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From International Socialism, No.44, July/August 1970, pp.11-19.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
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Although it is now more than ten years since the Cuban Revolution, the number of serious and critical studies of it from a left-wing viewpoint have been jew. For this reason we are printing the following article, though it will be clear that the editors of IS do not accept completely its standpoint (for instance, we believe that to call Cuba ‘socialist’ is to redefine the term in a non-marxist manner). |
At first glance the impression is not at all striking: it reminds one of an old acquaintance from the gloomy, somewhat strong-smelling family of Communist parties. The office of the local chairman somewhere in the Cuban provinces with its meticulously clean ash-trays, with the yellowing poster on the wall (’We salute the irresistible growth of the party’), with the dull-green armchairs and the brown sofa, the permanent stock of unread brochures, instruction texts and wall-newspapers – all this is both homely and depressing at the same time, reminiscent of Olomouc, Zeulenroda and Yegorevsk. Only the olive-green uniform and the bulging holster speak another dialect.
Not only in this dust-covered outpost in Oriente province, but also at the very top level of the Communist party of Cuba does not seem to be lacking any of those items which belong to the basic inventory of such an institution: politburo and secretariat, central committee and commissions for this and that, central organs and cadre schools – one finds all this again in the government quarter of Havana. Even the well-known blight is not missing: that peculiar, unmistakable mildew forming on the words which the party uses and thereby renders unusable.
Thus it might seem as if the Cuban party were getting along, if not always to the satisfaction of the CPSU, at least according to time-honoured usage; as if the customary reliance on the party, at least on its way of functioning, its mechanism, were still there; so that everyone who so wished could easily find his way around in its structure, just as easily as the weary Catholic in a foreign land always knows how to search out the confessional and the holy-water font. ‘Stolid’, ‘wise’, ‘imperturbable’ and, above all, powerful; narrow-minded, mediocre, characterised by a scrupulously good conscience and blessed with enormous resilience as they are, such parties nevertheless exhibit the workings of an obscure historical logic: they became stooges of a cunning greater than their own, and in their banal offices, wherever socialism, or whatever goes by that name, was supposed, to be constructed, all the decision-making was carried out.
Not so in Cuba. The Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) has little more in common with the other ruling CPs than a façade. But this is deceptive. The party is one of the youngest in the world. It has existed in its current form and under its present name only since 1965; ie, it was founded seven years after a victorious revolution that came to power without its aid, This single factor is enough to make its case unique, indeed a sheer scandal, for a Leninist party regards itself essentially as the vanguard of the revolutionary struggle, not as a subsequently set-up administrative structure. The party as conceived by the classical theoreticians was never meant to be an instrument of domination. The well-known ‘leading role’ is not supposed to fall into the party’s lap. It must be earned during the long and patient preparations for the revolution and in the decisive struggle for power. A party which is only constructed after the take-over – after a victory which was not its own – will suffer all its life from this irremovable birth defect. The historical validation for its existence is lacking. Its authority will always rest on a weak foundation.
In order to understand the structure and the present role of the PCC, one must get to know its background. By its very name it claims for itself the inheritance of the old Cuban CP. However, as will be shown, this claim to succession is a rather inadequate rationale.
The first Communist Party in Cuba was established in 1925. It is no easy task to summarise its course, its swings, its double-dealings and tactical name changes throughout the 35 years of its existence, particularly since source material is scanty and a useful history of the party has never been written. In any case its features present a generally familiar picture, for it was a typical Comintern party. Even its strategic capers had less to do with Cuban actualities than with the interests of the Soviet Union; without recourse to the policy of the Stalinist leadership of the Comintern they would remain unintelligible. The PCC began its work with modest means and was subjected early to an intensifying suppression; it had a very small core of regular members (after five years the party had 2,000 followers) and was hampered by struggles over the political line (its co-founder Mella, who commands great respect in present-day Cuba, was expelled and, in 1929, murdered under mysterious circumstances). The party was active above all in the organisations of the urban and rural proletariat, especially in the trade unions of the sugar, tobacco and textile industries. But from the very beginning it also had a basis among the intellectuals, chiefly at the University of Havana.
After the world economic crisis of 1929-30 imperialism tried to save its Cuban bastion by means of a police dictatorship; President Machado Gerardo became the front-man for this manoeuvre. In 1933 his regime was overthrown by a revolutionary mass movement. Workers and students joined forces on the streets of Havana; the general strike called was extraordinarily successful in spite of deficient organisational preparation. The spontaneous, violent actions of the masses at that time are to a certain extent reminiscent of the May Events in Paris of 1968. After the expulsion of the dictator a radical student government was formed, but it soon collapsed. The new candidate of the Americans, a sergeant named Batista, ended this first Cuban revolution with a military putsch; the year was 1935.
The role of the party in these events was ambiguous, to say the least. The attitude of the base was revolutionary: in the provinces seizures of land, the formation of Red Guards and the establishment of local Soviets occurred, just as in the Asturian revolt of 1934. At the same time, however, the party leadership was negotiating with Machado, who promised concessions to its representatives. At this point the Communists in Havana called upon the striking masses to return to work. [1] They met just as little response as the PCF in Paris was to meet 35 years later.
It is hardly worth our while to analyse in detail the political twists and turns of the party between 1934 and 1945. They follow the Comintern. line to the letter. By concentrating its attacks on ‘social fascism’, after the successful uprising, the PCC played right into Batista’s hands. Even its anti-imperialist stance crumbled: ‘The Communist Party must take all steps to prevent a us intervention, making certain concessions to us imperialism ... The Communist Party directs its main blow against the local ruling classes in Cuba.’ [2] The idea was to negotiate with the Americans, in order to buy up their businesses in Cuba or to manage them as concessions of the us monopolies, instead of to nationalise them.
From 1935 onwards the party under its general secretary, Blas Roca, followed the general line of the Popular Front. Under Cuban conditions that was tantamount to directly supporting Batista. By means of a front group, the Partido Union Revolucionaria (PUR), the Communists were able for the first time to come out into the open. One year later Batista announced that the party would henceforth be allowed to operate freely, because it had rejected the violent road to socialism and had opted for peaceful and constitutional methods. In 1939 the party was even made legal; it united with the PUR to form the Partido Union Revolucionaria Comunista (PURC).
A policy of outright co-operation now developed between the Communists and Batista, whom they extolled as the ‘great democrat’ and the ‘great exponent of our national policy, the embodiment of Cuba’s sacred ideals’. [3] Two leading Communists entered Batista’s government as ministers without portfolio: Juan Marinello and Carlos Rafael Rodriguez. It was the first time that a Latin American CP had achieved and accepted Cabinet posts.
It would be unfair to conceal the fact that the Batista government at that time differed considerably from the military dictatorship of the late 1950s. In 1940 the regime was reformist: strongly influenced by the American New Deal, it regarded itself as a kind of social democracy. The constitution of the same year increased the political manoeuvrability of the trade unions and even promised a land reform. ‘Thanks to our collaboration with President Batista,’ said the party, ‘the people of Cuba have the magnificent Constitution of 1940.’ [4] In the newly founded Cuban Confederation of Labour, the CTC, the Communists were able to secure for themselves most of the key positions. The groups of bureaucrats representing the labour aristocracy, which were becoming more and more powerful in the 1940s, were completely under their control. Also the membership figures increased from 5,000 (1938) to 37,000 (1946). [5 ]After the dissolution of the Comintern the party once again changed its name to the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP). This was its name from 1944 onwards and, in present-day Cuba, anyone speaking about the old CP refers to it as the PSP. It experienced its best period in 1946 when the party newspaper Hoy became one of the largest-circulation papers in Havana; in the elections the Communists managed to obtain 10 per cent of the votes.
But only a few years later the PSP saw itself cheated of its place in the sun. The coup d’etat of 1952 brought its policy of alliance to an abrupt end. Of course, even Batista’s second dictatorship truckled less to the wishes of Cuban capital than to the dictates of the international strategy of imperialism. It was nothing more than a local reflex action to the intensification of the Cold War. The beautiful constitution proved to be a mere scrap of paper. In 1953 the party was outlawed: Batista set up an office to combat Communist agitation; top party functionaries had to emigrate or face arrest. However, the PSP was not the chief target of the repression: for years it managed to send its formally illegal publications in the mail unmolested, and leading Communists such as Blas Roca, Juan Marinello and Carlos Rafael Rodriguez could live undisturbed in Havana up to the end of the 50s. In the administration of the dictator numerous old party members emerged; two of them became Undersecretaries of State. This move into the ministries was certainly not due to the opportunism of individual persons, but to a party directive. Nevertheless, one ought not to speak simply of a general armistice between Batista and the party. The dictator’s tactic was rather to keep the Communists in reserve, in order, with their help, to blackmail the Americans in an emergency. About the same time, Batista’s colleague and rival, Trujillo, was engaging in similar manoeuvres, admittedly without success, in the Dominican Republic.
The party stuck to its ambiguous behaviour even in the phase of armed struggle against the dictator. Anyone wishing to grasp the internal political situation of revolutionary Cuba must bear this behaviour in mind while studying the events of the years 1953-58, for the Communist policy of those days poisoned the atmosphere so lastingly that the consequences are still felt to this day.
After Fidel Castro’s first armed action, the attack on the Moncada Barracks and on a military objective in Oriente province, the PSP issued the following public statement:
We repudiate the putschist methods, peculiar to bourgeois political factions, of the action in Santiago de Cuba and Bayamo, which was an adventuristic attempt to take both military headquarters. The heroism displayed by the participants in this action is false and sterile, as it is guided by mistaken bourgeois conceptions ... The entire country knows who organised, inspired, and directed the action against the barracks and knows that the Communists had nothing to do with it. The line of the PSP and of the mass movement has been to combat the Batista tyranny and to unmask the putschists and adventuristic activities of the bourgeois opposition as being against the interests of the people. The PSP poses the necessity of a united front of the masses against the government, for a democratic way out of the Cuban situation, restoration of the 1940 Constitution, civil liberties, general elections, and the establishment of a National Democratic Front government ...
The PSP bases its fight on the action of the masses, on the struggle of the masses, and exposes adventuristic putschism as contrary to the fight of the masses and contrary to the democratic solution which the people desires. [6]
The Communists stuck to this position for five years. Castro did not pass over their attacks in silence. In 1956, when a Cuban periodical alleged that he was a Communist, he replied:
What moral right does Senor Batista have to speak of Communism when he was the Presidential candidate of the Communist Party in the elections of 1940, when his electoral squibs hid behind the hammer and sickle, when his photographs hung next to those of Blas Roca and Lazaro Peña, when half a dozen of his present ministers and confidential collaborators were outstanding members of the Communist Party? [7]
The Communists were not invited to the first discussions concerning a united front against Batista in 1957. In July of the following year, five months before the overthrow of the dictatorship, when such an alliance did take place – the so-called Pact of Caracas – the CP was still not involved in it. Also controversial is the party’s role during the abortive general strike of April 9, 1958, which Castro’s movement had called and in which it had placed great hopes for a decisive turn of events. The party leadership did not come out openly against the undertaking, but predicted defeat, and, after its failure, distanced itself from it. Carlos Rafael Rodriguez declared to a French journalist that this unsuccessful action would hopefully be a lesson for Castro: he would now have to realise that by himself he had no chance; he would have to enter a broad coalition even with the liberals and to tone down his anti-American propaganda. In a letter to the same journalist, Rafael Rodriguez stated that the Communists were not of the opinion that ‘there were any forces in the country which could conquer Batista and bring a progressive anti-imperialist government to power.’ [8] All the same, the Daily Worker, mouthpiece at that time also for the Cuban CP, welcomed the espousal of the general-strike slogan at least ‘as a step toward the organisation of the masses and away from excessive reliance on heroic but indecisive guerilla warfare, futile bombing, and sabotage.’ [9]
Not until midsummer 1958, after the failure of Batista’s counter-offensive and at the height of the guerrilla campaign, did the first talks take place between Fidel Castro and the PSP in the Sierra. They are still shrouded in mystery: neither side published documentary material on them. The only clear fact is that Rafael Rodriguez went to the mountains in July and that further emissaries followed during the autumn. However, according to the Communists themselves, no binding agreement was reached before Castro’s victory. [10] Thus the Cuban revolution is not in any way indebted to the PSP for its behaviour at that time; some of the guerrileros of 1957-58 still speak today with bitterness about the ‘ traitorous’ policy of the old CP – if only in private; of course, for the general public this subject is taboo.
Nevertheless, ‘traitorous’ policy is a glib description. To counter-balance it is not difficult. The attack on Moncada was in fact an adventure – planned in a dilettante fashion and hopeless from the military point of view. In a technical sense the assessment of the Communists was completely correct. It left only one decisive factor out of consideration: the psychological effect achieved by Castro in his speech before the court. And as far as the numerical strength of his forces in Cuba 1958 is concerned, one should know the figures which Fidel himself has named, in order to comprehend the scepticism of the PSP leadership : according to him, the revolutionary army consisted in the summer of 180, in autumn of 500 and in December of 800 to 1,000 men. [11] Today anyone who would like to maintain that he always knew what would happen is probably demonstrating a poor memory rather than past foresight. The political calculation of the Communists in 1958 betrays just as much of a common-sense bent and just as little faith in the improbable as that of the Americans.
The hindsighted ones of today are also repressing the fact that although Castro at the time was undertaking militant actions, his declarations of policy, however, were hardly more than a reformist muddle. Even a book as unoriginal, dull and doctrinaire as Roca’s Fundamentos del socialismo en Cuba (the first of numerous editions, each conforming to the respective party line, appeared in 1934) is still far superior to Castro’s early speeches in the power of its analysis, if not also in its revolutionary zeal. And as far as the politicisation of the Cubans is concerned, the party, by its persistent, tedious work and its attention to detail for over 35 years, doubtless played a very considerable role. Finally, .the PSP policy, however misguided it was, did after all pay off in one respect: it was the only party which succeeded in weathering all the storms intact. Already the first year of the revolutionary government showed that this fact was of central significance for Cuba’s future.
An endless amount of material has been written on the first two years of the Cuban revolution. When, on which date, was the decision to opt for socialism taken, and who was responsible for it? With scholastic zeal the opponents of the revolution have developed a conspiracy theory, according to which it was a deliberate process directed with diabolical cleverness. Their arguments abound with talk of secret agreements, ulterior motives, wirepullers and backstage secrets. In reality, the contradictions which arose in the years 1959 and 1960 and their socialist solution cannot, of course, be explained away by a ‘world conspiracy’; the inner logic of Castro’s decisions is rather to be derived from the objective national and international conditions of his struggle. Fidel himself did not seek out these conditions; he did not even provoke them. The increasing pressure of imperialism from outside and the sharpening of the class struggle within could only lead to one of two conceivable reactions: capitulation or the turn to socialism. The uncertain development of the party shows how enormous were the difficulties paving the road to socialism.
After January 2, 1959 only one of the old parties of Cuba was still able to operate legally and openly. This was the PSP. Nevertheless, the Communists found themselves in a position affording little comfort. They were not represented in the newly-formed government; Fidel Castro and his followers looked upon them with mistrust and bitterness. In the first months of the year it seemed as if an open break was imminent. [12] As late as May 21 the leader of the Cuban revolution delivered an openly anti-Communist speech:
Our revolution is neither capitalist nor Communist! ... We, in our humanist doctrine, are intensely concerned with the people and we are mobilising all of our forces in benefit of the majority. We want to liberate man from dogmas, and free his economy and society, without terrorising or binding anyone. We have been placed in a position where we must choose between capitalism which starves people, and Communism which resolves the economic problem but suppresses the liberties so greatly cherished by man ... Capitalism sacrifices man; communism with its totalitarian ideas sacrifices his rights. We agree neither with the one nor with the other ... Our revolution is not red, but olive green, the colour of the rebel army that emerged from the heart of the Sierra Maestra. [13]
The Communists did not pass over such speeches in silence. Anibal Escalante, a leading PSP functionary, reproached Fidel, not completely unjustly, for ‘ideological confusion’; the ensuing dispute, waged in the columns of the CP newspaper, Hoy, and Castro’s mouthpiece, Revolution, dragged on well into summer. And at their central-committee plenum on May 25 the PSP adopted an openly critical position toward the politics of the revolution:
We are a small country, situated only a very short distance away from the United States. The deformation of our economy through imperialist influence has made us very dependent on imports, even for the most basic foodstuffs of the people. In view of this, any leftist extremist tendency, any exaggerated measures ... to be applied or implemented by the revolution, and any attempt to disregard the realities and the concrete difficulties confronting the Cuban revolution must be rejected. [14]
Such were the antagonisms of the basic positions even in early 1959; out of them arose a complicated manoeuvring for power which oscillated for several years between enmity and partnership. The Communists had to come to terms, first of all, with Castro’s political organisation, the 26th of July Movement, and, second, with the remnants of another group dating back to the period of struggle against Batista, the Directorio Revolucionario.
The 26th of July Movement was a kind of radical social democracy, to which there is no parallel in Europe. With respect to strategy and tactics it was ultra-left; with respect to its base and programme, however, it showed rather the typical stamp of the national bourgeoisie. It never had a firm ideology at its disposal. Its very name indicates how it arose and to whom it owed its cohesion: it arose out of the action of a determined group who had found an ideal leader in Fidel Castro. It was without theory and heterogeneous. Its founding charter is Castro’s speech History Will Absolve Me, delivered at his summary trial in Santiago de Cuba. The text displays Fidel’s revolutionary elan and rhetorical liveliness, but, it must be admitted, its programmatic content is meagre and unoriginal. Its most important demands are: return to bourgeois democracy; moderate agrarian reform, aid to small farmers, the building of co-operatives, compensation to large landowners; reduction of rents, public-housing programme; struggle against corruption in the state apparatus; school reform; nationalisation of public utilities. These ideas had been the common property of bourgeois-reformist opposition groups in Cuba since the 1930s; they had been most clearly formulated by the Partido del Pueblo Cubano (Ortodoxo) under Eduardo Chibas around 1910.
Ex post facto speculations concerning hidden, far-reaching intentions on the part of Fidel Castro have not been lacking. He himself has hinted that he did not always state his true aims openly and has attempted to make himself a Marxist retroactively. Whole schools of counter-revolutionary authors, especially the American Theodore Draper, have inferred a skilfully planned, deceitful manoeuvre from the contradictions which later emerged. These naive accountants of history speak of a ‘revolution betrayed’. The role of the betrayed in this scheme naturally devolves upon the bourgeoisie, who is supposed to have been cheated of the reward for participation in the struggle against Batista. To be sure, we may be indifferent to what may have been going on in Castro’s mind at the time. However, it is an established fact that the 1953 programme reveals no Marxist insights whatsoever. It contains nationalist, populist and anti-imperialist impulses, but there is no trace of Leninist features.
This had a lasting effect on the organisational forms of the movement. Structurally it never existed as an organised party. It did not have firm leadership cadres at its disposal. It had no committees, because there was no formal membership. A congress of the movement never took place, either openly or illegally. An elected leadership did not exist. As far as one could speak of a programme, it was imposed on the movement from above. Possibilities of discussion and the building of political consciousness from the base upwards existed only informally, through the personal influence of individuals on Castro. It was a creation of its founder and his most intimate confidants (and even these few were quite exchangeable and interchangeable, as was soon evident after the victory of the revolution); even its line was dependent on the insights of its leader and his learning process. The movement never developed by the use of theoretical knowledge, but resulted from actions and reactions wrung directly out of praxis.
On one occasion, at a trade union congress in October 1959, Castro proclaimed the personalistic character of his grouping completely openly: ‘Should the movement be used to attack its founder, it would cease to be the 26th of July Movement’. This conclusion is consistent. The movement was never more than the instrument of its charismatic leader, who alone could guarantee its cohesion, for like every radical-reformist formation this one was extremely heterogeneous: an amorphous coalition, whose cracks were obvious immediately after the victory. A clear class basis was not present; the decisive integrative factors were the person of the leader and the common enemy. Within the movement the most important lines of tension ran between the workers aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, between advocates of a merely formal bourgeois democracy and determined social reformers, between pro- and anti-Communists, between supporters of a working arrangement with the USA and clear opponents of American imperialism. Furthermore, during the struggle against Batista, the relationship between llano and sierra, urban resistance and guerrilla in the mountains, became increasingly strained. Among the people in the lowland ‘a certain opposition spread against the caudillo whom they feared in Fidel and against the “militaristic” faction – whereby the fighters in the mountains were meant.’ [15]
Apart from his own movement and from the PSP, there was still a third Cuban political organisation which Fidel Castro accepted, namely the Directorio Revolucionario. Numerically even weaker than the 26th of July Movement and with a narrow base, which was essentially limited to the radical wing of the student movement, this group had achieved glory through a daring action: the assault on Batista’s palace on March 13, 1957, in which 50 people died. After several abortive commando-raids in the eastern part of the island, the Directorio had concentrated its energies on the urban guerrilla and not until 1958 had it intervened in the operations in the interior of the country, on the so-called Second Front of the Escambray mountains. The ideological differences with the 26th of July Movement were insignificant, and the initial rivalry had long been decided in Fidel’s favour. After the victory the Directorio as an independent political factor no longer played a role.
On January 2, 1959 Fidel Castro found himself in a peculiar situation. He had undivided power at his disposal, but not, however, a structured political organisation. His only competent apparatus was the numerically small and politically inexperienced rebel army. Instead of a consolidated party he had at hand only a formless movement in which the centrifugal forces were rapidly increasing. The diverging class interests were venting themselves more and more clearly. The forces of the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeois and the labour aristocracy began to put the brakes on the revolutionary process. Fidel saw himself confronted with growing opposition within his own ranks. His reaction was simple and thorough: he threw out the child with the bathwater and liquidated the 26th of July Movement as an autonomous political force. Looking back, Simone de Beauvoir described this process in March 1960:
Why, we asked, did the revolution not have any cadres, any organisation? On the whole, the answers were in agreement, despite differences in detail: The 26th of July Movement, from which the revolution sprang, had an organisation, but it was a petty bourgeois organisation which was incapable of keeping up with the revolution in the radical-isation phase it had been going through since the seizure of power; it was incapable of espousing the march toward agrarian reform. And so it was dropped. [16]
Its end, half collapse, half decay, can be dated in the autumn of 1959. At that time the 26th of July Movement lost control over the two most important mass organisations in Havana: the Cuban Confederation of Labour (CTC) and the Federation of University Students (FEU). In both cases Castro intervened personally; in both cases he brought about the downfall of the candidates proposed by the rank and file. Within a few months both the university and the trade union movement had forfeited their autonomy.
At the same time more and more socialists were advancing into key government positions. In July 1959 Osvaldo Dorticos took over the presidency and Nunez Jimenez, the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA); Raul Roa became Foreign Minister and Raul Castro, Minister of the Armed Forces. All four were close to the PSP.
The year 1960 put an end to the last reformist illusions. The increasing intensification of the conflict with the USA; the overtures to the socialist camp; the abruptly implemented agrarian reform and the nationalisation of all big industrial plants, banks and means of transportation left no more doubt that Cuba had entered the road to socialism, if not in name, at least de facto. But now as ever, this socialism had no party, no clear programme and no firm ideological platform.
In the long run this situation was unbearable. Even if a country is small and easy to survey, like Cuba, it cannot do without political organisations. After the smashing of the old state apparatus and of all political groupings except the PSP, a vacuum arose, especially on the middle and lower levels, which threatened to lead to complete disorganisation. Two diametrically opposed ways of achieving a remedy were conceivable: either through the self-organisation of the masses from the base upwards or, on the other hand, through an arrangement at the top, the constitution of a party from above. Fidel Castro took the second way.
A first trial balloon came from the Communists. At the Eighth Party Congress of the PSP the general secretary, Blas Roca, declared that it would be desirable to unite and merge all revolutionary forces into a single movement. That was in August 1960. In the following months the problem was discussed and decided internally. On December 2, 1960, behind closed doors, party schools were founded which were supposed to train cadres for a future United Party. Fidel Castro personally directed this meeting. [17]
The difficulties of founding a party from above were obvious. Because the 26th of July Movement and the Directorio Revolucionario only existed on paper, the PSP controlled the only intact political organisation existing in Cuba. Castro had nothing to set against it except his enormous authority among the masses. The old stigmas and prejudices towards the CP posed a psychological barrier which Castro tried to clear up in an interview with the Italian Communist newspaper, Unita. Asked what he thought of the PSP, he answered:
It is the only Cuban party that has always clearly proclaimed the necessity for a radical change of structure, of social relationships. It is also true that at first the Communists distrusted me and us rebels. It was a justified mistrust, an absolutely correct position, ideologically and politically. The Communists were right to be distrustful because we of the Sierra, leaders of the guerrillas, were still full of petty-bourgeois prejudices and defects, despite Marxist reading. [18]
In May 1961, after the invasion of Playa Giron and after the Declaration of Havana, which proclaimed the socialist character of the Cuban revolution, the first hints of the imminent founding of the party reached the public. In June, Che Guevara declared before the students at Havana University that the party already existed in the factual unity of all the revolutionary organisations, even if it had not been constituted as such. It was only necessary that it be founded and that Fidel be named its general secretary. Shortly thereafter a public communique was issued, according to which the party was to be established in two phases. A preliminary organisation called ORI (Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas) was supposed to set up the first stage of a United Party of the Socialist Revolution (Partido Unido de la Revolucion Socialista, PURS), which was to be founded later. No founding congress took place; the actual leader of the ORI remained a mystery; only gradually did it become known that Anibal Escalante had been named organisation-secretary, and that Bias Roca belonged to the innermost circle of the leadership. A party programme was never announced. An ORI spokesman declared in August 1960 simply that the party would be constructed according to the principles of Marxism-Leninism.
Already the devious name of ORI shows the inherent uncertainties of this founding. The ‘integration’ that it promised was tantamount in practice to a mere addition of various card files: the followers of the 26th of July Movement and of the Directorio Revolucionario, insofar as they hadn’t been shunted off to Florida, were simply lumped together with the members of the old CP. With this addition its strength came to about 15,000. Obviously no one thought of recruiting new members from the population at large. The methods employed to establish and direct the party naturally flouted just those ‘principles of Marxism-Leninism’ on which it based its authority.
Thus it is also difficult to take at face value the statements made by Castro in a well-known speech about the future role of the party and about his relationship to it on December 2, 1961. He started out with the correct observation that until then he had exercised power alone and undividedly. This situation had never corresponded to his wishes. Now was the time to put an end to it; henceforth, power was to belong in the hands of the party.
That instrument (the Leninist Party) is the best guarantee and the only sound guarantee of the continuity of power and of the revolutionary line. I sincerely believe that of the many political systems man has devised throughout his history, the most perfect one is simply the system of government based on the administration of the state by a revolutionary and democratically organised party with collective leadership. This means that the Party should exercise the functions of leadership. [19]
Did such a party exist or not? And where was its collective leadership? Three months passed before the Cubans heard anything authentic on the matter. On March 9, 1962 a terse communication appeared in the press, from which it could be inferred that a National Directory of the ORI had been set up. It consisted of 25 persons and had been abruptly named by Fidel Castro himself. Thirteen of its members had come out of the 26th of July Movement, two out of the old Directorio Revolucionario and 10 out of the PSP.
This new ‘integrated’ party apparatus managed to last for exactly eight days. On March 17 and 26, as well as on April 10, Fidel broke the just-achieved truce and exposed with unprecedented vehemence a severe party crisis, which could have almost led to the suicide of the just founded ORI :
The party secretaries have established a wilful dictatorship in the whole country. Despotic measures and individual acts of violence have occurred everywhere and honest revolutionaries have been terrorised ... Those gentlemen who want to force their ideas on others are almost indistinguishable from Batista and his henchmen! [20]
(The organisation-secretary of the party) Anibal Escalante has brought into existence a sect of privileged individuals whose provincial secretaries have acted like Nazi gauleiters and who have indulged in nepotism and terrorism. Wet set up ORI but we excluded the revolutionary masses! We were not creating an apparatus ... we were creating a yoke, a straitjacket ... The masses were not being integrated. They spoke of Integrated Revolutionary Organisations, but what were the organisations? There was one organisation formed ... in the Partido Socialista Popular ... It is the same in all the provinces: who became provincial secretary of the ORI? The provincial secretary of the PSP! It is the same in all the municipalities: who became local secretary of the ORI? The local secretary of the PSP! ... When we looked at the result, we saw that it was, if you’ll excuse the phrase, a dung-heap! [21]
In reality this result was inevitable: the superior organisational structure of the old CP had succeeded, so to speak, by a natural process; the ORI secretariat had become a kind of auxiliary government; a power base relatively independent of Castro had formed. Anibal Escalante was designated to be the scapegoat: Fidel attacked him for his sectarianism (because he favoured his comrades), for his opportunism (because he didn’t take strong enough action against former Batista collaborators) and for his inordinate ambition (because he tried to create his own power domain). Escalante went to Moscow into exile; not until 1964 was he allowed to return to Cuba.
At the same time a general purge began under the direction of special committees which were set up personally by Fidel Castro, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and Raul Castro. That year’s membership fluctuated by almost 50 per cent of the enrolment. A general exclusion of the Old Communists did not occur; only the autonomous power base of the PSP was supposed to be smashed. Even in his decisive speech against the ‘sectarians’ Fidel had promised a reconciliation:
From this moment on, companeros, every difference between old and new, between sierra and llano, between the one who threw bombs and the one who didn’t, the one who studied Marxism and the one who did not study Marxism before, must cease definitely. From this moment on we must be one and united. [22]
Adjurations of this sort, of course, could not bring the desired ‘integration’ within reach. However, by his bold and ruthless action, Castro succeeded in putting an end to the self-perpetuating tendencies of the party bureaucracy. Up to now in Cuba there has been no broad, materially privileged stratum of party functionaries, no saturated ‘new stratum’ or ‘new class’ regarding itself as unimpeachable, held together by an esprit de corps and by well-defined material interests, which would be in a position to act in a politically independent way. To hinder its formation is the conscious policy of Fidel. He has paid dearly for the carrying out of this policy: with a weakening of the party’s political strength which has persisted up to the present day.
A further result of the sectarianism crisis of 1962 was the trying out of new methods of recruiting members; these were highly original and certainly unprecedented in the socialist camp. First introduced in the summer of 1962, the procedure provides for the election of candidates for the party by non-members. In all factories, agricultural co-operative-associations and offices in the country general assembles (asambleas) are regularly convened. The workers at large nominate new candidates for the party. For election the following prerequisites are essential:
- Only workers with outstanding achievements at their work-place come into consideration.
- The candidate must accept both Declarations of Havana.
- He must commit himself to observing party discipline and to paying his membership dues.
- Collaborators with the Batista regime and participants in Batista’s sham elections of 1958 are excluded.
- The private life of the candidate must be ‘irreproachable’.
- He must fulfil his national-defence duties.
- He must be able to prove that he has contributed his share of voluntary work in agriculture.
After the nomination, a thorough and exhaustive public discussion of the candidate follows. Only then does the vote take place.
Of course, a party commission always has the last say on the proposals which come out of the factories. Election by the asamblea does not assure membership. This requires express confirmation by the party, which in numerous instances has exercised its veto right against so-called ‘sectarian’ and ‘tolerant majorities’. Besides, the party can take the initiative in enrolling members, ie outside this voting procedure. [23]
Since then, the party has grown continuously; in fact, membership has increased rapidly in recent years. Today the PCC seems to be on the way from a cadre- to a mass-party. By 1968 the number far exceeded 100,000. The repercussions on the qualifications of members can only be conjectured. Again and again the party secretaries stress the necessity of lifting the low level of education; for example, in 1964, 78 per cent of the comrades in Matanzas province had attended elementary school for less than six years. Through special further-education courses the party tries to remedy these deficiencies. [24] Four out of five members have to go back to school. The percentage of women comrades in 1963 came to about 15 per cent, and even today women are still very under-represented in the party.
In February 1963 the long-announced PURS (Partido Unido de la Revolución Socialista) was finally formed. Even on this occasion no founding party congress was held: the ORI Directory designated by Fidel simply continued to function (insofar as it showed any life at all). In reality this ended up being just another one of the numerous rechristenings which make the study of Cuban party history a kind of ‘scrabble’ game. The establishment of PURS continued to be delayed by a chain of further leadership crises, power struggles and difficulties. The unrest at the top reached a new peak during 1964. At least five leading Old Communists were demoted in the course of this tack: Manual Luzado, Minister for Internal Trade and member of the party Directory, was sharply reprimanded by Fidel in May; the Minister of the Economy, Regino Boti, was dismissed in July; the Deputy Minister of Defence, Joaquin Ordoqui, was seriously implicated in a scandal case, removed in November and placed under house arrest. He, too, had belonged to the Directory of PURS, as had Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, who in February 1965 had to hand over the direction of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) to Fidel. Finally, around the same time, Juan Marinello lost his position as Rector of the University of Havana.
In this way the contradictions within the leadership at first glance seemed to have been, if not removed, at least put to rest. The party continued to exist, but hardly created a ripple and relapsed into a kind of semi-conscious state. In order to reactivate it, Castro reverted, in October 1965, to the now ritualised method of changing its name: the Old Communists had been pushed to the wall, Fidel’s control was so complete and the political situation at home so fully ripened, that he could lay claim to the name Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) for his party. Thereby the usual CP organisational structure was also taken over. Since then the head of the party has consisted of a politburo (eight members), a secretariat (seven members), a central committee (100 members) and six party commissions (for the armed forces and domestic security, for economic questions, for education, for foreign affairs, for ideology and propaganda and for constitutional questions; there is no control-commission). Its personnel composition shows a very high concentration of offices among a small number of people. An analysis of the membership of the central committee gives the following picture (figures for comparison in parenthesis refer to the former ORI-Directory):
|
percentage of Old Communists from the PSP: 18 per cent (40 per cent); |
The study of systems of organisation and lists of functionaries has, however, under Cuban conditions at most symbolic value, for the central committee in turn owes its existence to a stroke of the pen by Fidel: it was simply imposed upon the party from above without any discussion. Moreover, it is an established fact that the central committee in Cuba has nothing to say. It plays a purely decorative role. Its first session took place one-and-a-half years after its formation. On the agenda was the rejection of Venezuelan charges in the Organisation of American States; a second session was convened in October 1967 on the occasion of the death of Che Guevara; the third and, until now, the last meeting occurred in January 1968 – it dealt with the proceedings against the so-called microfaction. It is obvious that this central committee serves merely as a facade and has no real decision-making powers. Just as infrequently do regular sessions of the politburo and the secretariat take place. The organisation of the top level of the party exists only on paper. Fidel does not even take the trouble to conceal this state of affairs. Thus in 1965 he appointed all the Cabinet members then in office to the central committee of the PCC; theoretically they still have seats there today, although many of them have since been dismissed and replaced by new ministers who do not belong to the central committee. Their appointment has seemingly been forgotten.
A party congress of the PCC has never taken place. In res-p.onse to the question, whether the party was already fully organised, Fidel told the American journalist Lee Lockwood in the summer of 1965: ‘It is virtually organised at the base. The leadership cadres are being organised now. By the end of 1967 we will hold the First Congress, with delegates elected by the members of the party throughout the entire country ‘. [26] The correspondent Herbert Matthews received a confirmation of this prediction from the organisation-secretary of the PCC, Armando Hart, as late as May 1966. [27] To this day the party congress has not taken place, elected delegates are out of the question, and nobody in Cuba seriously believes that this situation will change.
The desolate organisational condition of the party corresponds to its ideological state. It is a question of the two sides of one and the same coin. There is no PCC programme. Anyone inquiring about its ideology is always referred to Fidel’s speeches, which are notorious for their inconsistencies. Anyone citing them would do well to refer only to the latest one available; to repeat what Fidel said a few years ago could lead to the most unpleasant consequences. (For this reason there is in Cuba itself no collection of Castro’s speeches in book form.)
The Ideological Commission of the party (Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria, COR) occupies itself exclusively with tasks concerning agitation. It confines itself to issuing the special slogans of the day and to propagating the current production goals. The party schools have to fulfil similar ideological tasks. The Escuelas de Instrucción Revolucionaria, founded in 1961, have under their administration a central institute in Havana and 12 provincial schools. The courses last three to six months. In line with the tortuous course of the party, these schools are always being reorganised. They can take up to 30,000 participants yearly. Weakened by the sectarianism-crisis; severely attacked by anti-doctrinaire scholars, who have especially criticised the manuals slavishly copied from Soviet texts; and occasionally favoured with sarcastic taunts by Fidel, the schools have been losing political significance in recent years. As far as the ideological work in the press and in the mass media is concerned, it is restricted to the unpretentious vulgarisation of catch-words given out by Fidel, and to opportunistic and eclectic commentaries.
The prevailing ideological state of affairs can probably be best illustrated by an example. The following quotation comes from a pamphlet issued by the Ideological Commission of the party as ‘study material’ under the title Observations on Ideological Work. Of course, the text does not contain the entire ideological repertoire of the party. It especially fails to include the anti-imperialist and internationalist aspects, which in Cuba play an important role. However, with respect to domestic policy the following passages can claim to be complete and representative:
In the course of elaborating its plans for ideological work the party ought not to rely on general or supposedly ‘theoretical’ theses. Naturally it is important to work out the chief features of Communist morality. But in this respect the speeches of Fidel, Raul and Che give us sufficient directions. An anthology of this sort throws more light on these questions than any theoretical speculation on our part ... We can determine even more precisely which concrete questions concern each individual sector of the population and which concern all the people. Our ideological task consists in deepening consciousness in this respect. This enables us to fix the relationship between societal duties and societal aspirations. These duties include above all: revolutionary discipline in general; work discipline; school discipline; a sense of the heroic; the obligation to work more and better; the obligation to continue one’s studies; punctuality; a sense of responsibility; moderation; modesty; the spirit of scientific research; resoluteness; preparedness for action; the spirit of revolutionary solidarity; the organisation of work and the correct utilisation of all available factors of production; the fight against errors; the application of technical science; revolutionary vigilance; the spirit of sacrifice; dedication to work; and the ability to carry out deep and objective analyses. The essence of our ideological work will consist of explaining the meaning of every single one of these aspects and of showing which possibilities for work they open up. Only on this basis can the ideological work reach a concrete category and free itself from every sort of intellectualism, from every sort of speculation and from every sort of metaphysics ... The ideological struggle consists in mediating explanations, information and instructions concerning those duties which the advance of the revolution imposes on every single fighter. This task necessarily has an eminently paedagogical, instructive and educative character about it. The ideological struggle must be waged mainly by means of explanation and persuasion. This daily struggle consists essentially of transmitting explanations, information and instructions to the people about the tasks which the revolution places on every worker and the nation as a whole. [28]
Conspicuous is the fact that this document eschews any analysis of Cuban society. There is no mention of the class struggle; the relationships of production do not play any role. Although the ‘spirit of scientific research’ is evoked, it is not apparent; the ‘ability to carry out deep and objective analyses’ is missing in the very text which appeals for it. In this respect the brochure is not an isolated case. Its language, both primitive and inflated at the same time, is symptomatic of how far Marxist thought in Cuba has degenerated. Words like concrete, category and analysis are used in a way completely detached from their meaning, as pure fetishes. Every socio-economic argument is carefully evaded. Cuban society consists of ‘the people’, ‘the workers’ and ‘different sectors’. Confronting them is ‘the revolution’ as a strange, demanding and authoritative subject, which can only express itself in Biblical tautologies: ‘No hay argumento mas fuerte que la obra misma de la revolución’: There is no stronger argument than the work of the revolution itself. That sounds like: I am who I am.
But who is ‘the revolution’? An allegorical figure? An hypostatised historical process? Or something which can only be comprehended as being embodied in the person of the Jefe maxima? The very metaphysics which the instruction manual claims to reject is firmly infixed in it. Information about who and what the revolution is ‘we can find in the speeches of our leader’. In Fidel’s language usage, however, his own thought and behaviour dissolve into that of ‘the revolution’. Instead of an ensemble of principles there are only the ad hoc speeches of the leadership.
A further characteristic is the naive moralising tone of the ideological pronouncements which the party launches. Texts of this sort are fundamentally interested not in what is, but only in what should be. Their sentences constitute a pure appeal. They form an endless series of exhortations. A sort of virtue-system is postulated which might be .reminiscent of mediaeval prototypes if it were less confused. By means of magic repetition ‘consciousness’ is supposed to be drummed into the people. But this concept is without a concept; it understands nothing and exhausts itself in moralising extravagances. Flattened and coarsened beyond recognition, certain motifs out of the thought of Che return here: an extreme voluntarism, which, vulgarised, results in a permutation of subjective and objective conditions, as if Marx could be stood on his head. The consciousness of the individual worker, once put in its place, is supposed to determine the economic base. This moral exertion is supposed to be sufficient to drag the society out of the morass of underdevelopment.
The effect of this idealism is even more piercing as it obviously is not dependent on cognition. It could almost seem as if it were aiming at consolidating its own ignorance. It would then be ideology in the most reactionary sense of the word, consciousness as a fagade, a simple impulse of authority rather than a rational argument for historical necessity. A final conspicuous feature of the cited text is its almost frenzied hostility towards theory. It recurs in all the authoritative ideological pronouncements of the party and is doubtless traceable to Fidel himself. ‘Enough of revolutionary theoreticians, enough of purely theoretical Marxists! The purely theoretical Marxist-Leninist is really an unproductive expense to society.’ [29] Fidel’s speeches abound with such outbursts. To be sure, they often recur in more pleasant form, sueh as in an anecdote from the years 1954-55 which Raul Castro related to an American visitor. At that time, in prison on the Isla de Pinos, Fidel gave his brother some books by Marx and Lenin to read. ‘We read three chapters of Kapital,’ reported Raul laughing, ‘and then we threw it away. I am sure that Fidel has never looked at it again since.’ [30] This has a certain charm; there is probably hardly a Communist politician who has gone beyond the third chapter; there is, however, most certainly no one except Fidel who would take a lenient view of it.
Of course, this does not explain at all adequately the hostility of the party and its leadership towards theory, which borders on blind hate. It is thoroughly unmarxist and its roots lie not even in the revolutionary praxis of the Cubans. They are rather to be sought in the intellectual tradition of the country. Outside the old CP the transmitted theoretical material is meagre; a wide reception of the Marxist classics did not take place. Ideological remnants from the Spanish colonial period occasionally penetrated well into the forties. Only in the capital did the American influence barely conceal the general ignorance and political underdevelopment, but in return it did manage to impart to the Cubans an enduring streak of practicality. Even veiled residues from the anti-Communist periods of the 26th of July Movement play a role. The mistrust of the traditional Communist way of thinking is evident above all in the polemic against the ‘courses of instruction’ of Soviet origin; here, to be sure, justifiably for the most part. However, the Cuban party has used the dispute as a pretext to suspect of dogmatism everyone who even argues theoretically at all. The confusion of dogma and theory belongs to Fidel’s permanent repertoire. It is indeed difficult to perceive what is supposed to be so undogmatic about the instruction manuals of the PCC and in what respect they might be superior to their Soviet models and counterparts: in any case they can quite measure up to them in windy rhetoric and narrow-mindedness. In general, a deficient or false theory should not be met simply by a rejection of theory. A consciousness which expressly closes itself to any work with ideas is doomed to atrophy. Moralising rhetoric and a dull muddling through are all that remain. Ideology becomes any old pliant dough. A sort of permanent obsolescence sets in. Slogans are produced only to be discarded. Consistency no longer plays any role as a criterion.
As far as Fidel himself is concerned, still another motif supervenes, but one which is rather of psychological interest. He evidently has the need to confront the existing ideologies with a home-grown, genuinely Cuban doctrine. However, he cannot fulfil this claim because his theoretical abilities are not up to it. This is obvious to anyone who takes the trouble to read his speeches over a longer period of time.
Naturally Castro can rationalise his distrust of pure theorising by pointing to the bitter experiences during the years of struggle against Batista. His hatred of people for whom revolution takes place only in the mind, is not only understandable; it is absolutely justified. However, the necessary correlate is missing, namely the rejection of a pragmatism devoid of theory which continues to hang precariously in the balance from one situation to the next and which reduces political action to the learning scheme of trial and error. Theory related to praxis is an indispensable productive force. It requires criticism and also makes it possible. It does not conceal societal contradictions, but makes them visible, permits their articulation and indicates the possibility or impossibility of dissolving them.
To be sure, every theory also implies a fixation. It enables the rational scrutiny of decisions. To this extent it restricts the political elbow-room of the individual who espouses it. But here lies the gist of the matter. Fidel tends to develop a panicky aversion to any procedure which might limit his absolute freedom of movement. He rejects every obligation, every control and every pressure to justify himself, even to take stock of the very insights forming the basis of his actions. This is the true reason for his hostility to theory.
Such unlimited sovereignty, however, can become anything imaginable. Under these circumstances there is only one single guarantee for a consistent and continuous policy of the revolution, and this guarantee is of a purely subjective nature. It lies in the integrity of the revolutionary named Fidel Castro. Trust in him, exempt from every scrutiny, thus becomes the core of the ideology. For a Communist party this is not enough. It means that the PCC lacks not only historical, but also ideological legitimisation.
What is the Cuban party and how does it function?
First, it is the revolutionary vanguard, the political organisation of the workers who, manifesting the power of the state, mobilise the masses to the accomplishment of the tasks and functions of the Revolution. It educates them, it organises them, it directs and controls the administration, it draws up the plans of work and controls the carrying out of those plans. It is, in short, the political power. There is no duality, neither of powers nor of functions.
When we hold the First Congress we will be in a better position to map out all the tasks of the party; we will have a much better idea about what we have to do and how to do it. [31]
Since then much time has passed, but nothing has changed. The party is supposed to govern; in fact it does no such thing. This does not mean that it is superfluous or without function. On the local level it carries out good administrative work in many places. Especially in the small towns, villages and bateys of the island there are numerous competent party secretaries who are unflagging in their dedication to the details of their work. They mobilise people for voluntary work in agriculture, they intervene as mediators in internal factory matters, they cut out paths in the planchaos, they fight against disorganisation and inefficiency and assist as jacks-of-all-trades in the solution of the thousand-and-one problems occurring daily in the Cuban provinces. They do these things without any clear lines of competence, mostly on their own initiative. In this respect they undertake many tasks which, in other socialist countries, would devolve upon mass organisations such as the trade unions or the local administration authorities. Sociologically the party plays, in addition, a real role as a field for recruitment and advancement. The one and only thing which it is not is the political power.
The political power in Cuba lies exclusively in the hands of a very small number of individuals who cluster around Fidel and for whom the criterion is not party discipline, but simply and solely personal loyalty toward the Commandante-en-jefe. It is therefore completely irrelevant which party offices they hold, or even whether they belong to the PCC at all. (Some of Castro’s most influential advisers have not joined up to this day.)
Fidel needs the party, but cannot stand it. It is a nuisance to him. He hardly ever attends its meetings. He cannot do without its apparatus and fears it as a millstone around his neck. With great persistence he runs away from the very vanguard whom he keeps on calling. It will never catch up with him. He wants it and wants it not. Fidel’s dilemma is thus the dilemma of the PCC, an institution which for many years has been constructed and destroyed simultaneously. Therefore the Communist Party of Cuba is a party without elected committees, without party congresses, without statutes, without a programme, without fixed areas of competence, without clear self-understanding; a party - without historical roots, without theoretical substance; a party without power; the shadow of a party which perhaps will never be.
1. Evidence cited by Robert J. Alexander, Communism in Latin America, New Brunswick, NJ 1957, p.272, and Charles E. Thompson, Foreign Policy Reports XI/21, 1935.
2. Communist International of February 15, 1934, quoted by Boris Goldenberg, The Cuban Revolution and Latin America, New York 1965, p115.
3. Yves Guilbert, Castro l’infidèle, quoted by Goldenberg, ibid., p.117.
4. Segunda Asamblea Nacional del Partido Socialista Popular, Los Socialistas y la realidad cubana, La Habana 1944, as quoted by Robert Scheer and Maurice Zeitlin, Cuba: An American Tragedy, Harmondsworth 1964, p.123.
5. Figures cited by Theodore Draper, Castroism: Theory and Practice, New York 1965, p.204, as well as by Wyatt MacGaffey and Clifford R. Barnett, Twentieth-Century Cuba: The Background of the Castro Revolution, New York 1965, p.157.
6. Daily Worker, New York, August 5, 1953, as cited by Scheer and Zeitlin, op. cit., pp.126-7. The statement could not be published in Cuba itself at that time because the party’s official organ had been suppressed.
7. Fidel Castro, Basta ya de mentiras! in Bohemia, La Habana, July 15, 1956, quoted by Draper, op. cit., p.28. Blas Roca was the party’s general secretary, Peña a leading Communist trade unionist.
8. Claude Julien, La Révolution Cubaine, Paris 1961, p.81ff., and Goldenberg, op. cit., p.166.
9. Theodore Draper, Castro’s Revolution: Myths and Realities, New York 1962; Scheer and Zeitlin, op. cit., p.127.
10. Interview by Maurice Zeitlin with Carlos Fernandez R., as cited by Scheer and Zeitlin, ibid., p 128; Noticias de Hoy, La Habana, January 11, 1959.
11. Evidence cited by Goldenberg, op. cit., p.162.
12. Information given by Carlos Rafael Rodriguez to Herbert L. Matthews. See the latter’s biography of Fidel Castro, New York 1969, p176.
13. Guia del pensamiento politico-economico de Fidel, Diario Libre, La Habana 1959, p.48, as cited by Scheer and Zeitlin, op. cit., p.118.
14. Quoted by Andres Suarez, Cuba: Castroism and Communist, 1959-1966, Cambridge, Mass. 1967, p.61.
15. Ernesto Che Guevara, Un ano de lucha armada in Verde olivo, La Habana, January 5, 1964.
16. Quoted by MacGaffey and Barnett, op. cit., p.309.
17. Lionel Soto in Cuba Socialista, La Habana, February 1963.
18. Quoted by Theodore Draper, Castro’s Revolution, op. cit., p.84.
19. Quoted by Draper, ibid., pp.149f. and by Scheer and Zeitlin, op. cit., p.225.
20. Quoted by Goldenberg, op. cit., p.264.
21. Quoted by Scheer and Zeitlin, op. cit., p.227; Goldenberg, ibid., p.265.
22. Quoted by Matthews, op. cit., p.315 and by Scheer and Zeitlin, ibid., p.227.
23. Jorge Dominguez, The Politics of the Institutionalization of the Cuban Revolution: The Search for the Missing Links, unpublished manuscript, New Haven, Conn. 1968. Cf. also Cuba Socialista, La Habana, June-November 1962.
24. Cuba Socialista, La Habana, January 1965.
25. Dominguez, op. cit.
26. Lee Lockwood, Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel (1st ed.), New York 1967, p.137.
27. Matthews, op. cit., p.317.
28. Consideraciones sobre el trabajo ideológico, Material de estudio, Ediciones COR, La Habana 1968.
29. Fidel Castro, speech of October 30, 1963, quoted by Draper, Castroism, op. cit., p.217.
30. Quoted by Matthews, op. cit., p.187.
31. Lockwood, op. cit., p.138.
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