Understanding the Cuban Revolution

An institutionalized subterranean voice of critique, and its subtext

     Let us recall our historic appreciation of the wisdom of the poor.  The prophets of the Judaic-Christian-Islamic tradition were often marginal, hardly of high socio-economic status.  Karl Marx wrote an analysis of the political-economy of capitalism from the working-class point of view.  Paul Simon poetically expressed that “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.”  The left today often speaks listening to the voices that emerge “from below.”

      Such epistemological formulations express the notion that the attainment of insight and understanding requires listing to an alternative view from below, which is more able, by virtue of its experiential vantage point, to discern the injustices built into the social system.  In contrast, the voice from above functions to legitimate existing structures that generate inequalities; the voice from above distorts understanding in defense of particular interests and privileges.  In the march for social ju…