history never written by individuals?

[communard resolution]

How does the leftist/Marxist view that history is never written by Great Men/Great Women account for the fact that US imperialists are usually hellbent on destroying leaders of countries and political movements before everything else?

America's policies in regards to destroying socialism in Cuba, for instance, place the utmost importance on CIA plots to assassinate Castro - according to another user's post today, there have been 600+ such attempts under various US administrations. Would the US invest so much thought and resources into killing one single man -the leader of the revolution- if they weren't absolutely certain, quite possibly from experience with comparable situations, that it would dramatically alter its course?

[politics student]

How does the leftist/Marxist view that history is never written by Great Men/Great Women account for the fact that US imperialists are usually hellbent on destroying leaders of countries and political movements before everything else?

America's policies at destroying socialism in Cuba, for instance, place the utmost importance on CIA plots to assassinate Castro - according to another user's post today, there have been 600+ such attempts under various US administrations. Would the US invest so much thought and resources into killing one single man -the leader of the revolution- if they weren't absolutely certain, quite possibly from experience with comparable situations, that it would dramatically alter its course?

638 attempts on his life.

Well the USA has done much evil but it is not taught in schools, misinformation is a mayor issue.

I never got over the fact they celebrate thanks giving, they wiped out 1/4 of the worlds population in colonizing (Cutting off the native Americans from food supplies, diseases and of course the conflicts between them o lets not forget the total cultural genocide of the natives. *takes a deep breath*

The CIA has been a method to kill all governments which cared for their people to the point they may attack the oil/food/luxury goods supply. They are capitalist imperialists. :(

A quick google search can find you a few CIA timelines.


Late 40's: Operation MOCKINGBIRD
The CIA begins recruiting American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda. Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham head the effort. Graham is publisher of The Washington Post, which becomes a major CIA player. Eventually, the CIA's media assets will include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service and more. By the CIA's own admission, at least 25 organizations and 400 journalists will become CIA assets.
1953: Iran
CIA overthrows the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after he threatened to nationalize British oil. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police, SAVAK, is as brutal as the Gestapo.
Operation MK-ULTRA
Inspired by North Korea's brainwashing program, the CIA begins experiments on mind control. The most notorious part of this project involves giving LSD and other drugs to American subjects without their knowledge or against their will, causing several to commit suicide. However, the operation involves far more than this. Funded in part by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, research includes propaganda, brainwashing, public relations, advertising, hypnosis, and other forms of suggestion.
1954: Guatemala
CIA overthrows the democratically elected Jacob Arbenz in a military coup. Arbenz has threatened to nationalize the Rockefeller-owned United Fruit Company, in which CIA Director Allen Dulles also owns stock. Arbenz is replaced with a series of right-wing dictators whose bloodthirsty policies will kill over 100,000 Guatemalans in the next 40 years.

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/cia_time.htm

[Schrödinger's Cat]

People act as symbols. It isn't necessarily the death of Castro, but the consequences it sends to the people. Cue the line from V for Vendetta...

[communard resolution]

Really? Millions and millions of dollars spent on 600+ attempts at accomplishing a symbolic act? This would imply that the CIA are a bunch of hotheaded idealists, which I'm sure they aren't. Couldn't they have invested all that money into other counter-revolutionary measures?

To me, it looks like revolutionary Cuba has been entirely dependent on the individual Castro, and its enemies seem to have been well aware of that for several decades.

[OI OI OI]

How does the leftist/Marxist view that history is never written by Great Men/Great Women

Marxism never claimed that individuals cannot play a big role in history. But they can do so only in certain objective conditions.
If there was no revolutionary situation Lenin would have not played a great role in the Russian Revolution. Etc etc.

Your question is why the bourgeoisie spent so much money on attempts on Castro and other leaders. Because the conditions in Cuba are such that with the death of Castro which acts as a symbol of socialism (!) , socialism in Cuba will collapse.
This might be true only because the objective conditions are those of a counter-revolution in Cuba.

[communard resolution]

Marxism never claimed that individuals cannot play a big role in history. But they can do so only in certain objective conditions.

Hmm... but that kind of goes without saying, even from a bourgeois historian perspective. No bourgeois source, for example, will claim that Hitler came out of the blue and half of Germany decided to vote for his party because he was such a charming dude that the Germans didn't even mind his extreme racism. Most historians will say the NSDAP rose to power because the objective conditions were there. In this, I don't see how the Marxist approach to history greatly differs from the bourgeois view.


Your question is why the bourgeoisie spent so much money on attempts on Castro and other leaders. Because the conditions in Cuba are such that with the death of Castro which acts as a symbol of socialism (!) , socialism in Cuba will collapse.This still sounds very much like "kill the queen ant and the hive will collapse".


This might be true only because the objective conditions are those of a counter-revolution in Cuba.Do you mean the objective conditions are those of a counter-revolution in Cuba right now, or have they been in the past five decades (during which attempts on Castros life have been made)?

[OI OI OI]

Hmm... but that kind of goes without saying, even from a bourgeois historian perspective. No bourgeois source, for example, will claim that Hitler came out of the blue and half of Germany decided to vote for his party because he was such a charming dude that the Germans didn't even mind his extreme racism. Most historians will say the NSDAP rose to power because the objective conditions were there. In this, I don't see how the Marxist approach to history greatly differs from the bourgeois view.

Haha . Just because bourgeois historians claim that in certain objective conditions an individual can have an impact in history does not make it a false statement.....



This still sounds very much like "kill the queen ant and the hive will collapse".

Well Cuba is another Stalinist state though weaker one (with a weaker bureaucracy ) and Fidel's image is just another cult.
With Fidel dead the Americans thought that the people will be turned against the regime....that does not mean that it is nesesarily true..



Do you mean the objective conditions are those of a counter-revolution in Cuba right now, or have they been in the past five decades (during which attempts on Castros life have been made)?

I dont know if I am right but I think that conditions for a counter-revolution by the bureaucracy itself exist in Cuba. And this trend will show itself after the death of Castro.

Don't forget that the bureaucracy sold out "socialism" in the USSR, China and Yugoslavia after their cultist leaders died( Stalin, Mao and Tito respectively.
So Castros death can mean the start of the counter-revolution(not from the people, never from the people) on the part of the bureaucracy.
Of course now there is another variant in the situation which is Venezuela.
If things in Venezuela turn out good then this will dialecticaly reinforce the revolution in Cuba. ....

[Black Dagger]

How does the leftist/Marxist view that history is never written by Great Men/Great Women account for the fact that US imperialists are usually hellbent on destroying leaders of countries and political movements before everything else?

I'm so confused by this sentence, i don't see how the two are necessarily connected in any way? One is a theory of history writing the other is a stategy of war.

In hiearchal organisations, like governments or most political movements - the structure ensures that people are not capable of autonomous action or otherwise are limited in this capacity - being trained to follow rather than to think, act and organise themselves for their own liberation. In hierarchal organisation people simply look for someone else to tell them what to do next. Thus in such organisations or movements it makes sense to eliminate the leadership. Because in these organisations and movements decision making is centralised and flows from the top down. It will throw everything into disarray. That isn't a comment on history but on organisation. That hierarchal organisation exists and has certain obvious vulnerabilities doesn't negate the fact that reality is constructed in an impossibly complex manner, and thus to attribute control over its creation or direction to the actions of specific individuals is obscenely simplistic/flawed.



In this, I don't see how the Marxist approach to history greatly differs from the bourgeois view.


It doesn't, necessarily. Marxist historiography grew out of the bourgeois, liberal humanist tradition. Although there are obviously thematic differences, there is still a big emphasis on 'big men'/leaders in some marxist history and on structural/institutional analysis (another popular lense of bourgeois history) - essentialising certain actors such as 'the working class' etc. - i think it comes with all this pretension to being a 'science'.

[Invader Zim]

I think that rather than showing the flaw of structuralism, the policy exposes the way American conservatives think. They attribute the ideology of the vast majority of a nation to its leadership, and that socialism would collapse in Cuba without its figurehead. While I think that it is testement to the ideology of the nation that a Castro is still leader in Cuba.

[Black Dagger]

I think that rather than showing the flaw of structuralism,

Oh i wasn't suggesting that; my comments about structuralism and about marxist historiography weren't linked with a point about US policy in cuba.

I agree that this policy was driven in part by the particular ideological mix of US politics.

[Invader Zim]

My apologies BD, I wasn't actually passing comment on what you said, but rather the opening post in light of your post. Sorry for not being clear.

[Black Dagger]

Oh ok, no worries mate.

[communard resolution]

Haha . Just because bourgeois historians claim that in certain objective conditions an individual can have an impact in history does not make it a false statement.....

I wasn't claiming it was a false statement. I said that I couldn't see a significant difference between the Marxist and the bourgeois view in regards to that.

[communard resolution]

OK, thanks to everybody for their comments so far. I can easily see how my OP is a bit confusing as I've probably mixed up a few things (plus I'm sometimes struggling to express my thoughts clearly in a language that isn't my first). So... thanks for your efforts to make sense of what I was trying to say.

I think I should have put a bigger emphasis on the notion that the CIA approach to problem solving almost certainly derives from experience with comparable situations in which their counterrevolutionary strategies have proved successful, rather than by conservative/rightwing ideology. Which in turns would contradict the notion that individuals/Great Man aren't essential in revolutionary situations.

[ComradeOm]

It doesn't, necessarily. Marxist historiography grew out of the bourgeois, liberal humanist traditionActually its the other way around. Marx wasn't the first historian to de-emphasise great men or ideals in favour of social/economic trends, but he did have a profound impact on Western historiography which, particularly during the post-WWII decades in English speaking nations, increasingly drew (often directly and explicitly from Marxism) on materialist and social themes. The example given (ie Hitler) is the perfect illustration of this - beyond some vaguely defined fear of 'Prussian militarism' it wasn't until the 60s that most mainstream bourgeois academics began to consider Hitler a result of Germany's problems rather than the cause


Which in turns would contradict the notion that individuals/Great Man aren't essential in revolutionary situations.Who said they weren't? There's a tendency amongst students of historical materialism, and this has always been the case, to run to the extreme limits of the theory and declare that individuals are irrelevant. That's just vulgar Marxism. To quote Marx himself (emphasis as original):

"History does nothing, it possesses no immense wealth, it wages no battles. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights. History is not a person apart using man as a means to achieve its own aims. History is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims"

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Really? Millions and millions of dollars spent on 600+ attempts at accomplishing a symbolic act? This would imply that the CIA are a bunch of hotheaded idealists, which I'm sure they aren't. Couldn't they have invested all that money into other counter-revolutionary measures?

To me, it looks like revolutionary Cuba has been entirely dependent on the individual Castro, and its enemies seem to have been well aware of that for several decades.

That doesn't explain why Cuba is doing just fine with Raul Castro.

[Chapter 24]

Individuals can alter the course of history, but it is my understanding that they cannot do this without supporters behind them. The New World discoveries were not discovered by a sole indivdual alone but by crews of navigators; scientific creations such as that of the atom bomb were not created by one scientist but by an international team of scientists. Individuals themselves can hold great power as to how the course of an event takes place, but this is usually in an imaginary self-proclaimed sense and ultimately the collective is what makes history and not sole individuals.


America's policies in regards to destroying socialism in Cuba, for instance, place the utmost importance on CIA plots to assassinate Castro - according to another user's post today, there have been 600+ such attempts under various US administrations. Would the US invest so much thought and resources into killing one single man -the leader of the revolution- if they weren't absolutely certain, quite possibly from experience with comparable situations, that it would dramatically alter its course?

I think the CIA holds the notion that if they were to assassinate Fidel then that would, as a result, demoralize the Cuban people and the revolution would in turn collapse. This is the tactic the U.S. government attempted during the Bay of Pigs Invasion, correct?

[Decolonize The Left]

How does the leftist/Marxist view that history is never written by Great Men/Great Women account for the fact that US imperialists are usually hellbent on destroying leaders of countries and political movements before everything else?

Chicken and the egg problem? "History", that is the record of past events, is to be treated as the present in the case of this question. Who 'writes' the great events of our time? Neither great people nor conditions. Both are vital to any event taking place. People shape conditions just as conditions shape people. People choose to do things over others, and are influenced by their conditions to change them. It is all interrelated.

I further don't see how the attempted assassinations of Castro push this argument in favor of one option or the other. There are both symbolic and materialist reasons for the US to want Castro dead.

- August

Edit: The 'chicken and the egg' problem is actually a misnomer, the egg came first.