Title: Between Hegemony and Ideology: Anarchism with a Small a in Cuba
Abstract: Few argue that the Cuban revolution has anything to tell us about anarchist political thought, beyond vindicating traditional anarchist concerns about the power of the state. This paper argues that the story becomes more complicated once we understand anarchist political thought as sets of principles, practices and questions that cannot be reduced solely to a critique of the state. Understood in this way, one can see that anarchist political thought is and has long been part of the Cuban political landscape even after the triumph of the revolution in 1959. Cuban political actors have theorized about and participated in politics in ways that do not necessarily challenge the state's right to exist but do call into question the centrality of the state for political practice. The Cuban state's dual concern with creating a politicized and educated populace, but also with heavily managing political activity, has unintentionally inspired different and creative ways of being political, not necessarily in opposition to the state, but beside it and even within it. This suggests forms of direct action (politics not mediated by the state) that neither accept uncritically the idea of civil society as the realm of the political nor trivialize the power of the Cuban state.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-02-22
Language: en
Type: article
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