The right of peasants to the land; the right of workers to the fruit of their labor; the right of children to education; the right of the sick to medical and hospital care; the right of the young people to a job; the right of students to a free education that is both practical and scientific; the right of Blacks and Indians to “full human dignity”; the right of women to civil, social, and political equality; the right of the elderly to a secure old age….

—First Declaration of Havana, September 2, 1960

January 1 marks 48 years since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, when the country’s working people toppled a U.S.-backed dictatorship and paved the way for a government representing the interests of workers and farmers. By late 1960, through mass mobilizations of the producers, Cuba had nationalized the country’s plantations, mines, mills, factories, and banks, and opened the socialist revolution in the Americas.

The pledge to the world outlined above in the declaration millions adopted amidst those mobilizations was carried out by Cuba’s working people and their leadership.

The Cuban Revolution showed that no “progressive” section of the bourgeoisie can be relied on to win and defend national sovereignty against imperialist domination or intervention. Only workers and peasants will go all the way toward a society free of capitalism’s dog-eat-dog reality.

It showed that such a society can be built only by nationalizing the means of production, ending the property relations that generate economic and social discrimination.

It showed that, while the vast majority seeks to end class exploitation and national oppression peacefully, the employers use brutal violence to maintain their profits. Only a determined effort to defend what has been gained can stay the hand of imperialism. That’s why, in face of imminent U.S. attack, the Cuban people declared on Sept. 2, 1960, that they would accept “with gratitude the help of rockets from the Soviet Union should our territory be invaded by the military forces of the United States.”

The Cuban Revolution showed that the duty of revolutionaries is to make a revolution, not sit in their doorway “waiting for the corpse of imperialism to pass by,” as the Second Declaration of Havana put it on Feb. 4, 1962.

It showed that only through a socialist revolution can working people transform themselves into new women and men imbued with selfless proletarian internationalism. This is what hundreds of thousands of Cubans volunteered to do in Angola in the 1970s and ’80s, helping that country defend itself from invasion by South Africa’s apartheid regime. This is what more than 20,000 Cuban doctors, agronomists, and teachers are doing today in Venezuela.

The example of the Cuban Revolution is acutely relevant today worldwide. This is true in countries such as Venezuela, where it’s a more immediate question, as well as the United States, where absorbing its lessons is necessary for building a revolutionary working-class leadership.

The strength of the Cuban Revolution today, continuing to stand up to Washington’s unrelenting economic war, is a good omen for the New Year.
 
 
Related articles:
‘Capitalists dug our graves in vain; Marxism remains alive’
Remarks by speakers at presentation of ‘Nueva Internacional’ at Venezuela’s 2nd international book fair in Caracas
Tufts University meeting discusses ‘Cuba Today’  
 
 
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