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And just what is
Socialism?
11/10/2007
By Armando Hart Dávalos
Speaking of today’s debate about the content of 21st century’s socialism,
it becomes a theoretic as well as a practical necessity the articulation
of both Caribbean’s and Latin American’s intellectual tradition, the
ALBA, symbol of an alliance between Martí and Bolivar, with the
socialist ideology as interpreted by Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro.
During the 20th century there was such a distortion of Marx’, Engels’
and Lenin’s ideas on what socialism should be about, that today we are
strongly urged to go directly to their original writings. Let’s see what
Marx and Engels had to say, and also the ideas of Martí and Juárez on
this subject.
In the paper “Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist
Outlooks,” Marx and Engels state: “For us, communism is not a condition
that must be imposed, an ideal that needs to abide by reality. We call
communism the real movement that cancels and surpasses the actual status
of things (…).”
Friedrich Engels in a letter to Otto Von Boenigk on August 21, 1890,
suggests: “To my mind, the so-called ‘socialist society’ is not anything
immutable. Like all other social systems, it should be conceived in a
state of constant flux and change. Its crucial difference from the
present order consists, naturally, in production being organized on the
basis of common ownership by the nation of all means of production.”
In a letter sent by Friedrich Engels to Joseph Bloch in September 1890,
Engels poses: “(…) history happens in such a way that the final result
derives from conflict between many different individual wills, each of
which is what it is by virtue of a number of special conditions in life;
they are the innumerable forces that crisscross one another, an infinite
group of force parallelograms that add up to one – the historic event –
that in itself may be considered the product of a single force that, as
a whole, acts without conscience and without will; since what one wants
stumbles with the resistance placed by another, the end result becomes
something nobody wanted.”
In another letter sent by Engels to Karl Kautsky in September 1892,
Engels states: “But as to the social and [political] economic phases
these countries – in reference to those we call today underdeveloped
countries – will then have to pass through before they likewise arrive
at socialist organization, we today can only advance rather idle
hypotheses, I think. One thing alone is certain: the victorious
proletariat can force no blessings of any kind upon any foreign nation
without undermining its own victory by so doing.”
In his letter to the editors of the Annals, Karl Marx states: “My
historical understanding of the origins of capitalism in Western Europe
is bent on converting it into a historic and philosophical theory of a
general trajectory to which all peoples have been tragically subjected
to, whatever the historical circumstances taking place, to be finally
expressed in that economic formation that, (…) assures man’s development
in each and every aspect. (This is allowing me too great an honor and,
at the same time, too much mocking) […]
“Studying separately each of these historical processes and later
comparing each to the others, we will easily find the key to explain
these phenomena, results that we would never obtain by using the
universal key of a general philosophic theory of history that has its
major advantage in the fact of its being a supra-historic theory.”
Friedrich Engels writes to Joseph Bloch in September 1890, “…According
to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining
element in history is the production and reproduction of real life.
Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted anything else.
Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is
the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a
meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase.”
In the first point of the Theses on Feuerbach, Karl Marx states: “The
chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach
included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only
in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human
activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to
materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism –
which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.”
In a letter to Werner Sombart dated March 11, 1895, Engels writes: “The
entire conception of Marx is not a doctrine but a method. It does not
offer made dogmas, only starting points for subsequent investigation and
the method for such investigation.”
On the same grounds, I elicit from the reader that he/she studies this
paragraph from José Martí: “A thing which I must celebrate a lot, it’s
the love in which you treat others and your respect as a person, those
Cubans that are sincerely searching for, with this or that name, a
higher level of cordiality, and an indespensable balance to the
administration of all worldy things. An aspiration must be judged by its
nobility, and not for this or that wart brought about by human passion.
The socialist ideas, like so many others, encounter two dangers: foreign
writings – confusing and incomplete – and that of pride and concealed
rage of ambitious people, that they use to elevate themselves in the
world and which start with pretense, so that they may find shoulders to
climb, from where they can show themselves to be frenetic defenders of
the helpless.”
Later on Martí adds: “But with our people it isn’t so much the risk, as
it is in societies more enraged, and of a lesser natural clarity; our
task will be to explain, flat and deep, as you will do it – the idea is
not to compromise sublime justice on the way or in the excesiveness in
which we ask for it. And always with justice, you and I, because errors
by which it is being carried give no authority to those of good
upbringing from deserting when called for its defense.”
Also to be studied is the following paragraph from Karl Marx to be
compared with one by Benito Juárez that is given afterwards. Marx says
in the Critique of the Gotha Program written in late April, early May
1875: “In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving
subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith
also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished;
after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want;
after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around
development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative
wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of
bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its
banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his
needs!”
Fourteen years before, on January 11, 1861, Benito Juárez wrote
something which was later discovered by historians that stated:
”To each according to his ability and to each ability according to deeds
and education. That way there will be neither privileged classes nor
unjust preferences (…)”
“Socialism is the natural tendency to better the condition or the free
development of both physical and moral competences.”
As underlined before, Engels expressed that Marxism is a method for
investigation and study, and Lenin, in his own right, declared that it
was a guide for action. Using both method and guide we can tackle the
concrete problems of our time, while also heeding the warning that there
is no general formula that can be applied to all situations and all
nations. It is up to us, starting with the concrete development of our
societies, and the intellectual tradition and politics of our region, to
find creative ways and paths, and the optimal form to channel that true
socialism of the 21st century, the one aspired by our nations.
Any analysis we carry out must start from our history and the links
established during the centuries between the Latin American and
Caribbean nations which make our region the one with the loftiest
calling towards integration given our impressive spiritual [cultural]
heritage.
In the 21st century we should find inspiration in the enlightened ideas
of Marx, Engels and Lenin as expressed in the original writings, and
relate them to whatever is found to have validity with those ideas of
Bolivar, Martí and other past illustrious leaders and thinkers of our
America.
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