Re: [Marxism] Sam Farber and other, better, things...

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis says, "Walter, you should learn to not to refer to people as 'enemies'
of a revolution. It rather makes you sound like Nito Alves."  

I leave aside the tactical issue of "sounding" like someone even most people
on this list never heard of, but Walter is undoubtedly correct when he
identifies Farber as an inveterate opponent of the Cuban Revolution, indeed,
someone who has pretty much made it his career. He is a professional
anti-revolutionary insofar as Cuba is concerned and that is what he has
centered most of his political attention on since the 1960's.

People are, of course, free to waste their time reading Farber just as the
ISO and others are free to print his critiques. By and large they don't
offer serious grounds for polemics, and the central reason is simply that
his method is to hold up some (often one-sided, tendentious or distorted)
aspect of Cuban reality against an ideal model. 

As always, the shadows on the walls of Plato's cave wind up being exposed by
our philosophers as grotesquely misshapen two-dimensional misrepresentations
of Virtue, Truth and Beauty.

Farber says as much: the central conclusion of his article is that "In the
last analysis, Cuban support for liberation movements has been based on the
interests of the Cuban state as defined by its leaders, and not on a
commitment to revolutionary doctrine." 

To really make Farber's case in a Marxist way, however, it would be
necessary to show that "the interests of the Cuban state as defined by its
leaders" have been in contradiction to the interests of the world
revolution. This is such a tall order that even Farber does not attempt it.
On the contrary he *grants* the reality of "Cuban support for liberation
movements" as a general policy of the revolutionary government and hangs his
hat on its bad intentions (self-interest as opposed to "a commitment to
revolutionary doctrine").

He adduces as proof Fidel's speech on Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Cuban
support for the Dergue in Ethiopia in the 1970's. 

In the former case, in addition to the elements Joseph Hansen adduced, we
should consider the following. Many of us in the Trotskyist tradition
dismissed as stupid and absurd Stalinist slanders the idea that the
movements against Stalinist misrule in the countries of "really existing
socialism" could carry with them a restorationist danger.

I think after what we lived through in 1989, the concerns expressed by Fidel
in 1968 are not so easily dismissed, even though I still think the political
position he took was mistaken. But it should also be clearly recognized that
Fidel's position was one of "critical support," so to speak, with the
emphasis on the criticism. It is a polemic against the Stalinist mis-rulers
for their failure to lead their countries in a spirit of revolutionary unity
and struggle against the common imperialist enemy, and to foster that spirit
among the population. 

I still think Fidel's position was wrong because those he was supporting
represented, in fact, the main restorationist danger, and the only way to
have saved "really existing" socialism in Eastern Europe was through a mass
popular movement of working people leading to a political crisis and the
overthrow of the bureaucratic political regime. 

It took two more decades for history to deliver a verdict but when it did,
it was catastrophically conclusive: you could not defend the future of East
European and Soviet socialism by preserving its status quo. Only by purging
socialism of the criminal bureaucratic misrule covered up with the
ultra-euphemistic qualifier, "really existing," could the socialist
revolution, which in reality is MORE than property "forms" because it is at
bottom a mass movement of the working people, be rekindled.

As for state capitalist theory and the groups that adhere to it, there's a
lot that could be said and little that it matters. The theory today does not
help you at all in relation to Cuba, because, at any rate, the state cap
comrades who really are comrades (like the ones in the ISO and Solidarity)
all defend Cuba from imperialist threats, demand lifting the blockade and
freeing the five, and so on. And it leaves you with a decidedly difficult
political question, which is, comparing Cuba to the rest of Latin America,
aren't we really forced to admit that "state" capitalism is *preferable* to
the regular kind? 

*  *  *

On Ethiopia and Eritrea, the issue isn't quite as simple as depicted by
Farber. But, at any rate, I've not heard Cuban officials defend that policy
for decades, and I've heard Cuban diplomats and military officers say
privately it was a mistake. Whether that evaluation was ever made publicly,
I don't know. Perhaps Walter knows.

The issue is complicated for a couple of reasons. First, because the Dergue
arose from the overthrow of Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia, and had
significant popular support, at least initially, being viewed as a
revolutionary government. Second, the common position of most anti-colonial
and anti-imperialist forces has been that, as a general rule, the frontiers
inherited from the colonial era should not be altered. Doing so will lead
only to further balkanization, weaker states less able to resist
imperialism. 

*  *  *

In relation to Cuba, the main problem with the ISO and other state cap
groups is the same as those of similar groups that don't hold to this
particular doctrine. And that is that the stubbornly and willfully ignore
the lessons of Cuba (now re-enforced by Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia) on
how revolutions arise and develop.

On this, there is a most interesting article in Monthly Review which
addresses the issue of why Cuba has turned out to be different than the USSR
and East Europeans, but which also raises in passing the issue I allude to
above. This is the relevant passage: 

"[W]ithout any reference to Marx, socialism, or class struggle, there was an
unequivocal commitment to radical change and to serving the popular
interest. Explicit ideological references were to the national revolutionary
heritage: defending the agrarian reform in June 1959, Fidel declared that
'what we are doing, you gentlemen who defend powerful interests, what we are
doing is to fulfill the declarations and the doctrine of our Apostle
[Martí], who said that the fatherland belonged to all and was for the good
of all'; and in July 1959 he quoted Antonio Maceo: 'The Revolution will
continue as long as there remains an injustice which has not been remedied.'
 
"That these declarations were not mere rhetoric swiftly became clear as
decisive action was taken in all areas of policy, and these actions served
to increase the overwhelming popular support for the revolutionary
leadership. With such massive support and with a monopoly of armed force,
the new authorities in Havana enjoyed unprecedented freedom of action;
internal opposition was virtually paralyzed and no political party or
organization was able to contest the prestige of Fidel and the M-26-7 which
had become in effect the national liberation movement of the Cuban people. 

"In these circumstances an a priori socialist program would only have been a
hindrance: the strength of the revolution derived from its consensual and
inclusive character. When socialism was declared, it was more a reflection
of the new reality, an unexpected state of affairs which had come about as a
result of a dialectical process. The strength of the popular demand for
self-determination and social justice combined with the monopolistic
structure of the Cuban plantation economy and the direct and inevitable
confrontation with U.S. imperialism made a socialist solution the only
viable way forward from early 1960 onwards if the revolution were not to
collapse through division and incoherence. In terms of political economy, a
good analysis of this dynamic is to be found in James O?Connor?s 1970 study,
The Origins of Socialism in Cuba.

"The validity of this analysis was confirmed by interviews I conducted in
Cuba in the 1990s. Several former members of the M-26-7, when questioned on
the evolution of their ideology during the armed struggle and in the first
two to three years after the victory of January 1, 1959, declared that their
original outlook was democratic, anti-imperialist, and favorable to social
justice, but not socialist and certainly not Communist or Marxist-Leninist.
It was only at a certain point in the revolutionary transformation, which
most of them identify as around mid- to late 1960 or 1961, that they came to
the realization that what they were creating in Cuba was a form of
socialism; and Fidel?s famous declaration to this effect during the Bay of
Pigs invasion simply confirmed this in their minds: 'Pues sí: ¡somos
socialistas!' ('Well yes: we are socialist!') 

"This is to my mind more than just a peculiarity of the Cuban process: it
confirms the implications of Gramsci?s argument that for proletarian
ideology?Marxist theory?to triumph, it must win the battle for hegemony and
become 'common sense.' Or to put it another way, the abstractions of Marxist
theory must gel with the popular democratic traditions of a specific country
before they can become hegemonic. This is perhaps the crucial error of most
Communist (and also Trotskyist) parties: the idea that by preaching abstract
Marxist-Leninist doctrine they can build an effective mass revolutionary
movement."

The whole of the article, "Why Cuba still matters," much more worthwhile
than Farber's piece, is here:

http://www.monthlyreview.org/090105raby.php

Joaquin


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