Radical Atom
2nd October 2016, 19:08
Some time ago I looked up Simon de Bolivar's history due to his popularity in southern american nations, even to the point of being invoked by "socialist" Hugo Chvez and calling his government a Bolivarian Revolution.
Pretty much what I expected, you know, a bonapartist who despite being a tyrant he had a somewhat "progressive" role in history (the liberation of many south-american colonial territories from imperial rule that is, if only to have them under his rule). A latin american Napoleon if you will, after all the Bolivian Code mirrored Napoleon's.
What at the time surprised me to find out, is that Marx had a quite strong opinion on him (I actually didn't even know he had expressed a particular opinion on Bolivar).
So I started doing some research and this is what I found out:
Apparently he was asked to contribute to the The New American Cyclopedia by New York Tribune editor Charles Dana mainly on matters of military history, biography and terminology. One of the articles was of course, military leader and political tyrant Simn de Bolivar. AFAIK there's no other mention to him in Marx's works, at least not until then.
You can read the article in English here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/01/bolivar.htm
What's fun about this little quest is that it lead to very interesting discoveries:
CONTEMPORARY POLITICS is FAMILIAR with the moot issue of the justification for authoritarian dictatorships in developing countries, where the economic and political backwardness of the people and society is taken to prove the undesirability of democratic institutions for popular control from below. Generally speaking there are two schools of apologia: one defending only those authoritarian regimes that orient toward dependence on American power and that protect foreign capital investments with adequate enthusiasm; and the other vindicating only those dictatorships that replace the old property-holding classes with a new class of bureaucratic-collectivist rulers, or seem to be on the way to do so. While the first type of dictatorship automatically becomes a member of the Free World, in Washingtons slang, the latter type may adopt a sobriquet like Communism or African Socialism, etc. with appropriate references to a hyphenated or unhyphenated Marxism.
The subject of this study is not the line of argument used to justify progressive authoritarianisms today, but only the relation of Marxs views to this question, since his name is so often taken in vain. It is true Marx did not have an opportunity to express an opinion on the regimes of Castro, Nkrumah, Mao, Nasser and their similars; but as it happens, he took up a case which would seem to be a far less disputable example of a progressive authoritarian who led a great national-liberation movement. This was Simon Bolvar, the Liberator of northern South America.
The case is sharpened by the fact that Marx does not question the progressiveness and legitimacy of that national-independence movement itself; and by the fact that, over a century ago, justification-by-backwardness had a better prima-facie case than in the modern world, which on an international scale is rotten-ripe for socialism from the Marxist point of view.There is no suggestion that the case is closed by putting Marxs views in evidence; the aim is only to establish the facts in Marxs case, since they have been disputed, as we shall see. We shall also see that Marxs views, controversial over a century ago, were just as controversial only a few years ago when they once more became involved in a large-scale historical hassle in Latin America over Bolvar.
It is not only a matter of Bolvar. It is strange that there are Marxists today who think that support to modernizing dictatorships is a new and fresh idea for socialists, dating from about the end of World War II. In point of fact, the socialist movement began with the concept of the educational dictatorship, as I have discussed elsewhere, and nothing could be more natural. There were social struggles in undeveloped countries in Marxs day too; after all, more countries were undeveloped. Indeed, the first underdeveloped countries with which Marx dealt historically were none other than England, France and Germany, taken when they were faced with the initial tasks of industrializing, under an exploiting ruling class which was yet willy-nilly performing a certain historic role. The most passionate pages in Marx are reserved for denouncing the oppressive forms of capitalist rule in the Industrial Revolution. The political form which often clothed the modernizing function of the bourgeois New Class in underveloped France was Bonapartism; and there is no political force which Marx spent more time excoriating.Still, the case of Bolvar more clearly brings out the then-and-now symmetry of the underlying problem. True, Marx viewed Bolvar as a case of Bonapartism; but here was a Bonapartism which did not arise after a Thermidor, and still less after a whole historical interval like the third Bonaparte; rather, it was integrally involved in the leadership of the ongoing national-liberation movement itself, as in several modern cases.
[...]
Marxs article on Bolvar remained virtually unknown until it was republished for the first time, albeit in Russian translation, in the Marx-Engels Sochineniia, vol.II, Part 2, (1934). In 1937 it was included in the Communist-published collection Revolution in Spain, which also appeared in Spanish as La Revolucion Espaola. There was no editorial comment on Marxs viewpoint. As late as 1951, when the US Communist Party chief W.Z. Foster published his Outline Political History of the Americas, Marxs article was quoted favorably. But this turned out to be the wrong line on Latin American history.
When the second edition of the Sochineniia was published, vol.14 (1959) carried a sharp attack on Marxs article, which was also faithfully translated in the East German Marx-Engels Werke (vol.14, 1961). The attack by the Communist editors is couched in the usual terms of excusing Marx for not knowing any better in his day. It decries Marxs sources as untrustworthy (which they were indeed), and includes in this decrial also any conception of Bolvar as a dictator. Its claims for Bolvar as a progressive include this: He succeeded in binding together for a while in this struggle the patriotic elements of the Creole landowners ... the bourgeoisie, and the mass of people, including the Indians and Negroes.
And it disposes of Marx as follows: Naturally Marx had at that time no other sources at his disposal than the books of the authors mentioned, whose bias was then only little known. It was therefore inevitable that Marx got a one-sided view of Bolvars personality which was reflected in his essay. This striving of Bolvars for personal power which was exaggerated in the literature mentioned could not remain without influence on Marxs attitude toward Bolvar ...
The key claim, that Naturally Marx had at that time no other sources at his disposal than the anti-Bolvar books he cited, is intended to suggest that Marxs view of Bolvar was merely the result of misinformation, rather than of political opinion. Even if one grants that Marx innocently accepted the misinformation, this does not change the political meaning of his reaction to this misinformation. If you react to the news that the US has dropped an H-bomb on Peking by denouncing Washington, then this is an indicator of your political views, even if it turns out later that the news was misinformation.
Marx reacted to his image of Bolvar with a kind of political attack which nowadays is ridiculed not only by Communist Realpolitiker but also by a legion of bourgeois realists, who agree that undeveloped nations need dictators. The conclusion is inescapable that Marx put a human value on democratic freedom which is alien to both of these varieties of realism.
But as a matter of fact, the Communist editors claim is quite false. It is not true that Marx had no other sources at his disposal etc. It is not true that an anti-Bolvar attitude was prevalent and accepted when Marx wrote his article.
We have already mentioned that, in working on the NAC articles, Marx went through the extant encyclopedias French, German, and English-language. The articles which he read in these encyclopedias were overwhelmingly pro-Bolvar, mainly uncritically so. This can be checked with little trouble in the then current editions of the Encyclopaedia Americana, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Penny Encyclopaedia, the Encyclopedie du XIX. Sicle, the Dictionnaire de la Conversation, the Brockhaus Conversations-Lexikon. For all four countries represented here, the picture is unequivocal. It was Marxs article that was out-of-step, and that is exactly why Dana questioned it apprehensively.
A discussion of the state of modern scholarship on Bolvars dictatorial ambitions is not possible in this article. It is a thorny subject. On the one hand, there is the standard hagiography, or Bolvarolatry, of most Latin American writings on the subject. On the other hand, the polar-opposite view is now represented most prominently by Salvador de Madariagas devastating job Bolvar, whose impact was fatally weakened by its essentially pro-Spanish slant to the point of drawing attention away from its massive documentation. The result was an anti-Madariaga furor which we cannot here untangle.
However, if we limit ourselves to the single question of Bolvars authoritarianism, the picture is not quite so complicated. The numerous and violent denunciators of Madariaga have had little to say on the facts in this respect, preferring either to ignore them or to justify them with fairly common varieties of anti-democratic argumentation. In the light of Madariagas factual structure, Marxs attack on Bolvars dictatorial politics suffered only from mildness.
[...]
THUS MARX REMAINS, TO THIS DAY, one of the few champions of the democratic aspirations for which the northern South Americans fought against their Liberator. He does not accept the rationalizations for dictatorship, which have not changed much in a century and a half.
Hal Draper's full article, worth the read just for the historical insight: https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1968/winter/bolivar.htm
Not that I necessarily agree with his opinion in its entirety.
So there you go,
I wanted to share since it is a worthwhile read and it also might lead to an interesting discussion.
Pretty much what I expected, you know, a bonapartist who despite being a tyrant he had a somewhat "progressive" role in history (the liberation of many south-american colonial territories from imperial rule that is, if only to have them under his rule). A latin american Napoleon if you will, after all the Bolivian Code mirrored Napoleon's.
What at the time surprised me to find out, is that Marx had a quite strong opinion on him (I actually didn't even know he had expressed a particular opinion on Bolivar).
So I started doing some research and this is what I found out:
Apparently he was asked to contribute to the The New American Cyclopedia by New York Tribune editor Charles Dana mainly on matters of military history, biography and terminology. One of the articles was of course, military leader and political tyrant Simn de Bolivar. AFAIK there's no other mention to him in Marx's works, at least not until then.
You can read the article in English here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/01/bolivar.htm
What's fun about this little quest is that it lead to very interesting discoveries:
CONTEMPORARY POLITICS is FAMILIAR with the moot issue of the justification for authoritarian dictatorships in developing countries, where the economic and political backwardness of the people and society is taken to prove the undesirability of democratic institutions for popular control from below. Generally speaking there are two schools of apologia: one defending only those authoritarian regimes that orient toward dependence on American power and that protect foreign capital investments with adequate enthusiasm; and the other vindicating only those dictatorships that replace the old property-holding classes with a new class of bureaucratic-collectivist rulers, or seem to be on the way to do so. While the first type of dictatorship automatically becomes a member of the Free World, in Washingtons slang, the latter type may adopt a sobriquet like Communism or African Socialism, etc. with appropriate references to a hyphenated or unhyphenated Marxism.
The subject of this study is not the line of argument used to justify progressive authoritarianisms today, but only the relation of Marxs views to this question, since his name is so often taken in vain. It is true Marx did not have an opportunity to express an opinion on the regimes of Castro, Nkrumah, Mao, Nasser and their similars; but as it happens, he took up a case which would seem to be a far less disputable example of a progressive authoritarian who led a great national-liberation movement. This was Simon Bolvar, the Liberator of northern South America.
The case is sharpened by the fact that Marx does not question the progressiveness and legitimacy of that national-independence movement itself; and by the fact that, over a century ago, justification-by-backwardness had a better prima-facie case than in the modern world, which on an international scale is rotten-ripe for socialism from the Marxist point of view.There is no suggestion that the case is closed by putting Marxs views in evidence; the aim is only to establish the facts in Marxs case, since they have been disputed, as we shall see. We shall also see that Marxs views, controversial over a century ago, were just as controversial only a few years ago when they once more became involved in a large-scale historical hassle in Latin America over Bolvar.
It is not only a matter of Bolvar. It is strange that there are Marxists today who think that support to modernizing dictatorships is a new and fresh idea for socialists, dating from about the end of World War II. In point of fact, the socialist movement began with the concept of the educational dictatorship, as I have discussed elsewhere, and nothing could be more natural. There were social struggles in undeveloped countries in Marxs day too; after all, more countries were undeveloped. Indeed, the first underdeveloped countries with which Marx dealt historically were none other than England, France and Germany, taken when they were faced with the initial tasks of industrializing, under an exploiting ruling class which was yet willy-nilly performing a certain historic role. The most passionate pages in Marx are reserved for denouncing the oppressive forms of capitalist rule in the Industrial Revolution. The political form which often clothed the modernizing function of the bourgeois New Class in underveloped France was Bonapartism; and there is no political force which Marx spent more time excoriating.Still, the case of Bolvar more clearly brings out the then-and-now symmetry of the underlying problem. True, Marx viewed Bolvar as a case of Bonapartism; but here was a Bonapartism which did not arise after a Thermidor, and still less after a whole historical interval like the third Bonaparte; rather, it was integrally involved in the leadership of the ongoing national-liberation movement itself, as in several modern cases.
[...]
Marxs article on Bolvar remained virtually unknown until it was republished for the first time, albeit in Russian translation, in the Marx-Engels Sochineniia, vol.II, Part 2, (1934). In 1937 it was included in the Communist-published collection Revolution in Spain, which also appeared in Spanish as La Revolucion Espaola. There was no editorial comment on Marxs viewpoint. As late as 1951, when the US Communist Party chief W.Z. Foster published his Outline Political History of the Americas, Marxs article was quoted favorably. But this turned out to be the wrong line on Latin American history.
When the second edition of the Sochineniia was published, vol.14 (1959) carried a sharp attack on Marxs article, which was also faithfully translated in the East German Marx-Engels Werke (vol.14, 1961). The attack by the Communist editors is couched in the usual terms of excusing Marx for not knowing any better in his day. It decries Marxs sources as untrustworthy (which they were indeed), and includes in this decrial also any conception of Bolvar as a dictator. Its claims for Bolvar as a progressive include this: He succeeded in binding together for a while in this struggle the patriotic elements of the Creole landowners ... the bourgeoisie, and the mass of people, including the Indians and Negroes.
And it disposes of Marx as follows: Naturally Marx had at that time no other sources at his disposal than the books of the authors mentioned, whose bias was then only little known. It was therefore inevitable that Marx got a one-sided view of Bolvars personality which was reflected in his essay. This striving of Bolvars for personal power which was exaggerated in the literature mentioned could not remain without influence on Marxs attitude toward Bolvar ...
The key claim, that Naturally Marx had at that time no other sources at his disposal than the anti-Bolvar books he cited, is intended to suggest that Marxs view of Bolvar was merely the result of misinformation, rather than of political opinion. Even if one grants that Marx innocently accepted the misinformation, this does not change the political meaning of his reaction to this misinformation. If you react to the news that the US has dropped an H-bomb on Peking by denouncing Washington, then this is an indicator of your political views, even if it turns out later that the news was misinformation.
Marx reacted to his image of Bolvar with a kind of political attack which nowadays is ridiculed not only by Communist Realpolitiker but also by a legion of bourgeois realists, who agree that undeveloped nations need dictators. The conclusion is inescapable that Marx put a human value on democratic freedom which is alien to both of these varieties of realism.
But as a matter of fact, the Communist editors claim is quite false. It is not true that Marx had no other sources at his disposal etc. It is not true that an anti-Bolvar attitude was prevalent and accepted when Marx wrote his article.
We have already mentioned that, in working on the NAC articles, Marx went through the extant encyclopedias French, German, and English-language. The articles which he read in these encyclopedias were overwhelmingly pro-Bolvar, mainly uncritically so. This can be checked with little trouble in the then current editions of the Encyclopaedia Americana, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Penny Encyclopaedia, the Encyclopedie du XIX. Sicle, the Dictionnaire de la Conversation, the Brockhaus Conversations-Lexikon. For all four countries represented here, the picture is unequivocal. It was Marxs article that was out-of-step, and that is exactly why Dana questioned it apprehensively.
A discussion of the state of modern scholarship on Bolvars dictatorial ambitions is not possible in this article. It is a thorny subject. On the one hand, there is the standard hagiography, or Bolvarolatry, of most Latin American writings on the subject. On the other hand, the polar-opposite view is now represented most prominently by Salvador de Madariagas devastating job Bolvar, whose impact was fatally weakened by its essentially pro-Spanish slant to the point of drawing attention away from its massive documentation. The result was an anti-Madariaga furor which we cannot here untangle.
However, if we limit ourselves to the single question of Bolvars authoritarianism, the picture is not quite so complicated. The numerous and violent denunciators of Madariaga have had little to say on the facts in this respect, preferring either to ignore them or to justify them with fairly common varieties of anti-democratic argumentation. In the light of Madariagas factual structure, Marxs attack on Bolvars dictatorial politics suffered only from mildness.
[...]
THUS MARX REMAINS, TO THIS DAY, one of the few champions of the democratic aspirations for which the northern South Americans fought against their Liberator. He does not accept the rationalizations for dictatorship, which have not changed much in a century and a half.
Hal Draper's full article, worth the read just for the historical insight: https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1968/winter/bolivar.htm
Not that I necessarily agree with his opinion in its entirety.
So there you go,
I wanted to share since it is a worthwhile read and it also might lead to an interesting discussion.