[Marxism] Hansen's "Cuba, The Acid Test" now available online!

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Cuban Revolution has been a challenge to political forces on
the left and right from its earliest moments. It's been the source
of confusion, discussion and debate at every step of the way. This
has particularly been the case for those in the Trotskyist section
of the international socialist movement. Those who've been through
the U.S. Socialist Workers Party may recall this when it first was
published. I know I recall it as one of my earliest reading. Now is
is newly available to everyone. I think it's one which would be of
the greatest value for those who follow the "state capitalist" or
alternatively the "bureaucratic collectivist" approaches to Cuba.

Thanks to the work of Andy Pollack, this invaluable contribution
to the understanding of the Cuban Revolution is now easily read by
anyone with a computer. I am deeply grateful to Andy for making it
available to the new generations. This is a very long polemical
item, over 22,000 words in all, but one which retains all of its
validity, in my view, despite the passage of over forty three years
since its first publication. It remains one of the great political
polemics in my recollection.

For printing, I've reformatted it into a two-column WORD document:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/hansen-cuba-the-acid-test-1962.doc


Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
http://www.walterlippmann.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews

========================================================

Joseph Hansen
November 1962
Cuba-the Acid Test
A Reply to the Ultraleft Sectarians

http://www.marxists.org/archive/hansen/1962/acidtest.htm

Written: November 20, 1962
Source: SWP discussion bulletin, vol. 24, no. 2. January, 1963
Transcription\HTML Markup: Andrew Pollack.

    It is written: "In the Beginning was the Word."
    Here I am balked: who, now, can help afford?
    The Word?-impossible so high to rate it;
    And otherwise must I translate it,
    If by the Spirit I am truly taught.
    Then thus: "In the Beginning was the Thought."
    This first line let me weigh completely,
    Lest my impatient pen proceed too fleetly.
    Is it the Thought which works, creates, indeed?
    "In the Beginning was the Power," I read.
    Yet, as I write, a warning is suggested,
    That I the sense may not have fairly tested.
    The Spirit aids me: now I see the light!
    "In the Beginning was the Act," I write.

-Goethe.

As the mainstream of the world Trotskyist movement heads toward
healing a split that has lasted an unconscionable eight years, some
ultraleft currents in various areas are pressing in an opposite
direction, seeking to perpetuate the old rift, to deepen it if
possible, and even to precipitate fresh ruptures. The Latin American
Bureau of J. Posadas, ordering an end to discussion before it was
even initiated, bolted from the International Secretariat last April
under guise of "reorganizing" the Fourth International, and raised
the banner of a program that goes so far in its deviation to the left
as to include a but thinly disguised appeal to Moscow to start a
preventive nuclear war. On the side of the International Committee,
the top leaders of the Socialist Labour League, under guidance of
Gerry Healy, have chosen to interpret the efforts of the Socialist
Workers Party to help unify world Trotskyism as a "betrayal" of the
basic principles of Marxism which they intend to fight tooth and
nail; and, to emphasize their dedication to this course, they have
hardened a posture on Cuba the only virtue of which is to lay bare an
astonishing lack of the most elementary requisite of revolutionary
leadership-ability to recognize a revolution when you see one.

How are we to explain this curious turn? Obviously it was
precipitated by the unification process. A series of practical
problems surged to the fore. How can you unite with the opposing
tendency even if they do consider themselves to be Trotskyists? The
question is asked by groups on both sides. After years of bitter
factional war, how can you collaborate and live in the same
organization? Didn't the public positions of the other side damage
the cause as a whole? How can you work with leaders whose records
provide grounds for deep suspicion? How can you find areas of
agreement? A far easier, more "Leninist," and therefore more
"principled" tactic is to simply continue firing at them, no matter
if differences have to be magnified. Prestige, pride, bullheadedness,
personal eccentricities, all these came into play at the prospect of
unification. In the case of the Latin American Bureau, for instance,
a factor may have been fear that pretensions as to size and
influence, which were actually declining, would be exposed by
unification, or that habits of paternalistic centralism would have to
give way to democratic controls. Nevertheless, however weighty they
may be-and in a small movement they can loom large-such factors do
not explain the political differentiation.

The same fundamental cause that brought fresh impulsion to unity
sentiments in the past couple of years is also responsible for the
flare-up of resistance. At bottom lie the mighty forces of the
colonial revolution and the interrelated process of de-Stalinization.
These are having an effect on the radical movement roughly comparable
to that of the Russian revolution some forty years ago. Cutting
across all formations, they are shaking them and regrouping them,
dividing them to right and to left. If the repercussions among
radicals began with the victory of the Chinese revolution and speeded
up with the famous Twentieth Congress and the Hungarian workers'
uprising, it came to a crescendo with the Cuban revolution. When the
massive nationalizations took place, and the Castro government
expropriated both American and Cuban capitalists, every tendency had
to take a stand. The imperialists left little room for equivocation.

The Trotskyist movement has not escaped the general shake-up either.
The Chinese victory, de-Stalinization, the Hungarian uprising were
reflected in both capitulatory and ultraleft moods as well as
strengthening of the mainstream of Trotskyism. What we have really
been witnessing in our movement is the outcome of a number of
tests-how well the various Trotskyist groupings and shadings have
responded to the series of revolutionary events culminating in the
greatest occurrence in the Western Hemisphere since the American
Civil War. The move for unification and the symmetrical resistance to
it are no more than logical consequences to be drawn from reading the
results, especially those supplied by the acid test of the mighty
Cuban action.

The fact that differences, even sharp differences, exist among the
ultralefts who were turned up by the latest and most decisive test
does not invalidate this conclusion. Posadas, for example, after
initial opposition, came around to the view that Cuba is a workers'
state, thus making a rather better showing than Healy on this crucial
issue. Yet he is, if anything, even more truculently opposed to any
moves toward unification of the Trotskyist movement. Advocating a
line that bristles with inconsistencies and extravagances, Posadas is
nevertheless compelled to adapt himself to one of the main realities
of politics in Latin America today. Throughout that vast region, it
is political death among radical workers to voice a position on Cuba
like the one on which Healy insists. Posadas, for all his flights of
fantasy, was able to recognize this reality after discovering it the
hard way. Healy, unable to agree to so grim a conclusion from
anything he has seen in insular British circles, is more nonchalant
about the prospect of such a fate overtaking the Latin American
Trotskyists.

As is typical among ultralefts, elaborate justifications "in
principle" are offered for their sectarian course, along with dire
prophecies about the consequences of the "betrayals" being committed
by those following in the real tradition of Lenin and Trotsky. Like
similar rationalizations of ultralefts before them, these offer
little resistance to critical appraisal. I propose to demonstrate
this by examining the main thread of argumentation about Cuba as
presented in SLL material, above all the document "Trotskyism
Betrayed." I will then take up briefly the related considerations
offered by the leaders of the French section of the IC in "Draft
Report on the Cuban Revolution," a document that discloses
substantial differences with the SLL leaders on Cuba while
maintaining a united front with them on the question of unification.

FULL:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/hansen/1962/acidtest.htm



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