What the "trotskyists' Say About Castro

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The extract • from Granma printed below appeared in June this year.

It is the latest of a series of similar attacks on Trotskyism published by the Cuban Communist Party in the last few months.

Attacks on Trotskyism in Cuba. are, of course, nothing new. And the words in which these latest attacks are made are also not new.

They could be found almost exactly repeated in newspapers in Moscow or Prague or Warsaw or Peking.

"This Stalinist filth is typical of what, along with the systematic falsification of Cuban and Soviet history, passes in Cuba for political education.

What Within a few days of Granma's featuring its latest vilifications of Trotskyism, Intercontinental Press, the weekly international paper of the "Unified" Secretariat of the Fourth International, which claims to be a (indeed, the) Trotskyist organisation, published an article on Cuba.

This article, "The dispute over Cuba's role in Africa" by leading American SWP member Joseph Hansen, is the introduction to a newly published book (which Socialist Press will soon be reviewing).

The book contains documents on Cuba written iin the early 1960s by members of the organisations which in 1963 were to join in the unprincipled "reunification" which formed USFI.

Central to the politics of this "reunification" ,was an agreement that following the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba in 1959, the "unconscious Marxist" leadership of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had established a workers' state which was neither bureaucratically degenerated nor de formed.

The implication of this "theory" was that a workers' state-and moreover a healthy workers' state-could be established independently by a petty-bourgeois leadership without the'existence of a revolutionary The function of the new book is not to re-examine this revisionist position nor to question how the leadership of a healthy workers' state can have supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, can pour out a continuous stream of vile slanders against Trotskyism and can be giving material support No, the function of the book is to reassert the revisions of Trotskyism which were the basis of the 1963 "reunification" and to assert-in Hansen's article reprinted in Intercontinental Press-that today Cuba remains a healthy workers' state which is independent of world Stalinism.

The historical record, however, shows the falseness of the position of those who, like the USFI, say that events in Cubaeither in the first years of the revolution or now-can be analysed independently of the role of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union, of course, was in no way involved in the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship.

But from early 1960 onwards the involvement of the Soviet Union was crucial at every key moment of the actions taken against capitalism by the petty bourgeois Castro The Soviet Union supplied oil to the island when this was cut off by Eisenhower after the nationalisation of the US oil companies.

Economic aid

And the USSR agreed to buy the sugar quota which the USA had cut off in the autumn of 1960.

The Soviet Union supplied the Castro regime with economic aid, arms and growing political support through 1961 and 1962.

In 1962 while in the face of Kennedy's threats Kruschev withdrew the missiles he had placed in Cuba, this was part of a deal in which the US government was forced into an undertaking not, to repeat the armed invasion of Cuba which had taken place and had been repulsed at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

The events surrounding the missile crisis of 1962-as well as many other issues like guerrilla struggles in Latin Americacreated open political tensions between the USSR and the Castro regime.

For a long time the Cuban leaders did not trust the USSR not to do a deal at their expense and so they looked for other means of support.

These tensions, at times acute and public, continued for eight years after close material relations between the countries began.

•Cuban leaders openly voiced criticisms of Sovie et policies and more particularly of the policies of the USSR's cl osest allies in Latin America.

But regardless jective attitudes (up to 1959 they had been openly antiCommunist), the Cuban leaders could never after 1960 maintain a political existence which was fully independent of Moscow.

The tensions between Havana and Moscow were interpreted at the level of surface appearance by the USFI.

The deeper material dependence of the Cuban workers' state on Moscow was never considered.

And • the all-pervading bureaucratism within Cuba was ignored.

Only through falsification or distortion or turning a blind eye to the evidence could the USFI hold on to its revisionist position that Cuba was the world's one and only healthy workers' state.

But since 1968 the USFI been less vocal about this.

Well known fact

It has become increasingly difficult to reconcile the characterisation of Cuba as a healthy workers' state with well-known fact:

*Castro's support for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968;

*the uncritical and even slavish tone of Cuban statements on the Soviet Union;

#the withdrawal of material aid from Latin American revolutionary movements such as the Douglas Bravo group in Venezuela;

*systematic repression of political opposition and of all forms of "ideological deviations" such as homosexuality;

*the ending of all publications not directly emanating from the bureaucracy;

*the personality cult of Fidel Castro;

*the bureaucratic nature of the Communist Party which did not hold even a formal congress for ten years after its formation "from above" in 1968.

: Yet in the face of such embarrassing facts the characterisation of Cuba as a healthy workers' State was maintained, though it was hinted to be "under discussion"

To judge from the new article by leading USFI member Joseph Hansen, these discussions must have been very barren up to now.

Hansen concedes that: i "It would be untrue to Hansen that the battle against bureaucratism has been won in Cuba"

But he goes on:

"The headway made by bureaucratism has not reached such a degree that one must conclude that a hardened bureaucratic caste has been formed, exercises dictatorial power, and cannot be dislodged save through a political revolution. No qualitative point of change has yet been adduced to substantiate this hypothesis".

Hansen calls for:

.. the formation of a Leninist-type party that guarantees internal democracy, that is the right of critical opinion to be heard"

Kennedy • It is not in any way ruled out by Hansen that the Cuban Communist Party could become such a "Leninist-type party".

Hansen argues that: "The Castro regime exercised a certain initiative in bringing Cuban influence to bear in the struggle against imperialism on the African continent"

He draws a distinction between the conservatism and "counter-revolutionary outlook" characteristic of the foreign policy of "hardened bureaucratic castes" like those of the USSR and China and Cuban activities in Africa which:

"have greatly increased instability at the expense of the imperialist powers"

Cuban policy has, argues Hansen:

"closed off rather than invited a deal with American imperialism. This fact alone speaks decisively against the contention that the events in Africa offer proof that a hardened bureaucratic caste has taken over in Cuba"

So 20 years after the Cuban revolution the USFI continues to give a more or less clean bill of health to the originally petty bourgeois nationalist and now Stalinist current represented by the Castro bureaucracy.

It is not an easy position to hold. In fact to have even a shred of credibility it requires Hansen to indulge in important falsifications.

No criticism For instance, he writes astonishingly of "Castro's criticisms of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia which he reluctantly supported"

Castro's famous speech in August 1968 did contain some bitter implications about Soviet policy in relation to Cuba and But it contained not a word of criticism of the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In fact it went out of its way to give unambiguous support to this counter-revolutionary suppression of the rights of Czechoslovak workers.

It can at best be counted as extreme naivity to assert, as Hansen does, that Cuba's interventions in Africa show a "certain initiative" in the struggle against imperialism.

Every shred of evidence points to the fact that Cuba's African policy has been planned and executed in total integration with that of Moscow.

And despite its fleetingly (but always contradictory) anti-imperialist role in giving material assistance to the MPLA in Angola against imperialistbacked troops, the almost exclusive effect of Cuba's intervention since 1975 has been the reactionary one of keeping in power the counter-revolutionary regimes of Neto in Angola and then of Mengistu in Ethiopia.

Cubans have belped Neto to crush his left opposition.

And the Cuban-Soviet protege has just made a deal with Mobutu, the pro-imperialist dictator of Zaire.

But Hansen talks only of Cuba's "destabilising" role Africa.

Counter-revolutionary In Eritrea, Cuban troops have become the direct accomplices of policies of genocide.

Yet. Hansen is unable in his article to say an unambiguous word against this policy.

He only says pathetically that:

"Havana's hesitancy demonstrates how dangerous an inconsistent anti-imperialist line can be"

There is just one thing on which, from a totally different standpoint, we can agree with Hansen-that since 1963 there has been no qualitative change in the nature of the Cuban The Castro leadership remains today what it then was -d counter-revolutionary bureaucracy which is a hardened obstacle to the advance of socialism.

It must be overthrown by a political revolution under the leadership of a Trotskyist party.

In demonstrating in Granma it is not some misunderstanding or inconsistency las Joseph Hansen would presumably be forced to argue), it is behaving quite consistently with its counter-revolutionary historical role.

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to gęnocide in Eritrea. "Reunification"