Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his revealing conversation with a friend, admitted that he was, at Trancoso, has confessed how at an early age he had been overcome by a few of his lifelong beliefs. One that good novels should be poetic in language representations of reality, and secondly that the immediate future of humanity is in socialism. In this conversation Marquez has put in question his beliefs on both his ideals realism in literature and socialism in politics. The reasons that we now know clearly why his ideals have just not worked have been gradually depreciated during the last two decades especially since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. Both realism and socialism have been problematic ideals and each has been intellectually associated with the other as they were commonly grouped under the title of communism. Throughout the period of a hundred and fifty years since the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 these ideas and attitudes have dominated in the intellectual, social and political circles and in personal beliefs throughout the world. What is most significant about the communist ideology is not that it has been the most powerful current of thought in the last hundred and fifty years, but that the concept and attitudes it created were at once widespread among its friends and foes. By now, as the communist and communist countries are trying to transform themselves, it is clear that sometimes a parallel change is going on in the capitalist societies which are the original homes of market economics. While the communist are giving up their rigid centralisation and control of economic activity and adopting freedom of individual enterprise at least doses, the capitalist countries are adopting measures of social organisation which more and more conform with socialist ideals and purposes. In fact socialist ideas and purposes started being adopted by capitalist countries within a couple of decades of the Russian Revolution. By the time the Second World War came to an end there was little to choose between capitalist and socialist countries as far as their practice of social welfare were concerned. Socialism came to mean different merely in the countries which had adopted Marxist-Leninist or socialist political ideals as their guiding principles, and those which were capitalist in both their ideology and their economic structure. The entire capitalist world by the early fifties was organised on the lines of social democracy so as to avoid the path of violent communist revolution of the Soviet kind. This was described by the communist ideologues of the time as a bribe offered by the imperialist ruling classes to their working classes to keep them from taking the revolutionary path. In return the workers of the advanced capitalist countries became allies of their ruling classes in the conflict between imperialism and the national liberation struggles of the colonised countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Whether the social welfare policies of social democracy in the advanced capitalist countries were a bribe or their natural evolution certainly postponed the anti-capitalist revolution maturing in imperialist countries. At the same time it helped the advance- ment of scientific and technological processes in imperialist and capitalist countries, enhanced their capacity to compete success- fully with the socialist countries in the cold war between capitalism and the socialist system which began soon after the end of the Second World War.

The cold war, more than any- thing else, was a competition bet- ween capitalism and socialism to prove their ability respectively to win over the working class mas- ses by providing them with material and democratic needs. In this com- petition the scale was heavily tilted in favour of the advanced capitalist countries. Last but not the least, a revolutionary class which had grown up within the socialist coun- tries — a large middle class based on the state and party bureaucr- ratic structure, which had slowly become all powerful, with ideals and ambitions of their own. It was this middle class growing within communism which gave birth to the counter-revolutionary elements in the Soviet Union which came to power after the death of Stalin, and gradually disintegrated the socialist system ideologically, politically, economically and mili- tarily. Within three decades of the death of Stalin and rise of Khrushchev, capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union as Mao Tse Tung had predicted during the Cultural Revolution.

The capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union may have been slow on a theoretical level, as indicated by its state capitalism, the decision has certainly been adopted consequent upon. What is not clear as yet is the position that the politico-economic structure of the ex-Soviet Union is going to take in the new world order that imperialism has devised. Espe- cially what type of role has been this powerful politico-economic structure of state capitalism is going to behave in the struggle bet- ween imperialism and the ex-colo- nial countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

So far in the post-cold war period the fate of Third World countries has been sealed. The relation- ship between the advanced capitalist countries and the col- onised under-developed Third World countries is not less of an exploi- tive one as it has been during the last five hundred years. These countries and their people, as far as one can see, have been, for genera- tions, and will continue to be sources of all kinds of raw mate- rials and unlimited cheap human labour for the advanced advanced capitalist countries. On the one hand it is these countries and their vast mas- ses will continue to be part of an extensive structure of the indust- rial economy which is at the pre- sent of imperialism has not been changed. Nor is there, and the future of imperialism is not going to be different. It is not going to. That is inherent in the nature of capitalism. Until capitalism is transformed into socialism, i.e. it is abolished through… the relation- ship between imperialism and its colonies — the under-developed … of the Third World — isn’t going …

 

change. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has not expressed his opinions on the break-up of the Soviet Union. At least we are not yet aware of them. He retains his ideological fidelity to socialist ideals, based on his early knowledge about the political thoughts of Marx and Lenin (he came across their books in 1950) through teachers who were Marxists themselves or otherwise members of the Communist Party of Colombia. It is a fairly safe and accurate conjecture about his abiding friendship with Fidel Castro and on setting a great store by a period on the independent (independent of Soviet lines) development of communism in Third World states as well as his pointed interest in the growth of communism and socialism in deep and managing The collection of Urdu translations of a number of works of Garbriel Garcia Marquez, published recently by the enterprising quarterly Aj, Karachi, helps in boosting into the mind of this great progressive writer of the Third World and working out a new theory not only of progressive writing in the modern world but also of the kind of political thought which goes into it. The collection was originally published as a special number of Quarterly Aj, and has now been republished in the form of a hardbound book, available from Aj, B-87, Block H, North Nazimabad, North Karachi Township, Karachi 75700. Although the quarterly Aj has made a voluminous contribution towards introducing modern progressive literature of the world to Urdu readers, this book is perhaps the most significant of all the work seen so far from Aj. This significance has to do with the uniqueness of the vision of Marquez in the modern period, and his distinctive combination of both realism in literature and socialism in politics. This combination, as as 1 pointed out earlier, has in recent decades drawn great storms in intellectual circles. It was necessary to give the historical background of this phenomenon to understand his realism and socialism at length because understanding its international political background, it is not an easy matter to grasp it. This question of political background in modern art always has been. In the 19th century, those who dealt with literature and socialism in politics became the most lasting monuments of their time; their rise and growth. How could Tolstoy, Flaubert and Stendhal, Gogol, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Gorki could not be understood without relating them to the revolutionary politics of France and Russia, in that period of his time? Marquez himself regards this question as supremely important. In his confessional interview with his friend, Plinio, we find him dwelling on the political struggle of Latin America and his family as well. He emphasises the fact that his ideas are interpre- tive whereas his maternal grandfather provides him a link between his childhood and early boyhood and his past. Marquez regards this grandfather as the source of his realist ideas which he has aptly described to his young grandson

the details of the civil war in Colombia, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, clerical revolutionary elements against the conservative government. It was here he told young Marquez about the massacre of the banana plantation workers which took place in their town in 1928, one of the high watermarks in the history of political struggles in Colombia, reflecting the just anger of the people in their path of revolt against the status quo. His relationship with his grandfather continued in school. In this school he met many teachers who had been industrialised as a result of lack of democracy during the polet government of President Alfonso Lopez. This teacher, a bachelor, taught history based on Dialectical Materialism, the history of Colombia, urged the works of Lenin to read, and the teacher of letters introduced him to Neruda with us. It was in this school that he became confirmed in his life long ideological passions. He became a communist during this period at the age of twenty he formally joined the Communist Party, but he remained more of a sympathiser than a member. He is believed to have associated with even persons like Fidel Castro. Is independent in his way, given he has never agreed with every one of his ideological friends. When he differed he did so openly, and with convincing reasons for his argument. He is not a diplomat. He has continued to be a staunch supporter of the Castro revolution. He believes in the system that it has tried to create a modern Cuba. He believes that “the future of Latin America is not in its history. It will be created against it”. He will be realised in Latin America itself. To think otherwise is indeed European madness.” His belief in politics is matched by his realistic commitment in literature. Above all, he is known essentially on points of the precise characteristics of Latin American life in general and of Colombian life also he is committed to the depiction of exploitation and backward society of his own country. But despite his commitment he places a lot of value on his political activity in the sense of the politics of the pen. Most of his novels are reflecting deeply on his writing. he says “my revolutionary duty is to write well.” But his commitment is not merely with the broad and global issues of his own country, but with the reality of the entire continent, and even to some extent, the world. He writes “with an aspect of it, or looking at the sum total with an aspect.” In the same context he discusses his novels, all of which seem to express his belief that sooner or later the reality of Latin America will find its final commitment to socialism. In his view “committed” literature as a concept seems to be very limited, as opposed to the so-called “novel of social resistance, or protest.” He argues that “social realism” has a limited idea of world and life, and for that reason has a role to play in the attainment of any purposes in politics. It is not always possible to write the private story. Besides, consciousness slows it down. The problem of political writing is how to make a novel something more than the description of political acts or a discussion with which they are quite familiar in their life. He is critical even of his political friends who delimit the writing activity in the sense that they tell them what to write and what not to write. In return, they get notions on creative activity they get no more than a guideline, but they do not.” He firmly believes, he says, that a novelist, “a writer who is not revolutionary in his time is not worthy at any other. Actually, the duty of a writer — your revolutionary duty — is that he should write well.