FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
|
|
FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
| |
| |
|
| |
| |
| |
Fidel Castro has died. Millions were inspired by the Cuban Revolution he led because it promised a vision of a different society and a different humanity. However, it failed to deliver on both.
Fidel is greatly admired for standing up to US imperialism, but a true revolutionary communist would be against all imperialisms. Fidel opportunistically embraced Soviet imperialism, for example by sending troops to Africa to provide revolutionary cover for the Soviets during the Cold War.
Cuba also helped train the guerrillas in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, to fight and die for “national liberation.” But this struggle has ultimately only advanced the interests of some local capitalists and Soviet and European imperialists.
Today, open market capitalism flourishes in Cuba—not communism. Cuban workers could have been mobilized to fight for communism and to build a communist society. Instead they were mobilized for socialism.
Cuban socialism is widely acclaimed for its reforms in education and health care. But it has condemned the Cuban workers to remain wage slaves. They are wage slaves of the government that employs them. They are wage slaves of the Spanish and Mexican capitalists who own the tourist industry’s hotels. And they are wage slaves of the Chinese and European imperialists who profit from the sugar and tobacco they produce.
Communism is different. It is a society where money is abolished. Nothing is bought or sold. We all contribute to society according to our commitment and abilities and receive according to need. It is the only society which can fulfill the aspirations of the world’s oppressed masses.
Communism is based on cooperation and collectivity, not competition. It creates production and social relations where every human being is treated with respect, dignity and appreciation regardless of how little or how much he/she contributes.
Only communism can create a society without racism and sexism in a world without borders, nations, profits or private property.
Socialism could never do this. Socialism of any type is a form of capitalism. It relies on money, and the capitalist-imperialist market – where the workers’ labor and what it produces are bought and sold.
The Cuban revolution repeated the old communist movement’s fatal errors of fighting for socialism and national liberation as stepping stones to communism. They wrongly thought that the masses could not be won to fight directly for communism.
Fidel and the Cuban Revolution should be judged on the basis of whether they advanced the fight for communism.
CUBAN SOLDIERS AND DOCTORS: SOLIDARITY AND PROFIT
Cuban doctors and the Cuban soldiers that
fought in Africa are some of the best examples
that workers could be won to serve and sacrifice,
not for money, but for working-class solidarity
and internationalism.
But those soldiers and doctors were cynically
used by Fidel and his Soviet masters.
Cuban soldiers in Africa fought for Soviet
imperialism--in the Ogaden desert on behalf of
the Russian-backed Ethiopian Derg, and in Angola
against the apartheid government of South
Africa. They ended up in all cases putting capitalists
in power.
Doctors are Cuba's biggest export. They and
other professionals are rented out today to
some 66 countries, which pay the Cuban government
up to $5,000 a month for a Cuban professional.
The government pays the professional $150
to $500 a month, keeping the rest as profits. In
2014 this amounted to $5 billion.There are
30,000 Cuban doctors in Venezuela. In this
case the Cuban government is paid for their
services in oil.
While Cuba's main source of revenue is remittances,
Cuban doctors abroad now bring in
more revenue than the traditionally most profitable industry: sugar.
What would have been necessary in Cuba in 1959—and what is necessary for us today—to fight for communism?
A successful communist revolution requires a mass revolutionary communist party. There was none then and there is none today in Cuba. The Cuban Communist Party had long given up on armed struggle to overthrow capitalism. In 1944, it changed its name to the Popular Socialist Party to participate in elections. It was subservient to Soviet imperialism. This is the party Fidel became head of in order to govern Cuba.
A successful communist revolution would have required a communist party to mobilize the Cuban masses to fight directly for communism. But, neither Fidel nor his closest followers, including Che Guevara, were or became revolutionary communists.
Prior to and even after seizing power, Fidel was a member of the “Partido del Pueblo Cubano,” an anti-communist, populist, nationalist electoral party. Fidel’s populist bourgeois reforms hurt the profits of some US companies. US imperialism retaliated, imposing a total economic embargo on Cuba, and prepared an invasion to overthrow him.
Fidel needed a new trading partner and some protection. He turned to the Soviet Union. For its own imperialist reasons, the Soviet Union embraced Fidel. Fidel then declared himself a “communist,” and Cuba a socialist state.
The Cuban Revolution failed to meet the aspirations of the masses. So did the anti-imperialist struggles it inspired and supported from Africa to Central America. It promoted the line that imperialism is different from capitalism, and can be defeated by a national liberation struggle. But imperialism is advanced capitalism. It can only be defeated by communist revolution.
Bitter lessons have taught our class that the fight for communism needs to be a conscious, mass fight carried out by the laboring masses against all capitalists and imperialists. It must be led by one international party, the International Communist Workers’ Party. Join us in that historic task!
