Cuban socialism is under relentless attack from imperialism, struggling to recover from the devastating economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the US blockade which was dramatically escalated under the Trump administration and remains in place under Biden. Its defence requires urgent political and practical support on an international scale from anyone calling themselves socialist. In contrast, the response of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) is to up its attack on Cuban socialism, siding squarely with the forces of imperialism. In July 2021, when anti-government protests were stoked by forces loyal to US imperialism, the SWP called on its followers to support the counter-revolutionaries (see ‘The SWP: standing with imperialism against Cuba’, FRFI 283, August/September 2021). On 1 July 2022 at its misnamed annual talking shop, ‘Marxism 2022: festival of socialist ideas’, the SWP sank to new depths of chauvinism with a meeting held to try to promote the lie that Cuba is not socialist. The RCG was there to call this out and defend Cuba’s example.
The lecture – ‘Why Cuba is not socialist’ – was given by David Karvala of Marx21, an SWP sister organisation. Karvala’s speech simply reheated the same thin theoretical gruel that the SWP has served up time and again in attacking the Cuban Revolution. It has already been thoroughly debunked (see FRFI 180, ‘The oppressed people of the world support socialist Cuba – why doesn’t the SWP?’). The SWP’s transparent aim was to prime Marxism 2022 attendees to support any further counterrevolutionary schemes or anti-government protests in Cuba, a year on from the defeat of the previous ones.
It took an intervention from FRFI supporters to counter the hypocrisy, laziness and cowardice of this SWP line of attack. Two supporters interrupted Karvala’s lecture to unfurl a banner proclaiming ‘The oppressed people of the world support Cuban socialism – why doesn’t the SWP?’. This received support from many at the event who expressed total disgust at the SWP’s stance. During the discussion, another FRFI supporter corrected Karvala’s deceptive narrative which paid little attention to historical evidence or current events, and was premised upon of a series of lies:
- Lie number one: the Cuban Revolution was not an authentic socialist revolution because its leadership, the 26 July Movement (M-26-J), was made up of ‘middle-class’ individuals detached from the working class.
From its founding, M-26-J’s base was the working poor in the Havana district where Fidel Castro had stood for election. Another M-26-J leader, Frank Pais, brought a similar social base from Santiago. It was mainly factory workers and shop assistants who attacked the Moncada Barracks on 26 July 1953, a precursor to the 1959 revolutionary triumph. Guerrilla fighters and activists drawn from the urban and rural proletariat and the peasantry waged the struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista, and were organised outside traditional labour organisations, yet the SWP clings to the dogma that only the trade unions can provide authentic leadership to the working class. The reactionary role of the trade union apparatus, which sided with Batista during the Cuban Revolution, disturbs the SWP because it exposes the dogmatism of its own political strategy in Britain which gives the existing trade unions, and through them the Labour Party, the key role in building a socialist movement.
- Lie number two: Cuba is run by ‘bureaucrats’, not the masses.
The mass consultations which have recently considered changes to Cuba’s Family Code exemplify Cuban mass democracy at work. Since its 23rd draft was approved in the National Assembly of People’s Power in December 2021, country-wide explanatory sessions led to local community debates, which in turn led to amendments and changes in all parts of the Code. Six months later, President Miguel Díaz Canel reviewed the current process and stressed the need to continue conversing door-to-door with every worker, youth and family. After being presented again for debate at the National Assembly in July 2022, the referendum is scheduled for September. That the SWP is totally ignorant of such processes, or expects its audience to be, reveals how narrow its perspective is.
- Lie number three: Cuba’s support for revolutionary and anti-colonial struggles historically was part of ‘USSR colonialism’ (an echo of the US government’s lies).
Here the SWP showed its spiteful, paternalist racism. Cuban forces fighting in Angola from 1975 onwards – separately from the Soviet Union – defended the MPLA government and Angolan people from US-backed UNITA and apartheid South Africa. The SWP must have shut its ears when Nelson Mandela spoke in Havana in 1991, on his first foreign trip after release from prison: ‘We have come here today recognising our great debt to the Cuban people. What other country has such a history of selfless behaviour as Cuba has shown for the people of Africa? … The decisive defeat of the aggressive apartheid forces [in Angola] destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor.’ And this is not even to mention the internationalism shown by Cuban doctors and educators serving underdeveloped countries across the world for decades, most recently during the coronavirus pandemic when it sent its doctors to nearly 40 countries across five continents.
Any genuine committed socialist and internationalist must heed the definition of solidarity given by Díaz Canel to the People’s Summit organised by progressive forces in Los Angeles: solidarity is ‘…not only a principle that is inseparable from the revolutionary praxis. It is the most formidable weapon for those of us who believe in the power of the masses’. By recognising Cuba’s socialist achievements under a blockade, RCG/FRFI understands the reality of the struggle for socialism. The world is in the grips of deadly, crisis ridden imperialism. The SWP joins US imperialism and right-wing Miami Cuban exiles in attacking Cuban socialism. We must join the oppressed of the world in defending it!
Join Rock around the Blockade and allied organisations on 24 July 2022 to launch a campaign challenging European and UK banks’ enforcement of the illegal US blockade of Cuba: www.tinyurl.com/BanksUnblockCuba
