Honorary Proletarian

On Wednesday Fidel Castro announced that he is definitively stepping down from the inextricably linked posts of President of the Council of State and commander-in-chief of the Cuban armed forces.  He has been the twentieth century’s second most durable head of government - second only, that is, to Kim Il-Sung.  This is not something to be proud of.

Of course, it must be recognised that Cuba and North Korea are very different phenomena.  In North Korea millions of people have starved to death.  In Cuba the government has established free universal healthcare and education, ensuring 98% literacy.  Cuba’s public services are the envy of the 35 million people in the United States without health insurance - and many of those with, as Michael Moore recently demonstrated.

However, Cuba under Castro has been fundamentally a Stalinist state.  There are no forced-labour camps, but there are political prisoners; there are no show-trials, but there is a secret police force.  Most importantly of all, there are no free elections.  There are still some in the western world who call Cuba socialist, on the grounds that they understand socialism as reform and Cuba has enacted some impressive reforms (though often it is the most right-wing fake reformists who are the most enthusiastic: take George Galloway for example).  However, Cuba’s regime lacks the instincts of democracy and popular sovereignty, as well as the fierce working-class allegiance, that characterise the best reformists.  In that respect, a great gulf separates Fidel Castro and Nye Bevan.

What is more, the course of reform in Cuba has not run smoothly.  Facing an economic crisis following the cessation of Russian aid, the regime chose to deal with it not by relaxing the state’s political stranglehold but by inviting capitalists to set up tourist resorts inaccessible to all Cubans except for the privileged bureaucratic elite and those employed as skivvies.  Prostitution, the elimination of which was one of the first achievements of the Castro government, has sprung up again as some desperate Cubans cannot make ends meet any other way.

So what will happen in Cuba now?  In the short run, not very much.  The regime has named as interim president Fidel’s brother Raul, who has effectively been running the country since Fidel became ill in 2006.  Fidel’s resignation statement, however, hints at knowledge that this situation is unsustainable.  Cuba is not China, where the “Communist Party” has turned itself into the mouthpiece of a flourishing new capitalist class; it is much smaller and the potential for that kind of elite transition does not exist.  The Cuban people have but up with Castro because he has enacted reforms and defied the United States, but now he has gone they will no longer consent to be ruled by a coterie of elderly Stalinists.  In the medium term, then, either the system ludicrously and insultingly called “People’s Power” will have to be dismantled or there will be massive popular mobilisation to bring it down.

In the long term, there is, as the saying goes, everything to play for.  Cuba seems unlikely simply to collapse as the Eastern Bloc did.  Will the people of Cuba be able to hold on to and extend the social reforms they have brought about while building a genuinely democratic system of government - a workers’ democracy?  In isolation, the Cuban people have with their own hands and brains maintained their first-class public services and, perforce, made great strides in the development of cheap generic drugs and green technology.  If they can build a free society on this - as they will if they are not crushed between the twin monsters of Stalinism and free-market capitalism - they could be in reality what the Castro regime’s supporters foolishly or mendaciously proclaimed it to be - a socialist beacon of hope to the world.  They will need our support.