Levenstein mentions how the bureaucratic regimes heading the workers states in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and China used executions to "preserve the Stalinist caste." Thus, capital punishment, he concludes, is a question of "morality" and "socialist states such as Cuba" should practice "moral condescension" towards the death penalty.

Under capitalism, capital punishment, prisons, and other instruments of repression exist for one reason—to attempt to terrorize people into accepting an inhumane, irrational system based on maintaining the privileges of the capitalist class over the toiling majority. The number of executions has been rising almost every year in the United States, and the vast majority of prisoners awaiting state-sanctioned murder are from working-class families.

The Cuban socialist revolution exists in a world where capitalist market relations dominate. The Cuban people face constant threats from the most powerful and well armed empire the world has ever known, located just 90 miles away. They are fighting for socialism—a world system unachievable in one country, never mind a country that faces what Cuba does every day.

But workers, farmers, and young people in Cuba have an array of weapons at their disposal in order to defend their conquests and aid those fighting exploitation and oppression around the world.

First and foremost is their political and moral stands; the example they set for the exploited and oppressed internationally. Second, they have built a state apparatus, including an armed forces, Territorial Troop Militias, and the Production and Defense Brigades that stand ready to confront any threat of Yankee military aggression. The defeat of Washington's forces in the Bay of Pigs debacle was an example to the imperialists of this fact. Cuba also has the right to use the death penalty as part of these weapons.

The death penalty in Cuba has been used very sparingly over the past two decades. As reviewed in last week's column and described elsewhere in this issue, the leadership of the revolution charts a course to defend the interests of the workers and farmers there. It is a leadership that refuses to subordinate the interests of the Cuban people to Washington's dictates, and seeks to advance an uncompromising struggle against imperialist domination anywhere in the world. It is this stance and the steps the revolution has taken toward building a socialist society in Cuba that incur the unremitting enmity of the U.S. government.

The revolutionary leadership in Cuba makes it possible to confront and combat bureaucratic deformations, including corruption, that are manifestations of capitalist society from which Cuba is not immune. An aspect of this was involved in the case of Arnaldo Ochoa, a division general, and three other high-ranking officers, who were arrested, tried, convicted, and executed in 1989 for drug trafficking and abuse of office.

Cuban leaders explained that a key principle of the revolution was at stake. Ochoa had been a commander in Angola while participating in an international mission to defend that country's independence against military assaults by the racist regime in South Africa. He had correctly signed three execution orders for young Cuban soldiers who raped and murdered Angolan women, leaders of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces explained.

Ochoa's abuses took place during one of Cuba's greatest internationalist efforts, which dealt a major blow to apartheid. If he had been treated more leniently than those young soldiers, it "could damage the trust of our people in the leadership of the party and the leadership of the Revolutionary Armed Forces," said Cuban president Fidel Castro in a 1989 speech to the Council of State. The lives of those who wear stars or medals, or have wealth or political connections, are not worth more than anyone else in Cuba, the Cuban leaders argued.

Far from being a setback for working people, the way the Cuban leadership responded to this threat and carried out its responsibilities to defend the revolution has strengthened the ability of workers and farmers in Cuba to resist imperialism.

The extension of the socialist revolution and the bringing down of the imperialist powers will open up the possibilities for working people to eradicate every barbaric remnant of class society, which will include the elimination of the death penalty.

—MAURICE WILLIAMS  
 
 
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