Cuba, once again at a crossroads
Friday, 16 July 2021 16:09
To put an end to the imperialist blockade and defeat the CP's policy of capitalist restoration, the intervention of the working class of all America is urgent.
The outbreak of protests in San Antonio de los Baños last Sunday, which spread to Havana and other Cuban cities, has taken the unaware by surprise. Starting with the “gusanos” in Miami, who came out to demand US military intervention from Joe Biden, not only to take advantage of the crisis but also frightened to see no clear leadership of the protests. It also takes Biden focused on other problems, mainly domestic, but also of foreign policy: his relations with Latin America and the Caribbean (assassination of Jovenel Moïse, president of Haiti) show great disorientation. On the Cuban side, President Díaz Canel also showed himself to be completely disoriented, coming out with a hard line against the protests and then having to recognize the problems legitimately claimed by the demonstrators, and calling a sector of these "confused revolutionaries".
The confusion of these counterrevolutionary leaderships is based on a real element: the disorder generated by the pandemic worldwide and the lack of clarity of imperialism to lead a process of fulminating defeat of the working masses, starting from the reactionary general rehearsal launched last year, opens up all kinds of political processes. In the case of Cuba, we must consider the difficulties of the process of assimilation of the former workers' state, which is showing, as in Belarus and other countries, tendencies towards capitalist chaos in the face of the leadership weakness of the bureaucracy of that state, this element accentuated by the very weakness of the economic structure of the island. Imperialist decomposition makes assimilation more difficult, but it cannot stop the process ad eternum, rather, it aggravates the decomposition and the tendencies towards confrontation between the social forces present. We have seen this in Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia), in the Caucasus (Nagorno-Karabakh), in China (Hong Kong), all with their own particularities but all determined by a whole historical stage marked by a process of decomposition of a social system that undermines the bases of the nation-states as political form. All this, as we said above, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the case of Cuba, it’s evident how the pandemic hit the State structures already decayed by years of rotting since the fall of the USSR and the beginning of a tortuous transition towards full capitalist assimilation, where the bureaucracy and a social base linked to the State try to maintain their position, against the sector that intends to sweep away those structures with a program that, rather than "homeland and life", is summarized in "semicolony, yes; 51st US State, better". The lack of medical care, food and electricity, also show their awful silhouette against the backdrop of the reforms voted in the last congress of the CCP, which advanced in a savage devaluation with the unification of the exchange rate. The living conditions of the working masses are contrasted with the dollar-valued merchandise on display in the tourist stores and the privileges of the "communist" bureaucracy. These elements are the driving force behind the protests, of which heterogeneous sectors are part, who for years have identified the ideas of socialism and communism with a State that in reality is trying to impose capitalist restoration with repression. But it’s clear that the US imperialist blockade, imposed for decades with the aim of pressuring the bureaucracy to accelerate the restorationist measures (a goal it has more than fulfilled), is the main cause of the hardships of the Cuban working class. Díaz Canel, Biden, the Republican Party and the “gusanos” are all in agreement in taking the counterrevolution in Cuba to the hilt.
The intervention of the proletariat of all America is urgently needed
To collaborate in the task of setting up a revolutionary leadership capable of confronting the imperialist leadership and the leadership of the CP bureaucracy in Cuba, the intervention of the American proletariat is necessary, in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as in the US. Because it’s also evident, and it has been proven by historical experience, that the program of the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be realized within the narrow borders of any Latin American country, but that it acquires its political form in the Federation of Socialist Republics of Latin America and the Caribbean.
To carry out this task, we revolutionaries must fight within the trade unions so that the working class takes action with clear goals: Down with the imperialist blockade! Especially in the US, we must impose the opening of trade with the island, with our methods, the occupation under workers' control of ports, warehouses and factories, the seizure of control of ships and workers' confiscation to take to Cuba the hydrocarbons, food, medicines and vaccines needed by the workers and the poor people. No to imperialist military intervention! At the slightest sign of threat of military intervention, let us impose a strike in the US and the stoppage and occupation of all US-owned companies in the region. Down with the repression of the CCP bureaucracy, freedom for the prisoners! We must impose that the Latin American and US trade unions pronounce themselves for the freedom of the socialist fighters who were arrested on Sunday, July 11th, among them Frank García Hernández, Leonardo Romero Negrín, Maykel González Vivero and Marcos Antonio Pérez Fernández.
For an international revolutionary leadership
Far from what the Latin American Centrists postulate, it’s not a matter of developing a democratic program to take the demands of the masses towards a solution from the (national) State based on more or less "radical" reforms, it’s a matter of regenerating the foundations of the Cuban revolution with the extension of the revolution in the region and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship under a revolutionary leadership. Capitalism is in frank decomposition and can offer nothing more than repression, in increasingly open confrontations with the working class, to try to modify in its favor the relation between capital and labor with the intention of giving itself a survival. The need for an international revolutionary leadership, the reconstructed Fourth International, becomes palpable and cannot be a simple declamation for party congresses and conferences. We have before us the great task of preparing the reconstruction of the IV taking the programmatic debates to the heart of our class, giving political battle to the trade union bureaucracy and fighting to recover the trade unions. We propose, with new emphasis given the events in Cuba, to organize a Latin American Conference of the currents that claim for the dictatorship of the proletariat, to debate the policy, tactics and program to intervene in the situation with that objective. As a step towards a world conference that allows revolutionaries to face the task of the moment: to begin to settle the crisis of leadership of our class, the only revolutionary class, the working class.
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Mass demonstrations against the murder of George Floyd
The crisis shakes the center of world capitalism
Massive demonstrations are shaking the main cities of the United States since the night of Thursday, May 28. The racial murder perpetrated by Minnesota police against George Floyd is not the first of these crimes, which as early as under Obama’s administration had its response in the Black Lives Matter movement, central protagonist in the current mobilizations. In many cities, in addition to claiming for Floyd's life, the protesters are raising banners with other cases of murders of local Black youth and workers, such as David Smith, Jamar Clark, Breonna Taylor and Philando Castile. The situation in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis (Minnesota) and St. Paul (Wisconsin), the site of the crime and epicenter of the protests, has taken on semi-insurrectionary proportions of elemental forces, of a spontaneous nature. This has led the Democratic governor of Minnesota to mobilize the national guard and call for the intervention of federal army troops.
The racial oppression of Black people in the U.S. is an old problem that capitalism has proven unable to solve. The abolition of slavery after the civil war in the 19th century only opened the door to full capitalist development, without providing a political or social way out for the African-American population. This, like so many other problems, will remain unresolved under imperialism, which, as Trotsky said, is incapable of carrying its tendencies to the end, accumulating contradictions like geological layers under the iron domination of the bourgeoisie and its state.
Catalyst
As in other opportunities, the accumulation of contradictions in the economic and social basis of capitalism explode due to contingent events, which act as a catalyst for the tendencies of the exploited and oppressed to fight to reverse the desperate situation to which they are dragged by the rottening of imperialism. Perhaps this is the case with the response to Floyd's savage murder: it not only brings back to the forefront the struggle of Black people against State oppression, against police abuse, violence and murder, it shows that many of the movements that emerged in the heat of the 2008 crisis keep their strength, as Black Lives Matter does. The spontaneous demonstrations, the attacks against the repressive forces, are also an expression of a response of the youth and the working class to the situation generated by the present crisis, enhanced and accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. The destruction of 50 million jobs in the last few months shows the reality of the "job growth" that Obama and Trump sold in the last few years: completely precarious jobs, without any kind of stability, that today throw almost a quarter of the population of the country into unemployment. The current mobilizations have also been nurtured by a wave of strikes against the consequences of the crisis, in different companies, large and small, from coast to coast, from south to north of the United States. Many of them are led by minority and immigrant workers, many of them with trade union organizations with Spanish names. And this is not uncommon considering that the most dangerous and precarious jobs are those that all over the world the employers and their States call the "front line" and throw like cannon fodder to work without the minimum conditions of security and labor health during the pandemic. Nor is it curious that a percentage that does not fit the minority status of blacks or Latinos are the populations mainly affected by the COVID19.
But not only these communities are part of the struggle. Because it’s a spontaneous movement with confusion of objectives, without a clear direction, but it does show that the Democratic Party, which did everything to absorb into its left wing, Democratic Socialism, the inorganic movements that emerged from the previous crisis, has not been able to contain the current explosion, aimed even against its own governors and mayors as is the case of Minnesota and its capital city.
Imperialist Decay
The imposing outburst of contradictions accumulated over decades in the depths of capitalism threatens to wreck the last imperialist project to try to recover U.S. world hegemony: Trumpism. The leaps forward that Trump is trying to take in the face of the crisis, in all its aspects, whether it be underestimating the problem of the pandemic, with its struggle for the factories to work whatever it takes and the withdrawal of the country from the WHO; in the economic field, with the rescue packages for the big companies and the escalation of the confrontations with China and the imperialist competitors; and in the specific case of the current mass agitations, provoking the demonstrators with racist slogans and bullet threats, are the natural responses of Trumpism as a project. It is clear that a growing section of the imperialist bourgeoisie has taken note and is moving into opposition, in an attempt to revive the candidacy of the drooping Biden, who no one knows what he represents or what program he proposes, but who is seen as an alternative. The last to jump on Biden's bandwagon were the AFL-CIO union bureaucrats, who formally endorsed his candidacy on May 26th. One question remains: Is Trump, and the new imperialist orientation that underpins him as a project, colliding with the limits of the U.S. as a power charged with leading capitalism into the worst phase of its decay? The truth is that the division in the bourgeoisie is clearly trying to prepare the changeover, but with enormous difficulties. Not only the mobilized masses but also the imperialist political staff itself, with Trump at the lead, are questioning the institutions of imperialist democracy, fighting over the form of the vote, something very dangerous considering that at the end of the year they have to go to the polls to define the person in charge of leading the country's destiny in an abrupt turn towards greater state intervention in the domestic, but also world, economy.
For a proletarian leadership
The world crisis we are living through, with prospects of economic depression, layoffs, suspensions, massive unemployment, health catastrophes such as those experienced by Brazil and the U.S. itself, is just beginning. And yet, there are already massive demonstrations questioning the bourgeois staff that lead the States and their different recipes to give a capitalist, that is, a reactionary, way out. These segments of the masses, although with confused objectives, have been accumulating a previous experience, which includes the policies of co-optation of the counterrevolutionary leaderships, which wear all kinds of clothes like Democratic Socialism and Bernie Sanders in the U.S., and the different versions of the reformism without reforms of European social-imperialism. At the same time, the working class, in more localized experiences, more or less molecular, although sometimes of national scale as in the case of the general strike in Italy or some industry struggles in the U.S. itself, has been making a parallel (and intertwined with those processes) experience of struggle and union organization against the reform policies of imperialism to try to advance on our labor gains, and change in their favor the capital-labor relationship. On these elements and these experiences, we revolutionaries bet on setting in motion the transitional program between this rotten system and the political domination of the proletariat through its dictatorship. A workers' program that will allow the best elements of the vanguard to unify themselves in order to provide the wage-earning masses and the oppressed people with a leadership that will lead them to victory. We fight for the punishment of the murderers of George Floyd and all the victims of imperialist State apparatus. We fight so that Black people can decide their fate. Trusting that the way forward is the struggle against the social basis of that oppression, the expropriation of the expropriators, to put in place a Federation of Socialist Republics of America, where we will lay the basis for ending all forms of national and racial oppression by destroying bourgeois domination and wage labor exploitation.
First published 31st May 2020 on www.cor-digita.org
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Solidaridad con Michael Pröbsting (CCRI)
Permier mai : Nous levons la bannière internationaliste de la classe ouvrière révolutionnaire, les fossoyeurs du capital !
May 1st: we raise the internationalist banner of the revolutionary working class, the gravediggers of capital
