Dear Comrades,
Bill Koehnlein's film review post (by Mitchel Cohen in Z Magazine)
about Che Guevara and Louis Proyect's response started good discussion on
socialism in Cuba and elsewhere. Jim Devine's mild response to Louis
attracted other bystanders into the discussion. Unfortunately, the
discussion was quickly degenerated because of ill-temperaments. Before I
ask a question about socialism from above/below, I would like to make a
comment about the tone of our discussions and intolerance shown to those
with whom we disagree.
This raises a question in my mind. We are generally homogenous
group of left leaning intellectuals. Often we take the role of being
vanguard. We each have in our mind a kind of socialist society that we
dream and in some way we orchestrate our praxis toward that goal. The
puzzling question is: if we can't get along comradely with each other as a
small homogenous group of like minded people, how we can get along and live
in a socialist society that we want to create, a society that is very
heterogeneous? A society that we want to build has all kind of people, all
kind of races, religions, colors, languages, etc. How are we going to
tolerate those who are utterly different from us? Some of our neighbors
would be shepherds, auto-mechanics, farmers, preachers, teachers, truck
drivers, insurance salesperson, skin heads, etc. All those people are going
to have different values, knowledge, tolerance level, habits, etc. How are
we all going to work together to build a future society that we idealize?
Now, let me turn to the socialism discussion. I find comments about
Che and his Cuban revolution as well as revolutions in other parts of the
world are illuminating in general, but disengaged from reality. As if we
are living in a different planet that is accidentally called "utopia." Can
we bring our feet to touch the ground here? All third world revolutions are
called socialist revolution from above. I would like to know a definition
of socialist revolution from below. How is it made? Who makes it? Are there
blue-prints of it available somewhere? How is it supposed to happen? Are we
going to hold referendum for it? Are we going to ask peasants to vote for
the revolution? Are we going to go to every factory to hold election? Are
we looking for 51% approval in order to call it socialist revolution from
below? A 75% or 100%? What are we looking for? Are we looking for every
peasant, farmer, farm worker, factory worker, teacher, civil servant to
quit their work and grab arms against landowners and capitalists? With whom
Che Guevara was fighting in Bolivian jungles? Who were fighting along with
Mao in China, with Ho in Vietnam? Who were those people fighting with Fidel
and Che? In the 1930s, more than 95% of the Chinese population was in rural
areas and most of those were peasants. Do you think Mao or Fidel and Che
were fighting with factory workers? With intellectuals? There is no such
thing as spontaneous uprising or revolution. Social changes were always
brought about step by step and gradually, and not spontaneously. And these
social changes were always started by a group of individuals most of whom
were working class people, not intellectuals. There were not (and are not)
enough intellectuals to carry out actual fighting. It does not mean that
there were no intellectuals among the fighting people. There were, and most
of those involved with strategy of fighting.
I would love to see answers to these questions. These are the
questions worth discussing. Sometimes we have tendency to engage in
discussing stultifying questions which marginalize most of the people in
the list.
In Struggle for peace and justice for all.
Fikret.
PS. In late October/early November, I introduced Nader candidacy for
president, not necessarily expecting the establishment of spontaneous
socialism by Nader or anybody else. I used the name of Ralph Nader as a
generic candidate. Nader was not going to establish socialism as we
understand, but his election would have established conditions conducive
for socialist struggles. Nader candidacy was summarily dismissed by some of
us as irrelevant for socialism, rather than discussing why his election
would or would not promote or lead to socialism.
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+Fikret Ceyhun voice: (701)777-3348 work +
+Dept. of Economics (701)772-5135 home +
+Univ. of North Dakota fax: (701)777-5099 +
+University Station, Box 8369 +
+Grand Forks, ND 58202/USA e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +
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