[The last world congress of the Fourth International, held in February 1974, opened a public discussion on the internal situation in Cuba and the foreign policy of the Cuban government. The following article, translated by Intercontinental Press, is a contribution to that discussion.]
Recent developments-in internal as well as international politics-have again posed the problem of an analysis of the overall situation in Cuba. Militants are questioning the nature of the Cuban state at the present stage. Is the characterization advanced by revolutionary Marxists since 1960 still valid or must it be rectified? Before offering an answer let's cast a look back.
The Formation of the Workers State
"The Cuban revolution," says the text of the Sixth World Congress of the Fourth International (January 1961), "has roughly speaking gone through three phases up to now: the first, in which, after having limited its goals and its methods to a program of 'cleaning up the system' and of armed action carried out by a small group that tried to win over a sector of the army, the Fidelista movement developed a program of struggle against the system itself, centering mainly on bourgeois-democratic demands and on more and more advanced peasant demands; the second, marked by the first revolutionary gains and especially the agrarian reform; and the third, whose culminating points were the mortal blows against imperialist property in the summer of 1960, and the decisive wave of nationalizations, including those of native capitalist properties, in October of the same year.
"On the specifically political level, in the first phase the people's revolutionary forces signed (July 1958) a pact with the representatives of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democracy; the second phase was marked by the formation (January 1959) of a government including liberal-conservative elements, with Urrutia as president. Finally, the inevitable break with the latter occurred-a break caused above all by the promulgation of the agrarian reform.
"In its first two phases, therefore, the Cuban revolution developed as a radical anti-imperialist democratic revolution, whereas in the third it completed the process of 'growing over' into a socialist revolution, eliminating not only the economic bases of imperialism but also of native capitalist property. On the level of political leadership, this evolution was more in form than substance, for the real power was in the hands of the Ejército Rebelde [Rebel Army] and the Fidelista team, even during the period of dual power sui generis that ran from the taking of power to the fall of Urrutia." [See "On the Nature of the Cuban Revolution," Fourth International, Winter, 1960-61, No. 12.]
The specific forms of the armed struggle for power and the character of the Fidelista leadership—as analyzed in the resolution cited above-contributed to making a fundamental difference between the Cuban revolution and the Russian revolution of 1917. In spite of the active participation of broad layers of the peasantry and in the later stages of the urban proletarian masses, the destruction of the bourgeois state did not go hand in hand with the emergence of soviet-type proletarian democratic structures. That is why, in the context of cultural and economic backwardness and the impossibility Cuba faced of integrating itself into a homogeneous supranational economic system, tendencies toward bureaucratic degeneration existed from the beginning. However, unlike Yugoslavia and China-and even more unlike the countries of Eastern Europe occupied by the Red Army, which were quickly brought into a process of structural assimilation with the USSR- the revolution in Cuba did not develop under a leadership historically linked to Stalinism, trained in this school and deeply scarred by bureaucratism even before the conquest of power. In the period of the revolutionary war and right after the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship, the Castroist leadership suffered the limitations and contradictions stemming from its petty-bourgeois origins and its Jacobin ideology. But it was inspired by a determination to maintain its ties with the driving forces of the revolution, by an understanding that such a link was needed in order to counteract bourgeois restorationist tendencies and to counter the attacks of American imperialism.1 Another obstacle to adopting the Stalinist model and a factor promoting an awareness of the problems of the degeneration of the revolution were the distrust of the Stalinists of the PSP [People's Socialist party], who after collaborating with Batista on several occasions opposed the guerrilla struggle for a whole period, and the thinking that certain leaders of the July 26 Movement were able to undertake on the negative evolution of the USSR and the bureaucratized Communist parties.
Thus the Cuban workers state was born without the deformations that from the beginning marked countries like Yugoslavia and China where the taking of power was the outcome of prolonged revolutionary mobilizations. As a result of the decisions made at several points by its leading group, the Cuban revolution for a long time after its victory did not experience a substantial process of bureaucratic degeneration. That is why the Fourth International adopted an attitude toward the Cuban leadership qualitatively different from its attitude toward the leaderships of other workers states, not including in our program either the struggle for an antibureaucratic political revolution or the building of an alternative leadership.
Three Crucial Episodes
All these aspects did not prevent the Fourth International from highlighting the objective factors likely to stimulate forms of bureaucratization or from taking note over a long period of fifteen years of contradictory tendencies and crucial moments in the struggles against these phenomena.
On the whole we can distinguish three important episodes between 1960 and 1970.
The first came in 1962 when the pro-Stalinist faction around Aníbal Escalante was defeated. At that time some fairly well defined tendencies had set out to introduce administrative methods and to impose forms of bureaucratization involving a growing weight of the apparatus, the emergence of relatively privileged conditions, and the imposition of Stalinist-like cultural practices. This resulted in the creation of a dangerous gap between the leaders and the masses. A speech by Guevara in 1961 and Castro's speeches against falsification of history and above all against Escalante were the most important testimony to the fact that at least a small part of the leading group was perfectly aware of the dangers and had decided to fight resolutely against them.
In fact the most representative elements of the bureaucratic current were placed in a position where they could do no harm, and a difficult phase was overcome.
The second episode occurred in 1967. In this year the Cuban polemic against the international line of the bureaucracy of the CPs and of the Soviet bureaucracy itself came to its fullest development. One of the culminating points of this polemic was Fidel Castro's March 13 speech, in which, among other things, he explicitly criticized the visit of a Soviet commercial delegation to the Colombian government then engaged in repressing the guerrillas, and in which he made an extremely clear and vehement attack on the opportunistic line of the Venezuelan CP. Guevara's message, coming from an unknown field of battle, which was published in April, was along the same lines. The OLAS conference in July gave additional sanction to a line in opposition to the reformist conceptions of the Communist parties, and rejected any subordination to the politico-diplomatic needs of the bureaucracies of the degenerated workers states.
But 1967 was also the year of a new attack by the leading Castroist group against the bureaucratic positions and against the tendencies and men from the former PSP who had not ceased to represent a brake on, and a danger to, the revolutionary process. Already, the year before, an attack had been launched on a stronghold of some bureaucrats of the old school, that is, the national union federation. The apparatus headed by Lazaro Peña, whose responsibility cannot be wiped out by apologetic postmortem commemorations, was largely replaced. In the same period, a campaign was launched around the need for actively mobilizing the masses as a condition for achieving economic objectives. Likewise another campaign was started up against the overgrown administrative apparatus and against bureaucratic methods of management and leadership. These campaigns prompted a broad theoretical debate in which even economists from other countries, including revolutionary Marxists, were able to express their views. The criteria used in other workers states were explicitly criticized, and a general conception was outlined, which differed both from the Soviet theories based on the absolute primacy of material incentives as well as from certain Chinese formulations marked by oversimplification and abstract idealism (in addition to being largely out of line with the actual practice in China).
In the summer of 1970 the failure of the ten million ton zafra [sugar harvest]—a prime objective to which everything had been subordinated, creating extreme tension throughout the country-touched off a dramatic critical rethinking. Once again this was most explicitly expressed in Fidel Castro's speeches. These speeches drew a mercilessly self-critical balance sheet on the shocks and contradictions the Cuban economy was suffering; they denounced the preponderance of administrative methods over political methods of leadership and an extremely insufficient participation by the masses in economic management.
Let me cite what I wrote at the time in an attempt to take advantage of the opening the Cubans had made.
"We know whatever the specific solutions adopted, above all starting off from the level of a country condemned to backwardness by imperialist exploitation, that difficult problems will remain. It is hard to develop all the necessary trained personnel in a short period of time, and the cultural limitations of the masses constitute a major obstacle to their participating in a real way in administering the economy and the broader society.
"But to break out of this vicious circle, there is no other way than to strive by every means right from the start to tap the creative potential of the masses. Only by experience can the masses acquire the necessary capacities and concepts, and produce the cadres essential for the overwhelming tasks of real socialist construction.
"It is precisely for this reason-and not out of fetishistic attachment to any scriptures or experiences of the past-that we have always held that a revolution in Cuba, as elsewhere, must find expression in the creation of political structures arising from below, which alone can assure maximum democracy for the workers and peasants.
"The absence of such structures, let us repeat once again, has been the Achilles' heel of the Cuban revolution. Now the consequences of this lack should be evident to everyone. If these structures had been built; if instead of relying primarily on their instinct and their direct experiences the Cuban leaders had learned more from the fundamental lessons of the past half century of struggles by the workers movement in the countries where capitalism has been overthrown, it would have been less difficult to achieve coherent planning and avoid the ravages of bureaucratic disorder. It would have been easier to achieve a much more substantial increase in production, to assure a more rational allocation of resources.
"What is more, the creation of such structures would have erected much more substantial barriers than the mere combative spirit of a leading nucleus to the tendencies towards bureaucratization which, in a context such as the one in Cuba, is inherent in the phase of transition from capitalism to socialism.
"Among the causes of the economic failures and dangerous social developments, the absence of a revolutionary-democratic organization of the state must, then, be assigned first place." ("A Crucial Stage for the Cuban Revolution," Intercontinental Press, November 30, 1970, p. 1043.)
In a general way two alternative solutions to the problem posed by the failure of the zafra were counterposed within the leadership itself: a solution of a bureaucratic and authoritarian kind, based on domination by technicians and specialists and on much stricter discipline, possibly accompanied by repressive measures; and a solution based primarily on the mobilization and active participation of the masses in economic and political development.
"The stakes in this confrontation, which is shaping up to be very sharp, is, in the last analysis, fundamental for the future of the Cuban revolution. Will Cuba be condemned to growing bureaucratization, or will it prove possible to open up a new chapter in the history of the struggle the masses have waged against the bureaucracy? The answer depends in very large measure on the results of the present confrontation." (Quarta Internazionale, No. 1, 1971.)
The choices outlined by the Cuban leadership did not include an overall solution to the problems that had been present since the day following the victory of the revolution. For example, the conception that called for achieving active participation by the masses through the existing mass organizations did not resolve the problem of building and coordinating structures of real proletarian democracy, nor did it resolve, by itself, the problem of assuring the effective democratic functioning of these mass organizations. As for the party, no concrete step was taken with a view to eliminating in the near future decisive obstacles to internal democracy (lack of any room for freely expressing different or opposing positions, failure to call a congress, etc.).
But, in spite of all that, Fidel Castro's self-criticism and certain decisions outlined by the leading group revealed a clear potential for fighting bureaucratism and showed, in any case, that the group around Fidel was conscious of what was at stake and wanted at any price to avoid becoming the instrument of forces and interests different from those it has represented since the period of the armed struggle against the dictatorship.
Five years afterward, is it premature to ask ourselves, Did the battle announced in 1970 really take place? In what forms was it conducted and with what results? What tendencies are now operating and what are the perspectives?
At the moment, we do not possess all the analytical elements required to give a complete answer (for example, at least in the official publications we have been able to consult, we have not found any overall statistics that would permit a thorough evaluation of the economic situation). Nevertheless, certain general lines of analysis can be established, from which some definite conclusions can legitimately be drawn.
If our interpretation in 1970 correctly recognized the general trends, in practice the situation has evolved in a much less clear fashion. The results to date indicate that neither of the two solutions mentioned got the upper hand. Instead, we have to record a partial implementation of certain features of the second alternative, in combination with features of the first. Let us look at this in more detail.
Economic Problems and Tendencies
Throughout the first ten years of its life, the Cuban workers state was rudely compelled to periodically take account of how much the economic development of a small country dependent on one crop is conditioned by the world market. The political factors, i.e., the blockade and sabotage, made the economic effects of this pressure still more negative.
After the initial illusions about the possibility of a fairly rapid diversification, the leading group had to conclude that for an indeterminate period sugar cultivation would remain the backbone of the country's economy, the primary source of accumulation, and the principal means of acquiring currency for foreign trade (as Castro noted, for example, in a January 1973 speech, the products assuring foreign exchange are nickel, tobacco, fish, and sugar, but sugar overshadows the others).
In a context where Cuba remained isolated in Latin America, and could not pin its hopes on integration into an effectively unified economic system of the workers states (even leaving aside the specific difficulties of incorporating Cuba, since the Comecon does not constitute a fully developed system of economic integration), maintaining sugar cultivation as the principal economic lever was an unavoidable choice. Only utopians or irresponsible people could question the necessity of such a decision. In the last analysis, the origin of the ten million ton campaign is to be located in this reality. Regardless of propagandistic distortions or conjunctural rhetoric, this goal was not regarded as an end in itself but as a means to acquire resources needed for other sectors and to lessen a number of dangerous tensions. We cannot go back here over the causes of the failure.
In retrospect it can be said that in his self-criticism Castro put too much emphasis on the socio-political causes (which were certainly a factor), compared to the more specifically economic ones, especially the largely voluntarist nature of the option taken: That is, the fact that, in view of the available labor force, technical know-how, and general organization, such a large-scale, concentrated effort could not be made without creating grave bottlenecks in other sectors as well as a series of highly negative effects.
The failure was dramatic in any event, insofar as it seemed to compromise possibilities for rapid growth, or relatively rapid growth, and seemed destined to increase dependence on foreign countries.
However, the results obtained in the years following 1970 were better than could have been expected at the time. By 1972 there was already a modest but real improvement. And the agreements with the USSR, which, among other things, involved long-term payments and credits without interest, guaranteed the essential margin for maneuver.2
It should be noted, moreover, that what has historically been an economic tragedy for Cuba-that is, its dependence on the world market price of sugar—in the recent period has turned into an unexpected opportunity. This is the result of a rise, particularly noticeable in certain phases of the economic conjuncture, in the price of raw materials. Of course, world inflation also exerts pressure on Cuba, and what is still more important, the rise in sugar prices could experience a brusque change, likely to reduce seriously if not wipe out the gains made. This does not alter the fact that the rise of sugar to 40 and 50 cents a pound (end 1974, beginning 1975) represents a considerable advantage for Cuba (increases in the prices of industrial products have been more than compensated for). To get an idea of what this means, it is enough to note that even as late as mid-1973 at the International Sugar Conference, Cuba proposed 6 cents as the minimum price, 9 cents as the maximum price, and 11 cents as the so-called administrative price.3 As Castro pointed out in December 1974, in the coming season a six million ton zafra at year-end 1974 prices would correspond in terms of 1970 prices not to a ten million ton, but to a twenty million ton, zafra.
This means that Cuba already has, and will likely have in the next stage, a much larger margin of economic maneuver than could legitimately be expected after the failure in 1970. This makes it possible for the Cuban leadership to tackle a number of problems without having to contend with such serious tensions.
During the traditional balance sheet speech at the last July 26 anniversary, in giving some indicative facts, Castro pointed out that between 1970 and 1973 the overall economic growth had been on the order of 26 percent, that agriculture had scored considerable advances;4 and that industry had maintained a particularly steady growth (in particular, the construction industry had had an "extraordinary" dynamism). According to certain estimates, obviously from an official source, that have appeared in the international press, the rate of growth after 1973 reached 10 percent, with an increase in exports from 768 million pesos to 2,193 million pesos (Le Monde, January 14, 1975). In a speech in February of this year, Castro calculated that production in the construction sector had tripled since 1970.5 As for the perspectives, 1976 will mark the beginning of the first five-year plan. Its general lines will be established definitively after a discussion among the masses. But, in theory, it is to involve an annual rate of growth of 6 percent. This figure, already put forward in 1973 by Castro as attainable in the following decade, was confirmed in the balance sheet of last year mentioned above. If the favorable prices for sugar last, the percentage of growth could be increased. The investments foreseen by the plan are on the order of $12 to 15 billion, that is, $2.5 to 3 billion per year (cf. statement by Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, in Paris, January 15, 1975).
The elements of the balance sheet and the summary forecasts should not make us forget, in the first place, that the 6 percent average rate of growth is a relatively low one for a still largely underdeveloped country (all the more if you consider the rate of population growth).6 In the second place, the results of the plan will themselves be largely shaped by the evolution of the world market (evolution of raw materials prices, of the terms of trade in industrial products and of agricultural products, and the results of the inflationary process at the international level, etc.).7 It is necessary, in the third place, to take into account the choking bottlenecks that exist and serious contradictions that we can summarize as follows:
1. Problems created by the shortage of manpower, which results primarily from the seasonal character of the harvest and limited progress in mechanizing the cultivation of the main crop. (The special experiment of the microbrigades, employed to stimulate housing construction, had a bad side to it, in that it, at least partially, drew off manpower from the production sector. This forced other workers to do unpaid overtime work.)8
2. Insufficient training in regular work habits, resulting in relatively low productivity, especially in certain sectors, and the persisting absenteeism (even though, according to official statements, the trend has definitely been toward a drop in this).9
3. Shortages of certain essential materials (for example, cement for building) that has repercussions on production as a whole (the bottlenecks that exist in construction in spite of increases noted also involve industrial construction). Shortages of consumer goods (including restrictions on sugar, in view of the need to save as much as possible for export).10
Finally, the radical shift in the norms for organizing work and stimulating productivity has not, by itself, made it possible to overcome the difficulties, the tensions, and the contradictions that prompted the leaders to make this turn. This came out very clearly, for example, in the national union congress debates.
As we have already mentioned, these problems have been discussed on several occasions since the revolution. Different conceptions have been counterposed, and there was a succession of various methods.
But 1970 marked a break even on this ground. The leading group started to adopt a more realistic conception of the problems of the transitional stage and their solution. In the first place, they made much clearer the necessary distinction between the socialist phase and the communist phase and stated flatly that there was no possibility for a socialist revolution "jumping over stages." (Granma, February 16, 1975)
While not completely renouncing politico-ideological incentives and assigning a major importance to the level of consciousness attained by the working class and the toilers in general, the Cuban leadership staked more and more—in practice still more than in explicit theorization—on material incentives. The system of norms became the rule.11 Its extension went hand in hand with a reorganization of the system of wages and bonuses involving an attack on positions of privilege (first of all, ending so-called historic salaries). This included annulling Resolution 270, which granted bonuses to workers who individually or collectively accomplished exceptional tasks and demonstrated a revolutionary attitude. Social security was reorganized, and retirement at full pay was granted only in exceptional cases. Voluntary work was reduced (in view of its inadequate economic return in most cases). Overtime work was reorganized (in this case also because of a questionable economic return from overtime work that was unpaid or demanded without a specified purpose). The "escalafones" (job and salary classifications) were reorganized. "Compromisos colectivos de trabajo" (collective labor agreements) were concluded between the administrators and the workers in each unit of production as the basis of relations between the two categories.
The generalization of norms and the emphasis on material incentives, together with other measures mentioned, no doubt helped to increase productivity (Castro pointed to this also in the last session of the National Council of the Confederación de Trabajadores Cubanos [Granma, February 16, 1975]), and helped as well to introduce some elements essential for rationalizing production. But this did not proceed without difficulties and dangerous tendencies likely to create tensions.
The practical application of a system of norms itself created serious problems, since, to use some of Castro's formulations, certain norms were "basic," others "more accurately adjusted" (más ajustadas), others still "less accurately adjusted" (mal ajustadas). The workers who were given higher quantitative and even qualitative norms were disadvantaged, inasmuch as they had to make a greater effort, and could get the bonus for overfulfilling the norm only by a greater effort. Where, on the contrary, the norms had been fixed at too low levels, it could have two kinds of results. This could result in higher pay, in view of the greater ease of exceeding the norm. Or productivity could remain very low if the workers, fearing that it were noticed how undemanding these norms were, and that new ones would be set, kept under the established threshold. Besides, a system of material incentives and norms tends in general to produce marked wage differentiations in the working class itself, from sector to sector and even among different shops in the same plant.12 In the case of bonuses and promotions, the danger of arbitrariness, inequalities, and injustice is still greater, and in fact there have been some exposés of this. (At one time, the idea was raised of exempting the most active and disciplined workers, whose family income did not exceed a certain ceiling, from the rent payments required by the urban reform law, as well as of giving priority in the distribution of electrical appliances to the most meritorious workers.)13
Socialist emulation itself-which was particularly stressed in the theses of the last union congress-risks being compromised by organizational inadequacies that would make it difficult to keep the necessary controls. Problems of this nature were bared several months ago by the general secretary of the national union federation.14 We should not forget as well that the workweek is still fairly burdensome. The union congress set an average of forty-four hours a week (with a maximum of fifty-five a week and of ten hours a day with the exception of very particular sectors). In the proposed constitution, the eight-hour day is established (Article 45).
According to official sources, Cuba registered an increase in overall volume of wages as well as rising wage levels. In the balance sheet made in his last speech at the union congress, Castro cited the following statistics on total wages: 1967—2,773 million pesos; 1970—3,111 million; 1971—3,187 million; 1972—3,367 million; 1973—3,690 million. At the same time, spending by the population rose because of the commodities in distribution as well as the higher prices of certain "nonessential" products. Throughout the same speech Castro drew attention, however, to a fundamental danger to the Cuban economy at this stage, that is, the danger that the quantity of commodities available might not correspond to the volume of money in circulation and that inflationary tendencies would thus be stimulated. In view of the shortages that persist despite the progress that has been achieved and the prospects for the blockade being relaxed, Cuba will face this problem for a long while.15
The Social Context
Owing to the thoroughness of a series of revolutionary measures and some shrewd tactical decisions by the leading group, the problem of domestic conflict with layers of the former ruling class and restorationist tendencies was posed from the beginning years in a notably milder form in Cuba than in other workers states.
In fact, the representatives of the exploiting classes and their supporters have, for the most part, left the country for exile in the United States. The leading group did not place any obstacles in the way of this massive emigration; it even encouraged this in a certain way. The result was that, while there was a broad base for reactionary maneuvers outside the country, inside Cuba the representatives and the surviving layers of the old system found themselves rapidly isolated.
In the second place, following the two waves of agrarian reform in 1959 and 1963, the Cuban countryside underwent structural changes sharply reducing the chances for capitalist accumulation and for dangerous political counterattacks from well-to-do peasants, the potential kulaks. Let us remember that four and a half years after the fall of Batista and three years after the birth of the workers state-which followed the expropriation of the native capitalists-the state sector, in the form of state farms (granjas estatales), already covered more than 60 percent of the agricultural land. Less than 40 percent was left in the private sector (the reform in 1963 lowered the ceiling on the amount of land that the peasant could keep from 30 to 5 caballerias, that is, to about 67 hectares, since one caballería equals 13.4 hectares). Before the second wave of the reform, according to official statistics of June 30, 1962, there were 915,000 persons employed in agricultural production. At that time, small peasants, beneficiaries of the reform, organized in the ANAP (Asociación Nacional de Agricultores Pequeños—National Association of Small Farmers), represented about 200,000 families (today it would be 180,000 according to information obtained by a Le Monde correspondent in January 1975).16 In January 1967 the government decided to integrate individual plots into the state farms, because, according to official statements, the workers were devoting too much attention to them to the detriment of collective work. At the end of the same year, the ANAP decided to sell its members' produce only to the state.
It is obvious that such a social layer cannot represent either by its size or its dynamism a force hostile to the regime. On the one hand, it is too strongly conditioned by the leading role of the state in the agricultural sector. On the other, after the 1963 shake-up, the Castroist leading group adopted a careful attitude, aiming for a gradual and long-term absorption of existing peasant property and strongly stressing the principle of free choice by the peasants-a principle that, insofar as it is possible to judge, has been respected in practice.17 The problems that arise, creating tensions are-on the whole-fairly usual for a transitional phase, but, let us repeat, they present themselves in a much less serious form than in other transitional societies.
Tendencies to the development and consolidation of differentiation have arisen above all from the more or less favorable location of farms, differing productivity, and size. There is also the phenomenon of an exodus from the mountainous or poorer areas. As in other workers states, this is tied up with the spread of education and higher cultural levels. In certain cases the plots are left without the necessary manpower to work them, and a trend has developed toward combining previously separate farms. Some of the top layers of this peasant stratum can attain relative wealth and even employ wage workers.18 Finally, the breaking up of the small farms poses the classical problem of the use of agricultural machinery.
As for petty-bourgeois urban layers—linked to the trading sectors-they were hard hit by the March 1968 expropriation measures. These steps had unquestionably negative effects on the distribution of certain products and provoked a certain discontent. At the time, they were criticized as "ultraleft." Nonetheless, they prevented the reinforcement and consolidation of a business layer capable of becoming a political threat.
We already mentioned the problems that most directly concern the working class when we spoke of work organization, incentives, wages, etc. It is enough to add here that the working class is growing in industry proper as well as in construction, and that there is a tendency for manpower engaged in the zafra to decline (thanks to more efficient mechanization). We already pointed out the considerable expansion in the educational and public health sectors. As for the differentiations within the working class that we have also mentioned, they arise—-to put it in the most simple terms-from two sources: Either they flow from preexisting conditions (note the polemics over the "historic" wages) or they involve differences in sectors and productivity. Especially after the discussions of the 1973 union congress, the differentiations of the second type weighed more heavily. The decision to favor a system of norms and to emphasize material incentives could only work in the same direction.
During the polemics over the failure of the ten million ton zafra, we explained once again our fundamental position on the problem of bureaucratic tendencies and the hardening of bureaucratic forms. These tendencies and these forms, however limited they might be, were favored by the absence of political structures such as would enable the working class to actually play the leading role it must play and enable layers allied to the working class to actually participate in the management of the economy and the state. The void was filled by an apparatus of middle and upper cadres provided, notably in some stages, by the army, or belonging to the state or party administration. It is precisely these cadres who have been taking on more and more actual administrative functions and have largely adopted paternalistic and authoritarian attitudes.
Inevitably they have tended to consolidate their positions of power, at the same time gaining privileged social status. Such privileges, it must be noted once again, are limited in comparison with those existing in other workers states. However, the members of this layer enjoy a living standard notably different from that of the masses. Thus, privileges in consumption, housing, means of transport (in addition to advantages associated with positions of leadership, such as trips abroad), have had a significance beyond their intrinsic value.
Compared with five years ago the picture does not seem to have changed much. The layer represented by the cadres of different apparatuses-of the state, administration, the economy, the unions, the army-has maintained its leading political position with all the privileges that flow from it, although these are still relatively limited. The most important decision-making powers are firmly concentrated in the hands of a very small group in which Fidel Castro still plays the preeminent role. This group remains much more tied to the masses than the apparatus in general and it strives subjectively to defend the immediate interests of the masses without losing sight of the longterm perspectives of the revolution. However, the broader leadership layer-that is, the expression of the apparatus at different levels-is decisive in applying the orientations of the Castroist group, and it can, thus, in the last analysis, seriously affect even the choice of these orientations. Moreover, as we have seen, these options are also conditioned by international factors. We should not forget that in the USSR in the 1920s there were similar layers that played a decisive role in the process of bureaucratic degeneration.
The Political Structures
In view of the nature and the limits of the forms of bureaucracy that had crystallized at the end of the 1960s, the struggle against tendencies toward bureaucratic degeneration was bound up almost entirely with the struggle for creating political structures that could assure the masses real exercise of their sovereignty.
As we have seen, at the time of his selfcriticism over the campaign for ten million tons, Fidel Castro showed that he was to a large extent aware of this and that he was ready, however empirically, to set out on this path. What kind of a balance sheet can be drawn up now?
On the theoretical level, starting from recognition of the need to renovate the mass organizations such as the unions, the CDRs (Committees in Defense of the Revolution), the women's organizations, and others, and to increase the weight exercised by these bodies, the Cuban leadership came to realize the need for building organs of people's power and reached a better understanding of the dialectical interrelationship of the various organs and instruments of a transitional society.
In a particularly important article in the October 20, 1974, issue of Granma we read: "In a socialist revolution, the working people, headed by the working class, are sovereign. And this sovereignty, this right, this function of governing, must be explicitly delegated by the working people, it must be expressed and not simply be supported by them. The people must have the possibility of deciding whom to delegate their power to, and moreover, the channels should be established through which every member of society may, to the greatest possible extent, participate directly in the governing of that society. ... In our country we still lack the primary institutions through which the people govern directly, the institutions that emanate directly from the people, that are elected by the people.
"All secondary institutions must be based on these primary institutions."19
On the practical level, the leading group worked out a systematic plan including the following: reorganization of the government and its branches in 1972; restructuring of the party apparatus, from the Central Committee to the municipal committees; reorganization of the judicial system and holding of a trade-union congress in 1973; creation of organs of local power at the provincial level in Matanzas Province in 1974; convocation of a party congress in 1975. Until now, this calendar has been observed. The result has been, however, that the adoption of an at least questionable order of priorities and of careful gradualism has put off the solution of the No. 1 problem. (According to official plans, the Matanzas experiment is to be extended to the national level next year, following adoption of a new constitution.)
All the same, the present picture can be summarized as follows:
The first experiment with organs of people's power unquestionably represented a kind of participation by the masses in the exercise of power on a local scale. The methods by which they were prepared and carried out clearly distinguished the Matanzas Province elections from the purely formal operations that occur periodically as a stereotyped ritual in the USSR or in other workers states.20 It was, however, a limited experiment that could not have a decisive effect in running the government in general or in deciding on political options. Therefore these elections did not mark a qualitative change from the previous situation. Other mass organizations, even leaving aside how they function, cannot compensate-it is worth pointing out again—for the void left by the absence of these "primary institutions" of proletarian democracy. That is, of organs elected and subject to recall actually holding power at all levels.21
Other organs, finally, do not go beyond essentially consultative functions. This is the case of production assemblies, sanctioned by the theses of the last union congress. Over and above consultation at different levels, making the decisions on each year's economic plan is the prerogative of a restricted circle of party leaders (the Political Bureau, the Secretariat, and the Executive Committee). (See Granma, July 7, 1974.)
The unions have undergone a revitalization and a renewal at the local level, despite the reconfirmation of former Stalinist bureaucrat Lazaro Peña in the top post up until his death. Moreover, the theses and debates of the last congress introduced a series of theoretical definitions pointing in the right direction (a clear distinction between the unions and the state, the need for their representing a counterbalance to the administration, etc.).22 However, the unions could not but reflect in their structures, the education of their cadres and leaders, in their functioning, the same deficiencies and distortions and general conceptions of management that mark Cuban society at this stage. Thus, the banning of tendencies and groupings, even temporary ones, involves an inevitable mutilation of internal democracy. No less detrimental is the conception, which has been tested at various stages of its history by the working class and found to have negative results, that, while unions must be independent from the state, they must, on the other hand, be strictly subordinated to the party and take their orientation from it. (See the Union Theses, paragraph 9, 1.b.)
The party has continued to develop and organize in accordance with standards for admission and leadership that differ markedly from those applied by the Communist parties. Such standards may offer a certain guarantee against opportunist and careerist elements filtering into the ranks. They may also promote participation by workers and peasants who have the confidence of their comrades. However, the party has been built essentially from the top down, with the apparatus inevitably playing a dominant role. It is symptomatic that the first congress was called for this year and that another is not to be summoned before the end of another five-year period. This fact alone indicates that the powers exercised by this assembly will be quite relative. The preparations for the congress and the organization of the discussion will be an important touchstone. On the other hand, the way in which the congress has been conceived, which tends to follow a monolithic pattern, with a ban on tendencies and groupings and with activists unable to get adequate information about the discussions and possible disagreements at the top, presents serious obstacles from the start to applying Leninist democratic centralism.
As for the youth organization, it has held two congresses, ten years apart. In any case, the role assigned to it is purely that of an instrument for propaganda and mobilization. And such work is based on ideological themes of a moralistic and pedagogical nature.
The way the party is built and the way it operates are all the more important-and have still worse implications-in particular because the Castroist leadership conceives of the party as playing the absolutely predominant role in transitional society. We have already noted this fact in relation to the unions. The same paragraph already cited from the union federation's theses is unambiguous in this regard: "The party politically orients and leads the unions as it does all organizations and institutions."
By comparison with Soviet and even Chinese documents, one might note a better feel for the overall dynamic of the new society. The important article already mentioned in fact explains that the party must not play its leading role by means of administrative or coercive methods but by virtue of its "enormous political authority." It says that "the party is not expressly delegated with the powers of governing society. It has not been expressly delegated to govern even the working class itself." (Granma, October 20, 1974) Fidel Castro, for his part, has used the following formula: "... the party, in accord with the principles of Marxism-Leninism, regulates and guides society and the state. The party does not administer the state. The state must be administered by the masses through their organs of people's power." (Granma, August 4, 1974.)
But these specifications and others of the same tenor are counterbalanced by repeated statements about the party as "unquestionably the maximum agency of leadership within our society," which "directs not only other party organizations and their members, but also the state organs and mass organizations, and, therefore, must also direct the organs of people's power." (Raúl Castro, Granma, September 8, 1974) The statements that the party plays a role in society comparable to the heart and brain in the human organism are in the same vein. (Armando Hart, Granma, December 22, 1974.)23
In practice, the dominant role and real leadership belonged originally to the political-military organization, the Ejército Rebelde, and was then transferred to the party. And for the moment, there is no reason to suppose that in the future actual practice will resolve in a different way the ambiguities of certain formulations that are subject to various interpretations. To judge from the statements by Fidel quoted above, forming organs of people's power would not bring about any substantial change as regards the actual center of political power.
The "anteprojecto" [preliminary draft] text of the constitution, recently published for discussion in and outside the party, does not in itself offer any clarifications or any of the necessary particulars. Article 4 states that "all power belongs to the working people, who exercise it through the intermediary of the People's Power Assemblies and other organs of the state that derive from them, or else directly." The following article says that "the CPC, the organized Marxist-Leninist vanguard of the working class, is the main leading force of society and the state. It organizes and guides the common efforts toward the lofty end of building socialism and of advancing toward the communist future."
Thus, not only is the primacy of the party written into the constitution but also the one-party concept. This is a decision that is at least highly debatable. In fact, it cannot be excluded absolutely that the working class might organize itself in a single party, and in certain conditions revolutionary Marxists might advocate such a solution. But in general, the right to form tendencies and organizations within the working class committed to strict respect for revolutionary legality represents a fundamental guarantee of proletarian democracy, of real dialectical discourse within the transitional society.
Regarding the organs of people's power, the powers of the people's assemblies at the local level have been established for the most part by the terms of the Matanzas Province pilot project (with mandates lasting two and a half years). The National Assembly of People's Power, whose members will be subject to recall and who serve a term twice as long as that of the lower bodies, that is, five years, is designated as the supreme body. The mode of election will be determined by statute. However, the text of the constitution indicates that these representatives will be elected directly from constituencies, and as we have seen, for a fairly long period. That is, the National Assembly of People's Power will not be seen as crowning a soviet-type structure. (Nominations by elected assemblies to higher assemblies, are, however, foreseen for the local level, Article 106.) If our interpretation is correct, there must have been a change in thinking about this, because a year and half ago Castro outlined a system much closer to that operating in the USSR in Lenin's time.24
Finally the picture would not be complete without taking into consideration the more and more marked tendency, beginning at a certain point, to impose strict ideological and cultural monolithism. In this area, there has unquestionably been a regression from a whole earlier period of the revolution. Ideological training today is predominantly based on texts from the USSR, founded on the interpretations of history disseminated by the Kremlin bureaucracy. This has led to the acceptance of a series of traditional ideological obfuscations as well as the adoption of methods of argument similar to those that won the late Andrei Zhdanov a dubious reputation. Some far-left cultural and political tendencies are often the favored target of such polemics.25 The family code adopted several months ago did eliminate a series of reactionary legal principles. However, it endorsed as an unchanging fact the idea that the family is the "basic nucleus of society." Thus it failed to recognize that the dynamic of building a new society must bring radical changes in relations between the sexes and in bearing and raising children, changes that lead ultimately to the destruction of the "family nucleus" as traditionally conceived.26 In the name of a rigorous revolutionary spirit, attitudes have been adopted toward homosexuals and the sexual behavior of the younger generation that in fact are permeated with conservative philistinism.
International Policies
The ideological-cultural guidelines, as we have already mentioned, are in large measure the reflection of international pressures-that is, the relationship the Cuban leadership established with the Kremlin bureaucracy in 1969-70.
When American imperialism launched its attacks in 1959-60, Fidel Castro quickly realized the need for economic and military collaboration with the Soviet Union. However, leaving aside a few temporary oscillations, up until 1968 this need and the conclusion of a series of important agreements did not prevent the Cuban leaders from adopting clearly independent attitudes, from denouncing Moscow's policies in Latin America, and from polemicizing openly against the most orthodox pro-Moscow Communist parties, or from criticizing certain kinds of contradictions in the way the transitional society has been built in the Stalinist and post-Stalinist USSR. Even the attitude taken toward Soviet intervention into Czechoslovakia in August 1968 did not mark, in itself, a total change. While Fidel accepted Moscow's obfuscations about the need for blocking a purported restoration of capitalism, at the same time he did not hesitate to point out the responsibility borne by the bureaucracy.
In the subsequent period, however, following a series of developments in Latin America-defeats of guerrilla movements, emergence of military reformist governments in Peru and Bolivia, the victory of the Unidad Popular in Chile, new approaches in the foreign policy of other Latin American countries-the Castroist leadership made a rather profound shift in international policy. The first change was summed up as follows by Fidel Castro in July 1972:
"We must integrate ourselves with the workers, farmers, and revolutionaries when the inevitable hour of the revolution arrives in Latin America.
"But that will take time. We can't make plans based on an integration that could take 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years-this last for the most pessimistic.
"Meanwhile, what do we, a small country surrounded by capitalists and blockaded by Yankee imperialists, do? We integrate ourselves economically with the socialist camp." (Granma, August 6, 1972.)
From the premise that the situation could not be opened up by extending the revolution to other countries in Latin America in a short, or relatively short, time, flowed a readjustment of the central axis of Cuban policy along the following lines:
1. Every effort was made to tighten collaboration with the USSR and the other workers states (to a much lesser extent with China), and Cuba entered Comecon. The absolute primacy of the Soviet Union in the "socialist camp" was recognized. Not only were the criticisms and reservations dropped, but a practice of fulsome apologies for Soviet actions was adopted, in sharp contrast to the trend in the attitude of Communist parties in other countries.27
2. Alliances and points of agreement were sought not only with regimes such as the Chilean Unidad Popular but also with Velasco in Peru, Torrijos in Panama, Perón in Argentina, as well as governments such as those of Ecuador and Venezuela.28
More generally, Cuba followed a policy of friendly relations with the so-called nonaligned countries (on occasion they used the expression "Third World" that had been formerly criticized for good reason). According to statements made by Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, Cuba now favors a Latin American economic integration and does not regard a "similarity of economic and social regimes" as a necessary precondition for this. The first example of this orientation is the collaboration between Mexican state enterprises and Cuban enterprises involving the machine industry. (Le Monde, January 16, 1975.)
3. Cuba continued to express its solidarity with the movements that are struggling in Latin American countries oppressed by dictatorships (besides Chile, particularly those in Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil). However, the Cubans have given up making specific political analyses and, all the more, offering any tactical or strategical advice. Insofar as it lays out any guidelines, these do not differ from those of the Latin American Communist parties, with which relations have been normalized. All trace of polemics of the 1965-67 kind has disappeared.
In recent months, finally, Cuba has made considerable efforts to reestablish relations with the United States. The crisis in the OAS, where Washington's line meets with greater and greater hostility, and the difficulties that imperialism is faced with globally, offers some margin of maneuver on a world scale that the Cuban government is correctly exploiting. A normalization between Havana and Washington would rather probably result, on the other hand, in further accentuation of certain tendencies that developed after 1968-69.
The general conclusion to be drawn from the analysis I have outlined (unfortunately, I repeat, on the basis of incomplete information) is that there has been no qualitative change in the structures of the Cuban state by comparison with 1970. This is the result not of relative stagnation or immobility but of the operation of different and partly contradictory trends.
More concretely, on the one hand certain political initiatives and measures have been taken that have impeded the crystallization of the apparatus in a conservative direction and prevented a further increase in the privileges of the bureaucrats. These steps have also maintained the mobilization of the masses, which have even been encouraged, within certain limits, to show a critical spirit. On the other hand, the prolonged lack of organs of proletarian democracy at the national level, the accentuation of certain forms of work organization, the growing influence of the USSR (which among other things trains a considerable number of technicians and military cadres), have worked in favor of forces that could lead to a bureaucratic degeneration.
More generally, the Cuban experience of these years seems to highlight the fact once again that, aside from some differences stemming from specific factors (socioeconomic context before the revolution, the formation and evolution of leading groups), largely analogous conceptions and methods have tended to prevail in the transitional societies that have emerged to date. We refer not only to the obvious structural similarities (nationalization of industry, the survival of an uncollectivized sector in the country, etc.) but also to more specific features. Economic planning is done from above in certain restricted circles. Norms, material incentives, and "socialist emulation" are the basis of work organization. The party exercises leadership and control over all institutions and organizations, from organs of "people's power" to the unions, while other working-class political organizations respecting revolutionary legality are banned as are tendencies and groupings within the leading party.
Establishing genuinely collectivist relations throughout the countryside is put off for an indefinite period. A high degree of ideological and cultural monolithism is made into a theoretical principle and imposed in practice. Building a collectivist economy is conceived of the framework of special relations with other workers states (this is less true at this stage for China), but not on the basis of a genuine supranational economic integration. To sum it up, the interests of the world workers movement and the masses of other countries are subordinated to the self-interests of a single state and its governing layer.
If all of these elements, which are present in the degenerated workers states, also take a hardened form in Cuba, if Cuba remains isolated in the American hemisphere for a long period, subjected at the same time to strong influence from the bureaucratized USSR, the Cuban workers state in its turn will inevitably undergo a process of degeneration similar to that of other countries where capitalism has been overthrown.
For the reasons indicated in our analysis, which were also pointed out in previous analyses, such a degeneration did not occur before 1970 and it has not reached that point at present. I have sought to show in what way Cuba is different from the other workers states. Let's recall here briefly that in no other country has the necessary role of the organs of "people's power" been reaffirmed so clearly, both in theory as well as in political agitation. Moreover, no other country has undergone an experience so significant, limited as it was, as the one in Matanzas Province (with the obvious exception of the USSR in the time of the October revolution and in the years immediately following). Even the concept of the primacy of the party is expressed with nuances and with an understanding of the overall dynamic of a transitional society quite different from that of the Soviet and Chinese leaders.
Similar observations can be made in the case of the unions, both as regards the theoretical definition of their role, as well as the active participation of the masses. More generally, in spite of paternalism and of bureaucratic-authoritarian tendencies, the leading group has succeeded in maintaining fairly close relations with the masses. It still has their confidence, and in important moments, can count on the readiness of the masses to mobilize actively and consciously. The privileges that the leaders and cadres of the apparatus enjoy remain much more limited than those of the bureaucrats in other workers states.
Even Cuba's international political line, despite the retreat, still has some positive features that set it off from that of the USSR and the other workers states. The critical way the Cubans presented the Nixon visit to Peking comes to mind, along with the following examples: the interpretation, quite different from that given by the Kremlin, of the accords between the USSR and the United States; their correct interpretation of the Paris Accords on Vietnam as being an "initial victory"; their reflections on the Chilean defeat that involved explicit reaffirmation of the need for a revolutionary leap forward through armed struggle and "people's dictatorship"; the adoption of an unambiguous position on oil, opposing other "nonaligned" countries in defense of the underdeveloped countries, which were the hardest hit by the decisions of the producer countries and the international trusts; Castro's expressions of solidarity with the Eritrean liberation movement; and the Cuban rejection of any tendency toward "national messianism."29
All this shows that a difference exists between Cuba and the other workers states. Moreover, the whole picture we have sketched justifies rejecting the idea that bureaucratic degeneration is an accomplished fact in Cuba, bureaucratic degeneration that would make it necessary to struggle for the overthrow of a leadership representing the interests of a privileged caste, for an antibureaucratic political revolution.
A few general considerations should be noted here. In a process of bureaucratic degeneration, the qualitative leap cannot be pinpointed as clearly as it can in the case of the transition from a bourgeois state to a workers state. The fundamental reason for this is that, according to the Trotskyist conception, bureaucratic degeneration occurs within the framework of the new society, of a transitional society in which collective relations of production exist that are not put in question immediately by the bureaucratization. (In certain conditions, bureaucratic degeneration can involve a dynamic of capitalist restoration, but that, of course, is another problem.)
The experience of the USSR, and making allowance for different circumstances, of the other transitional societies, for over half a century, enables us to distinguish three types, or three phases, of bureaucratization. There are, in the first place, the almost inevitable bureaucratic deformations in the period immediately following the overthrow of capitalism. These deformations flow, in the last analysis, from the fact that immediately after the conquest of power it is impossible to achieve full mass participation in managing the economy and the state, from the fact that unavoidably those in the key positions in the government can be only partially controlled, from the fact that it is impossible to rapidly assure egalitarian living conditions and thus to cut off at the root any growth of even relative privileges.
Obviously, this rule holds all the more for economically and culturally backward countries, where the conquest of power takes place in particularly difficult conditions (prolonged civil war, the consequences of the devastation of a war, serious economic crises, etc.). We remember that this concept of a workers state with bureaucratic deformations was already used by Lenin to describe the USSR at the beginning of the 1920s.
There is also a type, or phase, of bureaucratization that already represents, so to speak, a pathological problem. In this case, the organs of the workers state, the party, the union organizations, etc., function less and less democratically, and the apparatus and the leading groups at different levels exercise their power by more and more eliminating mass participation. A leading layer enjoying material privileges begins to take form and to harden. At the same time the defense of acquired positions becomes the mainspring of international policy to the detriment of the necessity of expanding revolutionary struggles on a world scale.
However, the separation between the bureaucracy in formation and the masses is not yet so clear, the political structures are not yet so petrified, the privileges not so vast or consolidated that it is necessary to exclude all possibility of a renewal through corrections and reforms, of an internal struggle to establish proletarian democracy and real leadership by the working class. It was such a phase of bureaucratization that the USSR went through roughly between the death of Lenin and the end of the 1920s.
Finally, there is the phase where the bureaucracy becomes an actual ruling caste, has politically expropriated the working class and the toiling masses, has transformed the party and the organizations into instruments of its domination by destroying all internal democracy, has acquired relatively secure economic and social privileges.
In such conditions—which correspond to those that came into being in the USSR beginning with the 1930s and which were analyzed by Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed-the working class and the peasantry have no other way out but to struggle for an antibureaucratic political revolution that will overthrow the ruling caste and rebuild proletarian democracy. Likewise, they must create the political and organizational instrument needed to give effective leadership to this struggle. What is decisive for the strategy of revolutionists is to determine when a transitional society has reached the stage of bureaucratic degeneration that requires a radical change in the objectives and methods of struggle.
In order to define the social nature of a state, you have to view all factors together and in their dynamism. If you single out this or that factor, you risk making arbitrary extrapolations, or at least jumping to premature conclusions. This is why in his analysis, Trotsky tried to grasp the direction of the overall development of the state that emerged from the October revolution. He polemicized with opposition groups that wanted to change their basic characterization with each turn in Stalin's policies. In fact, after a certain point in the mid-1920s, the process in the USSR proceeded more or less in a straight line, encompassing all areas.
The bureaucrats began by cutting back internal democracy in the party and reducing the soviets to an empty form. Then they crushed every opposition group and expelled from the party all those who most consistently resisted their usurpation. They grabbed bigger and bigger privileges, detaching themselves economically and politically from the working class and the peasants. Not only did they abandon the revolutionary strategy of the Communist International and the Bolshevik party of Lenin's time, but by their neo-Menshevik or adventurist policies they directly shared in the responsibility for terrible defeats of the world workers and Communist movement, as in China and Germany.
It was at the culmination of this combined process that Trotsky came to the conclusion that a bureaucratic caste was in power and that a struggle had to be waged for a new international and a political revolution. Significantly he was prompted most directly by the defeat of the German proletariat at the hands of Hitler, for which the German CP and the Stalinist International bore a very heavy responsibility.30
It is not possible here to go back over the process that unfolded in the workers states of Eastern Europe and Asia. It is enough to note that in the Eastern European case, the decisive role was played in general by Soviet politico-military control and a tendency to structural assimilation with the bureaucratized USSR. In China, the fact that the old state apparatus was only partially dismantled, that bureaucratic methods and conceptions had already been imposed in the areas of the country wrested from Chiang Kai-shek, and that the leading group and key cadres were educated in the school of Stalinism all weighed heavily.
In both these cases, the evolution was, thus, different from that in the Soviet Union, with much less discontinuity between the starting point and the stage at which the bureaucracy hardened into a ruling caste (since a period of proletarian democracy comparable to that of the revolutionary period in the USSR never existed). The various stages or forms of bureaucratization tended to merge without clear distinctions.
On the basis of the analysis outlined, we estimate that the Cuban workers state has not yet gone through the stages traversed by the Soviet Union and has not undergone a process similar to those in the East European countries or China. It is debatable whether the existing situation might correspond to the first or second stage. But in any case, it does not correspond to the third. It cannot in fact be said that a hardened bureaucratic caste enjoying substantial privileges has imposed its domination over the masses by authoritarian and repressive measures, or that this caste has played a role on a world scale resulting in major defeats for the workers movement or systematically conflicting with the interests of the workers movement.
That is why revolutionary Marxists are not obliged to change their position. They need not orient toward a struggle in Cuba for the overthrow of the leading group and for the formation of a new party. Rather they must support trends and initiatives that can promote revolutionary democracy and the fight against bureaucratic methods and conceptions. They must denounce any attitude that subordinates the need for revolutionary struggle by the masses of other countries to the diplomatic and political requirements of the Cuban workers state and its leadership. They must develop a critique of non-Leninist conceptions, of tendencies to ideological and cultural monolithism, of the tendencies to adaptation to the reformist strategy of the bureaucratized Communist parties.
However, in the final analysis, revolutionists can make the best contribution to building socialism at this stage, too, in Cuba by struggling against imperialism and for the overthrow of the capitalist system in other countries of the world, especially in Latin America.
May 20, 1975
Since this article was written, an important joint document signed by the Latin American Communist parties was released in Havana. The general line of this document confirms the estimate made in the section "International Policies."
Notes
1. The problems of the nature of the Cuban revolution since the period of the struggle against Batista, of the role of the different social classes, of the ideology of the revolution, and of its international context have been treated on several occasions by the Cuban leaders. To limit ourselves just to a recent period, here is what Armando Hart said in October 1974:
"The far-reaching base of social support that was provided by different sectors of the urban population, the resistance struggle, sabotage, and strikes that were unleashed all over the country, the fact that the Cuban guerrillas faithfully reflected the essentially democratic demands of the whole nation and correctly interpreted the political methods of unity employed by Fidel, are aspects of the history of our revolution, which must be carefully studied in order to understand the reasons that led to the victory of the revolution on January 1, 1959.
"Because, although the guerrillas and the Rebel Army played the key role in the victory, the support of different social sectors especially the students in urban areas and the peasants in rural areas, combined with the way in which Fidel handled certain aspects of the struggle, also constituted factors of great importance without which the guerrillas might have been isolated." (Granma, November 3, 1974) All the quotations from Granma are from the weekly Spanish edition.
For his part, Fidel said several months earlier: "The social revolution could never have been carried out with the peasants alone; this revolution would have been absolutely impossible without the working class! Since, for topographical reasons, there were no industries or concentration of workers in the regions where the war had begun, since all there was were dispersed groups of peasants, it was logical for the peasants to play the main role at the moment. But the agricultural workers on the big plantations in the Sierra Maestra soon began to join the rebel forces; cane cutters, rice harvesters, and agricultural workers of other kinds began to turn up.
"However, Cuba was not made up of only mountains and countryside; there was the capital and other big cities where there were no peasants, just workers.
"Later the revolution would have to confront its foreign enemies; and in that decisive struggle, that life-or-death struggle, in which the nation had to confront its foreign enemies, the working class necessarily played a decisive role." In the common struggle, in the alliance with the peasantry, the working class "brought its own ideology, the ideology of the working class: Marxism-Leninism, the struggle for socialism, the struggle for communism." (Granma, May 26, 1974.)
"On the other hand, we have had a real and sincere friend who has always shown us great generosity, unselfishness and fraternity. Thus, we have said that the Cuban revolution came forth at the very moment-and not a minute sooner-when the international balance of power and the big changes taking place in the world could make possible this reality." (Granma, January 14, 1973)
2. At the beginning of 1974 the Cuban debt to the USSR was estimated, according to the Documentation Française (No. 231-32, 1974) at $4 billion to $5 billion. Repayment is due within twenty-five years, beginning in 1986. (For the agreement, see Granma, January 14, 1973.)
3. Eleven cents is also the new price accepted by the USSR, although with a reduction of the volume at the same time. (Le Monde, January 14, 1975.)
4. This in spite of two years (1973 and 1974) of drought.
5. The construction materials industry recorded a rate of growth of 11 percent in 1974 compared with 1973.
6. Population growth would be 200,000 a year. (Granma, May 26, 1974.) In 1975 total population reached 9 million; it was 7,256,267 in 1964 (1.5 million more than in 1953).
7. At the Twelfth Trade Union Congress, Castro cited significant facts about the goods imported by Cuba.
8. Some facts to indicate the nature of the problems: In 1974 there were 280,000 construction workers. For 1980 a doubling of production is foreseen with an increase of 140,000 workers. In the same year there would have to be fewer workers engaged in the zafra than in construction. (Granma, December 5, 1974.) The tensions flow from the development of sectors whose growth incontestably represents a gain scored by the revolution: At the end of 1975 workers in education will number 250,000 and those in public health 150,000 (the two together numbering around 400,000, that is, one worker in six. (Granma, February 16, 1974.) In other cases the tensions are produced by a relative abundance of money —caused by wage increases in a situation of relative scarcity of means of consumption—that leads women to leave their jobs. Castro denounced this trend at the November 1974 union congress, attributing it also to machismo and "supermanism."
9. Cases of a lowering of productivity of labor below the level of the capitalist epoch have been denounced, for example, in many repair shops in the sugar sector. (Granma, November 25, 1973.) A form of absenteeism, which may be termed deepgoing, was the relatively frequent trend not to look for or accept work. It was in order to fight against this trend that the law against vagrancy was adopted in 1971. Its adoption rapidly resulted in the integration of about 100,000 persons into production.
10. The Congress of Cuban Women approved the proposal to reduce the sugar ration to a pound per month in order to get an additional surplus of 50,000 tons, which, according to Castro's estimate, would permit the purchase of a textile factory. (Granma, December 8, 1975.)
11. "Tying pay to fulfillment of norms and adopting forms of payment that make it possible to step up production and productivity is a decisive task for our economy," stated Roberto Veiga, general secretary of the CTC last May 1. He added: "The material incentive represented by linking norms and wages does not deny but on the contrary reaffirms the need to strenuously exalt the high moral values that exist among our working people." These same ideas were expressed in the thesis of the Thirteenth National Union Congress: "Each must be renumerated according to the quantity and quality of his work. Whoever works more and better must be compensated. Those who through regular work give more to society must be compensated for it, in proportion to their contribution."
12. According to information given by the director of the Alquitex factory near Havana, wages range from 80 to 250 pesos a month with a maximum of 350 for the best paid technicians. (Le Monde, January 24, 1975.)
13. In his report to the February plenum of the National Council of the CTC, Roberto Veiga gave figures on the fulfillment of the plan for distributing household electrical appliances in 1974. (Bohemia, No. 7, 1975, p. 55.)
14. Ibid. According to Veiga in 1974, 1,511,185 workers participated individually in the emulation campaign.
15. One of the means adopted to counter the imbalance has been to raise the price of certain commodities—cigars and drinks. Other increases, for example in electricity, were aimed above all, according to official statements, to combat wastage. (Granma, November 25, 1973.)
16. For a recent estimate, see Le Monde, January 16, 1975.
17. See, for example, Granma, May 25, 1974. The principle of voluntary choice is also written into the draft constitution (Article 20), which among other things establishes a constitutional ban on renting out land, on introducing forms of rent in kind, etc., and use of land as security for loans. (Article 21.)
18. Regarding the exodus-especially of youth—see Castro's speech to the ANAP (National Association of Small Farmers) at the end of 1971. In this speech Castro also denounced the activities of black market speculators that damage farmers' interests. Regarding differentiations among the peasants, a Le Monde analysis already quoted refers to a proprietor from the area between Havana and Pinar del Río who produces cottage cheese and tobacco and who employs a manager and six employees in his business. Peasant production of meat, fruits, vegetables, and milk is increasing. Tobacco is one of the main products of the sector. (Granma, March 10, 1974.)
19. See also Castro's speech of July 26, 1974, and a speech by Raúl Castro. (Granma, September 8, 1974.) In the speech by Raúl as well as in the article quoted, there is a justification of the past: In the first years of the revolution the necessary conditions for the creation of organs of "people's power" did not exist and there were other, more urgent tasks concerning the economy and military defense. The argumentation, it is hardly necessary to say, is anything but convincing. It is enough to note that, according to the Cuban leaders themselves, the economic setback of 1970 was determined in large measure by faulty relations with the masses. Many difficulties would obviously have been avoided if soviet-type organs had existed.
20. Each constituency-about 1,000 electors in the urban areas and somewhat fewer in the rural areas-elected a representative. The elected bodies-whose members were subject to recall—had about 20 members. The candidates were chosen-by highly varied methods of voting-in public assemblies at various levels (in which more than 70 percent of the electors participated). There were 4,712 candidates, of whom 1,014 were elected. More than 41 percent did not belong to the party or to its youth organization. In half the constituencies a second ballot was necessary.
21. The task of organs of proletarian democracy cannot be accomplished—as some have claimed—by the CDRs. The limitations of these bodies emerge clearly from the official documents themselves that define them. (For example, a document by the national leadership of the CDRs and a speech by Fidel in Granma, October 8, 1972.)
22. "The union organization is not part of the state apparatus, it is not a state organization. It does not depend on any ministry or other body of the state apparatus. The union must serve as the counterpart of the administration." (Granma, September 2, 1973.)
23. Hart stresses at the same time that nonparty members enjoy all the rights guaranteed to the workers, but they do not have "the honor and the social prestige that the people accord members of the party."
24. "The delegates will be elected by the constituencies, and they will elect the delegates of the regions, who will choose the delegates to the National People's Power." (Granma, August 4, 1974.)
25. To give an example: The union theses as well as the projected constitution proclaims "the socialist principle 'each according to his abilities, to each according to his work.'" Castro attributes this formula to the "Critique of the Gotha Program." Actually, Marx never used such a formulation. It was, to the contrary, written into the 1936 Stalinist constitution in an obfuscation denounced at the time by Trotsky (in an appendix to The Revolution Betrayed). As for Zhdanovian-type polemics, their victims are, for example, intellectuals like Marcuse, Dumont, and Karol, whose analyses are grossly falsified and who are often characterized as CIA agents, without the slightest attempt to offer proofs. The "ultralefts," toward whom the Cubans in the past held an attitude different from that of the Stalinist bureaucrats, are also the object of summary condemnation. Trotsky suffered the same fate. (See Granma, June 16, 1974, for a ridiculous distortion of the theory of permanent revolution.)
26. Certain articles in the code have a markedly paternalistic character. Article 25, for example, reaffirms in fairly traditional terms paternal power, and it indicates the duty to educate children to have respect "for the authorities, their teachers, and other persons."
27. In the draft constitution the idea of the primacy of the USSR is expressed in the formula "the USSR and the other socialist countries." After his last trip, Castro made some highly laudatory speeches about the USSR, going so far as to say that Marxism-Leninism prevails there in the spirit of the October revolution. On several occasions unconditional support has also been given to the superbureaucratic Husak regime in Czechoslovakia. Castro recently said:
"When the revolutionary processes become institutionalized and consolidated through institutions that fully respond to their needs—as happened with the Bolshevik revolution, which is now more than fifty years old and is and will continue to be steadily moving forward—we see the great stability this gives these peoples, the great stability these nations and groups of nations and groups of people have when they are well organized, when they are well institutionalized, when they have the organizations they need for moving forward!" (Granma, June 8, 1975)
28. There is no need to repeat that diplomatic accords with countries like Peru are not as such condemnable. What is inadmissible, from the point of view of the interests of the workers movement, is to present as "revolutionary" a reformist bourgeois leadership. As for the attitude to the Chilean Unidad Popular, the political resolution of the Tenth World Congress of the Fourth International specified: "at a stage where there were real possibilities for revolutionary development-the Cuban leadership gave practically unconditional support to the reformist Popular Unity leadership. The critical remarks Castro made on several occasions were not of a sort to help the maturing of the vanguard and clarification among the masses." (Intercontinental Press, December 23, 1974, p. 1744.)
29. In a September 1974 speech, Castro concluded an appeal for solidarity with Venezuela by saying: "Perhaps fate is again reserving for the people of the illustrious liberator a significant and decisive role in the definitive independence of the nations of Latin America." (Granma, October 6, 1974.)
30. In "The Workers' State, Thermidor and Bonapartism," Trotsky wrote:
"Thus, the present-day domination of Stalin in no way resembles the Soviet rule during the initial years of the revolution. The substitution of one regime for the other occurred not at a single stroke but through a series of measures, by means of a number of minor civil wars waged by the bureaucracy against the proletarian vanguard. In the last historical analysis, Soviet democracy was blown up by the pressure of social contradictions. Exploiting the latter, the bureaucracy wrested the power from the hands of mass organizations." (Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1934-35, Pathfinder Press, New York 1974, p. 172.)