Marta Harnecker: Ideas for the struggle #1 -- Insurrections or revolutions? The role of the political instrument
[This is the first in a series of regular articles. Click HERE for other articles in the series. Please return to Links regularly read the next articles in the series.]
By Marta Harnecker, translated by Federico Fuentes for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
1. The recent popular uprisings at the turn of the 21st century that have rocked numerous countries such as Argentina and Bolivia -- and, more generally, the history of the multiple social explosions that have occurred in Latin America and the rest of the world -- have undoubtedly demonstrated that the initiative of the masses, in and of itself, is not enough to defeat ruling regimes.
2. Impoverished urban and country masses, lacking a
well-defined plan, have risen up, seized highways, towns and neighbourhoods,
ransacked stores and stormed parliaments, but despite achieving the mobilisation
of hundreds of thousands of people, neither the size nor their combativeness
have been enough to develop from popular insurrection into revolution. They
have overthrown presidents, but they haven’t been able to conquer power and
initiate a process of deep social transformations.
3. On the other hand, the history of triumphant
revolutions clearly demonstrates what can be achieved when there is a
political instrument capable of raising an alternative national program that
unifies the struggles of diverse social actors behind a common goal; that helps to cohere them and elaborate
a path forward for these actors based on an analysis of the existent balance of
forces. Only in this manner can actions be carried out at the right place and right
time, always seeking out the weakest link in the enemy’s chain.
4. This political instrument is like a piston that
compresses steam at the decisive moment and -‑ without wasting any energy -‑
converts it into a powerful force.
6. We are aware that there are a number of
apprehensions towards such ideas. There are many who are not even willing to
discuss them. Such positions are adopted because they associate this idea with
the anti-democratic, authoritarian, bureaucratic and manipulating political
practices that have characterised many left parties.
7. I believe it is fundamental that we overcome
this subjective barrier and understand that when we refer to a political
instrument, we are not thinking of just any political instrument, we are
dealing with political instrument adjusted to the new times, an instrument that
we must built together.
8. However, in order to create or remodel this new
political instrument, the left has to change its political culture
and its vision of politics. This cannot be reduced to institutional
political disputes for control over parliament or local governments; to approving
laws or winning elections. In this conception of politics, the popular sectors
and their struggles are completely ignored. Neither can politics be limited to
the art of what is possible.
9. For the left, politics must be the art of making
possible the impossible. And we are not talking about a voluntarist declaration.
We are talking about understanding politics as the art of constructing a
social and political force capable of changing the balance of force in favour
of the popular movement, so as to make possible in the future that which today
appears impossible.
10. We have to think of politics as the art of
constructing forces. We have to overcome the old and deeply-rooted mistake of
trying to build a political force without building a social force.
11. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of
revolutionary phase-mongering among our militants; too much radicalism in their
statements. I am convinced that the only way to radicalise a given situation
is through the construction of forces. Those whose words are filled with
demands for radicalisation must answer the following question: What are you
doing to construct the political and social force necessary to push the process
forward?
12. But this construction of forces cannot
occur spontaneously, only popular uprisings happen spontaneously. It needs a
protagonist.
13. And I envisage this political instrument as an organisation capable of raising a national project that can unify and act as a compass for all those sectors that oppose neoliberalism. As a space that directs itself towards the rest of society, that respects the autonomy of the social movements instead of manipulating them, and whose militants and leaders are true popular pedagogues, capable of stimulating the knowledge that exists within the people -- derived from their cultural traditions, as well as acquired in their daily struggles for survival -- through the fusion of this knowledge with the most all-encompassing knowledge that the political organisation can offer. An orientating and cohering instrument at the service of the social movements.
Posted May 21, 2009.
Marta
Harnecker’s bibliography
La izquierda después
de Seattle, Siglo XXI España, 2002.
La izquierda en el umbral
del Siglo XXI. Haciendo posible lo imposible, Publicado en: México, Siglo XXI
Editores, 1999; España, Siglo XXI Editores,
1ª ed., 1999, 2ª ed., 2000 y 3ª ed., 2000; Cuba, Editorial de Ciencias
Sociales, 2000; Portugal, Campo das Letras Editores, 2000; Brasil, Paz e Terra,
2000; Italia, Sperling and Küpfer Editori, 2001; Canadá (francés), Lantôt
Éditeur, 2001; El Salvador, Instituto de Ciencias Políticas y Administrativas
Farabundo Martí, 2001.
Hacia el Siglo XXI, La
izquierda se renueva,
Vanguardia y crisis
actual o
Izquierda y crisis actual, Siglo XXI España, 1990. Publicado en:
[Marta Harnecker is originally from Chile where she participated in the revolutionary process of 1970-1973. She has written extensively on the Cuba Revolution, and on the nature of socialist democracy. She now lives in Caracas and is a participant in the Venezuelan revolution.]