[Marxism] Diana Raby on "The Disinherited Left"

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is but one chapter of a book which seems not to be available
in stores at the moment. The author, whose name has only recently
come to my attention, seems to have a genuinely original synthesis.
I can't wait to get a copy of the book. She covers the entire gamut
of revolutionary, nationalist and reformist experiences throughout
Latin America. She thinks highly of Cuba, but like I do, opposes 
the idea that Cuba is "a" or "the" model for Marxists generally.


Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
http://www.walterlippmann.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews 
===================================================================

The Cuban revolution is clearly the starting-point for contemporary
Latin American revolutionary movements, yet remarkably little
attention has been devoted to its political originality. Accounts of
the armed struggle and the events of the revolutionary transformation
are legion, and Cuba has been much discussed in terms of armed
struggle and the foco theory of guerrilla action, and also with
reference to the Guevarist concept of the ?New Man? and socialist
theory; but the actual political process which led first to
revolutionary victory and then to socialist transition has not been
adequately studied. In the enormous literature on Cuba there is
general recognition that the old Communist Party, the Partido
Socialista Popular (PSP), was incapable of making the revolution,
both because it opposed armed struggle and because of its former
compromises with Batista. It is also generally recognised that
revolutionary victory was the work of Fidel Castro and the 26 July
Movement, a broad, popular, nationalist and social-reformist movement
which did not adopt a strictly defined ideological label and did not
mention Socialism or Communism until more than two years after the
victory of 1 January 1959. But the implications of this for
revolutionary theory have never been adequately explored beyond vague
references to the genius of Fidel (from admirers) or Castro?s
duplicity (from detractors), coupled with correct but inadequate
observations about the radicalising effects of US hostility. Surely
the fact that a broad national movement with individual charismatic
leadership was capable of leading one of the most popular and radical
revolutionary processes in history deserves careful analysis. It
raises fundamental questions about the concept of a revolutionary
vanguard, about the role of political parties and the relationship
between leadership and mass. Perhaps today?s distrust of political
parties and of formulaic ideologies is neither so new nor so
original, and the same questions (and possible answers to them) may
have been raised in Cuba over 40 years ago ? only to be lost in the
rhetoric and the harsh realities of the Cold War.
------------------------
Here it needs to be pointed out that Latin America has an outstanding
tradition of popular armed struggle which long predates the Cuban
revolution, having its roots in the Independence Wars of the early
nineteenth century. It is based on a concept of popular collective
insurgency which has nothing to do with militarism or with the
?individual right to bear arms? of the US Constitution. The idea of
the people taking up arms to achieve liberation is central to Latin
American political culture, and it by no means excludes other forms
of struggle and participation. It embodies a distrust of
institutionalized politics and a radical rejection of all forms of
paternalism: rights are gained by struggle, whether armed or
peaceful, and not granted by benevolent authority. It is intimately
linked to the concept of popular sovereignty, that sovereignty really
does reside in the people as a whole and not in the propertied
classes or in any hereditary group or privileged institution. The
people, moreover, constitute themselves as political actors by
collective mobilisation, not merely by passive reception of media
messages or individualised voting. The secret ballot is undoubtedly
regarded as essential, but as inadequate unless accompanied by mass
organisation and mobilisation; and this will ideally be peaceful but
may encompass an entirely legitimate recourse to arms if faced with
repression or arbitrary authority. Hence the resonance of the term
?revolutionary? tends to be positive, unlike in contemporary Europe
or North America where it has come to be associated with irrational
violence or dogmatic sectarianism. For the same reasons, ?democracy?
in Latin America is popularly associated with collective rights and
popular power, and not just representative institutions and liberal
pluralism. The concept is also indissolubly linked with the rights
and cultures of oppressed ethnic and social groups, with indigenous,
black and mestizo empowerment.

The Cuban revolution brought with it a reaffirmation of this
tradition of armed struggle, and even if for a while in the 1960s and
?70s it became fetishised in the form of the isolated guerrilla foco,
it also contributed to the rise of more substantial insurgent
organisations organically linked to popular movements in several
countries: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia. The Central
American insurgencies of the 1970s and ?80s represented the
internationalisation of the popular revolutionary movement, and
precisely for this reason they were regarded as an intolerable threat
by the United States. Victory in Nicaragua in 1979 revived the hope
of continental liberation inspired by the Cuban revolution, and
significantly it also came about in unorthodox form. As in Cuba it
was a national uprising against a brutal dictatorship in a small and
extremely dependent country, a client regime in a region which had
suffered frequent US intervention. The Sandinista Front (FSLN, Frente
Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) was a broad movement of national
liberation with three constituent tendencies and with ideological
influences ranging from Marxism-Leninism to Social Democracy and
liberation theology. The Sandinistas were opposed throughout by the
small Nicaraguan Communist Party, and as in Cuba, drew inspiration
from national and Latin American revolutionary and anti-imperialist
traditions. While expressing admiration for and gratitude to Cuba,
they did not adopt the Cuban model (and much less the Soviet one),
insisting on maintaining a ?mixed economy? and a pluralist electoral
system combined with elements of direct democracy. The Nicaraguan
agrarian reform and literacy campaign, and the rank-and-file
organisational structure of the Sandinista Defence Committees
(similar to the Cuban Committees for the Defence of the Revolution),
clearly drew on Cuban experience, but were combined with efforts to
work with the private sector and with a pluralist political system.

FULL:
http://redpepper.blogs.com/venezuela/2006/10/the_disinherite.html#more


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