Reply to Louis Proyect, at [EMAIL PROTECTED], who wrote on the 25/8/2000 16:19:
> Although the Cuban revolution is widely regarded as being
> vastly inferior to the Russian revolution in terms of the level of
> consciousness, it is doubtful that there is much difference between the
> two. Keep in mind that overwhelming majority of the participants in 1917
> were peasants who sought an end to the war and land reform, you can even
> argue that more Cubans were ideologically committed to socialism in 1959.
I think that the proposition that the Cuban and Russian Revolutions have
little differences is absurd. The Russian Revolution was led by the
revolutionary proletariat, whilst in the Cuban Revolution, the peasantry
were in the driving seat. That is hardly a subtle difference, and in both
cases that force which carried out the revolution reflected on to the state
that was created.
Anyway, the October Revolution was led by a party that represented the very
vanguard of the most revolutionary workers, with a consciously revolutionary
programme for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a
socialist society under the dictatorship of the working class, with the
ultimate aim of communism. It held that capitalism had broken at its
weakened link, and the future of the Russian Revolution depended on world
revolution - and specifically in the advanced capitalist nations. The regime
also held that a soviet system was the means for the proletariat to exercise
its dictatorship - not simply in Russia, but on a global scale. Hence the
calls for a "Soviet America". The truly democratic content of the
revolution's programme - the most democratic on earth - called for the
drawing in of all peasants and workers into the means of administration, and
for democratic working class management of production.
The Cuban Revolution was led by the peasantry, not by the most advanced
section of the proletariat. Its held a radical bourgeois-democratic
programme that included land reform and independence from US imperialism. It
would never have become any form of workers' state if it had not been for
the existence of the Soviet Union; if such a revolution were repeated today,
capitalism would not be overturned. Because the insurrection was led by a
peasant guerrilla army, from its ranks rose the bureaucracy; not necessarily
a Stalinist bureaucracy, and indeed in the first regime there were bourgeois
ministers. But in this revolution it was the peasantry that carried out the
historic tasks of the proletariat, not the working class itself. Because of
its petty-bourgeois nature, it did not have a revolutionary proletarian
revolution that called for world revolution or accepted that its continued
existence depended on workers' revolution in the advanced capitalist
nations. Instead it appealed to the peasantry, not the working class, in the
third world, and started peasant guerrilla insurrections which were
inevitably doomed to failure. There is no form of workers' democracy - and
no, these "mass organisations" Castro fans speaking about were established
and run by the bureaucracy to aid its continued rule, far from being any
organ of workers' political rule. Indeed, elections of any sort were not
even held till the 1980s because Castro said they were unnecessary and had
been discredited by the corrupt governments that preceded his; so far from
the National Assembly or whatever arising spontaneously as a result of class
struggle, that were constructed from above by the bureaucracy.
The glorification of the Cuban regime, even by those on the Trotskyist
Left, is as a result of the relative benevolence of the bureaucracy compared
to, say, Romania. This reveals a deeply moralistic strand in the
revolutionary Left. If a regime doesn't massacre thousands of people or
arrest somebody who met somebody in the supermarket whose brother's cousin's
sister's boyfriend had said something that might be taken as offensive to
the mother of Our Great Leader, then it can't be Stalinist. This type of
logic leads some, like Hobsbawn, to claim that Franco's regime wasn't
fascist, presumably in comparison to the German Nazi regime.
Stalinism is not the same everywhere. Romanian Stalinism as different to
Polish Stalinism, which differed from North Korean Stalinism, and so on. The
peculiarities of different nations reflect on to the ruling bureaucracy. In
Cuba, the high cultural level, the social weight of the proletariat, and the
participation of the masses in the actual revolution had an effect on the
regime that resulted. Hence, in regimes like North Korea where there was
little participation of the masses in the construction of the new state, or
a high level of culture, of advanced productive forces, or a particular big
proletariat, we had often hideous results (notice the religious features of
the North Korean regime?)
Someone I spoke to who visited Cuba as part of a German Communist Party
delegation (i.e. she is NOT a Trotskyist and I didn't read it in Workers'
Liberty) spoke of how when she was there, there was discontent amongst
workers, and how two were simply sacked with impunity for being mildly late.
The "Friends of the USSR" of the 30s are really not that different from the
"Friends of Cuba", whose members range from bored old Trots to soft-hearted
liberals. I realise in an epoch of reaction it's tempting to clutch at
straws and to think that there is at least some refuge on the planet, but
these illusions are misplaced and hardly confidence inspiring.
Owen
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