My column, “Knowledge, ideology, and real socialism in our times,” is written for people who are interested in serious reflection on issues of social justice, involving reading and learning about historic and contemporary unjust global structures, and about the sustained struggles of the colonized peoples of the world for a more just world. And for people who desire to engage in practical reflection on ways to contribute to the creation of a more just world.
As I explain in the April 6, 2021 Preface to the column, my life journey has taken me from the mainstream of American political culture in the early 1960s, to participation in the student anti-war movement in the late 1960s, encounter with black nationalism in the early 1970s, study of the Catholic philosopher Bernard Lonergan in the late 1970s, study of the Marx in the 1980s, and sustained encounter with Latin America from the 1990s to the present, especially the socialist revolution of Cuba. In my journey, I never lost sight of the question, what needs to be done to bring the United States to a more just foreign policy with respect to the neocolonized peoples?
So I have spent many years living among the colonized, formed and cared for by them. But I remained aware that I belong to the world of the colonizer, and it was somehow in that world of the colonizer that my lifework and mission had to be found. The colonized themselves reinforced this orientation. They were not making a constant effort to form and care for me in order that I would become lost among them. I was expected to do something with respect to the world from which I came, which presumably, I know something about.
My journey has given me a unique voice, which may benefit the reader on his or her own journey, because it is a voice that is not heard in the societies of the North, at least not in a consistent and coherent way. It is the voice of the Third World, more particularly, the voice of the exceptional leaders and teachers of the Third World movements for national and social liberation from colonial domination and imperialism. More precisely still, it is an appropriation of those insights from exceptional Third World leaders and teachers that are the most relevant to educating us in the North concerning what we can do with respect to our own dilemmas, adapting them, of course, to our concrete situations.
The content of the commentaries has its own special stamp. There are certain matters that I explain, and to which I repeatedly refer, which are not frequently discussed in the North, even among intellectuals of the Left. For example, the Cuban political process of people’s democracy; and the declarations, historical and contemporary, of the Non-Aligned Movement. And there are certain terms and phraseology that are repeated in my commentaries that do not have wide currency: the core and periphery of the capitalist world-economy; the economic function of the periphery; the neocolonial world-system; the sustained structural crisis of the modern world-system; a new international economic order; and an alternative, more just, democratic, and sustainable world-system. Moreover, the content includes a series of topics, much like a professor were to design an outline for a course: the history of the modern-world system; the colonial foundations of the modern world-system; the resistance of the colonized; the neocolonial structures of the current neocolonial world-system; the important cases of China, Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and the Non-Aligned Movement. But in this course, the reader finds that these topics are interwoven in the bi-weekly commentaries, which discuss current events, critically respond to current analyses, or commemorate anniversaries of significant events and historic persons. Beginning in 2024, I began to write commentaries on the MAGA phenomenon, analyzing it from a Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist perspective.
The worldview that I am formulating in the commentaries is consistent with what progressive Third World nations plus China are declaring and are implementing in practice, but with special attention to the meaning of these developments for those of us who are citizens of the nations of the North. At the same time, it is an understanding that shares certain principles and values of conservatism, as expressed, surprisingly, by both Third World socialism and American conservatives. These conservative values include the conviction that there is a reasonable process for discerning the true and the right; that citizens are called to personal responsibility toward society, work, and family; and that all citizens, in any nation, ought to have a strong sense of national identity and commitment to the nation’s highest historic foundational values. Although my journey has taken me to commitment to the fundamental principles formulated by Third World socialist revolutions, I remain a patriotic American with certain religious convictions.
The commentaries are from 1500 to 4500 words. They arrive in the reader’s Email Inbox twice a week, generally Tuesday and Friday mornings. Free subscribers receive all posts, and they are able to read until they are confronted with a paywall, which I have set for the maximum time that Substack allows. Paid subscriptions are $5 a month or $30 a year, the minimum that Substack allows. With a paid subscription, you receive all posts, have full access to all posts, and are able to make commentaries
Please join us, as either an unpaid or paid subscriber.
