The French Revolution included waves of violence and punishment that came to be known as the Terror.  It began during the first week of September of 1792, when approximately 1,400 prisoners were executed by angry crowds who had descended upon the prisons.  Driven by fear provoked by the advancing Prussian army and the mobilization of domestic counterrevolutionary forces, the targets of popular wrath were counterrevolutionary political prisoners, but three-quarters of the victims were actually common-law prisoners.  The revolutionary government took no steps to protect the prisons and allowed the horror to occur (Soboul 1975:262-65; Ianni 2011:74).

      Terror subsequently became institutionalized.  A Revolutionary Tribunal was established in March 1793 in order to prevent further massacres, but the tribunal itself became an instrument for killing.  It has been calculated that there were 16,594 executions between March 1793 and August 1794.  The victims were priests who refused to accept the republican constitution, aristocrats who engaged in counterrevolutionary activities, merchants who were hoarding food in order to profit from a higher price, and revolutionaries who were too moderate in their views or who were opposed to the dechristianization campaign or to the Terror itself.  They were executed without regard for rights of due process (Soboul 1975:384-88; Ianni 2011:105-7).

      The French historian Albert Soboul implies that the Terror was functional.  He maintains that it provided the revolutionary government with the coercive power to impose rules, thus restoring the authority of the State, and that it contributed to the formation of national solidarity by silencing for a time the selfish voices that represented particular interests (1975:388-89).  In a similar vein, the Argentinian historian Valeria Ianni writes that "there is no doubt that the Terror saved the Revolution” (2011:107). 

      In my view, the Terror was not functional, especially if we analyze it from the perspective of the long-term struggle of popular revolutions in the world.  Revolutionary processes are above all battles of ideas, and a long-standing claim of counterrevolutionaries has been that a structure that gives real power to the people will degenerate into mob violence.  Popular revolutions must demonstrate in practice that this charge is not true.  The revolutionary vanguard has the duty to constrain the normal tendency of the people toward vengeance and to lead the people in conduct that is guided by ethical values and respect for rights of due process (see “Popular assemblies” 11/28/2013).  During the French Revolution, the leaders of the French Revolution capitulated to popular instincts; they did not fulfill their duty.

     Ianni suggests that the Terror was justifiable, taking into account the social context: the people were demanding the Terror, and the revolution was threatened by foreign armies and the mobilization of counterrevolutionary forces within the nation (2011:74, 102-7).  But there were those at the time who understood that it was wrong.  Among them was Camille Desmoulins, an outstanding journalist who had written a passionate pamphlet in defense of popular revolution in 1789 and who had called the people to arms two days before the taking of the Bastille.  By 1793, he was speaking out not only against the Terror but also against religious persecution and the expansionist intentions of the French Republic.  Desmoulins was sent to the Guillotine on April 5, 1794 (Soboul 1975:123-24, 138, 165-66, 287, 364-68, 376-77, & 571; Ianni 2011:35).

     The Terror contributed to the emergence of the commonly-accepted erroneous concept that violence and revolution are intertwined and that revolution is the violent displacement of the ruling class.  This confusion on the meaning of revolution is shared by counterrevolutionaries and pretended revolutionaries alike.  As we have seen (“Popular militias” 11/30/2013), revolutions and revolutionary governments must develop structures for the use of force in their defense, but in this respect they are no different from human societies since the agricultural revolution.  Legitimate self-defense is an unavoidable component of popular revolution, but popular revolution is in essence and by definition the taking of political power from the elite and governing in accordance with the interests of the popular sectors (see “What is Revolution?” 11/14/2013).  There are various social and political contexts in which revolutions emerge, and as a result, there are various ways for the political representatives of the popular sectors to take power.  The taking of power does not always require the use of force, even though it always will require the organization of legitimate self-defense.  At the same time, the violent overthrow of a government is often not a revolution, but simply the expression of political conflicts within the ruling class.  Violent political acts are not necessarily revolutionary; revolutionary action is not necessarily violent.  And illegitimate violence can never serve revolutionary aims.

      Those of us who seek a just, democratic and sustainable world have the duty to study the revolutionary processes and to learn from their insights, and also to identify and learn from their errors.  The Revolutionary Terror of the French Revolution was an historic error and historic crime.  Revolutionary processes must always conduct themselves in accordance with the values of that more just and democratic world that they seek to create. 


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.


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, French Revolution, violence, terror

     The two principal popular actions of the French Revolution were the taking of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 and the taking of the Tuileries on August 10, 1792.  In both cases, the people were armed (Ianni 2011:37-38, 67-71; Soboul 1975:139, 250-51). 

     The formation of popular militias has been a continuing dimension of revolutionary processes.  Following the February Revolution, marchers in mass demonstrations were armed in order to protect themselves from possible violence from the troops of the Provisional Government.  During the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks were able to take power as a result of the organization of worker’s militias and the placing of army battalions under the authority of the popular councils.  Following the October Revolution, the Red Army was formed for defense against foreign armies and foreign-supported armed forces.  In Vietnam, nationalist forces used both guerrilla strategies and regular army troops in its long struggles against French colonialism and US neocolonial intentions.  In Cuba, the revolutionary movement took power using a guerrilla strategy in the countryside combined with urban sabotage.  After the triumph of the revolution, popular militias were formed that successfully defended the nation against a US-backed invasion.  In Venezuela, after the taking of power through non-violent electoral means, the government of Hugo Chávez, himself a former career military officer, was able to effectively place the armed forces under the authority of the civil government.

      Force has been a central component of human economic and social development for 10,000 years.  We have seen that conquest has been central to the formation of empires and civilizations, and that the existing world-system has been established on a foundation of the conquest of vast regions of the world (see various posts in the section on world history and the section on the world-system.  And we have seen that the neocolonial world-system is maintained through the application of military force in those situations that require it (see “The characteristics of neocolonialism” 9/16/2013). 

      Since a popular revolution involves the taking of power by the political representatives of the popular sectors, its triumph generates a counterrevolution led by the deposed elite, which uses any and all means, including the organization of violence and force.  In such a situation, it would be idealist and irresponsible for a revolutionary project to not have a program for the organization of force to protect the people and defend the revolution.

      Therefore, revolutionary governments have the right and the duty to development a plan for the responsible use of force.  But a revolutionary government should not violate the rights of due process in order to attain political objectives, nor should it use force in order to terrorize the people into compliance with the revolutionary project.  In accordance with this understanding, my view is that the revolutionary terror of the French Revolution was a great historic error and historic crime, the consequences of which are present in our time.  This will be the subject of the next post.

     The social movements of the United States could learn some lessons from revolutionary processes in other lands.  The social movements of the United States have an honorable tradition of protest against violence and war.  However, they have not developed an alternative program for the responsible organization of force, either with respect to the military forces of the nation or the domestic criminal justice system.  The movements protest illegitimate violence; they “speak truth to power.”  At most, they hope to obtain concessions from those in power.  But they have not sought to take power with the intention of exercising power in a responsible way.  This limited approach undermines the influence of the progressive social movements among the people.  With their idealist discourse, progressive social movements are not taken seriously by the people as a political force that could govern the nation in a responsible and practical manner.  The governing of the nation thus is left to those who govern in defense of particular interests, a project that necessarily requires the illegitimate use of violence and force, both at home and abroad.


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.


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, French Revolution, popular militias, violence

      During the breakout of French Revolution in 1789, the 407 Parisian eligible voters in the elections for the General Estates met in a public plaza and formed an alternative municipal government.  It consisted of a committee, composed of municipal officials and elected representatives to the General Estates, which was given the charge of leading the popular insurrection.  And a mayor was elected.  The alternative government was called the Paris Commune, a name that would be given to various subsequent similar efforts (Ianni 2011:35; Soboul 1975:135-36, 140).

      With the radicalization of the revolution, the Paris Commune was replaced by the Insurrectionary Commune in 1792.  Under the leadership of artisans, shopkeepers, small merchants, and workers who comprised the so-called sans-culottes, a central committee was established and a new mayor was elected, replacing the mayor elected in 1789, who had since his election authorized a violent repression of a popular protest.  The central committee of the reconstituted Paris Commune coordinated 48 sections.  The most radical sections admitted men who did not qualify to vote under the established income and residence restrictions.  The most active sections met every day at the end of the workday (Ianni 2011:68-69; Soboul 1975:250, 309-11, 407, 411-12, 470).

     The formation of popular assemblies as an alternative to representative democracy has a sustained history in revolutionary processes: the Paris Commune of 1871; the soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers of the Russian Revolution of 1917; the worker’s councils of the Vietnamese Revolution; and the popular power and mass organizations of the Cuban Revolution.  They reflect direct democracy by the people, a more advanced form of political participation than is possible under the structures of representative democracy developed by the bourgeoisie.

      But in the seeing the possibilities of “power to the people,” the people should not be idealized.  The majority of people tend to think in concrete and particular terms, not understanding problems in their larger historical and social context.  Most tend to be orientated to the protection of particular interests rather than the good of the society as a whole in the long run.  And the majority is prone to vengeance and violence, which in their most extreme manifestations include executions with minimal regard for the right of due process.

      The correction to these popular tendencies is found through the vanguard.  The members of the vanguard are of the people and come from the people.  The have the best qualities of the people.  They are disciplined and committed to the values of the revolution and to universal human values.  As a result, they have become theoretically, politically, and historically informed.  Their role is to educate the people, and they play this role through discourses in the popular assemblies and informal discussions among the people.  Their challenge is to persuade the people of the best courses of action for the good of the revolution and the good of society in the long term.

      Although the vanguard educates, the people decide.  Decisions are made through consensus among the people.  If the vanguard fails to persuade, the people may take courses of action that could undermine the revolutionary process and its quest to create a more just and democratic society.  It therefore is necessary for the sustainability of the revolutionary project that the vanguard maintains the confidence and trust of the people.

     The vanguard is not infallible, and it particularly may be vulnerable to limitations in understanding that are established by social and historical context (see “What is personal encounter?” 7-25-2013).  But due to the personal characteristics of the members of the vanguard, it is in the best position to understand the best courses of action.  

      The relation between the vanguard and the people plays out in the popular assemblies.  And in the assemblies, elections to government offices are held.  In these elections, the people are choosing from among nominated candidates whose qualities they have come to know in the popular assemblies.  This is a process different from and superior to representative democracy, where the people do not assemble, and they chose from competing images, and not from among persons that they have come to know and respect.  Choosing from among images, the people under structures of representative democracy are subject to manipulation by the wealthy, which control the media of communication.

 
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.


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, French Revolution, popular assemblies, popular councils      

      Anatomically modern humans evolved from earlier species of the genus Homo roughly 130,000 years ago in Africa.  During the period of 130,000-10,000 B.P., human societies were characterized by continuous economic and cultural development in the context of a foraging (hunting and gathering) economic foundation.  The period was characterized by continuous migration and settlement in new areas as a result of population growth, such that by 10,000 B.P. humans had settled on all of the continents.

       As human migrations reached the geographic limits of the earth, migration as a solution to population growth was no longer possible.  Thus in seven different regions of the world, human societies independently utilized the accumulated knowledge to develop food production (the cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals).  This agricultural revolution established both conquest and political centralization as tendencies integrally tied to economic and cultural development.  Societies that turned to food production had the capacity to sustain specialists, including soldiers and state administrators, who were not directly involved in food production.  This capacity enabled them to conquer neighboring societies and incorporate the conquered peoples and lands into a single political territory, providing a foundation for empire and advanced civilization, characterized by specialists who forged significant achievements in technology, science, the arts and literature.  The empires were ruled by a political-religious elite, and they were systems of social stratification that legitimated inequality with religious concepts.

       In North Africa, the human tendency toward development through domination led to the formation of Islamic Empires and to the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.  Spanish and Portuguese resistance to the conquest accelerated their tendencies toward centralization.  As a result, Spain and Portugal emerged from the reconquest as centralized states with advanced military capacities, establishing the basis for the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of America.

      The Spanish and Portuguese conquest of vast regions of America in the sixteenth century established the foundation for the modern world-system.  The precious metals obtained (through forced labor imposed on the indigenous populations) stimulated the further economic and commercial development of Western Europe, most notably England and France, which also had formed modern nation-states.  The force of the expansion was so great that the traditional forms of production constituted a fetter, leading to the modernization of production.  Modernization first occurred in agriculture, with the enclosure of common lands, the transformation of feudal obligations into rent, and the centralization of land ownership.  Thus serfs were converted into tenants, sharecroppers, and day laborers.  Subsequently, modernization occurred in manufacturing, with the transformation of the craft workshop into the industrial factory, creating the highly specialized form of labor that destroyed work as a craft and that Marx would famously describe as alienation. 

     The bourgeois class in France in the second half of the eighteenth century was formed by these dynamics.  The bourgeoisie consisted of the owners of the emerging industrial factories, the big merchants who profited from the expanding commerce in goods, the financiers who profited from loans to factories owners and merchants, and the professionals who were tied to the expanding state bureaucracy that was necessary for the efficient regulation and administration of the expanding commerce and manufacturing.  The bourgeoisie emerged in the context of a feudal society ruled jointly: by nobles, who had an interest in preserving decentralization and traditional forms of production; and by the monarch, who had an interest in centralization and in breaking the power of the nobility, even though the monarchy itself evolved from feudal structures and dynamics.  The bourgeoisie had an interest in taking power away from the nobility and in establishing an alliance with a state that would adopt measures designed to accelerate the modernization of production.  Thus the bourgeoisie formed a revolution that abolished feudalism and that established a constitutional monarchy, a monarchy recast in accordance with modern institutions.

     Because of the integral relation of the Church with feudal institutions and its intimate ties with the nobility, the further modernization of the society required a reduction of the Church’s power.  Thus the French Revolution was characterized by an attack on the Church, not only with respect to its property and its feudal privileges, but also by the formulation of an alternative to its hierarchical theocentric vision of society.   The bourgeois revolution formulated an alternative vision of society based on free and equal individuals who have natural rights, including the rights of suffrage and property, important components of the struggle with the nobility.  Under bourgeois class rule, legitimation of inequality would be attained not through religious concepts but through democratic values, interpreted in a limited way in accordance with bourgeois interests.  With the power of the Church reduced, the separation of Church and state and religious tolerance emerged as integral components of the new bourgeois-ruled democratic society.

     But the bourgeoisie would not have been victorious had it not been for the direct action of the popular sectors, which themselves for the most part were formed by the process of modernization.  The popular sectors included peasants, who were no longer a class as such, divided as they were among tenants, sharecroppers, and day laborers.  And they included craftsmen, shopkeepers, small property owners, and workers, who had their own organizations and leaders.  These popular sectors embraced the modern concept of democracy, interpreting it in a more radical form than the bourgeoisie, seeing in it the possibilities for not only political participation but also for social liberation.  Thus they pushed the revolution to take more drastic and deeply democratic measures.  Many of the leaders of the radical and populist wing of the revolution were members of the emerging professional class, which was both a lower part of the bourgeoisie as well as a relatively privileged part of the popular sectors.  Radical leaders from the professional ranks interpreted the destiny of their class as tied to the fate of the popular sectors. 

        Thus the French Revolution, seen in a panoramic context, was established by historic human tendencies toward conquest and centralization and by the more recent tendency toward modernization.  In its drive to complete the process of modernization, the revolution stimulated another tendency, namely, secularization.  At the same time, the French Revolution provided a foundation for popular movements throughout the world that would embrace its democratic world view and the implications of secularization in order to proclaim the universal human values that ought to guide humanity, such as protection of the social and economic rights of all persons and respect for the self-determination and sovereignty of nations.  The world-wide popular movements also would come to recognize that the historic human pattern of development through conquest and domination is no longer sustainable, inasmuch as the world-system has reached the geographical and ecological limits of the earth.  Just as humans invented food production when foraging societies reached their geographical limits, humans today must embrace a fundamental change from development through domination to development through cooperation and international solidarity.  The French Revolution did not challenge the historic human pattern of domination, seeking only to exchange domination by the nobility with an alternative form of domination by the bourgeoisie.  The global popular movements today seek to complete the French Revolution, carrying out the democratic revolution in a manner that ends domination in all of its forms.  The movement today proclaims that a just, democratic and sustainable world is necessary and possible.

       The French Revolution stimulates questions that must be addressed by the popular movements today.  These issues for our reflection include:  class structures and dynamics in revolutionary processes; the role of popular assemblies and popular militias; and the issues of violence and of religion and spirituality.  We will be discussing these themes in subsequent posts.


     The reader is invited to take a look at previous posts that have explored themes relevant to today’s post: “The origin of the modern world-economy,” 8/6/2013; “Conquest, gold, and Western development,” 8/8/2013; “What enables conquest?” 8/9/2013; “Food production and conquest,” 8/12/2013; “European feudalism,” 8/13/2013; “The modern nation-state,” 8/14/2013; “Dialectic of domination and development,” 10/30/2013; “Bourgeois revolution in France, 1787-1799,” 11/25/2013.


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, French Revolution

Posted November 6, 2013

      In 1976, the people of Cuba overwhelmingly approved a Constitution that established a political system based on popular participation.  The Constitution established structures of “Popular Power,” where the highest authority resides in the National Assembly of Popular Power.  The deputies of the National Assembly are elected by the delegates of the 169 Municipal Assemblies in the country, who are elected in elections with two to six candidates in voting districts of 1000 to 1500 voters.  The candidates are nominated in a series of nomination meetings held in each voting district.  They are not nominated by any political party, and focus at the nomination meetings is on the leadership qualities of the candidates.  The deputies of the National Assembly are elected to five-year terms.  As the highest political authority in the nation, the National Assembly enacts legislation, and it elects the 31 members of the Council of State and Ministers, including the President of the Council of State and Ministers, who is the chief of state. 

     The Cuban Constitution of 1976 also established requirements for consultation by the national, provincial, and municipal assemblies with mass organizations.  The mass organizations are organizations of workers, women, students, peasants and cooperative members, and neighborhoods.  They meet on a regular basis to discuss concerns of their members, and the discussions range from concrete problems to major global issues.  The mass organizations have a participation rate of 85%. 

     There are other examples of revolutions and movements forming popular assemblies and popular councils: the Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian Revolution of 1917, the German Revolution of 1918, the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, the General Strike in Great Britain in 1926, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (Grant 1997:61).  Popular councils also have been developed in Vietnam (Ho 2007:162-76), and they are being developed today in Latin America, particularly in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. 

     Popular assemblies and popular councils are structures of popular democracy.  They are fundamentally different from bourgeois structures of representative democracy.  Popular democracy is characterized by regular face to face meetings of small groups in places of work and study and in neighborhoods, where the people meet to discuss the challenges and issues that they confront.  In such settings, if someone has a confused or distorted conception, those persons with a more informed and comprehensive understanding of the issue can explain further, thus reducing the tendency to distortion and confusion, helping the people to understand the issues.  In this process, those with a capacity to explain and with a commitment to fundamental human values earn the respect, trust, and confidence of their neighbors, co-workers, and/or fellow students.  It is an environment that gives space to natural and indigenous leadership, and many leaders are able to develop their leadership capacities in the various mass organizations, serving from the local to national level.  In Cuba, for example, it is not uncommon to find informed, committed, and articulate persons serving as president of the neighborhood organization for a city block, or as president of a municipal assembly in a small rural town. 

     In contrast, representative democracy is an impersonal and anonymous process.  The people vote, or they select from predetermined answers for an opinion survey, but they do not meet to discuss and to inform themselves.  They respond not to arguments, reasons, and evidence presented in face to face conversations, but to slogans and sound bites presented in the mass media, sometimes in the form of political advertising.  Representative democracy is a process in which organizations compete, vying to see which political party or particular interest can generate the most support in elections or opinion polls, or better said, to see which party or interest can more effectively manipulate the people, who never meet to argue, debate, and discuss.  In such a context, with competing particular interests presenting different and opposed spins and manipulations, the development of a consensus that could be the basis of a constructive national project is no more than an idealistic and naïve hope.

      The formation of popular councils is an integral and necessary dimension of a social transformation that seeks a just and democratic world.


Bibliography

August, Arnold.  1999.  Democracy in Cuba and the 1997-98 Elections.  Havana:  Editorial José Martí. 

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.

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

Lezcano Pérez, Jorge.  2003.  Elecciones, Parlamento y Democracia en Cuba.  Brasilia: Casa Editora de la Embajada de Cuba en Brasil.


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, popular democracy, popular assembly, popular council, representative democracy, Paris Commune, Cuban Constitution, popular power in Cuba, mass organizations, Arnold August

Posted November 8, 2013

     As a result of the influence of popular democratic movements throughout the world, the meaning of democracy has evolved.  Accordingly, there has emerged the understanding that not only individuals have rights, but nations and ethnic and cultural groups have rights, and among these are the rights of nations to self-determination and sovereignty and of ethnic and cultural groups to cultural autonomy and to the preservation of their cultures. 

     V.I. Lenin affirmed the right of the self-determination of the oppressed nations of the Russian empire as well as of the European colonies of Asia and Africa.  He understood that colonial domination of the nations and peoples of Asia and Africa provided markets and raw materials for the capitalist powers, and that revolutionary anti-imperialist movements emerge in the colonies, formed by workers, peasants, and enlightened members of the middle class.  He believed that the proletarian revolution in the developed countries ought to be allied with the anti-imperialist revolutions in the colonies (Lenin 2010; 1968).

     When the young Ho Chi Minh became involved in the socialist movement in Paris in the early 1920s, he encountered the debate between the second and third internationals, and he wanted to know which side supported the struggle of the colonized people.  He was told that it was the Third International, and he was given a copy of Lenin’s “Theses on the National and Colonial Question.”  The affirmation by Lenin of the rights of the colonized people converted Ho into a Leninist, and it would lead to his affiliation with the French Communist Party, to a study of Marxism-Leninism, and ultimately to his creative practical synthesis of Marxism-Leninism with a Third World anti-colonial perspective.   Ho’s “Report on the National and Colonial Questions” at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International as well as other writings of 1924 reveal that Ho was critical of the communist parties of the West for lacking contact with the colonial peoples and for ignoring the colonial question, thus not following in practice the theoretical formulations of Lenin on the national question (García Oliveras 2010:25-27; Bello 2007:xii-xiv; Ho 2007:24-38). 

      Ho Chi Minh illustrates the importance of the principle of the self-determination of nations in the anti-colonial movements that emerged in Africa and Asia during the twentieth century and that culminated in the attainment of political independence by the colonies in the period 1948 to 1963.  Reflecting the new political reality established by the African and Asian national liberation movements, the United Nations in 1966 gave official certification to the right of nations and peoples to self-determination and development.  The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, proclaimed:  “All peoples have the right of self-determination.  By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.  All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation.”

      The right of nations to self-determination is repeatedly affirmed today in the declarations of the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization of governments of the Third World who represent three-quarters of humanity, and in the declarations of the Alternative World Movement, a global social movement that emerged in the late 1990s in opposition to the imposition of the neoliberal project by the global powers and the international finance agencies.  In addition, respect for the sovereignty of all nations is an integral component of the process of integration and union that is occurring in Latin America today under the leadership of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.  We will be discussing these movements in future posts.

     During the course of the twentieth century, US foreign policy has sought to maximize access by US corporations to the natural resources and labor of the world, generally manipulating the idea of democracy as a pretext for its intervention in the affairs of other nations, with the consequence that the sovereignty of nations has been denied in practice.  The United States pretends to be defending democracy in the world, but in fact it systematically negates the democratic right of self-determination of nations, a right affirmed by the peoples of the world.  In opposition to this historic tendency, Jesse Jackson in his presidential campaign of 1988 proposed a US foreign policy of global North-South cooperation that would respect the right of self-determination and that would seek to overcome poverty and underdevelopment in the Third World (McKelvey 1994:284-90).


References

Bello, Walden.  2007.  “Introduction: Ho Chi Minh: The Communist as Nationalist” in Ho Chi Minh (2007).

García Oliveras, Julio A. 2010.  Ho Chi Minh El Patriota: 60 años de lucha revolucionaria.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. 

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

Lenin, V.I.  1968.  National Liberation, Socialism, and Imperialism: Selected Writings.  New York: International Publishers.

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

McKelvey, Charles.  1994.  The African-American Movement:  From Pan-Africanism to the Rainbow Coalition. Bayside, New York: General Hall.


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, Ho Chi Minh

Posted November 14, 2013

     A revolution is the taking of political power by a group that represents the interests of a class or alliance of classes, substituting rule by the previously dominant class with rule by a different class or classes.  The revolutions of the late eighteenth century in Europe and in the European settler societies of North America were essentially bourgeois revolutions, substituting rule by the nobility with rule by the capitalist class, although the bourgeois revolutions had ample popular participation that constituted the beginning of popular revolutions.  A popular revolution is the taking of power by representatives of the popular sectors and classes.  The Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, and the Bolivarian revolutions today in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador are popular revolutions.  The taking of power by the popular classes does not mark the end of the revolution, but the beginning of a new stage in the revolutionary process, in which the new governing group must seek to govern in the interests of the popular sectors and to fend off efforts to destroy it by the previously dominant class and their national and international allies.

     The American Revolution was, in the final analysis, a bourgeois revolution.  We have seen that it was formed and led by the American elite, consisting mostly of large merchants and landholders, who enlisted the support of the popular sectors in their anti-British cause; that during the 1770s the popular sectors had captured control of the revolutionary process at the local level and had established constitutional reforms in each of the thirteen colonies that reflected popular interests; and that the elite was able to reestablish control, reflected in the Constitution of 1787, and to forge a system of democracy that favored elite interests and was more democratic in form than in substance (“The US popular movement of 1775-77” 11/1/2013; “American Counterrevolution, 1777-87” 11/4/2013; “Balance of power” 11/5/2013).

        There was a second American revolution that expressed itself in various forms during the period of 1830 to 1896, when popular sectors sought to establish democratic rights for blacks, women, and small farmers.  It attained the abolition of slavery and culminated in the right to vote for women in 1919.  Its high point was 1867, when constitutional amendments establishing citizenship rights for blacks were established, which were subsequently negated in practice. 

         From 1955 to 1974, blacks, students, women, Native Americans and Mexican Americans sought to expand the protection of political and civil rights to all citizens and to deepen the meaning of democratic rights to include social and economic rights.  The anti-war movement was an important part of this third American revolution, in which anti-imperialism and identification with Third World revolutions were expressed by white middle-class students.  The third American revolution, which Immanuel Wallerstein has called the Revolution of 1968, accomplished the expansion of political and civil rights to include women and people of color, but it did not result in the taking of political power by the popular sectors.  The nation remains in the control of the elite, which today is a corporate and financial elite.

      The Revolution of 1968 had all the necessary pieces of a successful revolution.  Some understood that it was a question of taking control of the political institutions of the nation from the capitalist class and its political representatives, in order to govern in the interests of the popular classes and sectors; some understood that the revolutionary process ought to seek to protect the social and economic rights of all of the people; some understood that the revolutionary process must be anti-imperialist, and that the nation under revolutionary leadership would respect the sovereignty and self-determination of all nations; some understood that there had to be a long process of the education and formation of the consciousness of the people; and some understood that the classical revolutionary theory of Marxism had to reformulated for a different situation, including the emergence of a new middle class of educated workers and of a diversity of popular sectors in the core as well as national liberation movements in the periphery.  But all of these pieces were part of a confused mix.  Some thought that power could be taken by symbolic urban sabotage; some rigidly applied the Marxist concept of the industrial working class at the vanguard; and many confused a political and social revolution with rebellious behavior in regard to sex, drugs, and styles of dress and appearance.  There did not emerge a charismatic leader who had the insight to synthesize the various pieces of understanding in order to formulate a coherent direction that would have the support of the people.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was possibly evolving in a direction that would have enabled him to become the revolutionary charismatic leader, a phenomenon that has occurred in successful revolutions.  He had not yet arrived to be a revolutionary leader, in that he had not yet understood that it is a question of taking power.  But by 1968, he had arrived at an understanding of the need to protect the social and economic rights of the people and to respect the rights of the nations and peoples of the world to self-determination and development.

       When I look at the revolutions that have taken power recently in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, I ask, How did they do it?  In all three cases they formulated a discourse that struck a responsive chord among the people: a connecting of people’s problems with specific policies, framed in a broader historical and global context of understanding; an unmasking of the unpatriotic and anti-popular behavior of the political elite, in spite of its popular and democratic rhetoric; and a commitment to defend the social and economic rights of the people and the dignity and sovereignty of the nation.  They formed not merely movements of protest designed to pressure those in power.  They developed revolutionary movements that intended to take power, and they took power legally and non-violently, utilizing bourgeois political structures of representative democracy and taking advantage of space afforded by bourgeois structures of political and civil rights.

     Why don’t we do something like that in the United States?   The answer, of course, is that it is not possible, for a host of reasons.  I here am reminded of what the nineteenth century Cuban revolutionary José Martí said: “We must make the impossible possible.”  It is a question of finding a way to overcome the various obstacles that a popular revolution in the United States confronts, for the good of the nation and for the good of humanity.

     The old Marxist parties to some extent had it right: an industrial working-class vanguard that seeks to take power.  But their concept was too rigid, literally applying the concept of a proletarian vanguard in spite of the fact that revolutions of the twentieth century were in practice being led by informed and committed leaders of multiple popular classes.  And their concept was too Eurocentric, based on the European experience and not sufficiently informed by revolutions of the Third World.  These errors are understandable in the context of their place and time.  But we can avoid them today.  It is possible today to form a comprehensive and universal understanding of popular revolution.

     We the people of the United States have the duty to renovate and bring to fruition what our foreparents began in 1775 and renewed in 1867 and 1968: a popular revolution that seeks to take political power and to govern in accordance with the interests of the popular sectors and in a form consistent with universally proclaimed democratic values, including the protection of the social and economic rights of all persons and respect for the rights of all nations and peoples to sustainable development, self-determination, and sovereignty.


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, American Revolution, Revolution of 1968

        The Latin American revolutionary/reform movements of today are developing, in both theory and practice, an alternative world-system.  They have taken the lead in the transformation of the world undertaken by the colonized and neocolonized peoples of the Third World, a process of global transformation that has been unfolding for 200 years, seeking to transform the basic structures of colonialism and neocolonialism.

      The Third World revolution expresses not merely what appears to be true and right from a Third World point of view.  It expresses the most advanced human understanding of the true and the right in the present stage of human social and cultural development.  We who pertain to the North develop our understanding in the limited context of horizons that emerge in positions of privilege that have been established by structures of colonial and neocolonial domination.  But the Third World movements look at the world-system from the vantage point of the colonized and the exploited,  a vantage point that makes possible insights into global structures of domination that are not possible from the vantage point of privilege.  The Third World movements are pushing human understanding of societies to a more advanced stage.  We in the North can learn this advanced understanding, if we engage in sustained encounter with the Third World movements, and if we permit the desire to understand to take priority over other desires.

     The Third World national liberation movements have been anti-imperialist but not anti-Western.  As they sought to formulate understandings that would be integral to their liberation, they appropriated insights from the West, adapting them to the colonial situation.  Thus they took seriously the values of the American and French Revolutions and the insights emerging from the European proletarian movements from 1830s to 1920s, formulated by Marx and Lenin. 

       Therefore, as we seek to understand the Third World Revolution, we must develop an understanding of its perspective on the Western revolutions.  We must ask the question: What were the most important insights of the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Western European workers’ movement, and the Russian Revolution from the vantage point of the movements of the Third World? 

     Reflections on the insights that emerge from these revolutions and movements will be the subject of future posts.  We begin in the next post with the American Revolution.

     At a later point in time, during the last decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, the Third World movements also would appropriate and adapt the womanist and ecological ideas that were gaining force in the West.  These issues too will be discussed in relation to the current deep structural crisis of the world-system, which provides the social and political context in which the Third World movements today are developing.

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

     Spain, England, and France attained centralization and unification in the fifteenth century, and these large centralized states were able to mobilize the resources of conquest and unleash a process of European domination of the world from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Identification by the masses of these nations with a culturally-defined national community was central to the process of centralization and unification and in the mobilization of the resources of global conquest.  

     If we define patriotism as the sentiments of affection toward the culturally-defined national community, then what we are noting is the importance of patriotic sentiments among the masses in the colonizing nations in the process of European colonial domination of the world. Marx and Engels, and later Lenin, recognized the role of patriotism in domination, and they envisioned a world in which a revolutionary proletariat would replace national patriotic sentiments with sentiments of international solidarity among workers.  However, in spite of the emergence of socialist movements and political parties in the second half of the nineteenth century, the bourgeoisies in the various European nations were able to exploit patriotic sentiments in order to mobilize workers and peasants as soldiers during World War I.  This manipulation of patriotic sentiments by the bourgeoisie, and acquiescence to it by leaders of socialist organizations, was strongly and rightly denounced by V.I. Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg.   As a legacy of this phenomenon, progressive and socialist currents in Europe and North America continue to distrust patriotism, with the consequence that the people, who take to patriotic sentiments naturally, distrust leaders of progressive and socialist causes, suspicious that they are unpatriotic.

     In the Third World revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, patriotism has another dynamic.  Observing the capacity of large, centralized states to mobilize resources, the Third World revolutions understood that they themselves had to form modern nation-states, if there were to mobilize the resources necessary to attain their goals. They envisioned the establishment independent and sovereign nations that could take their place in the community of nations, a world characterized by equality and mutual respect among all nations. Like the concept of the nation-state, these concepts of the sovereignty and equality of nations were appropriated from Western thought by Third World movements, even though such ideals were not followed in practice by the colonial powers.  Third World movements and revolutionary governments expanded the meaning of the nation and of sovereignty and equality, taking them to a depth of meaning that was never intended by the global powers.  Thus they transformed and revolutionized these Western concepts as they appropriated them.  
  
     So in the Third World, revolutionaries do not look askance at patriotism.  The greatest Third World revolutionaries were highly patriotic.  They defended the nation with all of their will and resources. In the Third World, all true revolutionaries are prepared to die for the nation.  This spirit pervades the people, who honor the heroes and martyrs who sacrificed in defense of the nation.  Unlike the European form of patriotism, this is not a patriotism that asks the masses to ignore injustices.  On the contrary, it is a patriotism that remembers.  It remembers colonial and neocolonial domination, and it remembers the universal values that humanity has proclaimed.  It is a revolutionary form of patriotism that seeks to establish an alternative world-system, in which there is mutual respect among all nations, and in which imperialist pretensions by the more powerful nations are universally condemned as morally reprehensible and as damaging to the prospects for the survival of humanity.  Revolutionary patriotism envisions an international solidarity that is based on mutual respect for all peoples and cultures, with their different languages, histories and cultures, and which support one another in a common struggle to sustain and uplift humanity.


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, state, nation-state, patriotism

Posted 7/23/2013

     Like yesterday, I am devoting today’s post to responding to the stimulating comments sent by Vera Vratusa.*  We will be discussing these themes in future posts, but I think it will be useful to discuss them succinctly now, in order to indicate the direction in which we are going.

     If we look at the cases of the revolutionary processes that have had significant gains in Latin America (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador), the key to unifying the people was a clear explanation of the causes of their concrete problems combined with a clearly formulated program of action.  The revolutionary discourses were patriotic: they identified with the historic national movements for true national independence; they accused the global powers and international bourgeoisie of disrespecting the sovereignty of the nation, in violation of the norms that the global powers themselves proclaimed; they portrayed the national bourgeoisie and the traditional political parties as traitors to the nation, for their collaboration with the global powers; and they promised to lead the people in the construction of a dignified and sovereign nation that would be committed to the wellbeing of all and to solidarity with other nations and peoples. 

     In addition, the revolutionary discourses were characterized by concrete plans to take power.  The idea was not merely to protest existing conditions, but to substitute a government that responded to the interests of the national and international bourgeoisies with a government that responded to the interests of the popular sectors.  The plans to power involved a guerrilla strategy in the case of Cuba and electoral strategies in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.  In the three cases involving electoral strategies, all three formed new political structures that were alternatives to the traditional political parties.

     The petty bourgeoisie is a diverse class that includes: bureaucratic officials; small-scale business persons; doctors and lawyers; teachers and academics (from pre-school to higher education); researchers and scientists; military officers (except for the highest ranking military officers); priests, nuns, and ministers (including the highest officials of national religious associations and organizations); local politicians; and journalists.  Unlike the national bourgeoisie (owners of large-scale economic enterprises), which has an interest in maintaining neocolonialism, the petty bourgeoisie of the neocolony has an interest in revolutionary transformation.  The revolutionary project involves overcoming the legacy of underdevelopment, thus raising the standard of living of the people, thereby expanding the need for the goods and services that the petit bourgeoisie provide.  But because of their relatively privileged living conditions, the members of the petit bourgeoisie are often confused by bourgeois ideologies that distort reality in order to justify privileges for the few.  Thus, some members of the petit bourgeoisie are active in the counterrevolution.  At the same time, many of the important Third World revolutionary leaders are members of the petit bourgeoisie who have come to understand that the fate of their own class is tied to the fate of the popular classes and sectors.  The petit bourgeoisie is a divided class, but an integral part of the revolutionary process.

     Thus the unification of the popular classes and sectors in opposition to the national and international bourgeoisies is accomplished on a foundation of significant intellectual work that has enabled the emergence of a leadership that grasps the structures of domination, that formulates concrete plans of action for the construction of a more just and democratic society, and that understands the people so profoundly that it is able to find the discourse that strikes a responsive chord among the masses.

      Each nation must find its own road to revolutionary transformation.  But we can learn important lessons from those nations that have developed relatively advanced revolutionary processes.

     Vera and I encourage all to participate in the discussion.

     Greetings from Havana, Cuba.

* Vera Vratusa is Professor of Sociology at the University of Belgrade, Serbia (former Yugoslavia).  Visit http://veravratusaesociology.wikispaces.com/

Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Latin America