Global Learning
  • Home
  • Defenders of Cuban Socialism
    • UN Charter
    • Declaration of Human Rights
    • Bandung
    • New International Economic Order
    • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Substack editorial column
  • New Cold War articles
  • Friends of Socialist China articles
  • Global Research articles
  • Counterpunch articles
  • Cuba and the world-system
    • Table of Contents and chapter summaries
    • About the author
    • Endorsements
    • Obtaining your copy
  • Blog ¨The View from the South¨
    • Blog Index
    • Posts in reverse chronological order
  • The Voice of Third World Leaders
    • Asia >
      • Ho Chi Minh
      • Xi Jinping, President of China
    • Africa >
      • Kwame Nkrumah
      • Julius Nyerere
    • Latin America >
      • Fidel Castro
      • Hugo Chávez
      • Raúl Castro >
        • 55th anniversary speech, January 1, 1914
        • Opening Speech, CELAC
        • Address at G-77, June 15, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, July 5, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, December 20, 2014
        • Speech on Venezuela at ALBA, 3-17-2015
        • Declaration of December 18, 2015 on USA-Cuba relations
        • Speech at ALBA, March 5, 2018
      • Miguel Díaz-Canel >
        • UN address, September 26, 2018
        • 100th annivesary, CP of China
      • Evo Morales >
        • About Evo Morales
        • Address to G-77 plus China, January 8, 2014
        • Address to UN General Assembly, September 24, 2014
      • Rafael Correa >
        • About Rafael Correa
        • Speech at CELAC 1/29/2015
        • Speech at Summit of the Americas 2015
      • Nicolás Maduro
      • Cristina Fernández
      • Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations >
        • Statement at re-opening of Cuban Embassy in USA, June 20, 2015
        • The visit of Barack Obama to Cuba
        • Declaration on parliamentary coup in Brazil, August 31, 2016
        • Declaration of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba on Venezuela, April 13, 2019
      • ALBA >
        • Declaration of ALBA Political Council, May 21, 2019
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 17, 2015
        • Declaration on Venezuela, April 10, 2017
      • Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) >
        • Havana Declaration 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 26
    • Martin Luther King, Jr.
    • International >
      • Peoples’ Summit 2015
      • The Group of 77 >
        • Declaration on a New World Order 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela 3/26/2015
      • BRICS
      • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Readings
    • Charles McKelvey, Cuba in Global Context
    • Piero Gleijeses, Cuba and Africa
    • Charles McKelvey, Chávez and the Revolution in Venezuela
    • Charles McKelvey, The unfinished agenda of race in USA
    • Charles McKelvey, Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist Revolutionary
  • Recommended Books
  • Contact

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Recommended books on Amazon.com; click on image of book to connect

The art of listening

4/8/2018

0 Comments

 
​     Yesterday, I by chance viewed part of a television program on the Arts and Entertainment Network, in which Ray Chen, an award-winning Taiwanese-Australian violinist, was explaining the need for developing our capacities for profound listening.  He noted that his mother had taught him that, if you constantly talk without listening to others, you would not be able to learn, and thus would not have anything important to say.  He also observed that it seemed to him that most people listen only superficially, just enough to identify what they take to be errors in the view of the other.

      Chen was offering practical wisdom important for the personal development of understanding and knowledge in the fields of common sense and music.  His insights parallel what I have tried to formulate for the field of historical social science, which also could be called historical political economy.  The field attained its highest stage of scientific development in the West with the work of Marx, but since the time of Marx, it has become fragmented in the universities, and the separated disciplines of philosophy, history, economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology have emerged.  As a result of its fragmentation in the universities, the evolution of the field of historical political economy has occurred in the domain of political struggles for social justice, formulated by charismatic leaders, of whom Lenin, Mao, Ho, and Fidel are the most exemplary. (See various posts in this category of Knowledge).

       I have maintained that, with respect to the development of the understanding of social justice issues, especially important is listening to voices of the social movement leaders of the colonized and neocolonized peoples of the planet, inasmuch as they have a vantage point “from below.”  However, as I have observed, such encounter with the movements of the colonized is overlooked systemically in the cultures of the North, or at least not developed beyond superficiality.  This limitation affects even the understanding and the political discourse of the Left.

      What would we learn if we were to listen carefully to the voices of the Third World revolutionary leaders?  We would arrive to important insights in two areas.  First, we would arrive to much greater understanding with respect to global political and social dynamics.  We would learn that the world-system and world-economy have been constructed on a colonial foundation of peripheralization of the economies of the world, thus converting the world’s economies into providers of cheap raw materials and purchasers of surplus manufactured goods, resulting in underdevelopment and poverty in vast regions of the world and in the economic growth of the colonizing nations.  We would learn that the colonized peoples of the world, with variation in particularities and in degrees of advancement, forged anti-colonial revolutions that sought national sovereignty and social transformation; they attained political independence but not true sovereignty, thus establishing the foundations of the neocolonial world-system.  We would learn that as the neocolonial world-system entered a sustained crisis, as a result of its having reached the geographical limits of the earth, its elites launched economic and military attacks against the peoples and nations of the earth, in violation of the imperialist rules of neocolonial domination, for which the fiction of a democratic world was necessary.  We would learn that the elite attack on the peoples in the context of systemic crisis have given rise to two serious problems, namely, a new form of terrorism that indiscriminately targets civilians, and an uncontrolled international migration to core zones.  And we would learn that some anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial revolutions, notably those in China, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, have forged stable political systems and growing economies and are cooperating with one another in developing new international guidelines that could serve as the foundation of an alternative more just and sustainable world-system.  We would learn these things if we were to learn to listen, because a host of Third World political and social movement leaders, academics, intellectuals, and journalists understands them.  

     Secondly, we would arrive to appreciate the importance of the art of politics, a quality that has been exhibited by social movement leaders of the Third World.  The revolutionary leaders that were successful obtaining the support of their peoples invariably demonstrated a high capacity for appreciating the issues, slogans, and discourses that would provoke a responsive chord among the people.  In addition, they understood that the people, outraged by abuses and social injustices, possess a revolutionary spontaneity, but that the people must be led toward the necessary road.

      Cultural factors influence our capacity to listen.  The culture of the United States, for example, with its historic economic development forged by commerce, the conquest of new territories, and individual dreams of upward mobility, listening to others has not been a quality of high priority.  In contrast, for the colonized peoples of the Third World, the experience of colonialism made apparent the different ways of viewing the world among the peoples of the planet as well as the necessity for cooperation and mutual listening among humans.  Now, as the multifaceted economic, political, ecological, and cultural crisis of the world-system deepens, the need for profound listening increasingly is necessary for political stability and ecologically sustainable economic growth.



0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author: Charles McKelvey

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

    Categories

    All
    American Revolution
    Blog Index
    Bolivia
    Charismatic Leaders
    China
    Critique Of The Left
    Cuban History
    Cuba Today
    Ecuador
    Environment
    French Revolution
    Gay Rights
    Haitian Revolution
    Knowledge
    Latin American History
    Latin American Right
    Latin American Unity
    Marx
    Marxism-Leninism
    Mexican Revolution
    Miscellaneous
    Neocolonialism
    Neoliberalism
    Nicaragua
    North-South Cooperation
    Presidential Elections 2016
    Press
    Public Debate In USA
    Race
    Religion And Revolution
    Revolution
    Russian Revolution
    South-South Cooperation
    Third World
    Trump
    US Ascent
    US Imperialism
    Vanguard
    Venezuela
    Vietnam
    Wallerstein
    Women And Revolution
    World History
    World-System
    World-System Crisis

    Archives

    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    January 2013

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

More Ads


website by Sierra Creation