[Marxism] Oppressed people of the world support Cuba: why doesn't SWP?

["Calvin Broadbent" <calvinbroadbent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

LOUS PROYECT WROTE:

> As far as Cuba is concerned, I have written thousands of words on the topic
> including something that was written in a debate with a British SWP'er
> about 8 years ago:

> http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/cuba.htm


THE OPPRESSED PEOPLE OF THE WORLD SUPPORT SOCIALIST CUBA: WHY DOESN'T
THE SWP?

By Helen Yaffe

According to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Cuban Revolution
has never been socialist because it was not the "self-emancipation of
the working class." A new book, "Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution"
by Mike Gonzalez, the SWP's expert on Latin America restates this
view:

"Che looked on the workers' movement, students and protest only to
support and supply the guerrillas. He described himself as a Marxist
now. Yet for Marx, a revolution was the moment when the working class
achieved its own liberation through collective action. This does not
appear in Che's worldview -- or in his political writings --
any more than it does in the political pronouncements and manifestos
of Castro."

It is vital for Gonzalez to assert this point to justify the
counter-revolutionary position of the SWP, which advocates the
overthrow of the revolutionary government by the Cuban working class.
Gonzalez continues: "And if that was how the revolution was to be
made, then it was also how the society which emerged from the
revolution would be." (p.79) Presumably it is this "original sin" of
the Cuban Revolution that allows SWP cadre to recommend the website of
right-wing terrorists in Miami, set up by Jorge Mas Canosa. In the
July 2004 issue of Socialist Review Gonzalez suggests that the
majority of people in Cuba do not benefit from the country's resources
and that workers are not represented. He concludes that: "the task for
socialists is to seek by every means possible to help workers organise
in their own interest. And if that means organising against the state,
then so be it."

The SWP adapts Cuban reality to its dogmatic theory, violating the
first principle of Marx himself -- historical materialism. The
facts confound the SWP's line. The Cuban working class, the rural
proletariat and the peasantry made the Revolution and have benefited
massively throughout its 45 years. The participation of the Cuban
working class was not led by the trade unions, because communists and
other radical left wing trade union activists had been assassinated in
the late 1940s and replaced with economistic leaders and outright
gangsters. Eusebio Mujal, head of the Cuban Workers Congress (CTC)
became a millionaire in one year. He was a rabid anti-communist.

When Batista seized power in 1952, Mujal allied the CTC with the
dictatorship. It was impossible for that trade union apparatus to
support the revolutionary movement against its puppet master. Mujal
warned trade unionists not to support the general strike called in
April 1958 by the 26th July Movement (M26J), headed by Fidel Castro.
Gonzalez just says the strike "was a disastrous failure. The unions
did not respond." (p.78) There is no mention of the repression meted
out to undermine the strike. In Havana 200 M26J militants were
murdered by Batista's troops who gunned down striking workers in the
streets. In Oriente province workers did strike en masse and M26J
militia destroyed and appropriated the property of US companies. Most
dishonest is Gonzalez's refusal to mention the revolutionary general
strike on 2-3 January 1959, which undermined US attempts to organise a
military junta after Batista fled. The strike was total and the
country was paralyzed as crowds cheered the Rebel Army into Havana.

Blinded by dogmatism, Gonzalez states: "The 26 July Movement had
supporters and sympathisers scattered across the island, but they were
not connected with the trade unions or any other organisations outside
their own circle." (p.59) Precisely because of the corrupt,
pro-imperialist nature of the trade unions, the task facing the
revolutionaries was to encourage workers to step outside the control
of the trade unions, to set up independent workers' organisations and
join other revolutionary organisations in the cities, which they did.
In the logic of Gonzalez's argument, when workers fought, either in
the urban underground or in the mountains with the Rebel Army, they
did not constitute the "armed working class," because the decision was
not passed at their local union branch meeting.

The reactionary role of the trade union apparatus during the Cuban
Revolution disturbs the SWP because it exposes the dogmatism of their
own political strategy in Britain, which gives the existing trade
unions, and through them the Labour Party, the key role in building a
socialist movement. To recognise other sections of the working class
as the real agents of social change is to undermine the SWP's claim to
the leadership of the left in Britain, which is based on their trade
union constituency.

Activists from Rock around the Blockade, an anti-imperialist campaign
in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution, continually expose the SWP's
position as contrived from a series of half-truths and outright lies.
Gonzalez himself drones from platforms about the Cuban Army
controlling prostitution, gays being persecuted, AIDS sufferers locked
up, no elections, no democracy, no workers' representation, the
government exploiting workers in the interests of multinationals,
while Cuba's support for Angola against the apartheid regime of South
Africa is dismissed as Soviet "imperialism."

Now the SWP has an organisational alliance with George Galloway, an
ardent supporter of both Cuban socialism and Fidel Castro. In this
light it is interesting to note that two key SWP lies have disappeared
in Gonzalez's book. Gonzalez's purpose is to reconcile the
anti-capitalist movement's admiration for Che and Cuban socialism with
the SWP's, a historical counter-revolutionary position.

First lie: The Revolution was fought by a bunch of middle-class men in
the mountains with no relationship to the cities.

At Marxism 2003, the SWP's annual meeting, Gonzalez described Cuba as:
"The command model, the idea of a revolution conducted and run by
revolutionaries with the passive support of the masses." In this
account, the Revolution was carried out by a small-militarised core,
with no participation in the cities.

Now Gonzalez's book recognises the existence of the M26J urban
movement led by Frank Pais: "Pais would be a key figure in the 26 July
Movement, as organiser of the urban movement." (p.53) Gonzalez now
shamelessly criticises Che for doing what the SWP has done until now
-- censoring the importance of the urban underground movement.

Discussing Che's upbringing Gonzalez says: "More important, perhaps,
than these directly political questions is the matter of the social
class to which the family belonged" (p.10) and speculates about "how
clearly he bore the marks of his class." (p.13) with an anecdote about
a beggar rejecting his help. Considering the class background of Marx,
Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, it is ridiculous that the SWP attempts to
discredit both Che and Fidel Castro for being middle-class. Clearly it
is not individual class background that is important but the class
interests such revolutionaries represent in the movement.

Within months of Batista's coup in March 1952, Fidel set up the M26J,
recruiting from the poor constituency of Havana where he had been
standing as a congressional candidate. Within a few months 1,500
members of the M26J were engaged in military training. They made an
alliance with Frank Pais and another group in Santiago, Cuba's second
city. Of those who attacked Moncada Barracks on 26 July 1953, "most
were factory workers and shop assistants," (Hugh Thomas, "Cuba," p.36)

The attack failed militarily and 61 of the 125 participants were
massacred. Politically, however, it sparked a movement throughout the
country, demanding the release of the survivors. In May 1955, less
than two years later, Batista submitted to public pressure and the
prisoners were released. Clearly then, Fidel and the M26J already had
public support. Gonzalez doesn't think so: "who were the guerrillas
beyond the small self-selecting group who had landed from the Granma?"
(p.63).

The urban wing of the M26J had sections for labour organisation, civic
resistance, students, urban militia, propaganda and treasury. Life in
the cities was more perilous than in the mountains, because of the
iron grip of the dictatorship. Nonetheless the M26J's National
Workers' Front organised work stoppages, the M26J's Civic Resistance
organised national strike committees and the M26J's National Student
Front agitated in schools. The urban militia carried out sabotage and
burned sugar cane. Frank Pais, the movement's leader, was assassinated
on 30 July 1957. He was 23 years old. The following day, 60,000 people
attended his funeral, businesses shut and workers went on strike
spontaneously for several days until Batista's repression forced them
back to work. This courageous and revolutionary history is censored by
the SWP and Gonzalez who writes: "The nature of the guerrilla
struggle, and its leadership by the 26 July Movement under Castro,
also meant that no mass organisations or organs of workers'
self-defence had grown in the course of the revolutionary war. That
was a necessary consequence of a war conducted until its very final
moments in areas remote from the centres of population and political
culture." (p.101)

Second lie: Che knew nothing about Marxism.

In 1991 Socialist Worker claimed that Che was "never inspired by
anything which remotely resembled Marxism." This is repeated
frequently from SWP platforms. Gonzalez now identifies Che with
Marxism, admitting that even before arriving in Cuba: "He had begun to
read his way into Marxist writings in a slightly more systematic way."
(p.54)

In 1963 Che instigated a "Great Debate" between Cuban revolutionaries,
members of the old Cuban Communist Party and internationally renowned
Marxists. The debate was about how to move away from the laws of
motion of capitalism and construct socialism in Cuba. Key to the
debate was the question of moral versus material incentives. Gonzalez
characterises Che's advocacy of moral incentives as an expression of
idealism or subjectivism. Gonzalez asks: "Why did he lay such emphasis
on the question of a new consciousness? It was certainly not for
economic reasons, or because committed people are more efficient
producers." (p.149) He is wrong. Che wrote: "We maintain that the
development of consciousness does more for the development of
production in a relatively short time than material incentives do."
("On the Budgetary Finance System," February 1964)

Che criticised the socialist bloc for using the "dull instruments of
capitalism" -- the law of value, the profit motive, material
incentives -- in building socialism. The law of value determines
the distribution of the social product according to the socially
necessary labour time embodied within it. The law of value is at the
heart of capitalist production. For Che Guevara, moral incentives and
voluntary labour were key to undermining the law of value because they
contradict its logic, under which workers sell their labour power in
order to purchase their subsistence, while creating profits for the
capitalists.

Gonzalez's book is marred by factual errors, dubious referencing,
spurious assertions and derogatory statements, backed by no evidence.
Gonzalez has pulled his information from several mainstream
biographies of Che and quotes some of Che's best-known works via
secondary sources, implying that he has not read them. A few examples
follow:

On pages 71-2 Gonzalez claims that during the guerrilla struggle "the
26 July Movement was also in regular contact with the CIA...and money
had already reached the Movement from US government agencies." No
evidence or reference is supplied for this claim.

On page 137 he quotes Jon Lee Anderson favourably: "There is no longer
any doubt that his [Che] and Fidel's paths had begun to diverge." A
few pages later Gonzalez states that: "While the economic argument was
developing with growing ferocity, Fidel was moving towards the
position that Che was defending." (p.141)

As examples of baseless derogatory comments; on Che's youth, Gonzalez
says: "Apart from his sexual dalliances with women workers, there is
little evidence to suggest that Ernesto had very much contact with
working people." (pp.16-17) On the Rebel Army?s arrival at La
Cabana fortress on the triumph of the Revolution, Gonzalez says Che
"opted for a kind of mass marriage ceremony within the fortress,
legitimising the uninhibited sexuality of the youth soldiers." (p.95)

While Gonzalez's book spreads its counter-revolutionary nonsense in
Britain the Cuban people prepare for an attack by the US. Cuba's best
defence from imperialist aggression is to continue to strengthen the
remarkable achievements of Cuban socialism, in healthcare, education,
culture, science, sustainable development and in international
solidarity. As Gonzalez's words ring hollow round the walls of Marxism
2004, Cuba continues to make an indelible contribution to
revolutionary Marxism.

*******

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