What happened when socialism met the struggle against empire? This theme is Part 3 of the three-part series on enacted socialism, and it follows the revolution out of Europe and the Eastern bloc into the colonized and formerly colonized world, where the fight for socialism and the fight for national liberation became one. Its stories run from Cuba and Allende’s Chile through Sandinista Nicaragua and Evo Morales’s Bolivia, across Africa from Sankara’s Burkina Faso to Nyerere’s Tanzania and Nkrumah’s Ghana, and to the brief, bright revolution in Grenada. These are some of the most inspiring and most painful chapters in the whole tradition: extraordinary visions of freedom, and, often, siege, coup, and implosion. The school takes no verdict on them. It asks what in this record is worth carrying forward and what must never be repeated, and it leaves the room to decide. It completes the series begun in Origins and Revolution in Power, and it deepens the national-liberation history of Imperialism and the Global System.
A note on balance
Like the rest of the series, this theme is built to argue with itself. Every lens gathers defenders and critics, each labeled: the luminous visions of Che, Sankara, and Bishop alongside sober reckonings with the guerrilla strategy’s failures, the Ortega government’s authoritarian turn, the “indigenous state” its critics say was neither, and the coerced side of Ujamaa. Committed solidarity sources (Tricontinental, Liberation School) are included and flagged as such, not as neutral. Nothing here is offered as the school’s position. A facilitator’s job is to keep the argument open and honest. See the facilitator guide.
How to use this theme
This folder organizes resources by lens. See the Pedagogy document for what the lenses do and why they are structured this way.
- Experiential: What is your experience with this? What does the room already know?
- Historical: How did this come to be?
- Theoretical: How do we understand and analyze it?
- Practical: What is happening on the ground and what are people doing about it?
- Liberatory: What would it mean to overcome or transform this?
A session does not need to use all five lenses. Because so many of these leaders speak for themselves on film, this theme rewards opening with the primary voices, Sankara or Bishop, before turning to the arguments.
Anchor questions
These questions have proven useful for opening up this theme. They are starting points, not a script.
- What did you first learn about Che, Castro, or “Third World revolution,” and from whom?
- What did these revolutions promise the poor of the Global South, and where did they deliver?
- How much of each story is internal, and how much is coup, blockade, and empire?
- Why do we know Che and Castro but not Sankara, Cabral, or Bishop?
- Grenada’s revolution destroyed itself; Nicaragua’s turned authoritarian. What do the implosions teach?
- What in these projects would you carry forward, and what would you refuse to repeat?
Recommended sequences
Suggested arcs for groups new to this theme. Adapt freely. Every session opens with a check-in and closes with reflection (see the pedagogy document).
Single-session entry point (2 hours). Open experiential: watch Sankara or Bishop speak, and ask what the room feels and distrusts. Read a few pages of Che’s Socialism and Man in Cuba aloud. Close on the last anchor question: what would you carry forward, and what would you refuse to repeat? See the single-session template.
Six-week study circle. Week 1 experiential: the leaders in their own voice (Sankara, Bishop, the Sandinista women). Week 2 historical: Cuba, Chile, and Venezuela. Week 3 historical: Nicaragua, Bolivia, and the African revolutions. Week 4 theoretical: foco strategy, African socialism (Nkrumah, Cabral, Rodney), and the twenty-first-century-socialism debate (Dieterich against Woods). Week 5 liberatory: the emancipatory visions and the honest reckonings, Nicaragua then and now, Bolivia’s “indigenous state.” Week 6 practical: solidarity and criticism, the pink tide’s rise and fall, and Cabral’s liberation pedagogy. See the six-week template.
Weekend intensive. Compress the arc into a Friday-through-Sunday structure, with Saturday on the histories and theories and Sunday on the living debates and the reckonings. A screening of The Upright Man (Sankara) or ¡Las Sandinistas! works well on Saturday evening. See the weekend-intensive template.
Related themes
- Origins and Revolution in Power are Parts 1 and 2 of this series.
- Imperialism and the Global System supplies the analysis of empire, dependency, and neocolonialism these revolutions rose against, and shares many of their key texts (Fanon, Rodney, Cabral, Nkrumah).
- Anarchism, Mutual Aid, and Prefiguration holds the indigenous-anarchist and horizontalist critiques of the national-liberation state.
- Ecology and the Climate Crisis meets this theme in Sankara’s reforestation and the ecology of anti-imperialism.
Status
First pass across all five lenses, and it may be a while before there is a second. It is built for viewpoint balance. Known gaps: the Portuguese-African revolutions (Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau), Guyana, and first-person Sandinista-dissident voices. If you have run a session on this theme, consider contributing back what you used and what you learned.