movements tend to view China as playing a cooperative role in the emerging alternative project for a more just world.  They view China’s foreign policy as fundamentally different from that of the imperialist powers of the European-centered world-system.

​Reference
 
Li, Minqi.  2008.  The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy.  New York:  Monthly Review Press.

     In his address to the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 19, 2017, Donald Trump asserted:  “From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure.  Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems.”

     Standing in contrast to the assertions of Trump are the views of Minqi Li, a Chinese intellectual who migrated to the United States in 1994 and obtained a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Massachusetts, and who now is Professor of Economics at the University of Utah.  In The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy, he notes that from the early nineteenth century to 1950, China experienced a significant economic decline.  He writes that China’s GDP accounted for one-third of the gross world product in the early nineteenth century, but it had fallen to less than five percent by 1950.  Similarly, the gap in per capita income between China and the leading states of Western Europe was 2:1 in the early nineteenth century, but it had widened to 20:1 by 1950.  “China was reduced to being one of the poorest populations in the world” (Li, 2008:24).

      But the triumph of socialism in China in 1949 established the political conditions for creating an alternative reality.  A transformation was accomplished through the nationalization of industry and the establishment of state ownership of industrial enterprises; and through an agrarian reform program that confiscated the property of landholders and distributed it to landless and poor peasants.  As a result, China’s long decline was reversed, and the basic human needs of the people were met.  In the Maoist period of 1950 to 1976, China’s growth rate surpassed that of the major Western powers and was significantly better than the world average.  Moreover, a system of centralized planning facilitated the development and diffusion of industrial and agricultural technologies that enabled the subsequent rise of China that began in the 1980s (Li, 2008:30-38).

      In Li’s view, the achievements of the Chinese Revolution during the Maoist period demonstrated the superiority of socialism over capitalism in providing for the basic human needs of the people in a social and economic situation defined by high levels of poverty. 

​     Li maintains that socialist states in general have demonstrated a capacity to provide for the basic human needs of their populations. 

​     Li quotes Vicente Navarro, who undertook a comparative study of the health conditions in capitalist and socialist countries:

     Located in Cuba, I can affirm the validity of the observations of Li and Navarro.  In socialist Cuba, as a consequence of the triumph of a popular socialist revolution in 1959, there has been developed an alternative political process of popular democracy, which ensures that the decision-making process in the political, economic, educational, cultural, and informational institutions are under the authority of the elected delegates of the people.  From this political reality other things follow: free and high-quality educational and health care systems; state support for needs with respect to nutrition, housing, and transportation; a public discourse that is free of distortions and manipulations; state support for culture and the arts; and safety in the streets.

     The opinion of Donald Trump is widely held in the United States and other nations of the North.  However, it is not necessarily a view that is based on empirical observation of the historical social-economic reality in which the political project of socialism has been forged.  Nor is it based on personal encounter with the social movements of the neocolonized peoples of the earth, whose insights into the global structures of domination and into the possibilities for their emancipatory transformation require the serious consideration of all who seek to understand.

      For more reflection on the Cuban Revolution and its meaning for the world-system, please see my book, The Evolution and Significance of the Cuban Revolution: The light in the darkness.

​References
 
Li, Minqi.  2008.  The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy.  New York:  Monthly Review Press.
 
Navarro, Vicente.  1993.  “Has Socialism Failed?  An Analysis of Health Indicators under Capitalism and Socialism.”  Science & Society 57(1):6-30 (Spring).
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted October 10, 2016

      In these reflections on the Third World project, we arrive at the point of understanding that revolutionary popular coalitions that seek to take power in the nations of the North are both necessary and possible.  Let us review and reassess what we have seen in these previous twenty-two posts on the Third World project.

      We have seen that, in reaction to centuries of conquest, colonialism and peripheralization, the colonized peoples of the world have not, for the most part, sought vengeance.  The prevailing concept of justice among Third Word peoples has not been that of just punishment for crimes committed.  Rather, the colonized peoples for the most part have held to a concept of social justice, which has led them, with full consciousness of the past, to project a different future for humanity, leaving behind the legacy of domination and superexploitation.  

      In the period of 1948 to 1979, the leaders of the Third World movement for national and social liberation accomplished a formidable political task: they attained the international organizational unity of the formerly colonized peoples of the world on the basis of a consensus with respect to fundamental principles.  They formulated a vision of a New International Economic Order, characterized by full respect for the equal sovereignty of all nations, the protection of the social and economic rights of all persons, and harmony with the natural environment.  

     But the New International Economic Order was disdainfully cast aside by the global powers.  In reaction to the proposals of the governments that formed the Non-Aligned Movement and the G-77, they aggressively attacked the Third World project.  There was no moral restraint on their methods: they sent the armed forces; they assassinated leaders; they created the phenomenon of the external debt, and used it to impose weak and accommodating states on the formerly colonized peoples of the world.  In the Islamic World, taking advantage of the tension within the Islamic movement between anti-colonial modernism and traditionalism, they supported Islamic radicalism in order to derail national liberation, and without any intention of accepting a world envisioned by the Islamic traditionalist.

      Through their military and economic aggressions and their duplicity, the global powers were able to block movement toward a New International Economic Order and to preserve the colonial foundations of the neocolonial world-system.  But in doing so, the global powers failed to attend to the fundamental contradictions of the world-system.  These contradictions included the economic need to expand without limit, consuming natural resources on a planet whose finite limits had been reached and overextended.  And they included the contradiction between, on the one hand, the democratic ideals of the sovereign equality of nations and the human rights of all persons, and on the other hand, the negation in practice of these ideals, through economic and financial penetration, military intervention, and military dictatorships.

       Third World hopes were deferred by the global neoliberal turn of the 1980s, and the Third World project died; but it was born again.  We can see in retrospect that the first signs of rebirth occurred in 1994.  During the period 1998 to 2012, self-proclaimed socialist governments would appear in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua; progressive governments would emerge in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay; socialist Cuba would endure and attain respect and admiration throughout the world; China and Vietnam would persist in their historic socialist projects, and they would deepen ties with the socialist and progressive governments of Latin America; popes would applaud the new tendencies in Latin America and would deepen relations with the socialist and progressive governments of the region; the Islamic Republic of Iran would persist in its insistence on its right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and it would expand economic and cultural relations with the Non-Aligned Movement and with socialist and progressive governments of Latin America; and the nations of the Third World would reaffirm their historic commitment to the Third World project of national and social liberation and to South-South cooperation (see “Hugo Chávez Frías” 8/4/2016; “The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” 8/5/2016; “The Chávist presidency of Nicolás Maduro” 8/9/2016; “The Movement toward Socialism in Bolivia” 8/11/2016; “The citizen revolution in Ecuador” 9/19/2016; “The Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua” 9/20/2016; “Latin American and Caribbean unity” 9/21/2016; “The renewal of South-South cooperation” 9/22/2016; “The spirit of Bandung lives” 9/26/2016).  

      Meanwhile, as the Third World project renews, the global powers have used all available means to undermine it.  Hypocritically and cynically declaring itself to be defending of democracy and human rights, the United States seeks to delegitimate and destabilize the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua; and to undermine BRICS.  As in the 1970s and early 1980s, the global powers fail to attend to the fundamental contradictions of the neocolonial world-system, seeking only to defend their particular short-term interests.  They seek to preserve their domination in a world-system that increasingly demonstrates its unsustainability.

      There are numerous signs of the unsustainability of the neocolonial world-system.  Historically, transnational corporations made concessions to popular demands in the core and accepted a certain level of social programs by core states.  The social programs were financially feasible as a result of core exploitation of peripheral regions, and through a strategy of government deficit spending.  But as profits stagnated and the government debt became overextended, the global elite launched in the 1980s an ideological attack on the state, preventing core governments from making adjustments in a form that would have preserved social programs, which were necessary for political legitimation and social control.  As a result, core states are ideologically and financially limited in their capacity to make concessions to popular demands, reversing a tendency that had been evolving since the nineteenth century and especially in the post-World War II period.  Since 1980, the peoples of the nations of the North have been increasingly abandoned by their governments, giving rise to a loss of faith in the state and a delegitimation of the political process of representative democracy.  The lack of structures of popular education in the North facilitate that the peoples of the North do not understand the sources of the global crisis and of their abandonment. But they correctly sense that they have been abandoned.

     In the absence of a proposed political project that defends one or more sectors of the people, the political system of representative democracy has degenerated.  Politics has become the technique of fund raising and political advertising, accompanied by the art of appearing to defend the people while actually defending particular interests that finance electoral campaigns.  In the context of the decadence of the political system of representative democracy, and the limited understanding and anxieties of the peoples of the North, politicians emerge with neo-fascist messages, speaking against immigrants, gays and terrorists.  In this panorama, the Left shows signs of life, but the European and US Left have failed to propose a comprehensive, moral, and historically informed political-economic alternative that would be able to attain the support of the people.

      At the same time, the increasing deterioration of economic and social conditions in peripheral and semi-peripheral zones has provoked an uncontrolled migration to the core.  This structurally rooted peripheral-core migration had been expressing itself since the 1960s, but it has been exacerbated by the neo-fascist wars and military interventions unleased by the global powers in the Middle East.  

      In short, rather than seeking, beginning in the 1970s, a reform of the neocolonial world-system in response to the proposal by the Third World project for a New International Economic Order, the global powers have ideologically, economically and physically attacked the dignified delegates of the colonized, the oppressed and the poor.  As a result, we are left today with a world-system that increasingly shows signs of profound structural crisis: terrorism, violence, social and economic insecurity, environmental degradation, ideological manipulation, political delegitimation, and spiraling financial speculation.  It is a world with spectacular wealth for a few; and increasing poverty, exclusion and vulnerability for the majority.  It is a world in which cynicism reigns.  And it is a world from which many seek retreat; through consumerism, individualism, religious fundamentalism, or various unhealthy or healthy addictions.

     The situation appears to be hopeless, but this is only a matter of appearance.  The Third World vision of a New International Economic Order (of the 1970s) and a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system (today) remains a viable option for humanity, and this is understood by the peoples in movement in the Third World.    

     In the North, however, we continue to act as though the proposal from below has never been made, a tendency found even among organizations and intellectuals of the Left.  So the key to the future of humanity is an awakening of the organizations and intellectuals of the Left in the North, based on an appreciation of the wisdom of the proposal for a more just and sustainable world-system, proposed by the colonized peoples of the planet.  

     We have seen that intellectuals of the North can arrive at universal understanding through cross-horizon encounter, which involves personal encounter with the charismatic leaders and social movements of Third World national and social liberation, taking seriously their insights (“Beyond Eurocentrism” 10/5/2016).  Through cross-horizon encounter with the colonized, we learn fundamental facts about the structures of domination of the world-system: colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism and neoliberalism.  And we learn that colonial and neocolonial domination simultaneously creates development and underdevelopment.

      In cross-horizon encounter, we also learn that the neocolonized peoples have created an international social movement that integrates the major social issues of national domination, class exploitation, racial and ethnic discrimination, gender domination and exclusion, and ecological degradation.  The Third World project has been from the beginning an integrating project.  It appropriated, expanded and deepened the concepts and values of the bourgeois democratic revolutions, seeing in them the basis for defending the rights of the colonized.  It appropriated the concepts and values of the proletarian revolution, adapting them to the conditions of the colonized, thereby creating a synthesis of Marxism-Leninism and the Third World perspective.  When the women’s and ecology movements gained force in the West, the radical Third World project appropriated their concepts, reformulating them in accordance with the principles of the Third World movement.  By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the radical Third World project had attained an integration of issues in theory and in practice.  As a result, the radical Third World project represents a theory and practice more advanced than what is found in the North, where understandings and action are fragmented into distinct issues.

     When intellectuals and activists of the North do not encounter the Third World project, they do not see the integration that the Third World movements have attained.  Looking at the Third World project from a partial perspective rooted in a particular popular sector, they perceive the Third World movement approach to a particular issue (e.g., race, gender, ecology, or sexual orientation) as deficient, not grasping that the essential insights of each have been reformulated in order to accomplish their integration.  They do not perceive that the integrating reformulation is central to the force that the movement has attained in the minds and hearts of the people, each formulated in accordance with the particular ideological, political and social conditions of the nation.  Rather than rejecting Third World formulations from a partial perspective, intellectuals and activists in the North would do better to appreciate the advanced character of the Third World project, and learn from it.  

     When we encounter the integrated and historically conscious international Third World social movements, we learn that, beginning with Vietnam in 1945, it has been taking power in key countries. Charismatic leaders have been nurtured, and alternative political parties and political formations have been created, and they have led the people in the taking of power.  The road to power was made possible by: the formulation and dissemination of a historically and socially accurate explanation of the structures of domination and exploitation, thus delegitimating leaders that accommodated to the colonial-neocolonial powers and foreign corporations; the emitting of concrete proposals that connect to the daily needs of the people; and the demonstration of courage and self-sacrifice by revolutionary leaders, thereby showing their commitment to defending the people and the nation.  

     If intellectuals and activists of the North were to study the speeches and writings of Third World charismatic leaders and the Third World movements of national and social liberation, they would find the fundamental ingredients of the necessary direction for the popular movements of the North: the formation of an alternative political party that educates and organizes the people, with the long term goal of taking political power.  It would be an alternative political party that redefines in practice what a political party is and does.  It would issue concrete demands connected to the frustrations of the people, but it would see the issuance of demands as a tactic for the organization and education of the people.  It also would develop and disseminate materials for popular education, and it would form study groups and popular schools for leadership formation.  It would engage in direct action strategies in order to involve the people in a social and personal quest for liberation from the dominating economic, social and ideological structures, seeing these strategies also as integral to popular education.

     The Third World charismatic leaders have understood the importance of the unity of the people, and so should we.  No popular sector should see its issues and concerns as having priority over those of other sectors of the people.  We intellectuals and activists of the United States need to formulate a comprehensive understanding that affirms the historic demands of all of the sectors of our people.  We need to form a popular coalition that theoretically and strategically unites the various sectors of our people, in a popular movement that seeks to defend the nation and the people, in cooperation with the peoples and government of the Third World.  Such a popular movement would see itself as a component of the movement formed by humanity in defense of itself, seeking to break the power of those who would sacrifice humanity in defense of particular interests (see “A socialist revolution in the USA” 2/1/2016).

       A revolutionary popular coalition that seeks to take power in the United States and in other nations of the North is necessary.  As revolutionary parties have taken power in the South, they have found that the most serious obstacle is the amoral and determined opposition of the governments of the North, through military and/or political interventions, ideological manipulations, and economic warfare. Therefore, the taking of power by the peoples of the North, transforming imperialist and interventionist foreign policies into a policy of North-South cooperation, is necessary for the transition from an increasingly unsustainable capitalist world-economy to a socialist world-system.  And a revolutionary popular coalition is possible.  The intellectual legacy of Marx, Lonergan, Wallerstein and others, and the dignified example of the leaders and movements of the colonized peoples of the earth, establish its possibility.

​     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