REFLECTIONS ON THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO FROM THIRD WORLD SOCIALISM

Drawing from the cognitional theory of Bernard Lonergan and from anticolonial movements, the paper maintains that universal understanding of social dynamics is approached through personal encounter with social movements of the dominated. Moreover, the paper sustains that Marx implicitly followed this method of cross-horizon encounter, thereby forging a significant advance in understanding. The paper points to the marginalization of Marx’s insights in Western universities and to the oversights of Western Marxism, stressing the significance of revolutionary political subjects that have emerged in the Third World. To overcome its limitations, Western Marxists ought to engage in sustained personal encounter with popular Third World revolutionary movements.

The Communist Manifesto provides an analysis of human history and modern economy from the vantage point of the worker, forged on the foundation of a synthesis of German philosophy, British political economy, and French socialism.On this philosophical foundation, the Manifesto and the work of Marx as a whole provided the foundation for a universal, philosophical-historical-social science.
My appreciation of the work of Marx was based on my previous study of the cognitional theory of the theologian and philosopher Bernard Lonergan. 2With recognition of the fact that human understandings emerge in the context of social and cultural horizons, the eminent Jesuit scholar maintained that all who seek to understand must follow a process of encounter with persons of other, different horizons.Personal encounter involves listening to the other, taking seriously his or her understanding, and permitting one's own understanding to be challenged at its roots.This process leads to the discovery of ques-tions relevant to the issue that one seeks to understand.If one places the desire to understand above other desires, such as the desire to protect one's own economic and political interests, the discovery of relevant questions leads to a reformulation of one's understanding (Lonergan, 1958(Lonergan, , 1973)).
On the basis of my previous study of Black Nationalism, I appreciated that understanding of social dynamics would require especially a personal encounter with the dominated, who by virtue of their experience, look at the structures and the processes of the social system from below, from a vantage point informed by domination, exploitation, and exclusion in their various manifestation.The vantage point from below provides a unique and special frame of reference, which has awareness of relevant questions that are beyond the horizons of the privileged.Moreover, the vantage point from below finds its most advanced and clearest formulation in the social movements that are formed by the dominated.Thus, we arrive to the understanding that universal understanding is reached through a process that takes into account the various intellectual and moral currents in the world of the privileged, but also includes a sustained processes of personal encounter with the social movements constituted by the dominated, the exploited, and the excluded (McKelvey, 1991).
The knowledge that we attain through cross-horizon encounter is consensual, in that many are on this journey of understanding, and they instruct and inform one another.Moreover, the knowledge attained is not eternal; it constantly evolves, and we continually discover further relevant questions, as new thresholds of understanding are attained, and as the world, natural and social, evolves (Lonergan, 1958).
In addition, the knowledge that we attain through cross-horizon encounter pertains to both the true and the right.In both the realms of fact and value, as we seek to understand, we move from initial insight to reformulation through the discovery of relevant question on a basis of cross-horizon (Lonergan, 1958;1973).Accordingly, it becomes possible for the peoples of the world to move toward the formulation of universal human values, as is indicated by declarations of the United Nations with respect to the rights of all persons to health care, education, nutrition, and housing; and with respect to the rights of nations to sovereignty and of peoples to self-determination.
The life and work of Karl Marx illustrate well the insight that can emerge from crosshorizon encounter with currents of thought from other cultures and from encounter with the social movements of the dominated.His primary formation was in German philosophy, and he attained a doctorate in the German university system.He was influenced by radical and atheistic currents of thought, major currents of intellectual thought in German intellectual life at that time.In October 1843, he moved to Paris, where he encountered different currents of thought, taking him beyond the horizon of German philosophy and German intellectual life.Introduced to British political economy by an article written by Friedrich Engels, a compatriot of Marx living in England, Marx studied the works of British political economists.He also studied the writings of French socialists, which he critiqued in the Manifesto itself.Moreover, he regularly attended meetings in Paris of artisans, industrial workers, and intellectuals who were connected to the emerging working class movement and tied to socialist organizations, some of whom called themselves communists (McKelvey, 1991, pp. 99-126).
On the basis of this study and experience, Marx experienced what Lonergan called an intellectual and moral conversion (Lonergan, 1971, pp. 33-34).He proceeded to formulate an understanding of human history and modern economy from the vantage point of the worker, forging a synthesis of German philosophy, British political economy, and French socialism.In doing so, he pushed Western European knowledge to a more advanced stage, overcoming the divisions of nationalities and cultures, the separation of empirical science from philosophy and morality, and casting aside the historic prevailing human tendency to formulate understandings from above.
Marx's first efforts to put his new understanding in writing was in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, written from April through August of 1844, where the basic concepts of the historical materialism that would make him famous were expressed (Marx, 1964).A further effort was The German Ideology, written with Engels in 1845 and 1846 (Marx, Engels, 1965) Neither of the manuscripts was published during Marx's lifetime.However, as all writers know, the exercise of writing deepens one's understanding.Accordingly, these writings provided the foundation for the task that he was given by the Communist League in 1847, namely, to write a programmatic statement and a compressed theory of history, explaining the views of the Communists, who, in the political and social conflicts of the time, had emerged as "the spectre that is haunting Europe."

The universal concepts of The Communist Manifesto
In The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels formulated concepts that transcended cultural and national boundaries and that provided a potential foundation for the development of an integral understanding of human social dynamics, that is, a universal, philosophical-historical social science.Such concepts included the idea that since the agricultural revolution, human societies have been characterized by class division, from which class conflict follows, as each class pursues its particular interests on the economic and political plane (Marx, Engels, 1972, pp. 335-36).
Marx and Engels used this basic paradigm to understand the emergence of Modernity in Europe.The bourgeoisie, initially a merchant class in the Middle Ages, on the basis of an expanding world market, and in alliance with the monarchs, gained political advantage and pushed the nobility into the background.In establishing itself as a modern bourgeoisie on a foundation of Modern Industry, it created the modern working class, or proletariat, and it thus "forged the weapons that bring death to itself " (Marx, Engels, 1972, p. 340).The proletariat itself evolves through stages, initially forming unions to obtain concessions from the bourgeoisie, and later attaining the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the rule of the proletariat.Unlike previous historical movements, the victorious proletarian movement represents the immense majority, thus establishing the foundation for a society that defends the interests of the immense majority.In accordance with this understanding of modern European historical development, the goal of the Communists and other proletarian parties is the formation of the proletariat into a revolutionary class that is capable of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and conquering political power (Marx, Engels,1972, pp. 336-46).
Marx and Engels described the bourgeois revolution as a process that swept aside morality and that established self-interested commercial calculation as the basis for the evaluation of personal worth.They wrote: "The bourgeoisie, where it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to this "natural superiors, " and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". . . .In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct brutal exploitation" (Marx, Engels,1972, p. 337).Marx and Engels discerned that the European "discovery" and conquest of new lands was integral to the commercial expansion that was the foundation for the victory of the bourgeoisie and the emergence of modern industry.
"The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie.The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies , . .gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known. . . .
The feudal system of industry . . .now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new market.The manufacturing system took its place.The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class. . . .Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising.Even manufacture no longer sufficed. . . .The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry" (Marx, Engels,1972, p. 336).They discerned the international character of production and distribution, a phenomenon that we today call globalization.
"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe.It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. . . .It has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.All old established national industries . . .are dislodged . . .by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industry whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe.In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations" (Marx, Engels, 1972, p. 338).As these dynamics unfold, the bourgeoisie increasing takes exclusive control of the economic and political process, and as it does so, it demonstrates that it is intellectually and morally unprepared to rule the world-system.
"The modern labourer . . ., instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class.He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than popular wealth.And it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law.It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery. . .Society can longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society" (Marx, Engels, 1972, p. 345).
For Marx and Engels, with the evident incapacity of the bourgeoisie, the taking of political power by the proletariat is a necessity for humanity.In doing so, the working class develops at first political struggles within nations, but ultimately it must develop an internationalist unity that transcends national boundaries, because in the final analysis, the modern working class has no country (Marx, Engels, 1972, pp. 343, 350).

The evolution of Marxism in revolutionary practice
The further development of Marx's insights was carried forward by exceptional revolutionary leaders, who also made important contributions to theory.As Marxism evolved in the context of revolutionary practice, key Marxian concepts were reformulated.There were two especially important dimensions of the twentieth century reformulation.First, the people, with its diversity and plurality, came to be understood as the revolutionary subject in socialist transformation, with the industrial working class seen as one of various sectors of the people.Secondly, the nation became the unifying center of theory and practice, such that a new form of nationalism that was also internationalist came into being.
In describing his evolution as a revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist, Fidel Castro stated that he arrived at the University of Havana in 1945 with a basic concept of justice that had been formed in his family and in Catholic primary and secondary schools.And he arrived as a "profound and devoted admirer of the heroic struggles of our people for independence in the nineteenth century" (Castro, 1985, p. 158), and as an admirer and follower of José Martí, the Cuban revolutionary and political philosopher who formulated and led the Cuban revolutionary nationalist movement of the 1880s and 1890s.However, Fidel observed that he had a limited understanding of political economy and class divisions and conflicts.But during his third year at the university, he began to read on his own, independently of his political activity at the university and his course work, the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.The Communist Manifesto was one of the first that he read, and he reported that it had the most impact.It made clear to him the role of class divisions and class interests in human history, thus enabling him to understand why politicians in Cuba behave so badly: they make promises to the people, in order to obtain the political support of the majority; but they are financially supported by the bourgeoisie, and thus they respond to its interests.As a result of this period of new reading, Fidel would become a Marxist-Leninist by the time he graduated from the university in 1950.But he acknowledged that, since it was a form of Marxism-Leninism that was synthesized with the Cuban tradition of national liberation, he could not have convinced a party member of the correctness of his ideas (Castro, 1985;1998;2006).
In an extensive interview in 1985 with the Brazilian Dominican priest Frei Betto, Fidel explained the personal and experiential significance of The Communist Manifesto.He observed that his life experiences, in which he had "seen up close the contrasts between wealth and poverty, between a family that possessed extensive land and those that have absolutely nothing" (Castro, 1985, p. 161), confirmed the truth of Marx's insight into class division.And the insight, for Fidel, had explanatory power, for it made clear that social phenomena are not consequences of the evil or immorality of men, but of factors established by class interests.In this description of his reading of The Communist Manifesto, we can see that Fidel was making an immediate Cuban interpretation of Marx as he read.
In confirming the validity of Marx's insight for the reality of Cuba, Fidel was focusing not on the exploitation of the industrial workers but on the unequal distribution of land, rooted in the colonial and neocolonial situation of Cuba.Fidel was appropriating from Marx from a perspective that was shaped by the neocolonial conditions of Cuba and by consciousness of Cuban revolutionary theory and practice.
Fidel's reflections on the impact of his reading of The Communist Manifesto are instructive, for they point to a generalized phenomenon, in which revolutionary leaders were formed in the concepts of Marx, but they were reformulating them, as they adapted them to different historical and national contexts.And particularly important here was the understanding of the revolutionary subject, or the social class or social sector that, on a foundation of political, historical, and social consciousness, acts with intelligence and organization to transform the fundamental structures of the society, including relations of political power and economic relations.
Whereas Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto conceived the revolutionary subject to be the proletariat, Lenin, on the basis of reflection on the Russian revolutionary process, recast the classical Marxist formulation of a proletarian revolutionary subject.He conceived a revolution of workers and peasants directed by the most politically mature proletarian leaders.In addition, he recognized that the centre of revolutionary dynamism was shifting from the West to the East, thus projecting the importance anti-colonial revolutions in that vast part of humanity that later would call itself the Third World.The Cuban scholar Thalía Fung has written that Lenin saw the colonized and neocolonized peoples as the new historic agents.And she observes that Lenin foresaw revolutions of two stages in the colonized zones: a democratic revolution that would bring unity to the people, enabling the evolution to a second stage of socialist revolution that would restructure the relations of political and economic power (Fung, 2014).
In the popular anti-colonial revolutions in Asia and Africa during the twentieth century, which to a greater or lesser extent included socialist projections, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie played a fundamental and necessary role.In the Latin American popular anti-imperialist revolutions of the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries, a plurality of subjects were present, including workers, students, professionals, women, peasants, indigenous persons, and the marginalized that pertained to the informal economy.Thus, what emerged in practice was a revolutionary class than was far more diverse than projected by Marx and Engels.
For example, Ho Chi Minh, who had studied Leninism in the Soviet Union, retained the Marxist-Leninist formulation of a revolution led by workers, but he subtly transformed the meaning of "worker, " thus adapting Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of Indochina (Duiker, 2000;Fall, 1967).Similarly, Fidel Castro, who studied Marx and Lenin on his own, freely adapted Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of Cuba.Fidel called the "people" to revolution.In the manifesto and program known as History Will Absolve Me, Fidel identified the sectors of the people: the unemployed; agricultural workers; industrial workers; tenant farmers; teachers and professors; small businesspersons; and professionals in health, engineering, law, and journalism.He discerned the people as having a healthy revolutionary spontaneity, but they must be led with political intelligence in a popular revolution of two stages, first a democratic revolution, and then a socialist revolution (Castro, 1985;2014).Thus, we see that Marxism-Leninism, as it evolved in the Third World,3 arrived to understand that the people, with its diversity and plurality, constitutes the revolutionary subject.But the people must be formed into a revolutionary subject.The people possess revolutionary spontaneity, but they do not necessary possess an understanding of the causes of the problems that they experience, nor do they automatically have a grasping of effective political strategies.Revolutionary process are initiated in a spontaneous form by the people, who go on strike or take to the streets to demonstrate and engage in acts of protest, which may or may not include violence against property.This initial stage establishes social settings that give voice to those among the people with greater historical and political consciousness, whose discourses enable the people to move to a higher level of understanding.Accordingly, in revolutionary processes, the people are formed by the most politically and intellectually mature among them.
The adaptation of Marx to Third World conditions occurred on another plane as well.Whereas Marx conceived the workers as moving toward a united internationalist movement to accomplish proletarian political rule on a global scale, the great revolutionary leaders of the Third World demonstrated themselves to be great patriots.Ho Chi Minh, for example, took the name of Nguyen the Patriot at the age of 29; and Fidel Castro constantly invoked patriotic symbols in his discourses.
It could be argued that the phenomenon of patriotism in Third Word revolutionary socialism is simply a manifestation of the fact that the global socialist revolution has not yet advanced to the internationalist stage.But more than this is at issue here.What occurred was that the Third World socialist leaders possessed strong patriotic sentiments, and they expressed them in calling the people to a socialist revolution.And at the same time, they also possessed and convoked a spirit of internationalism, and they envisioned a socialist world-system composed of nations, which would cooperate with one another on a basis of mutual recognition of the sovereign rights of all nations, standing against the structures of neocolonialism and the policies of imperialism.They formulated a form of nationalism that was also internationalist.

The marginalization of Marx in Western universities
Marx pushed scientific knowledge of social dynamics to a more advanced stage.This more advanced knowledge recognized that modern capitalism represented only one stage in human history, and as it evolved, it would generate the technological and social conditions that would make possible a transition to a society that would affirm and protect the human dignity of all.The transition to a new epoch was to be led by the industrial working class of the advanced nations, inasmuch as they possessed the interest and the capacity to do so.
The scientific breakthrough of Marx constituted a threat to the capitalist class, which had an interest in preserving a system that gives priority to the maximization of profits to the capitalist.High members of the capitalist class therefore supported an organization of knowledge in higher education that was favourable to their interests and that marginalized the work of Marx.Whereas Marx's breakthrough implied an integrated philosophical-historical-social social science connected to the social movements from below, the universities established academic disciplines that fragmented knowledge and that were disconnected from the social movements.In addition, they imposed epistemological assumptions that, unlike Marx, separated science from morality, which led to a false concept of objectivity and to labelling as ideologues all intellectual workers who sought to contribute through their work to the evolution of a more just society, in accordance with the legacy of Marx.
Given the marginalization of Marx in the universities and the bureaucratization of the universities, employment as professors and researchers in Western universities does not provide a fruitful road for all those who seek to understand the social dynamics of the current world-system, except for those who have some strategy for ignoring the epistemological and disciplinary rules that are imposed.

The epistemological problem of Western Marxists
In the evolving economic and social conditions of the capitalist world-economy, the increasing imperialist penetration of the colonized/neocolonized regions produced increasing levels of superexploitation and the impossibility of true sovereignty, as ex-colonial and imperialist powers supported accommodationist political elites in the neocolonies.This generated Third World popular movements that emerged to stand against accommodationist political actors, seeking to establish the dignity and the sovereignty of the nation, charging delegates of the people with the task of promoting the economic and social development of the nation and defending the economic and social needs of the people.European conquest, colonial domination, and imperialist penetration of vast regions of the world had established the foundation for what evolved to be a neocolonial world-system, in which popular movements in the neocolonies constituted the dominated social sector that was being forged into a revolutionary subject, seeking to transform the political, economic, and ideological structures of the world-system.
As the Third World became the epicentre of the global revolution during the course of the twentieth century, Western colonial and neocolonial domination of the Third World enabled significant economic concessions to the middle class and to working class movements in the West.Such concessions facilitated the predominance of reformist tendencies in the working class movements, undermining the revolutionary potentiality that expressed itself in Western Europe from the 1830s to 1922.There emerged a profound economic, political, cultural, and ideological divide between the worlds of the colonizer and the colonized.
Because of this colonial divide, Western Marxists to a considerable extent have been separated from the advances in Marxist theory and practice in the Third World.More-over, because of the triumph of reformist social democracy over revolutionary socialism in the West during the course of the twentieth century, Western Marxists have not had the social foundation for the further development of Marxist analysis appropriate for their own national and cultural contexts.Culturally disconnected from revolutionary practice in the Third World, and with the negation of revolutionary practice in their own nations, the theoretical development of Western Marxism has been constrained, taking a form influenced by the social and historical conditions and cultures of Western societies.Western Marxist theory has lacked the necessary foundation in revolutionary practice.
Accordingly, Western Marxists have become disconnected from revolutionary practice, which constrained the development of their understanding.To be sure, they have been able to understand partially the structures of neocolonial domination, and therefore they tend to have an anti-imperialist perspective.However, they have limited understanding of the processes of revolutionary change from below that have emerged in China and the Third World, and thus they have an undeveloped concept of the meaning of socialism in practice.
For those who seek to understand, the necessary road is that followed by Marx: seek encounter with the social movements that have been constituted by the dominated, exploited, and excluded; study the diverse currents of thought in various national contexts; seek to develop an integral understanding; and seek to forge structures of popular education that are tied to political practice.
At a time when the capitalist world-economy increasingly makes evident its unsustainability, and in a period in which new forms of fascism and myopic nationalism are expressing themselves, we Western Marxists would do well to remind ourselves of the method followed by Marx, namely, seeking encounter with the social movements formed by the dominated and exploited.In our day, this suggests personal encounter with the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist popular movements forged during the past 225 years by the diverse peoples of the earth.
Such encounter implies the appropriation of important concepts and principles formulated by the Third World project of national and social liberation: the need to defend the sovereignty and the dignity of the nation; a revolution of, by, and for the people; the taking of power by the people on the basis of an alternative political party, which not only protests but also educates, and which issues manifestos and platforms that are scientifically informed and historical and global in scope; the protection of the social and economic rights of all persons of the earth; the rights of all nations to sovereignty and of all peoples to self-determination, rejecting the imperialist policies and interventions of the core nations; gender equality, and the protection of women and girls from violence and abuse in all of its manifestations; and ecological sustainability.