- The Guardian
- Issue #2198
Hannah Middleton, former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Australia, once said that “Revolution and love are inextricably intertwined. You can’t have one without the other.” I have often wondered about this statement since it’s one of those lines that gives more when you think about it.
On one level it seems abstract. But when you think of the love a revolutionary like Fidel Castro had for his people, for the Cuban Revolution and the project of socialism, you can see why the two categories; revolution on the one hand, which entails a kind of just violence, and love, which entails tenderness, kindness, compassion are linked.
We revolutionaries yearn for civilisation instead of barbarism. But the barbarism we resist is not what the Western imperialists call ‘barbaric’; the apparent “barbarism” of non-Western peoples and civilisations that must be wiped out in genocides and wars. We consider imperialism and capitalism to be precisely the barbarism that humanity must bury forever.
We believe a Palestinian mother, an Iranian child, oppressed peoples all around the world, have the right to live in security on their land. They have a right to love. We believe in love and civilisation, or what CPA leader Peter Symon called “the sunshine of real civilisation.”
The unity of all progressive, poor, and working-class forces, the revolutionary power that comes from such unity, is what we need to fight imperialism and capitalism and bring forth the sunshine of real civilisation.
Of course love is deeply personal. It refers to the wonder of one-to-one relationships that change people’s lives forever. Revolution is similar in this sense because it changes whole societies forever. Once a revolution is won, the society is no longer the same. Once someone falls in love, their life also changes forever. Unfortunately perhaps for both love and revolution, that permanent change is not always good!
We aim for socialist-character revolutions, of the kind that became so successful in Cuba, China, East Germany, and many other places.
Yet too, for those who make the choice to become Communists, members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), that is a life-changing moment no less. It has been for many of us. We love the Party and its project and that love drives us to engage more deeply with it, thus becoming more ourselves, more “who we are,” as Christian Goopy suggested recently in Chinese media.
I could explore further the remarks made by Hannah Middleton, and the practical implications of this dialectic of love and revolution, but I’ll leave it there for readers to ponder.
