Cuba and the Revolution of Our Time
DRAPER, THEODORE
By Theodore Draper Cuba and the Revolution of Our Time Under the banner of nationalism, Castro's regime is heading for 'socialism in one island' IT IS A LONG way from the rioting students of...
...it was a rebellion by the sons and daughters of the middle class in the name of the workers and peasants...
...Finally I prevailed on one of the young ministers to make a list of the professions and ages of every member of the Government...
...It cannot be dismissed as merely a diabolical aberration because it does not live up to our expectations or its own advertisements...
...It was not an easy task because they prefer to be known as majors and captains of the former rebel army...
...The enraged, uprooted, superfluous children of the bourgeoisie in underdeveloped countries gravitate irresistibly towards the ideology of socialism, but they can make use only of those aspects of socialism which conditions permit them to realize...
...It demands understanding on its own terms, less in terms of its theory than of its practice...
...Both the rioters and the rulers belong to a revolutionary type that is little understood in the United States, where the equivalent in social background is anything but revolutionary...
...They cannot pay heed to the idea that the proletariat should liberate itself...
...Waclaw Machajski, made familiar to us by the writings of Max Nomad, that a new middle class of ''intellectual workers" would install itself in power by exploiting the ideals of socialism...
...By Theodore Draper Cuba and the Revolution of Our Time Under the banner of nationalism, Castro's regime is heading for 'socialism in one island' IT IS A LONG way from the rioting students of Japan and Turkey to the ruling ex-students of Cuba, but the distance is not so great politically and socially...
...they provided the friendly environment and some of the recruits necessary for the victory of the predominantly middle-class boys from the cities...
...This largest and most populous of Cuba's provinces ranked first in the production of sugar, lowest in the proportion of white population, highest in the illiteracy rate, lowest in school attendance and highest in the percentage of rural population...
...the habit of rich Cubans of investing their capital abroad, hoarding it or sinking it into non-productive real estate: the "unstable and static nature" of the whole economy...
...The sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie dedicate themselves to the destruction of their own class in the name of nationalism and socialism...
...But the Cuban case is even more extreme than the Russian...
...With the best will in the world, the order of development cannot be inverted—first the revolution, then the prerequisites of socialism—without resulting in something other than the classical prospectus of socialism had contemplated...
...Castro's father was a well-to-do farmer who sent his son to Jesuit schools and the University of Havana for a career in law...
...It ushers in a new type of system that is neither capitalist nor socialist...
...The result was not far from what I had expected...
...Where capitalism has been stunted and the middle class is stagnant, a different development from the one that Marx envisioned takes place, urged on by a segment of the middle class but anti-middle class in nature, and in the name of socialism but ultimately antisocialist in character...
...I have tried elsewhere to define the nature of Castro's revolution and its place in the Communist family of revolutions...
...It was no accident that Castro's rebellion owed its success to its original base in Oriente Province at the eastern end of the island...
...In its present stage, the peasants are benefitting from it the most, the workers very little or not at all, and the middle class as a whole has been marked for destruction...
...Castro's most influential lieutenant, Ernesto Guevara, is a doctor whose father was an Argentine architect and builder...
...The social conditions which led to Castro's victory were painfully familiar to every student of Cuban life...
...It does not help understanding much to dismiss these students and ex-students as "Communist-inspired...
...Of the 18 members of the Cuban Government in April 1960, there were eight lawyers, one professor, one architect, one engineer, one naval captain, one doctor, three ex-university students and two unspecified...
...Castro will be 34 in August, almost exactly the average age of the entire group...
...The Cuban revolution was not a As journalist, historian and editor, Theodore Draper has for the past 25 years been an acute analyst of the international scene...
...Classical Marxism conceived of socialism as the culmination of capitalist development without which the prerequisites of socialism—an advanced industrial economy and a preponderant, impoverished proletariat—could not be fulfilled...
...Why is Communist propaganda so much more effective in one place rather than another...
...In classical Marxism, this aspect was only one of several, conditioned by the stage of development at which it was put into effect and the social relationships which would govern its realization...
...chronic unemployment of the mass of sugar workers for about three-fourths of every year...
...According to this caricature of socialism, however, there is only one prerequisite—the seizure of power, wherever and whenever possible...
...In the end, the attempt to force socialism on a predominantly agrarian society generates the pressures that produce a "Communist" form of totalitarianism...
...This is the revolution of our time...
...rebellion of the workers and peasants...
...Only a growing, dynamic economy could have assimilated so many would-be intellectuals and professionals...
...They cannot recognize the existence of prerequisites of socialism, above all an advanced industrial economy...
...Ten years ago, the still unrivalled Report on Cuba of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development devastatingly exposed what was wrong with Cuba— dependence on a single crop, sugar...
...It is a genuine revolution, bursting out in so many places so far apart that it must respond to a common set of circumstances and answer a similar range of needs...
...The island's five universities enrolled about 25,000 students, with the University of Havana alone accounting for about two-thirds of the total, all turning out too many lawyers and too few engineers...
...They cannot conceive of socialism as the fulfillment and complement of political democracy...
...But Marx expected capitalism to develop too successfully in some places and not successfully enough in others...
...Castro's "socialism in one island" assumes some of the essential features of Stalin's "socialism in one country...
...but contains elements of both, and emerges where capitalism has not succeeded and socialism cannot succeed...
...His recent trip to Cuba provided the bases for this, his first, article for THE NEW LEADER, on the pattern of Castro's revolution, which he believes is by members of the middle class dedicated to the destruction of their class in the name of nationalism...
...Whereas the Bolshevik intellectuals and professionals were most closely linked politically and psychologically to the Russian working class, the revolutionary intellectuals and professionals behind Castro identify themselves emotionally with the guajiros and Cuban collectivism has taken an agrarian far more than an industrial form...
...Despite vast differences between Cuba and Russia...
...Yet the peasant-like guajiros of Oriente Province could not make their own revolution...
...In this respect, Cuba was particularly vulnerable because its middle class was relatively too big as well as too weak...
...Where capitalism has not been successful, the prerequisites of socialism could not be fulfilled, and where capitalism has been successful, the prerequisites of socialism also could not be fulfilled—but for different reasons...
...But there is one aspect of socialism on which they can seize without delay and without restraint —the full use of the state to change the social order...
...Yet the two groups have fallen out in the past and it cannot be ruled out that they may fall out again in the future...
...the appallingly high rate of illiteracy...
...In brief, despite important differences in background between Castro's circle and the official Cuban Communists, the former seem to be heading toward a Cuban variety of "socialism in one island" which the latter can unconditionally support as the best available means for fulfilling their own long-range objectives...
...In poor, backward countries like Cuba, revolutions still issue out of the middle class but not in behalf of the middle class...
...Why should the younger generation of the middle class be so susceptible to Communist propaganda...
...Every member of Castro's Government attended a university, came from middle- or upper-class homes and became or intended to become a professional or intellectual...
...it more nearly corresponds to the ideas of the Polish anarchist...
...This is not a wholly new situation: Lenin also came out of a middle-class landowning family and, like Castro, first adopted the law as his profession...
...Middle-class fathers provided their sons with educations which their society was too constricted and stagnant to utilize...
...but Machajski hardly worked out the mechanics of his central thought and could not foresee that it would be more applicable to backward than to highly developed capitalist countries...
...In the former case, the middle class was not strong enough, and in the latter case, the middle class was too strong...
...Thus, the Cuban revolution is partly a struggle of classes and partly a struggle of generations in a form which makes the younger generation of the bourgeoisie the revolutionary cadre of the more or less passive workers and peasants...
...On a recent visit to Cuba, I went to some trouble to find out what the social background of the leaders of the Castro regime was...
...This situation conforms to no Marxist schema...
Vol. 43 • July 1960 • No. 27
