Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation by Joseph Hansen is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for January. Hansen, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party, traveled to Cuba in 1960 with SWP presidential candidate Farrell Dobbs. He recounts the historic role of the leadership forged by Fidel Castro that led workers and peasants to carry out the first socialist revolution in the Americas. The proletarian and internationalist course led by Castro transformed the lives, conditions, and political consciousness of toilers in Cuba, and opened a renewal of communist leadership in the Americas, in the U.S. and beyond. The excerpt is from the Jan. 14, 1961, “Cuban Question: Report for the Political Committee.” Copyright © 1978 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
[T]he Cuban revolution is a great revolution. It’s a revolution that can prove decisive for the development of our party and our cothinkers in Latin America for years to come. We already see how the Cuban revolution has become a pole of attraction in the radical movement in the United States, separating the various tendencies, cutting through them, beginning a new combination of forces in the United States. This is much more so in Latin America itself. The Cuban revolution has now become a key issue in all political discussions in South America, forcing every party from the extreme right wing of the bourgeoisie over the whole spectrum into the working class, forcing them to take a position on Cuba. The Cuban revolution is having the same effect in Latin America, as a key issue, as the Russian revolution had in its day. The Cuban question now is comparable in Latin America to the Russian question some decades ago.
In the United States, besides becoming a question differentiating the different tendencies in the radical movement, it has also become a key issue in foreign policy. There’s no party now that takes a stand on foreign policy in the United States that can avoid the question of Cuba. So this is a very, very important question for us.
Now how did we begin our approach to the Cuban revolution? We did not begin it from a theoretical level. We began it from a political level. The first thing we did was to determine what our attitude would be toward the Cuban revolution as a whole, what our policy would be toward it. This was reflected immediately in our press, in the Militant.
Now we had no difficulty whatsoever reaching a political position on Cuba. Because no matter what the specific characteristics of the revolution might be, as a whole it obviously was a part of the whole colonial revolution that had been sweeping the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Therefore, we supported it, as an automatic reflex. We supported it with all the more energy because it involved American imperialism, our own enemy right here at home. That’s the approach on a political level.
Now similarly, as this revolution developed, in each of its crucial stages, we had no difficulty in finding what our attitude would be, determining our policy toward each of these turns, and expressing it in the Militant. For example, in January of 1959, when the people of Cuba moved in and took power in all the cities of the country and in Havana and they held the tribunals, citizens’ tribunals where they put these criminals, these butchers of the Batista regime, on trial, we had no difficulty in stating where we stood on those tribunals. On the opposite side, the Democrats and Republicans and all the spokesmen of the bourgeoisie also had no difficulty in stating where they stood, and we were on opposite sides of class lines. We had no difficulty there.
We had no difficulty taking a stand on the agrarian reform, which began very early but which became codified in the law of May 17, 1959. We were all for that agrarian reform, the bigger the better, and it turned out to be a pretty big one.
We had no difficulty in determining our attitude toward the bourgeois ministers who were in the Cuban government. Fresquet, Pazos, Urrutia, and the others. We were glad to see them dismissed and kicked out. … [E]very one of these are now part of the counterrevolution; they are in one or another of the groupings that are located in Florida.
Well, we had no difficulty in determining our political attitude toward the July 26 Movement taking full responsibility in Cuba as the government. That was easy to determine. We said, “Yes, we’re all for that, because this is something quite different from the bourgeois ministers, from those who seemed to be a facade for the revolution for a time.” And we were all for them replacing the ministers in the various posts.
We had no difficulty at all regarding the nationalizations in Cuba. … [W]hen they occurred we did not have the slightest difficulty in stating exactly where we stood: “We’re for those nationalizations, every bit of them, and the bigger the better.” And they were plenty big.
We had no difficulty on such key questions as the monopoly of foreign trade when it was done, first in the form of controls by the government over foreign trade. It became established, and we were for that because it was part and parcel of our whole traditional program as to what a country of that character should do as it moves forward — to establish a monopoly of foreign trade.
We had no difficulty taking a position on the planned economy that began in Cuba in an early stage in very tentative forms and which is now rolling ahead. We had no difficulty saying, “Yes, we’re for a planned economy. We have been for a long time. We think planned economies are a good thing.”
And we had no difficulty taking a position on the relations with the Soviet bloc. We said, “That’s very good. Cuba has found a possibility here for saving its revolution from being crushed by American imperialism and we’re all for that.” …
And we had no difficulty taking a position on the extension of the Cuban revolution into South America. … [T]he Castro forces, the July 26 Movement … went to the various countries in South America, to Mexico and all the Latin American countries, and appealed to them for aid and for help, and suggested to these countries that they should imitate the Cuban revolution. “That’s wonderful, that’s a good way to defend the Cuban revolution.”