Chapter 85 Chapter 15 The Third World and Revolution 3

3 Today, in the prosperous capitalist industrial countries, the possibility of social revolution brought about by the classical model of insurrection and mass movement is hardly considered today.Yet at the very pinnacle of Western prosperity, at the very heart of capitalist society, governments suddenly and unexpectedly—and at first even puzzledly—find themselves confronted with what seems to be an old-fashioned revolution. Phenomenon.This phenomenon reveals the weakness of a seemingly stable regime that actually has loopholes. In 1968-1969, a wave of rebellion swept through the three worlds (or at least a large part of them).The wave of riots was sent to every corner for a new social force—students from all over the country.Even in medium-sized Western countries, the number of students is now in the hundreds of thousands, and will soon be in the millions (see Chapter 10).What's more, in addition to the large number of students, there are three political characteristics that contribute to their prestige and increase the effectiveness of their political demands.First, they are all gathered in the huge knowledge factory, which is easy to mobilize. Compared with the workers in the real big factory in society, the space and time are more than enough.Second, they are usually located in the capital cities of various countries, and are always under the eyes of politicians and the cameras of the media.Thirdly, as an educated class, it is often also a well-to-do middle class, and it is also a source of new rulers for its own society (this is the case all over the world, especially the third world), so the authorities naturally have a lot of respect for them. Be tolerant, and will not shoot and shoot as easily as you would against the lower classes.In Europe, East and West, even in Paris in May 1968, during the earth-shattering riots and street fights, no students were seriously injured or injured.The authorities were careful not to cause martyrs.As for places where major massacres did occur, such as in Mexico City in 1968 - in the riots in which the army broke up a public meeting, according to official statistics, a total of 28 people were killed and 200 were injured (Gonzalez Casanova, 1975, vol. ii , p. 564)—the future trajectory of Mexican politics was thus permanently changed.

Although the proportion of the number of students is not high, it is extremely influential due to the above reasons.Especially in France in 1968, and in Italy in the "hot autumn" of 1969, student riots triggered a huge wave of workers' strikes and even temporarily paralyzed the national economy.However, they are not real revolutions after all, nor can they develop into real revolutions.For workers, they joined these ranks only to find an opportunity, and they had bargaining power in the industry; and this bargaining power has been quietly accumulated for 20 years without realizing it.Workers, not revolutionaries.As for the proud students of the first world, they don't pay much attention to trivial matters such as overthrowing the government and seizing power.However, a student riot in France in May 1968 almost brought General de Gaulle down from the throne; indeed, it did shorten his reign (de Gaulle retired a year later).In the same year, American students’ anti-war demonstrations brought down President L.B. Johnson (Students from the third world can see the reality of power more clearly; as for students from the second world, they are deeply Knowing that it is best to stay away from power and position).The rebellious actions of Western students, which are more culturally revolutionary, are an expression of resistance to everything represented by the values ​​​​of "middle-class parents" in society, the details of which are described in Chapters 10 and 11. discuss.

Nevertheless, a considerable number of this generation of rebel students began to pay attention to politics after all, and they naturally received the teachings of radical revolution and comprehensive social transformation, with their spiritual leaders as mentors—that is, the non-Stalinist October Revolutionary icons Marx and Mao Zedong.For the first time since the era of anti-fascism, Marx’s thought went out of the house, no longer limited to the confinement of Moscow’s orthodox theory, and attracted a large number of young intellectuals in the West (for the third world, the charm of Marx’s thought has never ceased).This is a strange phenomenon of Marxist theory. It does not use action as a battlefield, but chatters endlessly in seminars and academic fields. In addition to various trends of thought that were popular in the academic circles at that time, and sometimes other various ideologies and nationalism , Religious doctrine.The voice of this colorful world comes from the classroom, rather than the actual experience of the workers' life.In fact, these thoughts and discussions have nothing to do with the actual political behavior of this group of new disciples of Marx.They shouted loudly and advocated radical combat methods, and this kind of combat behavior actually did not require any research and analysis at all.After the original utopian ideal burst like a bubble, many people returned—or turned—to the old path of the left (such as the French Socialist Party, which was reformed at this time, and the Italian Communist Party is another example), and today’s The left-wing parties, after the injection of young fresh blood, are also somewhat rejuvenated.This is not only an intellectual movement, but naturally many members were drawn into the camp of academic circles. In American academic circles, there were thus unprecedentedly many political and cultural radicals.Others, seeing themselves as revolutionaries inheriting the October tradition, have joined or rebuilt Lenin-style well-trained small groups, preferably secret "pioneer" cadre organizations, in order to provide support to large groups. infiltration, or the targeting of terrorist acts.So in this respect, the West and the Third World have become one, and the latter also has countless illegal warriors, ready to use the violence of small groups to compensate for the large-scale retreat of the front line. In Italy in the 1970s, "Red Brigades" of various names appeared, and they may belong to the most important brigade of the Bolsheviks in Europe.Thus emerges a strange secret world in which nationalist action groups and social-revolutionary attack forces are combined in an international conspiracy network.There are the "Red Army" (often very small), Palestinians, Spanish Basque rebels, the IRA, and all sorts of others, overlapping with other illegal underground networks and infiltrated by intelligence agencies , protected by Arab and Eastern countries, and even aided when necessary.

It's a big world, the best material for writers of espionage fiction and horror stories, for whom the '70s were a golden age.This is the darkest period of brutality and counter-terrorism in Western history, and it is also the dark age of modern brutality.The claws of death and kidnappers are extended, and the cars with unknown signs and "mysterious disappearances" are rampant-but everyone knows that those vehicles come from the military and police, from the secret service, and from the government. A super organization that can be controlled by democratic means.This is an unspeakable "dirty war".Even countries with a strong tradition of constitutional procedure, such as Great Britain, can see the use of such unscrupulous tactics.In the early years of the conflict in Northern Ireland there were conditions of such severity that Amnesty International was concerned to include them in its report on abuses; the worst examples were found in Latin America.As for the situation in the socialist countries, although not many people pay attention to them, they are not infected by this evil trend. Their era of terror has been left behind, and there are no terrorist activities within their borders.Only a small group of dissidents remained who knew deeply that in their situation the pen was far stronger than the sword.In other words, the power of the typewriter (combined with the protest support of the Western public) far outweighed the destructive power of the artillery shell.

The student rebellion in the late 1960s was the last hurrah of the old world revolution.This movement is revolutionary in two respects.One is the pursuit of its ancient utopian ideal, which intends to permanently overturn the existing values ​​and pursue a perfect new society.The second is the way it appeals to the actual operation of actions: take to the streets, climb up the hills, erect fences, and bomb attacks.This is also an international revolutionary movement. On the one hand, because the ideology of the revolutionary tradition, from 1789 to 1917, has always been a universal and international pursuit—even the Basque Liberal Party, which advocates a separatist movement, has a strong national identity. Socialist groups and standard products of the 1960s also claimed to have ties to Marx.And on the other hand, because for the first time in history, the world is truly an international society—at least in the circle of students who talk about ideology, the world is indeed one.The same books appeared one after another in bookstores in Buenos Aires, Rome, and Hamburg, and they appeared almost at the same time—in 1968, Marcuse’s book was a must-have on the shelves of these bookstores— —The same group of revolutionaries crossed continents and oceans, from Paris to Havana, to Sao Paulo, to Bolivia. Students in the late 1960s were the first generation to take fast and cheap telex for granted.The Sorbonne, Berkeley, Prague, wherever there is something going on, the student body has no trouble experiencing it immediately, because it is part of the same event happening in the same global village.And according to the instructions of the Canadian master Marshall McLuhan (another fashionable figure in the 1960s), we all live in the same global village!

However, this seeming revolution is not the world revolution that the generation of revolutionaries in 1917 knew.It is just a dream that has passed away, and the dream thing has long since ceased to exist.What we do in it is just an illusion of self-deception, as if as long as we pretend that the barrier of fighting has been built, it will really be built, automatically built under the magic of resonance.No wonder that conservative wit Raymond Aron joked about the "May 1968 Incident" in Paris as a street drama or a psychodrama. No one expects a real social revolution in the Western world anymore.Most revolutionaries do not even consider the working class—the group whom Marx hailed as the "capitalist gravediggers"—to be fundamentally fellow travelers of the revolution; only those who remain faithful to orthodox dogma hold Hold on to this statement.In the Western Hemisphere, whether it is the theoretical extreme left in Latin America or the practical action of North American students, the old "proletarian masses" are even scoffed at by them and regarded as the enemy of radicalism.Because in their eyes, the "proletariat" is either a labor aristocracy who enjoys preferential treatment, or a patriotic fan of the Vietnam War.The future of the revolution is now only in the hands of the peasants of the third world (whose population is rapidly decreasing).However, these small farmers must rely on the armed evangelists who came from afar—under the leadership of Castro and Guevara—to awaken and shake them out of their past passive obedience.This fact shows that the old belief seems to be exhausted: the so-called "damned of the earth" (the group celebrated in the "Internationale") will earn their living "all by ourselves". The theory of opening their chains, this kind of inference of historical inevitability, obviously does not make much sense.

What's more, even where revolution has become a fact, or is very likely to occur, can it really retain its worldwide character? The various movements on which revolutionaries hoped in the 1960s actually ran counter to the universality of traditional revolutions.The guerrilla liberation movements in Vietnam, Palestine, and various colonies all focused on their own people.The reason why they are related to the larger world outside is only because of their leaders or the Communist Party.And only the Communists have more worldwide tasks.Another reason is because of the bipolar structure under the Cold War world system, which automatically puts them in place-the enemy of the enemy is a friend.The old general orientation has become trivial today, as evidenced by China.And revolutions whose goals transcended national borders survived only in certain regional actions, such as the thin movements that washed across the water, such as Pan-African, Pan-Arab, and especially Pan-Latin America.Movements of this kind have a certain degree of general truth, at least among militant intellectuals who speak the same language and move freely from country to country (e.g. Spanish, Arabic), such as The exiles and the masterminds of the mutiny.We can even say that some of them are indeed international - especially Castro all the way.Guevara himself fought in the Congo; and Cuba also sent troops to Africa's Cape Horn and Angola in the 1970s to assist the local revolutionary regime.But outside the door of the Latin American left, how many people really expect the liberation of socialism to win an all-African or all-Arab victory?The short-lived "United Arab Republic" (United Arab Republic, 1958-1961), consisting of Egypt, Syria, and the incidental Yemen, soon disintegrated.Although Syria and Iraq are governed by the Arab Baath Party, which also advocates "pan-Arabism" and socialism, there have been frictions between the two countries.Doesn't it just prove the fragility of the supranational revolutionary proposition and its impracticality in political reality?

The world revolution has faded, and the most dramatic evidence comes from the disintegration of the international movement dedicated to world revolution. After 1956, the Soviet Union, and the international movement under its leadership, began to lose exclusive control over the goals of the revolution and the theoretical sense of unifying effectiveness behind them.Today there are many different types of Marxists, several Marxist-Leninists, and even the few communist parties that still have Stalin's portrait on their flags after 1956 have two or three different models [China, Albania, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) which is separate from the orthodox Communist Party of India].

The International Communist Movement, centered in Moscow, collapsed between 1956 and 1968. From 1958 to 1960, the CCP officially broke with the Soviet Union, and called on other countries to follow suit, withdraw from the Soviet bloc, and organize another Communist Party to compete with it (but with little success).Other communist factions (mainly the West), under the leadership of Italy, have publicly expressed their distance from Moscow.Even the original "socialist bloc" of 1947 is now beginning to splinter into groups of varying degrees of allegiance to the Soviet Union, from fully committed Bulgaria to fully self-determined Yugoslavia. In 1968, Soviet troops invaded the Czech Republic with the aim of replacing the new policy implemented by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia with another set of policies.The Soviet Union's move ultimately ruined "proletarian internationalism".From then on, even the communist faction that implemented the Moscow line began to openly criticize the Soviet Union and adopt policies that disagreed with Moscow - such as "Eurocommunism" (Eurocommunism).All kinds of naysayers have become normal.The end of the International Communist Movement is also the end of any other kind of socialism or social revolution that advocates an international line, because these dissidents and anti-Moscow people can no longer form an effective international organization except for sects.The only institution still able to vaguely evoke traditional images of emancipation around the world is the Socialist International (Socialist International 1951).This organization now represents governments and parties, most of them in the West, who have formally abandoned any kind of revolutionary line; what is more, most have even completely abandoned their belief in Marx's thought.