'From the beginning there were two tendencies in the revolution'

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"What began to happen was what Fidel and Che had warned us about. In the name of socialism we were applying measures and relations that were clearly capitalist and had nothing to do with socialism."

SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1992 17 issue of The Militant, weekly newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Tablada is an economist at the University of Havana and is the author of "Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism," published by Pathfinder Press.

Tablada's own views are of some note, and we are sure our readers will find it interesting that a person in his position is expressing them today. What he says about past differences in the Cuban Communist Party concerning the introduction in 1975 of the Soviet model of economic management is relevant to today's debates in the Cuban Communist Party.

The collapse of COMCON and the trade it guaranteed for the embattled revolutionary island is a severe blow to the Cuban Revolution. But the collapse of Stalinism has made it easier for Cubans to express views that are necessary for coming to grips with the "special period" the Cuban Revolution is going through.

66 ...The Cuban revolution was a heresy not only from the point of view of bourgeois culture, but from the point of view of Soviet Marxism, " Tablada [said]. "In the 1950s the Soviet model was the dominant Marxism in the world. According to Soviet Marxism, it was impossible to make a revolution and take power in Cuba.

"But my people took power on Jan. 1, 1959. We made deep structural changes. We carried out a land reform. We defeated the United States at Playa Giron [the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion]. We built a socialist system that is participatory and democratic. We survived the [1962] Missile Crisis. We defeated the counterrevolutionaries. None of this would have happened if we had followed Soviet Marxism," Tablada declared....

"Another contribution Che made was explaining that simply by making a revolution in property relations where the means of production, the banks, and foreign trade are put in the hands of the people-this by itself doesn't guarantee that a socialist or communist society will be built.

"Che stressed that the building of socialism is a conscious process, unlike capitalism," with its anarchic market forces, the Cuban economist explained. "Consequently," Tablada continued, "together with developing production there must be a process of developing people's consciousness.

"Che wrote that one of Stalin's great crimes was to have substituted uncontrolled worship of authority for communist education. Stalin and the Soviet bureaucratic caste eliminated communist education in the process of production, the organization of society, and the development of the Soviet man and woman. That is why it was unable to develop a socialist society, leading to the results we see in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union."

Tablada added that during Guevara's time, "everything that departed from Soviet socialism was denounced as revisionism. It was like the Vatican during the Inquisition. To disagree with Moscow was to be a heretic."

"But Che wasn't dogmatic or prejudiced. He read everything. Che recommended studying not only Marx, Engels, and Lenin, but writers like Aristotle. Among the Marxists, he didn't hesitate to say it was also necessary to study Trotsky—who was and in part is still considered the Devil-because he was indisputably a leader of the Russian revolution. He also recommended studying revisionists such as Khrushchev."

"Che reached the conclusion, as early as November or December of 1960, that Cuba shouldn't apply the Soviet model, because it departed from the essence of socialist and communist principles. The model that was developed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe-after the Russian revolution began to be distorted and killed—was not socialism. Che says that in his works."

Tablada described how Che's political perspectives were abandoned in Cuba in the years following his death. "From the beginning there were two tendencies in the Cuban revolution."

One, he stated, was the communist leadership represented by Guevara and Fidel Castro. "But there was another tendency that favored applying the Soviet economic model. They were, and are, revolutionaries. They supported the Soviet system, not from the point of view of a bureaucratic caste trying to win privileges, but because of the dominant ideological influence of the Soviet Union in the revolutionary world. Soviet society was idealized.

"That tendency became the majority opinion in the Communist Party of Cuba in the 1970s. And since in my country we have a collective leadership that is, Fidel isn't a dictator—we began to establish this model. So beginning in 1974-75, we committed the grave error of copying the Soviet model for 10 years.

"What began to happen was what Fidel and Che had warned us about. In the name of socialism we were applying measures and relations that were clearly capitalist and had nothing to do with socialism."

Cuba began to rely increasingly on capitalist methods to administer the economy that, for example, gave more weight to fulfilling production quotas than to meeting social needs and producing quality goods. This led to the increasing demobilization and demoralization of working people and to the growth of a conservative bureaucratic layer in the state apparatus.

"So a process of rectification was begun," Tablada explained, "in November 1984 on the economic level and in 1986 on the social and political level," to reverse this trend. "This has been a struggle where the people have been reconquering the space that the bureaucracy had taken away from them. This struggle has been restricting the bureaucracy's power. We started to do the things we had stopped doing."

Tablada referred to the building of hospitals and schools-done in large part through the mobilization of thousands of volunteers as well as advancing the struggle for women's equal participation in society and efforts to combat the capitalist legacy of racism....

The Cuban economist recalled that voluntary labor, which had been abandoned during the 1970s, was revived with the launching of rectification.

Now, however, because of the disruption in Cuba's trade with Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, "volunteer labor continues, but it is limited in the non-priority industries as a result of the economic shortages. About 85 percent of our trade was with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Cuban-Soviet trade has decreased by 60 percent compared to 1989. We have big shortages of raw materials. We've had to close down plants and reduce work hours.

The use of volunteer labor has continued to play a role in priority sectors of the economy, he said, such as the development of agriculture and the construction of biotechnology plants.

Tablada commented that before the rectification fight was launched, "we were becoming corrupted in the economic sphere. But we were not corrupted in the area of international politics. That period of 1975-85 was precisely where my people's internationalism became a massive activity.

"Not only did more than 300,000 Cubans serve in Angola over these years, but 160,000 Cubans have gone to more than 100 countries as doctors, nurses, teachers, workers, engineers, and technicians. They've lived like the ordinary people in those countries. And we haven't asked for a penny in return. The Cuban internationalists have been financed by our own people. All this has made us stronger."

He added, "We understand that in the long run a revolution in a single country can't survive. The revolution must be extended. Revolutions can't be exported, but revolutionaries must respond to international counterrevolution by supporting revolutionary movements in countries where these struggles occur."

Tablada pointed to the historic significance of the October 1917 Russian revolution. "Without the Russian revolution, it would have been very difficult for the Cuban revolution to triumph. It was the greatest conscious undertaking in the history of humanity and opened the possiAbility of achieving a more humane and just society than capitalism, which had failed to do so in 500 years."

However, he commented, "the bureaucratic caste that began to establish itself in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s, '30s, and '40s, departed increasingly from the principles of the Russian Revolution. The industrial revolution of the late '30s and the reconstruction of the country after the war can only be explained by the legacy of the Russian revolution. "The bureaucracy turned Marxism into an instrument to justify its privileges on the level of its domestic and foreign policy. 'In spite of that, the caste existed on the basis of the existence of a workers' state. You can't explain the defeat of fascism by the Soviet Union during World War II except by the communist legacy of the Russian revolution. "Now the Soviet caste is striving to turn this workers' state into a completely capitalist state. But capitalism has prematurely sung its victory song, because capitalism has nothing to offer the Soviet working class."

Tablada said, "I don't consider it a misfortune that the Soviet Communist Party has disappeared, because in my opinion it stopped being communist many years ago. It's encouraging because now the real possibility opens up for communist organizations to arise again and take up the banner of the Russian revolution and its founders."

Tablada explained that "with the failure of the Soviet regime and the pro-Soviet Communist Parties it has been shown that our Marxism is based on the interests of the peoples of the world."

When the Cuban revolution triumphed, he remarked, "both the imperialists and the traditional left declared that it was a historical exception. The victory of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the Grenadian revolution were important because they showed that Cuba was not a historical exception. It was proven that despite all the resistance and resources mobilized by imperialism, it was possible for two more home-grown revolutions to take place."

Does the subsequent overturn of these two revolutions disprove this point? Tablada replied, "Their defeat doesn't negate the Cuban revolution but just the opposite. It proves that once a revolution is made, it must be consistently taken to the end; otherwise it will be lost."

"Grenada shows the importance of revolutionary unity and revolutionary morality," Tablada underlined. "Differences among revolutionaries cannot be resolved as they were when the Russian revolution died under Stalin. Stalin killed practically all the founders of the revolution, he eliminated all the members of Lenin's Political Bureau. That hasn't happened with the Cuban revolution.

"In the case of the Sandinista revolution it shows the importance of not making concessions on principles to the imperialists. A revolution can maintain a flexible policy and must when it's surrounded by capitalist governments, but if it makes concessions on principles it'll get its head chopped off.

"When the Sandinistas lost power in the [1990] elections, the response of the ordinary citizen in Cuba was: "That happéned because they made concessions to the empire."" ...

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