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NEWS & LETTERS, February - March 2009
Philosophic Dialogue: Marxism and Freedom Today
From Latin America
Dunayevskaya’s 1957 letter to Herbert Marcuse on the crucial themes of Marxism and Freedom as it was going to press, began with "the philosophic foundation of Marxism." Not all philosophic thought transcends its own time. But radical Marxist thought, at least Marx’s own writings, rooted in and at the same time re-founding Hegel’s dialectic in the era of proletarian revolt, speaks in important ways to the present moment.
Marxism and Freedom was structured around historical movements from practice toward theory from the French Revolution to the European revolutions of Marx’s day, to the Russian Revolution, and the mid-20th century revolts, revolutions and movements from below. Dunayevskaya demonstrated in the book, and emphasized in her letter, that such movements from below challenge the philosopher, the revolutionary theoretician, the radical intellectual, to reorganize his/her thought. Thus, she contrasted Hegel, Marx, and Lenin to Proudhon, Lassalle and other radical intellectuals who responded to their historic moments, and yet did not meet the challenge of fully reorganizing their thought to meet the emerging workers’ praxis.
In Latin America today there are powerful emancipatory social movements. Whether one takes as the point of departure the Zapatista Indigenous rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico, 1994; or the piqueteros and then mass uprising in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as the 21st century opened--what is clear is that there is a dialectic of revolt from below that not only has confronted neo-liberal imperialism from abroad and its home-grown personifications within each country, but also has challenged radical activist-thinkers in Latin America to meet this movement from below with the construction of a liberatory project.
How is this challenge being met? As opposed to the elitism of vanguard parties and of narrow guerilla focoism that dominated much of the action and discourse in Latin America from the 1960s through the 1980s, the 1990s to today witnessed a new appreciation of the movement from below in diverse social subjects, and the need for open, non-hierarchical organization. At the same time, there has not always been an effort to create theory that meets the masses’ praxis. Often there has been an attitude that everything must come out of the movement from below, with theory being primarily a recording of the masses' self-activity.
This is not wholly the case. The Zapatistas for one, certainly in their Sixth Declaration from the Lacondon jungle, issued a theoretical document that was in their own words, anti-capitalist and from the Left. They have sought to develop their theory in response to the practices of Indigenous communities in the autonomous zones in Chiapas. Also, their document was not just a photocopy of the movement.
Another expression of theory has come from an active thinking about utopia in Latin America. The Latin American concept differs from the abstract utopian socialism of the mid-19th century that Marx critiqued. It was born in resistance to the imposition of European "utopias" upon Latin America, which were in fact living nightmares of exploitation and domination. Neo-liberalism led by U.S. capitalism has been the latest manifestation of this.
In contrast, in Latin America the concept of utopia, based on local experiences and Indigenous ways of doing and thinking, opened a space of social resistance in the present. An illuminating articulation of this comes from the liberation theology thinker Gustavo Gutierrez:
"Utopia, contrary to what current usage suggests, is characterized by its relation to present historical reality . . . Utopia necessarily means a denunciation of the existing order . . . But utopia is also an annunciation, an annunciation of what is not yet, but will be; it is the forecast of a different order of things, a new society. . . . [Utopia is] subversive of the existing order. If utopia does not lead to action in the present, it is an evasion of reality" (Theology of Liberation, p. 233).
Can such an expression of utopia, as well as the Zapatistas' theoretical expressions, find a resonance in Marx’s dialectic of a "thoroughgoing Naturalism or Humanism" that Dunayevskaya argues is "the philosophic foundation of Marxism"? I don't mean resonance only as an historic echo, but rather as a re-creation of Marx’s Marxism in the present moment, which can fuse with the Latin American theory and praxis toward a new society.
At the November Social Forum of the Americas in Guatemala many participants, particularly Guatemalan Indigenous activists, were attracted by the title Marxismo y Libertad (Marxism and Freedom). Here in Mexico Marxismo y Libertad study groups have formed with activists in the Zapatista support movement.
Clearly, many Latin American activists are searching for emancipatory ideas, including Marxist-Humanism, in movements and organizations of resistance against conditions of exploitation and restriction.
--Eugene Walker
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