Volume 7, No. 1, January 2025
Editor: Rashed Rahman
What were the distinctive political conditions that led to Third World Revolutions after WWII and in the era of decolonisation? Destitution, professional revolutionaries armed with the ‘organisational weapon’ of a disciplined revolutionary party, or both, were not by themselves sufficient to spark off revolutions, let alone succeed in capturing power. Very many Third World countries are poor, but revolutions have only occurred in a few of them, and not necessarily in the poorest. Why, for example, did China and Vietnam experience revolutions, but not the Subcontinent or Indonesia? Why Cuba, one of the more developed Caribbean countries, and not Haiti or the Dominican Republic? Why Nicaragua but not Honduras? Raising these questions makes us realise that the ‘misery breeds revolt’ hypothesis does not explain much.
Although professional revolutionaries have organised and led many Third World insurgencies, revolutionary groups in most countries remain small and in numbers at least, relatively insignificant. The Third World may still be the principle theatre of revolutionary conflict in the 21st century, but currently much of it remains quiescent, trapped in dependence in a globalised capitalist system, and diverted into internal conflicts involving religious extremism, terrorism and ethnic/nationalist grievances. The major, dominant capitalist powers, led since WW II and even more after the collapse of Soviet and Eastern European socialism by the US, cannot prevent or reverse all Third World revolutions based on the experience, admittedly at a different juncture of history, of for example China, Vietnam and Cuba. Imperialism, in order to stave off revolutions and maintain control has necessarily to operate through local regimes. However, all regimes in the Third World have not, and cannot, provide the status quo ‘stability’ desired in Washington or other capitalist capitals.
Since Third World societies emerging from colonialism were either wholly or partially still located within pre-capitalist formations, any revolution could not conceivably ignore the peasantry in such societies. Although the Soviet-led Comintern after the Russian revolution acknowledged this fact, it got bogged down in a rigid formula of the peasantry and other anti-imperialist sections of society being unable to succeed without the working class leading such revolutionary struggles. The classic example of this rigidity was the Comintern’s ‘handling’ of the Chinese revolution, at least between 1921 (the formation, under Comintern tutelage, of the Communist Party of China – CPC) and 1927 (Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai Shek’s bloody coup in which erstwhile communist allies were ruthlessly massacred in the cities, particularly Shanghai). Perforce, the CPC had to accept from then on Mao Tse Tung’s argument that in the concrete conditions of an overwhelmingly peasant China, the revolution could not win without basing itself on the peasantry, whether through the leadership of working class cadres and/or proletarian ideology. When, after the travails of staving off Kuomintang ‘encirclement and suppression’ campaigns against the CPC’s base areas in the countryside the CPC was forced to undertake the heroic Long March to escape annihilation and position its forces to resist Japanese imperialism and finally achieve victory in 1949, the received wisdom amongst subsequent Third World national liberation and revolutionary movements became fixed on the formulation that the peasantry would be the main force in such struggles.
What followed in practice was the necessity to send trained cadres to integrate with the peasantry (and even tribal communities) in order to impart political consciousness, organise and mobilise these sections of the polity for armed revolutionary struggle. Following Mao’s example, this translated out as peasant (or even tribal) based guerrilla struggle. The extraordinary contribution of Mao to the strategy and tactics of a successful guerrilla struggle (part of which owed a debt to that ancient military strategist Sun Tzu’s The Art of War), informed and lit the way for most if not all subsequent Third World national liberation and revolutionary struggles.
But these struggles too were afflicted by the formulaic rigidity to which too close an adherence to the letter of the thought rather than its dialectical spirit proved a widespread impediment. Just as Mao had found a way forward from near-defeat to victory by correctly analysing the concrete historical conditions in which the CPC was operating, successful revolutionary guerrilla struggles numbered amongst them those that had concretely analysed their own conditions and the historical juncture at which their struggle was unfolding. On the other hand, those movements that rigidly and mechanically attempted to ‘import’ the experience of the Chinese (and arguably even the Soviet) revolution, seldom succeeded.
But all this still largely lay within the ambit of post-WW II anti-colonial movements. By now, on the verge of the second quarter of the 21st century, colonialism lies interred, although an even more sticky system of neo-colonialism has followed. Whether liberated from the colonial grasp through revolutionary struggle or ‘negotiated’ independence, Third World countries today exhibit, to a greater or lesser degree, the malign consequences of political independence rendered a hollow sham by the grip the developed capitalist world has over the former colonies, semi-colonies and neo-colonies. The chimera of ‘development’ has remained a myth, its unfolding only enmeshing the Third World further in the neoliberal octopus’ tentacles. Of course, leaving the argument at this would invite descriptions of falling into the same familiar trap of rigid dogmatism that has wreaked such a toll on the prospects of the revolution in the past.
Arguably, what Third World revolutions need today are struggles on two levels or fronts. First and foremost, an honest, critical, objective coming to terms with the legacy of socialist revolutions, successful and unsuccessful, encompassing the good, bad and indifferent in theory and practice, since the 19th century. The lessons from this critical evaluation, combined with a deep, penetrating understanding of the world as it stands today is the only method to theoretically point the way to the future and inspire today’s youth bulge to take up cudgels against the unequal, oppressive, Colossus with feet of clay that globalised imperialism actually is. This coming to terms with the past, understanding the present and forging the theoretical tools to light the way forward is the first and necessary step before the second level can be initiated.
This second level requires examining, in each case, with all its diversity and the dynamic at work in politics, the economy and society, the concrete situation, the potential classes, oppressed nationalities, other oppressed sections such as the youth, women, religious, ethnic, tribal minorities that potentially are the raw material for forging a broad revolutionary front to challenge the local, domestic oppressors and their external supporters, the capitalist imperialist countries.
Unfortunately in Pakistan we are still some way from even the starting line. One reason for this is the state of the Left, the tendency for oppressed sections (perhaps disillusioned with the experience of broader fronts in the past) to wage their struggles alone, and the ‘collapse’ of the intelligentsia entire (honourable exceptions notwithstanding) and its opting out of its historical role of being a guide and mentor to society. While this situation poses immense challenges, the dialectic of oppression and resistance should not be forgotten or set aside. Pakistan’s crisis of long standing, which has today transmogrified into military dominance from behind an all too transparent curtain, points towards new struggles breaking out sooner or later. The task therefore is to put our heads down and without despair or defeatism, forge ahead on the path to a revolutionary transformation, without which Pakistan faces a daunting, even frightening future.
The writer is the Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR).