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Fidel at 80:A Revaluation
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Fidel Castro is listed in The Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth Century Political Thinkers, the editors of which define those included as 'important thinkers from the early years of the century to the contemporary period...[whose] ideas have influenced political thought and activity in the twentieth century'.
Castro Today
Fidel not only represents continuity with defining struggles and themes of the twentieth century - capitalism and socialism, imperialism and national liberation, reform and revolution - thereby illumining them in retrospect, he has also a shaped the landscape of the present. "Suddenly Latin America has grabbed the world's attention", opines The Economist (London), in its issue of May 20th, 2006, in a cover story entitled The Battle for Latin America's Soul. According to Newsweek the central symbol in the drama of a resurgent Latin America is Fidel Castro: "Fidel has more fans in the region than he's had in years...The symbol that has benefited most from the new perspective is ...the left's reigning lion in winter, Fidel Castro...Castro has experienced a remarkable resurgence."(Joseph Contreras, 'Latin America: Castro's Comeback', Newsweek, March 20, 2006, p.26). The Chicago Tribune confirms recently that "the guidance and support of Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez have helped the political left make a remarkable resurgence in Latin America." (Colin McMahon and Hugh Dellios, 'Region shifts to the left', Chicago Tribune, Aug 8, 2006).
The Cuban leader's 80th birthday today, his renewed significance in Latin America, and his current illness which may presage the passage of his era, render relevant a re-valuation of Fidelismo, which Prof Donald E Rice defines as "a global perspective...Fidel's particular construction of Marxism".
Fidel's Perspective
Commenting on the fall of the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro remarked that it was not a case of homicide, but of suicide. "Socialism did not die from natural causes: it was a suicide." (Interview by Tomas Borge for Managua's EL NUEVO DIARIO, 3 June 1992). "The truth is that they destroyed the socialist bloc with the cooperation of the socialist bloc and the USSR. It was a case of suicide and self-destruction" (speech at the concluding plenary session of the Sixth Congress of the Union of Young Communists, Havana 4th April 1992). The comment on the collapse of Soviet socialism was Fidel Castro's second characterisation of the unravelling of a revolutionary experiment as 'suicide', i.e. self-inflicted. The first was that of Grenada. The two uses of the term 'suicide' indicate clearly, the two types of behaviour that Fidel thought self-destructive of revolutions: on the one hand fratricidal strife, internal bloodletting fuelled by political and ideological fundamentalism- as in Grenada - and on the other, endless compromise and dilution; the lack of political will to fight for the survival of socialism and the continuation in power of the revolution - as in the USSR. Castro strove to avoid both extremes, or as the Marxist lexicon has it, 'deviations'.
Looking back at the Cold war in a CNN/BBC interview (March 19, 1998) years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Castro's main conclusions constitute a quite distinctive perspective and stance on contemporary history: though Marx, Engels and Lenin did not envisage 'socialism in one country' the Soviet leaders were not wrong in adopting it because they needed a mobilising slogan and task in an international situation that left them no choice; not only was there no Cuban-Soviet master plan, had one "actually existed, we would have won the Cold War"; the USSR was neither consulted nor informed of the Cuban internationalist mission in Angola; the only instance of coordinated Cuban-Soviet military action was in support of Ethiopia and repelling the Somali invasion; the USSR did not support Cuba's policy towards the revolution in Latin America; that revolution had better prospects than the ones initially faced by Fidel and the Cuban revolution; had the Latin American revolution won it would have changed the outcome of history not least because of its impact upon the United States which would have equalled that of the Vietnam war; the Latin American revolution did not succeed largely because of the Sino-Soviet struggle and the competing pulls it exercised on the Latin American left movement; the main factor in the defeat of socialism and the victory of capitalism led by the US in the Cold War was the split between the communist parties of the USSR and China. (Fidel Castro, Cold War: Warnings for a Unipolar World, Ocean Press, Melbourne, 2003, pp 20-75)
Fidel's Anti-Imperialism
Fidel Castro's political thought is original in, among other things, its brand of anti-imperialism. It is in marked contrast to 'cultural nationalist' anti-imperialism, which is anti-Western and anti-modern. The Iranian revolution of 1979 is the most prominent example of the latter, though Al Qaeda and other similar organisations are cases in point. This brand of anti-imperialism is not solely Islamic in provenance: most countries of the global South display some variety of it, marked by ethnic majoritarianism and therefore the inability to deal sensitively with internal nationalities and ethno-religious questions.
Modernising ideologies
The global East and South saw forms of anti-imperialism that were non Marxist, pre-Marxist, which while being nationalist or patriotic, were not anti-Western, anti-modern or traditionalist. The main examples would be Cuba's Jose Marti, China's Sun Yat Sen and India's Nehru. These anti-imperialist nationalisms were in a sense modernising ideologies, fighting against the backwardness of their own societies, albeit drawing on dissident traditions of the West. Marti's patriotism had a continental sweep and went even further, invoking a humanistic universalism.
Fidel's anti-imperialism based itself on that of Jose Marti but went on, as in most subject areas, to cross cut existing trends and forge a new synthesis. It has a moral and cultural dimension but not in the sense of the extremist ideologues who view Western society as decadent and their traditional culture as both self sufficient and inherently superior. He also wove in the statist nationalism of Stalin, insofar as the defence of the Cuban revolution and the revolutionary state was given emphasis. From Jose Marti and Simon Bolivar he has inherited a continental, Latin American vision, but this he combines with a Tricontinentalism or Third Worldism (which found the most dramatic incarnation in the internationalist missions in Africa). Fidel's anti-imperialism was not purely Third Worldist or equidistant; it entailed solidarity with the socialist state system.
Most interestingly Fidelismo reached deep into Western society, identifying with youth movements and making an indelible impression on the consciousness of successive generations of Western youth. This it was able to do because of its nuanced, dialectical critique of the West and identification with certain aspects and trends of Western history and culture.
The moral and cultural dimensions of Fidel's anti-imperialism did not take the form of protectionist Puritanism, as in the case of many Third World nationalisms. He denounced the West in moral terms that were universal: injustice, oppression, poverty, inequality. He also projected the Cuban revolution and Cuban socialism as morally superior in terms that were not culturally circumscribed but could be subscribed to by all humanity: eg the provision of free universal health care and education. Cuba has more doctors serving abroad than do the World Health Organisation or USAID! In the domain of culture, Cuba's praxis takes the forms of indigenous and contemporary popular music and dance, which do not seek to shut out Western music but can compete with it, while drawing from and contributing to it. The Cuban experiment owes its sustainability in the face of unparalleled odds, to the assertion of the moral within the project of alternative modernity. The figure of Che Guevara shows the imaginative power and continued cultural valency in universal terms, of the combination of the values of reason/modernity and morality.
Fidel, Terrorism and Ethics
While in strategic terms the contemporary global picture is bipolar - between the sole superpower and its allies on the one hand, and terrorism of Islamic provenance on the other- it is not necessarily so at a philosophical and ideological level. In this domain the game is not zero-sum, but triangular. In-between the neo-conservatism (and rejection of liberalism) which is the ruling ideology of unipolar hegemony, and the forms of terrorism that challenge that hegemony, lies a third zone.
In this zone are those alienated, albeit unequally, by both the fanaticism of terrorism and the arrogance of neoconservative 'market fundamentalism'. The alienated are the offspring of reason and modernity: liberalism, social democracy, reform communism, residual Marxism, and the moderate liberal and progressive currents of religions. Anti-war US Democrats, western European social democrats, Eastern and southern European ex-Communists who are 'reform communists' or 'new social democrats', the African ex-Marxist ex-guerrillas who are 'new 'or 'emergent democrats', the dramatically revived Latin American left originating in the Sao Paulo and Porto Allegro forums but now wielding governmental power in a majority of South American states, the anti-globalisation and anti-Iraq war global movements, and Fidel Castro's Cuba. These are some of the trends and tendencies of a Third Zone.
Gramscian
The critique of terrorism cannot be credibly sustained by the neoconservatives with their project of unilateralist militarism, global hegemony and unvarnished economic neo-liberalism. The strength of terrorism, especially its religious variant has been its moral critique and its moral underpinning. The critique of terrorism has of necessity to be a moral and ethical, cultural and civilizational; in a word, Gramscian.
The discussion and debate on terrorism polarises between two main approaches. One is the status quo-ist response. It condemns terrorism out of hand with no reference to its context and causative factors. There is, in short, no attempt to understand the phenomenon. A variant of this is to condemn all forms of anti-Establishment violence as terrorism. The other seeks to set terrorism in its context but in doing so tends either to condone it, or exculpate it as the product of deep injustice and the response of the weak against the oppressor. State terrorism is seen as the root cause of and therefore morally worse than anti-state terrorism. Castro's response to the 9/11 attacks, contained in his speech of Sept 22, 2001, constitutes a unique 'third perspective'.
It contains an understanding of the deep, causative roots of terrorism and the culpability of the powerful and privileged in its emergence. However, none of these factors stand in the way of a resolute denunciation of terrorism; a denunciation that pre-empts the argument that there are any extenuating circumstances for its adoption and practice. The moral-ethical criterion operates as an autonomous factor, which is absolute and unconditional. Castro's country and its revolution are themselves the victims of US policy which has often taken the form of state sponsored terrorism. He is therefore acutely aware of the hypocrisy of the US denunciation of terrorism.
He warns against a militaristic response to terrorism and argues for deep-going structural changes to eliminate its causes. Fidel's is therefore an unambiguous and uncompromising moral denunciation of terrorism, not relative to or qualified by the socioeconomic or political causes, of which he is nonetheless aware (and goes onto address).
"No one can deny that terrorism is today a dangerous and ethically indefensible phenomenon, which should be eradicated regardless of
its deep origins, the economic and political factors that brought it to life and those responsible for it. " (Fidel Castro, Sept 22, 2001)
The people of the world disagree with the foreign policy of the US administration especially in its neo conservative variant, but as the response to 9/11 shows, there was a civilizational consensus which rejected those egregious acts of terrorism. A way of life, a way of being - both social and individual - has to be counter-posed to that offered by terrorist ideology. A moral critique of injustice must be part of the rejection of the terrorist response to injustice.
Fidel's Synthesis
Fidel Castro must be studied so as to derive a 'typology of morals' within the traditions of 'violent politics' (Eric Hobsbawm) or 'politico-military' endeavour, and his guiding values are a necessary prelude to the 'revaluation of values' (Nietzsche) within the current upsurge of terrorism, crude anti-globalisation and anti-Westernism.
A new moral synthesis can be based only upon a new synthesis of values, and can emanate only from such a breaking down of the Berlin walls that have existed between the off-springs of reason and modernity. This renders possible a condominium of reason against the forces of moral barbarisms emanating from within the status quo and without.
Reason and modernity alone cannot combat the moral power of both Christian Evangelical fundamentalism and Islamic terrorism. Both these extremisms thrive on a doctrine of struggle and heroism. Therefore an alternative psychology, deriving from an alternative ethic of struggle and heroism, has to part of the synthesis. The Romantic rebellion offers such a source of inspiration, but given the irrational dark underside of that rebellion, it must be filtered through and informed by the values of Reason and Modernity.
In his Political Romanticism, Carl Schmitt's critique is that Romanticism in politics introduces aesthetic criteria and in doing so, weakens its capacity for decision and demonstrates a propensity for defeat. Fidel Castro's synthesis of the traditions of Realism, Reason and Romanticism not merely avoids but demonstrates an aversion to such 'Hamletesque' political behaviour. Castro has shown a vocation for (Schmittian) 'decisionism'. He struggled to win and to defend the gains of victory.
He has succeeded in doing so using criteria other than or supplementary to those of Realism, of power; and introduced precisely aesthetic criteria and values especially in the notion of the heroic. Common to Realism and Romanticism is the centrality of the phenomenon of struggle, of great contestation. In the Realist tradition this is couched in terms of power, its acquisition and retention. In the Romantic tradition, the aesthetic of heroism is defined in terms of struggle. Romanticism often relies on 'irrational' criteria of pure feeling, while the Castroist synthesis combines passion with Reason's reliance on science and logical argumentation, and above all on the labour of convincing, explanation, and persuasion.
The relevance of Fidel Castro's achievement and contribution, and his political ideas could be contested on the grounds that they belong to an age that has disappeared, the age of socialism and revolution. However, the work of Nietzsche most strongly demonstrates the philosophical and intellectual validity of such excavation. Nietzsche's critique of existing values was based on or reinforced by his contrast with values of the past, their decline, and an argument not for their restoration but for a new synthesis which would give birth to new values. His celebration of the Homeric hero, his ambivalence towards Socrates, his discovery of the Dionysian and the dualism of the Apollonian and Dionysian and assertion of a synthesis as the source of Greek dramatic achievement, his final call in The Will to Power for "a Caesar with the soul of Christ", illustrate this fevered search for synthesis of types and values in the creation of a new mentality and mode of being. Fidel Castro is an example of such a synthesis on the Left end of the spectrum.
His relevance is enhanced by the fact that these alternative values are incarnated and practised by him in two antithetical states of being - as armed rebel, and as ruler. Thus they constitute an all encompassing ethic and morality.
[See also Dayan Jayatilleka, 'The Moral Sierra Maestra: The Moral-Ethical Dimension of the Political and Strategic Thought of Fidel Castro', in International Relations in a Globalising World (IRGW), journal of the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS), Vol 1 No 2, July-Dec 2005, SAGE publishers, New Delhi, London, pp. 162-202].
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