The Training of Activists in Local Development
Dr. Miguel Limia David
University of Havana, Cuba
translation by Ross Gandy
For days of intensive work in Cuba we have concentrated on the critique of capitalist globalization and on the evaluation of ways out of it, we have done this with concepts that are cultural, political, social, economic.
What follows are thoughts on building power from below in Cuba. They occur in the context of what we are living through—a crisis of global capitalist civilization. The crisis is both social and ecological. And in it a renovation of the socialist ideal is taking place, to the tune of a critical analysis of the history we have lived through and of the new realities of world social development.
To some the renovation of the socialist ideal may seem irrelevant and inopportune. Wrong: it is neither secondary nor tangential to our country. It is essential for the final socialist construction of society. It is not a theme derived from the conjunctural crisis we have lived through during the last few years. (Of course that crisis has made it both topical and unavoidable.) Traditional socialist thought could not find a solution to it in the experiences of the twentieth century. Today we must confront it. There is no way around it–we must solve it! What does this mean? It demands breaking with inertial modes of thinking. It means learning new ways of doing. It means quaffing a dosis of civic responsibility.
It is one of the ways of finding a revolutionary solution for the internal contradictions of social development shaped by history. On both the national and local level it confronts the globalizing processes that hit us in a world stamped by capitalism. And it challenges the hegemonic imperial policy of the North American government.
