(The following article was written as the introduction to a collection of documents and other materials relating to the Cuban revolution projected for publication in France as a book. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Our objective in publishing a series of documents that the international Trotskyist movement has devoted to the Cuban revolution is not only to provide activists with useful reference material but also to put in focus the influence that Fidel Castro's victory and the ensuing struggles in Latin America had on the development and revivification of organizations adhering to revolutionary Marxism.
The stage when Cuba was the object of unconditional admiration in wide circles of the vanguard is now passed. Unfortunately, those persons who previously indulged in apologetics, now most often prefer to make summary condemnations, to say nothing of those who have simply turned the page, Cuba no longer being considered in style. Thus, it is up to the Trotskyist movement once again to do the work of analyzing and evaluating a revolutionary experiment, which, whatever vicissitudes the future may hold, will go down in history as one of the crucial experiences of our age.
The genesis of the Cuban revolution, its victory, and the events of the first decade in the life of the Cuban workers state have constituted a crucial test of the revolutionary movement's conceptions and orientations. Like all great historical turning points, the Cuban revolution has swept away a number of old nostrums, false or ambiguous views, and outmoded schemas, and has made it possible to gain a better understanding of the fundamental tendencies in this stage in their complexity and richness.
At the same time, the experience of the Cuban revolution has exposed more clearly the limitations and contradictions that cannot be escaped by a workers state in the present international context, in the context of a relationship of forces prevailing not only between imperialism and the revolution but also within the noncapitalist front.
The writings we are publishing give a precise analysis of the meaning and fundamental lessons of the Cuban revolution. Thus I need only recapitulate them briefly here.
1. The Cuban revolution marked a critical turn for an entire continent, and in this sense, despite the smallness of the country, its importance is comparable to the Russian and Chinese revolutions. The very existence of a workers state in Cuba has represented, and-in spite of the present difficulties - has not ceased to represent, a powerful factor in promoting the crisis and weakening of imperialism, and objectively assisting the revolutionary struggle in an exceptional way.
If it had not been for Fidel Castro's victory, ten years of Latin American history would have been radically different. The profound crisis of the ruling classes and leading groups, the irreversible decline of the petty-bourgeois reformist nationalist movements, the rise and maturing of new vanguards-all this would not yet have occurred, or would not have developed so rapidly or extensively.
Even in Africa and Asia, the lessons of the Cuban revolution have left a considerable imprint and helped to produce and develop revolutionary movements and cadres. This is still more true for the advanced capitalist countries, especially Western Europe. In Europe, as is well known, mobilizations to defend the Cuban revolution marked a stage in the rise of the young vanguards which later stormed onto the political arena in May 1968 in France and in 1968-70 in Italy. For its part, the Fourth International has no reason to minimize the importance Cuba has had for it. In France in particular, if it had not been for Cuba and for Che Guevara, the JCR [Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire - Revolutionary Communist Youth] would not have experienced its rapid rise, nor would the Ligue Communiste (Communist League, the French section of the Fourth International be what it is today.
2. Thanks to the Cuban revolution, not only relatively limited vanguard strata but, above all, broad masses of workers, peasants, radicalized pettybourgeois, and plebeian elements on the fringes of the productive process have become conscious of the fundamental political and social antagonisms that exist and of the possibility of defeating their No. 1 enemy, the all-powerful imperialism of the U.S. Such a statement might seem a commonplace today. But no revolutionist who knew what Latin America was like before Cuba will minimize the importance of the change that has occurred.
At the same time, the Cuban revolution subjected to a practical test all the arguments about the nature of the Latin American revolution, arguments which no small number of philistines had considered sterile and scholastic. Refuting the conceptions supported by the Stalinists, reformists, and centrists of every stripe, living experience has shown the arbitrariness and fallaciousness of the postulate that there is a bourgeois-democratic stage of the revolution as distinct from the socialist one and that revolutionists can and must ally themselves with the so-called national bourgeoisie.
The Cuban revolution very quickly revealed its permanent character, breaking not only with imperialism but also with the indigenous "national" bourgeois ruling classes and "growing over" uninterruptedly into a socialist revolution. Paradoxically (although the paradox is only apparent), this "growing over" occurred even before those who gave impetus to it seemed to realize what was happening.
3. The victory of the Ejército Rebelde [Rebel Army] was an additional proof of the absurdity of all the theorizing about "democratic" or "peaceful roads to socialism" (which is still more ridiculous in countries lacking the parliamentary institutions whose presence in Western Europe might offer arguments to the advocates of these oppor-
tunist views). This victory also implied more specific lessons about the possible forms of a revolutionary breakthrough in the given Latin American context. In this area, discussions have been lively from the beginning, and they are continuing now, although the polemic has entered a new phase.
Correctly, the Cuban leaders, and Che Guevara especially, rejected the thesis that the Cuban revolution was exceptional. This postulate in practice was a smokescreen not only for Stalinists, reformists, and centrists whose formulas had collapsed miserably but also for those who, on paper, declared their support for armed struggle in very generous terms, without, however, drawing the required conclusions about the specific military tasks of the movement and the concrete choice of methods. In other words, the Cubans checkmated all these routinist and conservative attitudes based, in the last analysis, on a mechanistic use of historical analogies and on a spontanéist conception of the mass revolutionary upsurge and the insurrection leading to the conquest of power.
Despite all superficial and one-sided interpretations, the victorious outcome of the revolutionary struggle confirmed the need for a revolutionary party. It showed that the existence of a vanguard, even weak at first, but capable in a revolutionary or prerevolutionary context of clearly expressing the interests and aspirations of the masses and establishing real links at least with some layers of the population, is the decisive condition for success. In its own entirely special forms, which may prove to a large extent unique, the Cuban revolution argues, despite appearances, against any denial of the Leninist concept of the party.
4. On the international level, the imperialist attack very quickly gave impetus to the dynamic of permanent revolution in the Cuban process. It was above all after this attack that the leading group understood that Cuba could escape the danger of strangulation and military aggression only by integrating itself into the worldwide revolutionary process. As a result the Cuban government began to establish indispensable alliances with the other workers states. In this, it sought to form a bloc above all with countries like Vietnam and North Korea, which were also in the front line of the con- May 31, 1971
frontation with imperialism. And for the most part it retained its political independence in the face of the most powerful bureaucratic leaderships.
At the same time, and this is still more important, Cuba vigorously assumed the role of standard-bearer of the entire Latin American revolution. Che Guevara's enterprise in Bolivia, regardless of how you assess his specific choices and methods, has been the most spectacular expression of the internationalist orientation of the Cuban revolutionists, who are clearly aware that their fate is indissolubly linked with that of the revolution on a continental scale.
II.
The historic importance of the Cuban revolution and the unquestionable qualities of Fidel Castro and the leading group around him cannot lead revolutionists to soft-pedal the limitations, contradictions, and possible negative tendencies that appear, whether they flow from objective conditions or from deficiencies of a subjective order. Again, I will limit myself to a few brief recapitulations.
1. In general, the new productive relations have brought considerable economic development, permitting a very substantial improvement in the overall standard of living of the masses (among other things, by eliminating the scourge of unemployment and underemployment and by eliminating illiteracy and introducing universal education).
However, the initial underdevelopment, all the vestiges of the typical conditions of a backward society (an inadequate technical and cultural level, a limited number of technicians and specialists, the survival of habits belonging to a preindustrial society, etc.), and the imperialist blockade could not help but cause very grave difficulties and tensions, at the same time producing an inevitable economic dependence on the Soviet Union.
The deficiencies in systematic development of projects and economic plans; exaggerated voluntarist notions, especially in certain periods; the adoption of some excessive expropriation measures in the distribution sector, whose consequences for the economy are undeniable and whose political and social justification seems dubious; some concessions to utopianism in the conception of the phase of transition from capitalism to socialism and to communism, underestimating material stimuli- all these factors aggravated the objective difficulties and contradictions by helping to produce the failure of the attempt to harvest 10,000,000 tons of sugar and the tensions that have arisen more generally over the course of the last year.
2. Cuba has not suffered a process of bureaucratic degeneration like that suffered in various forms by the East European and Asian workers states, and the regime has been able to base itself on powerful mass mobilizations. But the tendency that has manifested itself from the beginning to prolong and even give a general theoretical value to fluid political and institutional relationships, crowned by a direct rapport between the leader and the masses, could not fail to have very negative implications in the long run.
In other words, Cuba lacks a structured revolutionary government of the soviet type, that is based on organs subject to election and recall at any time, coordinated from top to bottom and from the periphery to the center, capable of assuring administration of the state by the worker and peasant masses.
Furthermore, for long years the leading group
• has allowed the unions
-an essential instrument for defending the interests of the workers even in the transitional phase-to remain under the control of the old Stalinist bureaucrats of the PSP (Partido Socialista Popular-People's Socialist party, the name of the Communist party under Batistal, even relegating them, in hasty generalizations, to an essentially propagandistic role of exhorting the workers to greater productivity.
Finally, the Cuban leaders' statement of the need to build a Marxist- Leninist party, accompanied at the beginning by original attempts at countering the dangers of bureaucratization, has not been translated into action except to an absolutely insufficient degree. It is symbolic that ten years after the conquest of power, the first congress of the party has yet to be held.
In these conditions it has been difficult for the vanguard of the proletariat to accomplish its tasks in reality. And more generally, the working class has been able to exercise its hegemony in the society only very partially and through multiple intermediaries.
3. The absence of revolutionary democratic structures at the top levels, the inadequacy of the unions, and grave limitations in the functioning of the party have left voids which, in one way or another, had to be filled. Thus a stratum of leaders and functionaries has progressively been created, which in practice has interpreted the decisions made by the leading group at the top to suit its own narrow interests.
In a situation that-despite the historic advance indicated above-remained marked by scarcity, to entrust the leading functions to a narrow stratum inevitably meant the development of conditions of privilege and the mentality associated with them.
There is no doubt that social differentiation and privileges are still very limited and, in any case, qualitatively different from those in the Soviet Union, the people's democracies, and even China. Differentiation, however, does exist and a dangerous political and social dynamic is operating. This is all the more dangerous because the embryonic Cuban bureaucratic strata can take advantage of the relationship of forces on the international level, and, more precisely, the convergence between their interests and their aspirations and the interests and aspirations of the bureaucratic caste in the USSR, which for well-known reasons is now able to subject Cuba to all sorts of pressures, if not actual blackmail.
4. The revolutionary and antibureaucratic orientations of the Cuban leading group, its initiatives in Latin America, its polemics with the Communist parties and the Soviet leadership itself have made a powerful contribution to the crisis of Stalinism and the bureaucratic organizations of the international workers' movement.
However, because of their education and the conditioning they have undergone, the Cuban leaders have not acquired - have not shown- a rounded understanding of the phenomenon of the bureaucratization of the Communist parties and the degeneration of transitional societies. This theoretical deficiency has had serious practical implications and will have more in the future if it is not overcome in time. This is why the revolutionary Marxists of the Fourth International pose this problem clearly.
Their lack of clarity about the nature of the Communist parties has led the Cuban leaders several times to harbor illusions about the possibility of these parties contributing to advancing the revolutionary struggle in Latin America. The most dramatic example is the Cubans' attempts to reach an agreement with the Bolivian Communists during the guerrilla struggle led by Che Guevara. In this way, the Cubans' analytical and methodological deficiencies in approaching the problem of the nature of the bureaucratized workers states played a large role in their stand on the invasion of Czechoslovakia. And this position in practice led them to line up with Moscow and the most conservative (and most anti-Castroist) Communist parties. 1
There is no need for me to recall here how much such an attitude damaged the prestige and influence of the Cubans, both among the masses in the workers states oppressed by bureaucratic domination and the young vanguards that are the driving force of the new upsurge in the most industrialized capitalist countries. In the case of these new vanguards more specifically, the Castroist leading group's reticent attitude toward the May 1968 events in France also played a negative role.
5. The historic impetus that the Cuban revolution gave to the Latin American revolution and the aid the Cuban workers state has assured the revolutionists of the continent cannot overshadow the negative facts at the root of the crisis in relations between the Castroist leadership and a series of movements that were inspired by Castroism at the time of their formation.
On the level of generalizations and strategic guidelines, the Cubans gave a boost to erroneous or at least onesided interpretations of the Cuban revolutionary experience itself (for example, interpretations soft-pedaling the mass influence Fidel Castro already had before the landing, the effect the existence of the anti-Batista movement in the cities had on the development of the armed struggle, etc.). At the same time, in the attempt to refute - which was the right thing to doopportunist theorizing about the ex ceptionalism of the Cuban road, the Havana leadership went to the point of ignoring or seriously underestimating the actual peculiar conditions involved, which very probably will not be assembled in a revolutionary struggle in any other countries. (I need only note, once again, the attitude of a part of the Latin American bourgeoisie that believed the Batista regime had no future and expected Fidel Castro, once in power, to follow the trajectory of other leaders of petty-bourgeois movements in the area.)
Similarly, while starting off from a correct assessment of the revolutionary tensions on a continental level and the unquestionable necessity of refuting the tendentious analyses of the reformists and centrists, the Cubans formulated an ambiguous and schematic theory of the foco [guerrilla nucleus]. In this way, they promoted illusions in many revolutionists, who had courage but no political training or links with the masses, that they could repeat the experience of the Sierra Maestra as soon as a minimum of "technical" conditions were assembled. It is true that this theory has been most systematically and explicitly stated in Régis Debray's little book. It is also true that Cuban documents of approximately the same date (notably the report of the Cuban delegation to the OLAS conference) are markedly different from Debray's book. Moreover, Guevara also had many remarks to make about this work.
This does not take away from the fact, however, that the success of Revolución en la revolución? was due to Cuban publicity and support, which it would be legitimate to interpret as approval. Here we touch again on the negative consequences of the Cuban leaders' theoretical weakness, their empiricism both in the way they criticized the Communist parties and in the way they have approached the vital question of the revolutionary party.
Régis Debray's book, which no one defends today but which was greeted with veritable rave enthusiasm wher it appeared, was well suited to gin the maximum encouragement to the adventurist and spontanéist tendencies already widespread in Latin America in the aftermath of Fidel Castro's victory. The price the revolutionary movement has paid for these errors has not yet been fully assessed, but it is a high one.
Ill.
As one of the articles included in this volume? points out, the Cuban revolution has entered into a crucial phase, where opposing conceptions and forces are locked in conflict. This struggle has an international dimension because the relationship of forces between the masses and the embryonic bureaucratic strata in Cuba is also influenced by the relationship of forces on the world scale (and at this level the most powerful bureaucratic force, the ruling caste in Moscow, still has very great resources and considerable margin for maneuver).
Only windbags or ignoramuses can underestimate the terrible difficulties of building socialism in the situation that exists (it must not be forgotten for one instant that, over and above any possible tactical pretenses, Yankee imperialism remains on a war footing). But those who refuse to accept the outlook of resigning themselves to bureaucratic degeneration and an opportunistic softening of policy (which in the last analysis would isolate the regime from the masses and make the island more vulnerable to possible imperialist attacks) are virtually duty bound to try to offer solutions.
It is necessary to maintain an exceptional productive effort for a prolonged period (this is the only way to guarantee that the needs of the people will be progressively met). This involves rationalizing the economy. And to accomplish this, raising the productivity of labor is a sine qua non. The leadership must rely on constantly mobilizing and activating the masses. And it can do this only by profoundly reorganizing the workers state on a revolutionary democratic pattern that can enable the working class and the masses in general to participate in fact in administering the political and economic affairs of the country.
Press, November 30,
1970, pages 1041-46.] May 31, 1971
The positions Fidel Castro has taken, especially since he was forced to recognize the failure of the campaign to harvest 10,000,000 tons of sugar, indicate that at least a part of the leading group is conscious of the tendencies at work and of the necessity to wage a determined battle for workers' democracy. The reorganization of the únions by holding elections at the various levels represents a first step. A shake-up has occurred here in precisely the sector where the old and new bureaucrats were entrenched.
On the level of statements, what Castro said in a recent speech (December 7, 1970) evoking the historic experiences of the Paris Commune and the soviets in the Russian revolution is significant. He affirmed the need notably for "manifold forms of representation through which citizens can be represented in different ways" and for a perspective of developing institutional structures that can enable the people to "participate through their direct representatives in framing laws and measures of the revolutionary government."
If the leading group resolutely pursues this course, does not put off implementing it, and draws much more than in the past on the already long historical experience of the world workers' movement, it can make a contribution to blocking dangerous tendencies and creating the preconditions for exemplary socialist construction.
It goes without saying that a positive evolution would be conditional at the same time on adopting an orientation corresponding to the needs of the Latin American revolutionary movement in this stage. The attitude of the Cuban leaders in this regard seems to confirm that they are holding to a prudent course, prolonging their pause for reflection.
At any event, it seems, on the one hand, that certain "Debrayist" conceptions have been abandoned or set aside; on the other, that a very definite effort is being made to exploit the situation created by the turn in Peru, Allende's victory in Chile, and-to a lesser extent- Torres's coming to power in Bolivia.
No revolutionist can find fault with the Cuban government for its attempts to exploit differences and crises arising in the enemy front and to break the economic, military, and diplomatic blockade. What would be very negative would be any inclination toward giving theoretical justifications for opportunist concessions and, still worse, any subordination of the needs of long-term revolutionary strategy to the conjunctural needs of Cuban state policy.
In the case of Peru, for example, it is proper for the Cubans to exploit the openings offered them by the orientation of the present military regime. But what is unacceptable is characterizing the Peruvian army as "revolutionary" and forgetting in fact everything that the OLAS documents and Che Guevara explained about the nature of the revolution in Latin America and the impossibility of relying on alliances with the so-called national bourgeoisie.
As regards the struggles of revolutionists in Latin America more directly, after a period of partial reticence, the Cuban press is again devoting considerable space to the activity of organizations conducting armed struggle (first of all in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil). And in his speech last July 26, Fidel Castro also devoted considerable attention to this subject.
But what the Latin American revolutionists are waiting for is a redefinition of the Cuban position regarding orientations and methods of struggle. A wait-and-see attitude, which would ultimately, if it became too prolonged, mean opting for empiricism and spontanéism, is no solution whatever for a leadership whose responsibilities are directly proportional to its prestige and which itself has a vital interest in seeing revolutionary victories in Latin America in the near future.
I am convinced that the Cuban revolution has not yet shown its potentialities. This is why I have drawn attention to the tasks which, in my opinion, the Cuban leaders must accomplish. This is why today more than in the past, in determining their perspectives and orientations, the Latin American revolutionary Marxists will be inspired by an awareness of their duty through their anti-imperialist and anticapitalist struggle to defend the Cuban workers state. After ten years, this regime has not ceased to represent the boldest and cheekiest challenge to the most powerful imperialism in the history of the capitalist system.
Notes
1. As the Fourth International did not fail to stress at the time, Fidel Castro's August 1968 speech also contained a rather sharp criticism of the bureaucracy's misdeeds, which explains why it has not been published in Moscow despite its support for the invasion.
2. See "Une etape cruciale pour la revolution cubaine" ["A Crucial Stage for the Cuban Revolution" by Livio Maitan. Available in an English translation in Intercontinental