As could have been reliably predicted, THE NEWSLETTER, organ of the sectarian Socialist Labour League, has chosen to use the support Castro gave to the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia to justify its attitude towards Cuba.
The SLL's position on Cuba has been that it is a capitalist state led by a petit-bourgeois leadership, doing its best to hold back the tide of social revolution in Latin America. Whether it still subscribes to this is not clear: there has been no official "change of line", but recent writings in the NEWSLETTER have berated Castro for not having a marxist approach to the invasion of Czechoslovakia. It seems to us ludicrous to expect the petit-bourgeois leader of a capitalist state to have a marxist attitude anyway.
Be this as it may, the NEWSLETTER falls into the trap it is so fond of accusing others of: that of defining the class nature of a state by the political actions of its leaders. Lenin, Trotsky and other marxists always held it was the duty of revolutionaries to solidarise themselves with those struggling against oppression regardless of the mistakes or wrong attitudes [illegible] by invasion (of special note is the argument by certain reactionary elements that the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia gave the green light to the American invasion of Cuba). The leaders of the Cuban revolution daily call for the extension of the revolution to Latin America. Their heroism, just ninety miles from the belly of the greatest imperialist power the world has ever known, is remarkable. We would be surprised to see many of their "left" critics in this country show the same fortitude.
The Cuban leaders have made many mistakes and will make more. The duty of socialists in Britain is to solidarise themselves with the Cuban revolution, criticise it where necessary, but never forget that they should do all in their power to help it resist the pressures on it which are the objective factors working for its bureaucratisation. This is a marxist attitude. The position of the SLL, motivated by factionalism alone, is a complete perversion of marxism. It has to be seen in the context of the SLL's other unprincipled attitudes (its support of the Red Guards whilst it was wooing certain maoist elements, for instance).