What is socialism?
By:
Armando Hart Dávalos
A CubaNews translation by Ana Portela. Edited by
Walter Lippmann. Original: Regarding the debate about the content of socialism in the 21st century, it is necessary, theoretically and practicality, to mention the Latin American and Caribbean tradition that ALBA represents as a symbol of the alliance between Martí and Bolívar, with socialist ideas as interpreted by Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro. The 20th century saw such a distortion of the thoughts of Marx, Engels and Lenin and their ideas of what socialism should be that it now it is necessary to go to the original texts. Let us see what Marx and Engels wrote as well as the ideas of Martí and Juárez on the subject. The work entitled Feuerbach. Opposition between concepts of materialism and idealism, Marx and Engels wrote: “For us communism is not a state that should be implanted, an idea that has to be tied to reality. We call communism the real movement that annuls and surpasses the current state of things (…)”. In a letter to Otto Von Boenigk dated August 21, 1890, Friedrich Engels states “The so-called ‘socialist society’ I believe, is not something done all at once and forever but must be considered, as all other historical systems, as a society of constant change and transformation. The critical difference from the current regime is, naturally, in the organization of production on the basis of common property”. In a letter Engels writes to Joseph Bloch on September of 1890, he states “…history is made in such a way that the final result always derives from the conflicts of many individual wills, each of which, at the same time, effects a multiplicity of special conditions of life. They are, thus, innumerable forces that crisscross, an infinite group of parallelograms of forces that gives rise to a resultant – the historical event – that, at the same time, can be considered the product of one only force that, as a whole, acts without conscience and without will. Therefore what one wants is resisted by another who opposes it and what results of all this is something that no one has wanted. In another letter to Karl Kautsky of September 1882, he explains: “Social and economic phases of these countries – referring to what we call today underdeveloped – will also have to go through before reaching socialist organization. They cannot, I believe, be a vacuous hypothesis. One thing is certain, the victorious proletariat cannot impose happiness on any foreign peoples without compromising their own victory”. In his letter to the Annals of the Homeland, Karl Marx states: “In general you want to change my historical summary on the origins of capitalism in western Europe into a philosophical and historical theory on the general situation fatally subjugating all the peoples, whatever the historical circumstances occurring there to give expression to that economic formation that, (…) assures development of man in each and every aspect. (This honors me too much and at the same time, is too ridiculous) […] “Studying each of these historical processes separately and later comparatively we easily discover the key to explain these phenomena, a result we would never achieve instead with the universal key of a general philosophical theory of history whose greatest advantage resided, precisely, in being a fact of supra-historical theory.” Friedrich Engels, for his part, writes to Joseph Bloch in September of 1890 the following: “According to the materialist concept of history, a factor that, in the end, determines history is production and reproduction of real life. Neither Marx nor I have ever affirmed this. If someone distorts this saying that the economic factor is the only determinant they would convert that thesis into a vacuous, abstract and absurd phrase”. In the first point of the Thesis on Feuerbach, Karl Marx states: “The fundamental defect of all prior materialism – including that of Feuerbach – is that it only conceives things, reality, sensorial, in the form of object or contemplation but not as a human sensorial activity, not as practice and in no way subjective. Thus the active part can develop from idealism as opposed to materialism but only in an abstract form since idealism as such, naturally, knows no real, sensorial activity. In a letter to Werner Sombart of March 11, 1895, Friedrich Engels writes: “But all of the concepts of Marx are not doctrines but methods. He offers no pat dogmas but points to begin with for a later investigation and method of this investigation”. In the same manner, I ask the reader to study this paragraph by José Martí: “I have one thing which satisfies me and that is the affection and respect as a man you have for Cubans who sincerely search, with whatever name ,for a more cordial order and necessary balance, in the administration of things of this world. Aspirations should be judged for their value and not for this or other blemish imposed by human passion. There are two dangers in the socialist idea, as in so many others – of foreign, confused and incomplete readings – and the hidden arrogance and hatred of the ambitious who, to rise up in the world, have shoulders on which to rise up, feign frenzied defense of the dispossessed.” Further on he adds: “But the risk isn’t so much in our people as in more irascible societies and one of lesser natural clarity: our job is to explain, simply and deeply, as you will know how to do: what is important is not compromise that great justice by mistaken or excessive means. And always with justice, you and I, because errors of form does not authorize souls of noble birth to desert its defense”. Also study the following paragraph by Karl Marx and compare it to one by Benito Juarez that I also quote. Marx says in his Critique of the Gotha Program written during the end of April and early May of 1875: “The higher phase of a communist society when slaving subordination has disappeared from individuals on the division of labor and, with it, the opposition between intellectual and manual work; when work is not merely a means of life but the first vital necessity; when individuals of all kinds develop in all their aspects; grow exorbitantly drinking from the fountain of collective wealth; only then can they totally overcome the narrow horizon of bourgeois law and society can then write on their flag “To each according to their capacity and to each according to their necessities! Fourteen years before, on January 11, 1861 Benito Juárez wrote a text recovered later by historians. He then pointed out: “To each according to their capacity and to each capacity according to their work and education. There will be no class privileges or unjust preferences (…) “Socialism is the natural tendency to improve conditions or the free development of physical and moral faculties.” Engels, as we mentioned above, expressed that Marxism is a method of investigation and study and Lenin, for his part, affirmed that it was a guide for action. With this method and this guide we can take on concrete problems of our times but as they pointed out, there is no formula for general application in all situations and countries. It depends on us to concretely develop our societies and our intellectual and political tradition in our region and find the most adequate creative and political means for the spring of true socialism of the 21st century desired by all our peoples. Any analysis we make must begin with our history and the bonds formed throughout the centuries among Latin American and Caribbean nations that make up the greater will of our region for integration; a region that has the spiritual heritage of an impressive wealth. In the 21st century we must take inspiration from the bright thoughts of Marx, Engels and Lenin expressed in their texts and relate them in their validity to Bolivar, Martí and the patriots and thinkers of our America.
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