I have been thinking about the Revolution lately, whether or not I believe in it (or rather what I believe), and if such a thing every came about, if I would participate in such a venture. Before, I had the tendency to say that I am not against the Revolution, meaning that if it came, I would be a passive actor. However, here everywhere you go, there is talk of revolution, revolution, revolution -- and so it gets one thinking.

In Chile, the left has had a long history of political involvement, even actually coming to power a couple of times. Of course, they started to gain a lot of political weight in the beginning of the twentieth century due to the formation of urban workers in the process of industrialization. The workers who flocked to urban centers did not have a political voice -- since the aristocracy in Latin America never really cared about anyone outside of their elite circles -- and so leftist politics obviously started to rise. The popular classes have always been marginalized in America Latina, so it makes sense that such discourses are popular with the population who has no voice in the government.

In the 20th Congress (I guess that is what it was) of the Soviet Communist Party, the Communist leadership decided, in the face of the rising popularity of facism around the world in Latin America and in Europe, that their communist buddies in other countries need to do anything that they can to prevent the rise of facism in their countries, even if that means giving up their traditional revolutionary ideas and participate in the institutional politics of the bourgeoisie. Ironically enough, in Chile it worked (a).

So all of that is backstory for a group that I have stumbled upon. They are called MIR or Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria or The Revolutionary Leftist Movement. They have their origins in the 60s, when they decided that the democratic means of getting power was just playing into the grubby bourgeoise trap. The bourgeoisie has never ceded power in the past, and they never will. Thus, such ideas essentially corrupt those who think that is possible to reform from within. Inspired by the youth movements around the world, Chilean folk music, weed, and the Cuban Revolution, this rather small group decided that they needed to preserve the true marxist-leninist way of justice, morality, and equality, resolving to destroy the bourgeois structure through a popular armed uprising.

Unfortunately for them and their mission, in 1973 Pinochet took over and sent his trusty CIA equivalent agents of the DINA and the CNI to torture the shit out of any red commie that popped his head out of the wormy ground that they live in. The MIR never actually gained much popularity - obviously due in part to the political repression by the dictatorship - probably because their ideas never really responded with the population.

Reading this story, I remain more unconvinced of the Revolution, whatever it is and might be. I realize that I don't know much about the whole thing, but from the few things that I have read:

1. Throughout history, the ideas of the Revolution have only pertained to the very few or the elite or what have you, and I fail to see such a thing as resonating with the people. Sure they talk about giving people consciousness of their situation and directing them to do things that are in their interest, but it never happens and it never seems organic. It just seems like a marginalized club of angry, self-righteous middle class university students and professors more than anything else. Not only that, there are a million different leftists groups, all with their own ideas of the Revolution and what it means and what you have to do, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but they also fight amongst themselves like little spoiled kids.

2. Political violence is nasty. I fail to see the merits of an armed revolution that does not guarantee a more just society, despite perhaps good initial intentions (ie Soviet Union), that could perhaps just wind up like another horrible dictatorship.

3. What the hell is the Revolution anyway? I have heard a friend of mine say that you can't really describe the Revolution because it implies a sea change in the way people think. Thus, the world after the Revolution is so much different than the world that we live in today, and therefore, we have no way of picturing it. This does not really make me feel much better. This feeds into the next one:

4. If you are of the type that believes in some sort of State (but I am not sure if those go hand in hand. If you are for the revolution, are you ultimately for the abolition of the state?), how do you suppose one can construct viable institutions after you just destroyed all of the other institutions that existed before? Such a process would seem (in the interest of time and all of that) very undemocratic and rather unfair.

I can't really think of any more doubts that I have. As much as I would like to like the Revolution, I just can't. Maybe it is the bourgeoisie in me. What I can say is that a redistribution of wealth is necessary, especially if we are to call ourselves "advanced societies." It's ironic that we can pretend to call ourselves advanced when we still allow poverty, sickness, and lack of education to persist when we have the means to (at least try) allieviate these problems. Say what you want about individualism and incentives and self-reliance - I suppose that those things are important as well, but I do not think that the preservation of a rampant individualism justifies the negation of a sense of responsibility to the communal, nor the need for incentives justifies the negation of the redistribution of wealth to provide for a basic standard of living.


*Enough whining on this blog. Don't worry, this won't turn into a political blog, but perhaps some politics will be good. And so here is some.
(a) However, I believe it was because 1) Alessandri massacred a group of Nazis who tried to stage a coup and then lied about it. 2) The Nazis tried to stage a coup. So the people, pissed off at the ineptitude and untrustworthiness of the other two options, voted for the third, the Popular Unity government (made of the Socialists, Communists, and the Radicals).

Labels: chile, politics