The revolutionary subject of our times
The neocolonized peoples are constructing a new world order
My commentary of December 1, 2023, reflected on the life and work of Dr. Thalia Fung, founder of the Cuban Society of Philosophical Investigation, who died at the age of 89 on November 20, 2023. Dr. Fung dedicated her life to the formulation of a “political science from the South,” basing her formulation in the works of Marx, Lenin, Martí, and Fidel. The political science from the South contributes to the construction of an alternative world order, necessary for the neocolonized peoples of the global South.
Thalía’s final project was focused on the revolutionary subject, which she defined as the active driver of the productive forces, promoting changes in economy, politics, culture, and thought. She maintained that in each society, a revolutionary subject forms itself, and she stressed the need for the accurate identification of the revolutionary subject in different societies, from the times of Marx to the times of Fidel, whose teachings continue to shape the Cuban revolutionary project.
I noted in my December 1 commentary that Dr. Fung had prepared an anthology of essays by Cuban scholars (plus myself) entitled The Subject, and that the publication was delayed by the pandemic and the economic crisis. The collection of essays is now being finalized for publication in digital form.
My particular contribution to the anthology is entitled “Los pueblos neocolonizados: el sujeto revolucionario de nuestros días” [The neocolonized peoples: the revolutionary subject of our times]. I maintain that a revolutionary subject seeks to change not only economic relations but also relations of power, such that a triumphant revolution takes control (or partial control) of the state. The means for the taking of political power, whether through electoral means or armed struggle, for example, is of secondary importance. The essence of triumphant revolutionary processes is the taking of political power by the delegates of the revolutionary subject, who exercise state power in accordance with the needs and interests of the revolutionary subject.
The change in the relations of power unfolds in nation-states and in each nation-state. This must be so, because the nation-state is the principal actor in the modern world-system. Transnational corporations and international non-governmental organizations are influential actors in the world, more so than in the past, but it is the policies of states that shape the characteristics of the world-system. Triumphant revolutions are directed by leaders who have an accurate understanding of the political dynamics of their nations, providing them with the capacity to make politically intelligent decisions on the road to political power.
The emergence of exceptional leaders has been an important dynamic in the taking of political power by the revolutionary subject. They possess an exceptional capacity to understand the sources of the political and social conflicts of the nation, the unfolding of national and international events, and the necessary steps for the revolution and the nation. And they possess an unbounded commitment to the people and the nation. Their exceptional capacities are recognized by the people, in spite of prevailing confusions and divisions among the people. This recognition by the people endows leaders with moral authority, enabling them to unify the people and direct them on the necessary road. Examples of exceptional leaders include Toussaint, Lenin, Gandhi, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Simón Bolívar, José Martí, Augusto Sandino, Fidel, Salvador Allende, Hugo Chávez, and Evo Morales, among others.
One of the gifts of exceptional leaders is their capacity to identify the revolutionary subject in their nation and time. Marx encountered a movement formed by workers, artisans, and idealist socialist intellectuals in Paris in the 1840s. Influenced by his simultaneous study of the science of political economy, he recognized the importance of industrial workers in the productive processes of capitalism, and he therefore viewed the proletariat as the revolutionary subject that would usher in the new stage of socialism.
Lenin, observing the active formation of people’s councils by workers and peasants in Russia, envisioned the transition to socialism as led by workers and peasants under the direction of workers with mature political consciousness. When the anticipated triumph of the proletarian revolution in Western Europe did not materialize, Lenin projected that the new historical agents would be the colonized and semi-colonized peoples of the earth.
Consistent with Lenin’s projection, anti-colonial revolutions emerged during the course of the twentieth century in Asia and Africa. They were not led by workers, inasmuch as the industrial working class was small in number in the colonies, due to the destruction of manufacturing by colonial processes. Rather, the people’s revolutions in the colonies were led by the national bourgeoisie, the peasantry, and the petty bourgeoisie, thus constituting a plural revolutionary subject. For the most part, the exceptional leaders came from the national bourgeoisie.
The emergence in practice of people’s revolutions in the colonies with a plural revolutionary subject made necessary the reformulation of Marxist concepts by the revolutionary leaders. Ho Chi Minh—whose political consciousness was formed by the anti-French colonialism of Confucian scholars in Vietnam, by socialism in France, and by Leninism in the Soviet Union—stuck with the conventional Marxist formulation of a revolution led by the working class, even though the Vietnamese revolution in reality was forged by peasants and the radical wing of the national bourgeoisie. But he transformed the meaning of “workers” to include “peasants” and “intellectuals.” Fidel turned to a heterodox Marxism, calling the “people” to revolution, defining the people as including the unemployed, agricultural workers, small farmers, teachers, professors, small merchants, and professionals like doctors, engineers, lawyers, and journalists. Both Ho and Fidel formed vanguard political parties consisting of the most politically mature and committed from the plural revolutionary subject, a vanguard with the duty of educating the revolutionary subject with respect to the necessary road.
The taking of power in the colonies and neocolonies by the revolutionary subject—increasingly understood as a plural people united—is not the victory of the revolution but the transition of the revolution to a new stage, that of the revolution in power. Here begins the progressive reconstruction of the national political and economic systems as well as the economic relations with the colonial/neocolonial power. In this stage, the revolution in power comes up against the structures of the world-system, which have been designed to ensure economic advantages to the world powers, blocking the true sovereignty of nations and limiting the capacity of poor nations to attain economic development. In particular, the revolutions in power found obstacles to the exercising of control over the natural resources in their territories.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the exceptional leaders of the people’s revolutions of the Third World began to discern the need to form international associations of revolutionary governments, so that they could with a united voice proclaim the structures necessary for a new, democratic, and post-colonial world order that respects the sovereignty of nations and the self-determination of peoples. This step was anticipated by the Bandung Conference of 1955, attended by leaders of twenty-nine newly independent governments of Asia and Africa. The Non-Aligned Movement was established as an organization of states in Belgrade, ex-Yugoslavia, by twenty-three governments in 1961. It put forth a demand for the democratization of the United Nations.
The Non-Aligned Movement emerged to become a permanent force in international diplomacy, constituting the united voice of the nations and peoples of the Third World. In 1974, it attained the passage by the General Assembly of the United Nations of a declaration of a New International Economic Order, which affirmed the principles of the self-determination of nations and the sovereignty of states over their natural resources. It advocated the creation of associations of states exporting raw materials, enabling greater control of prices in the world market. It called for the transfer of technology to nations in development and for the increased industrialization of the Third World. It called for cooperation and mutually beneficial trade among the nations of the South.
Thus, World War III had begun, not as a military war with weapons of mass destruction between superpowers, but as an economic, political, and ideological war between imperialist powers and nations dedicated to anti-imperialist construction. It supplanted the class war seen and anticipated by Marx, which now would express itself in the context of the worldwide conflict between imperialism and anti-imperialist construction.
The strategy of the great powers was not to suppress, but to ignore. Their media and educational systems were mute with respect to the emergence of exceptional revolutionary leaders throughout vast regions of the world, who had been granted moral authority by their peoples. The great international media and prestigious universities of the world pretended that a new more just world order had never been declared by the delegates of the colonized peoples of the earth.
But wishing away the threat did not nullify its presence. The sustained struggle for development forged by the once-colonized peoples was chipping away, bit by bit, at the structures of the neocolonial world order. And this was occurring in a time in which the world-system had overextended the geographical and ecological limits of the earth, rendering impossible an economic expansion through new conquests of lands and peoples.
The power elites that were the de facto rulers of the neocolonial world-system responded to the situation with a stunning display of unenlightenment. In the form of Reaganism and neoliberalism, they launched economic and ideological war against the weak states and poor nations of the world, which deepened and reinforced the inherent contradictions of the neocolonial world-system.
The worldwide forces of anti-imperialist construction did not anticipate such astonishing ignorance, and they therefore were unprepared for it. They fell into confusion and accommodation before the new reality, which soon included the collapse of the Eastern European socialist bloc, which had been an inconsistent ally of the movement of anti-imperialist construction.
However, the rebellion of the peoples before the negative consequences of neoliberalism, which began in the late 1990s, provided the foundation for a renewal of the movement for anti-imperialist construction. In Latin America, new political parties were formed, which took power through electoral processes in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Paraguay, with the new leaders in four of the nations declaring that they were constructing socialism for the twenty-first century. Associations of regional union and integration were created in the first decade of the twenty-first century, seeking to circumvent U.S. imperialist imposition.
The Non-Aligned Movement, which had been hijacked by representatives of the “Asian tigers” in the 1980s, regained its classic voice. In its Declaration of Havana in 2006, the Non-Aligned Movement, which had arrived to include 118 governments, called for a new, more just and equal world order. It rejected neoliberal policies for their promotion of world inequalities and for increasing the marginalization of countries in development. It affirmed the relevant principles of the UN Charter, such as the equal sovereignty of nations, non-interference in the affairs of states, and the self-determination of peoples in the struggle against foreign intervention. It called for a new attempt to put into practice the principle of South-South cooperation.
At the XVII Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, held in Venezuela in 2016, the 120 member states ratified the historic principles of the Movement. It called upon the peoples of the Third World to struggle against colonialism and neocolonialism and to participate in the construction of a more just and peaceful world, based in solidarity and cooperation. It reaffirmed the principles of the sovereignty and equality of nations, and the inalienable right of all peoples to self-determination. It affirmed the right to development as a universal, fundamental, and inalienable right. It characterized as violations of international law the policies of regime change carried out by a certain state, and it rejected unilateral and coercive sanctions as violations of the UN Charter.
§
Final considerations
The people’s revolutions of the Third World during the last 100 years have registered important gains. They have attained political independence in the colonies. They have taken political power away from accommodationist actors in several key nations of the neocolonial world-system, where they have taken important steps toward the development of their economies and societies. They have created an international association of states, thus providing a united voice for the once-colonized peoples. They have forged various international and regional associations of alternative economic integration, thus taking steps toward the construction of a more democratic pluripolar world. They have declared their uncompromising commitment to a worldwide struggle between the imperialist powers and anti-imperialist construction, which some have described as World War III.
The political practice of the peoples of the South implies the need for a reconceptualization of Marxism. Marx formulated a synthesis of Western philosophy, political economy, and idealist socialism, drawing upon writings in German, English, and French; a synthesis written from the vantage point of the worker. He brought knowledge of history, political-economy, and society to a more advanced stage on the basis of a creative epistemological method that constituted a model for intellectual work.
But Marx’s formulation cannot be considered eternal. Important developments in political practice have occurred since his time. Such as the reformist seduction of the working-class movement in the West and the containment of the Russian Revolution as well as people’s revolutions in the colonized regions of the capitalist world-economy. These developments in political practice make necessary a reconceptualization of Marxism from the vantage point of the colonized based on encounter across cultures and a dialogue among civilizations and on a synthesis of understandings from the West, East, and South, exemplified by the political science of the South in Cuba, in particular the philosophical formulations of Dr. Thalía Fung.
From the vantage point of the colonized, it can be seen that the class conflict identified and projected by Marx now expresses itself in the context of a war between imperialist powers and anti-imperialist construction. And it can be seen, therefore, that the revolutionary subject of our times is not the working class, neither the working class of the West nor the East nor the South. The revolutionary subject of our time is constituted by the peoples of the South, united within each nation in a project of anti-imperialist construction.
The multidimensional crisis of the world makes necessary the awakening of the peoples of the North, so that the states of the North can cooperate in the worldwide task of anti-imperialist construction. The awakening of the peoples of the North must be rooted in a Marxism reconceptualized from the South. Thus far, there is little sign of such awakening in the North, neither among the elites nor among the peoples.
A new generation of intellectuals and leaders in the North is convoked by the faith in the future of humanity expressed in political practice by the peoples of the South, who are teaching that the key to world peace and prosperity is the unity of the people(s) of each nation, regardless of class, profession, occupation, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious perspective, or political philosophy. A unity forged by exceptional leaders capable of reading the signs of the times.
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.