Once again the Socialist Workers’ Party has spearheaded an attack by the bulk of the British opportunist left on the Cuban revolution. Serving the interests of US and British imperialism, the SWP has expressed its full support for the protests that took place on the island on 11 July (Socialist Worker, 12 July 2021). For decades, the SWP has been desperate for the Cuban revolution to collapse, allying itself with reactionary ‘Cubanologists’ – academic Cuban émigrés to the US – in unceasing vilification of Cuban socialism.
The protests themselves were about the hardships that ordinary people face under the impact of the intensified and illegal US blockade of Cuba – the food shortages, the frequent power outages, the lengthy queues that people face in getting the basics of life. Although they were very small – no more than 3,000 were claimed in Havana, and others elsewhere in the island numbered no more than a couple of hundred each – the imperialists presented them as the start of a nation-wide rebellion against socialism. There is no doubt that the SWP shared these sentiments and, like the imperialists, wished for a national uprising.
Of course the SWP has to use radical words to present the imperialists’ case for destroying Cuban socialism, describing it as a ‘state capitalist’ society, and deploying in a completely fraudulent way Marx’s argument that the emancipation of the working class has to be the act of the working class itself. When Socialist Worker says ‘Back the protests in Cuba, but beware US imperialism’ who is it warning? People in Cuba? People in Britain? Who? One thing is certain, the Cuban people do not need such counsel. We would suppose the readership of Socialist Worker does not need such advice either; it would be very odd if it were that backward. So the warning is really just a fig-leaf for a reactionary position. The US and Britain want to destroy Cuba. So does the SWP. The US and Britain claim Cuba to be a repressive society suppressing basic freedoms. So does the SWP, stating that after the Revolution, ‘Cuban society was marked by repression and the crushing of dissent.’ (Socialist Worker, 16 July 2021). The imperialists belittle the impact of sanctions on ordinary Cuban people claiming that the economic problems the island faces are primarily home-grown, a consequence of socialist organisation. So does the SWP, declaring that ‘the protests this month are a reaction to food shortages caused, in part [emphasis added] by US sanctions that intend to starve Cuba’ (16 July 2021).
Given the single-mindedness of the SWP to march in lockstep with those imperialist forces determined to destroy Cuba, its call for an end to the illegal US blockade is entirely phoney, and has the sole purpose of covering up its disgraceful position. After all, the SWP has never actually organised or been involved in a single protest about the embargo. And it is always going to claim it is not in alliance with imperialism, but as the saying goes, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then the odds are it is a duck. The SWP’s principal demands are the same as those of the imperialists, it repeats the same lies about repression, and if socialism were ever overthrown, we are sure that the SWP would cheer as loudly as it did when the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc fell.
Perhaps one of the most telling features of Socialist Worker’s coverage of the 11 July is that it does not and cannot point to anything progressive in the protests. Indeed, an article it publishes from some erstwhile allies in Cuba, Comunistas Editorial Board (17 July 2021), states that the slogans of the protests were reactionary and that one in particular, ‘the slogan “Down with the dictatorship” is frequently used by the Cuban right and counterrevolutionaries’ – a stinging rebuke to the position of Socialist Worker. The Comunistas article is also quite clear that ‘Counterrevolutionary propaganda had a role in organising the protests’ and that ‘although this was not the main factor that triggered the protests, it is undeniable that a strong right-wing campaign was orchestrated from the United States on social media, openly focused on the overthrow of the Cuban government.’ This of course is also the goal of the SWP.
In his address to the Cuban people on 11 July in response to the demonstrations, President Miguel Diaz-Canel was quite open about the economic hardships that Cuban people are facing at the moment, and showed forensically how the energy blackouts and the food shortages are a consequence of the blockade and its intensification under President Trump which has been sustained by Biden. Yet Socialist Worker does not quote from this extensive passage because it would have to try to refute Diaz-Canal, something of which it is politically and intellectually incapable (see http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2021/07/11/miguel-diaz-canel-comparecera-en-cadena-de-radio-television-a-las-400-pm/ for his full speech).
Yes, Socialist Worker acknowledges that ‘real improvements were made to healthcare and education and large sections of industry were taken into state hands’ but deceitfully ignores the fact that none of these benefits are available to workers across Latin America let alone to the mass of the working class in the US. And the reason is clear: to make the comparison would raise questions about its characterisation of Cuba as ‘state capitalist’ – why would this supposed capitalist class not just undertake these reforms. but maintain them even during the depths of the Special Period when the economy contracted by a third? Every other ruling class across the world has targeted health and education for cuts in periods of economic crisis, but not this Cuban ‘ruling class’. How can the SWP explain this? It cannot.
The SWP’s unendingly poisonous attitude towards the Cuban revolution and its achievements needs to be stood alongside to its own supposed contribution in the fight against imperialism and capitalism over the same period:
- In 1969, its forerunner, International Socialists, supported the introduction of British troops into the occupied North of Ireland;
- Throughout the struggle for Irish freedom, the SWP constantly sought to adapt its stance to the political needs of the Labour Party even when in government in 1974-79 Labour implemented a regime of torture, arbitrary detention, juryless courts and shoot-to-kill against Republicans. It constantly attacked the Republican movement as ‘petit bourgeois nationalists’ and its leadership ‘full of their own bullshit’.
- The SWP closed down any campaigning during the first and the second hunger strikes in 1980-81 and allowed the Labour Party to get away with supporting the Tory government as ten hunger-strikers were murdered;
- The SWP refused to participate in any campaign against the South African apartheid regime, constantly attacking the African National Congress;
- Along with Labour ‘lefts’ like Tony Benn it attacked the youth in 1981 when they rose up against racist policing and deepening poverty, describing them in racist terms as ‘the soft underbelly of the working class’;
- In 1989-90, it opposed campaigning in local working class estates and communities against the hated Poll Tax because ‘On council estates are drug peddlers, junkies and people claiming houses under false names.’
- In 2001, it prevented Stop the War from being based on an anti-imperialist standpoint, and in 2003, sold the movement out to protect its alliance with the left of the Labour Party;
- Every supposedly anti-racist organisation it has set up (Anti-Nazi League, Unite against Fascism, Stand up to Racism) has curried favour with open Zionists; in Glasgow it has defended the active participation of explicitly Zionist organisations on its marches in 2017-2019.
The lesson is clear: the SWP is a thoroughly reactionary organisation. Its attitude towards the Cuban Revolution has always been nakedly chauvinist. The Cuban revolutionaries did not do things according to the template for revolution devised by a bunch of British ‘socialists’, a template which starts with the assumption that it can only proceed through an alliance with the social imperialists of the Labour Party. While these British ‘socialists’ have achieved nothing of any consequence, the Cuban Revolution stands tall in its opposition to capitalism and imperialism. Viva Cuba!
Robert Clough
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 283, August/September 2021
