Intellectuals & Cuba (this time hopefully properly formatted)

["Zane Boyd" <zeebee@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

But if constructing the future and settling everything for all times is not
our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present:
I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless in the
sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of
being just a little afraid of conflict with the powers that be." -- Karl
Marx,
1843

Socialism has always been about democracy, human rights and
internationalism. -- Tony Benn

Freedom for only the supporters of the government, however many there may
be, is not freedom. Real freedom is freedom for those who think differently.
... Without general elections, without freedom of the press and unlimited
freedom of assembly, without a contest of free opinions, life stagnates and
withers in all public institutions, and the bureaucracy becomes the only
active element. -- Rosa Luxemburg

The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class
itself. -- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1879


THE CURRENT DEBATE OVER THE ARRESTS AND SENTENCES IN CUBA

A Contribution by Zane Boyd
June 10, 2003


A remarkable debate has opened up in the international left around the
arrests and harsh sentences meted out to more than 70 opponents of the Cuban
government and that government's execution of three hijackers earlier this
year. The debate is an important one, because what's at stake is not only
how best to respond to the U.S. criminal policy toward Cuba but, more
importantly, how best to defend the Cuban Revolution itself.

While there have been numerous statements and counter-statements on this
issue, I wish to focus on the contribution by veteran Marxist and Latin
America scholar James Petras, "The Responsibility of the Intellectuals:
Cuba, the U.S. and Human Rights," which he issued May 1, 2003.

While Petras acknowledges various right-wing intellectuals who have
predictably condemned the Cuban government's actions, he makes it clear his
primary target is "a small army of otherwise progressive
intellectuals -- Chomsky, Saramago, Sontag, Zinn and Wallerstein." It is
this
"progressive" group that he says "causes the greatest harm to the burgeoning
anti-imperialist movement."

INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY
Before I get to my own critical assessment of the Cuban situation, I want to
answer what I can only describe as slanders by Petras against these
intellectuals. This is necessary since, after all, the very subject of
Petras's piece is the responsibility of intellectuals.

Well, the first responsibility is integrity, honesty and truth. What is
particularly galling (as well as unhelpful for a healthy debate and
exchange) is that, while waxing indignant over dishonesty, moral blackmail
and  "mendacious moralizing," Petras himself engages in a defamation of his
intellectual targets.

For instance: "...prestigious intellectuals brandish their past credentials
as
'critics' of U.S. foreign policy to give credibility to their uninformed
denunciation of alleged Cuban moral transgressions, equating Cuba's arrest
of paid functionaries of the U.S. State Department and the execution of
three terrorist kidnappers with the genocidal war crimes of U.S.
imperialism. The practitioners of moral equivalents apply a microscope to
Cuba and a telescope to U.S. crimes -- which gives them a certain
acceptability among the liberal sectors of the empire."

What is this about "past" credentials? The international statement against
the Cuban regime's crackdown signed by Chomsky, Wallerstein, Zinn and a host
of other "otherwise progressive" intellectual authors contains fully four
out of six paragraphs focused clearly on the past and the present crimes of
the U.S. government. It is a demagogic smear to claim that these
intellectuals make a moral equation between the recent actions of the Cuban
government with the manifold crimes of U.S. imperialism.

The slander gets worse. Again: "But our moralists are not bothered by
context, by U.S. threats to Cuba immediate or proximate, they are eager to
ignore it all to demonstrate to the State Department that they not only
oppose U.S. foreign policy but also condemn every independent country,
system and leader who opposes the U.S. In other words, Mr. Ashcroft, when
you crack down on the 'apologists' for Cuban 'terror', remember that we are
different, we too condemned Cuba, we too called for a change of regime."

Incredible! The real reason these so-called progressive intellectuals have
condemned the Cuban regime's crackdown is.to curry the favor of the U.S.
State Department! Since when has Noam Chomsky ever curried the U.S. State
Department's favor, or any other of these other individuals for that matter?
It is to laugh! Or perhaps cry.

In the spirit of free debate and openness of ideas -- that which,
incidentally,
should also prevail in any country calling itself socialist -- Petras is of
course fully entitled to criticize the response of various intellectuals to
the recent Cuban events. However, he has no justification for maligning or
impugning the motives of those he takes issue with based on fabrication,
innuendo and hyperbole. This makes it difficult to take any argument he may
have seriously and effectively discourages further debate.

A SHAMEFUL LACK OF CONTEXT
On a more critical matter, for someone who lectures about the importance of
context, Petras himself displays a shameful lack of it in yet another
noteworthy paragraph. "Let us remember," he writes, "the same intellectuals
supported 'dissidents' in Eastern Europe and Russia who were bankrolled by
Soros and the U.S. State Department. The 'dissidents' turned the country
over to the Russian mafia, life expectancy declined five years (over 10
million Russians died prematurely with the sacking of the national health
system), while in Eastern Europe 'dissidents' closed the shipyards of
Gdansk, enrolled in NATO and provided mercenaries for the U.S. conquest of
Iraq. And never among these current supporters of Cuban 'dissidents' is
there any critical reflection on the catastrophic outcomes resulting from
their anti-communist diatribes and their manifestos in favor of the
'dissidents' who have become the soldiers of the U.S. Middle Eastern and
Central European empire."

Context, indeed! So, it was Adam Michnik, Jacek Kuron and their colleagues
who were responsible for restoring capitalism in Poland. The kindly
declaration of martial law by that great friend of socialism, Wojciech
Jaruzelski, and his Stalinist henchmen of course had nothing to do with
Poland's subsequent fate! And it was the likes of Leonid Pliushch and Ivan
Dziuba who brought Ukraine to its knees and not the years of Stalinist rot
brought on by those Ukrainian socialist paragons, Leonid Brezhnev and
Konstantin Chernenko, and their cronies!

The "critical reflection" that Petras so rightly demands on the recent
history of the former "socialist" states of the USSR and Eastern Europe is
not a matter of mere idle theoretical and historical interest to socialist
Cuba. It is vital, given the urgency of the Cuba's own current crisis.

Unfortunately, Petras himself turns reality on its head on this subject. It
wasn't dissidents who sold off the Soviet economy and took over along with
the Russian mafia. Rather, it was those with the power to do so-former state
apparatchiks themselves, especially those within the managerial bureaucracy.
This was also largely the case on the political level. Boris Yeltsin and now
Vladimir Putin were former Communist Party stalwarts, as was Byelorus's
Alexander Lukachenko. In Eastern Europe, meanwhile, ex-Communist bosses
morphed into "social democrats" or adopted some other new guise, and have
moved in and out of political power over the past decade. It's hard to
believe that Petras doesn't know all this already. Or, has the vehemence of
his vitriol against his intellectual nemeses simply clouded his memory?

In any event, does Petras actually believe that none of this would have
happened-that there would have been no collapse of the Soviet and East
European systems, no restoration of capitalism-had the "dissidents" simply
kept their mouths shut or had perhaps been eliminated? Petras should instead
be asking himself how it is that these former "socialist" governments
collapsed with such overwhelming popular approval with nary a peep of
protest or ounce of resistance from any of the working classes of these
countries.

What we have here is conspiracy theory substituting for serious social
analysis. There is nothing regarding the corruption, decadence and
oppression of Stalinist rule. There is nothing on the role (or passive lack
thereof) played by the Soviet and East European working class. There is
nothing about the absence of socialist democracy. There is nothing even
regarding the U.S. and NATO's bankrupting the Soviet economy through the
four-decades-long arms and space race.

No, the entire socio-economic evolution of these countries over the past 15
years is chalked up to the scheming of a ragtag bunch of dissidents fostered
and funded by Western capitalists and the U.S. State Department-and, of
course, the perfidious support of our "otherwise progressive" Western
intellectuals.

To put it bluntly, this is precisely the kind of hysterical response that
infected millions of Communist Party members and their intellectual fellow
travellers in the West when confronted with any opposition to or criticism
of Soviet Stalinism in the 1930s.

Back then as well, any problems within the Soviet Union were blamed entirely
on the threats and machinations of Western imperialism, Fascism, and various
plotters-including Trotskyists, anarchists and "social fascists" (viz.,
Social Democrats). Then as well, it was "you're with us or against us." Back
then, too, anyone who criticized or denounced the Soviet regime was branded
either a willing or pliant accomplice in the pay of (read: "apologist" or
"paid functionary") the CIA and Hitler.

On a more singular note, Petras here (like so many "otherwise progressive"
intellectuals on the left before him) again trots out the same old slander
and misrepresentation of the historic Solidarnosc movement in Poland. In the
early 1980s, "Solidarity" conducted perhaps the most militant and massive
workers uprising in modern times. These "dissidents" didn't "close" the
Gdansk shipyards, they occupied them! And they also struck and occupied
factories, mines, schools and offices throughout the entire country.

These "dissidents" in fact comprised virtually Poland's entire working class
organized in regionally coordinated local workers' self-management bodies
which had sprung up spontaneously during the strike wave in 1980. The
original draft program of Solidarnosc called for a national system of
workers'
self-management within the framework of a "socialized" (vs. merely
"nationalized") economy. Meanwhile, Jaruzelski's bureaucrats and their
Moscow mentors fought frantically to retain rigid, central command of a
decaying and bureaucratically manipulated structure with an implacable
hostility to any element of genuine workers' democracy. In fact, Jaruzelski
declared martial law in December 1981 on the very eve of a planned national
gathering of workers self-management delegates-what would in effect have
amounted to a full-fledged dual power situation.

It appears that Petras finds more kinship with the Stalinist "defenders" of
"actually existing socialism" (as did Fidel as well at the time), than with
the working class and its intellectual defenders.

Just imagine for a moment if Solidarnosc had succeeded in establishing
workers' power in Poland though a self-managed economy and democratic
political system. What might Poland and possibly all of Europe for that
matter have looked like today? Would the world have seen in Poland the real
possibilities of socialism as opposed to the dead hand of bureaucratism?
Would Cuba have been reduced to such isolation as it finds itself in today?
And would not the liberating promise of socialism have retained some cachet
among the new generation of anti-globalization and anti-capitalist activists
who instead have largely turned their backs on socialism?

OPEN AND FAIR TRIALS?
I realize that some defenders of the Cuban government have declared that the
trials were legal, open and fair. The truth is, these dissidents (or paid
U.S. functionaries or whatever you care to call them) were rounded up en
masse and summarily tried and sentenced.

Why didn't the Cuban government -- if it had the goods on these people, with
a
good many if not all of them in cahoots with James Cason and/or acting as
paid agents of the U.S. government -- why didn't it hold truly open trials
in
the full light of Cuban and international public opinion, expose these
opponents for the stooges they allegedly are, along with the various
machinations of the U.S. government? That would have been the effective and
principled thing to do. Instead, Castro and Cuban foreign minister Perez
Roque were forced to explain their arbitrary actions after the events,
certain intellectuals felt compelled to protest the trials and sentences,
while others countered by defending the Cuban government's actions. All this
could have been avoided and Cuba would have emerged on a solid and confident
moral and political footing.

BROADENING THE CONTEXT
Throughout his article, Petras repeatedly sounds the alarm on the indirect
and overt threats of a U.S. military intervention in Cuba, U.S. covert
operations in funding and fomenting oppositional activity within the
country, international U.S. imperialist aggression, Miami-based terrorism,
and the like. In fact, Petras frames the dangers facing the Cuban Revolution
exclusively within this singular context. Cuba and its problems are viewed
entirely within the perspective of a hostile American regime bent on world
domination. And it is this narrow alarmist framework that, in fact, defines
his attitudes to all dissenters and critics of Cuban government policies,
above all our "progressive" intellectuals.

Everything with Petras is U.S. vs. Cuba, state vs. state. There is nothing
regarding Cuba's internal situation. Petras barely mentions the U.S. embargo
and its effects. More significantly, he fails to address the question of how
the base of Cuban society -- the workers, students, intellectuals -- are
expected
to fulfil their essential function in defence of the revolution. Instead,
they are relegated to a passive role, while the entire burden of the
Revolution seems to be shouldered by the Fidelista leadership.

Of course, the threat of U.S. intervention is real. It always has been. And
admittedly there is a greater urgency under the current U.S. administration.
And yes, the U.S. engages in covert and overt destabilizing operations in
Cuba as well as many other countries. And yes, the American administration
is bent on world domination. However, is this exactly news? Especially after
9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq? And how does any of this justify the Cuban
regime taking injudicious, undemocratic actions against its critics and
opponents, however serious the charges it may have against them?

It is ludicrous in any case for Petras to think that the intellectuals he
denounces would not strongly oppose against any imminent or actual U.S.
invasion of Cuba, as they have on Iraq? Especially considering the colossal
antiwar movement that would immediately be spawned in the U.S. and around
the world in the event of such an attack.

More importantly -- and this is something Petras never addresses -- the
revolution
is not just in danger from U.S. intervention, subversion and terrorism.
There is also the dire internal crisis facing the country with its profound
social consequences. The economic reforms introduced by the Cuban government
over the past decade (many of them pro-market and even pro-capital, by the
way) have spawned dangerous divisions among the Cuban population, virtual
two-tiered health care, and serious unemployment. While some of these
reforms may be necessary to simply to keep the Cuban economy afloat, there
is a very real danger that the Revolution could eventually implode from
within.

This is the actual context -- external threat and internal crisis -- in
which the
various problems facing the Cuban Revolution must be considered, including
that of organized opposition. In this context, internal dissatisfaction and
criticism are inevitable. The challenge is, how best to harness the creative
and critical energies of the majority of Cubans in the active conduct and
defense of the country? How best to preserve, extend and in some cases
restore the gains of the revolution? In addition, how best to isolate and
neutralize those engaged in genuine counter-revolutionary activity?

SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY IS KEY
To begin with, the larger strategic context must always be kept in mind: if
it was impossible to achieve socialism in a single isolated country as was
the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s (what was realized was, in fact, a
grotesque caricature of socialism), it is that much more impossible in tiny,
even more impoverished and isolated Cuba. Cuba (in case anyone has any
illusions on this score) does not yet enjoy actual socialism, or anything
near it. It is still a state in transition, and in transition it can still
go either way. For the Revolution to survive, it will ultimately, sooner or
later, require its extension abroad, to Brazil, Argentina and Mexico (if not
to Europe) with their much larger economic base. For now, the Cuban
Revolution remains in a precarious holding operation.

But, for this very reason, the Revolution all the more urgently requires the
institution of genuine, full-fledged socialist democracy. The National
Assembly, the People's Councils, the unions, and other popular bodies are
not in themselves sufficient. They do  allow for a certain participation by
much of the population. But as long as the Cuban Communist Party maintains a
monopoly of power -- with dominant influence and control within these and
other
popular bodies, by the way -- Cuban socialist democracy will remain only
skin-deep.

In defense of the Revolution itself, it is urgent that the Cuban government
establish a system of real popular political and economic power (not mere
participation), especially local and national structures of workers'
self-management and control. At the same time, it is imperative that a
plurality of workers' and other popularly based political parties be
introduced, along with free elections within all bodies, the right to free
assembly for all citizens, and freedom of the press. Let the Communist Party
demonstrate the superiority of its vision, program and leadership within the
full light and debate of public opinion-public opinion that is fully engaged
and active in actually running the country.

Think of the beacon and example such a system of democratic socialism would
be to all of Latin America and the rest of the world, including the United
States itself, with its pathetic, transparently sham bourgeois democracy. On
the other hand, if the Cuban leadership continues to balk at such a prospect
(perhaps on the grounds it would "destabilize" the country), then it will be
responding all-too-typically like the bureaucrats Rosa Luxemburg warned us
about.

All socialists, as well as others, should be reminded that the Bolshevik
Party's monopoly of power during the nascent years of the Soviet Union was
to be a temporary measure. It was imposed during the then-raging Civil War,
initiated by the armed opposition to Soviet power of the Russian White
armies and the invasion by 15 imperialist armies including those of the U.S.
and Canada. In fact, before the Civil War began, the Bolsheviks reserved
seats in the Congress of Soviets for the absent Mensheviks and Social
Revolutionaries, who had opposed the establishing of Soviet power and were
at the time boycotting the Congress.

Hindsight is always best sight. However, the continued Soviet Communist
Party monopoly on power through the 1920s and beyond, it must be said, was a
disastrous policy and egregious error. Had the Soviet workers and peasants
been able to enjoy real Soviet (viz., Council) democracy during that time
and had there been a plurality of parties, freedom of assembly and of the
press, they might have been able to prevent the consolidation of the heinous
Stalinist regime, the resultant deaths and misery of millions, and the
corruption and emasculation of Communist Parties throughout the world which
under the Kremlin's direction, it should again be pointed out, thwarted
several potential socialist revolutions.

Our challenge is to learn from history. The Cuban Revolution has survived
now for over forty years. It is high time to invigorate Cuba's political
system. Socialism, however, is incompatible with continued exclusive
centralist rule by the Cuban Communist Party. The defense of the Cuban
Revolution requires the ongoing, active engagement of the entire Cuban
population enjoying complete socialist democracy. Otherwise, the Revolution
itself ultimately cannot survive.

Viva Cuba! Viva la Revolucion! Viva la democracia socialista!

POSTSCRIPT ON THE EXECUTIONS
It is hard to have any sympathy for those who engage in hijackings. Still,
the struggle against capital punishment has been a long one under
capitalism. The death penalty ought to have no place under a socialist
regime either. Any other stance on this matter is crass apologetics.

NOTE ON THE AUTHOR: Zane Boyd has been a lifelong Canadian socialist. He was
raised in a Communist Party family, but subsequently, after spending a year
in Moscow, became a dedicated anti-Stalinist. From age 15, he participated
in the movement against the war in Vietnam. In the 1970s and early 1980s, he
was actively involved in defending Soviet and East European political
prisoners. He has supported and identified with the Cuban Revolution since
his early youth.