RE: [Marxism] struggle.ws: Cuba..socialist paradise or Castro's fiefdom?

[Joaquín Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

        Interesting article, if only because it shows the truly encyclopedic
ignorance of a group that nevertheless felt qualified to make medicine for
the Cuban Revolution based strictly on general principles.

        Although they call themselves "anarchists" they remind me most of
all of the Cubaphobic "Leninist" sects that trot out strikingly similar
arguments against the Revolution.

        The very title of the article reeks of Cubaphobia and simplistic
disjunctives: *either* "workers paradise" OR "Castro's fiefdom." I was
tempted to call my reply "Workers Solidarity: complete idiots or paid
imperialist agents?" Strictly by way of parody.

        There are just too many howlers in the article to take up more than
a few of them, starting with a tiny one.

        "Virtually every Cuban under the age of 30 can read and write," the
article says. But the same is true of Cubans over 30, as was a decade and
some years ago when the article was written. I don't know why the anarchist
author bothered with this little distortion, which suggests it wasn't true
of people over 30. It's not even a case of damning with faint praise. My
guess is he had heard something or other about literacy in Cuba, but knowing
nothing of Cuba's real history, and the 1961 literacy campaign, the author
figured he'd be safe saying "under 30" as that would be strictly people born
after the revolution

        The recounting of the anti-Batista struggle makes for fine reading
but bears no relationship to the actual course of events. It is said, for
example, that "The political aspirations of the movement extended no further
than 'total and definitive social justice' and 'absolute and reverent
respect' for the 1940 constitution." It's clear that "total and definitive
social justice" (placed in "quotes") is meant to be read as merely an empty
phrase, for I assume EVEN anarchists would be for substantive *total* and
*definitive* social justice. 

        But if read that way, as empty words, the statement is simply not
true. Fidel's reconstruction of his closing statement at his trial for the
Moncada attack ("...Condemn me, it doesn't matter. History will absolve
me.") contains a fairly detailed analysis of Cuban society and a series of
democratic and transitional measures a revolutionary government would begin
implementing upon taking power. 

        And whatever else one might say about the Cuban Revolution, the ONE
thing it can't conceivably be accused of is not having changed things.

        "By 1958 the Batista troops had retreated to their barracks," the
anarchists write. It simply ain't so. At the beginning of 1958, the rebels
were confined to two small rural "liberated territories" in Oriente
province. BY the middle of the year they had fused back into one and were
engaged in a life-and-death struggle in which the 500 or so rebels were
reduced to a small area of a few dozen square kilometers in the mountains
surrounded by a force of 10,000 Batista troops. Outnumbered 20 to 1, with
the Batistiano forces having unchallenged domination of the air, and much
greater firepower, the rebels, of course, won, defeated the encirclement,
and went on to launch to columns led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos to
take the revolutionary war to the rest of the country.

        The anarchists accuse the Cuban people, in essence, of being
backward and stupid for supporting Fidel, and accuse him of being an ingrate
by writing out of history others who also played a role in the struggle.
"Many who weren't in the July [26] movement lost their lives, yet they seem
to be forgotten in the process of deification which has taken place around
Castro," they claim, citing, for example, "the attempted assassination of
Batista in 1957 by the Revolutionary Student Directorate. All of them were
massacred."

        One need only do a Google News search (in Spanish) to find press
articles from Cuba THIS YEAR about activities in homage to the martyrs of
the DRE on March 13 and the subsequent massacre in on April 20 of four other
student leaders at 7 Humboldt street.

        In typical anarchist fashion, the article asserts the Revolution was
the work of a handful: "It is important to remember that the Cuban
revolution was the work of a few armed insurgents. It was the work of a few
hundred armed guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra mountains and various other
rebels. The working class supported the rebels but it was a passive support
that did not extend beyond strikes and demonstrations when the dictatorship
was close to crumbling....

        "Following the toppling of Batista the first cabinet contained a
judge, a lawyer, the head of the Havana Bar Association, a member of the
Orthodox Party, and the ex-president of the national bank. (Within 14 months
all of these disappeared to the USA and became 'contras'.) The 1940
constitution was reinstalled. The first office set up was the National
Tourist Board. All this would not seem to indicate a very socialist
revolution had taken place."

        This is very similar to the tripe the state capitalists write about
Cuba. They think of the revolution as something that happened on January 1,
1959, when Batista fled. They should listen to what Fidel told the people of
Santiago the next day, when the rebel columns entered the town. January 1
was not the END of the revolution but its BEGINNING.

        As for the rest, the infantile ultraleftism of the anarchists drips
permeates every sentence. 

        They set up a tourism board. Horrors! And a bunch of the people who
assumed posts in the government initially turned out to be gusanos! Quick,
my smelling salts, I'm going to faint! 

        Have these comrades studied the history of the Russian Revolution?
Or any other real revolution? OF COURSE among those who initially come to
high positions are going to be the heroes of petty-bourgeois democracy, the
"famous" gentlemen of the "opposition" who for decades have been built up in
the bourgeois press and in whom the masses retain all sorts of illusions.
The quickest and surest way to shatter those illusions is to give the
honorable gentlemen enough rope to hang themselves. 

        And in a country like Cuba, the surest way for the revolutionaries
to win the trust of the people is to demonstrate that they didn't wage the
struggle so they could become the high ranking officials, but if they
eventually accept such posts, it's because no one else will do what needs to
be done.

        Our anarchists are such children that they take the euphemistic
Soviet term "cult of the personality" for good coin. That was the label the
post-Stalin bureaucrats gingerly gave to Stalin's brutal dictatorial rule in
order to distance themselves from it without upsetting the applecart of
bureaucratic rule. But look at how our anarchists apply it to Cuba!

        "Castro is the cement which holds Cuban society together. As Che
Guevara wrote 'It is true that the mass follows it's leaders, especially
Fidel Castro, without hesitation but the degree to which he has earned such
confidence is due precisely to the consummate interpretation of the peoples'
desires and aspirations.'6 This is the cult of Castro's personality which
cannot be underestimated, he is the consummate master of telling the people
what they wish to hear. As rumblings of discontent come from the working
class about the bureaucrats, they still look to the father figure of Fidel
to deal with the nasty bureaucrats."

        What does this actually say? That even as of 1993, the anarchists
were convinced Fidel remained in power *because he had the support of the
people.* They warn that the power of Fidel's "personality ... cannot be
underestimated, he is the cosummate master" and so on.

        Now think about what's being said. This is a people that for decades
has resisted imperialism, fought off an invasion, countered assassination
plots against its leaders by the hundreds, suffered terrorist attacks,
economic blockades, and everything else the imperialists could come up with.
On the other hand, this same people are such simple minded sheep that
they've allowed this Fidel character to lead them around by the nose for
decade after decade after decade.

        As for their "economic" analysis, it is composed of such gems as
that sugar represented half of Cuba's economic activity and similar
stupidities. There isn't even a *pretense* of any actual knowledge about
conditions on the island.

        Make sense of it, those who can!

Joaquín


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism