Cuban Revolution - 30 opportunity and the Kremlin leaders. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 11 December 1988/January 1989 Castro's unique years on understood unless it is seen in a world context. Whatever our verdict on the personal qualities of Fidel Castro and his team, defined by many factors outside their own borders and out of Simply to look at the policies or ship in isolation from the specific con- ditions which shaped their options and their actions is as futile as trying to analyse the defeat of the British The evolution of the Cuban revolution cannot be properly their scope for action was political origins of the Castro leader- 1984 miners' strike without examin- Castro speaking in Havana their direct control. PHOTO: Julie Etchard/ Reflex
•Cuba is an island: but Nicuragua's Costa Rica have given Somoza's old und mount continual cross border promoling a extensive borders with Honduras and National Guard and other CLA-back- ed mercenaries the chance to regroup •Soviet leaderships since 1979 have shown little or no economic or military commitment to delend Nicaragun, and used their leverage on Gorbachev is if anything less likely •The Sandinista leaders themscives, Havana to limit Cuba's involvement. conflict in Washington's "back-yard" sabotage and terrorism; than Brezhnev to risk supply of armaments to Cuba: and this in lum was followed by the most Khruschev's pledge to use Soviet tee the defence of the infant revolu- tionary regime 90 miles from Florida. sequent Soviet policy on the much Khruschev plainly hoped that a spin-off from this would be to site Soviet intermediate range missiles in Kennedy's ICBM treat Though in the 1962 'Cuban missiles crisis' thin remarkable promise of all - armed force, even missiles, to guaran- Cuba - a low-budget response to This stands in sharp contrast to sub- EMEN more distant Nicaragun. E M tempt showed the extent to which the old reactionaries had simply upped By 1961 the abject failure of Kennedy's Bay of Pigs invasion at- and left Cuba to carry on their nefarious activities in Miami or clac- The second, quite decisive, factor was the changes taking place in Krem- lin policy from 1960 onwards. The economic crisis at home, was also wrestling with the problem of how to counter a new US military build-up Krusche leadership, beset by an aggressively promoted by new sabre- lion of the major capitalists. Washington's "Gorbachev Brezhnev to promoting less likely conflict in anything, than risk is if
Their goal is not a workers state or spiration to many millions of workers. ception of Nicaragua, every attempt to for all their courageous defiance of LTS pressure, have always insisted that socialismi, but a mixed oconomy. Itis by no means ceitain that even if total exteral support were forthcoming the Sandinistas would opr for the "Cuban Road' Significantly Fidel Castro hirself has been among those on, therefore, the Cuban Revolution stands as an in- and peasants around the world, but not tionary struggles. With the partial ex- export the "lessons" of the Cuban struggle have proved a total disaster, a finished "model" for today's revolu- advising them not to. Thirty years option was abandoned, the commit- ment to Cuba has remained a major since 1959. The closest companson (and expensive) aspect of Kremlin No similar situation has opened up would be with the huge military sup port given by the Soviet bureaucracy (and Cuba) to the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia since 1977. However this support ran no risk of direct US retalialion, and simply served to regime against US-backed des- tabilisation and legitimate national liberation struggles of the Eritrean and In fact it has been not Cuba - with its break from both imperialist and na- lional capital, its military and protect Mengistu's reactionary strategy and foreign policy. other oppressed peoples. Missiles (ICBMs) capable of hitting Khruschev was also facing a new ing as levers of diplomatic pressure communist parties in the 'third world' influence' agreed with imperialism in cluding new Intercontinental Ballistic within the once monolithic Man Zedong's tional communist parties and seeking For years, the Moscow Line for (and especially Latin America) had heen to respect the speheres of the post-war settlement, and seek al- rattling president Kennedy, and in- political competitor to Moscow's in- Chinese bureaucracy had emerged in open opposition, splitting various na- a new periphery of contacts for Beij- Soviet targets from US soil. against imperialism. fluence 'backyard.""
In stressing the material gains for Cuban workers and the superiority of the Cuban system to the viciously ex- ploitative capitalist reginies of Latin America and elsewhere, we must not While welcoming the inter- fort that is helping to defend Angola from South African and reactionary terrorist attacks, we should remember that Soviet endorsement of this is also Linked to Cuban military involvement in repressing the Eritican struggle for costing the lives of thousands of gal- derwritten by multi-billion dollur sub- nationalist of the Cuhan military of- forget the extent to which this is un Lant guerrilla fighters. sidies from the USSR self-determination. similation into the Kremlin orbit -that has been the model for subsequent ferent calibre from Cuba's Fidelistas, but different, too, was the attitude of as a mass movement was many times July 26 Movement, the defeat of economic reliance upon Soviet sup port and its subsequent political as liberation movements, so much as Al- The Ben Bella leadership of the Al- gerian anti-imperialist National Liberation Front (FLN) was of a dif- the USSR, which was not scriously in- terested in Algeria or repared to offer substantial support. Though the FLN stronger than Castro's ramshackle French imperialism was followed not by a break from imperialism but a final months of the dictatorship. The to jockey between their instincts - of imperialism: they wanted to head off This line in Cuba had led the CP into maoists, on the other hand, while still embracing popular frontist politics, leaned much more towards the type of The Kremlin leaders therefore had and their need to swing back their "anti- imperialist" sections of capitalists. writing was clearly on the wall in the glohal relationship of forces with US a long-term accomodation with Batis ta, and vigorous opposition to Castro's guerrilla movement until the suspicion towards revolutionary guerrilla tactics favoured by Castro. movements not under their control liances with "progressive" inspiration revolution stands as to many Cuban ..the an
Jaruzelski and his ilk. the grey-faced bureaucrats who have led only police- state regimes in castem Europe. But popularity, Castro's survival is partly because he now represents the 'ac- pleasant contrast to General for all his achievements and SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 11 December 1988/January 1989 The book Cuba; Radical Face of Stalinism by John Lister is still avallable at £4.50 ceptable', radical face of Stalinism. including postage, from Fidel Castro may provide Socialist Outlook recently seen in action against militant dominated by national capitalists, renegotiation of terms and the reconstruction of the bourgeois stnte machinery, which we have just Very different, too, was the situa tion after the 1979 Sandinista victory •Unlike Cuha, which had been a major base of US investment, the Nicaraguan economy was weak, and substantial sections of which had thrown in their lot with the anti- Somoza struggle - but then stayed on as a vocal and stubbom obstacle to over dictator Somoza in Nicaragua workers and youth. of liberation struggles - but without Beijing for support. When Moscow: authority in the emerging movement Castro and Guevara were able to blockade by turning to Moscow and Soviet economic aid war followed - responding to the escalating US persuade Beijing to show support - Chinese challenge to their triggering a new surge of potentially lake advantage of this unique opening boycott of Cuban sugar and economic was slow to respond, Guevara would and then retur to negotiate more from by what has ever since remained a free embarrassing revolutionary action. revolutionary workers and struggles." around the 'model for millions of world, but peasants finished not as a today's Page 24
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which are transforming the mode of government and state power In the 1970s, sections of the left — most notably the Workers to whatis, in the third term of Thatcherism, a real drift to the strong vent of the strong state becuase they think that provided we don't have either full military dictatorship or fascism, tben we must bave an unproblematic "bourgeois democracy". This was not Trotsky's in Britain. In assessing this, it is necessary not just to look at for- mal, juridical forms — although these are very important - but the Revolutionary Party - argued that Britain already had, or was abour to bave, a form of dictatorship. These absurd and catastrophist declarations have in my view almost numbed the left Many comrades in the socialist movement are blind to the ad- Page 25 real social content of various instances of power. In itself this is a drastic and extremely authoritarian piece of unions, drastic new restrictions on the right to strike in moury of any other advanced capitalist state. The guidelines call But it is just one of an array of violent attacks on democratic rights WHILE Mrs Thatcher was in Poland praising free trade While not being legally enforceable, they will be taken into account' by judges when deciding if particular These guidelines are far beyord anything in the judicial ar- for a 70 per cent 'yes' vote in strike ballots before industrial ac- hon is undertaken, and conditions on ballots which put all the legislation for a bourgeois democracy to introduce in peacetime. Britain were being outlined in a new "code of practice' SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 11 December 1988/January 1989 cards in the hands of scabs and management. strikes are lawful.
----- pull-quotes on this page ----- CE Who's next for the treatment? Thatcher has massively increased police powers