- The Cuban revolution & its leadership: A reply to a sectarian criticism – Resistance Books 2000 (PDF format)
This pamphlet is based on a article which appeared in the The Activist – Volume 9, No 4, 1999 titled The Cuban revolution and its leadership: A criticism of Peter Taaffe’s pamphlet ‘Cuba: Analysis of the revolution’ that was written at the request of Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan, as an initial contribution to a discussion between the LPP and the DSP on the character of the leadership of the Cuban socialist state and the Communist Party of Cuba.
Introduction
Peter Taaffe’s pamphlet on Cuba (first published in 1978 and reprinted in 1982) consists of three articles taken from the paper of the British Militant organisation (now called the Socialist Party), of which he was, and still is, general secretary. The first article presents an analysis of the revolutionary struggle in Cuba up to the expropriation of capitalist property and the establishment of a planned economy. The second article analyses the character of the group which led the Cuban socialist revolution, the central conclusion of which is indicated by the article’s title: “Power in the Hands of [a] Bureaucratic Elite”. The third article is an attempt to substantiate this view in the light of the foreign and domestic policies of this leadership group.
The basic conclusion of the pamphlet is set out at the end of the third article: The Cuban revolution has demonstrated the gigantic possibilities which flow from nationalisation and a plan of production. In the statistics which record the rise in health care, education, social security and the development of the economy it has been more than justified. It has also given a big push to the revolution in the Caribbean and in Latin America.
But because the revolution took place in a backward country with a leadership which based itself on a predominantly agrarian movement and with national limitations, bureaucratic degeneration was inevitable. Undoubtedly the Castro regime still has much more of a popular base than the Stalinist regimes in Russia and in Eastern Europe. But the development of industry will also mean the growth of the working class and with it increasing demands for workers’ democracy. Moreover political revolution in Eastern Europe or the social revolution in Europe, America or Japan will have their repercussions in Cuba itself.
The victory of the socialist revolution in Argentina or Brazil, for instance, would have a dramatic effect on Cuba. In these countries the social weight of the working class is so decisive that the socialist revolution would develop along the lines of the Russian revolution. A victory of the working class in either country would detonate the socialist revolution throughout the continent and lead to a new revolution in Cuba – a political revolution and the establishment of workers’ democracy.
Taaffe’s basic conclusion is that the task facing the Cuban proletariat in 1978 was the same as that facing the workers in the Soviet Union, i.e., to carry out an anti-bureaucratic political revolution. This political perspective is based upon his claim that the Castro regime represents a “bureaucratic elite” similar in all essential characteristics to the ruling bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union, as analysed by Trotsky in his 1936 book The Revolution Betrayed.