{"id":256543,"date":"2022-08-14T13:19:50","date_gmt":"2022-08-14T17:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=256543"},"modified":"2022-08-14T13:19:50","modified_gmt":"2022-08-14T17:19:50","slug":"past-present-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/in-plain-words\/past-present-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Past present (II)"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I <\/span>recalled<\/b><\/a>\u00a0the debates of the 1960s around the teaching of Marxism, I don\u2019t know if I made it clear that its central and almost sole object, what was at the bottom and on the surface of those disquisitions about how and what was taught, was the question of a theory of socialism. The orthodox thought that this theory was already constituted science, according to the experience of the Russian revolution, its predecessors and strategists. The heterodox defended that this European science had to be grafted here, according to the course of the Cuban revolutionary experience, and of its loyal knowledge and understanding, which as such did not detract, neither practically nor ideologically, from that one over there.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the latter, it was about thinking about our revolution in their own terms and based on their path of breaking dogmas about how, when and where to do it according to \u201cobjective and subjective conditions,\u201d as it was said then. The question of what and how much of this revolutionary science was applied to our political experience entailed studying and mastering its theoretical and practical sources, not only declaring that, since we were different and different from the Russians, we had only to listen well, read and apply Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the other leaders, which would be enough to unravel the dilemmas of destroying, and above all, of building a social order from top to bottom.<\/span><\/p>\n

In that context, those intellectuals of Marxism were there to contribute with their studies to enrich the theory of socialism, so that it would serve other countries like Cuba, and to systematize the thought and experience of the struggle and the construction of a new society, to guide ours. Almost nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Naturally, to what extent they were able to do so was not what gave them their status as intellectual leftists, neither to them nor to the orthodox, but the fact that they were working within a real political process, with which they were articulated through what one of them called \u201cthe exercise of thinking.\u201d It was a political action that acquired meaning in the context of the problems and challenges that the country faced, inside and outside. Their intellectual hallmarks, sources, currents, authors, were not confined to university philosophy programs, but included the interpreters, thinkers and leaders of the revolution as a phenomenon of the contemporary world. As one of the main intellectuals of that time said, the Cuban Revolution was linked to Marx where he had gone from science to political action, since \u201cMarxism is present in the events of the Cuban Revolution, regardless of whether its leaders profess it or fully know it, from a theoretical point of view.\u201d<\/span>1<\/b><\/sup><\/p>\n

Going back to the questions I proposed at the end of the previous article, I would say that some differences separate the intellectual left of the 1960s and the current one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Past present (I)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n