Following the public break between China and Cuba early in 1966, the Maoist press around the world began carrying attacks against the Cuban leaders. There was no attempt to demonstrate that their policies were different from those pursued by the Cubans during the early years of the revolution, or that there had been some qualitative new developments.
But quite abruptly those who followed Progressive Labor’s press learned that according to the Maoists, the fundamental character of the Cuban revolution had changed. For example, Cuba was no longer a state in which socialism was triumphing, but one in which the bourgeoisie was consolidating itself. Cuba’s foreign policy was no longer based on proletarian internationalism, but on petty-bourgeois adventurism.
For Marxists, the class nature of a state is the decisive criterion for determining one’s attitude toward it. For example, the Russian Revolution of 1917 abolished capitalism in the Soviet Union and established social ownership over the means of production. That fundamental change in property relations has never been reversed, despite the degeneration of the revolution and the dictatorial control exercised by a bureaucratic caste. Because of the character of the property relations, Marxists consider the Soviet Union a workers state which must be defended against imperialism.
The Maoists, trained in the political school of Stalinism, not Leninism or Marxism, do not follow such basic class criteria, however. Thus, it was possible according to Mao Tsetung’s Thought for the Soviet Union to pass from a “socialist” state to a “fascist” state, without any fundamental change in property relations, much less an open counterrevolutionary struggle. In a similar, thoroughly mystical fashion, the class nature of Cuba was also transformed, without anyone but the Maoists noticing what had happened. Not even the ever-vigilant CIA seemed aware that Cuba had suddenly become a class ally.
The Winter 1967 issue of PL’s publication World Revolution contains some of the most explicit statements about the class character of Cuba. One article, entitled “The Position on Cuba,” is reprinted from a pamphlet published by the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile. Among other things, it charges that “the greater part” of the land in Cuba “is in the hands of small owners who exploit the manual labor of others,” that “capitalist not socialist forms of agricultural production have developed,” and that “the bourgeoisie has not been relieved of its positions of leadership in the bureaucratic apparatus and cultural institutions.” On the contrary, “the bourgeoisie is becoming more secure and gaining new positions of power.”
First, of all, the statement that the majority of the land is in the hands of small owners is simply false. Out of approximately 9,000,000 hectares of agricultural land in Cuba, 5,200,000 hectares had become collectively owned as early as May 1959, the date of the first agrarian reform law in Cuba. After the second agrarian reform law in October 1963, almost 70 percent of the total agricultural lands were in the state sector.
The maximum size of any private holdings is about 165 acres, and over 75 percent of all private holdings are less than 65 acres. The owners of private farms together with their families constitute less than 10 percent of Cuba’s population. If anything, the percentage of privately owned land has decreased since these figures were released in 1967, because private holdings cannot be sold to another individual, but only to the state.
No other revolution in the 20th century has dealt with the agrarian problem as radically, completely and quickly as the Cuban Revolution under the leadership of Fidel Castro, and if that constitutes the development of “capitalist not socialist forms of agricultural production,” then it seems strange that other Latin American countries have not followed the obviously superior “capitalist” style developed in Cuba.
The second charge leveled by the Maoists, that the bourgeoisie is consolidating its power in Cuba, is equally ludicrous. First, one must ask, what bourgeoisie? The bourgeoisie that was completely destroyed, expropriated and physically dispersed as a class? The one that now lives in Miami and New York? The one whose former homes in Miramar are now dormitories for scholarship students? Or do they mean the peasant small landowners with their few acres in the mountains? Or do they mean some mythical bourgeoisie that owns no property but in whose interests the Cuban state is run?
Secondly, one must ask, how does this bourgeoisie exert its power? The old bourgeois army was totally destroyed, and not the slightest vestige of it remains. The new armed forces that have emerged are the most egalitarian since the days of Trotsky’s Red Army. The militia is composed of the workers and peasants who control their own weapons. The state police, secret police and all the other hated instruments of oppression by which the bourgeoisie maintained its control were also totally smashed.
With few exceptions, all top government, industrial, financial and cultural functionaries fled the country after the revolution, or lost their positions.
How is it possible that after a socialist revolution, a nonexistent bourgeoisie consolidates its power, through a totally reconstructed state apparatus, which rests on the armed power of a popular militia! That is a theoretical maze that nothing short of Mao Tsetung’s Thought could even begin to construct!
The second, and equally important round of charges brought against the leaders of the Cuban Revolution by the Maoists deals with their foreign policy.
Jake Rosen, writing in the November-December 1967 Progressive Labor, states that “counterrevolutionary ideology confronts us from two main sources on the Left and in two main garbs” (emphasis added). The two sources, Rosen announces, are Moscow and Havana. Havana’s garb, he reveals, is “left-cover” for Moscow, because while pretending to denounce the policies of the Moscow-oriented Communist parties in Latin America, the real intention is to isolate the Maoists and discredit Mao’s theory of “people’s war,” the only “correct” guide to struggle.
In addition, the “net result” of Che’s Bolivian guerrilla front, according to PL. will be to turn honest revolutionaries away from armed struggle, “certainly away from Marxism-Leninism” and reinforce petty-bourgeois individualism. (Progressive Labor, May 1969) Che’s efforts, we are told, were nothing but “intense self-indulgence under the guise of revolutionism.”
The Cuban line of guerrilla warfare is certainly not flawless. It raises a number of questions that are valid points for discussion within the revolutionary movement. The Maoists in their criticisms seek to demagogically exploit several of the Cubans’ weakest points–including their underestimation of the need for a revolutionary party, their tendency to substitute the actions of a guerrilla band for the task of building a revolutionary party, their tendency to disparage theory and political discussion, and their overemphasis on military technique as opposed to political analysis.
But to pass from comradely criticism and discussion within the revolutionary movement, to placing the Cuban leadership in the category of counterrevolutionaries–enemies of revolution –that is another matter. What proof do the Maoists offer for so serious a charge? Absolutely none! They cannot point to even one single example where the Cuban leaders consciously stood in the way of, or blocked, a developing revolutionary situation. They charge that Che failed in Bolivia, and that the pro-Cuban forces in Venezuela have been unsuccessful. But even if that is correct, defeats or mistakes are one thing; conscious or objective derailment of revolutionary opportunities is another.
The Maoists are most vitriolic against the Cuban leadership’s refusal to support Mao’s thought on “people’s war,” which they present as an immutable, worldwide formula for victory. But having the opportunity to observe the Peking line in action in a number of key areas, the Cubans certainly have a basis for at least being a bit wary.
While the rhetoric of Maoist theory is quite revolutionary (although on key issues a departure from Marxism), the Cubans certainly cannot but pause to consider the fact of the opportunistic, class-collaborationist line carried out by the Maoists in a number of areas. For example, was the Maoist policy in Indonesia revolutionary when it supported the political collaboration of the Peking-oriented CP with the capitalist regime of Sukarno? It was that policy of class collaboration that left the Indonesians unprepared for mass struggle and led to the slaughter of 500,000 or more members and supporters of the Indonesian CP.
Has the Maoist policy toward Pakistan been a revolutionary one? Was it revolutionary to support dictator Ayub Khan and supply him with the arms and ammunition that were used against the workers, peasants and students in recent months?
Such examples could be multiplied, but the point should be clear. PL dogmatically insists on Mao’s foreign policy as a correct alternative to the Cuban line, but history has proven many times over that when the Chinese bureaucracy, like the Soviet, has something to gain from collaboration with the reactionary bourgeoisies of capitalist countries, it is willing to subordinate the needs of the workers and peasants of those countries to the needs of the Chinese bureaucracy.
Likewise, the Maoists have been willing to subordinate the needs of the Cuban revolution to their narrow, bureaucratic needs in a factional battle with the Soviet bureaucracy.
This methodology, based on subjectivism, sectarianism, opportunism and factionalism–in short, the Stalinist methodology–has also guided the actions of PL in the United States.
During its period of “support” to Cuba, PL was quite ready to exploit its relations, through such things as the trips to Cuba, as a device for their own narrow, factional gain, rather than to promote and defend the interests of the revolution.
And then, when Peking’s line switched, they proved ready to blindly and dogmatically go along, even though it meant deserting the first socialist revolution in the Western hemisphere.
As we shall see, PL’s attitudes and actions toward the Cuban revolution were to be repeated in relation to the Vietnamese revolution.