Is Cuba’s revolution still relevant for the left?

[Pablo N]

While the mainstream media has concentrated on whether Fidel Castro’s retirement will usher in a “transition” period for Cuba there’s little analysis of how Cuba’s revolution has survived for over 50 years.

Here Diana Raby argues that Cuba’s revolution is still important for the left and offers living proof that another world really is possible.

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article1212.html

Shortly, we will  be posting a response to Raby's piece.

[Pablo N]

Dave Osler responds to Raby, arguing that it is unforgivable to utilise the slogans of Seattle in describing Cuba.

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article1255.html

[Fiona]

I agree with Dave, Cuba does not represents anything at this moment that is positive for the left. This is not to say that Cuba didn't have potential but where ever you place the blame for it not coming to fruition the fact remains it's not some utopic socialist democracy but an inherited dictatorship. Certainly this isn't to decry Cuba's achievements in health and education nor its strong internationalism in supporting -practically- other struggles but not to balance this against the human rights abuses,  lack of civil rights, lack of independent trade unions, lack of political and social space is pure 'starry eyed' romanticism.

Fiona

[Neruda]

What Cuba needs now is a dose of pragmatism- after over 50 years of idealism I think it is fair to say for the main part it hasn't acheived what Castro and the left thought it would.  The many great achievements of Cuba that put it at the vanguard of revolution and to be a beacon for the left lie some 30 odd years in the past and its failure to become a successful alternative to free market capitalism speaks volumes.  We all know the arguments behind this but there is no point in retreading them because it is what it is and only genuine radical change will now make a difference and I don't feel optimistic that Raul Castro will be in much of a hurry to bring this about.

[Brigg57]

An interesting, thought-provoking polemic. My guess is that most of us will see both sides of the argument, whatever conclusion they reach.
My admiration for Castro's ability to withstand the economic might of the most powerful state in the world is unqualified. To compare Cuba under Castro with Cuba under Batista is to see the real potential of a socialist revolution; an illiterate US brothel run by the mafia has become a nation marked by literacy and free health care for all. The marks of a popular, rather than a parliamentary, democracy provide the legitimacy and support for the regime which has prevented Cuba's revoution from repeating the failures of previous popular risings against corrupt US-backed dictators (eg Guatemala and Chile, where leftwing governments were brutally overthrown by forces financed by the CIA). The poverty of Cuba is a result of the US blockade, not any inherent failure of the regime.
Given this, the regime is a dictatorship; the censorship and imprisonment of political opponents may be understood (not justified) by the nature of the powerful forces seeking to return Cuba to the US-friendly days of Batista, but the torture of gays which has taken place can hardly be justified by anything. I also distrust all the talk of a new socialist human nature as potentially totalitarian.
So - my reaction is as ambigious (or multi-faceted) as the revolution in Cuba; when Rosa Luxemburg criticised the dictatorship in Bolshevik Russia, she was always careful to show the positive elements there. I wouldn't really see socialism as personified in Cuba; I do think that, for all its faults, the revolution there stood and stands still as a beacon to the impoverished Latin American continent.

[Dugsie]

If it doesn't move towards becoming a socialist democracy it is likely to degenerate. Renewal is essential.

[Brigg57]

well, a socialist democracy would certainly be my preference, too...though what that means isn't universally agreed...but it hasn't been a socialist democracy for the last 50 years, and hasn't degenerated (or moved forward).  I think we should look at Cuba in context. If the US blockade eases, then the chances of economic prosperity allowing a loosening of censorship etc would be enhanced. While Cuba remains in genuine danger, then to expect it to loosen controls is rather like expecting Britain to free Mosley and his fascist mates from jail in 1940. It ain't going to be done. Cuba is too poor. At least so far it has avoided the fate of Mexico - "poor Mexico...so far from God, so close to the United States", and its dictatorship is socially just, unlike other Latin American countries, and mitigated by an element of popular democracy.
As I have argued, Cuba is a paradox for socialists..in some ways unacceptable, in some ways admirable. The pressure to become a US colony is very intense, though, and I'm afraid  that's to do with its economic position, not its political system.

[Brian]

Raby is widely acknowledged as a leading expert on Latin American affairs.

Cuban socialism certainly is still relevant to the left, and for anyone to say that the Cuban revolution, and it's contributions , are not relevant is simply to inadvertently admit ignorance.

There is the example of Angola 1987-88, whose 20th anniversary we are presently living through,
and remember that one of the Miami 5 (Rene Gonzalez) is a veteran of that struggle which began the toppling of Apartheid South Africa, with Soviet support.

If others are not clear about this, Nelson Mandela certainly is, which is why he made a point of visiting Havana first when he was released in 1990, and describes the Cuban intervention in Angola in 1987-8 as a 'turning point in the liberation of our country and continent'.

To describe Cuba as an 'inherited dictatorship' , as Fiona does, is also to display ignorance as to the voting situation in Cuba,  which is clearly described at the CSC website:You can read a series of articles answering the landslide of imperialist propaganda against Cuba at

www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/faq.asp

where questions like 'is Cuba democratic?' , 'how does Cuba's constitution and electoral system work?',
'does Cuba discriminate against gays?', 'are cuban trade unions free?' are all answered.

I think Michael Moore certainly thinks that at least one aspect of Cuba, it's health service, is an example for the US, and maybe elsewhere. I will never forget the scene, in Moore's film 'Sicko', where veterans of the rescue of those injured in the 9-11 attack ,who are heroes in their own country yet can't get the basic health care they need, are given life-changing treatment in a Cuban hospital.

Some of them break-down in tears of joy at the fact that the treatment they are given is absolutely free.

Not only this, but Cuba has been the beacon stimulating Latin Americans and others to rise against the empire:I think the Bolivarian revolutions would have been far more unlikely had it not been for the existence of Cuba as a counter-example to third-world servitude.Not for nothing has Chavez regularly visited Companero Castro in his hospital bed. I certainly think the left here in the UK and elsewhere should get behind Evo Morales when he sits in the UN General Assembly and calls for 'the ending of the capitalist system', as he did only a few days ago.

For Cuba to continue to do all it has done for it's own people, and for stricken and oppressed people around the world, in the face of a US blockade which is regularly condemned as illegal at the UN general assembly, is nothing short of amazing, indeed staggering.

And for the left, in this country or anywhere else, to fall for any set of shallow, pious abstractions used as propaganda to turn the left against Cuba, is nothing less than to do the work of the imperialists, or 'the empire' as the Cubans call it.

Such shallow gullible exercises in 'socialism somewhere over the rainbow' may be the long-standing prerogative of the ultra-left, but they need not characterise the rest of us.

yours,

Brian Precious

[rob9443]

Gay rights in modern Cuba.

http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=2327

[Johnnywas]

I do not believe that Cuba is democratic - the formal structures described by the Cuban Government (and its apologists) may serve some use as consultative bodies but in democracies the representatives of the people have the power to decide the major issues of polity - and the constitution  -  the   Cuban Trade Unions do not and can not

in 2003 the Government has arrested 75 people for demanding nothing more than basic human rights and continues to hold them in unfit conditions. Amnesty international has classified all 75 as prisoners of conscience.

what the Cuban people need now is for the left to denounce human rights violations in Cuba and call for the immediate release of all prisoners of conscience.  

if we do so - there is  chance that Cuba's will one day re-emerge with a strong and effective social democratic movement

then it will be relevant to the left  


    










  

[Brigg57]

There seems to be a sharp division between apologists and people who feel Cuba should have the same political institutions as Britain.

The apologists sound too much like those people who denied purges in the USSR, blaming all ills on fascist ultra-left saboteurs who rightly deserved to be shot, and stressing how happy everyone was. The fact that it was Castro who set up 're-education' camps for gays after his victory should not be forgotten, though the government is now officially against the oppression of gays and lesbians (as is the US and UK - officially). Castro's conflict with the US was always talked of in terms of 'cojones' (balls)- Castro accused Khruschev in 1962 of having no cojones for not launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US.

However, I think that it's the critics who think of themselves as social democrats who are really worrying. They seem to forget what Cuba was like under Batista (an American brothel run by the Mafia and the sugar and tobacco companies, marked by low levels of literacy and health), and how the US has used its blockade to impoverish Cuba. With a history of US occupations and with the US wanting to turn Cuba into a virtual colony once again, it's hardly surprising that Cuba should hold political prisoners, or that there should be shortages. Cuba was never wealthy to begin with, and with such a powerful country as an enemy any government would be touchy. When Britain was at war, civil liberties were given short shrift for the duration. No government faced with such hostile power could survive without taking measures to defend itself.
If the critics have a real concern with liberty - and to me freedom is one of the keystones of socialist democracy - then the real fire should be turned on the real culprit. If the US becomes a friendly power, accepting that Cuba is hostile to capitalism and living with it, then there will be no excuse for any suspensions of civil liberties. Until that happens, then I'm not going to be pointing the finger of blame at anyone but the US.

[Brian]

Cheers for the informative link, Rob.

This adds to my link to the csc website which has articles on the lgbt position in modern Cuba.

And thanks very much for your second paragraph, Briggsy, which is an antidote , just like you say, to all the London pseudo-lefties for whom Cuba doesn't dot all the i's and cross all the t's and so gets dismissed, in traditional ultra-leftist style.

I do not count myself one of the apologists you rightly criticize: The USSR was not a workers paradise, and yes Castro is to be criticized for his previous policies towrds gay people.

So we should not be uncritical, but certainly give credit where it is due.

So to fail to show solidarity with Cuba in the face of a 50-year illegal blockade by the most powerful nation on earth, while it has done so much for it's own people and for others around the world, is the height of boy-scout abstract pietism from leftists who need to grow up.

yours,

Brian Precious

[Fiona]

Diana Raby responds to Dave Osler

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Cuba-response-to-Dave-Osler

[baslamak]

"There seems to be a sharp division between apologists and people who feel Cuba should have the same political institutions as Britain."

You mean like having a monarch as head of state, very democratic; and an unelected second legislative chamber? or do you mean the shoot to kill policy the British state practiced in Ireland for three decades, shit that was not a breech of anyones human rights as it was only uppity paddy's whose lives the UK state were stealing. [after practicing something similar for hundreds of years] Pr perhaps the countless murders of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, or perhaps the belief that the UK state has the right to invade just about anyone who ever gets up the nose of the USA. [lap lap, let me such your cock Georgie boy, fine Tone but you must swallow it this time, if not Gordey can give me a blowjob, Greenspan tells me he is better at it than a $5 hooker]

Socialism is different where ever it is practiced, to believe otherwise is infantile, whether it is implemented after a revolution or after an electoral victory. I do not have the time to do this subject justice let alone vent my anger with my pen for Fiona even asking this question in the manner she has.

All I will say to conclude [for now] is that there is no such thing as a socialist who does not stand four square with the Cuban revolution against the crude and obscene power that is the government of the USA; and there never has been. For if you do not stand with the Cuban people and there revolution, then  you cannot be a socialist.

Talk about a friend in need is a bloody nuisance.

[Johnnywas]

the only division is between those who believe that the Cuba Government should be  accountable for its continuing abuses of human rights and those who would deny that or shift the blame elsewhere

Thsi is what Amnesty has to say on the issue of prisoners of conscience in Cuba

19 March 2008 

Cuba: Five years too many, new government must release jailed dissidents
18 March 2008

On the 5th anniversary of the largest crackdown against political opponents in Cuba, Amnesty International today called on the new Cuban authorities to immediately release the 58 dissidents still being held in jails across the country.

“Five years is five years too many. The only crime committed by these 58 is the peaceful exercise of their fundamental freedoms. Amnesty International considers them to be prisoners of conscience. They must be released immediately and unconditionally,” said Kerrie Howard, Deputy Director for Amnesty International’s Americas Programme.

In February 2008, Amnesty International welcomed the release of four prisoners of conscience and Cuba’s signing of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“The new Cuban President, Raul Castro, has to follow the recent positive actions by tackling some of the most pressing human rights issues in the country – including judicial review of all sentences passed after unfair trials, the abolition of the death penalty and the introduction of measures to guarantee freedom of expression and independence of the judiciary,” said Kerrie Howard.

Fifty-five of the 58 current prisoners of conscience in Cuba are the remainder of a group of 75 people jailed in the context of a massive crackdown against the dissident movement in March 2003. Most of them were charged with crimes including “acts against the independence of the state” because they received funds and/or materials from the United States government in order to engage in activities the authorities perceived as subversive and damaging to Cuba. These activities included publishing articles or giving interviews to US-funded media, communicating with international human rights organizations and having contact with entities or individuals viewed to be hostile to Cuba. The men were sentenced to between six and 28 years of prison after speedy and dubious trials. Twenty have so far been conditionally released on medical grounds.

Among the jailed political opponents is doctor and human rights defender Marcelo Cano Rodriguez. He was arrested in the city of Las Tunas on 25 March 2003 as he was investigating the arrest of another doctor, Jorge Luis García Paneque, detained during the crackdown on dissidents on the island. Marcelo Cano Rodríguez was tried, convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison. The activities the prosecution cited against him included visiting prisoners and their families as part of his work with the Comisión Cubana de Derechos Humanos (Cuban Human Rights Commission); and maintaining ties to the international organization Medicos sin Fronteras, Doctors without Borders. He is currently being held in Ariza prison in the city of Cienfuegos, around 250 km south-east of his home in the capital, Havana, where his family lives making family visits difficult.

“By continuing to hold political opponents for exercising fundamental freedoms, the Cuban authorities are failing to step up to their human rights commitments,” said Kerrie Howard.

A full list of the 58 political activists unfairly imprisoned in Cuba will be available from 18 March on:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/cuba-list-prisoners-of-conscience

[Brian]

"There seems to be a sharp division between apologists and people who feel Cuba should have the same political institutions as Britain."

You mean like having a monarch as head of state, very democratic; and an unelected second legislative chamber? or do you mean the shoot to kill policy the British state practiced in Ireland for three decades, shit that was not a breech of anyones human rights as it was only uppity paddy's whose lives the UK state were stealing. [after practicing something similar for hundreds of years] Pr perhaps the countless murders of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, or perhaps the belief that the UK state has the right to invade just about anyone who ever gets up the nose of the USA. [lap lap, let me such your cock Georgie boy, fine Tone but you must swallow it this time, if not Gordey can give me a blowjob, Greenspan tells me he is better at it than a $5 hooker]

Socialism is different where ever it is practiced, to believe otherwise is infantile, whether it is implemented after a revolution or after an electoral victory. I do not have the time to do this subject justice let alone vent my anger with my pen for Fiona even asking this question in the manner she has.

All I will say to conclude [for now] is that there is no such thing as a socialist who does not stand four square with the Cuban revolution against the crude and obscene power that is the government of the USA; and there never has been. For if you do not stand with the Cuban people and there revolution, then  you cannot be a socialist.

Talk about a friend in need is a bloody nuisance.

Superb stuff, Baslamak.

I do not know if you were there, but last night many of us from North London CSC went to a highly productive meeting at ULU, with Teresita Trujillo from the Cuban Communist Party addressing a packed out room with some 80 people.Teresita's tour of the UK is being sponsored by organisations across the progressive spectrum in the UK, from Jeremy Corbyn to the CPB to various unions.

Teresita easily fended off many quite searching questions from the audience - answering categorically that parties and unions are not banned in Cuba, and that many of the stories you read in the capitalist press are of 'dissidents' who often get their money from the US interest section in Havana (or from such lovely sponsors of democracy as the US National Endowment for Democracy - you can follow where the US is next going to throw some shit at the fan just by following the movements of NED and it's leading figures such as Richard Holbrooke, who was to be seen in Croatia just before the Croatian army 'cleansed' Krajina of 250,000 ethnic Serbs in 1995, doing Uncle Sam's dirty work).

Teresita pointed out this especially in reference to the 75 'dissidents' which the west keeps mentioning, including Amnesty.

Finally, of course, we know that the propaganda barrage against Cuba is not launched from a love of human rights, any more than the operations against Nicaragua in the 1980s  , or the coup which tried to oust Chavez in 2002.

The western rulers and their cheerleaders are only concerned with overturning the Cuban revolution and returning the whole of the third world to it's traditional slave status.


yours,

Brian Precious

[Brian]

Diana Raby responds to Dave Osler

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Cuba-response-to-Dave-Osler

Thanks for this, Fiona.

Excellent riposte to David Osler.

Diana Raby is regarded as a world leading authority not just on Cuba but on Latin America as a whole.

It was good to read her closing remarks on Cuba's effects on Latin America, which is the real clincher, and illustrates something which Chomsky has been saying for years, namely that US imperialism fiercely guards against the 'domino effect' that is now happily sweeping Latin America, whether Washington likes it or not.

yours,

Brian Precious

[Brigg57]

I don't think we do anybody any favours, least of all the cause of social change here or anywhere,  by unthinking praise or blame.

In response to baslamak (whose blog I greatly admire), and to Brian, I don't feel the need to reiterate my support of the Cuban Revolution...just read my contributions above. But the imprisonments and deportations can't be sidestepped. The democracy there is one which people on the radical left in Britain have long supported - the local democracy of committees organising ordinary people to make decisions has a long history of support in the Left, going back to the 'lost treasure' of the American Revolution and expressing itself in the soviet democracy of Russia and Spain during the birth of their revolutions.

Yet I refuse to suspend the critical spirit which is so essential to socialist thought and action, particularly when a genuine socialst reviolution is being made. If that democracy is not balanced by tolerance for opposition and freedom of thought, then it becomes a totalitarian democracy where people are mobilised to flatten dissent - we saw that at its worst in China during the great Cultural Revolution where all opponents were 'enemies of the people' and in league with the US. In Russia under Stalin, under dire threat from imperialism and fascism, all enelmies were in league with Hitler. Appalling crimes were hushed up by most of the Left at that time (there were honourable exceptions) precisely because Russia represented something heroic, and was struggling for social justice, and anyone who spoke against her from the Left was shouted down and censored (Orwell was only the most notable example).

I most certainly do NOT want to be associated with those who say Cuba has nothing to offer the Left. look at my contributions here to see that. Those who condemn the regime for imprisoning (and deporting)people have the wrong enemy in sight - it's the US threat, from invasion to blockade, which is the cause of Cuba's poverty and continual state of alert; the US will not be content before the island becomes a US colony once more. People who just sit and finger-wag at the regime really need to clue themselves up about where real power in the world lies, and I will only take them seriously when they take the actual world of imperialism seriously. Anyone who is seriously concerned about liberty in Cuba will demand that the US lift its blockade and accept that Cuba has chosen to reject capitalism. I don't think the US will ever fully accept that, because of its fears that the rest of their Latin American colony might do the same, but it does start to look in all sorts of ways that US capital is straining at the leash to trade with Cuba

However, my admiration for the revolution, for its achievements and its example, is strengthened and not weakened by a critical spirit.

[baslamak]

However, my admiration for the revolution, for its achievements and its example, is strengthened and not weakened by a critical spirit.

brigg 57

I agree totally with the above and most if not all of your last post, and thanks for the kind words about the blog. This thread has got me thinking about Cuba so I thought I would reply in full on OR and then post it up in full on this thread, if Fiona does not object.

Brian

Nice to see your as committed today as when we used to debate on the old Red Pepper yahoo site.

Comradely regards to you both.

Mick

[Brian]

I don't think we do anybody any favours, least of all the cause of social change here or anywhere,  by unthinking praise or blame.

In response to baslamak (whose blog I greatly admire), and to Brian, I don't feel the need to reiterate my support of the Cuban Revolution...just read my contributions above. But the imprisonments and deportations can't be sidestepped. The democracy there is one which people on the radical left in Britain have long supported - the local democracy of committees organising ordinary people to make decisions has a long history of support in the Left, going back to the 'lost treasure' of the American Revolution and expressing itself in the soviet democracy of Russia and Spain during the birth of their revolutions.

Yet I refuse to suspend the critical spirit which is so essential to socialist thought and action, particularly when a genuine socialst reviolution is being made. If that democracy is not balanced by tolerance for opposition and freedom of thought, then it becomes a totalitarian democracy where people are mobilised to flatten dissent - we saw that at its worst in China during the great Cultural Revolution where all opponents were 'enemies of the people' and in league with the US. In Russia under Stalin, under dire threat from imperialism and fascism, all enelmies were in league with Hitler. Appalling crimes were hushed up by most of the Left at that time (there were honourable exceptions) precisely because Russia represented something heroic, and was struggling for social justice, and anyone who spoke against her from the Left was shouted down and censored (Orwell was only the most notable example).

I most certainly do NOT want to be associated with those who say Cuba has nothing to offer the Left. look at my contributions here to see that. Those who condemn the regime for imprisoning (and deporting)people have the wrong enemy in sight - it's the US threat, from invasion to blockade, which is the cause of Cuba's poverty and continual state of alert; the US will not be content before the island becomes a US colony once more. People who just sit and finger-wag at the regime really need to clue themselves up about where real power in the world lies, and I will only take them seriously when they take the actual world of imperialism seriously. Anyone who is seriously concerned about liberty in Cuba will demand that the US lift its blockade and accept that Cuba has chosen to reject capitalism. I don't think the US will ever fully accept that, because of its fears that the rest of their Latin American colony might do the same, but it does start to look in all sorts of ways that US capital is straining at the leash to trade with Cuba

However, my admiration for the revolution, for its achievements and its example, is strengthened and not weakened by a critical spirit.

I would not doubt your support for Cuba at all, Brigg, and I especially agree with your last paragraph here. Spot on.
I also think that any violations should not be sidestepped. But also anti-Cuba propaganda should be confronted without being seen to whitewash.

yours,

Brian Precious