End of an era
My Life: Fidel Castro
With Ignacio Ramonet
Published by Allen Lane, 2007
£25
Reviewed by
Tony Saunois
THE PUBLICATION of My Life: Fidel Castro was timely
as Castro resigned as president only a few months later. Based on over
100 hours of interviews with Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde
Diplomatique and founder of Attac, Castro’s answers are illuminating
about the Cuban revolution and world events since 1959. They also reveal
much about his political outlook and method.
Castro justifiably cites the impressive gains
conquered in medicine, health and education that have been won as a
result of the revolution. "The life expectancy of Cuban citizens is now
almost 18 years longer than in 1959, when the revolution came to power";
"Cuba has an infant mortality rate under six per 1,000 live births in
their first year of life, behind Canada by a slight margin. It will take
us half the time it took Sweden and Japan to raise life expectancy from
70 to 80 years of age – today we are at 77.5". At the time of the
revolution, life expectancy was 60!
Free education is open to all who are unemployed and
over 90,000 students currently study medicine, nursing or other
health-related subjects. This despite an economic embargo imposed by US
imperialism since 1960 and severe economic decline following the
collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1992 and loss of economic
subsidies. These and other impressive achievements give a small glimpse
of what would be possible with a democratically planned, socialist
economy.
Apart from mobilising 30,000 doctors to work in over
40 countries, one of the most impressive achievements was sending tens
of thousands of ‘internationalist volunteers’ from 1975 to Angola and
Namibia. Over 15 years, more than "300,000 internationalist combatants
fulfilled their mission in Angola", helping to inflict a military defeat
on the South African apartheid army. Cuban forces were crucial in
freeing Namibia from South African rule. Cuba was, as Castro argues,
"the only non-African country that fought and spilled its blood for
Africa and against the odious apartheid regime".
From the beginning, the Cuban revolution aroused the
wrath of US imperialism which has sought to overthrow it on numerous
occasions. Following Castro’s resignation, US imperialism and its
representatives long for the demise of the regime and collapse of the
planned economy. The Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1962 is the most well-known
attack, and followed Castro decreeing the ‘revolution’s socialist
characteristic’. Castro lists other attacks by US-backed exiles, US
security services and other counter-revolutionaries: in 1971, under
Richard Nixon, swine fever was introduced into Cuba; in 1981, type II
dengue virus was unleashed, resulting in 158 deaths, 101 of them
children. There have been more than 600 plans to assassinate Castro.
The social gains of the revolution and brutal
hostility by US imperialism illustrate why thousands of workers and
young people internationally have tremendous sympathy for Cuba. It has
been perceived as the only regime prepared to resist the onslaught of
neo-liberal capitalism during the 1990s.
Castro exposes the role played by Felipe González,
(former leader of the Spanish Socialist Party, PSOE) in persuading
Mikhail Gorbachev to support capitalist restoration, which was carried
through due to the general situation which developed. González and
others, like Manuel Fraga (a former minister in Franco’s fascist regime,
now president of Galicia), attempted to persuade Castro to adopt the
same road in the 1990s: Fraga "took me to a very elegant restaurant one
night – and he tried to give me formulas too. ‘The formula for Cuba is
the formula in Nicaragua’, he said – that’s verbatim".
Castro rejected this because it "has led Nicaragua
into a bottomless abyss of corruption, theft, negligence… All those men
whose advice was to follow the tenets of neo-liberalism to the death –
privatisation, strict compliance to the IMF rules – have driven many
countries and their inhabitants into the abyss".
Looking at the crisis unfolding over recent years,
he concludes: "It’s no longer just a crisis in Southeast Asia, as it was
in 1997, it’s a worldwide crisis, plus the war in Iraq, plus the
consequences of huge debt, plus the growing waste and consequent cost of
energy… plus the deficit on the part of the main economic and military
power on the planet". As a result: "The world is being driven into a
dead-end street".
Yet what is the social class that is capable of
fighting this system and building a genuine democratic socialist
alternative? Castro reveals his weakness in answering this question.
Throughout the book there is no reference to the working class and its
central role in the socialist revolution. Even when referring to the
great general strike of ten million workers in France in 1968, Castro
only mentions in passing that Charles De Gaulle was compelled to go to
Germany to get the support of troops stationed there, in case forces
were needed to put down any attempt at popular rebellion.
Referring to the Cuban revolution, Castro explains:
"But for us, guerrilla warfare was the detonator of another process
whose objective was the revolutionary takeover of power. And with a
culminating point: a revolutionary general strike and general uprising
of the populace". In other words, a guerrilla struggle was then
supported by the mass of the population where the working class played
an auxiliary rather than the leading role. As we have explained in other
articles, because of a series of historical and subjective factors, the
guerrilla struggle successfully unfolded in Cuba. Only as the guerrilla
army entered the cities did the urban masses come onto the streets.
In this book there is some discrepancy between how
Castro and the July 23 Movement viewed the revolution as it began.
Castro gives the impression that he had a clearly formulated ‘socialist’
objective from the beginning. In reality, the leaders of the movement
had the objective of overthrowing Batista and establishing a ‘modern
democratic Cuba’. As a consequence of the embargo of US imperialism and
mass pressure, the leaders were rapidly pushed in a more radical
direction.
This process helped shape the nature of the new
state. Although the working class supported the revolution it did not
consciously lead it. As capitalism was snuffed out following a series of
tit-for-tat reprisals between the Cuban government and US imperialism –
a big step forward – it did not result in the establishment of a genuine
workers’ and peasants’ democracy, like in Russia in 1917, but a
bureaucratic regime which managed a planned economy.
The real character of the state is perhaps
inadvertently revealed by Ramonet in his introduction: "Where he
[Castro] is there is but one voice: his. He makes all the decisions, big
and small. Although he consults the political authorities in charge of
the party and the government very respectfully, very ‘professionally’
during the decision making process, it is Fidel who finally decides".
Castro defends the idea of a one-party state: "How
could our country have stood firm if it had been split up into ten
pieces?" He then confuses this question by attacking the corruption and
manipulation of the media in the capitalist west as being not real
democracy. Yet this is an entirely different question to the right of
workers, youth and intellectuals to form their own political parties and
contest elections in a workers’ and peasants’ democracy.
A genuine workers’ state would ensure the election
of all officials subject to recall, that state and party officials
received no more than the average wage of a skilled worker, and full
freedom of expression. Such a regime, especially after nearly 50 years
in power, should have nothing to fear from workers, youth and
intellectuals establishing their own political parties and organisations
which support the planned economy if they chose to do so.
This does not mean that Cuba has taken on the same
grotesque features of Joseph Stalin’s Russia, with mass purge trials, an
unchecked cult of the personality, etc. There are still no portraits or
streets named after Castro. There is no evidence of torture being used
by the state. However, this does not mean that a bureaucracy, corruption
and privileges do not exist.
The problems facing Castro in the 1990s were of
isolation, top-down rule and the consequences of the lack of workers’
control. Measures such as a partial opening up of the economy and
partial dollarisation were taken to try and buy time. These brought
their own problems, especially the partial dollarisation which vastly
increased differentials between those with access to US dollars and
those without.
Cuba’s isolation is partly linked to the defeat of
the revolutionary movements which swept Latin America in the 1970 and
1980s. Castro draws no lasting conclusions regarding the reasons for
these defeats, in particular, why the Sandinistas in Nicaragua lost out
to the counter-revolution. Castro does not comment on the failure to
overthrow capitalism – under pressure from the Stalinist bureaucracy in
Moscow and the role of Cuba, which embargoed MIG fighter planes destined
for Managua.
Of the defeat of Salvador Allende in 1973, while
correctly denouncing US imperialism, no conclusion is drawn about the
mistakes of the leaders of the socialist and communist parties. Yet
these and other defeats were crucial in leaving Cuba isolated. In a
sense, Castro repeated some of the errors in the advice he gave Hugo
Chávez at the time of the thwarted coup in Venezuela in 2002. He urged
Chávez to "get in touch with some officer with some real authority among
the ranks of the coup members, assure them of his willingness to leave
the country but not resign". Allende, he argues, did not have the
"support of a single soldier". But it is estimated that Allende was
backed by up to 30% of the military at the time of the coup. The tragedy
was that he failed to arm and mobilise the working class. Castro’s
advice to Chávez was an alternative to "trying to meet with the people
in order to trigger national resistance, which had virtually no
possibility of success under those circumstances"! Yet ‘national
resistance’ erupted spontaneously and Chávez was returned to power by
the masses. This is another example of not seeing the working class as
the leading force of a revolution but an auxiliary to guerrilla
organisations or sections of the military.
While coming into collision with the Stalinist
bureaucracy, which Castro criticises on occasions sharply, he has no
alternative to it. Ultimately, he acquiesced to the Stalinists or fell
silent when faced with attacks against workers and youth in other
capitalist countries. Undoubtedly motivated by diplomatic and trading
interests, the Cuban regime was silent as hundreds of students were
massacred by the Mexican government in 1968. Castro says nothing of
these events in his book.
In the same year, while initially supporting some of
the demands for greater democracy in the Prague Spring in
Czechoslovakia, he concluded: "But from fair slogans there had been a
move towards an openly reactionary policy. And we – bitterly, sadly –
had to approve that military intervention". The dominant consciousness
of the masses at that time was to look for the ‘democratisation of
socialism’, not capitalist restoration.
By raising the spectre of capitalist restoration at
that time he is confusing processes which emerged during the 1990s, not
the 1960s, and echoes the justification for the intervention given by
the Russian Stalinists at the time. Castro is clearly against capitalist
restoration in Cuba.
Castro identifies some of the problems which faced
the former Soviet Union – waste, corruption, mismanagement and the
failure to apply modern technique, computers, etc. Yet he fails to offer
any clear solution for the removal of the Stalinist bureaucracy and
establishing genuine workers’ democracy. Without this, none of the
problems could be resolved. Yet many of these features exist in Cuba as
well.
In letters published in English for the first time,
Castro reveals the erratic attitude that his regime could also adopt,
especially in the chapter dealing with the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
Castro urged the USSR to launch a ‘first strike’ nuclear attack in the
event of direct offensive action against Cuba by the USA. Khrushchev and
the Soviet bureaucracy did not accept this proposal.
Significantly, Castro is openly critical of Stalin:
"The more intellectual of the two was, without a doubt, Trotsky". This
is not to say that Castro was influenced by Leon Trotsky’s writings. He
dismisses any suggestion that Che Guevara had begun to read Trotsky’s
works or was in any way affected by his ideas. In doing so, he brushes
aside the evidence to the contrary featured by Celia Hart, Jon Lee
Anderson and Paco Ignacio Taibo.
A striking feature of this book is Castro’s attitude
to world leaders and pro-capitalist leaders of the former workers’
parties. For Marxists, opposing the system they defend is not a personal
question. Yet Castro goes out of his way to heap praise on some of them.
Former US president, Jimmy Carter, is described as a "man of integrity".
De Gaulle is credited with saving France, "its traditions, its national
pride, the French defiance". Fraga is "an intelligent, shrewd Galician".
Lula, in Brazil, is praised as "a tenacious and fraternal fighter for
the rights of labour and the left, and a friend of our people", despite
the fact that the majority of Lula’s ‘reforms’ have been neo-liberal
attacks on the working class.
For the future of Cuba, Castro is adamant that the
revolution will be maintained with no threat of capitalist restoration.
However, despite the strong legacy that remains and support for the
gains of the revolution, the threat of restoration is growing. Since the
publication of this book, Castro has resigned. Raúl, his brother, and
other powerful sections of the Cuban bureaucracy, are intent on moving
towards opening up the market. The publication of this book has given an
illuminating insight into Castro, his role and methods. Above all, it is
necessary to learn from the experiences he recounts about how to build
genuine workers’ democracy and socialism.
|