The historic errors of the Left
The historic errors of the Left
Not seeing long-term tendencies and progressive gains
There are three principal limitations of the Left, which limit its influence among the people, in spite of the Left’s historic commitment to peace, social justice, and full democracy for all. (1) Insufficient historical consciousness, which renders the Left incapable of understanding and explaining long term tendencies. (2) Its taking of sides in the cultural wars among the people, instead of promoting and defending structures that facilitate civil and reasoned discussion among the people with respect to difficult cultural issues. (3) Its failure to understand and explain the necessary role of the state in promoting the productivity of the national economy and the social wellbeing of the people. These shortcomings are evident in Dossier No. 70 (November 2023) of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, entitled “What Can We Expect from the New Progressive Wave in Latin America?”
.
Understanding long-term historic tendencies
The Dossier presents an overview of successive progressive waves in Latin America, each of which provoked imperialist reaction, and each of which occurred in different contexts. The period initiated by the 1999 election of Hugo Chávez, often called the “pink tide,” was brought to an end by the financial crisis of 2008 and a U.S. counteroffensive. There were progressive gains in the period, but they were made possible because of favorable conditions in the world-economy and by the preoccupation of the USA with wars in the Middle East, according to the authors of Dossier No. 70.
The U.S. counteroffensive took shape, Dossier No. 70 maintains, during the 2010’s. It was highlighted by the intensification of the exploitation of the workforce and the reduction of social rights. It was the period of unconventional war against Venezuela and electoral victories of the Right in a number of Latin American countries.
A new progressive wave has now emerged, resulting from popular dissatisfaction with the counteroffensive. The new wave is indicated by the electoral defeats of neofascist projects in Mexico (2018), Argentina (2019), Bolivia (2020), Peru (2021), Chile (2021), Colombia (2022), and Brazil (2022). However, the new progressive wave confronts more serious difficulties than did the “pink tide,” because the world civilizational crisis has deepened, and because the Right is stronger, in the view of Dossier No. 70.
The problem with this recounting of progressive waves is that it obscures the historic tendency in Latin America from the late 1990s to the present, in which increasing numbers of governments are emerging that are seeking to promote the development of their national economies and greater protection of the socioeconomic rights of their citizens through the development of mutually beneficial trade among themselves and with other nations of the Third World. With consciousness of this longer historical trend, one could note that the electoral victories of the Left in the period 2019 to 2023 in Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil were recoveries of important progressive governments of the “pink tide,” which would enable us to see the loss of these government during the counteroffensive as setbacks from which the progressive movement recovered, although Argentina has been lost again. But we should not expect that a long-term anti-imperialist movement will not have setbacks. And the capacity of Bolivia and Brazil, as well as Nicaragua and Cuba, to resist the imperialist counteroffensive could be stressed.
Moreover, from the perspective of the longer historical tendency, it can be appreciated that Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Columbia are new progressive conquests; none of them had progressive governments during the “pink tide.” Thus, it could be said that the progressive wave announced by Chávez continues to advance, with recognition that it provoked an imperialist counteroffensive that has included a new mobilization of the Right, which has had some gains. These gains of the Right should be analyzed, and the analysis must include constructive self-criticism by the Left.
Moreover, the long anti-imperialist historical tendency did not begin with Chávez, who was a great admirer of Fidel. The friendship between Fidel and Chávez and their cooperation in launching ALBA show that Chávez saw the revolution that he headed as pertaining to a longer historical tendency. Indeed, both Chávez and Fidel saw their revolutions as continuations of the nineteenth century revolutions of Bolívar and Martí.
What is more, the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions see themselves as integral to the anti-imperialist movement of the Third World that was first organized by leaders of newly independent Asian and African governments in the 1950s and 1960s, with the participation of Yugoslavia and Cuba. The Non-Aligned Movement, established in 1961 with an anti-imperialist proposal, was highjacked in the 1980s by representatives of the Asian Tigers, who preached accommodation to Western neoliberal demands. But during the period of Chávez, the Non-Aligned Movement retook its classic anti-imperialist agenda, which was most evident in the 2006 Declaration of Havana, during Cuba’s second presidency of the Movement. There is a clear continuity of principles with respect to the declarations of the Movement today and those of the 1960s and 1970s. However, the Movement today has 120 member governments, many of which are now in a position to begin implementation of its principle of South-South cooperation, that is, mutually beneficial trade among the nations of the Global South. When viewed from the vantage point of long-term historical tendency, it can be said that anti-imperialism among states of the Global South has been deepening and expanding for the last seven decades, in both theory and practice, and is now more united and powerful than ever.
This expanding and strengthening anti-imperialist tendency of the nations of the Third World is obscured by Dossier No. 70’s discourse of progressive waves, which leaves the impression that the quest of the peoples for social justice is getting nowhere. If this were so, why should any citizen of any nation join in the revolution of the peoples for a more just world order?
Understanding long-term tendencies is important not only with respect to anti-imperialist movement, but also with respect to imperialism itself. In this regard, it can be said that U.S. imperialism has been in decline since the 1980s, if not since 1946 or 1965, and its decline has reached the point that power elites have neither the economic nor the ideological capacity for a correction of course, which is why it can be reasonably said that imperialism is in decadence. The Post World War II turn to a permanent war economy, the escalation of the war in Vietnam, the severing of the tie of the dollar to gold, the turn to neoliberalism, the endless wars in the Middle East, and the launching of unconventional wars were decisive steps in the weaking of the U.S. national economy, undermining its capacity to maintain its hegemony. The incapacity of the hegemonic power to maintain hegemony is a force driving the further movement of the sustained anti-imperialist tendency of the Third World plus China.
The long-term tendencies of imperialist decadence and sustained and expanding anti-imperialist movement must be understood by the Left and explained to our peoples.
.
The cultural wars and the Left
Dossier No. 70 states the following with respect to the cultural war and the ideological conflict between Left and Right in Latin America.
“If the old right prioritized its socioeconomic principles (defending the free market, monetary stability, commercial and financial openness, fiscal austerity, withdrawal of social rights, privatisations, and so on), today the far right prioritises conservative beliefs and values. This creates a stronger ideological pillar that is more difficult to break because it appeals to religious and moral themes that are rooted in popular culture. In addition to the traditional corruption agenda, the right has doubled down in mobilising to defend the heteronormative nuclear family structure, ‘Christian values’, and the right to bear arms as well as to combat abortion, what it refers to as ‘gender ideology’, and the rights of the LGBTQIA+ population.
….
“The right has used the escalated tensions around so‑called family values to hinder the construction of a consensus about more ‘classical’ economic and social themes, such as combating inequality and hunger, distributing income, overcoming the country’s position of dependency in the global arena, and implementing agrarian reform.”
Here the authors are implicitly recognizing a historic error of the Left, namely, taking one side in the cultural war, rather than advocating for full civil and participatory dialogue over cultural questions. The authors of the Dossier lament that the Right is able to use cultural issues against the socioeconomic agenda of the Left, but the Left, by taking sides in the cultural wars, has placed itself in that situation.
The Left often has assumed that these are simple moral questions, to which they know the correct answers. But in reality, most issues at stake in the cultural wars are complex questions that ought to be the object of free and open dialogue, informed by reason and science as well as traditional philosophical concepts and religious values, with the active participation of the people, whose views should be received with civility. The Left should have positioned itself above the battle, protecting the right of all to express views, and imposing civility from all. Instead, the Left has conducted itself with moral certitude, implicitly claiming superiority over persons with traditional views, even traditional views with scientific and philosophical support. The Left has alienated itself from the people, who are the foundation of anti-imperialist emancipatory construction.
Many in the Left express admiration for socialist Cuba, but they do not carefully observe Cuba, with the intention of attaining insight concerning how a socialist revolution in power can sustain itself. Many are not aware, therefore, that socialist Cuba views the family as the basic cell in the formation of socialist consciousness. When it moved to a constitutional and legal recognition of diverse forms of families, it did so on the basis of extensive education and popular participation in respectful discussion. In addition, in Cuba, no medical interventions of any kind are performed on minors without the full involvement of parents or guardians. In Cuba, if the revolutionary vanguard has an understanding that differs with the prevailing view of the people, it turns to patient explanation, not imposition or depreciation.
.
The necessary role of the state in promoting the economic development of the nation
The Third World revolution from the 1950s to the present has arrived to understand that the right of the people to economic development is the most fundamental of all human rights, because without economic development, all other rights are compromised, if not nullified. Third World nations in many cases were able to organize the political will to seek economic development in accordance with their right to sovereignty, which has led to an accumulated experience and understanding concerning effective strategies for promoting the development of a nation’s economy. Many have arrived to understand that the basis for economic development is the formulation and implementation by the state of comprehensive development plans, with space for diverse forms of property, including large-scale private property, but always under conditions of state direction. The state must look for creative ways to stimulate the productivity of the economy, promote the long-term sustainable growth of the economy, and provide for the socioeconomic needs of the people, a political situation that is most possible when the state is in the control of the delegates of the people or by people’s delegates in alliance with particular economic sectors that have an interest in the sustained development of the national economy. The role of the revolutionary intellectual is to explain this possibility to the people or to the leaders of the people, or to lead the people directly as leaders/intellectuals.
The Left has failed to put before the people an effective explanatory discourse, using numerous examples of effective state action in the strengthening the productivity of the national economy, including China, Vietnam, Cuba, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and also appropriating relevant lessons from the Asian tigers. The Left needs to learn from the progress of the most advanced leftist projects, explaining the accumulating wisdom to the people. It must win the trust and confidence of the people, armed with an informed and persuasive discourse. The Left has failed to do this, so I ask: Why should the people follow them? Shouting slogans in the street is no substitute for the development of understanding through persistent personal encounter with the most advanced socialist projects and people’s revolutions, explaining the developing understanding to the people.
.
Final considerations
In the Forty-Eighth Newsletter (2023) of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, entitled “The Dangerously Appealing Style of the Far Right,” Vijay Prashad reflects on Javier Milei’s victory in the November 19 presidential elections in Argentina. He writes that “the far right’s misleading representation and weaponisation of corruption and crime has placed the left at a deep disadvantage.” I would add: especially when the Left has not put forward a politically intelligent, scientifically and historically informed, and pedagogically effective alternative economic plan for the long-term development of the nation.
According to its Website, “Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research is an international institute guided by popular movements and organisations. We seek to bridge academic production and political and social movements in order to promote critical thinking and stimulate debates and research with an emancipatory perspective that serves the people’s aspirations.” I wonder if this framing of its mission leads it away from questions related to political power, such as: What are effective strategies for the taking of political power by people’s movements? And what are necessary and effective emancipatory strategies for a people’s revolution in power to fulfill its promises to the people? Perhaps such questions would lead it to analyze more carefully the nations constructing socialism in China, Vietnam, Korea, and Cuba.
In Cuba, I came across the phrase “historic error,” with respect to the Communist Party of Cuba’s alliance with Batista in the 1930s, an error caused by the over-centralization of the Communist International and an over-application of the popular front strategy. It was suggested that the error was so damaging to its image before the people that it destroyed the Party’s capacity to lead the revolution to triumph, as occurred in China and Vietnam. It created a situation in which Fidel, an unorthodox Marxist-Leninist, had to first create a new political formation (the July 26 Movement), and then, following its triumph, to include the militants of the first Communist Party in the creation of a second Communist Party of Cuba.
The errors of the Left today are fatal in exactly the same way. They are historic errors that destroy the capacity of the Left to lead the people. They create a situation that makes necessary an ideological reconfiguration that synthesizes the Left and the Right, one that stresses gradual dedicated study and patient explanation of long-term imperialist and anti-imperialist tendencies, and one that accepts all religiously based concepts and practices as a private matter.
A free subscription option is available, with capacity to read, send, and share all posts. A paid subscription ($5 per month or $40 per year) enables you to make comments and to support the costs of the column; paid subscribers also receive a free PDF copy of my book on Cuba and the world-system. Ten percent of income generated through subscriptions to the column is donated to the Cuban Society for Philosophical Investigations.
Follow me on Twitter: Charles McKelvey@CharlesMcKelv14