Editorial
Commemorating
Two Great Revolutionaries
This issue
includes reports on meetings held recently in Winnipeg to commemorate two great
revolutionaries of the twentieth century – Shaheed
Bhagat Singh and Ché Guevara. Both participated in the
anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggles - Shaheed Bhagat Singh in India against British imperialism
and Ché Cuevara in Latin
America and Africa against U.S. imperialism - and both became martyrs to that
cause. Both have also inspired successive generations of young people to take
up the cause of revolution and socialism.
To a large
extent, both Bhagat Singh and Ché have also
transcended narrow ideological considerations that are often embraced or laid
claim to by many of the sometimes-antagonistic ideo-political tendencies that
exist within the revolutionary working class movement. This is as it should be.
A revolutionary should be recognized as such by his/her deeds rather than by
the ideology espoused or organizational affiliations.
For example, few
know the specific ideology or political affiliations of the martyrs of the
Paris Commune and fewer care. Marx and Engels argued against initiating that
revolutionary uprising because conditions did not exist for it to succeed.
However, once the battle had begun they gave it their unconditional support and
when it was crushed they summed it up and drew the appropriate lessons, both
positive and negative.
There are, of
course, those who still refuse to accept Bhagat Singh and/or Ché as “genuine” revolutionaries because of their supposed
lack of ideological purity. Such individuals are mistaken in their insistence
that ideas are more important than reality. This is the mark of philosophical
idealism.
In this era of
imperialism and proletarian revolution, a revolutionary is someone who devotes
his/her life to the overthrow of capitalism and imperialism and the
establishment of the rule of the working class – socialism. That is all that
matters. There are not a few individuals who claim to stand for socialism but
who oppose the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. There are
others who wish to eliminate imperialism without eliminating its material base
– capitalism; and others still who think that capitalism can be eliminated
without the overthrow of the imperialist system. Bhagat Singh and Ché Guevara were not of that ilk. Whatever weaknesses may
have existed in their ideological or political analysis of specific issues and
whatever their choice of tactics, both clearly identified the enemy –
capitalism and imperialism - and both called on revolutionaries to put aside
their difference and unite in action against these enemies of humankind. This
is why their legacy has spanned generations while many other “super”
revolutionaries have become footnotes in history.