July 11, 2019
 
     The Helms-Burton Act of 1996 codified the economic measures that had been directed against Cuba since the Kennedy administration.  The measures seek to suffocate the Cuban Revolution and to effect political change in Cuba.   The Law allows the termination of these coercive economic measures when Cuba becomes democratic, granting the U.S. government the right to determine whether or not democracy exists in Cuba. 
 
     The Helms-Burton Act is widely interpreted as a violation of the UN Charter on two grounds.  First, the UN Charter prohibits coercive economic measures against nations in order to attain political ends.  Secondly, the Charter affirms the principle of the sovereignty of nations, and it does not allow for one nation to be the ultimate authority on the legitimacy of the political system of another.
 
     Title III of the Helms-Burton Act permits any U.S. citizen or entity, whose property was expropriated by the government of Cuba, to file suit in U.S. courts against companies engaging in commercial activities related to the expropriated property.  The Act has an extraterritorial character, in that it allows the filing of suits against foreign companies.  In reaction, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Canada, and Cuba have adopted resolutions and laws that are designed to counter Helms-Burton.
 
     The Act gives the President the authority to suspend the implementation of Title III for up to six months, if would be in the national interest.  All presidents from Clinton to Obama have suspended the implementation of Title III on a continuous basis, concerned with backlash from trading partners and allies that do business in Cuba.  The Trump administration, however, recently has changed the implementation policy of more than two decades.  The full implementation of Title III has been in effect since May 2, 2019. 
 
      The Helms-Burton Act refers to Cuban “confiscations,” thus obscuring important legal and moral distinctions.  In the first place, there is the distinction between confiscation and nationalization.  Confiscation refers the seizing of assets by the state, without compensation, because the owner had obtained the property illegally or had been found guilty of some other criminal behavior.  On the other hand, nationalization refers to appropriation with compensation, undertaken for reasons of social utility or public benefit.    In addition, there is the distinction between foreign properties and properties held by nationals, which have entirely different political, moral, and legal contexts.
 
      On the basis of these distinctions, we can discern three types of property appropriations in Cuba from 1959 to 1962.  (1)  The first appropriations of property in 1959 were confiscations in response to criminal behavior.  From 1902 to 1959, corruption was rampant in Cuba, as government officials used their positions to enrich themselves.  Presidential candidates who promised reform were elected, but the administrations of the “reformist” presidents were notorious for their rampant corruption.  With the Batista coup d’état of March 10, 1952, political repression was added to the historic pattern of corruption.  Leaders of workers, students, and political organizations were arrested and tortured; and in the rural areas, peasants were subjected to brutal and repressive treatment by the army.  The Batista dictatorship enlisted the support of political parties and politicians in serving in the legislative and executive branches, who thus gave legitimacy to corruption, repression, and brutality.
     
     Following the triumph of the Revolution on January 1, 1959, the Revolutionary Government responded to the popular outcry for justice by developing Revolutionary Tribunals and confiscating properties.  With respect to the latter, the Revolutionary Government on February 28, 1959 approved a law proposed by the Minister of the newly created Ministry for the Recuperation of Embezzled Public Funds.  The Law authorized the confiscation of the property of certain persons, all of whom were Cuban nationals:  Batista and his collaborators; officers of the armed forces who had participated directly in the coup d’état of March 10, 1952; ministers of the Batista government during the period 1952-1958; members of the spurious congress of 1954-58; and candidates in the sham elections of 1958.  The revolutionary leadership believed that the corruption prior to the Batista dictatorship with justice could be addressed, but doing so would cast an impractically wide net, and the focus on the corruption and brutality of the Batista regime would be sufficient to satisfy the popular demand.  In accordance with the Law, the Ministry for the Recuperation of Embezzled Public Funds carried out confiscations, and it turned the properties over to appropriate state institutions, such as the National Institute of Agrarian Reform. 
 
     Article 24 of Law 851 of July 6, 1960 superseded and expanded the February 28 law by including counterrevolutionary crimes and activities, which were activities that today would be described as terrorism, inasmuch as they included violence against civilians and sabotage, for the most part carried out with the support of the U.S. government.  Law 851 authorized confiscation with respect to real estate owned by: Batista and his collaborators; persons who had committed crimes against the national economy or the public treasury, or who had used a public office to enrich themselves illicitly; and persons who had committed counterrevolutionary crimes (as defined by law), had abandoned the country in order to escape punitive action by the Revolutionary Tribunals, or had abandoned the country in order to carry out conspiracies against the Revolutionary Government. 
 
     The confiscated properties have been used as public buildings, such as primary schools, day care centers, medical clinics, multiple housing units, and embassies.  Members of the Council of Ministers did not personally benefit from the confiscations.
 
     (2) The second type of appropriation was the nationalizations of foreign properties in Cuba.  Nationalization of foreign property was a necessary precondition for Cuban attainment of true sovereignty.  Cuba at that time faced a situation in which most agricultural land was in foreign hands, and there was high concentration of land ownership.  Addressing this structural problem in the Cuban economy, the Revolutionary Government on May 17, 1959 emitted an Agrarian Reform Law that nationalized large-scale agricultural lands, making no distinction between foreign and national ownership, and providing for compensation in the form of “Agrarian Reform Bonds” that were to mature in twenty years. 
 
     In addition, banks, electricity and telephone companies, gasoline refineries, mining companies, and importing companies were under foreign ownership.  In response, the Revolutionary Government on July 6, 1960 emitted Law 851, authorizing nationalization of U.S. properties.  The Law established compensation through government bonds, and it required the Cuban government to contribute to a compensation fund through bank deposits equal to 25% of the value of the U.S. purchase of Cuban sugar in excess of the sugar quota.  On the basis of Law 851, the Revolutionary Government emitted three resolutions on August 6, September 17, and October 24, 1960, nationalizing all 197 U.S. companies in Cuba.  These decisive steps struck at the heart of the Cuban neocolonial condition.  They intended not the severing of relations with the United States but transformation of the Cuba-USA political-economic relation from exploitation and domination to cooperation and mutual respect.
 
     The U.S. government, however, refused to cooperate with the Cuban quest for sovereignty.  Rather than financing compensation through an increase in the U.S.-Cuba sugar trade, the U.S. government reduced sugar purchases to a level below the sugar quota.  At the same time, the U.S. government refused to negotiate with the Cuban government a mutually satisfactory agreement with respect to compensation for U.S. proprietors who were adversely affected by the Cuban nationalizations.  The U.S. government stood out in this regard, inasmuch as the governments of France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Spain negotiated agreements with the government of Cuba with respect to demands of their citizens resulting from the Cuban nationalizations.  The USA was not interested in negotiating reasonable compensation; its political agenda was regime change, which it sought to attain through what Cuba has described as terrorist activities and economic aggression. 
 
     In 1974, the General Assembly of the United Nations affirmed the right of states to nationalize properties, declaring that nationalization is an indispensable precondition for national sovereignty over natural resources.  It further declared that no state should be subjected to coercion in response to its exercising this right of nationalization.  The “Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order” affirmed the:

      Today, May 17, 2019, marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Agrarian Reform Law, signed by the Cuban Revolutionary Government on May 17, 1959, a little more than four months after the Rebel Army triumphantly entered the city of Havana.  The signing ceremony was held in the wooden shack that had served as the general headquarters of the Rebel Army in the mountains of Sierra Maestra during the revolutionary war, in recognition of the important role of peasants in the revolutionary triumph.  The date for the signing ceremony was chosen in recognition of the “Day of the Peasant,” declared by Guantanamo peasants in commemoration of the May 17, 1940 assassination of Niceto Perez, a peasant who had been successfully cultivating, without title or authorization, land that he had informally occupied.   During the past week, in commemoration of the Day of the Peasant and the sixtieth anniversary of the Agrarian Reform Law, various acts have been held throughout the island, with significant media attention and journalistic commentary.
 
      In essence, the Agrarian Reform Law nationalized 40 billon square meters of land pertaining to large agricultural estates, without distinction between domestic and foreign ownership, offering compensation in the form of bonds that would mature in twenty years.  It was a bold and decisive step, made necessary by the fact that a majority of agricultural land was foreign owned, and 85% of peasants worked on land they did not own.  Of the expropriated land, 45.8% was distributed to 100,000 peasants, who, in addition to being granted titles of property, received favorable terms of credit as well as access to a state-regulated network for the commercialization of their products and the purchase of agricultural supplies, such as seeds and fertilizers.  In the late 1960s, the revolution propelled the cooperative movement, which, on a voluntary basis, unified the lands and resources of the peasants, and which gave rise to small village communities, with schools, medical institutions, markets, and offices.
 
      The remaining 54.2% of the expropriated land was converted into state-managed agricultural enterprises, which should not be interpreted as a top-down form of management.  In the first place, the revolutionary government was taking steps in accordance with popular will and in defense of the interests of the people; and in the mid-1970s, it developed popular structures to ensure that the political process is controlled by the people (see “Popular Democracy in Cuba”).  Secondly, alongside managers appointed by the appropriate ministry, the revolution impelled the organization of the workers, who elect their own leaders to work with the state-appointed managers in the development of the companies.  In general, the state management approach was taken with respect to the large U.S. owned sugar plantations, where distribution of land to individual peasants as a transitional step toward cooperatives would have been complicated.  In the early 1990s, in the context of the economic difficulties of the “Special Period,” the state-managed agricultural enterprises were converted into cooperatives, with contractual relations with the state.
 
      The Agrarian Reform Law sought to break Cuban neocolonial dependency on the USA and to break with its peripheral role of exporting sugar and coffee on a base of foreign ownership and superexploited labor.  It hoped to generate the diversification of agricultural production, the elevation of the level of consumption and the standard of living of the people, and the industrial and scientific development of the nation.  Standing against the interests of the Cuban national estate bourgeoisie and U.S. corporations with landed property in Cuba, the Agrarian Reform Law revealed the essentially anti-neocolonial character of the Cuban Revolution.  It provoked a firestorm of opposition from those interests, national and international, that benefited from the neocolonial world order.
 
     The Revolution, however, sought to minimize conflict with the USA.  The revolutionary leadership did not envision the rupture of USA-Cuba trade; rather, it intended a transformation of exploitative core-peripheral exchange into mutually beneficial commerce.  On July 6, 1960, the Cuban revolutionary government emitted Law 851, which authorized the expropriation of companies and not merely land, including the expropriation of companies in non-agricultural sectors.  Superseding the terms of compensation provided by the Agrarian Reform, Law 851 authorized the creation of a compensation fund that would be fed by deposits equal to 25% of the value of U.S. purchases of Cuban sugar in excess of the sugar quota.  It proposed, therefore, a mutually beneficial resolution to the issue of compensation, linking payment for nationalized properties to the U.S.-Cuban sugar trade. By means of a higher U.S. sugar purchase and Cuban use of the additional income to finance compensation and invest in industrial development, Law 851 pointed to the transformation of core-peripheral exploitation into North-South cooperation.  Although the United States immediately reduced U.S. purchases to a level below the sugar quota, thirty days later, in the announcement of the first nationalizations, Fidel appears to be hopeful that the U.S. government will accept the proposal of compensation through U.S. purchase above the sugar quota, thus maintaining a strong economic relation, but basing it in cooperation rather than exploitation.  Perhaps Fidel had hoped that a constructive relation between the two peoples and nations would be a practical learning experience for humanity, pointing to the necessary road toward a transformation of neocolonial structures, such that a more sustainable world-system based on cooperation, mutually beneficial trade, and respect for the sovereignty of nations could be constructed step-by-step.  However, the USA has been incapable of accepting Cuban sovereignty; it has continued to insist on a relation defined by Cuban subordination to U.S. interests, and it persistently has tried to effect regime change to this end.
 
     Although the Agrarian Reform Law confronted the established neocolonial world order, it did not affect directly the interests of the Cuban national industrial bourgeoisie.   Moreover, lawyers with ties to the national bourgeoisie were included in the revolutionary government in January 1959, making possible a political alliance between the Revolution and a national bourgeoisie committed to the industrial and scientific development of the nation.  However, the Cuban national bourgeoisie had been formed during the neocolonial republic as a puppet bourgeoisie, totally subordinated to the interests of U.S. capital.  In the months following the triumph of the Revolution, the national bourgeoisie demonstrated its incapacity to reconstruct itself as an independent national bourgeoisie, in alliance with the social and political forces that the triumphant revolution had unleashed.  Taking its cue from the U.S. corporations with which it was organically tied, the majority of members of the Cuban national industrial bourgeoisie, after the enactment of the Agrarian Reform Law, increasingly abandoned their companies and emigrated to the United States, participating in the U.S. project of regime change in Cuba, with the expectation that they would return to Cuba and reclaim their properties under a government supportive of U.S. interests.  As this political project failed, the Cuban national industrial bourgeoisie integrated with other counterrevolutionary sectors in the Cuban émigré community, eventually reconstituting itself as a Cuban-American bourgeoisie.
 
     Therefore, even though the Agrarian Reform Law did not affect directly the interests of the Cuban national industrial bourgeoisie, the law was a decisive step that provoked the breaking of the national industrial bourgeoisie with the Cuban Revolution.  The rupture reached culmination in the period of October, 1960 to July, 1962, when the Revolution nationalized Cuban-owned private companies, reasoning that members of the Cuban industrial and commercial bourgeoisie were abandoning the management of their establishments, participating in criminal counterrevolutionary activities, channeling capital out of the country, emigrating to the United States, and/or sabotaging production; and that such comportment made the nationalization of the companies, with compensation, a matter of public utility and social interest.
 
       Cuba, meanwhile, persists in its quest for sovereignty, in the face of the hostility of its powerful neighbor to the North, but with the growing support of the governments and peoples of the world.  It sustains itself by celebrating its modest gains.  In commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the Agrarian Reform Law, Ana Margarita González, a journalist of Trabajadores (Workers, the weekly newspaper of the Union of Cuban Workers), traveled to the village of Güira de Melena, where she talked with associates of the Niceto Pérez cooperative for agricultural and animal production.  (All of the works of the revolution are named after martyrs of the revolution, and this cooperative is named for the above-mentioned peasant whose assassination prompted the declaration of the Day of the Peasant).  The associates report that the cooperative, established nearly forty years ago, has always been profitable, and this year it has attained a record crop of grains, vegetables, and fruits.  Celedonio Barroso, a sharecropper before the triumph of the revolution and an associate of the cooperative, declared that “the Agrarian Reform was the liberation of the Cuban peasant.”  It could be said with justice that the Agrarian Reform Law is the foundation of the national and social liberation of the nation; and it constitutes a Cuban declaration of sovereignty, standing in defiance of the structures of the neocolonial world-system.
 
      To read more on Agrarian Reform in Cuba, see “The Agrarian Reform Law of 1959” 09/23/2014 and “The defining moment of the Cuban Revolution”  09/24/2014 in the category Cuban History.

September 22, 2015 (revised April 25, 2019)

      When capitalism entered the stage of imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century, the foundation was being laid for the passing of the torch of leadership of the global socialist revolution from Russia and Western Europe to the colonized and semi-colonized peoples of the Third World.  So writes Cuban scholar and former diplomat Jesus Arboleya (2008:3-24) in his insightful book, La Revolución del Otro Mundo (The Revolution of the Other World), which analyzes the parallel histories of the United States and Cuba. 

     Cuba indeed is emblematic of the revolutions of the Third World.  One finds in Cuba the dynamics that everywhere are present in the Third World: colonial conquest and peripheralization, anti-colonial movement, transition to neocolonial republic, and anti-neocolonial revolution.  But furthermore, it can be said that one finds these dynamics in their most advanced expression.  As a result, from Cuba, one can obtain a profound grasp of the meaning of domination, revolution, and socialism.

     In this section of the blog, Cuban History, are found fifty blog posts that were initially published from June 12 to September 29, 2014.  They point to seven important lessons to be learned from the Cuban Revolution, understood as a project of popular social reconstruction that has been continually evolving from 1868 to the present.

     (1) Third World revolutions are defined fundamentally by the colonial/neocolonial situation.  They seek to transform those structures that have been imposed by colonialism and sustained by neocolonialism, particularly economic structures that ensure the super-exploitation of labor and the exploitation of natural resources by the colonial/neocolonial powers.  They therefore above all seek true independence and the development of a just and democratic world-system that respects the equal sovereignty of all nations.

     (2) Whereas Western historians have retreated from “great man” interpretations of history, careful observation of unfolding revolutionary processes cannot avoid recognition of the importance of charismatic leaders in revolutionary processes, leaders with an exceptional capacity to understanding structures of domination and the road to liberation, and with a gift for the art of politics.  In the case of Cuba, these charismatic leaders have included José Martí, Julio Antonio Mella, Rubén Martínez Villena, Anontio Guiteras and Fidel Castro.

     (3)  Whereas classical Marxism emphasized the role of the proletariat in the vanguard of socialist revolutions, careful observation reveals that revolutionary leaders emerge principally from the radical wing of the petit bourgeoisie.  Moreover, popular organizations central to mass action and movement include not only workers’ organizations but also those of students, women, and peasants.  The socialist revolution is not exactly a workers’ revolution, but more precisely, a popular revolution.

      (4) Cuba was the first US experience in neocolonial domination.  The Cuban Republic of 1902 to 1959 was the model for US neocolonial domination on a world-scale following 1946.  When neocolonial domination is functioning well, direct military intervention is not necessary.  However, with the relative decline of the United States since 1968 and the re-emergence of Third World movements since 1995, the United States has had to increasing turn to neofascist military interventions.  Neocolonialism is eroding, and the neocolonial world-system confronts a profound crisis that it cannot resolve.  But an alternative world-system, more just and democratic, is emerging in the Third World.

      (5)  Third World revolutions are integral and comprehensive.  Their charismatic leaders appropriate from different social and historical contexts, including the bourgeois and proletarian revolutions of the West.  They have a tendency to incorporate new insights as they emerge, such as the principle of gender equality and the need to respect nature.  Third World revolutions have accomplished the integration of issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender and ecology; and they have done so on a foundation of both theory and practice.

     (6) Third World revolutions have expanded and deepened the meaning of democracy.  For the Third World, political democracy is popular, and not merely representative.  And democracy includes social and economic rights as well as the rights of nations to sovereignty and development.  Western “democratic” governments accuse Third World revolutionary governments of being undemocratic and violating human rights, basing the claims on the fact that they have developed alternative structures.  But this is mere demagogy, designed to confuse the peoples of the North, and to some extent, the South.

     (7) Third World revolutions today have reached their most advanced stage.  They are constructing an alternative world-system is theory and practice precisely at an historic moment in which the world-system is experiencing terminal structural crisis and is spiraling toward chaos.  Therefore, Cuba and the Third World revolution is showing humanity the way.  We intellectuals and activists of the North have much to learn from Cuba, Latin America and the Third World.  

       This category of Cuban History also includes two more recent posts.  (1)  The first of two posts occasioned by the proclamation by Raul Castro of the new Cuban Constitution at an Extraordinary Session of the National Assembly on April 10, 2019.  The post reflects on the influence of the historic Cuban struggle for national liberation and social transformation on the remarkable generation that led the Cuban Revolution for six decades.  (2)  A post on the Cuban “Special Period” of the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc.  It was published on August 1, 2016, as part of a series of posts on the Third World project (found in the category Third World).  These two more recent posts appear first, followed by the fifty posts of June 12 to September 29, 2014, which are in chronological order.


References

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

     The generation of leaders that took political power in Cuba on January 1, 1959 were known as the centenarians, because of their determination to take political action in 1953, the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of José Martí, in order to show that the ideas of the apostle remained alive, in spite of the corruption of the neocolonial republic and the Batista dictatorship.  The July 26, 1953 armed attack on Moncada Barracks galvanized the people, and it gave the authors of that heroic action the right to claim leadership of a popular struggle against the dictatorship and the established neocolonial order.  Unable to forget the maneuverings and intrigues that had blocked revolutionary triumphs in three moments in Cuban history, they possessed a singular determination that, this time, the revolution will not be frustrated.
 
     They took power on January 1, 1959 amidst enormous popular acclaim, on the basis of a guerrilla struggle that moved from the mountains to the cities, forcing the dictator to flee the country.  In their first two years in power, the young leaders of the revolution took decisive steps that would demonstrate its anti-neocolonial intention, culminating in a declaration of its socialist character.  For more than six decades, they guided the people through various stages, but with constancy in commitment to basic principles: the commitment of resources to the social and economic needs of the people on a basis of full equality, regardless of class, race, or gender; and an international projection of commercial relations, political alliance, and solidarity with the socialist governments and neocolonized nations and peoples.  In order to ensure that political power remained in the hands of the delegates of the people, they developed alternative structures of popular democracy, characterized by mass assemblies, mass organizations, assemblies of popular power, a vanguard political party, and a public media attentive to the political education of the people. 
 
     There are many subjective and objective factors that create possibilities for an advanced generation of leaders to emerge in a particular time and place.  In observing advanced and sustained revolutionary processes, a common characteristic is the phenomenon of a generalized popular identification with the nation and a self-sacrificing commitment to its defense.  In the case of Cuba, nationalist consciousness emerged during the nineteenth century, forged by Cuban intellectuals of the Seminary of San Carlos in Havana.  They synthesized religious concepts of social justice with modern republican notions in standing against colonial Spain and the Spanish monarchy.  They initiated an awakening of consciousness among the Cuban privileged class that represented an alternative to subordination to Spain and envisioned a secular and progressive republic, with modern systems of production, moving beyond economic dependence on slavery.  Formed by these progressive notions, the Cuban landholders that declared independence in 1868 were able to discern the necessity of forging not only the independence of the nation, but also a national social transformation that would eliminate the social inequalities rooted in colonialism.  However, as a result of class, regional, civilian/military, and ideological differences and divisions, the war of independence of 1868-1878 ended without attaining independence or the abolition of slavery. 
 
       The vision of the 1868 revolution of a sovereign and socially transformed nation has guided Cuban revolutionary practice since that date, but continually evolving.  Reflecting on the failure of the War of Independence of 1868-1878, José Martí was able to see the importance of politically unifying all the popular sectors, on the basis of a promise to establish a republic of all and for all, regardless of race or class, and implicitly, gender.  The outstanding writer, poet, journalist, and diplomat politically implemented his vision, forming in 1892 the Cuban Revolutionary Party, which launched a war of independence in 1895.  However, the 1898 U.S. military intervention prevented the taking of power by the militarily victorious Cuban Army of Liberation.  The revolutionary army, party, and congress were dismantled, and the 1901 constitution had a “Made in the USA” character.  The republic of all and for all, as envisioned by Martí, was eclipsed by the neocolonial republic, and U.S. economic, commercial, and financial penetration was unleashed. 
 
      Twenty years later, reflecting on the neocolonial situation, and influenced by the examples of the Russian and Mexican revolutions, a new generation of revolutionaries emerged to struggle against the Machado dictatorship of the 1920s and early 1930s, synthesizing revolutionary currents of thought from other lands with the thought of Martí, and making more explicit the inclusion of women in the revolutionary process.  Sustained popular protests against the Machado dictatorship combined with urban sabotage and armed struggle in the countryside brought down the Machado government and led to the formation in 1933 of the “government of 100 days,” which included a revolutionary wing and was established without U.S. approval.  However, the short-lived independent government was brought to an end by U.S. mediation, leading to the first Batista dictatorship of 1934-1937.
 
     In the twenty years following the fall of the Revolution of 1933, disillusionment and fatalism prevailed among the people, but the soul of the nation hope was kept alive by intellectuals, social scientists, poets, and artists, who studied Cuban culture and the multifaceted work of Martí, and who reminded the people of the revolutionary ideal that was central to the Cuban sense of nationality.  The revolutionaries who came of age in the 1950s were made of the stuff that inclined them toward the dreams of the poets, rather than the seemingly more practical conclusion that the republic of Martí was impossible.  Martí himself had said that the task was to make possible what appeared impossible.  To the radical Cuban youth of the 1950s, the republic of Martí did not seem so impractical.  They were aware of the enormous reserve of revolutionary spirit among the people, who were the heirs to an advanced political thought and a history of political/military resistance.  They discerned the possibility of galvanizing the popular revolutionary spirit through decisive, bold, and courageous action, calling the people to the defense of national honor and dignity.  Theirs was an idealism guided by an intimate knowledge of the people and a practical political intelligence. 
 
      The neocolonial situation is defined by a pattern of betrayal of the nation through subordination to the interests of a foreign neocolonial power, and in this national debasement of the soul, the national bourgeoisie and the dominant political class are the most culpable.  Political leaders and government officials become habituated to using their positions to enrich themselves, having abandoned a dignified and purposeful road at the outset of their careers.  In Cuba in the 1950s, the indignity of the neocolonial situation never had been more evident.  Corrupt politicians invoked the ideals of Martí, thus corrupting the revolutionary vision itself.  To this national pattern of corruption, the Batista dictatorship added the disgrace of political repression, torture, and brutality.  And the visible presence of the Italian-American mafia, with its gambling and prostitution, compounded the national shame.
 
      In popular revolutions, the middle class is disproportionately represented in the revolution as well as in the counterrevolution that it unleashes.  Therefore, the possibilities for revolution are influenced by the conditions that the middle class confronts.  In the case of Cuba, the neocolonial situation, with political control by a figurehead bourgeoisie, created conditions unfavorable for the middle class.  As a result of the subordination of Cuban industry and commerce to U.S. capital, middle-class aspirations for advancement required an undignified accommodation to a foreign nation and culture.  As a result of generalized corruption, small business persons were overburdened with debt and harassed by corrupt government officials.  Reflecting the disconnection of education from economic development, young people with professional degrees found their opportunities for employment limited. 
 
      Accordingly, university students took a central role in the leadership of the revitalized revolution in the 1950s.  University students had the privileged opportunity to reflect on the conditions of the neocolonial republic; and those informed by the Cuban tradition of revolutionary and political thought could envision the republic of Martí.  The most politically astute among them could discern that, on the basis of a platform that would seek to address the desperate economic and social conditions of the countryside, an effective political-military alliance could be forged with the great mass of tenant farmers and agricultural workers.  This radicalized sector of the petit bourgeoisie played a central leadership role in the revolutionary process, and it is impossible to imagine the triumph of the revolution without them.
 
     It is equally impossible to imagine the triumph and persistence of the Cuban Revolution without the presence of Fidel.  To understand the successes of the revolution, we have to appreciate the exceptional capacity of Fidel to understand the correct course of action in pivotal moments: the creation of an anti-Batista coalition that included reformist sectors in 1958; the inclusion of representatives of the national bourgeoisie in the initial revolutionary government, creating the possibility for the inclusion of an independent national bourgeoisie in the revolutionary project; the necessity for the nationalization of U.S. properties in Cuba in order to break the core-peripheral neocolonial relation with the USA; the breaking with the national bourgeoisie through the nationalization of Cuban big industry, once the Cuban figurehead bourgeoisie demonstrated its incapacity to remake itself as an independent national bourgeoisie, not tutored by U.S. capital; the development of alternatives to representative democracy in the form of structures of popular democracy, including mass assemblies, a vanguard political party, mass organizations, and popular power; the seeking of Third World unity in working toward the establishment of a New International Economic Order, providing exceptional analyses of the contradictions of the unsustainable capitalist world-economy; the making of the necessary adjustments of the Special Period, redefining the revolutionary road in the context of new conditions; and at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the participation of Cuba in the process of Latin American unity and integration.   However, as the history of Cuban revolutionary movement makes evident, Fidel was not nurtured in a political vacuum; he was formed in a historical and social context shaped by revolutionary thought and political praxis.
 
      The emergence of charismatic leaders is a general pattern in revolutionary processes.  One cannot imagine the Haitian Revolution without Toussaint, the Russian Revolution without Lenin, the Chinese Revolution without Mao, the Vietnamese Revolution without Ho Chi Minh, and the Bolivarian Revolution with Chávez.  The emergence of charismatic leaders is indispensable in revolutionary processes, not only because their exceptional capacity to understand is itself an important resource for the revolution, but also because the leaders and the people discern these exceptional gifts, thus empowering the charismatic leader with the capacity to unify the various and sometimes contradictory tendencies within the revolutionary process.  At the same time, we also should appreciate that charismatic leadership emerged in a social and historic context, and it is formed and shaped by this context, as the case of Cuba makes evident.  In general, charismatic leaders have the capacity to lead the revolutionary process to a move advanced stage, even as they affirm and identify with the previous revolutionary achievements.
 
     The Cuban Revolution is presently in a process of transition from charismatic individual leadership to vanguard party leadership.  For more than five decades, Raúl Castro served as a second-in-command to the charismatic leader, substituting for Fidel when, for one reason or another, Fidel could not be present.  Raúl has assumed this substitute role on a relatively permanent basis in 2009, when Fidel step down as head of state for reasons of health.  In 2018, a further step in the transition was taken, when Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected President of the Council of State and Ministers by the National Assembly of Popular Power, while Raúl continues as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba.  Since his election, Díaz-Canel has been the more visible of the two, as he carries out his duties as head of state. 
 
     As the transition proceeds, many of the generation of the revolution continue to be present, fulfilling various duties in the state, the party, or various institutions.  Among the tasks that they have assigned themselves in recent years has been the development of a new constitution, so that the people and the nation will have a guide for the future.  It is their final will and testament, as we will discuss further in the next post.

Posted August 1, 2016

     The Structural Adjustment Policy of the International Monetary Fund was developed in response to the structural crisis of the capitalist world-economy, and it was defined by defense of the interests of the upper class, the transnational corporations, and the powerful nations, resulting in negative consequences for the poor nations and the lower classes (see “USA & IMF attack the Third World project” 7/29/2016).

      Exempt from the maneuvers of the International Monetary Fund by virtue of its revolutionary commitment to true independence, Cuba nonetheless would confront in the 1990s the need for its own structural adjustment plan.  The collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc had created an economic crisis in Cuba, inasmuch as socialist Cuba had developed extensive commercial relations with the socialist world.  The impact of the economic crisis on Cuba was much greater than the global impact of the simultaneous world-system crisis, since Cuba’s principal trading partners had disappeared; and Cuba remained ineligible for credits and loans through international finance agencies, as a consequence of the US blockade.  In three years, the Gross Domestic Product was reduced by 23%, due principally to the impossibility of importing capital goods and raw materials.  The purchasing capacity of the country was reduced from 8 billion dollars to 1.7 billion dollars.  The supply of petroleum declined from 13.4 million tons to 3.3 million tons, while national production of petroleum fell 17.8%.  As a result, electric energy was reduced to 70% of its 1989 level, and steel production was at 19% of its 1989 level.  The sugar cane harvest declined from 7 to 4.3 million tons, and agricultural production and animal husbandry declined by 53%.  As a result, consumption declined dramatically, and the people began to live under conditions of extreme scarcity.  A good part of the day was spent without electricity.  The system of public transportation was drastically reduced, and many people walked or rode bicycles (Arboleya 2008:199-201).  

     The Cuban plan of structural adjustment plan was formulated by Fidel, now in his sixties, who continued to be everywhere present as the leader of the Cuban revolutionary project.  The Cuban adjustment plan demonstrated once again the exemplary character of the Cuban Revolution and its historic leader, for it showed how to adjust to economic crisis in a form that gives priority to the needs of the people.

     The Cuban adjustment policies were in important ways different from the structural adjustment policies adopted in Latin America during the same time period (López 1994).  First, the Latin American structural adjustment was being imposed by international finance agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as a condition for restructuring debts, whereas the Cuban adjustment policies emerged from the Cuban national political process in response to the new international economic and political situation. Cuba had to adjust to new international realities, but it was Cuba herself who was deciding what to do in the new situation; policies were not being imposed by outside agencies.  Secondly, whereas the Latin American structural adjustment policies were designed to increase corporate profits in an era of stagnating profits and markets, without regard for the social consequences of the measures; the Cuban adjustment was designed to protect the standard of living of the Cuban masses and to preserve the social and economic gains of the Cuban Revolution, giving priority to the maintenance of the system of health, education and social security.  Thirdly, unlike the Latin American structural adjustment, the Cuban adjustment policies were developed in a context of wide citizen participation.  There was a “popular consultation” in regard to the measures during 1993 and 1994, involving the mass organizations of workers, peasants, students, , and women as well as neighborhood organizations.  The popular consultation gave the people an opportunity to make recommendations, many of which were implemented, as well as to gain a greater understanding of the international and national economic situation and of the necessity for the measures.  

     The Cuban adjustment plan was oriented toward the diversification of trading and commercial relations, and on the expansion of production in industries with higher wage rates than the classical peripheral exports, such as sugar.  Accordingly, Cuba sought to expand investments in certain branches, such as tourism (with foreign and Cuban state capital), the pharmaceutical industry and biotechnology (with Cuban state capital), petroleum (with foreign and Cuban state capital), and nickel (with foreign and Cuban state capital). This expansion included efforts to attract foreign capital, but under conditions of strong regulation by the Cuban government, fundamentally distinct from the privatization of companies and the opening to foreign capital that was occurring throughout the world with the imposition of the neoliberal project.  For example, most agreements with foreign hotel companies are joint ventures with the Cuban state, and the foreign firm does not employ the Cuban workers directly.  Cuba attracts foreign investment not by selling natural or human resources cheaply, but by providing an educated workforce, political stability and an opportunity for reasonable profitable investment.  

     Various measures were adopted to improve productive efficiency, including: the decentralization of government-owned enterprises, with many state companies expected to become fully or partially self-financing; the conversion of state enterprises in agricultural production and animal husbandry into cooperatives, along with an expansion of the sale of agricultural products under market conditions; and a significant expansion in the possibilities for self-employment.  In addition, a plan for the rationing of electricity and gasoline was implemented.

     Cuban adjustment policies adopted during what Cuba calls the “Special Period” enabled the country to emerge from the depths of the crisis in 1993 to a level of recovery by 2001.  Beginning in 1994, there was a steady growth in the gross domestic product.  Hamilton observes:  “The net economic effect of the changes introduced during the Special Period was positive.  The economy was saved from collapse and after 1995 began to show significant rates of growth—0.7 percent, 2.5 percent, and 7.8 percent in 1994, 1995, and 1996, respectively, compared with an average annual rate of growth of 4.3 percent from 1959 to 1989 and a 3.5 percent average for Latin America and the Caribbean in the mid-1990s.  Expansion has continued, with growth in GDP of 2.5 percent in 1997, 1.2 percent in 1998, and 6.2 percent in 1999” (2002:24).  The recovery largely was stimulated by growth in tourism, biotechnology, and mining.  

     Tourism has become the principal industry of the country.  During the 1990s, it grew at a rate of 18% per year, increasing from 340,000 tourists in 1989 to 1,774,000 in 2000, reaching 2 million tourists annually in 2007.  The hotel capacity on the island increased threefold from 1989 to 2007 (Arboleya 2008:204).  Hotel capacity continues to expand, supplemented by the incorporation of private rental rooms. The number of annual tourists in Cuba now surpasses three million.

     During the Special Period, there were significant investments in the biopharmaceutical industry, with the intention of developing high-technology exports that commands high prices in the world economy, as Fidel had proposed in the debates in the Non-Aligned Movement in the early 1980s.  Cuban scientific research centers have developed fifty products and services that have received international patents, including a Hepatitis B vaccine.  These centers have begun to sell these products and services in the international market, although there are obstacles due to the US blockade as well as monopolization of the market by the large pharmaceutical corporations (Arboleya 2008:205).

    Petroleum production increased six fold from 1991 to 2001, and Cuba now produces enough petroleum to be self-sufficient in the generation of electricity (Arboleya 2008:205).  Joint ventures in the nickel industry brought its production to a record level by 2001.  Cuba is the sixth largest producer of nickel in the world, and it has the largest nickel reserves in the world (Arboleya 2008:205).

     During the Special Period, the system of health and education developed prior to 1989 was in essence preserved (Arboleya 2008:206).  After 1998, Cuba began to expand its international medical missions in the countries of the Third World, and in 2001, there began a project to reconstruct school buildings and reduce class sizes as well as the development of municipal universities in a project for the “universalization of education.”   

    As a result of the willingness to sacrifice on the part of the Cuban people, the Cuban Revolution survived.  There has been some degree of erosion of socialist values as a result of the dynamics of the Special Period, but the popular commitment to the Cuban revolutionary process remains strong, and the Cuban political process continues to be characterized by extremely high levels of mass participation and legitimacy.  As Arboleya writes:  “Few imagined [in 1994] that Cuba would be capable of overcoming this crisis.  Even a good part of the international Left predicted the anticipated internment of the Cuban Revolution. . . .  The overcoming of the crisis to the present level constitutes a fact explainable only on the basis of the cohesion created by the Revolution and the virtues of the socialist distributive system. There were great shortages, but not starvation; unemployment, but not alienation; there were tensions, but not uprisings, much less generalized repression, as would have been normal in the rest of the world.  In the worst moments, the health system was maintained and the schools continued functioning with used books, paper, and pencils” (Arboleya 2008:201-2, 206). 

     Arboleya maintains the Cuban Revolution today possesses legitimacy and popular support as a consequence of the fidelity of the revolution to the interests of the popular classes that are its social base, and as a result of its defense of the sovereignty of the nation, consistent with the nationalism and anti-imperialism that have been central to the Cuban Revolution since the days of José Martí.  And the popular support of the Cuban Revolution has given it legitimacy before international public opinion (2008:209-10).

     The Cuban structural adjustment plan stands in sharp contrast to that imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the global powers.  On the one hand, the Cuban plan is more moral, for it is based on the universal human values proclaimed by humanity, such as the rights of nations to sovereignty, and the rights of all citizens to education, health care, and meaningful political participation.  But the Cuban structural adjustment policy is also more politically intelligent and economically effective: Cuba is recovering, but the world-system falls deeper into crisis, each day increasingly demonstrating its unsustainability.

     The Cuban adjustments during the 1990s is yet one more example of the exceptional capacities of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, who will soon celebrate the ninetieth anniversary of his birth, an event which is widely anticipated in Cuba and Latin America.

References
 
Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo: Un análisis histórico de la Revolución Cubana.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.
 
Hamilton, Douglas.  2002.  “Whither Cuban Socialism? The Changing Political Economy of the Cuban Revolution,” Latin American Perspectives (Issue 124, Vol.29 No.3, May, Pp. 18-39).
 
López, Delia Luisa.  1994.  “Crisis Económica, Ajustes y Democracia en Cuba,” FLACSO Documentos de Trabajo III

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Key words: Cuba, Special Period, Structural Adjustment Policy (SAP)

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Posted June 12, 2014

     A fundamental tendency in human societies since the agricultural revolution has been the formation of world-empires and world-economies, with accompanying advances in civilization, on a foundation of conquest.  I have called this principle of human social dynamics “the dialectic of domination and development” (see “Dialectic of domination and development” 10/30/2013).  Jared Diamond (1999) has maintained that the societies that were able to conquer others were those that, driven by necessity provoked by population growth and environmental factors, had turned earliest to food production, thereby enabling them to maintain fulltime specialists, such as soldiers, state administrators, craftsmen, and priests, who played important roles in wars of conquest (see “What enables conquest?” 8/9/2013; “Food production and conquest” 8/12/2013).  

     The dialectic of domination and development received advanced expression with the modern nation-state, which is characterized by centralization of political authority and by unity established on the basis of common ethnic identification.  Centralization was a significant force in Western Europe from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, pushed by monarchs and merchants as a consequence of their common interest in overcoming the local power of feudal lords.  National ethnic identification took shape in Spain, England and France, as a result of wars of conquest reinforced by natural geographical boundaries.   In the case of Spain, it was a matter of reconquest in reaction to the Moorish conquest; whereas England and France had continuous wars with one another.  The common ethnic identification of the modern nation-state became a unifying force, replacing religion, which had functioned as the central unifying force in the traditional state.  This ultimately gave rise to the differentiation of political leaders from religious leaders, reducing the role of the latter.  Common ethnic identification made possible the unifying of peoples of diverse cultural-religious traditions in a territory governed by a single state (see “European feudalism” 8/13/2013; “The modern nation-state” 8/14/2013; Cristóbal 2008).

     Modern nation-states were the central actors in the formation of the modern world-system.  The modern world-system came into being as a result of the Spanish conquest of America, which, in addition to the factors that had forged the Spanish nation-state, also was aided by the lack of horses and iron and the limited resistance to disease among the indigenous kingdoms and societies of America.   The Spanish conquest of America was the foundation for the forced acquisition of gold and silver, which was utilized by Spain to maintain its army and expanding state bureaucracy and to sustain the life-style of the expanding upper and middle classes.  The Spanish, however, did not manufacture the goods required for these needs; rather, they purchased necessary manufactured goods from northwestern Europe.  Therefore, the Spanish purchase of manufactured goods promoted the economic development of Northwestern Europe, stimulating the modernization of agriculture (including centralization of land and conversion from feudal obligations to rent payments), the conversion of land use from agriculture to pasture, and the expansion of industry.  And it caused the peripheralization of Eastern Europe, where landholders converted a decayed feudalism into capitalist agriculture that supplied Western Europe with grains and timber.  Thus, during the sixteenth century, a European-centered world-economy took shape, with Western Europe as the core and Spanish America and Eastern Europe as the periphery.  The peripheral regions functioned to provide cheap raw materials on a foundation of forced labor to the core and to provide markets for the surplus goods of the core, thus facilitating the economic development of the core and strengthening the nation-states of England and France and their capacity for conquest (see “The origin of the modern world-economy” 8/6/2013; “Modernization of the West” 8/7/2013; “Conquest, gold, and Western development” 8/8/2013; Wallerstein 1974).

      During the period of 1750 to 1914, seven Western European nation-states, led by Britain and France, conquered, colonized, and peripheralized vast regions of Africa and Asia, converting them into suppliers of raw materials, on a foundation of forced labor, for the modernizing industries of Western Europe.  The conquered regions also functioned to purchase surplus manufactured goods of the core. Thus, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the capitalist world-economy had become global, with Western Europe and the European settler societies of North America as the core, and with the periphery formed by Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, except for China and Japan; South America (except Bolivia) and Eastern Europe had ascended to semi-peripheral status, having developed limited levels of industry.  A world-system characterized by extreme levels of inequality, in which the majority of persons and peoples on the planet were denied the democratic rights proclaimed by the ideology of the world-system, had taken shape (see “New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; “The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013; Wallerstein 1989; Frank 1979).

     At the end of the nineteenth century, the capitalist world-economy entered its imperialist phase.  Lenin provided a penetrating description of the characteristics of imperialism.  In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, published in 1917, Lenin writes that imperialism is characterized by the concentration of industry and banking, so that a small number of large firms dominate industry and banking.  The large corporations and banks turn to the investment of capital in the peripheralized zones, where the price of land and labor is low, and profits are high (see “Lenin on imperialism” 9/10/2013).  Thus, in the twentieth century, the axis of super-exploitation, in which labor received less compensation than is necessary for life, shifts from the industrial factories of the core to the plantations, haciendas, and mines of the peripheralized zones.  

     The reaping of high profits during the twentieth century through the super-exploitation of the peripheralized regions made possible concessions by transnational corporations to workers in the core, so that there occurred a significant improvement in the standard of living of core workers, such that their social and economic rights were protected, for the most part, at least prior to the emergence of the terminal structural crisis of the world-system.  Concessions to core workers made possible the cooptation of the workers’ movement and its transformation from a revolutionary movement to a reform movement. 

     Thus, once the capitalist world-economy entered the imperialist phase, the force of the revolution no longer is located in the working-class organizations of the core but in the peripheralized zones.  Because the peripheralized zones were historically peripheralized through the conquest and colonization by European nation-states, the revolutions in the periphery have taken an anti-colonial character, consisting of nationalist revolutions that seek national liberation and independence from colonial domination (Arboleya 2008: 4, 10-11, 21-23). 

        From the period of 1919 to the 1960s, Third World national liberation movements developed a significant challenge to the world structures of colonial domination.  The core powers responded to this threat by seeking to coopt the national liberation movements, through a strategy of obtaining the cooperation of the national bourgeoisies in the perpetuation of the core-peripheral relation following a transition to political independence.  The overall success of this strategy led to a transition from colonialism to neocolonialism and the consolidation of a neocolonial world-system.  With respect to radical national liberation governments in the Third World that could be not coopted, the strategy of the global powers has been to overthrow them and replace them with a moderate and more cooperative government, or failing that, to economically and diplomatically isolate the government, so that its autonomous path will have limited impact on the neocolonial world-system.

      Third World national liberation movements have a component of social transformation, involving a class struggle within the colony/neocolony that pits the popular classes against the national bourgeoisie.  In most cases, this class struggle takes the form of peasants, agricultural workers, and their allies from other popular sectors in opposition to an estate bourgeoisie or agricultural bourgeoisie.  This is rooted in the objective conditions of the peripheralized colony/neocolony.  The agricultural elite profits from the trading of its products with transnational corporations, over a base of low-waged labor, and thus it has an objective interest in the preservation of the core-peripheral relation.  In opposition to the particular interests of the agricultural elite, the sovereignty of the nation requires the formulation of a national development plan by and in the interests of the popular sectors, on the basis of which the use of land and human labor is decided.  This requires that the agricultural bourgeoisie be dislodged from its position of control over the decision-making process. 

     Thus, within national liberation movements conflict emerges between the interests of the agricultural elite and the interests of the popular sectors.  Moderate national liberation movements are those in which the interests of the agricultural elite shape the direction of the movement, and they cooperate with the global powers.  But radical national liberation movements are those in which the popular sectors take control.  They cannot be coopted by the neocolonial system, and they must be destroyed or marginalized by the global powers.

     In the colonies and neocolonies of the world-system, there are particular factors and conditions that shape whether the national liberation movement will emerges as a moderate or radical movement.  In the case of Cuba, various factors led to a situation in which its national liberation movement would become radical and indeed would become one of the most advanced revolutionary movements of national liberation, placing it in an epic battle with its neighbor to the North, the hegemonic neocolonial world power.  We will be exploring various components of this story in subsequent posts.


References

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

Diamond, Jared.  1999.  Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.  New York: W.W. Norton.

Cristóbal Pérez, Armando.  2008.  El Estado-Nación: Su Origen y Construcción.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Frank, Andre Gunder.  1979.  Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment.  New York:  Monthly Review Press.

Lenin, V.I.  1996. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.  Introduction by Norman Lewis and James Malone.  Chicago: Pluto Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1974.  The Modern World System, Vol. I.  New York:  Academic Press. 

__________.  1989.  The Modern World System, Vol. III.  New York:  Academic Press.

Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective

June 13, 2014

     The conflict between Cuba and the United States is in not an accident.  It is the logical expression of central historic tendencies in the modern world-system.

       On the one hand, there is the tendency for a single core nation to emerge as hegemonic.  The United States was the third hegemonic nation in the history of the world-system, following Holland, which passed through a cycle of hegemony during the seventeenth century and attained hegemonic maturity from 1620 to 1650; and Great Britain, whose movement through the cycle of hegemony occurred during the nineteenth century, attaining hegemonic maturity from 1850 to 1873. The spectacular ascent of the United States occurred as a result of its expansionist conquest of new territories that were incorporated into its national political boundaries during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; its accumulation of capital as a result of lucrative trade relations with the slaveholding societies of the Caribbean and  the US South from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries; its investment in the highly profitable industries of textile in the nineteenth century and steel and auto in the twentieth century; and its development of imperialist policies during the twentieth century, enabling it to have access to the raw materials, cheap labor, and markets of the world. The height of its hegemony was from 1945 to 1968.

      On the other hand, there is the tendency of the resistance of the colonized.  The resistance is permanent and self-renewing, as a result of a human need and desire for social justice.  Resistance can be repressed for a time, but it will express itself again.  And the resistance is cumulative, in that it learns from the experiences of the past struggles in the nation and those of other lands.  Like the capacity of a nation-state for conquest, the capacity for resistance by the people is driven by various factors.  Accordingly, although all colonized nations and peoples will develop resistance struggles, some movements of national liberation will be more advanced than others.

     We will see in subsequent posts on the Cuban Revolution that various factors have made the Cuban movement of national liberation advanced: the historic plantation economy of Cuba, thus creating a tradition and culture of rebellion typical of slave societies; the development of core-like activities, represented by middle class tobacco farmers, tobacco manufacturing, and the role of Havana as an international port, giving rise to a significant working class and middle class that were politically repressed and economically exploited by the colonial and neocolonial situation; the tendency, typical of slave societies in Latin America, toward the emergence of a significant mixed-race population and for blurred racial boundaries, giving rise to tendencies toward cultural and social integration among the popular sectors; the failure of the war of independence of 1868, leading to the control of the movement by the radical sector of the petit bourgeoisie by the 1890s; the lateness of Cuban independence, and the early arrival of neocolonialism, with the result that the movement developed for decades in a neocolonial context; and the influence of the Russian Revolution on the movement.  Because of the advanced character of the Cuban movement, its charismatic leaders formulated penetrating insights, more advanced than those of the charismatic leaders of other lands.  In the 1890s, for example, José Martí had forged in theory and practice the integration of anti-colonial and class struggles, and he had discerned the imperialist intentions of the United States.  In the 1920s, Julio Antonio Mella introduced Marxist-Leninist concepts to the national liberation and class struggle, and in the same rebellious decade, women’s organizations emerged to call for the incorporation of issues of gender in the anti-imperialist and social struggle.  All of these tendencies influenced Fidel Castro, who would develop them further in exercising charismatic authority from July 26, 1953 to January 2009.  Fidel’s formation also was influenced by the ethical example of his father, a landholder who had not been socialized in bourgeois culture, and by the private Catholic elementary and high schools that Fidel attended.

    Thus, there has emerged during the last half century an epic battle between the world-system’s most advanced neocolonial power and its most advanced revolution of national liberation.  It is a battle that the United States has lost.  Overspending in military forces and in consumption, rather than investing in economic production, the United States has experienced economic, commercial and financial decline since 1968.   Although it continues to be the world’s dominant force militarily and ideologically, it no longer is able to impose its political project on the Third World, which has begun to assert its independence, particularly in Latin America.  The US blockade of Cuba has been condemned by the nations of the world, and thus the blockade is beginning to hamper the conduct of US foreign policy and the attainment of its imperialist goals.  For this reason, key political actors in the United States have called for an end to the US embargo of Cuba.  Such a change would not imply, of course, that the United States would cease its efforts to destroy the Cuban Revolution.  It would mean that US strategies in opposition to the Cuban Revolution would be more consistent with the accepted rules of the neocolonial world-system.  But any adjustment in US policy that involves an end of the blockade would strengthen the Cuban Revolution and its capacity to resist US efforts to destroy it. 

     The US blockade has had a significant effect on Cuba, and it has resulted in many hardships for the people.  However, during the last fifty years, Cuba has developed excellent systems of health and education, and it has formed committed leaders with advanced understanding at national and local levels and at upper and middle levels of authority.  It has won the respect and admiration of the peoples of the world.  Although there has been an erosion of revolutionary values since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the “Special Period,” there remains nevertheless an enormous revolutionary fund among the people.  The Cuban Revolution continues to confront its challenges with intelligence, vitality, energy, and hope.  

     The decline of the United States and the continuing vitality of the Cuban Revolution is an indication of the state of the world.  The world-system is in decadence: since 1970, it has entered a terminal structural crisis (see “The terminal crisis of the world-system” 3/28/2014), and the response of the global elite has been, since 1980, to wage economic war against the poor, and in more recent years, to launch interventionist wars and to stimulate fascist popular violence, on the basis of distortions and lies, directed against governments that seek an alternative world-system.  On the other hand, since 1995, the revolution of the Third World has renewed, and it has reached its most advanced stage.  Various socialist and progressive governments, Cuba among them, are cooperating with one another in the development of an alternative more just and democratic world-system.  Based on the well-spring of human thirst for social justice, they have faith in the future of humanity.

       For those of us in the North, let us encounter the movements of the Third World, so that we may understand (see “What is personal encounter?” 7/25/2013; “What is cross-horizon encounter?” 7/26/2013; “Overcoming the colonial denial” 7/29/2013).  Let us set aside cynicism and ethnocentrism, and let us cast our lot with faith, hope, and social justice.  I will in subsequent posts endeavor to aid understanding of Cuba, the Cuban Revolution, and the charismatic leader who formed the Cuban people into a revolutionary people.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective

Posted June 16, 2014

     We have seen that the conquest, colonization, and peripheralization of vast regions of the world by seven European nation-states from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries involved the imposition of systems of forced labor for the production of raw materials, thus establishing a world-system in which the core nations have access to cheap labor and cheap raw materials as well as markets for their surplus manufactured goods (see “The modern world-economy” 8/2/2013; “Unequal exchange” 8/5/2013; “The origin of the modern world-economy” 8/6/2013; “Modernization of the West” 8/7/2013; “Conquest, gold, and Western development” 8/8/2013; “New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; “The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013; “Cuba in historical and global context” 6/12/2014). 

     In the case of Cuba, the raw materials products were sugar, tobacco, coffee, gold, and cattle products.  The forced labor included African slave labor, indigenous slave labor, and the Spanish colonial labor systems of the encomienda and the repartimiento. 

     Gold.  Using indigenous slave labor, gold nuggets were extracted from riverbed sand immediately following Spanish conquest of Cuba in 1511 and 1512.  Father Bartolomé de las Casas, who would become famous as Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, and as defender of indigenous peoples, documented the brutal treatment of the indigenous slaves, who toiled in the riverbeds from dawn to dusk.  The exploitation of the gold ended in 1542, with the exhaustion of the gold and the near total extermination of the indigenous population, as a result of the harsh conditions of labor, the effects of disease, and the disruption of indigenous systems of production (López Segrera 1972:35-49; Pérez 2006:18-22; Foner 1962:20-32).

      Cattle products.  The exportation of cattle products to Spain, or to other European nations via contraband trade, was the principal economic activity in Cuba in the period 1550 to 1700.  It was ideal for the conditions of limited supplies of labor and capital that existed in Cuba during the period (López Segrera 1972:36, 60-87).

     Sugar.  Sugar plantations were developed utilizing imported African slaves.  They were first developed in Cuba at the end of the sixteenth century, and they continued to expand, especially after 1750, in conjunction with the expansion of the capitalist world-economy (see “New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; “The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013).  Sugar plantations and slavery dominated the economy and defined the Cuban political-economic system during the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century (López Segrera 1972:87-158; Pérez 2006:32-33, 40, 48, 54-65; Barcía, García, and Torres-Cuevas:259-60).

     Coffee.  Like sugar, coffee production was developed using African slave labor.  It was never developed on the scale of sugar, but it was a significant part of the economy of colonial Cuba.  It expanded following 1750, and it received a boost in Cuba as a result of the arrival of slaveholders and their slaves from Haiti following the Haitian revolution.

     Tobacco.  Whereas sugar, coffee, gold, and cattle products were developed in Cuba in accordance with a classical peripheral role, tobacco production in Cuba was developed with some core-like characteristics.  Tobacco production for export emerged in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and it was produced not by forced low-waged laborers but by middle class farmers.  By the first half of the eighteenth century, some tobacco growers had accumulated sufficient capital to develop tobacco manufacturing.  Tobacco production and manufacturing represented a potential for the development of Cuba that was different from the peripheral role represented by sugar, coffee, and slavery.  During the first half of the eighteenth century, there was a possibility that Cuba would emerge as a semi-peripheral nation, with a degree of manufacturing and economic and commercial diversity.  Contributing to this possibility was the diversity of economic activities found in the city of Havana, as a consequence of its role as a major international port.  But with the expansion of sugar production after 1750, the peripheral role defined by sugar and coffee became predominant, although tobacco production by middle class farmers and tobacco manufacturing continued to exist (López Segrera 1972:75-76, 90-91; Pérez 2006:33, 40).

     Consistent with the general patterns of the world-system, the peripheralization of Cuba created its underdevelopment.   There were high levels of poverty and low levels of manufacturing.  The vast majority of people lacked access to education, adequate nutrition and housing, and health care.  Relatively privileged sectors, such as tobacco farmers, tobacco manufacturers, and the urban middle class, found their interests constrained by the peripheral role and by the structures of Spanish colonialism.  Only owners of sugar and coffee plantations benefitted from the peripheralization of the island, and even they were constrained by Spanish colonialism.  During the nineteenth century, these dynamics gave rise to a movement of national liberation, which we will discuss in the next post.

      For further discussion of the peripheralization of Cuba, see “The Cuban revolutionary project and its development in historical and global context.”


References

Barcía, María del Carmen, Gloria García and Eduardo Torres-Cuevas.  1994.  Historia de Cuba: La Colonia: Evolución Socioeconómica y formación nacional de los orígenes hasta 1867.   La Habana: Editora Política. 

Foner, Philip S.  1962.   A History of Cuba and its Relations with the United States, Vol. I.  New York: International Publishers. 

López Segrera, Francisco.  1972.  Cuba: Capitalismo Dependiente y Subdesarrollo (1510-1959).  La Habana: Casa de las Américas.

Pérez, Jr., Louis A.  2006.  Cuba:  Between Reform and Revolution, 3rd edition.  New York: Oxford University Press. 


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, peripheralization

Posted June 17, 2014

     Prior to the development of an anti-colonial movement in Cuba, slave rebellions and other forms of slave resistance were an important part of the political landscape of Cuba (Pérez 2006: 55, 72-74; Foner 1962: 48-50).  The conditions during slavery of extreme and brutal repression made impossible the development of a social movement, able to form organizations and formulate programs and ideologies. Nevertheless, slave resistance and rebellion was an important expression of a spirit of rebellion that emerged as an integral part of Afro-Cuban culture.  And because of the high degree of cultural and ethnic integration in Cuba, the Afro-Cuban cultural characteristic of courage and audacious rebellion would become an important influence on the Cuban movement of national liberation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

     In the first decades of the nineteenth century, there emerged in Cuba a number of intellectuals whose writings and teachings provided the foundation for Cuban national consciousness and identity, which as it evolved would unite two critical ideas: the independence of Cuba and the abolition of slavery.  The most outstanding of these intellectuals was Father Felix Varela, a professor at San Carlos Seminary in Havana (Vitier 2006:5-41; Barcía, García, and Torres-Cuevas 1996:12-14).  

     The emerging Cuban nation, however, did not join in the Latin American independence movements of the early nineteenth century.  Cuban landholders feared that an independence movement would unleash uncontrollable forces from below, as had occurred in Haiti from 1789 to 1805 (Castro 1990:5; see “Slave rebellion in Haiti” 12/9/2013; “Toussaint L’Ouverture” 12/10/2013; “The problem of dependency” 12/11/2013; “Toussaint seeks North-South cooperation” 12/12/2013; “Toussaint and racial conciliation” 12/13/2013; “Toussaint and revolutionary terror” 12/16/2013; “The isolation and poverty of Haiti” 12/17/2013; and “Lessons from the Haitian Revolution” 12/18/2013).

     But a Cuban ethic, integrally tied to social and political movement and economic development, continued to evolve, an ethic that sought Cuban autonomy in accordance with universal human values.  On this moral and spiritual foundation, the Cuban Revolution was launched on October 10, 1868, when Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a landholder and slave-owner in the Eastern province of Oriente, declared, at his plantation La Demajagua, the independence of Cuba and the freedom of his slaves, a gesture followed by other slave-holders present.  Seeking to enlist the support of Western landholders to the independence cause, Céspedes called for the gradual and compensated, rather than immediate, abolition of slavery. Subsequently, landholders from the central provinces of Camaguey and Las Tunas joined the insurrection.  On April 10, 1869, the Republic of Cuba in Arms was established in the town of Guáimaro in Camaguey.  Its constitution declared the abolition of slavery (Barcía, García, and Torres-Cuevas 1996:25-52; Vitier 2006:42-45).

     Thus, the independence war of 1868 was a revolution of national liberation and a democratic anti-slavery revolution.  Although it was led by Eastern landholders, it inspired the popular sectors to active participation, including the rural and urban middle classes; revolutionary  intellectuals; an emerging proletariat; craftsmen; slaves in the liberated zones; and free white, black, and mulatto farmers.  It forged a common struggle, uniting popular sectors, overcoming divisions of class and race (Barcía, García, and Torres-Cuevas 1996:2-3; Castro 1990:6).

      But in 1878, the Pact of Zanjón ended the war without conceding the independence of Cuba, and it granted liberty only to those slaves who had fought in the insurrectionist ranks.   Various factors contributed to the failure of the Ten Years’ War to attain nationalist goals: the opposition to the struggle on the part of the Western landholders, who feared that the unfolding forces would unleash an uncontrollable revolution from below; divisions between the executive and legislative branches of the Republic in Arms, which led to the destitution of Céspedes as president in 1873; the deaths of Céspedes in 1874 and Ignacio Agramonte in 1873, the two principal leaders of the revolution; and a tendency toward regionalism and caudillismo in the revolutionary army (Barcía, García, and Torres-Cuevas 1996:94-96, 140; Vitier 2006:5-8, 45-69; Arboleya 2008:49-51; López Segrera 1972:112-15, 126-29; Pérez 2006:86-93).

     José Martí, who had been imprisoned for his revolutionary sentiments in 1869 at the age of 16, and subsequently deported to Spain, learned from the divisions that had caused the failure of the Ten Years’ War.  He led the national liberation movement in a second war of independence, launched in 1895, in which the unity being forged in practice by the popular sectors would be matched by the ideological clarity of the leadership.  In this new phase, the Cuban Revolution would be led not by the Eastern estate bourgeoisie but by the revolutionary sector of the petit bourgeoisie.  We will discuss this evolution of the Cuban Revolution in the subsequent posts.


References

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

Barcía, María del Carmen, Gloria García and Eduardo Torres-Cuevas.  1994.  Historia de Cuba: La Colonia: Evolución Socioeconómica y formación nacional de los orígenes hasta 1867.   La Habana: Editora Política. 

Castro Ruz, Fidel.  1990.  Informe Central: I, II y III Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba.  La Habana: Editora Política. 

Foner, Philip S.  1962.   A History of Cuba and its Relations with the United States, Vol. I.  New York: International Publishers. 

López Segrera, Francisco.  1972.  Cuba: Capitalismo Dependiente y Subdesarrollo (1510-1959).  La Habana: Casa de las Américas.

Pérez, Jr., Louis A.  2006.  Cuba:  Between Reform and Revolution, 3rd edition.  New York: Oxford University Press. 

Vitier, Cintio.  2006.  Ese Sol del Mundo Moral.  La Habana: Editorial Félix Varela.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cuban Revolution, 1868, Ten Years’ War

Posted June 26, 2014

     José Martí, the son of Spanish immigrants from Valencia and the Canary Islands, was born in 1853 in Havana.  His father worked as a bureaucrat in the Spanish colonial administration.  The young Martí was greatly influenced by his teacher, the Cuban patriot Rafael María de Mendive, through whom he internalized the teachings of Cuban nationalist thought and its concepts of Cuban independence and the abolition of slavery (see “The Cuban war of independence of 1868” 6/17/2014).  Martí was imprisoned in 1869 at the age of 16 for his activities in support of Cuban independence, and he was deported to Spain a year later.  He subsequently lived in Madrid, Guatemala, Mexico, and New York City, spending fourteen years in the United States from 1881 to 1895.  He played a central role in the further development of the Cuban nationalist ethic, seeking to overcome the divisions and ideological limitations that had led to the failure of the independence war of 1868-78 and the “Guerra Chiquita” of   1879-80. Seeking to establish in political practice the necessary unity and ideological clarity, he formed the Cuban Revolutionary Party in 1892. He died in combat in 1895, shortly after the beginning of the third Cuban war of independence (de Armas and Rodríguez 1994:391).

      Martí was profoundly impacted by the injustice of colonial domination in Cuba and by the violence and brutality to which the Cuban black population was subjected.  He synthesized a wide variety of intellectual and moral tendencies, including naturalism, positivism, and the perspective of the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America.  He sought to form a common consciousness that would be the basis for political action and for the forging of a popular democratic revolution by all, regardless of race or class.  He envisioned not only independence from colonial Spain but also from the imperialist intentions of the United States.  And he envisioned a republic by and for the good of all, regardless of race or class (Vitier 2006:74-78; de Armas and Rodríguez 1994:387-90).

      Martí formulated this vision at a time in which the public discourse in Cuba was dominated by conservatism and reformism.  Even in its most progressive expressions, reformism did not advocate independence, much less an independent republic characterized by inclusion and social equality.  Thus, what Martí proposed seemed impossible.  But Martí believed that the task of Cuban patriots was to make possible the impossible.  And this is attained through a commitment to integrity and duty, which involves above all the seeking of truth, thereby overcoming distortions and confusions.  For Martí, such incapacitating of the distortions that emerge from colonialism, slavery, and domination constitutes the necessary foundation of a struggle for liberation, for “the first task of humanity is to reconquer itself” (quoted in Vitier 2006:89)   He believed that heroes emerge that lead the way, heroes that are dedicated to the “redeeming transformation of the world” (Vitier 2006:91) through sacrifice and the seeking of the truth (Vitier 2006:78-91).

      Because of the confusion dominating the public discourse in Cuba as well as restrictions imposed by the colonial situation, Martí focused his efforts on the Cuban émigré community.  But even the Cuban emigration was characterized by many divisions: class divisions between the petit bourgeoisie and the factory workers (concentrated in tobacco factories in Florida); racist attitudes among white Cubans; various currents of conservative and reformist thought among the petit bourgeoisie; and currents of socialist and anarchist thought that disdained nationalist patriotic struggles among factory workers.  Accordingly, Martí formed in 1892 the Cuban Revolutionary Party in order to unify the struggle.  The purpose was not control from above, inasmuch as the Cuban émigré clubs that joined the Cuban Revolutionary Party were permitted substantial authority in local affairs.  The goal was unity in support of fundamental principles: the independence of Cuba; the formation of an independent republic not controlled by colonial or imperialist powers; the development of an inclusive republic by all and for the good of all, regardless of race or class; and identification with the oppressed and the poor (Vitier 2006:92-97; Arboleya 2008:55-57; de Armas and Rodríguez 1994:403-11).  

     As a result of his fourteen years in the United States, Martí was aware that capitalism was entering a phase of monopoly capital, of large and concentrated industries and banks, and that this made possible an imperialist penetration by the global powers in nations that are formally politically independent, a phenomenon that we today call neocolonialism.  He thus considered anti-imperialism to be a necessary component of a genuine struggle for national liberation.  He believed that imperialism has a psychological base in disdain for the peoples of the world and an ideological base in the belief in the superiority of whites over blacks and of Anglo-Saxons over Latinos.  He believed that the Cuban struggle for national liberation was part of a global struggle against US imperialism that would not only establish the sovereignty of the colonized peoples but also would save the dignity of the people of the United States (Vitier 2006:98-102; Arboleya 2008:58; de Armas and Rodríguez 1994:392-99).

    Vitier considers the work of Martí to have been an “historic creation” (2006:85).  The work of Martí was both intellectual and political, and it brought the Cuban Revolution to a more advanced stage.  It was rooted in an evolving Cuban nationalist ethic that had been based on the principles of Cuban independence and the abolition of slavery.  Advancing these two principles further, Martí discerned the imperialist and neocolonialist obstacles to true independence, and he advocated the formation of an inclusive republic by all and for the good of all.  And he formed a political party that unified the various social sectors and intellectual currents.  We have seen in previous posts the importance of charismatic leaders in the development of revolutionary processes (see “Toussaint L’Ouverture” 12/10/2013; “The isolation and poverty of Haiti” 12/17/2013; “Reflections on the Russian Revolution” 1/29/2014; “Lessons of the Mexican Revolution” 2/19/2014; “The dream renewed” 3/6/2014; “Is Marx today fulfilled?” 3/20/2014; “On the charismatic leader” 4/30/2014; “Ho’s practical theoretical synthesis” 5/9/2014).  José Martí was one such charismatic leader.  His premature death in 1895 was an important factor in the successful imposition of neocolonial structures on Cuba by the United States beginning in 1898, which we will observe in future posts.

     Speaking at the first Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in 1974, Fidel Castro noted that Martí, like Lenin, saw the importance of a political party in order to unify the various popular social sectors and currents of thought, thus establishing a force capable of challenging and overcoming the global power of imperialism (Castro 1990:7-8). Fidel considered Martí to be the foundation of the Cuban Revolution. Fidel would forge a synthesis of the integral national liberation perspective of Martí and Marxism-Leninism, as we will see in future posts.

      We today can learn an important lesson from José Martí.  In the United States today, as well as in other societies of the North, there is considerable ideological confusion, even among tendencies of the Left.  This situation makes impossible a popular revolution that could take power and take decisive steps toward the construction of a just and democratic nation and world-system.  But we should be aware that this situation is similar to what Cuban revolutionaries confronted between 1878 and 1895.  We should be inspired by the example of Martí.  He sought to make possible the impossible, through commitment to integrity and duty, which involves seeking to understand what is true in order to formulate the basic principles for united collective political action on a foundation of universal human values.  In our time, the attainment of the impossible is aided by important global developments: the reemergence of popular revolution in Latin America (see “A change of epoch?” 3/18/2014) and the terminal structural crisis of the world-system (see “The terminal crisis of the world-system” 3/28/2014). I have maintained in previous posts that the key to commitment to the search for truth is cross-horizon encounter (see “What is personal encounter?” 7/25/2013; “What is cross-horizon encounter?” 7/26/2013; “Overcoming the colonial denial” 7/29/2013).


References

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

Castro Ruz, Fidel.  1990.  Informe Central: I, II y III Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba.  La Habana: Editora Política. 

de Armas, Ramon, y Pedro Pablo Rodrúguez.  1994.   “El pensamiento de José Martí y la creación del Partido Revolucionario Cubano” en María del Carmen Barcía, Gloria García and Eduardo Torres-Cuevas, Eds., Historia de Cuba: La Colonia: Evolución Socioeconómica y formación nacional de los orígenes hasta 1867.   La Habana: Editora Política. 

Vitier, Cintio.  2006.  Ese Sol del Mundo Moral.  La Habana: Editorial Félix Varela.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cuban Revolution, José Martí