forward a class-struggle programme struggle. He stood aside and allowant victory for imperialism against From the experiences of leading these revolutions, the broad Fidelista current is also more and more Commander Tomas withdrawal.
National Assembly of FSLN cadres "The revolution has achieved de- US Cavman is Uk We pro- Jamaica Honduras We Nicaragua ty that takes other experiences into Costa Rica iveness and adaptability to our conParty cadres must also understand that makes the decisions; that, while forms.
Finally, cadres must be "those who olutions the Cuban people have vast resources.
projecting the "classic construction Studying these revolutions can also help put paid to lies about them circulated by the bourgeoisie, and even reflected by some leftwing forces like the Maoists and some who call themselves "Trotskyists". I want to deal here with just one such lie, namely that Cuba is a totalitarian dictatorship subordinated to the Kremlin.
It is not difficult to show sharp divergences between Cuba's and Moscow's foreign policy. On Afghanistan, for example, Cuba has sent no troops of its own and nor has it been enthusiastic about Moscow's massive military intervention there. Instead it has offered to act as a go-between in negotiations between Pakistan and Afghanistan that would enable a Soviet troop In relation to El Salvador, Moscow supported the military-civilian junta, which was installed in a Washington-inspired coup in late bact shames UN Cuba Haiti Dominican Rep.
CARIBBEAN SEA Curacao a bonaire Noti Aruba Neth Panama Colombia 1979, and was promising fake reCuba supported its overthrow. And while in response to the Grenadian and Nicaraguan revbeen mobilised, and massive and decisive aid has been sent from that relatively poor country, Moscow has remained cool, sending only token aid in comparison to its What is true - and this was constantly explained to me during my visit to Cuba in November 1980 -is that material aid and trade with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is crucial to the survival of the Cuban revolution, because of the US economic blockade of the island. Oil is supplied from the USSR at below market prices, industrial development is taking place with Sov. iet and Eastern European technology, and much-needed manufactured goods are imported from there. Perhaps most importantly, Cuba does not have to pay for these commodities with US dollars, which it doesn't have, but with sugar, which it can grow in quantity.
As New Jewel Movement leader Liam James put it to the American Socialist Workers Party conference in August 1980: "We must never, never underplay the importance of all this. We must understand that there would have been no revolutionary Cuba if there was not a Soviet Union in 1959. And there would not be today a revolutionary Grenada and a revolutionary Nicaragua if there was not a revolutionary Cuba"
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St. Vincent * * Grenada * States t ASSoCial venezuela Now maybe the Cuban leadership does not fully understand Stal. inism theoretically. It is certainly true that they cannot easily discuss Stalinism openly in Cuba today, without posing what would seem to me to be a suicidal challenge to the Kremlin. And they obviously pay a political price for this. For instance, I found a lot of confusion in Cuba over the working class rebellion in Poland, even among members of the Communist Party. In Cuba, the only large layer of anti-government dissid. ents were the 100.000-odd boat
October 1981 people who, influenced by US propaganda, left for Miami in the belief they were going to a land of milk and honey.
In relation to Stalinism, there is one thing that we shouldn't forget. The Cuban revolution has survived 21 years of economic dependence on the Soviet bloc, and yet maintains an internationalist foreign policy. And on at least three different occasions, Castro has mobilised the Cuban people to beat back the growth of bureaucracy within the state. It is Cuba's internationalism that is the most effective political challenge to Moscow's policy of peaceful coexistence with imperialism, and this must eventually lead to a clash between the two.
According to the ultraleft schema, part of the price of this supposed Cuban subordination to the Kremlin, is suppression of workers democracy inside Cuba. To one extent or another, this is probably the most widely held myth among left-wingers about Cuba.
In fact my visit to Cuba convinced me not only that this view is totally false, but that Cuba has the most extensive system of workers democracy that any revolution has yet developed, including the Soviet Union under Lenin and Trotsky.
ECONOMIC FAILURES The economic failures in Cuba during the late 1960s, especially the failure of the plan to harvest 10 million tons of sugar in 1970, led to a profound re-thinking in the Cuban Communist Party. It was felt that the economic failures flowed from being conceived and planned in a bureaucratic way, without the participation of the workers and farmers, who were being called on to carry the projects out. In the early 1970s, a process was got under way to strengthen and develop institutionalised forms through which the masses could participate in the administration of the country.
Mass organisations like the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, organised block by block, and the Cuban Women's Federation (FMC) were strengthened and given more authority to participate in the running of their communities. The workers, through the union and factory assemblies, began to discuss the national economic plan, make proposals, and set the production goals of their factories. They elect their union representatives who have to continue working alongside them, and they are able to get rid of unsatisfactory managers.
In 1976, the system of People's Power was established, through which the people nominate and elect Municipal Assemblies, and can recall unsatisfactory representatives. These Assemblies run almost everything on a local level and elect the provincial and national governments. People's Power has also developed as a major way in which the Cuban people can combat bureaucratic abuses by government officials. Martha Harnecker's book Cuba - Dictatorship or Democracy gives a very good account of the extent of the institutionalisation of workers democracy in Cuba.
The extent to which the workers really run Cuba today was brought home to me by the events which culminated in the boat exodus to Miami in 1980. As explained to me in Cuba, during 1979 there were persistent complaints about bureaucratic privileges and malpractices by certain government officials and departments, coming from units of People's Power across the country. Responding to this, central leaders of the government began a campaign against bureaucracy.
Several cabinet ministers were sacked and their departments housecleaned, actions which were immensely popular with the Cuban masses. Among those sacked were not only old Stalinists, but former activists in the July 26 movement who, growing weary of revolutionary austerity, had begun to teather their own nests.
POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES Underlying these events was a struggle over political perspectives which was brought to a head by the revolutionary victories in Grenada and Nicaragua on the one hand, and the stepped up pressure from US imperialism in response, on the other. On the one side were Fidel and Raul Castro who stood for deep ening Cuba's internationalist commitments to these revolutions. On the other were those who Raul called the "faint-hearts", those government officials and party cadres who wanted to cut back on this aid, make peace with Washington and build "socialism" in Cuba, Eden Pastora: A leader of the Nicaraguan revolution. that is "socialism" for the government bureaucracy.
in Grenada, Nicaragua and El Salvador, and under the sting of Washington's provocations, the Cuban workers and farmers rallied to Fidel's internationalist line, culminating in the five-million on May 17, 1980, demonstrating the unparalleled depth of political "is the task of absolutely free men and women. cratic taint-hearts joined the exodus to Miami. I was told that Cuban police had to protect many of of contempt by the masses.
the struggle between the Left Opbureaucracy in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. Only, given the olution today, this time the revolutionary Marxist current won. As Fidel explained to a mass rally in Havana on September 27, the 20 years after the revolutionary everything is rosy in Cuba, or that the process of institutionalisation society. But as the revolutionary of carrying through the socialist reen this process?
IMPERIALISM and Central America? Fundamentally, it comes down to one - impproletariat. industrial proletariat.
Social But inspired by the revolutions strong march of the Fighting People consciousness of the Cuban people.
"Building socialism," said Fidel, Many of the bureauthem from spontaneous expressions What took place in Cuba during 1980 had important parallels with position and the emerging Stalinist for several decades. context of the rise in the world revCuban revolution today, more than victory, is stronger than ever before.
Of course, this is not to say that of workers democracy could not go further. Certainiy, the dependence on the Kremlin is a fetter on Cuban leadership in Cuba learns from their own experiences and the experience volution in Grenada and Nicaragua, who is to say that they won't deepWhat then are the principal problems facing the development of the socialist revolution in the Caribbean deepgoing problems even to those countries which have had successful revolutions. As I discussed earlier, socialism is not a set of ideas abstracted from time and place These ideas are as much a product of the machine age as the industrial Imperialism prevented industrialisation of these countries. At the same time, the struggle against the super-exploitation and oppression of imperialism has put these poor countries on the path of socialist revolution, but without the highly developed base necessary for socialism - an extensive industry and This places a very real objective limitation on the pace at which a socialist transformation of these societies can be carried through, and the needs of the masses met. This in turn opens the door for ultraleft sectarian attacks on these revolutions. An example of such attacks would be to demand that the revoFourth International What then is the historic responsibility of the cadres of the Fourth International towards this revolutionary Marxist current that has emerged outside our ranks and is today leading millions of workers in class combat with world capitalism?
I think it is useful to begin by examining what is meant by Trotskyism, the name given to the political current represented by the Fourth International. Trotskyism is not a unique doctrine of its own. It merely developed as the theoretical expression of the "line of march, the conditions and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement" in the context of the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. But as a movement it remained isolated from the working class ifesto:
Trotsky did not think that Stalinism would survive World War II, which he knew would evolve into a war to crush the Soviet Union. But despite Stalin, and at the terrible price of 20 to 30 million Soviet citizens killed, the Soviet workers broke German imperialism, without first having to break Stalinism, as Trotsky thought would be the case. This lead to a temporary strengthening of Stalinism, which in turn led to the betrayal of the revolution in Western Europe in the 1940s and to the reconsolidation of capitalist prosperity. The few surviving Trotskyist cadres were thus isolated from the class struggle.
In fact, tor objective reasons, ism" or Trotskyism became a "semi-sect" defending a body of doctrine that was not able to be brought to life in the struggle of the working class. Through this isolation, tremendous degenerative pressures came down on the cadres of the Fourth International. There lution provide the full social measures for the liberation of women, before it can even guarantee them the most elementary right to a job.
As Maurice Bishop explained in the interview with Intercontinental Press, this ultraleft sectarianism plays into the hands of imperialism which attempts "...to try to find a popular base, using elements in the country who are trying to ex. ploit genuine objective grievances of the masses. In other words, conditions are bad. There is a lot of unemployment. There is a lot of poverty. They get these people, therefore, to try to incite strikes. to try to whip up sections of the population around issues that are pressing issues, that we are concerned about, that we are trying to do something about. But making them at the same time feel that revolution is like instant coffee: you just throw it in a cup and it comes out presto..
notions of what a socialist revolution would be like and who would lead it. Many well-known Trotskyists reacted in such a sectarian manner and broke with the Fourth International over the question, including the majority of Latin American Trotskyists.
Unfortunately, the major contact with Trotskyism on the part of the leaderships of the Central American and Caribbean revolutions has often been with these sectarians. More often than not. the name "Trotskyism" has been associated with ultraleft opposition to their revolutionary process.
How then should the Fourth International approach this new Marxist leadership? By the method outlined in the Communist Man"In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement."
The historical imperative before the Fourth International is to find the road to linking up with these Marxists. There is no other road to building the world party of socialist revolution, for which we were founded. No label, be it "Trotsky.
• ''Fourth International" should be allowed to get in the way of this process.
If we don't rise to this challenge, then I am convinced that it will be the Fourth International, not the world revolution, that will die. The road that the working class will have to travel to resolve its crisis