Cuba’s burning?

The facts and their false versions from the right and the left

Through direct and spontaneous mass actions ranging from marches and self-convened assemblies to overturning police cars and looting stores, the proletariat of the Cuban region is rising up in the streets against hunger and State tyranny, that is to say, against the miserable material conditions of existence imposed by capitalism and its current crisis, just as the proletariat of the Colombian, Burmese, Iranian and South African regions has done this year, and just as the proletariat of the Ecuadorian, Chilean, Haitian, French and Iraqi regions, among others, did two years ago.

With all its weaknesses, limitations and internal contradictions (patriotism, interclassism, lack of revolutionary autonomy, isolation, etc.), the proletarian revolt of these days in the Cuban region is one more link or episode in the trend towards the recomposition of the international proletarian revolt that began in 2018-2019 and was “interrupted” by the pandemic and the counter-insurrectional health dictatorship or the preventive counter-revolution of 2020-2021 by all the States of this planet.

First of all an anti-capitalist ABC in this regard: since they have existed for several centuries, capitalism, the crisis, the proletariat and the class struggle are global. The differences of these in/between each historical epoch and each geographic region are only of degree and form, not of nature or substance in their fundamental conditions, relations and categories. Which, mainly wage labor and capital accumulation, have rather spread and deepened over time everywhere. So both “Cuban socialism” and “capitalist restoration in Cuba after the fall of the USSR” have always been myths: in reality, what has always existed in Cuba is capitalism and class struggle, but in another form and to another degree, just as in the former USSR and throughout the world. The only thing that has really changed from the fall of the Soviet bloc until now is the predominance of private capital with respect to State capital over the proletariat, today more precarious and exploited.

Therefore, the two points that follow in this part of our analysis are the two versions of the false dichotomy between the imperialist right of Capital and the anti-imperialist left of Capital, that is to say between the two political tentacles of the same monstrous and gigantic octopus that is the world-historical capitalist system.

On the one hand, the Cuban petty-bourgeois right wing and U.S. imperialism are capitalizing politically and mediatically on this emerging conjuncture, on the material basis of the current economic, ecological, health and political crisis, as well as in the absence of a revolutionary historical situation and therefore of an autonomous revolutionary direction of the masses in revolt.

Therefore, their version of these mass protests is the dominant version or that of the dominant fraction of the capitalist class in the media, with the purpose to publicly declare that “socialism does not work” and that it is necessary to intervene in Cuba militarily, politically, technologically and “humanitarily” to “restore democracy, freedom and social peace”, as in Haiti or Syria.

On the other hand, the Cuban “socialist” government and the left-wing of international Capital purposely focus only on its right-wing imperialist opponent, in order to hide the really existing capitalism and class struggle inside Cuba, so as to preserve its power and its image of false revolution and false socialism/communism, in the classic Stalinist-Orwellian style but in Latin American version.

That is why the Diaz-Canel government and the pro-Cuba left disqualify or slander these massive protests as “ordered and directed by imperialism”, “coldly calculated”, “manipulated”, “sold out”, “with an interventionist agenda”, “with a coup and colonialist project”, “worms”, “shit-eaters”, “mercenaries”, “reactionaries”, “fascists”, “counterrevolutionaries”, etc. Which, in fact, is false, absurd, conspiratorial and cynical.

And that is why the Cuban State is facing this mass revolt by combining police and military repression (in spite of the existing “information blackout” or communication blockade, as of the publication time of this edition it is known that there are already 5 dead, dozens wounded and more than 150 detained and disappeared) with the mobilization of the ideologized and captive social bases that still remain, as well as forcibly recruiting young people to join them. By making equally repressive counter-marches (police in red) where they shout the usual stale patriotic slogans and carry national flags and banners with pictures of Fidel Castro, reminiscent of the cult of personality in Stalinist Russia, as well as public declarations of “anti-imperialism, national sovereignty and socialism”.

But facts are stubborn things and, no matter how hard the rulers and their henchmen try, mass hunger and rage cannot be hidden.

The conjunctural causes and their data

On the one hand, it is the current economic and health crisis; more concretely, the resounding fall of the GDP by 11% –the worst in the last three decades–, of the trade balance –a deficit of 9 billion dollars, considering that 80% of consumer products are imported–, of the foreign currency from tourism –the 2nd source of income for the Cuban economy and population, after the export of professionals or “human capital”– and of the production and export of sugar –due to lack of fuel and machine breakdowns–, due to the pandemic, and also due to the monetary and exchange rate reform decreed at the end of last year by the Díaz-Canel government –called “Tarea Ordenamiento” [0]– which, instead of counteracting the crisis, worsened it (the cure turned out to be worse than the disease).

The result of the above is that there is currently unemployment, shortages and inflation: there is a shortage of work, money, food, medicines and basic services for the majority of the population in Cuba (we say for the majority of the population, because the Cuban bureaucratic-military bourgeoisie and foreign tourists enjoy all kinds of privileges). As it has always been under that regime, but today more than yesterday, with the aggravating factor of the resurgence of Covid-19 (a sign of the failure of the overvalued and mystified Cuban medical system, by the way) and its highly negative impact on health, the economy and daily life.

Even more concretely: in October 2020, 8 out of 10 Cubans were surviving with just enough, 67% of the families rated their daily food as deficient, while 6 out of 10 families had only 5- to 10-day supply of food per month. After the “Tarea Ordenamiento” in December 2020, the situation worsened: unemployment in the public sector increased at the same time as proletarianization and the rate of exploitation (“cheap labor”) in the private sector; services and goods of the basic food basket rose between 500% and 600% (electricity, water and medicines became practically unaffordable), and both remittances from families abroad and local bank deposits were “withheld” or “frozen” partially and temporarily by the State. In addition to all this, there has been an increase in the number of cases of infection (more than 275,000 people) and death (more than 1,800 people) due to the resurgence of Covid-19 on the island. It is also quite possible that cases of depression and suicide have increased.

In other words, this is a social malaise that has been accumulating daily for decades, worsening since last year and exploding this year, for the reasons mentioned above. The majority of the population of that country today is hungrier, sicker and more desperate than ever before.

That is why today, to the cry of “food, electricity and vaccines”, the dispossessed and hungry of Cuba are taking to the streets to protest massively, as they had not done for decades. It could be said, then, that this is a “hunger revolt” so far this year, like those that broke out around the world during 2008, the year of the food crisis. All this, in the context of the crisis of valorization that characterizes the current crisis of capitalism, as a backdrop.

On the other hand, it is the political crisis; more specifically, the “lack of democratic institutions” or “popular power” to channel and cushion social demands. This is not an “error in the construction of socialism” or a “contradiction of the revolution”, because in Cuba there is no such revolution, but rather, even from the political and democratic point of view of “governability” and “hegemony”, the Cuban regime is no longer legitimate or sustainable, if not through institutionalized repression and lies (e.g. using the “Committees for the Defense of the Revolution” – CDR).

Now, from an anti-capitalist and anti-State perspective, the other conjunctural cause –with elements of structural cause– of this revolt is the totalitarian power that the privileged State bureaucracy exercises over the population in that Caribbean concentration camp or tropical gulag that is Cuba. Or rather, the capitalist and bureaucratic-military dictatorship of the Cuban “Communist” Party (PCC) of the wealthy and powerful Castro family and the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA) of other military leaders –who are owners and shareholders of more than half of the companies, profits and even “Panama Papers” of that country– over the proletariat –increasingly precarious, exploited, alienated and oppressed–, as in its time was the USSR of Lenin and Stalin, as well as Mao’s China (the latter up to the present day, together with North Korea and Venezuela).

The obvious differences between Cuba and Russia or China is that in the middle of the last century the former became the new small sugar colony, with a “charismatic” military leader at its head, of those great Asian capitalist-imperialist powers that disguised themselves as “communists”. Unlike the latter, which today are still powers but already hyper-modernized, the former remained petrified or rusted in that past, and hence it became nevertheless a tourist capital for the European and North American upper-middle class, as well as a fetish of nostalgic emotional attachment for the also middle-class Latin American left of Capital that religiously and viscerally defends the myth of “Cuban socialism”.

On the contrary, the anonymous proletariat of the Cuban region is sick and tired of living in this way. It is fed up with so much misery and State oppression. That is why these days they have taken to the streets en masse shouting “down with the dictatorship” and “freedom”.

In this sense, it is no longer only a “hunger revolt” but also a political revolt, in which unfortunately, in the absence of a revolutionary historical and international situation, class instinct and spontaneity are not enough. The Cuban proletariat has also been underdeveloped and repressed in matters of revolutionary struggle by the Cuban State. For this reason, this revolt is being politically and mediatically capitalized by the right-wing and imperialist faction of world Capital, while it is physically and symbolically repressed by the left-wing and anti-imperialist faction of the same world Capital.

In other words, the proletariat in revolt of “The Island” is literally isolated, disarmed and attacked in every aspect. And, as the history of the class struggle shows, isolation condemns every revolt –and every revolution– to defeat.

The structural causes and their data

It is NOT the “imperialist blockade” –as the fanatics of the Castro-Stalinist regime repeat–: the U.S. is the 9th supplier of imported goods to the island. As of 2019, there are 32 large Yankee companies (such as Visa, Accor, Mastercard or Amazon) investing in that country. In addition, Cuba trades with 170 countries and currently 40% of its exports are “assisted” by China.

Neither is it a non-existent “degenerated workers’ State” nor a “capitalist restoration” in Cuba since the 1990s –as the Trotskyists argue–, because Capital –understood as an impersonal and fetishist relation of production and social reproduction, and not as simple juridical or formal property over the means of production– cannot be restored where it has never been extirpated, and because the only thing that really changed since then is the predominance of private capital with respect to State capital over the increasingly precarious and exploited proletariat.

What then? It is the economic, political and social crisis of the underdeveloped Cuban State Capitalism