Government, consciousness, and practice

By Antonio Aponte

Translated by Owen Richards

Arriving in government is indispensable for a revolution, because only from there can it socialise the revolutionary spirituality, radiate it across society, place it in the centre of the struggle for hegemony, for leadership.

The revolutionary government is the command centre in the battle for the substitution of consciousness.  As such, the spirituality that radiates from the government, will guide, will determine the meaning of partial actions.  In other words, the way, the speed, the the rhythm of the central battle of the revolution, which is the replacement of the capitalist egoistic consciousness, will be determined by the spirituality that the government reflects on society.

Nevertheless, in the government, a ferocious ideological and class struggle takes place in the heart of the revolution, and this ideological struggle reveals itself in the practice of the government: it is its reflection and is itself reflected in it.  The dominant ideology in the government will be the dominant ideology in the practice of the government.

This phenomenon was clearly seen in the Revolution of Independence: [Simon] Bolivar was in power, but the ideas that he embodied were not dominant, and so he was unable to impose the liberation of the slaves, that was a demand that would have marked the character of that revolution.  Despite such effort and such battle by the dispossessed and their leaders, in the end the ideology and practice of the oligarchy was dominant, and the Liberator ended his days in Santa Marta thinking that he had ploughed the sea.

Our revolution lives intensely through this situation of confrontation, taking place at all levels, from the individual level within ourselves, all the way up to the highest levels of leadership.

In this situation, the question arises: What should revolutionaries do, what should be their practice?

Revolutionary practice will be that which underpins and is itself underpinned by revolutionary theory, that which contributes to strengthening the revolutionary option.  This is, that practice which accompanies the rhythm, the speed, the limits proposed by Comandante Chavez, and within these limits strengthens the Consciousness Of Social Duty, the integration of society as the essence of socialism, and the social property of the means of production administered by the state as a cornerstone of this consciousness. 

Revolutionary practice should contribute to making ideology, the revolutionary spirituality hegemonic, entwining itself with, mutually influencing, enriching and being enriched by theory. It must demonstrate through results, in the first place, that it results in support  for the revolution, forms revolutionary militants, new men, new human relations, and that this militant support is based on the understanding of belonging to a sublime cause:  the defence of Humanity, of the Homeland.  With this sentiment rooted in the soul we will be invincible.

Our revolution has reached a point where one can measure the effectiveness of the different ideological proposals by their results.

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