The lightning speed of the organisers and signatories to the Frank Garcia petition campaign, as well as the speed and assuredness of the statements and positions of the anti-Cuba socialists more generally, indicates that what drives them is not so much the events on July 11 or its aftermath – about which the leaders of this push did not stop to check the facts. Rather, their various statements and positions, their overall attitudes and interpretation of what information has come to light, express pre-existing ideas about Cuba that already existed in the heads of the different groupings.

By his own account, Frank García Hernández, a communist historian at the University of Havana, was not arrested for criticising the Cuban government or for participation in the July 11 mobilisations against it.

In the previous article in this series it was argued that China is not imperialist in the Marxist sense because its capitalist class is not able to capture, in a widespread way, value that is produced by workers in other countries. That privilege is held only by the capitalist classes of the rich countries such as Australia, the United States, Japan, South Korea and the countries of Western Europe. It is also the reason these countries are rich and China is not.

According to the mainstream definition, China perhaps is imperialist. For example, Beijing claims territory in the South China Sea that is closer to the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam than it is to China. It is also increasing military expenditure. On these facts alone, China might be “imperialist” in the dictionary sense.

For more than a hundred years – since the First World War – revolutionary socialists have used the concept of “imperialism” to analyse the relations between different countries. In that whole period, or at least since the Second World War, there has been no major example of a non-imperialist country (i.e. a poor, colonial, “semi-colonial”, “underdeveloped” or “Third World” country) breaking free of domination and forcing an entry into the small club of rich nations.

I was born in 1951. I was in my early teens when the American war in Vietnam started to become news. I just missed out on being old enough or exposed directly enough to be fully caught up in the 60s radicalisation, but it was the 60s all the same that framed the picture of the world that I gazed upon and eventually engaged with. The 60s was a period of multiple, myriad, kaleidoscopic, even hallucinogenic angles of gaze and questioning. Engagement with social and political realities exploded with militant protest movements, subversive culture and the sharing of songs hitherto without voices.

It was a genuine surprise to read the nature of the 'arguments' presented by Allen Myers in his reply to our article "Can Australian Capitalism be Forced to Quit Coal?". The article critiqued an analysis presented in the journal Marxist Left Review by Sarah Garnham of the centrality of fossil fuels to capitalism. It was written to answer the question of what should be the strategic perspective and demands of the now emerging climate action movement.

The contemporary world economy has become more highly integrated than ever before. Supply chains for complex products can sometimes span dozens of countries. Yet the benefits from this global production system still fall mostly to the capitalist rulers of just a handful of rich, imperialist countries. As a result of their monopolistic position in global production and world trade the imperialist societies have secured levels of wealth, income and social development immensely higher than all other countries – the so called “Third World”.

Around the world there is heightened awareness of the dangers to the human habitat from global warming. The assessments of climate scientists increasingly express a sense of urgency that carbon emissions be reduced immediately. More and more people understand the threat. Polls show stronger understanding of the threat and a demand for governments to act to reduce carbon emissions. In some countries government action has already made significant progress; in others, sections of business are resisting or slowing down the process.

Speaking at a rally in Florida in May 2019, United States President Donald Trump told his supporters, “We won’t back down until China stops cheating our workers and stealing our jobs. And that’s what’s going to happen. Otherwise, we don’t have to do business with them. We can make the product right here, if we have to, like we used to.”