Posted April 9, 2014

     Wallerstein maintains that the revolution of the 1960s critiqued not only the world-system but also the Old Left movements that had emerged against the system.  The movements were of three types: communism, consisting principally of the Soviet Union and the communist parties of the West; social democracy, including social democratic parties and labor unions of the West; and Third World national liberation movements.  According to Wallerstein, the revolution of the 1960s was critical of states controlled by social movements, maintaining that these states failed to deliver on their promises.  This had the long-term consequence of undermining faith in the capacity of the state to gradually make improvements in the social and economic conditions of the people.  Reflecting this loss of faith in the state, the social movements of the Left beginning in the 1970s became focused on particular issues (women, ecology, ethnic rights and gay rights), and for the most part they were oriented to pressuring states and international organizations rather than seeking to take control of states. More recent movements that are more comprehensive (e.g., the Zapatistas and the World Social Forum) likewise do not seek to take control of national states (Wallerstein 1995: 53-54, 89, 117-18, 187, 214-15; 261-65; 1999: 42-43, 71-72; 112-13; 2003:263-69; 2005; 2008).

     We can understand today why the three types of social movements in opposition to the world-system were limited in their achievements and were viewed as failures by the revolution of the 1960s.  (1)  The communist movements were distorted by the fact that the Russian Revolution had fallen to a petit bourgeois bureaucratic counterrevolution.  To be sure, the Soviet Union represented an alternative to the capitalist world-economy, because it was characterized by state control of the economy under the direction of a bureaucratic petit bourgeoisie.  But it was not a state directed by delegates of workers and peasants, as envisioned by Marx and Lenin.(2) Social democracy in Western Europe, although rooted in the revolutionary proletarian and popular movements of the nineteenth century, was reformist.  It had been coopted by the capitalist class, which took advantage of the super-exploitation of semi-peripheral and peripheral regions to make concessions to working class organizations.  (3)  For the movements of anti-colonial national liberation, the power of neocolonialism directed by the United States and supported by the European ex-colonial powers was a fundamental structural obstacle.  The United States had acquired considerable experience in the development of neocolonial structures in Cuba during the period 1902-59, and it drew upon this experience and utilized its overwhelming economic, financial and military dominance in the post-World War II era to establish neocolonial structures world-wide.  These were significant obstacles to newly independent governments in Africa and Asia. 

      The revolution of the 1960s to some extent grasped the world-system dynamics that were undermining the attainment by the movements of their announced goals of full equal rights for all persons and equality among all nations.  To be sure, its understanding was preliminary and not fully developed, and the revolution was full of confusions and contradictions.  But one can reasonably assert that the revolution rejected the strategies of cooperation with the global powers that had been adopted in different ways by the three types of movements; it stood against the movements, as well as the world-system, as Wallerstein has argued.  It also can be reasonably asserted, in my view, the revolution of the 1960s made a distinction between Third World national liberation movements that were moderate and those that were radical.  It criticized the moderate Third World governments for their adaptation to neocolonial structures.  But it supported without reserve revolutionary Third World governments that sought to transform neocolonial structures.  The revolution of the 1960s identified with Che, Fidel, Cuba, Ho, the NLF, and Vietnam.  As I have maintained (see “Liberals or revolutionaries?” 4/7/2014), Wallerstein does not consistently maintain a necessary distinction between moderate and revolutionary movements and governments.

     The revolution ended during the 1970s.  But Vietnam and Cuba persisted.  And since 1995, there has been a renewal of Third World revolutionary nationalism.  The renewed movements identify with Cuba and Fidel, who have supported the new revolutionary manifestations, establishing continuity between the revolutionary national liberation movements of the 1960s and the process of change in Latin America today.  The renewed revolution today recalls all of the revolutions of the past.  It remembers Bolivar, Martí, Marx, Lenin, Ho, Che, and Fidel.  It sees itself as carrying forward the revolutions of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.  As Chávez has said, “We are making real the dreams of Bolívar and Martí.” 

     The renewed revolutions have faith in the state.  Not the state as an instrument of exploitation or domination, nor the state that failed to challenge neocolonial structures, but a state formed by the people and taking decisive steps in defense of the people.  For the renewed movements, democracy is above all the development of political processes that establish that the popular sectors control the state and direct it to act in its interests.  It is a concept of government formed by the delegates of the people and in the interests of the people.  And the renewed movement sees the state as playing a central role in the economy, formulating plans for development and developing economic policies in accordance with the plan.  These plans typically include state ownership of a sector of the economy.

     The renewed movements have learned lessons from the defeat of the 1970s: avoid sectarianism; each nation must develop policies in accordance with its particular situation; and mixed economies are often the way.  The critical issue is not what particular policies are adopted, but who makes the policies, and in whose name. 

       Wallerstein portrays the people of the world as having lost faith, faith in the liberal promise of gradual improvement, faith in the capacity of states to improve the conditions of the people, and faith in hope of national liberation for the Third World.  But I see a different spirit among the peoples of the world. There was, to be sure, considerable confusion and disillusionment in the period of 1980 to 1995.  But symbols of hope endured, in the form of the charismatic leaders of revolutionary movements: Mao, Ho, Nhrumah, Bella, Nyerere, Lumumba, Allende, and Fidel.  When the movements renewed after 1995, new charismatic leaders invoked the memories of the heroes of the earlier stages of struggle.  They sought to take control of the state in order to bit by bit transform the world-system and to improve the social and economic conditions of the people.  They have received the support of the people, and they are beginning to construct an alternative world-system.  The global movement for a just and democratic world is today more advanced than it was in the 1960s, taking into account the number of nations that belong to the revolutionary camp, the degree of cooperation and/or support from progressive nations of the Third World, and the greater maturity of Third World charismatic leaders today, having reflected on the factors that led to the reverses of the revolution in the 1970s.

     Faith in future of humanity has not died.  The struggles of the peoples of the world continue.  They establish a definite possibility for humanity in this historic moment in which the world-system is in terminal crisis: the road that seeks a just and democratic world-system, characterized by mutually beneficial relations of trade and commerce; respect for the social and economic rights of all persons and for the sovereignty of all nations; and the quest for ecologically sustainable ways to produce goods necessary for human life.


References

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1995. After Liberalism. New York: The New Press.

__________.  1999.  The End of the World as We Know It:  Social Science for the Twenty-First Century.  Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

__________.  2003.  The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World.  New York: The New Press.

__________.  2005.  “The Zapatistas: The Second Stage.” Commentary No. 165, July 15, 2005.  [Available on Fernand Braudel Center Website].

__________.  2008.  "What Have the Zapatistas Accomplished?" Commentary No. 224, Jan. 1, 2008.  [Available on Fernand Braudel Center Website].


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, 1960s, New Left

      In various posts since February 3, I have sought to formulate an understanding of the Mexican Revolution, utilizing as a principal source the classic work by Adolfo Gilly, The Mexican Revolution, originally published in 1971 as La Revolución Interrumpida.  The book has been adopted as a textbook by many departments of history in Mexico.   

     Revolutions do not inevitably lead to the ultimate frustration of the popular interest in taking power and governing in its own name.  The failure of the Mexican Revolution to triumph as a popular revolution was rooted in particular disadvantages.  Its principal charismatic leader, Emiliano Zapata, lacked the experiential foundation for the formulation of a national program that could unify the various popular sectors.  Moreover, the working class struggle was developing in a manner separate from the peasant revolution, making difficult the forging of a peasant-worker alliance from below.  In addition, the revolutionary sector of the petit bourgeoisie was not sufficiently advanced to lead a peasant-worker alliance from below.  The current most prepared to do so was led by Ricardo Flores Magón, who was isolated and in exile at the time of the triumph of the revolutionary army in 1914.  At the same time, the ascending petit bourgeoisie was able to offer a coherent national project.  All of these factors contributed to the inability of the revolution to maintain popular direction at the critical moment of its triumph. 

      As we have seen, in the October Revolution, when armed militias took control of the capital city, Lenin immediately convoked the establishment of new political power, which immediately issued decrees that responded to popular demands, including the demands of the peasantry (“The Russian Revolution (October)” 1/23/2014).  In future posts, we will see that, similarly, in the cases of Vietnam and Cuba, when popular armies took control of capital cities, the leaders of the people in arms took immediate steps toward the implementation of popular programs, thus establishing that the revolutions would triumph as popular revolutions.  In both cases, the revolutionary movements were led by a leadership cadre that was overwhelmingly petit bourgeois in composition.  In the two cases, charismatic leaders emerged who were nourished and formed by both petty bourgeois Third World nationalism and Marxism-Leninism, and they forged a synthesis of these two currents of thought, providing a solid ideological foundation for the consolidation of the revolution as a popular revolution.

      Classical Marxism taught that the proletariat is at the vanguard of the revolution.  But the unfolding of revolutions in the twentieth century teaches us a different lesson.  Popular revolutions are characterized by the active participation of peasants and the petit bourgeoisie as well as workers.  And in the second half of the twentieth century, other popular sectors would emerge to identify themselves as actors independent of their class: Afro-descendants, women, and indigenous peoples. 

     In this mixture of popular classes in movement, we can see that the role played by the petit bourgeoisie is critical.  When revolutions failed to be consolidated as popular revolutions, one finds a petit bourgeoisie in which confusion, division and opportunism prevails.  On the other hand, when popular revolutions are able to sustain themselves, one sees the emergence of a petit bourgeoisie that conducts itself in an informed and dignified manner and in accordance with universal human values, led by a charismatic leader who is lifted up by the people, and who leads the people to the consolidation of the popular revolution.  Examples of the former include the Mexican Revolution and the US Revolution of 1968 (which we will discuss in future posts).  Examples of the latter include the October Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, and the Cuban Revolution.

     Revolutions, whether or not they are able to sustain themselves as popular revolutions, are exceptional moments that call persons to action and self-sacrifice, and therefore they produce heroes and martyrs.  The Mexican Revolution produced three of universal significance: Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and Ricardo Flores Magón.  All three dedicated their lives to the better world that they envisioned, and all three were killed by the forces that correctly perceived them as a threat to the established order.  We today have the duty to remember them in a form that recognizes their limitations but that also appreciates their exceptional qualities.  We must do this not only because they deserve it, but also because we must overcome the cynicism, rooted in a consumer society, that seeks to induce us to believe that there are no heroes.

       All popular revolutions have their imperfections, even those that have been able to sustain themselves as political and cultural projects dedicated to the protection of the interests and needs of the people.  We must seek to understand why this is so, and we should be aware that those who seek to preserve privileges for the few will exploit these imperfections to induce us to think that revolution is not possible.  There are various factors in each national case that contribute to limitations and contradictions in the revolutionary project.  The single factor that pertains to all national cases is the fact that, in the context of a political economic world-system that has global structures, revolutionary transformation in a single country is not possible, and any effort to do so will necessarily have its limitations.

     Thus let us understand the Mexican Revolution as a particular heroic moment in a global process of revolutionary transformation, a transformation that continues to unfold, and that ultimately will triumph, because of the unsustainability of the world-system itself, and because of the demonstrated heroism of those who seek a better world.

     

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, Mexican Revolution

      The Russian Revolution was an historic event of lasting importance for humanity.  It inspired the peoples of the world, who saw in it the real possibility for ordinary people to develop structures of political action and to seize power.  It would henceforth be known that the world need not be ruled by the rich. 

       There is much disagreement concerning the development of the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin.  I am influenced by Trotsky’s writings on the Russian Revolution, and I am persuaded by the Trotskyite Ted Grant on the Soviet Union.  On the other hand, I am not sympathetic with the historic tendency of Trotskyite parties to rigidly apply the concepts of Lenin and Trotsky in other lands, regardless of particular conditions.

     In Ted Grant’s view, the Russian Revolution suffered within seven years a major reversal, victim of a petty bourgeois and bureaucratic counterrevolution represented by the emergence of Stalin, a counterrevolution that nonetheless invoked the legacy of Lenin, sometimes distorting his intellectual work for purposes of ideological justification.  Accordingly, the Soviet Union after Lenin can be understood as a system of petit bourgeois bureaucratic control from above sustained through political repression and ideological distortion.  In spite of reforms introduced by Khrushchev, the system was not able to return to its Leninist foundation, and it ultimately collapsed under the weight of its contradictions, making possible a bourgeois counterrevolution that dismantled the structures of the petty bourgeois bureaucratic state.  But even that “deformed worker state” of 1924 to 1990 was able to register impressive gains in economic and industrial development, as a consequence of state planning and state ownership of the means of production, legacies of the era of Lenin and Trotsky (Grant 1997).

      The universal significance of the Russian Revolution, however, lies above all with the contributions of the October Revolution to human understanding.  All knowledge emerges in social context, and the most advanced understandings of society emerge in connection with the social movements formed by the dominated (see “What is cross-horizon encounter” 7/26/2013; “Overcoming the colonial denial” 7/29/2013).  Marx, as we have seen, developed new understandings on the basis of his observations of the Western European proletarian movements of the nineteenth century (see various posts on Marx from 1/6/2013 to 1/15/2013).   Similarly, Lenin arrived at new insights, forged in practice as he sought to understand what ought to be done.  Appropriating the insights of Marx, Lenin further developed Marxism through practical reflection on the Russian Revolution, thus establishing the perspective that came to be known as Marxism-Leninism.  Subsequently, Marxism-Leninism would influence charismatic leaders in the Third World, such as Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro, who would appropriate its insights and at the same time further develop them through reflection on the revolutionary processes in their particular national conditions. 

      Therefore, we today are able to understand Marxism-Leninism as a constantly evolving theory and practice that began with Marx and continued with Lenin and that has been developed further by Third World national liberation movements of the twentieth century as well as by the renewed popular movements of the twenty-first century that proclaim socialism for the twenty-first century.  In reflecting on the possibilities of the present historic moment for renewed popular revolutionary movements in the countries of the North, an important task is the intellectual work of studying these revolutionary processes, examining the speeches and writings of their leaders, in order to arrive at an understanding of the essential characteristics of popular revolution, a necessary component of effective revolutionary political action.

      In the case of the Russian Revolution, important insights learned include: (1) the necessity of structures of popular power, in which the people form local councils to debate and discuss and to elect delegates to represent them, who in turn elect delegates at the higher levels that function as the highest political authority, thus substituting popular democracy for representative democracy and parliamentarianism;  and (2) the role of a vanguard party, which functions to politically educate the people, overcoming ideological distortions.  In addition, with respect to the Russian Revolution, we see the unusual capacity of Lenin to understand national and international dynamics from the perspective of the exploited workers and peasants.  The people were able to recognize these characteristics, and they lifted him up to speak on their behalf, thus establishing him a charismatic leader.  This phenomenon of a charismatic leader with unusual gifts and with a special relation with the people would occur later in Third World popular revolutions.  It is a necessary dimension of the revolutionary process, because the charismatic leader has the capacity: to discern insight from confusion in the various contradictory tendencies within the movement; to formulate a coherent comprehensive vision that unites the insightful components; and on this foundation, to forge the political unity of the people, an indispensable prerequisite for success.  We will discuss this phenomenon of Third World charismatic leaders in future posts.

 
References

Grant, Ted.  1997.  Rusia—De la revolución a la contrarrevolución: Un análisis marxista.  Prólogo de Alan Woods.  Traducción de Jordi Martorell.  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels.  [Originally published in English as: RUSSIA—From Revolution to Counterrevolution].


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, Russian Revolution, Lenin

     Lenin maintained that bourgeois revolutions have expanded bureaucracies, as a consequence of the fact that bureaucracy functions as a mechanism for increasing the size of the petit bourgeoisie and bringing it to the side of the bourgeoisie.  The bureaucracy provides positions to the upper levels of the peasantry and artisans as well as merchants, positions which are relatively tranquil, comfortable, and honorable, placing the holders of these posts above the people.  This establishes a situation in which an expanding petty bourgeoisie has an objective interest in the expansion and strengthening of bureaucracy (Lenin 1997:52).

      In the context of this prevailing petit bourgeois interest in the expansion of bureaucracy, there emerges, in Lenin’s view, a competition for power among different bourgeois and petit bourgeois political parties, which share and redistribute bureaucratic posts in accordance with wins and losses in political competition.  This dynamic establishes the phenomenon of petit bourgeois socialism, in which political parties under petty bourgeois leadership proclaim an idealist form of socialism in order to attract the workers and peasants to their side, giving these “socialist” political parties an advantage in the competition for bureaucratic posts.  But petit bourgeois socialism does not have an objective interest in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the taking of power by the proletariat, inasmuch as the proletariat has an interest in the gradual elimination of the bureaucracy, with necessary administrative functions carried out by workers themselves.  Therefore, the petit bourgeois socialists, to the extent that they are successful in the competition with the other bourgeois and petit bourgeois parties, will seek to mediate an arrangement between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, according to which there is an improvement in the economic and social level of the workers, thus promoting a degree of social stability within the structures of capitalism, and at the same time making necessary the further expansion and strengthening of the bureaucratic apparatus.  Thus the petit bourgeois socialists ultimately betray the proletarian revolution, promoting their interest in political stability and bureaucratic expansion (Lenin 1997:47-48, 54). 

     Rosa Luxemburg also writes of the pernicious influence of petit bourgeois social democracy, which distorts the concepts of Marx in order to formulate a theory advocating the improvement of the conditions of the working class within the structures of the capitalist system, abandoning the perspective of the taking of power by the proletariat.  The social democratic parties were able to attain parliamentary majorities in the competition among competing bourgeois and petit bourgeois political parties, thus giving these socialist parties control of the bureaucratic apparatus of the state.  But the bourgeoisie was not dislodged from power, and the bureaucracy continued to serve its interests, although it did function as a mechanism for the improvement of the social and economic conditions of the working class, a necessary precondition for the maintenance of control of the bureaucratic apparatus by the petit bourgeois socialist parties.  The true character of petty bourgeois socialism in Europe was revealed by the break-out of World War I, when the leaders of the social democratic parties in the various nations supported their respective national bourgeoisies, thus contributing to the slaughter of workers in the trenches of Europe in a war caused by the quest for domination of the planet by competing imperialist powers (Luxemburgo 2002:19-20, 27-28).

     Thus, classical Marxist theory viewed the petit bourgeoisie as a class with a tendency to appear to be taking the side of the workers in opposition to the interests of the bourgeoisie, but in reality the petit bourgeoisie did not have an interest in creating a worker-controlled socialist state.  The objective interest of the petit bourgeoisie was in the reform of the capitalist system, improving the standard of living of the workers and peasants, and thus providing the foundation for political stability.  A less conflictive and more stable capitalist system, with a higher standard of living that would include increased access to petit bourgeois commercial and professional services administered by ever growing public and private bureaucracies, would expand and empower the petty bourgeoisie.  Thus, according to classical Marxist theory, the petit bourgeoisie proclaimed its support for the worker-led socialist revolution, but in actuality it tried to serve as a mediator between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, directing the revolution toward reform and thus undermining the possibility of socialist transformation. Classical Marxists saw this dynamic, which they viewed as a petit bourgeois betrayal of the workers’ revolution, unfolding in both Russia as well as Western Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century.  In Western Europe, petit bourgeois socialism rescued the bourgeoisie from the proletarian revolution following World War I.  In the Soviet Union, during the 1920s a petit bourgeois counterrevolution took control of and redirected the proletarian revolution, facilitating a transition from soviets and popular power to a system controlled from above by the state bureaucracy (Lenin 1997:27-30, 47-48; Trotsky 2008:742; Trotsky 1972:31, 68; Luxemburgo 2002; Grant 1997).

     Observing the role of the petit bourgeois socialist or social democratic parties, Trotsky formulated a distinction between a reformist political party and a revolutionary political party.  “In practice a reformist party considers unshakable the foundations of that which it intends to reform.  It thus inevitably submits to the ideas and morals of the ruling class.”  In contrast, a revolutionary political party formulates an intellectual and moral perspective that is an alternative to the assumptions, concepts, and values that are integral to the functioning of the political-economic system of capitalism.  The reformist political parties rise on the backs of the workers and peasants, but they are in essence bourgeois parties.  A revolutionary party is authentic, faithful to its commitment to workers and peasants to lead the masses in the development of a political-economic system that is an alternative to the political economy of capitalism (Trotsky 2008:739).  In a similar vein, Rosa Luxemburg, on the basis of her observations of the pernicious role of social democracy, made a sharp distinction between reform and revolution.  She maintains that reform is the improvement of the situation of the workers within the existing order, whereas revolution is the conquest of political power by the workers (Luxemburgo 2002:23).

     The distinction between reform and revolution by Trotsky and Luxemburg remains valid.  It makes clear that a revolution requires the formulation of fundamental assumptions, concepts and values that are alternatives to the capitalist world-economy, and that provide the foundation for the popular taking of power in order to develop a world-system that responds to popular interests and needs.

      But the betrayal of the revolution by the petit bourgeoisie pertains more to Europe than to the colonial situation.  In the neocolonized nations of the world-system, where the middle class does not benefit from the superexploitation of other lands and thus lives in a more precarious material situation, the petit bourgeoisie has an interest in the autonomous development of the nation and thus in the fundamental structural transformation of the neocolonial system.  For this reason, although ideologies significantly penetrate the middle class of the neocolonized nation, members of the petit bourgeoisie play a significant role, including a leadership role, in the revolutionary process and in the development of a socialist alternative in theory and in practice.

      Moreover, in the context of the present structural crisis of the world-system, the petit bourgeoisie of the core nations no longer has the same possibility for protecting its interests in the context of the capitalist world-economy.  During the twentieth century, material benefits to the core middle class were made possible through the conquest and superexploitation of vast regions of the planet and through government deficit spending.  But in the twenty-first century, the conquest of new lands and peoples has been overextended, and government borrowing has exceeded reasonable limits.  The providing of a secure and comfortable middle class life to members of private and governmental bureaucracies is no longer possible, and the core middle class will increasingly find itself in precarious material conditions. Therefore, like its colonized and neocolonized counterparts of the twentieth century, the core middle class of the twenty-first century will increasingly cast its lot with the popular sectors and will play an important role in the popular revolutions of the twenty-first century.  No doubt many of its members will participate in resistance and reaction, but many of its members also will play leadership roles in the coming socialist popular revolutions of the core.  Like their counterparts in the colonized and neocolonized regions of the twentieth century, they will dedicate and even sacrifice their lives for the sake of the revolution and for the good of humanity.


References

Grant, Ted.  1997.  Rusia—De la revolución a la contrarrevolución: Un análisis marxista.  Prólogo de Alan Woods.  Traducción de Jordi Martorell.  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels.  [Originally published in English as: RUSSIA—From Revolution to Counterrevolution].

Lenin, V.I.  1997.  El Estado y La Revolución.  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels.

Luxemburgo, Rosa.  2002.  Reforma o revolución.  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels. 

Trotsky, Leon.  1972.  The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it going?  New York: Pathfinder Press. 

__________.  2008.  History of the Russian Revolution.  Translated by Max Eastman.  Chicago: Haymarket Books.


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, Russian Revolution, Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, petit bourgeoisie, reform or revolution

     Lenin and Trotsky believed that the ultimate success of the Russian Revolution depended upon the triumph of the proletarian revolution in Western Europe.  In 1905, Lenin wrote that the proletarian struggle for socialism in Russia “would be almost hopeless for the Russian proletariat alone, and its defeat would be inevitable . . . if the European socialist proletariat did not come to the help of the Russian proletariat” (quoted in Trotsky 2008:894).  At the same time and in a similar vein, Trotsky wrote, “The contradiction in the situation of a workers’ government in a backward country with the peasant population an overwhelming majority can find its solution only on an international scale, in the arena of the world revolution of the proletariat” (Trotsky 2008:894).  In 1918, Lenin evaluated the situation as follows: “If we examine the situation on a world historical level, there is not the least doubt that if our revolution remains alone, if there did not exist revolutionary movements in other countries, there would not be any hope that it would be able to attain the final triumph” (quoted in Grant 1997:76).

     Lenin and Trotsky considered the necessity of a triumph of the proletarian revolution in the West to be a consequence of several factors.  Without proletarian control of the governments of the West, the political isolation of Russia, along with its limited industrial capacity, would create conditions favorable for a counterrevolution by the bourgeoisie and upper and middle peasants.  However, if the revolution in the West were to triumph, the Western proletarian-controlled states could provide technical and economic support to the Russian Revolution, enabling it to develop, thus bringing the peasantry to the support of the proletarian revolution and undermining the counterrevolution.  But in the absence of a proletarian triumph in the West, such assistance would not be available, and the imperialist powers would mobilize their considerable resources to engage in armed intervention in Russia (Trotsky 2008:894, 901). 

      Lenin believed that the victory of the proletarian revolution in the West was imminent.  From underground in 1917, he wrote to Bolshevik Party leaders that “we stand in the vestibule of the worldwide proletarian revolution” (quoted in Trotsky 2008:711).  For this reason, during September and October of 1917, he was exhorting party leaders to give greater emphasis to plans for an armed insurrection to take power.  Lenin believed that the taking of power by the Russian proletariat would be a stimulus to the proletarian revolution in Western Europe (Trotsky 2008:230).

     In his report to the eighth congress of the party in 1919, Lenin continued to express the need for a proletarian victory in the West.  “We live not only in a state, but in a system of states, and the existence of the Soviet Republic side by side with the imperialist states for an extended period is unthinkable.  In the end either one or the other will conquer” (quoted in Trotsky 2008:900).  In 1920, he expressed the view that capitalism and socialism cannot live in peace, and that “either the one or the other in the long run will conquer” (quoted in Trotsky 2008:900).

      Although the proletarian revolution in Western Europe did not triumph, it was able to constrain imperialist intentions.  Trotsky notes that the proletarian revolution in Germany compelled the German government to abandon its military adventures on the Russian frontier, and the spirit of revolt among the troops compelled the English, French, and U.S. governments to withdraw from the shores of Russia.  This constraint on imperialist interventionism gave the Soviet Union the possibility to establish an “unstable equilibrium” (Trotksy 2008:901).

     But the imperialist supported civil war in Russia was costly, establishing conditions that undermined peasant support for the revolution and exhausted the proletarian class, facilitating the victory of the petty bourgeois and bureaucratic counterrevolution (see Grant 1997).  Subsequently, the Soviet Union proclaimed the notion of “socialism in a separate country,” and in Trotsky’s view, distorted Lenin’s concepts and the history of the Bolshevik Party in order to legitimate this claim.  Trotsky maintains that the consistent view of Lenin and the consensus of the Bolshevik Party prior to 1924 was that the socialist revolution is permanent and international, and that socialism in a single country would not be possible (Trotsky 2008:890-913). 

     Thus, “peaceful co-existence” with imperialist powers by a “socialist state” is not consistent with the understanding of Lenin.  There may be good reasons, in a particular historical and international context, to depart from the teachings of Lenin and to adopt such concepts and strategies.  But neither the history of the struggle nor the views of the charismatic leader should be distorted.  Rather, the unanticipated international situation should be explained, thus making necessary the departure from the teachings of the leader.

     Although the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union are no longer at the forefront of the global revolution, humanity still confronts the choice between two systems with different foundational structures: the world capitalist economy, on the one hand, and the alternative socialist and post-capitalist structures being developed by the Third World, on the other.  From the perspective of the Third World revolution, if the world system manages to contain the global revolution from below and sustain the basic structures of the world-system, humanity will continue to experience global poverty, insecurity, wars, chaos, and threats to the ecological balance of the earth, dynamics that put the survival of the human species at risk.  On the other hand, the Third World revolution is developing in practice alternative structures that are designed to protect the social and economic rights of all persons, defend the sovereignty of nations and peoples, and conserve the ecological balance of the planet.  It is a choice that Rosa Luxemburg understood as the option of “socialism or barbarism” (Kohan, ed. 2006:98-101). 

      As Lenin and Trotsky understood, since all nations live in the capitalist world economy, in the development of alternative structures to capitalism, no nation can stand alone.  But today there are eight nations with alternative projects, with others coming to their support.  The foundational structures for alternative world-system are emerging.  Meanwhile, the world-system itself confronts a structural crisis that its leaders are unable and unprepared to resolve.


References

Grant, Ted.  1997.  Rusia—De la revolución a la contrarrevolución: Un análisis marxista.  Prólogo de Alan Woods.  Traducción de Jordi Martorell.  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels.  [Originally published in English as: RUSSIA—From Revolution to Counterrevolution].

Kohan, Néstor, ed.  2006.  Rosa Luxemburgo.  Melbourne: Ocean Press. 

Trotsky, Leon.  2008.  History of the Russian Revolution.  Translated by Max Eastman.  Chicago: Haymarket Books.


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      With Paris threatened during the Franco-Prussian War, Paris deputies constituted themselves into a Government of National Defense.  Those capable of bearing arms were enrolled in the National Guard and were given arms, and the majority of guard members were workers.  When peace terms were negotiated, the government attempted to disarm the people, but the workers refused to surrender their arms.  They established an alternative workers’ government, declaring the Paris Commune on March 28, 1871.  During April and May, French government troops advanced on the city, and the last of the defenders of the Commune were overcome on May 28.

     The alternative structures established by the short-lived Paris Commune illustrated for Marx, Engels, and Lenin the possibilities of the proletarian revolution.  Marx and Engels wrote that the Commune demonstrates that the revolutionary working class, instead of taking control of the state, will abolish it, that is, will destroy the bureaucratic machinery of the state.  The Commune, for example, replaced the professional army with popular militias of workers and peasants; and it eliminated bureaucratic functionaries of the state, and necessary administrative functions were carried out by the workers.  Furthermore, Marx and Engels observed that the institutional transformation pertained to the economic sphere as well, taking into account the efforts of the Commune to establish cooperative manufacturing.  In addition, they observed the emergence of structures of workers’ democracy, as the Commune replaced parliamentarianism with an alternative form of representation, characterized by election to popular councils that in turn elected representatives to higher levels of authority.  These new understandings formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of the Paris Commune were subsequently appropriated by Lenin, who observed as well the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, in his reflections on the state under conditions of worker control

    Thus, on a foundation of observation of the continually developing proletarian movement, the Marxist-Leninist understanding of the characteristics of socialism emerged: workers’ cooperatives, popular militias, administrative functions carried out by workers, and popular democracy as an alternative to parliamentarianism.  In practice, as socialist projects developed in various nations during the twentieth century, they found that bureaucratic structures of government were difficult to eliminate, because of the need to organize persons with technical and administrative skills.  In addition, in some contexts, it was more workable to develop structures of state ownership in addition to cooperatives; and to some extent it was necessary to leave space for private property.  Nevertheless, workers’ cooperatives, popular militias, and popular democracy and structures of popular power emerged in practice as integral components of socialist projects.  They were understood as structures developed by the people and in response to the interests and needs of the people, in contrast to capitalism, which develops structures in accordance with the interests of the bourgeoisie.


Bibliography

Engels, Frederick.  1988.  “Introduction” in (Marx and Lenin:1988).

Lenin, V.I.  1997.  El Estado y La Revolución.  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels.

Marx, Karl and V.I. Lenin.  1988.  The Civil War in France: The Paris Commune, 2nd edition.  New York: International Publishers.


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Posted January 10, 2014

      Marx saw the invention of the factory as the technological development that established the conditions for a fourth stage in human history, that of capitalism.  The factory, with its organization of labor into highly specialized tasks, was a more technically-advanced system of production than the feudal craft shop, and it would become the foundation for a new economic, political, and social system.    

     Marx’s approach to historical analysis was to identify classes and their particular interests.  Accordingly, he viewed the merchants as being an underdog class in the feudal system and as having an interest in promoting the newly emerging factory system and the higher levels of commerce that it would create.  The worldview and philosophical orientation of the merchants, their connection to commerce, and their network of interrelationships facilitated that they could see the potential of the new system for their own interests.  So the merchant class engaged in the new forms of production and commerce and advocated state policies in support of them, thus transforming themselves into the modern bourgeoisie and a revolutionary class that sought the abolition of feudalism and the establishment of a capitalist society. 

     For Marx, in the struggle against the feudal privileges of the aristocracy, the revolutionary bourgeoisie advocated a new concept of society, the notion that all persons had rights, regardless of their status at birth.  This meant that the economic transformation from feudalism to capitalism ultimately would require the political transformation from monarchy to democracy.  Thus the bourgeois revolution sought to eliminate or reduce the power of the monarchy, even though in some moments it was allied with the monarchy in the struggle to eliminate the privileges of the aristocracy.  In addition, the new system required a religious transformation from Catholicism, integrally tied to feudalism, to Protestantism, integrally tied to bourgeois democracy.  Thus the bourgeois revolution sought to reduce the power and the privileges of the Catholic Church.

     In his analysis of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, Marx grasped the importance of the revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie, which acted to defend and promote its class interests.  But we can understand the transition today in a more global context.  Certainly the expansion of commerce and industry and the process of feudal re-urbanization had been developing from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries in a form that was for the most part endogenous to European society, as we have seen (“European feudalism” 8/13/2013).  However, this process of transformation was given a tremendous push forward by the Spanish conquest of America in the sixteenth century, which resulted in the acquisition of gold and silver by Spain and her use of the precious metals to purchase manufactured goods from Northwestern Europe, thus facilitating the modernization of agriculture, the expansion of manufacturing, and the origin of the capitalist world-economy (see “The origin of the modern world-economy” 8/6/2013; “Modernization of the West” 8/7/2013; “Conquest, gold, and Western development” 8/8/2013).  Marx was aware of the role of colonialism in the accumulation of capital, as we have seen (“Marx on human history” 1/9/2014).  But he did not integrate this awareness into his formulation of the transformation from feudalism to capitalism.  Today, from the vantage point of the colonized, we can formulate the transformation from European feudalism to the European capitalist world-economy in a manner that never loses sight of its foundation in the Spanish conquest of America.

       Our criticism here of Marx is analogous to Marx’s own criticism of Adam Smith.   Marx observed that Smith, writing after the emergence of modern industry, understood that general social labor is the source of surplus value; but writing before the emergence of larger-scale industry, Smith was not able to consistently integrate this insight into his theoretical system (see “Marx’s analysis of political economy” 1/8/2014).  Today, we can say that Marx, writing after the emergence of the proletarian movement, understood the role of colonial domination in the economic development of Europe; but writing before the emergence of Third World anti-colonial movements, he was not able to consistently integrate this insight into his theoretical system.


References

Bottomore, T.B., Ed.  1964.  Karl Marx: Early Writings.  New York: McGraw-Hill.

Marx, Karl.  1963.  The Poverty of Philosophy.  New York: International Publishers.

__________.  1967.  Capital, Vol. I.  New York: International Publishers.

__________.  1970.  A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.  New York: International Publishers.

__________.  1973.  Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.

Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels.  1948.  The Communist Manifesto.  New York: International Publishers. 

__________.  1965.  The German Ideology.  London:  Lawrence & Wishart. 


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Posted December 16, 2013
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     As we have seen (“Toussaint L’Ouverture” 12/10/2013), Toussaint by 1795 had been appointed Brigadier-General of San Domingo colony, achieved on the basis of the black revolutionary army that he had formed, and he was given the charge of expelling foreign and counterrevolutionary armies that controlled the Southern province.  His influence among the people was growing, strengthening and further legitimating his charismatic authority.  “If the army was the instrument of Toussaint’s power, the masses were its foundation and his power grew with his influence over them” (James 1989:151).  “These years 1795 and 1796 marked the growth of confidence in him by the labourers in the North Province, not only as a solder, but as a man devoted to their interests, whom they could trust in all the difficulties that surrounded them, the man who was on their side in the struggle against slavery.  By his incessant activity on their behalf he gained their confidence, and among a people ignorant, starving, badgered and nervous, Toussaint’s word by 1796 was law—the only person in the North whom they could be depended upon to obey” (James 1989:153-54).

     The masses over whom Toussaint had influence had just been liberated from the degradation of slavery and now entered “a world of indiscriminate murder and violence” (James 1989:151).  During the slave rebellions of 1791, before Toussaint had joined the movement, in the desperate struggle between slaves seeking liberty and those whose economic interests mandated the preservation of slavery, there was violence and abominable cruelty on both sides, including the displaying of the heads of victims, designed to instill terror in the enemy camp (James 1989:94-96). 

     Toussaint invoked his charismatic authority to prevent terrorist violence.  For example, in 1796, upon hearing that black labourers had massacred some whites, he traveled all night to arrive on the scene.  “He calls the blacks together and gives them an address on the way they should conduct themselves.  If they have grievances, assassination is not the way to have them redressed.”  One of them protests, saying that the white owners have not given adequate provisions and have taken their animals, and anyone who protests is put into prison.  “‘The reasons you have given me seem justified,’ says Toussaint, ‘but if even you had a house full of them, you have rendered yourself wrong in the sight of God.’”   He obtains their support and their commitment to follow the rules he is laying down, and he appoints a commander over them (James 1989: 152-53).   Later, in the victorious military campaigns of 1798, when English and mulatto armies were overcome, James reports that “Toussaint’s Africans. . . , starving and half naked, marched into the towns, and such was their discipline that no single act of violence or pillage was committed” (1989:204).

     In 1801, as Bonaparte prepared an invasion of San Domingo in order to restore slavery, there was an insurrection against Toussaint, led by his nephew, Moise.  Apparently, Moise wanted the plantations broken up and distributed, at least to the officers.  And he advocated a policy of alliance with mulattoes instead of white planters.  These proposals imply the creation of an agricultural petty bourgeoisie among black officers, who would form an alliance with petty bourgeois mulattoes, with the masses of blacks receiving more limited benefits. Toussaint dealt with the insurrectionists harshly.  Moise was quickly tried and executed, and some of his followers were summarily shot (James 1989:275-79).  Moise had violated a fundamental rule of revolutionary processes: unity must be maintained, and disagreements in strategy must be contained within the context of a unified struggle.  In response to a treacherous rebellion just prior to an invasion by France, Toussaint felt justified in taking harsh action against his own people, in order to ensure unity.  Nevertheless, the killing of persons without due process is not justifiable.  On the other hand, there is evidence that Toussaint later lamented his harsh treatment of the insurrectionists.  And Toussaint’s behavior on this occasion departed from the general norm, in which he was a constant voice against terror in a generally violent context.

     Popular vengeance against those who have systematically exploited and abused with impunity is a normal tendency.  When the structures of power have been turned up-side-down, and the abused people find themselves in power and their abusers without defense, a popular fury for justice is unleashed.  When the popular demand for justice expresses itself as uncontrolled popular vengeance, it administers punishments that are excessive, and its wave submerges some who actually have committed no crime.  The revolutionary leadership has the responsibility to control the popular need for vengeance and to ensure that popular justice is satisfied in a form that respects the right of all to due process and administers reasonable punishments.

       Toussaint complied with this ethical responsibility of revolutionary leadership.  His general opposition to terror and vengeful violence was rooted in a character that abhorred useless violence and in an understanding that the cooperation of whites and the support of France were indispensable for the economic and cultural development of the nation in the long term.  He thus consistently pursued a policy of no reprisals against whites, guaranteeing the protection of lives and property of the white population of the colony, and seeking financial and administrative support from France for the development of the colony.  In his consistent opposition to terror directed against whites, Toussaint stood in sharp contrast to the Jacobins who controlled the government of France from 1792 to 1794, who capitulated to popular demands for vengeance (see “Revolutionary Terror” 12/2/2013).

 
References

James, C.L.R.  1989.  The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, Second Edition, Revised.  New York: Vintage Books, Random House.


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Posted December 18, 2013

      In seven posts from December 9 through December 17, I have discussed Toussaint L’Ouverture and the black revolution in the French colony of San Domingo.  As a conclusion to this series of posts, I offer the following reflections.

     (1)  There is a fundamental contradiction in the world-system between its ideological formulation and its material foundation.  Conquest, colonial domination, and peripheralization created the economic and cultural development of the nations of Western Europe and North America, a development that established the social and cultural conditions for the modern concept of democracy, according to which all persons and nations possess equal rights.  But the concept contradicts the structures of domination that continue to provide the material foundation of the world-system.

     (2) The movements formed by the colonized in opposition to domination have appropriated the democratic values proclaimed by the core powers of the system, expanding and deepening their meaning.  In the early 1970s, there was a tendency in Black Nationalist thought to radically reject Western values and to turn to African values for a moral and intellectual foundation, and this radical rejection has been a secondary tendency in the Third World movements.  But the predominant tendency has been the appropriation of Western democratic values, transforming them to adapt to the colonial situation.  This is clearly represented in San Domingo, where the slave rebellions were stimulated by the French Revolution, and where Toussaint would develop a vision for the future development of the nation on a foundation of Jacobin democratic values.

      (3)  Revolutionary processes are characterized by the emergence of charismatic leaders, persons with exceptional capacities to understand, whose gifts are recognized by the people, thus providing the leader with a capacity to unify the various popular sectors in the struggle.  In addition to Toussaint, examples include Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel, Allende, Chávez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa.  The charismatic leaders do not emerge in a social vacuum; they are a product of the social conditions that have made possible the development of understanding.  In cases where a revolution is unable to take power, one reason that this occurs is the fact that a charismatic leader that can unify the various popular sectors has not emerged, as a consequence of inadequately developed social conditions.  Examples of this include the Mexican Revolution and the Revolution of 1968 in the United States, revolutions that we will be discussing in future posts.

      (4)  The mobilization of armed force or armed self-defense is a necessary condition for the taking of power by the revolutionary movement.  Toussaint never would have been able to take power without the formation of a black revolutionary army.  Nor would he have been able to obtain any degree of cooperation from the government of France and from white society in the colony had it not been for the black army that he commanded.

     (5)  The legitimate use of force is distinct from indiscriminate and uncontrolled popular violence and from violence against civilians in order to terrorize and instill fear.  Unconstrained violence damages the revolutionary process in the long run.  We have seen in the cases of the revolutions in France and Haiti that there is a tremendous thirst of the people for vengeance when an oppressive regime is overthrown from below.  A similar phenomenon occurred in Latin America following the fall of military dictatorships.  But the revolutionary leaders have the responsibility to ensure that the popular thirst for justice is constrained by respect for due process.  In accordance with the possibilities of his time, Toussaint correctly took concrete measures to control popular vengeance.  There has been some tendency in the Left to excuse revolutionary terror, rightly noting that the people were provoked by previous systematic abuses.  But we must be diligent in being opposed to terrorism in all of its manifestations.  There are not good terrorists and bad terrorists.

     (6)  Toussaint’s vision of the providing by France of capital, teachers, and administrators for the future development of San Domingo was remarkably advanced for its time.  The concept of North-South cooperation, although complemented by South-South cooperation, is an important component of the movement for a just and democratic world today, as can be seen with the discourses of leaders of progressive and leftist governments in Latin America as well as the declarations of the Non-Aligned Movement.  The cooperation of all of the peoples of the earth is necessary to confront the problems that humanity confronts.

     (7)  There is a tendency among socialists, particularly academics of the North, to hold to a fixed abstract concept of what socialism ought to be, and from this perspective to criticize measures taken by revolutionary leaders, without appreciation of the requirements of the particular context.  Accordingly, some may be critical of Toussaint’s strategy of maintaining the production of raw materials for export with large-scale private ownership of plantations.  But revolutionary leaders must choose the best option available in a concrete particular situation.  For this reason, projects in various nations that have proclaimed themselves socialist have developed a variety of strategies, particularly with respect to production and forms of property.  On the basis of observation of the socialist projects as they have developed in practice, it seems to me reasonable to conclude that socialism includes a variety of economic policies and strategies, in accordance with the various economic and social conditions in which they emerge.  The most important characteristic is not what decisions are made, but who makes them, and in representation of whose interests.


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     We have seen that the French Revolution included the formulation of a new concept of society, based on the rights of the individual, fundamentally distinct from the feudal concept of society as a social organism with a hierarchy of strata, each with its rights and privileges (“Bourgeois revolution in France, 1787-1799” 11/25/2013).  The Roman Catholic Church in France was an integral part of the Old Regime, and it allied itself with the aristocracy in opposition to the French Revolution.  As a result, the Revolution could not avoid conflict with the Church.

     The French Revolution launched a campaign against the Church, known as dechristianization, and it included a number of specific measures.  Religious orders devoted to teaching and assistance were suppressed.  Church hospitals, universities, and colleges were appropriated and put up for sale.  Religious ceremonies outside of church buildings were prohibited, as was the wearing of religious garb, except in religious ceremonies.  Priests were required to swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, and those who refused to do so were imprisoned and/or deported.  And although freedom of religion formally was declared, in practice most churches were closed (Soboul 1975:198-201, 266, 344-50, 581-83).

     Robespierre considered the dechristianization campaign to be a political error.  He maintained that the Revolution had sufficient internal and external enemies without stirring up opposition by abolishing religion.  And he was right: many peasants were opposed to the Revolution because of religious questions (Soboul 1975:349; Ianni 2011:52, 111).

      The Revolution attempted to develop a revolutionary civil religion, and here it was on solid ground.  A revolution ought to have public acts that recall and celebrate martyrs and heroes of the revolution and that commemorate important dates and events in the history of the struggle.  Such rituals pertain to all of the people of the nation regardless of their religious beliefs.  They function to establish and maintain national identity, national solidarity, and revolutionary consciousness.  The Cuban Revolution, for example, has developed public acts that fulfill these functions.  And in the United States, there has emerged in a similar form an American Civil Religion, which has been described by the sociologist Robert Bellah.  

     But the French Revolution went too far in its efforts to establish a national civil religion.  It sought to eliminate and replace the Catholic religion, instead of accepting traditional religious beliefs and practices as private customs that would exist alongside national celebration of the Revolution.  In its efforts to eliminate and replace the Catholic Church, the French Revolution decreed the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul, thus erroneously moving into a terrain that pertains to personal beliefs (Soboul 1975:377-79).

      Marx considered religious conceptions to be a consequence of human alienation and to be functional in the legitimation of the established order.  Marx’s view was typical among radical European intellectuals of the nineteenth century, and it made a great deal of sense, given the actual role of the Church in legitimating the feudal social order.  But it was an understanding that reflects a particular social context.  Marx did not know of popular expressions of religiosity that do not involve a legitimating function and that even would legitimate popular rebellion against the established order.  With advances in the scientific study of religion since Marx’s time, we today can appreciate the diverse forms of popular religiosity as well as the role that religion can play as a liberating force.

     We now are able to see, therefore, that religion is adaptable.  It can legitimate social stratification or it can point the way to human liberation.  The religion of ancient Judaism was formulated by a band of escaped slaves who wondered for forty years in the desert and who understood God as the one who acts in history to defend the oppressed and the marginal.  The religion of Moses subsequently was modified to adapt to the Kingdom of Israel in the time of David.  Jesus later gave renewed emphasis to the God who was with the poor, and the Church established by his followers subsequently became an integral part of the Roman Empire and later the feudal order, functioning to legitimate social stratification.  In our time, the liberating components of the Judeo-Christian tradition have been appropriated by Third World movements in opposition to the global system of social stratification.  Third World liberation theology affirms that, in the global struggle between the rich and the poor, God is on the side of the poor.

      The extensiveness of religious expressions in human societies perhaps suggests that spirituality is a fundamental human need.  Even in Cuba, where the people have a relatively advanced revolutionary consciousness, the importance of spirituality among the people can be observed.  But expressions of spirituality include a tremendous variety of religious beliefs and practices, and they can include what we generally categorize as art or culture.  God can be found in a church or temple, in a poem, or in the dignified struggle of the poor and the oppressed for a more just world.

       Taking into account the extensiveness and variety of religious expressions among the people, the correct revolutionary strategy is the separation of religion from the state.  Religion ought to be understood as a private matter that should not in any way affect one’s participation in the construction of a just and democratic society.  This implies an attitude of religious tolerance, where religious beliefs of all kinds, from religious fundamentalism to liberation theology to atheism, are socially acceptable.  Meanwhile, revolutionary consciousness among the people can be developed in national celebrations, in schools and universities, in art and literature, and in the mass media.  It is an error for popular revolutions to wage war on religion.  If the people want to light a candle or leave a glass of water to obtain the support of the saints or to protect themselves from harm, let it be.


References

Ianni, Valera.  2011.  La Revolución Francesa.  México: Ocean Sur.

Soboul, Albert.  1975.  The French Revolution 1787-1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.


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