[The following article was originally published in four issues of Rouge, the French Trotskyist weekly, in January 1981. It was written in December 1980, while the author was in Cuba.]
Cuba and Internationalism
Internacionalismo! As 1980 draws to a close, on the eve of the Second Congress of the Cuban Communist Party and the twenty-second anniversary of the revolution, reminders of this "sacred duty" are seen everywhere. Along the roads, on shop walls, on the radio and television, at school.
One theme dominates: militant solidarity with Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala. One slogan is repeated a thousand times: "Without internationalism, the revolution wouldn't exist!"
This morning on the bottom of the international news page of Granma, the Communist Party daily newspaper, there is a dispatch from the Soviet news agency, Tass, describing an imperialist plot against Poland..
Roberto is not a "
'vanguard worker." He will never be a member of the Cuban CP. Fifty-four years old, he has spent his entire life in the Escambray mountains, one of the most isolated and backward areas on the island. As an independent farmer he grows coffee beans. In a chance encounter, Roberto told us about his life. In doing so he was telling us about the revolution: the literacy campaign and his happiness at having learned to read, the arrival of the teacher in the village, the building of the school, the road, electricity, the doctor and the dispensary, which his wife works at, the visits by the veterinarian and the advice of the agricultural engineer.
When he told us about his children he was again speaking about the revolution: "Three children, three internationalists," he said. "One of them is an officer and fought the imperialists for two-and-a-half years in Angola, another is an 'internationalist doctor' in Ethiopia, the third is an 'internationalist teacher' in Nicaragua, on the coast."
Like Che in Bolivia
This small peasant, still attached to his little patch of land, for whom the peaks of Escambray still mark the end of the world, spoke of internationalism as the most beautiful thing that the revolution had taught his children. His children who, "a little like Che Guevara in Bolivia, help other peoples to fight imperialism and bring them what they themselves were brought by the Cuban revolution."
It was a moving encounter, symbolie, like so many others, of what this revolution is after twenty years of existence, symbolic of the depth of its roots, the strength of the internationalist feeling that is present everywhere.
Raul, a high official in the Transport Ministry, is in charge of the problem of labor productivity in the ports. At the end of a conversation on this question, which is crucial for the Cuban economy, Raul told me that "if we were to ask the workers at the port of Havana-all ages and all categories-how many were ready to go and fight in El Salvador, 90 percent would immediately volunteer. If, however, we asked how many wanted to participate in a training program that would later allow us to increase labor productivity, we would get 10 percent, or at the most 15 percent to volunteer."
The internationalism of the Havana dock workers and Roberto's pride in his children are examples of what is behind the prolonged applause of hundreds of thousands of Cubans who gathered December 20 at the Plaza of the Revolution to listen to Fidel Castro's speech closing the Second Congress. As Castro said: "The basic characteristic of our Congress was its internationalist character." For the Cuban masses the revolution can only be internationalist. More than ever that is the education the leaders try to, and do, give them.
That's one of the major focuses of the people's mobilization, a mobilization that has clearly broadened and deepened since what Fidel Castro called the "big turning point" represented by the victory of the Nicaraguan revolutionaries and the rise of struggles in El Salvador.
From San Salvador to Gdansk
The "internationalist battle" sometimes causes the Cuban CP and state to take serious political risks. They devote major human and material resources to it and give up other resources-like those they would get from a normalization of relations with the United States-especially in order to contribute to the consolidation and extension of the Central American revolution, to the victory of new "inevitably socialist" revolutions. Victories which, in turn, would constitute "the best help possible" for Cuba, according to Fidel Castro.
But this internationalist dimension reveals and also focuses some of the most significant contradictions and limitations of the Cuban revolution and its leadership. In the name of internationalism, and again at the cost of enormous sacrifices, more than one hundred thousand soldiers and officers have at one time or another served in Africa.
They victoriously drove the imperialist invasion of the South African racists out of Angola. But as an armed wing of the bourgeois Angolan government they participated in taming people's mobilizations in the urban centers.
In Ethiopia they powerfully aided in the defense of the revolutionary process, the most deepgoing seen to date in an African country. But they furnished the Ethiopian army with logistical aid in its repeated attempts to crush the Eritrean people's struggle for independence.
And finally, also based on his concept of "internationalism," when confronted with the Polish crisis Fidel Castro places himself unambiguously on the side of the Soviet bureaucracy and completely agrees with its point of view. He obviously would prefer that there be no Soviet intervention in Poland, but he justifies it, in advance, in terms of the "right of the socialist camp to defend its integrity against imperialist attacks."
Logic of the Two Camps
Empirically, the internationalist practices of the Castroist leadership are foreign to what Lenin saw as the essense of internationalism: "The conscious will to organize joint action of the proletariat of different countries for its emancipation." The Communist [Third] International was the concretization of this conscious will and the instrument for this joint action.
The practices of the Cuban leadership fundamentally flow from their experience as a national leadership, from the internal dynamic of the revolution, its needs, and above all from its specific position within the context of the world-wide relationship of forces.
Being right in the heart of the United States sphere of influence, and convinced that only the extension of the revolution, that sphere, will especially within strengthen their position, the Cuban leaders are opposed to any new Yalta Agree-
They are against "dividing the ment.
world into spheres of influence," an "obsolete, reactionary and fascist" concept, "which is equivalent to freezing progress and change throughout the world" as Fidel
Castro says in his report to the Second Congress of the Cuban CP.
Placed on the front lines of the struggle against imperialism, the revolution has survived as a result of the ongoing extraor dinary mass mobilizations, as well as the massive aid of the Soviet Union and its allies and their de facto military guarantee. In addition, the Castroist leadership analyzes the world situation from the vantage point of the confrontation between two basic camps: imperialism and the socialist camp.
On a world scale the Castroist leadership mixes up and makes an amalgam of the struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat and the conflict between these two camps. In its views, to really fight today against imperialism is to fight for socialism, which means to unite with the socialist camp and fight for its internal unity.
The international resolution of the Cuban CP emphasizes "the need to continue working unreservedly for unity of action by the three great forces of modern revolutionary process: socialism, the international workers' movement, and the national liberation movement." It states its commitment to "struggle against the imperialist strategy of breaking up the revolutionary movement, opposing all efforts to divide these forces...
Thus, by making an amalgam of the interests of the world proletariat and oppressed peoples with the interests of a
"People's Power" and
People's Power is a network of institutions installed since the First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1975. The system of People's Power illustrates the internal dynamics of Cuban society and the relationship between the Castroist leadership and the masses.
By now it's midnight. The meeting to hear the report back on activities by the delegate to the municipal People's Power assembly from this district of Boyeros, on the outskirts of Havana, began more than three hours ago. About two hundred people are meeting, as they do every three months, in this hall, open to the wind. The atmosphere is lively. The chairperson often must call the participants to order.
On the wall are a picture of Che Guevara and two banners. One banner says "The Right to Recall: A Basic Aspect of Proletarian Democracy"; the other states that The Delegate is Not Your Boss. You Elected Him, You Can Recall Him."
An hour later the meeting ends. In addition to the delegate's initial report on the activity of the municipal Assembly of People's Power and his activity as the supposedly homogenous "socialist camp," one is led to subordinate the interests of the proletariat to those of the bureaucra cies in power in the workers states, and especially the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy.
This is the logic of an analysis of the world situation made by using the distorted lens of the "two camps" view and not taking into account the existence of bureaucracies with their own specific interests that are different from those of the workers.
There seems to be a total contradiction between an internationalist policy of extending the revolution in Central America and alignment along the lines of the main views of the Soviet bureaucracy. This contradiction is the product of contradictory elements-two decades of growing Soviet influence on Cuban society and the economy, on a genuine workers and peasants revolution with non-Stalinist leadership; and the deep effects the revolutionary upsurge that has already produced the victory of the Nicaraguan revolution has had on the Cuban workers state and its leadership.
But a contradiction of this type and scope must necessarily be temporary. How it will be resolved depends not only on these factors, especially on the progress or setbacks of the Latin American revolution, but also on the internal dynamic of the Cuban revolution. This dynamic-as we shall see-is itself marked by numerous deep contradictions.
Socialist Democracy district's representative, seven other points have also been discussed, four of them raised by people in attendance.
The discussions dealt with problems concerning roads, the enlargement of a playground, a poorly stocked shop, an incompetent official in charge of a local cafeteria, shortcomings of the commission elected to oversee distribution of cement. While the subjects discussed were of a purely local character, they were among those that affect the daily life of the meeting's participants.
The Delegate is Not Your Boss
At the end of the meeting, Emilio, the delegate, seemed satisifed. "Between this assembly and the one last week [report. back meetings are held twice to allow more people to participate nearly 75 percent of the voters attended. The problems they raised are real ones, and they proposed constructive solutions. Now it is up to me to see that they are directly carried out or discussed in the municipal assembly."
The 174 municipal assemblies on the island are the basic local structure of People's Power. The assemblies are respon sible for applying the laws, and they organize and regulate municipal life. They are responsible for the organization and functioning of the bodies that regulate all spheres of social and economic activity on the municipal level. They also appoint. replace, or dismiss the municipal officials and directors of local enterprises. Finally, they elect, and can remove, judges of the People's Courts within their jurisdictions.
These functions, which are the most important ones although there are numerous others as well, reflect a desire for largescale decentralization after the overcentralization-"centralized bureaucratism" as it is commonly called in Havana-that prevailed during the first fifteen years of the revolution.
The municipal assemblies are composed of anywhere from 30 to 200 delegates who, like Emilio, each represent a district with an average of 500-600 voters. When it is time to nominate candidates for delegate to the municipal assembly, the districts are broken down into from two to eight zones.
Each zone holds a general assembly at which candidates for delegate are nominated by members of that zone, and no one else. A vote is taken, and the leading candidate becomes the zone's nominee in the district election. The main criteria in the election are the nominees' individual histories and profiles.
The candidates nominated by each of the zones then become the de facto list of candidates for the whole district. The delegate is elected by the district as a whole, after an "election campaign" that also concentrates on the individual profiles of the candidates. If no one receives an absolute majority in the first round, a second round runoff is held between the leading candidates.
Unless a delegate has a special assignment, he or she is expected to carry out the activity, which is unpaid, outside of regular working hours.
In order to understand the real content of this set of procedures, and to understand the report-back assemblies—i.e. to understand the relationship between the municipal delegate and his constituents, and the relationship between the local People's Power assembly and the masses—you have to begin with the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs).
Committees for the Defense of the Revolution
The CDRs were set up more than twenty years ago to mobilize the population against any imperialist attack. With their five million members (more than 80 percent of the adult population), the CDRs remain the basic mass organization in Cuba. Organized on a block-by-block basis, the CDRs, with their social and "vigilance" activities, and regular meetings for political education and discussion, organize and mobilize the masses.
The people who nominate and elect the candidates, who discuss their activities and even recall their delegates are not simply passive "voters." They are "citizens organized in the CDRs."
The right to recall delegates, which has been used several hundred times since the establishment of People's Power, would never have been possible if the masses were not organized in the CDRs.
But on the regional and national levels of People's Power, the situation is completely different. The delegates or deputies to the regional and national bodies are elected solely by the municipal delegates. They are not necessarily members of the municipal bodies that elect them and that they are supposed to represent.
A significant proportion, although a minority, of the candidates for the higher bodies are directly nominated by the central party and state aparatus, on grounds of having a needed level of "competence."
Under these conditions, the report-back meetings and the control over the activities of the delegates to higher bodies, as well as the nomination procedure and the right of recall, remain very largely rights in "form" only, and are not really subject to control by the masses.
The system for choosing candidates for the municipal assemblies-with nominations made by voters' assemblies of small zones-limits the possibility for the party apparatus to manipulate the nominations. But the party does in fact have the initiative when it comes to nominations for the regional and national assemblies.
Then there are the criteria used to choose the candidates at every level. The criteria are always biographical, featuring devotion to the revolutionary cause, and never political. They could not be political since there is no debate over perspectives.
Locally, in the district and the municipal assembly, it is very natural that the moral criterion of devotion to the revolution seems necessary and sufficient to the voters. It works well for the main tasks on that level—to run things as well as possible and resolve the mass of problems of every sort that arise.
On the regional, and especially the national level, having a good personal history and devotion to the revolution, while not unimportant, are not very weighty in the absence of other political criteria. It is then easy, and quite common, to confuse devotion to the revolution with devotion to the apparatus, to the leadership; to confuse devotion with blind following. Several times Fidel Castro has attacked this mechanism.
But being a follower seems to be a prerequisite qualification to be a member of a provincial or the National Assembly of People's Power. The role of those bodies is to register and give legal form to the decisions made by the real leadership of the country: the party's political bureau and the secretariat.
This assessment is confirmed by the fact that the sessions are very short, no matter how important the documents being discussed, and by the small number of speakers and the formal nature of the discussions.
People's Power and Socialist Democracy
In the municipalities and their neighborhoods, People's Power expresses the ongoing character and depth of the mobilization of the Cuban masses. Even more than the endless marches and gigantic rallies, it provides evidence of the massive, and often enthusiastic, support the Castroist leadership still enjoys. It illustrates this leadership's desire to maintain and even expand this mobilization, its consciousness that that is where its basic strength comes from.
People's Power is also an attempt by the leadership to turn this mobilization into an instrument of struggle against what it calls "bureaucratism," meaning administrative inefficiency, wastage, incompetence, and the "small privileges" of numerous local cadres.
But when you go beyond the municipalities and their districts, when you go beyond the problems of "the application of policies," People's Power loses all its sub-
An educational system put in place in the course of two decades, unequalled in any country under imperialist domination. A ratio of medical facilities and medical personnel that, in many areas, is higher than the average in France. These are some of the gains of the Cuban revolution, for all its bureaucratic deformations.
"What surprised me most? Not seeing any children in the streets during school
" The man pauses, as if surhours..
prised, almost shocked by his answer.
A business lawyer in Bogotá, conservative politician and anti-communist, he is not on Cuban soil by choice. As a passenger on a Colombian airplane hijacked to Havana in December, he visited the city while waiting to get back to his country.
Is he, perhaps, thinking for the first time in his life about those tens and tens of thousands of famished infants wandering around the cities of Colombia, looking for food and shelter?
Is he, perhaps, recalling one of his countless speeches about "Colombia, land of freedom" and "Cuba, island of the Gulag**?
The content of the U.S. organized and financed anti-Castroist propaganda that has flooded the entire Latin American media for twenty-two years evaporated in the face of the reality.
The Extraordinary Becomes Common
There are no children loitering in the stance because it remains the productand the instrument-of the Cuban leadership's paternalistic conception of its relationship to the masses.
As a result of its paternalistic conception, it tried to eliminate inefficiency and waste-typical products of decisions imposed on the masses from above-without a system of socialist democracy in which the decisions are made by the producers themselves through mechanisms of genuine workers power.
Furthermore, the combination of a single-party regime and the impossibility, in practice, for currents of thought to express themselves within the party-as is the case in Cuba-is incompatible with a system of socialist democracy.
People's Power is the product of this combination, despite everything within it that is positive for the Cuban masses. It would be wrong to see it as the embryo of real workers' power.
Twenty-two years after the victory, it remains, above all, the institutionalized form of a unique relationship between the leadership of a revolution and the masses-unique in terms of its level and its long duration.
streets of Havana because the revolution has defeated illiteracy-which totalled about 50 percent of the population before 1959. It has trained massive numbers of teachers, built schools and institutes. The educational system put in place in the course of two decades is unequalled in any country under imperialist domination.
At the end of the 1979-1980 school year 98.5 percent of the children finishing primary school began their secondary education. Two years from now the first three years of secondary schooling will be compulsory. This year more than one Cuban out of three is receiving an education. And from kindergarten to university, including the very numerous courses for adults, education is completely free, including materials, books, transportation, and often meals.
In terms of health care the gains are just as remarkable, if not more so. The ratio of medical facilities and personnel to population is higher than the French average in many respects. For example, in France there are 135 doctors per 100,000 people, while in Cuba there are 159 doctors per 100,000. This has made possible the installation of a medical system that has an increasingly preventive character, and it is totally free of charge.
The result has been dramatic progress in health care: beginning with the drastic reduction in infant mortality. The average life expectancy of a Cuban has leaped by a number of years since 1959, to the point that it now equals that of economically
Economic Gains and Options Economic Gains and Options more "developed" countries: 74.5 years for women, 71.5 years for men.
In addition to health and education, the positive progress of the Cuban revolution in its bitter struggle against economic "underdevelopment" and its social effects has been considerable.
An old construction worker I saw in Matanzas illustrated that. To the applause of the future residents, he unfurled a banner on top of an apartment building in the course of construction. The banner said: "The revolution is when the extraordinary becomes an everyday occurence."
Individual Consumption and Collective Consumption
Clearly, given the lack of infrastructure and resources, and the effects of the imperialist-imposed blockade, the systematic emphasis given to collective consumption has made it necessary to sacrifice individual consumption.
A minority of Cubans, apparently a small minority, sharply questions this decision and the restrictions that flow from it. It's this minority that provided most of those who wanted to leave for the United States. People who are motivated more by the "opulence" of the supermarkets of Florida or Texas, as related by relatives who have already emigrated, than by ideological or political considerations.
"Even if I have to work fourteen hours a day over there, even if I'm despised because Im Latino, I want to leave. In Miami I'll work for myself and not for the state, not for the others. And I'll be able to buy what I want, a car, a stereo. Here that's impossible." A young technician, son of a professor at the University of Havana, made this confession after asking if we had a tee-shirt with Travolta's picture to sell him.
Nevertheless, the level of wages, the free character and quality of the basic social services, the extremely low prices for numerous food products and basic services mean that the Cuban working class has the highest level of real resources in Latin America-in spite of the restrictions and the rationing. The advantage is more striking for agricultural workers. The people who want to leave are perfectly well aware of that fact: the United States is the only place that interests them.
In spite of exceptionally unfavorable economic conditions (as an appendage of the United States, Cuba produced nothing but sugar and tobacco before 1959), in spite of the absence of energy sources, of raw materials other than nickel, in spite of twenty years of blockade, in spite of errors, too, revolutionary Cuba compares favorably to the other countries of Latin America, to the most industrial among them, to those with the most natural resources, to those with enormous oil income.
Getting beyond superficial images (empty store windows versus full store
PRESENTE EN CADA VICTORIA DEL PUEBLO
Demonstration in Havana, July 26, 1980.
windows in the downtown areas of the capital cities) the superiority of a socialist and planned economy, liberated from imperialist exploitation, from the profit motive, is decisively seen in the progress made in genuinely fighting against economic underdevelopment and its terrible social effects.
Isn't it this above all that imperialism wants to hide from the Latin American masses through its wild propaganda? And yet, at all levels, the economy remains the weak point of the Cuban revolution.
What Reform?
Because of the bureaucratic management methods, the consciousness of the masses in the economic sphere has not risen in the same way as on a more immediately political level. Thus we see phenomena such as absenteeism, waste, repeated immobilization of materials and, more generally, very low productivity of labor.
For several years the Cuban leaders have been trying to correct this situation by progressively implementing a network of "reforms" of the system of economie management and decision-making.
"We have taken as a point of reference the reforms initiated in the Soviet Union, based on the works of the economist Lieberman. We have also studied the measures
Fred Murphy/IP
taken more recently in Hungary, as well as the functioning of industry in Yugoslavia," a very young cadre working on the plan tells us.
He adds that "the objective is to gradually replace a system based on administrative directives with a system based on the objective economic laws that still operate at this stage in the construction of socialism, when the law of value and monetarycommercial relations still exist, even though their content is new."
The resulting big increases in plant autonomy are accompanied by a strengthening of the authority of the manager and the executives, while the union is relegated to responsibility for overseeing the application of the social laws.
The system of production norms becomes the predominant method of organizing labor. The profitability of the plant becomes an essential criterion and the profits that can be made become the instrument for "material stimulation" of the workers: those profits finance a system of bonuses that are added to wages.
If systematically applied, these reforms will-in the short run-result in some improvement in the functioning of the economy. Nevertheless, they are simply a series of technical improvements that remain within the framework of bureaucratic management methods.
The bonuses and the other "material stimulants," which are basic instruments for raising productivity, will not contribute greatly to raising the level of the masses' "economic consciousness."
Fundamentally, a rise in the level of can only be achieved consciousness through exercising real control over the management of the economy, combined with a free political discussion on essential perspectives. That involves the possibility of discussions inside and outside the Com-
Bureaucratic Deformations,
Since the conclusion of the Second Congress of the Communist Party, meetings have been being organized to hear reports on it in all the workplaces, in all the neighborhoods. Rank-and-file party bodies, People's Power organs, trade union meetings, meetings of the Federation of Cuban Women, and Committees for the Defense of the Revolution have been discussing Fidel Castro's report and the new tasks that flow from it.
The first task is immediate: Massive organization of territorial militias in response to the new threats that the installment of Reagan as the head of the U.S. government pose for the revolution.
These territorial militias will be auxiliaries of the armed forces. They will be organized in the production centers and residential areas. A call has been made for workers to join by the hundreds of thousands. Everyone will get their weapon through a surprising system: They'll get a weapon after they've done a number of hours of "voluntary work" whose value equals the weapon's price.
Can one imagine a better symbol of the Castroist leadership's intransigence toward imperialism, of its willingness to contribute at whatever cost to the deepening and extension of revolutionary developments in Central America; or a better symbol of its relationship with the Cuban masses?
We have already noted some of the tremendous results of the struggle against economic underdevelopment and its social consequences. But two short decades of this struggle is a very short time compared to centuries of colonial and neocolonial exploitation.
For a long time Cuban society will still be marked by the limited development of the productive forces, the relatively limited weight of a proletariat with weak cultural traditions, the shortage of consumer goods and products. These are objective factors favoring a tendency toward bureaucratization of the Cuban state and Communist Party.
This tendency is expressed by a layer of munist Party. Once again, this is the decisive question, as it was when we analyzed the limits of People's Power.
In the future, therefore, these reforms may have serious consequences on a social level: they may be a source of significant inequality among workers, they may widen the gap between the situation of workers and leading cadres within the plants, and increase existing privileges. In sum, they could be the basis for deepening and systematizing the already existing bureaucratic deformations.
Democratic Reorganization intermediate cadres and leaders who, through their management or controlling positions in the state apparatus (administration, army, economic apparatus) enjoy social privileges. They are the very ones whom Fidel Castro denounced in his report to the Second Congress a few weeks ago:
"At a certain point during this five-year period, it became clear that a number of bad habits were spreading in our coun try.... There were increasing signs that the spirit of austerity was flagging, that a softening up process was going on in which some people tended to let things slide, pursue privileges, make accommodations and take other attitudes, while work discipline dropped."
Still a Limited Phenomenon
While this phenomenon has experienced relative growth these last years, it is still limited in its material content and social breadth.
Moreover, the Cuban leading group is still the same one that led the revolutionary struggle against the dictatorship, and then against imperialist domination and its policy of aggression.
The leadership does not come out of this layer of intermediate cadres. Nor is it the expression of that layer. Even if the thrust of certain of the leadership's political decisions favors that layer, the decisions are primarily made as a function of the immediate and long-range interests of the masses.
In Cuba there is not a crystallized bureaucracy acting as a privileged social layer with its own interests that are opposed to the interests of the proletariat. That kind of bureaucracy is in power in a "bureaucratically degenerated" workers state like the Soviet Union and it's against the powers and privileges of that kind of bureaucracy that the Polish workers mobilized.
In this connection it would be hard to imagine those responsible for and complicit with the massacres of workers in Gdansk in 1970 organizing militias and seeing to it that the majority of the Polish workers are armed, as the Castroist leadership is currently doing.
For all these reasons, when speaking of Cuba, we must speak of "bureaucratic deformations."
But it is not inevitable that these deformations must deepen, that they must be qualitatively transformed into a process of degeneration.
Nevertheless, we should not underestimate factors other than the heritage of underdevelopment that also work in the direction of an increasing tendency toward bureaucratization.
We should bear in mind certain aspects of the "economic reform" that are tied to the installation of the "new management and planning system," which have been previously analysed: increased plant autonomy, the essential role of the managers, the widening differences in income increased somewhat between those "in charge" and the rest of the personnel, growing inequality within the working class.
The series of ties with the Soviet Union is another factor. There is often a tendency to view them simply as economic ties: the daily arrival of a Soviet oil tanker in one of the island's ports, or the enormous quantities of sugar bought at a favorable price, fixed according to criteria independent of the fluctuations of the world sugar market; the long term loans at very low interest, or the grants of military material.
But there are bilateral ties at numerous other levels: politics, science, culture, sports, technology. And above all, the links are forged with this layer of intermediate cadres, whom the Soviet bureaucracy cannot help but influence by putting forward, whatever the differences between the two countries, its own values, methods, and concepts.
•The area where this influence of the Soviet bureaucracy is felt with the most serious potential consequences is in the field of teaching: Already social sciences, philosophy, economics, and "Marxism- Leninism"
have been taught to entire generations of Cuban students on the basis of Soviet manuals or under the inspiration of Soviet writings.
The Democratic Reorganization
"Our worst enemies could not have done us more damage," Fidel Castro was quick to declare at the end of his denunciation of the "bad habits," quoted above, in his report to the Second Congress.
After such statements, there can be no doubt that the Cuban leaders are convinced of the importance of this kind of problem for the revolution's future. Particularly when Castro adds: "Was our Revolution beginning to degenerate on our imperialist enemy's doorstep? Was that an inexorable law for any revolution in power?"
But they basically see it as a series of individual, personal attitudes and behaviour patterns which they denounce as "bureaucratism." And for many years now they have failed to analyze this phenomenon as they did correctly at the beginning of the revolution: as a social phenomenon.
The struggle against the tendencies toward bureaucratization, which is a social phenomenon, is nothing other than the struggle for the strenghtening and defense of the revolution. It cannot be carried out in a real way on the basis of the paternalistic relations that the Cuban leaders have with the masses.
The struggle against bureaucratization requires mobilizing the masses, within the framework of genuine workers' power, which, based on the transformation and extension of the current structures of People's Power, would insure democratic control of the plan, democratic effective mass participation at all the decision-making levels, not just at the social level.
First of all that means recognizing and organizing freedom of expression and organization inside and outside the Cuban Communist Party.
That kind of "democratic reorganiza-
That kind gif Consideratie rempeans to the construction of a socialist society. Drawing its strength from the mobilization of the Cuban masses, but drawing also upon the revolutionary developments of other Latin American countries, it would, in turn, constitute a new and decisive contribution by the Cuban revolutionaries to the liberation of the continent. It would strengthen them against all their enemies, against their false friends.
The real battle to defend the Cuban revolution, a permanent task for revolutionary Marxists, also means calling for such a reorganization. Cuba sí!
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press, freedom of association and organization, and the release of all antiimperialist political prisoners;
• The extension and unification of the shoras and a congress of workers' shoras to formulate policies for winning the war; and
• A workers and peasants government.
The HVK convention was the first convention of the Trotskyist movement in Iran since the overthrow of the shah. The HVK had urged a united convention with the HKE and HKS, but this proved not to be possible.
One of the decisions of the HVK convention was to call for political discussions among all the Trotskyist forces in Iran to lay the basis for a principled unity in order to build the Iranian section of the Fourth International.
These discussions would include the questions of defense of the Iranian regime against the imperialists and the Iraqi