The Political Instrument Needed to Lead the Transition
Historical experience shows that the intervention of the state or government to push forward the transition to socialism is crucial. Why is this state intervention necessary? Did this happen with capitalism, too?
No, the historical process of capitalist development was very different. Capitalist relations of production were born in the bosom of precapitalist societies, and the only mission of bourgeois revolutions was to conquer political power and then use it to foster the expansion of this mode of production, which has its own logic of development.148
The capitalist dynamic is explained by the hunger for profit and the associated exploitation of wage labor, generating the economic laws that govern this process. The state only intervenes to create the two basic conditions for the existence of the capitalist mode of production: (1) the complete separation of the producer from his/her means of production; and (2) the primitive accumulation of money capital.149 Then, once this mode of production has established itself, the state intervenes to facilitate or favor the logic of how it functions.150
Socialist relations of production, however, are not born spontaneously in the bosom of the preceding society. They need the intervention of some kind of political organization, which, with the support of the people, conquers state power—or at least government power. From this position, they can begin to create the conditions that allow them to move gradually (the speed at which this happens depends on the objective conditions in each country) toward establishing socialist relations of production in the various economic spheres in the society.
Overcoming Inherited Culture and the Fragmentation of Society
The main actors in the construction of the new society do not drop from the sky. In fact, they drag a weighty cultural heritage behind them. This is why a process of cultural transformation is needed if socialism is to be built—a process in which the individualistic culture of every person for himself or herself is gradually overcome, as is the paternalistic culture, which has created the habit of waiting for the state to solve our problems instead of organizing to solve them ourselves. Consumer culture must also be overcome. Consumerism makes us think that, if we have more, we are better, instead of inducing us to feel bad because we have superfluous things, while others do not have even the minimum needed to live with dignity.
Twenty-first century socialism will only be able to consolidate itself if we manage to impregnate present and future generations with a new humanistic and solidarity-infused ethics, an ethics that respects nature and that stresses being rather than having. What is more, if the goal we are pursuing is the full development of each person, and each person is different from the next, one of the most import characteristics of socialist culture must be respect for difference, and the fight against sexism and all other kinds of discrimination.
Another facet of the reality bequeathed to us is an incredibly fragmented society. This fragmentation has been one of the strategies used by the enemy to weaken us. Our transition processes usually get under way with an extremely heterogeneous working class, weakened by the processes of labor flexibility and contracting out. This class is also deeply divided internally, not only because of the objective conditions caused by neoliberalism, but also because of ideological differences, personalities, and caudillismo. There are also large numbers of social and political organizations that, in fighting for their own goals, forget that the most important thing is to make the revolution.
Although the strategic objective aimed for is self-government by the people, this is not something that will happen overnight. As Aristóbulo Istúriz says, our peoples do not have “a culture of participating”; they have no “real experience of governing,” and are accustomed to “populism, cronyism, to not reasoning politically, to asking for things.” It is, therefore, necessary to govern with the people for a certain length of time so that they can learn to govern themselves.151
Tasks of the Political Instrument
Building socialism entails developing new relations of production, carrying out a real cultural revolution that allows us to go beyond the inherited culture, and developing a revolutionary subject who is the bedrock of the whole process. It also requires that the people undertake an apprenticeship in forms of self-government. These are not things that come about spontaneously. This is why we need a political instrument. In what follows, we list the most important tasks that this instrument must undertake.
In his 1853 Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, Marx notes “we say to the workers: ‘You will have to go through 15, 20, 50 years of civil wars and national struggles not only to bring about a change in society but also to change yourselves, and prepare yourselves for the exercise of political power.’”152 Through their social practices and their struggles, people must leave behind the muck of the inherited culture and begin to discover, experiment with, and incorporate into their lives new values—the values of humanism, of solidarity, and of respect for difference, as manifested in the struggle against sexism and discrimination of all kinds.
However, these practices are not enough. New ideas are needed to go up against the old ideas (this is why Marx devoted his whole life to writing Capital). We need, as Fidel Castro says, to wage a battle of ideas. But battles are not won if there is no one leading them. This explains another of the reasons for having a political instrument.
This political organization must also take on responsibility for drawing up an educational strategy—based on practice and very structured courses—that will make it easier for its members and for the people in general to acquire new knowledge; the kind of knowledge that will enable them to develop a critical attitude concerning the inherited culture and to take on more and more responsibilities related to building the new society.
Design a Project for the Country: A political organization is necessary because we need a body that sets the scene for the first draft of a proposal, program, or national project that represents an alternative to capitalism. This program or project will serve as a sea chart for finding the way, for making sure we don’t get lost, for putting the construction of socialism on the right course, for not confusing what has to be done now with what has to be done later, and for knowing what steps to take and how to take them. In other words, we need a compass to ensure that the ship doesn’t run adrift and that it reaches its destination safely.
If I have talked about a first draft, drawn up by the political organization, it is because I believe we must be mindful that, as it goes along, this project should be enriched and modified by social practice, with opinions and suggestions from social actors because, as previously stated, socialism cannot be decreed from on high—it has to be built with the people. Rosa Luxemburg never tired of saying that the path to socialism was not laid down in advance, and neither were there predetermined formulas and blueprints: the “modern proletarian class does not conduct its struggle according to any blueprint reproduced in a book or a theory, the modern workers’ struggle is a part of history, a part of social evolution and we learn how we should fight in the midst of history, in the midst of evolution, in the midst of the struggle.”153
This task needs time, research, and knowledge of the national and international situation. It is not something that can be improvised overnight, especially in the complex world in which we live. This project must be set out in a program, which serves as that sea chart we talked about earlier, and which becomes something concrete in a national development plan.
The political instrument must stimulate a constant debate on the big national issues, so that this plan and the more concrete programs that stem from it are constantly enriched. I agree with [architect and poet] Farruco Sesto that these debates cannot be limited to a simple confrontation of ideas, but should “lead to the collective construction of ideas and of answers to the problems….Arguments added to or raised against other ideas will allow a shared truth to be created.” The political organization should be, according to Sesto, “a huge workshop for strategic thought, deployed all over the country.”154
I think that the party should not only encourage an internal debate but should also endeavor to create spaces for public debate on subjects of more general interest, in which all interested citizens can take part. For this reason, I find myself again in agreement with Sesto: since the party is not something apart from the people but rather has to make “its life within the people,” the ideal place for this debate is “in the bosom of the popular movement.” Moreover, “if one of the strategic lines of the revolution is to transfer power to the people, that implies transferring not only the ability to make decisions but also that of working out the bases for those decisions…[since] producing ideas and making clear the road to take is the most important activity in the exercise of power.”155
To build socialism, the greatest possible number of domestic and international forces must unite in order to be able to defeat the forces that are loath to give up their privileges. We need a political body that understands it is not enough to create a huge organization with hundreds of thousands of members. We must go beyond that. We have to create places (cyber or real) where people can meet; we must encourage coordination of the various emancipatory practices present in the movement by bringing together all the actors to discuss common goals: parties, social movements, organizations, and individuals. We need an organization capable of filling millions of women and men with the enthusiasm to fight for a common goal.
We must think not only of the popular sectors but also of middle-class and professional sectors, even those business sectors willing to accept the national development plan we mentioned earlier. Only in this way will we be capable of defeating the far more powerful forces that oppose the transformation we desire.
Encourage and Facilitate Protagonistic Participation: Finally, the most important task: we need a political instrument that encourages popular protagonism in the most varied social and political milieus in the country. An instrument that puts itself at the service of that participation, so that the people themselves build the new society. Without this, we will never manage to build socialism.
Only thus will we be true to the thesis that revolutionary practice is essential for workers’ emancipation and that of the popular movement in general. It is through practice that we can reach full human development, our most important goal.
Recruit New Cadres to Renew the Political Instrument: All processes dedicated to building socialism are faced with the problem of a scarcity of cadres. Generally, there are very few revolutionary cadres available that are politically and technically ready to carry out efficiently the multiple and complex tasks of building socialism. This is why all our left governments have had to rely on the expertise of professionals and technicians who have worked for previous governments, people not exactly brimming with revolutionary consciousness.
This situation must change if we are to push ahead with building socialism. The political instrument should be especially concerned with spotting new cadres emerging in various spaces created by the revolution. As a temporary measure, perhaps, the revolution could rely on foreign professionals and technicians who are committed to the revolutionary project, and whose most important job would be to begin a process of training new national cadres. In addition, new cadres with new values are needed to revitalize and renew the political instrument.
Give Early Warning of Weaknesses and Mistakes: We can see, then, the complications of building socialism. The task of construction must be undertaken: (a) with an inherited state structure; (b) with professional and technical cadres that do not share the same goal; (c) by relying on a people whose political consciousness is far from ideal; (d) by experimenting with how to go about transforming the relations of production in societies where scarcity and not abundance is king; (e) often with parties that were created to compete in elections and that are plagued by opportunists who want to take advantage of their party affiliation to obtain some job or privilege; and (f) with a temporary acceptance of the fact that top party leaders are also top state officials, because of the scarcity of qualified cadres.
On top of that, there is the permanent danger that even the most revolutionary cadres will become “bureaucratized.” The inherited state apparatus has a habit of swallowing up many who, bit by bit, abandon revolutionary logic and become corrupt or begin to operate under an administrative logic. In this sort of process, it is difficult to avoid mistakes and deviations. This explains the need for a political instrument that acts as the critical consciousness of the process, that gives early warning so these errors and deviations can be corrected, and that is also highly self-critical.
The Kind of Political Activists We Need
If we revolutionary activists are to contribute to the construction of socialism—the goal of which is full human development through practice—our most important task must be to encourage and facilitate popular protagonism. To do that, we have to begin by changing our way of thinking about politics. We cannot reduce politics to the battle to get a job in a state institution or to wanting to govern from above because we think we are in possession of the truth. Let us look at the most important characteristics that members of the new political organization must have.
I said previously that one of the difficulties we face when building socialism is the cultural heritage of our peoples, the type of consciousness they have inherited. We must begin to build socialism among the people often in a time in which they have not yet accepted socialist values as their own. Yet we cannot build socialism without socialist men and women. How can we resolve this contradiction?
What happens is that there are people, who—because of their commitment to earlier struggles—have managed to transform their consciousness and begin to follow socialist values. These are the people who must become the members of the new political instrument.
Those of us who are members must be careful that our own practice does not violate the values of the new society we want to build. In a world where corruption holds sway and political parties, and politics in general, are losing more and more prestige, it is of the utmost importance that we present a different ethical profile, and that we embody in our daily lives the values we advocate. We must be democratic, show solidarity, be willing to cooperate with others, to practice camaraderie, be honest at all costs, and practice sobriety. We must project vitality and joie de vivre.
Our practice must be consistent with our political discourse. People turn away from churches that promise democracy for all social classes, yet deny their own loyal members basic freedom of expression when they do not blindly accept their slogans, from general staff who, on their own, negotiate and make agreements about the welfare of all, from giant party machinery which takes initiative, action, and the right to speak away from individual members.156 Since the social revolution’s aim is not only the struggle for survival but also the struggle to transform our way of living, as Orlando Nuñez says, we have to venture into the realm of morality and love in search of a direct, daily transformation of our way of living, thinking, and feeling.157
If we fight for women’s social liberation, we should begin right now by changing the relations between men and women in the family, eliminating the division of labor in the home and in society. If we believe that young people are the raw material for our work, we must educate them to think for themselves, adopt their own positions, and to be capable of defending them, based upon what they feel and think.158 If we fight against racial discrimination, we must behave in a manner consistent with that in our own lives.
We have to understand that if we are to be victorious, we need the support of the overwhelming majority of the people. To do that, we have to create places where people can meet and exchange ideas, and we must coordinate all revolutionary forces.
All manifestations of sectarianism, every high-handed attitude, will only serve to weaken the march toward socialism. We cannot impose our ideas and our internal party candidates just because we are the majority political organization. A small revolutionary organization can have, proportionally, more cadres ready to assume government tasks than the majority party has. What should count here is quality, not quantity and, of course, loyalty to the government program. We must avoid reproducing the harmful practice of the Chilean Popular Unity coalition, where all jobs were shared out on a quota system. Each party had a quota and carried on with its own policies. And we must remember that, historically, there have been political minorities who were correct because their analysis of the situation was more accurate than that of the majority, and because they were able to discover the real motivations of given social sectors.159
We must show great respect for the people’s autonomous organization. We must contribute to its autonomous development, abandoning any attempt at manipulation. We must have, as one of our main tenets, that political cadres are not the only ones to have ideas and proposals, and that the popular movement has a great deal to offer. Through its daily struggles, the popular movement learns, finds answers, and invents methods that can be profoundly enriching.160
The members, and especially the leaders, of the new political instrument cannot be people with an I-order-you-obey cast of mind. Political cadres must be, first and foremost, popular educators, able to empower all the popular wisdom that exists in the people—that which comes from their cultural traditions and traditions of struggle, and that which they acquire as they toil every day for subsistence—by merging this popular wisdom with the kind of global knowledge that a political organization can contribute.161 This is why the slogan “order by obeying” is so wise.
Bureaucracy: The Biggest Scourge
One of the deviations that did the most damage in the historical experience of Soviet socialism was bureaucratism. Bureaucratism destroys the people’s energy and creativity, and, as the people are the real builders of the new society, it prevents the goal of twenty-first century socialism from being reached. The goal is that women and men develop themselves completely through revolutionary practice itself.
Earlier, in discussing decentralization, we said that one cannot attribute the existence of bureaucracy in the Soviet state simply to the legacy of the tsarist past; it is more correct to say that it begins in the excessive centralization that existed in that state. However, if excessive centralization inevitably leads to bureaucratism, this phenomenon can also arise in state institutions, parties, and other kinds of public and private institutions. Moreover, if it were only a matter of the red tape and being shunted around, all that would have to be done would be to improve management methods, but that would not work.
Where lies the root of this disaster? It is related to a basic issue: how management in an institution is conceived of and implemented. Do the top civil servants or cadres make the decisions—because they think they are the only ones who have the expertise to do so—or is trust placed in the membership and the organized people, in their energy and creativity?
It was often said in the Soviet Union, devastated by an imperialist war and a civil war, that progress could only come about if the workers and peasants en masse were committed to work for the country’s reconstruction. But when workers and peasants took these remarks seriously and tried to apply them by taking the initiative (organizing, for example, a people’s cafeteria or a daycare center), their efforts were rejected by the central authorities. This was done on various pretexts, but the bottom line was that the authorities could not stand the fact that people had done things outside their control.
Bureaucratism is the direct negation of people’s autonomous activity. Any independent initiative, any new thought is considered heresy, a violation of party discipline. The center must decide and supervise each and every thing that is done. Nothing can be done if the order didn’t come from the center.
Alexandra Kollontai, the militant feminist and leader of the Workers’ Opposition, gives an enlightening example:
What would happen if some of the members of the Russian Communist Party—those, for instance, who are fond of birds—decided to form a society for the preservation of birds? The idea itself seems useful. It does not in any way undermine any state project. But it only seems this way. All of a sudden there would appear some bureaucratic institution which would claim the right to manage this particular undertaking. That particular institution would immediately “incorporate” the society into the Soviet machine, deadening, thereby, the direct initiative. And instead of direct initiative, there would appear a heap of paper decrees and regulations which would give enough work to hundreds of other officials.162
Bureaucratism tries to solve problems with formal decisions taken by one person or a small group, both in the party and in some state institutions, but the real stakeholders are never consulted. This way of operating not only restricts the initiative of party members but also that of the nonparty masses. The essence of bureaucratism is that someone else decides for you.
The Need to Encourage Public Criticism
As we said previously, a long process of cultural transformation is required to free ourselves of the muck of the inherited culture. According to Marx, this transformation can only be achieved after decades of civil wars and people’s struggles, and history has proved him right. It is not only difficult for the common people to change; this is also true of some of those who are members of the political organization itself.
Even the parties with the most experience in revolutionary struggle, those that led wars of national liberation for many years, such as the Chinese Communist Party or the Vietnamese Communist Party, have suffered from the scourge of bureaucratism and corruption. In spite of the enormous sacrifices they made during the long years of struggle to liberate their peoples, several of the leaders no longer serve the people. They have moved away from them, and have become comfortable and arrogant; they treat others in a high-handed, authoritarian manner; they enjoy privileges, and have become corrupt.
Why do these situations arise? We must remember that revolutions carry the load of an inherited culture on their shoulders, a culture in which those who held public office had special considerations and privileges.
It is natural that these civil servants, if their political future does not depend on the people, would be more inclined to satisfy the demands of their superiors than to respond to people’s needs and aspirations. What tends to happen is that, because they want to please their superiors or to obtain more monetary rewards, they falsify data or obtain results demanded of them at the cost of the quality of public works. It was rather common in the past in socialist countries to inflate production data. This was not only negative from a moral point of view, it was also negative from a political point of view because faulty information was provided about an actual situation. This prevented the party or government from taking the necessary corrective measures in time.
We should also add that what tends to happen is that those who fawn over their bosses tend to be promoted to posts with more responsibility, whereas those who criticize and adopt an independent posture are marginalized in spite of being competent. And, since there is no encouragement for the people to exercise control over the way cadres behave, misappropriation of public resources for personal purposes becomes very tempting.
How can we fight against these errors and deviations? Can we trust the party itself to resolve its problems internally by, for example, creating an ethics committee charged with dealing with these situations? It seems that this is not the solution.
History has shown—especially in one-party regimes or regimes with an obviously hegemonic party that controls the government and often confuses itself with the government—that it is necessary for the party to be controlled from below, to be subject to public criticism. That seems to be the only way to prevent cadres from becoming bureaucratized or corrupt. As well, it prevents cadres from thinking they are the lords of the people’s destiny and putting the brakes on popular protagonism.
Mao Zedong explained the need for criticism and self-criticism by using the image of a room that need cleaning regularly to prevent it from filling up with dust. His words on this point were: “[T]he only effective way to prevent all kinds of political dust and germs from contaminating the minds of our comrades and the body of our Party” is, among other things, “to fear neither criticism nor self-criticism,” to “say all you know and say it without reserve,” “Blame not the speaker but be warned by his words,” and “Correct mistakes if you have committed them and guard against them if you have not.”163
Criticizing Functionaries to Save the Party
There are some authors who, when faced with the mistakes and deviations committed by party cadres, try to convince us that any party or, in my preferred terminology, any political instrument is bad. I think enough arguments have been made above to substantiate the thesis that we cannot do without a party when building socialism. The point, then, is not to try to do without a political instrument, but to find ways of correcting these possible deviations.
Therefore, in the same way that Lenin thought that to save the Soviet state, it was necessary to accept the existence of strike movements that fight against bureaucratic deviations, we today think that to save the political instrument—which is much more than the sum of its leaders—we must allow the organized people to question publicly the mistakes and deviations that some of its cadres may commit.
There is a basic argument for this: we must remember that the political organization is an instrument created so we can achieve the socialist goal of full human development for all people and that it is therefore the people and not the party that is most important. The people have the right to watch over the instrument; they need to make sure that it fulfills its role, that its cadres really help develop popular protagonism, that they do not stifle people’s initiatives, or use their positions to gain privileges or unjustified rewards.
If we are realists, we cannot think that the very leaders of the party will commit harakiri. There is a tendency for them to want to protect themselves from criticism by their subordinates and by the people in general. Therefore, it is extremely important that it be the people who supervise the actions of government and party leaders. For that reason, the people must be allowed to criticize their leaders’ mistakes, without being accused of having an “anti-party attitude.” The political instrument has to understand that getting rid of these arrogant, corrupt officials who are causing it to lose prestige can only strengthen the party.
It is important that the mistakes or deviations made by the leaders are not suffered in silence. Otherwise, the people’s discontent will build up and could explode at any movement. But if channels for expressing this discontent are established, the defects identified can be corrected in time.
An argument often used to condemn public criticism is that enemies employ it to weaken the party and the transformation process. This is the reason some accuse those who make criticisms of being anti-party or counterrevolutionaries.
The remarks Fidel Castro made on criticism and self-criticism are quite important on this point. He made these remarks after half a century of revolution, in an interview given to Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, at the end of 2005. Some days previously, on November 17, the leader of the Cuban Revolution said that “a fight to the finish” must be waged against certain evils that exist in Cuba, such as small-scale corruption, theft from the state, and illegal enrichment. He also told Ramonet that they were “inviting the whole country to cooperate in this battle, the battle against all defects, including small theft and massive waste, of any sort and in any place.”
When Ramonet asked him why the usual method of criticism and self-criticism hadn’t worked, Fidel replied:
We used to trust in criticism and self-criticism, it’s true. But this has become almost fossilized. That method, in the way it was being used, no longer really worked because the criticism tended to be inside a small group; broader criticism was never used, criticism in a theatre, for example, with hundreds or thousands of people….We have to resort to criticism and self-criticism in the classroom, in the work place and outside the workplace, in the municipality, and in the country….We must take advantage of the shame that I am sure people feel.164
A little later on, after having admitted to various mistakes made by the revolution, he said: “I am not afraid of accepting the responsibility I have to accept. We cannot go about being wimpy. Let them attack me, let them criticize me. Yes, many must be hurting a little…[but] we have to take risks, we have to have the courage to tell the truth.”
However, what I found the most surprising and the most interesting was what Castro said next:
It doesn’t matter what those bandits abroad say….He who laughs last laughs loudest. And that is not saying bad things about the revolution. That is saying very good things about the revolutions because we are talking about a revolution that can deal with these problems, can take the bull by the horns, better than a Madrid bullfighter. We must have the courage to admit our own mistakes…because this is the only way to achieve the objective we set out to achieve.165
To sum up, although public criticism can be used by the enemy to attack the party and the revolution, it can be better used by revolutionaries to correct mistakes and to strengthen the party and the revolution.
There would be no need for public criticism if the political instrument had an excellent information system that allowed it to quickly identify which of its cadres had fallen into errors or deviations, and if, moreover, it took immediate measures against those cadres. Nor would there be any need for criticism if this information were provided from outside the party or from its own grassroots members, and if the party had time to process the information and adopt the relevant sanctions.
However, if these conditions do not exist, and the mistakes and deviations that occur every day are in full view of everyone, including the opposition, there is no other option but to denounce them publicly, so as to appeal, as Fidel says, to the shame of those who are destroying the political instrument by their attitudes. Is it not better to ask the people, those who have firsthand experience of these defects in the cadres, to watch over the cadres’ behavior and, in a constructive manner, denounce the mistakes and deviations they commit? Is that not better than letting our enemies, filled with rage and the desire to destroy our revolutionary project, denounce them?
But stressing the need for public criticism does not mean swallowing any old criticism. We must avoid anarchic, destructive, and ill-founded condemnation. Criticism must be filled with the desire to solve problems, not to increase their number.
To do this it is necessary that: (a) criticism and denunciations be well-founded; (b) strong sanctions exist for those who make unfounded criticisms or denunciations; (c) criticisms are accompanied by proposals for solutions; and (d) an effort is made to bring criticisms to the party first (and if they have not been answered after a short time, then they can be made public). The ideal situation would be for the party to take the initiative by opening up spaces, so that all those interested can make their opinions known on how the party and state cadres in a given locality are operating.
Notes
- ↩ Feudal, Slave Owning, Tributary or Asiatic.
- ↩ Let us remember what Marx wrote in Chapter 31 of Volume I of Capital; “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.”
- ↩ Harnecker, Los conceptos elementales del materialismo historico, Chapter 9.
- ↩ Marta Harnecker. Haciendo camino al andar (Caracas: Monte Ávila, 2005), 334-35.
- ↩ Karl Marx, Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/revelations/ch01.htm.
- ↩ Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions, http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-strike/index.htm.
- ↩ Farruco Sesto, ¡Que viva el debate! (Caracas: Editorial Pentagráfica, 2009), 10-11.
- ↩ Ibid., 27-28. This statement by Alexandra Kollontai is along similar lines: “Fear of criticism and of freedom of thought, by combining together with bureaucracy, often produce ridiculous results. There can be no self-activity without freedom of thought and opinion, for self-activity manifests itself not only in initiative, action and work, but in independent thought as well.” See Alexander Kollontai, The Workers’ Opposition (1921), http://marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/workers-opposition/ch03.htm.
- ↩ Octavio Alberola, “Etica y revolución” (“Ethics and Revolution”), El Viejo Topo, no. 19, (April 1978): 35. This reference and the one that follows are taken from Rebuilding the Left, 98 et seq.
- ↩ O. Núñez, La insurrección de la conciencia (Nicaragua: University of Managua Sociology Department, 1988), 29; Ibid., 60.
- ↩ Ernesto Che Guevara, “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” in David Deutschmann, ed., The Che Guevara Reader (New York: Ocean Press, 2003).
- ↩ Harnecker, Rebuilding the Left, 106 et seq.
- ↩ Ibid., 354.
- ↩ Ibid., 364.
- ↩ An internal current in the Bolshevik Party that advocated greater internal party democracy; Kollontai, The Workers’ Opposition, http://marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/workers-opposition/ch03.htm.
- ↩ Mao Zedong, On Coalition Government, April 24, 1945, http://marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_25.htm.
- ↩ Ignacio Ramonet, Cien Horas con Fidel (La Habana: Publication Office of the Council of State), 677.
- ↩ Ibid., 682-83.
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