THE CUBAN WORKERS' STATE
Socialism and the Strength of the Colonial Revolution-Proletarian Democracy
By A ORTIZ
The problems analysed on chapters IV and V of the present article are a contribution o!
comrade A ORTIZ for the discussion on these problems in the International.
The decisive defeat of the conter-revolutionary invasion by the militia and the Cuban Rebel Army, the proclamation on May Ist of the first Socialist Republie of Latin America and the announcement of a four-year plan for the Cuban economy are expressions of the formidable dynamism and vigour of ihis revolution and of this triumphant workers' state which has come into being in the very heart of the "free world", of the imperalist system.
"The existence of the Cuban workers' State, firmly based on the worker and peasant masses of Cuba is the main centre for the weakening and disorganisation of Yankee Imperialism, and the main stimulus for the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggles of the Latin American masses". 1
This revolution, which was declared by its authors to be neither capitalist nor socialist, but humanist, was proclaimed democratic by the Stalinism, which Sartre defined as a revolution without ideology, and which Wright Mills called a revolution of the intellectuals and the youth beyond the bounds of social classes, this same revolution now defines itself as a Socialist revolution, its regime as that of a Socialist Republic, and its government proclaims itself a workers and peasants government.
It is not only the capitalist system which suffers from the impact of the Cuban revolution, from the birth of the new workers, state, but also the official conceptions of the Left, of the reformist and Stalinist movement, the conception of the "peaceful road" and "peaceful co-existence" and the alliance with the "progressive sectors" of the bourgeoisie. These conceptions are suffering from the impact of this developing revolutionary process. The very role of the Stalinist party is at stake. The Socialist Republic proclaimed in Havana is not mentioned in Moscow. Anibal Escalante, Executive Secretary of the P SP. 2 says that it cannot be considered "that Cuba is already a Socialist country.". 3
Such attitudes do not arise from a desire for theoretical clarity, but from a resistance to an acceptance of a major political defeat for Stalinism.
Cuba is no more a "socialist country" than any other of the existing workers' states. Cuba is a workers' State of a special kind, a regime of transition to socialism. How it has come into existence, what are its fundamental characteristies, what is its most probable evolution - these are themes which need to be clarified by the world revolutionary movement which is today supporting the new Cuba and which is now learning from its experience.
I - THE PECULIAR WORKERS' STATE OF CUBA
The nationalisation of the means of production, of transport and the banks, foreign trade monopoly, expropriation of the large landed estates and the establishment of direct state ownership of a large part of the land, the formation of co-operatives and the distribution of land to the small peasants, have established new property relations in Cuba in place of capitalist private property.
Although the forms taken by the state in January 1959 at the victory of the forces led by Fidel Castro maintained some of the forms of the old state, and the subsequent changes and purges have maintained many of these forms, the state is organised today for the defence of these conquests and new forms of ownership. The state is based directly on the mobilisation of the masses, on the armed militia, which, as shown during the last invasion, defends it against external aggression, internal counter-revolution and any disorganisation and chaos in the apparatus of production, through a great combined military and productive collective effort and through an attempt at planning.
It is these new forms of ownership, won and defended by the revolutionary mobilisation of the Cuban masses, which constitute the basis of the society and which characterise Cuba as a workers' state.
The state apparatus is not working class in composition or structure. There is no form of Soviet power, of workers' and peasants' councils, in Cuba. It is not a normal wor1 Latin American Bureau of the Fourth International, "Voz Proletaria". , Buenos Aires, second half of April 1961. -, 2 Partido Socialista Popular, Cuban Stalinist party. 3 Television speech of May 7th, quoted by "L'Humanité".
kers' states, any more than is any of the already existing workers' states, but a deformed one. It is for this reason that it cannot be classed simply as a workers' state without drawing attention to its peculiar character.
The determining factor is the function of this apparatus, the property and social relations on which it is based. We shall attempt to define them more clearly. THE SOCIAL FORCES OF THE REVOLUTION
The depth and the daring of the Cuban revolution have been explained by various from an "enlightened" petty bourgeoisie, from the personal chara teristics of Fidel Castro and his team, from the reaction to the pressure of Yankee imperialism, from the youth of the leaders, etc. All these factors have some weight.
But the Cuban revolution is an expression of precise social causes, of the intervention of the exploited classes and especialy the proletariat, supported and helped forward by a new world factor — the existence of the workers' states, forming a system opposed to the capitalist system.
The initial nucleus of the revolution is of petty bourgeois origin. The curb placed upon the working class for years by the Partido Socialista Popular, helped the Batista dictatorship consolidate itself by means of a powerful bureaucratic trade-union apparatus and permanent repression, and relegated political agitation for a whole period to the student sectors. During the latter years the centre of political activity was among University cireles. The group headed by Fidel Castro strove to develop for a
48 time through these circles to influence the petty-bourgeoisie. But the group only succeded in achieving isolated actions of a "putsch" character such as the assault on Moncada, and did not develop a political insurrectional force capable of overthrowing the dictatorship.
This group was only able to form a basis favourable for insurrection when it left its own circle and class in order to seek this basis among the peasants in the Sierra. It is incorrect, then, to generalise about the Fidel Castro uprising as a political expression of the middle class. We can consider it as the fusion of a 'radical and small minority section of that class which sought a revolutionary way outside the urban petty-bourgeoisie.
The Fidel Castro movement continued to make individual recruits from university and petty-bourgeois circles, but it obtained its development and its main support through its action in the Sierra and among the agricultural workers' in the areas where it operated. *
But from this arises another erroneous conception - that of the role of the small peasantry in the insurrection. It would be inexplicabled, in a country in which the small peasantry comprises a third of the rural population and accounts for a very much smaller percentage of agrarian production, that this sector, some elements of which participated directly in the revolutionary struggle, could provide such a cohesive force, bring into being a new regime for the whole of Cuba and maintain it throughout all the first period, particularly when one considers the breadth of vision and perspective of this regime.
In reality, there is another social situation in the Cuban countryside. There were more than half a million agricultural workers and labourers directly dependen: upon the large foreign concerns, producing for the market. The greater part of these workers were employed for only three months in the year, and there were several hundred thousand others completely unemployed.
These were social sectors which gave the Cuban country. side its social instability, 5 and was among these sectors on which the revolution headed by Fidel Castro was based. The need for a change was felt, not only by the petty-bourgeoisie and the small peasantry, but also by this agricultural proletariat and the mass of unemployed who were the objective and potentially subjective base for the overthrow o fthe capitalist structure and the rural
Youth who attained working age could find no employ. ment. If the youthful character of the Castro movement is seen as the expression of its idealistic character beyond class divisions, we can say that the tremendous spirit of sacrifice, generosity and intrepidity of the young Cuban revolutionaries finds its material basis in a youth which was deprived by the capitalist regime in Cuba of any prospect of a worth-while life, and this youth was the permanent source of cadres, and fighting spirit for the Castro movement in the towns and countryside. The members of the Fidel Castro movement were recruited from among young people often under twenty, who left * According to Paul Baran, the middle class looked with favour on the downfall of Batista, gave "logistic" help to terrorism and financial help to guerrillas, but was ralised". — "Cuba, a Revolution on the Road to Socialism",
Internationaux, January-February 196l. organisation of soviets on several sugar plantations during the general strike of 1933 which overthrew the Machado dictatorship.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the sugar plantations and mills and the inland towns to go to the Sierra — sons of workers of the sugar industry, of railwaymen, of employees of the Guantanamo naval base and of poorest sections of the petty-bourgeoisie who were most closely in contact with these workers, their same problems, and of the small peasantry.
The fact that the revolution was to pass so rapidly through the stage of small property to co-operatives under state direction and People's Farms, maintaining and developing all the popular support and enthusiasm, shows the social, ideological and even political weakness of the small peasantry within the forces of the revolution.
On the other hand, the strength of the workers and the wholly and partially unemployed, the demands of a youth which was unemployed or employed in miserable occupations, call for solutions which will not tend to keep the workers in a statie position, but which bring about a profound transformation of the economy, which finds a new equilibrium in fuli employment and expansion of the productive forces.
The Cuban revolution could not be carried through under the slogan of the land for those who work it. In Cuba the land had been developed by capitalism,: with production for the market, with an enormous proportion of unemployed for a country with such a relatively small population as Cuba — a proportion of one seventh of the population.
This developinent of the economy could only be achieved by taking great leaps forward, and had to be attained by having recourse to the whole of Cuba's resources -sources which were not in the hands of the people. The role of the working class has been decisive, not merely in the programme of expropriation, but in carrying through the plan. The wide mobilisation of the masses, the demands for a radical change which would not permit a return to the old situation of degradation of the masses and the youth could not be achieved within a capitalist regime.
From the beginning, Trotskyism stated that the Cuban revolution raised problems and was taking paths and measures which went beyond the capitalist system, not because the forces engaged were in themselves incompa. tible with capitalism in general, like the first Agrarian Reform, but because capitalism, with its rigidity and its a was incapable of absorbing even the slightest of these measures, and would be compelled to act against
Howewer, how was it possible for a leadership which was petty-bourgeois in its origină and with a democratic programme, to lead this revoiutionary process which has resulted in the taking of power, the setting up of a Workers' State and a socialist programme? 6 6 This eventuality had been foreseen in 1938 in the Foundation programme of the Fourth International, in the following way: "Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny categorically in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the influence of a completely exceptional combination of circumstances (war, defeat, financial collapse, revolutionary offensive uf the masses, etc), petty-bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may procted farther than they themselves wish on the road to a break with the bourgeoisie. In any case, one thing is certain: if this unlikely event should occur, and that a « worker and peasant government » in the sense mentioned above comes into being, it would represent no more than a short episode on the road to the real dictatorship of the proletariat":
The crisis of the capitalist regime in Cuba drove a forward by tremendous subjective forces, by a will for
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL nucleus of the petty-bourgeoisie into insurrectional struggle, in which they became linked with the most exploited sectors of the population, for whom the crisis of the regime did not mean merely a change of government and methods of administration. The extraordinary upsurge of the colonial revolution, particularly the Latin American revolution, has sustained this development, which is confronted by the crisis of the imperialist system, and, on the ether hand, finds support in the existence of the workers' THE ROLE OF THE EXISTING WORKERS' STATES
The workers' states are no more simply isolated states which can affect by their example. They act objectively and as a system on the world economy, with an economie policy which they carry on in their own defence and which links them to the process of revolution in various parts of the world.
The new proletarian economie forms, in spite of the policy of "socialism in one country", "peaceful co-exist-
', etc, go beyond the bounds of a single country. They constitute a considerable sector of the world economy and provide an objective basis for the workers' Power in the world.
"The strength of socialism in the world is cumulative". 7
The colonial revolution, the Cuban revolution, driven
49 change and improvement, mobilising the creative forces of millions of men, is smashing the sclerotie structures of capitalism, is entering into a war with imperialism, undeclared or open, is breaking the bounds of the capitalist system and finds an objective social basis already in existence in the workers' states, while by its existence and its active intervention in the world economy it is stimulating the revolutionary process and enabling this process to find the only other equilibrium open to it free from imperialist exploitation.
Cuban economy, breaking with the world capitalist market, objectively had to seek a new solution. But this was not only a commercial solution, but a solution to its own internal struggle, to the civil war which was taking place against the remnants of capitalist power, of the capitalist organisation within Cuba.
The needs of the Cuban proletariat, unemployed or employed for only a third of the year, or suffering as whole from the results of this situation, their expression, not in the programme of the Partido Socialista Popular de Cuba, which counselled conciliation and moderation, but in the objective existence of the states in world political and economic life and their tendency to international expansinn as a system. 8 This has been the objective basis for the subjective development of the Cuban revolution.
I — THE DYNAMISM OF THE CUBAN WORKERS' STATE
At the present time, not even China, with all the power of its development, has the internal dynamism nor generates the external dynamism of the Cuban revolution. The forms which Cuban economy is taking, the forces which are organising it and the forces which form the basis of the new state are in a continuous process of development and change.
To analyse Cuba is not to analyse a crystalised and fixed phenomenon. New forces and factors of the economy are continually developing from the popular mobilisation and the state organisation, which advance beyond and reabsorb the previous steps, the organisational forms taken by the development of the revolution and the workers' state. AGRICULTURE
The organisation of agriculture is one of the aspects in which this dynamism and transformation are most clearly expressed. The Agrarian Reform Law of March 1959, maintaining capitalist ownership, organising peasant co-operatives on the land expropriated from the large companies, was rapidly superseded by its own application. 7 Paul Baran, op cit. 8 Che Guevara said recently: "It is not surprising that we seek our models in the East. I am not in the slightest interested in what a French Communist may tell us, since the French Communists are not even capable of stopping the war in Algeria. But I think that in order to learn to rule a country, to plan its economy and to build socialism in it, our youth need to read the books of the Socialist countries which have trodden this road before us." What he says about the French C P can be said of the Cuban PSP. The Stalinist parties have degenerated and are adapting themselves to and capitulating before their own bourgeoisie, but the workers' states, as a social system, are tending to integrate themselves into an international system which is an objective support for workers' power.
"The moderation of the law soon contrasted with the rapidity of its execution."
In October 1960, sugar mills and estates were placed in the hands of the state by the expropriation of the capitalists. But state ownership of the sugar industry and the placing of the canefields in the hands of co-operatives did not solve the problems posed to the Cuban revolution.
unemployment and seasonal work raised social problems which had to be solved by the development of sources of employment, the economic blockade of imperialism involved the necessity of developing the production of foodstuffs and raw materials which had previously been imported.
Based on various kinds of experiences, Cuban agri culture has taken on a different and completely daring aspect: the formation of the People's Farms (Granjas del Pueblo). These farms are owned and administered by the state, and they are developing all aspects of production with the exception of sugar. They occupy large areas both fertile and virgin land (up to 40 hectares), and are starting to produce all kinds of crops, are employing several hundred and thousands of workers (some them have more than 5,000 workers) and are absorbing some of the former co-operatives.
René Dumont, "Esprit", No 4, 1961, page 596. 10 An article in the revue "Bohemia" of February 19th, 1961, entitled "Cuba changes its Profile" describes the "Granma" People's Farm in Oriente Province, which has an area of 4,000 caballerias (caballeria is a Cuban unit of land measurement equal to 33 acres - Editor) and employs 5,000 workers: "Co-operatives of sugar cane workers, charcoal burners, fishermen and timber-workers operate within the "Granma" Farm. There are 28 clothing workshops with 52 teachers and 1,500 women students, which will serve as a basis for a ready-made clothing factory which is being planned. The overall budget of the farm for the year 1961
50
The Peoples' Farms which have been formed from the taking-over of the large cattle ranches, have succeeded in increasing production 11 and absording part of the unemployed labor force, 12 and have abolished in some parts of Cuba some of the "dead time" from which the workers suffered during a large part of the year.
The Cuban countryside comprises four main economic sectors: 1. According to official statisties, 13 7½ million hectares of cultivated land is held by small peasants, who, constitute approximately a third of the agrarian population, but account for a much smaller proportion of production. The policy of the government is to guarantee their right to land ownership, their standard of living, but not to base its agricultural development plans on them. 14 2. 11.8% of the cultivated land is held by 622 co-operatives comprising being in the main taken over from the large sugar estates.
In fact, the production plans of the co-operatives are organised and directed by INRA. 16 Their members is $9,219,167.91 spread over 25 different crops. There are further budgets for basic projects such as the building of 20 villages of 120 houses each, with schools and health centres, people's shops and all the benefits of civilisation, the building and maintenance of various factories, some of which will come into operation immediately such as the cotton-burling factory, the furniture and box factory and the clothing factory, and others, such as the canning factory and the oil-press, which will come into operation in a few months. Besides these, building is going ahead on the construction of poultry farms which will produce 200,000 chickens a month to supply the region of the Golfo
Guacanayabo and the surrounding area, together with pig-farms for more than 4,000 pigs, and cattle farms with more than 3,000 head of cattle of well-established breeds."
A recent announcement states that the production of tobacco has been increased to a total of 90 million pesos (one Cuban peso is roughly worth a dollar), and of coffee to a crop of 850,000 quintals in the latest harvest, which have enabled exports to be increased. The cocoa harvest has been increased (45,000 quintals was the latest harvest), and the country now produces sufficient vegetables and fruit for its own needs and almost sufficient rice (6,000 tons been imported from the United Arab Republic). (Report of Captain Nuñez Jimenez, Director of IN R A, on the occasion of the 2nd Anniversary Agrarian Reform Law.) (N B. INR A: National Institute of the Agrarian Reform.) 12 According to official statistics, about 300,000 unemployed from the town and countryside have heen absorbed into production.
Nuñez Jimenez, above quoted report.
European agricultural experts had recommended a greater degree of help to the small peasants as a means increasing the production of foodstuffs, but the plans have been based mainly on the People's Farms, and partly on the co-operatives. Fidel Castro, in a speech he made on May 17th., said: "The revolution proclaims and gurthe rights of the small peasants to land, has at its disposal large landed estates for the development of ist plans." (Our italics).
In the two years since the proclamation of the Agrarian Reform Law, 31,425 title-deeds to land have been 15 Nuñez Jimenez, above quoted report. 16 In this connection, René Dumont, previously quoted, says: "The large co-operative, is really a Peopie's Farm directed by an administrator appointed by INIA. The management
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL receive a wage, and the surplus is invested in collective works and the development of production. 17
The rice, cotton, fishing, timber getting and vegetable co-operatives are being absorbed and incorporated into the People's Farms. The sugar co-operatives, which are the great majority, are not the most dynamic sector of economic development, nor are peasants. There is no immediate prospect of an increase in the market for sugar, and the industry can increase its production to cope with present necessities without, great effort or capital investment. 18
There are 263 People's Farms, accounting for 29.1% of the cultivated land (formerly cattle ranches), and employing 96,000 agricultural workers. This is the state sector, of the countryside, 19 and that in which the efforts of the state are concentrated on the development of agricultural production, on industrial development of of agricultural production, on industrial development in the countryside and on the absorption of unemployed la4. The Sugar Enterprises are owned by the state, together with the sugar mills for pressing the cane, the railyways engaged in the transport side of the industry, etc. During the periods of full activity, this industry employs several hundred thousand workers, and the plantations form the basis for the industralisation of the main export product, and the entire productions of the sugar co-operatives are really subordinated to them.
Through its ownership of the People's Farms and the sugar plantations, together with its administration of the co-operatives, the state controls 80% of agricultural production. Official figures give the amount of investment during the two years since the Agrarian Reform Law 400 million pesos.
These forms of agricultural organisation, daring in their methods of preventing fixed social forces in tht country. side, of rapidly liquidating the effects of private ownership and eliminating the possibility of enrichment and differentiation in the countryside, express a dynamism which will continue to be reflected in the revolutionary process and which must rapidly lead to an effective industrial development. INDUSTRIALISATION The development of the Cuban Workers' State towards a socialist economy will have to be based on a vigorous thus entirely controlled from above and organised by branches of the apparatus of production."
Dumont says: "Che Guevara... reproached emphasising in my report the feeling of joint-ownership which I considered useful to apply to the co-operators. This did not appear to be orthodox to him, and he preferred to develop the feeling of responsabilitly, « especially as many of them are called upon to be displeaced»"
present scale of production is 6 million tons, and can be increased to the record figure of 7 million.
Nuñez Jimenez, above quoted article. 26 The Peoples' Farms have solved another problem. The abolition of rent by the agrarian reform opened up the possibility of the profitable utilization of the differential rent on the richest land of the cattle ranches the same way as it occurred in the Sugar Enterprises. The Peoples' Farms and the state ownership of these enterprise puts directly in the hands of the state these resource which are an important source of accumulation.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL process of industrialisation. This is the most difficult problem for Cuba, where practically no industries existed, where there was not a single large factory, and which even used to import from the United States fruit juices produced from fruit grown in Cuba itself. The development of industry raises several problems: 1. The maintenance of the existing sugar-mills, electrical powers generators and distributors, telephones, railways, motor transport, agricultural machinery, petrol refineries, commercial craft, etc. As the machines are of United States manufacture, the economic blockade is felt very keenly. For a time, spare parts were bought from other countries (Mexico, Canada, etc.) but a start has been made on creating factories for spare parts with the help of the workers' states of Europe and Asia. A central problem has been that of petrol, as the lack of large rivers means that Cuban electrical power relies on petrol for its generation. An agreement valid for several years has been signed with the Soviet Union. 2. Better utilization of the existing industrial capacitv. The regrouping of branches of state industries has been practically achieved in electricity and telephones, and can be achieved without great difficulty in sugar, railways, petrol and buses. Consolidated industrinl units formed to regroup small entreprises and factories in various branches: textile, metallurgical, chemical, etc. It has thus been possible in some cases to undertake immediately a complementary development. It is planned to increase the amount of electrical power generated by 60% in a short period, and to increase output by 100% during the next five years on the basis of equipment provided by the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. 3. Aid from the other workers' states. Cuba depends upon outside help for any real industrial development, of credits for industrial equipment for the Cuban workers' state.
Some 300 million dollars will be used for the development of the steel industry, electrical power, petrol refineries, shipyards, tractor, car and lorry factories. textile factories, abattoirs, factories for spare-parts and tools, chemical products, dynamite, mining machinery, etc. At the same time, students are being trained for various technical careers and technical workers are being trained, and technicians are being sent to Cuba. 21
Prospecting for oil and all kinds of minerals is being granted by the Soviet Union is being used main'y for
La complete steel plant capable of producing half a million tons by 1964, a comnlete metrol refery, together with the plans for electrical power ›ready mentioned. A credit of 40 millions from Crecho lovakia is being used for the installation of a factory for the manufature of tractors, lorries and motor-cycles, to be expanded later to include buses and cars.
Two complete textile factories have been purchased in China and East Germany, to be installed number of complete factories has heen hought from Poland, including a shipyard which will huild shins of 3.000 tons in the first instance, and later ships of 10.000 tons.
Contracts have been signed for the instal'ation of more than 100 enterprises during the period 1961-65. ad an ecual number are under discussion, to be installed during the
51 The figures and plans are modest in relation to those of large producer countries, but for Cuba they mean the creation of a basic industrial structure and the training ef a specialised working class, together with a number of basic industrial enterprises on which can be developed a large-scale heavy industry. Throughout an entire historical period, the basis of Cuhan heavy industry is and will be in the other workers' states. 4. Foreign Trade. Cuba is subjected to the economic aggression of United States imperialism, together that of the other imperialist countries and the bourgeois governments of Latin America. The Kennedy government continued the embargo on any Cuban purchases, and now prohibits any kind of sale, putting pressure other countries to the same en•l. Because of Cuba's geographical situation and its traditional trade, this economic encirclement is of tremendous importance for Cuban economy. In order to break free, Cuban economy must be fundamentally based on the monopoly of foreign trade which has been established, and on this trade being carried on with the workers states.
One of the immediate problems which has to be faced is that of the price of sugar, which forms the bulk of Cuba's exports and which is the basis of its purchasing power. 22 Cuba can maintain its volume of sugar exports but receives less for them. In any event, the trade with the workers' states, especially as it is carried on through long-term credits, interest free or at very low rates of interest, and the prices of some of the goods imported, 23 together with the increase in Cuba's production of foodstuffs, reduces costs and allows for a certain amount of same period. Spare ought in the USSR workshops have been bought in Czechoslovakia, the installation of some of which has already begun. A number of industrial units have been bought in East Germany. Several score of factories for the production of spare parts, tools, accessories, chemical products, textiles and dynamite have been bought in China, and in North Karea and other countries, various types of mining machinery, lathes and tools of many kinds.
These purchases are being obtained in the main by means of long-term credits. Interest-free credits of 60 mil'ion dollars have been opened in People's China, of be repaid over a period of 15 years. 785 students of various branches of engineering, 855 tudents of different branches of science and 1,680 technical workers have been sent to these workers' states.
Plans have also been developed for the utilization of the hydrocarbons of sugar cane for a series of important chemical products in order to reduce the cost of sugar production while making use of the by-products. (Report of Che Guevara on his return form a tour of the workers' states of Europe and Asia, in l've review "Obra Revolucionaria" , 6th January, 1961.) 22. The United States used to buy 3 million tons of sugar (60% of Cuba's prodnetion) at a price of 5.25 cents a pound, while the world price was 3.25 cents or less. The trade agreements made at the end of last year with the workers' states allow of the sale of sugar to them at 4 cts 1 million tons, and the other workers' states 326 thousand tons. 23 According to the economists (Sweezy and Huberman, Cuba - Anatomia di una rivo'-inne Finandi, 1961, page supplied prieste be paid th hmorkers fors fo foe supplied are lower, and this m prices received for sugar.
financial equilibrium to assist in the development plans. The credits are, in any case, a fundamental point of support for the initial stages of the industrialization process.
But there is another very serious problem for the Cuban economy. Together with the economic blockade, there a military blockade, with aggression such as the last invasion, the counter-revolutionary guerrillas, sabotage and frequent arson. 24 The internal military mobilisation of the masses is kept in being together with the production effort by the tremendous revolutionary spirit and the development of the initiative and the energy of the Cuban working masses, but a permanent economic effort is required to maintain an efficient and large scale armament and a mobilisation for the entire militia. At the same time, the Cuban workers' state is subjected to a series of restricions in the supply of various materials. Without having to resort to the "War Communism" of the early years of che Soviet Union, collective efforts have to be made to persuade the people to accept a tendency to thr. levelling of consumption and to rationing where necessary, especially for the sections of the petty-bourgeoisie and the more privil. eged sections of state employees who have been accustomed to a higher standard of living. 5. Planning. The economy of the Cuban workers' can only overcome its backwardness and take advantage of the openings in the world market placed at its disposal by the workers' states, and make use of its internal resources and the creative energy of the masses, by a planning of the whole economy.
The existing chaos industry has been largely due to the lack of any concrete idea of what to do in this field, but the material basis for this chaos was the complete inefficiency of industry for a country which broke from an age-old economic structure without having developed the minimum bases of the new structure, and which soon found itself subjected to an economic blockade which severed it from its normal sources of supply of industrial
The consolidated industrial units, in some cases, such as the textile, metalurgical and chemical industries, comprising the small state or expropriated enterprises, do not provide the possibilities for a real change or the atlainment of the minimum needs of the new economy.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL Nevertheless, the expropriation of these small enterprises (which has been criticized) place in the hands of the state the minimum elements of private accumulation, and lays a healthy basis on which the development of the industrial apparatus can be built throagh the help of the other workers' states. The Ministry of Industrialization, headed by Guevara, and the four-year plan which he announced on May Ist., provide a new basis following the first attempts. It is based on expropriation, on the consolidated units, the General Administrations (of tobacco, coffee and cocoa) and on the agreements with the other workers' states, which form a starting point for a rational equipment for the Cuban industrial development. In this direction, the basis has been laid for the beginning of a plan for industry and for the planning of the whole economy supported by the dynamism of agricultural production, by the real increase in the production of foodstuffs, and by the real improvement of the living standards • fthe Cuban workers food, housing, work and education.
In any event, this economic development and this planning is at an anarchie and explosive stage, with great possibilities, and developments, and wirth many bottlenecks, because it is under the fire of the need, the impulse, the fever and the demands of the various sections of the working class, subject to the solution of great economic problems and the lack of a coherent and homogeneous class, which could only be provided by the working class in Cuba, wich has arrived at a homogeneity of programme, policy and objectives to lead this process and to solve in a harmonious way the problems of planning. These beginnings of planning are led by sectors of a team which is continuing to adopt the Socialist point of view, which is basing itself on the experience and help of the Stalinisi leaderships of the workers' states and the technical advice of elements of the international Left, a team which is acting under the lively and healthy pressure and demands of the Cuban working masses, but which has not yet succeeded in constructing a programme, doctrine or a political force which fully expresses the content and the proletarian leadership of the Cuban revolution and the working class leadership of the Cuban workers' state.
III - THE MASSES, THE NEW ECONOMY AND THE WORKERS' STATE THE CHANGES IN LIVING CONDITIONS
The considerable economic measures taken in town and country have been accompaniel by small but noticeable improvements in the lot of most exploited sectors of the old society. Immediate measuras taken by the revolution cut rents in half and reduced telephone and electricity charges. The INAV (Instituto Nacional de Ahorros y Viviendas - National Savings and Housing Institute) immediately set up, and embarked on the relatively portant task of building blocks of modern popular dwellings.
Later, Urban Reform developed the conception of the social function of housing, abolishing the large-scale owneship of urban housing 25 and giving the occupants 24 Some of the large shops in Havana have been burnt in recent months, including "El Encanto" and "La Epoca". 25 There were proprietors of more than 5,000 dwellings.
of all houses the opportunity of owning their houses by payment of rent over a period of time. 26
One of the boldest programmes is that dealing with housing for the peasants and agricultural workers. envisaged an individual dwelling in place of the old one, in line with the first conception of the agrarian reform. But now, through the People's Farms, the building of population centres which concentrate the population being undertaken. These are being specially built to vide sanitary facilities, electrical viring, schools for children and for eradicating adult illiteracy, health centres, people's shops, entertainment centres and various other social ser-
The People's Shops, begun in 1959, provide a form of distribution of various consumers' goods which were 2" Those property owners who lived on the rents of a small number of dwellings were granted by the State a pension equal to the rents they had been receiving up to a maximum of 600 pesos.
28 The year 1961 has been named "the Year of Education". expropriated from the old administration (houses, cars, etc.)
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL previously available to country-dwellers, thus making possible an increase in the interchange and varieiy of their food supplies and general consumption. At the same time, the shops elimiated the middiemen and brought a real reduction in retail prices, which cover only administration costs. According to Professor Dumont, these prices were reduced by 20 to 30%, bringing that amount of increase in rural consumption.
Professor Dumont makes the following comments in this connection:
"The traditional communist State would have taken the difference in prices, or the major part of it, for use as investment. When I proposed to the president of the National Bank, the famous Comandante Che Guevara, that a half of the reduction in retail prices should be devoted to that purpose, he told me that he would supply that investment fund by re-selling at the old prices the watches and radio sets which the US SR would supply to them very cheaply. A watch bought for 9 pesos could be re-sold at 40 pesos. But these «durable» purchases constitute only a small part of the purchases and a general tax on all purchases would bring in much more." 27
Despite the desertion of some doctors, enticed, together with that of some other technicians, by imperialism and reaction, medical attension has been improved , mainly by carrying out a better distribution of doctors and medical personnel throughout the country, whereas they were. previously concentrated in the urban cuntres and among sectors who were better able to pay for services; by creating new health centres in the Sierra and expanding the services of the skilled medical workers, but above all by linking this development with the new People's Farms and the population centres attached to them, and with the sugar entrerprises and co-operatives, etc.
But the new regime is concentrating its energies particularly in the fight for education and against illiteracy. 28 Apart from the establishmet of large schools, particularly in the buildings used formerly as military barracks by the Batista dictatorship, the main effort has now been directed to combatting illiteracy among adults. mainly in the countryside, with the creation of corps of voluntary teachers for which an appeal was made to the finest spirit of sacrifice and generosity of young Cubans. Clearly this effort has met with the open opposition of some of the old layers which monopolized education when it was imbued with a strict class sense, and it has encountered considerable resistance from the Church, including a strike by some private colleges against the state monopoly of education, representing the resistance offered by the old caste-spirit of Cuban education. Now all former private schools, and the universities have been taken over by the State.
Here, as in other aspects, the desertions added to the already existing shortage of technicians and specialist personnel, even more acute in view of the tasks which 27 Quoted article, p. 591. For example, after the installation of the Peoples' Shops, an American factory making soap and other toilet requisites —and now expropriated— incorporated in its own distribution chain entire zones where it did not exist before.
53 calling upon the creative energy and the capacity of the people for development. At the same time, as we have seen, the workers' states give support by the training of technicians, which Cuban education is not yet able to undertake, and numerous volunteer technicians from other Latin American countries are helping the Cuban workers' state during this difficult transition period.
If we add to these measures the progress made in overcoming unemployment and seasonal working, we can see that there have been real improvements in the condition of the masses, even though some more privileged sections of the workers (privileged comparatively with the extreme exploitation of the Cuban masses),, like the pettybourgeoisie, have seen a reduction in their income.
lhis difference which Professor Dumont notes between Cuba and the "traditional Communist state" is a very real one, if we consider, not the traditional Communist state, but the Stalinist conception of the state and its relation with the masses. In the other workers' states, Stalinism has imposed as a source of accumulation, a superexploitation of the masses, at the same time justify. ing political oppression and the lack of workers' democracy, by the need to impose upon the masses for a whole historic period a regime capable of ensuring the maximum productivity by imposing a very low level of consumption. In reality, instead of equal sacrifice, a privileged stratum of administrators, managers and officials has been built upon this low level of consumption.
While the Cuban Revolution bases its development on the other workers' states, it differs form Stalinism, among other things, by developing a real material hond with the Cuban people through a real, though small, improvement in their lives and through a participation which is measured materially in the transformations effected by the revolution. And this is being done under the pressure of the imperialist blockade, of the invasions, and of internal counter revolution. THE STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF THE STATE
APARATUS
This greater share of the masses in the national income has not eliminated the differences in income of the various sectors. Though Cuba is a workers' state in the production relations on which it is based and which it defends, the distribution norms are bourgeois in character. Surplus value is maintained, together with higher incomes for certain social layers (technicians, teachers, administrators, members of the government, trade union leaders and army officers) in relation to the large masses. 29
These differences are not very marked at the present stage of revolutionary mobilization, and the danger is more potential than actual because of the actual structure and composition of the state apparatus. This apparatus has been in the process of renewal since January 1959 as a result of crises and purges but it still maintains some forms of the old state. It is in a permanent state of change, has no coherence or homogeneity. and does not represent a class exercising power through its constituted organs.
It is difficult to lead from a centralized control these developing forces, this permanent mobilization throughout Cuba against imperialism and internal counter-revolution,
The differences in income are expressed not only in salaries, but also in the possibility of the use of property
54 this economy which is evolving daily, this revolutionary process which places in the hands of the state human and economic resources of tremendous dynamism and poten-
In fact, these forces cannot be centralized and planned whithout affecting their permanent expansion, without operating a very great change in the structure and composition of the state apparatus. The structure of this apparatus must arise from the very classes which maintain all the revolutionary dynamism and interest in the development of the economy. Only the working class, supported by the peasantry, through its organs of power. its workers' councils, its soviets, can provide the structure capable of centralizing the state, of planning the economy, maintaining and intesifying its. dynamism and creative force.
In general, the road taken is a contrary one. It is that of developing the administrative centralization, a disciplineconomic, trade union and political apparatus which is being imposed from above. The factories, People's Farms and co-operatives 30 are directly administered by ihe State, by the INR A. A Stalinist leadership is being imposed from above on the trade unions. The desire to impose a centralized leadership has meant that, instead of developing the power of the working class through its organs, there is the development of the power of an apparatus of hybrid composition.
The consolidation of such an apparatus can only be achieved at the expense of the initiative of the masses and of the dynamism of development.
To the extent that this State apparatus has not a structure controlled by the workers, that it is not working class in composition, and that it is not basing itself on the development of industry, on the People's Farms and the army, will the dangers of these weak bourgeois di. striution relations grow, and introduce differences tending to crystallise into serious bureaucratic distortions. That is to say, these distribution relations can imperil in the long run the property relations characterized by the state ownership of the means of production.
The danger which exists is not so much that bourgeois norms of distribution are in existence, but that there may be created around this structure a social grouping within the workers' state which seeks to maintain and consolidate them with the backing of an uncontrolled state
The role of the state is fundamental, because, as Trotsky has posed it, while the productive forces work automatically in a capitalist regime, the property relations established by the revolution in the workers state are indissolubly linked with the State which gives them birth".
It is necessary that the State apparatus and its policy should be completely on the side of the proletariat and be socialist in tendency. That is, that the whole weight of political power should be directed to the maintenance of socialist tendencies. This is decisive for the true socialist development of Cuban society. WORKERS' POWER AND THE MILITIA
But also here the process is many-sided, contradictory and far from having crystallised.
For a whole period, the source of Fidel Castro's power 30 The co-operatives elect their leader, but the actual administration, is in the hands of the coordinator and the administrator designated by the INRA.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL was the support of the masses, but this power is exercised concretely on the basis of the Rebel Army, an organ whose principal cadres were in general recruited among petty-bourgeois circles, but whose rank and file comprise agricultural workers', peasants and the sons of workers, and whose social medium was the Cuban countryside with all its explosive contradictions. 31
But there has been a rapid development in the militia, with the influx mainly of the urban and rural working class, the peasants and the poor sectors of the urban petty-bourgeoisie. The fight against the counter-revolutionary guerrillas was carried on directly by the peasants in the Sierra del Escambray or the Sierras de Oriente, and it was they who eliminated them. The vigilance in the centres of work against sabotagt and against terrorism has called for a permanent mobilization of the workers rather than a regular army or an independently mobilized police force. This has given a greater participation and importance to the militia in the defence of the revolution, increasing its initiative and independent action in association with the factories and work centres, the sugar plantations, the People's Farms and the mills, and territorial control of the militia has developed in practice in the peasant areas.
The very danger of invasion has contributed to raising the importance of the militia in relation to the regular army. What is needed to counter an invasion from the United States — like that of April last - is not a matching of army against army, but, above all, the mass mobilization of the entire Cuban people, house by house fighting, as Fidel Castro has said, guerrilla warfare, the infinite harassment throughout Cuba by the armed people.
This is the type of warfare which the Cuban workers' state can carry on against an armed invasion by the forces of imperialism, a type of fighting which cannot be defeated and which also places in the forefront the militia and its initiative and relegates the role of the regular army to second place.
In fact, the militia has now superseded the army in importance. It was the militia which carried out the actions and was the vanguard in the defeat of the recent imperialist invasion, and is the most highly organised expression of the mobilisation of the Cuban working an i masses in defence of the workers' state.
It is here that new forms of power have developed in Cuba in recent months, power is not expressed in an organized form, nor canalized in the leadership of the State.
More than half a million armed militiamen, more than a million men mobilized in the fighting services and auxiliaries, supported actively by the greater part of the Cuban population — these are figures which give the Cuban workers' state special characteristics which no relation to any other workers' state at the present time, and which explain the dynamism, the daring and the perprocess of amazing development of the Cuban workers' state.
This is another of the great obstacles to the development of a bureaucratic, Stalinist regime - this State which must base itself on the stimulus of the creative spirit and the initiative of the masses and in full accord with them in every part of Cuba. 31 See Sweezy and Huberman, op cit, p. 224.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL THE COUNCILS OF TECHNICAL ASSESSORS AND THE
ADMINISTRATION OF THE ECONOMY
The formation of the Councils of Technical Assessors (C TA) is a step on the road to the intervention of the working class movement in the control and administration of the economy.
The C TA has been conceived partly as a means of associating the workers of the various enterprises with the production drive, giving them participation in its leadership. The law setting up these Councils calls for them to be set up in all state enterprises, whether directly or partly controlled, as consultative bodies which participate "in everything concerning the development and improvement of production, the fixing of rates, discussions with the workers on output and other working conditions, together with the drawing up of long-term and short-term plans." According to the law, the Councils are also empowered to propose to the managements "the adoption of whatever measures they feel may be necessary for the technical improvement of production, both in relation to productivity and to the quality of the articles being manufactured". 32
These councils are not directly elected by the workers. Full sectional or departmental meetings of the workers elect a list of three delegates. These lists are taken to the management, which selects from each list of three a delegate to represent each department or section. 33
On his return from his tour of the workers' states, Guevara explained that the C TA "constitute which has been one of our main aims, which is to link the working class even more closely with the leadership cf production, to interest the workers in production, to reveal the problems of each factory and to solve the very difficult problems which face us at this time, when we have had to absorb the great majority of Cuban enterprises with practically no administrative apparatus" he stressed the role of the C I A as that of "ensuring the maximum production capacity of the factory,
55 ourselves much more or integrate the working elass in the leadership of the factories. For it is a fact that the administrative work is separated from the masses. That is a fact. Bureaucracy does exist". 34
At the February Convention of the C TA, Fidel Castro said: "This is a meeting of the workers as participants in the management of the enterprises". And Guevara said: "It is in no way possible to make an all-embracing economic plan unless we have the agreement and the interest of the people and the participation of the masses in all the planning work of the national economy".
These statements, reflecting both a certain understanding of, and a certain lack of confidence in the working elass, reveal the role of the C T A. The CT A represent a revolutionary step in the participation of the workers in the control of the factories. They also represent an as yet paternalist form of leadership, lacking confidence in the workers, which hinders full intervention and resists the full development of workers' democracy, preventing the workers as i class from taking over the leadership of the state economy through its organs of power and absorbing the administrative apparatus into the control and leadership of these organs.
apparatus still maintains its independence and its capacity for taking decisions over and above the working
But this development must be seen in the framework of a dynamic process of permanent incorporation of the working class, of the development of its experience and participation. Like all the other organs of the revolution, the C TA is a organ of ransition, whose content will not be decided by the law nor the will of the leaders, but by the masses themselves and by the role which the masses assign to them in their own process of development, of political understanding and of dynamie intervention. The C TA answer the objective need for the intervention of the workers in the planning and leadership of the economy, and for the political development of the working class itself. They represent the beginning of a new improving the workmates". adding in conclusion that "we shall be able to integrate
IV — PARTIES AND TRADE UNIONS
The rapid evolution to socialism, the measures which THE SOCIAL ROOTS OF STALINISM IN CUBA have transformed Cuba into a workers' state, the building of a state apparatus and the mobilization of the masses, which reflect such strength, are not being achieved without very great internal contradictions. And these contradictions are being reflected principally where the organized life of the masses takes place, or should take place - in political organization and in the trade unions. There resides the crisis of the growth of the revolution and of the workers' state, where the struggle i engaged between the groups which are attempting to control and crystallize the forces of the revolution at a level which will permit them to dominate these forces, and where the - main part of the battle will take place for the full expression of the power of the masses. 32 ("The Workers, the Trade Unions and Production", FNFC, Havana, p. 29). 33 A meeting of the delegates of each enterprise or work centre forms the C T A, which elects the delegates for the corresponding Consolidaded Unit C TA. 34 "Obra Revolucionaria", Havana, 6th January 1961.
stage in the development of the organised intervention of the working class.
Who is interested in controlling and crystallizing the forces of the revolution? The PSP has worked throughout all this period to gain controlling positions in the trade unions, in the political apparatus on which the governement is based, and in the state. But this is not only the product of the subjective desire of the Cuban stalinists, but the political expression of the social forces which act within and on the Cuban workers' state.
Some petty-bourgeois sectors of the old trade union bureaucracy, driven by the impulse of the insurrection, took part in the first stage of the revolution and formed themselves into the 26th of July Movement, which was later left completely behind by the direct mobilization of the masses. These sectors form part of the cadres of the state apparatus, and particularly of some organs such as the police, INRA, sectors of the CIC and the trade union leadership, but which tend to lag behind the continuous development of the forces of the revolution and the intervention of new forces. They rather trail behind the revolutionary process, without any pol-
56 itical initiative. They have bureaucratic ideas, resist and distrust the full revolutionary expansion of the working class, and oppose the development of the organs of workers' and peasants' power in Cuba.
not consolidated or cohesive, no very defined interests as a social grouping. The influence which gives it a certain centre of cohesion and political force is an external one - the influence of Soviet bureaucrac.
While the Cuba workers' state relies on the support of the system of workers states, the bureaucratic deformations of those states also affect the Cuban workers' state, just as the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union affected the other workers' states during their formative process.
Though the Soviet bureaucracy objectively supports the Cuban workers' state, it tends to prevent any ideological and political development, and especially any development of workers' power and of soviet democracy in Cuba, which would profoundly influence, not merely the Communist Parties, but the workers' states themselves, shaken as they are by an ideological crisis and a development of new forces seeking to return to the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism.
This bureaucracy, which has not hesitated to break with and combat the Yugoslav workers' state, or smash by force of arms the development of workers councils in Hungary, or fight the Polish revolution and the revolurionary ideas of the Chinese, is clearly not simply playing the role of a disinterested bencfactor in Cuba. Although the Soviet bureaucracy has not subjectively inspired the Cuban workers' state through its Stalinist forces inside Cuba, it is, through its objective connection with it, clearly trying to control an evolution which might prove dangerous to its own system in the workers' states. This Cuban example, based on a soviet-type democracy would be a tremendous stimulus to the revolutionary movements of Latin America and Africa, its influence even being capable of extension to the workers' states through the most sensitive sectors such as China.
Stalinism in Cuba, tends in fact to be thr political expression of this internal semi-bureaucratic sector, supported by external bureaucratic interests. This sector is not directly organised in the PS P. It forms its political grouping in the 26th of July Movement, the latter which, though it has not disappeared, has ceased to be a centre of political initiative and political grouping. Without party lines, it acts as a confused political medium through a de facto Front established with other organisations of the same political characteristies, such as the Revolutionary Directorate, the Young Rebels, etc, in which the PSP is the cohesive force. These sectors are not going to the PSP and have not hardened into bureaucratic positions. They are linked with the PSP, which has an influence and fulfils a role in these circles far more weighty than it has in the development of the revolution.
In fact, the PSP is today the organizing element of the resistance which is barring the proletariat from full expression and control of the workers' state.
This has been expressed in the fight against the full expansion of the working class movement, its ideas and organization, which must logically be the basis of support, the constituent cells of the new state organism. ' This fight has shown itself in the attempt to place the trade unions under the direct control of the Ministry of Labour,
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL and to force them to accept leaders generally linked to Stalinism. This acts as a brake upon the independent fighting spirit of the working class and makes use of working class support for the Revolutionary Government in order to subordinate its organs, robbed of their own political content, to the hybrid state apparatus which we have seen.
We would say that the most symbolic expression of this fight has been the attempt to reimpose the trade union leadership of Lázaro Peña and the old leaders who have been discredited by their former conciliation and subordination to bourgeois governments — to prevent the election of a new leadership from among the working class vanguard which has arisen during the revolution and during the process which culminated in the establishment of the workers' state.
Of all the forces of the revolution, it is in the trade unions that the greatest struggles and crises have taken place. The so-called purges of eiements who collaborated with the old regime have been used as a means of liquidating opposition and imposing a certain political terrorism. Of course, a considerable part of the opposition to Stalinism came from elements which resisted some of the measures of the revolution. But there has been resistance by the working class vanguard and rank-and-file to these bureaucratic methods, and anions with several thousand members have elected their leadership at meetings attended by only a few score workers. This is not a sign of indifference or lack of interest, since these same workers who fail to attend their trade union meetings are the same who rally to the great public demonstrations, who form the militia and stand on guard against the counterrevolution, and who are the driving force of production. But for the time being, it is in these channels that the revolutionary energy of the workers finds expression, and the measures taken by the government, the advances it has made and its fighting determination overshadow the complaints and disagreements which may exist in other directions.
But, as the leaders of the government are themselves discovering, the development of production and planning demands and will demand greater participation by the workers. In the organization of agriculture, industry, education, the militia, the building of houses, health centres and factories, the state has to rely on the forces of the people, to nourish itself on the working classes which support the revolution, to stand fast on each one of these tendencies in the life-and-death struggle against the former owning class, the technicians of the old regime, the Church, the privileged sectors, the active and passive resistance of the capitalist regime in all its forms, the sabotage and the economic blockade. This is where the elements of the new state are being developed. The contradiction between this method of appealing continually to the initiative of the popular forces, to their creative and revolutionary spirit, to their maximum effort in production or in military defence and the attempts to control or crystallize the organs of the workers in a -bureaucratic form, will become increasingly sharp. THE SINGLE PARTY
The Church is attempting to regroup within Cuba the most privileged sectors of the petty-bourgeoisie, and to make them act by forms of pressure and action against the State in conjunction with the external aggression and
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL pressure. The strike of students of private (that is, religious) schools was the most serious attempt at this stage. But the recent invasion has shown the weakness of this attempt and the division of these forces, which were not able to react or to take any iritiative in favour of the invading forces.
The various political forces whose cadres were built up before the insurrection (the "Organizacion Autentica" the "Ortodoxos") have been swepi away, together with the wing led by Manuel Ray, which split from "Accion y Sabotaje" and went over to the counter-revolution. The Revolutionary Directorate and the 26th of July Movement, whose cadres were created during the insurrection, are incorporated in the administrative apparatus, in a re groupment whose ideology and initiative is provided fundamentally by the PSP, subordinate, of course, to the policy of Fidel Castro. Some of the old trade union sectors have been smashed (Fraginals, of the Electrical Workers), others pushed aside (Antonio Torres, of the Railwaymen), others have submitted to the apparatus and and to collaboration with the PSP (such as Cabrera), particularly since the PSP represents politically certain social interests of this layer.
This is really an aspect of the struggle for the formation and development of the Party which will lead the Cuban workers' state.
There is an urgent need for a party, since the old forces which took part in the insurrection are outdated. Here two interests collide: those of the governmental, state, economic and trade union apparatus, and those deriving from the maturity, expansion and centralized intervention of the proletariat and the working masses in the administration of the state and the economy.
The idea of a Single Party has been circulating in leading circles for the past year and a half. It has been the subject of internal discussions, but decisions have been postponed. 35 One of the strongest points of the present leadership has been its resistance to crystallizing into laws, fixed juridical forms and organs any of the transitory stages and movements. Nevertheless, there has been a process of developing maturity, and the government is now working towards this Single Pary, based on the apparatus and relying on the prestige of the present leadership of the revolution.
The Single Party is not being built on the plan of development and intervention of the masses, but on the constitution of a state political force, a force of the apparatus, based perhaps on the militia, the trade union apparatus, the corps of volunteer teachers and the "Young Rebels", similar to and in the image of the present hybrid apparatus. Within this, Stalinism, would represent the pressure of the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union and the other workers' states. It would be a force which would reflect all the contradictions, but with a tendency to solve them from above, consolidating the apparatus and submitting the forces to it.
Stalinism cannot openly predominate with its cadres and ideology. There has been no retreat of the revoluton to allow of that. The Single Party sponsored by bureaucratic circles and accepted in principle by 35 Since this article was written, Che Guevara, in a
57 government, is the form of a regrouping of the apparatus with a Stalinist-Khrushchevist predominance.
But a very big resistance to Stalinism exist among the workers, the cadres of the Rebel Army and in the govern. -ment itself. From its beginning, the Single Party will be faced with an internal struggle in its own apparatus. Through Fidelism the masses seck their own power, and this will be an element of differentiation with the bureaucratic tendencies.
The PSP itself, shaken by the differences existing between China and the Soviet Union, by the disagreements introduced among its youth by the comparison of the Cuban Revolution itself and its methods with Stalinist reformism, is not a force capable of establishing complete domination. The different tendencies maintain agreement publicly, but they are themselvas rent by internal struggle. The whole weight of international Stalinism is needed to maintain its cohesion. But the determining factors are the relationship of forces within the revolution and the advancement and development of the workers' states. These contradictions will blow up. THE REVOLUTIONARY MARXIST PARTY
The alternative to the Single Party is the achievement of political cohesion in the working class and the formation of its own party, of a revolutionary Marxist leadership which would not be swallowed up by the state apparatus, but would impose its will on that apparatus. There is a political force in Cuba which expresses that alternative, the Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Revolutionary Workers' Party), the Trotskyist Party of Cuba. The fate of this party is linked with the struggle for the interven. tion and control by the workers, worker and peasant, democratic and soviet leadership of the Cuban workers' state.
The fight for the political organization of the Cuban workers' state, has to be waged through the formation of a party which brings together the socially diffuse forces in the apparatus, which organize to affirm their leader. ship and privileges, though, at the same time, having to unite themselves with authentic revolutionary forces - or through the coherent political development of the revolutionary forces capable of imposing their leadership on society and on the Cuban workers' state.
The reorganization and development of Trotskyism in the working class as the leader of the revolution, of its expansion, of the political hegemony of the proletariat. The role of the P OR is to promute, develop and organize the workers' forces politically in revolutionary Marxism.
The struggle which has been strangled by police means in the Soviet Union, and stifled in each workers' state with the triumph of bureaucracy, of the apparatus over the masses, opens up again in Cuba. The social and political conditions make it difficult for Stalinism to smash it by police methods there also, as it is supported by the developing proletarian forces. This struggle raises the problem of the leadership and political organization of workers' power.
revolutionary Marxist Party will grow in the student on June 5th 1961, stated that" struggle for the development of the organs of mass power, speech delivered to as a real unity of the revolutionary organisations exists in
Cuba,
"nothing more remains thar to form a single party whose general secretary would be Fidel Castro".
of the workers' Councils (soviets), of the trade unions, militia and peasant and youth organisations. A congress of these bodies, with delegates elected democratically by
58 direct vote of the workers at meetings, must organize the new state apparatus.
The fight of Trotskyism against the Cuban political expression of conservative bureaucracy of the workers' states is taking place in conditions of advance, and not ol retreat and isolation. The very political basis of Stalinism, the control of the first workers' state is being seriously jeopardized by the development of new forces. The methods which permilted the triumph of Stalinism have had to be condemned in the Soviet Union itself. The Chinese C.P, just as the Yugoslav, Polish and Hungarian revolutions before, raises as a matter of discussion the monoLithic character and the fundamental conceptions of Stalinism, and Cuban Stalinism - at the same time that it is tending to secure control — is shaken by this international crisis and is splitting into wings. To the extent to which it links itself with he workers' state, it becomes exposed
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL as well as other tendencies which will in the coming period come to be called "Cuban tendencies"
As we have seen, Fidel Castro himself is departing from Stalinist paterns and Stalinist political conceptions Icadership of the state and the revolution, constitutes the Left within the leadership of the workers'
Trotskyism bases itself today on a dynamic of the revolution which, despite its errors and deviations, revolutionary Marxist dynamic, a Trotskyist dynamic. The building of a mass revolutionary Marxist Party, the estallishment of a real workers, soviet rule of implacable deviations and obstacles — a struggle against the pressure that is still capable of being put on the revolution by the bureaucracy installed in the system of workers' states, to which in one way or another the Cuban workers' state is subordinated to the fire of a permanent revoiution, is shaken by the crisis, Leftist tendencies, "Chinese" tendencies appear,
V - THE REVOLUTIONARY DEFENCE OF THE CUBAN WORKERS' STATE
This struggle must be based fundamentally on the same forces which are today defending the Cuban revolution, the Latin American revolutionary movement, on the development of new workers' states in Latin America and
The Cuban revolution will have to assert itself by a permanent revolutionary process, not only internal, but also through its external extension as a vital necessity for its very existence. It must extend itself on a continental scale through the development of new workers' states, in an extension of the system of the United Soviet Socialist States of Latin America.
The great subjective and objective support for the Cuban revolution is to be found in the Latin American revolution, as part of the colonial revolution, just as the objective support for its cconomic victories lies in workers'
Today the struggle for the maintenance of the Cuban workers' state is not only the affair of the Cuban masses. The pressure of the colonial revolution will increase the intervention of the Soviet Union and the other workers' states. The colonial masses measure the sincerity of the help which the Soviet government proclaims for them in Asia, Africa and Latin America, by its attitude towards Cuba. The Cuban government is aware of this. peoples now know that their sovereignity can ben guaranteed by the Soviet Union", said Guevara on May 8th, speaking to electrical workers in Havana, adding: "I consider that the solidarity of the Socialist countries has by objective necessities. prevented Cuba from becoming a pawn in future transactions on a world scale".
The defence of the Cuban workers' state will be based on the support of mobilizations like those which took piace in Latin America and in other parts of the world, but Its long-term support must be based on the revolutionary struggles of the Latin American and colonial masses. The defence of Cuba will extend the revolutionary movement in all countries, "making the Andes into a Sierra Maestra," transforming the imperialist war against the Cuban workers' state into a war for the expulsion of imperialism and the ending of capitalism in Latin America. "Our revolution is not only an example for Latin America but also a
, as Guevara said to the electricity workers. policies of alliances with "progressive bourgeoisies", the policy of conciliation, and, as is now happening, revolutionary forces and tendencies in the old parties and in the workers' movement will develon together with the Trotskyrevolutionary defence of the Cuban workers' state will develop together with the developparties of the Fourth International in Latin . the parties which hold to the programme of the Proletarian Revolution. 30 May, 1961
Three Declarations and an appeal of the
International Secretariat of the Fourth International