Review of Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
What was the class character of the Cuban revolution of 1959-61? More than any other Marxist over the last forty-five years, Sam Farber has tried to tackle this question from the standpoint of Third Camp working class socialism.
Farber was born and grew up in Cuba. Since the early 1960s he has been an active revolutionary socialist, most recently as a member of the editorial board of Against the Current magazine, published in the United States.
His earlier book, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba 1933-1960 (Wesleyan University Press, 1976) is the most coherent Marxist explanation of the Cuban revolution to date. Now this new book, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) updates his interpretation in the light of scholarship published over the last thirty years.
Farber uses original documents, biographies and other sources emanating from Cuba and elsewhere, fleshing out some issues that were previously not well known or understood. In particular he uses declassified US State Department files and Soviet documents to clarify a number of crucial matters.
What happened in the Cuban revolution?
There is little dispute about the broad outlines of the Cuban revolution 1959-61.
Before the revolution, Cuba was ruled by a military dictator Fulgencio Batista, who seized power in a coup in 1952. A range of organisations - and even sections of the military - challenged Batista’s rule, including the group around Fidel Castro, which attacked the Moncada barracks on 26 July 1953. Although the attack failed and the participants imprisoned, they were released and exiled two years later.
Castro’s group, now known as the July 26 Movement (M26J), returned to Cuba in December 1956, launching a guerrilla struggle against Batista from the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. Other urban groups, such as the Directorio Revolucionario and the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP, the Cuban Communist Party) also opposed Batista. In April 1958 the M26J called a general strike, but it largely failed.
However Batista’s offensive against the guerrillas in July 1958 failed and by the end of the year his forces had been driven back. On 1 January 1959 Batista fled and his army collapsed. The M26J took over, celebrated by a general strike lasting four days.
Castro’s political revolution was consolidated when leading Batista figures were tried and executed and the new regime passed a series of reforms, notably an Agrarian Reform Law in May 1959. Castro himself became prime minister in February 1959. In November 1959 pro-Castro and Communist (PSP) supporters took control of the trade union movement.
Towards the end of 1959, the US government began making plans to overthrow the Cuban government – and Castro began making links with the USSR. In May 1960 the government took complete control of the media. In the following months US oil and other businesses were expropriated. In April 1961 the US sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion failed and Castro declared the “socialist” character of the Cuban Revolution – in reality a social revolution that created the first Stalinist bureaucratic social formation in Latin America.
Why was there a revolution in Cuba 1959-61?
Lenin argued that revolutions come about when the ruling class is no longer able to rule in the old way, and the mass of people are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way.
This means trying to understand the circumstances that made a revolution possible – but also clearly identifying the agents involved, their aims and strategies for power.
Any explanation of the nature of the Cuban revolution has to grapple with five key issues:
1) The political economy of Cuba before and after 1959;
2) The nature of the Castro group that led the revolution, and other parties contending for power (e.g. the PSP);
3) The role of the US government in pushing Castro towards Stalinism;
4) The role of the USSR and the PSP in attracting the Cuban regime towards its orbit; and
5) The role of the working class and other classes in the process.
Most “left-wing” explanations of the Cuban revolution address these issues in the following way:
1) They emphasise the backward, dependent nature of Cuban capitalism, dominated by imperialism and ruled by a dictatorship often depicted as a puppet of the US.
2) They depict the Castro group as radical nationalists, but pragmatic revolutionaries who evolved their programme and strategy as they went along.
3) They emphasise the US government’s imperial bungling, which pushed the new regime away from bourgeois-democratic rule towards “socialism”.
4) The role of the USSR is presented as benign or even progressive, coming to the aid of the Cuban government when it came under attack from the US.
5) The working class is presented as an integral part of a popular, multi-class alliance that eventually put its representatives (the Castroites, sometimes with the PSP) in control.
In most “Trotskyist” accounts, this is sometimes dressed up as “permanent revolution”, whereby a process of growing over from a national-democratic revolution to a socialist revolution is asserted, with Castro’s leadership playing the locum role for a Marxist party. Differences about the nature of Stalinist rule in Cuba revolve around the extent of bureaucratic “deformation” or “health” of a “workers’ state”.
The central problem with this approach is that it displaces the working class from the centre of the analysis, substituting the Castro group as the progressive agency. The working class is at best perceived as a subordinate prop for the Castro regime – rather than the victim of its rule. Despite the absence of mass workers’ organisations, such as soviets (factory councils) or factory committees, and the absence of a Marxist party leading a class conscious working class to take power in its own interests, proponents of this view describe with ever great detachment from reality the manner in which the Cuban working class “rules” vicariously through the agency of Castro’s state. They forget that a “workers’ state” created without the active intervention of the working class is no workers’ state at all.
There are also right-wing explanations of Castro’s rise to power.
1) These emphasise the developed nature of Cuban capitalism in the 1950s and suggest that Batista would have given way to some form of bourgeois democracy.
2) They depict the Castro regime as Stalinist from the start, as a conspiracy that carefully concealed its true nature within a broadly democratic movement before foisting its real designs on the Cuban people after two years in power.
3) The US government is usually presented as moderate, protecting the interests of its businesses, sometimes making mistakes – but essentially benign;
4) By contrast, the USSR is portrayed as pulling Cuba towards its orbit from the beginning.
5) The working class is presented as duped by Castro’s promises – or is simply irrelevant to government-level machinations.
The main problem with this view is that it completely misunderstands the international context in which the Cuban revolution took place and the various contending forces that vied for power. It too fails to grasp the reality of the situation for Cuban workers before and after 1959, so provides no conception of what workers could have done in the situation – or what lessons can be learned for today.
Neither of these broad views offers a class analysis of the Cuban revolution. Neither grasps the dynamics of the period, the motives of the key social agents nor understands the trajectory the regime took between 1959 and 1961.
By contrast, Farber’s view is much more nuanced. To summarise it tersely:
1) The political economy of Cuban capitalism in the 1950s was defined by uneven development and Batista’s regime is understood as a Bonapartist formation, balancing between social classes with little social base.
2) Castro’s group was a declassed populist movement in the tradition of Latin American caudillismo, an active agent with its own aims and with internal tensions and pressures – and faced competitors for power. It created its own form of Bonapartist rule before choosing the Stalinist camp.
3) US policy emanated from its imperial role in the hemisphere and its priorities in the Cold War - consistent with its treatment of other regimes in Latin America.
4) The USSR pursued its own imperial state interests and was involved from the early days in the regime – acting as a pole of attraction and actively promoted as a model by the PSP.
5) The Cuban working class lacked the kind of independent politics necessary to fight for its own interests and self-rule. Workers were not the social force that made the revolution, nor its ultimate beneficiary – indeed the working class was hegemonised and effectively exploited by the new class that came to rule by 1961, under what Farber has called a “bureaucratic collectivist class society”. (1976 p.237)
To sum up, Farber’s book is exceptionally useful, dispelling the veil of romanticism that surrounds Castro’s Cuba on the left. It is vital contribution towards reorienting the left and a tremendous contribution towards understanding the nature of the Cuban regime today. With Fidel Castro’s death likely to set off a chain reaction inside and outside Cuba, Marxists have a substantial task in seeking to understand the Cuban social formation and its direction. This book helps us to do that work.
Comments
Markets, Planning, and the Working Class
Your statements re: authoritarianism are fine, but don't amount to authoritarianism as I understand the term. Authoritarianism is when, like Lenin, you think that "the dictatorship is unrestrained by any laws and based directly on force." I understand that this isn't your view, but the fact that this was Lenin's (and Trotsky's, and Bukharin's) view contributed much towards the destruction Soviet Union's character as a workers' state.
The NEP was explicitly a temporary measure, whereas under Stalin there was all sorts of nonsense about the law of value being a permanent feature under "socialism." Big difference, I think.
The problem with "planning" in the USSR isn't that it was "bad." It was that it wasn't done by the workers themselves and hence was without real working-class socialist content. Of course errors are possible through democratic planning. But if the workers are really in charge then they can correct the errors.
Of course the working class is different from any other class in history. To quote Charles Post (http://www.ernestmandel.org/en/aboutlife/txt/charlespost.htm):
"The analogy with feudal absolutism and capitalist dictatorships tends to obscure the differentia specifica of the transition to socialism. First, neither the feudal nor capitalist modes of production emerged from the struggles of classes self-consciously attempting to create new forms of society. Instead, feudalism and capitalism arose out of the struggles of already propertied classes to consolidate and extend their class domination. Socialism, by contrast, is the first form of society created in a conscious struggle by a propertyless social class, the working class. Further, both feudalism and capitalism are reproduced through a “blind economic logic” that operates “behind the back” of both the economically dominant classes and the direct producers. The feudal aristocracy and the bourgeoisie can remain socially dominant without directly dominating the state. Socialism is the first form of society based on conscious and deliberate planning of economic development."
And Alan Johnson (http://archive.workersliberty.org/wlmags/wl50/losttext.htm):
"...the “correct and decisive” criteria of a workers’ state is that the working class holds political power. The bourgeoisie can own and control the means of production without political power. The working class, by contrast, “differs from all others in history above all in the fact that it can conquer and rule only in its own name.” “Proletarian Bonapartism” is therefore a theoretical and practical impossibility...To define property relations in terms of property forms is, for a Marxist, to reverse the order of categorial priority, to replace social relations with a juridical illusion and to substitute an economism for a rounded Marxist judgement. The consequences are disastrous for one’s ability as a Marxist to theoretically ground democracy. For when the bureaucracy conquered state power the property relations established by October were, by definition, destroyed. To imagine that the property relations of October were somehow, mystically, congealed in the property forms of October, held there, intact, as long as capitalism was not restored, was a fatal error, a juridical illusion."
I no longer have time to contribute to this argument, and in any event I doubt that Arthur's mind has been changed. But I will give Arthur credit for proving to me that the state-capitalist arguments don't work.
One last point...
One more time...
(Could someone from the AWL please delete the twice-repeating post of mine, thanks.)
Arthur -- look at how the ortho-Trots almost to a one were drawn to authoritarian conclusions via their theory of deformed workers states. Ernest Mandel thought that even Pol Pot's Cambodia was a deformed workers state. The Spartacists famously Hailed The Red Army In Afghanistan. Etc.
I've read the old Critique issues too -- Ticktin's analysis was not that of Shachtman, Carter, Draper, etc. He always, always, always thought that USSR-type societies were "historically delimited" and hence couldn't be considered possible successors to capitalism, as at least some BC-theorists did.
I'm opposed to privatization. I'm a socialist, so I have to be, yes? Opposition to private property and all that. All Third Campists were always opposed to a US attack on the Stalinist states and the de-nationalization that would naturally occur were the US victorious. They just refused the slogan of UNCONDITIONAL defense because it was, in practice, tied to things like the invasion of Finland, which Trotsky defended...go re-read the Cannonite-Shachtmanite arguments, it's all spelled out...
And again, there's a difference between the nationalization of property through the actions of a government that, in however flawed a fashion, represents the working class (the 1945 Labour government creating the NHS), and the nationalization of property as a result of non-working-class forces (in China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, etc.) Nationalized property in such societies can't be defended UNCONDITIONALLY any more than it can in, say, Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
And by authoritarianism I obviously refer to authoritarianism AGAINST THE WORKING CLASS. I assume you don't want to defend that. It has nothing to do with the dictatorship of the proletariat, aka a workers' state, aka the rule of the working class, which DID NOT EXIST in the states that you think deserve the term "workers states" (deformed, of course...still, one wonders why the workers in those states had no interest in defending "their" states...didn't think that state property plus authoritarian "planning" was worth defending...). And no, I don't defend authoritarianism by the pre-Stalin Soviet Union against the working class either, i.e. I don't defend the Cheka, or Lenin and Trotsky's justifications for Taylorism, or any of that.
Back to the Cuban Revolution: None of us want a capitalist Cuba. None of us want Cuba as it is, ruled by the Castroist elite and not the Cuban workers, either. We all oppose US interference in Cuban affairs. Doesn't mean we have to pretend that state property in Cuba has some sort of proletarian "essence." It wasn't the working class, it wasn't a working-class party, that nationalized Cuban property.
In any event, it'll probably be the Cuban elite, not American imperialism, that carries out mass privatization after Castro finally dies.
So nationalized property is ALWAYS progressive?
Your position comes very close to sheer worship of state property Arthur.
No Marxist group, even with a state-capitalist or bureaucratic-collectivist analysis of Stalinism, has ever done the "sorry comrades..." bit. We would oppose denationalization because we oppose workers being out of work -- but that's as far as it goes. We'd also explain that statified property under capitalism is NOT SOCIALIST, certainly not when private bosses are replaced with state bosses.
And while Labour measures such as the NHS are obviously progressive because they ensure that all workers will get health care -- even though one can dispute just how "socialist" the NHS is, when functioning properly it does serve a basic human need -- one can't exactly say the same thing about the nationalization of railways, coalmines and shipyards, not in the WAY the industries were nationalized. Their structure of authority was virtually as authoritarian as in private industries. Undoubtedly this helped to discredit the idea of socialism in the minds of the workers in those industries. There is a reason why Marxists demanded "nationalization under workers' control." There was never any smaller text on the placards that said "Oh, but if you nationalize without workers' control, that's OK too..."
And again, the only reason to oppose the denationalization of such industries is because as socialists we oppose workers being thrown out of work. That's all.
(Would someone from the AWL please step in and argue with Arthur? Really, comrades, I feel like I'm doing your work for you...)
Farber
Actually, my understanding is Sam Farber is only active in Against the Current magazine. He is NOT a member of Solidarity and it is somewhat surprising one would make this mistake as I believe his non-membership likely relates to his discomfort with Solidarity's non-position multi-tendency stance on the class nature of the former USSR. Against the Current is rather independent from Solidarity and merely sponsored by it. Please correct the error.
The logic of the deformed workers' states position
Arthur has done a good job of proving that the Stalinist states weren't and aren't state-capitalist or a new form of class society. He hasn't done a good job of proving that they were/are workers' states. States that aren't the result of workers' revolutions, which weren't even the result of revolutions led by workers' parties, aren't workers' states. It really is that simple. Furthermore, since by definition a workers' state is preferable to a capitalist state, one would have to conclude that life even in a Stalinist "workers' state" is freer for workers than life in a capitalist state. But of course it wasn't. One would also have to conclude that it would have been a good thing had Stalinism taken over all of Europe and not merely Eastern Europe, since, after all, it's a good thing when workers' states replace capitalist states. But of course this would have been a terrible thing, since political freedoms in Europe would have vanished.
If one is consistent with the Stalinism = deformed workers' states line of thinking, one inevitably reaches authoritarian conclusions, regardless of one's intent.
I urge Arthur to read Hillel Ticktin on Stalinism as a non-mode of production. A summary of Ticktin's analysis can be found here: http://www.dumbartonssp.co.uk/page42.html
What really matters
Apparently my last post didn't go through.
But seeing as this argument is possibly never ending, let's get to what really matters.
Does Arthur agree with the Third Camp position or not? Was "Neither Washington or Moscow -- for International Socialism" the right position to take during the Cold War or not?
If the answer is "yes" then it doesn't really matter what he thinks the Stalinist states were, because his political stance is right. If the answer is "no" then it proves to me yet again that the "deformed workers' state" position leads one to essentially Stalinoid conclusions, whether or not one wished the Stalinist bureaucracy to be overthrown by workers.
BTW, Arthur, I'm pretty sure that Hillel Ticktin knows the difference between a Marxist and a non-Marxist concept, so your declaration of his analysis of the USSR as "non-Marxist" is, well, sectarian. Ticktin may be wrong, but it's obvious that he's working with Marxist concepts. As did the state-capitalist theorists, even if they too were wrong.
The NHS does not have a foreign policy
Ticktin's analysis was never one of "bureaucratic collectivism" a la Shachtman, Carter, Draper, etc. His position has never changed. And his position regarding Stalinism as a non-mode of production is closely tied to his belief that the USSR could "produce" only in a very defective way (products often having negative use-values).
And the Third Camp slogan is a slogan that pertains, first and foremost, to the foreign policies of the US and USSR. If one opposed the foreign policies of both states and advocated the overthrow of their rulers, then one was a Third Campist.
The rest of your points I don't have time to respond to, sorry, perhaps someone else can step up to the plate.
I find you hard to understand.
You oppose the Leninist conception of the party but you support the Cheka. Weird. If that's not what you mean to say, that's still how it reads.
My take has never been that everything would have been hunky dory had Stalin and co. not taken power. My point is simply that the working class cannot rule without governing, and when you have a "workers state" that is politically beyond reform, that is so undemocratic that a revolution is necessary, then you no longer have a workers state, just as when a union is unreformable then it's no longer really a workers' trade union.
It doesn't matter what the Stalinist rulers THOUGHT they were doing, or even what others at the time thought they were doing. In retrospect we can all say that Stalinist industrialization and gradual marketization was a preparation for capitalism.
You miss my point re: national ownership and foreign ownership. I'm saying that's what Iraqi workers are most likely thinking, not the AWL.
Can't respond to other points now. I'd recommend that everyone read this:
www.critiquejournal.net/carthur32.pdf