Manifesto. Karl Marx
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invites us to reflect on the truths it sets out. With this in mind, those who have read this famous document should read it once again. If you have not yet done so, read it for the first time. You will always find it a useful guide to understanding the historic drama of exploited peoples and as a lesson in the struggle for human and social emancipation.
We can say today, paraphrasing Engels, that The Communist Manifesto is one of the greatest documents ever written in support of the poor of the earth in favor of their struggle for liberation. We could begin to discuss his ideas using the profoundly ethical thinking of José Martí, when he said, in relation to Karl Marx: “He deserves to be honored for declaring himself on the side of the weak.”4
Let’s move on to comment on Rosa Luxemburg’s text. From an intellectual point of view and particularly within the terrain of social sciences, history and philosophy, she is one of the most outstanding women in the world and among the elevated intellectuals of the human race. With her assassination on January 15, 1919, the right wing demonstrated its powerful class instinct and proved that it was more aware of the caliber and significance of unswerving revolutionaries than many who proclaimed themselves as such.
Rosa fought equally against reformism as she did against dogmatism, meaning that she made enemies among dogmatists and reformists. As it was both sides that imposed themselves on the evolution of socialist ideas in the 20th century, the illustrious adopted daughter of the Germany of Marx and Engels was smothered under the tapestry of false interpretations of these founding fathers’ work.
Much was lost to the world revolutionary movement with the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and the marginalization of her luminous ideas. Until now we have been arguing the importance of the subjective factor in history, in a progressive sense. The dramatic reality of contemporary times has shown that this same factor also impacts negatively as a painful historical lesson. In relation to Rosa Luxemburg’s ideas, we have a sound judgment to make in this respect.
In this text Rosa criticizes reformist statements from a dialectical perspective and in terms that are logically rigorous. She points out how positions originating from these statements exacerbated contradictions between the rich and the poor and led to the need for a social revolution. The 100 years that have passed since she wrote this text demonstrate that reformism, far from succeeding, helped to universalize anarchy, wars, brutal conflicts, and even to expand terrorism throughout the globe, creating the particularly grave situation we currently face in the world.
The basic argument put forward by reformists in the times of Marx, Engels and Lenin and, consequently, in Rosa Luxemburg’s era, stated that capitalism could cushion and even overcome class differences with measures such as the following:
- Improvements in the situation of the working class
- Extension and broadening of credit
- Development of the key means of transport
- Concentration of the trusts that accentuated the tendency toward the socialization of the means of production
For reformists, these processes would blunt the class contradictions that would lead to social upheaval and, therefore, to a revolution against capitalism. The position set out by Rosa Luxemburg was that these processes could slow down or delay and, as a consequence, lengthen the workers’ struggle, but that in the end social chaos was inevitable.
How are the weaknesses of these reformist theses manifested? If capitalists were people without petty ambitions and were educated, or at least had common sense, the ideal situation would naturally be a process of reforms. Yet this doctrine fails because, as Martí said: “All men are sleeping dragons. It is necessary to rein in the dragon. Man is an admirable dragon: he has been given his own reins.” The key then is in the triumph of common sense, intelligence and culture. We Cubans know this because of our ethical, juridical, social and political traditions of universal value.
What is certain is that the failure of reformists is due not to the possible logical value of their statements, but to the objective fact that the petty and short-term interests of the owners of wealth prevail over more elemental truths than logic. Moreover, these essential truths that, as I say, are rooted in common sense, will lead them to consistently apply reformist ideas; but the [reformist] process will not take place because evil, mediocrity and petty interests rule in the minds of the principal owners of wealth.5 All social systems have disappeared on account of this mixture of stupidity, mediocrity and evil.
In another of her works known as the Junius Pamphlet, Rosa Luxemburg formulates a political slogan and historical choice that faces humanity: socialism or barbarism. More than 80 years after her death, history has dramatically proven her to be correct.
Today’s dilemma is that, for the time being, barbarism has imposed itself. It can only be substituted, from our perspective, by a line of march that, in the final analysis, leads to socialism.
Today we live in a world that is described as globalized; I say globalized because of what the Spanish writer Ramón Fernández Durán called the explosion of disorder. A revolutionary process must take into account objective and economic factors, but it must also consider the cultural and moral questions involved. The basic error of 20th century Marxist interpretation, after Lenin, was precisely in neglecting this key element in political practice.
Finally, we will deal with the well-known text by Ernesto Che Guevara. An analysis of this allows us to explore Che’s central idea: the role of subjectivity and, therefore, of culture in socialism and the education of the new human being.
Socialism and Man in Cuba encourages us, as the most recent of the documents published here, to reflect on the challenges facing socialism. In this text, an embryonic analysis of the superstructural and subjective factors in relation to the material base of socialist society is presented. Hence, it continues to be a key text which contemporary revolutionaries must study in depth.
In this text, Che broaches the crucial question of the ideological, political, moral and cultural superstructure and its relations with the economic base in the specific Cuban situation of the early years of the revolution. He highlights that socialism was only infant in terms of the development of long-term economic and political theory. All that he outlined was tentative, he stated, because it required subsequent elaboration, which did not happen. In an era when material incentives were promoted to achieve social mobilization and intensify production, Che insisted on means and methods of a moral character, without neglecting the correct use of material incentives, particularly of a social nature.
This is, precisely, the Cuban Revolution’s contribution to socialist ideas and it does not contradict the ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin.
Forty years ago, he raised the problem of direct creation, in other words, the immediate results of humanity’s productive activity. Today, we must study Che’s ideas and suggestions from a broader and more general perspective of culture.
Over four decades later, the matter of subjectivity and, therefore, of ethics, is revealed to us in a more complete and defined way. Today it is inseparable from Fidel Castro’s proposal to attain a comprehensive level of culture in society. The culture of emancipation and accordingly, Che’s ideas on subjectivity, are of immediate interest in our process of revolutionary analysis of the influence of culture in socioeconomic development. This is the only way to find the path that leads to new philosophical thinking and to political action in tune with the contemporary situation.
Determining the influence of culture in development is fundamental to elaborate the ideas needed in the 21st century, especially in the Americas. To test the importance of culture in the economy is an unavoidable commitment we have with Ernesto Che Guevara. This would demand a more detailed analysis, but for now we are going to refer to the matter that Che raised, that of subjectivity. To carry out this analysis, one has to begin with the question of culture and its influence on the history of humanity. This matter has remained pending in the history of socialist ideas during the 20th century.
Let me discuss, by way of a conclusion, some reflections on the role of culture. I will do this by beginning with the history of civilizations in order to reach later more concrete conclusions.