On August 1, we learned that Fidel Castro had to undergo abdominal surgery due to a serious illness. His brother, vice-president and minister of defence Raul Castro, was to take charge temporarily of the presidency of Cuba. Fidel's serious illness and his old age – he has just celebrated his 80th birthday – has put Cuba’s future centre stage again.
Capitalist restoration or socialist revolution?
Cuba is the only workers state in Latin America. In 1959 a workers and peasants revolution succeeded in expropriating the bourgeoisie. Immediately Bush and Condoleezza Rice started speaking about a “transition” in Cuba. The ‘gusana’ bourgeoisie (1) in Miami demonstrated in the streets, enthusiastic about returning to Cuba to recover their properties. On the other hand, the European imperialist powers – which have lucrative businesses on the island – said they wished Fidel a quick recovery.
No doubt, the imperialist bourgeoisies and their different fractions are discussing the best way to complete the capitalist restoration in Cuba. After more than 15 years of pro-capitalist measures carried out by the Castroite bureaucracy, Cuba has been turned into extremely degenerated workers state. The monopoly of foreign trade has been abandoned. Nationalized property and central planning, despite being heavily bureaucratic, has been badly eroded.
In spite of this, the anti-imperialist consciousness of the Cuban workers and peasants won in the struggle for the victorious revolution is still alive. They will defend the expropriation of the bourgeoisie that arose out of the insurrectionary general strike that overthrew the dictator Batista and made possible the first workers’ state in Latin America.
But with each day the bureaucracy’s restorationist policies causes creates deeper inequalities and a growing bureaucracy, workers aristocracy and rich middle classes as the potential new bourgeoisie.The poverty and suffering of the big majority of workers and peasants threatens to undermine the revolutionary consciousness of the masses. The worse their situation gets the more the masses will identify real socialism with the fake socialism Fidel Castro talks to them about; a “socialism” with miserable wages, rationing cards and never ending hardships.
But real socialism can only start from the highest degree of development reached by the productive forces under capitalism; that is in the imperialist countries. The working class of a underdeveloped country like Cuba can make a workers and peasants’ revolution sooner than the workers of an imperialist country, but it cannot arrive at socialism without the victory of socialist revolution in at least some imperialist countries. For this reason, every workers’ and peasants’ revolution that remains isolated and doesn't join forces with other countries undergoing revolution, sooner or later will be bureaucratized and retreat backwards into counter-revolution.
For that reason, the Stalinist pseudo – theory of “socialism in a single country” is clearly a reactionary utopia, proven by the collapse of the USSR, China and the East European ex-workers’ states headed by the Stalinist bureaucracy. The extreme decomposition of the Cuban worker state is yet another instance of the bankruptcy of that pseudo-theory.
It was a reactionary utopia to affirm that a huge country (almost a continent in itself, with 150 million workers and peasants and enormous natural resources) such as the USSR could be arrive at socialism without a decisive advance of the world revolution (which the Stalinist bureaucracy strangled step by step). It was also a utopia that China could keep going as a workers state after the expropriation of the bourgeoisie in 1949, without a world revolution. Indeed far from realising socialism, both collapsed back into capitalism bringing about a historical defeat of the working class of those nations and the whole world. How much more reactionary then to claim, as the Castroite bureaucracy does, that it is possible to make “socialism in a single island” while the Latin American and North American revolutions have been contained and strangled (again with the help of the Castroite bureaucracy).
The only thing that can result from the isolation of a workers’ state in a single country, is the distribution of scarcity. Arising out of this scarcity the bureaucracy emerges as the gendarme to police the queue and reward itself with privileges at the expense of the workers. As the agents of the capitalist world economy inside the workers’ states the bureaucracy frees itself from dependence on state property and restores capitalism to transform itself into a new bourgeoisie.
The Bolshevik Party always saw the triumphant October revolution in Russia as a spark to ignite the European and world revolution, and for that reason it founded the 3rd International. On the contrary, Stalinism – the executioner of Bolshevism – usurped the October revolution, and developed the fake “theory” of “socialism in a single country” and its counterrevolutionary policy of collaborating with ‘democratic’ imperialists in the rest of the world.
Without doubt, today the gains of the Cuban revolution are in danger. To finish the capitalist restoration in Cuba would be an historical defeat not only for Cuban workers and peasants, but for the proletariat and the exploited of all Latin America and the world. Defending the revolutionary gains that still remain, and preventing the Cuban worker state, despite its degeneration, from destruction is an anti-imperialist and revolutionary task of the working class of the greatest importance. As Trotsky said, those who won’t defend the existing gains cannot win new ones.
Every standpoint on the Cuban issue today that doesn't agree with the position of the founders of the 4th International in the Congress of 1938 on the defence of workers’ states, amounts to an open and definitive rupture with the program of Trotskyism, and a capitulation to the Castroite bureaucracy.
As Trotsky said in 1937:
“To identify the October Revolution and the peoples in the USSR with the ruling caste, is to betray workers interests and help the reaction” (The Revolution Betrayed, Leon Trotsky).
In the same way, today, to link the Cuban revolution and the Cuban workers and peasants fate with the fate of Castroite bureaucracy, is to betray the interests of the proletariat. On the contrary, the advances of Cuban revolution can only be defended today by fighting against the Castroite bureaucracy’s privileges, and replacing the bureaucracy with a government of workers’ and peasants’ councils (soviets). Only a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat can make Cuba the spark to light the fire of Latin American and world revolution.
How to defeat the US Imperialist and the Miami “gusano” threat to Cuba? The overthrow of the bureaucracy by a workers and peasants’ political revolution would spread panic among the Gringo imperialist bourgeoisie. It would become a driving force to push the North American proletariat, only now standing up to fight, towards a revolutionary struggle.
Two imperialist plans to complete capitalist restoration in Cuba
It is clear, once again that there are two different plans, promoted by different fractions of the imperialist bourgeoisies, to finish capitalist restoration in Cuba.
The fall of the worker states in Eastern Europe and USSR – the only states Cuba traded with – plunged the Cuban workers’ state into a deep crisis. The productive forces were already retarded by the reactionary utopia of “socialism in one island” imposed by the Castroite bureaucracy. On top of this, US economic sanctions from the early 1990s made the shortages worse. This pushed the bureaucracy to open the economy to foreign trade with European imperialist monopolies and created the conditions for the birth of a rich middle class.
Spanish, French, Italian, Canadian, Swiss imperialist monopolies began investing and extracting super- profits in Cuba from the beginning of the 1990s. This took the form of FDI or “joint ventures” with the Cuban state (the so called “mixed enterprises”) and they now have a big stake in very profitable businesses in tourism, nickel and oil, etc.
A fraction of the US bourgeoisie – associated with the Chamber of Commerce – favors the same policy and calls for an end to economic sanctions so it can also share in in the plunder of Cuba alongside its European rivals.
For this fraction of the world imperialist bourgeoisie, completing capitalist restoration in the island is best done by reintroducing the ‘law of value’ i.e. the market, money, “joint ventures” etc., as happened in both the ex-USSR and China. Free trade would open Cuba to cheap goods to undermine the workers and peasants support for the workers’ state, and create opportunities for the new middle classes and the bureaucratic caste to become a new bourgeoisie.
But clearly this is not the plan of the bourgeois clique around Bush, Rice, the oil monopolies and the arms industry, who are currently administrating US bourgeoisie interests. Their plan means counterrevolution by invasion and occupation. Capitalist restoration will be completed by the “gusana” bourgeoisie and US monopolies return to the island. Meanwhile, they are happy for European monopolies to invest in the infrastructure on the island and to modernise the economy. For when the US invasion takes place the gringos and “gusanos” will seize their former property rights expropriated by the revolution, including those concessions granted by the Castroite bureaucracy to the European monopolies!
The objective of the Bushite fraction of the US bourgeoisie is not only to obtain super-profits by restoring capitalism in Cuba, but to recover all their private property, turning Cuba again into “an American brothel” as it used to be before the revolution. US imperialism and the “gusana” bourgeoisie in Miami, would then become the national bourgeoisie in a Cuba restored to capitalism.
his is the strategic objective of the Bushite fraction of US imperialism. However, it has not been able to implement this policy because of the heroic resistance of the Iraqi masses that “swamped” the Anglo Yankees troops in Iraq causing a crisis in Bush government, and the national war of resistance of the Palestinian and Lebanese masses that humiliated the Zionist army in the south of Lebanon.
These are the two imperialist fractions in a race to see who gets the property in a restored Cuba: US imperialism and the “gusanos” of Miami, or the European imperialist monopolies in collaboration with the Castroite bureaucracy as the prospective new national bourgeoisie.
Mercosur is a new milestone on the road to capitalist restoration
Stalinists, Castroites and the fake Trotskyists – all members of the World Social Forum – tell the Latin American working class and exploited peoples that to defend Cuba is to support Fidel Castro and the Castroite bureaucracy. They say that both Castro and the Castroite bureaucracy are “anti-imperialist” and defend Cuba against capitalism.
However, the Cuban revolution has not survived thanks to the Castroite bureaucracy’s policies, but in spite of and against it. The Cuban revolution survives thanks to the revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle of the working class and the exploited during the '60s, the '70s, and the '80s. It survives thanks to the Ecuadorian and Argentinean revolutions, to the magnificent Bolivian revolution, and to the great anti-imperialist struggle of the Venezuelan masses that have taken place in the first few years of the 21th century.
And today the Cuban revolutionary advances are in danger not because Fidel is sick, but because the restorationist Castroite bureaucracy in the name of the revolution has collaborated with the national bourgeoisies to strangle the Argentinean and Ecuadorian revolutions, and contain the great Bolivian revolution. Over four decades the Castroite bureaucracy, in condemning Cuba to isolation, and in preparing the destruction of the gains of the revolution, has betrayed the Latin American revolution.
Thus, the betrayal by Castroism of the Chilean revolution (the revolution of the “Industrial colons” and coordinated worker-peasant councils) in 1973, with Fidel proclaiming the “peaceful road to socialism”, lead to a coup by Pinochet and the ITT followed by a number of counterrevolutionary military governments in Latin America. All those developments left Cuba isolated.
In the 1980s, by proposing that Nicaragua shouldn’t be a new Cuba, and abandoning the Central American revolution to the counter-revolutionary pacts of Esquipulas and Contadora, the Castroite bureaucracy – which is a part of the Stalinist bureaucracy – began to prepare its transition to capitalist restoration.
Thus, in the 1990s – after the collapse of USSR, China and the Eastern Europe workers states – we saw the reform of the Constitution and Foreign Capitals Investment Law driven through by the Castroite bureaucracy in preparation for capitalist restoration on the island. These reforms which undermined the foundations of Cuba as a workers’ state.
Since 2000, the opening of the Ecuadorian and Argentinean revolutions, and expecially that of the heroic Bolivian revolution in 2003, has sounded the alarm to the Castroite bureaucracy. It knew perfectly well that a victorious workers and peasants revolution in Bolivia would be like an electric shock to the entire Latin American masses, and especially, the Cuban masses. Its own survival as a privileged caste and its plan to become the new bourgeoisie would be immediately at risk. For that reason, the Castroite bureaucracy played a key role, together with the other counter-revolutionary leaders in the World Social Forum, in surrounding and containing the Bolivian revolution, in backing and supporting the class collaborationist policies of Mesa’s government and the government of Evo Morales today.
The betrayal to Bolivian revolution, is consistent with the history of betrayals of the masses’ struggles in Latin America, and prepared the conditions for a new leap in the capitalist restoration process in Cuba and ofn the bureaucracy recycling itself as a bourgeoisie.
This leap was clearly seen when Castro signed a commercial agreement on behalf of Cuba with Mercosur, at the last summit of presidents in Cordoba (Argentina), in mid July. Argentinean, Venezuelan, Brazilian, and Uruguayan bourgeoisies, along with imperialist monopolies installed in those countries, will be able to export to Cuba large quantities of goods at subsidized prices. This agreement for introducting cheap imports by means of ‘joint ventures’ with capitalist corporations is part of the plan of completing capitalist restoration in the island.
Thus the restorationist Castroite bureaucracy represented by Castro himself proved that they are on course to become the new national bourgeoisie. This is why Fidel Castro has said that Chavez “has the task to look after Cuba” when he dies. His objective is for Cuba to become like Venezuela, that is to say, a capitalist country, but with a national bourgeoisie formed out of the recycled bureaucracy.
This agreement of the Castroite bureaucracy with Mercosur – a free trade agreement with the imperialist monopolies and national bourgeoisies of its member countries – marks a new leap forward in the capitalist restoration process in Cuba. It is as if – though not an exact analogy –Stalin and the Russian bureaucracy had established a trade agreement with French and English imperialists, instead of creating COMECON – the common market with the deformed worker states of Eastern Europe. That would have meant clearly an opening of the road to capitalist restoration as was finally done by Gorbachev in the 1980s, and by Yeltsin in 1989 to complete the restoration and the recycling of the bureaucracy as a new bourgeoisie.
The signing of the agreement with the Mercosur clearly points to the fact that once the Bolivian revolution is strangled and the revolutionary struggle of the Latin American masses completely aborted, the the process of capitalist restoration in Cuba can be completed. This agreement between the Castroites and Mercosur angered Bush, Rice and the “gusanos” in Miami because it confirmed that the bureaucracy is already planning to restore capitalist private property of the means of production under the framework of Mercosur and not the FTAA of US imperialism. The social inequality in Cuba will get worse and will cause greater demoralization of the workers and rural masses, undermining their commitment to defend the gains of the revolution. In fact this is what both the main imperialist fractions bet on, in their race to finish capitalist restoration in Cuba.
The strip tease exposes the “mixed economy” as the Castroite bureaucracy prepares its transformation into a new bourgeoisie
Fidel's illness and Raul Castro’s role as his temporary replacement is a “srtrip tease” of the Castroite bureaucracy, exposing its plans to complete capitalist restoration and turn itself into a bourgeoisie. It is clear the army -a.k.a “Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias” (“Revolutionary Armed Forces”) is the fundamental institution through which the Castroite bureaucracy is driving the capitalist restoration plan.
The army controls most of the “mixed companies” (“joint ventures” with foreign monopolies, created under the umbrella of the “Foreign Investment Law”), from model farms that produce for export, to telecommunications, to tourism and nickel. Today the army controls 322 of the biggest companies, some of them Cuban capital, and others mixed with foreign capital – among them, “Gaviota” (tourism and transport), Cubanacan (tourism), Almacenes Universal (tax free areas), Sasa (auto parts), Habanos (cigars), Cimex (import and export, distribution, gas stations, real estate). These companies employ 20% of Cuban labor, represent 89% of the exports, and generate 59% of the earnings in tourism. The army directly controls these companies through the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S. A. (Managerial Administration Group A.S.) or GAESA, of which the general director is... Raul Castro, and the executive director is his son-in-law. These companies are run by a new generation of young army officers, all of them trained in business administration schools in Europe.
In this way the restorationist bureaucracy has been preparing for its role as a bourgeoisie: by joining the boards (undisclosed to the public) of stock companies with bank accounts in fiscal paradises (off-shore accounts); as anonymous shareholders with their holdings protected by commercial secrecy; as partners in joint ventures with imperialist monopolies such as the Sherrit (which has 50% of the mixed company Moa Nickel, and the gas company Energas), the French Pernod Ricard (which has 50% of Corporation Cuba Ron S.A.), the Swiss Nestlé (with 50% of the food company Los Portales), and the Spanish Altadis (50% of Habanos S.A.).
It is clear then that private property rights are being restored in Cuba very quickly, and that the bureaucracy is now rapidly forming a new bourgeoisie. The only two things that for the moment the bureaucracy has not been able to do – and the reason that capitalist restoration has not yet been completed – are the absolute right to private property in land and the right to inherit such property.
The right to inheritance is a key question, as Leon Trotsky brilliantly outlined in The Revolution Betrayed, “property that cannot be bequeathed to descendants loses half of its value”.
The Castroite bureaucracy’s policies have carried the Cuban workers’ state to an extreme degree of degeneration. Such that today in Cuba two economies coexist at the same time: a capitalist economy that works under the law of value, and a transitional economy in crisis and severe decomposition.
These two economies are in a struggle of life and death. One or other must win. The unstable coexistence of these two economies has its expression in the two currency system introduced in Cuba by the bureaucracy. Thus, you have the “chavito” (convertible peso; 1peso= 1dollar) used for tourism and which allows foreign monopolies to take their earnings out of Cuba in US dollars. This “chavito” is a real “exchange insurance” for imperialist investments, paid for by super-exploiting the workers and peasants. It expresses the law of value in the sector of the economy open to capitalist property and to imperialist investment which has the highest labor productivity and most value-added commodities. Only 20% of the population – the restorationist bureaucratic caste, the labor aristocracy and a newly enriched middle class, linked to imperialist investments – have access to the “chavito” and to exclusive goods and services of this sector.
On the other hand, you have the devalued Cuban peso that expresses low labor productivity, the low quality of products and the low value created in the nationalised sector of the economy. It represents the workers’ state in acute degeneration. The low wages of the big majority of workers and peasants are paid with this devalued peso. 80% of the population lives facing shortages and deprivation, depending on ration cards. This poverty coexists with a growth rate of 11.8% in 2005 which exceeded that of China.
This shows that in Cuba the law of value that governs the capitalist economy is already in operation. It means that market values are imposed on the planned economy creating huge wealth in the newly enriched middle class and emerging bourgeoisie, while driving the vast majority of the population into poverty as in any capitalist country. The introduction of the market and the widening gap between rich and poor is what undermines the ability of the Cuban masses to defend the revolution. Political consciousness is always the expression of material conditions. If the material gains of the revolution resulting from the expropriation of the bourgeoisie are destroyed, then so is the consciousness that defends them destroyed.
During the 1980s the bureaucracy In the USSR and the workers’ states of Eastern Europe became restorationist, and by enforcing pro-capitalist measures (such as Gorbachev’s "perestroika") it forced tens of millions of workers and farmers into misery. For example, the coalminers in the Donbass (Ukraine) were living under worse conditions than the Bolivian miners in 1940 – such that they had to fight for... soap and toilet paper. Why would millions of hungry workers and farmers come out in defense of a "revolution" that condemns them to hunger, misery, and unheard of shortages? It is precisely the intention of all fractions of the imperialist bourgeoisies to cause this same demoralization and destruction of the anti-imperialist consciousness in the Cuban masses and to undermine their resistance to the completion of capitalist restoration.
Break with all the national bourgeoisies of the continent! For a Federation of Socialist Republics of the Americas!
Everyone that claims to be anti-imperialist and revolutionary has a duty to defend Cuba from the US blockade and the renewed threats of US imperialism and the “gusana” bourgeoisie of Miami. But how to defend effectively the historical gains of the Cuban revolution already much weakened by the class collaborationist politics of the Castroite bureaucracy?
The first task to effectively defend the gains of the revolution, is for the Cuban workers and farmers to break with Mercosur and all the agreements and treaties which give the resources of the island to the imperialist monopolies that have been sacking Latin America for decades. Second, is to break with the bourgeoisie all over the continent. Third, to defeat the counterrevolutionary policy of the Castroite bureaucracy that usurps the prestige of the Cuban revolution to maintain and support the lackey, anti-worker and repressive governments and regimes of Kirchner, Lula, Bachelet, Morales, etc. Fourth, is to break with the UN - that today is ready to intervene in Middle East to crush the Palestinian people, as it did in the 1990s in the Balkans, and to defeat the politics of Fidel Castro and the Cuban bureaucracy who call on the world’s masses to trust that den of imperialist thieves.
It is not possible to defend Cuba without fighting against all class collaborationist politics, so that the working class and the exploited in the continent can break with their own bourgeoisies and the left leg of the popular front of the treacherous fake Trotskyists of the WSF. It is not possible to defend Cuba if you are holding hands with the WSF because it belongs to Chavez, Lula, Evo Morales and the likes, to the national bourgeoisies of Mercosur, to the Castroite bureaucracy and the treacherous misleaders of all colors, that form the party of capitalist restoration in Cuba!
Cuba will be defended when El Alto becomes once more the central headquarters of the Bolivian revolution, and when that revolution (today caught in the trap of the Constituent Assembly by Evo Morales’ class collaboratist government backed by Fidel Castro) returns to the road to victory. It will be defended when the Ecuadorian revolution rises up again (after Fidel’s friend Chavez stabbed it in the back when he lent oil to Palacio to break the oil workers’ strike). Cuba will be defended by the Argentine working class breaking the ‘social pact’ of the bureaucracy with the bosses and the government of Kirchner (a government that has put Castroites in many state offices, and which was warmly supported by Fidel on his recent visit), and retakes the revolutionary road of 2001.
Cuba will be defended when the workers and farmers in Mexico –the teachers of Oaxaca, the miners and steel workers of Michoacan, the exploited people of San Salvador Atenco, the poor farmers of Chiapas –unite their struggles into one revolutionary front. Today these struggles are in danger of being isolated and expropriated by the bourgeois Lopez Obrador, presented as "progressive" by the Castroite bureaucracy and the WSF. Cuba will be defended when the workers and peasants of Central America rise up against the CAFTA imposed by the bourgeoisies with the open collaboration of the ex-commaders of the Sandinistas and FMLN who today have become Wall Street yuppies and government officials in the bourgeois states of Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Cuba will be defended when the Venezuelan workers and exploited can guarantee that not one barrel of oil is sold to the US imperialists who feed it to the military machine that murders Iraqis, and finances the Zionist-Fascist state of Israel to murder the Palestinian people and the Arab masses in Lebanon.
Either the revolution will extend to Central and South America, or, sooner or later, the fate of Cuba will be the same of the oppressed nations in Central America and the Caribbean: new enslaved colonies, enslaved by the CAFTAs, or directly occupied as US protectorates, as Haiti is today after it was bled-white. Cuban workers and peasants can see themselves in the mirror of their class brothers and sisters of the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America today: that will be their destiny if the capitalist restoration prevails!
Cuba will be defended when the North American workers, led by the Latino immigrants, refuse to kneel before the imperialist butchers of the Democratic Party - as Castroism does- but rises up and unites against the war in Iraq. It will be defended when the US working class comes to the defense of the Palestinian people and the masses of Lebanon. It will be defended when the US workers defend the gains of the Cuban revolution against all imperialist threats and aggressions, and supports the fight against the FTAA that ties the nations of Central America to imperialism with double chains.
The fence imposed on Cuba from the outside by US imperialism with its blockade, and from the inside by the Castroite bureaucracy with its restorationist policy, can only be broken by the Cuban workers and peasants their fight for political revolution with the struggles of the working class and the exploited of the rest of Latin America. Te isolation of Cuba can be effectively broken by centralizing a common struggle in Latin America and with that of the North American working class, against imperialism and the national bourgeoisies that are its servants!
In order to defend the conquests of the revolution the Cuban masses must fight for a political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy and win worker democracy
To defend Cuba means to break all political ties with the bourgeoisie that the restorationist Castroite bureaucracy imposes on the workers and peasants. For that reason, it means to finish with the restorationist policies of the bureaucracy and with the growing social inequality it brings.
Stop the wage and social inequality!
Stop the privileges, ranks, medals and decorations!
Down with the differential wages and the prizes for production in the joint ventures and the imperialist monopolies!
For equal work for an equal wage in all the sectors of the economy!
Out with the parasites: all the bureaucrats must go to work paid at the average wage of a worker and in Cuban Pesos!
Down with the "two currencies"!
For a single currency that reflects the real productivity of labor of the whole Cuban economy!
Reimpose exchange controls so that the value produced by Cuban workers is not siphoned off to imperialist monopolies! Re-imposing the monopoly of the foreign trade in all the branches of the economy!
Restore the centrally economy planned, under the control of the workers and peasants councils!
Smash the “gusano” bourgeoisie!
End all commercial secrets that allow the imperialist monopolies to hide their profits!
End all corruption that allows the bureaucracy to profit from “joint-stock companies"!
For workers’ control of all the branches of the production – including tourism, nickel and petroleum!
Renationalise without compensation and under workers control the private interests of the "joint-stock companies" and mixed companies!
For the freedom to organize unions in the private and mixed companies and in the state owned companies!
For workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils!
For workers democracy where the majority of the workers and peasants decided on strategy and tactics of defending the revolution!
For political parties that demonstrate they can defend the gains of the revolution!
For workers’ and peasants’ militias, the arming of the entire population to defend Cuba and take back Guantanamo!
For a political revolution to overthrow the restorationist bureaucracy and build a socialist Cuba as part of the Socialist United States of Central America and the Caribbean, which would be, at the same time be a decisive step to win the unity with the North American proletariat, and open the way to the workers and socialist revolution in the United States!
For an international party of socialist revolution to defeat the class collaborationist and restorationist World Social Forum!
For this reason, no-one can defend the Cuban revolution without fighting to re-found the international party of the socialist revolution. Only such an internationalist proletarian party is capable of uniting and organising the working class from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in a victorious war against imperialism, the client national bourgeoisies and capitalist restoration in Cuba.
Castro’s bureaucracy is a declared enemy of an international revolutionary party. On the contrary, it organises a continental policy of subordination of Latin American workers to their own national bourgeoisies and the North American working class to the Democratic Party. The fake Trotskyists have lent support to this class collaborationist policy by supporting the Castroite bureaucracy and the ‘Trotskyist’ impostor Celia Hart Santamaria. All over Latin America, that are forming new parties uniting Castroites, Stalinists and the trade union bureaucracies – such as the PRS in Venezuela, Podemos (“We can!”) in Chile, the P-SOL in Brazil, “Plenario de Autoconvocados” (“Self convened fighters plenum”) in Argentina, etc. which acts as the “left wing” of the the World Social Forum as a counter-revolutionary international.
The imminent danger posed by finishing capitalist restoration in Cuba, makes the first task of internationalist Trotskyists that of completing the unfinished work of the founders of Fourth International in America: "... for the Leninist Bolsheviks, there is no more important task than to establish the connection - and then the unification – between the different parts of the proletarian organization in the continent, creating such a well constructed organism that any revolutionary shock taking place in Patagonia, reverberates immediately as if it was transmitted by a perfect nervous system, in the revolutionary proletarian organizations of the United States. Until this has been done the task of the Leninist Bolsheviks in the American Continent will not have been carried out". ("The countries of the Caribbean ", Clave magazine Nº 4, November 13, 1937).
Only as a result of this struggle will an international workers revolutionary party be set up in Cuba, which armed with the Program of the Fourth International and its fight for political revolution – both having passed the test of histor –will be able to lead the Cuban working class and peasants to victory. To this task, we, of the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction, devote all our forces.
In the 1930s, Trotskyism – the heir and continuator to Bolshevism – was the only current in the world working class that adjusted and updated its theory and the program to fight to for political revolution in the Soviet workers state, overthrowing the Stalinist bureaucracy which had usurped the revolution, to create a healthy workers’ state as a revolutionary pole in the struggle for the world revolution.
In those years, groups and tendencies called “friends of USSR“ blossomed all around the world. They were the agents of the Stalinist bureaucracy and promoted its counter-revolutionary policies. Today, social democracy, recycled Stalinism, and former Trotskyists, joined together in The World Social Forum, are the “friends of Cuba”. That is, the servants and defenders of Castro and the Castroite bureaucracy’s policies in the continent and in Cuba itself.
The tasks of defending the gains of the Cuban revolution and the fight for political revolution to defeat the restorationist bureaucracy, are key parts of the program for socialist revolution in Latin America, the United States and the world. The Cuban issue today – as the Russian issue in the ’30s, devides the healthy forces of Trotskyism that fight to regroup at an international level from those that rally –like the Pabloites did in 1953, but in a more brazen and shameless way –to the side of the Stalinist bureaucracy, defending its interests.
In 1953, the Pabloites subordinated Trotskyism into Stalinism. The Stalinist bureaucracy had gained prestige from the victorious struggle of the Soviet masses to defeat Nazism. Millions of workers everywhere entered the communist parties. This policy led to Trotskyism tailing Stalinism and ultimately liquidating the Fourth International as a revolutionary world party of socialism.
Inevitably when the restoration of capitalism occurred in the degenerated workers’ state began after 1989, the renegades of Trotskyism who had kneeled down to Stalinism wept while trying to hide their capitulations and their responsibility for the counter-revolution, putting the blame on Trotsky, Lenin and Marxism.
Today, with the excuse that Cuba is being attacked by imperialism, the renegades if Trotskyism kneel down before the Castroite bureaucracy and abandon any struggle for a political revolution in Cuba – that is to say, the dictatorship of the revolutionary proletariat in Cuba.
When in the 1930s Trotskyism was fighting Stalinism, it organized hundreds of Trotskyist militants in Cuba. The struggle to set up again a Trotskyist, revolutionary and internationalist party in Cuba is in our hands, in the hands of those who are fighting for an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary worker organizations. The renegades to Trotskyism already have their party in Cuba: the party of Castroite bureaucracy and its agent’s, the charlatan Celia Hart Santamaria. They are the third batch of Mensheviks. They have deserted to the Stalinist camp with all their arms to be the left leg of the popular front with ‘democratic imperialism’!
Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction 17 August 2006.
From Class Struggle 68 August-September 2006
