Política y Derechos Humanos
Politique et droits de la personne
Politics and Human Rights
Tlahui-Politic No. 2, II/1996 




The Present State of Revolutionary Strategy
Jordi Corominas



For many people, revolution will remain confined to the speeches of some hollow-eyed militants. They consider it, if not in bad taste, then at least inappropriate to talk of revolution in political or intellectual circles.

But unfortunately, revolution is less and less an aesthetic or literary question. If the historical experience of our continent during the last century teaches us anything, it is that revolutionary force does not originate in ideas and is not primarily a question of values. In Latin America, revolutions and guerilla movements from Tupac Amaru to the Zapatista movement have had their origin and ultimate justification in injustice, impoverishment and the exclusion of large sectors of the population.

More necessary than ever

If we stick to the facts, revolution is more necessary today than ever. Since the end of the Cold War, the chasm of inequality in Latin America and the world has widened to a frightening extent. There is no need to cite leftist intellectuals or the latest statistics from some terrifying report: the data are accepted across the spectrum of political opinion.

Structural (revolutionary) change, as opposed to simple "reform", is turning out to be the necessary condition for the survival of the human species, including that of the affluent minority on the planet.

Today we realize that the problem is no longer (simply) a problem of justice and distribution, as it seemed to be a few decades ago. If a world-wide socialist revolution were to redistribute wealth and achieve social justice, but did not transform our lifestyle and our present civilization, this would no longer be enough. Without a radical transformation of the modes of production and lifestyles, even the "eradication of poverty" would only serve to prolong the agony of the rich world. The justification of revolution is becoming more and more metaphysical, more elemental: if we human beings are simply to survive (to eat, drink and breathe ...), structural changes are urgently required.

A strategic weakness

It might be thought that, no matter how necessary revolution may be, it seems more impossible than ever. It has to be admitted that, for the vast majority of people on this planet, the possibilities of improvement have shrunk, compared to only ten years ago. If the force and the powerful attraction of revolutionary movements has always been that they could see a way to achieve collective liberation, their weakness today would be that they present the vision of a magnificent utopia without any prospect of its historical realization.

During the century now ending, liberation strategy basically consisted of a guerilla force supported by the people trying to seize the power of the state and then turning to the Eastern block for support as the quickest and most effective way to pull the large majority out of their misery and marginalization. The fact that this strategy is impossible today makes the crisis of revolutionary movements and parties more acute than a simple defeat.

But the end of one road is not the end of all roads. This is what the newly emerging tendencies on the Latin American revolutionary Left seem to believe.

The reformist tendency

Sergio Ramírez with his Sandinista Renewal Movement, Joaquín Villalobos in El Salvador and Jorge Castañeda, author of La utopía desarmada (Utopia Disarmed), illustrate the reformist tendency. They consider it so difficult to affect structural changes that they regard anyone trying to form a revolutionary movement as doing little more than following a do-nothing policy. According to them, the Left must put aside any guilt feelings and opt for economic agents capable of creating wealth for all, rather than just for the weaker classes (the unemployed, the marginalized); and it must give up any thought of replacing capitalism and seek instead to moderate it by means of redistributive social policies after the manner of the European social democracies.

The main strength of this tendency lies in the possibility that it may offer some comparative advantages to the entire population of a country which manages to carve out a niche for itself on the world market. The main weakness is that today even reforms to capitalism are no longer enough to satisfy the basic needs of the majority of human beings.

The orthodox tendency

The orthodox tendency is embodied in Castroism and in the hard core of old guerilla fighters. It tries to dissociate Marxism entirely from the crisis of socialism. Basically, it would maintain the same principles and strategies it always held, in the hope that the revolutionary Left would attain power in some prominent country (in the former Soviet Union for example) or that the forces of the Left from different countries could form a common front. It continues to take it for granted that the revolutionary party must lead the grassroots organizations. This vanguard is made up of people who are aware that revolution is inevitable because of some kind of dialectical logic inherent in the dynamics of history.

Its main strengths are the excluded masses themselves, its readiness to mobilize people and its unequivocal opposition to the established system. Its main weakness is its "protests without proposals", without any real short- or medium-term alternatives, as well as the survival of too many dogmas, too much metaphysics, which inhibits serious debate, profound analysis and the testing of categories and concepts in use.

The civil and popular tendency

This tendency manifests itself in feminist movements, the Zapatista movement, large sectors of the traditional parties of the Left, Christian base communities, grassroots organizations, NGOs critical of the system, etc. It starts from the observation that, today, we already form a single world community, beyond national boundaries and cultural differences. Within this social system, the wealth and economic wellbeing of a minority involves the marginalization of the majority of human beings. For one part of the world to be able to have a car, refrigerator, vacations and a decent salary, it is essential for the other part to be barely able to survive. If exploitation was formerly a fundamental element of the system, today, when it is a privilege to be exploited, marginalization is a much more essential element.

From this viewpoint, a revolution, to be real, has to affect the structure of the world system itself and change what is most essential to the system. If it leaves intact the marginalization of the vast majority of people in the world, it will still be simple reformism. This means that a simple, peaceful reform of a powerful world institution (World Bank, International Monetary Fund ...) may have "revolutionary" consequences, while even the best possible revolution in a single country may hardly affect the world system.

This tendency takes very seriously the limits of growth and the threat to the ecology of the planet, as well as the decisive importance of our daily actions. The only solution to the "paradox of the Chinese" (if each of the 1.3 billion Chinese had a car, we could not breathe) is to change our lifestyle.

It recognizes the fragility of economic proposals in world terms. It denounces the fundamentalism of the market as the most dangerous, terrorist fundamentalism of our time. And it maintains that a democratic (social democratic or even liberal) orientation of the economy and the world market would have more of an impact on the roots of the system, and it would benefit the poor majority more, than a socialist revolution in one country. It encourages the struggle everywhere for democratization of existing structures and democratic participation of the people, from groups, NGOs, local and municipal entities to big networks and world-wide institutions. It demands recognition of world citizenship and legal entitlement to what we usually leave to solidarity and charity.

The great strength of this tendency is that it presents a feasible revolutionary strategy. Its great weakness is its rudimentary state, the mere beginnings of articulation of groups, the ideological difficulty of getting rid of an enormous number of ideas that obscure the real possibilities and permit the system to go on being what it is. The challenge is to create a world-wide social force able to fight and press for these changes.

Conclusion

A policy of continuity may lead to abdication, while working for change may ensure continuity. Revolution today lies in making a serious attempt at realism, combined with an effort to build up and to unite all social forces prepared to struggle in all fields (including the State) and to embody in their daily actions, not some dream of reason, but something perfectly possible today: a world where every woman and every man can, at the very least, satisfy their simple basic needs. A clear theoretical and analytical framework may shed some light on the sombre future hanging over the vast majority of Latin Americans as well as over the entire planet.


Index. Tlahui-Politic No. 2