José Martí

THOUGHTS

Carlos Ripoll

ON GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

41.- I want the first law of our republic to be the reverence of Cubans for the full dignity of man... If the republic is not built on the character of each one of its children, on their habit of working with their hands and thinking for themselves, on the full exercise of their abilities and respect for the right of others fully to exercise theirs, as if it were a matter of family honor, on a passion, in short, for the dignity of human beings, then the republic will not have been worth a single tear from one of our women, a single drop of blood from one of our brave men.

42.- A nation is made of those who resist and those who push, of affluence that monopolizes, and of justice that rebels, of arrogance that subjugates and belittles, and of decorum that neither deprives the arrogant of their place nor gives up its place to them. A nation is made of the rights and opinions of all its children, and not the rights and opinions of a single class.

43.- Anyone who, under the pretext of guiding the young, teaches them an isolated and exclusive group of doctrines and preaches to them the barbarous gospel of hate instead of the sweet gospel of love, is a treacherous assassin, an ingrate to God, an enemy of men.

44.- Politics is the art of raising unjust humanity towards justice, of reconciling the selfish beast with the generous angel, of favoring and harmonizing various interests, with virtue and the general welfare as its goals.

45.- Political systems maintained by force create rights that are totally unjust, and when people, who tend continuously and inexorably towards independence and justice, are deprived of their essential freedoms, they create a set of rules of reconquest to justify their growing rebellion.

46.- An honest man cannot excuse himself, step aside, and allow parasites to infest public life, not even when the goal of politics is to change a country merely in form without changing the basic injustice endured by its people, not even when in the name of liberty the goal of politics is to replace contented authoritarians with hungry ones.

47.- To change masters is not to be free.

48.- Scientific politics does not consist of giving a people foreign institutions that have been discredited where they seemed most appropriate, even if this is done with the best of intentions, but in leading a country towards what is possible given its own composition.

49.- Countries heal by following their own natures, which require different dosages and even different medicines depending on the presence of this or that symptom in their illness. We need neither Saint-Simon, nor Karl Marx, nor Marlo, nor Bakunin, but the reforms that suit our body politic. It is as wise to assimilate what is useful as it is senseless to imitate blindly.

50.- The most important aspect of patriotism is self-abnegation, the banishment of personal passions or preference in the face of public reality, and the need to accommodate the ideal of justice to its shape.

51.- Those who sincerely want a better lot for the human race cannot be accomplices of police-state policies, which preach disdain for politics.

52.- Man's love for man is the only passion that should govern those who hold the fortune of nations in their hands.

53.- Like physicians, nations should prefer to prevent sickness or cure it in its incipient stages rather than to allow it to spread in all its virulence and then fight with bloody and desperate means the ills that result from that negligence.

54.- A homeland is everyone's joy, everyone's sorrow, and everyone's paradise. It is no one's fief and chaplaincy.

55.- It is not the anarchist, the leaf on the tree, who must be eliminated, for leaves come out again. It is the insufferable abuse of unjust privileges, the root of anarchy, that must be removed.

56.- A broad base that will accommodate all useful reforms makes and strengthens a good government, not belief in an infallibility that is impossible in human affairs.

57.- The apparent insecurity of nations that are governed by suffrage does not stem from their incompetence but from their impersonality and diversity. The people do not speak with a single voice. They seem doubtful and vacillating because they have thousands of voices that join once every four years to decide with admirable sense.

58.- There is no country in which the use of violence is more inexcusable than one in which law prevails. The offense is made that much more abominable for being unnecessary.

59.- One who has a right cannot violate another's right to preserve his own, nor should one who has strength abuse it. Use inspires respect; abuse indignation.

60.- Abuse is held back by the radiance of the law like a common courtier by the anger of a pure lady. But if the law begins to wear a gown of wrath, then the very ones who respect it will sadly rise up against it, like a father who restrains his mad child.

61.- To speak of economic union is to speak of political union. The nation that buys commands. The nation that sells serves. To ensure liberty trade must be balanced. A nation willing to die sells to a single nation, and one that wants to save itself sells to more than one. Excessive influence of one country on the trade of another becomes political influence... The first thing a nation does to dominate another is to separate it from other nations... Union must be with the world, and not with one part of it, nor with one part of it against another.

62.- The continuous, frank, and almost brutal debate of open political life strengthens in people the habit of expressing their opinions and listening to those of others. There is great benefit in living in a country where the active coexistence of diverse beliefs prevents that timorous and indecisive state to which reason descends where a single and unquestionable dogma prevails.

63.- Socialist ideology, like so many others, has two main dangers. One stems from confused and incomplete readings of foreign texts, and the other from the arrogance and hidden rage of those who, in order to climb up in the world, pretend to be frantic defenders of the helpless so as to have shoulders on which to stand.

64.- Anyone who receives money in trust to manage it for the benefit of its owner and uses it either for his own interest or against the wishes of its rightful owner, is a thief. The vote is a trust more delicate than any other, for it involves not just the interests of the voter, but his life, honor and future as well. Anyone who uses an office conferred by the voters wrongfully and against their interests is a thief.

65.- After seeing it rise, quake, sleep, prostitute itself, make mistakes, be abused, sold and corrupted; after seeing the voters turn into animals, the voting booths besieged, the ballot boxes overturned, the results falsified, the highest offices stolen, one still must acknowledge, because it is true, that the vote is an awesome, invincible and solemn weapon; the vote is the most effective and merciful instrument that human beings have devised to manage their affairs.

66.- The art of politics lies in bending and yielding. Only in the essential ideas of dignity and liberty should one be prickly, like a sea-urchin, and straight, like a pine.

67.- Fortunately, there is a healthy equilibrium in the character of nations, as there is in that of men. The force of passion is balanced by the force of interest. An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life. A nation that neglects either of these forces perishes. They must be steered together, like a pair of carriage horses.

68.- Can there be a locomotive with a boiler to run it and no brakes to stop it? In the affairs of nations it is necessary to have one hand on the throttle and the other on the brakes. Behind the suffering of nations there is always either too much throttle or too heavy a hand on the brakes.

69.- One revolution is still necessary: the one that will not end with the rule of its leader. It will be the revolution against revolutions, the uprising of all peaceable individuals, who will become soldiers for once so that neither they nor anyone else will ever have to be a soldier again.

70.- Peoples are made of hate and of love, and more of hate than love. But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. What greed and privilege build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.

71.- One of the devices of politicians is to keep the people distracted and bewildered, and to focus their eyes on new and varied spectacles so that, always having something to look at, they have no time to look within, to see themselves miserable and brave, and to rebel.

72.- A good American leader of state is not one who knows how the French and the Germans are governed, but one who knows what elements make up the country, and how to lead them to reach, through indigenous methods and institutions, that desirable state where all people know and apply themselves and all enjoy the bounty of the country that they make fertile with their work and defend with their lives. Government must be born from the country itself. The spirit of government must be that of the country. The form of government must suit the peculiar composition of the country. Government is no more than harmony among the natural elements of a country.

73.- A homeland is a community of interests, a unity of traditions, a unity of objectives, a most sweet and consoling fusion of loves and hopes.

74.- An authoritarian society is, of course, one based on a sincere or feigned notion of human inequality and in which social duties are imposed on those who are denied rights so as to further the power and pleasure of those who deny those rights.

75.- It is annoying to hear talk of social classes. To recognize their existence is to contribute to them. To refuse to recognize them is to help destroy them.

76.- Anyone who tries to make human beings better should not disregard their evil passions but take account of them as a very important factor and be alert not to work against them, but with them.

77.- Tyranny is the same in all its shapes, even though sometimes it dresses in handsome names and grand deeds.

78.- There is no nation on earth with a monopoly on any human virtue, but there is a political state with a monopoly on all virtues: that with enlightened liberty; not one where liberty is understood as the violent supremacy of the poor, defeated class over the rich, once ruling class (for we already know that is a new and fearful tyranny), nor one where liberty is nominal and widely proclaimed but where, when spoken of by certain people (and unfortunately they are the most vociferous) it reminds one of the cross of our good Jesus on the inquisitorial banners, but rather that state where liberty exists in custom and law, drawing life from competition and balance among rights, naturally accompanied by general respect as a mutual guaranty, and owing its subsistence to that supreme and infallible guide of human nature, self-preservation.

79.- In politics, which is nothing more than a trust of private and public rights, one must do as people did in their homes in Pompeii: one must keep a dog guarding the door. Anyone who comes to the door without clean hands and soul, without love for the unfortunate, without love for all, without a burning desire to correct and prevent historic crimes, without courage to subordinate the concerns of one caste to the general interest, should have the dog unleashed on him.

80.- One must have faith in the best in people and mistrust the worst in them. The best must be given the opportunity to reveal itself and prevail over the worst. If not, the worst will prevail. Nations should have one pillory for those who incite to useless hatred and another for those who do not tell the truth in time.

81.- The sky will become the pavement men walk on before the human spirit renounces the pleasures of creation -a lasting realization of oneself. If the earth ever becomes one immense commune, no tree would hang heavier with fruit than the scaffold with glorious rebels.

82.- There is only one kind of person who is more vile and despicable than a demagogue: a person who accuses those who calmly and honestly seek justice of being demagogues.

83.- In truth, authority is degrading when it is not a trust and mandate from those who are to obey it, because any other type of authority involves the abasement or diminishment of those who endure it, and only a person of mean and vulgar character will watch without bitterness the demeaning of other people. Satisfaction comes from seeing people free, even when they err, with the dignity of free thought and the beauty, the natural peace, that come from its exercise.

84.- The true revolutionary impulse is a generous fear; it is a love at once filial and paternal for all those in need of it, including those who sin, whether because they do not have it or because they do not know of it; it is untiring vigilance and preparation; it is an attention to the substance of things and not mere forms; it is constructive politics, politics that build and not that destroy.

85.- All unchecked power exercised over a long time degenerates into a caste system. With castes come vested interests, high positions, fear of losing them, intrigues to sustain them. Castes search each other out and rub shoulders with each other.

86.- The merit and strength of a people are measured by their enthusiasm for freedom when the only rewards from it are anguish and martyrdom, the blood and ashes of exile, the sorrow of a house driven by the waves, and the shame of a useless life that lacks the foundation and peace of mind needed to do one's share of the common task.

87.- Let the wine be made of plantains. If it turns out bitter, it is still our wine. It is understood that the forms of government of a country must be adapted to that country's nature, that absolute ideas must be expressed in relative forms or formal errors will bring their downfall, that for liberty to work, it must be sincere and complete, that if a republic does not open its arms to all and advance with all, the republic dies. Tigers, both from within and without, come in through the chinks.

88.- There is no room for delay where justice is concerned; and those who procrastinate in bringing it about turn justice against them.

89.- Every ruler, even in the most deviant and degrading forms of government, represents an active and considerable source of power, be it visible or hidden. When that power ceases to be, or when the ruler ceases to represent it, he will fall, no matter how strong his legal machinery and his hold.

90.- Compassion for the unfortunate, the ignorant and the impoverished must not go so far as to encourage and promote their errors. Awareness of the deaf and malignant forces of society, which hide under the name of order their anger at seeing those yesterday at their feet rise up, must not lead us to join hands with impotent rage so as to provoke the inevitable wrath of powerful freedom.