Cuba’s 20 Year Fight Against Imperialism

Review of Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution by Joe Hansen. Movement over two decades ago. Today, Cuba remains an ‘acid test’ for revolutionaries worldwide. The methods of the Cuban revolution posed a whole series of questions for Marxists. This was particularly so in the case of revolutionaries in the U.S.. For them the question of Cuba was from the beginning much more than a theoretical problem. With the main imperialist power just a mere 90 miles away from the infant workers state the role of revolutionaries in the U.S. was of primary importance. Joe Hansen has compiled a series of invaluable documents in his book ‘The Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution’. As a leading member of Socialist Workers Party , U.S. supporters of the Fourth International, he went to Cuba in the early stages of the revolution to report firsthand on the situation there for the U.S. Trotskyist paper ‘The Militant’.

The book contains a detailed background to the long history of imperialist domination in Cuba, from Spanish domination to U.S. occupation, outlining the various puppet regimes that acted as caretakers for U.S. imperialist tule. The extent of imperialist penetration of the economy is underlined graphically with statistics which show how Cuba was a poverty stricken country, whose assets were heartlessly extracted while the native population were left unemployed or paid totally inadequate wages, undernourished and illiterate. The year 1960 was a special one in the history of humankind. It witnessed the setting up of the first workers’ state in the Western hemisphere - revolutionary Cuba was born. In the two decades that followed this historic event Cuba has acted as a source of inspiration to millions of oppressed people struggling for liberation in many diverse parts of the world. Since then there have been many successful wars of National Liberation: Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique and in Central America itself, Nicaragua and Grenada have overturned centuries of oppression and their revolutions stand now where Cuba stood at the beginning of the 1960s. Again in Central America, El Salvador is waging a protracted war against imperialist rule. Indeed Latin America has not been the same since the coming to power of the 26th July STALINIST ROLE There are articles which analyse the role of the Communist Party in the decades leading up to the revolution (at one time Communist Party Ministers served in the U.S. sponsored dictator Batista’s Cabinet) and in the immediate aftermath of the success of ‘El Ejeraito Rebelde’ (The Rebel Army).

In this connection, a lot of attention is given to the international role of Stalinism in this period. The latter’s line of ‘peaceful co-existence’ placed in immediate jeopardy any revolution which was threatening to cause a disturbance in Stalinism’s accord with the imperialist powers. Spain and Germany in the 30s and Vietnam in the 60s are cited as significant examples when the weakness of both ‘socialism in one country’ and ‘peaceful co-existence’ contributed to the rise of European fascism in the first case and the delay in the victory of the Vietnamese revolution in the second.

The most important part of the book however concentrates on the nature of the Cuban state and economy , the Castro leadership, the role of armed struggle and the place of Permanent Revolution in the Cuban situation.

On the latter, the book argues that the Castro leadership set out to overthrow Batista and all he represented in foreign domination. However, having achieved this, it felt it necessary to abolish capFidel Castro talking to w italist property relations, gradually confiscate imperialist property, carry out radical agrarian reform with all state in the Western world.

This process however raised a whole number of questions; the role of the etc. Answers to these questions are dealt with in detail There is also great emphasis on the Women’s brigades members its ramifications. So Cuba moved from being a backward imperialist dominated country to being the first workers’

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY covered in detail.

Party, can armed insurrection achieve SUPPORT socialism, the role of the urban masses sectarian attitudes towards Cuba of various currents claiming to be Trotskyist: notably the Posadas current in Latin America and the Socialist Labour League in Britain. The relationship between Cuba and the workers’ states, its role in international solidarity and specifically whether or not it can act independently of the U.S.S.R. are The one point which is strikingly clear from the book is that the comrades of the Socialist Workers Party in the U.S. saw it as their revolutionary duty to CPPS Map oe ase defend the Cuban revolution; their activity in the ‘Fair Play for Cuba Committee’ which sought to answer slanders and distortions against revolutionary Cuba in the U.S.A. is illustrative of their role. From a position of unconditional support for the overthrow of imperialism the S.W.P. sought to critically analyse the unfolding revolution. This book is a compilation of articles and documents. written from such a standpoint, provides a solid background of facts and historical analysis of the dynamics of the Cuban Revolution.

lran: A Study For Irish Socialists emerge from oppression completely unscathed. The Iranian people, after a century of struggle against colonial and imperialist domination, overthrew the Shah and his hated regime, beginning a process,of weakening the grip of world imperialism’s preying aggressively upon their country. But Iran’s process of revolution has many twists and turns to steer through: socialist revolution is not guaranteed, despite the extensive mobilization of Young Socialists among high schools and student groups; despite the programme of Reconstruction, originated by students; despite the extraordinary leap of millions of Iranian women from deepest oppression into the front line of the uprising; despite the workers’ Shoras, or committees, and the mass mobilizations with the peasants to defend Iran against Iraqi invasion. Son of a Dog When Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr was elected President of Iran eighteen months ago, with over 80% of the vote, he was described by the constitution as ‘next to the leader, the highest authority in the country’. He is now ousted, and denounced as the ‘son of a dog’.

In the mid-fifties, after the CIA had ensured the overthrow of Iran’s National Front Government, BaniSadr had allied himself with radical, socialistic Islam, During his exile to Paris, (after imprisonment for taking part in the 1963 failed revolt against the Pahlavi dynasty) he studied at the Sorbonne and tried to reconcile his capitalism resists wo Irish republican socialists will recognize all too readily that when a country rises to throw off centuries of imperialist rule, the entire repressive baggage of colonialism can rarely be thrown out in just one great upsurge. A whole range of conflicting attitudes and forces are thrown up by such an upsurge, because a country does not and given support to a number of repressive measures, such as the attacks on university students and leftists.

Bani-Sadr had attempted the impossible: to proceed with a programme of self-determination without confronting the key question - which class would rule? He tried to balance the different forces that emerged with the Iranian revolution: Islamic fundamentalisin, Marxist ideology, an army elite and sectarian organisations still unable to form united anti -imperialist fronts.

In fact Bani-Sadr did not respond to the tremendous expectations that had developed among the workers, the urban poor, peasant population and women, because he became caught by the split in the iranian government between the liberal wing and the clergy-led Islamic Republican Party, (LR.P.)

Basically the Iranian government is a weak, capitalist administration trying to establish a stable capitalist state; to accomplish this it needs to curb a working-class that has started to rely more and more on its own strength and organization. The split in Iran’s government is a division of attitude over how to contain the independent organizations of workers and peasants.

War Torn Economy For nine months the Iranian masses have taken their own initiatives to mobilise to defeat the Iraqi invasion, ra can only be fulfilled by maximising the power and organisation of the working class (i.e. on all fronts - a workers‘and peasants plan to reconto defeat invasion; increased workers control and liberation of women to ation). Thus the inability of the capitalist rulers in Iran to conceive of in a capitalist bourgeois state,is the central hurdle in the march towards as capitalism requires the subjection of the masses, repressive action is the rkers’ growing in Iranian soldiers. The war situation dominates Iranian life.

struct the economy; arming the masses maximise the process of self-determinany stability, other than their illusions self-determination and the destruction women are pregnant. of imperialist intervention - therefore, d Right-wing gangs have kidnapped and interrogated left activists. Two women, anti-imperialist activists from the HKE, were arrested at work in the Ray-O-Vac battery factory; the lives of these women, Faranak Zahraie and Monavar Shir Ali, are in danger; they are currently in Evin Prison, where many of the executions have been carried out. The women have been falsely accused of starting a strike in their factory, although there has never been a strike at Ray-O-Vac. Both ependence ON Iran has expressed its recognition of the Irish struggle, as a heroic struggle against imperialism; the street adjoining their British Embassy was renamed Bobby Sands street. As a country claiming commitment to the overthrow of imperialism, Iran is sensitive to the responses from other countries in similar positions.