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Popular democratic socialist revolution

1/15/2016

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     In the last two posts, we have seen during the last twenty years Third World popular movements have emerged to demand “a just, democratic and sustainable world-system.”  And we have seen that during the last eighty years, socialist revolutions have triumphed in the Third World, and that today socialist governments, in addition to making internal structural transformations, are cooperating with progressive governments to develop relations that are based on mutual respect and solidarity, seeking to sidestep the world-system’s network of international relations based on domination and the pursuit of particular interests.  This alternative system of international relations can be interpreted as the first steps in the development of a socialist world-system, in which the twelve practices of socialism would be the norm (see “A just, democratic & sustainable world-system” 1/12/2016; “The twelve practices of socialism” 1/14/2016).

       In order for the transition to a socialist world-system to advance, the people in the nations of the core must take power away from the elite and put it in the hands of persons who are morally and intellectually prepared to defend the rights of the people, the wellbeing of the nation, and the sustainability of the world-system and the earth. Nation-states are principal actors in the world-system, and thus the transition to a socialist-world system would require that popular revolutions triumph in various nations, and especially important are the more powerful, wealthier, and larger nations.  The transition to a socialist world-system would occur through cooperation among socialist and progressive governments of the world, just as the transformation of Latin American political reality has occurred through cooperation among socialist and progressive governments in the formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), and just as BRICS is developing an alternative through the cooperation of governments that are mostly socialist and progressive.

     How can socialist revolutions triumph in the core?  To address this question, we should observe what triumphant socialist revolutions have done.  Such observation should not be based in an ethnocentric pejorative evaluation, in which we assume that the poverty of their nations makes it evident that they have made fundamental errors, a false assumption that leads us to invent or magnify limitations.  Rather, our observation should be based on recognition that the peoples of the Third World have accomplished something that the peoples of the North have not accomplished, namely, the development of sustained popular movements that, in some important cases, have taken power from the elite.  Our observation should be based on appreciation that we the peoples of the North have much to learn from the movements of the Third World.  

     Let us, then, first seek to understand what the popular and socialist movements of the Third World have done, and how they have done it, including also the historically significant case of the Russian Revolution, viewed as important by the Third World socialist revolutions.  Then we can proceed to analysis, in which we adapt their insights to the conditions of the nations of the North, so the peoples of the North also can attain popular power. 

      The taking of political power.  In the change to socialism in particular nations, popular movements have emerged that have sought to take control of the political institutions of the nation, and to use political power to also take control of economic, financial, media, educational, and health care institutions.  The taking of power by the people is necessary.  Popular movements mobilize protests and issue demands, but they alone are not enough; they must be seen as strategies that facilitate the goal of the taking of power.  Elites make concessions to protests and demands, but always in a form in which it maintains control of the political-economic system.  It is idealistic to think that, in the context of the crisis of the world-system, a just and sustainable world-system can be created without the taking of power by the people in various nations.  The taking of political power must be an explicit goal of the popular movements of the North.

     A popular movement.  The movements that have taken power are popular movements and not proletarian or industrial working-class movements.  The emphasis on proletarian revolutions has been central to the Marxist intellectual tradition.  But in fact, from the beginning, the revolutions were formed by social subjects of various popular classes.  Marx emphasized the industrial working class, because he discerned that it would become increasingly important as capitalism developed.  But the movement to which he was tied was in fact formed by artisans and intellectuals as well as industrial workers. The Russian Revolution was actually a revolution of peasants and workers.  Trotsky emphasized the industrial working-class, because of his understanding of the particular conditions of Russian industry, and Trotsky’s interpretation influenced Trotskyite parties to adopt a classic Marxist formulation of a revolution of the industrial working class. Lenin, on the other, adapted Marx to Russia by formulating the concept of a worker-peasant revolution, led by a working-class vanguard.  In Vietnam, the revolution was formed principally by the petit bourgeoisie and peasants.  Ho Chi Minh adopted the orthodox formulation of a working-class revolution, but he placed professionals and peasants in the category of workers, for they would become workers during the process of socialist transformation.  Unlike Ho, who studied in the Soviet Union, Fidel studied Marx, Engels and Lenin on his own, and he rather freely adapted Marxist concepts to the Cuban situation.  He understood the revolution to be a popular revolution, formed by various sectors of the people, including agricultural workers, industrial workers, tenant farmers, small businessmen, teachers, professors and professionals.  With the emergence of new social subjects in Latin America in the 1980s (women and indigenous persons), the example of Fidel to view the people, composed of various popular sectors, as the revolutionary subject was taken by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Evo Morales in Bolivia.  We can today arrive at the formulation that the socialist movements of the world have been popular movements, formed by various sectors of the people.  We also should be aware that the great majority of the leaders of the popular movements, but not all, have come from the petit bourgeoisie.

      Charismatic leaders.  The popular movements have lifted up charismatic leaders.  At first, responding to some injustice, popular protests emerge.  But during the mobilization, charismatic leaders appear.  Charismatic leaders have studied intellectuals and leaders of their own nations and other lands, especially those who were connected to popular movements.  They have developed exceptional gifts for understanding the structures of domination and exploitation and the strategies that should be adopted.  And they possess an exceptional capacity to explain to the people and to connect to the concerns and hopes of the people.  They also are highly committed to the people and the nation.  Many gifted leaders spontaneously emerge in the movement.  But one or two leaders with exceptional gifts emerge to be a symbol of the movement of the people.  Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel, and Hugo Chávez are emblematic (see various posts on Charismatic Leaders).  

     Charismatic leaders are a product of the movement, nurtured and formed by it.  As they mature, and the movement recognizes their gifts, they are lifted up by the movement to speak on its behalf.  Speaking with charismatic authority, they denounce the global powers and the structures of the established system, and they speak in defense of the poor, the oppressed, the exploited, and the excluded.  They lead the movement to a more advanced stage, and they play the important role of unifying the movement, which invariably is divided into different tendencies.  Their presence is indispensable for the triumph and subsequent gains of the revolution, once it attains power.  

     Charismatic leaders are the prophets of our time, and their speeches and writings are sacred texts, like the texts of the words and the teachings of the prophets of ancient Israel, Jesus, and Muhammad.  They are the teachers of all of us, transcending the culture and the nation in which they spoke.  They are the most important part of the universal culture of humanity, and their teachings constitute important advances in human understanding of social dynamics.  We need to study them all, regardless of the particular nations any one of us is from, if we are to understand what is true and do what is right.  

     An alternative political party.  During the movement, an alternative party emerges, led by the charismatic leader.  It is an alternative to the traditional political parties that represent the established power.  And it is an alternative also to other parties of the movement, whose understanding is flawed in some aspect or other.  The party is only secondarily concerned with elections.  Its principle role is to educate the people, to develop their political and social consciousness, and to call the people to action, even heroic action.  The members of the party are well informed about the history of the nation, the structures of domination, the possibilities for emancipation and liberation, and the international situation.  And they have complete loyalty to the charismatic leader, as a result of their personal awareness of his exceptional gifts.  The charismatic leader cannot be everywhere at the same time, but the party can be.  The party members are the voice of the charismatic leader in every place of work and study, in every factory, field, university classroom, and neighborhood.  The party is indispensable for the education of the people and for the united and mass action of the people.  

     A manifesto.  Popular revolutions have issued manifestos, which explain the present situation of the nation and the popular struggle in historical and global context.  They denounce the structures of domination and exploitation, and they explain the necessity of the taking of power by the people.  The Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels during the Western European popular movement of the 1840s, is the most famous popular manifesto.  History Will Absolve Me, the testimony of Fidel at his 1953 trial for the attack on Moncada Barracks, functioned as the manifesto of the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s.  It galvanized the people and announced a new stage of the Cuban Revolution, which had begun in 1868; it put Fidel and the July 26 Movement at the head of the Cuban Revolution.

     A platform.  The popular revolution has a platform, a set of concrete proposals that address the most pressing injustices that the people confront.  The platform of Lenin involved the transfer of power from the parliament to the popular councils (soviets), the withdrawal of Russia from the World War I, and the distribution of land to the peasants.  The call for power to the soviets, peace and land galvanized the people, and it put Lenin and the Bolshevik Party at the head of the Russian Revolution.  

     The platform of the Cuban Revolution was contained in History Will Absolve Me.  Its concrete proposals included the restoration of the Constitution of 1940, agrarian reform, profit-sharing for workers and employees, educational reform, nationalization of US-owned utilities companies, and the confiscation of property that had been fraudulently obtained through government corruption.  All of these proposals responded to abuses and injustices that the people experienced, which were provoking disgust with the Batista regime and alienation from the neocolonial republic. They were proposals that Fidel and the July 26 Movement promised to implement when they arrive to power, a promise that was delivered. 

     The institutionalization of charismatic authority.  After the charismatic leader is gone, the party and its leaders continue to lead the people, on the basis of the teachings of the charismatic leader, in a constantly evolving national and international situation.  The party must be organically tied to the people.  Its members must be from and of the people, living among them, and not living apart.  It must listen to the concerns of the people, which was one of the most important gifts of the charismatic leader.

     Thus, if we observe the revolutions of the world, we see that the people have taken control of political and other institutions of the nation through the formation of popular movements that have lifted up charismatic leaders, have formed alternative political parties, and have issued manifestos and platforms.  We may have other conceptions concerning how revolutions ought to occur, but we should be guided by the general process through which the elite has been dislodged from power in other lands.  If human experience is to be our guide, we should understand these revolutionary dynamics and take them into account, as we reflect on what needs to be done by the people in the nations of the North.  

      The adaption of these lessons from the revolutions of the world to the particular conditions of the United States will be the subject of our next posts.


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The twelve practices of socialism

1/14/2016

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      The peoples of the Third World are today in movement calling for a just, democratic and sustainable world system (see “A just, democratic & sustainable world-system” 1/12/2015).  The most advanced of these movements understand that the development of such an alternative world-system requires a transition from a capitalist world-economy to a socialist world-system.  These advanced movements have proclaimed “Socialism for the XXI Century.”

      What is socialism?  The principles and characteristics of socialism cannot be formulated idealistically, on the basis of the abstract concepts isolated from real social movements and from the practice of socialism in nations where socialist revolutions have triumphed.  If we observe popular movements and socialist nations through encounter, with a listening that seeks understanding, we learn that the meaning of socialism has evolved over the last two centuries, and that there are a diversity and plurality of socialist practices.  But we also can discern that there are common practices in socialist nations.  Twelve such practices can be identified, on the basis of observation of two nations that once were socialist (Russia in the time of Lenin and Chile under Allende) and six nations that continue to develop socialist projects (China, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador).  These twelve practices have not been fully developed in all eight cases, but they can be identified as general patterns.

     (1)    Power is in the hands of delegates of the people.  Socialist nations seek to develop a political process that is an alternative to representative democracy, which is a type of government originally created by Western bourgeois revolutions and subsequently developed by the Western powers.  Representative democracy is susceptible to elite control, for it is able to impose a debt on elected officials through its capacity to finance election campaigns, and it is able to frame and manipulate public discourse by virtue of its ownership of the media of communication and as a result of its capacity to fund think tanks.  As an alternative to representative democracy, socialist nations have developed popular democracy, which is established on a foundation of a multitude of small popular assemblies. The people meet in numerous local assemblies in order to discuss problems and issues and to make recommendations, and this structure of face-to-face dialogue weakens the capacity for ideological manipulation by a wealthy class.  The popular assemblies also meet to select delegates to serve in a higher level of popular power.  The elected delegates in turn select delegates to serve in a still higher level, until ultimately the highest political authority of the nation is established.  In socialist nations, citizens who serve in the highest levels tend to have the same demographic characteristics as the people: they are professionals, workers, peasants, students, women, and members of ethnic groups.  Political parties tend not to participate in the selection of those who hold political authority.  Political parties play more of a role of educating, disseminating ideas, and participating in the public discourse.  Citizens who hold political authority are selected by the people without mediation by political parties, and they are selected on the basis of personal characteristics that they possess. In some socialist countries, like Cuba, representative democracy has been eliminated, and the country is governed through structures of popular power; in others, like Venezuela, structures of representative democracy and popular democracy exist side-by-side.

     (2)  Sovereignty.  The nations of the Third World are historically colonized.  Their most important economic, political, and cultural institutions were under the control of the colonizers.  They successfully struggled to attain political independence, but the independence that they achieved was not a true independence, as a result of the fact that the colonial powers were able to preserve important economic and commercial structures established during colonialism.  The transition to neocolonialism was accomplished with the help of the collusion of the national bourgeoisie in the newly independent nations, and neocolonial control is reinforced by financial and ideological penetration and political maneuvering of the neocolonial power(s).  When neocolonial control breaks down, the global powers turn to military intervention, under any pretext.  Responding to this neocolonial situation, socialist nations of the Third World affirm the true sovereignty of the nation as a fundamental principle.  They maintain that each nation has the right to decide on its type of government and form of development, and the right to control over its natural resources and the cultural formation of its people.  In their quest for definitive independence, the socialist nations have played a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement and in the processes of South-South cooperation.  (See various posts in the categories of Neocolonialism, Latin American and Caribbean unity and integration, and South-South cooperation).

     (3)  Cooperation among nations.  The socialist nations of the Third World maintain that the world-system should be guided by the principle of cooperation among nations, and they have tried to develop cooperative relations with other nations.  This has not always been possible, because the global powers have adopted a policy of conflict toward the socialist nations.  But the socialist governments have historically welcomed opportunities of cooperation with other governments.  Today, as the crisis of the world-system deepens, and as the incapacity of the global powers to respond constructively to the crisis becomes manifest, many progressive governments are taking the road of cooperation with the socialist governments.  This can been seen with respect to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC for its initials in Spanish) and the BRICS, which are multi-national associations that seek to develop mutually beneficially commerce as well as social and cultural exchanges.  These associations are establishing in practice an alternative model for humanity: the development of a world-system based on cooperation and mutual respect rather than conflict and domination.  (See declarations emitted by CELAC and BRICS).

     (4) Solidarity among peoples.   Parallel with the principle of cooperation among nations, socialism has practiced solidarity among peoples.  There are numerous examples of persons who, driven by commitment to social justice, have gone to other countries to join in a political struggle for liberation.  Socialism calls for international support for any people confronting hardship, whether its roots be political, commercial, or climatic.  Socialist governments participate in solidarity among peoples, by fostering cultural, academic and sports exchange among peoples; as well as by coming to the support of another nation in difficulty, as is illustrated by the support of the Cuban government for the government of Angola in the 1980s, and by the sending of medical missions to Africa by Cuba in response to the Ebola epidemic of 2015.

      (5)  Social and economic rights.  The concept that democratic rights include the social and economic rights is one of the most important principles of socialism, and socialist governments have invested considerable resources to national projects that seek to provide a minimal standard of living, adequate nutrition and housing, access to education, and health services.  Socialism maintains that these goods and services, necessary for living well and in dignity, should never be distributed solely on the basis of market principles, and it maintains that decisive state action is necessary to ensure that the economic and social rights of all persons are protected.    

     (6)  State directed economic development plans and various forms of property.  There has been some tendency to think that the nationalization of the means of production is the defining characteristic of socialism.  It is true that nationalization of the major means of production has been an important feature of socialist nations. However, socialist nations in practice have sanctioned other forms of property as well, giving varying degrees of emphasis to them in accordance with productive and commercial needs under particular conditions.  These forms of property, in addition to state ownership, include joint ventures with foreign capital, cooperatives, medium and small-scale capitalist enterprises, and private entrepreneurship.  What has distinguished the socialist nations is the central role of the state as an economic actor and as the author of a national plan for economic development.  In socialist nations, economic development is not left to market demands, nor do capitalists’ interests shape economic policy. Economic policies are developed by the state in representation of the interests of the majority of the people.  When socialist states grant space to private capitalist enterprises, they have made the judgment that such a policy can contribute to the production and distribution of goods and services, always a pressing concern, and as such it is beneficial to the people and to the long-term development of the nation.  It is an error to think that when a socialist nation grants space to foreign or domestic capital, it is no longer socialist.  

     (7)  Diversity in production.  Most socialist revolutions came to power in conditions in which the economy of the nation was characterized by the exportation of two or three raw materials and the importation of a variety manufactured goods and food products.  This created a situation of economic and political dependency on the international market and on one or two core nations that were the destiny of its exports and the source of its imports.  In order to facilitate true independence, the socialist nations have tried to strengthen and diversify their manufacturing and agricultural productivity.  This is often a difficult challenge, as a result of limited capital.

     (8) Public media.  Socialist governments have sought to place the media of information under public control.  Socialism does not believe that state ownership of the media restricts freedom of speech.  To the contrary, it maintains that private ownership of the media limits and distorts the awareness of the people, and this places constraints on their capacity to freely develop as persons.  When there is state ownership of the media, the directorship of the various networks and outlets of the media are appointed by ministers of the state, which are appointed by political authorities that are directly and indirectly elected by the people.  This implies that editorial judgements, rather than being guided by the particular interests of corporations and the powerful, ultimately must respond to the political leaders of the people, thus increasing the possibility that the media will serve the public good. Some socialist nations, like Cuba, have entirely eliminated private ownership of the media; others, like Venezuela, have invested in the expansion of the public media at the international, national and local levels, which exists alongside a regulated privately-owned media.

     (9)  Gender equality.  Socialist nations have been at the forefront of the struggle for the rights of women.  They have been guided by the principle of the full participation of women in the construction of a socialist society, including positions of authority in political and economic institutions.  This has been accomplished in a form that has not been conflictive.  In Cuba, for example, the struggle for gender equality has been consistently presented as “a women’s revolution within the socialist revolution,” and it has been supported from the beginning by the highest levels of leadership of the socialist revolution.

     (10) Ecological sustainability.  Socialist nations were not at the forefront of the ecology movement prior to 1990.  However, beginning in 1992, the socialist nations began to integrate the issue of the protection of the environment into its comprehensive project for the creation of an alternative, more just and sustainable world-system.  It has recognized and proclaimed that the current patterns of production and consumption of the world-system are unsustainable, and that they are likely to lead to climatic and ecological consequences that could threaten the survival of the human species.  While they recognize that all nations have a responsibility toward nature, they also insist on a “differentiated responsibility,” in which the industrialized nations of the North, which are primarily responsible for environmental degradation and have greater resources, take a particular responsibility for responding to the environmental crisis that threatens all of humanity. Within their own nations, socialist nations seek to protect the environment, to the extent that their resources permit, and taking into account that they must balance ecological issues with the need to provide for the basic necessities of the people (see “Sustainable development” 11/12/13).

     (11)  Patriotism.  Inasmuch as the popular struggles in the Third World were struggles for the sovereignty of the nations, their charismatic leaders were great patriots, and they called the people to patriotic service of their nation.  Ho Chin Minh, for example, formed in the tradition of Confucian nationalism, at the age of 29 took the name of Nguyen the Patriot.  Fidel Castro, educated in the nationalist tradition formed by the Cuban revolutionary José Martí, constantly invoked patriotic symbols in his discourses.  Revolutionary patriotism in the Third World, however, is completely unlike patriotism in the North, where politicians manipulate the patriotic sentiments of the people in order to induce them to support unjust and imperialist wars. In the Third World, the patriotic sentiments of the people are invoked in order to defend the sovereignty and the dignity of the nation against imperialist interventions.  The meaning and context of patriotism varies greatly, depending on which side of the colonial divide it is found (see “Revolutionary patriotism” 8/15/2013).

     (12)  Spirituality and revolutionary faith.  Third World socialist revolutions have been guided by spirituality.  Revolutionary spirituality draws from and is influenced by religious traditions.  Ho Chi Minh, for example, was formed by Confucian scholars; and Fidel was educated in Catholic schools.  But revolutionary spirituality re-expresses religious spirituality.  It proclaims the essential dignity of the human species, and it calls upon all to live in accordance with human dignity and to fulfill duties toward humanity as a whole and to nature.  Revolutionary spirituality sets aside the cynicism of the North, and it is based on faith in the future of humanity.  As the Cuban essayist Cintio Virtier has observed, it is “a revolutionary faith in the potentialities of the human being.”  It is an “uncontainable force” that “sees in history what is not yet visible” (2006:197).  This faith is the source of revolutionary sacrifice.  When it looks at the structures of domination and exploitation in our world, it does not escape to other-worldliness or to personal acquisitions; rather, it proclaims that “a better world is possible.”  (See “Universal human values” 4/16/2014 and “The revolutionary faith of Fidel” 9/15/2014).    

     Socialism cannot be implemented from above.  The global elite has demonstrated, particularly since 1980, its indifference to the long-term wellbeing of their own nations and of the peoples of the earth as well as to the sustainability of the earth itself.  In the countries of the North, where socialism has not triumphed, the people must take political and economic power away from the global elite.  How can this be done? We should form an understanding of the answer to this question by observing how Third World socialist movements were able to do it. This will be the subject of our next post.


Reference

Vitier, Cintio.  2006.  Ese Sol del Mundo Moral.  La Habana: Editorial Félix Varela.     
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A just, democratic & sustainable world-system

1/12/2016

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     Beginning in the 1970s, the world-system entered into a multifaceted global crisis, as a consequence of the fact that it had reached the geographical limits of the earth, taking away its historic mechanism for productive and commercial expansion, which had been the conquest of new lands and peoples.  The elites of the core nations responded to the crisis by launching the neoliberal project, a global economic war against the popular classes and the nations of the world. Neoliberalism has been characterized by the imposition of economic recipes, utilizing pressure by international finance agencies supplemented by interventionist wars and political interference in the affairs of nations seeking autonomy.

      The response of the global elite to the structural crisis of the world-system has given rise to a popular revolution in the Third World, in which the people, organized and led by charismatic leaders, are seeking to take power away from the elite.  The peoples of the Third World in movement are repeatedly putting forth the slogan of a just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  They are constructing such an alternative world-system in theory and practice.

      A just world-system.  The ethical concept of a just society has ancient religious roots.  In the earliest sacred texts of Ancient Israel, we find a concept of a God who acts in history to liberate the people from oppression and to defend justice for the oppressed. Later, as Israel evolved to a nation, the prophets of Israel denounced economic injustices as well as the luxury in which kings lived while people were living in poverty.  The prophets condemned the lust for economic power; and they declared economic inequality and social injustice to be sins.  They defended poor farmers who suffered at the hands of powerful landlords.  They called for a change in lifestyle and for social justice.  And they proclaimed that history is not governed by powerful empires but by God.  Subsequently, the religious traditions of Israel influenced the development of Christianity and Islam, and the concept of the ethical responsibility of the faithful to construct a just society became central to liberation theology in both religious traditions.  Today, the peoples of the world, influenced directly and indirectly by these religious traditions, have appropriated the ethical principle of social justice, and they are demanding a just world-system.  For specific biblical texts of Ancient Israel, see Anderson (1986:108, 198, 278, 287-88, 293, 297-98, 337, 345, 372, 383, 480, 495, 503, 523); for liberation theology in Christianity, see Gutierrez (1973, 1983) and Brown (1984, 1993); for liberation theory in Islam, see Ansary (2009) and Schulze (2000).

     A democratic world-system.  The bourgeois revolutions of the late eighteenth century established the principle of a society in which all citizens are equal and all have inalienable rights.  But at first, the rights were confined to political and civil rights for white men with property or education.  For the next two hundred years, social movements emerged that would attain respect of citizenship rights for all persons, regardless of class, race, ethnicity, or gender.  And the popular movements would deepen the concept of democracy to include social and economic rights, such as the right to a decent standard of living, education, and health care.  When the anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements of the national liberation emerged in the Third World, they proclaimed that nations have rights, such as the rights to sovereignty, equal participation in the community of nations, self-determination and development.  When the peoples of the Third World today demand a democratic world-system, they have in mind a concept of democracy in this expanded and deeper sense that includes social and economic rights as well as the rights of all nations to self-determination.  They seek true independence, so that they can put into practice the most fundamental of all human rights, the right to development, in order to protect the right of the people to a decent standard of living (see “Universal human values” 4/16/2014).  

    A sustainable world-system.  Historical world-systems have risen and fallen.  The great majority of them were not sustainable, many because the center of the empire was gluttonous, and others because of ecological factors.  In the world-system today, ecological contradictions and political conflicts constitute the greatest threats to the stability and sustainability of the world-system.  The peoples of the world today proclaim that the world-system must have a harmonious relation with the natural environment, and it must develop in accordance with the ethical norms of cooperation among nations and solidarity among peoples.  The peoples of the world today demand a just, democratic & sustainable world-system (see “Sustainable development” 11/12/13).
     
     Justice, democracy and sustainability cannot be developed in the context of the structures and logic of the capitalist world-economy.   The attainment by humanity of a just, democratic and sustainable world-system will require a transition to socialism.  This will be the subject of our next post.

​References
 
Anderson, Bernhard W.  1986.  Understanding the Old Testament, Fourth Edition.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
 
Ansary, Tamim.  2009.  Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes.  New York: Public Affairs.
 
Brown, Robert McAfee.  1984.  Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes.  Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.
 
__________.  1993.  Liberation Theology.  Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press.
 
Gutierrez, Gustavo.  1973.  A Theology of Liberation, English translation.  Maryknoll, New York:  Orbis. 
 
__________.  1983.  The Power of the Poor in History.  Maryknoll, N.Y.:  Orbis Books.
 
Schulze, Reinhard.  2000.  A Modern History of the Islamic World.  New York: New York University Press.
 
 
Key words: social justice, democracy, sustainability, world-system, popular movements, Third World
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Presidential primaries in USA

8/25/2015

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     In times of crisis and uncertainty, the people lose faith in established mainstream political institutions, and they simultaneously turn to both the Right and the Left.  This occurred, for example, in Europe following the First World War.

     The emergence of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as significant contenders for the nominations of the Republican and Democratic parties is a sign that US voters are increasingly disenchanted with the two traditional political parties and with mainstream political institutions, inasmuch as both Trump and Sanders are marginal members of their respective parties, and both adopt a discourse more to the Right and to the Left of their parties.

     The growing lack of faith in mainstream politics indicates that the time may be ripe for a third party of the Left in the United States, as has occurred in Latin America, where new parties of the Left have been formed since 1995 and have captured control of governments in a number of nations, utilizing electoral procedures of representative democracy.  The new parties reacted to and took advantage of the cooperation of national elites and their political pawns in the imposition of the neoliberal project by the global powers.

      The neoliberal turn of global elites in 1980 occurred as a result of the structural crisis of the world-system, the first signs of which emerged during the 1970s.  The crisis has been caused principally by the fact that the world-system has overreached its geographical and ecological limits.  Since the sixteenth century, the world-system expanded through the conquest and domination of new lands and peoples, thus incorporating more natural resources, additional reserves of cheap labor, and new markets.  But this mechanism for productive and commercial expansion has been eroded since the middle of the twentieth century, when the system reached the geographical limits of the earth.  New technologies can increase productivity on existing land, and additional natural recourses can be discovered, but these possibilities do not provide for the sufficient growth of the system (see various posts in the section on the crisis of the world system).

      But the effort by global elites to increase levels of exploitation through the imposition of neoliberal policies does not address the source of the crisis.  Moreover, the neoliberal project has provoked popular rejection in both peripheral and core zones during the last twenty years, thus creating a situation in which the world-system is not only ecologically but also politically unsustainable.

     Coinciding with the structural crisis of the world-system, the United States has entered a period of productive, commercial and financial decline relative to other core powers.  Excessive military expenditures, rampant consumerism, insufficient investment in manufacturing, and uncontrolled financial speculation have contributed to its decline since the early 1970s.  The decline of hegemonic core powers following their ascent to hegemonic dominance is a normal phenomenon.  But the coincidence of the structural crisis of the world-system with the decline of the hegemonic core power, provoking its turn to unilateral neo-fascist militarism, has accelerated a global turn to chaos.  

     Political discourse in the United States lacks the capacity to explain the sources of the crisis of the world-system and the relative decline of the nation.  So anxiety grows among the people.  They increasingly are losing faith in mainstream political institutions.  They are turning more and more to unconventional approaches, which in the case of the presidential primaries are represented by the candidacies of Trump and Sanders.  

     But neither Trump nor Sanders points to the necessary road.  Trump’s discourse taps into fear and ignorance, and its ultimate logic would be a fascist order that would be far from democracy and social justice.  Sanders heads in the right direction, but in a far too limited form.  He has no discourse to explain the world systemic crises and the national decline nor to formulate a comprehensive national project that seeks democracy and social justice on a global scale.  Furthermore, what is needed at this moment is not a presidential candidate representing one of the two established parties, but an alternative political party.  

     The success that Sanders has had with his superficial discourse of the Left does indicate, however, that the people may be ready to follow the lead of an alternative political party of the Left that seeks to take power and govern in the name of the people.  That is to say, the people in the United States may be prepared for revolution, which would be the fourth stage in the American Revolution, the first three being the periods of 1763-1789 (establishing political independence), 1829-1876 (abolishing slavery), and 1955-72 (establishing fundamental civil and political rights for minorities and women).

      If we follow the example of successful revolutions in the world of the past 100 years, a revolutionary party of the people of the United States would need an effective manifesto and platform.  The manifesto would explain global historical dynamics, so that the people would be able to understand the crisis of the world-system and the national decline as well as the necessary constructive responses by the nation.  The platform, on the other hand, would formulate specific proposals that would address the concrete needs of the people.

      Whereas revolutions in other lands often have resulted in new constitutions, constitutional amendments would be more appropriate in the case of the United States.  More than 200 years of constitutional continuity is a significant achievement, and it should not be cast aside.  Moreover, the road of constitutional amendment is an historic legacy of the three earlier revolutionary stages of the US popular movement, resulting in the Bill of Rights; the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments; and the proposal in the 1970s for a constitutional amendment affirming equal citizenship rights for women.  In the present historic moment, the revolutionary party should propose four constitutional amendments affirming: (1) that women have full constitutional rights; (2) that democratic rights include social and economic rights, such as education, health care, nutrition, housing, and a minimum standard of living; (3) that the foreign policy of the nation must respect the full sovereignty of all nations; and (4) that the government has the right and the duty to take measures necessary for the ecological balance of the earth.

      Concrete platform proposals could include: reduction of taxes for the middle and working classes and a tax increase on corporations and the wealthy; the replacement of student loans with direct grants and the forgiveness of existing student debt; infrastructural investment to provide for needs in housing and urban public transportation and to provide employment; a minimum-wage increase; structures of community control to facilitate crime prevention, prevent police violence, and increase citizen participation; a domestic partnership law to ensure fairness for gay couples living together; expansion of structures supporting adoption and single-parenthood as alternatives to abortion, while affirming the principle of reproductive rights and the legality of abortion; universal social programs that provide support for persons in need, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender; an anti-imperialist foreign policy of North-South cooperation, with constructive proposals with respect to sovereign nations that have been demonized, such as Venezuela and Iran; cooperation with other nations in order to reduce illegal immigration, trafficking in human persons, and illegal drug trafficking; reduction of expenditures on high-technology military weapons, combined with the increasing use of the armed forces for emergency relief and construction projects throughout the world; expansion of government support for public television; and campaign finance reform, with the goal of eliminating the dependency of political candidates on the contributions of the wealthy.

      The revolutionary party should have the long-range goal of seeking to capture the presidency and the Congress in a period of twenty-five years, cultivating allies in the judiciary and the military during this period.  Its focus initially should be on the education and organization of the people, rather than on the election of candidates.  However, in the short-term, candidates could be nominated in Congressional districts with favorable demographic characteristics, such as districts with high percentages of blacks, Latinos or Native Americans.  Elected members of the Congress in these demographically favorable districts could play an important role in the education of the people throughout the nation with respect to the perspective, values, and proposals of the revolutionary party.

      The revolutionary party should be launched when there is significant support for the new political party from prominent public intellectuals and personalities, including political leaders affiliated with the Democratic Party who are prepared to cast their lot with the new party, in consideration of the challenges that the nation and humanity confront in the present historic moment.


Key words:  Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, revolution, revolutionary party

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Guiteras and the Revolutionary Union

9/5/2014

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Posted August 6, 2014

     Among those who participated in the armed insurrection led by the Revolutionary Junta of New York was Antonio Guiteras Holmes, who had been the leader of a Student Revolutionary Directorate formed in 1927.  As part of the actions of the Revolutionary Junta in August 1931 (see “The Cuban popular revolution of 1930-32” 8/4/2014), Guiteras and his followers engaged government troops in a brief combat in a plantation in the eastern province of Oriente.  The rebels suffered three casualties, and they were captured and imprisoned.  During his four months in prison, Guiteras worked with Felipe Fuentes in winning followers among the prisoners.  Fuentes was a communist leader from Oriente who was the founder of the Student Left Wing (Instituto de Historia de Cuba 1998:292). 

     Following the failure of the insurrection led by the Revolutionary Junta of New York, Guiteras severed ties with the Junta and formed an independent organization, the Revolutionary Union, in order to develop his own revolutionary project.  Guiteras was influenced by a number of revolutionary movements and ideas, including: Cuban revolutionary theory and practice, in which Martí and Mella were the most influential leaders/intellectuals (see “José Martí” 6/26/2014; “Julio A. Mella and the student movement” 7/8/2014); the Russian Revolution; the Mexican Revolution; the struggle of Augusto César Sandino in Nicaragua; the Irish independence movement; the ideas of Antonio Blanqui on the role of the revolutionary vanguard; the ideas of the French socialist Jean Jacques Jaurés; and the analyses of Marx and Lenin.  The Revolutionary Union was organized in the last four months of 1931, and it united a number of existing small insurrectional groups in the eastern and central provinces.  Its members included professionals, intellectuals, artisans, service employees, workers, farmers, veterans of the independence war, and students.  It advocated a popular, democratic, agrarian, and anti-imperialist revolution of national liberation that would create conditions for the gradual construction of a socialist society in Cuba (Instituto de Historia de Cuba 1998:293-94; Arboleya 2008:99). 

     The strategy of the Revolutionary Union was urban and rural armed struggle, utilizing such tactics as sabotage, execution of government representatives and police officers, the taking of military barracks, and guerrilla actions in the countryside.  Guiteras conceived a plan for the taking of the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, with the intention of arming the people and creating a guerrilla struggle in the eastern mountains, but the plan was frustrated by the maneuvers of the army.  On April 29, 1933, the Revolutionary Union took the barracks of San Luis, but Guiteras and his followers were forced to withdraw in the face of an army counterattack, although they were able to avoid capture.  In the second half of 1933, small guerrilla units, composed principally of peasants, emerged in the eastern and central provinces of the country, under the direction of Guiteras and the Revolutionary Union, and they continued to operate until the fall of Machado on August 12, 1933 (Instituto de Historia de Cuba 1998:294, 297; Arboleya 2008:99).

     The Revolutionary Union was a significant development.  Like the PCC, it had revolutionary goals, for it sought to develop a revolution of national and social liberation and to establish a socialist society ruled by popular sectors.  But unlike the PCC, it turned to armed struggle, as had the reformist Revolutionary Junta.  However, unlike the Revolutionary Junta, it was able to sustain armed struggle in rural areas for a period of months.

      In spite of the similarity of goals of the Communist Party of Cuba and the Revolutionary Union, the two were moving in different directions with respect to strategy, creating a division within the revolutionary sector of the popular movement.  Such divisions in revolutionary popular movements must be overcome, if the revolution is to triumph, but in this phase of the Cuban revolution, it was unable to do so.  We will return in a subsequent post to this issue.

      Although the Communist Party of Cuba did not support armed struggle during the Revolution of 1930-33, various organizations, both reformist and revolutionary, adopted the strategy.  The use of armed force had been central to the Cuban political process, practiced historically by both the forces of domination and the forces of liberation.  As a result, by the 1930s the use of armed force came to be defined as a legitimate strategy of popular struggle.  The complete lack of legitimacy of the Machado government, as a result of its repressive tactics and its representation of foreign interests, also was a factor in legitimating the strategy of armed struggle in the eyes of many of the popular leaders and many of the people.

      The necessity and the legitimacy of armed force in revolutionary processes is one of the lessons that we must learn as we seek to understand revolutionary processes of the past, present and future. But we must be careful to observe the particular subjective and objective conditions.  We must recognize that armed struggle is legitimate in many revolutionary contexts, but not all, for it depends on particular conditions.  The particular conditions for armed struggle were present in the Cuban neocolonial republic.  But they were not present, for example, in the United States in 1968, and they are not present in the United States today.  The errors of the Revolution of 1968 in the United States and the possibilities for revolution in the United States in the future are themes that we will discuss in future posts.

     Armed struggle has been integral to celebrated revolutions that have taken power, such as the Haitian, Mexican, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban, and Sandinista Revolutions.  However, we must keep clearly in mind that revolution is not synonymous with armed struggle. Revolution is the taking of power, and armed struggle is merely a strategy to this end, but other strategies can be more effective, depending on particular conditions.  In the cases of Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, revolutions took power by using mechanisms of representative democracy, although their experiences have demonstrated the need for effective civilian control of the armed forces, once power is taken.  In general, revolutions show that the taking of power requires creative strategies, for those who have power have many resources at their disposal.  The taking of power cannot be reduced to an imitation of armed struggles that have successfully taken power in certain particular conditions. 

      The emergence in 1933 of armed struggle directed by the Revolutionary Union deepened the crisis of the Machado regime, which already had been in crisis as a result of the organization of popular opposition by the Communist Party of Cuba, the emergence of reformist and revolutionary opposition among students and women, and the emergence of a bourgeois reformist opposition that had launched an aborted armed struggle (see “The Cuban popular revolution of 1930-32” 8/4/2014).  The United States, concerned that its interests would be compromised by the coming to power of the popular revolution, began to search for a way to end the Machado regime but to preserve a neocolonial republic in accordance with its interests, as we will see in the next post.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo: Un análisis histórico de la Revolución Cubana.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

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

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


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cuban Revolution, neocolonial republic, Guiteras
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The lesson of sectarianism

8/28/2014

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Posted August 15, 2014

     We have seen that the Communist Party of Cuba during the 1930s rejected a strategy of alliances with popular organizations that would not subordinate themselves to the direction of the party, and it was opposed to the government of 1933, even though this government included a revolutionary faction headed by Antonio Guiteras (see “Guiteras and the ‘government of 100 days’” 8/11/2014; and “The Communist Party of Cuba in the 1930s” 8/13/2014).  In accordance with this sectarian approach, the PCC published harsh criticisms of Joven Cuba, the revolutionary organization developed by Antonio Guiteras and his followers after the fall of the Grau government (Tábares 1998:327; see “Guiteras and Joven Cuba” 8/12/2014). 

     At the same time, Guiteras and Joven Cuba also committed the error of sectarianism.  They insisted that the unity of the popular organizations in opposition to the Caffery-Batista-Mendieta government be formed on a base of compliance with the perspective and methods of Joven Cuba and be under the leadership of Guiteras (Tábares 1998:327). 

      Moreover, the problem of sectarianism was evident not only with respect to the principal popular organizations, the PCC and Joven Cuba.  A wide variety of small revolutionary groups emerged during 1934 and 1935, with different programs and tactics, giving rise to “constant antagonism and frequent confrontations among them” (Tábares 1998:328).

      José Tábaras maintains that the antagonism among the popular organizations was an important factor in enabling the government to consolidate its power.  He writes, “The contradictions and disunity among the different organizations that were opposed to the Caffery-Batista-Mendieta government contributed much to its survival and consolidation” (Tábares 1998:328).  He concludes:
The defeat of the revolutionary process ought to be attributed, not so much to the power of those who were opposed to it, but to the division of the revolutionary forces.  Rather than uniting into a solid bloc the vast sectors of the people interested in a democratic and anti-imperialist revolution, the popular organizations wore themselves out in internal conflicts, proposing in an exclusive manner dissimilar political projects (Tábares 1998:333).
     In its most profound sense, the error was not appreciating the dialectics of theory and practice.  Revolutionary theory is formulated on the basis of practice, and it develops through reflection on experience in practice.  When there are divergent understandings within the revolutionary process, we must ask, which understanding is correct?  The answer emerges in experience.  As the revolutionary process advances, the insight and the oversight of different understandings will become clear.  In the meantime, until the answer emerges in practice, the two sides have to develop tactics of cooperation, which strengthen the force of the revolutionary process and enable it to advance.

     In the 1930-35 stage of the of Cuban Revolution, there were two competing theories: the taking of power through the creation of popular councils, which would replace the structures of representative democracy; and the taking of power through a guerrilla war emerging in the country and advancing to the city.  The Cuban Communist Party practiced the former concept; and the Revolutionary Union and Joven Cuba implemented the latter.  These organizations were by far the most influential popular organizations of the period.  The proponents of both conceptions had many beliefs and commitments in common: opposition to the existing government, on the basis of its representation of imperialist and national bourgeois interests; the taking of power by a vanguard organization in the name of the people; and the formation of a government of national liberation as a first step toward socialism.  But they disagreed concerning the strategy through which power is to be taken.  It was not a trivial disagreement, for different understandings of the road to power can imply different forms of exercising power, once the revolution triumphs.  Which was correct?  Should the people take power through the formation of popular councils, or through armed struggle?  The answer emerges in practice: one of the two approaches will have more success, and this greater success in achieving goals demonstrates its greater insight in the context of particular conditions.  

      An example of the answer emerging in practice is provided by the case of Cuba in the 1950s.  Although the Cuban revolutionary process was aborted in 1935 by the consolidation of the power of Batista, the revolution continued.  Division within the revolutionary process remained, principally in the form of conflict between a strategy of alliance with reformist sectors, including bourgeois parties, and the strategy of armed struggle.   But on July 26, 1953, an attack on Moncada Barracks by Fidel Castro and his followers announced a renewed armed struggle and a revitalization of the concept of the taking of power from the country to the city.  This heroic action was effective in galvanizing the people, freeing them from a pervasive sense of powerlessness, and renewing the hope of the people in a more just and democratic nation.  Thus, the insight of the strategy of armed struggle, in relation to the particular conditions of Cuba in the 1950s, could not be denied.  The evident superiority of this approach made possible the unification of the popular revolutionary forces on a basis of support for the guerrilla struggle emerging in the mountains of Sierra Maestra in 1957 and 1958 and spreading to the cities in late 1958, culminating in the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959.  

     In retrospect, we can see that the strategy of armed struggle was appropriate for the conditions of the Cuban neocolonial republic of the 1950s.  To be sure, the Communist Party strategy of 1930-35, involving the formation of popular councils, had much to recommend it, inasmuch as it involved the people actively in self-government, thus promoting practical education in the meaning of democracy, and it had been the successful strategy of the October Revolution.  And the Communist Party strategy, beginning in October 1935, of forming alliances with various sectors, including bourgeois parties, made possible certain concrete gains.  But the particular conditions of Cuba in the 1950s made the armed struggle a viable strategy for the taking of power: the repressiveness of the second Batista dictatorship, creating serious obstacles to the more open and visible forms of political opposition; the long history of armed conflict in the political affairs of Cuba, giving legitimacy to the tactic of armed struggle; and the willingness of the rural people to support the guerrilla struggle in practical ways. 

     With the restoration of the project of the Right on a global scale, a process that began in 1979, the post-World War II era of revolution came to an end.  The imposition of the neoliberal project and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist bloc would soon follow.  After this setback for the revolutionary forces, there emerged a period a profound critical evaluation of the errors of the revolution.  Among the conclusions was recognition of the error of sectarianism, defined as the malady in which popular organizations with common goals refuse to cooperate, because of differences in tactics or concepts.  Since the reemergence of popular movements, beginning in 1995, principally on the basis of popular world-wide rejection of the neoliberal project, the various emerging revolutionary organizations have been conscious of the need to avoid sectarianism.  They have been oriented to cooperation with one another, seeking to include in collective action the various organizations that are committed to the creation of a more just and democratic world.

     The revolution today that seeks to establish socialism for the XXI century has learned the historic lesson of the absolute practical necessity of overcoming sectarianism.  It has learned the need for unity, not a unity imposed from above, but a horizontal cooperation that respects differences and that becomes in practice a unity with pluralism and diversity.  A unity and diversity that has a base in universal human values (see “Universal human values” 4/16/2014) and in the knowledge of errors of the past, errors made by persons of good intentions who continue to be our heroes, even as we seek to overcome their limitations.  And a unity with diversity that has faith that, when there are sincere differences among us, rooted in different understandings, our experience together in common struggle will teach us the way.

 
References

Tabares del Real, José A.  1998.  “Proceso revolucionario: ascenso y reflujo (1930-35)” in Instituto de Historia de Cuba. 1998.  La neocolonia.  La Habana: Editora Política. 


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cuban Revolution, neocolonial republic, Guiteras, Cuban Communist Party, sectarianism
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Unifying the Cuban revolutionary process

8/9/2014

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Posted September 17, 2014

     During the Cuban revolutionary war of 1957 and 1958, there were organizational, tactical and ideological divisions.  The revolution was able to triumph and sustain itself by virtue of its capacity to overcome these divisions.

      When the 26th of July Movement (M-26/7) was established on June 12, 1955, a national leadership consisting of a small group of trustworthy and capable leaders was formed, under the direction of Fidel Castro.  When Fidel went to Mexico to organize the armed struggle, and later, when Fidel was directing the armed struggle in the Sierra Maestra, the national direction of M-26/7, located in Havana, was responsible for organizing all its activities throughout the country. Two types of activities emerged: a clandestine struggle in the cities, characterized by sabotage and the formation of secret cells among workers and the radicalized sector of the petit bourgeoisie; and the guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra, which as it evolved would increasingly have peasant participation.  Many of the urban leaders of M-26/7 saw the guerrilla struggle in the mountains as of secondary importance.  Using the Revolution of 1930 as their guide, they believed that a combination of mass action and sabotage in the cities would bring down Batista.  But the leaders and soldiers of the rebel army believed that they would acquire the military capacity to defeat Batista’s army and force the surrender or flight of the dictator.  At the same time, there was an ideological division within M-26/7: some were Marxist-Leninists who favored an alliance with the communist party, whereas others were anti-communist, an ideological division that existed both in the urban front and among the guerrillas (Castro 1985:229-31; Arboleya 2008:123-25).

     Although the 26th of July Movement was by far the organization with the most popular support, as a result of its heroic action on July 26, 1953, it was not the only revolutionary organization.  The second most important was the Popular Socialist Party (PSP, the communist party), which was strong particularly among urban workers, and it possessed a significant capacity to organize urban workers.  In general, the PSP membership had far more experience and political consciousness than the members of the M-26/7.  Many of the PSP had a distrustful attitude toward M-26/7, due to its diversity of ideological viewpoints, including an element of anti-communism, and its relative political immaturity. Another important revolutionary organization was the Revolutionary Directorate, a student organization led by José Antonio Eceheverría.  The Revolutionary Directorate experienced the same tactical and ideological divisions that were found in the M-26/7 (Arboleya 2008:125; Castro 1985:235-38) 

     Events during 1958 would demonstrate the greater viability of the guerrilla struggle as against the urban front, and they would solidify the dominance of the 26th of July Movement within the revolution and would strengthen the authority of Fidel within the M-26/7.  The leaders of the urban front of M-26/7 called for a general strike and actions of sabotage for April 9, with the intention of provoking the fall of Batista. But as a result of the lack of cooperation between the communist party and the urban M-26/7, the general strike failed.  The PSP, with its network among urban workers, had the capacity to mobilize workers, but the PSP was not participating in the mass action.  Although the M-26/7 had enormous prestige among the people, it lacked organizational structures to mobilize the people.  The leaders of the urban M-26/7 had mistakenly believed that a general call would bring the people to strike and acts of sabotage, in spite of its lack of organizational strength, because of its high prestige (Arboleya 2008:126).  

     The failure of the general strike had two consequences.  First, priority was given to the guerrilla struggle.  At a meeting of the national leadership of M-26/7 on May 3-4, it was decided to transfer headquarters to the Sierra and to place the organization under the direct control of Fidel.  Henceforth, all resources and arms were to be sent to the guerrilla forces.  Secondly, Batista was emboldened, and on May 24, he launched an offensive against the rebel army, seeking to totally annihilate it.  Ten thousand soldiers were sent against the guerrilla forces, which at the time consisted of no more than 300. There were 30 battles in 76 days during the offensive, and the rebels were forced to retreat to an area of twenty kilometers from the highest point of the Sierra Maestra.  But the rebel retreat to some extent was strategic.  As the Batista army advanced, it was more vulnerable to guerrilla attacks and more isolated from its bases of support.  By the end of the offensive, the Army had suffered one thousand casualties, and the guerrillas had taken 400 prisoners, turning them over to the Red Cross with great publicity.   They captured arms from Batista’s forces, and they increased their numbers threefold.  The Batista army was exhausted and demoralized.  On August 18, Fidel announced on Radio Rebelde that the offensive had failed and that the guerrillas would soon begin a counteroffensive.  The rebel army expanded from its base, and battles began to acquire characteristics of conventional war.  Che Guevara and Camilio Cienfuegos commanded columns that marched to the West, supplementing the front to the east that Raul Castro had established prior to the army offensive.  Fidel moved M-26/7 headquarters from the mountains to the plains.  The tide had turned; the guerrillas were occupying towns at a dizzying pace, and Batista’s army was in disarray (Arboleya 2008:126-28; Buch and Suarez 2009:17-18, 25-26; Castro 1985:232).

     The spectacular march toward victory by the guerrilla forces during the second half of 1958 brought to an end all tactical debates within the revolutionary movement.  Clearly, the guerrilla army, expanding in numbers and moving west and east, was the force that was bringing down the dictatorship.  As often occurs in revolutionary movements, differences within the movement are resolved in practice as the revolution evolves.

     Batista fled Cuba just past midnight on January 1, 1959, and the revolutionary army occupied Santiago de Cuba and Havana, with an enthusiastic and celebratory popular reception.  The complete ascendency of the 26th of July Movement within the revolution was established.  Fidel has estimated that the M-26/7 had the support of 85% or 90% of the people, with 10% or 15% supporting other parties and organizations, including both other revolutionary parties as well as counterrevolutionary parties.  In these political conditions, it would have been possible to establish the M-26/7 as the party to lead the revolution.  But Fidel considered it important to establish the organizational unity of the revolution, to establish a single organization that would function as a party leading the revolution, including the various factions within the revolution.  He spoke with leaders of all of the organizations and parties, including those of the old and discredited political parties of the “democratic” period of 1940-52.  He was able to bring on board the Popular Socialist Party (the communist party) and the Student Directory, which were the two principal revolutionary organizations other than the M-26/7.  He considered the participation of the communist party to be important, because of the greater experience and the greater political consciousness of its members.  The three organizations thus dissolved themselves and formed a single organization, Integrated Revolutionary Organizations, which after some difficulties in its evolution, later would become the reconstituted Communist Party of Cuba (Castro 1985:233-39). 

      In addition, Fidel also sought to overcome a prejudice within the triumphant revolution in favor of the guerrillas, diminishing the contribution of those who had participated in the urban clandestine struggle.  He taught that there were different roads of struggle against the dictatorship; not all were in the guerrilla struggle, but those in the urban clandestine struggle also took great risks.  This teaching was a dimension of his effort to overcome divisions within the revolution and to forge unity, to include all who are committed to the basic principles of the revolution, to prevent the emergence of resentments and disappointments as the revolution unfolds (Castro 1985:234).

      In forging an organizational unity that included the communist party, the revolution took the ideological decision to reject anti-communism and to overrule the exclusion of the communist party from the revolution.  This caused some who had an anti-communist orientation to break with the revolution and to join the counterrevolution.  However, to exclude communists would have caused division among the most active of the popular sectors, given the significant influence of the communist party among urban workers and the important role that it had played in the Cuban revolution since the 1920s. 

      The forging of organizational unity among the principal organizations that had struggled against Batista was an important step in unifying the revolution and preparing it to do battle with powerful national and international forces whose interests could not permit the taking of power by a popular organization that gives first priority to the needs of the people and that places the sovereignty of the nation above international corporate interests.  Fidel’s awareness of this need for unity, and his capacity to persuade the principal actors to strive for unity, is another one of his charismatic gifts, another indication of his exceptional capacities for understanding and leadership.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo: Un análisis histórico de la Revolución Cubana.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Buch Rodríguez, Luis M. and Reinald Suárez Suárez.  2009.  Gobierno Revolucionario Cubano: Primeros pasos.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

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


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cuban Revolution, neocolonial republic, Fidel, 26th of July Movement, Communist Party of Cuba
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Revolutionary sacrifice

6/9/2014

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     George Snedeker has submitted the following message to the Progressive and Critical Sociologist Network with respect to the posts on Vietnam and comments submitted by members of the list.
George Snedeker
<george.snedeker@verizon.net>
Reply-To: Progressive and Critical Sociologist Network <PSN-CS@lists.wayne.edu>
To: PSN-CS@lists.wayne.edu

I think most people know that it was the U.S. who prevented a democratic election from taking place in Vietnam in 1956 because Eisenhower knew that the Viet Minh would win the election. They preferred putting Diem in as dictator of South Vietnam. The CIA later allowed Diem to be killed . By the time of his murder, he had become too big of a problem because of greed and patronage. The corruption in South Vietnam would get worse with each new dictator.The rest of the story is history. The U.S. war in Vietnam had very little to do with Communism. It was an attempt to maintain control over a colony and to prevent the Viet Minh from uniting all of Vietnam. As Chomsky has argued, there is a sense in which the Vietnamese lost the war. No one would be able to see Vietnam as a positive model of national liberation because of all the destruction the United States had caused there. The struggle to bring about meaningful economic development has not been an easy one. Most of the population still lives in poverty.  (Emphasis added).

GS
     Georges raises a very important question:  Is there a point at which the sacrifices inherent in revolutionary change become too great?

     The people of Vietnam have paid a very high price to attain, in 1976, the sovereignty and unification of the country, which were violated by the French colonial process of 1859 to 1945, the Japanese occupation of 1940 to 1945, the French war of reconquest and neocolonial maneuvers from 1945 to 1954, and the US imperialist war and neocolonial strategies of 1954 to 1973.  Four million Vietnamese were killed during the stage of the US war.  I began my series of blog posts on Vietnam with a quotation from Fidel:  “No liberation movement, no people that has struggled for its independence, has had to carry out a struggle as long and heroic as the people of Vietnam.” 

     The national liberation movement in Vietnam is not a model for national liberation movements, because we expect and hope that no people will ever again have to pay so high a price to put into practice its right to be a sovereign and independent nation.  There is a sense, however, in which the Vietnamese national liberation revolution is a model, and this has to do with the question: How did they do it?  What enabled them to make such heroic sacrifices and to endure for so long in defense of the nation and the revolution?  I have implicitly argued in my various posts on Vietnam that this remarkable capacity of sacrifice and endurance was rooted in key factors that made the revolution advanced: the charismatic leadership of Ho Hi Minh, who provided a practical synthesis of the moral and intellectual traditions of Marxism-Leninism and Confucian nationalism, thus establishing an advanced understanding of objective conditions and possibilities.  Ho’s leadership enabled clear identification of the issues of national independence and distribution of land to peasants and made possible the formation of a committed vanguard with advanced understanding that was able to forge the united political and military action of the people.

       In previous posts, I have written on the Haitian Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Mexican Revolution, in addition to the posts since 4/24/2014 on the Vietnamese Revolution.  In future posts, I will treat other Third World revolutions, including those in Tanzania, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.  I am endeavoring to show that Third World revolutions that have attained their goals have had charismatic leaders who forged a synthesis of an anti-colonial national liberation perspective and Marxism-Leninism (or some variant of it), and who formed a committed vanguard with advanced understanding, which identified key issues of importance to the people and which led the people in united political action.  (On the role of charismatic leaders in revolutionary processes, see the posts in the section on Charismatic Leaders).

      There is a price to be paid.  Revolutionary processes challenge the structures of the neocolonial world-system, and they therefore unavoidably stimulate reaction and counterrevolution.  And the reaction knows no civilized limits: it includes mass violence, torture, repression, and economic sanctions.  Often, people are reluctant to participate in unfolding revolutions, because they understand that sacrifices will be required, and they fear that, in the end, the revolutionary goals will not be attained.  Revolutionary leaders endeavor to persuade the people that the goals can be attained, if the people unite, and if the people are prepared to endure necessary sacrifices.

      Here in Cuba we know something about having to sacrifice for the revolution.  People still suffer emotional pain as a result of having lost family members or dear friends fifty years ago during the campaign of terroristic violence inflicted on the young Cuban Revolution.  But the level of violence suffered by the Cuban people has been small in comparison to Vietnam.  In Cuba, the sacrifices have been primarily in the realm of material hardships, caused by the fifty-year campaign of the United States and other global powers to economically, financially, and diplomatically isolate Cuba.  In spite of the blockade, as Cubans calls the “embargo,” Cuba has remarkable gains in education and health.  But having given priority to investment in human resources, there are limitations in material conditions.  Sometimes necessary items are hard to get, and in general, housing and transportation are inadequate; access to Internet is expensive and limited, and connections are slow.  Cubans for the most part endure these difficulties with dignity, and I have learned from them to do the same.  Few think that it has not been worth it.  To the contrary, most Cubans are proud of their nation’s important role as a model of true independence in a neocolonial world-system.

      Since it attained reunificaton in 1975, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has moved forward with its socialist project.  It made adjustments in its economic model in the 1980s, and in recent years, has attained high levels of growth.  It is developing cooperative relations with socialist and progressive governments that are seeking to develop an alternative more just and democratic world-system.  It continues to follow the road that fifty years ago provoked barbaric violence by the forces of reaction.  It may be a poor nation by some measures, but it is seeking to overcome its poverty through strategies and policies that it, as a sovereign nation, decides for itself.  It has paid a high price for its sovereignty, but it has attained it.

     Can sacrifice be too great, even when goals are attained?  My sense is that the response of the true revolutionary would be that no sacrifice in defense of the sovereignty and dignity of the nation is too great.  It perhaps is an extreme position, but it seems to me necessary, if a more just and democratic world is to be created.  For without such a conviction, we who struggle for a better world would be constantly thinking that perhaps we have paid enough, and it is time to give up; and the message to the reaction would be, if only it inflicts enough violence on us, it could get us to quit.  We must be fully committed to the principle that, no matter what price we have to pay, we will never surrender.  We must endure, until the reaction, beset by conflicts and problems provoked by its barbarity, recognizes that it must stop. 


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Vietnam
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How can knowledge be reorganized?

4/1/2014

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Posted April 4, 2014

     The existing structures of knowledge emerged during the nineteenth century as an integral dimension of a world-system characterized by colonial domination of vast regions of the planet by seven European powers.  In the 1960s, anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements in the Third World reached an advanced stage, and they impacted political consciousness in the core, exposing the contradictions between the democratic pretensions of the global powers and the fundamental colonial and neocolonial structures that sustained them.  A dimension of the world-wide revolution was its critique of the functional relation between the structures of knowledge and the global structures of domination.  Because of the impact of the global revolution, the social roots of knowledge became widely recognized, and the epistemological consensus that had been evolving and consolidating since 1789 collapsed, a phenomenon that is one symptom of the terminal crisis of the world-system.  Although some adjustments have been made, such as the creation of departments of African-American studies and women’s studies, the pre-1968 structures of knowledge remain intact.  And although various scholars are working in disparate new directions, an alternative epistemological consensus has not emerged. 

     The emergence of an alternative epistemological consensus must be an integral part of a transformation of the world-system from a neocolonial world-system to a just and democratic world-system.  This social transformation has begun in peripheral and semi-peripheral zones of the world-system, and it thus represents a possibility for the future.  But a revolutionary social process has not yet emerged in the core, where the major centers of higher education are located.  A transformation of the structures of knowledge will require that a popular revolutionary process emerge in the core.

      How can we imagine a popular revolution in the core?  In accordance with the methodological guideline of cross-horizon encounter (see “Universal philosophical historical social science” 4/2/2014), we must encounter popular revolutions in other lands in order to learn from these experiences.  Of course, we cannot apply strategies developed in one context to another, at least not without creative adaptation.  But we are able to understand general revolutionary structures by observing the various revolutionary processes that have occurred in the world, focusing especially on those popular revolutions that have been able take power, to deliver on many of the promises to the people, and to maintain themselves in power for a reasonable period of time.

     Drawing upon observation of popular revolutions in general, what are revolutionary structures that we can imagine as having possibilities for the core? First, there must occur the education of the people, the formation of a vanguard from among the people who have an understanding of the structures of domination of the neocolonial world-system and of the historic and contemporary movements of the Third World that seek the development of a just and democratic world-system.  We need to form local groups that meet regularly to study, to dialogue, and to act locally; and to elect delegates who will participate in the emerging alternative political structure at the regional, state, and national levels.  From this vanguard that combines study and action, charismatic leaders must emerge, leaders who can lead the people in the transformation of the fundamental structures of the world-system, in solidarity with similar efforts in other nations throughout the world.

      In the formation of a vanguard, intellectuals have a necessary role, as a consequence of the educational function of the vanguard.  Many of these intellectuals, but by no means all, will be academics.  But they must be academics who are aware of the limitations of the assumptions and boundaries of the academic disciplines; and who are prepared to sacrifice their careers, that is, to advance less in prestige and bureaucratic authority within the structures of higher education.  They must liberate themselves from the disciplinary assumptions and bureaucratic structures of academia in order to discover relevant questions through cross-horizon encounter with the social movements formed by the dominated.  They must dedicate themselves to popular education and to the raising of political consciousness among the people, working in structures of popular education being developed by the unfolding alternative revolutionary political structure.

      The ultimate goal of the alternative revolutionary political structure must be the taking of power.  We must move beyond protesting the policies formulated by those in power, beyond “speaking truth to power.”  The goal must be to take power, with the intention of governing in a form: that defends the social and economic rights of the people in the nation and the world; that conducts foreign policy on a basis of respect for the sovereignty of all nations; and that develops policies that promote ecologically sustainable forms of production.

       As the vanguard forms, and the revolutionary process unfolds, the revolution will be able to attend to one of its tasks, which is the reorganization of the division of knowledge within the universities.  The revolution can call upon social scientists, historians, and philosophers to reorganize knowledge.  As a rising political force, the revolution will have the possibility of overcoming the resistance of petty conservatives in academia, who presently defend the turf of their various disciplines.  As the general social transition occurs, the reorganization of the university becomes possible.  An alternative university can be created as part of a more just and democratic world-system, a university that seeks to develop knowledge that serves the needs of the people and not the interests of the powerful.

      Keeping a vision like this in mind, intellectuals and academics of the North today need to personally liberate themselves from the assumptions and bureaucratic structures of higher education and to search for ways to encounter the movements of the Third World, seeking to develop alternative forms of understanding that grasp colonial and neocolonial structures of domination,  and searching for strategies of popular education and political action in the North that are connected to and work in solidarity with the Third World national liberation movements that seek a more just and democratic world.  

     We intellectuals of the North today confront a situation in which our people are confused, and they are divided between reactionary conservatism and moderate liberalism.  Furthermore, public discourse that shapes popular consciousness is superficial and ethnocentric.  It thus does not seem possible that the people would support a revolutionary process. Confronting a similar situation of ideological confusion in Cuba at the end of the nineteenth century, José Martí asserted that the task of the revolutionary is to make possible the impossible.  He formed the Cuban Revolutionary Party, which took the first decisive steps toward the liberation of the people from structures of domination.  We should take a lesson from Martí and concentrate our energies on creative strategies for transforming popular consciousness.

     The peoples of the North have the right to understand the world and the options that are available for future human development.  By organizing fields of study in a form that systematizes the blocking of relevant questions from consciousness, the structures of knowledge in higher education deny this right.  We intellectuals of the North must creatively search for ways to overcome this obstacle.

     Above all we must believe in the possibility of social transformation.  We will never be full citizens until we believe that we can be subjects in history: reading, thinking, creative and politically active subjects who are forging our destiny.

     The most powerful weapon of social control is the generation of ideas that convince the people that they must accept things as they are.  When I was a child growing up in suburban Philadelphia, I often heard the expression, “You can’t fight City Hall.”  We should invent an alternative saying, “You can fight City Hall, and you can win.  But it will be a long fight that will require discipline, determination, and courage.”  How do I know that this is possible?  I have seen it in other lands.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Wallerstein, world-systems analysis, historical social science, Lonergan, cross-horizon encounter
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Liberals or revolutionaries?

3/28/2014

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Posted April 7, 2014

​     In his essays on liberalism, published as a collection in After Liberalism (1995), Wallerstein presents a panoramic view of the ideologies of the modern era, using ideology here not in the sense of legitimations of domination (see “Domination and ideology” 3/31/2014), but in the sense of the formulation of a long-term political agenda (see “Wallerstein on Liberalism” 4/6/2014). 

     I am not in agreement with Wallerstein’s overview of ideological developments in the modern world-system.  Our differences in interpretation lead us to divergent interpretations concerning the significance of ideological and political developments in the Third World today.

       In critiquing Wallerstein’s panoramic overview of ideological developments, I begin by maintaining that a distinction must be made between Third World national liberation movements that are revolutionary and those that are moderate.  In his second book on Africa, published in 1967, Wallerstein discusses the differences between revolutionary and moderate nationalist movements and nations with respect to the concept of African socialism, presenting presidents Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ben Bella of Algeria, and Modibo Keita of Mali as outspoken representatives of the revolutionary camp (2005:II 230-36).  But in an article on the social roots of different tendencies in African nationalism originally published in 1970, he does not mention revolutionary African nationalism (1986:13-35).  In his later essays on liberalism, Wallerstein does not consistently maintain a distinction between Third World nationalist movements that are moderate and those that are revolutionary.

      But in analyzing the significance of Third World national liberation movements, the distinction between moderate and revolutionary movements is necessary.  The former are oriented toward cooperation with the neocolonial powers, which includes above all the maintenance of the core-peripheral relation established during colonialism, and as a result, governments with a moderate nationalist orientation have limited possibilities for the improvement of the standard of living of the people.  In contrast, revolutionary leaders have sought to break the neocolonial relation and to place the nation on a path of autonomous development.  Their political agenda has not been the promotion of the interests of the elite within the neocolony. They violated the rules of the system and were declared anathema by the global powers.  They therefore had to maintain the support of the people in order to survive.  Thus, the protection of the social and economic rights of the people was in their interests, reinforcing their personal commitment to revolutionary values, a commitment that brought them to the head of the revolutionary movement as it was unfolding. 

      Some revolutionary projects did not last long or could not succeed in breaking the neocolonial relation: Nkrumah in Ghana, Ben Bella in Algeria, Nyerere in Tanzania, and Allende in Chile.  Others have endured: Mao in China, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, and Fidel in Cuba.  In our analysis of the world-system, both short-lived and long-lasting revolutionary governments should be placed in a separate analytical category, distinct from moderate Third World governments.  Whereas the latter at most challenged the global powers in order to defend national projects of ascent within the structures of the world-system, the former challenged the structures of the system itself.  With respect to Third World revolutionary governments, we must ask questions such as: What theories, methods, and strategies did they have?  What constellation of forces made it possible for them take power and/or to maintain themselves in power?  What obstacles did they confront?  What achievements did they have?  To what extent have they been able to maintain popular support?  What lessons can we learn from their experiences?  What are the implications of their achievements for the development of a more just and democratic world-system?  

      Viewing the revolutionary Third World governments as a distinct category, some general observations can be made.  China, Vietnam and Cuba have persisted in their socialist revolutions, each making changes as they adjusted to dynamic national and international forces and conditions.  They are joined today by other nations that have proclaimed socialism for the twenty-first century: Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.  Domestically, all have attained high levels of political participation and political stability.  All have significant gains in the protection of the social and economic rights of the people. Internationally, all have developed foreign policies that reflect independence from the demands of the neocolonial powers.  All are developing relations with nations that have progressive governments, such as Argentina and Brazil.  They are forming mutually beneficial economic, commercial, social, and cultural relations, based on respect for the sovereignty of all nations.  They are self-consciously developing in practice an alternative model for relations among nations, fundamentally different from the exploitative relations that characterize the neocolonial world-system.  In a historic moment in which the world-system experiences structural crisis and bifurcation, the domestic and international policies of the revolutionary governments suggest a possible option for a resolution of the crisis and a restoration of global equilibrium: the development of an alternative more just and democratic world-system.  Whereas Wallerstein sees the emergence of an alternative socialist civilizational project as a possibility, I take this further.  I maintain that an alternative project is in fact emerging in the Third World, that this can be seen through cross-horizon encounter (see “Universal philosophical historical social science” 4/2/3014), and that intellectuals of the North have the duty to engage in cross-horizon encounter and to do intellectual work that contributes to the theoretical development and political advance of the alternative project.

      Wallerstein maintains that the four fiercely autonomous nations are against the system but of the system.  Indeed so.  One of the characteristics of Third World national liberation movements has been their appropriation of Western values that are consistent with their interests, transforming and adapting them to the colonial situation.  Like Thomas Jefferson, they believe that there are self-evident truths.  They declare that no nation has the right to conquer peoples and nations and to impose forced labor; and no nation has the right to intervene in the affairs of others, manipulating its political processes in order to protect particular interests.  Thus, they share epistemological premises and basic values with Jefferson, but they have transformed his ideas, expanding and deepening the meaning of democracy, in accordance with the requirements of the colonial situation.  So Third World revolutionary nationalist leaders are of the system, in that they have appropriated its most humanistic values.  But they are against the system, in that the changes that they seek, if implemented, would imply a change in fundamental structures, converting the world-system into a different world-system.  And they envision this transformation as being carried out by the peoples of the world in movement, who have taken control or will take control of various governments in peripheral and semi-peripheral regions.  They therefore possess the defining characteristics of revolutionaries: they seek a fundamental structural change carried out by popular sectors that yesterday were excluded from power but that now have taken control of the state.  Like liberals, they envision this transformation as occurring step-by-step, reflecting a realistic understanding that neither the nation nor the world can be transformed in a day.  But unlike liberals, their aspirations are not constrained by a desire to preserve the privileges of a minority.  They are constrained only by a sensibility toward what is politically possible in a given situation and by respect for universal human values. These characteristics of revolutionary Third World nationalists differentiate them from liberals.

     The unfolding Third World movement does not seek concessions to the popular classes in order to promote the stability of the world system; it seeks to replace governments controlled by representatives of international corporations with governments formed by delegates of the people.  It seeks not the ascent of a peripheral or semi-peripheral nation in the world-system; it seeks the abolition of the core-peripheral relation and the establishment of an alternative logic of cooperation among nations and solidarity among peoples.  It is lifting up charismatic leaders who are not liberals but revolutionaries.


References

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1986.  Africa and the Modern World.  Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

__________.  1995. After Liberalism. New York: The New Press.

__________.  2005.  Africa: The Politics of Independence and Unity.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.  [Combines into one edition Africa: The Politics of Independence (1961) and Africa: The Politics of Unity (1967)].


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Wallerstein, world-systems analysis, liberalism
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    Author: Charles McKelvey

    Retired professor, writer,  and Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist revolutionary

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