Peter Binns

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Peter Binns & Mike Gonzalez

Cuba, Castro and Socialism(1980)

First published in International Socialism Journal 2:8 (Spring 1980), pp.1-36.Reprinted as a pamphlet June 1983 (and several times later) by theSocialist WorkersParty.Transcribed by Michael Gavin and marked up by Jrn Andersen for MarxismeOnline, March 2000.

Downloaded with thanks from Marxisme Online.Marked up by Einde OCallaghan forREDS Die Roten.

Twenty one years have passed since the time Castros rebel army, backed by a loosecoalition of intellectuals the 26th July Movement destroyed the US-backed Batistaregime and began to effect fundamental changes in Cuban society. What exactly did itachieve? Does it provide the Third World with an alternative and viable road tosocialism to that of Moscows stultifying bureaucrats? Can its methods be repeatedelsewhere? These questions have been posed even more sharply by recent events inChina China for so long the brightest star on the eastern horizon, but which now

participates in joint foreign policy initiatives with the USA in Afghanistan, andencourages the entry of western capital and a more sharply differentiated society athome. The limelight is therefore inevitably on Cuba; has it remained faithful to itssocialist principles? Did it indeed ever have any? Or, like China, when one probes

beneath the surface at all seriously do they disappear into thin air?

Many indeed have had no doubts at all about the socialist nature of Cubas revolution.Thus C. Wright Mills for instance concluded that it was a revolutionary dictatorship

of the peasants and workers of Cuba in which one man possessed virtually absolutepower. This somewhat bizarre view was the more remarkable for representing a wideconsensus on the question; from Paul Johnson in the New Statesman who waxedlyrically on Cubas genuine dictatorship of the proletariat even if it was expressedthrough the arbitrary rule of one man, to Joseph Hansen and the FourthInternational who claimed somewhat less lyrically that in the final analysis, theoverturn in property relations in Cuba is an echo of the October 1917 revolution inRussia, and therefore Cuba entered the transitional phase of a workers state,although one lacking as yet the forms of democratic proletarian rule. [1]

On what were these very widespread claims based? And how have they stood the test

of time? Finally, how can we now characterise the direction in which Cuba isheading? These are questions we shall examine in this article.
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was toppled by Batista and the army, the movement was greatly weakened. After afailed General Strike in 1935, Batista murdered hundreds of leading working classmilitants and declared virtual war on the CCP.

By 1938, in pursuance with the Comintern line of unity with progressive forces, the

CCP was ready to do a deal with Batista. It was an alliance which was consummatedin the 1940 Constitution. Along with his policy of giving the local capitalists a largershare of the sugar industry. Batista sought to enlarge the slate machine and toincorporate the trade unions into it. The Cuban Workers Federation (CTC), foundedin 1940, was part of that strategy. Two Communists entered Batistas Cabinet andanother took control of the CTC. The CCP had abandoned independent working class

politics for a nationalist populism which focussed on the national interest. Thus,despite the fact that the party had grown, the government was able to take control ofthe CTC in 1947 and ban the CCP.

The new union leaders were gangsters. The unions limited membership was relatively

privileged economically but any political opposition was violently crushed. The ruralworkers, on the other hand, remained poor and badly organised. the majority of

plantation workers were unemployed for 5 or 6 months every year. 31% of thepopulation had no education at all, 29.4% had three years or less, 3.5% had been tohigh school, and only 1% to university.

The other current of opposition was petit bourgeois in origin. So long as the wholeeconomy remained dependent on the USA, the less powerful sectors of the urbanmiddle class could not develop. They together with middle farmers, small peasantsand university students, formed the backbone of the nationalist opposition. After thesemi-incorporation of the organised working class, they formed the onlypoliticalopposition to Batista. The Partido Ortodoxo, under Eduardo Chibas, grouped variousdissidents including the revolutionary student group, the Directorio Revolutionario.which had played a significant role in 1933 and was, in 1953, to organise the assaulton the Moncada barracks.

It was out of this, fundamentally non-working class, tradition, that Castro and theother leaders of the 1959 revolution came. Their background was in an ideology ofindependent national development which had been betrayed time and again by corrupt

politicians who had failed to reform Cuban society. But, at the same time, socialismwas entirely discredited and the potential mass base for a revolutionary organisation

the working class was effectively insulated from political action.

Castros most complete political manifesto was delivered at his trial after the failureof the attack on the Moncada barracks on 26 July 1953. This speech,History willabsolve me is a fine fighting speech, but its politics are radical reformism. Castro wasto have been an Ortodoxo candidate in the 1952 elections which had been forestalled

by a military coup led by Batista, and the speech is cast in that mould. It calls foragrarian reform, for proper social services and lower rents, and for controls on UScapital.

Castro was released in a 1954 amnesty and went to Mexico, where he began to

organise a guerrilla group that landed in Cuba from the motor-boat Granma in late1956. In the course of the guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra mountains, he


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delivered another speech which, once again, stresses his distance from theCommunists:

What right does Senor Batista have to speak of Communism? After all, in theelections of 1940 he was the candidate of the Communist Party ... his portrait hung

next to Blas Rocas and Lazaro Penas; and half a dozen ministers and confidants ofhis are leading members of the CP. [2]

The nature of the 1959 Revolution illustrates the divergence between these twocurrents. The 12 members of the 26 July Movement who survived the Granma landingestablished a guerrilla front in the Sierra Maestra mountains and, by late 1957, asecond one in Escambray. Both of these were distant from the working-class centres,and the working class had no place in the guerrillas central strategy.

In marked contrast to the general strike and other workers activities that destroyedthe earlier dictatorship of General Machado in 1933, the workers in the 1958/9

revolution played no central role at all. They did however participate in two generalstrikes against the Batista regime: in 1957 and again in April 1958. The former wasspontaneous and successful, and as a result of this Castros 26th July Movementattempted to build the struggle in the cities by organising another on the same lines.The Communist Party refused to support the second strike, and it was terriblymismanaged by the Fidelistas. Outside Havana working class support for it wasalmost complete, but the overall effect was disastrous all the same. Instead of leadingto increased opposition to dissipated it. From then on Castro ignored the workingclass, concentrating exclusively on the guerrilla struggle.

Like almost every other section of Cuban society, the workers hated Batista and hisboot boys. But they did not do so as workers, and so in general they did not connectthis with any specific social goals beyond toppling the dictator. Batista emasculatedthe trade unions by declaring strikes illegal, but the workers failed to create organs oftheir own to fight back either clandestine or legal. It might be thought that this wascontradicted by the fact that general strikes took place. In fact it is not, it is entirelyconsistent with it. For the general strikes were not organised in and through theworkplace. In fact they were not organised by workers at all. In the first case thespontaneous walk-outs were generalised through the bourgeois and petit-bourgeoisorganisations of the Instituciones Civicas, the students organisations, even religiousand professional organisations. In the second case the same groupings, but this time

under the hegemony of the 26th July Movement, organised the strike from thebeginning, coordinated (or rather miscoordinated) through clandestine radios and soon. In other words in both general strikes workers were helping to build (to a greateror lesser degree) institutions ofcollaboration between all classes, and ones whichwere under the hegemony of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois elements. Instead of

building their own organisations and their own independent strength, and only thenunder their own leadership collaborating with other social strata for the specific

purpose of bringing down Batista exactly the reverse happened to the Cuban workingclass in 1957-59. [3]

By 1958, it was clear that Batista enjoyed no support outside of the state machine

itself. The fall of Batista was the result of the work of the guerrillas, but there was noclass who wanted him to continue in power. Thus, when Castro entered Havana in
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January 1959, the 26 July movement a group of radical students, professionals andsome peasants walked into a vacuum of power.

For the Cuban Communist Party, the victory of Castro was a problem. They haddenounced the organisers of the attack on the Moncada barracks as bourgeois

putschists. In 1956 and 1957 they had ignored the guerrillas. Some claimed that theyhad a working arrangement with the Batista regime. It was only in 1958 that theyeven opened negotiations with Castro.

The victory of the revolution faced Castro with the task of building a new order. Buthe had neither the organisation nor a clear class base to work on. In the first fewmonths bourgeois politicians held government posts while Communists moved intolocal administration. There was no doubt that the 26 July Movement had masssupport. The question was: what was the nature of the support?

Unlike in 1933, the masses had no organs of workers defence and power. Power lay

with the barbudos, the bearded guerrillas who had fought the war The commandstructure of the revolutionary army would be reproduced in government. The new,honest, administrators would be revolutionaries and that would be sufficient guarantee

that, at least, was how Castro saw it. For the people, however, despite theirenthusiastic support for the barbudos, the task was to be limited to that of spectatorsand recipients of the revolutionary process. The process itself was to be carriedthrough by the real, proven revolutionaries in the olive-green uniforms.

1959-60: Our revolution is neither capitalist nor communist

We are a small country situated only a very short distance away from the UnitedStates. The deformation of our economy through imperialist influence has made usvery dependent on imports, even for the most basic of foodstuffs of the people. Inview of this, any leftist extremist tendency, any exaggerated measures ... to be appliedor implemented by the revolution, and any attempt to disregard the realities and theconcrete difficulties confronting the Cuban revolution must be rejected. (CP CentralCommittee, May 25th. 1959)

Our revolution is neither capitalist nor communist! ... Capitalism sacrifices thehuman being, communism with its totalitarian conceptions sacrifices human rights.We agree neither with the one nor with the other ... Our revolution is not red but olive

green. It bears the colour of the rebel army from the Sierra Maestra. (Fidel Castro,May 21st. 1959)

Very few people deny that the 1959 revolution was supported by virtually everysection of Cuban society, and was (and still largely remains) incredibly popular.Again it is generally admitted that it was the collapse of the Batista regime andabove all the army that led to the victory of the rebels, rather than a bitter struggle

between social classes. The rebels found themselves the inheritors of an economywith a great deal of slack in it, but with no ready-made state apparatus to run oradminister it. For a period of a few months they tried to rebuild a liberal constitutionalstate, though on foundations that were not much stronger than the fragile ones of

1933-34. All this was completely consistent with the radical but petit-bourgeois


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programme that Castro had continued to put forward from 1953 onwards. Why thendid it all change?

It was certainly not due to a secret plan worked out between Castro and theCommunist Party beforehand even the US state department admitted as much.[4]

Nor is there the least evidence that Castro was pushed from below by the workers orpeasants. Quite the reverse is the case. After the January 1959 coup there was awidespread strike wave, but the demands were purely economic, forreivindicaciones

more goods not for any changes in the structure. And after they had been met,with large wage increases and a rapid decline of 36% in the rate of unemployment,they led not to further demands but to a complete dyingaway of the strike wave bythe summer of 1959. [5]And unlike in 1933, there was hardly any looting or anyother more obvious signs of class struggle in the cities; it was necessary to sentenceonly a few hundred of Batistas murderers to death, and apart from that there wasalmost complete social peace. In the countryside too, the 1959 land reform was not atall the result of spontaneous squatting by peasants that the government was only later

forced to legitimate. On the contrary, there is virtual universal recognition that thisagain was instituted from above. [6]

As such Cuba in 1959-60 stands in sharp contrast to Chile in 1970-71. There theelection of the Popular Unity government also led initially to large wage increases, adecline in unemployment, and a short-term boom fuelled by these measures that tookup the slack in the economy in the traditional manner expounded by the liberaleconomist J.M. Keynes. But in Chile this led to subsequent pressure by both peasantsand workers on the government. They occupied the land and many factoriesdemanding land reform and nationalisation, going far beyond the moderate proposals

put forward by the Allende government and forcing the regime to accept a goodnumber of them. In Cuba the events of 1959-60 had the opposite effect. Instead ofleading to renewed pressure from below, as one commentator put it, it left theoverwhelming majority of Cubas workers and peasants very satisfied with the newregime. Their consciousness was anything but one of impatience and dissatisfactionwith Castros lack of radicalism during the first months of 1959. [7]The facts areclear: the events of 1959-60 just did not create the conditions for asocialrevolution.

So why then did Castro move towards the creation of a monolithic statised economy?The major reason must be found in his long standing commitment to diversify theeconomy, to end its dependency on the US and the vagaries of the world sugar

market, and to all-round economic development. The question that came to be posedin the summer of 1959 was this: how were the reforms of the first part of the year tobe paid for? The rapid increase in wages, the fall in unemployment, the drasticreduction in rents (up to 50%), the cheapening of electricity, telephone and medicinecharges; all put much more money into the workers pockets. This automaticallyincreased the demand for consumption goods all of which had to be imported andfood. The latter automatically put pressure on the land available for sugar; and sincethis provided Cuba with more than 80% of the exports from which the imports had to

be paid, this situation could not be allowed to persist indefinitely. Onlyindustrialisation and diversification could solve the problem. The fantastic variabilityin the price of sugar, and Cubas almost total dependency on it as a source of foreign

earnings, [8] meant that the level of demand in the domestic economy was much toounpredictable for most capitalists to want to take the risk of relying on it as a source
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of income. And, without that, no advantage attached to investing productive capital inCuba. With a very small and highly unpredictable home market, and with just aboutthe highest wage levels in Latin America, there was not the least chance of thesituation changing if the bourgeoisie was simply left to its own devices.

The matter was made more acute by land reform. Again this was a long standingcommitment of Castros from the mid-1950s: antipathy to the latifundistas, the hugelandowners, was the cornerstone of Castros radical liberal programme. The May1959 Land Reform Act has to be seen in this light. It was in no way a socialistmeasure, nor one which led to collectivisation in any other form. It abolished only thevery largest estates (those of more than 402 hectares; though even here there wereexceptions which allowed much bigger farms up to 1,342 hectares that wereefficient to continue), and it did not solve the problem of the indebtedness of the small

peasant. Indeed one prominent agronomist sharply contrasted the 1959 reform withthose in East Europe in the early 1950s; and suggested strong parallels with those inItaly in 1949-50 instead. [9]Yet for all that, something like 25% of the cultivable land

was covered by the Act, and was distributed to the poorer peasants. The effect was toincrease the proportion of land that was devoted to immediate consumption ratherthan providing the country with an exportable surplus, and this added considerably toCubas problems. Although it was also true that much of the land previously owned

by the latifundistas was poorly tended, the fact remained that to increase productivitysignificantly would have required levels of investment and skilled personnel that were

just not available at the time.

The initial reforms were thus in no way reminiscent of the state-capitalistcollectivisations of Eastern Europe in the 1950s, nor Cubas own 1963 reform; butwhat they did do was to create a situation that only a state-capitalist programme couldsolve. Again at this point it is important to stress the ideological or subjective factorsat work too. It is impossible to underestimate the significance of the popularity of thenew regime, or the widespread trust it engendered in the Cuban masses. This was

based on several factors. First of all there was the ascetic revolutionary purity of therebels which continued while they were in power They did not abandon their fatiguesfor pin-stripe suits, their jeeps for chauffeured limousines, and nor was this simpleaffectation: it was largely genuine. What is more they backed this up with laws. Theyenacted draconian measures such as the death penalty for the misappropriation of

public funds against bureaucrats, [10] while at the same time making the biggestefforts Cuba had ever known to eradicate illiteracy, to massively extend preventive

health measures and so on. The enormous confidence in the regime that thesemeasures created made sure that a large reserve of loyalty above all on the part ofthe workers and peasants was built up when the state itself began to take on a moreactive role in the direction of the economy.

It was the 1959 land reform limited though it was which first brought a reactionfrom the USA. Before that America and its multinationals coexisted peaceablyenough with the new regime. But after it things were quite different. A substantialamount of US-owned land was involved and Washington demanded full andimmediate compensation for lands seized in the 1959 Act; it refused financial supportto the Cuban regime, supported the most reactionary of the Batista followers who had

now become refugees in Miami, and even began to aid their piratical attacks on Cubaitself. [11]
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the Cuban workers and peasants faced with the threat from the colossus a mere 80miles to the north of them.

As it happened the militia and the CDRs were never seriously put to the test after theBay of Pigs fiasco. The US did not have to invade (wisely it would have been faced

with two Vietnams in the 1960s) and the social basis of support for the old orderwithin Cuba itself was being rapidly eliminated by the fundamental changes that thenationalisation and land reform measures were producing. More than 1/2 millionrefugees left Cuba in the first 3 years of the Castro regime, unable to make a livingfrom The exploitation of others any more. First to go were the beneficiaries of UStourism: the US banned its citizens from travelling to Cuba, and this led to the 10,000

pimps, the 27,000 croupiers, and many other hangers-on leaving. Then followed thebusiness men, the Batista ex-officers, the pampered state officials, the eliteprofessions, the landowners and so on. However much the US might have wanted toput the clock back, by 1961 the layers of Cuban society that would have enabled themto Cubanise any return to the old order had more or less disappeared. The Castro

regime had quite effectively removed opposition to its continued rule. But where wasthe basis of the new regime to be found in society? This was Castros next andcrucial problem.

1961-1963: the first industrialisation attempt

By the end of 1960, The first key period in Castros Cuba leading to the eliminationof the social basis of the old regime was largely completed, it was followed by anumber of other distinct phases. From 1961-63 the emphasis was on industrialisation

based on diversification, and the key agency for carrying on this task was the old

CCP. From 1963-65 the emphasis switched back to sugar production, and the processwas presided over by a Castroised Communist Party based on material incentives toworkers. Then came the 1965-69 Chinese period; with the emphasis on sugarremaining, but presided over by a small and highly militarised CP and involvinglargely moral incentives to workers. Finally there is the period from 1970 to the

present day (1980 MG). This has involved the militarisation of the economy,renewed emphasis on industrialisation and centralised planning on the basis of jointCuban/Russian control. These are all points to which we shall return in the followingsections. In particular we shall leave the question of the nature of the ruling class thatemerged till towards the end of the article.

By late 1961, the revolutionary government had reached an impasse. Castro and CheGuevaras commitment to industrialisation was unyielding; yet they had noexperience of bureaucratic organisation nor any clear conception of how to bringabout a change from expanding consumption to accumulating capital. The way out ofdependency, according to Castro and Che, was the development of heavy industry.The key was to divert resources away from sugar. The problem was, how to effectthese changes in both economic and political terms? Here the inexperience of thebarbudos led them into the arms of the Cuban Communists and, hence, to a newinterest in the Russian experience.

The period 1962-63, then, was a period of planning, and Ches statements (he was

then Minister for Industry) on planning [12]returned repeatedly to the Sovietexperience as a precedent for Cuba. as well as the direct involvement of friendly
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socialist countries in the actual preparation of the plan. The consequences of thisshift in policy were profound at both economic and political levels. The creativity andenthusiasm unleashed by the Revolution of 1959 were now mobilised in support of acentral plan evolved by a rapidly expanding state bureaucracy. An increasingemphasis was laid on labour discipline, on socialist competition and workers direct

management of the implementation of central plans. The role of the trade unions wassharply curtailed, and replaced by technical commissions in the workplace. [13]

In 1962, identity cards were introduced and made obligatory for workers. In additionthere developed increasingly stringent laws on labour absenteeism; the independenceof the political organs of the state from popular control; the growing concentration of

power in the Castro brothers; and above all a form of planning whose outcome wasnot economic independence but Cubas integration as an unequal partner in a newcircle of dependency.

Relying on the apparatus of the Communist Party to administer the industrialisation

attempt, very ambitious targets were set for industrial development. More than aquarter of the total national income was devoted to accumulation.[14] Livingstandards increased slightly, though they were based on longer hours at work and anattempt at speed up. But the industrialisation attempt itself sucked in a vast number ofimports of the machinery, stocks, technology etc. needed to get industry moving.These were almost entirely provided by the Eastern Bloc countries, and of course theyneeded to be paid for. But Cuba had only sugar as a viable export at least until someof the newer industries had matured sufficiently and it was precisely sugar that had

been dc-emphasised in the attempt to industrialise in 1961.

So just when increasedsources of foreign earnings were needed to pay for capitalimports, Cubas ability to find them sharply decreased. The extent of the problemfacing Castro in 1963 is revealed by the figures:

Year Sugar Production

(millions of tons)Agricultural Production

(1952-1956 = 100)

Total Per capita

1961 6.70 124 108

1982 4.82 102 87

1983 3.88 87 73

(Sources: Hoy, 14.10.64; Monthly Bulletin of AgriculturalEconomics and Statistics, UN, Rome, January 1972)

And this underestimates the scale of the problem, for the population was expandingby 2.4% per annum and its standard of living was even if only slightly going up.[15] And this meant that the agricultural produce available forexportwas decliningeven faster than the above figures suggest.

1963-65: back to the machete

The disastrous 1963 sugar harvest revealed to the Cuban leaders that there could be no

question of just ignoring agriculture so as to concentrate on industry. Unless thecatastrophic decline in sugar production could be halted, there could be no


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industrialisation because there would be no money to pay for it. They were forced tore-emphasise sugar again, and to put off industrialisation until they had the foreignexchange to finance it.

This meant two things in the 1963-65 period. Firstly the 1959 land reform measures

had to be reversed. Instead collectivisation needed to be extended very considerablyso that the state would have much more control over what was going on. Secondlythere had to be a set of devices to increase labour productivity. In both of theserespects the policies of the Cuban regime failed in the years 1963-65.

The land collectivisation of 1963 was certainly very extensive. It led to 70% of allcultivable land being in the hands of the state. But productivity remained incrediblylow on collective farms, with the yield of rice declining from 17 to 14 quintals perhectare, and that of tubers being three times greater on private than on state farms.

The change in emphasis in the Cuban economy is revealed in the following figures:

State Investments in tour sectors at the Cuban economy 1962-65

(Percentages of total state investment)

1962 1983 1964 1965

Agriculture 29.4 24.3 30.5 40.5

Industry 23.1 21.5 29.1 18.1

Housing, Community Services &c 13.5 11.5 11.4 9.4

Education, Culture, Research 8.1 7.0 5.3 5.0

(Source: Boletin Estadistico, Havana, 1966, p. 102) [16]

As far as labour productivity was concerned, material incentives i.e. much sharperdifferentials, piecework and other systems of payments by result were initiated bythe authorities. Yet in spite of an increasing labour force, industrial productionremained stagnant. The material incentives in industry at least did not seem towork. On the land things were not so bad. Helped by better weather conditions thesugar harvest improved considerably. It increased from the abysmal 1963 level of3.88 million tons to 4.47 million in 1964 and 6.15 million in 1965. [17] Most of thiswas destined for the USSR, which, in the years after 1961, was increasingly called into bale out the Cuban economy. It is to this that we now turn.

The Russian connection

Russian policy towards Cuba has been conditioned by two factors; (i) the progress ofdetente with The United States; (ii) Russian economic interests. It is the first thatexplains the cool reception in Moscow of the news of the Revolution in 1959 It wasnot until February 1960 that a delegation led by Mikoyan reached Cuba and declaredits support for the new revolution. For Russia clearly, Cuba was a useful bargainingcounter through the ups and downs of detente; further, Cuba was a market for itsgoods and a producer of the sugar whose consumption in Russia was risingconstantly.


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From then onwards, Soviet economic intervention was constant. The Cubans lookedto Russia for aid, for machinery, for military assistance and for credits Soviettechnicians became increasingly evident after 1961 and Cubas $1 millionper day aidfrom the USSR (and at 1961 prices too) meant that it was receiving a per-capita aidequivalent to the total income of people living in he poorer parts of Africa during this

period. [18]

By 1963, with the turn back to sugar, the Russians contribution did not fall hut grewdue to the need for the industrialisation of sugar production. The agreement signed

between Cuba and Russia in 1963 established a quota of 5 million tons per year ofsugar exports to the USSR; the five year plan of 1965-70 reinforced that decision by

projecting a gradual increase in sugar production culminating in a 10 million tonharvest in 1970. It is worth underlining that the payment for Cuban sugar exports toRussia was to be in the main in non-convertible currency. This meant that while theUSSR guaranteed Cuba a market for its sugar, it ensured at the same time that Cubanimports would come from the USSR, given that Cuba could not use the non-

convertible currencies to purchase goods outside the Russian-bloc countries.Furthermore, Russian sugar beet was for more expensive to produce than Cubansugar; thus a considerable amount of agricultural land in Russia could be released toother more productive crops. Thus in a strictly economic sense, Russia has found inCuba a market for its goods and a field of investment; its aid has served not so muchas a support for Cuba as to reinforce and deepen the domination of sugar over theeconomy. The Russians themselves are aware of this-that maybe why they prefer toconceal the fact that the hulk of their investment enters sugar and related industries.[19] In 1980, Cubas main export to the exclusion of almost any other continues to

be sugar; the united development of its other natural resources has done nothing toalter the fundamental structure of the economy as a department producing a single

product within a global economic system of which it is a servant.

But the real benefit to Russia was geo-political, rather than economic. In much thesame way that the USA was in the 1950s quite willing to sink millions of dollars intoYugoslavia to have a friend on Russias doorstep, so too with Russia over Cuba. Interms of inter-imperialist rivalry, the USSR could not hut be grateful for theopportunity to wield influence in the American backyard, where Cuba provided anopportunity to rejuvenate the tattered image of the Latin American CommunistParties. At a later stage, Cuba would be an important spokesperson for the globalRussian interest within a non-aligned movement many of whose members were

hostile to it particularly in the Middle East- It was this strategic interest and itslimitations which would be most clearly revealed in the Missile Crisis of 1962,Russia installed a number of intermediate range ballistic missiles on Cuban soil in theAutumn of 1962, making many American cities as vulnerable to nuclear attack asmost Russian cities had been to the ring of US installations mounted in Britain.Germany, Turkey etc.

The Missile Crisis brought a large scale disillusionment with Russia; while Cubaraised the cry Fatherland or Death we shall triumph, Khrushchev turned back hisships and reached agreement with Kennedy without bothering to consult Castro overthe missile bases. Castros response was angry and critical. While Cuba continued to

be drawn into the Soviet camp, a cautious debate was reopened on the question of theavailable strategies for economic development though this would not lead to any


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Man and socialism in Cuba. [21] Underdevelopment, he argued, imposed upon anysociety seeking to break the circle a general and collective sacrifice. There was noavoiding that. Therefore it was necessary to replace self-reliance and self-interest,with a collective, social interest.

In this respect, he clearly identified with the Great Leap Forward, in which Mao hadstressed the importance of the element of consciousness, of the replacement ofindividual with social consciousness. Like Mao, [22] Che recognised the potential for

popular mobilisation that still existed in Cuba, particularly behind the charismaticfigure of Castro, and sought to harness that to the development of the productiveforces. Socialist emulation would encourage workers to contribute their utmost insolidarity with the Revolution; voluntary labour allows man to see himself portrayedin his own works and to understand its human magnitude ... [thus] man truly achieveshis full human condition when he produces without being compelled by the physicalnecessity of selling himself as a commodity. [23]

The problem, however, was that the objective conditions of scarcity didexist; that theproductive forces were notdeveloped. Accumulation was the pressing need, forwithout it the materialbase of the revolution could not exist. Ches idealismostensibly recognises the problem; yet in real terms the moral incentives formula,with its emphasis on the subjective conditions, on consciousness and the will of the

people, represents a means of mobilising the workers and peasants in support of theirown continuing exploitation by the state.

The hard reality is this: whatever the ideological significance of incentives, they arechiefly a device for motivating labour productivity. Moral incentives in Cuba weredesigned to prepare the ground for a swing of investment away from consumption andsocial expenditure and towards productive investment in economic development. Butequal poverty is not what socialism is about, iris about freeing human beings from theslavery of want. Ches Man and socialism contains a tell-tale paragraph:

What is hard to understand for anyone who has not lived the revolution is the cleardialectical unity which exists between the individual and the mass, in which both areinterrelated, and the mass as a whole composed of individuals, is in turn interrelatedwith the leader. [24]

The mass? Where then is the class, and what is its political expression? Of this Che

makes no mention; the state is unquestioningly assumed to be representative of theworking masses, to be its voice and incarnation. In this respect, Ches vision of therelationship between state and people can be reintegrated into his political theory ofrevolution. In his Guerrilla Warfare, Che insists that it is the revolutionaries whomake the revolution. The experience of the barbudos is generalised. and theassumption is drawn (once again) that willpower, the subjective conditions, canovercome the absence of the objective conditions for revolution. The protagonists ofrevolution are the guerrillas, not the workers. In the same way, the protagonist of theCuban Revolution is the state, and not the Cuban working class. Politics, in that sense.

becomes the states activity among the masses.

This explains why it is these same years of moral incentives that witness alsotightening of labour discipline. The Law of 1964-65 enforced sanctions for breaches
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of Labour Discipline while the Grievance Commissions established in 1961 wereabolished at the same time because they were regarded as too lenient. The 1965 Law,according to Minister of Labour Augusta Martinez Sanchez, would

strengthen labour discipline and increase production and productivity ... it will be

applied to that kind of worker who is a residue of the exploiting society ... who is stillfound in working places as a residue of capitalism ... We have to admit that in theworkplaces there are still undisciplined workers and for them we have to havedisciplinary measures ... We still find workers who have not taken a revolutionarystep and tend to discuss and protest any measure coming from the administration.[25]

By 1969, the then Labour Minister Jorge Risquet, acknowledged that thesedisciplinary measures had largely failed, that absenteeism was a permanent andgrowing problem, and that other forms of persuasion would have to be used yet in1970 new and even harsher forms of persuasion even harsher rules were introduced,

including the entry of merit and demerit points on a workers identity card.

Thus at all stages, moral incentives were combined with coercive measures of statecontrol. The two cannot be separated.

The key to explaining Cubas change in foreign policy is to be found here. For 1966also marked an important change in Cuban foreign policy, a shift away from theRussian orbit and towards Latin America again. From then until 1970, Cuba againtook on before the world the image of the pure guerrilla so dear to Regis Debray andother Third worldists in Europe. We shall consider this foreign policy at greaterlength below. The question here is what role did this have on the economy?

Basically the economy had run out of steam. Too poor to provide material incentivesthat would work, and requiring a powerful shift away from consumption if the foreignreserves necessary for industrialisation were to be generated, the moral incentivesformula i.e. put up with increased work for no extra pay seemed at the time to bethe only viable alternative. Yet to convince the workers to do this, they had to beshown that it was part of a crusade: one aimed at the whole of Latin America and withfairly immediate prospects of success. It is difficult to assess the significance thisrevolutionary line had on labour discipline and productivity, but there is no doubtthat it must have helped. For the years 1965-70 were ones of stagnating or declining

living standards.

Indeed the obsession with increasing sugar production to the magical figure of 10million tons by 1970 had a catastrophic effect on the economy as a whole and onconsumption in particular as is revealed in the following figures:

Economic growth in Cuba 1963-70

Years Absolute growth

(% p.a.)Per capita growth

(% p.a.)

1963-66 3.8% 1.2%

1965-70 0.4% -1.3%(Source: C. Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s, Albuquerque, 1978, p. 57)
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The true extent of the decline is hidden by the above figures because the CentralOffice of Statistics in Havana measured output in constant prices until 1966, but from1967 it was measured in current prices i.e. the decline would be sharper still if itwere corrected for inflation. An exact estimate for the effect of this on the Cubanworking class is a little difficult to measure. But some idea can be obtained by Cubas

output of consumption goods during this period. In a list of 26 selected outputs of theCuban economy, of which 20 were consumption goods, a recent study found that

between 1965 and 1970 fifteen of these twenty suffered a decline in the five years:some (e.g. refrigerators, radios and cookers) by 50% or more. Two of the twentyremained more or less constant, and only the production of eggs, rice and fish actuallywent up. [26] When one takes into account the fact that the population grew by 10%in this period, the extent of the deprivations that the working class suffered becomeeven more manifest.

For Russia too there were important changes in this period. After 1964 its strategicinterest in Latin America well served till then by Cuba led to a series of new

approaches to bourgeois regimes in Latin America. Frei had come to power in Chilein 1964 with a programme of industrialisation and capitalist development; inVenezuela the COPEI government promised a new version of social democracy, inBrazil the military government, while brutally repressive, had a programme ofexpanded trade. With all these regimes, the Soviet government sought economiccontacts.

The Cuban regime reacted in a number of ways. In founding the Organisation of LatinAmerican Solidarity, the Tricontinental organisation, the Cultural Congress of 1967,and in launching the Revolutionary Offensive in 1968, the Cuban state set out toestablish an area of political independence from the Soviet Union. The identificationof exploited peoples and colonised nations, however, had only an ideologicalsignificance. In terms of what Castro still saw to be the central question development there was an unbroken continuity from 1961 onwards. The attempts bythe Cuban state to gain political legitimacy in the world were in the first place aresponse to political developments within Cuba. [27]Secondly, they were designed asa massive exercise in ideological mobilisation. Yet they were coupled within Cubawith a consistent fall in production, a gathering disillusionment among CubanWorkers (expressed through absenteeism, low productivity etc.), and an increasinglydraconian body of laws controlling everyday life.

The 1970 crisis

1968 brought the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia: in Cuba. the sugar harvest washad. Castros speech on the Czechoslovakian invasion marked a meeting point

between those two facts, as well as a new approach towards the USSR. It was aconciliatory speech: in defending the invasion he was, as always, responding first ofall to the domestic situation within Cuba. The bad sugar harvest. it was clear,underlined the failure of the period which had culminated in the RevolutionaryOffensive of 1968 the end of the search for an alternative strategy. The SovietUnion was Cubas main customer for sugar. Since 1966, the Soviet Union had

provided no new credits to Cuba (though it continued to service existing agreements).

The only aid that Cuba did receive came from Rumania and that was only ofsymbolic value. The death of Guevara had only underlined the problem. So the
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completed. By 1973, 67.5% of all Cuban trade was with the USSR; its chief export,sugar, was exchanged for Soviet manufactures and equipment, whose prices were upto 50% higher than those of the world market. Even Cubas trade with the West,although much smaller, only continued with Russian support and guarantee. JoiningComecon in 1972 was the logical confirmation of this new relationship; Castros

animated defence of Russian foreign policy at the Conference of Non-AlignedNations at Algiers in 1973 was its political expression.

And there were other consequences too, particularly over economic policies andmethods of planning. In 1973 a number of prices were decontrolled, and three yearslater prices on all other non-essential items were too. In 1976 a form of profit-sharingwith the managers of state enterprises was introduced, together with the concept of theautonomy of individual enterprises. The implications were enormous; far from thegradual abolition of money, social relations in Cuba were increasingly expressedthrough the 1970s in money terms. A managerial class, economically and politically

privileged and acting in terms of profit and loss, was fast being created.

In 1980, it is hard to distinguish between the dependency of the Cuban economybefore 1959, and its renewed dependency in the third decade of the Revolution. Cubacontinues to be the worlds major sugar supplier, the bulk of it going to the USSRwhich in turn provides Cuba with the industrial goods, and the oil, it does not andcannot produce itself. In 1980, Cuba is re-affirmed as a fundamentally single-producteconomy, incapable of diversification, but now controlled from Moscow. And the

prospective is for a deepening dependence, as trade deficits grow and Cubaseconomic takeoff is postponed indefinitely.

The working class

During the revolution itself the working class played, as we have seen, no active role.And increasing living standards albeit often accompanied by various shortages retained the support of the workers for the regime by largely non-coercive means untilthe middle-1960s, though it did not significantly change this role. What then is thesituation today? Who controls production and how do they do so? What is the role ofthe trade unions, the advanced workers movement, the experiment in peoples

power (poder popular[33a])? What happened to the other areas of de-centralisedactivity: the peoples militia, the Federation of Cuban Women and the Committees forthe Defence of the Revolution (CDRs)? These are all questions that have to be

answered before a definitive answer can be given to the class nature of Cuban society.

Let us begin with production. There has never been anything resembling workerscontrol in Cuba. The only organisation of or for workers vis-a-vis production has

been the trade union; though there has also been a loose movement the AdvancedWorkers movement. First proposed by Castro in 1968, it was formed as a pro-regimecadre of foremen, charge hands etc. who were entrusted with the task of speeding up

production. Those aspiring to such status needed to be proposed by the workforce,though they were actuallyselectedat the level of government. At this stage themovement was no more than an arm of the revolutionary offensive of the late1960s. But with the ending of rationing and the freeing of price controls and the

reintroduction of material incentives after 1970 the situation changed rapidly. Soon
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goods, services even the possibility of accumulating interest on savings wereprovided: but for Advanced Workers only.

Material incentives and widening differentials proceeded throughout the 1970s. Theneed to widen the gap between worker and worker was expressed by Castro in 1971:

Paying the same wage for the same type of work but without taking into account theproductive effort required to do it is an egalitarian principle we must correct.[34]Then in 1974 an extra 132 million pesos were allocated to raise salaries formanagerial personnel. (Given that 1 peso equals $1 US at the official exchange rate,and that there are at the most one or two hundred thousand people in this position, thesum is a very large one.) And for the first time, after 1974 cars were to be importedfor the bureaucrats in Castros words in order to increase their productivity.

So moral incentives, so popular in the late 1960s, were more or less abolished in the1970s in favour of material incentives. The switch was not made out of a concern forthe material well being of the workers, but because of the benefits of production, as

the theses approved by the 13th congress of the CTC made clear in 1973: In manycases unpaid overtime turned out to be more costly than regular paid hours of work,reducing real product and yield per man-hour. [35]

In this context of widening material differentials, it is easy to see why the AdvancedWorker movement began to confer such material privileges. The minimum wageceased to play any real role of preserving equality, and soon the bonus system ensuredthat an Advanced Worker could earn easily twice as much as ordinary workers. By themid-1970s the social wage was also being increasingly treated as a privilege. It isno coincidence that day nurseries began to charge fees in 1977, nor that access tohousing became dependent on Advanced Worker status. In no way therefore can theAdvanced Workers movement be seen as even remotely connected with bringingsocialism into the workplace.

But what then about the role of the trade unions? After the 1959 revolution their rolewas defined by the regime as being: to win workers for the Revolution, to fightcounter-revolution, and push production forward. There was no question of themdefending workers against the employers, because the employer was now the state,and was therefore assumed to have the same interest as that of the workers. Theleaders were not elected by the workers, but directly appointed by the regime.

All this cut away the basis for the existence of trade unions even as collaborativebodies. Instead the unions were given managerial functions but no managerial power.Not surprisingly they went into a very rapid decline. This presented the regime with aproblem through what organs were the workers to be incorporated? For a time theregime attempted to use Advanced Workers who were encouraged and givenfacilities to coordinate worker-management cooperation on the shop floor. But by1970 this was acknowledged to be a total failure. As the minister of labour Risquet

put it in August of that year:

Theoretically, the administrator represents the interest of the worker and peasantstate, the interest of all the people. Theory is one thing and practice another ... The

worker may have a right established by the Revolution ... and there is no one todefend him. He does not know where to turn. He turns to the party and it does not
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structure of poder popular itself was undemocratic, as delegation to Regional andNational Assemblies was not by direct suffrage, but elected from Party-approved listsfrom the level immediately below it. Thus Dominguez notes the almost completeunanimity on all issues at the meeting of the National Assembly, where most majordecisions were taken by acclamation, including the election of the Council of

Ministers. [40] It rapidly became clear that the development of Peoples Power does,not provide forself-government, but for more efficacious and responsive organs oflocal administration. [41]

In general, the same conclusions can be drawn for the other mass organisations,despite their superficial resemblance to organs of power. The Committees for theDefence of the Revolution, set up to watch for counter-revolutionary activity afterthe Bay of Pigs, have been a case in point. By the late 1960s their role had developedinto being one of the main organisations for tapping manpower reserves in theeconomy as well as promoting public health, education and general propagandafunctions. At their height in 1970 they included fully 3.2 million people a

remarkable figure for a country of only 8 million. Undoubtedly then, the Committeeswere mass organisations. But two crucial features must be borne in mind. Firstly since1970 they they have gone into a rapid decline, and the reason for this has beenindicated already: when the regime depended on volunteer labour in the 1965-70

period, the CDRs were the crucial transmission belts though which this was provided.Since this whole method is now universally recognised as actually counterproductive,the regimes need for the CDRs has diminished accordingly. Secondly, at no Pointwere the CDRs controlled by their mass base. On the contrary their leadership wasuniversally appointedby the Communist Party. They were never permitted toformulate policy, only to implement the policy given to them from above.

The other mass organisation set up in the period around the Bay of Pigs invasion thepeoples militia had a shorter history. By 1964, with the US military threat fading,they were disarmed; and in 1973 they were abolished, with the remaining personnelincorporated into the army reserve.

The Federation of Cuban Women, in many ways a parallel body to the CDRs, hasshared its fate. A mass organisation of 1.3 million at its height, also charged with a

principal role over public health and volunteer labour, it has had all too little effect onchanging the male domination of production and society. A massive campaign to getwomen into the workforce in the 1969-70 period failed to retain the majority of them.

And it is still the case that over 300 jobs are prohibited to women including housepainter, deep sea diver and cemetery worker! More importantly the representation ofwomen at the levels of leadership in the Communist Party or the mass organisations isextremely low. And while the Family Code of 1976 reaffirmed the equality of menand women in the home, it did nothing to socialise the functions of women nor toacknowledge the continuing exclusion of women from political life.

Since the revolution therefore, Cuba has at various times created a variety of massorganisations. But none of them at any time has been able or willing to do anything

but implement the already fixed policy of the regime.

The Party the army and the construction of a new ruling class


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Committee is supposed to be elected from below, and is in its turn supposed to electthe higher party bodies, without congresses there are in fact no means at all for this to

be done. In practice the Secretariat is, as in Russia, a self-perpetuating clique. [43]

The army achieved this hegemony in Cuba in the late 1960s not only because it was

Fidels pliant tool, but because of its efficiency. Industrial and agriculturaldevelopment in Cuba in the late 1960s was quite disastrous, with the years from 1966to 1970 showing a decline of more than 1% in per-capita GDP even according to theregimes own figures. [44]

During these years all forms of cost accounting were eliminated, in the attempt tosubstitute moral incentives for material incentives. In the event only 81/2 milliontons of sugar were produced by this method and the virtual collapse of the rest of theeconomy forced Castro to make a sharp reversal of policy.[45]

This left the army as the only instrument that worked at all efficiently in Cuba. It was

the only organ untouched by Cubas disastrous Chinese experiment; its cadre ofofficers having been trained in Russia from the early 1960s and its command structureremained unaltered throughout this period. Its technicians and other skilled personnelwere not ignored or put on to other work as occurred elsewhere in the economy. Forthese reasons the militarisation of the economy and the administration seemed theobvious indeed the only solution to the crisis of the late 1960s.

The ruling class that has emerged in Cuba is thus a unique fusion of three mainelements: the Communist Party with its roots deep in a class collaborationist labourmovement, the petit bourgeois but revolutionary July 26th Movement, and finally thearmy. The command structure, size and efficiency of the latter coupled with themilitarisation of the economy after its collapse in the late 1960s all ensured that it

played the crucial role in cementing together and structuring the relatively stableCuban ruling class of the past 10 years.

Today, the internal struggle within the bureauracy continues; yet, whatever the stateof the parties the relationship between the Cuban state and the mass of the peopleremains unchanged. Power resides in the 18 overlapping members of the Politburoand its Secretariat, the Council of Ministers and the Council of State elected (byacclaim) by the National Assembly. Only 3 people are members of all three bodies Fidel, his brother Raul Castro and Carlos Rafael Rodriguez. Fidel is First Secretary of

the Communist Party, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, President of theCouncil of Ministers, and has recently become Minister of Education, Health andCulture as well. Raul Castro is his deputy in each case. In effect, all leading posts inCuban organisations are determined in the last analysis within this tiny circle of

power, whose domination is and will for the foreseeable future be unchallenged.

The increasing differentiation within the Cuban working class (the Advanced WorkersMovement) is not, then, the fruit of a differential development of politicalconsciousness among sections of workers, but the creation of new layers of privilegedindividuals who are directly dependent upon the Cuban bureacuracy for theircontinuing prosperity.

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Since 1970 sugar has not been allowed to disrupt the rest of the economy as it didbefore then. Skilled personnel have been re-introduced and there has been adistribution of resources throughout the economy that is much more rationally tied inwith the regimes goals of development and accumulation. The first five years of the1970s therefore saw a much healthier growth rate in the Cuban economy. [46]

The militarisation of the economy has not, however, been a magic wand eliminatingCubas problems of underdevelopment. The downturn of the world economy in 1975affected Cuba deeply, because Cubas diversification away from sugar requiredsubstantial imports of the capital goods that would make this possible. That in turnrequired foreign exchange, but with 80% of Cubas foreign earnings coming fromsugar, and the price of sugar dropping rapidly in the 1975 crisis, a severe balance of

payments crisis was the inevitable result.

The effect of this has been for Cuba to become more and more dependent on theRussian economy to bail it out at least for the foreseeable future. It also threw

planning into a sharp crisis, markedly lowering growth aims and involving a massivecut of 25% in 1977 state expenditure. It produced the delegation of executiveresponsibility and financial accountability to the individual enterprises themselves andthe demand that they pay stricter attention to profitability in future. [47] In additionthere is no doubt at all that the crisis would have been much worse if the Cubanregime had not already made major attacks on the working class, attacks which theyare bound to repeat more ferociously as the present world crisis deepens. [48]

Cuba has been tranformed into a society in which the state owns and organisesproduction in all the significant areas (though about a third of agriculture is still in theprivate sector). But this transformation has come about not as a result of the intentionsof the revolutionaries of 1959. Certainly they wanted an independent Cubandeveloping economy. They were however prevented from achieving it by means of amixed, but western-style economy through the abrupt destruction of the trade andinvestment link with the US.

The result has been both the transformation of the Cuban economy into a statecapitalist one, and the transference of depen-dence from the USA to the USSR, as thehuge levels of Russian aid indicate. Since the onset of the 1975 crisis these levelshave increased even further.

But unlike Russia or China, Cuban state capitalism is at the present time a completelydependentformation. In addition to the massive size of Russian aid to Cuba (equal totwenty times the average per-capita aid from allsources to the rest of Latin America),Russia and the East accounted for two thirds of Cubas trade even before the 1975crisis forced a still heavier concentration on these sources.[49] As industrialisation

proceeds, more and more based on Russian technology, this dependence is bound togrow further.

In the medium term therefore, just when Russias allies in Eastern Europe have beendeveloping greater economic and therefore also political independence fromRussia the reverse is happening in Cuba. For all intents and purposes therefore, Cuba

has become an international tentacle of Russian state capital. In the long term, of
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course, things could develop differently as they have in Russias Eastern Europeanallies in the past 15 years. But there is no chance of this happening in the short term.

Cubas foreign policy

How does Cubas foreign policy fit this picture? It was with respect to Latin Americathat Cuban foreign policy has been most clearly defined. And it was Castros clarioncall to revolution on the continent that established his revolutionary credentials duringthe high point of the revolutionary period in the late 1960s.

Castro originally (and not inaccurately) referred to the Organisation of AmericanStates (OAS) as a putrid, revolting den of corruption, a disgusting, discreditedcesspool, a ministry of colonies of the United States, to which Cuba would onlyreturn if the imperialists and their puppets were kicked out first. Relations withother Latin American countries could only be restored if not only were OAS sanctionsrejected, but also if these countries had a revolution and if they condemned US crimesagainst Cuba as well. [50]

Yet within a very short time less than a year this whole position was revealed asempty rhetoric. Already in 1969 Castro was praising the Peruvian regime that came to

power in a military coup a year before as a new phenomenon with a group ofprogressive military playing a revolutionary role. Perus new dictator, GeneralVelasco, and Castro became close associates, diplomatic relations being restored andVelasco proposing (unsuccessfully) in the OAS that sanctions should be dropped-Apart from nationalising US oil interests (hardly in themselves revolutionary FreisChristian Democrat regime in Chile had already proposed as much in its copper

industry), Velascos main claim to fame at the time he was receiving Castrosaccolades, was his continued persecution and imprisonment of Peruvianrevolutionaries like Hugo Blanco. Those with illusions in Castro were shocked anddisarmed by this volte-face, but all too few learnt any lessons from it. [51]

Nor was the Peruvian case an isolated example. In the early 1970s similar relationsdeveloped with the Panamanian military regime of General Torrijos and theEcuadorian autocrat Velasco Ibarra, neither of whom had introduced anynationalisation or other socialist measures at all, but both of whom were prepared toact relatively independently of the United States. [52]

The situation has developed further since then, and now even one of the most rightwing and repressive regimes in the continent, Argentina has diplomatic andcommercial relations with Cuba. The OAS policy of isolating Cuba was quietlydropped in 1975, and since then there have been tentative (and as yet unsuccessful)measures to reopen some direct US/Cuba links.

Castro has therefore turned full circle. From beginning with the notion that what wasneeded was a revolutionary foreign policy, he has now reduced that to support ofanyregime that opposes American interests, however reactionary it is a position that hehimself has explicitly admitted to.[53]

We have argued, therefore, that Cubas revolutionary phase as far as foreign policyis concerned, was (a) mainly rhetorical, (b) conditioned by Cubas isolation from the
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emphasis throughout has been on discipline, obedience. loyalty not on the creativetransformation of a society from one based on exploitation to one organised aroundthe fulfilment of need. Accumulation has taken precedence; growth has been

presented as equivalent to socialism. Yet if the task of accumulation is urgent, that isessentially the function of a bourgeoisie in capitalism; if the working class is to carry

out that function because a dependent capitalism has failed to develop thoseresources, then it must do so in the context of a form of power that is proletarian,reconciling workers democracy with the demands of accumulation. If it fails toreconcile those two things, then the state is exercising to its full extent a capitalistfunction in a capitalist way. After all, it has been the desire of every capitalist class toencourage the working class to submit voluntarily to their own exploitation. ThatCuba has succeeded in this and there is no doubt that it has done so moresuccessfully than any other state capitalist regime is no evidence that it is socialist,if by socialism we understand that qualitative change in the nature and possession of

political power.

Could it have been otherwise? The origins of the distortion of the Cuban economy, itssubservience to another economic centre to which it was forced to sacrifice thedevelopment of its own productive forces, coincide with the moment of itsdiscovery by Europe in 1492. The iron circle of dependency closed through thecenturies, and the central problem in 1959 was still how to accumulate, industrialise,and thus escape from the circle. But it became clear that rapid accumulation, with allits attendant sacrifices, could only offer a socialism that involved the equitabledivision of scarcity and poverty. Yet without the full development of the productiveforces, there could be no emancipation of the working classes. For a time, theoptimism of the will the belief that ideas were enough sustained a politics ofsacrifice. Yet in the end, Cuba entered a new dependency, and reconciled itself to anaccommodation with the existing world order. Now, in a period of world crisis, Cubais once again the victim of the unequal international distribution of the productiveforces. And it is, ultimately, only at that international level that Cubas problemcan be solved. It remains as true now as it was for Lenin in 1917, that only theinternational revolution can effect the redistribution of the worlds resources that willrelease Cuba. Yet the truth of the matter is that within its narrow confines, there is inCuba today a class which dominates that society, and which has benefited in powerterms from the present course of events. For that bureaucracy, ensconced in the state,the modus vivendi it has reached with the Russian metropolis and its arrival at thenegotiating tables of the international order have ensured, for the moment at least, the

survival of its national state, which has been and remains its only priority.

If the interests of the Cuban working class lie in the international socialist revolution,then they too will have to overthrow a national state and its bureaucracy which has, inits turn, become an obstacle to the transformation of the world.

REDS Die Roten > State Capitalism | Staatskapitalismus
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Peter Binns & Mike Gonzalez

Cuba, Castro and Socialism

(1980)

First published in International Socialism Journal 2:8 (Spring 1980), pp.1-36.Reprinted as a pamphlet June 1983 (and several times later) by theSocialist WorkersParty.Transcribed by Michael Gavin and marked up by Jrn Andersen for MarxismeOnline, March 2000.

Downloaded with thanks from Marxisme Online.Marked up by Einde OCallaghan forREDS Die Roten.

The background to the 1959 Revolution

1959-60: Our revolution is neither capitalist nor communist

1961-1963: the first industrialisation attempt

1963-65: back to the machete

The Russian connection

One, two, three Vietnams?

The 1970 crisis

Cuba in the 70s

The working class

The Party the army and the construction of a new ruling class

Cuban state capitalisms subordination to the USSR

Cubas foreign policy

For the self-emancipation of the working class

Notes
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Twenty one years have passed since the time Castros rebel army, backed by a loosecoalition of intellectuals the 26th July Movement destroyed the US-backed Batistaregime and began to effect fundamental changes in Cuban society. What exactly did it

achieve? Does it provide the Third World with an alternative and viable road tosocialism to that of Moscows stultifying bureaucrats? Can its methods be repeatedelsewhere? These questions have been posed even more sharply by recent events inChina China for so long the brightest star on the eastern horizon, but which now

participates in joint foreign policy initiatives with the USA in Afghanistan, andencourages the entry of western capital and a more sharply differentiated society athome. The limelight is therefore inevitably on Cuba; has it remained faithful to itssocialist principles? Did it indeed ever have any? Or, like China, when one probes

beneath the surface at all seriously do they disappear into thin air?

Many indeed have had no doubts at all about the socialist nature of Cubas revolution.

Thus C. Wright Mills for instance concluded that it was a revolutionary dictatorshipof the peasants and workers of Cuba in which one man possessed virtually absolute

power. This somewhat bizarre view was the more remarkable for representing a wideconsensus on the question; from Paul Johnson in the New Statesman who waxedlyrically on Cubas genuine dictatorship of the proletariat even if it was expressedthrough the arbitrary rule of one man, to Joseph Hansen and the FourthInternational who claimed somewhat less lyrically that in the final analysis, theoverturn in property relations in Cuba is an echo of the October 1917 revolution inRussia, and therefore Cuba entered the transitional phase of a workers state,although one lacking as yet the forms of democratic proletarian rule. [1]

On what were these very widespread claims based? And how have they stood the testof time? Finally, how can we now characterise the direction in which Cuba isheading? These are questions we shall examine in this article.

Top of page

The background to the 1959 Revolution

Cuba was the last remnant of Spains Latin American Empire mid when, in 1898, itfinally freed itself from Spanish rule the USA was to step in. The USA entered Cubato protect its citizens and the new government of independent Cuba was appointed bythem. The 1901 Constitution was actually written in the office of the US Governor ofthe island.

Cuba was one of the biggest prizes in the drive of US imperialism into the Caribbeanand Central America. During the 19th Century more and more sugar-growing and fellinto American hands and the process continued rapidly under the new regime. Thewild fluctuations of sugar prices on the world market aided the process ofconcentration and, by 1924, American capital owned 63% of Cuban sugar production.
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The Cuban economy was completely subordinated to the US sugar barons. In 1902they had gained preferential terms fur sugar purchase. The entire economy wasstructured around sugar and, as early as 1912, 70% of all imports were consumergoods. In the 1940s the Batista regime, then in a radical nationalist phase, had begun a

process of cubanisation in the sugar industry and direct US control of the sugar

industry receded, but their control of the world sugar market meant that they couldcontinue to control the overall direction of the Cuban economy.

By the 1950s, 80% of all Cuban imports came from the USA. $1 billion of US capitalwas invested there. The USA had a virtual monopoly of foreign trade via the 1934Reciprocal Trade Agreement. Agriculture, with 41.5% of the labour force, dominatedthe economy and sugar dominated agriculture. 83% of available land was under sugarand it made up at least 80% of exports (another 10% being tobacco). Sugarconstituted 36% of the GNP. The rest of the economy was little developed. Utilitiesremained in foreign hands. Mineral resources were little developed. Services,including a large sector of the economy devoted to catering for US tourism. employed

20.1% of the labour force. A vast state machine, riddled with graft and gangsterism,took an estimated 25% of the GNP. By 1959, Cuba was a model of anunderdeveloped economy; its real centre was not Havana but Washington.

This society was run by a series of brutal and parasitic figures. Between 1924 and1933 an ex-director of General Electric in Cuba, Gerardo Machado, ran things withrepression and tenor. In 1933 he was overthrown by a workers rising and replaced fora few months by the progressive nationalist Grau San Martin. He was then toppled

by an ex-sergeant-clerk Fulgencio Batista, who was to dominate Cuban politics from1934 to 1959.

There were two traditions of opposition to this state of affairs. The first wasrepresented by the working class. It was they who toppled Machado in 1933. What

began as a strike of bus drivers in Havana escalated rapidly into a general rising ofworkers and students against the government. The Cuban Communist Party (CCP)had initially played no role in this rising, but quickly moved to take control. Theydeclared the establishment of soviets and of workers control. By 1934, after massiverecruitment of members, they were the effective leadership of the working class. Buttheir aim was not the overthrow of the Cuban state; instead they used their masssupport as a bargaining counter with the Grau San Martin government. Thus, when hewas toppled by Batista and the army, the movement was greatly weakened. After a

failed General Strike in 1935, Batista murdered hundreds of leading working classmilitants and declared virtual war on the CCP.

By 1938, in pursuance with the Comintern line of unity with progressive forces, theCCP was ready to do a deal with Batista. It was an alliance which was consummatedin the 1940 Constitution. Along with his policy of giving the local capitalists a largershare of the sugar industry. Batista sought to enlarge the slate machine and toincorporate the trade unions into it. The Cuban Workers Federation (CTC), foundedin 1940, was part of that strategy. Two Communists entered Batistas Cabinet andanother took control of the CTC. The CCP had abandoned independent working class

politics for a nationalist populism which focussed on the national interest. Thus,

despite the fact that the party had grown, the government was able to take control ofthe CTC in 1947 and ban the CCP.


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other more obvious signs of class struggle in the cities; it was necessary to sentenceonly a few hundred of Batistas murderers to death, and apart from that there wasalmost complete social peace. In the countryside too, the 1959 land reform was not atall the result of spontaneous squatting by peasants that the government was only laterforced to legitimate. On the contrary, there is virtual universal recognition that this

again was instituted from above. [6]

As such Cuba in 1959-60 stands in sharp contrast to Chile in 1970-71. There theelection of the Popular Unity government also led initially to large wage increases, adecline in unemployment, and a short-term boom fuelled by these measures that tookup the slack in the economy in the traditional manner expounded by the liberaleconomist J.M. Keynes. But in Chile this led to subsequent pressure by both peasantsand workers on the government. They occupied the land and many factoriesdemanding land reform and nationalisation, going far beyond the moderate proposals

put forward by the Allende government and forcing the regime to accept a goodnumber of them. In Cuba the events of 1959-60 had the opposite effect. Instead of

leading to renewed pressure from below, as one commentator put it, it left theoverwhelming majority of Cubas workers and peasants very satisfied with the newregime. Their consciousness was anything but one of impatience and dissatisfactionwith Castros lack of radicalism during the first months of 1959. [7]The facts areclear: the events of 1959-60 just did not create the conditions for asocialrevolution.

So why then did Castro move towards the creation of a monolithic statised economy?The major reason must be found in his long standing commitment to diversify theeconomy, to end its dependency on the US and the vagaries of the world sugarmarket, and to all-round economic development. The question that came to be posedin the summer of 1959 was this: how were the reforms of the first part of the year to

be paid for? The rapid increase in wages, the fall in unemployment, the drasticreduction in rents (up to 50%), the cheapening of electricity, telephone and medicinecharges; all put much more money into the workers pockets. This automaticallyincreased the demand for consumption goods all of which had to be imported andfood. The latter automatically put pressure on the land available for sugar; and sincethis provided Cuba with more than 80% of the exports from which the imports had to

be paid, this situation could not be allowed to persist indefinitely. Onlyindustrialisation and diversification could solve the problem. The fantastic variabilityin the price of sugar, and Cubas almost total dependency on it as a source of foreignearnings, [8] meant that the level of demand in the domestic economy was much too

unpredictable for most capitalists to want to take the risk of relying on it as a sourceof income. And, without that, no advantage attached to investing productive capital inCuba. With a very small and highly unpredictable home market, and with just aboutthe highest wage levels in Latin America, there was not the least chance of thesituation changing if the bourgeoisie was simply left to its own devices.

The matter was made more acute by land reform. Again this was a long standingcommitment of Castros from the mid-1950s: antipathy to the latifundistas, the hugelandowners, was the cornerstone of Castros radical liberal programme. The May1959 Land Reform Act has to be seen in this light. It was in no way a socialistmeasure, nor one which led to collectivisation in any other form. It abolished only the

very largest estates (those of more than 402 hectares; though even here there wereexceptions which allowed much bigger farms up to 1,342 hectares that were


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efficient to continue), and it did not solve the problem of the indebtedness of the smallpeasant. Indeed one prominent agronomist sharply contrasted the 1959 reform withthose in East Europe in the early 1950s; and suggested strong parallels with those inItaly in 1949-50 instead. [9]Yet for all that, something like 25% of the cultivable landwas covered by the Act, and was distributed to the poorer peasants. The effect was to

increase the proportion of land that was devoted to immediate consumption ratherthan providing the country with an exportable surplus, and this added considerably toCubas problems. Although it was also true that much of the land previously owned

by the latifundistas was poorly tend

Peter Binns

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