“Morality only consists in making the relationship between the smallest action and the greatest good…”
Antonio Gramsci
Cocaine
Published in Sotto la Mole, 1916-1920
***
Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia by James J. Brittain provides a comprehensive account of the conflict between the FARC and the Colombian government from the perspective of the now demobilized quasi Marxist-Leninst narco-insurgents. Based on five years of field research and extensive archival analysis of primary and secondary documents – the strength of the work is sapped by numerous inclusions of half-baked opinions and poorly informed analysis. Brittain, for instance, is fundamentally cynical about U.S. military aid to Colombia – as if the profound effects wrought by incredibly violent and ruthless transnational drug trafficking networks on society and governance in the Americas did not even exist!
An external example of such ideological prejudice can be seen in a review of the book was posted shortly after publication on Fight Back News – a Freedom Road Socialist Organization front masquerading as an authentic media organization. On their website, the book is described as such:
“For Colombia solidarity activists, Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia is a tool. In the battle of ideas against all of the U.S. ruling class justifications for continuing to give billions of dollars to the Uribe regime through Plan Colombia, or in opposition to the U.S. escalation in Colombia through its seven newly acquired military bases, this book is a weapon. For anyone doing anti-intervention organizing, whether around Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, the Philippines or any place where the U.S. is oppressing the people of the world and where the people are resisting by any means necessary, this book provides a valuable case-study.”
While the author’s clear biases mean that some of the arguments and analysis by Brittain is intellectually facile or, at times, absurd, it is in fact because of this that it is an important work for those seeking to understand the concepts and terms of how the FARC and those who sympathize with it think. Because the author uses Marxist philosophy to present the FARC as an innovative and “more democratic” alternative to globalization than neoliberalism rather than a narco-terrorist organization was, in fact, why I wanted to read it.
Neoliberalism and it’s Discontents: FARC’s Rise
Like other books I’ve read covering conflict in Colombia – such as The FARC: The Longest Insurgency by Gary Leech; The Para-State: An Ethnography of Colombia’s Death Squads by Alvo Civico; and Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in Colombia by Michael Taussig – this books starts with La Violencia as the founding moment for the FARC.
Birthed in the Tolima region, which is the department immediately to the south of where I now write this (Antioquia) a number of self-defense groups were formed in order to protect land that was seized from large-property owners or areas administered by the Colombian state. They became enclaves for those wishing to escape the violence elsewhere and farm. While not first conceived of as an “alternative” form of socio-economic development defining itself in contrast to globalization – coca production and illegal commodity extraction soon became their economic basis of what was, essentially, a colonial project.
By mid-1964 the PCC/guerrilla leader Manuel Marulanda Vélez (Tiro Fijo) had accumulated such a significant amount of dual-power that Operation Marquetalia was launched to retake occupied areas. 20,000 Colombian troops, as well as U.S. advisors and U.S. Iroquois attack helicopters.
While the operation as a whole was successful this lead to the spreading of the number of fronts of those connected to the FARC. This put the organization into more conflict with Colombia’s large-land owners, who were extorted, had their lands forcibly broken up and were kidnapped or killed for money or to send a message.
The South and West Blocks specifically became areas that were associated with coca production and provided the organization with funds to fight the intensifying violent backlash by the political and economic elites.
Given that the publisher of this book (PM Press) is committed to disseminating Anarchists and Marxist literature it’s not surprising that the author’s singular focus on the origin and activities of the FARC doesn’t give a broader contextualization of events.
As a result of this myopia that I mentioned in the introduction, there are a number of endorsements of the FARC political/historical line without a broader view of how events transpiring outside of Colombia affected the country.
Recounting the rapid rise of membership in the 1970’s, for instance, the author claims that rising inflation, declining capital for small agricultural operations and the dispossession of subsistence farmers leading are solely the U.S.’s fault. Brittain conflates the national Colombian economic elite with that of the US, as if the former were mere pawns/proxies of U.S. power, and gives no mention to the the global restructuring of supply chains and capital investment portfolios wrought by the rise Europe and Asia as well as other nations intensifying their agricultural export industries – all trends described in Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the 1970s.
Movement of Movements and the Composition of the FARC
No organization is ever an island unto itself, and the FARC is no exception. Brittain explicates how there are numerous Colombian organizations, such as the PPC and the MNBC, that assist and amplify the effects of their war of position as well as international organizations – be they transnational criminal enterprises involved in the distribution of cocaine and even Special Committees of the United Nations.
A term emerging from the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, war of position refers to the specific manner in which the FARC conceives of their historical mission. Their relationships to outside organizations are based on the intention to create a dual power system within Colombia they become an instrument of state power. Even though these organizations may not be fully committed guerrillas like the FARC, because they view socialism revolution as “a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria” their actions are conceived of as aligned with their goals.
Quoting several SouthCom and Colombian government reports Brittain states that in the early 1990s it was thought possible – given the FARC’s embeddedness within urban collectives in Bogota – for them to have taken over Bogota. Rather than pursuing this policy and thus, to use a Game of Thrones metaphor, ruling over a “city of ashes” they did not engage in direct confrontation in the urban center in order to reinforce their support-bases in the periphery, the coca-growing regions. It was believed that by the building of class consciousness (really their own particular vision of ideological orthodoxy) a social revolution could be achieved rather than a merely political one. This view, as the recent history of the peace accords shows, was incorrect. Because of Brittain’s sympathies, it’s worth pointing out another consideration less likely to be voiced by the FARC Secretariat – the problems created by actually administering a large and complex economy connected to multi-national corporations rather than merely interacting with coca-producing farmers, and small-scale illegal loggers and miners.
While such an admission would likely never leave the lips of someone whose committed their lives to guerilla combat, surely because of this the urban center, which inevitably complicates the Bolivarian-Marxian vision they’ve been acculturated into, doesn’t allow for simple solutions. Reading Marx, after all, doesn’t prepare one to appropriately understand modern national macro-economic policies.
FARC as Narco-Settler-Colonialism
Given that the campesinos that the FARC acts as a government for those that are involved in the narco-trafficking industry and that they are setting up their operations in a colonial manner – i.e. setting up operations in areas without infrastructure (roads, sewage, medical or educational facilities) – there’s an deep irony in the author’s frequent endorsement of the settlers claims that it is the lack of the farmers ability to obtain credit from banks or services from the government as a justifying cause for their operations.
Brittain presents the Colombian-government sponsored Juntas de Acción Comunal, for instance, as being started to helping to serve up national sovereignty to American capital rather than helping develop new business relationships for the export of legal agricultural goods and other commodities. This is, after all, what the FARC’s help facilitate – though of illicit materials.
Organized along military lines, the FARC uses military tactics to gain recruits and expands it’s operation not though a greater division of labor but by geographical expansion. More illicit farms mean more money and arms for their operation. Because of this it highly ironic – Orwellian Irony even – that Brittain describes this dual-power organization as the target of “fascist” attacks when the actual government seeks to halt their recruitment efforts on college campuses in Colombia – something that Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia describes. This Manichean worldview means government-sponsored informer networks are, to Brittain, quadi-totalitarian while the FARC’s are expression of “organic” identification with the organization – even after describing punishments for breaking the FARC’s laws.
FARC, Social Change & Kultural Marxism
The author, giving a first person account of the
“Upon visiting areas controlled by the FARC-EP I observed educational facilities in both public spaces and guerrilla camps that loosely resembled small makeshift schoolhouses. The encampment schools were plastered with pictures of Che Guevara and past comandantes of the FARC-EP, and were referred to as “cultural centers.” They were heavily used and resembled a jungle-like revolutionary museum; filled with pamphlets, books, music, and information related to Marxism, Colombia’s political economy, and Latin American society.”
Venezuela, TeleSUR & Kultural Marxism
Well not discussed within the book it’s interesting to note that Hugo Chavez, the former president of TeleSUR, has long cited the FARC-EP as a historical and ideological inspiration.
No surprise then that the entrance to TeleSUR’s offices in Quito, Ecuador is akin to the cultural centers described by the James J. Brittain – filled with the portrait art of Latin America’s many revolutionaries.
The relationship between Sergio Marin, the head of the propaganda office for the FARC, however, would certainly approve of their operations. They, like Nicolas Maduro Moros, use Gramsci as a framework to inform their model of social and political change.
Thus, despite the books many weaknesses, it is an important work for those trying to understand the perspective of the FARC and their allies in Venezuela, Ecuador and elsewhere.