A Selective Marxist

...A Selective Marxist Revolution in the Third World: Myths and Prospects By Gerard Chaliand Viking 256 pp $10 95 Reviewed by Seth Cropsey Reporter/researcher, "Fortune The most significant point made in Gerard Chaliand's new book is that nationalism, not the desire for massive social restructuring, has inspired the majority of revolutions over the past 30 years A correspondent for Le Monde and occasional political science teacher in the United States, Chaliand has previously written on Africa, Vietnam, the Palestinian "resistance," and Algeria His latest work, more ambitious than its size suggests, holds forth on Marxist theory, ancient Oriental philosophy, the social customs of rural Asia, Colombian history, demographics, foreign trade economics, and more At its core is the familiar charge of many Third Worlders and their First World" supporters—justice denied The author feels that capitalist nations have sacked the underdeveloped countries for raw materials, thereby sharpening an already desperate poverty "Latin America," he writes, "took in $1 1 billion [in U S investments] between 1965 and 1968 and payed out $5 4 billion in profits " In addition, we are told, ruling classes in some parts of the Third World have cozied up with foreign interests at their compatriots' expense Accoidingly, the main political question is how to solve these economic problems And the answer, Chaliand declares, is ladical social change But starting with Africa's many successful revolutions against the colonials, he finds that Marxist rhetoric notwithstanding, the victorious natives have instead imposed their own regimes of unmixed self-interest Latin America has done no better Indeed, only in a very few places—such as China and Vietnam—has society actually been uprooted and remade To explain this phenomenon, Chaliand draws brief geopolitical-cultural-historical sketches of individual nations or regions The Marxist takeover in North Vietnam, for instance, is pictured as "a fairly smooth transition from Confucianism " Fairly smooth compared to Russia or China, perhaps Chaliand passes daintily over the bullying and slaughter Ho Chi Minh's government practiced in the early '50s to mold the country to its own specifications Yet what is really remarkable about this description—considering the author's orientation—is the idea that Confucianism preceded Marxism as the controlling influence in people's lives A Vietnamese writer, Nguyen Khac Vien, is quoted admiringly "Confucianism having for centuries accustomed minds not to speculate on the great beyond, Marxism had much less trouble being accepted than in Islamic or Christian countries " Chaliand also discovers other national traditions that helped make Vietnam ripe for Communism the independence of the village from central authority, the emphasis on communal life, the "patient and sustained effort" encouraged by a military used to conquest and resistance Coming from one who seems perfectly at ease with Marx, this approach is odd Marx, after all, saw the forces that shape human existence as fundamentally economic, not cultural and surely not religious However temporal it may be, Confucianism is certainly not the equal of feudalism or capitalism in Marx's dialectic Cultural-historical analyses are used to show why particular societies are not right tor Marxism, too Chaliand regards the Arab states as insecure about their national identity and so obsessed with "clutching at the past" that they cannot see how good Communism would be for them Their situation is quite different from that of China or Vietnam, where people never had to "worry about losing their identity if they embraced Marxism-Leninism" (although a good number had to worry about losing their lives if they did not) While interesting, Chaliand's reasoning is full of contradictions—to use a term he relishes Some of these have already been suggested, and others become apparent when we reach the root of his original fascination with the Third World—a keen disappointment in the major Communist powers Chaliand wrote off China because of its bureaucratic class, its apotheosis of Mao and a foreign policy neglectful of advancing revolution, Stalinist terror and the Soviet bureaucracy qualified the USSR for similar disapproval Disillusioned, he looked elsewhere in hopes of finding some place that would accept Marxism without perverting it But after turning to the Third World he soon recognized that the societies there bore little resemblance to the one Marx thought The Revolution would spring from On the one hand, then, Chaliand maintains that revolution depends greatly upon a society's unique cultural-historical character On the other, that the complex bundle of Marxist-Leninist doctrine requires revolution to be interpreted ideologically Pulled in opposite directions by the two positions, Chaliand at first tries to walk the line Still, it is plain that he thinks individual cultural-historical patterns are ultimately weightier than the ideology of dialectical materialism in determining what son of regime will prevail in a given country All this brings the author to a sticky place, forcing him to be selects c in his Marxist-Leninist sympathies The bloodsucker theory explaining commerce between richer and poorer nations is fine with him More important, he believes deeply in the leveled society, the proletarian regime that practicing Marxists may quarrel over but generally prefer to capitalism Marx, however, had little to justify his social vision except the conception of it as a step along history's remorseless path, and without that idea, there is not a shadow of a reason in Marx to await the bourgeoisie's demise, the equal distribution of property or the ultimate withering away of the state Chaliand's problem is that he is no longer convinced economic determinism is correct What he saw in the Third World made him realize that other forces are at least as influential these, alas, reveal the power of the nationalism or "tribalism" he loathes Thus he ends the book groping for a principle that his notion of a just society can be based on And thus, not surprisingly, the world looks mostly irrational to him What order remains would not gladden a Utopian "If the essence of politics is domination," Chaliand asks, "is the aim of socialism—the abolition of conflicts and the end of history—a dream worth defending...

...A very good question Yet the author's seeming acceptance of its premise means that he has flip-flopped from one extremely narrow impression of human nature to its precise opposite—from the conviction that society is fundamentally perfectable to the idea that what men really want is to parade each other around in chains On the possibility that a moderate picture of man could exist, or even be sought, between those poles, Chaliand is silent And that silence is Revolution in the Third World's, most telling flaw...