We have seen that the global migratory crisis has been caused by five hundred years of colonialism and neocolonialism, thirty-five years of neoliberalism, and twenty-five years of military and political interventions (see “Causes of the global migratory crisis” 9/18/2015). 

      What can be done?  The solution to global migratory crisis is North-South cooperation, in which the super-exploitation of the peoples and lands of the planet by the core powers would be cast aside as no longer sustainable.  Governments of the world would work together in the creation of a more just and democratic world-system, in which would be respected the equal sovereignty of all nations, the rights of all nations to development, and the right of all persons to work and live with security in their native countries.  Such a democratic world-system can only be attained when popular movements in various core nations emerge to take power in the name of the people, thus establishing governments that develop policies in defense of the needs and interests of the people, and not the elite.  In other words, the solution would require the emergence of a socialist world-system, consisting of governments that rule in the name of and on behalf of their peoples.

      The transition to a more just and democratic or socialist world-system has begun, with governments representing the interests of the people having emerging in several nations in peripheral and semi-p   eripheral regions: eight in Latin America plus China, Vietnam, North Korea, Angola, Mozambique, and Iran.  The next s tep in the process is the taking of power in the name of the people in key nations of the core.  

     However, even with people’s governments in power in important core nations, the move toward a just and democratic world-system would necessarily be a step-by-step process.  The core-peripheral inequality established by the capitalist world-economy cannot be eliminated overnight, so a tendency for peripheral-to-core migration would continue.  Therefore, governments under popular control would have to take cooperative steps to control migrations from one nation to another, so that they occur in the context of a plan for the use of the migratory labor, and in the context of programs that are responding to the various needs of the people in both core and peripheral regions.  

     Immediate steps by people’s governments to control international migration would be necessary in order to undermine the political use of illegal migration by fascist parties and actors, which would seek to destabilize governments under popular control through the scapegoating of illegal immigrants, as part of a global counterrevolution that would seek to establish a fascist world-system dominated by the US-based military-industrial complex and characterized by repression of political and civil rights and disregard for social and economic rights.  Indeed, observing the signs of the times, one could reasonably maintain that at the present time in human history, liberalism and neoliberalism are exhausted, and the battle for the future is between socialism and fascism.  One can see clear tendencies in both directions in the established world-system, still ruled by liberal and neoliberal elites yet clearly in decay and headed toward chaos.

     As a dimension of continued liberal and neoliberal ideological control of the world-system, a political perspective that envisions North-South cooperation and international cooperation for the control of migration cannot be found in the news media controlled by the great corporations of the core.  The superficial approach of the news media, necessary for the ideological manipulation of the people, does not allow space for historical and theoretical analysis of the various dimensions and symptoms of the systemic global crisis.  To the extent that there is debate on the migratory issue, it is between those who want to receive the migrants and the refugees, and those who want to block their entrance and/or send them away.  It is a debate between humaneness and indifference to human suffering, and although the one is far more moral than the other, neither addresses the source of the problem.

      But not so in Cuba.  Cuban television and newspapers have devoted considerable time to the global migratory crisis, in which the fundamental historical factors and the political implications have been explored.  At a recent panel discussion on the theme on Cuban television, the moderator asked in conclusion for a succinct expression of future prospects with respect to the global migratory crisis.  One panelist, a professor of demography at the University of Havana, maintained that as long as the economic and political interventions of the core powers continue, uncontrolled migration to the core from the periphery and semi-periphery will continue.  Another panelist, a professor in international relations at the Higher Institute for International Relations (which educates Cuban diplomats), asserted that the strong migratory tendency to the core nations will continue as long as the world-economy continues to be a capitalist world-economy.  

     Although these commentaries by Cuban academics provided a good, succinct conclusion to the panel, not many people saw it in Washington, Berlin or London, or in Des Moines.  The formation of alternative people’s parties in the core, dedicated to the education of the people, is a necessary response to the structural crisis of the world system (see “Presidential primaries in USA” 8/25/2015).  An educated humanity, educated by and for itself, can save itself from the moral indifference of global elites, who are leading the world toward barbarism and chaos.


Key words: migration, illegal immigration, refugees, fascism

     Western Europe is inundated with migrants and refugees from the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe.  In the United States, the question of illegal immigration has become a divisive political issue.  The world-system is experiencing a global migratory crisis.

     Prior to the middle of the twentieth century, significant migrations were stimulated by the geographical and commercial expansion of the world-system.  The forced migration of Africans to the Americas functioned to provide labor for sugar, coffee, cotton, tobacco and rice plantations.  The voluntary migration of Europeans to the Americas was stimulated by the need for settlers in the newly-conquered regions, who became proprietors and workers in expanding industry and agriculture.  Although the scope and ethnic origin of the immigrants provoked political division in the American republics, migration was functional for the world-system.

      But migration today is a sign of the terminal crisis of the world-system, an indication of the increasingly downward spiral of the world-system toward chaos.  Migration today is principally from the periphery and semi-periphery to the core, provoked by declining social and economic conditions in peripheral and semi-peripheral zones, and occurring in the context of limited need for new labor in the core.

     The problem is rooted in the historical development of the structures of the world-system.  From the end of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, seven European powers conquered, colonized and peripheralized vast regions of the planet, converting them into suppliers of cheap raw materials and cheap labor, and establishing markets for the surplus goods that were beyond the capacity of core domestic markets to consume.  The result was a world-system characterized by extreme inequality, with high levels of industry and a high standard of living in the core, and with underdevelopment and high levels of poverty in the colonized regions.  As is logical, such inequality created a tendency of migration from the periphery and semi-periphery to the core, as migrants sought to improve their economic situation.

       The colonized peoples were everywhere tenacious and persistent in their resistance to the structures of the world-system.  Slave rebellions provoked a fear of a generalized violent retribution among white settlers in the Americas.  The conquered nations and peoples as a whole, once their initial armed self-defense was overcome, turned to the organization of nationalist movements, seeking to form independent nations and a more just and democratic world-system composed of equal and sovereign nations.  But the movements could accomplish no more than the protection of formal political and civil rights and the establishment of new nations that were only nominally independent.  They did not attain the necessary transformation of the economic structures that had been imposed through conquest and peripheralization.  And thus, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the world-system underwent a transition from colonialism to neocolonialism, with increasingly expanding economic and social inequality.  

      In spite of its successful containment of the nationalist movements of the colonized regions, the world-system faced a contradiction that it could not resolve within its logic and assumptions.  Namely, the contradiction between a system that expands through conquering new lands and peoples, and the fact that the earth has finite limits with respect to land and peoples.  These ecological and geographical limits were reached around the middle of the twentieth century, when the world-system ran out of lands and peoples to conquer, thus eliminating its most important engine for expansion.

      The necessary direction to resolve the problem was being indicated by the most radical of the nationalist leaders: Ho Chi Minh, Fidel, Nasser, Nyerere, Nkrumah, and Martin Luther King.  They were pointing to a more just world-system, in which future world commercial expansion would be based on the increasing capacity of the colonized regions to purchase goods and services.   But the visionary charismatic leaders, the prophets of their time, were ignored and often demonized by global elites.  The super-exploitation inherent in the core-peripheral relation was preserved as an essential component of the neocolonial world-system.  

       As a result of the fact that the fundamental geographical contradiction remained unattended, the system began to experience symptoms of structural crisis, the first signs of which began to emerge in the 1970s.  At this juncture, global elites began to demonstrate their unrestrained commitment to their particular interests, placing them above the requirements of the world-system and the needs of an increasingly suffering humanity.  They launched a global economic war against the poor in the form of a neoliberal project that reduced state regulation, placing profits over people and financial speculation over economic development.

      The neoliberal project increased the extreme global inequality and high-levels of poverty that were the historic legacy of colonialism and neocolonialism, and it undermined the already limited sovereignty of nominally independent nations in the neocolonial world-system.  An important political consequence of the neoliberal project was that it gave rise to a renewal of the nationalist movements, which attacked the legitimacy of national political elites in semi-peripheral and peripheral zones for their cooperation with the core powers in the imposition of the neoliberal project.  The renewal is particularly advanced in Latin America, where Leftist/progressive alternative political parties have taken political power from the national elites who “were on their knees before the colonial power,” as Hugo Chávez expressed it.

       By creating an increasingly desperate economic and social situation in semi-peripheral and peripheral regions, the neoliberal project also gave further stimulation to the tendency of migration to the core.  And this has occurred in an historic moment in which the nations of the core are not in an economic or political position to receive migrants.  To some extent, the migration to the core is functional, for many migrants become laborers in low-income sectors, where there is a short labor supply.  But not entirely so.  Migration today is not like the great migrations in earlier moments of the world-system, when labor and settlers were needed in the Americas in the midst of economic expansion.  Migration today occurs in a context of limited economic growth, where unemployment in the core is a stronger dynamic than labor shortage.  And it occurs in a political context in which the Keynesian welfare state, having been overextended, has been dismantled, creating a situation in which the social and economic needs of core citizens and residents are not being attended by core states.  In this economic and political context, the pretended arrival of tens of thousands persons, without authorization by any government, creates an explosive situation that can be utilized by political parties and actors with fascist inclinations.  Rather than being functional, migration today is a symptom of a world-system spiraling toward chaos.

       Along with migrants who seek to enter the core for economic reasons, migration today includes refugees, who find that their lives are threatened in their native countries as a result of war, terrorism, or political repression.  The increasing number of refugees also has been provoked by core policies.  Since the end of the Cold War and the emergence of Islamic radicalism, core elites have unleased wars and provided support for terrorist opposition groups in various countries, including Iraq, Syria, and Libya, in an effort to maintain control over natural resources.  The political and military interventions have destroyed the social fabric of nations, creating conditions of life-threatening insecurity, and stimulating a wave of refugees in Europe.

     Thus, the global migratory crisis is a consequence of five centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism, creating a fundamental global inequality; three decades and a half of neoliberalism, exacerbating the inequality and creating a desperate economic and social situation in vast regions of the planet; and two decades and a half of military and political interventions, creating refugees on a large scale.  The migratory crisis is one of several signs that the world-system is spiraling toward chaos, a consequence of the blindness of global elites to the fact that the system has reached the geographical limits of the earth, and it can no longer expand by conquest and domination. Experiencing stagnating profits, and not grasping its source, and lacking sufficient patriotism and social responsibility, global elites has waged war on the weakest and the poorest. 

     The historic context of the migratory crisis, and the social irresponsibility of the governments of the North, was expressed well by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Minister of Foreign Relations of Cuba, in a press conference on September 16, 2015:

Source

“El bloqueo es  una violación masiva, flagrante y sistemática de los derechos humanos de todos los cubanos.”  Press conference offered by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Minister of Foreign Relations of Cuba, September 16, 2015.  Published in full in Granma: Organo official del Comité Central del Partido Coumnista de Cuba, September 17, 2015, Pp. 3-6.  Cited text was translated by Charles McKelvey.
 

Key words: global migratory crisis, migration, illegal immigration, refugees, fascism

      We have seen that elected delegates to the National Congress of the Cuban Union of Communist Youth (UJC for its initials in Spanish) have discerned an approaching battle, a “War of Thought” and a “Battle of Ideas,” between two fundamentally different kinds of societies.  It is a conflict between a society that manipulates people to buy, thus converting citizens into consumers; and an alternative kind of society that calls people to a way of being, characterized by social service, commitment to universal human values, and solidarity with the peoples of the earth in their quest for social justice (see “Cooperatives and social change in Cuba” 8/7/2015).  The battle will be unleashed by the increasing presence of the United States in Cuba as a consequence of the end of the US blockade.  It will be aggressively pursued by the United States, which will seek to take advantage of the historic commercial and cultural ties between the two nations as it pursues its new imperialist strategy of ideological and cultural penetration and support for opposition political actors.  

     September 4, 2015 marked the seventieth anniversary of the entrance of Fidel into the University of Havana.  The occasion was commemorated in Cuba by a series of events, newspaper columns, and television commentaries.  The commemorations repeated the celebrated comment made by Fidel twenty years ago at the University of Havana, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his entrance into the university, when he said, “Here I became revolutionary” (see “Fidel becomes revolutionary at the university” 9/11/2014).  These commemorative activities have called upon the students to be, like Fidel, revolutionary, and to be committed to the revolution that Fidel directed and to ethical and professional service of the revolution.

      One newspaper commentary recalled an historic speech given by Fidel at the University of Havana in 2005, on November 17, The International Day of the Student.  On that occasion, Fidel asserted that “imperialism cannot destroy us, but we can destroy ourselves, if we do not eradicate certain vices.”  The revolution is not irreversible, he concluded.

      Elier Ramírez Cañedo, historian of the University of Havana, was President of the University Student Federation of the University of Havana central campus at the time of Fidel’s historic address in 2005.  He observes that Fidel was explaining to the students that imperialism understands that it cannot destroy the Cuban Revolution from outside; it can only destroy the revolution from within, by pretending to help.  He interprets the 2005 speech by Fidel as initiating a new stage in the Cuban Revolution, in which “looking inward” becomes the principal task.  He notes that the 2005 speech has particular relevance at the present time, when a new form of relation with the United States is unfolding, thus establishing the most difficult test for Cuban revolutionaries of the last fifty years.

     On September 4, 2015, the leadership of the University Student Federation sent a message to Fidel, pledging that they will fulfill their duty and respond to the challenge that Fidel has given them.  They wrote:

     The University Student Federation (FEU for its initials in Spanish) was founded by Julio Antonio Mella in 1922 (see “Julio A. Mella and the student movement” 7/8/2014; “Mella fuses Martí and Marxism-Leninism” 7/9/2014”).  Its membership today consists of all university students in Cuba.  The leadership of FEU is elected by the students, organized by areas of concentration and fields of study.  FEU leaders are not selected by those in power, as we often imagine occurs in totalitarian societies.  Nor are they self-selected believers in a cause, as often occurs with respect to activists in the nations of the North.  FEU leaders are the elected delegates of Cuban students, who are charged with the duty to speak and act in the name of the mass of Cuban students.

      Like the youth of Cuba who were prepared to defend their socialist revolution before the US-backed military invasion at the Bay of Pigs, Cuban students and youth today are ready and prepared to defend their socialist revolution against the upcoming ideological and cultural invasion.  And they understand that what is at stake is not only the future of the Cuban Revolution, but the future of humanity.

Sources

Castro, Fidel.  1998.  “Días de Universidad,” en Fidel en la memoria del joven que es, Pp. 51-75.  Melbourne: Ocean Press.  Speech at the University of Havana on September 4, 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of Fidel’s entry into the university.

Gomes Bugallo, Susana.  2015.  “Fidel en tres tiempos,” Juventud Rebelde, September 4, P. 5.

FEU.  2015.  “Mensaje de la Federación Estudiantil Universitaria al Comandante en Jefe de la Revolución Cubana Fidel Castro Ruz,” Juventud Rebelde, September 4, P. 1.   

    The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC for its initials in Spanish) has declared that the return to Cuba of the territory occupied by the US Naval Base in Guantanamo ought to be part of the process of the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba.  The communique was issued during the XIII Meeting of National Coordinators of CELAC, which met in Quito, Ecuador, from August 26-28, 2015.  

     CELAC was formed in 2011, and it consists of the thirty-three governments of Latin America and the Caribbean.  Its formation is the fullest expression of the process of Latin American unity and integration, which began to emerge in the first decade of the twenty-first century as an alternative to the structures of the neocolonial world-system.  CELAC support for Cuba on the issue of Guantanamo is yet another indication that the Pan-American project of the United States has collapsed and that US neocolonial control of Latin America is eroding (see “Pan-Americanism and OAS” 10/2/2013; “The dream renewed” 3/6/2014; “The rise of ALBA” 3/11/2014; “Latin American union and integration” 3/13/2014; “The Declaration of Havana 2014” 3/14/2014; “The erosion of neocolonialism” 3/17/2014).

     The US Naval Base, located on 116 sq. km. on Guantanamo Bay at the eastern end of the island, was established as a result of a 1903 accord between the United States and the newly created Republic of Cuba, in which Cuba agreed to lease land for two naval bases, in Guantanamo in the east and Bahía Honda in the west.  Ultimately, the United States developed only the base in Guantanamo, because Bahía Honda turned out to be impractical (Instituto de Cuba 1998:66-68).  

      At the time of the agreement in 1903, the Republic of Cuba was far from being a sovereign nation.  In the aftermath of the US intervention of 1898, the three principal Cuban political and military revolutionary organizations were dissolved, undermining the possibility of a united Cuban resistance against US imperialist intentions.  The Constitution of Cuba had a “Made in USA” stamp; and a constitutional amendment, the infamous Platt Amendment, granting to the United States the right to military intervention and establishing the obligation of US consent for Cuban international treaties, was imposed by the US government.  The first president of Cuba, elected with a limited franchise and under conditions of electoral fraud, was a great admirer of the United States, a proponent of limited government, and an advocate of “free-trade” between the United States and Cuba, without concern for the consequences with respect to Cuban economic development (see “The “democratic” constitution of 1901” 6/30/2014; “A neocolonial republic is born” 7/1/2014).  

      The Cuban scholar and former diplomat Jesus Arboleya maintains that in the ideological confusion of the time, without benefit of the guidance of José Martí (who had been killed in battle in 1895; see “José Martí” 6/26/2014), Cuban political leaders were unprepared ideologically to resist the US commercial, economic and cultural penetration that constituted the essential components of the newly emerging US neocolonial domination.  However, Cuban political leaders were opposed to all signs of colonial domination, including US intentions to claim jurisdiction over the Isle of Pines and US plans to establish four naval bases in Cuba.  As a result of Cuban opposition, the US government abandoned claims to the Isle of Pines, and it reduced its plans from four bases to two.  But the United States persisted in its claim to develop two naval bases, in spite of Cuban disagreement.  In the negotiations between the two governments, the United States tied the question of the naval bases to a commercial accord reducing tariffs on Cuban imports, in accordance with the desires of the Cuban national bourgeoisie.  Thus the United States, in the context of a neocolonial situation, was able to impose its political will to develop a naval base in Cuba (Arboleya 2008:77; Instituto de Cuba 1998:65-69).

     The return of Guantanamo to Cuba has been a demand of the Cuban Revolution since its triumph in 1959, but it has been retaken with a renewed vigor in the context of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba.  Both governments affirm that they seek the normalization of relations, but they define normalization differently.  Cuba sees normal relations as involving mutual respect for sovereignty.  But imperialism respects the sovereignty of no Third World nation.  For the United States, a normal relation with Cuba would involve US commercial, ideological, cultural, and political penetration in a form that less blatantly violates international norms than does the “embargo.” This difference in perspective with respect to normalization means that the process will be difficult.  To the extent that normalization moves forward, it will be based on Cuban satisfaction that some of the more blatant violations of international law have been removed; combined with the United States giving lip service to respect for Cuban sovereignty, but violating it in practice, under Cuban protest.  At present, with respect to Guantanamo, Cuba insists on the return of the territory as one of five components necessary for the normalization of relations; but the United States maintains that the naval base is not on the table for discussion (see “The Unfolding Cuba-USA Drama” 3/11/2015; “Cuba is and will be sovereign” 7/3/2015; “USA and Cuba establish relations” 7/21/2015; “The arrogance of power” 8/15/2015).

     The renewal of diplomatic relations establishes an historic moment in which the structures of the USA-Cuba conflict are being redefined, and the closing of the naval base could occur in this context.  CELAC insistence on the return of the territory could put the naval base on the table in the negotiations between the two countries, inasmuch as the US turn toward normalization with Cuba is driven by a desire to strengthen its credibility with respect to Latin America.

     In a democratic world-system, in which the sovereignty of all nations is respected, international norms would preclude that one nation would have a military base in another nation, over the objections of the latter.  The existence of the US Naval Base in Guantanamo has been connected from the beginning to the persistent US refusal to accept Cuban sovereignty.  The US position on Cuba, although politically extreme, has a degree of rationality, inasmuch as the Cuban national project for the development of an autonomous political-economic-cultural system is incompatible with the neocolonial structures of the world-system.  There is between Cuba and the United States not merely a difference between two types of governments, but a conflict between two opposed kinds of world-systems, one rooted in conquest and domination, and the other based on the equal rights of all nations and persons.

      The US Naval Base in Guantanamo is of limited military value to the United States, and the territory has limited economic value to Cuba.  But Guantanamo is full of symbolism for both.  The taking of the issue by CELAC is a sign of the times: the neocolonial world-system increasingly is demonstrating its unsustainability, while a more just and democratic world-system is emerging from below.

References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo: Un análisis histórico de la Revolución Cubana.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Instituto de Historia de Cuba. 1998.  La neocolonia.  La Habana: Editora Política.


Key words: CELAC, Guantanamo, US Naval Base, Cuba, neocolonialism

     In the late afternoon and evening, on 23rd Avenue from L Street to O in Havana, the sidewalks and building steps are crowded with “Nautistas,” the Cuban word for persons accessing the Internet.  Using multi-functional cell phones and laptops, they are accessing the Wi-Fi network that has been set up in public places.  The Cuban-style open-air Internet cafes are appearing in Havana and various provincial capitals.  ETECSA, the state-managed telecommunications company, charges two per hour to use the system.  There are long lines at ETECSA offices to establish Wi-Fi accounts and make payments on them.

     During the 1990s, Internet in Cuba was distributed on the basis of need, rather than on ability to pay.  The Internet infrastructure was very limited, so access was distributed through places of employment, with preference given to professionals who had most need for it, such as medical researchers.  Some people outside of Cuba said that Cubans did not have access to Internet.  However, the truth was that Cubans could not buy Internet services, but those who had most need for it had access through their places of work.  Others said that the Cuban government restricted access to Internet in order to prevent Cubans from having access to criticism of the Cuban government or alternative perspectives.  But in fact, the Cuban Internet policy of the 1990s was driven principally by a desire to distribute an important service with limited availability on the basis of need.  I liked the Cuban system of the 1990s, and I still do.  I think that all countries should distribute essential goods and services, especially those in limited supply, on the basis of need.

      At that time, Internet was available in the more upscale hotels as a service to international tourists.  This made sense, because Internet access was something that quality international tourism provides, and Cuba was expanding international tourism as an important part of its economic recovery plan of the 1990s.  However, at a price of eight to ten dollars an hour, Cubans were effectively excluded, which caused some resentment among Cubans.

     Gradually the Cuban Internet system changed, and the change was driven by the same dynamics that led to the adoption of the social and economic model of 2012 (see “Cooperatives and social change in Cuba” 8/7/2015).  As the economy recovered, some Cubans were able to purchase Internet in hotels.  Cubans in this category included those connected to tourism in some way, such as owners of small restaurants or renters of tourist rooms, and those receiving remittances from abroad.  So the first sign of change was that Cubans began to appear in the “business centers” of the upscale hotels.  Then ETECSA set up “navigations rooms,” as they are called, consisting of personal computers with Internet access.  The cost was $4.50 an hour, about half the cost of the hotels.  But Cubans continued to use the hotels, because ETECSA customers sometimes had to wait up to an hour for an available computer.

      During the last five years, influenced by the high-level of availability of Internet in the consumer societies of the North, Cubans have clamored for more Internet access.  Why can’t we more easily purchase Internet, like our relatives in the United States or Germany?  The open-air Wi-Fi access is a response to this clamor.  At two dollars an hours, and without the need to wait in line, it is the best offer yet.  The great majority of the Nautistas uses the sidewalks and steps, but a few enter cafeterias along the public access ways and order a soft drink, thus providing themselves with a more comfortable table and chair.

     Studies of Internet use in Latin America have found that the great majority of users are communicating with family and friends, with Facebook being very popular.  From what I have been able to observe, this is the case among the new users in Cuba.  Facebook and communicating with family members in other countries is very common.

     The desire of the people for Internet poses a threat to the Cuban Revolution.  But the threat does not lie with the potential for the Cuban people to be influenced by philosophical and political alternatives of the Right.  The perspective of the Right has credibility only to the extent that fundamental historical and social facts, with respect to the nation and the world, are not known.  But in Cuba, relevant facts are known among the people, thus depriving the discourse of the Right of its capacity to ideologically distort and manipulate the people.  When a Cuban forgets relevant facts that have been taught in school or in the mass media, there is always another Cuban nearby to remind.

      Rather, the threat lies in the fact the desire for Internet it is part of a creeping consumerism, where the people increasingly desire to possess the consumer goods that are readily available in the market in the societies of the North.  The people possibly are moving in a subtle way toward a belief that the quality of life is defined by the possession of things (see “Cooperatives and social change in Cuba,” 8/7/2015).

     In a socialist world-system, all things, including access to Internet, would be distributed according to need.  In such a world, the notion that necessary or desirable goods and services be distributed on the basis of ability to pay would be considered as an anachronistic and anti-social idea, previously disseminated by particular interests who obtained enormous profits through the marketing of necessary or desirable goods and services.

     But in the context of the capitalist world-economy, the Cuban socialist revolution finds that its people are influenced by the consumerism of the North.  The contact of the consumer societies with the people is extensive, given that international tourism is an important part of the economy, and many Cubans have migrated to the consumer societies of the North during the last twenty years, maintaining contact with and support for their extended families in Cuba.  So the Cuban Revolution has to make concessions to the consumerist mentality emerging among the people, concessions that could further increase consumerist desires.

      So a “war of thought” or “battle of ideas” is on the horizon, a battle between a philosophy that proclaims that the quality of life is defined by the possession of things, and an alternative philosophy that calls people to a form of being, characterized by social consciousness, commitment to service, personal sacrifice for the common good, patriotism, and solidarity with other peoples and nations (see “Cooperatives and social change in Cuba” 8/7/2015).

     Although Internet has become the fad in Cuba, and Cubans are to some extent attracted by consumerism, fifty years of socialist formation have left its impact on the consciousness of the Cuban people, such that there is a tremendous revolutionary fund among the people.  After all, the desire to communicate with a son or daughter, brother or sister, or cousin in the United States or Europe is hardly egoist or counterrevolutionary.  The Cuban people are a long way from the individualism, egoism, and materialism that pervades the societies of the North.  In addition, a vanguard has been formed, consisting of perhaps twenty-five or thirty percent of the people, who are well informed concerning national and international history and social dynamics, and who are highly committed to socialist values and universal human values (see “Universal human values” 4/16/2014).  

     Given the revolutionary fund among the people, and the advanced character of the vanguard, the Cuban revolution is in a strong position to advance during the upcoming stage characterized by a different form of relation with the United States.  The relation will continue to be conflictual, because the two nations have opposed missions, with the United States seeking to preserve a neocolonial system, which denies of sovereignty of neocolonized nations; and with Cuba seeking to participate in the establishment of a just and democratic world-system, in which the sovereignty of nations is respected.  During this new stage, the United States will try to undermine the Cuban Revolution through economic, commercial and ideological penetration (“USA and Cuba establish relations” 7/21/2015).  Cuba can and will draw upon its vanguard and its revolutionary fund among the people to continue to develop its socialist project, overcoming the new form of imperialism and interventions of the United States.  The Cuban Revolution has formed significant human resources, and it will draw upon them to prevail during the next stage of the Cuba-USA conflict.

     But ultimately, the future of the Cuban Revolution will be determined by the future of the world-system.  Will the world-system continue to be defined by a war of all against all, characterized by individualism, consumerism, super-exploitation, and domination?  Or will it evolve toward greater respect for universal human values, pushed by the alternative movements from below?  If the latter occurs, the dreams of Martí, Fidel, and the Cuban Revolution will receive their fullest expression in Cuba and in the world.


Key words:  Internet, Cuba, consumerism, socialism, universal human values, Cuba-USA conflict