The following article is based on a speech Oct. 20 to the San Francisco branch of Workers World Party.
On my way here I read the newspapers of several cities and they all carefully played down what's happening in Haiti. You might think, "Maybe things are back to normal." But a lot is happening in Haiti. It should have world attention. When the U.S. decided it wasn't going to support Aristide, that's when the news about Haiti stopped. A vanguard party of the workers like ourselves has to bring it back into focus.
What's happening in Haiti is one of the cruelest forms of suppression. We don't know how many are being killed. The Nazis couldn't do much worse.
Haiti is a small country but has revolutionary traditions and experience. A great deal of money, time and energy have been spent by the U.S. government to suppress it.
It should be an important topic in any city, not just New York or Miami with their large Haitian populations. That's what internationalism is all about. We don't just support the countries or struggles with which we have the greatest affinity but those that are under the greatest pressure. It's a worldwide class struggle.
Only a party that takes up the difficult questions, like supporting China in its struggle against counterrevolution, that enlightens the workers at home on the link between the most critical issues of economics and world politics, merits the name of a revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist party. And that's what we're striving to do.
U.S. can't `liberate' Haiti
They say that all the U.S. wants to do is restore democracy in Haiti. But it's up to the Haitian people to decide that. Should the U.S. come in as knights in shining armor to liberate Haiti? In the first place, they weren't asked.
For a brief period the U.S. capitalist press was saying that Aristide must be returned in order to restore democracy. What they meant was that the imperialists would return him. But Aristide himself does not want that and so he's stuck in Venezuela.
Back in Haiti, like everywhere on the face of this earth, there are two classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie is small and weak and can't stand on its own. The proletariat proper, who work in the plantations, plants, factories and offices, might be a minority, but together with the peasants they are the overwhelming majority. The bourgeois class, their servants, bureaucrats, military and agents are a mere 15-20 percent. The rest are all workers and peasants, the poorest on the continent, so we are told.
It's important for us as Marxists that the workers and peasants have the material basis for an alliance. The workers' pay and the peasants' income are about equal. Very few workers are richer than peasants and very few peasant households live better than the workers. This lays the basis for a united front. Of course, the peasants may own small plots of land and be private proprietors in that sense. They want to own the land and market and sell their products. And they deal with merchants, pawnbrokers, bankers and so on. It differentiates them from the workers to some extent. One class is exploited by the landlords, merchants and bankers, the other by the manufacturers and bosses.
But in Haiti these classes are unified on the basis of equality of exploitation and oppression.
Election stunned imperialists
Aristide, who is a priest, took it upon himself to suddenly declare his candidacy for president and got about 70 percent of the vote.
It was a remarkable development in a country where elections have been so fraudulent that they were seen with not just indifference but hostility. But this election became somewhat of a referendum on the whole neocolonialist, imperialist system. It shook the very foundations of colonialist rule. It upset the State Department planners because they had figured this was the kind of election they wholly approved of.
They had made sure that the United Nations sent its inspectors and poll watchers. So they can't say it was rigged. It was an election they planned and managed. But it turned out that a vast majority were against the ruling class and its candidates.
It wasn't only a magnificent electoral victory. It was a revolutionary upsurge of the masses that took the form of an election but was far more than a mere parliamentary expression.
Frederick Engels, co-author of the "Communist Manifesto" and life-long friend of Karl Marx, said that parliamentary elections are an index of the maturity of the working class to take power. I used to think that was a very far-fetched statement, that maybe when Engels wrote it was apropos and correct, but that the elections we've seen in the United States, Britain and elsewhere show the working class is not mature enough to cope with bourgeois parliamentarism. More than half don't even participate.
But it turns out that Engels was right after all. In Haiti the election showed the maturity of the workers. They all went out to vote in a spectacular demonstration of the will to overthrow an old and corroded imperialist oppressor.
For a while, the capitalist media were saying that the U.S. supported it. Apparently they didn't get the message that the Pentagon planners and the State Department were rethinking the whole thing. They were worrying it could turn into a worker and peasant revolution.
Bourgeoisie scared of masses
The small, narrow bourgeoisie there are scared to death. They're seeing what the workers can do. With the burning tires, like in South Africa, they're handing out proletarian justice to those who have carried out injustices all these many years.
It isn't just an individual or small group; it has the approval of the masses. And it has gotten the approval of Aristide himself. He has given voice to the deep feelings of the oppressed masses, their hatred for their torturers.
That's not the type of democracy the State Department and Pentagon want. That's proletarian democracy in the streets. The masses were taking destiny in their own hands. And this was intolerable to the U.S., French and other imperialists.
So the capitalist press found out that Aristide was guilty of what they call "human rights violations" and is not really for democracy.
No leader in Aristide's position could come out against the justice of the masses because that's what the essence of the struggle is about. It is a violent struggle. The only type of rule they've had in Haiti (as in all other capitalist countries, but it varies in degree) is through violence or the threat of violence. But when Aristide spoke against the violence of the military camarilla, the outrages committed daily by the paramilitary forces of the Tonton Macoutes, the U.S. State Department never seemed to hear.
The masses see democracy in one way, the bourgeoisie in another. Terminology is a class weapon. So when Aristide speaks for democracy and human rights he has one thing in mind, which I believe coincides with the thinking of the masses. The imperialists have something else in mind.
It's like the word "peace." When the imperialists speak about peace they mean war or war preparations. Peace to them is an interval for the preparation of war.
Aristide and Thomas Munzer
Aristide reminds us of another theologian, a giant revolutionary in his time. Thomas Munzer was a priest turned revolutionary in Germany in 1525. He made the kind of speeches that rouse the masses, that speak their language. But it was religious-type language. If you read it today, you wouldn't know whom he was addressing or what he meant. But the masses of peasants knew he was talking about them and was approving what they were planning. And so Thomas Munzer became the leader of the first great peasant uprising in Europe.
He outshone Martin Luther. Luther was the leader of the bourgeois revolution against the Catholic centralization of feudal power. But Thomas Munzer addressed himself to the peasants. All of this, by the way, is set in lucid and almost entertaining language by Engels in a book called "The Peasant War in Germany."
The difference between today and the peasant war then is not that one was more revolutionary than the other. Here they may use tires to burn some of the oppressors. Back then they burned and vandalized the castles of the landlords.
Thomas Munzer was able to lead an insurrection that took over in some regions. And they organized militarily to fight the big princes and landlords. But they didn't get much help from the rest of Germany. The proletariat wasn't ready to launch a revolution that could sweep through Germany. As Engels explains, the economic conditions were not there. There were not enough workers. Too many peasants were scared, and with good reason because the landlords were organized militarily.
So that revolution by Munzer was premature, but there was no way to do anything else but lead the revolution on and fight like hell.
General strike in Haiti
The workers rose in general strike when Father Aristide was kidnapped. But the general strike from the Marxist point of view is only correct if it can be followed up with a general insurrection where the workers are armed. The general strike alone in a period of revolutionary ferment can peter out. The workers can get exhausted unless they take over not only the factories, but also the banks and other vital levers.
The general strike was successful but couldn't go on too long because the workers exhausted their savings. Also, you have to deliver milk, groceries, run the electric plants, etc. It can turn against the workers themselves if it doesn't have a perspective.
After calling such a strike, you set a deadline or make preparations for the next stage. There has to be a general staff working it out, explaining to the workers what has to be done, what can't be done, guiding them ideologically from day to day. If that doesn't happen, then the military has complete sway. And the military is just going on killing, killing. House to house murders, no different than the Nazis.
And all this is being suppressed. If somebody in Poland or Bulgaria gets hurt, or there's a demonstration against the socialist government, it's big headlines, a violation of human rights. But you don't hear a thing about Haiti.
Need for a people's army
Probably the best that could be done under these circumstances was to temporarily pull back and come back to Marxist strategy, which is not anti-Aristide at all. Slowly build a people's army in answer to the essence of the capitalist state, which is the terrorist apparatus. The proletariat must organize its own coercive force against the bourgeoisie if it ever expects to become the dominant class, to rule in the interest of the workers and destroy the vestiges of the bourgeoisie. That's Lenin's teaching on the nature of the state. The state is the instrument of suppression of one class or another. For that reason you have the military and the police and the prisons. And no capitalist democracy ever functions without them.
Difficult though the situation may be in Haiti, there's still this one answer: to slowly re-form the revolutionary forces and begin surreptitiously to build the people's army. Lenin says a class that has not learned to use arms will forever be enslaved. It allows the exploitative bourgeoisie to rule through armed force while the masses are unarmed.
Haiti offers a vindication of Marxism on the nature of the capitalist state. The soul of the capitalist state is in that military instrument.
And the military is financed, housed and fed by U.S. funds.
The only way around it is to organize a military force of the revolution. And that may be difficult. In China it took many years. It was difficult for Vietnam and Korea and Cuba. But that difficulty has to be overcome whenever the class struggle reaches a pitch that requires the building of the armed forces of the working class and the oppressed masses.
Can any revolutionary party hide the significance of the need for an armed force, that in our epoch there can only be either the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of finance capital?
This has to be brought to the large mass of people, even if only a few take it to heart. In Haiti this problem presents itself in a practical way. Of course, our party does not presume to intervene on questions of a practical character in Haiti.
What we are talking about is a general proposition of revolutionary Marxism that has been proven correct in every country. Wherever there is a coup by the bourgeois elements, the imperialists are either behind it or they let it happen. Wherever a leader like Aristide or Nkrumah takes office, it can soon be seen who really is in power. The power lies with the bourgeoisie or the colonialists. And Nkrumah or Aristide realize that the military calls the shots.
They may try to reshuffle the military command. The problem is, they're taking cards from the same deck. You can replace a reactionary with one who looks more progressive. Aristide changed a couple of generals. The present head of the military camarilla, Cedras, was supposed to be more progressive.
But Aristide also began to try to build an independent force. He brought in Swiss specialists to train them. But of course the bourgeoisie knew what that meant and wouldn't let it go any further. They wouldn't let him build even a corporals' guard of 250 soldiers. It could be an embryo workers' militia.
You can't build such a force surreptitiously. You have to talk to them politically, tell them what they're organizing for and against.
This isn't just a problem facing Aristide. Some men and women with years of training in the Marxist movement got themselves into the same situation. The coup leaders in the USSR, who wanted to save socialism by kind of sneaking it in, didn't take the masses into their confidence. They addressed themselves only to the imperialist bourgeoisie.
What they should have done is openly proclaim their intent to overthrow the bourgeois reforms. Organize the masses accordingly. If necessary resign their posts, get off the swivel chairs and do some mass work. But they didn't do that. And that was one reason it collapsed.