Cuba - August 22nd, 2018

THE MILESTONES OF THE CAPITALIST RESTORATION IN CUBA

August 2015. Kerry raising the US flag in Havana

Chavez, Kirchner and Fidel Castro

The capitalist restoration in Cuba is the result of decades of betrayals, surrender of conquests and counterrevolutionary pacts by the former Castroist bureaucracy with imperialism.
As stated by the Transition Program of the IV International about Stalinism in the USSR: " either the bureaucracy, becoming ever more the organ of the world bourgeoisie in the workers’ state, will overthrow the new forms of property and plunge the country back to capitalism; or the working class will crush the bureaucracy and open the way to socialism.. "

Clearly due to the crisis of revolutionary leadership, the Cuban working class could not get rid of the Bonapartist bureaucracy of the army-party of the guerrilla commanders. The centrism of Yalta IV International, which kneeled before Castroism, has an enormous responsibility. While Pabloism dissolved the Cuban section, the largest in Latin America, most of the Yalta currents recognized Castro as a revolutionary leadership, and even some of them, like Morenism, spoke of Castro as a "Jacobin" and "the greatest revolutionary since Lenin."

For 50 years, the Castros made Havana a center of conspiracy against the world revolution under the leadership of the bureaucracy of the USSR, a "Berlin Wall" in America (as the wall in Europe which was the highest expression of the agreement with imperialism of "Peaceful coexistence" to prevent the revolution from spreading). In the hands of the Castroite bureaucracy and its nefarious policy of "socialism in one country," the conquest of the Cuban revolution was used to prevent it from spreading to the rest of the continent: in Chile in 1973 they proclaimed the "peaceful way to socialism"; in the United States, Fidel Castro used his enormous influence in the black movement to kneel them before the Democratic Party; in Nicaragua and El Salvador, he signed the infamous Esquipulas and Contadora agreements in the 1980s to surrender the revolution; in the XXI Century, he supported the Bolivarian bourgeoisies to strangle the Latin American revolution, etc. Fidel Castro himself was in charge of guaranteeing most of these betrayals.
The more the bureaucracy managed to isolate the Cuban revolution, the more they prepared the conditions for the restoration of capitalism on the island. Only the revolutionary struggle of the masses of the continent and the anti-imperialist resistance of the Cuban masses prevented Castroism from restoring capitalism before, as Stalinism did in 1989 in the USSR, Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam and Korea.
From that year, however, Castroism had to take different steps until it managed to impose capitalist production relations.

1989: the "special period" opens the process of capitalist restoration that begins to decompose the Workers' State

Until 1989, the Castroite bureaucracy had not been able to advance in the capitalist restoration for the combats of the 70s and the 80s: the revolution in Nicaragua and El Salvador, the proletarian uprising in Chile of 1982-86 against Pinochet, the uprising that overthrew to "Baby Doc" Duvallier in Haiti in 1986, the Venezuelan Caracazo in 1989.

The "special period" that began that year marks the opening of the capitalist restoration. The Castroist bureaucracy, based on the defeat of '89, becomes a restorative agent and lays the foundations to change property relations, destroy the monopoly of foreign trade and planned economy, which will lead to the decomposition of the Workers' State.

This period is shaped, on the one hand, by the collapse of the USSR, which bought Cuba its sugar production and, in exchange, provided oil and machinery; and on the other, by the blockade of US imperialism. Cuba had been isolated. The "special period" meant unprecedented suffering and famine for the Cuban masses, which were used by the bureaucracy as blackmail to introduce pro-capitalist measures that began to undermine the socialist elements of the transition regime.

The Castroist bureaucracy, already a restorative agent, carried out "exceptional openings" in the monopoly of foreign trade and gave permits for small property and small production and cooperatives, and associations between the State and Spanish, Canadian and French transnationals in hotels, tourism and nickel.

This situation deepened social inequality, opening an irreconcilable gap between the privileged restorationist bureaucracy that became richer and richer while the people that sank in hunger and misery. Sectors linked to foreign business handled dollars, while the vast majority of workers and peasants lived hardships with miserable ration cards.
They were years of unprecedented suffering of the people. Between 1990 and 1995, GDP fell by 35% and real wages of workers by 80%.
In spite of the isolation and US offensive, the Cuban masses presented a heroic anti-imperialist resistance defending the revolution and its conquests. But the imperialist blockade could only be broken with the working class of the continent revolting against transnationals and their governments, with workers and peasants of the island supported by the Latin America and US revolutions, and with the Cuban working class overthrowing the restorationist bureaucracy with the political revolution.
But in 1989, the parties that claimed belonging to the IV International, which had the program for the political revolution, were totally subjected to Stalinism. Mandelism had supported Gorbachev. In Latin America, they were on political fronts with the CPs.
American SWP became an appendix of Castroism. These parties reviewed Marxism and blamed Trotsky for their own capitulations and adaptations to Stalinism.
That is why in the process of restoration, they did nothing but deepen their course of submission to Castroism, definitively refusing to carry out any struggle for the political revolution in Cuba.

With the reform of the Constitution (1992-1995), the CCP allows the creation of joint ventures with imperialism
Establishing two currencies

During the blockade of imperialism in Cuba and with the imposition of capitalist restoration in the former USSR, China, etc., the CCP reforms the Constitution (1992-1995), allowing the creation of Joint Ventures (between the Cuban State and transnationals, in which the State retained at least 51% of the shares) in tourism, nickel, etc. and establishing a double currency system. The participation of the children of the bureaucrats in the Joint Ventures directories allowed bureaucracy to begin a capitalist accumulation with the leakage of dividends to the Bahamas.

With the double currency, bureaucracy established two parallel economies: a capitalist economy with foreign investments in tourism, hotels and nickel mining, where a currency (the CUC) was exchanged 1 to 1 with the dollar.
A dozen Cuban CP bureaucrats and their children begin to benefit from the economic plan of the double currency, exacerbating social inequality. A sector of workers of the mixed companies obtained a salary differentiated in convertible pesos (CUC) convertible to dollars, while the vast majority of the workers and poor peasants lived on the devalued currency and with salaries of U$ 18.

Thus, establishing the double currency and social inequality meant a hard blow against the egalitarian consciousness of the masses.

1997-2006: The Latin American revolution puts in check the capitalist restoration plan. The Castroist bureaucracy, allied to the "Bolivarian" native bourgeoisies, strangles it to advance in the restoration

In 1997, the economic crisis began and the processes of the Latin American revolution began: Ecuador (1997), Argentina (2001), Bolivia (2003-2005), the anti-war movement in the US, the Oaxaca commune (2006), etc. The Cuban masses, who had resisted the enormous privations of the "special period", saw in these uprisings the possibility of breaking Cuba's isolation. The bureaucracy, on the contrary, saw its own existence threatened as well as the capitalist restoration plans to become the new native bourgeoisie in Cuba. That is why they needed to defeat the revolution on the continent.
Castroism swindled the Cuban masses. It told them that Cuba's isolation was broken by Chávez and the "Bolivarian" bourgeoisies. At the head of the World Social Forum, it deployed a policy of class collaboration with the native bourgeoisies and was guarantor of counterrevolutionary pacts in Honduras, Colombia, Bolivia, etc. to prevent the triumph of the revolution.
This posed the question of redoubling the struggle to overthrow Castroite bureaucracy with the political revolution and against the "Bolivarian revolution" of the WSF. Far from this, the renegades of Trotskyism joined the Forum as a left wing, actively participating in all its meetings and legitimizing Castro's counterrevolutionary action. Its role was to contain and bind the left wing of the proletariat, subordinating it to the bourgeoisies and the governments of the "Bolivarian revolution".

Meanwhile, the mechanisms of social differentiation inherent in the double currency deepened. The Castroite bureaucracy liquidated the monopoly of foreign trade entering ALBA, which allowed transnational installed in Cuba to trade through the triangulation of imports with capitalist countries, and at the same time, a brutal enrichment of the bureaucracy through contraband with the Bolivarian bourgeoisies.
The export of health and education services to Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia and Colombia was another source of enormous enrichment of the bureaucracy.

Since 2009-2010, with the strangulation of the revolutionary processes and the Obama-Castro pact, the bureaucracy enters the final stretch of the capitalist restoration process

The last period of the restorationist offensive in Cuba begins after the crash of 2008. With the Latin American revolution expropriated by the "Bolivarian" bourgeoisie, the Castroist bureaucracy, already determined to define the capitalist restoration, agrees with Obama, to whom Fidel Castro and Chávez called their "candidate" against Republican McCain. To win the recognition of US imperialism as a restorative agent, Castroism subjects the American working class to the Democratic Party and commits itself to surrendering the Colombian resistance with the Peace Accords of Havana.
With the assumption of Raúl Castro in 2008, a series of reforms are defined to liquidate the last socialist elements and impose capitalism on the island, definitively interrupting the transition regime from capitalism to socialism and allowing the automatic development of capitalism in Cuba.
In 2010, two key issues were decided: firstly, lay off over 500,000 workers, liquidating on the one hand full employment and developing an industrial reserve army, and promoting, on the other, individual property and with it a petty-bourgeois social base for the capitalist restoration under self-employment; and secondly, the right of inheritance is legalized to bequeath the property to the children of the families of the Castro hierarchs. Thus, bureaucracy begins to openly become a possessing class, a native bourgeoisie.

The resolutions of the CCP - VI Congress in 2011 wanted to finish imposing a capitalist economy on the island, but in an orderly manner. The Bonapartist government of Raul Castro disciplines the most avid layers of the new rich to prevent from disintegration of the restoration regime and to prevent gaps in the heights, through where the Cuban masses can escape facing restoration.
With the Foreign Investment Law of 2014, imperialist monopolies are guaranteed that they will not be expropriated, and that if they do, they will be duly indemnified according to international treaties, liquidating the policy of expropriation without compensation imposed in the revolution of 1959
With the visit of two Popes in 2012 and 2015, the Church, which acts in fact as a legalized bourgeois party, legitimizes restoration and Castroism as a restorative agent.

US imperialism reopened the Embassy in Havana in 2015 and the US flag, burned in 1959 by the exploited, was raised on the island. As part of the concessions to imperialism, Castro created a free zone in Puerto Mariel, a strategic zone of deposits and circulation of merchandise of the multinationals, where 27 companies from Spain, Holland, France, Belgium, Panama, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea. There the workers are prohibited from having unions.
In this period, Cuba becomes a transitory capitalist state, dependent on imperialism, but not yet semi-colonized, that is, not yet subject to imperialism by economic, political and military colonial treaties.

The defeat of the revolutionary uprising of 2011, whose highest point was undoubtedly the revolutions of the Maghreb and the Middle East and in Ukraine, was wind in favour of the new Cuban bourgeoisie.
In 2018, the new rich are ready to approve a bourgeois Constitution for capitalist Cuba, to recognize at the highest legal level the capitalist production relations already imposed in recent years.
It must be said that the prognosis of the Fourth International was confirmed by the refusal: the revolution was isolated, betrayed by Castroism, which ended by imposing capitalist restoration.

JUAN CARBALLO