Radical Notes
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Archive for May, 2007
Posted by Radical Notes May 31, 2007 at 11:50 pm in Nepal
Anand Swaroop Verma, Gautam Navlakha
Economic and Political Weekly
In Maoist understanding, People’s War (PW) is 80 per cent politics and 20 per cent warfare. The decisive factor in a war of this genre is not guns but the mobilisation of people for seizing power through protracted war. This is not to underplay the significance of armed struggle in Maoist politics or to delink one from the other, but to stress that the mark of Maoist success lies in their emergence as the dominant political and ideological force in Nepal. The remarkable political consistency and dexterity displayed by them in sticking to their strategic goals and making their agenda (a democratic republic through an elected constituent assembly, interim government, under an interim constitution, etc) the basis, if not the rallying point, for ending the civil war, and attempting to win the mandate to constitutionally transform the state, are its articulation. In this paper we confine ourselves to the period 1990 onwards, leading up to PW - the period from February 1996 to the “12-point agreement” of November 2005. We highlight the elements of continuity in the salient features of the strategy of PW implemented by the Maoists.
Degenerate Parliamentary Politics
It is worth recalling that the armed struggle of the Nepalese people against feudal monarchy is as old as the kingdom itself. Thus struggle persisted even after the 1950 overthrow of Rana autocracy, which had wielded state power until then. The 1950 Indian intervention, which restored the king’s power, was soon followed by several anti-feudal struggles in 1952-53, primarily in western Nepal. In these struggles, government officials were removed, feudal landlords were eliminated and foodgrains looted and redistributed. Failing to subdue this rebellion, the king sought the help of Indian troops. In 1959 when the Nepali Congress, then led by B P Koirala, signed Gandak agreement with India it triggered off violent protests against it. The Nepali Congress which was thrown out by the king on December 16, 1960, then initiated in 1962 and again in 1971 an armed uprising. In 1972-73, inspired by Naxalbari, an armed struggle broke out in Jhapa. The introduction of the multiparty system in 1991, as a sequel to the protracted struggle against partyless Panchayat regime, spurred the people’s aspirations at various levels.
In these 30 years, 1960-1990, the democratic forces went through lot of trials and tribulations. Since the Nepali Congress had at one time held the reins of power and had developed cordial foreign relations, particularly with the ruling classes of India, it did not bear the brunt of repression. Despite the fact that it took to arms in 1962 and 1971, its movement against the monarchical system remained qualitatively different from that launched by the left forces. Many communist formations were active during this time, the most powerful among them being the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist) (CPN(ML)). The party, inspired by the Naxalbari movement in India, had carried out a peasant led anti-feudal movement in Jhapa in eastern Nepal.
Without going into the strategy and tactics adopted by the Jhapa peasant movement,it can certainly be said that the movement laid the traditions of communist struggle and sacrifice. Several activists of the CPN(ML) were killed, many more were put behind the bars, while the land and the properties of many others were attached by the state. In spite of repression, many young people left their home and hearth and dedicated their lives to the establishment of a genuinely democratic order. The CPN(ML), in its First National Convention (held between December 26, 1978 and January 1, 1979) had resolved that “(t)he party…shall unite and lead through a protracted peoples’ struggle all such progressive forces who are committed towards the victory of the ‘New Democratic Revolution’ in Nepal as a prerequisite for the eventual establishment of a socialist and communist society.”(1) The resolution identified the agrarian revolution as the kernel of the new democratic revolution and committed itself to uproot “the power of big landlords through armed struggle”.(2)
After the declaration of a multiparty system, the CPN(ML) which had so far been functioning underground started working as an open political party. They tried to unite other left formations and were successful to a considerable extent. The party in association with Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist), led by Manmohan Adhikari, formed the Unified Marxist-Leninist Party, which was christened CPN(UML).
The CPN(UML) participated in the first democratic elections held on May 12, 1991 after the establishment of the multiparty system. Although the party was a newcomer in the electoral arena, it scored major victories in various places as compared to the Nepali Congress, well steeped in the rituals of parliamentary democracy. In this election, the Nepali Congress won 110 seats, whereas CPN(UML) captured 69 seats. Undoubtedly, against all odds, it was a great achievement for the CPN(UML). In subsequent elections, the party forged ahead of the Nepali Congress and, for the first time in south Asia, a communist government took over the reins of power at the national level. Yet, once the party entered the realm of parliamentary politics, it jettisoned its historical legacy to bring about social transformation, beginning with radical land reforms. Instead, in order to remain in power it took recourse to the same means adopted by the Nepali Congress.
Thus if the Nepali Congress took the support of the pro-monarchy Rashtriya Prajatantrik Party (RPP), then the same means were adopted by the CPN(UML). The RPP was then led by Lokendra Bahadur Chand and Surya Bahadur Thapa who had earlier been prime ministers in the panchayat system. In fact, Lokendra Bahadur Chand was the prime minister at a time when a massive and unprecedented protest movement was taking place outside the Royal Palace in 1990. In September 1995, the Nepali Congress government led by Sher Bahadur Deuba had secured the support of RPP. In March 1997, CPN(UML) helped install RPP’s Lokendra Bahadur Chand as the PM in spite of the fact that the CPN(UML) had 90 members of Parliament (MPs), whereas RPP could boast of only 10. This was done to prevent Nepali Congress from forming the government.
Again in October 1997, the Nepali Congress helped in installing the RPP’s Surya Bahadur Thapa as PM. At that time, the RPP had only 17 MPs, whereas Nepali Congress could boast of a strength of 85 MPs. The Nepali Congress resorted to this ploy to prevent the communists from forming the government. In March 1998, there was a split in the CPN (UML) and 40 MPs walked out of the party to form CPN(ML). The same story was repeated when the new party also indulged in playing the same power brokering games as its predecessor. In August 1998, the new party, in collaboration with the Nepali Congress formed the government. In this descent towards degeneration, CPN(UML) could not be expected to be an exception. In December 1998, the coalition government of the Nepali Congress and the splinter group CPN(ML) collapsed. Immediately afterwards, as on cue, the CPN(UML) formed the government in alliance with the Nepali Congress.
Locating People’s War
It would not be far-fetched to say that to remain in power at any cost, the political parties betrayed the trust of the people.(3) It is against this background and resultant disenchantment of people with parliamentary brokering, in particular with the tactics of the parliamentary communist parties, that one can locate PW. First the 1990 transfer of power from the palace to the political parties gave wind to people’s expectations. Whereas in the Terai region, the people’s expectations were for ending feudal landlordism which was rampant, in the far-flung areas in the east as well as west, the popular demand was to end the neglect of these regions. On both counts, the political parties failed. Moreover, the shenanigans of the communists hastened the process of disenchantment. Also, while the international situation was unfavourable for the launch of social transformatory projects, conditions nationally were just the opposite. Nepal’s economy was in a crisis by 1994-95. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) stipulates that any country whose foreign debt is 200-250 per cent of the value of exports and debtservicing ratio is 20 per cent of the same is in a “critical stage”. Nepal’s foreign debt jumped to 600 per cent of the total export trade and debt servicing to exports reached 35 per cent. Profligacy and scarcity, typical of a nascent capitalist country with strong feudal roots, not only contributed to low capital formation but also made it dependent on foreign donors for up to 70 per cent of its revenue needs. The migration of people in search of jobs had picked up in the 1970s and began to surge towards the end of the 1980s. The economic embargo imposed by India in 1989 brought home rather painfully the dependent nature of the relationship with India.
In initiating the PW, the Maoists were not simply engaging in combat; the very act of fighting was political. Acquisition of weapons by looting the armouries to arm themselves was as much a mark of their independence as of their awareness that any challenge to undermine the status quo would invite military suppression. It was increasingly realised that radical land reform, women’s liberation, the right of self-determination of nationalities and social justice could not be brought about through parliament under the 1990 constitution. Even the actual conduct of the
Maoists was pregnant with revolutionary tactics. Their secret parleys with Birendra (king of Nepal from 1972 until 2001), playing on his patriotism and Sihanouk like role, achieved its aim, even as they were able to maintain a line of communication with the political parties. Thereby the Maoists delayed the deployment of the army against them until they were prepared. They won this time by exploiting the contradictions between the palace and the political parties on the one hand, especially over the control exercised by the king over the army, and between the various political parties on the other. When the PW began on February 13, 1996, it was dismissed as being of no major consequence. And, as in the past, a “police action” was felt to be capable of quelling this problem.(4) However, by 2000 India and the US began pressurising the Nepal government to bring in the army. It was the attack on Dunai which was the headquarters of Dolpa district, on September 24, 2000, which brought home what it meant to keep the army out of the fighting. The army unit, based in the district headquarter watched while the Maoists destroyed the police station; it did not intervene. It was after this incident that the tussle between the king and the political parties for control and deployment of the army began in earnest. Although king Birendra gave in to international and national pressure by the end of April 2001 and agreed to an Integrated Security and Development Programme which was meant to bring in the army to the frontline in the fight against the Maoists. Nevertheless, following the assassination of king Birendra and his family on June 1, 2001, the situation changed dramatically.
Advantage of Hindsight
With the advantage of hindsight, it is worth a pause to consider how the Maoists expanded and consolidated their position during the PW. The People’s War did not emerge in a vacuum or out of simply exploiting opportunities that came the way of the Maoists. It emerged after long years of political work amongst the people, debating the failings of earlier struggles, including Jhapa. There was intense debate and differences over tactics and strategy amongst their top leadership as well as the rank and file, and above all, about creating the opportunities. The most endearing quality of the Maoists has been their willingness to learn from every crisis, of which they were witness to several. A crisis was turned into an opportunity. It is this which enabled them to overcome the near split in the party in 2004-05 and bounce back strongly so as to be able to reach an agreement with the seven political parties by November 2005. In the process the question of ‘democracy’ within the party got a boost. But, in 1995-96, the world was different. On December 13, 1995 in an interview given to The Independent, Baburam Bhattarai, a senior leader of the CPN(M) said that “every revolution appears as a dream before it is made…(and) appears like a nightmare for the reactionary classes before and after it is made”. And certainly, two months before the PW actually commenced this did appear to be a foolhardy enterprise. But commitment, perseverance and critical reflection pay. The Maoists leaders and leading cadres had been working underground long before the PW began. Some such as Kiran and Gaurav, from the 1960s, although most of the others began their journey from 1970 onwards. Prachanda and most of his other comrades began their political life in 1970s. When the first elections took place after the jan andolan of 1990 on May 12, 1991, the Samyukta Jan Morcha (United Peoples Front), headed by Baburam Bhattarai, won nine seats. The UPF was the open front of the communist group called Ekta Kendra (Unity Centre), which believed in armed struggle and was working underground. Though their seats were fewer than the seats won by the Nepali Congress or CPN(UML), the UPF secured the third position. Even as the UPF was taking part in the elections, the leaders of Ekta Kendra publicly campaigned that the Nepali people will not benefit from this parliament.
Meanwhile in December 1991, the Communist Party of Nepal (Ekta Kendra) which was reconstituted in 1986, changed its name to Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and after long deliberations and discussions, and some parting of ways, evolved the present line. Within this ideological context, the party came to the conclusion that PW is the only path for the successful completion of the New Democratic Revolution which would entail the encirclement of the cities from it villages, and, in this process, guerrilla warfare would play a strategic role. Following this the party carried out a large-scale survey in 1992 covering 18 districts. The objective of the survey was to identify the ways and means for initiating and carrying out PW. Several districts such as Rolpa, Rukum, Gorkha, Sindhuli, Dhanusha and Kavrepalanchowk were chosen for carrying out the preparatory work. In January 1994, when the CPN(UML) was in power, the Maoists had submitted a 38-point charter of demands concerning “nationalism, people’s democracy and people’s livelihood”.
Thus between 1990 and 1994, through public meetings, posters and pamphlets, the UPF leaders had been emphasising that the parliamentary system serves those who have been exploiting and tyrannising the common people. In 1994, mid-term elections took place in Nepal and the UPF boycotted it. The boycott of elections by them and the movement launched by Maoists against the local landlords and moneylenders was seen by the government as discarding parliamentary politics. As a result, large-scale repression was unleashed on the supporters of UPF and the Front had no other option but to go underground.
On February 4, 1996 the CPN(Maoist) submitted, through UPF a 40-point charter of demands to the then government headed by Sher Bahadur Deuba, giving that government a two-week ultimatum. But, a few days before the ultimatum was to expire, on February 13, they declared protracted People’s War against the state. The charter of demands were no different than what UPF had been demanding since April 1992, related to nationalism, democracy and livelihood issues. Thus, the first demand under “Concerning Nationality” was for abrogating “(a)ll discriminatory treaties, including the 1950 Nepal-India Treaty”. Under “Concerning People’s Democracy” the first demand was for drafting a new “constitution…by representatives elected for the establishment of a people’s democracy”. And finally, the first item under “Concerning Livelihood” demanded that “(l)and should belong to ‘tenants’. Land under the control of the feudal system should be confiscated and distributed to the landless and the homeless.” Besides, the 40-point demand focused on women and dalits as the two most discriminated groups, even amongst the exploited classes/strata. And, they did so by mobilising them in the first instance. In other words, the 40-point demands were not a mere rhetorical device but were meant to be taken seriously, since these demands encapsulated their politics. That the charter of demands was dismissed in the first instance by the political parties had much to do with their bloated self-image, borne of being “mainstream” parties, either in power or as contenders for acquiring power.
In an atmosphere of repression and resistance, the Central Committee of the Party held its Fourth Extended Meeting in mid-1998. A “New Plan for New Stage” was chalked out in the meeting. Based on the experience of the past two and a half years, the party drew some important conclusions regarding this particular issue. At the ideological level, the party made an attempt to develop a clear perspective regarding the distinction between a guerrilla zone and a base area. According to the party, in a protracted PW, without a base area, there cannot be any surrounding of the cities by the countryside. Thus, whereas PW had established itself as a parallel power centre via-a-vis the state, the party’s assessment was that it was quite weak in terms of military strength. Therefore, augmentation of people’s military might was identified as the main task. Based on its own experience, the Party underscored the point that if people do not possess military strength then it would not be possible to protect and uphold their achievements. Besides, due to lack of military might, people tend to lose their initiative. Thus the speedy formation of the new state necessitated the augmentation of military strength.(5)
Development of People’s War
In order to augment their military capabilities, many qualitative changes were carried out in the third year of PW. And bigger armed actions had been initiated by the party. But the interesting thing to note is that simultaneously while the war was being waged between 1998 and 2003, the ongoing process of formation of the new state was sought to be based on democratic principles. And the party was engaged in discussing the strategic importance of democracy for the new Nepal in the making, as well as the question of dissent, discipline and centralisation during the war within the party. People’s rule was organised at the village, region and base area levels; the principle of democratic centralism was followed. In areas where people’s local governments were in operation, the entire population were brought under the fold of various organisations and the right to recall their elected representatives encouraged. Above all, the new political setup was expected to harness human resources for economic resuscitation while fulfilling essential economic, social and cultural needs of the people. In 10 years what the Maoists achieved appears modest, but looked at from where they began, it is a novel people-oriented development, a story yet to be written.
Within three months of king Birendra’s assassination, negotiations took place in August 2001 between the government and the Maoists. Arguably, both sides needed a breathing space and used the period to consolidate themselves. However, the difference lay in their stated position at the negotiations. The Maoists stuck to their stance in terms of their demand for a round-table conference, an interim government and formation of an elected constituent assembly (CA), whereas the government appeared to have no clear idea other than wanting the Maoists to capitulate. And, once the September 11, 2001 attack took place in the US and the “war on terror” began, the prospects of talks dimmed perceptibly. When the talks broke down in November 2001, a few days later, the Maoists overran a big army garrison in western Nepal. The message sent out was clear while they favoured a democratic closure of the civil war, they were prepared to engage in war. By 2002, the tussle between king Gyanendra and the political parties had reached a new crisis point with the king declaring a state of emergency, dissolving local government bodies and dismissing the Deuba government because it had failed to hold general elections. The demand for an elected CA, however, was gaining supporters, with elements within the political parties discovering that the CA was a means to undercut the monarchy. Thus the PW entered a new phase, in which debate over an elected CA was gaining adherents. This was carried on until January 29, 2003 when a ceasefire was reached once again, and negotiations were attempted for the second time. However, while the government of Lokendra Bahadur Chand appeared keen, it failed to live up to its commitments in releasing imprisoned Maoist leaders and non-implementation of the agreement to limit the army to within a five kilometre radius of the barracks. The last straw was the deliberate massacre of 19 unarmed Maoist cadres in Doramba by the RNA in August 2003. This compelled the Maoists to withdraw from the talks. While the talks derailed, by early 2005 it had become clear the king’s army could not deal a fatal blow to PW. This brought about a “tectonic shift”; by November 2005 the Indian authorities saw an advantage in encouraging the seven political parties to reach an understanding with the Maoists.
The remarkable thing, despite all the ups and downs, is that the two rounds of negotiations show the continuity in the Maoists’ position. In 2001 they had publicly proposed that if an elected CA was accepted by the government, then they were prepared to be part of the interim government and therefore favoured a roundtable conference. This remained their position as well in 2003. Indeed by 2005 and 2006 those very same demands became the common rallying point for the democratic movement in its entirety. Graduating from being a rag-tag band of revolutionaries to becoming the centre of people’s struggle was no mean achievement. This was the result of their creating as well as seizing opportunities. When they claim that they combine strategic firmness with tactical flexibility their politics testifies to that. It is this that catapulted them to become the leading political force in Nepal. Their success lies not only in gaining legitimacy for their transformatory project within Nepal, but also in their boldness to address failures of other socialist experiments in order to learn from the mistakes committed. In concrete terms, the Nepali Maoists have put the question of democracy within the party as well as in the new state in the making at the centre stage.
In an interview to The Worker (No10, May 2006) Prachanda had said that “(w)e know…that in today’s world the usefulness of the tactics to use parliament has come to an end. But continuous boycotting of a system without considering the situation of a country and its people is not Marxism”. Instead his party “believes that within the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist constitutional framework, only through multiparty competition…can counterrevolution be prevented”. Multiparty competition can also help realise people’s control, monitoring and intervention in governance. In another interview given in July 2006 Prachanda pointed out that if one looks at the “essence of that which we are calling democratic republic then… within that we’ve raised the class question, nationality question, gender question and the regional question. If all these four issues are solved then it amounts to having a new democratic republic…but since we are also talking about peaceful competition with the bourgeoisie, its form looks like bourgeois democracy, whereas it is new democratic in essence”.(6) Whether they will succeed, how exactly this democracy would function and what contradictions will this generate remain to be seen. But this cannot detract from acknowledging their advancement of revolutionary politics.
No sooner Maoists joined the interim government, they declared that they wanted Nepal, even in the interim period, to become a democratic federal republic. This is not a sign of their impetuosity or irresponsibility. In fact therein lies their relentless pursuit of their objective through mass struggle. If Nepal becomes a democratic federal republic, then each and every party, currently espousing the republican agenda, will have to spell out its vision of what in essence this means to them. This would provide a distinct advantage to the Maoists since they have a radical programme, some experience of running their own government, and suffer least from a popular trust deficit, which afflicts the seven political parties. For instance, since they had already begun introducing major reforms in their base areas, including land re-distribution, they are disinclined to roll them back. Apart from the immediate gain for them, this will restore democracy and boost the struggle for real democracy, which is right at the centre of the revolutionary project. The Maoists are seeking to gain legitimacy for their project by winning the mandate of the people through elections to restructure the state in such a way that real inequalities do not negate formal equality under law. This struggle for “real democracy” inspires hope because they have brought more than 20 million crore people in Nepal a historic opportunity to take a big leap forward in their fight for justice. It is this journey, or “transitional democracy” as Maoists characterise it, which rekindles hope that the revolutionary left in south Asia in general, and the Maoists in Nepal in particular, are capable of fusing armed and mass struggles as well as conceptualising a democratic egalitarian state and society. What remains to be seen is whether they realise what had appeared to them to be a “dream” in 1995.
Email: gautamnavlakha@hotmail.com
Notes
1 Political resolution of CPN(ML), party’s underground publication, 1979, p 20.
2 Ibid, p 27.
3 The sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) was held in January 1998 and it is apparent, if we look into the statements of party general secretary Madhav Nepal, politburo member C P Mainali and others on the eve of the Congress, that CPN(UML) was grappling with regression within the party. General secretary Madhav Nepal had said in an interview, “Bourgeois deviations are growing within the party. Corruption, misuse of office and charm for a luxurious lifestyle is on the rise. Petty bourgeois individualism and lust for power are acquiring deeper roots and a very large number of opportunists and self-seekers have become active in the party…anarchism, indiscipline and lumpenism are ever on the rise. There is no importance of party decisions and discipline. If a decision is favourable or to one’s liking, it is implemented, and if it is not, then there is an increasing tendency to defy it - either collectively or in a group mentality” (Interview of Madhav Nepal Mansir 2054, Mulyankan (Kathmandu), pp 5-7). A senior leader and ideologue of the party, C P Manali, was also of a similar view, that various deviations regarding the character of the party, its functional style and disciplinary matters have surfaced. He attributed it largely to the compulsions to contest elections. He said “the party has been, at many places, reduced to a front of the communists and communist sympathisers, giving rise to the dangers of the weakening of the party character” (op cit, pp 8-9).
4 Until 1999-2000, India’s ministry of home affairs (MHA) and the ministry of defence (MoD) in their annual reports, did not once refer to the presence of Maoists in Nepal. Their main concern then was Pakistan’s support for “anti-India activities from Nepal” and “growth of religious fundamentalist organisations” along the Indo-Nepal border. It was in 2000-01 that the reports begin to refer to Maoists. MoD annual report of 2000-01 spoke of a “development of concern… increasing intensity and spread of Maoist violence within Nepal”. After that there was no turning back. When MHA wrote in its annual report of 2001-02 of “the decision of the MCC [Maoist Communist Centre] and the CPIML-PW [Communist Party of India (Marxists Leninist) (People’s War)] to tie up with the CPN(M) to carve out a ‘Compact Revolutionary Zone’.” The MoD annual report of the same year claimed that “India has also offered such assistance as is desired by Nepal” to address Maoist extremism.
5 Report of the general secretary, CPN(Maoist), The Worker, No 4, 1998. Also see ‘Third Turbulant Year of People’s War: A General Review’, article by CPN(Maoist) general secretary Prachanda, February 1999. Also see, ‘Experiences of the People’s War and Some Important Questions’, Document of the Fourth Extended Meeting, August, 1998.
6 Interview of Prachanda by A S Verma, July 29, 2006. at www.insn.org
Posted by Radical Notes May 25, 2007 at 10:35 am in State Terrorism, Press Release, India
Jan Hastakshep
May 25, 2007
Jan Hastakshep condemns the arrest of Rajinder Sail the President of the Chattisgarh PUCL. This arrest is allegedly made in connection with Shankar Guha Niyogi’s murder case, on grounds of contempt of court proceedings at Madhya Pradesh. Even though the case pertains to April 2005, the M.P. and Chhattisgarh governments have kept the warrant pending for years and suddenly pulled it out of their pockets to execute it. The fact is that the state was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with Rajender Sail’s activity in the matter of the arrest of Chhattisgarh PUCL General Secretary, Dr Binayak Sen. While it is true he will have to serve the sentence lawfully imposed, yet the abuse of powers is writ large. It is a clear case abuse of law when the police keep final orders pending without executing them and using them only at their convenience.
Dr. Binayak Sen was fighting against violations of human rights and he was very critical of the numerous “encounters” being done in Chhattisgarh, while demanding a proper enquiry into these so called encounters. At the time of issue of this statement to the press, Binayak Sen stands charged for Sedition, conspiracy to wage war and conspiracy to commit other offences. Such post arrest and post FIR confabulations are part of the impunity, governments have granted to the law-enforcing establishment..
It is indeed a lesson for civil liberty and democratic groups to watch the increasing depravity of state institutions and the manner of their functioning which holds all issues of democracy and accountability in utter contempt. This unrelenting attack on civil liberty groups and activists is unprecedented; except during the Emergency, it was never common place to arrest senior and well known civil rights activists.
Jan Hastakshep appeals to all concerned citizens and civil right groups to come out and protest these increasing attacks on Indian democracy and insist for a more accountable administrative functioning. These increasing attacks by the right wing BJP led governments and the creation of state sponsored vigilante groups such as the Salwa Judum are clear indicators of the growing dangerous fascist trends in India. What needs to be kept in mind is that these trends are not any different in Congress or other party ruled states.
Jan Hastakshep strongly condemns the arrest of both PUCL activists and demands:
1. Immediate release of Mr. Rajender Sail and Mr. Binayak Sen and dropping of all criminal charges against them
2. Strict and swift action be taken against the armed forces and police personnel involved in the brutal murders of innocent citizens in these so called encounters.
Posted by Radical Notes May 23, 2007 at 11:25 am in Fidel Castro, Imperialism
REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF FIDEL CASTRO
May 22, 2007
On March 28, less than two months ago, when Bush proclaimed his diabolical idea of producing fuel from food, after a meeting with the most important U.S. automobile manufacturers, I wrote my first reflection.
The head of the empire was bragging that the United States was now the first world producer of ethanol, using corn as raw material. Hundreds of factories were being built or enlarged in the United States just for that purpose.
During those days, the industrialized and rich nations were already toying with the same idea of using all kinds of cereals and oil seeds, including sunflower and soy which are excellent sources of proteins and oils. That’s why I chose to title that reflection: “More than 3 billion people in the world are being condemned to a premature death from hunger and thirst.”
The dangers for the environment and for the human species were a topic that I had been meditating on for years. What I never imagined was the imminence of the danger. We as yet were not aware of the new scientific information about the celerity of climatic changes and their immediate consequences.
On April 3, after Bush’s visit to Brazil, I wrote my reflections about “The internationalization of genocide.”
At the same time, I warned that the deadly and sophisticated weapons that were being produced in the United States and in other countries could annihilate the life of the human species in a matter of days.
To give humanity a respite and an opportunity to science and to the dubious good sense of the decision-makers, it is not necessary to take food away from two-thirds of the inhabitants of the planet.
We have supplied information about the savings that could be made simply by replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones, using approximate calculations. They are numbers followed by 11 and 12 zeros. The first corresponds to hundreds of billions of dollars saved in fuel each year, and the second to trillions of dollars in necessary investments to produce that electricity by merely changing light bulbs, meaning less than 10 percent of the total expenses and a considerable saving of time.
With complete clarity, we have expressed that CO2 emissions, besides other pollutant gases, have been leading us quickly towards a rapid and inexorable climatic change.
It was not easy to deal with these topics because of their dramatic and almost fatal content.
The fourth reflection was titled: “It is imperative to immediately have an energy revolution.” Proof of the waste of energy in the United States and of the inequality of its distribution in the world is that in the year 2005, there were less than 15 automobiles for each thousand people in China; there were 514 in Europe and 940 in the United States.
The last of these countries, one of the richest territories in hydrocarbons, today suffers from a large deficit of oil and gas. According to Bush, these fuels must be extracted from foods, which are needed for the more and more hungry bellies of the poor of this Earth.
On May Day 2006, I ended my speech to the people with the following words:
“If the efforts being made by Cuba today were imitated by all the other countries in the world, the following would happen:
“1st The proved and potential hydrocarbon reserves would last twice as long.
“2nd The pollution unleashed on the environment by these hydrocarbons would be halved.
“3rd The world economy would have a break, since the enormous volume of transportation means and electrical appliances should be recycled.
“4th A fifteen-year moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants could be declared.”
Changing light bulbs was the first thing we did in Cuba, and we have cooperated with various Caribbean nations to do the same. In Venezuela, the government has replaced 53 million incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent in more than 95% of the homes receiving electrical power. All the other measures to save energy are being resolutely carried out.
Everything I am saying has been proven.
Why is it that we just hear rumors without the leadership of industrialized countries openly committing to an energy revolution, which implies changes in concepts and hopes about growth and consumerism that have contaminated quite a few poor nations?
Could it be that there is some other way of confronting the extremely serious dangers threatening us all?
Nobody wants to take the bull by the horns.
Posted by Radical Notes May 22, 2007 at 6:45 am in Fidel Castro, Imperialism
REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF FIDEL CASTRO
May 21, 2007
The press dispatches bring the news; it belongs to the Astute Class, the first of its kind to be constructed in Great Britain in more than two decades.
“A nuclear reactor will allow it to navigate without refuelling during its 25 year of service. Since it makes its own oxigen and drinking water, it can circumnavigate the globe without needing to surface,” was the statement to the BBC by Nigel Ward, head of the shipyards.
“It’s a mean looking beast”, says another.
“Looming above us is a construction shed 12 storeys high. Within it are 3 nuclear-powered submarines at different stages of construction,” assures yet another.
Someone says that “it can observe the movements of cruisers in New York Harbor right from the English Channel, drawing close to the coast without being detected and listen to conversations on cell phones”. “In addition, it can transport special troops in mini-subs that, at the same time, will be able to fire lethal Tomahawk missiles for distances of 1,400 miles”, a fourth person declares.
El Mercurio, the Chilean newspaper, emphatically spreads the news.
The UK Royal Navy declares that it will be one of the most advanced in the world. The first of them will be launched on June 8 and will go into service in January of 2009.
It can transport up to 38 Tomahawk cruise missiles and Spearfish torpedoes, capable of destroying a large warship. It will possess a permanent crew of 98 sailors who will even be able to watch movies on giant plasma screens.
The new Astute will carry the latest generation of Block 4 Tomahawk torpedoes which can be reprogrammed in flight. It will be the first one not having a system of conventional periscopes and, instead, will be using fibre optics, infrared waves and thermal imaging.
“BAE Systems, the armaments manufacturer, will build two other submarines of the same class,” AP reported. The total cost of the three submarines, according to calculations that will certainly be below the mark, is 7.5 billion dollars.
What a feat for the British! The intelligent and tenacious people of that nation will surely not feel any sense of pride. What is most amazing is that with such an amount of money, 75 thousand doctors could be trained to care for 150 million people, assuming that the cost of training a doctor would be one-third of what it costs in the United States. You could build 3 thousand polyclinics, outfitted with sophisticated equipment, ten times what our country possesses.
Cuba is currently training thousands of young people from other countries as medical doctors.
In any remote African village, a Cuban doctor can impart medical knowledge to any youth from the village or from the surrounding municipality who has the equivalent of a grade twelve education, using videos and computers energized by a small solar panel; the youth does not even have to leave his hometown, nor does he need to be contaminated with the consumer habits of a large city.
The important thing is the patients who are suffering from malaria or any other of the typical and unmistakable diseases that the student will be seeing together the doctor.
The method has been tested with surprising results. The knowledge and practical experience accumulated for years have no possible comparison.
The non-lucrative practice of medicine is capable of winning over all noble hearts.
Since the beginning of the Revolution, Cuba has been engaged in training doctors, teachers and other professionals; with a population of less than 12 million inhabitants, today we have more Comprehensive General Medicine specialists than all the doctors in sub-Saharan Africa where the population exceeds 700 million people.
We must bow our heads in awe after reading the news about the English submarine. It teaches us, among other things, about the sophisticated weapons that are needed to maintain the untenable order developed by the United States imperial system.
We cannot forget that for centuries, and until recently, England was called the Queen of the Seas. Today, what remains of that privileged position is merely a fraction of the hegemonic power of her ally and leader, the United States.
Churchill said: Sink the Bismarck! Today Blair says: Sink whatever remains of Great Britain’s prestige!
For that purpose, or for the holocaust of the species, is what his “marvellous submarine” will be good for.
Posted by Radical Notes May 17, 2007 at 8:44 am in Fidel Castro, Imperialism
REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF FIDEL CASTRO
May 16, 2007
At the 6th Hemispheric Meeting in Havana, when the discussion turned to the subject of production of biofuels from foodstuffs, which are constantly getting more expensive, the huge majority voiced their opposition with indignation. But it was undeniable that some individuals with prestige, authority and good faith had been won over by the idea that the planet’s biomass would suffice for both things in a relatively short time, mindless of the urgency to produce the foods, which are already scarce enough, that would be used as raw material for ethanol and agridiesel.
On the other hand, when the debate on the Free Trade Agreements with the United States began, several dozen people took part and all of them unanimously condemned both the bilateral and multilateral forms of such agreements with the imperialist power.
Taking into account the need for space, I shall return to the method of summarizing in order to present three eloquent speeches made by Latin American personalities who expressed extremely interesting concepts with great clarity and distinctiveness. As in all the summaries in previous reflections, the authors’ exact manner of presentation is respected.
ALBERTO ARROYO (Mexico, Red mexicana de Acción contra el Libre Comercio- Mexican Action Network against Free Trade).
I would like to share with you the new plans of the empire and attempt to alert the rest of the continent about something new which is on the upswing or that is coming forward as a new strategy for a new phase of the United States’ offensive. NAFTA or the FTA of North America was merely the first step of something that it wants for the entire continent.
The new attempt does not seem to take into account the defeat in the implementation of the FTAA, which even in it’s Plan “B” recognizes that it cannot implement what it calls the comprehensive FTAA simultaneously in all the countries of the continent; it will try proceeding, piece by piece, negotiating bilateral Free Trade Agreements.
It succeeded in signing with Central America, but Costa Rica has not ratified it. In the case of the Andean nations, it has not even succeeded in sitting down at the bargaining table with all the countries, but only with two of them; and with these two it has not been able to conclude negotiations.
What is so new about the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America)? I see three fundamental issues:
First: To strengthen military and security structures in order to confront the resistance of the peoples is precisely its reaction to the triumph of the movement that is jeopardizing its plans.
It is not a question of simply stationing military bases in danger zones or in areas with a high level of strategic natural resources, but trying to establish a close coordination, with plans concerted with the countries, in order to improve the security structures which are a way of confronting the social movements as if they were criminals.
This is the first novel aspect.
The second element, which also seems new to me: the principal actors in this entire neoliberal scheme were always directly the transnationals. The governments, particularly the United States government, were the spokesmen, the ones who formally carried out the negotiations, but really the interests that they were defending were directly those of the corporations. They were the great actors hidden behind the FTA and the FTAA project.
The novelty of the new SPP scheme is that these actors come out of the blue, take the foreground and the relationship is inverted: the corporate groups directly talking amongst themselves, in the presence of the governments that will then attempt to translate their agreements into policies, rule changes, changes of laws, etc. It was not enough for them now to privatize the public corporations; they are privatizing policy per se. The businessmen had never directly defined economic policy.
The SPP starts in a meeting, let’s say it’s called, “A meeting for the prosperity of North America”; they were tri-national meetings of businessmen.
Among the operative agreements being taken up by the SPP, one is the creation of tri-national committees by sectors, –what they call “captains of industry”– so that these define a strategic development plan of the sector in the North American region. In other words, Ford is multiplied or divided into three parts: that is, the Ford Corporation in the United States, the subsidiary of Ford in Mexico and the subsidiary of Ford in Canada decide the strategy for the auto industry sector in North America. It’s the Ford Motor Company speaking to a mirror, with its own employees, with the directors of auto companies in Canada and in Mexico, to agree on a strategic plan that they will present to their governments which will translate and implement them into concrete economic policies.
There is a scheme to incorporate the security element; second point, to directly privatize the negotiations; and the third new aspect of this structure is perhaps, remembering a saying of our classic grandparents, that phrase of Engels where he was explaining that when the people are ready to take power through the mechanisms of formal democracy, like the zero on a thermometer or the 100, the rules of the game change: water will either freeze or boil, and even though we are speaking about bourgeois democracies, they will be first ones to break the rules.
The Free Trade Agreements have to go through congresses, and the fact is that it is getting more difficult to have them ratified by congresses, including the Congress of the empire, the United States Congress.
They are saying that this is not an international treaty therefore it doesn’t have to get approved by the congresses. But, as it does touch on issues that disrupt the legal framework in our countries, they will present in bit by bit; they will decide on a modification to legislation in a minute, and another one in the next minute; executive decrees to be implemented, changes in operative regulations, rules for standard functioning, but never the whole package.
Even though they were negotiated behind our backs and behind the backs of all peoples in general, sooner or later the Free Trade Agreements will be translated into a written text that will go to the congresses and then we will know what it was that they agreed to. They would like us never to know what was agreed to, they will only let us see fragments of the strategy, because it is never going to get translated into a complete text.
I shall close with a story so that we can realize the degree of sophistication, with regards to security, that these agreements and operative mechanisms of integration of security apparatuses have reached.
A short while ago, a plane took off from Toronto with tourists headed for a vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. While the plane was on the runway, the passenger list was examined again more carefully, and they discovered that there was someone there from Bush’s list of terrorists.
As soon as the plane entered American air space –when you fly out of Toronto, American air space begins after you pass the Great Lakes and, in a jet, this takes a few minutes– two F-16s showed up flying alongside. They led the plane out of American air space and escorted it to Mexican territory where they forced it to land in the military section of the airport; then, they arrested this man and sent his family back.
You can imagine the impression those 200 poor tourists on the plane had, seeing the two armed F-16s flying alongside and rerouting the plane.
Later, it turned out that he was not the terrorist that they thought, and they said to him: “Sorry, you can carry on with your vacation now, and make sure you call your family to come and join you.”
JORGE CORONADO (Costa Rica, Continental Social Alliance)
The struggle against free trade in the region has various features. One of the most devastating projects that have been proposed for the infrastructure, for the appropriation of our biodiversity, is the Puebla-Panama Plan, a strategy that not only appropriates our resources, but comes out of a military strategy of the empire covering the territory from the south of Mexico right up to Colombia, passing through Central America.
In the struggle against hydroelectric dams which uproot and take by force the indigenous and peasant lands there have been cases where, using military repression, they have uprooted various native and peasant communities in the region.
We have the component of the struggle against the mining industry. Canadian, European and American transnationals have been pursuing this appropriation strategy.
We have been confronting the privatization of public services: electrical energy, water, telecommunications; the struggle in the peasant sector to defend seeds, against the patenting of living beings and against the loss of sovereignty to the transgenics.
We have been struggling against labor flexibility, one of the focuses oriented to the sector and, obviously, against the entire picture of dismantlement of our small scale peasant production.
Also, the struggle against the subject of intellectual property, which removes the use of generic medicines from our security, these being the main distribution focus which our social security institutes have in the region .
A central factor in this struggle against free trade has been against the Free Trade Agreements and, particularly, against the Free Trade Agreements with the United States, passed in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, through blood, sweat and tears. And this is not just a rhetorical expression.
In Guatemala, comrades in the struggle have been murdered while they have gone head to head against the treaty approvals. This struggle has allowed us to ensure a coordinating and mobilizing force for the greatest unity of the people’s movement in the region.
In the case of the Honduran Parliament, the deputies walked out, breaking the minimum framework of institutional legality.
We have stated that, within the heart of the people’s movement, this has not signified defeat. We have lost a battle, but it has allowed us to take a qualitative leap forward in terms of organization, unity and experience in the struggle against free trade.
The Popular Social Movement and the people of Costa Rica, which have prevented Costa Rica’s approval of the FTA up until the present, forging unity with various academic, political and even business sectors to create a great national front of diverse and heterogeneous struggle, till now have succeeded in stopping the Costa Rican government, the right-wing neoliberals, and so they have not been able to approve the FTA. Today the possibility of a referendum in Costa Rica to decide the fate of the FTA is being proposed.
We are on the threshold of a fundamental stage in Costa Rica in terms of being able to prevent the advance of the neoliberal agenda; a defeat of this treaty would symbolically mean that we keep on adding up victories, like detaining and bringing FTA to a standstill.
Today we need solidarity in the popular movement, and we request it of the social and popular organizations which come to Costa Rica as international observers. The right-wing is preparing to encourage, if possible, a fraud that will guarantee it a win in the fight that is already lost, and having international observers from the popular movement will be an important contribution to active militant solidarity with our struggle.
Today, after a year, the FTA has not brought any more jobs, any more investments, or better conditions for the trade balance to any country in Central America. Today, in the entire region, we proclaim the slogan of agrarian reform, sovereignty and food security, as a central focus for our eminently agricultural nations.
Today, not just the United States but also Europe would like to appropriate one of the richest areas in biodiversity and natural resources. Today, more than ever, the coordinating focus of our different movements in the Central American region is to confront free trade in its multiple manifestations; hopefully this meeting will help give us coordinating elements, focuses for struggle and joint action that will allow us in this entire hemisphere to advance as one popular force.
We shall not rest in our efforts of organization and struggle until we reach the goal of a new world.
JAIME ESTAY (Chile, coordinator of REDEM - network of world economy studies - and, now professor at the University of Puebla in Mexico.
This crisis, in short, has to do with a manifest non-compliance with the promises that accompanied a group of reforms that began to be applied in Latin America in the 1980’s.
Under the banner of free trade, we were told that we were going to achieve growth of our economies, that we were going to achieve diminished levels of inequality in our countries, along with diminished distances between our countries and the advanced world and, in brief, that we were going to achieve a move towards development in leaps and bounds. In some countries there was even talk about making those leaps and bounds into the First World.
In the matter of new integration or this open regionalism which took off more than 15 years ago, what was proposed was Latin American integration, or what we call Integration of Latin America, at the service of an opening-up process. A whole debate was set up about how we had to integrate in order to open up, an integration that would not be the old-style protectionist integration, but an integration that would bring us better conditions to include ourselves in this global economy, in these markets which, supposedly, since they operated in a free manner, would produce the best possible results for our countries.
This relationship between integration and opening-up, that idea whose supreme objective of integration had to be the opening up of our countries, took place in effect; our countries effectively opened up and effectively and unfortunately the central theme of Latin American integration consisted in putting it at the service of this opening up.
Some officials were talking about what was called “the pragmatic phase of integration”. We move forward as we are able; that more or less became the slogan. If what we need is to trade more, let us concentrate on trading more; if what we want is to sign a bunch of little agreements among countries, bilateral agreements or agreements between three or four countries, let us go in that direction, and at some point we shall be able to call this Latin American Integration.
The balance is clearly negative. I think that there is recognition, greater on various levels now, that what we have been calling the Integration of Latin America is not integration, it is trade; and it is not Latin American but a tangle of signed agreements between different countries of the region, none of which has lead to a process possessing an effectively Latin American character. The opening-up, at whose service it is supposed that integration must be placed, has not produced any of the results that were announced in terms of economic growth, lessening of inequalities and achieving the sorely desired development that they said was supposed to be coming to us.
What we should point out is that we are witnessing an extreme deterioration of a style of integration that very clearly knew why, how and for whom integration was taking place.
In short, what I am talking about is an integration which was conceived on the foundations of neoliberalism, which has failed, both in terms of its own objectives and in terms of the objectives that we all have a right to demand and to expect in a genuine integration process.
The new Latin American integration was firmly supported by the policies and proposals coming from Washington. To a great extent, those American proposals have become something that will end up devouring its own offspring. Just the act of signing Free Trade Agreements has brought both the Andean community and the Central American Common Market to a crisis point.
An important part of the current crisis in Latin American integration has to do with the advance of the United States hemispheric project, not via the FTAA which managed to be stopped, but via the signing of different free trade treaties.
We can see the appearance of alternatives more clearly in the current panorama of integration. In many ways, ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) is based on principles that are radically different from those belonging to that integration process which is in crisis.
There are many functions left to define and many boundaries to be traced: the meaning of such concepts as “free trade”, “national development”, “market freedom”, “food security and sovereignty”, etc. What we are able to state is that we are witnessing, on the hemispheric and Latin American scene, a growing insurgency regarding the predominance of neoliberalism.
This is where the opinions expressed by these three personalities end, summing up the opinions of many of the participants in the debate about Free Trade Treaties. These are very solid points of view derived from a bitter reality and they have enriched my ideas.
I recommend my readers to pay attention to the complexities of human activity. It’s the only way to see much further.
Space has run out. Today I should not add one more single word.
Posted by Radical Notes May 15, 2007 at 12:31 pm in Nepal
Interview with Com Mohan Baidya in Budhabar
May 9, 2007
Why did this talk about not returning the property seized during the ‘people’s war’ start after you entered government?
We believe that we should first develop a long-term strategy for land distribution. Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal is clear when he says that if land has been seized unfairly, it needs to go back to the [original] owner. But if they are feudal, it will not. The eight parties need to sit together to form policies on land reform, and new laws can be made through interim legislature. There will be no redistribution or return until these issues are settled. We believe in giving land to the poor, and we have to be careful that seized property does not go back to the rich again.
Discussions about left party unification have pushed back the elections to the constituent assembly and prevented eight-party meetings. If Girija (sic) and Deuba (sic) can talk about unification, why can’t we talk about a unified left? The left parties have a majority in parliament and feel that a united left will make the alliance stronger, though we can, of course, face the Nepali Congress as an independent entity. The NC is trying hard to disrupt the momentum we have created in our unification [plans].
What do you hope a united left will achieve?
Unity until the elections to the constituent assembly is most important, so we can work for equality and socialism. Right now, a republic is not possible either, without left party unification. Even the capitalists talk about a republic, but the NC is so influenced by foreign capitalist forces, that it refuses to join the discussion.
The left parties have contributed to the success of the two People’s Movements, and in forming the 12-point agreement. Together, the left parties can fight foreign interference and the royalist forces together. Anything is possible if the left parties unite.
Due to ideological and political differences with the CPN-UML there can be no immediate unification with them, but we could settle our differences through discussion.
Your party’s central committee meeting also decided to talk about nationalism.
Our political agendas have been hampered because of international interference. Look at what the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum is doing in the tarai, listen to [US ambassador] Moriarty’s speeches-it’s clear foreign forces do not want Nepal to be a republic. Who would call Nepal independent with all this interference? Nepal is being Sikkimised.
SOURCE: Nepali Times, Issue #348 (11 May 07 - 17 May 07)
Posted by Radical Notes May 15, 2007 at 11:38 am in Fidel Castro, Imperialism
REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF FIDEL CASTRO
May 14, 2007
María Luisa Mendonça brought to the meeting in Havana, a powerful documentary film on the subject of manual sugarcane cutting in Brazil.
As I did in my previous reflection, I have written a summary using María Luisa’s own paragraphs and phrases. It goes as follows:
We are aware that most of the wars in the last few decades have been waged over control of energy sources. Both in central and peripheral nations, energy consumption is guaranteed for the privileged sectors, while the majority of the world’s population does not have access to basic services. The per capita consumption of energy in the United States is 13,000 kilowatts, while the world average is 2,429 and in Latin America the average is 1,601.
The private monopoly of energy sources is ensured by clauses in the bilateral or multilateral Free Trade Agreements.
The role of the peripheral nations is to produce cheap energy for the central wealthy nations, which represents a new phase in the colonization process.
It’s necessary to demystify all the propaganda about the alleged benefits of agrifuels. In the case of ethanol, the growing and processing of sugarcane pollutes the soil and the sources of drinking water because it uses large amounts of chemical products.
Ethanol distillation produces a residue called vinasse. For every liter of ethanol produced, 10 to 13 liters of vinasse are generated. Part of this residue can be used as fertilizer, but most of it pollutes rivers and the sources of underground water. If Brazil were to produce 17 or 18 billion liters of ethanol per year, this means that at least 170 billion liters of vinasse would be deposited in the sugarcane field areas. Just imagine the environmental impact.
Burning sugarcane to facilitate the harvesting process, destroys many of the microorganisms in the soil, contaminates the air and causes many respiratory illnesses.
The Brazilian National Institute of Space Research issues a state of emergency almost every year in Sao Paulo –where 60% of Brazil’s ethanol production takes place– because the burning-off has plunged the humidity levels in the air to extreme lows, between 13% and 15%; breathing is impossible during this period in the Sao Paulo area where the sugarcane harvest takes place.
The expansion of agrienergy production, as we know, is of great interest to the corporations dealing with genetically modified or transgenetic organisms, such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont, Bass and Bayer.
In the case of Brazil, the Votorantim Corporation has developed technologies for the production of a non-edible transgenetic sugarcane, and we know of many corporations that are developing this same type of technology; since there are no measures in place to avoid transgenetic contamination in the native crop fields, this practice places food production at risk.
With regards to the denationalization of Brazilian territory, large companies have bought up sugar mills in Brazil: Bunge, Novo Group, ADM, Dreyfus as well as business magnates George Soros and Bill Gates.
As a result of all this, we are aware that the expansion of ethanol production has led to the expulsion of peasants from their lands and has created a situation of dependency on what we call the sugarcane economy, not because the sugarcane industry generates jobs, on the contrary, it generates unemployment because this industry controls the territory. This means that there is no room for other productive sectors.
At the same time, we are faced with the propaganda about the efficiency of this industry. We know that it is based on the exploitation of cheap and slave labor. Workers are paid according to the amount of sugar cane they cut, not according to number of hours they have worked.
In Sao Paulo State where the industry is most modern –“modern” is relative of course– and it is the country’s biggest producer, the goal for each worker is to cut between 10 to 15 tons of cane per day.
Pedro Ramos, a professor at Campinas University, made these calculations: in the 1980’s, the workers cut around 4 tons a day and were paid the equivalent of more or less 5 dollars. Today, they need to cut 15 tons of sugarcane to be paid 3 dollars a day.
Even the Ministry of Labor in Brazil made a study which shows that before, 100 square meters of sugarcane yielded 10 tons; today, with transgenetic cane one must cut 300 square meters to reach 10 tons. Thus, workers must work three times more to cut 10 tons. This pattern of exploitation has resulted in serious health problems and even death for the workers.
A researcher with the Ministry of Labor in Sao Paulo says that in Brazil, sugar and ethanol are soaked in blood, sweat and death. In 2005, the Ministry of Labor in Sao Paulo reported the death of 450 worker for other causes such as murder and accidents –would this be because transportation to the refineries is very unsafe?– and also as a result of illnesses such as heart attack and cancer.
According to María Cristina Gonzaga, who carried out the survey, this Ministry of Labor research shows that in the last five years, 1,383 sugarcane workers have died in Sao Paulo State alone.
Slave labor is also common in this sector. Workers are usually migrants from the northeast or from Minas Gerais, lured in by intermediaries. Normally the contract is not directly with the company, but through intermediaries –in Brazil we call them “gatos”— who chose the laborers for the sugar mills.
In 2006, the district attorney’s office of the Public Ministry inspected 74 sugar mills, only in Sao Paulo, and all of them were taken to court.
In March 2007 alone, the district attorney’s office of the Ministry of Labor rescued 288 workers from slavery in Sao Paulo.
That same month, in Mato Grosso State, 409 workers were pulled out of a sugar mill that produces ethanol; among them was a group of 150 indigenous people. In Mato Grosso, the central area of the country, indigenous people are used as slave labor force in the sugar industry.
Every year, hundreds of workers suffer similar conditions in the fields. What are these conditions? They work without being legally reported, with no protective equipment, without adequate food or water, without access to washrooms and with very precarious housing; moreover, they have to pay for their housing and food, which is very expensive, and they also have to buy their implements such as boots and machetes and, of course, when work-related accidents occur, which is often, they do not receive adequate care.
For us, the central issue is the elimination of the latifundia because behind this modern façade we have a central issue, and that is the latifundia in Brazil and, of course, in other Latin American countries. Likewise, a serious food production policy is called for.
Having said this, I would like to present a documentary that we filmed in Pernambuco State with sugarcane workers; this is one of the biggest sugarcane producing regions, and so you will be able to see what the conditions are really like.
This documentary was made with the Pastoral Land Commission of Brazil (CPT) and with the unions of forestry workers in the state of Pernambuco.
With this, the outstanding and much admired Brazilian leader concluded her speech.
And now I shall present the opinions of the sugarcane cutters as they appeared in the film shown to us by María Luisa. In the documentary, when the people are not identified by name, they are identified as being a man, a woman or a young man. I am not including them all because there were so many.
Severino Francisco de Silva.- When I was 8 years old, my father moved to the Junco refinery. When I got there, I was about to turn 9; my father began to work and I was tying up the cane with him. I worked some 14 or 15 years in the Junco sugar mill.
A woman.- I’ve been living at the sugar mill for 36 years. Here I was married and I gave birth to 11 children.
A man.- I’ve been cutting cane for many years, I don’t even know how to count.
A man.- I started working when I was 7 and my life is that: cutting cane and weeding.
A young man.- I was born here, I’m 23 years old, and I’ve been cutting cane since I was 9.
A woman.- I worked for 13 years here in Salgado Plant. I planted cane, spread fertilizer, cleaned sugarcane fields.
Severina Conceiçäo.- I know how to do all this field work: spread fertilizer, plant sugar cane. I did it all with a belly this big (she refers to her pregnancy) and with the basket beside me, and I kept on working.
A man.- I work; every work is difficult, but sugarcane harvest is the worst work we have here in Brazil.
Edleuza.- I get home and I wash the dishes, clean the house, do the house chores, do everything. I used to cut cane and sometimes I’d get home and I wasn’t able to even wash the dishes, my hands were hurting with blisters.
Adriano Silva.- The problem is that the foreman wants too much of us at work. There are days when we cut cane and get paid, but there are days when we don’t get paid. Sometimes it’s enough, and sometimes it isn’t.
Misael.- We have a perverse situation here; the foreman wants to take off from the weight of the cane. He says that what we cut here is all that we have and that’s that. We are working like slaves, do you understand? You can’t do it like this!
Marco.- Harvesting sugar cane is slave work, it’s really hard work. We start out at 3 in the morning; we get back at 8 at night. It’s only good for the boss, because he earns more every day that goes by and the worker loses, production decreases and everything is for the boss.
A man.- Sometimes we go to sleep without having washed, there’s no water, we wash up in a stream down there.
A young man.- Here we have no wood for cooking, each one of us, if we want to eat, has to go out and find wood.
A man.- Lunch is whatever you can bring from home, we eat just like that, in the hot sun, carrying on as well as you can in this life.
A young man.- People who work a lot need to have enough food. While the boss of the sugar plantation has an easy life, with all the best of everything, we suffer.
A woman.- I have gone hungry. I would often go to bed hungry, sometimes I had nothing to eat, nothing to feed my daughter with; sometimes I’d go looking for salt; that was the easiest thing to find.
Egidio Pereira.- You have two or three kids, and if you don’t look after yourself, you starve; there isn’t enough to live on.
Ivete Cavalcante.- There is no such thing as a salary here; you have to clean a ton of cane for eight reales; you earn according to whatever you can cut: if you cut a ton, you earn eight reales, there is no set wage.
A woman.- A salary? I’ve never heard of that.
Reginaldo Souza.- Sometimes they pay us in money. Nowadays they are paying in money; in the winter they pay with a voucher.
A woman.- The voucher, well, you work and he writes everything down on paper, he passes it on to another person who goes out to buy stuff at the market. People don’t see the money they earn.
José Luiz.- The foreman does whatever he wants with the people. What’s happening is that I called for him to “calculate the cane”, and he didn’t want to. I mean: in this case he is forcing someone to work. And so the person works for free for the company.
Clovis da Silva.- It’s killing us! We cut cane for half a day, we think we are going to get some money, and when he comes around to calculate we are told that the work was worth nothing.
Natanael.- The cattle trucks bring the workers here, it’s worse than for the boss’s horse; because when the boss puts his horse on the truck, he gives him water, he puts sawdust down to protect his hoofs, he gives him hay, and there is a person to go with him; as for the workers, let them do what they can: get in, shut the door and that’s that. They treat the workers as if they were animals. The “Pro-Alcohol” doesn’t help the workers, it only helps the sugarcane suppliers, it helps the bosses and they constantly get richer; because if it would create jobs for the workers, that would be basic, but it doesn’t create jobs.
José Loureno.- They have all this power because in the House, state or federal, they have a politician representing these sugarcane mills. Some of the owners are deputies, ministers or relatives of sugar mill owners, who facilitate this situation for the owners.
A man.- It seems that our work never ends. We don’t have holidays, or a Christmas bonus, everything is lost. Also, we don’t even get a fourth of our salary, which is compulsory; it’s what we use to buy clothes at the end of the year, or clothing for our children. They don’t supply us with any of that stuff, and we see how every day, it gets much more difficult.
A woman.- I am a registered worker and I’ve never had a right to anything, not even medical leaves. When we get pregnant, we have a right to a medical leave, but I didn’t have that right, family guarantees; I also never got any Christmas bonus, I always got some little thing, and then nothing more.
A man.- For 12 years he’s never paid the bonuses or vacations.
A man.- You can’t get sick, you work day and night on top of the truck, cutting cane, at dawn. I became sick, and I was a strong man.
Reinaldo.- One day I went to work wearing sneakers; when I swung the machete to cut cane, I cut my toe, I finished work and went home.
A young man.- There are no boots, we work like this, many of us work barefoot, the conditions are bad. They said that the sugar mill was going to donate boots. A week ago he cut his foot (he points) because there are no boots.
A young man.- I was sick, I was sick for three days, I didn’t get paid, they didn’t pay me a thing. I saw the doctor to ask for a leave and they didn’t give me one.
A young man.- There was a lad who came from “Macugi”. He was at work when he started to feel sick, and vomit. You need a lot of energy, the sun is very hot and people aren’t made of steel, the human body just can’t resist this.
Valdemar.- This poison we use (he refers to the herbicides) brings a lot of illness. It causes different kinds of diseases: skin cancer, bone cancer, it enters the blood and destroys our health. You feel nauseous, you can even fall over.
A man.- In the period between harvests there is practically no work.
A man.- The work that the foreman tells you to do, must be done; because as you know, if we don’t do it… We aren’t the bosses; it’s them that are the bosses. If they give you a job, you have to do it.
A man.- I’m here hoping someday to have a piece of land and end my days in the country, so that I can fill my belly and the bellies of my children and my grandchildren who live here with me.
Could it be that there is anything else?
End of the documentary.
There is nobody more grateful than I for this testimony and for María Luisa’s presentation which I have just summarized. They make me to remember the first years of my life, an age when human beings tend to be very active.
I was born on a privately owned sugarcane latifundium bordering on the north, east and west on large tracts of land belonging to three American transnational companies which, together, possessed more than 600 thousand acres. Cane cutting was done by hand in green sugarcane fields; at that time we didn’t use herbicides or even fertilizers. A plantation could last more than 15 years. Labor was very cheap and the transnationals earned a lot of money.
The owner of the sugarcane plantation where I was born was a Galician immigrant, from a poor peasant family, practically an illiterate; at first, he had been sent here as a soldier, taking the place of a rich man who had paid to avoid military service and at the end of the war he was shipped back to Galicia. He returned to Cuba on his own like countless other Galicians who migrated to other countries of Latin America.
He worked as a hand for an important trans-national company, the United Fruit Company. He had organizational skills and so he recruited a large number of day-workers like himself, became a contractor and ended up buying land with his accumulated profits in an area neighboring the southern part of the big American company. In the eastern end of the country, the traditionally independent-minded Cuban population had increased notably and lacked land; but the main burden of eastern agriculture, at the beginning of the last century, rested on the backs of slaves who had been freed a few years earlier or were the descendents of the old slaves and on the backs of Haitian immigrants. The Haitians did not have any relatives. They lived alone in their miserable huts made of palm trees, clustered in hamlets, with only two or three women among all of them. During the short harvesting season, cockfights would take place.
The Haitians would bet their pitiful earnings and the rest they used to buy food which had gone through many intermediaries and was very expensive.
The Galician landowner lived there, on the sugarcane plantation. He would go out just to tour the plantations and he would talk to anyone who needed or wanted something from him. Often times he would help them out, for reasons that were more humanitarian than economic. He could make decisions.
The managers of the United Fruit Company plantations were Americans who had been carefully chosen and they were very well paid. They lived with their families in stately mansions, in selected spots. They were like some distant gods, mentioned in a respectful tone by the starving laborers. They were never seen at the sugarcane fields where they sent their subordinates. The shareholders of the big transnationals lived in the United States or other parts of the world. The expenses of the plantations were budgeted and nobody could increase one single cent.
I know very well the family that grew out of the second marriage of that Galician immigrant with a young, very poor Cuban peasant girl, who, like him, had not been able to go to school. She was very self-sacrificing and absolutely devoted to her family and to the plantation’s financial activities.
Those of you abroad who are reading my reflections on the Internet will be surprised to learn that that landowner was my father. I am the third of that couple’s seven children; we were all born in a room in a country home, far away from any hospital, with the help of a peasant midwife, dedicated heart and soul to her job and calling upon years of practical experience. Those lands were all handed over to the people by the Revolution.
I should just like to add that we totally support the decree for nationalization of the patent from a transnational pharmaceutical company to produce and sell in Brazil an AIDS medication, Efavirenz, that is far too expensive, just like many others, as well as the recent mutually satisfactory solution to the dispute with Bolivia about the two oil refineries.
I would like to reiterate our deepest respect for the people of our sister nation of Brazil.
Posted by Radical Notes May 15, 2007 at 8:17 am in Imperialism, History, India
Irfan Habib
THE Revolt of 1857 had as its opponent what was the largest colonial power of the world. It has, therefore, a notable place in the history of Imperialism, and no study of the Revolt can be separated from that of the emergence and internal mechanics of Imperialism. In a letter (27 October 1890) to Conrad Schmidt, Engels noted that while colonial powers before 1800 aspired to capture sources of imports at the lowest cost, thereafter following the Industrial Revolution, they essentially sought markets for their own industrial manufacturers. In respect to India, Marx (New York Daily Tribune, 11 July 1853) dated the change to 1813, when the Charter Act threw Indian markets open to British manufactures by abolishing the East India Company’s commercial monopoly. The results of this invasion of ‘Free Trade’ for India’s own artisanal manufactures were disastrous. In Capital, I, (ed. Dona Torr, p.461), Marx noted that after 1833, there came about “the wholesale extinction of Indian handloom weavers”, amounting to a “destruction of the human race.” It must be remembered that this new source of misery was in addition to the increasing burden of ‘Tribute’, extracted by Britain through excessive over-taxation of the country. Marx had seen in such Tribute a special source of primitive accumulation for British capital; and this too was, therefore, an inseparable element of the new regime of Free Trade, how much individual Free Traders like Bright may have criticised it.
Not only was ‘Free Trade’ a vehicle for the conquest of external markets by British capitalism, a new impetus was now given to world-wide expansion of British power, so as to impose ‘Free Trade’ on the whole world. ‘Imperialism of Free Trade’ is how this new aggressive stage in British colonialism has been described by British historians, J. Gallagher and R. Robinson in an essay of this title (1953). Marx himself had never believed in the sincerity of the ‘peace cant’ of the British Free Traders (Tribune, 11 July 1853) and spoke specifically of the military means that were adopted for “securing the monopoly of the Indian market to the Manchester Free Traders”. (Tribune, 30 April 1859).
The expansion of British power, both world-wide and within the Indian subcontinent imposed a still further burden on India: Annexations of princely states came one after another: Sind, Punjab, Nagpur, Satara, Jhansi, Awadh, all went into Britain’s grasp between 1844 and 1856. In each state large sections from courtiers to common people lost their means of livelihood. Payment had to be made in blood as well. The Bengal Army became a major instrument that was put to use for fulfilling the sub-continental and global ambitions of British imperialism. The bones of thousands of its Sepoys lay scattered in the fields of Afghanistan, Sind, Punjab, Burma, Crimea and China, and no end to the blood-letting was in sight when the storm burst over the greased cartridges in 1857.
We can thus see in 1857 a critical juncture in the history of emerging Imperialism: the pressures it relentlessly exerted on the largest colony in the world, provoked, finally, an anti-colonial outbreak, unique for its scale in the whole of the nineteenth century. The rebellion pitted against the colonial regime over 120,000 trained professional soldiers from the Bengal Army, the most modern army east of Suez, with tens of thousands of other armed rebels, reinforcing and aiding them. In terms of the area affected, nearly a fourth of the population of British India (some five crores of people) passed under rebel control.
That the Revolt of 1857 had its roots in the pressures exerted on India by the Imperialism of Free Trade can hardly be denied; but the depth and breadth of the upheaval also raises the question of the classes and groups that became involved in it, and of their grievances and aspirations.
In his Discovery of India (1946) Jawaharlal Nehru wrote most feelingly about the slaughter and suffering imposed on the people of India by the British during and after the Revolt; and he compared the ‘racialism’ exhibited by the British to that of Hitler. Yet he simultaneously believed that the uprising was essentially “a feudal outburst, headed by the feudal chiefs and their followers, and aided by the widespread anti-foreign sentiment” (p.324). Nehru repeats this characterisation at the end of his account of the rebellion as well (p.328: “essentially a feudal uprising, though there were some nationalistic elements in it”).
Such characterisation, though perhaps natural with the limited amount of evidence available on 1857 at the time Nehru was writing, needs now to be reconsidered.
In the first place, the perception inexplicably overlooks the role of the Bengal Army sepoys. Coming largely from peasant and small land-owing families, they had been drilled and trained in modern warfare and, often themselves literate, were attuned to the mode of British administration with its committees and councils. They had thus no “feudal” attachments that we can think of. Yet, they remained from the beginning to the end, the firmest single component among the ranks of the Rebels. During the rebellion, they asserted their ‘democratic’ attitude by electing their officers (with, often enough, largely Hindu regiments electing Muslims, and vice versa). They formed ‘councils’ to govern their affairs, and in Delhi established the famous ‘Court of Administration.’ If their officers gave themselves designations, they were those of a modern army; such as “Captains”, “Colonels” and “Generals”!
Another class, which we tend to overlook, is that of the educated in the towns, who were increasingly affected by modern ideas. While it is true that there was nothing comparable to the Bengal Renaissance in the Hindustani-speaking zone, at both Delhi and Agra colleges had been established, imparting modern education. In People’s Democracy (April 23-29), Shireen Moosvi has given an account of weekly newspapers coming out in Delhi during the time it was held by the rebels (May-September 1857). Her account shows clearly that the rebel newspapers addressed themselves to people at large, and were not mere Mughal court bulletins.
Let us take a cursory view of the Delhi Urdu Akhbar (June 21,1857), where under the heading “Seize this Opportunity”, it tells its readers that the English had been depriving India of its wealth, by taking it away to England, and remarks upon how the new rebel administration, as it extended its control over “districts” would open opportunities for men of “education and capacity.” It calls upon the scions of the old aristocracy to leave their ways of idleness and take to various trades and crafts. It especially commends the ironsmiths who were manufacturing “rifles, English guns and Turkish pistols.” Its appeal to Hindus and Muslims to fight the English does, indeed, make use of the slogan of saving both religions from the onslaught of the alien English, but it increasingly shifts to patriotic sentiments, addressing “fellow countrymen” and glorying in the exploits of “the Indian Army” (Fauj-i-Hindustani). Modern methods of propaganda were also employed: a pamphlet containing an appeal to Hindus and Muslims was separately printed to be sold at a quarter Rupee per copy (issues of 5 and 12 July). Interestingly, the paper’s hero consistently is not any of the Mughal princes, but the brusque “republican” sepoy leader, the Commander-in-Chief, “General” Bakht Khan. Clearly, the weekly’s readership consists not just of the dependants of the Mughal court, but also a much larger educated population, which was being invited to support the rebel cause by enticing vistas of what they would gain from an Indian (not necessarily, a mere Royal) regime. The general slaughter by way of retribution carried out by the English in Delhi after its fall in September proved that in English eyes the rebel appeals to the Delhi citizenry for support had not fallen on deaf ears.
Beyond the educated class, there were the artisans whose callings the Delhi Urdu Akhbar in its issue of 21 June had so much commended. These included many who had lost their employment owing to the competition of British manufactures, especially textiles. Firuz Shah, the famous rebel leader, in his Proclamation of August 25, 1857 – which reads surprisingly like a modern political party’s programme – makes a special promise of giving employment to the weavers and other kinds of artisans rendered unemployed by English importations. Such artisans formed another class that turned out to be strongly sympathetic to the rebellion. Syed Ahmad Khan then a British agent, in his contemporary memoir of the Revolt in district Bijnor (Sarkashi-i-zila‘ Bijnor) speaks sneeringly of how the sepoys and professional soldiers of the local rebel leader, Mahmud Khan were reinforced by “cotton-carders and weavers, who had hitherto handled only yarn, and never a sword.”
While we are discussing the outlook of the rebel press at Delhi, it may be mentioned that none of the extant issues of the three weekly newspapers display the slightest sign of Wahabi influence. Iqtidar Alam Khan’s critique of the theory of a large Wahabi role in 1857 is going to be published in a subsequent issue, so more need not be said here about it. The practical absence of theocratic influence on rebel leaders, despite the constant cry of religion in danger is, indeed, remarkable.
As for peasant support for the rebellion this became so immediately apparent that already in his article in the Tribune (16 September 1857), Marx was drawing a comparison between the Indian Revolt and the French Revolution of 1789, on this, very basis. The peasants were hard-pressed by the Mahalwari system of land-tax (a consequence of the British pressure for Tribute), and the Revolt gave them an opportunity to throw off the tax-collector. The late Eric Stokes deserves much gratitude for his detailed studies of peasant participation in the Revolt. To him is owed the telling quotation from the report of Mark Thornhill (15 November 1858), where that official held “the agricultural labouring class”, i.e. peasants, rather than “the large proprietors”, as having been “the most hostile” to the continuance of British rule during the Revolt.
That large numbers of zamindars, the bulk of Oudh taluqdars and some princely courts threw their lot with the Rebels is, on the other hand, quite undeniable; and Talmiz Khaldun’s suggestion that the 1857 Revolt was developing into “a peasant [and, therefore, anti-feudal] war against indigenous landlordism and foreign-imperialism” was rightly contested by P.C. Joshi in whose centenary volume on 1857 the essay had appeared. Much of the visible rebel leadership came from these elements: the reluctant Bahadur Shah Zafar, Nana Sahib and Tantia Topi, Hazarat Mahal and her entourage, Khan Bahadur Khan of Bareilly, Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi, and Kunwar Singh and Amar Singh of Jagdishpur, all came from what one can conveniently characterise as feudal classes. Most of them had their own grievances, over lost rights or rebuffed claims. But it needs to be borne in mind that resistance and struggle, in which support had more and more widely to be sought from among the common people, could not but force fundamental changes of outlook. One may look, for instance at two proclamations of Birjis Qadr, whom the rebels declared to be the ruler of Awadh. The first was the proclamation of Rebel Rule at Lucknow, printed in Urdu and Hindi side by side, and issued in June 1857. Addressed to the “Zamindars and the Common People of this Country” it blames the English for their attack on the religion of both Hindus and Muslims, on their seizures of land, and on their disregard of the dignity of the higher classes by treating them at par with the meanest! There is no explicit reference to India, in the main text and, quite clearly, the interests of the landed aristocracy are given primacy. Contrast this with the last appeal to the Indian people in reply to Queen Victoria’s Proclamation of November 1858. In this Appeal issued on behalf of Birjis Qadr, India (Hindustan) is in the forefront. The story is briefly narrated of how the British by force and fraud have acquired territory after territory in India from Tipu’s Mysore to Dulip Singh’s Panjab. The rebels are not to believe in Victoria’s honeyed words, but to continue the struggle. Victoria’s Proclamation shows, it asserts, that if British rule continues, Indians would remain mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. The petty matters, such as the loss of hierarchical dignity, are here quietly forgotten.
One must recognize that the overall historical orientation of the 1857 Revolt cannot be established in definitive terms for the simple reason that, because of its ruthless suppression, there is no way of knowing how it would have developed should success have come its way. But some preliminary suggestions can still be made.
Given the crucial role of the Bengal Army sepoys in initiating and carrying the Revolt forward, the Revolt at least drew on one element of the ‘regenerative’ process, that Marx had spoken of, in his seminal articles of 1853 on British rule. The Sepoys did not at all belong to the old world of princes and landlords. Significant also are the early traces of modern ideas and perceptions that we see in rebel journalism of Delhi and certain proclamations of the rebels. The fact that these modern or quasi-modern elements could make common cause with princely courts, zamindars, unemployed artisans and overtaxed peasants was due to a particular combination of circumstances created partly by that transformation of colonialism itself, with a discussion of which this essay had opened. To characterise the revolt as either “feudal” or “bourgeois” would be unhistorical. The time for one was past, the time for the other had not come. Such discussions have their place in attempting any understanding of how 1857 came about. But what cannot be disputed is either the sheer patriotism of so many, whatever class they came from, or their undying defiance in the face of so brutal and ferocious a retribution as the English visited upon them. The memory of the Rebels’ sacrifices in what they believed so ardently to be the cause of their country will remain ever green in our people’s memory — so long, as the royal poet of 1857 said, as “the country of India endures.”
SOURCE: People’s Democracy May 13, 2007
Posted by Radical Notes May 13, 2007 at 2:36 pm in Marxism
Current Reflections on the Occasion of Isaac Deutscher’s Classical Biography
Armando Hart Davalos
These reflections constitute a homage to all revolutionaries without exception who suffered from the great historical drama of seeing the socialist ideas of October 1917 thwarted. We do it with admiration and respect towards the Russian people who managed to carry out the first socialist revolution of history and to defeat fascism decades later under Stalin’s leadership; this very Russian people which, 130 years before also defeated Napoleon Bonaparte’s military offensive.
As a ground, I have the experience of around 50 years of struggling for the sake of socialist ideas in the beautiful trench of the Cuban Revolution, a follower of both Fidel and Marti; that is, the first revolution of Marxist nature that has triumphed in the so-called West.
Precisely, on the first chapter of the criticism to Feuerbach, he is reproached by Marx and Engels for not taking the subjective factor into account.They say:
“The major defect of all the previous materialism - including that of Feuerbach - is that it only conceives things, reality, sensitivity, under the shape of an object or of contemplation, but not as human sensorial activity, not as a practice, not in a subjective way”.
Since the first years of the Revolution, Fidel and Che spoke to us about the importance of the subjective factor. Life has shown its value for the sake of the cause of human progress, it has also expressed that it influences, at the same time, on the historical stagnation and backwardness. A long list could be made showing it in practice, both in the positive and in the negative aspects. Stalin is one of the greatest examples of the latter; maybe he is the most important sample in the 20 th century of how subjectivity may impact history negatively. Bear in mind, as I express here, that the subjective is revealed in culture.
The basic lesson to be drawn out of all this history is to be found in the human fabric; that is, the subjective factor played a decisive influence in the tragic end of the so-called “real socialism” that, being so in such a simplistic manner, it lost all reality.
A key aspect revealed to us by the experience of the 20 th century, consists in the fact that Engels’ teachings were not learned in the USSR . He, with his huge talent and modesty critically expressed that both himself and Marx, when highlighting the economic content as determining, had forgotten the form and; therefore, the process of the genesis of ideas. Textually he expressed:
“There is only one missing point in which, usually, neither Marx nor I have emphasized our writings, and that is why we are all to be blamed on equal terms. What we insisted on the most - and we could not do it otherwise - was in deriving the basic economic facts, the political, legal ideas, etc. and the acts conditioned by them. And when proceeding this way, the content would make us forget about the form; that is, the process of origin of these ideas, etc. With that we grant our adversaries a good pretext for their mistakes and distortions”. [See C. Marx, F. Engels, Obras Escogidas, t. 3, p, 523, Editorial Progreso Moscu].
In the political practice represented by Stalin certain basic formal aspects of an ethical, political and juridical nature were overlooked, which resulted particularly serious because through them the real life is expressed of millions and millions of people who obviously have an impact on the course of history. When underestimating them, they were not given the proper attention or two major categories placed in the core of culture and the revolutionary struggles were relegated: the ethical and the juridical one.
In the former Petrograd and in Russia as a whole, in 1917, the most advanced political and social thoughts of the European intellectuality and the conditions of exploitation and misery of the Russian farmers and working class, to which the need for the struggle was added; that is, against imperialism, and at the same time, against what was represented by feudalism and czarism. In the former Russia up until February 1917, there had not been a triumphant bourgeois revolution, which had started in Europe over two centuries before. Feudalism, imperialism domination and the monarchical regime of the czars was the setting that nourished Stalin’s political training, of course, also influenced by Leninism; he welcomed it with the aforementioned cultural limitations. Stalin was a revolutionary, but he could not reach the dimension of a full socialist leader.
Unlike Lenin and other Bolsheviks, Stalin never lived or traveled around other countries of the old continent, nor was he nourished from the revolutionary wisdom of other regions of the world. Of course, he received Lenin’s influence, we should not deny it because it is a component part of the drama, but he did it based on the ground of the old Russian culture out of which, even opposing it, he was never capable of drawing socialist consequences valid for the world of his times.
Objectively, Europe by itself was unable to carry out a socialist revolution; the reasons would be the target of an analysis that goes beyond the goals of this present work. But in order to understand the culture of Marx and Engels deeply, particularly to apply it creatively, the intellectual tradition of the old continent needed to be undertaken because the forgers of socialism were its most consistent exponents in the 19 th century. They ended up being the legitimate successors of the revolutionary ideas of the former centuries expressed in the Enlightenment and the encyclopedia scholars. Out of this cultural fact, Stalin did not extract the due consequences. That is why; its universal reach was limited.
Fidel Castro, when talking on television on the occasion of the visit to Cuba by John Paul II, in January 1998, referring to the mistakes of the applied policy during Stalin’s times, underscored that:
“As a Polish man, the Pope witnessed the crossing of the Soviet troops and the creation of a socialist State under the principles of Marxism Leninism, dogmatically applied, totally disregarding the concrete conditions of that country, and without that extraordinary dialectical and political sense that Lenin used to have, capable of a peace of Brest-Litovsk, capable of a N. E. P. and capable of passing before, in an armored train, through the territory of a country that was in a war against Russia, facts demonstrating an intelligence, a capacity, a courage and a true political wit, that never ever stopped being Marxist”. [See Castro, Fidel. Appearance on Cuban television, January 16, 1998, Granma newspaper, January 20, 1998].
Lenin was reared within the revolutionary commotions of the Europe of his times and when studying the life of the founder of the Soviet State, it will be noticed that he enriched his knowledge with the huge culture and the active involvement within the settings of the different European countries, among which, those which gave birth precisely to the thought of Marx and Engels. The same happened with other paradigmatic examples such as Ho Chi Minh. The illustrious Viet-Namese man was a founder of the French Communist Party, he lived and worked in the United States , traveled to many parts of the world and in his homeland, received the impact of the French culture that had arrived imposing colonialism and was able to undertake it from his universal, Third World Asian autochthonous perspective.
The Leninist conceptions of the Russian Revolution stated the thesis that that country was the weakest link of the European imperialist chain. It was expected that the process started back in October 1917 in Petrograd would end up having an impact on the revolutionary outburst in Western Europe, beginning by Germany . That was not the case; the idea of the creation of socialism emerged in only one country. On the other land, Russia as an Asian-European country was part of the huge Asian world. This slogan could have a contextual value for a later moment of the October Revolution, but what nobody will be able to admit is that it was a correct revolutionary strategy for a whole century.
Lenin’s geniality to address these issues was extraordinary, but Stalin did not draw out of his texts the conclusions about the possibility and the need of linking the interests of socialism with the situation that was being generated ever since in the Asian countries and as a whole, in what later on we have called Third World.
Let us go to Stalin’s characterization made by Lenin, and it will be witnessed that he was a real prophet. In 1922 he said:
“I think that the key things in the problem of stability, from this perspective, are such members of the C. C. as Stalin and Trotski. The relations between them, the way I see it, enclose a great good half of the danger of that split that could be avoided, and to this end, according to my criterion, it would help to have the enlargement of the C.C. up to 50 and even 100 members”.
Comrade Stalin, being Secretary General, has concentrated a huge power in his hands, and I am not sure that he always knows how to use it wisely. On the other hand, according to what is shown in his struggle against the C.C. on the occasion of the problem of the People’s Commission of Communication Roads, comrade Trotski is not only remarkable by his great capacity. Personally, maybe he is the most capable man of the C.C., but he is too proud and too attracted by the purely administrative aspect of issues.
These two qualities of two outstanding leaders of the current C.C. may lead to the split unwillingly, and if our Party does not adopt any measures to avoid it, the split may come unexpectedly”. [See V. I. Lenin, Letter to the Congress, Moscow . Publications in Foreign Languages, / S.A. /].
The policy followed by Stalin during the gestation of World War II and his pact with Hitler is one of the cloudiest processes of his long career. Nazism was rejected by the peoples and particularly by the socialist and progressive forces. It placed these latter in a very difficult position, even in Germany .
Fidel himself points out, in the already mentioned speech that… “when talking with Soviet visitors, I used to ask them three questions: Why the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?, that took place in 1939, and I was about 13 years old (…) Why had they invaded Poland to gain a few kilometers of land?, land that was lost later on in a disastrous way in a matter of days (…) Why the war with Finland?, third thing I would ask them (…) Well, the international communist movement had to pay a very high price for that, the communities from all over the world, so disciplined and faithful to the Soviet Union and to the Communist International, that when it said: “This has to be done”, that was the case. Then, all communist parties of the world explaining and justifying the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact, were isolating themselves from the masses”. [See Castro, Fidel. Cited speech].
History revealed later, as an aggravating circumstance, that it worked this way despite the reports of the intelligence of his country about the fact that Hitler was preparing the offensive against the Soviet Union . However, it should be acknowledged that after the Nazi aggression, Stalin successfully led the counteroffensive. The Soviet people fought heroically, the Red Army made it up to Berlin in an ultra human effort in which millions of people died. The war was over with the victory upon fascism, but, at the same time, the Yalta and Potsdam Agreements were signed and conditions like these were created for the splitting of the world into two large spheres of influence. That did not turn out to be positive for socialism.
In the following years in which the Cold War was being unleashed, neither Stalin nor his successors managed to understand the forms and possibilities that the alliance among the societies of the Third World and socialism could have granted them because to do that, a universal conception of cultural grounds that they were lacking was needed.
In 1959, the Cuban Revolution triumphed founded on the national historical tradition and with a projection of Latin American, Caribbean and universal scope. Fidel and Che’s Third World theses meant, from then on, an attempt to change the bipolar world from the side of socialism.
For the true revolutionaries of the 20th century, the attack to the sky represented overcoming the established bipolarity for ever, from positions of the left and not of the right, as it was the case later on during the ’80s. The examination of the most important events of the ’60s shows that disregarding their diverse political nuances, they are characterized by the need of overcoming the bipolar world.
Let us see some of them: the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959; the Missile Crisis of October 1962; the tragic split of the international communist movement that triggered the breaking up between China and the USSR; the emergence and development of the Vietnam liberation war; the Angolan liberation war; the collapse of the colonial system in Asia and Africa; the birth and rise of the Movement of the Non-Aligned Countries; the growth of the liberation movements in Latin America; the Sandinista Revolutionary Movement; the military progressive movements in Latin America, particularly in Peru and Panama; the French May; the Czech crisis and previously the situations created in Hungary and Poland.
The heirs of Stalin’s work could not respond to this challenge because they were locked in the policy derived from the Yalta and Potsdam agreements and in the idea of the construction of socialism in only one country which after World War II had extended to several nations. Stalin’s successors could not tackle the dilemma because in 1956, after his death, when Stalinism was denounced for its crimes, a deep, radical and consistent analysis was not made of the nature and character of his regime. It could be said that then, it was not possible to do it and much less by those who had been born out of that policy; so, well; that was what happened. Today, 80 years later, not only is it possible, but indispensable, because as long as this is not done, the ideas of Marx and Engels won’t be able to emerge triumphantly out of the chaos they were dropped into in the 20 th century.
Later on, those who wanted to change the bipolar world were accused, from the perspective of socialism, as Fidel and Che did it in Latin America, of violating the economic laws; and in fact, the ones who did not take them into account were those who ignored that the development of the productive forces and the scientific progress would lead to going beyond bipolarity. The further course of events came to dramatically underline that, just the opposite, those who did not know the economic laws or tried to accommodate them to their conservative position were precisely, the ones who with the banners of socialism, would reject the Cuban revolutionary theses.
There are three major conclusions to reflect upon from this recently started century: The first, that this change was a need of the ever growing internationalization of the productive forces and, consequently, of the economic and political evolution of the world. The second, that as it was not done from the left, it took place from the right; and the third, that such change from the left could only be made by promoting the national liberation struggle in Asia, Africa and Latin America and by trying to link it with the ideas of socialism. That was the challenge that socialism had ahead of it.
Isaac Deutscher in his biography about Stalin, which is already a classic, points out that the Soviet leader substituted Marx’s idea about the fact that violence was the midwife of history, for the one who used to be the mother of history. The intellectual refinement to understand the subtlety of Marx’s definition was to be found, the way I see it, beyond Stalin’s cultural possibilities.
Precisely, the fundamental mistake of the revolutionary policy in the 20 th century, at best conditioned by Stalin, was in the fact that it marched divorced and separately from culture. Even in the case of the USRR, as it is known, it ended up in the most dramatic extremes. In Cuba - as we were indicating - we were immensely lucky to count on the wisdom of the greatest political revolutionary and the greatest intellectual of the 19 th century, that was Jose Marti. The unique teaching of the Cuban Revolution in these two centuries and currently consists, precisely, in having stated and enriched this relation. In it Marti’s and Fidel Castro’s uniqueness is to be found.
The radicalism of Mart’s revolutionary thought was accompanied by an intense and consistent humanism in the treatment to men and the people of the oppressive mother countri
