Re: Fidel re-proclaims the socialist nature of the Revolution...

[Stewart Sinclair <stewsinc@xxxxxx>]

Fidel re-proclaims the socialist nature of the Revolution

I'm very glad that someone posted this speech by Fidel on the current
reality of the Cuban Revolution.  It reminds me of the time when I first
came to be involved in revolutionary politics.  In 1963 I joined the Fair
Play for Cuba Committee in Vancouver B.C. Canada and volunteered to be the
literature agent (which mostly consisted of going around to meetings and
selling copies of Fidel's speeches  and distributing material by C.W. Mills
and others).  At the time I was doing this as part of my commitment to
socialism as a member of the Canadian Trotskyist group the "League for
Socialist Action".

The capacity of that organization in that time (mid 1950's to 1967/8) for
serious working class politics - with all it's warts and there were plenty
- has not been equaled in Canada since.  We have not yet produced an
analysis of it's demise or the corrective measures that might be taken to
prevent the decay and fracturing of revolutionary organizations, so common
over the last 3 decades, in the future.

Be that as it may, it is clear that the Cubans have accomplished a lot more
with a lot less theory that most "academic" Marxists  would have thought
possible (including myself and many of the people that I worked with) at
the time.  This experience says a lot for leaving some debates in abeyance
and getting a serious organization, even a very small one, together and
going directly to the workers with a clear understandable message of the
sort that you can get from Fidel's speeches.  The same spirit of the unity
and simplicity of the program of the needs of the oppressed can be gained
from Malcolm X's later speeches (that's why the "man" murdered him).  It is
clear to me that the small contribution to the survival of the Cuban
Revolution is the best thing I have done.  It's also the most satisfying
because - as Fidel's speech shows us -  so much can be done under the
terrible circumstances that Cuba has struggled through.  The fact of this
revolution is our most precious remaining accomplishment.

Stewart Sinclair

PS I'm quit familiar with the term "workerist" and many of it's uses and
abuses.  I'm in favour of Lenin's kind of workerism as expressed "What is
to Be Done".  When all's said and done the primary written and practical
contribution that Lenin made to the whole of theory and history is
contained in "What Is To Be Done" and "Where to Begin".  His material on
Imperialism and the State is valuable but pales to historical
insignificance when stacked against the plan for, and implementation of,
the construction of a revolutionary workers party.