A detailed analysis of these texts allows us to understand in greater depth that, after Lenin’s death, the political importance of culture was not integrated into socialist practice. It was not taken into account by Engels when… he pointed out:
…Civilization has achieved things of which gentile society was not even remotely capable. But it achieved them by setting in motion the lowest instincts and passions in man and developing them at the expense of all his other abilities. From its first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization; wealth and again wealth and once more wealth, wealth, not of society, but of the single miserable individual — here was its one and final aim. If at the same time the progressive development of science and a repeated flowering of supreme art dropped into its lap, it was only because without them modern wealth could not have completely realized its achievements.1
Socialism therefore demands the promotion of the best in human nature, and to this end it is essential to find and utilize the ideas of key cultural figures. It is crucial to select the ideas and thoughts of all the greatest cultural figures from the era of the mythical Prometheus to contemporary times. This can be done using the selective methods of Cuban cultural traditions — methods chosen precisely to find the paths to justice.
We continue to insist that the thoughts of a wise person are not enough on their own to find the path to socialism. Moreover, the infinite wisdom of great socialist thinkers is not enough to open the gateway to these redemptory ideas that, say what you might, are the most profound and sophisticated to emerge from Europe and have acquired the greatest significance over the last two centuries. As we have mentioned to the publishers, we see this book only as a first endeavor toward something more ambitious. We must continue to seek the invisible threads in order to articulate contemporary fragmented culture, or the process of the dissolution of what is known as western civilization.
It is essential to clear away the mysteries of current neoliberal fragmentation — of the anarchy and chaos prevailing in the world — an argument dramatically expressed by Fidel Castro on the 45th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution: “Either the course of events must change or our species will not be able to survive.”2
As Cubans we can grasp the essence of universal culture expressed in these texts because we have been able to perceive what has transcended from them. This is fundamental for humanity today. That we are able to interpret it within a contemporary context, on the basis of the teachings and traditions of major figures from our history, of whom José Martí is the most outstanding, is due to our experience of the revolution of January 1, 1959. In other words, we have 45 years of practice in confrontation and struggle against the most powerful empire in the world.
Moving in chronological order, I want to set out what I consider to be the key aspects of the documents we are presenting to the reader.
The first of these is, naturally, The Communist Manifesto, written, as is well known, by Marx and Engels in 1848. It begins with the famous words, “A spectre is haunting Europe…,” to which I might add: this spectre has remained at the center of history for 150 years. We could also state that since 1848 no political event has been without direct or indirect relation to the fire of ideas and feelings which this text evoked. In one way or another, the text has been present in the historical subconscious of western civilization, either to support or to undermine it. Of even greater importance is that it has been present, over the past 150 years, in the interweaving of redemptory ideas and aspirations that have been at the heart of western civilization. What we have to ask ourselves is whether humanity is capable of forgetting, of pushing to the side, the hopes and emancipatory aspirations that are framed by the communist ideal.
The Manifesto was written to describe and denounce the capitalist social regime in mid-19th century Europe. No political document written since has achieved this with such depth and clarity, or so faithfully expressed the revolutionary needs of its historical period. It described with scientific depth and literary quality the essence of social and economic history since remote antiquity up to its time; and no other document of its kind has improved on its analysis. Without the lessons it provides, the subsequent development of history in the second half of the 19th century and the whole of the 20th century could not be understood.
During the trial of those involved in the July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada garrison, the state prosecutor accused Fidel Castro of being criminal for the fact of keeping books by Lenin in the apartment of Haydée and Abel Santamaría.3 Fidel responded: “Those interested in politics who have not read and studied Lenin are ignorant.” Moved by Fidel’s words, I resolved to embark upon an in-depth study of Marx, Engels and Lenin. After more than 50 years, I can say that those interested in politics who have not read The Communist Manifesto of 1848 are also ignorant. Those who, like Fidel, study it and learn from its teachings, and at the same time embrace the cause of the poor, will find the path to revolution.
Reading The Communist Manifesto, with the benefit of experience acquired through events of the past century and a half, we can see that the authors not only described profoundly and concisely the historical period in which the text was written, they also provided invaluable teachings for the world in which we live today.
The reader, by viewing humanity’s development since then through the key lines in the Manifesto, will see that capitalism has continued to march toward taking control of the surplus value created by human labor, which it still extracts from workers. The theft has continued, it is more widespread and has been carried out in a more dramatic fashion. To the extent that we are capable of making an abstraction without prejudice, it enables us to interpret the concrete facts we have within sight and confirm that capitalist society is jeopardizing the relations of production that the system itself has created.
It is clear that modern bourgeois society, which has emerged from the ruins of feudal society, has continued to march forward amid the contradictions and antagonisms that it generated and never abolished. Instead, all it has done is to continue substituting the old conditions of oppression; it is evident that socioeconomic antagonisms and the exploitation of human labor have become increasingly threatening to humanity’s future on earth. It may be demonstrated that wherever bourgeois power has existed, it has continued to transform the relations of production into an alienating factor that makes individual freedom a simple commercial asset. It has substituted the numerous structured freedoms with inhuman and soulless market freedoms. Put simply, instead of exploitation clouded by political or religious illusions, bourgeois power has continued to establish open, direct and brutal exploitation.
Doctors, legal experts, priests, poets and scientists have, over the past 150 years, become its paid servants. It has continued to wipe away the emotions and feelings that in the past have characterized social relationships, reducing them to simple financial relations. Likewise, it will be understood that the bourgeoisie cannot exist unless it is to transform unceasingly the instruments and relations of production and, consequently, social relations in general. It has continued to eliminate all that is simple and timeless, all that is sacred it has made profane, and human beings have been compelled to analyze the nature of their real social relations.
Study The Communist Manifesto as though it were a valuable historical document giving the background necessary to gain insights into and better confront the realities of the present and the future. Compare it with what has happened in the past 150 years and the reader will see that essential truths in the text have been confirmed and exemplified in increasingly dramatic ways by life itself.
Let us see: If this study has been carried out in an unbiased fashion, it will reveal that the course of social and political events confirms that to the present day, the history of society continues to be a struggle between oppressor and oppressed, engaged in eternal confrontation, sometimes veiled, but otherwise direct and open. There is a crucial warning here for all human beings inhabiting the earth and particularly for those involved in making decisions: these struggles have always ended with the victory of one or other of the belligerent classes, with the revolutionary transformation of the entire society or with the collapse of the classes involved in the confrontation. This idea torments us and is the key question in the world of the 21st century.
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