Vol. 81/No. 39 October 23, 2017

Revolution in Cuba shows road forward for workers

There were two great working-class revolutions in the 20th century — the one led by the Bolshevik Party of V.I. Lenin in Russia in 1917 and the victory of workers and farmers in 1959, led by Fidel Castro and the July 26th Movement. The Cuban Revolution continues today to set an example for working people across the globe. Workers everywhere should join in demanding that Washington end its economic war against Cuban working people and get out of Guantánamo.

Every day Washington and the imperialist powers and other capitalist classes around the world show they are incapable of ruling in the interests of humanity. The endless wars from Afghanistan and Syria to Iraq and Yemen, the senseless deaths on the job as the bosses speed up production, the contamination of the environment, police brutality, discrimination against women around the globe, racist violence, denial of national rights, like the right of the Kurdish people to independence — these are the reality of capitalist rule today.

Just look at the conduct of the U.S. rulers and their junior “partners” in the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico. More than 100 years of colonial rule has left millions without electricity, medical care in shambles and tens of thousands who can afford it trying to flee.

On an island frequently struck by hurricanes, the lack of preparation for hurricanes Irma and Maria was criminal. After the storms, containers of basic necessities stacked up in the port for days — undistributed — while thousands of people had nothing to eat or drink. And the people of Puerto Rico are still saddled with an utterly unpayable debt to the capitalist bondholders.

The same disregard for working humanity, turns natural disasters in country after country into social catastrophes, including in the U.S., where tens of thousands in Florida and Texas still have no home to return to. But not in Cuba.

That’s because the Cuban Revolution brought the working class to power.

In Cuba, working people, organized by their government, were prepared for the storm. Those most in harms way were evacuated. Shelters had food, water, beds, doctors. Reconstruction began the second the storm ended. No one was left on their own.

“We share what we have, not what’s left over,” Cuban revolutionaries like to say. Hundreds of thousands of Cuban internationalist fighters defended Angolan sovereignty and defeated the invasions of South African apartheid in the 1970s and ’80s. Che Guevara and other Cuban fighters gave their lives as they fought to win political power for working people in Bolivia and throughout the southern cone of Latin America. Thousands of Cuban health care workers are working across Venezuela in the face of Washington’s threats against the country’s sovereignty.

Their principled stand opposing nuclear weapons is a beacon the world over.

It is fitting that the World Festival of Youth and Students in Sochi is dedicated in part to Cuban revolutionaries Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.

“What does the Cuban Revolution teach? That revolution is possible,” states the Second Declaration of Havana. Workers and youth appalled at the consequences of capitalism and imperialism are drawing the same conclusion today.

Related articles:
‘Cuban Revolution will never yield sovereignty, principles’
Díaz-Canel: ‘Che says you can’t trust imperialism’
US gov’t uses pretext of ‘mystery illness’ to attack Cuba
‘Cuba’s revolution acts with the will of the entire people’

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