[Marxism] Revolution Betrayed presented in Havana

[Adam Richmond <adambrichmond@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here's an interesting notice from Marxism.com on a
presentation of a Spanish Edition of Revolution Betrayed at
the Havana Book Fair.

Adam Richmond
San Francisco

...............
More than one hundred attend launch of 'Revolution
Betrayed' in Cuba       
By In Defence of Marxism           

Thursday, 21 February 2008

On Monday, February 18, more than one hundred people filled
the Fernando Ortiz meeting room at the Havana Book Fair, to
attend the launch of Leon Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed,
the first time that a book by the Russian revolutionary has
officially been presented in Cuba. The people were so keen
that 15 minutes before the advertised time, all 60 seats in
the room had already been taken. Those attending were
revolutionary militants spanning three generations and from
many Latin American countries and beyond. Among those
present were veteran Cuban Trotskyist Idalberto Ferrera,
and his son and also a revolutionary militant Juan Leon
Ferrera, who participated in the revolutionary war and
later worked with Che Guevara.

This is the fourth year that the Spanish Frederick Engels
Foundation (FFE) is taking part in this impressive Book
Fair which takes place in the Cabaña complex, the old
Spanish colonial fortress where Che Guevara established his
Comandancia (Command Post) after the victory of the
revolution, nearly 50 years ago. This time we decided to
present two works which in our opinion are crucial for the
debates about socialism that are taking place throughout
Latin America, and of course in Cuba itself. One is the
already mentioned work by Leon Trotsky, and the other a
special issue of the Marxismo Hoy theoretical magazine
devoted to China, which includes a work on the
revolutionary history of the country, Trotsky's
introduction to Harold Isaacs book on China and a document
by the International Marxist Tendency analysing the process
of capitalist restoration in China.

The meeting began with a speech by Jordi Martorell,
spokesperson for the international Hands Off Venezuela
campaign and a member of the Frederick Engels Foundation.
He stressed how the presence of the FFE at the Book Fair
was part of our internationalist and militant commitment to
defend the Cuban Revolution.

Jordi explained the historical significance of the event.
This was the first time a book by Trotsky was being
launched at the Book Fair. Written in 1936, the book
predicted and explained the process by which the Stalinist
bureaucracy restored capitalism in the Soviet Union at the
end of the 1980s. Jordi pointed out that the importance of
the book lies in the scientific analysis of the collapse of
the bureaucratic system, which was not at all the "failure
of socialism", as bourgeois propagandists argued. In this
book Trotsky describes the process of bureaucratic
degeneration of the Russian Revolution, but also explains
its material causes: the isolation of the revolution in a
backward country.

One of the aspects that Trotsky deals with is the foreign
policy adopted by the Stalinist bureaucracy, which
abandoned proletarian internationalism for the conservative
idea of "socialism in one country" and peaceful
coexistence, which reflected the interests of the
bureaucratic caste. Jordi pointed out how the Cuban
revolution itself, many years later, clashed with this
conception, and quoted from Che's speech in Algiers when he
made a call to "create two, three, many Vietnams", and how
he attempted by all means to spread the revolution to other
countries, finally paying with his life.

In the Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky outlines three possible
perspectives for the USSR. One is the victory of the
workers and the return to Lenin's regime of workers'
democracy. The other is the victory of a bourgeois party,
which would start the return to capitalism by
de-nationalising the land and light industry. Finally,
Trotsky warned that the continuation of the rule of the
bureaucracy would lead to this bureaucracy attempting to
transform itself from parasitical administrators of the
means of production to owners of the same, which is
precisely what happened in Russia after 1989/91.

Jordi explained how the restoration of capitalism in the
former USSR led an unprecedented collapse of the economy,
living standards, life expectancy, art and culture, etc. He
warned that the restoration of capitalism in Cuba would be
even worse. He pointed to a certain naivety among layers of
Cuban society about the introduction of the "market
economy" and made an appeal to unconditionally defend the
gains of the Cuban revolution, at which point the audience
interrupted with applause.

Moving on to the presentation of the theoretical magazine
on China, Jordi outlined the process of capitalist
restoration which has taken place, led and controlled by
the bureaucracy of the Chinese Communist Party, backing it
up with many of the facts and figures which can be found in
the IMT document. Although no one can deny that there has
been significant economic growth, this has taken place at
the cost of an enormous intensification of the exploitation
of the Chinese working class, the emergence of enormous
regional imbalances, the concentration of wealth at one end
of society and of poverty at the other, with 300 million
unemployed, etc. Far from being socialism of any kind (not
even "market socialism with Chinese characteristics"), what
we are witnessing in China is the emergence of a
particularly brutal kind of capitalism.

The fact that China trades with Cuba and Venezuela does not
determine at all the character of the mode of production in
that country. These trade relations, necessary and
justified as they may be, take place on market terms. Where
are the Chinese doctors in the hills of Caracas or in the
mountains of Kashmir?

The positive side of this process has been the development
of the largest working class in the world, which is
starting to acquire a consciousness of its interests and
which, without doubt, will play a revolutionary role with
consequences throughout the world. As the document
explains, the perspectives for China, which to a large
extent depends on the US market which is already in crisis,
are of sustained growth, but of a crisis of overproduction
and enormous social and political convulsions.

The discussion on China is also important because it has
been presented by some as the model that the Venezuelan
revolution should follow, arguing that if in China they are
"going back to the market", then in Venezuela there is no
need to expropriate the means of production..

Jordi finished by announcing the forthcoming publication of
Alan Woods' "Marxism and Socialism of the 21st Century -
Anti-Dieterich", which demolishes the theses of Heinz
Dieterich, who by arguing that there is no need to
nationalise the economy provides a "theoretical" cover for
the reformists in Venezuela.

Cuban Communist journalist and writer Celia Hart, also
participated in the launch of Revolution Betrayed. Celia
explained the enormous impact the reading of this book had
on her, when she first managed to get hold of a copy of the
same edition that the Frederick Engels Foundation was now
launching in Cuba. She praised both Estaban Volkov's
foreword and Alan Woods' introduction to it, which she
recommended to all those present.

As Jordi explained in introducing her, Celia was the person
who insisted that the FFE should be present at the Havana
Book Fair, in order to spread the works of Trotsky among
others, and therefore the credit for such an historic event
was also hers.

Celia stressed that the economic policy of Stalinism
followed a series of zig-zags, and how it was the failure
of the right-wing policy of concessions to the kulaks and
other capitalist elements that forced it to adopt the
programme of collectivisation and industrialisation that
the Left Opposition had advocated, albeit in a bureaucratic
and brutally distorted manner.

Regarding the NEP, she insisted that this was a policy of
necessary concessions but that it had always been conceived
by Lenin as something strictly limited in time and to be
kept under control, not a virtue in itself. In her opinion,
of all the crimes of Stalinism, the worst was the policy of
"socialism in one country".

She also underlined the parallels between the ideas of
Trotsky and those that Che Guevera elaborated in his
recently published "Critical Notes on the USSR's Manual of
Political Economy", in which Che denounced the foreign
policies of both the USSR and China towards the
revolutionary struggle of the Third World countries, and
warned of the danger of capitalist restoration.

Finally Celia proposed that the FFE should give a copy of
the Revolution Betrayed to Fidel Castro and appealed to all
those present to study in depth and discuss the book.

At the end of the event both titles were sold in Cuban
pesos and were taken up enthusiastically by the audience.



      
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