[Marxism] Models for the Latin American left

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael H.
>>> lnp3
>     CB wrote:
>   "Speaking of Latin American history, was General Simon Bolivar really
all that progressive as a model for today ?"
>
>   Louis says:
>"Absolutely. In the 19th century, he was on the front-lines attacking
Spanish colonialism and disunity. As a militant of the bourgeois revolution,
we would put in the same category as an Abe Lincoln or a
>Garibaldi."
<<<<<>>>>>

one's relevance depends upon *our* creative/flexible/imaginative use of
her/his ideas according to context, both revolutionary theory and
revolutionary action must be rooted in specific socio-economic conditions,
in effect, there are no models...   Mh


^^^^
CB; I don't mean for people to get hung up on the word "model."

I happen to think that naming the movement "Bolivarian" is a good idea. My
question to Lou was tongue in cheek.  It is not an individual as a model for
individual action today, but the relative revolutionary or radical character
of Bolivar's movement or Lincoln's movement ( the historical forces pushing
him from below, not his actual mentality) in their specific historical
context. We use their name as a convenient moniker for the movement that
they were made by, pushed by. See Marx's discussion of Lincoln, small man ,
actually , pushed into a historic act by the social forces of his day.
Revolutions can happen through non-revolutionists, that's one thing we learn
from Lincoln.

By the way, discussing history as an experience to inform today's struggles
is a non-scholastic way to discuss history as it connects scholarship with
practice.



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