Cuba August 7th, 2021

Conference on Cuba and capitalist restoration
Trotskyism vs. Stalinism

Presentation of the Conference
by Eliza Funes, from Rudolph Klement Socialist Publishing House

We convened this conference at a time when the starving Cuban masses staged a huge uprising on July 11 demanding bread (…)
We also called this conference when the event ‘Trotsky in Permanence’ has just finished. Itwas held Brazil and it was organized directly by the Communist Party of Cuba. All currents that speak in the name of Trotskyism participated in that event”.

"The former Trotskyists went to embrace the ones that sold out the revolutions (...) raising the Stalinist program and using the clean banners of the Fourth International"

Good afternoon to all of you who are with us today. We begin this conference,which we have called "Cuba and capitalist restoration, Trotskyism vs. Stalinism", because today Trotskyism and Stalinism are once again on the opposite sides, face to face: the Stalinists brandishing the pseudo-theory of "socialism in one country”, reaching the extreme point of stating that socialism can be done on a single island while moving forward firmely restoring capitalism in the last workers' state left on the planet, just as they did in 1989; and the Trotskyists with the theory of the Permanent Revolution and the international socialist revolution, fighting from the most advanced of the combats in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

From the Rudolph Klement Socialist Publishing House and from the paper "The International Workers Organizer", we convened this conference at a time when the starving Cuban masses, who were the vanguard of the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America, staged a huge uprising for several days, since July 11, demanding bread and freedom, as we have recently seen in Ecuador, in Chile, in Colombia in the American Continent.

Today we are having this conference as we are responding to these developing events and we will present the Trotskyist point of view of what is happening and what the tasks of the revolutionaries are, which is the way forward and the program of those of us who defend the legacy of the Fourth International and its program, the program for victory. This is what Carlos Munzerwill talk about. He’s the author of "The 1989 Theses"about the events of capitalist restoration in the former workers' states such as the USSR and China. Martín, from the International Network for the Liberation of the World Political Prisoners and Justice to Our Martyrs, will state the genesis of the Cuban revolution; the events that eventually ended up in the seizure of power and the setting up of the Workers' State in 1959, which is a fact that shook the continent and the world. We will also have the speech of Nadia, from the LOI-CI of Argentina and the paperDemocracia Obrera (Workers Democracy), as well as the speech of comrade Leandro Hofstadter, correspondent for the International Workers Organizer and the paper The truth of the Opressedof Middle East. Leandro was a correspondent during the uprisings in Syria, Libya, Egypt. They will tell us about the milestones of the capitalist restoration and the impossibility of having "socialism in one country", as Stalinism and Castroism stated, the betrayals and shots in the back that it committed against the entire revolution and the uprising of the exploited in Latin Americaand in the semi-colonial world, to become a true Berlin wall in the continent against the international revolution.

As we said, we are holding this conference at the time of the starving Cuban masses' uprising, but also at the time when an event called "Trotsky in Permanence" has just finished.It was held in Brazil and it was organized directly by the Communist Party of Cuba and by the Cuban Foreign Ministry.All currents that speak in the name of Trotskyism participated in that event, such as the currents of the FIT-U of Argentina (PTS, PO, MST, Izquierda Socialista). The PSOL of Brazil participated.In PSOL all these currents of FIT-U are together as different tendencies plus also the Nuevo MAS of Argentina. The European “anti-capitalists” of the NPA also participated.Years ago, they removed from its program the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is to say, erased with a stroke of the pen the struggle for the seizure of power by the working class. The PO-Tendencia also participated.They, even before separating from the official PO, together with another current participant in this meeting, the EEK of Greece, held conferences in common with a woman of Putin, Mitina, claiming that a sector of Stalinism was “rethinking and drawing lessons from its actions”and it was proposed to create a common international. The IMT, the current of Alan Woods, the same one that gave the Transitional Program to Chavez, did not miss the appointment. As we can see, the entire arc of organizations that claim to be Trotskyistswere present at this meeting that has just taken place virtually from São Paulo.
This meeting, under the name of "Trotsky in Permanence", which was carried out as a whole week of symposia and debates, was the continuation of the plenary session that they themselves held in May 2019 in Havana, where in a small College classroom in that city they made a conciliation pact of the renegades of Trotskyism with representatives of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), claiming that they were taking Trotsky's legacy to the island.

On that occasion, the meeting was also organized, as today, directly by the PCC and the Foreign Ministry with its man, Frank García Hernández, leader of the PCC and the Cuban Communist Youth. Today he declares to have participated in the demonstrations of the starving masses, but he openly clarifies as soon as he has the chance he clarifies that he did so as part of the Communist Party, responding to the call of Díaz Canel, the current president of Cuba, who called to “defend the Cuban revolution in the streets”. Frank García Hernández is shouting from the rooftops that he went to beat the heads, as we saw, of starving workers demanding bread.
Of course, in 2019 on the occasion of the Leon Trotsky Seminar in Havana, none of the renegades of Trotskyism who traveled there went to denounce the unprecedented hardships of the Cuban masses, nor the restoration of the right of inheritance and private property that Castro brothers restored in the island, nor the dismissal of the more than 500,000 workers that took place seconds after the event organized in Havana finished.
In that event, which we insist was organizedby the PCC the Cuban Foreign Ministry and Frank Hernández, the starving masses had no place, no presence. It was carried out in a small classroom, with the participation reduced to 40 people, who claimed to take Trotskyism to the island with the aim of covering with a red cloak the capitalist restoration that the Castro brothers were carrying out.

Today, the PCC, the party of the new rich and partners of the imperialist gangs that plunder the island,once again is being surrounded with a “Trotskyist halo”, as we saw in this event in Brazil. Old renegades of the Fourth International, graduates, doctors, magisters from bourgeois universities showed their degrees, PhD’s, their research works, to legitimize the expropriation of the socialist revolution in Cuba and throughout the American Continent. Once again, the former Trotskyists, as they did two years ago in Havana (in the same place where the Castros paid honors to Mercader, the murderer of our leader Leon Trotsky) went to embrace those who sold out the revolution, proving to be true epigones of Stalinism, raising the Stalinist program using the clean banners of the Fourth International.

Today the starving masses that take to the streets in Cuba objectively confront the extreme social inequality that capitalist restoration implies, and the former Trotskyists cover the left pockets of a new capitalist class on the island that does not suffer any blockade, as they are united with thousands of ties with imperialism and they have access to the dozens of luxury stores and live in real mansions in gated communities, while the starving masses do suffer from the blockade and misery.

All the participants of the event "Trotsky in Permanence" that just ended in Brazil are on their knees begging Biden to lift the US blockade of Cuba. So much so that they have gone as far as to present a petition signed by all of them and by all the renegades of Trotskyism, so that the Wall Street pirates sympathize and "lift the blockade on the island." In 2019 the "democratic socialists" of Sandershad participated in that meeting in Havana. Sanders is a representative of the US Democratic Party who spoke of socialism to deceive the workers who rose up in the United States to the cry of "black lives matter” and took to the streets demanding wages of US$ 15 an hour, making the continent vibrate. Sanders took that enormous combat of the masses and the exploited and oppressed of the United States to the feet of Biden, the current commander-in-chief of the United States and NATO. For this vile task, Sanders counted on the invaluable support of Stalinism itself and of all the renegades of Trotskyism, the same ones who today ask "good" Biden to lift the blockade. All of them assured that with Biden, Cuba would do better "because Biden was not Trump."

But the US blockade is not defeated with any petition to the imperialist pirates. It is defeated with the unity of the Cuban and Latin American masses with the rebellious American working class, as it happened in the Vietnam War or with the movement of the million men march against the war that imposed the US withdrawal from Iraq. The blockade is defeated with all the armed workers, just as they defeated the US in Bay of Pigs in Cuba. This is how the blockade is defeated and not by begging the American pirates and nor organizing counterrevolutionary gangs armed to the teeth, breaking their heads and imprisoning the starving Cuban workers, as Frank Hernández did. The starving Cuban masses are not even allowed to set up independent unions to defend their rights from the capitalists.

According to official figures, more than 500 exploited were jailed after the marches and protests that took place last month on the island. Frank García Hernández was jailed for 24 hours on that occasion and all the renegades of Trotskyism and left-wing intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky rushed to demand his freedom - omitting the hundreds of detainees by the Castro governmentin their demand. But Garcia Hernández himself hastily clarified that his arrest had been a confusion because he had been in the demonstrations, as we said before, responding to the call of the PCC and Diaz Canel, only as a member of the Communist Party.
We can see that Frank's image appears in everyPCC propaganda that exists, because he is the leader of the Cuban Communist Youth. This is the man from Havana who, in his disguise of praising Trotsky as a harmless icon, recruits forces from the ones who sold out the Fourth International to cover the party of Castroism in its capitalist restoration with red clothing, while raising the US flag again in La Havana. Of course, this Communist Party would not give legality in Cuba to any Trotskyist party that calls to defeat the Stalinist nomenclature and the new capitalist class that came out of its bowels.

"Socialism is no longer possible, not even in Cuba," proclaimed the Stalinist nomenclature of Havana, with their children, whoare all partners of the transnational tourism, nickel, oil, ports and tobacco companies, while they sold out one by one the revolutions of the American Continent.

We Trotskyists fight for the victory of a new socialist revolution in Cuba that will triumph with the victory of the working class throughout Latin America, Central America, the Caribbean and the United States. We fight for two, for three Vietnam!

In this event "Trotsky in Permanence", held in São Paulo, what was prepared was the permanence of capitalism, just that.

Before we begin this conference, we wanted to tell you that from the Rudolph Klement Socialist Publishing House, we are finishing a new work, a new e-book that will deal with Cuba and everything that we will be exposing today; and we are also preparing a book that will feature the manuscripts that were found in Stalin's political isolators of the 1930s in the Urals, where the members of the Left Opposition, the Bolshevik-Leninists as they were called at that time, the comrades who confronted the Stalinist bureaucracy at that time, were in prison and still edited their papers enduring torture, enduring years in jail. As we can see in their manuscripts, there they discussed how to confront the Stalinist bureaucracy, how to defeat it and tied the fate of the Workers' State of the USSR to the victory of the German revolution, the European revolution and the worldwide revolution.

That is why today we call this conference because we believe that in Cuba "Stalinism vs. Trotskyism" is being raised again and here, we Trotskyists are going to speak.