Dear Comrades, Bill Koehnlein's film review post (by Mitchel Cohen in Z Magazine) about Che Guevara and Louis Proyect's response started good discussion on socialism in Cuba and elsewhere. Jim Devine's mild response to Louis attracted other bystanders into the discussion. Unfortunately, the discussion was quickly degenerated because of ill-temperaments. Before I ask a question about socialism from above/below, I would like to make a comment about the tone of our discussions and intolerance shown to those with whom we disagree. This raises a question in my mind. We are generally homogenous group of left leaning intellectuals. Often we take the role of being vanguard. We each have in our mind a kind of socialist society that we dream and in some way we orchestrate our praxis toward that goal. The puzzling question is: if we can't get along comradely with each other as a small homogenous group of like minded people, how we can get along and live in a socialist society that we want to create, a society that is very heterogeneous? A society that we want to build has all kind of people, all kind of races, religions, colors, languages, etc. How are we going to tolerate those who are utterly different from us? Some of our neighbors would be shepherds, auto-mechanics, farmers, preachers, teachers, truck drivers, insurance salesperson, skin heads, etc. All those people are going to have different values, knowledge, tolerance level, habits, etc. How are we all going to work together to build a future society that we idealize? Now, let me turn to the socialism discussion. I find comments about Che and his Cuban revolution as well as revolutions in other parts of the world are illuminating in general, but disengaged from reality. As if we are living in a different planet that is accidentally called "utopia." Can we bring our feet to touch the ground here? All third world revolutions are called socialist revolution from above. I would like to know a definition of socialist revolution from below. How is it made? Who makes it? Are there blue-prints of it available somewhere? How is it supposed to happen? Are we going to hold referendum for it? Are we going to ask peasants to vote for the revolution? Are we going to go to every factory to hold election? Are we looking for 51% approval in order to call it socialist revolution from below? A 75% or 100%? What are we looking for? Are we looking for every peasant, farmer, farm worker, factory worker, teacher, civil servant to quit their work and grab arms against landowners and capitalists? With whom Che Guevara was fighting in Bolivian jungles? Who were fighting along with Mao in China, with Ho in Vietnam? Who were those people fighting with Fidel and Che? In the 1930s, more than 95% of the Chinese population was in rural areas and most of those were peasants. Do you think Mao or Fidel and Che were fighting with factory workers? With intellectuals? There is no such thing as spontaneous uprising or revolution. Social changes were always brought about step by step and gradually, and not spontaneously. And these social changes were always started by a group of individuals most of whom were working class people, not intellectuals. There were not (and are not) enough intellectuals to carry out actual fighting. It does not mean that there were no intellectuals among the fighting people. There were, and most of those involved with strategy of fighting. I would love to see answers to these questions. These are the questions worth discussing. Sometimes we have tendency to engage in discussing stultifying questions which marginalize most of the people in the list. In Struggle for peace and justice for all. Fikret. PS. In late October/early November, I introduced Nader candidacy for president, not necessarily expecting the establishment of spontaneous socialism by Nader or anybody else. I used the name of Ralph Nader as a generic candidate. Nader was not going to establish socialism as we understand, but his election would have established conditions conducive for socialist struggles. Nader candidacy was summarily dismissed by some of us as irrelevant for socialism, rather than discussing why his election would or would not promote or lead to socialism. *+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++* +Fikret Ceyhun voice: (701)777-3348 work + +Dept. of Economics (701)772-5135 home + +Univ. of North Dakota fax: (701)777-5099 + +University Station, Box 8369 + +Grand Forks, ND 58202/USA e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] + *+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++*