WHERE IS THE CUBAN REVOLUTION GOING ?
The Cuban revolution, which already eight months ago brought down the sanguinary dictatorship of Batista, has since undergone an uninterrupted development. Having won power through an armed struggle essentially supported by the peasant masses of the island, it steadily and tumultuously advances from stage to stage: the destruction of Batista's police and military apparatus; the agrarian reform; revolutionary wartare against the surrounding dictatorships and the reactionary plots organized on US soil itself.
In this process, purges and regroupings within the general staff of the revolution follow one atter another, stressing the preëminently Bonapartist character of the political power incarnated by Fidel Castro and the handful of his close lieutenants. This staff, of rather petty-bourgeois and even intellectual social origins, which is not supported by any party, any organized political movement, is a unique combination of the special traits of the revolutionaries of 1848 and the Mexican Zapatas of 1911, in the context of the social and international realities of 1959.
The undeniably romantic décor of the Cuban revolution can be understood only by taking into account the petty-bourgeois social origins of the present leadership of the revolution, the main social forces - peaantry, petty bourgeoisie of the cities - that dominate it at the present stage, and the revolutionary flamboyance characteristic of the traditions of Latin America, and of Cuba in particular.
But the picturesque aspects of the Cuban revolution must not hide the fact that it is taking place in a given national and international context that is far distant from the possibility of a pure and simple repetition of 1848 or of 1911. The Cuban "bourgeois-democratic" revolution, however drenched it may be in local color, does not cease to obey the laws of the permanent revolution in our period.
Its dynamic development so far has fully demonstrated this. In November 1958 Fidel Castro, accompanied by some 80 followers, landed on the eastern shores of the island and immediately took to the brush. His immense merit consists in his having known how to win the sympathy of the poor peasant masses of this part of the island and - thanks to the promise of a difficult agrarian reform (and already some practical applications along these lines) - to mobilize them actively on his side.
He was thus able to raise a real army of partisans, constantly harassing the forces of repression of the Batista dictatorship until they were broken up and completely beaten in the decisive final assault.
At this stage, the Castro experience is already highly instructive, showing the possibility of raising a whole peasant army which, in close liaison with the population, can maintain itself, grow, and fight effectively against the superior military forces of a dictatorship.
During this stage Castro combined the leverage of a political programme, of a difficult agrarian reform, with the organization and conduct of a guerilla which was able to use to the full all the resources of the soil and popular support in its favor. At the same time, he was working on the urban centres politically and militarily, by propaganda in workers circles, incitation to strikes and terrorist activity, as he gradually benefited by the help and protection of the population.
The fact of thus having brought down, in a relatively short time, the sanguinary dictatorship strongly organized and enjoying the full support of Washington and London, was already a striking proof of the strength of the revolution and foretold its dvnamic development on a broad scale.
Immediately after the victory over Batista, the Cuban revolution buckled down to the task of violently destroying the state apparatus of the dictatorship and of reconstructing a new apparatus. The purge of the police. the army, and the administration was of wide scope and ended up in mass firings and in the execution of hundreds of persons. Nevertheless, the forms of the state apparatus remained the same, i e, bourgeois, despite the purge of personnel.
The new stage in the revolution was entered by the promulgation of the law of agrarian reform last May. Of all the social measures of the revolution, this was the lost important and the most impatiently awaited. Ih land has great expanses of land, which are however, either non-productive or the property of foreign or native latifundists.
These latifundists control about 46% of the arable land, while 70% of the peasant population have only 12 %. Among the latifundists, sugar monopolies in US hands control 75% of the most fertile land in the island, and two thirds of the sugar plantations!
The agrarian law promulgated by Castro is quite radical in its written dispositions. It specifies that no
person or corporate entity can hold more than 30 caba- bean archipelago, Central America, and South America
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL - Îlerías 1 of land, except sugar planters and cattle raisers, who will have the right to keep - and even then only in certain cases - 100 caballerías. Corporations must transform their anonymous shares into securities whose holders' names are registered, and foreigners cannot possess land without prior authorization trom the Institute of Agrarian Reform.
Leases are henceforth forbidden, and all existing contracts will be automatically abrogated by the property's adjudication to the peasants who are actually tilling the soil at the moment when the agrarian reform goes into effect: five caballerías maximum to medium-sized families; two caballerías in certain cases of irrigated land. And lastly, the law strongly encourages cooperatives, which will benefit by important facilities in fiscal and
It was the attempt to put this law into operation which caused - beginning with July of this year, and as might have been expected - the successive waves of domestic and in Cuba. Foreign and domestic latifundists, as well as native capitalist landowners who were cultivating land on lease, formed a coalition to block by every means the putting into effect of the law of agrarian reform. Obstructionism and reactionary plots appeared within the government's own ranks and in Castro's close entourage.
There was also the desertion to the United States of Major Díaz Lanz who was in command of Cuban military aviation, and there was above all the direct conflict with President Urrutia, later dismissed in a revolutionary way by the people mobilized in the streets and public places of the capital on the dramatic night of July 17-18 of the present year.
The deepening of the revolution brought about an inevitable political differentiation in the ranks of its general staff, composed of petty-bourgeois ideologists -a good part of them being of Catholic origins - and bourgeois careerists. A more plebeian wing, subjected to the pressure of the revolutionary masses, thus broke away from the rest of the bourgeois and pro-imperialist elements, and sought, by basing themselves inevitably on these masses, to stand up to the reflex actions of the native reactionaries and of imperialism.
The revolutionary mobilization of hundreds of thousands of peasants armed with machetes, who fraternized on July 26th with the Havana workers celebrating the national day of the revolution, was aimed at showing the strength of the revolution in face of its enemies, scheming up new plots.
The heart of these plots in unquestionably incarnated by American imperialism, which has about $ 1,000 million invested in Cuba, and controls more than half the island's sugar companies, half its railways, a third of its banks, the majority of its mining, power, and other firms, as well as the postal services, telecommunications, etc. Fabulous profits have been extracted from these investments: $ 750 million between 1952 and 1957!2
American imperialism is afraid, furthermore, Cuba's contagious example spread throughout the Carib+- 1 A caballería is about 33 1⅓ acres. & In contrast, the average monthly family salary for the approximately million and a half agricultural workers is scarcely 45 pesos, while 700,000 others, i e, a third of the total manpower of the island, are unemployed.
A radical agrarian reform that would dare expropriate - even with indemnization - the foreign and domestic latifundia, threatens to produce analogous revolutionary movements over the whole extent of Latin America, dominated since the time of the conquistadores by this regime in land.
Indeed, save for modest reforms undertaken in Mexico and Bolivia, and a few other exceptions, everywhere else in Latin America large-scale landed property predominates. In Venezuela, 3% of the landowners control 90% of the arable land; in Brazil, where scarcely 5% of available land is cultivated, the regime is similar. If it is taken into account that 70% of the population of Latin America live by agriculture and stock-raising, the primordial importance and highly explosive nature of the agrarian question can be estimated.
The Castro experiment, if ever it succeeds, threatens to touch off this powder magazine.
American imperialism and the native compradore strata whose interests are tied up with it, visualize this eventuality with anxiety - hence the desperate efforts made so far, from inside and outside the island, to sabotage the agrarian reform, if not indeed just plain overthrow the revolutionary regime, and even assassinate its
The most immediate danger of contagion threatens the neighboring dictatorships of Trujillo (Dominican Republic) and of Somoza (Nicaragua). Through them would be affected the American monopolies in agricultural, mining, and other exploitations in the whole of the Caribbean archipelago and Central America, as well as the vital strategic positions of American imperialism in that region.
And yet the attempts at a military overthrow of the revolutionary regime, including through the Organization of American States, have so far failed, as has just been demonstrated at the recent Santiago Conference. On the contrary, the economic threats hanging over the revolution are more serious.
The deficit in the balance of payments, which at the time of the revolution was in the neighborhood $ 100 million, threatens to become further aggravated this year, for investments and income from tourists have dropped sharply. With the treasury emptied by the bandit ex-dictator, and the production of sugar and its price both fallen, the revolutionary government will have major difficulties in financing its programme of public works to combat unemployment at least partially ($100 million), in compensating the expropriated landowners,? and in simultaneously avoiding inflation.
To stand up to its economic, social, and international problems, the Cuban revolution needs to settle its social character right away by getting rid of the cloud of ambiguities that have accompanied it from the cradle. Begun, inevitably, as a "bourgeois-democratic" revolution, from the viewpoint of both its leadership and its immediate tasks - independence from imperialism, agrarian revolution - it soon found itself involved in the contradictions inherent in any genuine revolution in our period: if these "bourgeois-democratic" tasks are to find a radical solution, it is necessary to fight resolutely against imperialism and native reactionary forces, in3 The price of the land was fixed on its tax valuation, rather lower than its market value.
8 cluding the native bourgeoisie, by relying squarely on the revolutionary mobilization and organization of the peasant and proletarian masses.
To do so causes the revolution to go in reality beyond bourgeois limits and to develop itself, organically as it were, as a proletarian and socialist revolution. To stop half way would inevitably mean retreat, the annulation of the conquests already won, and the victory in the long run of the reaction in the form of a new dictatorship. That is the iron law of any revolution in our times.
in order tor the Cuban revolution to maintain itseli nd to attain its "bourgeois-democratic" goals - the real liquidation of all the aftermaths of imperialism, the land to the peasants who till it - it needs to base itself on the adequate organization of the revolutionary masses, ns here together uh parties, indiet trade
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL famine or economic asphyxiation, to diversify the economy, and to industrialize the country, it needs to nationalize the principal means of production, plan the economy, and receive financial, commercial, and technical aid, wherever it may come from, including the USSR and the other workers' states.
In this process, the organization and public appear-
Rode of he essential facto ar is ost party tild the
guarantee of victory.
The conditions in the island, in Latin America, and in the world, are favorable to there being no regression for a certain time in the Cuban revolution. It is urgent that this interval be utilized to endow it with the basic framework that is essential to its final victory: a revolutionary Marxist party, an organization of the masses into committees and militia.