ONE of the first statements of the new Reagan administration in America was that if Cuba continued to support the revolution in Central America they would pay a heavy price. All eyes are again turning to Cuba. But what is life like in Havana? Last December Jean-Pierre Beauvais visited Cuba for Rouge, the weekly paper of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire in France. The following account is edited from the series of articles he wrote. It is also a contribution to the discussion going on within the Fourth International about Cuba.
INTERNACIONALISMO! Reminders of this 'sacred duty' are everywhere on the eve of the second congress of the Cuban Communist Party and the 22nd anniversary of the revolution. One theme is prominent above all others: militant solidarity with Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala. One slogan is repeated over and over again: 'Without internationalism there would be no revolution!' This morning, at the bottom of its international page, the CP daily Granma prints a Tass report about the imperialist conspiracy against Poland...
Roberto is not a 'vanguard worker'. Aged 54, he has spent his whole life in the Escambray, a mountainous region among the most isolated and backward in the whole island. He is a small farmer, growing coffee. In a chance meeting he tells us about his children. It is a real tale of the revolution: 'Three children, three internationalists. One is an officer and has been fighting the imperialists for 2½ years in Angola; another is an "internationalist doctor" in Ethiopia; the third is an "internationalist teacher" in Nicaragua, on the coast...'
This peasant talks about internationalism as the most beautiful thing the revolution has taught his children.
For the Cuban masses the revolution can only be internationalist. Sometimes this carries serious political risks. Thus the Cuban leadership has renounced the normalisation of relations with the USA in order to aid the consolidation and extension of the Central American revolution. As Castro says, such victories would be 'the best possible assistance' for Cuba.
But here too lie some of the most significant contradictions and limits of the Cuban revolution and its leadership. In the name of internationalism, and at the cost of huge sacrifices, more than 100,000 soldiers and officers have gone to Africa in successive waves. They successfully pushed back the imperialist invasion of Angola by the South African racists; but they also sided with the bourgeois Angolan government in putting a stop to the popular mobilisations in the urban centres. In Ethiopia they made a big contribution to the defence of the revolutionary process; but they also gave logistical support to the Ethiopian army in its repeated attempts to crush the Eritrean people's struggle for their independence.
Finally, faced with the Polish crisis, Castro's conception of internationalism leads him to side unambiguously with the Soviet bureaucracy. Evidently he would prefer not to see a Soviet intervention in Poland. But in advance he justifies the possibility in the name of the 'right of the socialist camp to defend its integrity against the attacks of imperialism.' This empirical response is completely different from what Lenin saw as the essence of internationalism: 'The conscious will to organise the common action of the proletariat in different countries for its emancipation.' The Communist International was the concretisation of this conscious will and the instrument of this common action.
The practice of the Cuban leadership is fundamentally the product of its experience as a national leadership. While the revolution has survived thanks to the continuous mobilisation of the masses, it is also dependent on massive aid from the Soviet Union and its allies. Standing in the front line of the struggle against imperialism, the Castro leadership analyses the world situation from the point of view of a confrontation between two basic camps: imperialism and the socialist camp.
The international theses of the Cuban CP say that, 'unity of action is necessary among the three great currents of our epoch: the world socialist system, the international workers' movement, and the national liberation movement. To undermine the unity within any of these three great currents, and the unity among them, for whatever reason, is objectively to aid imperialism.'
Thus, by tying the interests of the world proletariat and the oppressed peoples to the interests of a supposedly homogeneous 'socialist camp', the conclusion is to subordinate the interests of the working class to those of the bureaucracies in power in the workers' states — to the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy, when it comes down to it.
There is a total contradiction between an internationalist policy of extending the revolution in Central America and a systematic defence of the policy and interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. Such a contradiction by its very nature can only be temporary. How it will be resolved depends not only on such factors as the advance or defeat of the Latin American revolution, but also on the equally contradictory internal dynamics of the Cuban revolution.
MIDNIGHT ... The 'report-back' meeting of the delegate to the municipal organ of popular power in the Boyeros suburb of Havana started more than three hours ago. About 200 people have come, as they do every three months. It is a lively meeting: the chair frequently has to call the participants to order. On the wall are a picture of Che Guevara and two banners: 'The right of recall: a basic aspect of proletarian democracy'; and 'The delegate is not your leader, you elected him (sic), you can recall him'.
Apart from the delegate's initial report - on the activity of the municipal popular assembly and his activity as representative of the constituency — the matters raised have a strictly local character. But they are also those which most affect the daily lives of the participants.
As everyone leaves, the delegate, Emilio, seems satisfied: 'Between this meeting and last week's (they are repeated to encourage greater participation) nearly 75 per cent of the voters have attended. The problems posed are real; the solutions put forward are constructive. It's now up to me to ensure that they are directly put into practice or discussed in the municipal assembly.'
The 174 municipal assemblies in the island are the basic structures of 'popular power'. Charged with applying the laws, it is up to them to organise and regulate all aspects of economic and social administration at the municipal level. This reflects the desire for major decentralisation after the hypercentralism — what they call 'centralised bureaucratism' in Havana — which prevailed in the first fifteen years of the revolution.
These assemblies are composed of delegates (30 to 200) who, like Emilio, each represent a constituency with an average of 500 to 600 electors. The constituencies are divided into zones (varying from two to eight) for the purpose of nominating candidates. Each zone has to make a nomination from among its ranks, the decisive criteria being the candidate's individual record and life history.
The candidates from the different zones make up the list at the constituency level. The delegate is elected after an 'election campaign' (also centred on their personal record) in a vote which goes to a second round if there is no absolute majority in the first round. Unless assigned exceptional tasks, the delegates undertake their activity — which is unpaid — outside working hours.
The reality of popular power must be understood in relation to the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs). More than twenty years after they were created to mobilise the people against imperialist attack, the CDRs with their five million members (more than 80 per cent of the population between 14 and 65) are still the basic mass organisation in Cuba. Their social and 'vigilance' activities, their regular meetings for education and political discussion, mean that they structure and mobilise the masses street by street.
In Cuba we are not talking about passive 'voters' but 'citizens organised in the CDR' who put forward and elect candidates, discuss their activities or ... recall them. The right of recall, for instance, which has been exercised several hundred times since popular power was set up, could not happen without the organisation of the CDRs.
Regionally and nationally, however, it is a different question. For these assemblies the only voters are the municipal delegates. Those nominated are not necessarily drawn from the municipal organs which elect and are supposedly represented by them. A significant proportion (though still a minority) are directly nominated for election by the central apparatus of the party and the state, in the name of ensuring the necessary 'competence'.
In these circumstances the report-backs, the control over their activity, the nomination process and the possibility of recall are very largely formal and outside any real control by the masses.
So while the possibility of direct manipulation by the party apparatus is limited, it nevertheless retains the effective initiative in such elections. This is reinforced by the criteria which determine the choice of candidates at all levels: personal record, devotion to the revolutionary cause, and never any political consideration.
Locally, in the constituency and municipal assembly, the moral criterion of devotion to the revolution naturally seems necessary and sufficient to the voters. It basically corresponds to the tasks at this level.
But regionally, and above all at the national level, a good personal record and devotion to the revolution, while of some significance, is relatively meaningless in the absence of other political criteria. It becomes easy — and very common — to confuse devotion to the revolution with devotion to the apparatus and to the leadership; to confuse devotion with unquestioning obedience. While Fidel Castro has denounced this on several occasions, it appears to be a necessary quality for members of the provincial and national assemblies, since their role consists of putting into legal form and registering the decisions of the country's real leadership: the political bureau and secretariat of the party.
The reason why 'popular power' lacks any substance outside the municipalities and their constituencies lies in the Cuban leadership's paternalistic conception of its relationship with the masses. This leads it to want to remove inefficiency and waste above — while opting against a system of socialist democracy where the choices would be made by the producers themselves through the mechanisms of a real workers' power. Such a system is incompatible with the present single party regime and the fact that different currents of thought cannot express themselves inside the party.
In spite of all its positive aspects for the Cuban masses, it would therefore be wrong to see 'popular power' as the embryo of a real workers' power. Twenty-two years after the victory of the revolution, it is above all the institutional form of a relationship which is unique — at this level and over such a long period — between the leadership of a revolution and the masses.
'WHAT IS most amazing? Not to see any children in the streets during school hours...' The man stops short as if surprised, almost shocked by his reply. A business lawyer in the Colombian capital Bogota, a conservative and anti-communist politician, he finds himself in Cuba against his will. A passenger on a hijacked Colombian plane, he is touring the city while waiting to return to his country. Perhaps, for the first time in his life, does he give a thought to the tens and hundreds of thousands of famished waifs wandering through Colombian towns in search of food and shelter? Does he recall one of his many speeches on 'Colombia, land of freedom' and 'Cuba, island of the Gulag'?
The content of the US-organised and financed propaganda campaign against Castroism, which for 22 years has flooded the media of Latin America, melts away at the first contact with reality.
There are no children hanging about in the streets of Havana because the revolution wiped out illiteracy (which affected about 50 per cent of the population before 1959), trained teachers and lecturers on a massive scale, and built schools and colleges. This year more than one Cuban in three is receiving an education which, from kindergarten to university, as well as numerous adult education courses, is entirely free — including materials, books, transport and often even food.
The achievements in health are just as remarkable, if not more so. In many respects the number of units and medical personnel exceeds the average in France: 135 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants in France, 159 in Cuba, for example. There has been a drastic reduction in infant mortality, and average life expectancy now equals that in the most economically 'developed' countries: 74½ years for women and 71½ for men.
A banner we saw hoisted to the roof of a block of flats under construction in Matanzas sums it up: 'The revolution is the extraordinary become commonplace...'
Of course, the decision to give systematic priority to collective consumption has led to sacrifices in the realm of individual consumption, given the lack of infrastructures, of resources, and the effects of the imperialist blockade.
A small minority of Cubans oppose this choice and the restrictions it involves. They are attracted to the United States, more by relatives' tales of 'affluence' than any ideological or political considerations. A young technician tells us: 'In Miami I would be working for myself and not for the state, not for other people. And I would be able to buy what I want. Here it's impossible.'
However, the wage levels, free social services, low-priced food products and basic services all give the Cuban working class the highest level of real resources in Latin America, in spite of restrictions and rationing. This is even truer for agricultural workers. Those who want to leave know this perfectly well, but they are obsessed with the USA.
In spite of the exceptionally unfavourable economic conditions ([illegible] literally nothing but sugar and tobacco before 1959); in spite of the absence of energy sources and primary materials other than nickel; in spite of a 20-year blockade; in spite also of mistakes, Cuba demonstrates the superiority of a planned socialist economy, freed from imperialist exploitation and the logic of profit, in the struggle against economic underdevelopment and its terrible social effects.
Even so, it is the economy which remains the weak point of the Cuban revolution. Bureaucratic methods of management have prevented a rise in the masses' consciousness in the economic sphere similar to that on the more immediately political level. Hence the phenomena of absenteeism, waste, repeated hold-ups in supply and, more generally, a very low productivity of labour.
For some years now, the Cuban leadership have tried to remedy this through the gradual introduction of a series of 'reforms' in the way the economy is directed and managed. These involve increased autonomy for individual plants; a strengthening of managerial authority; and a generalised system of production norms. The plant's profitability has become a key criterion, and is the source of a system of bonuses on top of the basic wage.
Systematically applied, these reforms could in the short term produce some improvements in the functioning of the economy. But they still do not amount to anything more than a series of technical improvements within the same bureaucratic framework. Furthermore, they will hardly contribute much to raising the 'economic consciousness' of the masses. This can only come through real control over economic management, combined with freedom of political discussion over the basic choices to be made. Open debate inside and outside the Communist Party is the decisive question here, just as it is in relation to 'popular power'.
If this does not happen, these reforms could in future have serious repercussions at the social level: producing significant inequality inside the working class and an increase in existing privileges. This could markedly deepen and systematise the bureaucratic deformations which already exist.
BIG GAINS have already been made in the struggle against economic under-development and its social consequences. But two short decades of this struggle have to be set against centuries of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation. The development of the productive forces is still limited; the relative weight of the proletariat is still small, and its cultural traditions weak; and a scarcity of goods for consumption will mark Cuban society for a long time yet.
These are the objective factors underlying the tendency towards bureaucratisation of the Cuban party and state. This tendency finds its expression in an intermediate layer which, as a result of its position in the state apparatus (administration, army, economic apparatus), enjoys social privileges. These are the people denounced by Fidel Castro in his report to the second party congress: 'Some people ... have begun to show obvious signs of a gradual relaxation in the spirit of austerity, of getting soft, of a lack of urgency, of a taste for privilege, of bourgeoisification...'
This is still a limited phenomenon, however — the more so since the leading group in Cuba is the same one which led the revolution. The logic of some of its political decisions may favour this layer, but they are prompted above all by the immediate and long-term interests of the masses.
In Cuba there is no crystallised bureaucracy existing as a privileged social layer with its own interests opposed to those of the proletariat [illegible] 'bureaucratically degenerated' workers' state such as the Soviet Union. Power and privileges of this kind are the target of the Polish workers' mobilisations. It is hard to imagine the organisation of militias and the arming of the masses by those who massacred the workers in Elblag, Gdynia, Slupsk and Szczecin in 1970. Yet these are the measures being carried out today by the Castro leadership.
For all these reasons it is correct to talk of 'bureaucratic deformations' which are by no means doomed to become more profound.
The accumulated ties with the Soviet Union are a factor in this direction, however. There is often a tendency to reduce them to the purely economic level, but in fact they are consolidated at various other levels: political, scientific, cultural, sporting, technical, etc. And they are consolidated above all with this intermediate layer, which is the most susceptible to the values, methods and conceptions of the Soviet bureaucracy.
This influence has its most serious potential impact in the area of education: already the social sciences, philosophy, economics, and 'Marxism-Leninism' are taught to entire generations of Cuban pupils and students on the basis of Soviet or Soviet-inspired textbooks.
Castro's denunciation of 'bureaucratism' at the second party congress shows that the Cuban leadership understand the importance of this problem for the future of the revolution. But essentially they see it in terms of individual attitudes and behaviour, not as a social phenomenon.
The struggle against tendencies towards bureaucratisation cannot be separated from the struggle to strengthen and defend the revolution. It cannot be conducted effectively on the basis of the Cuban leadership's paternalistic attitude towards the masses. It requires mass mobilisations for real workers' power which, starting with the extension and transformation of the existing structures of popular power, would guarantee the democratic management of the plan; the effective participation of the masses in all areas of decision-making, and not just at the local level.
That requires the prior recognition and organisation of freedom of expression and organisation inside and outside the Cuban CP.
Such a 'democratic reorganisation' would considerably advance the building of a socialist society. Drawing its strength from the mobilisation of the Cuban masses, but basing itself also on the revolutionary developments in other Latin American countries, it would in turn amount to a new and decisive contribution by the Cuban revolutionaries to the liberation of the continent. It would strengthen them against all their enemies as well as their false friends.
The real struggle for the defence of the Cuban revolution, a permanent duty for revolutionary Marxists, today means demanding such a reorganisation. Cuba si!...