INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIALIST RENEWAL
Together with New and Old Project, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewalis republishing a revised and updated edition of Marta Harnecker’s “Ideas for the Struggle”, a collection of 12 articles looking at the question of how to organise for socialism in the 21st century.
The entire text is available to download (PDF) here. Links will also be publishing each article individually over the coming weeks.
In a short introductory note, Harnecker explains: “The following text is made up of 12 articles that were first published in Venezuela in 2004 and that were slightly modified in 2016. They were written without a predetermined order in mind and I have preferred to maintain this order to facilitate discussion with my earlier readers. I recommend starting from the topic that most interests you and then reading the rest of the text. As it is impossible to develop all facets of an idea in two pages, only by reading the whole text will readers be able to fully understand each individual article.”
Below, we are republishing the introduction that the editors at Old and New have written to explain the relevance of Marta’s pamphlet for today’s activists. Together we believe that by republishing Harnecker’s “Ideas for the struggle” we can help stimulate a much need debate on the left, and hope to publish comments and responses to the text on both websites.
Introduction
By editors at Old and New
August 20, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/New and Old Project— When we asked Marta Harnecker whether it would be OK to post her “Ideas for the Struggle” (12 short articles about the left and the challenges it faces) on the Old and New website, with an invitation to revolutionary activists in the USA to discuss it, she said she would be delighted. But she also urged that we write an introduction explaining why a piece that was originally composed in 2004 is being reprinted today, with only a few modifications. That question, however, seems relatively easy: not much has changed on the revolutionary left since 2004 concerning the issues Harnecker is addressing in these notes. They have not been adequately discussed or resolved, far from it.
Another question also seems significant: Why do we think a text inspired by and considering the practices of the Latin American left will be helpful to revolutionaries in the USA? This should also be obvious to readers who take even a quick look at the topics Harnecker considers. Each one of her specific notes points to a significant difficulty for the left in the USA and other “advanced” nations too. The problems are not unique to Latin America.
Indeed, most of “Ideas for the Struggle” might have been written directly about the US left and its experience without changing a single word. And even a section that is more specific to Latin America, like article eight, merely requires that we acknowledge a slightly different historical context: Latin America went through a period, in the living memory of many present-day activists, in which military or other forms of dictatorship were the governmental norm. The need to develop a revolutionary movement which could work effectively, strictly outside governmental institutions, left a strong imprint on the thinking of many leftists. Its a legacy which (Harnecker tells us) needs to be reconsidered today with the turn toward more “democratic” forms of rule throughout the continent. In the USA, of course, the “democratic” form of rule is the only kind we have known. And yet the set of problems that Harnecker discusses in this section of her document is still relevant for us, as are many of her insights—precisely because the political realities in Latin America are now much more like those in the USA.
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