Fidel Castro has announced that he will step down as president after almost 50 years as the president of Cuba. He has outlasted two generations of U.S. presidents, dedicated to his overthrow. In 1959 – the year of the revolution – Castro said: “Our revolution is neither capitalist nor communist! ... Capitalism sacrifices the human being, communism with its totalitarian conceptions sacrifices human rights. We agree neither with the one or the other ... Our revolution is not red but olive green. It bears the colour of the rebel army from the Sierra Maestra.”[1] No wonder generation after generation of young people, fighting for social change, have identified with both Castro and the revolution he personified.
When you study the history of Cuba, you can understand why the young Castro described his revolution as “neither capitalist nor communist.” Before the 1959 revolution – which overthrew the corrupt U.S. backed Fulgencio Batista – hidden from most histories is the magnificent uprising of 1933.[2] In the context of the catastrophic Great Depression, a massive movement engulfed the country. Richard Gott cites one eyewitness account. “Within less than a month the number of mills under labour control was estimated at thirty-six. Soviets were reported to have been organized at Mabay, Jaronú, Senado, Santa Lucía, and other centrales. At various points mill managers were held prisoners by the workers. Labour guards were formed, armed with clubs, sticks and a few revolvers ... Workers fraternized with the soldiers and police.”[3]
Batista emerged into history as the central figure who helped to restore capitalism by leading the counter-revolution. Tragically, the communist organization at the time – the Partido Unión Revolucionaria – eventually did a deal with Batista. Their international organization – the Communist International – could say that “The people who are working for the overthrow of Batista ... are no longer acting in the interests of the Cuban people.”[4] This alliance with Batista would last a decade, from 1937 to 1947. Castro’s movement in the 1950s was, then, a movement against a regime which the Communist Party had helped legitimize. The Communist Party was completely discredited, and Castro’s revolution was “not red but olive-green.”
Bitter opposition from the United States has defined Castro’s rule. This has nothing to do with a supposedly “democratic” U.S. against an “authoritarian” Castro. On taking power, to make even small improvements in the lives of Cuba’s poor, Castro had to challenge both landlords and capitalists. The U.S. has never forgiven him.
Cuba like much of Latin America, had an economy disfigured by centuries of imperialism. A handful of very rich landlords controlled the vast majority of land, while thousands of peasants were completely landless. Castro took three steps. First, he restricted most landholdings to 1,000 acres. Second, he divided up 40 per cent of the countryside into small holdings for the poor and landless peasants – giving them on average plots of 67 acres. Third, he stated that in future, land in Cuba would be owned only by Cubans. This infuriated the Americans, because the majority of foreign landowners were from the U.S.[5]
So when 300,000 tons of desperately needed crude oil arrived from Russia (in exchange for Cuban sugar), under pressure from the U.S. government, Shell, Standard Oil and Texaco refused to allow the use of their refineries. Castro expropriated the refineries. The U.S. then attacked the sugar industry – the lifeblood of the country, taking away Cuba’s sugar quota. “They will take away our quota pound by pound, and we will take away their sugar mills one by one.”[6] The sugar mills were nationalized, along with all major American properties on the island. So the U.S. “struck back ... with the most powerful economic weapon in its armoury: an embargo on U.S. exports to Cuba.”[7] That embargo has continued to this day, and has made life in Cuba extremely difficult.
But Castro’s Cuba has nonetheless survived – in fact it has more than survived. Through the 1970s and 1980s, Cuban troops fought side by side with liberation fighters in Africa, helping win national liberation struggles against European imperialism. Critically, in 1987 and 1988, Angolan troops supported by Cubans, fought repeated battles in Angola against an invading army from apartheid South Africa. The inability of the South African military to defeat the Angolans and Cubans was a critical factor in the subsequent collapse of the apartheid regime.[8]
But the brutal U.S. embargo had the disastrous impact of driving Cuba into the camp of the Stalinist Soviet Union. An economy dependent on the export of sugar to the United States became an economy dependent on the export of sugar to the Soviet Union and its allies. And working too closely with the Soviet Union sometimes meant taking the wrong sides in international disputes. In the 1970s, Cuba provided military support to the repressive Russian-backed regime of Ethiopia against the people of Eritrea who were fighting for their independence, an action that left a legacy of bitterness in Eritrea.[9]
Most analyses of Cuba accept that its society is now “post-capitalist” in some sense. This is misleading. No country as poor and isolated as Cuba can, on its own, make a transition to socialism. It remains caught in the web of the world economy, forced to “market” itself as a tourist designation with all the social ills which come with carving out such a “niche” in the capitalist economy.[10] Cuba under Castro needs not to be romanticized as a new socialist society, but understood as a country that has mobilized and stood up to imperialism over half a century.
In 1953, while on trial with 100 others for their assault on the Moncada Barracks, the then 26 year old Fidel Castro entered the stage of history. “The guilty continue at liberty and with weapons in their hands - weapons which continually threaten the lives of all citizens. ... I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.”[11] As Castro prepares to step down as president of Cuba, more than half a century later, there is no question that history has absolved him. The revolution he led remains a beacon for millions in the Global South.
© 2008 Paul Kellogg
References
[1] Cited in Peter Binns and Mike Gonzalez, “Cuba, Castro and Socialism,” International Socialism 2:8, Spring 1980, p. 6
[2] See Luis E. Aguilar, Cuba 1933: Prologue to Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972)
[3] Cited in Richard Gott, Cuba: A new history (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 136
[4] Cited in Gott, pp. 143-4
[5] Gott, pp. 170-1
[6] Gott, pp. 183-4
[7] Gott, p. 185
[8] “Cuba & The Liberation of Southern Africa,” Pan-African newswire, November 8, 2005
[9] D. Fogel, Africa in Struggle, (San Francisco: ISM press, 1982), pp. 281-336
[10] See Antonio Carmona Báez, State resistance to globalisation in Cuba (London: Pluto Press, 2004), pp. 1-85
[11] Fidel Castro, “History Will Absolve Me,” Castro Internet Archive
10 comments:
Thanks for this excellent article, Paul. I remember two years ago you gave a talk on Cuba at Marxism in Toronto, and when talking about the great victory of the Angolan and Cuban forces over the South Africans in Quito Canavale, 1987, you also mentioned it was the same year as the South Africa's great miners strike, the other, more forgotten aspect of how Apartheid South Africa was brought down.
I think this is the key approach that has to be taken on Cuba when we talk about whether or not it is socialist or in a period of transition towards socialism. Clearly it is not. The Cuban Revolution was not based on workers control and workers power. This is why socialists should draw lessons from 1932-3, not 1959, if we want to learn how we create a socialist society.
Doug -- the point you make about the miners' strike is very important. I'm working on a longer article that will link these two events -- the military defeat of South Africa, and the magnificent emergence of an independent Black workers' movement, centred on the mines. I think when these two events are seen together, you get a real feel for how apartheid was destroyed -- by a combination of class struggle and anti-imperialist struggle.
Thanks for this, Paul. A wonderful synthesis of sympathy and criticism that pulls out what is most significant about Cuba. In contrast to most of what we've been reading, this is sober and neither hostile nor starry-eyed.
Thanks for your commentary, Paul. I'm pleasantly surprised at your sympathetic commentary, since your politics are ISO. I've taken your comments and sent them to the eleven hundred subscribers of my CubaNews list, a free Yahoo news group and, arguably (I would so argue!) the largest Cuba internet news group there is in English.
As a Canadian, you're very lucky that you live in a country which has normal relations with Cuba (at least diplomatically normal, and with an active economic relationship).
Last time I went to Cuba, I passed through Toronto, and what a delight to see all those carts at the airport with the Cuban advertising on them!
Cuba and the United States are not and cannot be equal. Cuba’s government certainly does limit democratic rights. But in a situation like David and Goliath, Cuba does what it feels it must to defend itself. Look at Iraq today and you can see what Cuba would look like if it were “liberated” by Washington.
In Guantanamo, the world can see what legal system Washington would impose on the rest of Cuba if only it could. In Guantanamo, which is United States occupied territory, prisoners are held without trial for years, and are told they could be held indefinitely even if not found guilty there. In this context, Cuba’s defensive measures should surprise no one.
My father and his parents lived in Cuba from 1939 to 1942. They were German Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, and not political left-wingers. That family history is where my own interest in Cuba comes from. My dad met my mom in the United States and that's how I came into this world.
Cuban society today represents an effort to build an alternative to the way life was under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who ran Cuba before Fidel Castro led a revolution there. No one complained about a lack of human rights and democracy in those days, but U.S. businesses were protected.
Some things work, some don’t. Like any society, Cuba its flaws and contradictions, as well as having solid achievements. No society is perfect. But we can certainly learn a few things from Cuba’s experience. I think we can learn more than a few. If we want to bring freedom to Cuba, the best thing we can do is practice what we preach.
We should all be free to visit Cuba. We can visit China and Vietnam, even North Korea, Syria and Iran, why can't we visit Cuba and see it for ourselves? Cuba is our neighbor and we should simply normalized relations with the island.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments Walter. One small point - my comments here grow out of the last few years of work in Toronto participating in solidarity with Venezuela and now Bolivia. I have little recent familiarity with the position of the ISO in the United States in terms of Cuba.
Working to build solidarity with the people of Latin America poses very clearly two key political questions. First (and it has to be first) are the issues of imperialism and anti-imperialism. The shape of Cuban, Venezuelan and Bolivian history has been shaped by the long "encounter" with the horrors of first European and then North American imperialism. This quite rightly shapes 90 per cent, maybe 95 per cent, of our dialogue, debate and activity. With that as a foundation, there are then issues posed "internal" to each society, among them questions about the class nature of the regimes. Done in that order - and in that proportion - this can be a fruitful and important discussion.
Paul, thanks for this excellent article and appreciation of Fidel Castro’s role as the historic leader of the Cuban revolution.
Your comments about how the July 26th movement had to cope with the so-called “red” politics of the pro-Batista Cuban Communist Party (the pro-Moscow Stalinist operation are an important starting point to understand the essential anti-Stalinist character of the Cuban communists who have led the revolution for the last five decades.
You wrote:
“Tragically, the communist organization at the time – the Partido Unión Revolucionaria – eventually did a deal with Batista. Their international organization – the Communist International – could say that “The people who are working for the overthrow of Batista ... are no longer acting in the interests of the Cuban people.”[4] This alliance with Batista would last a decade, from 1937 to 1947. Castro’s movement in the 1950s was, then, a movement against a regime which the Communist Party had helped legitimize. The Communist Party was completely discredited, and Castro’s revolution was “not red but olive-green.”
John Riddell and I touched on this same historical lesson in our article Economic Reforms Fuel Cuba’s Battle of Ideas (published in Socialist Voice #69, March 1, 2006 and available in PDF/pamphlet format at
http://www.socialistvoice.ca/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/cubastandsfirm.pdf )
We wrote:
Fidel’s November 17 [2006] speech took up
this topic with regard to the foreign policy of the
Soviet state and Communist Party.
“A tremendous vice was created,” he told the
University of Havana students, “the abuse of
power, the cruelty, and in particular, the habit of
one country imposing its authority, that of one
hegemonic party, over all other countries and
parties.”
These historical events “influenced the idea that
for a communist the end justifies the means,”
undercutting the importance of the ethical factor
in the struggle for socialism.
“Today we can speak of this subject because we
are entering a new phase.”
Fidel explained his view with reference to
international policy of the Soviet Communist
Party in the 1930s and 1940s. He condemned the
1939 alliance of the USSR with fascist Germany
as “a very hard blow” that left communist parties
“to politically bleed to death.” He also assailed
the policy that led the Cuban Communist Party
in the 1930s and 1940s to ally with the dictator
Fulgencio Batista: “The order came from Moscow:
organize the anti-fascist front. It was a pact with
the devil.”
Subordination of workers’ struggles to
supposedly progressive capitalist politicians like
Batista was a hallmark of the Soviet CP’s policy of
“anti-fascist unity” in the mid-to-late 1930s.
Fidel contrasted to this record the Cuban
Communists’ relations with Latin American
revolutionary movements: “It has never even
occurred to us to tell anybody what they should
be doing.”
Castro’s comments on the international
dimension of the Soviet experience illustrates
the central role that the Cuban leaders assign to
Cuba’s intimate involvement in the experiences
and liberation struggles of working people around
the world. Cuba’s internationalism is rooted in
the thought of the leader of its independence
struggle, Jose Marti, who famously said, “Patria
es humanidad”—humanity is our homeland. [end quote]
Your point about Cuban society not being post capitalist is potentially misleading. On one level, that observation is correct. No country, no matter the class character of its state and government, can build socialism in isolation. Despite all the progressive economic and social conquests of Cuban workers and farmers, their national economy is still a small rowboat in a raging sea of international capitalist and imperialist economic relations. The tentacles of those commercial relations reach far into Cuban society and severely limit its options and achievements. This would be true even without five decades of US embargo.
The issue about achieving a correct characterization of the class nature of Cuba, however, is to understand what worldwide aims and program the Cuban state and government, the Cuban Communist party, and the social institutions of the revolution have committed to, and remain committed to. The Cuban revolution has led a ceaseless and inspiring anti-imperialist struggle for five decades. It has always placed the interests of the world revolution ahead of its own particular state interests – a revival of the approach of the Soviet government in Lenin’s time. It has campaigned worldwide for a socialist alternative, explaining to millions that the problems of underdevelopment and imperialist domination cannot be solved in a national or capitalist framework. It is this outlook that has won over the Bolivarians and informs the strategy of the ALBA alliance. That is what makes the Cuban revolution an anti imperialist, anti-capitalist, and a socialist revolution. The elimination of the Cuban capitalist class was a huge step forward in the long march towards socialism than can only be successful through the extension of the conquests of the revolution to other countries in the hemisphere.
You end your blog with an inspiring statement: “As Castro prepares to step down as president of Cuba, more than half a century later, there is no question that history has absolved him. The revolution he led remains a beacon for millions in the Global South.”
But this only begs the same question. How can a capitalist society (I ask those who claim that Cuba is still capitalist) be and “remain a beacon for millions in the Global South”? There is something there that has acted to inspire and attract this response by tens of millions of workers and farmers worldwide, not just today, but for decades. More than Fidel, as huge as his historical role is. More than Che. More than the 400,000 Cuban internationalists that fought in Africa to end colonial rule and bring down apartheid. More than the tens of thousands of Cuban doctors and teachers working in solidarity missions abroad.
And it’s not capitalism!
It’s the organized masses of Cuba, committed to socialism on a world scale and dedicated to support any and all struggles that point in that direction. The Cuban state and government rests on them and acts to defend their social and class interests.
I heartily concur with the closing comments of your response to Walter Lippmann’s remarks.
“Working to build solidarity with the people of Latin America poses very clearly two key political questions. First (and it has to be first) are the issues of imperialism and anti-imperialism. The shape of Cuban, Venezuelan and Bolivian history has been shaped by the long "encounter" with the horrors of first European and then North American imperialism. This quite rightly shapes 90 per cent, maybe 95 per cent, of our dialogue, debate and activity. With that as a foundation, there are then issues posed "internal" to each society, among them questions about the class nature of the regimes. Done in that order - and in that proportion - this can be a fruitful and important discussion.”
In that order! – and in that proportion!
Sol y paz
Felipe Stuart
Managua
Thanks for the comment Felipe. A country that stands against imperialism does not have to be socialist to inspire millions. Nasser's Egypt inspired millions. The Mexican Revolution in the early part of the 20th century was a beacon for the entire region. The wonderful anti-colonial revolutions in Africa in the 1970s sparked workers' revolution in Portugal. There are two separate questions – anti-imperialism and the struggle against capitalism. They are of course related. But too often they have been conflated.
mpkellogg said...
Thanks for the comment Felipe. A country that stands against imperialism does not have to be socialist to inspire millions. Nasser's Egypt inspired millions. The Mexican Revolution in the early part of the 20th century was a beacon for the entire region. The wonderful anti-colonial revolutions in Africa in the 1970s sparked workers' revolution in Portugal. There are two separate questions – anti-imperialism and the struggle against capitalism. They are of course related. But too often they have been conflated.
****
I appreciate your point that anti-imperialism is not the same thing as the struggle against capitalism. All one needs to do to prove that is look at the composition of the Baku conference convened by the Communist International, or closer to our time the Movement of the Non Aligned countries, again chaired by Cuba for the second time.
But you missed my point.
Cuba combines its struggle against imperialism with a relentless anti-capitalist struggle both at home and in the internationalist arena. It has argued ever since the time of the Second Declaration of Habana that only socialism can resolve the problems of imperialist domination of “third world” countries. ALBA is something more than an anti-imperialist trade alliance. It advocates economic relations based on solidarity. Operación Milagro, which has restored sight to tens of thousands of Latin Americans, is not a charity. It is a sustained campaign to demonstrate the possibility of a new kind of social relations based on satisfying human needs, not profit.
I know of no other country that has waged an anti-imperialist struggle for fifty years and used it as a platform to advocate the only strategy that can end imperialist domination – the strategy of international socialist revolution and the building of a federation of socialist Latin American states.
The Bolivarians are now advocating the same course. But they have yet to settle decisively the question of class power within Venezuela, something the Cubans have done within their own borders to the degree possible in a small, isolated country. Further progress in Cuba very much depends on the fate of the Bolivarians and the PSUV.
We may fail to comprehend the fundamental difference between Cuba and other anti-imperialist regimes past or present (Nasser’s Egypt, Correa's Ecuador today) but Washington understands it to the marrow. They have been and are able to reach a modus vivendi with such regimes, as they did with Stalinist regimes in Europe prior to their demise. They can threaten nuclear war against Iran today and tomorrow cut a deal with Tehran if that would help them stabilize Iraq or Pakistan.
But they cannot do that with Cuba, any more than they could have with the Bolshevik government when led by Lenin and Trotsky. That is why we saw a trade and investment initiative towards Vietnam but an increasingly vicious trade embargo against Cuba.
Cuban communists fight for socialism and use government and state power to advance that aim both at home and abroad. We have not seen any example of that since the Bolsheviks during the first decade of Soviet power. The Bolivarian government of Venezuela has committed itself to a similar course, a move that now makes it a prime target of Washington.
Defending the Bolivarian revolution involves more than explaining the anti-imperialist dimension of that fight. It involves explaining Bolivarian commitment to a socialist future. And it involves explaining ALBA which is an anticipation of non capitalist, solidarity-based trade relations and economic relations between countries.
I hope that our efforts to understand this don’t run aground on the rocky shores of disputes over labels and words. But the content of what we are discussing can’t be avoided so we will have to keep searching for terminology that clarifies and avoids false debates. I don’t doubt that we are fully in agreement about that aspect of an ongoing and necessary discussion.
Felipe Stuart
Managua
Hi Paul. Great article and discussion. I found the text below when I was browsing the Marxist Internet archive. It's a 1999 PhD thesis on Cuban Trotskyism. Haven't read it yet, but it might be useful.
Cheers, Sean
Revolutas, Brasil
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/cuba/tennent/PhD/contents.html
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