A Marxist Analysis of Cuba
*The text below consists of major excerpts from a
resolution, "Death Agony of World Capitalism and the Crisis of
Proletarian Leadership" that was approved by Socialist Action's
national convention in August 1998. It contains the Marxist analysis of
Cuba held by Socialist Action and Youth for Socialist Action.
The Cuban revolution of 1959 profoundly changed economic and social life on
the island. Within two years after the revolution, the capitalist system
had been replaced by what we call a "workers state."
Cuba created a planned economy, with virtually all industry, large
commerce, and land holdings removed from private ownership and run for the
common welfare instead of for private profit.
In selecting the terms to describe Cuba, we have consistently rejected use
of the terms "deformed" or "degenerated" workers state.
There certainly are deformations of workers democracy in Cuba. But in our
terminology the term "deformed workers state" is both descriptive
and programmatic. It is politically equivalent to the view that the state
is controlled by a crystallized bureaucratic caste that must be overthrown
by political revolution.
As Joe Hansen put it in his article, "What the Discussion on Cuba Is
About," we qualify the designation of Cuba as a workers state by
adding that it is "'one lacking as yet the forms of democratic
proletarian rule,' meaning that while it is not 'deformed' in the sense of
having Stalinists in power, the state is not under the democratic control
of the workers and peasants...." (From "Dynamics of the Cuban
Revolution.")
From the beginning, moreover, Cuba's revolutionists of action have resisted
counter-revolutionary pressures by Soviet and Cuban Stalinism.
Fidel Castro in 1962, when he was first secretary of the Integrated
Revolutionary Organizations (ORI) and prime minister of the revolutionary
Cuban government, led the first big open fight against Stalinist
bureaucracy and right-wing sectarianism.
The first confrontation occurred when Anibal Escalante, a leader of the
Stalinist faction of the ORI (which resulted from a fusion of Castro's July
26th Movement and allied groupings with Escalante's Popular Socialist
Party) attempted a bureaucratic takeover of the ORI and state apparatus.
Fidel Castro took the Stalinists head on in his March 26, 1962, speech and
dealt them a blow from which they never recovered.
And even now, in its current critical stage of existence, the Castroist
leadership has continued its efforts to block the formation of a
crystallized bureaucratic caste. At the most recent congress of the Cuban
Communist Party (October 1997), the Castroist left wing of the CCP were
reported to have dealt their right wing a major setback.
And in Fidel Castro's July 26, 1998, speech-carried by all of Cuba's
electronic and printed media-he reaffirmed his party's and government's
commitment to their goal of world socialism.
Cuba's revolutionary leaders have from the outset demonstrated their
loyalty to the class interests of Cuba's workers in factory and field and
to all of the proletariat's natural allies. But in regard to the need for
institutionalization of soviet-type workers' democracy, they have
established what they call "people's power," which is far short
of true workers' democracy.
True workers' democracy, modeled after the institutions created by Russia's
workers to carry through the October Revolution and serve as the political
embodiment of the dictatorship of the proletariat-not the eviscerated
version imposed by Stalin after his bloody political counterrevolution-is
vital to Cuba's socialist future.
But that does not mean that "peoples' power" is, or is designed
to become, a form of bourgeois parliamentary "democracy," such as
Gorbachev instituted in 1985 to mobilize non-proletarian social forces
behind the bureaucratic caste's attempt to make a transition to capitalism
and transform itself into a capitalist class.
Parliamentary democracy, better-known as dollar-democracy, gives
"everyone" the right to vote, but the power to mold and
manufacture "public opinion" is restricted to those few
individuals with enough dollars to maintain a veritable monopoly over the
media of communication as well as the means for purchasing politicians and
state officials.
People's power, in short, is not the institutionalization of workers'
democracy that Joe Hansen spoke of. But it's not bourgeois parliamentarianism
either.
Of course, in the course of events, backward and counter-revolutionary
forces active in Cuba may well attempt to give a bourgeois-parliamentary
content to people's power. And on the other side, the revolutionary forces
in Cuban society may also seek to transform this ambiguous electoral
institution into a genuine democratic agency of the political dictatorship
of the working class.
These opposing tendencies are implicit in the current relationship of
forces in Cuba and in the world.
The revolutionary component of the Cuban party and government is certainly
aware of the very real danger attendant to opening its economy to the
penetration of foreign capital. The revolutionaries in Cuba are fully aware
that it is second nature for imperialist capitalism to infiltrate the
democratic institutions of the workers, their unions, and their parties to
corrupt and transform workers' leaders into their labor and/or
"socialist" lieutenants.
Thus, this fully justified fear may have caused them to underweigh the
potentially decisive contribution workers' democracy can make to the
defense of the revolution.
That, in our view, may or may not be a lack of confidence in the working
class and its historic role as the agency of world socialist revolution.
After all, the predominant policies followed by these exemplary
revolutionists of action are an expression of their confidence in the
working class and the historic alternatives facing the human race: either
forward to socialism, or barbarism, or worse will be its fate.
Moreover, we should not be so arrogant as to oversimplify the very
difficult position of this country of 11 million people, isolated and
blockaded by history's most ruthless and most powerful imperialist behemoth
just 90 miles from its shores.
This is an enemy with a destructive power capable of destroying all life on
earth many times over. And one that has repeatedly demonstrated that it
will not hesitate when it believes that the raining of death and
destruction on cities and nations is necessary for the defense of its
perceived right to kill any and all who threaten its class interests.
Cuba's revolutionists of action are fully aware of the responsibility they
bear and will think more than twice before moving faster and further than they
believe that the current objective relation of class forces will permit.
We should continue to remain in solidarity with the Cuban socialist
revolution and in critical support of its Castroist/Guevaraist leadership,
which, at almost every key historical juncture, has chosen the road of
revolutionary action.
The character of the Cuban leadership has a content closer to revolutionary
Marxism than many of the currents which describe themselves as such.
Moreover, the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party has shown a highly
unusual capacity to learn from its own and others' mistakes, and has also
shown, most importantly, that it has the courage to act according to its
convictions.
Cuba remains the only workers' state that has not come under the domination
of a crystallized bureaucracy and which has not made other than essentially
tactical concessions to foreign capitalist investors in Cuba in order to
survive in a world dominated by a ruthless imperialist colossus 90 miles
away.
Their current focus on breaking through four decades of blockade and
economic sabotage by Yankee imperialism is indispensable to defending the
conquests of their socialist revolution. All indications are that
revolutionary Cuba has learned from the collapse of Stalinism and the disintegration
of the Soviet Union that there is no hope for Cuba within the framework of
a capitalist world economic order.
Paradoxically, the developing global economic crisis has impelled some of
the world's capitalist countries to invest in Cuba, essentially on terms
acceptable to Cuba under the given circumstances. And that, in turn,
contributes to identical pressures on American big business to oppose
Helms-Burton, albeit, half-heartedly.
American capitalists are also driven by their own narrow economic interests
to take advantage of a potentially lucrative Cuban market for their own
surplus goods and capital.
To be sure, this includes great risks for Cuba. The presence of hordes of
capitalist entrepreneurs with plenty of dollars to invest will have contradictory
effects. On the one hand, it can serve to ameliorate the extreme hardships
of the "special period." And on the other, investors loaded with
dollars and seeking to gain friends in positions of influence can also have
very harmful effects on Cuban society.
That's the rationale of the growing sector of American capitalists who are
in favor of trading with Cuba. They also know that from their viewpoint
this is also a risk, but the blockade hasn't worked anyway, they argue, and
they point out that once inside they have a fighting chance of corrupting a
large portion of the Cuban people.
The record of the Castroists, however, suggests that they are well aware of
the risks. But they have every right and a duty to their revolution to try
to break through the American imperialist blockade.
Workers' democracy, to be sure, is vital to the defense of the Cuban
revolution. But in and of itself it cannot solve the problem of an isolated
workers state in a hostile capitalist world. And everything we know about
Cuba's revolutionaries, everything that has been said above, indicates that
they understand that their current trade policy is only a temporary
expedient but no solution.
Castro's July 26, 1998, speech mentioned above indicates that Cuba's
perspective remains as it was from the first days of their revolution-the
extension of their socialist revolution to the world. But experience has
taught them that their earlier strategy was deeply flawed. And we have
every reason to believe that when the unfolding global economic crisis
erupts, it will precipitate a pre-revolutionary period of class struggle in
the strongholds of world capitalism.
When the world crisis breaks out into the open, it could with surprising
speed bring masses of the world's revolutionary workers onto Cuba's side in
the global struggle between capitalist barbarism and a socialist world
order.
No one can predict what the Cubans, or for that matter any other current in
the world working class, will do when world capitalist equilibrium collapses-including
the many currents claiming to be Trotskyist or quasi-Trotskyist. In any
event, we cannot discount the capacity of the Castroist leadership of the
CCP to rise up to meet that fateful challenge to the future of their
revolution as well as the very future of the human race.
In the early 1960s, the Castro/Guevaraist leaders of the Cuban Revolution
sought to extend their revolution primarily to Latin America. This
perspective made eminent sense to them because the Latin American workers
and peasants, inspired by the Cuban Revolution, were in pre-revolutionary
ferment.
The Cuban revolutionists of action, however, missed that opportunity
because of their mistaken guerrillaist strategy and their failure to come
to grips with counter-revolutionary Stalinism in Latin America.
This time it promises to be different. Besides having learned from their
mistakes, the dynamics of rising class struggle in the world of imperialism
promises to make it easier for Cuba's revolutionary leaders to embrace the
revolutionary proletarian strategy of class struggle based on the method of
the "Transitional Program."
And as small as our world movement is at this moment, we can play a key
role in helping the Cuban Communist Party draw the right lessons in the
course of the coming struggles. But only if we remain on the solid
foundation of the historic theory and program of the Fourth International.
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