Rear View: They won, you lost (2019)

The Rear View Column from the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

They won, you lost

Ahead of the election in South Africa last month, a BBC report (1 May) confirmed that this country ‘. . . has the highest level of inequality in the world.’ Just over a year ago, another outlet put this fact in starker terms adding '. . . most of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of a small elite’ (NPR, 2 April 2018). Writing before the result of this election is known, socialists can state with a mixture of confidence and sadness that multi-millionaire Cyril Ramaphosa’s class won, we lost. ‘The opposition Democratic Alliance leader, Mmusi Maimane, says the gap between “economic insiders and outsiders” has grown. “There is no indication of it closing. We are a country split in two”” (bbc.com, 1 May). But neither the ‘market-friendly’ DA, nor the state-capitalist Economic Freedom Fighters offer an escape route as they are two sides of the same coin.

No amnesty

Shenilla Mohamed, executive director of Amnesty International South Africa, told Deutsche Welle (26 April): ‘Mandela had a very romantic dream, to some extent, of having a nation where everyone is equal, where people are able to access their basic human rights, economic, social, cultural rights. But South Africa is a country where the quality of life has not improved for the majority of the population in 25 years. Issues such as racism are still in the foreground because people feel they have been disappointed by a system which began in 1994, when independence promised that everything was possible.’ Compare this candid comment with that of Stefan Simanowitz, European media manager for Amnesty International, who, seemingly reminiscing through a rose-tinted fog, states: ‘Just after Mandela was sworn in came a moment that still gives me goosebumps. Three jets flew low over the crowd followed by four helicopters, each towing the new flag. Instinctively we flinched. But then it dawned: The military — and the state — were no longer enemies of the people: they now belonged to the people’ (mg.co.za, 28 April).

UnFreedom

Members of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shack-dwellers’ movement in South Africa, are well acquainted with the state as a coercive machine of class oppression. AbM are credited with starting UnFreedom Day, an unofficial annual event that is planned to coincide with the official South African holiday called Freedom Day, the orthodox annual celebration of the country’s first non-racial democratic elections of 1994. Ten years ago South African police initially tried to ban the UnFreedom Day, made some arrests and monitored the demonstration with a low-flying helicopter but later retreated. An altogether more blatant display of state power took place on 16 August 2012, With 17 workers killed and 78 wounded by the police, the Marikana Miners’ Massacre was the most lethal use of force by South African security forces against other workers since 1976. Commissioner Phiyega said that the police had acted well within their legislative mandate as outlined in Section 205 of the Constitution. Ramaphosa and King Zuma share responsibility for this mass murder and have yet to stand trial…

Learning from the past

‘A democratic state . . . industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well being of the people . . the land re-divided amongst those who work it. . . The police force and army. . . shall be the helpers and protectors of the people. .. . . a national minimum wage . . . the right to be decently housed . . . free medical care . . . Slums shall be demolished . .. ‘ (The Freedom Charter adopted by the ANC in 1955). Nelson Mandela: ‘The ANC has never at any period of its history advocated a revolutionary change . . . nor has it.. . ever condemned capitalist society.’ In the August 1988 edition of this journal, we stated: ‘ If the ANC come to power they will have to take on the task of controlling and disciplining the majority when it becomes clear that capitalism run by blacks is little different to the white-dominated variety. They will have to ensure “calm labour relations”, which will bring them into inevitable conflict with “All who work shall be free . . . to make wage agreements with their employers” (Freedom Charter). ‘ ‘Already in 1948 apartheid was an anachronism, even from a capitalist point of view…The end of apartheid will not mean the end of working-class problems. At most it will result in the creation of the best conditions under which the working class can struggle to protect its interests within capitalism and, more importantly, can struggle alongside the workers of the rest of the world for the non-class as well as non-racial society that socialism will be’ (After apartheid, what? March 1990).

Rear View: Global misery (2018)

The Rear View Column from the March 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global misery

‘There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery…’ This comment is as valid today, quite possibly more so, than when it first appeared as part of the introductory sentence to an article penned by Marx in the New York Daily Tribune of 16 September 1859. He observed that the ‘Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the slightest damage’ (Capital, Vol. 1, p.658). Back to the present: ‘global wealth increased by £7.3 trillion in the year up to June. More than 80 percent of this new prosperity was enjoyed by the top one per cent of the population. Meanwhile, the poorest half got no increase.’ And if that was not miserable enough newstatesman.com (22 January) adds ‘Oxfam has spoken to workers in US poultry factories who use nappies because they’re denied toilet breaks. In Bangladesh, a garment worker would have to work a lifetime to earn what the CEO of one of the top five fashion retailers makes in just four days.’

Down and out in London

Signs of class division were obvious in Marx’s time and remain so today. ‘Number of homeless people sleeping on streets in England hits highest level on record. More than 4,500 people were recorded as sleeping rough on any given night in autumn last year –a figure that has more than doubled since 2010’ (independent.co.uk, 24 January). The needs of the homeless are not met because they do not constitute a market. Thus we are told (theguardian.com, 4 February) ‘London councils have granted property developers planning permission to build more than 26,000 luxury flats priced at more than £1m each, despite fears that there are already too many half-empty posh ghost towers in the capital. Builders are currently constructing towers containing 7,749 homes priced between £1m and £10m, and have planning rights to build another 18,712 high-end apartments and townhouses, according to the Observer. Housing campaigners said the figures show councils are prioritising the needs of the super-rich over those of hardworking young Londoners.’ Existing without adequate shelter is a feature of capitalism worldwide.

Down and out in Calais

Luxury properties in London and elsewhere will remain empty, particularly if the market shrinks. ‘ Rich Folks Are Fleeing London and Lagos, Wealth Report Shows’ (bloomberg.com 31 January). Some of the 99 percent move in search of slightly better living conditions, trying to reach London after leaving Nigeria for example, but at risk of becoming stuck en route –perhaps in Calais or Libya. ‘ “One year ago, the Italian government, backed by their European counterparts, agreed on a dodgy deal with the Libyan government that has trapped thousands in misery. People are being forced to endure torture, arbitrary detention, extortion and unthinkable conditions in detention centres run by the Libyan government,”said Iverna McGowan, Director of the Amnesty International, European Institutions Office’ (amnesty.org 2 February). According to Indu Prakash Singh, Leader, ActionAid India’s Urban Knowledge Activist Hub, there are at least 3.7 million homeless in India. ‘We are now the 6th wealthiest nation in the world, and in terms of growth of wealth creation, we have beaten all wealthy countries including China, US and UK. Overall, India created a wealth of $8230 billion in 2017’ (track.in, 2 February). And who created all that wealth? India’s workers.

Weltsozialismus

The stateless Marx lived in London from 1850 until his death in 1883. ‘Britain on the eve of the EU referendum reached its wealthiest position in modern history, according to figures showing the vast gulf between the richest 1% and the poorest in society’ (guardian.com 1 February). This gulf between a small parasitical minority and the huge majority who own little more than their ability to work is to be found worldwide. ‘Income disparity has been a persistent problem in recent years for Indonesia, which has the sixth-worst inequality in the world, according to Oxfam. Indonesia’s four richest men have more wealth than 100 million of the country’s poorest people’ (forbes.com, 2 February). And Oxfam’s cure? More reformist platitudes: ‘What we’re saying in the report is that corporations shouldn’t be paying out massive dividends until they can show that everyone in their supply chain is getting a living wage… We shouldn’t have a situation where countries and companies are able to reduce their margins by employing slave labor.’ Marx’s solution: the abolition of the wages system.

Observations: Turning the screw (1982)

The Observations Column from the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Turning the screw
Among the more eager practitioners of the Falklands-style militancy in industrial relations are the management of British Rail. The determination with which they stood their ground in the battle with the NUR and then with ASLEF was an inspiration to all employers who are seeking, in slumping capitalism, to degrade workers’ wages and conditions.

Even more notable has been the policy of the associated sea ferry service Sealink. Faced with declining traffic and mounting competition, they have simply imposed wage cuts and threatened to close their services down if the unions resist.

This worked for Sealink in the case of the ships running from Newhaven, where the seamen accepted the cuts. But in other ports there has been resistance. Sealink assert that their aim is to reduce wages by some £28 a week in Harwich (which is bad enough, when prices are still climbing week by week) but, according to the Guardian of 9 July, the cuts are more like £40, or even £80. a week. A Sealink spokesman has spelled out the situation: ". . . this is the only way we can make the service pay. If the NUS do not accept it, there will be no service”.

It is doubtful that there will be cries of anguish in the media about the suffering caused to passengers by the closing of the service by the management — the kind of protests they make when a service is disrupted by a strike. Cuts made in the interests of defending profitability are regarded as common sense while those stemming from workers’ defence of their standards are put down to bloody- mindedness.

There is an equally enduring lesson for workers to learn in this episode. This militancy is being displayed by the management of a nationalised industry; and all in the interests of economic operation — of working in such a way as to make profit, or at least not to make a loss.

This is exactly the kind of situation which the advocates of nationalisation assumed would be eliminated by a state take-over. Real experience has exposed the fallacy of those hopes. State owned industries have to be run in basically the same way as their private predecessors. The profit priorities of capitalism continue; the interests of the wealth-producing workers are low in the order of concern; the privileges of the non-producing owning minority are paramount.

For the ruling class, nationalisation can be a good deal. For the workers it is a fraud.


Pats and kicks
After all their hard work preparing the ships for the Falklands Task Force, the dockyard workers at Chatham and Portsmouth thought they deserved a pat on the back from the government. They were very upset when in fact they got a kick in the teeth.

Before the war in the Falklands. the government had decided to reduce Portsmouth drastically and close Chatham. As the first ships left Portsmouth for the South Atlantic, they were waved away by 180 workers who had already had their redundancy notices. In all, about 13,000 were to be sacked. But during the war, the yards were working night and day to prepare and convert other ships for the fighting. Some people did literally work night and day; perhaps it was overtiredness which led them to think that the government would be so impressed with the speed and quality of their work that they would be rewarded for a job well done by changing the planned cut-backs.

Now the Falklands war is supposed to have proved that this is a government of inflexible resolve, that Margaret Thatcher is always right, always eye to eye with reality. The post-Falklands “Defence” Estimates revealed that there was to be no change of plan, although John Nott subsequently promised some slight adjustments in the case of the yards at Portsmouth. Chatham will close, as planned. So the dockyard workers were very angry, sick, rejected — and jealous of the workers at the Devonport yards where, they grumbled, they don’t make the killing machines half as efficiently.

Any workers who think they arc employed as a favour, or as a reward, are gravely misunderstanding the facts of capitalist life. Labour power is a commodity — something to be sold — wherever and however it is expended. If it is not economical to buy it, workers will be laid off; factories, mines, dockyards will close.

The armaments industry has an economy with some distinctive, even peculiar, features but these do not allow it to evade the basic laws of capitalism. The very fact that they expected a pat on the back means that the dockyard workers deserved the kick in the teeth.


Charity is cold — official
In case anyone ever had doubts on the matter, it has now been officially announced that charities are completely helpless to ease the problems of capitalist society.

Amnesty International recently took the Charity Commissioners to the High Court after they had refused to register AI as a charity. Amnesty International, of course, busy themselves with battles against what they call injustice; they sponsor prisoners of conscience, they struggle for “prisoners' rights’, whatever they may be. But Justice Slade was not impressed. “The elimination of injustice", he droned, “has not ever been held to be a purpose which qualifies for the privileges accorded to charities by English law.”

Following their victory, the Commissioners issued some “guidelines", presumably hoping to deter any well-meaning bunch who think they are doing something about some of the world’s ailments and that this deserves to make them a charity. But the Commissioners are quite clear on the point. They will not register any organisation which:

  tries to influence any causes of poverty which are lying in the social, economic and political structures of a state;
brings pressure to bear on governments to change their policies on issues like land reform, trade union rights;
tries to abolish social, political or economic injustices.

What this means is that charities have to exist in a society in which there is is poverty and "injustice" of all kinds and which imposes repression on organisations like trade unions.

Now the fact is that there is only one way in which to rid the world of problems like these and that is to organise for a democratic revolution to abolish the social system which causes them. That aim is far beyond the scope of any charity. The tragedy is that its achievement is hampered by many obstacles, one of them being the delusion that capitalism can be transformed by charitable acts. Well, now we know. Let alone abolishing the problems, charities can not even claim to protest about them. There has always been a hollow note to the rattle of the collecting box; it is the note of futility.

Political Prisoners (1969)

From the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prisoner of the Year is one of the world’s most unwanted distinctions. But unpleasant business though it is to get your name in the running for it, there is no lack of candidates for the award.

The Prisoner is selected each year by the International Assembly of Amnesty (in 1968, as it was Human Rights Year, they chose three), from all those all over the world who are “prisoners of conscience”—in other words people who are imprisoned or detained because of political, religious or conscientious opinions or by reason of their colour, race or language.

It is clear that this gives a pretty wide field of selection. Political prisoners exist in all parts of the world from Peru to Malaysia. Leaving aside the obvious places like Russia, we have Burma where hundreds have been held without trial since the coup d'etat in 1962, India which has some two hundred detainees under the Defence of India Rules and, on the other side of that particular conflict, Pakistan which holds several hundred under the Defence of Pakistan Rules. Some of the prisoners in Pakistan have been inside for over ten years.

Among this unhappy mass there are many cases which are outstanding for their harshness and cynicism. In Algeria Bachir Hadj Ali, once secretary of the Algerian Communist Party, is in very bad health after being tortured. He was arrested in 1965. The Cuban government have not tried David Salvador, but he is to serve a thirty year stretch .for his part in the July 26 “Labour Wing”. Ajoy Bhattacharya and Santosh Banerjee have both been held without trial by the Pakistani authorities since 1958.

Political prisoners exist under all sorts of governments. States which profess to be “communist” have them and so do those which claim to be “anti-communist”. Many of the new independent states, now governed by parties which once said they were fighting against the colonial powers for their freedom, are now showing that the word, must not be interpreted too literally. Malawi, Uganda and Indonesia are only three examples of this. Another is Kenya, where the government of Jomo Kenyatta continues to hold, without trial, the Somali politician Yasin Mohamed Ahden, who was actually arrested by the British before Kenya became independent and “free”.

Political prisoners have committed no crime in the usually accepted sense of an assault upon property or people, although there have been famous cases in which they have been charged with “crimes against the people” which, the prosecution has alleged, were intended to have horrific results. (Amnesty refuses to adopt prisoners who advocate acts of violence). Their offence is in either refusing to recognise the authority of the state (like conscientious objectors in countries which insist on compulsory military service) or in being a possible threat to a government’s political hold upon a country.

Thus many political prisoners are themselves politicians— like Patrick Peter Ooko in Kenya, and Chibingwe in Malawi. Perhaps, if they were out of prison and in power, they would themselves put away their opponents. Political imprisonment is in fact a sort of apprenticeship to power and there is nothing new in the prisoner turning gaoler. Kenyatta and Banda are only two who have done this.

There are other prisoners who are not politicians. Many obscure people are suffering for the offence of refusing to conform to a political dictatorship. East Germany imprisons anyone discovered helping people to leave the country illegally. Tunisia, after sentencing medical student Ben Jennet to a savage twenty year stretch, has followed this up with a 14 year sentence on Brahim Razgallah for protesting against it.

All of this may seem on the face of it to be worth protesting about. Amnesty is one of the organisations which concern themselves with this, adopting prisoners, agitating for their release and so on. Amnesty says that it works for “freedom of opinion and religion all over the world”, which brings us down onto the old, familiar grounds of idealism which, however sincere it may be, tries to obscure the basic, material realities of the world. Idealism offers no more than a collection of sickening stories, a desire to do something about them—but a stifling bewilderment about any effective solution.

To look at political imprisonment on the face of it is not enough. What are the basic realities? We might start at the fact that political prisoners are international. Even Britain, which has as much political freedom as any country, roped in the Fascists in 1939—when they were protesting their eagerness to help the war effort of British capitalism—and held them without trial. Mistakenly or not, the government regarded men like Mosley as a political threat.

This suggests that the conditions which cause prisoners of conscience are also international. The world today is dominated by property society—in most cases by its most highly developed form of capitalism. Property society is an affair of privilege, of a minority holding a higher economic and social position than the rest and asserting their superior standing through a coercive State machine.

Whoever controls that state controls power. That is what capitalist politics are all about. In some cases control can be won only through a popular vote, which means that politicians have to try to beat their opponents by means other than imprisonment (by Enoch Powell, for example, menacing Heath with his appeal to the rudest of mass deception). In some—but not all—of such countries there are other legal rights, existing alongside the popular franchise, which make political imprisonment rather difficult for a government to pull off.

But there are other countries which are in a different case. In some—for example South Africa and Rhodesia— the electoral system is rigged with the result that a crushing majority of those with the vote are in favour of the suppression of political freedom. In others there are either no elections, or elections in which effectively only one party can put up candidates. In such countries the acquiescence, apathy or support of the majority enable the government to restrict or even crush the opposition by the simple method of putting away anyone who speaks up against it.

Let us be clear that no one suffering political imprisonment today is a threat to the fundamentals of property society. They are in gaol not because they protest against capitalism but because they oppose the particular clique which at any one time holds power over the system. Some are actually former members of a government which now imprisons them—like Grace Ibingira of Uganda, who was once President Obote's right hand man. Others are religious, like Bishop James Walsh, a Roman Catholic who has been serving a 20 year sentence in China since 1958. Some, like Amnesty Prisoner of the Year Nina Karsow (now free), are patriots; ”... I know for certain,” she wrote to her mother, "that our own country is not just a place on a map. but that it lives within each of us.”

What this means is that if, by some miracle, every political prisoner were suddenly released the whole rotten business would soon start all over again for the simple reason that the cause of it would still be there. There can be only one guarantee for the protection of human liberty and dignity and that is something beyond the horizons of all the individuals and organisations which agitate on behalf of the prisoners. The guarantee is to end the social system which by its very nature, and in fields other than the political, denies freedom and dignity and to replace it with one which treats them as its first concern.

If we say, then, that Socialism will be the society of freedom which will not know such disfigurements as political prisoners we are inviting an obvious question. Why are there no socialists in prison for their opinions? The answer is equally obvious. At the moment Socialism is not a threat to worry a capitalist state. But the socialist movement grows through the developing consciousness among workers—and remember that no government can impose its will upon a consciously unwilling majority. So when Socialism is a threat, and the ruling class would like to do something about it—it will be too late.

Ivan.

(We are grateful for the help which Amnesty gave in the preparation of this article.)

Cuba: No Workers Paradise (2003)

From the October 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The scene is typical: the dog-end of a trade union branch meeting; members are tired after discussing complex pay and discipline issues; tired from listening to the hyper-activists glorying in the sound of their own voices; desperate to escape. Item 9 on the agenda of the hour-long meeting is expenses for a delegate to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign meeting. Exhausted hands fly up to approve the monies, without debate, voting as much for escape as for sanction.

Cuba has become a cause celebre amongst those who identify themselves as 'Old Labour'. Tommy Sheridan of the Scottish Socialist Party has dreams of an independent Scotland emulating Cuba; Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party adores Cuba and makes trade with it a centre-piece of their foreign policy; Guardianistas write endless letters in support of the country; no union conference is complete without a resolution or six in support of Cuba. (See Cuba Solidarity Campaign.)

This is as true for America as for the UK. Michael Albert of Z-Magazine had to give a rearguard defence of his criticisms of Cuba's decision to murder a number of hijackers (his critics themselves being activists and opponents of state-murder in the US); anarchist superstar Noam Chomsky warmly supports Cuba's defiance of the US, staying stoically silent on Cuba's internal regime, save that it is a matter for Cubans themselves.

In European literature, Utopia was always supposed to be an imaginary far-flung Island in uncharted seas like the Caribbean; now, it seems, it is a very real island in perfectly well-charted waters for a good majority of the left — even if those are waters that have been well sailed by the USSR and its sundry fellow travellers. This misty eyed respect for Cuba would not be so worrying were it confined to the dying ranks of Tankie Stalinists; however, its tendrils reach well beyond them. Like Chomsky, many take an anti-American reflex and root for the underdog versus the hyperpower: excusing the repressive parts of Castro's regime as mistakes, or excesses of siege warfare.

This is a siege that has been going on for a very long time. Castro's guerrillas emerged from the hills in 1959 to drive away the US-backed kleptocrat dictator Batista. What began as a simple nationalist movement was quickly driven into the "Communist" camp by the hostility of the American government. The new regime weathered numerous attempts to displace it, including Kennedy's Bay of Pigs invasion, and miscellaneous attempts by the CIA to assassinate Castro. Simultaneously, the former guerrillas declared for "Communism", and abandoned dreams of national autarky by becoming a sugar plantation for the USSR rather than the US. (See Socialist Standard, April 1984).

The US has never been able to forgive the expropriation of its millionaires by Castro's party, and has maintained its siege ever since. For its part, the Castro regime has proven remarkably resilient (to the point at which American planners are now taking the 'biological resolution', i.e. Castro's death from old age, as the most likely way for them to advance their cause). In that time, the regime has maintained a tight control over the economy. At times, this has meant a heavy bureaucratic hand, requiring strings of permits to produce, distribute and export or import goods.

None of this has abolished the commodity nature of production, nor the wages system. A fact starkly illustrated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the loss of Cuba's export markets as well as the convenient supply of oil for industrial purposes. The economy underwent serious recession, from which it has yet to fully recover. Since then, the government has been trying to re-orientate the economy towards tourism to bring in essential foreign currency. This has led to a situation in which goods are produced solely to be consumed by tourists in their enclaves which are denied the Cuban workers.

The continued existence of the wages system has meant the need for measures to impose labour discipline. The Cuban state only recognises one trade union federation, Central de Trabajadores Cubanos (CTC). This consists of unions entirely dominated by the ruling Communist Party, wherein officers are vetted (not just by their present affiliations, but on a documentary of their entire lives going back to their school records) before they are allowed to take up posts. Whilst independent trade unions are not entirely illegal, their existence is subject to repressive controls and harassment, beginning with the Associations Act (Leyes de Asociaciones) and escalating to the generally repressive political order laws. (Source: ICFTU).

As Amnesty International notes, in the past few years, the numbers of long term political dissidents imprisoned has fallen; but this is counter-posed by an increase in short-run harassment techniques, like arrest without trial, breaking up of meetings, threats of eviction, etc. According to the ICFTU (an organisation which the British TUC is affiliated to) in the early months of this year over 78 union activists had been targeted by the Cuban state. One, for example, was arrested for attempting to resist a state organised eviction of a family.

Although Cuba nominally has 100 percent post-16 suffrage, this is restricted to candidates approved by the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution. Likewise, a plethora of laws make free criticism and electoral organisation impossible: Article 144(17) of the criminal code prohibits disrespect to authority; Articles 200-201 preventing the spread and cause of panic and disorder have been used to imprison people publicly voicing criticisms; Article 103 prohibits 'enemy propaganda' which is interpreted as anyone inciting criticism of the Cuban system and its international allies; Article 203 criminalises disrespect to the flag and symbols of the regime; Article 115 prevents the dissemination of 'false news against international peace'; and the piece de résistance is articles 72-74 which forbid anything 'dangerous', which can be anything the police and courts decide are so (Amnesty International).

This battery of laws amounts to an arsenal fit to stop any independent thought and organisation, and amounts to a capacity to arrest anyone the state doesn't like, any time they want. In a situation in which workers cannot hope to organise politically, it makes free association in trade unions impossible. All of this needs to be borne in mind when stories are repeated by supporters of Cuba (such as the Cuba Solidarity Campaign) about how workers have democracy and freedom to organise in Cuba; or of how workplace committees and trade unions decide industrial matters. Indeed, as the ICFTU points out, the requirements of the Labour Code demand that collective agreements be decided by both workers' meetings, and the employers, with the Communist Party being heavily involved on both sides of these negotiations. There is no legally-sanctioned right to strike.

Thus, although there are formal and nominal freedoms, much like in the USSR, in practice they are undermined by highly centralised capacity to crush dissent. In the absence of political and trade union freedoms, then, the working conditions of Cuban workers are hard. Their living standards drastically cut by the recent recessions, even if they "agreed" to this in mass meetings to save their jobs. International companies that invest in Cuba are compelled to hire their workers via agencies. These agencies pocket 95 percent of the dollar value of the wages. State officials maintain that this is to maintain Cuban equality, and not to direct the dollars into state hands. This despite the obvious stratification of Cuban society that has emerged.

The romantic supporters of Cuba put their concerns for "national rights" before class solidarity, in supporting the Cuban regime. They excuse its actions as a necessary defence against US aggression, and will it to survive against the greater power, even at the expense of its workers' lives and liberties. And they can point to its impressive record on health care, education and education (much better than in much of the rest of Latin America: including a healthy 76 year life expectancy).

Cuba does indeed show what could be possible, even with meagre resources to meet the needs of human beings, and how artificial the deprivation across much of the rest of the world is. But the difference in treatment stems largely from an autarkic nation's need to maintain a functioning workforce versus the surplus population of the mono-export countries of much of the rest of South America.

Socialists do not consider that the best way to assist the workers of Cuba is to support the régime that dragoons them in siege warfare with the US, but that the spread of the world socialist revolution is the only way to rescue them from the unpalatable set of choices facing them. To do that, we need to free socialism from the taint of the undemocratic methods applied in Cuba and stand clearly for the political freedoms of association and speech for the working class the world over, so as better to spread the ideas and consciousness required for the building of a truly stateless classless world co-operative commonwealth.
Pik Smeet