The philosophical testament of Thalía Fung
The philosophical testament of Thalía Fung
A call for political philosophy from the Global South
In my commentary of December 1, 2023, I wrote of Dr. Thalía Fung, founder of the Cuban Society of Philosophical Investigations, who passed from earthly life on November 20, 2023, at the age of 89. I wrote of her life and work, with special emphasis on her final project on the revolutionary subject. (See “Dr. Thalía Muklan Fung Riverón: Science and revolution from Cuba and from the Global South,” December 1, 2023).
In today’s commentary, I review La ciencia política enfoque Sur, [Political Science from the South], which I view as Dr. Fung’s political-philosophical testament. It was published in Havana by Editora Politica in 2014. In what follows, I try to be faithful to what Dr. Fung wrote, introducing my own interjections only in a couple of places in which I felt that clarification would be useful. I reserve until my next commentary a review of her interpretations of the Cuban Revolution, to which she was committed in word and deed throughout her life. It will be posted on January 1 to coincide with the sixty-fifth anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
Preface
In the Preface to La ciencia política enfoque Sur , Dr. Fung writes that the establishment of the United Nations appeared to announce a world capable of attaining justice and peace, but the characteristics of states did not favor the implementation of the values of the UN Charter. States were rewarded and driven by monopolistic circles, such that what emerged was the use of the United Nations in favor of the economic, political, and military mechanisms of the powerful. Weak nations and unfavored groups were excluded.
Only a non-excluding humanist political philosophy, she writes, would be able to critically evaluate the situation in which powerful economic circles, and therefore the drivers of world policy, have led humanity. For this great task, political philosophy must find a road that brings together all the branches of philosophy, including epistemology, the technological sciences, and the social sciences. And such political philosophy belongs not only to the dominant classes and groups, but also those who represent those of low status. Thus Dr. Fung sees the need for a political philosophy from below. She does not intend to be neutral, but to formulate an alternative, Marxist political option, a political science from the perspective of the Global South.
Before the urgent challenges that humanity today confronts, philosophy must integrate science with all human activities, including activities with respect to nature; and it must bring the sciences to a common consciousness, including consciousness of the use and abuse of science against humanity and against nature. It therefore must pass from philosophy to political philosophy.
§
The rise and fall of Western Political Science
Western political science was born in an intellectual movement away from philosophical speculation and toward the recognition of real political subjects who are conscious of the possibility of influencing the reality of the world around them. The thought of Machiavelli was an important breakthrough in this regard. The idea, as expressed by Tocqueville, that men direct themselves toward increasing and strengthening their power, gained wide influence in the second half of the nineteenth century in France, Germany, and United States. In 1903, the American Political Science Association was established in the United States, and its assumptions and concepts became influential in the world during the ascent of the United States, giving rise to what can be called Western political science.
As described by Fung, Western political science possesses limited capacity for epistemological reflection. Western political science emphasizes individual political and civil rights, not social or economic rights or collective rights. It is removed from the reality of the neocolonized peoples who constitute the world’s majority, and therefore it is incapable of formulating a universal political science. It does not analyze or reflect upon the political dynamics of Third World countries; it simply assumes that European-U.S. democracy is the only form of democracy. Even though it pretends to be neutral, Western political science cannot hide its ultimate end, that of reproducing the capitalist political system, with the support of national and international civil societies. Western political science reinforces the international division of labor imposed by colonialism during the development of the world-system, dismissing policies that seek a relatively autonomous development in a quest for emancipation.
With its emphasis on civil and political rights and its marginalization of social and economic rights and collective rights, Western political science is incapable of critiquing neoliberal globalization, even though neoliberal globalization is a manifestation of the decadence of the modern West. Neoliberal globalization has given rise to an alternative political science from the South, now in its incipient stage, which emphasizes the emancipation of the colonized.
§
The foundation of the Political Science from the South: Marx, Engels, and Lenin
Thalía Fung maintains that the necessary political science from the South, capable of responding to neoliberal globalization and a capitalist world-economy in decadence, is rooted in the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
Marx. Like Western political science, Marx discerned the importance of real political actors who endeavor to change the conditions of their reality. But he identified the proletariat, and not the bourgeoisie, as the revolutionary political subject of his time. What is more, he saw the proletariat not only as an agent of political revolution, but also of human revolution, able to attain human emancipation.
Marx saw the Paris Commune as an important indication of the potential of the working class to take political power and to forge alternative emancipatory structures. The Commune established alternatives to the army and bureaucracy of the State. It established the popular masses, as against the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie, as the source of the legitimacy of the State.
The Paris Commune was more advanced than the French Revolution, in that the French Revolution was merely a political revolution that left intact the civil society and socioeconomic conditions. Whereas previous forms of government were fundamentally repressive, the Paris Commune was a government of the working class that carried out economic emancipation from work. It was, for Marx, a new process without historic precedent.
In addition, the Paris Commune stimulate a general uprising of peasants in the rural provinces. This enabled Marx to anticipate a future worker-peasant alliance.
Engels. The First International stimulated the founding of workers’ parties in Europe. Its pamphlet, written by Engels, explained that in a struggle for socialism, distinct from a struggle for democracy, the working class identifies its common objectives and tactics, which are different from those of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, the working class needs a workers’ party with its own military organization and its own political comportment, negotiating with the parties representing other social groups as one power with another.
Engels understood that in the struggle for democratic change, the workers had to form strategic alliances with peasants. This strategy was subsequently implemented in practice by Lenin in Russia, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Mao in China, and Fidel in Cuba. With respect to Germany, Engels proposed the unification of various workers’ organizations on the basis of Marxism. He envisioned a political party with authority and discipline, able to educate the workers in clandestine political action that seeks the taking of political power.
Lenin. Lenin adapted Marx to the twentieth century and to the conditions of Russia. For Lenin, the universally applicable insights of Marx must be mediated by consideration of particular conditions.
In the context of the autocratic regime of Russia, armed with a solid knowledge of the coercive policies of the autocracy, populism was successful in clandestinely disseminating revolutionary ideas and tactics to Marxist groups. In this vibrant populist environment, Lenin identified the first important political task as the transforming of the militant revolutionary into a politically reflective leader. He thus sought to inculcate political culture and progressive political consciousness among active social subjects.
At the same time, Lenin analyzed the changing political conditions of the peasantry. New economic factors in feudal peasant life converted many peasants into agricultural workers or peasants who produced in response to market demands, resulting in the impoverishment of the majority. Lenin observed that these dynamics had given rise to the emergence of peasant movements and populist political movements, which meant that peasants were being converted into new social agents and new historical subjects. This was a situation very different from what Marx confronted in his time, which led Marx to consider that the peasants did not constitute a class or class-for-itself. It led Lenin to reconceptualize the revolutionary class struggle in Russia as involving an alliance of workers and peasants, led by leaders of the working class, who were dedicated to elevating the consciousness of workers and peasants.
Lenin emphasized the need for a vanguard political party, a political organization that would be an instrument of combat for the Russian working class, acting on the basis of theoretical and political work and observation of political processes. The party would be an organization comporting itself professionally and taking firm yet flexible decisions, establishing norms for the political comportment of the workers and their allies. When a political revolution occurs, the party assumes political power, substituting the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with a dictatorship that defends the interests of workers and peasants. Once in power, the party would maintain its organizational and ideological cohesion. Its special work is to develop the political culture, struggling against individualism and elements of bourgeois political culture that always have influence among the oppressed. It designs strategies and tactics for the construction of socialism.
Lenin observed the movement of the epicenter of the Revolution from England and France, to Germany, to Russia, and to the East (China and Indochina). He understood this movement to imply the generation of new political subjects and a plurality of actors. In the colonized countries, the colonized would be the decisive force from below, and the peasants would be a major force among the colonized.
Lenin differentiated pre-capitalist colonial policy from the imperialist policies of monopoly capitalism and the territorial division of the world by the imperialist powers, which gave rise to the movements of national liberation and the emergence of neocolonialism. Marx had anticipated national struggles against foreign powers, as was reflected in his treatment of the Anglo-China war as a special case. But the phenomenon of national liberation versus imperialism did not emerge as the prevailing pattern until after Marx’s time, with the rise of monopoly capitalism, which was compelled by its advanced levels of productivity to find new markets for surplus goods. This phenomenon was observed and appreciated by Lenin, who discerned the antagonism between monopoly capitalism and oppressed peoples, which launched the oppressed peoples, subjugated economically and militarily, toward a struggle against imperialism.
The world situation would thus be increasingly defined as a struggle between the colonizers and the colonized. Among the colonized are found the bourgeoisie of the oppressed peoples, which began to attain consciousness of itself as part of an oppressed people during the stage of monopoly capitalism and imperialism. The unity of action of the national bourgeoisie with the peasants, proletarians, semi-proletarians, and lumpenproletariat requires a political party capable of identifying the common interests of all the sectors of the colonized, which becomes increasingly the point of departure for Third World intellectuals as imperialist penetration deepens.
The consciousness of Lenin of the significance of anti-imperialist struggles among the colonized can be seen in the Third International, which supported nationalist revolutionary movements in what it called the “backward countries.” Lenin revised the historic slogan of Marx, when he declared, “Workers and oppressed and exploited peoples of the world, unite!”
§
The fundamental concepts and principles of political science from the South
Contemporary political science must advance to the formation of the revolutionary vanguard capable of leading the peoples to an alternative world situation, forged from below by the new historic subjects who are the new sources of knowledge. It must make a decisive and necessary contribution to a political practice of the South that seeks an alternative to imperialist capitalism.
The political science from the South must appreciate complexities in the construction of socialism in the real world. The socialist project seeks to satisfy the needs of the great majority, and not merely a few, using the productive capacity of the society. To do so, it must utilize productive forces that pertain to capitalist socioeconomic formation. But capitalist productivity is based on the exploitation of workers and on the superexploitation of other countries. In response to this challenge, the socialist ethic calls for satisfying the needs of all without exploiting other lands, developing the nation’s own productive capacity on the basis of sacrifice, and gradually developing the productive capacity of the nation to provide for the fundamental needs of the people. Nation’s constructing socialism today therefore must adopt limited capitalistic enterprises under the direction of the state, with state power placed in the hands of the delegates and deputies of the people. This has been the road in Cuba, Vietnam, and China.
It is easy for Northern schematic socialists to say that Cuba, Vietnam, and China have lost the socialist way, because of their adoption of capitalist practices. But the policies of Cuba, Vietnam, and China are justified, because they are responses to the real needs of the people, who do not hesitate in respectfully expressing their dissatisfactions.
The political science from the South is based on the methodical construction of Truth, in contrast to post-modern subjective constructions in the pursuit of the pragmatic objectives of domination. The political science from the South focuses on real global problems, based in the formulation of alternative values and an alternative ethic. It rejects a constructionism that distances real actors from concrete historical analysis.
The epistemology of the political science from the South differs from the epistemological premises of the Frankfurt School, which departs from the Leninist theory of truth. The Frankfurt School seeks intersubjective consensus among individuals and historic construction on the basis of critique of the status quo. This idea is present in neo-Marxism, neo-Gramscism, and post rationality. Formulations must be based in real movements and real political actors.
Both the powerful and the real movements from below assume the possibility of knowing the truth. The debate over constructionism is confined to think tanks; in the real movement of international affairs, the possibility of knowing the truth is assumed.
The necessary political science from the South is rooted in Marxist theory and in concrete historical relations defined by domination, colonialism, underdevelopment, and poverty.
§
The development of the task
Dr. Fung’s book includes an appendix that provides brief bios of the forty-six Cuban scholars plus one each from East Africa, Spain, and Palestine who were among the founders of the Cuban Society of Philosophical Investigation in 1983 and have continued to work on the project. The appendix also names philosophers, historians, economists, and political scientists who have contributed to the project. A second appendix lists thirty-three doctoral dissertations that have been defended before the faculty of the Society since 1995, in cooperation with the University of Havana. The themes of the dissertations include: the political thought of Raúl Roa García, Cuban ambassador to the UN following the triumph of the Revolution; the policy of rectification in the Syrian Revolution (doctoral candidate from Syria); the reintegration of East Africa (East African candidate); Yemenite unity (candidate from Yemen); an analysis of the conceptions of the Cuban revolutionary process; the origin of the nation-state in Western Europe; public housing policies in Tabasco (candidate from Mexico); North American Middle Eastern policy from 1991 to 2000 (candidate from Iraq); UN resolutions on Jerusalem; governability and political education in Colombia (candidate from Colombia); transition to socialism in Cuba (candidate from Italy); the eventual use of military force by the United States against Cuba; the leadership of Brazil in South America; political alliances in Cuba, 1952-1960; rupture and continuity between the governments of Cordosa and Lula in Brazil (candidate from Brazil); the political subculture; the impact of the arms race on international relations; public policies in Latin America; the foreign policy of Canada toward Latin America; the Caribbean and the European Union; the political ideas of Raúl Castro; the tourist policy of the Mexican State (candidate from Mexico); political participation in Cuba; Cuban political culture; foreign policy of the United States toward Palestine, 2001-2006 (Palestinian candidate); the political and ideological formation of military forces in Cuba; the Convention on the prohibition of chemical arms; policies of the Communist Party of Cuba on the Revolutionary Armed Forces; political transparency in Mexico (candidate from Mexico); the continuity of U.S. strategy toward Latin America and the Caribbean, 1976-2012; the principle of democratic centralism in the Communist Party of Cuba; and the principal political conflict in Cyprus.
§
Final considerations
An important legacy of Thalía Fung is her founding and development of the Cuban Society of Philosophical Investigations, which is dedicated to the task of supporting the continuous formulation of the Political Science from the South. The Society counts among its active members scholars from practically all the provinces of Cuba. It holds an annual conference, and its members collaborate in the publication of anthologies. We are committed to the further development and expansion of the Society, as a memorial to the life and work of Dr. Thalía Fung.
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