REPORT ON CUBA

CUBAN INTERVENTION

Preparation of the American People
Steve Seltzer

ON THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE NEW CUBA
John Ball

CUBAN INTERVENTION:
Tragedy and Tragic Aftermath G. Troiano

TRANSLATIONS FROM THE (CUBAN) TROTSKYISTS
Steve Seltzer

Published by Cornucopia, July 1961

CUBAN INTERVENTION:
Preparation of the American People

STEVE SELTZER

Disclosures made during and since the recent attempt to invade Cuba throw a new light not only on the extent of United States support for that invasion, but on the motivation for that support as well. Several dates are particularly illuminating in this respect.

In his column in the New York Post of April 9, 1961, William V. Shannon (who writes in the same column "It would be a blessing to rid the hemisphere of Castro....") tells us:

"Back in late 1959 the Eisenhower Administration decided to apply to Cuba the Guatemala solution.' That is, the National Security Council gave CIA Director Dulles the go-ahead to organize the Cuban exiles, train a military force, and plan an invasion of Cuba."

On April 23, 1961, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall referred to the Cuban invasion as follows:

"The fascinating thing about this particular business is that here was a plan conceived by one administration—this from all I can find out began over a year ago and President Eisenhower directed it. And here the actual plan was carried out under a successor Administration."

What had happened in Cuba by late 1959 to prompt such a decision? The Agrarian Reform had been promised, enacted, and was just being put into effect by late 1959, and private American economic interests were threatened. Cuban cities had been bombed and Cuban cane fields set afire by foreign planes, and Cuba had accused the U.S. goverment of complicity in these acts, occasionally forcing a grudging apology among the denials, and the United States government was insulted. It is worth noting that "by late 1959" there were no Soviet-bloc arms in Cuba, there were no Soviet-bloc technicians in Cuba, there were no Soviet or Chinese trade agreements with Cuba, and there was no clamor about Communists taking over the Cuban government. Thus when the CIA was directed to organize the invasion of Cuba there was no political, economic, or militarysubstance to the "foreign Communist menace" which was used to justify American support of that invasion when it finally was attempted. Indeed, Tad Szulc writes in the New York Times of April 20, 1961 that "Rebel forces had been trained in the complex of camps on Guatemala's Pacific Coast since last May." The Soviet embassy in Havana was not even reopened until last May.

In the light of these early decisions and preparations United States policy towards Cuba can no longer be viewed simply as "response" to Cuban "provocation." If exiles were being organized, a military force trained, and an invasion planned, American policy thenceforth can be seen as an effort to create a political climate in which such an invasion would be accepted at home and abroad.

In retrospect, Fidel Castro's search for arms for Cuba was not without good reason. And United States refusal to sell him arms appears to have had more sinister roots than a well-intentioned concern with peace in the Carribbean. Had a friendly U.S. shown itself willing to sell some arms to the new Cuban régime, Fidel Castro would have had no reason, or no excuse, to arm himself as heavily as he has. Our refusal only confirmed his worst suspicions, provided the basis for huge expenditures for the purchase of arms, when the Cuban economy cried out for more useful equipment, and compelled the régime to buy arms wherever it could: chiefly, and predictably, from the Soviet bloc.

Similarly our refusal to buy Cuban sugar, our embargo on exports to Cuba (combined with our threat to withhold foreign aid from any country giving or loaning economic or military aid to Cuba) forced a shift of Cuban trade towards the Communist bloc. A United States truly concerned with preventing Communism in the Western hemisphere "at all costs," (to paraphrase Kennedy) would have adapted itself to the Cuban "provocations" rather than retaliate in such a way as to drive Cuba towards the Communist bloc. Our attempt to force Cuba into the posture of licking the Soviet boot could only be in preparation for the forceful application of our own boot.

For Kennedy simply to ask Castro to break the relationship with the Soviets into which Eisenhower had forced him was the height of cynical hypocrisy. When one asks a man to stop breathing through his mouth one first lets go of his nose, or one's request is not taken seriously. When one asks Cuba to break with the Reds one first restores the sugar quota, lifts the embargo, encourages trade and travel and seeks a peaceful influence, or one's request is not taken seriously. And of course Kennedy's request was not serious: it was but the, last in a series of steps designed to prepare the American people to accept an act of international gangsterism on the part of their government.

The assault was attempted, and failed. Cuba was driven closer still to the Soviet bloc. And the myth was perpetuated that no middle course was possible, that a thoroughgoing but independent revolution was not to be permitted in the world today.

And the American people proved to have been well prepared indeed. Warned of "Soviet arms 90 miles from our shores," but not reminded that the Soviet arms were forced on them by U.S. hostility; lectured about Cuban dependence on Soviet trade, but not reminded that their government's self-righteous "retaliation" compelled this dependence; harangued about the rising influence of Cuban Communists, but not reminded that such influence was fostered rather than fought by our permitting the Communist bloc to appear as the chief benefactors of the Cuban revolution: thus prepared, America heard and accepted its government's embarrassed explanations—not of its crime, but—of its failure.

It was not to be expected of course that President Kennedy would be deposed, but one would have hoped at least for impeachment proceedings. It could scarcely be expected that the law-abiding American people would take matters into their own hands, but they might have managed to send Allen Dulles off on a goodwill tour of South America. One could not expect the sacking of United Fruit, but a boycott might have been contemplated. One could not expect a general strike: but a healthy America would at least have reported sick the day after the invasion.

Instead a sick America carried on business as usual. And some sugar stocks rose, hopefully.

ON THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE NEW CUBA
JOHN BALL

In spite of the many material achievements of the Cuban Revolution—its reduction of unemployment, its diversification of agriculture, the consequent rise in standard of living, and the fantastic housing program—Cuba is still not a land of abundance. It will be some years before the Cuban economy will be able to afford luxuries for more than a few of its citizens.

So under even the best of circumstances (not to mention the austerity which would come from increased American pressure or harassment, or from the reduction or withdrawal of Soviet bloc support as the result of a possible overall East-West settlement) , we can expect that Cubans will try to improve their individual conditions and positions within their social structure.

This is not only inevitable, it is not bad in itself. The trick is to arrange social institutions in such a way as to preclude the emergence of a group or class whose interests diverge sharply from, or are opposed to, the larger interest of the people, and who also have the power to advance those particular interests at the expense of the majority. To what extent does the new Cuban institutional structure guard against such a development?

The farmer whose income and wellbeing depend on the productivity of his cooperative has an interest in contributing to its productivity; and this interest is in harmony with the interest of the larger community, the nation.

The case may be somewhat different with the INRA administrator or official. If he is responsible to those below him—to a co-op or factory or to a whole sphere of production, or to the representatives of a geographic area—he must concern himself not only with their productivity but with their compensation; and his position, his security, his future prospects depend on his effectiveness in both respects.

If, however, he is responsible only to those above him; if he works in an autonomous organization which is not directly responsible to the people, but responsible to a government which is not responsible to the people (and the Cuban government, no matter how responsive it may be to the people, is not responsible to them) he is likely to be judged largely in terms of the economy of his management: his achievement of high productivity at low cost. His security, his salary, his advancement, the size of his staff, his reputation, his prestige, is very likely to be decided on this basis by the people who count for him: his colleagues and superiors. And up to a point economy is a sensible criterion: one does not feed turkeys any more than is needed for them to reach a certain size in good health. But does one pay workers any more than is needed to achieve a certain productivity? If one is in a position where workers are seen primarily as an item of cost, one tends to resist raising this cost.

The Cuban economy appears to be administered by people in such positions. For whatever reasons, there have been no national elections, and the government and the heads of the various Institutes it has created are not accountable to the people. Moreover, elections seem to be increasingly regarded as unnecessary in the future.

Nor are the administrators of the co-ops and nationalized industries generally accountable to the workers of the farms and factories they administer, but rather to their superiors in INRA who decide on policy, including prices. Of ten economic units visited by two members of Cornucopia on separate visits (one with the Fair Play tour) , one was still privately owned, and of course the workers had no voice in management except through their union; only one had elected its own director; one had petitioned the government to remove its administrator and had been assigned a new one in his place; one had successfully petitioned the government for the assignment of a particular administrator whom the workers knew and trusted; and six had no formal democratic proceedings at all. It is perhaps indicative of the fluid state of Cuban institutional structure today that democratic procedures can still be used for redress of grievances, but democratic machinery is not built into the institutional structure itself. The co-op administrator who was removed from his position was removed because the workers said they "didn't work together well under him." Would the government prove so flexible if it were not a relatively simple problem of efficiency, but rather some government policy which was being questioned; or would a new administrator continue to carry out the old policy despite opposition among the workers? And above the co-op or factory administrator, are coordinators and planners and policy-makers whose identity is not even known by the workers and whose responsibility is blurred in the interplay of committee decisions and directives, and who are generally beyond the reach of those whose activities, ultimately, they direct.

These bureaucrats emerge as a group which administers a state economy, is paid by the state, and consequently has an interest that the state economy be run "profitably," with all that may imply for the workers; and has the power to run that economy more or less profitably, since it is not accountable to the units it administers or their workers. Where power is not held in check by such responsibility, revolutionary idealism is no more likely to resist the temptations of narrow self-interest, in the long run, than was bourgeois morality. It would be tragic indeed if the Cuban people, having been freed of the old monopolies, now confronted a new one, more powerful than the old in that it combined both economic and state power.

But this new force is not without limitations. The national leaders claim to have taken steps to submit themselves to the approval of the people, and steps to share their power; the bureaucracy in its own self-interest may follow a course which coincides with the interest of the Cuban people; and at any rate the freedom to act against the interest of the Cuban people is limited by the existence of the armed militia. To what extent do these factors actually afford the Cuban people control over their own economy?

The national leadership has submitted itself for approval by the General Assembly of the Cuban people, huge mass rallies of perhaps a million Cubans, and has described this "direct democracy" as infinitely superior to other forms of democracy. Such assemblies can indeed demonstrate overwhelming support for a régime; but as organs of democratic control they have obvious and decisive drawbacks. They are called only at the initiative of the government, and it is worth noting that none has been called since last September. They cannot initiate policy, and they cannot discuss policy, and their response to policy presented to them may be ambiguous. At the September Assembly there was a noticeable lack of enthusiasm for Fidel's restraint regarding Guantanamo, but no opportunity was given for approval of an alternate policy, and the subdued response to the policy of restraint could be interpreted as Fidel saw fit. Such an arrangement can hardly constitute an effective check on government.

Somewhat more promising has been the creation by the government of Technical Advisory Councils of workers in the nationalized sector of industry with the announced purpose of encouraging worker participation in the planning and running of the economy. Addressing the first delegates from these Councils on February 11, 1961, Ché Guevara noted that "There were still lacking some complementary aspects of this great struggle to see that the people totally control the productive forces. There was still a bureaucratic management in almost all the leading or recently nationalized enterprises, there was still a certain failure of the working class to fully understand the new situations. The Administrator designated by the Revolutionary Government was seen somewhat in the image of the old capitalist owner; at times because there existed indifference, or because all our administrators could not always achieve the necessary stature, and also they had a somewhat owner-like concept of their position in the management of the factory.... This step which has been taken today will completely eliminate these differences.... Moreover, you can, at the side of your compañero Administrator, orient him so that he better understands the spirit . . . of the suggestions which the working class makes, which have a habit of seeming inexplicable to those who from administrative positions have to run this type of establishment." The aim is laudable, and such Councils, extended throughout the economy, could provide an effective counterweight which could prevent a bureaucracy from extracting more from the economy than the workers agreed to. In deciding on the balance between future needs and present needs, on how much of present production be allotted for industrialization, etc., the people, who do the work and are called upon to make whatever sacrifices are deemed necessary, would gain a determining voice.

Unfortunately information about the Councils is hard to come by. According to the November-Decemer 1960 issue of Voz Proletaria, published openly in Cuba by the Workers Revolutionary Party (POR-Trotskyist), "In spite of the Technical Advisory Councils having been ordered set up by the Minister of Labor himself and in spite of Ché Guevara's having publicly proclaimed their importance and promised their rapid activation, the fact is that the Councils of workshops and industries have been ignored by the state administrators (of industry) and by the great part of the official union bureaucracy. So that even this timid attempt at democracy and worker-control has not been made effective."

These Councils existed, then, in December. But no American visitors in Cuba in December and January had heard of them, and their existence was only publicized by Guevara's addressing their convention in February, after which they disappeared from the pages of the Cuban press. Then again in the Voz Proletaria of March, 1961 the selection of Council delegates is described. Three workers, usually those proposed by the union leadership, are elected by the body of workers; and of the three so elected one is chosen by the administration, as Technical Advisor. Such a procedure is at best ambiguous, and could equally well be used by management to claim worker acquiescence in its plans as by workers to participate in the shaping of those plans. Furthermore, from all accounts the function of the Councils, as their name suggests, is purely advisory, not vested with authority. Nevertheless the Technical Advisory Councils constitute an organ which under certain circumstances might be transformed by an aroused body of workers into their true spokesman. Given the right to elect representatives they might insist that their choice not be rendered meaningless by being ignored by management; and given genuine representation in the administration they might insist that their views be heeded. That such "insistence" is not mere daydreaming, not abstract theoretical possibility, but could really come about in Cuba, as it could not in the Soviet bloc, will be indicated below in discussing the militia.

Besides factors which may impose limits on the bureaucracy, there is the consideration that the self-interest of the bureaucracy may, in the peculiar Cuban situation, largely coincide with the interests of the Cuban people at large. In an economy which for whatever reason emphasizes industrialization, such as the Russian economy after their revolution, the bureaucracy must seek to expand by sustaining and increasing the emphasis on that industrialization, even if such emphasis brutally ignores the present needs of the population; and in order to sustain such emphasis may seek to establish and perpetuate a more reliable market for heavy industry than is afforded by an impoverished and goods-hungry population, such a market taking the form, for example, of a more or less permanent government armament program. To compel a people to produce, and to refuse to let them consume, also requires the familiar police apparatus which has grown up alongside the Soviet bureaucracy.

On the other hand, in an economy which begins with an orientation towards consumer goods, as has the Cuban economy since the revolution, the bureaucracy may find itself similarly seeking to expand by continuing and increasing this emphasis, which requires in turn the expansion of the people's capacity to buy consumer goods—their real wages. To encourage people both to produce and to consume hardly requires the apparatus of compulsion and regimentation so necessary to régimes of forced industrialization. The Cuban development, then, even without effective checks from the population, can be expected to take a somewhat more benign form than those models to which it is so often compared, and with which it is even coming to compare itself.

But there is one important check on the power of the Cuban government and the Cuban bureaucracy, and that limitation is imposed by the existence of the militia. It must be said at the outset that the militia is no substitute for democratic control: it cannot initiate policy, nor can it present only partial, selective opposition, defying the government in some policies while supporting it in others. Nevertheless the militia remains a powerful weapon of last resort, with the means of nullifying government decrees and overthrowing the government itself should it choose to do so.

Contrary to the description of the militia in the American press as Castro's personal instrument for terrorizing and intimidating a rebellious population, the Cuban militia comes as close to the concept of "the people armed" as anything we have seen in this century, with the possible exception of the Hungarians in 1956. Unlike a professional soldier, the militiaman continues to work in his old place of employment and receives pay for that work, performing his military duty as a volunteer. His prospects for economic advancement lie not in his service in the militia but rather in his activities in the civilian sphere. He suffers or benefits from the ups and downs in the Cuban economy in the same way as anybody else. Unlike the professional soldier the militiaman is not separated from his civilian environment, but continues to live at home among his family and friends, sharing their fortunes and misfortunes, alive to their problems. And unlike the professional soldier the militiaman is not sent away to serve among strangers, but rather guards the factory or farm in which he works, or the housing project or village or neighborhood in which he lives, and his fellow militiamen arc his co-workers and neighbors. In short he acquires no special interest separate from or opposed to that of the population at large. If the Cuban people are oppressed, the militia are oppressed too. And the militia have weapons, and these weapons give them access to more weapons; and the force they represent must be reckoned with by any govrnment and any bureaucracy contemplating unpopular measures. It is this consideration—the fact that the Cuban leaders, Cuban officialdom, Cuban bureaucracy do not have the monopoly of power so characteristic of all governments, do not even begin to approach that monopoly of power—it is this consideration that must ultimately restrain even the most ruthless and ambitious despot imaginable from embarking on any course which would require the widespread use of force for its successful execution. And where ultimate use of force is a doubtful possibility, the threat of force loses its coercive power proportionately.

It is under these circumstances that a people who feel themselves bullied or oppressed by their government may effectively "insist" on their rights. The government which cannot compel must accommodate; and in this process Cuba has the chance to evolve her own unique forms of democratic control, both of her political and her economic life.

* * *

The perspectives for the Cuban revolution are thus fairly promising. Of necessity the government is based on the support of the populace, because the old state apparatus is gone, as are its personnel, and because the old army is gone, and its personnel dispersed; though this necessity is only temporary and will last only until the new bureaucracy consolidates itself. The initial orientation is toward raising the standard of living first, and creating an internal market before industrializing. And arms in the hands of the people preclude decisive actions against the interests of the people. With a rising standard of living the Cuban government can probably retain the support of a majority of its people without democratic institutions; though without democratic institutions Cubans run the risk of setting up an uncontrolled bureaucracy which may find it in its interest, and perhaps eventually within its power, to act oppressively.

The alternative to supporting the Cuban revolution, despite its inadequacies, its negative features, and its uncertainties, is to embrace a United States policy which so far has provided plausible if not valid explanations for every repressive measure the Cuban government has taken, and which has been responsible for Cuba's increased relations with and esteem for the Communist bloc, and the resulting prestige of Cuban Communists.

A more active intervention by the United States would have to overcome an armed Cuban people (Sartre, in On Cuba, estimates 2,000,000 Cubans armed and in the militia in January 1961; two Canadian fliers stranded in Havana during the April invasion attempt report 4/5 of the population of Havana is armed), with all the slaughter and destruction that would involve. Once we "won" we would presumably install the counterrevolutionaries whose recent venture was marked by its significant failure to win any support from the Cuban people, and whose program contains proposals that will alienate virtually every important sector of the Cuban population. We would find ourselves supporting a program which offers to Cuban youth replacement of the militias by a drafted army, something Cuba has never known in all its history. To tenants it offers the abolition of the Urban Reform Law which makes each tenant the nominal owner of his rented apartment or house. To the population as a whole, it offers "to restore to their legitimate owners the goods and rights confiscated by the Communist régime." Upon a population which visibly does not want a return to the repressive old order, such measures could only be imposed by force: the democracy which the counterrevolutionaries and our own government proclaim could not do the job which they have set for themselves. Thus the alternative offered by the United States policy of hostility toward Cuba is not a very appealing one, least of all to the Cubans.

Defense of the Cuban revolution on the other hand has some additional considerations to recommend it. American friendship would remove justification for repression. American friendship would permit a peaceful influence among the majority of Cubans, who support Fidel Castro. Finally, preservation of the Cuban revolution would encourage revolution elsewhere in Latin America, which would open up wider economic perspectives for Cuba, and more importantly would proliferate a variety of political and economic arrangements, permitting imitation of the most successful and satisfying and undercutting support for the less democratic forms.

* * *

Two recommendations emerge from the foregoing considerations. For Cuba, that all who have power be responsible to those over whom it is exercised: that peasants elect their co-op administration; that workers elect their factory administration; that the people elect their government.

For the United States, a policy of friendship for Cuba. This, however, involves resignation to the loss of, or by, American business interests, and can only come about through pressure from below, from the American people. So until "Friendship for Cuba" is possible, HANDS OFF CUBA.

CUBAN INTERVENTION:
Tragedy and Tragic Aftermath
G. TROIANO

The dirty and tragic story behind the Cuban fiasco has not been long in coming out. We learn that for months American policy toward Cuba has been controlled by a directive, known colloquially in high government circles as the "Castro must go" paper, prepared during the Eisenhower administration and rat. ified by Kennedy. Responsibility for the execution of this directive was given by the Central Intelligence Agency, which established an operating directorate under the supervision of R. M. Bissell, Jr., a deputy director of the CIA—and henceforth, with this appointment, proconsul of Cuba. The CIA started to build up the force of exiles necessary for the invasion of Cuba over a year ago, planning an invasion by an exile army of 5,000 with the active participation of American air and naval forces. President Kennedy regarded the open use of American bombers and warships as excessive, and vetoed this phase of the operation, thereby bringing the entire plan into question. The State Department and certain groups among the Cuban exiles themselves held an immediate invasion to be premature, since Castro was still too popular to be overthrown by a small force. The CIA argued against calling the whole adventure off or postponing it, maintaining that the shaky coalition army which had been painstakingly pasted together out of the motley quarreling collection of Cuban exile factions would disintegrate. The CIA also stuffed Kennedy with phoney predictions that the Castro government was on the point of being overthrown, and that only an initial impetus was needed. Kennedy finally issued the go-ahead, but protected himself against the possibility of disaster by stating, at a press conference a few days before the invasion was scheduled to begin, that American forces would not be used. By this statement he threw out a precautionary political anchor to prevent himself from being swept away by the currents of hysterical violence which an invasion in the process of failing was bound to generate. Thus arose an idiotic but typical compromise: let them have a little invasion; let us attempt a crime, but only half-heartedly; let us do what we know must fail but hope for the best.

Within the exile army itself, proconsul Bissell was busy shaping a political future for Cuba which satisfied the CIA, however badly it corresponded to the aspirations of the Cuban people. According to the Times, Bissell's favorite was a certain Captain Manuel Artime, who "received most of the military equipment and financial assistance" dispensed by the CIA. The exile group headed by Manuel Ray, the timid "left wing" of the exiles, the only group with any political following at all in Cuba, was, on the other hand, starved into submission: "The CIA began to deliver sabotage material to the Ray group only in the last few weeks, when it joined the . . . Revolutionary Council"—under the nominal leadership of that professional figurehead of responsibility and respectability, Miro Cardona. "The alleged reason for the disapproval (of Mr. Ray) was . . . belief that Señor Ray's ... political ideals were too radical. The CIA .. . believed the Artime movement to be more conservative." The CIA army was from the moment of its inception in a state of political disintegration. "Captain Artime ... was beaten up in a Miami street by a group of his former associates. Numerous officers . . . split away. They attempted to form `free lance' guerilla organizations...." The CIA's hunt for reliable "conservatives" naturally brought to the fore the most reliable Cuban conservatives of all, the supporters of Batista. "When the Revolutionary Council ordered a purge of men who once were supporters of the former dictator, Fulgencio Batista, agents were reported reluctant to give up trained personnel to satisfy political requirements.... Captain Artime was the center of many arguments as nervousness rose. . . . Charges were constantly heard in Miami that Batista supporters held high positions in the camps. Ten days before the landings a gun battle was reported to have occurred in one of them." We may deduce from all this a picture of the Cuban government as it would have been after the CIA "liberation." For the use of his name, Manuel Ray would deserve, let us say, the ministry of posts and telegraphs.

Cardona, once premier by appointment of Castro, would again decorate the Cuban government as premier. Behind this facade, probably in the ministries of war and police, would stand the weII-armed Captain Artime and his gang of Batista executioners, t lie CIA's guarantors of "conservatism." After Ray and Cardona Bad served for a decent period as window dressing, after a sufficient period of executions and tortures, Artime could be allowed to kick them out (Ray into exile; Cardona once more becoming ambassador to Spain) and to come to the fore as dictator.

Castro's victory, so easily foreseen, has at least spared the Cuban people the attentions of Bissell and Artime. But now the real tragedy begins to unfold. The criminally incompetent policies of the American government have made Cuba into an inflamed boil which is beginning to poison the political bloodstream of the United States. Even now, it would not be impossible by a reorientation of Cuban policy to establish entirely satisfactory relations with Castro, breaking down his relations with Russia by making them unnecessary. In spite of this, Kennedy, having just been duped even if duped willingly by the CIA, instead of separating himself from Dulles and his gang, has rushed to back them up. Three days before the invasion, Kennedy was at least in possession of the elementary sense to refuse publicly to use American troops. A week later, swindled and defeated, he repudiates his own caution: We do not foreswear unilateral military action!

To prepare American public opinion for this new, more naked, and more expensive crime, Kennedy must lead us deeper into the mire of hysterical misrepresentation. The nation in peril! cries Kennedy. A relentless struggle! Subversion, infiltration! A host of other tactics! National unity above all! By echoing in this way the hysterical claptrap of the worst American interventionists, Kennedy has written them a political I.O.U. which he will have to pay. Even if further reflection makes him desire to renege, he will have to go ahead or be struck down by his own words. Small wonder then that the semi-Birchite Daily Mirror should exult, immediately below an editorial calling for police suppression of pro-Castro demonstrations and the deportation of all pro-Castro Cubans: "We must at last realize—and may President Kennedy be blessed for finally putting it into words—the nature of the enemy we are fighting and the character of the War. Historically, according to Brendan Byrne, executive director of the American Heritage Foundation, what we may be facing is another hundred years' war. There will be incidents and setbacks and victories and defeats, but the war ... will go on and on." The war will go on and on! Here the John Birch Society has the medicine by which they can "Keep America from becoming a democracy."

We must go on in Cuba. To what? To open American intervention? And what after the bloody conquest of Cuba? Install Quislings? Hard to find and keep in power after such a national violation. Occupy the island? For how long? With what final settlement? Such are the catastrophic dilemmas of the road which Kennedy seems determined to tread. Alas! It seems that only the first act of the Cuban tragedy is over: the greater tragedy, fate's retribution, is yet to come.

TRANSLATIONS FROM
THE (CUBAN) TROTSKYISTS
STEVE SELTZER

In view of the oft-repeated statement that the Communist Party is the only legal party in Cuba, and that an independent Cuban press is nonexistent, it will come as a surprise to many (including most American Trotskyists who have not been apprised of it by their American party) that there exists in Cuba, legally, a party which openly calls itself Trotskyist (the Revolutionary Workers Party), that this party openly publishes its own monthly newspaper (Proletarian Voice), and that this newspaper criticises in no uncertain terms both the trend towards bureaucratization in Cuba and the role and the tactics of the Cuban Communist Party (see below) .

The April 1960 issue of Proletarian Voice cites a Communist Party resolution, published in its daily, Hoy, which says, among her things, "The Plenary denounces the efforts of the imperialists to revive in our country the Trotskyist groups in order to use them as provocateurs, spies, and confusionists against the Cuban revolution. It is our task, and that of all revolutionaries, to destroy these elements...." The continuing activity of the Cuban Trotskyists over a year later (an April 1961 issue of their paper and a letter dated May 5, 1961 have been received) indicates, if it does nothing else, that the power of the Cuban Communists is less than absolute.

The excerpt appearing below is front a longer article entitled "In Defense of the Cuban Revolution" which appeared in Proletarian Voice of November-December 1960. Translation is by Steven Seltzer. Brackets [I indicate uncertain translation.

* * *

In the economic sphere the Revolution has acted boldly and extensively in its expropriations: this has been its best and most important defense.... In the international sphere too it has acted boldly, gaining wide support of the masses of the worker-states and the backward countries. There still remains for it to recognize the Algerian government—to say to the world of the exploited and the worker-builders of socialism that the Cuban revolution is in truth allied with them, and dissociated from any diplomatic maneuver that uses people in revolt as merchandise for bargaining in the futile negotiations on disarmament at the summit.

But if in the economic and the international spheres there have been advances, when we look at the internal aspect not only has no advance been made, but the best possibilities have not been fully utilized, and there have even been steps backward, and this is without doubt a danger which at all cost and risk the revolutionary Marxist-Trotskyists must warn against as part of our revolutionary duty. In effect, instead of moving towards the widest participation of the masses of farmers and workers organized in the administration of the nationalized enterprises, of the cooperatives, in the leadership of the unions, in the command of the militias through places of work, in the conduct of planning and government—that is to say, instead of going towards revolutionary democracy, towards worker-peasant government through workers,' peasants' and soldiers' councils where these judge, discuss, in short where these feel fully masters of their revolution, their government, of their destiny, which would give them greater understanding of problems, of the need for sacrifice; greater will and determination and revolutionary consciousness; instead of all this which would indestructibly cement the support of the wide masses of the revolution, there are taken steps opposite in sentiment, reinforcing the bonapartist character of the revolutionary government (thus are characterized the governments such as that of Napoleon of the French Revolution, and of Stalin and his successors in the Russian Revolution, which on the one hand must defend the new social structure that sustains them and on the other hand bend subjectively to the ideological tasks of the old régime, slowing the revolution to take power from the masses and to establish governments outsiue their control, above them, and finally, upon revolutionary degeneration, even against them) .

The symptoms of this political retreat by the Cuban revolution, of this discord between the economic and the political, are clear if the following facts are observed: [on the theory, which seems apparently reasonable, that bureaucratic excesses in the leadership of unions will thus be dissolved, organizations are regrouped in larger organizations], but doing this keeps concentrating the leadership in ever fewer hands, often designated through maneuvers of bureaucratic control—that is to say, to cure a bureaucratic evil a greater bureaucratism is applied, directed against the democratic expressions of the masses; in the same way, through bureaucratic maneuvers there are attempts, which sometimes succeed, to overthrow union directors, tied in many cases to conservatism and even counterrevolutionaries, although the charges are not very clear, and in reality because they have not submitted, in many cases, to state administrators, or to the official union line of "unity" (bureaucratic unity imposed from above) .

In spite of the Technical Advisory Councils having been set up at the order of the Ministry of Labor himself, and in spite of Ché Guevara's having publicly announced their importance and promised their rapid activation, the fact is that the TACS of workshops and industries have been ignored by the state adminIstt.1tors (of industry) and by the great part of the official union bureaucracy. So that even this timid attempt at democracy and I%orker control has not been made effective.

Also in the farm cooperatives the will of the "responsibles" reigns exclusively, evoking the disgust and censure of the farmers who see their democratic rights as cooperators ignored.

In the application of the Urban Reform many nuisances and contradictory orders {could have been avoided and can still be avoided] with the organization of Neighbors' Committees in buildings and neighborhoods, which would have been the most efficient collaborators with the government and the most zealous administrators of the property which is passing into their hands.

Also the workers' militia has taken a step backward in its political organization; in forming combat units according to geographical location one of the greatest virtues of militia {organizedj1 according to place of work must be abandoned, namely the familiarity and confidence of the individuals in each other, their voluntary obedience to their leaders whom they know and consider most able; instead there have been appointed bureaucratically to the different combat units officers and cadre most often unknown by them, and the militiamen themselves do not know, and for a time do not trust, their comrades in arms, precisely in the job which most demands mutual confidence in the time of combat. There has thus been lost one of the decisive elements of the guerilla warfare in which we will see ourselves involved, in case of imperialist aggression, since the revolutionary `esprit de corps' given by the common bonds of the same trade union or place of work is not the same as that shown by a muss army, in which the bonds of trust take time in forming. From a class armed force it comes to take on a diffuse popular character.

In the same sense the movement towards a single party is guided towards the bureaucratic grouping of political directors which began with the public disbanding of the Socialist Youth and their integration into the Rebel Youth; the active presence of the old Stalinist directing bureaucracy in these maneuvers,
in %%liidi they are consummate masters, reflects the old habit, the conditioned reflexes of the worst period of Stalinist absolutism: the obsession of "monopolitismo," of the strangulation of all revolutionary democracy, of all divergent tendencies, of the subordination of revolutionary democracy to the dictates of "leadership" sanctified with revolutionary infallibility and omnipotence by a kind of "divine grace" like the monarchs of old.

Against this whole tendency, demonstrated in the mentioned symptoms, aimed at separating the masses more and more from the exercise of administration and power, the workers and peasants—their most revolutionary elements conscious of the danger this can mean for the consolidation and the future of the Revolution—must establish the necessity of moving quickly toward a Constituent Assembly formed by delegates of the Confederation of Cuban Workers, the unions, the farm cooperatives, the soldiers, the students, professionals, small businessmen and industrialists, of all the political tendencies that support the revolution; which assembly would leave the organization of power in the hands of the councils of workers, farmers, soldiers, and militia as well as {leaving] the administration of the factories, enterprises, and cooperatives under worker control. This will be the only form of consolidating democratically the revolutionary power against all the obstacles and harassments which we have ahead of us.

At the same time as we fight for a Constituent Assembly to give new judicial bases to the advances already won by the Revolution and to the government of workers, peasants, and soldiers, we ought to fight day by day for immediate measures of revolutionary democracy, such as:

Organization of administrative councils in the cooperatives, formed by their own peasants.

Formation and functioning of the Technical Advisory Councils in factories and industries, set up by the revolutionary government, as an immediate step toward administration by Workers' Councils. This measure will assure more than any other the real increase in production so necessary for our economic development.

Full recognition of the role of the unions as defenders of the economic interests of the workers as consumers. It is necessary to do this in order that they can counteract the bureaucratic pressures and subterfuges of some state administrators. The workers ought to feel that their revolution does not represent a retreat in its conquests, and in necessary cases it should be they who decide through complete voluntary and democratic agreements whatever sacrifices they find necessary. But above all they must feel that they are not at the mercy of the single will of the administrators, however revolutionary these may be or seem. It is necessary to recall that even in the first few years of the (Russian) Revolution, under siege by the imperialists, and by the internal counterrevolution, and in a terrible economic situation, Lenin himself fought to maintain the independence of the unions vis-a-vis the state, even to the point that they could exercise the right to strike.

Restructuring the workers' militia through the unions and places of work (leaving zonal organization only for the unorganized workers and artisans, professionals, and small businessmen) with command of their own combat units by workers who have been specially trained and who are known and accepted by the majority.

... Finally, as a complement to and guarantee of all these revolutionary measures of consolidation and advance, it is necessary to move towards a Workers' Party of the Masses, based on the Confederation of Cuban Workers and the unions, which would form the backbone of the revolution towards socialism, but which would be a party of authentic revolutionary democracy with its cadre and directors selected freely from below, from the ranks of the workers, from among the best and most conscious revolutionaries independently of their party militance. Against the bureaucratic purpose of the single "party" formed front above and manipulated, with monolithic and absolutist characteristics, it is necessary to promote the Workers' Party of the masses with wide internal democracy, where all who support and fight for the fundamental measures and laws of the revolution have the right to evaluate, discuss, and decide their own politics, where all the tendencies within the revolution, even though they he minorities, have the right to expression without restrict ion or coercion. This will be the true revolutionary unity... .

This material was written and collected by members of Cornucopia (see back cover) two of whom have visited Cuba within the last year. If the response appears to warrant it additional material will be published from time to time.

Those interested in receiving future publications are invited to send their names and addresses to Cornucopia, (290 Riverside Drive, New York 25, N.Y.). Those interested in supporting further publications are invited to send contributions. Inquiry, comment, and information are welcome from all.

CORNUCOPIA PUBLICATIONS:

A Political Declaration (May 1960) (pamphlet) (15c) Hands off Cuba

Quitad las Manos de Cuba (October 1960) (leaflet)

Is Anyone Fooled? (protesting `Civil Defense') (leaflet) Cuban Intervention: Folly Becomes Crime (April 18, 1961)

(leaflet) Report on Cuba (July 1961) (pamphlet) (35c)

22 printed by Libertarian Press, a workers community shop, Glen Gardner, N. J.

BACK COVER:
WHAT IS CORNUCOPIA?

A new political group seeking a way out of the impasse the world is in.

WHAT IS WRONG? Part of the planet struggles with want, the rest with glut. Vast interests thrive by channeling scientific progress into means of destruction. Recurring political crises bring forward those who tell us that to survive we require less democracy, more centralism and repression; less information, more propaganda; less diplomacy, more arms and military adventures —in effect, that we must copy the totalitarian features of the Communist and Nazi systems. Recurring recessions and chronic unemployment plague the United States in spite of its large military budget. The Communist sphere, despite brutal repression and bureaucratism, struggles with persistent shortages and economic inefficiency.

WHAT IS RESPONSIBLE? The control of productive enterprises by narrow interests to whom abundance appears as the threat of overproduction: On the one hand there is an artificial division in each economic unit between employers and employees, so that from the viewpoint of the former an increase in the prosperity of the latter appears as an increase in production costs to be strongly opposed. On the other hand, dissipating potential economic abundance into arms production appears as sound business practice.

WHAT IS NECESSARY? Society must so change that abundance where it exists is viewed no longer as a nuisance but as the means to advance the world to a new level of plenty. The alternative to narrow control is democratic control. Each economic unit should be directly controlled by those who make it up. The inconceivably complicated economic relations between these units in the modern industrial complex should be left to the free play of a free market, and not governed by centralized power. On this basis a rational society of abundance can begin to emerge in the United States. The vast wealth of the United States can be applied to eliminate the world scarcity on which totalitarianism thrives.

WHAT DOES CORNUCOPIA DO? We seek to develop and disseminate our understanding of political and social questions. We hold regular meetings with lectures and open discussions ranging from theoretical economics to the Cuban situation. We give special lecture series. We issue leaflets and organize public meetings. We seek to organize opposition to each step toward catastrophe; to organize a party that can modify those features of present society from which catastrophe grows.

WHAT CAN YOU DO? You can subscribe to our publications. You can send us your comments and information. You can attend our meetings and contribute to our discussions. You can offer your time or money to help in our work.

Write to: CORNUCOPIA, 290 Riverside Drive, New York 25, N.Y.