BY HARRY RING  
One of the most exciting chapters in the Militant’s history was our coverage of the first years of the Cuban revolution. The revolution was an inspiring event that left a profound imprint. Countless people around the world were radicalized and won to socialism by it.

From the very outset, the American imperialists worked overtime to strangle the revolution—a fact that posed special responsibilities for socialists in this country. The revolution also posed many political and theoretical questions in a new way for the Marxist movement. All this was reflected in the pages of the Militant. The Militant became must reading, week in and week out, for those who wanted to keep up with Cuban developments.

Throughout that period, Joseph Hansen was on the editorial staff of the Militant. In a recent interview, he discussed how U.S. socialists responded to the key stages of the Cuban revolution. Currently the editor of Intercontinental Press/Inprecor, Hansen is a longtime leader of the Socialist Workers Party. He was secretary to Leon Trotsky and is the author of a voluminous body of Marxist writings. Among these is the recently published Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution, an invaluable compilation of his writings on Cuba.  
 
July 26 Movement
In the interview, Hansen discussed the changing attitude of the Militant toward Fidel Castro’s July 26 Movement as that movement evolved.

From the very beginning, of course, socialists wholeheartedly supported any struggles against the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. “We took our stand against Batista and against U.S. domination of Cuba,” Hansen said. “But we didn’t politically support the July 26 Movement.”

The reason, he explained, was that the initial program of Castro’s movement specifically excluded expropriations of capitalist holdings. It pledged that the democratic reforms it was committed to would be carried out within the framework of capitalism. “We knew this was a totally utopian idea,” Hansen commented. “None of the basic problems of Cuba could be solved on a capitalist basis, so we couldn’t support Castro’s political program.”

At the same time, he added, the Militant was very much aware of the potential of the struggle then developing in Cuba. A staff writer was assigned to follow these events.

With the fall of Batista on January 1, 1959, our coverage greatly expanded. “We were particularly concerned,” Hansen said, “to get all the material we could that indicated the direction in which the movement was going.

“It should be remembered that in the first days after it came to power, the July 26 Movement did not carry out expropriations. It reiterated its intention not to.”  
 
Socialist direction
Why did the revolution, over its first two years, take a socialist direction?

There were several reasons. To begin with, Hansen said, the Cuban leadership began to learn fairly quickly that it couldn’t carry out an effective land redistribution and other social programs within the framework of capitalist property relations. And U.S. interests, which dominated the island’s sugar economy, were determined to thwart the new government’s program to place control of the land in the hands of those who worked it.

To that end, the Eisenhower administration directed an intensifying barrage of economic and political blows against Cuba. But the new government responded not with retreats or compromises but by moving more resolutely to realize its goals. This quickly led it to expropriate capitalist interests in the countryside and city.

“It was inevitable that Washington would direct heavy blows against Cuba,” Hansen commented. “But it wasn’t inevitable that the Cuban leaders would respond the way they did. Like many other reform governments, they could have knuckled under.

“But they didn’t. They responded by deepening the revolution, by taking it in an anticapitalist direction. “They started out as middle-class reformers—they described themselves that way, you know. But in the heat of the struggle, they became socialist revolutionists. They deserve a lot of credit for that.”  
 
On the scene
In April 1960, Hansen got a chance to see the process first-hand. He went to Cuba with Farrell Dobbs, the SWP’s presidential candidate that year. This was at a time when Washington and the capitalist media were whipping up a menacing anti-Cuban slander campaign.

Defense of the Cuban revolution became a central axis of the SWP campaign. Dobbs went to Cuba to get the facts that would help combat the lies. He and Hansen spent nearly a month visiting various parts of the island, talking with workers, farmers, and government officials.

“We saw the gains of the agrarian reform program,” Hansen said. “How they took over the big sugar plantations—and the sugar mills—and turned them into state farms. We saw how they broke up other holdings and turned over these smaller plots to the peasants.

“They eliminated unemployment in a country where previously most people didn’t work nine months of the year,” Hansen emphasized. “They made it possible for children to go to school. They slashed rents, cut food prices, provided medical care, opened a drive against illiteracy.

“And there was a real liberating atmosphere in the country,” he added, “not the totalitarianism the State Department kept talking about.”

On their return, Dobbs effectively used that firsthand knowledge on TV and radio and at public meetings. As the Cuban press noted, he was the only presidential candidate to stand up for Cuba.

Hansen wrote a series of articles for the Militant, later published as a pamphlet, The Truth About Cuba. At the same time, Hansen recalled, members of the SWP were actively involved in building the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which worked to counter the anti-Cuba campaign. It published literature, held meetings, provided speakers, and—before the United States instituted a travel ban—organized tours to Cuba so people could see the revolution for themselves.  
 
Impact in U.S.
The Cuban revolution, Hansen recalled, coincided with the victory of the Algerian revolution over French colonialism.

“These were popular causes,” Hansen said. “Not in the sense that they swept the country. But they found considerable backing among people who were beginning to radicalize because of the situation they found themselves in here.

“The revolution came at the same time as the whole movement for Black freedom in this country,” he continued. “You had the marches and sit-ins in the South, the new awakening of the student movement.”

And, he added, there were a lot of poor people who simply didn’t accept as “gospel” what they were being told about Cuba. This was demonstrated in the most dramatic way, Hansen recalled, when Castro headed a 1960 delegation to the United Nations. Rudely treated at their original hotel they packed their bags and moved up to the Theresa, then a well-known Harlem hotel.

Every night during the week the Cuban delegation was there, thousands of people gathered in the streets outside, cheering and demonstrating. The outpouring of the people of Harlem, Hansen said, was a stunning rebuke to Washington’s hate-Cuba campaign.

For those following the Cuban development closely, the Militant performed a unique service. Despite its very small size, at the time—as few as four pages in 1961—the Militant became a paper of record for the Cuban revolution.

It printed more speeches by Castro and Che Guevara than any other English-language publication. The texts of major Cuban documents appeared in the Militant as well. Other radical publications were sympathetic to Cuba, but they apparently did not see the importance of publishing what the Cubans themselves were actually saying.

And some radical groups were only lukewarm in their support, Hansen noted.  
 
Record of CPUSA
For example, “the U.S. Communist Party gave ‘all hail’ to the revolution, verbally,” Hansen said. “But they dragged their feet about doing what was needed to defend it.”

This was because they had a big political problem, Hansen explained. The Cuban Popular Socialist [Communist] Party had bitterly opposed the July 26 Movement until it was on the road to power. The PSP had previously denounced the July 26 Movement as “adventurist” and, several times during Batista’s reign, had given open support to the dictator.

Not surprisingly, the July 26 Movement had bypassed the PSP in making the revolution.

That victory, Hansen said, exploded the carefully nurtured illusion that only Communist parties could lead revolutions. This, he said, dealt a heavy blow to Stalinism.

For authentic Marxists, the process by which the Cuban revolution succeeded was, in many respects, unanticipated. After coming to power, the evolution of the July 26 Movement from radical reform to the enactment of deepgoing socialist measures was something entirely new in world history and had to be assessed in the light of prior Marxist experience and theory.

The SWP carefully followed its evolution in an open-minded, objective way.

“We went by the Marxist criteria that what’s decisive are the actions that are taken,” Hansen explained.

“You can lay down a blueprint that lists the main steps that should be taken and say that’s where you stand.

“But you also have to be prepared for a development that doesn’t fit the blueprint but nevertheless points in the same general direction. You have to take that into consideration. That was the basis of our judgment.”

The SWP and Militant demonstrated our respect for the Cuban leaders by frankly stating our opinions—critical as well as positive—on the basic political issues facing the revolutionary government.

“For instance, we welcomed the desire of the Cuban leadership to extend the revolution into Latin America,” Hansen said. “But we disagreed with them on how that could be done.

“While they placed reliance on the organization of guerrilla movements, we argued for building mass-based, revolutionary working-class parties. It was a mistake, we insisted, to believe the Cuban experience could be mechanically duplicated in other countries in Latin America.”

Hansen continued, “Another issue on which we argued for our particular point of view was how best to develop and expand the new climate of freedom that followed the triumph over Batista.

“What was necessary, we said, was the development of structured workers democracy; that is, the creation of institutions, under the control of the working people, whereby they could actively participate in Cuba’s decision-making process. Such forms of democracy, we said, would strengthen the revolution.”  
 
Decisive transformation
In the late summer of 1960 the expropriation of major U.S. and Cuban holdings reached the point where the power of capitalism was broken. The significance of this historic development received major treatment by the Militant.

And, when the ill-fated U.S.-organized invasion of Cuba occurred in 1961, the SWP and Militant stood in the forefront of those denouncing and opposing it.

“STOP THE CRIME AGAINST CUBA,” was the headline emblazoned in block type across the front page of the Militant. It featured a statement by the SWP Political Committee assailing the imperialist aggression.

There were other major developments in Cuba that we followed closely, Hansen said. “But it would take a book to deal with them all. So, if I can be permitted a plug, I would suggest people check out Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution. A lot of it is material that first appeared in the Militant….”  
 
 
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