Colombia

to one of coercion, leading to a further weakened empire. Reactionism will and must occur to reclaim lost surplus profits and geopolitical power. This inevitably ends in imperial overstretch while placing the newly revolutionized state(s) at a decisive advantage. As a result of the transfer of surplus value, the socialized nations are able to expand militant defensive power, while forcing imperial nations into a two-way political-economic disadvantage. Economically, the empire’s already bleeding coffers are further exhausted because of the losses of foreign derived profits. Politically (and militarily), it is forced into unconventional conflicts (that is, guerrilla warfare) on unfamiliar terrain; a field and strategy of battle in which modern imperial powers have proven inefficient. As the exploited begin to “liberate themselves from the bourgeois yoke” they come to consolidate and unify themselves with other states that have done the same (Lenin, 1964e: 339). Revolutionaries in Colombia, to be victorious, must recognize the country’s unique arrangement and relation to capitalism and revolution, and ensure a contextually specific non-dogmatic approach toward social change. This is achieved through a pragmatic response to domestic conditions. Theoretically, this will be dependent on the internal emancipatory dynamics and social organization from below.

EVALUATING REVOLUTION “FROM BELOW”: THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOMBIA

A great deal of theory related to the issue of revolution has muted the subject of organic struggles “from below,” opting rather for analyses dominated by the question of the centralized state.11 Take for example Theda Skocpol’s (1979) characterization that revolutions are a consequence of competition amongst nation states, or interconflict between those of the dominant class, resulting in the alteration of existing political relations. While some emphasis is placed on those from below, her thesis attests that revolutions occur through and by a dramatic shift at the level of the state, whereby dominant class competition and conflict (through domestic or international political-economic pressure) lead to state deterioration and transformation.12 Negating agency, Skocpol is chastized for developing a deterministic and dissident elitist political perspective, for only “division among the elites … increase the probability of the success of a revolutionary movement” (Defronzo, 1996: 12). “No matter what form social revolutions conceivably might take in the future (say in an industrialized, liberal-democratic nation), the fact is that historically no successful social revolution has ever been ‘made’ by a mass-mobilizing, avowedly revolutionary movement” (Skocpol, 1979: 17). Skocpol’s famous definition of revolution is the “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below” (Skocpol, 1979: 4; see also 163–4). Criticized for marginalizing the latter group, Skocpol attempted to legitimize her approach in a later work by examining the role of peasants in

revolutionary situations (1982). Providing a clever overview of multiple theories of revolution (including Marxist), she detailed the revolutionary “contribution” of those in the countryside. Characteristically, Skocpol dismissed this group as unorganized and incapable of responding to state power through class relations or militaristic capabilities.13 Incapable of revolutionary classconsciousness, peasants are universally argued to have a unified “kinship and community institutions with collective economic functions that may tie richer and poorer relatively closer together than their individual property interests might suggest” (Skocpol, 1979: 116).14 While this is marginally accurate, numerous examples of peasants organizing around class issues in Colombia prove otherwise (Larios, 2006; Röhl, 2004; Zamosc, 1986). The significance of Skocpol’s work has been its direct challenge to the 150-year canon that revolutions are the product of contradictions related to the social relations of production. She challenged that revolutions “have not conformed to Marx’s theoretical expectations” but are a consequence of state crisis (see Skocpol and Trimberger, 1986: 60). Social change is then not a result of historical processes or development, but rather a series of political responses resulting in slight transformations to the social construct. In turn, the state is interpreted as “a potentially autonomous institution” in relation to capitalism (Guggenheim and Weller, 1982: 11; see also Defronzo, 1996: 24; Skocpol, 1992: 42; 1979: 30). Unlike Marxists, such premises approach the state and capitalist class as not intrinsically linked but separate entities with periodically related interests. Viewing the state and the capitalist class as distinct reifies the thesis that “states should be viewed theoretically as conditioned by, but not entirely reducible to, economic and/or class interests” (Skocpol and Trimberger, 1986: 62). This position is of importance to this book, for Skocpol’s highly influential structural approach cannot be considered valid in the context of Colombia’s revolutionary situation, the FARC-EP’s structure, or the Colombian state’s relation to political-economic realities in much of the country. Colombia epitomizes how a state is a cemented ally (if not relative) of the dominant class. Suggesting otherwise abstracts economic conditions as secondary participants to the capital system and retards any understanding of the social relations of production (see Gilly, 2003: 108). Any theory separating capital from politics is misleading in the context of domestic capitalism and imperialism. The conjoined promotion and defense of property and surplus profits via state and class perpetuate capitalist expansion. To look at either as independent of the other is to negate the historic and present conditions of modernity.15 Antonio Gramsci noted how two superstructures exist in society: civil society (that is, the capitalist class) and state. Some have used this to imply that the state and the capitalist class, while mutually dominant, are distinct (see Skocpol, 1979: 6). Gramsci’s work, however, clarified that both superstructures combine to produce a mutually beneficial hegemony (Gramsci, 1971: 12). Essentially, class interests are extended through a united force of state and (elite) civil society (Gramsci, 1971: 263). When a (capitalist) state’s centralized power is threatened, it is “civil society” that employs reactionary forces,

external to the official coercive arm of the allied state, to assist the continuity of the paradigm (Gramsci, 1971: 238).16 Apart from this, progressive forces have also been known to be co-opted through conventional political mechanisms and/or upon their rise to power, simply continuing this vicious cycle (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2005a; Gramsci, 1973).17 A “from below” strategy could then be a sound tactic to respond to issues of political and economic class alliances, as it provides those most marginalized by capital to revolutionize society well outside the lines of convention.

State breakdown: a consequence – not cause – of revolution One of the suggested causes of grassroots involvement in revolution is a “rapid deterioration in material living conditions” and/or “a decline in capabilities of attaining them” (Defronzo, 1996: 11). Another assumption “is the breakdown of a mode of social control which prompts and allows social revolution” (Skocpol, 1976: 181). Yet such accounts fail to encapsulate the reality of social conditions and the state’s role in much of Colombia. At virtually every interview I participated in or rally I attended the phrase “ausencia del estado” was heard, as in “state authority has only weakly reached the countryside,” while negative socioeconomic and political conditions have remained constant for generations (Wickham-Crowley, 1991: 35; see also Saunders et al, 1978: 132–4; Gilbert, 1974: 142–7; Felstenhausen, 1968a, 1968b; Galbraith, 1953: 59–60, 94–5). It has even been suggested that an altogether material absence of the state has existed across the Colombian territory since independence (Sweig, 2002).18

Rapid declines in healthcare, education, human rights, and so on, are not the basis on which revolutionary sentiment has pervaded Colombia for decades, nor has social welfare and state confidence suddenly deteriorated, simply because such conditions have never been present. Those in the countryside have yet to experience a degeneration in living conditions, as they have experienced a constancy of squalor and exploitation through capitalist and state forces. In fact, the only measure of state presence in much of rural Colombia has been that of the state forces, which does not constitute state authority (see Kalyvas, 2006: 113n.2; Gutiérrez Sanín, 2004: 275–6). On the contrary, it demonstrates a lack thereof (Henderson, 1985: 109). While a potential for the state to break down is real, the revolutionary dynamic being experienced in Colombia is not a consequence of fractured centralized power in Bogotá. Dominant class power remains very much intact as noted by Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín (2004: 276): “Colombia has a quite stable democratic institutionality vis-à-vis its level of development, and a state that can’t be reasonably described as being in a breakdown process; on the contrary, in several key domains it has visibly modernized and strengthened.”19 Colombia then breaches structural theories to more accurately reflect a Marxist theory of revolution. Rather than the state, it is the FARC-EP that has undercut class power through a long-term strategy of mobilizing via dual power. Any breakdown of the state is therefore inexplicitly the consequence of those from below.

A seldom-presented argument supporting the radical power of those from below has been the intimate influence of a revolutionary culture within (Latin America and) Colombia. Not only were names like Che and Marulanda brought up regularly during interviews with civilians and the guerrillas, but so too were Bolivar and Martí. Latin America provides an important example of how agency, culture, and history create a trinity promoting the realization of social change. The region has a “legacy of revolutionary activity” which has undoubtedly influenced the sociopolitical ethos for some of those inside its borders. Well versed in the study of Latin American emancipatory struggle, political scientist Eric Selbin (1997: 125) argued that “the cult of the heroic revolutionary has produced in many places a popular political culture of resistance, rebellion, and revolution,” which has little to do with structure but rather the hearts and minds of those in struggle throughout the region. Historian D. L. Raby (2006: 11–12) also noted that within Latin America there exists a historical consciousness that not only critiques power but also approaches the issue of social change outside typical Western-political forms (that is, electoral politics, constitutional government, and so on).

It needs to be pointed out that Latin America has an outstanding tradition of popular armed struggle which long predates the Cuban revolution, having its roots in the Independence Wars of the early nineteenth century. It is based on a concept of popular collective insurgency which has nothing to do with militarism or with the “individual right to bear arms” of the US Constitution. The idea of the people taking up arms to achieve liberation is central to Latin American political culture, and it by no means excludes other forms of struggle and participation. It embodies a distrust of institutionalized politics and a radical rejection of all forms of paternalism: rights are gained by struggle, whether armed or peaceful, and not granted by benevolent authority. It is intimately linked to the concept of popular sovereignty, that sovereignty really does reside in the people as a whole and not in the propertied classes or in any hereditary group or privileged institution. The people, moreover, constitute themselves as political actors by collective mobilization, not merely by passive reception of media messages or individualized voting …. Hence the resonance of the term “revolutionary” tends to be positive, unlike in contemporary Europe or North America where it has come to be associated with irrational violence or dogmatic sectarianism.

(Raby, 2006: 11–12)

Recognizing that human development evolves through revolution enables it to be viewed as an acceptable methodology for social change. Revolution is simply “a particular strategy to which actors resort when conventional constitutional ways for progressive change are closed” (Vilas, 2003: 104; see also Goodwin, 2003: 138–9). In Colombia, traditional attempts to challenge the country’s political-economic structure have been met with devastating

outcomes for the left. Recognizing the exclusionism of capitalist power, the FARC-EP continues outside convention. In most cases the insurgency does not impose social transformation but rather facilitates change of/by/with segments of the populace (that is, community action groups, public forums, and so on). As centralized state power continues to function in Bogotá, the countryside witnesses the FARC-EP fusing power. State-centered approaches have also fallen short in their analyses in that they do not theorize revolutionary movements that exist outside the state (see Goodwin, 2001: 55; Wickham-Crowley, 1992). Jorge Gilbert suggested,

the Cuban revolution, the Nicaraguan revolution, and the revolutionary situation in El Salvador, Guatemala, and the increasing organization of the resistance movements in South America, indicate a change in the correlation of forces and a new era for the social movements and the social forces which compose them.

(Gilbert, 1982: 1)

Social movements in Latin America have, for quite some time, demonstrated an important reconstitution toward radical social change, not always coinciding with conventional models and theories (Isbister, 1998). As revolutionary social movements seek to alter existing socioeconomic and political systems, they do not necessarily reflect nor seek legitimacy within the parameters of formal politics (Defronzo, 1996: 8). Unlike electoral parties they exert power over the state through venues apart from “acceptable” means. Revolutionary movements (including insurgencies) then carry a potential to be system-antagonists through their emphasis on changing society from below (see Johnson, 1966: 164; 1964: 66).

Unlike political parties social movements are not organized to pursue power as such. Although they are clearly engaged in the struggle over state power this struggle is an inescapable consequence of their quest for social change and anti-systemic politics of mass mobilization ... While the electoral road to political power requires conformity to a game designed and played by members of “the political class,” social movements generally take a confrontational approach to change and pursue a strategy of mass mobilization of the forces of resistance against the system and the political regime that supports it.

(Petras and Veltmeyer, 2005a: 220–1)

Social change from below is important for it looks at revolution beyond the confines of politics. The crumbling of a political form does not, in fact, constitute a revolution, but rather a window of opportunity for the next most dominant political faction to usurp power (see Draper, 1978a: 180–1; Tucker, 1969: 11). Understanding this, Marxists are not overly concerned with the “conception of the state, as such, but the relation between this conception and Marx’s attitude to the proletariat (or, rather … ‘the poor’ …)” (Löwy, 2005a: 29).