It is only on the surface that the Cuban movements, of which the ‘barbudos’ have been and remain the iconic figures, are linked to those that have shaken the traditional order in Asia and Africa to its very foundations.

The violent struggle against imperialism and the major monopolies is a common feature of both. However, in the case of the Afro-Asian countries, the struggle for national independence, which aims at the establishment of unitary States (and is therefore directed against the colonial powers and the financial yoke of imperialist capitalism) masks a broader, more fundamental aspect of the struggle against traditional, feudal, or para-feudal structures. In Cuba, and in Latin America in general, albeit to varying degrees, capitalism has, for decades now, been imported by the United States and other capitalist countries, and the domestic economy has long featured a fundamentally bourgeois structure and, consequently, a social structure resting on a substantial and overexploited proletariat.

In the latter case, the objective of the anti-colonial ‘revolution’ lies in the efforts of the young indigenous bourgeoisie to free itself from the subjugation of foreign finance capital (in whose shadow it has, nevertheless, grown up) or, depending on the circumstances, to establish a relationship of co-participation with it in the profits realised from the exploitation of local resources, using, to this end, the momentum of the rebellion of the proletarian and semi-proletarian masses, channelling it towards the nationalist objective, preventing any possibility of a social-revolutionary orientation, and using it as a springboard to consolidate its own position at the helm of the State. The movements and regimes emerging in this region, of which the Cuban example offers the ‘purest’ model, present themselves as violently nationalist abroad and as reformist at home. In relation to the outside world, they fulfil a historical function in the rupture of the imperialist balance, which can, and in fact does, provoke crises of prestige and serious economic difficulties in the major centres of bourgeois piracy (particularly in the U.S.), the violent outbreak of which cannot leave the world proletariat and the revolutionary Communist Party ‘indifferent’. At home, they act as a brake on social conflicts. Consequently, the question of armed support for nationalist parties from the international and indigenous proletariat does not arise, for the problem of ‘turning the wheel of history forward’ does not exist, since, in this region, there are no residual pre-capitalist structures to be destroyed. On the other hand, the problem does arise of denouncing the bourgeois reformist objectives of these parties and of bringing about the separation of the working class from inter-classist parties and regimes, whilst proclaiming the open struggle of the proletariat for the conquest of power.

In the specific case of Cuba, the revolutionary proletariat can capitalise on the drubbings inflicted either on the American sugar and oil giants, or on their government which intervened in the name of the ‘freedom’ and ‘self-determination’ of peoples, as well as the unmasking of these ideological false flags; but it must mock and combat the Castroist pretension to have accomplished a ‘social revolution’ and, worse still, to have built, out of the blue, a ‘socialist republic’ with the blessing, as one might expect, of the other centre of global racketeering: the Kremlin.

The Stalinist-Khrushchevites, travelling salesmen for inter-classist ‘people’s regimes’ christened as progressive and even socialist, are not the only ones to create and spread the myth of socialist Cuba, which, incidentally, plays into the hands of the bourgeoisie, who are desperate for radicalism and preach the possibility of social ‘revolution’ without a class party and therefore without Marxism. They are aided by national-communists à la Tito and by those who, to the misfortune of the great Russian revolutionary, proclaim themselves to be Trotskyists.

Yet the character of the Cuban ‘social revolution’ appears clearly not only through the statements, even the most recent ones, made by Castro and the Kremlin Fathers, but also through the analyses of these statements made by crypto-Stalinist groups. In its December 1959 issue, the journal ‘Cahiers Internationaux’ defined the Castroist ‘revolution’ with great satisfaction, as follows: ‘A revolution which, in the current historical period, respects private property, does not seek to break with the framework of national capitalism (the aim is rather to develop it), but with that of foreign monopolistic financial capitalism. A revolution that can follow a peaceful path within the framework of constitutional legality... etc.’; and, in the February 1961 issue: ‘The Cuban Revolution was “born with a caul”. The solidarity and devotion of its people, the isolation, the political bankruptcy and moral abjection of its adversaries, saved the country from the administrative chaos and economic upheavals that could have resulted from a long and destructive civil war (these people particularly disparage civil war and its ‘risks’ – Ed.)’. Respect for private property became the centre of the great Barbudo government’s declarations and actions even after the momentous events that saw the U.S. shamefully driven back into the sea. On the other hand, the Castroist movement only began to appear revolutionary to the Pentagon and the White House, which had viewed it favourably because of its opposition to Batista’s corrupt regime, on the very day it violated the sacred property rights of a few American citizens. It ended up being relegated to the realm of the outcasts when, in the face of Yankee reprisals, the Castroist regime showed itself willing to align with the communist bloc, at least in the spheres of trade and diplomatic manoeuvring. The blessings of the Catholic hierarchy were not lacking at the birth of the Cuban ‘new society’; nor are there any shortage of pro-Barbudo proclamations from American economists and sociologists who are, nevertheless, staunch opponents of Marxism. We shall examine later the reality of the economic transformation initiated by Castro. For the moment, what has just been outlined is sufficient to refute its socialist character.

It is necessary, even if only in an imperfect way, to outline the fundamental points in the island’s development since its independence from Spain with the help of the U.S., in order to understand its current development.

It is since 1898 that Lenin’s words, in his pamphlet Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, can be applied to Cuba, as to most countries in Latin America: ‘Not only are the two main groups of countries, those owning colonies, and the colonies themselves, but also the diverse forms of dependent countries which, politically, are formally independent, but in fact, are enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence, typical of this epoch. We have already referred to one form of dependence – the semi-colony. An example of another is provided by Argentina’. Lenin added a quotation from Schulze Gaevernitz taken from a work on British imperialism (Leipzig 1906): ‘South America, and especially Argentina, is so dependent financially on London that it ought to be described as almost a British commercial colony’. Likewise, we can say that since 1898, Cuba has been a commercial dependency of the U.S., the very same country that had facilitated its attainment of political independence.

It should be noted, however, that the intervention of U.S. troops against Spain took place at a time when the Cuban national rebellion had already all but secured victory over the Spanish. Be that as it may, the American troops who landed in Havana were to remain there for four years. And, from 1901 onwards, agreements concluded between the Cuban government and Washington granted, among other things, preferential tariff treatment for American commodities and capital entering Cuba, along with concessions and special prices for land. Furthermore, Cuba relinquished the right (what a strange sort of political independence!) to sign commercial treaties or take out loans with countries other than the U.S. The result was clear: U.S. investment in Cuba amounted to nearly one billion dollars in 1929 (in 1958, still 850 million); whilst in the same year nearly 70% of Cuban exports went to the U.S.A. and 65% of Cuba’s imports came from the United States. With regard to investment, it should be noted that the 1958 figure (850 million dollars) represents the largest amount of capital exported by the United States anywhere in the world (military programmes excepted). Between 1901 and 1933, the entire island, or at least 90% of its arable land, became the property of American companies through long-term leases. The remainder is mortgaged to American banks or US creditors. Alongside the tobacco industry, the second largest after sugar, all the banks, railways, urban transport companies, power stations, P.T.T. (post, telegraph, telecommunications, ed.), and other public utilities were owned by U.S. capital, not to mention the oil resources and mining operations. Virtually all the largest U.S. firms are in Cuba, which thus constituted the chosen field for American imperialism for nearly half a century.

In 1958, Cuba produced approximately 5,800,000 tonnes of cane sugar, accounting for almost 90% of world production and virtually all marketable supply. From a production level of 1 million tonnes between 1895 and 1900, it rose to over 5 million tonnes by 1925, driven by American capital and its predilection for this type of investment. Simultaneously, the proportion of land devoted to sugar cane plantations rapidly reached nearly 70% of cultivated land and accounted for 60% of the total workforce.

Refined sugar, accounting for 80% of the value of Cuban exports, is manufactured in factories, 40 of which are owned by American proprietors processing nearly half of the harvest, whilst the Cuban proprietors, owners of the remaining 120 establishments, share the rest of the production capacity.

Everyone knows that the dominance of American finance capital had the effect of increasing the monoculture, over large areas, of sugar cane and tobacco. This monoculture has led to a further concentration of private land ownership, the expropriation and pauperisation of the small peasantry; it has increased the vulnerability of the local economy to crises (dependence on the vagaries of the world market); and increased the risk of famine to such an extent that Cuba is regarded as one of the major centres of the ‘economy of hunger’. Suffice it to say that rice, an essential component of the local diet, formerly cultivated on a vast scale, must now almost entirely be imported; this entails an expenditure of 20 million dollars each year. Economic and political dependence, the fragility of productive structures, proletarianisation, chronic poverty and famine, and, on this basis, the succession of ultra-corrupt governments, representing at once the interests of both big foreign capital and Cuban aristocratic property; such is the balance sheet of sixty years of independence under the protective wing of Yankee piracy.

This monstrous capitalism, grafted onto a semi-slaveowning regime run by large landowners, has engendered, in Cuba, a large and superexploited proletariat and lumpenproletariat, languishing in appalling indigence.

Out of a working population of around 2 million people, one and a half million are made up of pure wage-earners, of whom more than 800,000 are agricultural workers. The middle classes, comprising employers, artisans, and those in the liberal professions, number only half a million in total. Added to the considerable proletarianisation of the Cuban population is the phenomenon of urbanisation. Of a total population of 6,200,000, at least a third is concentrated in 9 cities. The city of Havana alone is home to nearly 1,200,000 people who scrape by thanks to the port, the refineries, tourism, small-scale sporadic trade (and, if necessary, smuggling) and the ‘services’ demanded by foreign vessels and the American base at Guantanamo. 500,000 agricultural workers depend on the sugar industry, being employed for only 4 months of the year, during the harvests. Unemployment during the seasonal ‘tiempo muerto’ reaches 15 to 20%. Given the importance of anarcho-syndicalist traditions, the rapid capitalist takeover of the Cuban economy resulted in a re-grouping of wage-earners in trade union organisations: more than a third of agricultural and urban proletarians are unionised. Only a few Black people and the ‘guajiros’ (whom we shall discuss later) refuse to join.

It is easy to see what revolutionary potential such a vast, reserveless mass of people held. Yet, when the peasant and working masses poured into Havana to demonstrate against Batista’s government, the ‘26 July Movement’ ⁽¹⁾ was already prepared to offer them power in the form of integration into a Popular Front government with the purely bourgeois objectives of democracy and national independence, supported by radical elements: students, intellectuals, and the petty and middle bourgeois from both the countryside and the city. It was essential at all costs to ‘avoid chaos’, that is to say, to prevent the proletarian masses from stepping outside the framework of legality: it was thus that they proceeded towards... socialism.

The guajiros are the descendants of the first Spanish settlers who did not receive sufficient plots of land to prosper. For the most part illiterate, impoverished landowners or tenant-sharecroppers; they are now grouped into associations of smallholders and farmers, associations set up by the Cuban ‘revolutionaries’; they thus have a decisive say not only in decisions concerning agrarian reform, but also in the choice of crops to be planted in place of industrial crops such as sugar and tobacco, etc... and their views as well as their decisions are inspired by the desire to escape proletarianisation, to which the industrial concentration of land condemned them, due to their mounting debt. This is therefore a highly reactionary element because, under the pretext of crop diversification, it steers agrarian reform towards extreme fragmentation. Now, freeing Cuba from the monstrous bondage of monoculture was clearly called for; but dividing the land into small private plots is a petty-bourgeois and anti-proletarian objective which weighs heavily upon the development of the Cuban movement.

Arrested following the attempt of July 1953, F. Castro defended himself during his trial, basing himself on the 1940 constitution, which recognised the right to revolt, and citing examples of modern anti-feudal revolutions as well as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Declaration of Independence of the United States. In his plea, which is now regarded as his programme, he included the restoration of civil liberties and political democracy. From an economic perspective, he called for the allocation of land to smallholders, ownership that could neither be mortgaged nor transferred, the nationalisation of public services, and the return to the people of telephone and telegraph charges that had been unduly levied. As for the workers, Castro proposed the right to share up to 30% of the profits of all industrial, mining, and commercial enterprises, including sugar mills.

Having come to power in January 1959, what objectives will Castro tackle, and at what pace? In a Central American country where police dictatorships have ruled since 1930, where the national bourgeoisie itself is weak, where the rebel base is constituted by landless peasants, and where, finally, a proportion of small industrial and commercial enterprises is ruined by the enormous financial concentration of the United States, the first act is to reduce rents, lower food prices, increase the lowest wages, and tackle the chronic problem of unemployment. In the agrarian sphere, land is divided into plots which are allocated to families and farmers, whilst production cooperatives are set up in regions where sugar cane is grown.

But the mere fact of introducing such measures into the American investment haven amounts to an attack on the United States. Thus, once the stage of threats has passed, we witness the chain reaction of retaliatory measures from the Washington government, to which the new Cuban government can respond more effectively than the governments of Guatemala or other South American republics that have rebelled against the United States because it has, pre-emptively, ‘capped’ its revolution by presenting itself as the leader of a popular movement in which the proletariat is submerged in the peasant mass demanding land, and as the journal ‘Cahiers Internationaux’ puts it: ‘Job security, more humane working conditions and fair wages’.

In response to the American attacks on Cuba, the Castro government, in the early months of 1960, reacted by first seizing control of, and then nationalising, foreign-owned property, mainly that belonging to the United States. This was first the case with the oil refineries, controlled by American companies, which refused to refine crude oil from the Soviet Union, and then with the sugar mills. In May 1960, of the 1,620,000 hectares of land devoted to sugar cane, approximately 1 million came under the control of the Cuban government. Half would remain reserved for sugar cane cultivation, whilst the rest would be planted with other plant species. Of the 400,000 farms now controlled by the Cuban government, 230,000 were placed under the direct management of the central government, whilst outright expropriation affected only 10 per cent of the total that had been investigated. The purchase of 350 farms alone cost nearly 8 million US dollars, three-quarters of which was paid in 20-year Cuban treasury bonds (the value of which is based on the property tax levied on small plots). Generally speaking, the expropriations have affected landowners who supported Batista, companies where labour disputes have recently been frequent, and US monopolies. So far, only mining companies – also US-owned – have been spared. It is also known (and this has been repeated many times in recent days) that the ‘agrarian reform’ does not affect properties larger than 400 hectares. It is therefore even more timid than the reform implemented by Nasser, not to mention that it leaves companies that are reasonably efficient untouched.

The government has finally launched an industrialisation programme; an urgent issue in all Latin American republics, characterised by the abnormal and highly unbalanced development of the capitalist economy, which develops one or just a few industrial sectors linked to the exploitation of natural resources, whilst sacrificing or stifling the others; this problem is all the more urgent given the chronic prevalence of total or partial unemployment. But for such plans to be realised, within the framework of a radical-bourgeois ‘revolution’, they require ‘aid’ from big foreign finance that is anything but ‘gracious’. This is why, given that Cuba’s external debt is increasing by around 50 million US dollars (at the time of Batista’s flight, it stood at 1.5 billion dollars) and the stock of unsold cane sugar from the 1959 harvest is 1 million tonnes, neutral buyers first, followed by the Russians, the Chinese, or other people’s democracies, are most welcome. The Russians purchased 1,700,000 tonnes initially, followed by a further 345,000 tonnes. What a windfall (F. Castro threw himself into Khrushchev’s arms at the UN); but at what price? At least the same price as the USA? Not at all. The USA had guaranteed to purchase 3 million tonnes of sugar, year in, year out, at the 1957 price, that is to say, 5 cents a pound. Yet the international price had fallen to 2.78 cents a pound; the Russians made their new friend pay the world market price! The rest is recent history. In any case, the violent clash with the USA and the farcical proclamation of the ‘socialist republic’ have done nothing to alter the fundamental characteristics of an inter-classist, radical-democratic and nationalist-statist regime.

One might wonder what role the Cuban Communist Party may have played in the events that led to the triumph of the 26 July Movement.

Founded in the province of Oriente in 1919, the Communist Party was outlawed by Machado, the first Cuban dictator installed by the USA. Forced underground, and once Stalinism had taken hold in the USSR, it became an instrument of Soviet foreign policy, embarking on ventures similar to those of the Chinese Communist Party.

With Hitler’s rise to power and the onset of Stalin’s anti-fascist policy, 1933 also marked the year in which the Soviet Union was recognised by the United States (President F.D. Roosevelt). One of the favours offered by Stalin to Roosevelt during the negotiations leading up to this recognition was the Soviet Union’s assistance in quelling the revolutionary unrest in Cuba, which was then in full swing: workers were seizing factories and forming local Soviets. Apart from Moscow’s complete silence on these events, the Communist International’s policy of non-intervention thus openly sabotaged the efforts of the Cuban proletariat. In the years leading up to the Second World War, and particularly around 1938, in order to follow the Popular Front line, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party even decided ‘to adopt a positive attitude towards Colonel Batista, since he has ceased to be the centre of reaction and now professes democracy’! Batista returned the favour by legalising the Cuban Communist Party. For six years (1938–1944), until the outbreak of the witch-hunts in the USA and the start of the Cold War, the Cuban Communist Party even collaborated with Batista’s various puppet governments and with the electoral coalitions set up by the United States in Cuba. It even appears that the Cuban Communist Party used its influence over the trade unions to prevent them from taking action, or to bring them under government control where possible. In any case, the Communists never gave the slightest support to F. Castro’s 26 July Movement; on the contrary, even at the height of Batista’s reign of terror, they attacked it. Now the only party to officially continue its activities outside government structures, and operating under the name of the Popular Socialist Party (since 1944), the Communists reaffirmed in September 1960 their support for F. Castro’s aims and objectives, whilst recognising that the measures already taken, though not in themselves socialist, were certainly leading in that direction!

Proud and majestic America, in the early years of this century, replaced splendid and perfidious Albion as the dominant power in the world. As soon as the First World War had ended, Lenin and Trotsky had already identified the location of the new bastion of counter-revolution. The monster of capitalist domination had changed its name, but the proletarian strategy remained the same. In the last century, no socialist movement could have any chance of success unless the proletarian struggle succeeded in overthrowing British power; similarly, today, the communist revolution can only triumph by destroying that of the United States.

It was in England’s interest to maintain the European balance of power in order to avoid the repercussions that revolutionary movements might have on its working class. In effect, it bought off the working class by giving it a share – a tiny one, it is true – in the super-profits derived from the exploitation of the whole world. To maintain social peace in Europe, it found a natural ally in Tsarist Russia, which feared two revolutions: the bourgeois and the proletarian. These two powers, although competing in Asia and the Middle East (the famous ‘Eastern Question’), always sought to limit the consequences of their conflicts, always opting, as a last resort, for the status quo for fear that the imbalance caused by one or the other gaining too much ground might encourage the emergence of the other power that both hated and which had already made them tremble: revolution.

Today, then, the United States has taken the place of Britain; but it, too, has found an ally in Russia, which has gone from being tsarist to Soviet – a Russia cloaked in the guise of revolution. Their common enemy remains the same: the communist revolution, which has grown in strength over the past century, as it is now a ‘current’ issue for the whole world.

The Tsar of All Russia believed that if His Britannic Majesty were willing to form an alliance with him, no power could challenge the policy that the two of them would advocate. Similarly, today, Khrushchev believes that the fate of the world depends on good relations between the USSR and the USA. To make this possible, the other powers (France and Britain in particular) must be eliminated. This is why the famous summit conference of the ‘Big Four’ turned into a meeting between just two nations. The fledgling capitalism of the East is forming an alliance with that of the Federal Republic, which has reached maturity, in order to maintain the status quo.

The ‘Cuban Revolution’ clearly illustrates this; the same pattern is repeated in other parts of the world: Laos, the Congo and, in a more subtle way, Algeria.

The revolution was quelled in Europe (including Russia) and in North America. The wave of bourgeois revolution that had swept through Asia after 1945, spreading to Africa after 1950, petered out and died because it had fulfilled its role: the establishment of nation states. Now another protagonist is emerging in these last two regions: the proletariat, and with it the communist revolution. Consequently, at the present time, any upheaval in the economic foundations may provoke autonomous action by the proletariat in any of these regions, and also in the old capitalist metropolises; consequently, to keep the world within the bounds of social peace, so that capital may reproduce itself freely, the production of commodities may increase and trade may thus flourish, the new Holy Alliance (forged in Vienna, just like its predecessor of over 100 years ago) between the Russian virgin and the American pimp is necessary to counter the revolution.

But there are parts of the world where revolution is a permanent feature; such as Central and Latin America. Will the United States, with the help of its Soviet ally, succeed in channelling the development of this continent and keeping the proletariat under control? Events in Cuba show that this is difficult. In fact, this entire continent plays the same role vis-à-vis the United States as Algeria does vis-à-vis France. It is primarily from there that American capitalists derive their enormous profits, a portion of which they can use to ‘buy off’ the working class in their own country. These countries form the bedrock of their global hegemony.

Is social peace eternal in the United States, as the theorists of the welfare state, popular capitalism, marginalism, and so on would have us believe? Just as there can be no eternity for capitalism, there can be none for social peace either. The shock that will ‘awaken the American proletariat’ may well come from Latin America. Indeed, any challenge to the power of finance capital cannot take place without serious repercussions in the USA. The champions of classical anti-colonialism will be forced to recognise that the limits of their power lie there, that the conditions for their downfall are being prepared there, because sooner or later the revolution will be brought back to them in retaliation for the brutal exploitation they have perpetrated. Proud America will, in turn, have to admit that a social problem exists within its own borders as well, and in so doing it will proclaim its failure: the impossibility of bourgeoisifying the proletariat, of ensuring its security, even at the cost of exploiting the rest of the world.

In Cuba, as in other Latin American countries and as in the Algeria of tomorrow, the indigenous proletariat will dominate the political scene. Once again, the bourgeoisie, that sorcerer’s apprentice, will fail to contain the forces which, willingly or not, it will have called up. The myth of Cuba’s ‘socialism’, a socialism imposed from above and compatible with private property, commodity production, and the wage system, a socialism that is nothing but a farcical disguise for capitalism, which can only survive by denying its own existence, will vanish. Is that all? No, as we have said, this will have the knock-on effect of causing the American working class to break away from its bourgeoisie, and then the question of the link between the proletariat of the North and that of the South may arise, in order to prepare the assault on the citadel of global capitalism. Proud and powerful America, your time will come!