Castro's new views on revolution pose serious questions

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Camilo Cienfuegos and Fidel Castro during Cuban revolution 12 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1985 an ever-tightening economic blockade, sabotage, and threats of invasion by the Kennedy administration.

The Castro leadership met the imperialist challenge by nationalizing the U.S. banks and corporations and the holdings of the capitalists and landlords "down to the nails in their shoes."

Less than two years after the Rebel Army had taken power, the revolutionary government had established a workers' state with the goal of establishing socialism.

The Cuban revolution inspired a new generation of fighters in Latin America and around the world. By the time of the first conference of the Organization of Latin American Solidarity, which met in Havana in 1967, a current of Central American revolutionists looking to the Castroist leadership as an alternative to the ossified Communist parties had developed.

This current includes the FSLN in Nicaragua, which was to triumph over the hated Somoza dictatorship in July 1979, and the Salvadoran revolutionists organized in the FMLN.

From the day it took office in 1980, the Reagan administration has not hidden its goal of overturning the victory of the Nicaraguan workers and peasants, of drowning the struggle of the Salvadoran masses in blood, and ultimately of crushing the Cuban revolution. The invasion of Grenada in 1983 was a dress-rehearsal for what the U.S. government would like to do throughout the region.

The stakes in the struggle of the Central American revolutionists against U.S. imperialism are therefore very high. The defense of the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions-and the extension of the revolutions to El Salvador, Guatemala, and beyond-requires that the leaderships of these revolutions have a clear understanding of the program needed to advance the interests of the impoverished masses of the region.

"Socialism is not on the agenda"

In a recent interview, however, Fidel Castro asserts that the Cuban revolution cannot be held up as an example for revolutionists in the rest of Latin America. The interview, published in the Dec. 26, 1984, issue of The Guardian, was conducted by Swedish journalist Peter Torbjornsson in Havana in November 1984. Castro states the following:

"In Latin America, socialism is not the question. The Nicaraguans have not set socialism as an objective. Economic development and social reform are the question. No revolutionary movement-including the Salvadorans-has proposed socialism as an objective.

We know how the Salvadoran revolutionaries think. Their objective is national liberation. They have proposed a pluralistic system, economically and politically."

Fidel Castro goes on to motivate this orientation. But in doing so a subtle ambiguity creeps in. He presents his rejection of the socialist goal in a way that lends itself to the interpretation that this is a tactic intended to reassure the revolution's bourgeois "friends":

"Proposing socialism would the 1960s, when Cuba was calling for socialist revolution throughout the hemisphere."

But this observation is not precise.

While his sweeping statement ruling out socialism as a task for today is new, it is not true that Castro ever called for socialist revolution "throughout the hemisphere."

Canada and the United States were most certainly never included in such a perspective. Moreover, active encouragement and aid to revolutionaries by the Cubans have been restricted to the colonial and neo-colonial world.

And even in the underdeveloped sphere of the world, Castroist policy raises a question mark over its previously stated position in favor of socialist revolution.

The sending of Cuban troops to Africa, for example, has two sides to it. The troops unquestionably help defend nationalist governments against imperialist attack. But they also shore up regimes—such as that in Ethiopia— which are opposed to the independent mobilizations of the workers and oppressed nationalities in their countries. This fits in with a perspective Dublished in the Jan. 11. 1984. Sar Francisco Chronicle. Rodriguez states:

"The problem of Latin America at this moment is the problem of cohesion and coordination between Latin American governments, even if they have different points of view on politics and economics, in order to establish the capacity of Latin America to negotiate with other parts of the world, including the United States."

After affirming that "in no countr in Latin America is socialism the imm‹ diate reality,' Vice President Rodrigue strongly denied that Cuba was inte ested in having the Nicaraguan gover ment follow the path of the Cuban reve lution:

"There are no possibilities in Nicaragua to construct a socialist economy because they do not have enough basic economic development.... Nicaragua is at a lower stage of economic development than existed in Cuba at the time of its revolution, Rodriguez stated.

"We don't believe that the Cuban model is to be exported either to strategic goal of socialist revolution.

It would indeed "weaken the revolutionary movement" if, as Castro warns, "every movement for democracy and social justice [is presented] as a radical [i.e. revolutionary socialist] movement."

Such a sectarian approach would certainly cut short the development of a mass movement capable of challenging the capitalists for state power.

But the gap between short-term tasks and the longer-term goal is overcome by what revolutionary Marxists call the transitional method. This method begins with demands based on the current level of consciousness of the masses. These are demands that represent a bridge from today's consciousness through progressive struggles and explanations to a higher level of thought and action and thus in the direction of socialist revolution.

The other side inherent in the transitional method is the need to construct a conscious instrument to lead workers to the conquest of power—a revolutionary, proletarian, Leninist combat party. The two sides are intimately connected and indispensable for the victory of socialism in the developed countries and ultimately on a world scale.

There is no contradiction, therefore, in mobilizing and educating the masses in action around democratic and day-to-day demands, and the perspective of socialist revolution. The two key leaders of the 1917 workers' revolution in Russia, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, applied this method to successfully lead the workers to victory in their revolution.

Lenin was the foremost exponent of this dialectical conception of the interrelationship between the ends of the revolutionary struggle and the means for reaching the goal. Trotsky went on to codify this strategy for socialist revolution in the Transitional Program, the founding programmatic document of the Fourth International.

[The Fourth International, the world party of socialist revolution, was founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky after the Stalinist degeneration of the Third fighters around the world."

(Communist) International established by Lenin and Trotsky in 1919.] Reaganism is not fascism In a similar vein, flowing from the perspective that rejects socialist revolution as the goal of the present period, are Castro's comments concerning alleged fundamental differences within the U.S. ruling class. He says:

"Can we put our trust in these people-in an administration that invaded Grenada, that mined the ports of Nicaragua, that organizes the counterrevolution, that (continued on page 13, in “[(continued from page 12) launched the arms race…]”)

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NO THEORY AND DEBATE follow the lead of the Stalinist rulers in Moscow are unable to overcome their strategic misconceptions. Those political forces that adhere to the so-called Socialist International are equally cynical. When push comes to shove they,

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"The Cubans Inspired a new generation of