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

Who defines socialism?

4/20/2016

0 Comments

 
     Among the articles posted on the list of the Association of Black Sociologists in the aftermath of the visit of President Obama to Cuba was “Race and Sex in Cuba” by Paul D’Amato.  The article was published in the International Socialist Review in 2007; D’Amato is the Editor of the Review.  

     D’Amato maintains that the achievements of the Cuban Revolution are limited.  The Cuban Revolution, he maintains, has achieved national independence, but it is not a socialist revolution, inasmuch as its economic system is based on the exploitation of wage labor. Having not liberated the working class, Cuba is incapable of attaining full liberation with respect to race and gender, he maintains.

      Beyond noting that nationalization is not identical with socialism, D’Amato does not, in this article, explain the characteristics of a system that has eliminated the exploitation of the worker.  He notes that societies that have called themselves socialist are not in reality socialist, and he refers specifically in this regard to the former Soviet Union and the former nations of the socialist bloc of Eastern Europe as well as China and Cuba.  D’Amato maintains, moreover, that Marxism should not be criticized on the grounds that various forms of oppression continue to exist in socialist societies, inasmuch as the self-proclaimed socialist nations are not truly socialist.        

     D’Amato represents a tendency in European and US Marxism, in which there is a fixed idea of the meaning of socialism, on the basis of which the various socialist projects of the world are found lacking. Such a perspective appeared to receive empirical support with the collapse of “real socialism” in Eastern Europe.  But the recent triumph of self-designated socialist revolutions in Latin America provides empirical basis for a reformulation of the meaning and characteristics of socialism.  In this situation, I maintain that all of us who carry the banner of socialism should permit the triumphant revolutions calling themselves socialist to define in practice the characteristics of socialism.  These include the triumphant revolutions in Russia (1917), Vietnam (1945), China (1949), Cuba (1959), Chile (1970), Venezuela (1998), Bolivia (2006), and Ecuador (2007).

      Studying the characteristics of these socialist projects, we can discern that they all involved the taking of political power by an alternative political formation led by a charismatic leader and supported by various popular sectors.  In these cases, the working class was not in the majority, and it was not in the vanguard.  The leaders in the revolutionary processes came overwhelmingly from the radical wing of the petty bourgeoisie; and the popular sectors included peasants, students, workers and women.  Once in power, the triumphant revolutions confronted enormous challenges with respect to the production and distribution of necessary goods and services.  Of necessity, their orientation was not so much toward the emancipation of the worker but the marshalling of labor to provide for the needs of the people.  They relied heavily on nationalization, but they sanctioned various forms of property in addition to state property, including cooperatives, small scale private property, and joint ventures with foreign capital.  They all believed that the state should be the author of a national development project and that the state should be a major actor in the economy.

      As socialism evolved in practice, it assumed characteristics that were different from what was projected by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.  But the formulators of classic Marxism-Leninism understood that their theoretical formulations were tied to observations of particular conditions and social movements, and that revolutionary theory would continue to evolve, connected to practice.  Lenin, confronting immense challenges with respect to providing for the needs of the people in the aftermath of the Civil War, adopted out of necessity the New Economic Policy, which could be interpreted as violating some of the theoretical tenets of Marxism.  Moreover, observing the failure of the proletarian revolution in the West to triumph, and seeing as well the anti-imperialism of the oppressed nations, Lenin discerned that the vanguard of the socialist revolution would move from the Western European working class to the oppressed peoples of the East, which we today call the Third World or the South.

     Marxism-Leninism should be understood as an evolving theoretical project, linked to practice.  It has evolved since the Lenin’s time in the form of revolutions of a dual character in the colonized regions of the world, characterized by a quest, on the one hand, for national liberation from European colonial domination, and on the other hand, for social liberation from class exploitation and related forms of social oppression.  Paradigmatic charismatic leaders that have formulated the evolving theory of Marxism-Leninism include Ho, Mao, Fidel and Chávez.  And it is they who define the characteristics of socialism, an authority that they possess because of their demonstrated capacity to mobilize their own peoples in defense of the national and social liberation that their peoples seek.  The characteristics of socialism cannot possibly be defined by those who are removed from the evolving global popular revolution.

      The current epoch is characterized by a structural and terminal crisis of the world-system and by a turn of the global elite to neoliberalism.  And it is characterized by anti-neoliberal protests and popular movements and revolutions in all regions of the planet, attaining its most advanced expression in Latin America.  To understand the meaning of socialism for our time, we must appreciate that theory is tied to practice, and that the peoples and movements of the Third World have taken the role of the vanguard in revolutionary practice.  We must seek to understand Third World movements and the insights of their charismatic leaders, just as Marx sought to understand human history and modern capitalism from the vantage point of the Western European worker, who constituted the vanguard of revolutionary practice in Marx’s time. 

     In tomorrow’s post, we will discuss D’Amato’s observations concerning race in Cuba.


Key words:  socialism, Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, theory, practice, Third World
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