Vol. 81/No. 16 April 24, 2017
(special feature)
US, Canadian socialists, Cuban youth discuss
US class struggle
The 150 students in attendance listened with great interest to two Young Socialists, Rebecca Williamson from Los Angeles and Philippe Tessier from Montreal, and Róger Calero, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States. A centerpiece of the meeting was the book Cuba and Angola: The War for Freedom by Cuban Gen. Harry Villegas, which had just been launched at the Havana International Book Fair. Published by Pathfinder Press, it’s a firsthand account of how Cuban volunteer combatants helped defend Angola from invasions by South Africa’s apartheid regime and hastened the demise of the white-supremacist regime in the early 1990s.
A number of the youth at the Feb. 21 event were from Ghana, Congo-Brazzaville and other African countries. Like Konnyebal, they belong to a generation that grew up three decades after the battles against apartheid and colonialism in southern Africa that changed the course of history, and before arriving in Cuba knew little about the aid to Angola of 425,000 Cuban internationalist volunteers between 1975 and 1991. Several spoke about how important the Cuban people’s solidarity and example has been in the struggles against imperialist oppression and exploitation in Africa.
The meeting at the dental school was one of two organized by the leadership of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) for the Young Socialists and Calero to talk with youth in Cuba. The other was an exchange with young workers at a pharmaceutical plant.
The Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) organized a third meeting, held at the University of Pinar del Río in western Cuba.
Mary-Alice Waters, a Socialist Workers Party leader and president of Pathfinder Press, also participated in two of the meetings. All four were in Cuba for the annual Havana International Book Fair, where Pathfinder Press had a stand.
‘What kind of socialism?’
In addition to the interest in Cuba’s internationalist aid to the freedom struggle in southern Africa, the students and workers had many questions about the class struggle in the United States.The speakers described the depth of the crisis of the capitalist system unfolding today, its devastating consequences for working people in the U.S., Canada, and other imperialist countries, and how communists there are part of working-class discussions and struggles that are developing.
They drew on three new books by Socialist Workers Party leaders about class politics in the United States: The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record and Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? by Jack Barnes, and Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? by Waters. Those titles, which also were presented at the Havana book fair the week before, and a wide selection of other books on revolutionary working-class politics, were on sale at the meetings. Dozens of students left with one or more books in hand.
At the University of Pinar del Río event, attended by more than 100 students, Yamil Alexander Otero, from El Salvador, said he had learned from many Central American workers about the brutal conditions they face as immigrants in the United States. Those conditions should be known more broadly, he said.
Calero agreed, and underlined the importance for the U.S. labor movement of demanding amnesty for undocumented workers and organizing them into unions regardless of their immigration status.
“Immigrant workers are not simply exploited,” he noted. “They are strengthening the working class in the U.S. as they join protests against deportations and union struggles.” Their actions help break down divisions imposed by the bosses on working people. He pointed to demonstrations by tens of thousands that had just taken place across the country in response to a recent wave of immigration police raids.
“Can you achieve socialism in the United States through elections, or do you need a revolution?” asked Alejandro Simón, a law student at the University of Pinar del Río.
A youth from the Democratic Republic of Congo asked, “Are you in favor of the kind of socialism Bernie Sanders talked about during the elections?” referring to one of the 2016 Democratic presidential candidates.
“No revolution has ever been made anywhere through elections,” Williamson said. “The president of the United States acts as a manager for the interests of the capitalist class. What we need is not a change of president but a change in the class that rules the country — and that will take a socialist revolution by millions of working people.”
“For us the Cuban Revolution is a concrete, living example we can point to. It shows how workers have taken state power and transformed society,” Calero added. Even today, he said, “when Cuba is surrounded by the world capitalist crisis, workers and farmers here continue to defend their own revolutionary gains as well as the interests of working people internationally.”
Exchange at medicine factory
At Medsol, a pharmaceutical complex, the Young Socialists had an exchange with a group of 40 workers at a production unit that manufactures a wide range of medicines. Nearly half the workers in that plant are 35 years old or younger.Workers described some of the obstacles they face in obtaining needed raw materials and spare parts as a result of U.S. policies that were not changed when diplomatic relations were re-established two years ago. Cuba is barred from buying U.S. products or even using U.S. dollars in commercial transactions, and have to obtain more costly imports from other countries.
“When materials are delayed because of the U.S. blockade or other difficulties,” one worker said, “we organize ourselves to make sure we can produce in a timely way the medicines our country’s public health system depends on.”
Many of the employees belong to the Technical Youth Brigades, a nationwide movement of young workers dedicated to developing more efficient production methods and improvising creative solutions to the lack of spare parts — another consequence of U.S. trade sanctions — that cause machines to be idled.
“In Cuba we produce medicine in order to cure diseases. In other places it’s a business,” said a director at Medsol.
“In our plant solidarity among workers is very strong,” one worker told us. “We try to deal with problems collectively. We look after each other. How do workers in your countries show solidarity with one another?” she asked.
The speakers described how the capitalist rulers foster competition and dog-eat-dog values. At the same time, they noted the kinds of struggles for safety and dignity on the job that workers become involved in as the bosses, in their drive to increase profits, force working people to look more and more toward each other and their unions to protect themselves, their communities and the environment.
Tessier pointed to the current frame-up trial of Thomas Harding and Richard Labrie, two rail workers accused of causing the 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in Quebec. The workers explain that the derailment and deadly fire was a direct consequence of the employer’s profit drive, he said, and many working people in Canada have rallied to their defense.
Róger Calero and Jonathan Silberman contributed to this article.
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