Cuba Fading Fast

An example for working people? Not even the plumber has a truck! (Source)

Roy Landerson publishes a piece in The Militant misleadingly entitled Why the Cuban Revolution is an example for all working people. That doesn't describe the article at all. Instead it's a sentimental post about how a dictator was overthrown by a bunch of ragtag "revolutionaries." This isn't an example for working people so much as a sentimental journey for those who were inspired by the so-called "revolution" at the time.

How many people in the US will recall Fidel Castro's supposedly inspirational speech History Will Absolve Me? It's two hours long! All but the most brainwashed Castro fans will fall asleep before it's over. It asserts that Castro partisans are unfailingly honest, innocent, peaceful (despite launching an insurrection) citizens, while the government officials are all and always liars, crooks and thieves. I confess I didn't read the whole thing--it was too boring and too incredible.

Yet Mr. Landerson will have us believe that History Will Absolve Me is the greatest document since the Declaration of Independence.

Usually, if a country is "an example for working people" it's because it has a higher standard of living, offers more freedom in terms of career, where to live, and how to spend your money and your free time. Cuba provides none of that: housing is hopelessly dilapidated, food is nearly non-existent, you can't choose a career, and--it seems to me worst of all--one has to spend one's free time listening to boring speeches and "volunteering" to contribute free labor.

Whatever the good life is, Cuba's is the complete opposite. When possible Cubans flee to the USA--or Mexico or Colombia, or Panama or any place besides Cuba. Mr. Landerson's headline is 180 degrees wrong.

The dictator that so offended Mr. Castro was a politician cum gangster named Fulgencio Batista, president of Cuba from 1952 to 1959. The Castroites had much to complain about (links & footnotes omitted).

Throughout the 1950s, Havana served as "a hedonistic playground for the world's elite", producing sizable gambling, prostitution and drug profits for the American mafia, corrupt law-enforcement officials, and their politically elected cronies. In the assessment of the Cuban-American historian Louis Perez, "Havana was then what Las Vegas has become." Relatedly, it is estimated that by the end of the 1950s the city of Havana had 270 brothels. In addition, drugs, be it marijuana or cocaine, were so plentiful at the time that one American magazine in 1950 proclaimed "Narcotics are hardly more difficult to obtain in Cuba than a shot of rum. And only slightly more expensive." As a result, the playwright Arthur Miller described Batista's Cuba in The Nation as "hopelessly corrupt, a Mafia playground, (and) a bordello for Americans and other foreigners."

While the prostitution part is as much a draw today as it was back then, the Castro regime has curtailed the drug trade. They've tried to keep the tourist industry alive, but instead of attracting the rich or famous (eg, Ernest Hemingway), Cuba instead appeals to low-budget package tourists. Much less lucrative.

In 1960 (according to Google AI) Cuba produced between 5.6 and 6.0 million tons of sugar. After 66 years of Castro rule production is down to 200,000 tons.

Perhaps the country most like Cuba is the Dominican Republic--same ethnicity and former Spanish colony. In 1960 it was ruled by a dictator way more vicious than Mr. Batista, namely Rafael Trujillo ("Generalissimo" from 1934 until his death in 1961). He is credibly charged with murdering between 25,000 and 50,000 people. If Mr. Castro had been Dominican he would have been summarily shot and never put on trial.

I asked ChatGPT what fraction of Dominican households had access to electricity in 1960, and also today. Her answer, excerpted:

In 1960: the best estimate is roughly 15–25% of households had reliable electricity.

Today (2025–2026): about 95–99% of Dominican households have reasonably reliable electricity, although reliability still varies substantially by neighborhood.

I put the same question to her about Cuba:

By the late 1950s Cuba was one of the more electrified countries in Latin America:

• Havana and other cities had extensive electric service.
• Cuba was considerably more urbanized than the Dominican Republic.
• Many towns had electricity, although rural electrification remained incomplete.
• Large rural areas still lacked service entirely.

Historical studies of Latin American electrification suggest Cuba's household electrification rate around 1958–1960 was approximately 55–70%, much higher than most neighboring countries.

Moreover, where electricity existed, it was generally dependable.

Clearly, Mr. Batista was way more successful in getting electricity to his population than his Dominican counterpart. He also killed far fewer people. Corruption was, of course a problem, but comparatively a minor one..

Regards today, Ms. GPT points out that 100% of Cuban households are connected to the electrical grid. But the grid is not reliable, and in recent years it's failed more or less completely. Apparently Cuba had another nationwide blackout in early June. She writes:

Access to the grid has improved from roughly 60% to essentially 100%. But reliability has deteriorated dramatically in recent years because of the collapse of the generating system and fuel shortages. A household that technically has electricity today may still experience many hours each day without power.

She goes on to estimate that despite 100% access, only between 30%- 50% of households have power at any given time. Ms. GPT does not have access to the most recent internet pages, so I think today's figure is no more than 30%.

In other words, since Trujillo died, the Dominican Republic has brought its electrical grid almost to first world standards. Meanwhile, Cuba has gone the opposite direction--from a dependable, nationwide grid under Batista, to complete collapse under the Castro brothers. This is NOT an example for working people--at least not a positive one.

Mr. Landerson's retort will be Cuba's problems are entirely due to the perfidy of the United States. Of course that's small comfort to the average Cuban--why did the Castro brothers go so far out of their way to anger the US? Seems in retrospect to be totally unnecessary--what has Cuba gained from that? As Marco Rubio puts it, the only thing worse than a communist is a stupid communist.

 
But Mr. Landerson is wrong: Cuba is in significant part the author of her own problems, for when it comes to corruption, the Castros have been far worse than anything Batista did. The Castro regime has stolen 90% of people's paychecks--it's hard to get more corrupt than that.

A useful counterpoint to Mr. Landerson's piece appears in Left Voice in an article by Adrien Masson entitled Cuba’s Market Reforms Are a Huge Retreat for Socialism. He takes the regime to task for taking some obvious steps to rejuvenate its economy, to wit:

The main measures include the adoption of private banking, lifting the cap on how many companies private individuals can own, giving private companies control over how many workers they hire and at what wages, eliminating the government’s monopoly on foreign trade, repaying external debt by selling national assets, and expanding the private sector’s reach. State-owned properties and real estate can now be sold to both domestic and foreign companies and individuals, while subsidies for important goods will be taken away from most Cubans and means-tested for the most vulnerable.

In other words, he accuses Cuba of going down the capitalist road and betraying the working class along with socialist ideals. He is right, of course, and the government's new policy is a straightforward admission that the idiotic, "revolutionary" fantasies held over the past 67 years are worthless. How many lives have been wasted sacrificing everything in a heroic effort that has done nothing but enrich the Castro clan?

The nonsense spouted by Mr. Masson deserves its own post. I won't go into detail here. His article is a very clear illustration of how Marxists completely misunderstand capitalism. The bottom line is Mr. Masson wants a do-over--his solution is to subject another three generations of Cubans to ever more poverty and misery. 

Further Reading:

• Cosmetics, Cuba & Mary-Alice Waters
• The End of Cuban Civilization
• The Trotskyist Faction on Haiti

The SWP Throws In the Towel

 

"The SWP opened its 2026 International Conference here June 11-14 ...  SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, at podium, gave the political report. Seated, from left, are SWP leaders Paul Mailhot, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark." (Photo & caption from The Militant)

Founded in 1928, The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party) has been the unwavering champion of Revolutionary Socialism, standing in the tradition of Marx, Lenin, and above all, Trotsky. Leon Trotsky, aka the Old Man, took a personal interest in the paper and the Party's worker-Bolshevik cadre. Many SWP comrades lived, worked, and/or studied with Trotsky during his exile in Coyoacan, Mexico, including James P. Cannon, Farrell Dobbs, and most prominently, Joseph Hansen.

Party comrades went to jail for their opposition to US involvement in WWII, accused of violating the Smith Act. The convictions were later overturned as the Act was ruled unconstitutional--the first of many civil rights cases where comrades were victorious. The Party played a key role in the 1960s civil rights movement, long championing Malcolm X. The Party-run Pathfinder Press was Malcolm's first publisher.

The SWP reached its height during the Vietnam war, growing to as many as 3000 comrades. It played a key role organizing the antiwar demonstration on April 24th, 1971, the largest ever antiwar demonstration in US history. Together with the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters' strikes, this was one of only two occasions when the Party exercised political influence well beyond its small size. It is during Vietnam period that the majority of today's comrades were recruited--I also date from that time.

Jack Barnes, who turns 85 this year, has been national secretary (the vaguely Stalinist term for CEO) since 1972. That's 54 years in office--a tenure that's much too long. (There is at least a hint of corruption resulting from such a long tenure.) He and his one-time squeeze, Mary-Alice Waters, were both recruited to the Party in 1960 from Carleton College, where they were members of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Defense of the Cuban "Revolution" has been a raison d'être for the movement ever since.

Though things are getting increasingly desperate for that benighted isle. The Militant rises to the "Revolution's" defense with headlines such as Build protests now to defend Cuba’s sovereignty! US hands off Cuba!, authored by Mr. Barnes himself. More pathetic is Join protests, demand: ‘US hands off Cuba!’ The picture shows a dozen or so elderly people forlornly standing up for Castro's kleptocrats.

“Hands Off Cuba!” picket at Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis June 3, called by area Cuba Committee. It was one of dozens across the country, worldwide. (Picture & Caption: The Militant)

The Party's position is that ALL (100%) of Cuba's problems are due to the US blockade. But the blockade is simply the icing on the cake. The country was founded on the principle of stealing from rich people. Not surprisingly, all the rich people left and built prosperous lives for themselves in Miami. Having squandered the wealth of rich people, the Castroites started stealing from the middle class. In particular they reduced skilled professionals to slaves. For example, in terms of purchasing power doctors in Cuba only earn between $15 and $20 per month! (According to ChatGPT)

Needless to say, the middle class has now fled the country--can you blame them? In particular, anybody with the technical skill to maintain the electrical grid is long gone. So no wonder Cuba can't keep the lights on anymore.

As the Castro government cannibalized economic infrastructure (eg, Cuba went from being the world's largest sugar exporter, to--in some years--being a sugar importer) the country depended on handouts. These initially came from the Soviet Union, and then subsequently from fellow kleptocrats in Venezuela--both regimes longstanding enemies of the United States. The Soviets even put nuclear-tipped missiles on the island, aimed at the USA. Apparently the Chinese use Cuba for electronic spying. So no wonder Uncle Sam is kind of pissed, and is finally doing something about the problem.

So Jack and Mary-Alice are getting really old, and the Cuban lodestar is fading fast. There is no younger leadership. Oh, there is, namely the comrades of my generation, who are roughly 10 years younger than the decrepit duo. Whatever--there doesn't appear to be any succession plan, and it's too late for one now anyway.

Marco Rubio memorably describes Cuba this way:

Cuba's in a lot of trouble because, unfortunately for them, it's run by a bunch of incompetent communists. Being a communist is bad. Being an incompetent communist is the worst.

That's a fair appraisal of Cuba--but not so of the SWP. For the Party was at least competent--at least compared to all other Trotskyist grouplets. Their communist doctrine never accurately described the American economy--certainly not post-WWII. Today it's just totally wrong, as I've detailed at length in this blog. So it was never going to become a mass Party with the prospect of taking state power. Most recently they've been pipped by the Democratic Socialists of America--who are campaigning hard on antisemitism.

So today, the biggest accomplishment of the SWP is that they exist--just as the banner says. It appears they will outlive Cuba's kleptocratic "Revolution." Will they survive the passing of Jack Barnes? There are reasons to be skeptical. But I understand (from commenter John B) that they have several million dollars in the bank--so they'll probably soldier on until the money runs out.

The Fading Fumes of Trotskyism

 

Jack Barnes

Jeff Mackler

Jack Barnes' biography has yet to be written, and I am certainly not the one to write it. I've never met the man apart from being in the audience at a few of his Oberlin presentations. All I know is what I've heard through the grapevine (and from Wikipedia). Along with his life-long companion, Mary-Alice Waters, he attended Carleton College, and in 1960 joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. That brought him and Ms. Waters into contact with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)--in those days an avowedly Trotskyist Party in fraternal solidarity with the Trotskyist Fourth International. In 1972 he became National Secretary (top leader) of the Party, a post he has held ever since. Comrade Mary-Alice followed him on to the Political Committee, a status she continues to hold.

So support for the Cuban "Revolution" is in the core DNA of the Party, even today. Almost every issue of The Militant contains articles about Cuba, this week's being no exception. This is noteworthy because the Party has evolved its opinions on many other topics, eg,

• They no longer refer to themselves as "Trotskyist," and have broken ties with the Fourth International.
• They have distanced themselves from Wokeism, and no longer associate with the petty-bourgeois, identity movements so common elsewhere on the Left.
• They support Israel against Hamas, which they regard (correctly) as a fascist death cult.

Today the Party consists of about 100 comrades (with perhaps 200 sympathizers), down from around 2000 in the early 70s. It's an aging crowd--the median age is likely over 70 by now. They'll survive Jack Barnes (who turns 85 this year), but I doubt they'll make it too much longer than that.

I think the end of the SWP and the end of the Cuban "Revolution" are likely to occur simultaneously. When Cuba is no longer "revolutionary," then the Party's very raison d'etre is gone. Without their allegiance to the Cuban Commies the SWP simply becomes a rather weird group of Trump supporters.

So people have been predicting the imminent demise of the "Revolution" for many decades now--and such predictions have so far come to naught. I think that's because the soothsayers have misunderstood the fate of Cuba: the "Revolution" isn't going out with a bang, but instead with a whimper. Rather than a cataclysmic end to the regime, it will instead just gradually and literally die away and fade into the dustbin of history.

In this, the "Revolution" is like the SWP. The Party won't end by Jack Barnes turning off the lights at the National Office. Instead there will be a gradual aging and shrinking until there is effectively nothing left. The historical analogy is the Socialist Labor Party, a once vital movement that faded into a website that ended when the last keeper of the flame passed away. It's gonna take another 20 years, but this is also how the Socialist Workers Party will end.

And so it is with Cuba. There will likely never be a counter-revolution in Cuba, but instead the country will cease to be a civilized, cohesive society. It's already close to that--most of the island is without electricity for most or all of the day, and transport is today mostly by oxcart and donkey.

The country is in steep demographic decline. You can't trust the Cuban government numbers (echoed by the United Nations)--those are certified fake. The government still counts as residents people who left the island less than two years ago--which obviously inflates the population numbers. According to official numbers, in 2024 the population of the island was 9,748,532. As mentioned, this ignores the large out-migration that began in 2020. According to the Universidad de Navarra in an article by Agustina Rodríguez Granja (emphasis mine)

The Cuban government refuses to give concrete figures on the recent massive outflow of citizens, claiming that until they have been out of the country for two years, they are still considered residents. This forces researchers to collect data from the receiving countries and to draw their own models. The conclusion of Cuban demographer and economist Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos is that in reality only 8.62 million people reside on the island, pointing to an 18% decrease in population between 2022 and 2023. Thus, more than one million people would have left Cuba since 2021, a Issue that is in line with the number of Cubans registered in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in other countries.

She goes on to write,

Based on the number of Cubans who entered the United States and the count that on other occasions this direct migration to the U.S. has represented in the overall Cuban migration, Albizu-Campos extrapolates that the total number of Cubans who left the island between 2021 and 2024 is close to an estimated 1.79 million.

The people who are leaving are typically working age, and disproportionately female of childbearing age. The government is letting them leave likely because they don't want rebellion at home. But eventually the "Revolution" will be reduced to a bunch of old people without electricity, subsisting by growing food on whatever land they can get ahold of.

It's not just the fading fumes of Cuba. It's also the fading fumes of the Socialist Workers Party. 

Speaking of fading fast, I haven't read a biography of Jeff Mackler, either. I also have never met him, but I think his bio might actually be very short--perhaps only one word: pathetic.

Mr. Mackler is the "national secretary" of the nearly defunct Socialist Action organization. That grouplet, which fancies itself as the "vanguard party," likely consists of a couple dozen comrades. It's gotten so small and so devoid of talent that I've taken to referring to Mr. Mackler as Vanguard Man, ie, the very last, living leader of the coming American revolution. 

The last formal edition of their newspaper was published in June, 2022, and since then their webpage has struggled with content. As I predicted back in January, it appears that Mr. Mackler (who is in his 80s) is no longer capable of leadership. So Vanguard Man is fading out, and it's not clear whose gonna lead us into the next revolutionary era.

The most recent post in Socialist Action, dated April 30th, is entitled Socialist Action General Membership Meeting for Comrades and Friends. It reads in full (except for details of Zoom meeting that was held on May 4th),

Comrades and Friends,

Join us this coming Sunday, May 4 at 5 pm PST [7 PM Midwest and 8 pm EST] for our Socialist Action ZOOM general membership meeting.

Reply to David.huseth@tutanota.com, John Pottinger <jpottinger@earthlink.net>, Jeff Mackler <jmackler@lmi.net>

Proposed agenda:

Analysis of Democrat’s “Hands Off” and “50 50 1,” • Defense of Palestine • May May/Immigrant Rights • New SA Members •  Fourth International World Congress Assessment and SA’s termination of fraternal membership. • Other business.

Comradely.

David and John

I don't know David Huseth, but John Pottinger was a comrade of mine in Chicago back in the day. He's a perfectly fine, upstanding gentleman against whom I bear no grudge--but frankly, he is woefully unqualified to assume the role of Vanguard Man. At very least he lacks the editorial talent. Note that prior to this April 30th announcement, the last post to their webpage was on March 20th.

No word yet on the outcome of the general membership meeting. But honestly, along with Mr. Mackler, it appears that Socialist Action is passing from this mortal coil. Which is a bit surprising--I expected the SWP to go first. 

There's more, of course. One shouldn't forget Left Voice, a claque of petty bourgeois academics that suffer from an overdose of Wokeism, a hatred of Jews, and of all the ills that beset the modern academy (eg, among other things, the advent of AI). These people aren't serious.

There is the nearly forgotten Socialist Viewpoint, a bi-monthly magazine edited by an aging group of spinsters formerly associated with Nat Weinstein's grouplet. And I can't forget Workers' Voice, which is in part a split-off from Socialist Action, and which now claims to be a vanguard party all its own.

The most significant remnant of Trotskyism is Solidarity, which isn't really Trotskyist anymore (not that anybody else is), but has instead become an addendum to the Democratic Party.

Anyway, I find all of this increasingly meaningless and boring, which is why I'm uninspired to write. There's no point. I won't end this blog--something will come along that inspires--but it's probably gonna be less frequent than it has been.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us
• American Brezhnevism Today
• Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again

 

Cosmetics, Cuba & Mary-Alice Waters

From left, Esther Pérez, Mary-Alice Waters and Martín Koppel at the podium in Havana
(Source: Militant/Jonathan Silberman)

Contrary to my prediction, octogenarian Mary-Alice Waters really did make another trip to Cuba in February--and took a whole bevy of comrades with her (as best as I can determine, including Martín Koppel, Jonathan Silberman, Rachele Fruit and Philippe Tessier). Ms. Waters is second in command of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and longtime consort to chief honcho and similarly aged Jack Barnes. 

The occasion was the Havana Book Fair, and the topic of Mary-Alice's speech was a new edition (2024) of Cosmetics, Fashion and the Exploitation of Women, recently translated into Spanish by a Cuban, Esther Pérez.  The original authors were Joseph Hansen and Evelyn Reed, while the new edition includes contributions by Ms. Waters.  Her speech is reprinted in The Militant under the title ‘Fight for women’s equality is part of battle on world scale to settle which class will rule’. A companion article, by Rachele Fruit and Philippe Tessier, is headed Lively exchange at Havana book launch.

There are at least two things weird about the above photo. First are the microphones on the table. Authors Fruit and Tessier tell us that about 30 people attended the session. It hardly seems necessary to have a sound system, especially since Cuba is busy liberating itself from electricity use. After last Saturday's additional power failure, a reasonable estimate is that only 10% of demand is satisfied. It seems unlikely that the microphones even work. Why are they even there?

The second weird thing--recall this is a talk nominally about cosmetics and how evil capitalists have bamboozled women into buying them--is that octogenarian Mary-Alice has obviously dyed her hair! Compare her hair color with that of Esther Pérez--a woman likely younger than Ms. Waters, but who, living in Cuba, doesn't even have access to cheap hair dye.

In my prior article (Mary-Alice on Cosmetics & Fashion) I challenged Ms. Waters:

As a test, Ms. Waters should go to the dollar store and buy a bunch of cheap cosmetics that she can take with her next time she goes to Cuba (if she ever goes to Cuba again). She can pass them out to local women, whom I hazard will be overjoyed to receive them, without any encouragement from the bourgeoisie. Just a little bit of beauty to brighten their otherwise dark, dreary, boring days.

At very least she could've brought along some hair dye to share with her loyal translator. It would seem like the right thing to do.

The gist of Mary-Alice's speech was that women are oppressed, not just by men, but mostly by "capitalism" (whatever that is--Mary-Alice has no clue). The depths of their oppression is illustrated by the fact that they are hoodwinked into buying cosmetics that (according to Mary-Alice) they 1) don't need, 2) are dangerous, and 3) are similar to addictive drugs, such as fentanyl.

To which my responses are: 1) maybe women don't need cosmetics (who is Ms. Waters to tell women what they need?), but surely they enjoy having them. Cuban women probably have bigger problems than a lack of cosmetics (eg, adjusting to no electricity), but I still think had Mary-Alice taken my advice, she would've brightened the day of a few Cuban ladies. Cheapskate!

2) Ms. Waters mentions a few edge cases where cosmetics--broadly understood--might be dangerous. Her examples are mostly around cosmetic surgery, which I agree is perhaps taking the passion too far. But L'Oreal is the biggest cosmetics company in the world, and I don't think she can reasonably claim that any of their products are dangerous. 

3) They're addicting--which is true, but so is everything else that's pleasurable. I take great joy in being able to turn on electric lights in the evening. Does that mean that I'm addicted to electricity? Are her Cuban comrades better off being free of such an addiction?

Ms. Waters summarizes her talk at the end by asking and answering two questions.

The first question is: Are the issues addressed in a debate about cosmetics and fashion many decades ago still relevant? Haven’t “we” moved beyond that?

Second: Hasn’t knowledge of the earliest human societies moved far beyond what was known in the early 1950s? Isn’t Evelyn Reed’s article on “Anthropology: Marxist or Bourgeois?” outdated for that reason?

This is her answer to question one:

More than three centuries after the birth of industrial capitalism, we can say that the resources devoted by capitalist enterprises to advertising and the creation of markets — that is, creating “needs” that don’t naturally exist — have expanded astronomically, and continue to expand. 

Which demonstrates that she knows nothing about capitalism. To me, the most succinct definition of capitalism is an economic order designed to maximize consumption. Capitalists want you to shop till you drop.

Contrast that with socialism, where consumer wants are to be rationed by the government. Under socialism you can buy cosmetics only if the State approves the sale of cosmetics. Mary-Alice is convinced that nobody (except her) needs cosmetics, and therefore you should be prohibited from buying them. Apparently in Cuba they've decided that nobody needs electricity, either.

Sure--you can complain about overconsumption or even wasteful spending. But I think those are minor problems compared with the problem that afflicts most of the world, namely under-consumption, aka poverty. The problem in Cuba has nothing to do with who owns the means of production or who gets to distribute the proceeds. The problem is poverty. That's all it is. Cubans aren't allowed to buy what they want to buy.

Ms, Waters responds to the second question merely by asking another: Who needs any stinkin' research anyway? Some 60+ years ago she read a book entitled The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, by Friedrich Engels, first published in 1884. That book is the absolute truth when it comes to anthropology. Why? Because it's "materialist," whatever that means.

In the intervening six decades Mary-Alice has refused to read anything new in the human sciences. Whenever confronted by novelty she sticks her fingers in her ears and sings loudly "LA LA LA LA..." to drown out any contrary information.

She's never heard of evolutionary psychology. Indeed, it appears she denies the theory of evolution altogether. She doesn't know what the human genome is, much less the astounding discoveries made over the past couple of decades. She's unfamiliar with radiocarbon dating. She's resoundingly ignorant of basic economics. Amazingly, she denies that humans are a sexually dimorphic species. Hell, she probably hasn't even read Sigmund Freud (who is, at very least, a pleasurable read).

She's a complete ignoramus, and we can safely ignore her opinions. Whether in English or Spanish, Cosmetics... is not a serious book.

Further Reading:

• The End of Cuban Civilization
• Steve Clark's Bizarre Book Bazaar
• Book Review: Human Diversity

Havana, Boston

The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party, SWP) published two, backward-looking articles in its issue dated January 20. The first, by Sara Lobman, is a hopelessly sentimental account of the Cuban "Revolution." The lede paragraph sets the tone.

“Under the leadership of Fidel Castro, the Cuban people carried out a successful socialist revolution by uniting working people on the basis of a program that championed their own independent class interests,” Socialist Workers Party National Committee member Róger Calero told some 60 people at a special meeting here Jan. 5. The gathering was a celebration of the 66th anniversary of the Jan. 1, 1959, Cuban Revolution and to demand an immediate end to Washington’s decadeslong economic war aimed at crushing the Cuban people and overturning their revolution.

It stretches credulity to count the so-called "socialist revolution" as a success. Today's Cuba--which is fearlessly leading us into a post-electric future--is not only short on electric power, but now can no longer feed or house its population. There's even a water shortage, since without electricity the water pumps don't work. Presumably neither do the sewage treatment plants.

There is almost no transport on the island. Above is a satellite view of central Havana taken from Google Maps. It shows the four-lane Malecon merging into the seven-lane Tunel de la Habana. Amidst all those lanes, there are only three (3) vehicles in view! Clearly, Cuba does not have a traffic congestion problem.

The source of the problem--according to both the SWP and the Cuban government--is America's "decadeslong economic war aimed at crushing the Cuban people and overturning their revolution." Well, the Cuban people certainly are crushed--of that there is no doubt. But for what? Is the "Revolution" worth anything more than the silly propaganda posters displayed everywhere on the island? What has Cuba gained by earning the undying enmity of the USA? Nothing, so far as I can see. Indeed, the only people who perceived any benefit to the "Revolution" were the 60 people in attendance at the meeting upon which Ms. Lobman reports.

None of the other Trotskyist grouplets on my Beat even bother to talk about Cuba--likely because it's too embarrassing. They don't talk about Venezuela, either. They're not willing to tout the ox-cart as the latest in socialist transportation solutions.

Basically, socialism sucks. Forget about Cuba Libre. I'll settle for a Cuba with abundant food, clean running water, livable housing, and a bustling marketplace in the city center. If that means cozying up to the USA, then so be it.

The second article, by Susan Lamont, is a peon to the good ol' days, entitled ‘Battle of Boston’ 50 years ago helped change US class struggle. I remember it well, for this was my swansong as I was well on my way out of the Movement by that then.

The event surrounded a rather bitter fight to desegregate Boston's public schools. The premise was that Black children would learn more if they sat next to white children. That was always implausible because the white children--or at least their parents--were adamantly against any Black kids in their schools. There were more or less violent protests as the occasionally racist, white parents objected to the destruction of what had hitherto been their neighborhood school.

The upshot relevant to me was an effort to form a national movement in favor of school bussing--called the National Student Coalition Against Racism, or NSCAR. The premise was ludicrous: 

1) Pretty much everybody is against racism, which made it unclear who are opponents were to be. Indeed, the only opposition we confronted were working class parents in a white neighborhood who wanted to preserve their neighborhood school.

2) The Black kids weren't keen on being bussed long distances to schools where they obviously weren't welcome.

3) The issue was mostly about Boston geography, and didn't catch on as a national crusade.

So NSCAR had exactly one meeting, and somehow I got shanghaied into driving my car with a load of comrades to attend the meeting. And I did do that--on the first day. It was extraordinarily, excruciatingly, unendingly boring. They'd rented an auditorium seating about 500 people, of which perhaps 150 seats were taken. Most attendees were comrades, but there were a few ultraleft sectarians mixed in (I think Workers' League). The only interesting moments were the rare instances when one of the sectarians got to speak--at least that wasn't completely predictable. I doubt there were more than 20 "independents" in the whole crowd.

Needless to say, it was the first, last, and only NSCAR meeting ever held--long forgotten until Ms. Lamont chose to resurrect it in this article.

Fortunately for me, I met a fellow comrade from another city who was as bored with the proceedings as I was. And since we were more interested in exploring Boston than sitting thru another day of BS, we arranged for digs as far from the conference site as we dared go, and then spent the next morning and into the afternoon exploring Boston. It's a glorious city and I'm so glad we did that!

So around 3pm we sheepishly showed up at the conference site, hoping to escape unnoticed. Didn't happen, because as soon as we walked in a prominent comrade--no longer in the Movement, but a man of some accomplishment--confronted us and asked what happened. We confessed, but didn't apologize. We got the side eye expression of disapproval--but then nothing. We didn't get reported to any higher-ups or subjected to any further discipline.

It was my first time as a comrade where I behaved "irresponsibly." I learned my lesson--and vowed never to be "responsible" again. I spent another year as a nominal, inactive member, and then dropped out completely. My fellow comrade behaved similarly.

Bussing has long since died. The effort was very disruptive and seriously damaged the public schools. It was also completely unnecessary. I asked ChatGPT:

How do the demographics of Boston Public Schools compare with the school age population of Boston as a whole?

It answered (excerpt only):

The racial composition of Boston Public Schools (BPS) differs notably from that of Boston's overall school-age population.

Boston Public Schools (BPS) Demographics (2023):

Hispanic/Latino: 44% 

Black or African American: 28%

Asian: 9%

White: 15%

Other/Multi-Racial: 4%

Boston's School-Age Population Demographics (2018-2019):

Black: 45%

White: 24%

Hispanic: 19%

Asian: 3%

Other: 9% 

I disagree with ChatGPT. Apart from a significant discrepancy among Hispanics, it doesn't seem like BPS demographics are way out of whack. Please tell me what problem here will be solved by bussing?

Further Reading:

• The End of Cuban Civilization
• Chicago: Ilona Gersh Runs for Mayor
• Louis Proyect Denies Being a White Supremacist

Mary-Alice on Cosmetics & Fashion

Advertisement from around 1950. Cubans today wish they had a refrigerators filled with food.
(Picture Source: The Militant)

The octogenarian comrade Mary-Alice Waters opines on the status of women using a book first published in 1986 as a guide: Cosmetics, Fashion and the Exploitation of Women. She celebrates the new edition, which occasions this series of three articles from and about the book. The original book contains articles by old Party stalwarts, Joseph Hansen and Evelyn Reed. ("Party" refers to the Socialist Workers Party, SWP, publishers of The Militant.)

The first article is the new preface authored by Ms. Waters. The second article is the first chapter, also authored by Ms. Waters. Finally are some short reflections on the book by a Cuban woman, Isabel Moya, given as a speech in Havana in 2011 (back when Cuba still had electricity).

The first sentences of Ms. Waters' preface were for me a disappointment:

Title notwithstanding, Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women is not a book about cosmetics.

It is about capitalism.

Geez, I'm more interested in cosmetics and fashion. In The Militant every article is about "capitalism." The paper gets interesting only when they talk about something else. Besides which, Ms. Waters knows nothing about how capitalism actually works. 

Fortunately the excerpts cover other topics as well, notably economics, biology, anthropology, psychology and politics. Wow! It's a pastiche of factoids from beginning to end.

Unfortunately, Ms. Waters seems to think all progress in the social sciences ended in 1881, when the "materialist" anthropologist Lewis Morgan died. Or perhaps in 1895 when Friedrich Engels passed. Or maybe into the early 20th Century with Morgan's disciple, Robert Briffault. But nothing since the dawn of jet aircraft, or computers, or the internet, or mobile telephony, or the dramatic progress science has made studying human genomics. None of this crosses her radar screen--because if it did it would readily disprove her thesis. She can win the argument only by plugging her ears and pretending progress doesn't exist.

Her thesis is that humans are distinctive because we "labor." She quotes Evelyn Reed (italics in original):

Beauty has no identity with fashion. But it has an identity with labor. Apart from

the realm of nature, all that is beautiful has been produced in labor and by laborers.

Well? Maybe. Though it seems to me the fundamental human characteristic is not that we labor (beavers also labor), but that we trade. No other species on the planet engages in trade. Indeed, in an era when Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens shared the space, Neanderthal products are always found near where they were made. Human products, on the other hand, are often found hundreds of miles from where they were made. Perhaps labor can be defined as the act of making something for purposes of trade? In other words, labor exists to make the customer happy.

I'm not sure how Ms. Reed defines labor, but I think I disagree with her quote. People often produce beautiful things without any expectation of financial reward. And it is true--they "labor." But if made for personal use, then they don't trade, just like a beaver doesn't trade. Women (and some men) apply cosmetics to make themselves beautiful--and it is not done for any financial reward.

Regards cosmetics, Ms. Waters proposes some serious conspiracy theory.

More than three centuries later, the resources devoted by capitalist enterprises to advertising and the creation of markets — that is, creating “needs” where none yet exist — are still expanding astronomically. Under the profit system, instead of advances in the productivity of social labor breaking down this mystical animation of objects that working people ourselves have made, the working class and lower middle classes are pushed into “needing” more and more things. Everything from each new cell phone release, to the latest model automobile, $500 torn blue jeans, and an exploding array of “cosmetic” surgeries, skin bleaches or tanning salons, designer handbags, and cosmetics-designed-to-make-you-look-like-you’re-not-using-cosmetics.

That is, women buy cosmetics only because they are foisted on them by a rapacious, scheming capitalist class. This is ridiculous! Women buy cosmetics because they want to, not because they've been bamboozled by the bourgeoisie. Working class women are way smarter than our comrade gives them credit for.

As a test, Ms. Waters should go to the dollar store and buy a bunch of cheap cosmetics that she can take with her next time she goes to Cuba (if she ever goes to Cuba again). She can pass them out to local women, whom I hazard will be overjoyed to receive them, without any encouragement from the bourgeoisie. Just a little bit of beauty to brighten their otherwise dark, dreary, boring days.

I'm not going to detail Ms. Waters' description of capitalism, but a few things need clarification. First, the declining rate of profit refers only to commodities, ie, products that compete only on price, such as gasoline. All other products, like most branded products, will compete on factors other than price. A commodity smart phone costs about $50; the latest iPhone will set you back more than $800! The iPhone, which competes on style and functionality, is not a commodity, and the profit margin on that product is huge.

The bottom line is that consumers determine the price for all non-commodity products. Apple will charge whatever consumers are willing to pay. The cosmetics you buy at the dollar store are commodities. The cosmetics you get from L'Oréal are definitely not commodities. 

The second and most important point is that Comrade Mary-Alice is a Luddite. She doesn't think there should be any pleasure in the world. Buying something that makes one more beautiful or more stylish is, in her opinion, just the bourgeoisie messing with your mind. She's wrong. America is a rich country because you can buy refrigerators full of food, shelves full of cosmetics, closets full of clothes, garages with two cars, and vacations to some of the finest beaches in the world. Compare that to consumers in that socialist heaven-state, Cuba, who can't even buy food or fresh water.

The measure of any society is the level of consumption--and Americans are by far the best consumers in the world. That's why everybody on the planet wants to move here. You can't eliminate poverty without increasing consumption--neither the Cubans nor the Chinese have learned that lesson yet.

Ms. Waters, in her preface, lists a whole bunch of bad things that happen to women, eg, "the stoning of women for adultery," and "government dictates that a woman must cover her hair, or face, or entire body, and that even her voice should never be heard in public." Most of the examples are from pre-modern societies (eg, Afghanistan) and do not represent the lives of women in the capitalist world. Nevertheless, our friendly comrade induces from her examples that women are systematically oppressed and are second class citizens.

This is not generally true, partly because she omits the list of bad things that happen to men, eg, dying by the thousands of the trenches in WW1. Or, quoting Robert Gordon, describing life prior to 1870, "men's work was dirty and dangerous, while women's toil was unremitting drudgery." It's hard to say one sex was more oppressed than the other. Life was hard all the way round.

Women are sometimes subordinated and oppressed. More generally they're not--instead they're protected and cherished. The fundamental error that Marxists (including Ms. Waters) make is that they believe evolution stopped the minute human beings came along. They claim that culture has supplanted biology. But this is false--it's more accurate to say that culture has augmented biology. Indeed, culture is itself a product of evolution, and conversely, culture dramatically influences the reproductive success of various human ethnicities. Thus culture drives evolution. The modern term for this is gene-culture co-evolution.

Men and women are biologically different. We evolved separately for different roles in reproduction. All cultures distinguish between men and women--there is no culture on earth where they are regarded interchangeably. Most of the differences between men and women in today's modern capitalist society stem, directly or indirectly, from those fundamental, biological differences. 

Mary-Alice is wrong to consider all differences to be examples of oppression.

Let me close with a poem (that only a woman could write) by Dulce María Loynaz, quoted by Isabel Loya. I include it here just because I like it.

If you love me, love me whole,
       not by zones of light or shadow …
If you love me, love me black
       and white, and gray and green,
       and blonde and dark …
Love me by day,
       love me by night …
And by morning in the open window!
If you love me, don’t break me
       in pieces:
Love me whole … or don’t
       love me at all!

Further Reading:

• Book Review: Human Diversity 
• Down the Cuba Rabbit Hole With Mary-Alice Waters
• Mary-Alice Waters' Religious View of History

Three Militant Articles on the Economy

While energy prices have gone down, most items working people depend on are still rising today.
(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Caption: The Militant)

All three articles are from the August 7th issue of The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party, SWP). and two of them are only indirectly about the economy. The first piece is entitled Why do liberals claim that US capitalism is on the upswing?  and is authored by The Militant's economics correspondent, Brian Williams. The second, by Seth Galinsky, is headlined Teamsters union says tentative agreement reached with UPS. Finally, there is an editorial under the banner Cuba’s socialist revolution points way forward for working people.

Mr. Williams gets it mostly right--but tells only one side of the story. He agrees with Republican partisans that the economy is going to hell in a handbasket, with this lede (links mine)

If you go by what the liberal big-business media are saying, the economy is on the verge of a boom, with prices dropping and fears of a wrenching recession fading away. Among a plethora of articles pushing this view include: “Everything’s coming up soft landing,” by New York Times economic whiz Paul Krugman, and “US economy shifts into disinflation mode,” by Reuters.

Not true, claims Mr. Williams, and he cites the above chart as evidence, saying 

But this doesn’t mean that prices of goods essential for working people don’t continue to bite us. Rents rose by 8.3% over the past year. Prices for grocery items workers need kept going up — cereals, up 16%; jelly and jam, up 17.5%; mayonnaise, 23%; applesauce, 22%, for example.

Some of the steepest rises were for the cost of insuring a vehicle, up 17% in June. And the cost of keeping your car running rose 12.7% from a year earlier.

He's right in holding Mr. Krugman to account, who claims that fuel, food and rent can be ignored in any meaningful measure of inflation.

There are plenty of voices in the media who, like Mr. Williams, argue that we're heading for a recession. Indeed, the whole Republican party makes that claim, for obvious electoral reasons. The popular website Zerohedge.com makes that case in spades. And they might be right.

On the other hand, it may be no recession is on the near horizon. A popular meme today is, instead of a "soft-landing", there will be "no-landing", that is the economy will continue to grow at a rate proportional to population growth and new technology, i.e., 1 - 2%. But the cost will be continued inflation at or above 3%. My opinion (today; I change my mind every week or so) is this is the most likely outcome, though I'll hazard inflation will be more like 5%.

Mr. Williams makes a huge error, for which we can fault Marxism to which he is beholden. He writes,

Bosses and government spokespeople claim that the biggest problem with inflation is it impels workers to fight for higher wages, leading to what they claim is a “wage-price spiral.” This just isn’t true. When workers organize and use unions to fight and win higher wages, it just means profits go down. Profits are what the bosses steal from the fruits of our labor.

Marxism claims that capital should cost nothing. This will never be true, no matter who owns it. The statement that higher wages always come out of profits is also usually wrong. Most often higher wages result in higher prices, just as the "bosses" claim.

He goes on to say that "...workers’ real wages are currently 3.2% lower than in December 2020." Perhaps this is true--there are uncertainties in measurement that make it debatable. But more important, there have been pandemic-driven changes in the economy that confound any simple comparison. For example, consumer preferences have changed from goods (which manufacture pays relatively high wages) to services (which pay relatively low wages). This will result in lower overall wages, but not because of inflation.

More, Mr. Galinsky, writing about the UPS settlement with the Teamsters Union, writes

According to the Teamsters’ press release, all current full- and part-time UPS workers will get a $7.50 per hour wage increase over the life of the contract, starting with $2.75 more this year. That comes to about an average of 6.5% a year.

Six and one half percent is well over the rate of inflation. Unions do best when there is a labor shortage, forcing all companies to pay more for labor, whether they're unionized or not. Walmart, Amazon and Starbucks have all raised their wages recently. No union is required to get a hefty raise.

I think The Militant fundamentally misunderstands the union movement. Unionists are not revolutionaries in the making. They're certainly not communists. Any union member will understand that a company has to make a profit in order to stay in business (see, e.g., here). The last thing they want is for the company to go bankrupt, as is happening with Yellow Freight, putting nearly 30,000 teamsters out of a job. At their core, unions are pro-company and pro-capitalist. They resent organizations like the SWP, who see unions merely as a tool to help the vanguard party take state power. See, e.g., the Labor Notes movement.

Finally, the editors reprint an excerpt from Castro's speech titled History will absolve me. This speech was delivered in 1953,  It is an agenda for the "revolution," which at that point was still in the future. It is entirely appropriate to compare Castro's promises with the outcome today. What follows are some quotes (taken from the excerpt of the speech published by the editors), with my comments in red (which are so obvious they're hardly necessary).

• When we talk about the people, in terms of struggle, we mean the 600,000 Cubans without work, who want to earn their daily bread honestly without having to emigrate from their homeland in search of a job. Since the "revolution" millions of people have fled the island in search of jobs and a better life, with more arriving in the US every day. 1.2 million Cuban-Americans live in Miami alone.
• The 500,000 farmworkers who live in miserable huts, who work four months of the year and starve the rest, sharing their poverty with their children; who don’t have an inch of land to till and whose lives would move any heart not made of stone. Nothing has changed here. Farmworkers still live in miserable huts, still don't own any land, and still lack enough food to live well on.
• The 400,000 industrial workers and laborers whose retirement funds have been embezzled; whose gains won in the past are being taken away; whose homes are hellish shacks that resemble the worst barracks; whose wages pass from the hands of the boss to those of the moneylender; whose future is a cut in pay and loss of a job; whose life is endless toil; whose only rest is the grave. Today industrial workers and laborers have no retirement funds, and their salaries are less than $100/month. A UPS employee earns that much in under five hours.
• The 20,000 small merchants, crushed by debt, ruined by the crisis, and dealt the final blow by a plague of thieving, venal officials. Today small merchants are crushed by even more venal officials, and are not allowed to run even the smallest businesses without bureaucratic oversight and corruption.
• The 10,000 young professionals: doctors, engineers, lawyers, veterinarians, school teachers, dentists, pharmacists, journalists, painters, sculptors, and others who leave school with a degree, looking for a way to fight, full of hope, only to find themselves at a dead end with all doors closed and deaf to their pleas and outrage. With all doors closed to them in Cuba, these are the people who have fled to Miami and have turned that city into the financial and cultural capital of Latin America.

Not only will history not absolve him, it will condemn him! It is obvious that by the standards of its own promises, the "revolution" has been an abject failure. The SWP and The Militant are strong supporters of the Cuban, so-called "revolution. By reprinting this, The Militant's editors show just how clueless they really are. This is just face-plant stupid.

Further Reading:

• Unions and Work From Home
• Professor Wants to Shut Down CUNY
• Lost in the Amazon

Louisville, Cincinnati, Havana

Maggie Trowe, at podium, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, and Anthony Dutrow, right, member of the SWP National Committee, talk about political opportunities ahead as SWP members move to Cincinnati, at Oct. 2 Militant Labor Forum.
(Photo & caption source: Amy Husk/Militant)

The October 25th issue of The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) brings us tidings from Louisville, Kentucky. But not for long--because the whole branch is moving a hundred miles up the road to Cincinnati.

The announcement was made in the weirdest possible way. Maggie Trowe is running for mayor of Louisville, and has actually gotten a bit of media attention, including a nice write-up in the Courier-Journal. (See also here and here.) But it seems to no avail, for apparently the campaign is too hot for her, so she and her comrades are hightailing it to Cincinnati.

Eighteen people attended the forum "including four workers from two Walmart stores where members of the SWP had worked. A young woman, who met party members earlier that day at an action to defend a woman’s right to choose an abortion, brought a friend."

Leave it to the Party's mayoral candidate to invite special guests and possible new recruits only to announce that she's decided to cut and run. This rises to Macklerian levels of unseriousness.

The reason for the move is the usual grass is greener elsewhere boilerplate.

“We think in Cincinnati we’ll have greater opportunities to join in union battles and at the same time build a branch of the SWP in a city with a long tradition of class struggle, an industrial center in the Midwest,” Dutrow said. “And where there have been important struggles against racist oppression and police brutality, like those we’ve been part of in Louisville.”

Though timing and manner of the announcement notwithstanding, the move does make sense. The population of metro Cincinnati (2,256,884 from 2020 census), is the 30th largest city in the country, and the largest in Ohio. It's almost double the population of metro Louisville (1,285,439), the 45th biggest city in the nation. So Ohio's Queen City is a bigger sandbox.

I've been to both cities, but know Cincinnati better. My first visit there must have been in the late 80s, when I was living in Buffalo, NY. I went to visit a friend of mine from grad school, by then engaged at the Univ. of Cincinnati. He was a foreign student from Taiwan named Mr. Wong. I've sadly lost touch with him--and it's impossible to locate a Chinese guy named Wong, when a) he's almost certainly moved back to Taiwan, and b) the English spelling does not specify which Chinese character he uses for his name.

Anyway, my friend from Taiwan gave me the grand tour of Cincinnati. The first thing I did was learn how to spell the place. Then we had to eat some chili--I liked it. He drove me to Kentucky just so I could say I'd been there. Of course we spent time at his lab at the University, and then we walked around town. He knew nothing about baseball, but he did point out the P&G buildings downtown.

I wish Ms. Trowe luck in her campaign for mayor of Cincinnati--assuming she stays there long enough to make it happen.

Moving on to Havana: The Militant scored an interview with a foreign dignitary. The conversation is described in an article entitled ‘Cuban Revolution: a challenge to US imperialism’, by Martín Koppel, Mary-Alice Waters and Róger Calero. The lede paragraph:

Carlos Fernández de Cossío, head of the Cuban foreign ministry’s department for U.S. affairs, was in New York at the end of September for the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly. As part of his busy schedule, he made time to sit down and talk with the Militant. He spoke about the intensified assault the world’s strongest imperialist power is today mounting against the men and women who made and continue to defend Cuba’s socialist revolution.

(Source: Cuba Escena reprinted in The Militant)

The best way to parse this is by looking at the pictures included in the article, such as the one above. The Militant's caption reads

Artists bring theater and music to El Salvador, a rural town in Cuba’s Guantánamo province Jan. 28, 2019. Socialist revolution expanded access to culture and education to millions in countryside and city.

This reminds me of rural Uganda when I lived there in the 1990s: no electricity, no telephones, no internet, no television, mostly illiterate, and only limited radio. The performers have no stage, no microphones, no props, no makeup, and no lighting. Apparently that's also how rural Cubans still live--a world of deep and desperate poverty. 

Compare with the average American, who, when they tire of the 50 channels on TV, can stream almost any content they wish from anywhere. My wife and I have been watching a Chinese soap opera called Chef Hua on YouTube. Even poorer countries are better off than Cubans--rural Filipinos at least have access to the Internet and telephones.

The "socialist revolution," far from expanding "access to culture and education," has instead vastly reduced and impoverished said culture. It's very sad.

Or consider this image

(Source: GRANMA/MIGUEL FEBLES HERNÁNDEZ, reprinted in The Militant)

The Militant's caption reads

Havana, February 2021. Medical students go door to door, making sure anyone with COVID symptoms gets needed care. For more than 60 years black Cubans have been a leading force in the socialist revolution, fighting to consolidate social and political gains of working people of all skin colors while uprooting legacy of discrimination against Cubans who are black. 

These are very strange medical students--they carry no supplies, no thermometer or stethoscopes, or any other tools. All they've got are white shirts and clipboards. Perhaps they're not medical students (or not just medical students), but rather agents from the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution--the Stasi-like secret police that hires neighbors to snitch on neighbors. The lady at the door doesn't look too happy to see them--can't say I blame her.

In the past the SWP extended "critical support" to the Castro regime, offering an occasional criticism. For example, they once dinged the Cuban government for their homophobia. But there is nothing even remotely critical in The Militant's account of Fernández de Cossío's interview. Indeed, a more credulous audience our visiting diplomat has likely never had. Surely no audience in Cuba would grant him such authority.

Here's the deal: all government officials lie. Trump lied. Biden lies. Boris Johnson lies, etc. Mr. Fernández de Cossío represents the Cuban government, and there is no way he is telling the truth. Surely any journalist with half a brain will treat his comments with some skepticism.

But not Martín Koppel, Mary-Alice Waters and Róger Calero. Their obsequiousness is embarrassing, and it discredits The Militant as a serious newspaper.

Further Reading:

• Wittenberg, 2021
• Cuba Needs More Communism!
• Down the Cuba Rabbit-Hole with Mary-Alice Waters

Cuba Needs More Communism!

If you agree with my headline, then you're likely a Trotskyist. Without exception the comrades on my Beat are unanimous in support of the "revolution." Though there are some denominational distinctions.

In broad outline, the Trotskyist story goes like this. A few hundred counter-revolutionaries organized demonstrations in cities across the island. While this was in response to rapidly deteriorating economic circumstances, the unrest was greatly magnified by US propaganda, the CIA, and/or reactionary Cubans living abroad. To counter these small and unrepresentative demonstrations, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of loyal "revolutionary" citizens took to the streets to support the "revolution."

Cuba's economic difficulties--according to my Trotskyist friends--stem entirely from the US embargo. The Militant, in an article by Seth Galinski, reports that "as a result of the embargo, they have a critical shortage of hypodermic needles for vaccination." This even though "...Cuba is the only country in Latin America to develop its own vaccines, rated as over 90% effective, and has begun massive distribution."

Which makes no sense. Despite the supposedly knee-capping embargo, Cuba has assembled the advanced biotechnology and sophisticated manufacturing wherewithal to produce a world-leading vaccine. Yet they can't manufacture their own hypodermic needles? It's even weirder since hypodermic needles are manufactured all over the world--not just in the United States--including Europe, Japan and China. Why can't Cuba buy needles from those countries? (Answer: they don't have any money.)

Besides which, hypodermic needles (and other medical supplies) are not under US embargo. Ike Nahem, in one of Socialist Action's poorly produced webinars, proudly announces that his private organization has just shipped six million hypodermic needles to Cuba all by their lonesome. Presumably without violating any US laws.

If Cuba has such a successful vaccine program, why can't they sell doses to other poor countries and earn money to buy needles? (Answer: they don't have an effective vaccine.)

The Militant (along with Socialist Action) claims that the American media has hugely overstated the importance of demonstrations by a few malcontents, by exaggerating both the numbers and the crowd's anger. Mr. Galinski says the NY Times misleadingly labels a photo as an antigovernment demonstration, when if fact it depicts a crowd of enthusiastic revolutionaries. Indeed, Mr. Galinski's article recycles the Cuban government's position hook, line and sinker, taking every word spoken by President Diaz-Canel as gospel truth.

I wasn't there. I don't know how many people marched in which demonstration, but I'm not inclined to believe The Militant. That paper--usually honest reporters--has lost its marbles when it comes to Cuba. More trustworthy is this piece by Jon Lee Anderson in the New Yorker (not exactly a right-wing source) who writes in the lede paragraph,

On Sunday, July 11th, the world took note of a historic event in Cuba, as thousands of citizens took to the streets to protest against the government. Many shouted “Patria y Vida!”—Fatherland and Life—the title of a banned but extremely popular rap song that riffs on a slogan coined by the late Fidel Castro: “Fatherland or Death.” Many also shouted “Libertad!”—Freedom—and similar phrases that are not only heretical but, when shouted in protest, illegal in Cuba, where the Communist Party is the sole legal arbiter of political life.

Socialist Resurgence takes a different tack. In an article by Ernie Gotta entitled Defend the gains of the Cuban Revolution! Free the prisoners! End the U.S. blockade!, the lede is this:

The protests in Cuba on July 11 are the symptom of a government in crisis. In some areas, the government used police to crack down on the protests. Marxist activists like Frank García Hernández and his comrades were arrested; Socialist Resurgence calls on the Cuban government for their immediate release.

The key issue is that communists were being arrested! What Cuba really needs is actual, real live Communists in control--not these crazy Castroite fakers. That's what the demonstrators were really demanding. The site reposts an article from the Cuban blog Communistas headlined A call for the freedom of detainees in Cuba.

Left Voice goes further with the idea that the Cuban government is not up to the task. A think piece by Facundo Aguirre suggests that Cuba is a deformed workers’ state, following the path of Stalinist Russia. While much is to blame on the embargo, there is also this.

For a little more than two decades, the Castroist bureaucracy has been promoting a policy of economic opening with the characteristics of restoring capitalist relations. This has led to the development of internal forces that are hostile to the revolution, particularly in the ranks of the bureaucracy itself, which controls the most profitable sectors of the economy. It is this social force of small proprietors that the pro-imperialist gusanos aim to influence as they look for a way to hitch a ride on this social movement. At the same time, imperialism hopes to influence the wealthy bureaucrats as a way to break the unity of the regime.

Of course the policy of "economic opening" was driven by necessity stemming from the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is impossible to have a growing economy if you don't put people in charge of their own resources. Back in 2013, Socialist Action's Jeff Mackler described the policy well:

The reforms indicate that the Cubans recognize the harsh reality of the economic distortions that have been wrought from their forced isolation from the world market due to the U.S.-imposed illegal embargo/blockade and related imperialist incursions. In a significant sense they are legalizing a reality—that hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers are already “employed” in tiny “business” ventures, trying to make ends meet, while they simultaneously receive subsistence wages from the state for their official job.

Some 178 areas where terminated workers can now operate as formally licensed small-scale business owners have been established.

I posted a response to Mr. Mackler's piece entitled Viva Poverty!, which I think accurately sums up the current situation.

What does Mr. Aguirre propose as the Trotskyist response?

We must not hand over the banner of democracy to imperialism and its agents. Instead, we must fight those forces, demanding an end to repression; freedom for those detained, who are mainly militants of the Left; and insisting on political freedom and freedom of organization for the Cuban masses.

It is necessary to fight for the legalization of the anti-imperialist Left parties and forces that defend the conquests of the revolution. What is required is to raise up the great mass of the Cuban people against the criminal embargo, against the restorationist policies, and against the privileges of the bureaucracy.

In a word, he advocates for more communism. His plea to extend freedom applies only to those folks who agree with Mr. Aguirre. Unfortunately for him, the demonstrations in Cuba--however big or small they were--demanded more freedom. That is freedom to be in charge of one's own life, own property, own money, and to choose a job where one wants to work.

Here we are--the great grandchildren of the "revolution" are still forced to live in abject poverty in a country where food is illegal. The last thing they want is more communism. 

Further Reading:

• Down the Cuba Rabbit-Hole with Mary Alice Waters
• The Militant Visits Manila
• Cuba

Down the Cuba Rabbit-Hole with Mary-Alice Waters

Last week I wrote about The Militant's (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) retraction of an article by Steve Warshell. My lede paragraph:

The Militant concocts more fake controversy with this post:

This week’s print edition of the Militant includes an article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” It has been withdrawn from the online edition. It does not reflect the opinion of the Militant or the Socialist Workers Party. 

Next week’s issue of the Militant will feature an editorial correcting that article.

This week's editorial--actually a long article by Mary-Alice Waters--appears in the current issue under the title Defending the Cuban Revolution, strengthening US working people. The supposedly offensive article by Mr. Warshell (Would a Joe Biden White House be better for Cuba?) is included at the same link (scroll down). If you really want to go down this rabbit hole, I suggest you read Mr. Warshell's piece before engaging with Ms. Waters, though this is one of those cases where I've done the reading so you don't have to.

Ms. Waters' piece is just plain incoherent. In an effort to understand it I've tried to outline it. The idea is that major points have a lede paragraph, and each paragraph has a topic sentence. Let's see how far those high school English class principles carry us.

For example, she says,

The second major problem with the article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” is its opening sentences. “A number of groups here and around the country that consider themselves ‘friends of Cuba’ are promoting Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency as a way to relieve the effects of over 60 years of Washington’s economic and political attacks. …

The journalistically unacceptable anonymity of the phrase “a number of groups” is plenty reason enough to reject such a lead sentence in a working-class newspaper. But why is it a problem that some friends of Cuba are urging a vote for Joe Biden? Or Donald Trump? Is it a problem that the Socialist Workers Party advocates and organizes everyone we can to support the SWP ticket of Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett?

The major criticism seems picayune--that Mr. Warshell omits a listing of the offending groups. Of course The Militant does this all the time, often referring to middle class organizations that cross the class line--without listing them individually.

But beyond that, she claims that Mr. Warshell misunderstands the principles behind a united front, where working class groups come together around narrow issues upon which they agree. He writes

These groups are organizing car caravans here, peddling the myth that Democratic administrations — and in particular Barack Obama’s — “have been better” for relations between Washington and Havana, especially better than Donald Trump’s.

Perhaps Mr. Warshell is unclear here, but my impression is the car caravans are not organized to defend Cuba, but rather to promote Joe Biden. In which case this isn't a united front at all. But even if the stated purpose of the caravans were the defense of the Cuban "Revolution," since when is the Party supposed to remain silent about other issues of disagreement not involved in the united front? For example, we never hid our criticism of liberal Democrats despite marching with them in antiwar demonstrations.

But getting back to high school English, note the first phrase in Ms. Waters' above quote: the second major problem. Which begs the question: What is the first major problem? As best I can figure (and it's really unclear), it's this:

The problems begin with the headline itself. It poses a question the article never addresses. Moreover, it is a question that can’t be answered. What is there to say except, “If Joe Biden becomes the next president of the United States, we’ll see.”

Huh? Wouldn't this be solved by rephrasing Mr. Warshell's headline If Joe Biden became president, would that be better for Cuba? This seems like a really minor point. 

The supposed first issue subdivides into two, numbered components. 

First, whether Biden or Donald Trump is installed in the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, the revolutionary leadership of Cuba will continue on the course they’ve followed from 1959 to today, through 12 U.S. administrations. ...

Second, for our part, irrespective of who occupies the White House for the next four years, the Socialist Workers Party too will continue on the course we have followed from 1959 to today. 

She simply restates what we already know, namely that neither the Cuban government nor the SWP will change fundamental positions, regardless of the election outcome. There is nothing in Mr. Warshell's article to suggest otherwise. And neither has anything to do with the supposedly misguided headline--it's a non sequitur.

Then we get to the second major problem discussed above, not to be confused with the aforementioned "second" sub-point. (And if you're confused, so am I.) I think Ms. Waters just flunked English Comp.

But now we strike gold with {emphasis mine}

There’s a third way in which the article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” did not express the editorial line of the Militant or the positions of the Socialist Workers Party. That is the way in which it presented the differences between executive actions taken by the Barack Obama administration during its second term versus measures imposed by the Trump administration. The latter have included cutting back travel rights in both directions and depriving Cuba of necessities such as oil, access to the international financial system, and remittances from family members living abroad. 

Here I'm indebted to commenter Eldee Stephens who intuited the true reason for the retraction without chasing down any rabbits. The reason is that life for the Cuban government (and probably also the Cuban people) will be easier under a less stringent sanctions regime, i.e., under a Biden administration.

After much throat-clearing Ms. Waters admits as much.

If a Biden administration were to reverse the direction of some of Washington’s current policies, it would open some breathing room for Cuban working people and their government to more easily deal with the challenges they face. If the boot on their neck pressed less tightly, they would be quite capable of doing that. … 

For these reasons, it’s probably safe to say that a majority of Cuban working people and their leadership are hoping for a Biden electoral victory. Does that mean it’s in the interests of U.S. working people to give political support to a capitalist party and its candidates?

That question was neither asked nor answered in the article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” But for class-conscious workers in the U.S., that’s the most important question. And the answer is an unequivocal “No.”

So she admits that there is a difference between the two bourgeois candidates--a distinction that the Cubans are very much aware of. This is very unTrotskyist of her--Trotskyists (like Mr. Warshell) assert there is no essential difference between Republicans and Democrats--any contrary answer is reformist. But since the SWP wants to remain on good terms with the Cuban leadership, high principle has to yield to Cuba's immediate self-interest.

Regarding the question Does that mean it’s in the interests of U.S. working people to give political support to a capitalist party and its candidates?, Mr. Warshell answers it unambiguously in his final paragraph:

The fact is the only campaign for president that offers solidarity with the Cuban people and their revolution is the Socialist Workers Party campaign of Alyson Kennedy. Not only does the SWP call for an end to Washington’s economic assaults against Cuba and for the U.S. rulers to get out of Guantánamo, Kennedy points to Cuba’s socialist revolution as an example for workers and farmers in the U.S. to follow.

So here we are--at the bottom of the rabbit hole. And there ain't even a rabbit down here! 

Further Reading:

• "A Program to Unify the Exploited and Oppressed"
• The Militant Visits Manila
• Mary-Alice Waters' Religious View of History