Week Eight

I'm really tempted to comment on the discussion that has already started about Che, but I think I'll wait til after the class where we discuss the readings on Che to do so in detail--unless I am confused about what was discussed in the last class. I wasn't there, but according to the syllabus the discussion should have been on the conquest of Mexico, correct? And this week should be Che? Also, is it this week and next that are being switched on the syllabus (making this the week off and next week the Che discussion)?

Anyway, I do want to comment on the idea of not taking sides during the Cold War and the association of Che's beliefs with the Soviet side of that 'war.' I think it's very misleading to think of the Cold War as an ideological battle between capitalism or democracy (or "freedom" if you're nauseatingly idealistic enough to phrase it that way) and communism. It was a struggle for hegemony between two world powers, neither of which was truly guided by an ideology that it thought was best for the common folk. Both the US and the USSR were imperialist powers motivated by the desire for more power. Much of the rhetoric of the Cold War, from both sides, was just propaganda intended for domestic political benefit. The US is as terrible an example of democracy as the USSR is of communism. We should view both as historically situated powers with a political agenda, not as proxies for contrasting political projects.

The contradictions here are particularly striking when you realize that the supposed justification for "battling communism," namely to preserve freedom and democracy, was the same justification for the struggles of Che and other Latin American revolutionaries. Arguably, the Cuban Revolutionaries were genuine about this project and the US military was not. Che and co. were not waging a revolutionary war to support the Soviet side of an international struggle, they were waging a war against oppression and imperialism and fighting for freedom and equality. The record of post-revolutionary Cuba is of course mixed, as is the record of every nation in the history of the world, but overall the revolution brought a dramatic increase in the standard of living as well as the level of freedom, equality, and democracy for Cubans. This improvement is especially staggering when you consider the massive efforts by the West to prevent the project from succeeding. To suddenly have what used to be your most important trading partner, and all of that partner's allies, suddenly cut off all relations, and still to effect dramatic improvements, is downright remarkable. Props to Fidel.

When Marx was writing in the mid and late nineteenth century, he was doing so in opposition to cruelty and oppression and with the aim of creating a better society in which workers--meaning, ideally, all people--would not be ruled over by a tyrannical few but would share power and resources more or less equally. The phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" refers to the joint rule of the entire working class, not to a single dictator who is supposed to rule in lieu of said working class. Sad, then, that we now simply dismiss this alternative vision to capitalism by pointing to the Soviet Union--a political entity on the opposite end of the spectrum from most everything Marx stood for--and saying "look, that didn't work." Of course it didn't work, but it didn't work because the revolution was betrayed and turned into a corrupt authoritarian regime. That's a failure of tyranny, not of communism. The Cuban case is similar in that it resulted in the rule of a single leader, but unlike Stalin, Castro was repeatedly elected by overwhelming majorities and, also unlike Stalin, Castro's rule dramatically improved the conditions for the people of his country (excepting, of course, those people who had previously been the exploiters and who now live in luxury in the US and complain about the evils of the revolutionary regime in Cuba). We should be skeptical of all centralized power and not let revolutionaries off the hook for their fuck ups just because they wave the right flag, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to conflate any given revolutionary project with the Soviet Union just because the word "communism" has been applied to both. That's far from a fair treatment of independent historical subjects.