Assessing the Russian Revolutionary Project in the Twentieth Century

 Harry Targ

Taken from a paper printed in Duncan McFarland ed. The Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union: Seeds of 21^st Century Socialism, Changemaker Publications. http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/chsngemaker

                                            Jacobin

Social scientists have contributed to the discussion of revolutionary processes by studying political organizations, leadership, ideology, mass-based support, regime types, and external interventions. Left critics of the Russian Revolution and the former Soviet Union, provide useful analyses of weaknesses in efforts to build socialism in the former Soviet Union. At the same time there is a danger in these intellectual traditions in that they underestimate the extraordinary contributions the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union made to the advance of socialism as a world historic project. And by marginalizing this history, millennial activists lack the tools to learn from the twentieth century about theory and practice, finding themselves groping for an understanding of where modern exploitation and oppression have come from and thinking about ways to challenge them.

First, the Russian Revolution was the singular event in modern history where a radical overthrow of a reactionary regime occurred, in which the new leadership represented the interests and perspectives of the working class. Its leaders embraced an anti-capitalist agenda and articulated a vision of building socialism, in both Russia and the entire international system.

Second, for oppressed people around the world (Lenin estimated that 1/7 of the world’s population lived under colonialism) the Russian Revolution stood for the overthrow of rule by the small number of capitalist powers. Within a decade of the solidification of the Revolution, anti-colonial activists from every continent began to dialogue about developing a common struggle against the great colonial empires of the first half of the twentieth century. And Third World revolutionary and anti-colonial activists, such as Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, looked to the Russian experience as a guide and source of support for their struggles.

Third, the experience of the Russian workers, paralleled by workers movements in the United States and other countries, gave impetus and inspiration to class struggles. Leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for example and many Debsian Socialists saw the Russian Revolution as a stepping-stone for the overthrow of capitalist exploitation of the working class in the United States.

Fourth, the Bolshevik Revolution stimulated new currents in struggles of people of color, particularly in the United States.  Black Nationalist leaders of the African Blood Brotherhood and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance began to see a connection between racism and capitalist exploitation. Cyril Briggs, Harry Haywood, and others of the ABB were early founders of the Communist Party USA. Many saw in the evolving Soviet experience a commitment to oppose all forms of national oppression, including anti-Semitism, and over the decades prominent artists, intellectuals, and activists such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. DuBois spoke to the connections between capitalist exploitation, national oppression and colonialism, racism, and war. In each of these cases the image of the Russian Revolution, if not the reality, contributed mightily to global struggles against capitalism, imperialism, and racism.

Fifth, International Women’s Day was first celebrated by the newly created Russian government on March 8, 1917, and it became a national holiday in the Soviet Union after the Bolsheviks seized power in November, 1917. As in reference to marginalized people, workers, people of color, ethnic minorities, the Russian Revolution sent a message that human liberation for all was possible. In the case of women, the new regime declared its commitment to women at a time when struggles for women’s suffrage were occurring in Great Britain  and the United States.

Sixth,  the first decade of the Russian Revolution was a time of experimentation in the arts and culture. Poster art, literature, music, alternative theories of pedagogy were stimulated by the revolutionary atmosphere. The support for cultural experimentation was stifled in the 1930s with the rise of the fascist threat and Stalinism at home but the linking of political revolution and cultural liberation became etched in the consciousness of revolutionaries everywhere. The literacy campaigns in Cuba and Nicaragua many years later may have been inspired by cultural dimensions of revolution inspired by the Russian Revolution.

Seventh, the rise of fascism in Europe and Asia created the necessity of anti-fascist states mobilizing for war. The Soviet Union assumed a major burden and thus became a leader in the anti-fascist struggles that engulfed the world by the late 1930s. Sensing impending German aggression, the creativity of the revolution was transformed into a mass mobilization of workers to rapid industrialization in preparation for German aggression. Germany invaded Poland in 1938 and the former Soviet Union in 1941. From the onset of World War II until its end, vast stretches of the Soviet homeland were laid waste and over 27 million Russians died in war. Without the Soviet sacrifice, fascism would have engulfed Europe.

Eighth, in the Cold War period, the Soviet Union and its allies were confronted with an anti-Soviet, anti-communist coalition of nations committed to the “rollback” of International Communism. What began as the first step down the path to socialism became a great power battle between the east and the west. And despite the enormity of resources the Soviets committed to their side of the arms race, they still supported virtually every anti-colonial, anti-imperial campaign around the world; from Asia, to Africa, to the Middle East, and Latin America. They gave Vietnam and Cuba as lifeline; they supported the African National Congress and South African Communist Party; the MPLA in Angola; and they supported nationalists leaders such as Gamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt.

Ninth, until the Sino/Soviet split rent asunder the socialist camp, the Soviet Union provided a check on the unbridled advances of western capitalism. After the split in international communism in the 1960s, Soviet influence in the world began to decline. This split had much to do with the dramatic weakening of socialism as a world force in the 1990s.  One can only speculate what the twenty-first century would have looked like if the Soviet Union had survived? Would the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq have occurred? Would the Libyan regime have been overthrown? Would the countries of the Global South have had larger political space in world politics inside and outside the United Nations?

Lessons Learned: Assessing the Revolutionary Project

It is important, one hundred years after the Russian Revolution, to think about its contribution to human history, (and for many of us to twenty-first century socialism). First, it is important to conceptualize revolution as a multi-dimensional historical process, a process which sets off numerous collateral responses, positive and negative. This means that all the variables articulated by social scientists are part of an explanation of what revolution means. Also the history of shortcomings and the historical contexts are part of this process.

Second, when we revisit the Russian Revolution (and the Soviet Union which has to be seen as an extension of the revolutionary project) several features, often ignored, need to be stressed. The Russian Revolution planted the seeds for workers struggles everywhere. The Russian Revolution inspired anti-racist campaigns, particularly developing the links between class and race. The Russian Revolution provided a modest dimension to the historic process of women’s liberation. And putting all this together the Russian Revolution, and the material support of the former Soviet Union, gave impetus to the anti-colonial movements of the last half of the twentieth century. And we must remember that virtually all these dimensions were actively opposed by western imperialism, particularly the United States.

Having recognized all this, and other contributions as well, twenty-first century advocates of socialism need to revisit the history of socialism, of revolution, to find the roots of today’s struggles. The intellectual formulations of today, as well as debates about them, go back at least one hundred years. The intellectual connections revolutionaries today make with their past can be liberating in that they suggest continuity with common historic struggles. And they provide an opportunity to relive, study, critique, embrace or reject, ideas, strategies, tactics, and organizational forms of the past.

As a former leader of the Chinese Communist movement, Zhou Enlai is alleged to have said in response to a journalist’s request for an evaluation of the French Revolution, Zhou said, “it’s too early to say.”

SONGS CAN INSPIRE US AND SMALL VICTORIES ALSO

Posted by Harry Targ

 “I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim. Too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood…..” Woody Guthrie

“Continued study and research into the origins of the folk music of various peoples in many parts of the world revealed that there is a world body-a universal body- of folk music based upon a universal pentatonic (five tone) scale. Interested as I am in the universality of (hu)mankind- in the fundamental relationship of all peoples to one another-this idea of a universal body of music intrigued me, and I pursued it along many fascinating paths.”   Paul Robeson

Let's Move Ahead: We Have a Long Way to Go

Harry Targ (a repost)

https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2025/10/reaffirming-progressive-project-in-2025.html

https://youtu.be/sq2IgTmQfAk?si=HC01aaD560BVCbUG

WHAT DO VICE-PRESIDENTS DO?

 Harry Targ

                                    The Real News Network

I was reflecting on the wisdom I acquired in one of my early college classes, “Introduction to American Government” and subsequent historical readings. First, the conventional wisdom of American political life was that Vice-Presidents are rarely of any administrative or political consequence. Generally, sitting Vice-Presidents represent the United States at funerals of foreign dignitaries. They throw out the first pitch at baseball games at season openers. They may be selected to provide “balance” on a presidential ticket. If the Presidential candidate is from the North, the vice-presidential candidate is from the South, or one of the team is from the East and the other from the Midwest or West Coast.

In office, the traditional wisdom suggests, sitting Vice-Presidents have little influence or even knowledge of current policies, programs, and pending crises. The classic example of this is signified by Vice President Harry Truman’s ascendency to the Presidency upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt in April, 1945. The new President was informed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson, in April, 1945, that the military was about to test a new weapon, the atomic bomb, which could bring an end to the war in Asia. This was news to the sitting Vice-President! And Stimson proposed a strategy for using the bomb, if the test was successful, to threaten the Soviet Union to bow to U.S. post-war demands.

Truman, like most twentieth century Vice-Presidents was not part of the public policy inner-circle before or after presidential elections. He was only on the ticket in 1944 to assuage Southern Democrats because the incumbent Vice-President, Henry Wallace, was seen as a dangerous radical who had publicly opposed racial segregation.

Southern Democrats and other racists and conservatives in the Democratic Party organized to oust Vice-President Wallace to make sure that no dangerous radical could be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. They mobilized around a traditional machine politician from a border state with no record of opposing racism, Harry Truman. And, as suggested above, while FDR caved to rightwing pressures in the party, the new Vice-President was not made part of the policy team.

Subsequent to the Truman nomination, Vice Presidents included Alben Barkley, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, George H. W. Bush, Dan Quayle, and Al Gore. For the most part they were of little political influence at best or embarrassments at worst.

The role of Vice-President changed markedly with the election of the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney ticket. Bush came from a wealthy political family and had served with less than distinction as governor of Texas. The election was close and the outcome in November, 2000 was largely determined by a Republican-led Supreme Court.

The real influence over the next eight years was the Vice President, Dick Cheney. Former Congressman from Wyoming, Cheney had served every administration since Richard Nixon. He was the Secretary of Defense when George Herbert Walker Bush launched Gulf War One. General Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of forces during that war and his superior General Colin Powell, Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, originally opposed military action in the Gulf. But Secretary of Defense Cheney made it clear that if these military men continued their resistance to war on Iraq he, Cheney, would find a way to get the job done.

Later in the decade, Cheney would participate in the formation of PNAC, Project for the New American Century. This organization of inside the beltway hawks, descendants of the anti-Communist Committee on the Present Danger, and other advocates for high military spending and war rather than diplomacy as the primary tool of empire, used every opportunity during the decade to pressure President Clinton and Congress in the new post-Cold War era to remake the world, including attacking Iraq.

In the 2000 election the PNAC point man, who also served time as CEO of a major defense contractor, Haliburton, became the number two man in the White House.

Serving a new president who during a foreign policy debate with candidate Gore suggested that the United States should not engage in overseas adventures, Cheney went to work to transform United States foreign policy. The so-called “neo-conservative” agenda promoted war over diplomacy, lied about threats to U.S. security, used the 9/11 tragedy to launch two wars that lasted a decade, and created fear about a global terrorist threat. In short, the new Vice-Presidential role was one of power, influence, and control over the presidency not seen since Theodore Roosevelt served as William McKinley’s second in command.

Cheney was the idea man with enormous clout derived from his associations with the military/industrial complex. As a smart, manipulative politician he transformed the role and influence of the vice president, particularly on foreign policy.

TRUMP CALLS FOR RESUMPTION OF NUCLEAR TESTING: NUCLEAR WEAPONS PRODUCTION STILL PROFITABLE

Harry Targ 

(Check out this update first)

https://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/at-great-cost/

An Old analysis that still holds:

Reconstituting the Military/Industrial/Academic Complex: An Update

The essay below was originally posted at / The Rag Blog / March 18, 2012 (military spending was updated to fiscal year 2026). Military policies have not much changed since the onset of the Cold War).

The James Forrestal Industry Leadership Award is named in honor of James Forrestal, who has served as secretary of the Navy and of Defense. The Forrestal Award honors his leadership and outspoken advocacy for a robust and responsive defense industrial base during the painful early years of post-World War II demobilization. The Forrestal Award is bestowed annually on a person who best reflects Forrestal's vision, leadership, and staunch support of a strong industrial base (NDIA100, ndia.org).

https://www.warresisters.org/resources/pie-chart-flyers-where-your-income-tax-money-really-goes/

Poor are paying the price: Military spending and our national priorities

"From Forrestal’s day to the present, semi-warriors have viewed democratic politics as problematic. Debate means delay. To engage in give-and-take or compromise is to forfeit clarity and suggests a lack of conviction. The effective management of national security requires specialized knowledge, a capacity for clear-eyed analysis and above all an unflinching willingness to make decisions, whatever the cost. With the advent of the semi-war, therefore, national security policy became the preserve of experts, few in number, almost always unelected, habitually operating in secret, persuading themselves that to exclude the public from such matters was to serve the public interest. After all, the people had no demonstrable 'need to know.' In a time of perpetual crisis, the anointed role of the citizen was to be pliant, deferential and afraid.” -- Andrew Bacevich, reviewing a biography of James Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense, in The Nation.

Andrew Bacevich reminds us that a permanent war economy has been part of the political and economic landscape of the United States at least since the end of World War II. The War Resisters League pie chart of total government spending for fiscal year 2026 (see the link above) indicates that the projected Trump budget projects  that 50 percent of all government spending will deal with current and past military costs. Despite lower government estimates that mask true military spending, by adding the Social Security Trust Fund to total spending and regarding past military spending -- particularly veteran’s benefits -- as non-military, it is clear that roughly 50 cents of every dollar goes to war, war preparation, covert operations, and military contractors. In addition, “war support” contractors such as KBR have made billions of dollars in the twenty-first century from military spending.

Top producers of military hardware Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing earned 11, 8, and 5 billion dollars in contracts in 2010 alone. Ostensibly non-military corporations such as BP, FedEx, Dell, Kraft, and Pepsi received hundreds of millions of dollars in defense contracts in 2010. Virtually every big corporation is to some degree on the Department of Defense payroll. A recent data-based report, “Don’t Bank on the Bomb,” prepared by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), identified “more than 300 banks, insurance companies, pension funds and asset managers from 30 countries that invest significantly in 20 major nuclear weapons producers.”

The report examined in detail financial connections to 20 major nuclear weapons companies. (and see the link above to the updated don't bank on the bomb report). These 20 included U.S. producers of nuclear weapons components such as Bechtel, Boeing, GenCorp, General Dynamics, Honeywell, and Northrop Grumman. U.S. financial institutions investing in the nuclear weapons producers included Abrams Bison Investments, AIG, American National Insurance Company, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, JP Morgan Chase, New York Life, and Prudential Financial. Because of the economic crisis which began in 2007, debate about military spending has increased.

IF INDIANA IS GERRYMANDERED THE PEOPLE WILL SPEAK AND BE HEARD

Harry Targ

 

Governor Braun and sectors of the Republican majorities in the Indiana legislature are advocating mid-decade gerrymandering. While we may correctly regard such advocacy as profoundly anti-democratic, that is to take away the Democratic seats in Congress, we might use such a gerrymandered strategy to our advantage.

How is that possible? First, a gerrymandered election, of course, would require that all of our Indiana Congress people face electoral challenges. Second,  incumbents in all nine districts would have to answer for Indiana's declining real wages, access to health care, and educational resources and the fact, as the United Way ALICE study has shown, that 38 percent of Hoosier households earn below a livable wage (see below). Third, contested elections in all nine districts would offer the opportunity for candidates, and their supporters, to show how most of the incumbents voted in ways to reinforce these deplorable conditions as a result of federal legislation.

And finally, candidates in all nine districts could articulate a vision of national policy, and state policies, that would help Hoosier citizens improve their lives. For example, proposals being introduced in the California legislature, which could also be introduced at the federal level, would require  that those who make the highest income and wealth in the country, particularly billionaires, pay a wealth tax to help support healthcare, education, housing for the masses of people in the United States (and states like Indiana) who are suffering. And one thing would be made crystal clear: the health and wellbeing of the American people is not a partisan issue. Voters of both parties can understand that.

The Indiana Economy Hurts Working People of Both Parties: A Little History

The material below indicates that under Republican rule in Indiana for over a decade the economic circumstances (and education, good paying jobs etc.) have worsened for Hoosier workers and their families. The Republican "business model" is a disaster for workers. From 2017 through 2022, the Indiana economy grew more slowly than the nation as a whole. In inflation-adjusted terms, the Hoosier economy expanded by 10.8%, while the nation economy as a whole grew by 11.3%.

“...the dismal growth of 2017 through 2020 accounts for all the lagging performance of the Hoosier economy. The expansion from 2009 to 2019 was the worst relative performance of our economy in state history. By 2019, the Indiana economy was slipping into recession due primarily to the tariffs put in place by the Trump administration. "What the new GDP data tells us about the Hoosier economy". Michael Hicks Muncie Star Press, reprinted in the Journal and Courier, January 8, 2024)

Tax abatements, huge job promising government funded projects, military contracts, the privatization of education from K through college, real estate speculation, and more are a substantial cause of the movement of wealth from the 99 percent to the top one percent. And we see in Indiana that 38 percent of households exist below a liveable wage, healthcare is scarcer and more expensive, there are pockets of food deserts, and across the state growing environmental degradation. It is time to say enough is enough.

However, Hoosier politicians and corporate/university elites suggest that the Indiana economy is booming and will only improve with lower taxes, more support for industrial projects like LEAP, and a general reliance on the "free market." The United Way ALICE reports suggest that economic circumstances of large percentages of Hoosiers have worsened over the last decade.  The number of households in Indiana living below a livable income have increased since the last decade.

https://iuw.org/alice-2025/

Let us be clear, the interference of President Trump and recent visits of Vice-President Vance to Indiana suggest that the new MAGA agenda is designed to radically transform both federal and state policies back to the era of the Gilded Age, when wealth was accumulated at the top and the vast majorities of the population, White and Black, men and women, most workers, Democrats and Republicans suffered enormously.

 

US IMPERIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA CONTINUES: IT IS TIME FOR THE PEACE MOVEMENT TO SAY “NO”

Harry Targ

(a repost)

“It’s past time for Maduro to go. Keep it up, President Trump,” said Senator Lindsay Graham in an X post on Friday, October 24.

Venezuela is “a candidate for decisive military action on land, sea, or air” because it has for years been “a safe haven for drug cartels poisoning America,” Graham added.

During a White House address on October 23, US President Donald Trump said, “Now they’re coming in by land … I told them the land is gonna be next.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/10/24/us-deploys-aircraft-carrier-and-threatens-invasion-of-venezuela-while-expanding-drug-war-to-colombia/

Progressives Need to Address US Imperialism Now!

The world again enters an economic, political, and military crisis in the Western Hemisphere. It remains important to historicize and contextualize current threats and murders in the Caribbean by the United States. The sub-text of statements from the Trump Administration “all options are on the table;” meaning that there might be a military intervention to overthrow the government of Venezuela. For many who are learning about US imperialism for the first time, it is important to revisit the history of the Western Hemisphere and to contextualize a regional crisis which is misrepresented throughout the mainstream media. And after revisiting this history it becomes clear that the Peace movement needs to take a clear anti-imperialist position.

As Greg Grandin argues in “Empire’s Workshop,” the rise of the United States as a global empire begins in the Western Hemisphere. For example, the Spanish/Cuban/American war provided the occasion for the United States to develop a two-ocean navy, fulfilling Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt’s dreams. After interfering in the Cuban Revolution in 1898 defeating Spain, the United States attacked the Spanish outpost in the Philippines, thus becoming a global power. Latin American interventionism throughout the Western Hemisphere, sending troops into Central American and Caribbean countries thirty times between the 1890s and 1933, (including a Marine occupation of Haiti from 1915 until 1934), “tested” what would become after World War II a pattern of covert interventions and wars in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

The Western Hemisphere was colonized by Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, and France from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. The main source of accumulated wealth that funded the rise of capitalism as a world system came from raw material and slave labor in the Western Hemisphere: gold, silver, sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa, and later oil. What Marx called the stage of “primitive accumulation,” was a period in world history governed by land grabs, mass slaughter of indigenous peoples, expropriation of natural resources, and the capture, transport, and enslavement of millions of African people. Conquest, land occupation, and dispossession was coupled with the institutionalization of a Church that would convince the survivors of this stage of capitalism’s development that all was “God’s plan.”

Imperial expansion generated resistance throughout this history.  In the nineteenth century countries and peoples achieved their formal independence from colonial rule. Simon Bolivar, the nineteenth century leader of resistance, spoke for national sovereignty in Latin America.

But from 1898 until the present, the Western Hemisphere has been shaped by US efforts to replace the traditional colonial powers with neo-colonial regimes. Economic institutions, class systems, militaries, and religious institutions were influenced by United States domination of the region.

In the period of the Cold War, 1945-1991, the United States played the leading role in overthrowing the reformist government of Jacob Arbenz in Guatemala (1954), Salvador Allende in Chile (1973), and gave support to brutal military dictatorships in the 1970s in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Also, the United States supported dictatorship in Haiti from 1957 until 1986. The Reagan administration engaged in a decade-long war on Central America in the 1980s.  In 1965 the United States sent thousands of marines to the Dominican Republic to forestall nationalist Juan Bosch from returning to power and in 1989 to overthrow the government of Manuel Noriega in Panama. (This was a prelude to Gulf War I against Iraq).

From 1959 until today the United States has sought through attempted military intervention, economic blockade, cultural intrusion, and international pressures to undermine, weaken, and destroy the Cuban Revolution.

Often during this dark history US policymakers have sought to mask interventionism in the warm glow of economic development. President Kennedy called for an economic development program in Latin America, called the Alliance for Progress and Operation Bootstrap for Puerto Rico. Even the harsh “shock therapy” of neoliberalism imposed on Bolivia in the 1980s was based upon the promise of rapid economic development in that country.

The Bolivarian Revolution

The 21st century has witnessed a variety of forms of resistance to the drive for global hegemony and the perpetuation of neoliberal globalization. First, the two largest economies in the world, China and India, have experienced economic growth rates well in excess of the industrial capitalist countries. China has developed a global export and investment program in Latin America and Africa that exceeds that of the United States and Europe.

On the Latin American continent, under the leadership and inspiration of former President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela launched the latest round of state resistance to the colossus of the north, with his Bolivarian Revolution. He planted the seeds of socialism at home and encouraged Latin Americans to participate in the construction of financial institutions and economic assistance programs to challenge the traditional hegemony of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.

The Bolivarian Revolution stimulated political change based on varying degrees of grassroots democratization, the construction of workers’ cooperatives, and a shift from neoliberal economic policies to economic populism. A Bolivarian Revolution was being constructed with a growing web of participants: Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and, of course, Cuba.

It was hoped that after the premature death of Chavez in 2013, the Bolivarian Revolution would continue in Venezuela and throughout the region. But the economic ties and political solidarity of progressive regimes, hemisphere regional institutions, and grassroots movements have been challenged by declining oil prices and economic errors by Maduro; increasing covert intervention in Venezuelan affairs by the United States; a US-encouraged shift to the right by “soft coups” in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador; and a more aggressive United States foreign policy toward Latin America. Governments supportive of Latin American solidarity with Venezuela have been undermined and/or defeated in elections in Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, and now attacks have escalated against what National Security Advisor John Bolton calls “the troika of tyranny;” Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.  As Vijay Prashad puts it: “Far right leaders in the hemisphere (Bolsonaro, Márquez, and Trump) salivate at the prospect of regime change in each of these countries. They want to eviscerate the “pink tide” from the region” (Vijay Prashad, thetricontinental.org, January 20, 2019).

Special Dilemmas Latin Americans Face

Historically all Western Hemisphere countries have been shaped and distorted in their economies, polities, and cultures by colonialism and neo-colonialism. They have also been shaped by their long histories of resistance to outside forces seeking to develop imperial hegemony. Latin American history is both a history of oppression, exploitation, and violence, and confrontation with mass movements of various kinds. The Bolivarian Revolution of the twenty-first century is the most recent exemplar of grassroots resistance against neo-colonial domination. Armed with this historical understanding several historical realities bear on the current threats to the Venezuelan government.

First, every country, with the exception of Cuba, experiences deep class divisions. Workers, peasants, the new precariat, people of color, youth, and women face off against very wealthy financiers, entrepreneurs, and industrialists, often with family ties, as well as corporate ties, with the United States. Whether one is trying to understand the soft coup in Brazil, the instability in Nicaragua, or the deep divisions in Venezuela, class struggle is a central feature of whatever conflicts are occurring.

Second, United States policy in the administrations of both political parties is fundamentally driven by opposition to the full independence of Latin America. US policy throughout the new century has been inalterably opposed to the Bolivarian Revolution. Consequently, a centerpiece of United States policy is to support by whatever means the wealthy classes in each country.

Third, as a byproduct of the colonial and neo-colonial stages in the region, local ruling classes and their North American allies have supported the creation of sizable militaries. Consequently, in political and economic life, the military remains a key actor in each country in the region. Most often, the military serves the interests of the wealthy class (or is part of it), and works overtly or covertly to resist democracy, majority rule, and the grassroots. Consequently, each progressive government in the region has had to figure out how to relate to the military. In the case of Chile, President Allende assumed the military would stay neutral in growing political disputes among competing class forces. But the Nixon Administration was able to identify and work with generals who ultimately carried out a military coup against the popular elected socialist government of Chile. So far in the Venezuelan case, the military seems to be siding with the government. Chavez himself was a military officer.

Fourth, given the rise of grassroots movements, the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela began to support “dual power,” particularly at the local level. Along with political institutions that traditionally were controlled by the rich and powerful, new local institutions of popular power were created. The establishment of popular power has been a key feature of many governments ever since the Cuban Revolution. Popular power, to varying degrees, is replicated in economic institutions, in culture, and in community life such that in Venezuela and elsewhere workers and peasants see their own empowerment as tied to the survival of revolutionary governments. In short, defense of the Maduro government, depends on the continuing support of the grassroots and the military.

Fifth, the governments of the Bolivarian Revolution face many obstacles. Small but powerful capitalist classes is one. Persistent United States covert operations and military bases throughout the region is another. And, perhaps most importantly, given the hundreds of years of colonial and neo-colonial rule, Latin American economies remain distorted by over-reliance on small numbers of raw materials and, as a result of pressure from international financial institutions, on export of selected products such as agricultural crops. In other words, historically Latin American economies have been distorted by the pressure on them to create one-crop economies to serve the interests of powerful capitalist countries, not diversified economies to serve the people.

Finally, and more speculatively, United States policy toward the region from time to time is affected by the exigencies of domestic politics. For example, the Trump Administration verbal threats against Venezuela are being articulated as the president’s domestic fortunes are being challenged by the threat of impeachment and confrontations with the new Congressional leadership. War often masks domestic troubles.

Where do Progressives Stand

First, and foremost, progressives should prioritize an understanding of imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, and the role of Latin American as the “laboratory” for testing United States interventionist foreign policies. This means that critics of US imperialism can be most effective by avoiding “purity tests” when contemplating political activism around US foreign policy. One cannot forget the connections between current patterns of policy toward Venezuela, with the rhetoric, the threats, the claims, and US policies toward Guatemala, Haiti, the Domincan Republic, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, and in the new century, Bolivia, Venezuela, Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina.

Second, progressives need to show solidarity with grassroots movements in the region, support human rights, oppose military interventions, and demand the closure of the myriad of United States military bases in the region and end training military personnel from the region. (When citizens raise concerns about other countries interfering in the US political system, it is hypocritical for the United States to interfere in the political and economic lives of other countries in Latin America.).

Finally, progressives must oppose all United States foreign policies that are designed to maintain twenty-first century forms of imperialism in the Western Hemisphere. Support for progressive candidates for public office should require that they oppose economic blockades, punishing austerity programs imposed by international financial institutions, the maintenance of US ties with ruling classes in the region; essentially all forms of interference in the economic and political life of the region. And, as progressives correctly proclaim about domestic life, their candidates should be in solidarity with the poor, oppressed, and marginalized people of the Western Hemisphere. Progressives cannot with integrity support the “99 percent” in the United States against the “1 percent” without giving similar support for the vast majority of workers, farmers, women, people of color, and indigenous people throughout the hemisphere.

And if it is true that US policy toward Latin America is a laboratory for its policy globally, the same standard should be applied to United States policy globally. 

The time has come for the articulation of a comprehensive stand against United States imperialism in the Western Hemisphere, and around the world.

(A useful history of United States interventionism can be found in Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq,

 

REMEMBERING CUBA: END THE BLOCKADE! REMOVE CUBA FROM THE LIST OF STATE SPONSORS OF TERRORISM

 Harry Targ

 

 

From Thursday, April 5, 2012

ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND CULTURE:THE CUBAN EXPERIENCE

Harry Targ

(These remarks were prepared for a presentation before a musical performance at Purdue University by Sierra Maestra, the stirring band formed at the University of Havana in 1976. The band was named after the mountain range in Eastern Cuba that was the site of the formation of the Cuban revolutionary force that overthrew the U.S. supported dictator in the 1950s. The nine-person band promotes and celebrates the classic Cuba Son music that has its roots in the diversity of class, race, ethnicity, and gender in Cuban history).

People’s lives begin with the struggle for existence and are supplemented by the pursuit of joy and liberation. Culture, often reflecting the pain of daily existence and the vision of a better life, is intimately embedded in history, economics, and politics.

Cuba’s revolutionary poet Jose Marti describes his place in history, economics, and politics.

“I am a truthful man,
From the land of the palm,
Before dying, I want to
Share these poems of my soul.

My poems are light green,
But they are also flaming red
My verses are like a wounded fawn.
Seeking refuge in the mountain.

(Pete Seeger reports learning these two additional Marti verses from a Cuban of African descent in 1983.)

Red, as in the desert,
Rose the sun on the horizon.
It shone on a dead slave
Hanging from a tree of the mountain.

A child saw it, trembled,
With passion for those that wept,
And swore that with his blood
He would wash away that crime.”

Latin American social theorists and activists of the era of the Cuban revolutionary process (since the 1950s) defined the economic and political context of countries like Cuba, less passionately but rigorously, as a result of dependency. For example, Brazilian social scientist, Theotonio Dos Santos wrote about what he called “the structure of dependence.”

“Dependence is a situation in which a certain group of countries have their economy conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy, to which the former is subject.”

Andre Gunter Frank, looking at the broad sweep of history beginning with the rise of capitalism out of feudalism referred to “the development of underdevelopment.” During the fifteenth century the sectors of the globe now referred to as the “Global North” and “Global South” were roughly equal in economic and military power. But as a result of the globalization of capitalism and militarism, some countries, primarily in Europe and North America, developed at the expense of most of the other countries of the world.

Dependency theorists began to include domestic class structures in their analysis of relations between dominant and dependent nations. In addition to dominant and weak countries bound by exploitation and violence, within both powerful and weak countries class structures existed. In fact, rulers in poor countries usually were tied by interests and ideology to the interests and ideology of the ruling classes in powerful countries. And, most importantly, the poor, the exploited, the repressed in both rich and poor countries shared common experiences, often a common outlook, and potentially a common culture.

I have written a book chapter about “Themes in Cuban History” from the point of view of dominance and dependence (from Harry R. Targ, Cuba and the USA: A New World Order? International Publishers, 1992). The chapter addresses:

-Spanish conquest between 1511 and 1515

-Cuba as sugar producer

-Cuba as slave society. By 1827 over 50 percent of Cuban residents were of African descent.

-Britain’s economic and military penetration of the island beginning in the 18th century

-Revolutionary ferment, particularly slave revolts, permeating 19th century Cuban society

-The visions of U.S. leaders, including Thomas Jefferson, that some day Cuba would join the new nation to the North.

-U.S. investor penetration of the island, challenging the Spanish and British. By the 1880s over 80 percent of sugar exports went to the United States and large plantations on the island were owned by Americans.

-The Spanish/Cuban/American war of 1898 which lead to a full transfer of colonial and neo-colonial hegemony from the Spanish and British to the United States

-The United States establishment of economic, political, and cultural domination of the island from 1898 to 1959. Subordinate wealthy and powerful Cubans controlled the political system, benefitting from U.S. hegemony, while “the poor people of this earth” on the island made up the vast majority.

-1953 to 1959 armed struggle which overthrew the Batista dictatorship and the elimination of U.S. interests on the island.

-1959 to the present Cuba haltingly, with international and domestic opposition, pursuing a new society to “wash away that crime” of long years of empire and dependency.

How is this history relevant to indigenous Cuban music and its connections with U.S. culture?

Culture, it seems to me, grows out of the experience of peoples. That experience is shaped by history, economics, and politics. Music is a common way of communicating and sharing experience, particularly of pain and joy.

The seeds of a common Cuban culture were planted in various fields--Africa, the sugar plantations of the island, and growing relations between Cubans and people of African descent in the region, including the United States.

Finally, culture can be revolutionary when it expresses pain, implies a better life, and extends the experiences of some to others--of similar class, racial, ethnic, and gender histories.

So as we listen to Sierra Maestra and reflect on the roots of its music, its contribution to jazz in the U.S., and the commonalities of Cuban Son and U.S jazz and blues, we might remember Marti’s expression from the poet’s point of view:

“With the poor people of this earth,
I want to share my lot.
The little streams of the mountains
Please me more than the sea.”

(All verses quoted here are from Pete Seeger, Where Have all the Flowers Gone; A Singer’s Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies, A Sing Out Publication,1993).