MY BLOG NOTES

http://antonio-diferencia.blogspot.com/200

THE ENEMY- 

POLITICAL ORGANIZING APATHY AND CONFUSION- The most active and powerful political party is the party of indifference. This represents a victory for the ruling party. In addition to this, the right wing has unscrupulously hijacked the language of the left, distorting words and phrases like "politically correct" sexual harassment" " hate speech" "feminism" to serve its own reactionary uses. There is always the danger that an elected left government limit itself to administrating the crisis and allowing the right to set the agenda even when it is out of power. 

SOPHISTRY. Sophists do not seek the truth but only victory in debate and are prepared to use dishonest means to achieve it. They are "captious or fallacious reasoners or quibblers," promoting myths to buttress their arguments, using rhetoric and oratory to sway their listeners They will reach conclusions based on carrying their arguments to their logical end with little regard for reality. They always work for some sort payment from those who set them up to publicize their arguments. They try to impress their audience and not infrequently expect to reach political and economic success by their performances. A good sophist may also be hired by some of the ruling families to train their offspring in the art of what might be called "rational obfuscation." Apparently reasoned arguments are really cover-ups for tradition and unreflecting faith. Sophists concentrate on words and shades of meaning to not clarify, but to muddy the waters. By concentration on an individual phenomenon as an example for the generality, they basically abandon the search for truth, since one example or incident can be used to prove anything and its opposite equally well. Another favorite tactic of sophists is demonization. By calling some one "liberal," for example, no further explanation is needed. The person or idea referred to is obviously morally defective, since it has been established a priori that liberals are morally defective. It’s a circular argument. Anything that does not contribute to the good of the sophist, though it may be good for another, (the right of others to vote, for example) is unwarranted. They advocate throwing off of all restraints for the self-interest and the desires of the individuals who think like they do, advocates of free rein in the pursuit of wealth. Sophists typically are hostile to science and the study of the physical world. They invoke a "higher law" to justify repression of human beings that they are not in agreement with. They very commonly see life in terms of a decline from an earlier golden age. They see human history in terms of progress from savagery to civilization, with themselves being the civilized people. 

 

RIGIDITY. Bureaucracies  include  complicated  procedures,  intolerant and  dictatorial  attitudes  on  the  part  of the administrators and  of  dictatorial  governments. They are complex organizations that  do  not  show  clearly  who  is responsible, they use rigid norms   and   routine   procedures   without   taking   different circumstances   into   account.    They  hire  gauche,  slow  and incompetent   personnel,   they  give  conflicting  orders,  they duplicate  effort,  they   pile up charges against those they are monitoring  and  they  concentrate  control  in  a few people who mutually protect each other. De-politicization of the bureaucracy is an illusion. It is a system where the politicians give orders  and  the  bureaucrats  take  them and carry them out.   As   compensation  on  these restrictions  on  their  civil  rights, bureaucrats are protected from outside criticism. In    the   same   way   a  machine can, the bureaucrat may place him/herself  in  the  service  of  different  masters. There is a decrease  of  personal relationships. The use of a hierarchy that makes  decisions  diminishes  the  possibility  of  alternatives. Behavior  becomes  rigid.  The objectives of the organization are increasingly  seen  as  shared  by  all, although this may not be actually true. Bureaucracy  cannot  be neutral, even though it may try to appear so. Political  decisions  can  be  sabotaged  or  ignored by the bureaucrats.  Political  changes  cause  changes  in the chain of command  of  the  government.  The  routine of public bureaucracy affects  the  activities  of  the government and of public social services. Conservative  bureaucracy  can  obstruct change in a dynamic society that requires wide flexibility. Bureaucrats are not neutral. They   write   official   speeches,  participate  in government   decisions,   advise  political  leaders,  manipulate information,  explain  official  policy  to the public, etc.

Bureaucracy  is disguised as "managerial" bureaucracy and is a blight on the landscape that can reach terrifying proportions. Bureaucratic societies wind up inevitably as an alienated society. Bureaucracy can become so entrenched as to be regarded as a fetish, where human beings are at the mercy of things merchandise,  including money Humans and social relations become objectified, the population is separate from the governing class, even while it forms an integral part of it. The State oppresses the people, while at the same time taking on the mantle of its guardian angel.

THE GEOPOLITICS OF CAPITALISM. GOVERNMENT FOR THE ELITE. The objective of the traditional capitalist economy is the prosperity of the ruling class. The government has the obligation to protect the nation's class economic interests in foreign transactions ( customs tariffs, taxes, restrictions on imports) and making them be obeyed internationally (embargos, sanctions, war). The government should not limit the free development of the economy. Real estate, natural resources and means of production are private property. The structure of the economy is top down hierarchical. Every type of decision is in the hands of the owners of the means of production. The type and quantity of production, as well as the distribution of merchandise, is automatically regulated through supply and demand, through the market economy. The market economy is based of free market competition, which automatically leads to supposedly harmonizing individual and social interests.by means of free competition, through which the price of each product reaches its natural level, and which over time equals its average value. Human labor is for sale, its price is determined by supply and demand, like any other product. The pursuit of profits is the dominant activating motor of the economy.The government is the servant of the dominant class, and as such, it is a class government. It nevertheless has to continue taking care of certain social needs, such as public order and health, but all its functions are collated through its class character and class functions. If there is not enough money to cover the national debt and education too, the bankers have to get paid first. If the budget is not enough to pay the internal debt, and also health services, the bankers get the first crack. Their interests distort and determine all the functions of the government. Humanity has fallen into the hands of a delinquent elite, made up of ten thousand bankers, industrial heads and professional politicians, who use the planet's resources and the fruits of our labor for their own ends. They monopolize for themselves the benefits that energy, technology, science, food production, education and health provide, leaving the majority in poverty and neglect. This system has characteristics that identify it; 1. It is vertical and antidemocratic, top down, 2.- It is dominated by the Atlantic bourgeoisIe, that is, by North Americans and Europeans, 3.- It exploits others through the national market economy, its insistence in formal democracy, and reliance on the class government. These institutions are untouchable because they are its support, because they unify all government operations, and because they guarantee its stability and day to day reproduction .The neocon New World Order that we now see is the third strategic attempt in the last hundred years by the Atlantic bourgeoisie to impose on global society its vision of the world.

THE DEBT- As it happened, she didn't actually know what the IMF was, so I offered that the International Monetary Fund basically acted as the world's debt enforcers-"You might say, the high-finance equivalent of the guys who come to break your legs. " I launched into historical background, explaining how, during the '7os oil crisis, OPEC countries ended up pouring so much of their newfound riches into Western banks that the banks couldn't figure out where to invest the money; how Citibank and Chase therefore began sending agents around the world trying to convince Third World dictators and politicians to takeout loans (at the time, this was called "go-go banking") ; how they started out at extremely low rates of interest that almost immediately skyrocketed to 20 percent or so due to tight U.S. money policies in the early '80s; how, during the '80s and '90s, this led to the Third World debt crisis; how the IMF then stepped in to insist that, in order to obtain refinancing, poor countries would be obliged to abandon price supports on basic foodstuffs, or even policies of keeping strategic food reserves, and abandon free health care and free education; how all of this had led to the collapse of all the most basic supports for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth. I spoke of poverty, of the looting of public resources, the collapse of societies, endemic violence, malnutrition, hopelessness, and broken lives. 

"Oh, we wanted to abolish the debt too. The immediate demand was to stop the IMF from imposing structural adjustment policies, which were doing all the direct damage, but we managed to accomplish that surprisingly quickly. The more long-term aim was debt amnesty. Something along the lines of the biblical Jubilee. As far as we were concerned," I told her, "thirty years of money flowing from the poorest countries to the richest was quite enough. " "But," she objected, as if this were self-evident, "they'd borrowed the money! Surely one has to pay one's debts."

Where to start? I could have begun by explaining how these loans had originally been taken out by unelected dictators who placed most of it directly in their Swiss bank accounts, and ask her to contemplate the justice of insisting that the lenders be repaid, not by the dictator, or even by his cronies, but by literally taking food from the mouths of hungry children. Or to think about how many of these poor countries had actually already paid back what they'd borrowed three or four times now, but that through the miracle of compound interest, it still hadn't made a significant dent in the principal. I could also observe that there was a difference between refinancing loans, and demanding that in order to obtain refinancing, countries have to follow some orthodox free-market economic policy designed in Washington or Zurich that their citizens had never agreed to and never would, and that it was a bit dishonest to insist that countries adopt democratic constitutions and then also insist that, whoever gets elected, they have no control over their country's policies anyway. Or that the economic policies imposed by the IMF didn't even work. But there was a more basic problem: the very assumption that debts have to be repaid.

IMPERIALISM, the last stage of capitalism, has several stages;  Monopoly capital, parasitic, rotting capital, and-dying capitalism. There are 5 economic spheres that are covered by imperialism; 1-concentration of capital to the degree of monopolies that control every aspect of everyday life 2.- fusion of banks and industry, giving rise to finance capital 3.- the export of capital, as opposed to the export of merchandise, 4.- international monopoly alliances in order to divide the world up among themselves 5.- the end of any possibility of dividing the world any further. Imperialism is given birth to by an enormous increase and concentration of production, that is, corporations take the lion's share of the totality of production, they increase their labor power controlled by a few magnates.

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THE COMRADES

DIALECTICS. Dialectical materialism means that the material world, perceptible to the senses, has objective reality independent of mind or spirit. It does not deny the reality of mental or spiritual processes but affirms that ideas arise only as products and reflections of material conditions. Materialism is the opposite of idealism, which any theory that treats matter as dependent on mind or spirit as capable of existing independently. Dialectics considers things in their movements and changes, interrelations and interactions. Everything is in continual process of becoming and ceasing to be, in which nothing is permanent but everything changes and is eventually superseded. All things contain contradictory sides or aspects, whose tension or conflict is the driving force of change and eventually transforms or dissolves them. Individuals can gain knowledge of things only through their practical interaction with things, framing their ideas corresponding to their practice; and social practice alone provides the test of the correspondence of idea with reality—i.e., of truth.

REELING THE SOCIAL FORCES- The left must work to create a new balance of power in the correlation of forces, using what is progressive, and strengthening that. It must include all people exploited by capital----permanent workers and temporary workers, contracted or subcontracted, union or non-union, along with all the other social sectors that have been damaged by the neoliberal system. This means building social force at the same time, not only against the economic exploitation of the workers, but also against the diverse forms of capitalist oppression and destruction of humans and nature. It is about the radical and transforming political potential that exists in all of these struggles, to articulate its practice into a single political project, at the same time generating spaces so that the different social problems can recognize each other’s needs. A social force is not a given, but rather has to be built, and the ruling class has strategies in place to prevent it from coming into being. There is a tendency to ignore the knowledge that is acquired in this manner by the dominated sectors. This winds up leaving the analysis of reality in a handful of intellectuals. 

TACTICS-Realizing that they are not strategy, taking into account the changing ways and means of the correlation of objective and subjective forces and forms of struggle, of immediate tasks, of defeats and victories, the ebb and flow, (quick changes in offense, politics, retreat, defense, gathering of forces, siege, assault), the phases of development, the historical and national specifics, what is needed in an action, learning new legal and illegal forms as well as learning from the experience of others, selecting the time and place, maintaining flexibility, mobilizing alliances, refusing wait,or to jump stages, to trail behind, 

STRATEGY-Maintaining grounding in constant contact with the leading role of the masses (without falling to their level, but raising them), the total movement, the final transformational objective, adapting to new circumstances without becoming lost, maintaining firmness in flexibility, elaborating the correct line, putting it in practice and mobilizing the forces for it.

THE PARTY OF A NEW TYPE- DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM AND THE WORKER'S PARTY

THE PARTY OF THE MASSES. Socialism's enemies pretend that the work of the left is that of a few agitators. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fascism has taken care of destroying the left with jail, assassinations, propaganda, yet the left has a constant  resurgence. Why is that? Because the left represents the organized Party of the working class. They have their origins in the most profound objective need that the workers have in social development, and above the interests and needs of the workers. Workers and Party are like "carne y uña", that is, as the finger nail is to the finger. Unions and mutual help societies will never be enough for the emancipation of the workers. The Party is destined to take the working class to power by showing the way to a revolutionary transformation of society. Empathy definitions encompass a broad range of phenomena, including caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling;[11] and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other.[12]

EMPATHY- What is the relation between genes and race, class, or gender? Does social superiority spring from superior genes, or from biological differences between the sexes? As a Marxist and activist, Lewontin believed that we need to fight at both levels: to expose class, race and gender stereotypes as a reflection of power within society, and also at the level of radical science, meaning from the fundamentals of scientific theory and data. Empathy definitions encompass a broad range of phenomena, including caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling;[11] and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other. Nowhere does any biological basis for race being superior or inferior exist. Having empathy can include having the understanding that there are many factors that go into decision making and cognitive thought processes. Past experiences have an influence on the decision making of today. Understanding this allows a person to have empathy for individuals who sometimes make illogical decisions to a problem that most individuals would respond with an obvious response. Broken homes, childhood trauma, lack of parenting and many other factors can influence the connections in the brain which a person uses to make decisions in the future.[13] According to Martin Hoffman everyone is born with the capability of feeling empathy. Since empathy involves understanding the emotional states of other people, the way it is characterized is derived from the way emotions themselves are characterized. If, for example, emotions are taken to be centrally characterized by bodily feelings, then grasping the bodily feelings of another will be central to empathy. On the other hand, if emotions are more centrally characterized by a combination of beliefs and desires, then grasping these beliefs and desires will be more essential to empathy. The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process. However, the basic capacity to recognize emotions is probably innate[15] and may be achieved unconsciously. Yet it can be trained[16] and achieved with various degrees of intensity or accuracy.

At the same time, empathy is systematically destroyed by capitalism, since looking out for number one, confiscating a house and putting the family out on the street, sucking up all the wealth of a third country to starve the population, deliberately creating unemployment in favor of prison labor, etc. requires good capitalist practices, but a dearth of empathy.

 

THE TIME FOR REVOLUTION. A revolution happens when the time is ripe.

1.- The ruling class cannot continue as before, it undergoes  political crisis through which discontent is manifested. "Those on top can't and those at the bottom don't want to" continue as before.

2.- There is a sharp increase in the needs of the people that are not being met.

3.- A reaction not before seen of masses unable and unwilling to go on as before, and the pouring out into the street of millions. None of these points are dependent on anyone's will- they happen spontaneously under a crisis that affects those at the top as well as those at the bottom. The revolutionary leadership has to be equally cognizant of both (top and bottom)- it cannot just focus on the working people and their problems. The approach is scientific, but there is instinct and art in the leadership that must be there.

THE INSURRECTION. 1.- An insurrection is not a plaything, and once it starts, it must be carried to the  end.

2.- In the time and place indicated, one must rally a greatly superior force in order not to be destroyed.

3.- Once the insurrection has started, one must pass on to the offensive, never defensive.

4.- The enemy must be caught by surprise at a time when its forces are scattered and relatively weak.

5.- One must have successes, even small ones, constantly, in order to maintain the moral superiority.

The exploiting class may be destroyed in one country, but they have resources and international capital  to keep resisting change for a long time. The revolution is often the result of capitalist killing fields, wars and sanctions that make it impossible to go on living. At the same time they have counterrevolutionary forces in the army that can do great damage, and a civil war could ensue.

The working class take into its hands the monopolies and makes them run in a way that all the people can see the advantages of the new means of production and distribution.

HOW REVOLUTIONS ARE MADE 

1-BACKGROUND

2-NEW IDEAS EMERGE

3-THERE IS A SHIFT TO REVOLUTION(L & R)

4-THE TERROR (L & R)

5-COUNTERREVOLUTION

6-ULTRALEFT DEVIATION

7-SYNTHESIS

8-THE NEGATION OF THE NEGATION

The French Revolution

1760 - BACKGROUND.- Things start with contradictions. Voltaire opposed absolutism but was strongly pro-monarchy.  Social contracts, separation of Church and State were ideas bandied about. As early as 1760 the Social Contract was published. Decadence expressed as libertinage was rampant (Casanova and de Sade)among the nobility, fueling discontent. Prostitutes found a way to raise their station in life, only to be thwarted once more by in this case "the French disease." Commoners were burdened with taxes. There was a fight against the Holy Inquisition. Abuses of the people by the Monarchy and the clergy became hot issues. The bourgeoisie was small and ineffective, the aristocracy was parasitic and corrupt, commoners ignorant and superstitious, and the church concerned only with tithes, money and power. Democracy was not to be trusted, as this would give power to ignorant people.

 

NEW IDEAS EMERGE- Tom Paine-the royal flight to Varennes removed the last sympathy for the King, and the Republic took over in peoples minds as inevitable. If natural law could bolster the monarchy it could also assert the rights of the subjects. The thinking was qualified--people had rights but also duties, which were not voluntary. The anti-slavery abolitionists gained momentum, having consequences in the West Indies. Adam Smith declared that labor is the source of value. Paine was condemned as an infidel and traitor to the crown. The ruling class cursed him and the radical workers praised him and kept his name alive. The right wing slandered the word "Republic" as mob rule and anarchy, and democracy was considered filth. The revolutionary task was to throw the old landed gentry elite out of power (ownership of property). The Federalists feared the tyranny of the majority. In Paris, the Bastille had fallen and in England the Industrial Revolution was in full sway. Paine consorted with the centrist Gironde and advocated sparing the kings life. 

THERE IS A SHIFT TO REVOLUTION- When the Jacobins took over, Paine was arrested as a Girondin.  The Conspiracy of Equals tried to bring down the Directoire. The ultra-left, communist Babouvistes declared property to be the greatest crime. Nationalize all private property and impose equal distribution of wealth to all. To counter this, the king imposed a fake assembly, Les Feuillants, who were supposed to follow his orders, propping up the most reactionary ideas under the guise of progressivism. Roberspierre objected that it was vital to crush counterrevolution instead of wasting resources in the distraction of a war with Austria. The Girondins supported the war. Robespierre, Marat, Desmoulins and Danton were all Jacobins at this point. La Commune was born, defending the sans-coulotes and expressing the will of the majority. The Jacobins solve the demands of the peasants. Lands are confiscated and divided up. Feudal practices (free labor) are abolished. 

THE TERROR- The anarchist Hebertistes and the centrist Gironde (Danton) conspired together to bring abut the  fall of Robespierre and the Jacobins, fueling the rise of the counterrevolutionary Directoire. Paine is released. The counterrevolution by the Gironde forces their hand and gives birth to the Terror. The nobility are executed. The poor demand fixed prices and a minimum wage. An army has to be fed. The Jacobin government  is transformed into a revolutionary democratic dictatorship. Roberspierre is attacked from the right by Danton and the  left by Hebert and the Cordeliers.

 

ULTRALEFT DEVIATION- The centrist movement split into an ultra left wing faction, the Hébertists, who  attempted to stage a popular revolt against the Jacobins, hoping to mimic that which had led to the downfall of the centrist Girondins. Theirs was an anarchic notion of popular government, always armed to impose the will of the people on its mandatories, taking the form of support for unrelenting surveillance, denunciation, indictment, humiliation, and paranoia.  La terreur sans virtue, c'est un desastre, la virtue sans terreur  est impuissante.   

COUNTERREVOLUTION- The split: Jacobin rule was taken over on the right by the Directory and subsequently by the right wing Napoleon, whose aggressive expansionism in the Middle East, Europe  and Russia brought back the trappings of the monarchy and empire. The First Republic was brought to an end by Bonaparte, and segwayed into the Third Imperial Phase, re-establishing the church and imperial wars, albeit with a nominally Republican character. He also re-established slavery in the French Caribbean. Napoleon's incessant  wars had bankrupted the Republic, and the Directoire was unpopular. Napoleon crowned himself emperor. After losing Waterloo he is exiled to Elba and St Elena.  

SYNTHESIS- In 1848 Louis Napoleon elected president of the French Republic, and the Revolution is over; power is snatched from the peasants, the poor and the newly formed working class and is assumed by the centrist merchant class, the industrial bourgeoisie, in a coalition with the left over elements of the crushed nobility.

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THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION

1826 -BACKGROUND.- RUSSIA.- Inspired by the French Revolution, though defeated, the Decembrists did affect some change on the regime. Their dissatisfaction forced Nicholas to turn his attention inward to address the issues of the empire. 1848 - The old organization of the administrative law, of municipal government, of court procedures of the army, etc., remained untouched, or, where the constitution did change them, the change affected their index, not their subject; The freedoms of France in 1848—personal freedom, freedom of the press, of speech, of association and of assemblage, freedom of instruction, of religion, etc.—received a constitutional uniform that rendered them invulnerable. Citizens have the right of association, of peaceful and unarmed assemblage, of petitioning, and of expressing their opinions through the press or otherwise.  Education is free. The freedom of education shall be enjoyed under the conditions provided by law, and under the supervision of the State. The domicile of the citizen is inviolable, except under the forms prescribed by law. 1902-Members of the new guard were in their early 30s and had only recently come from Russia. Lenin, who was trying to establish a permanent majority against Plekhanov within the newspaper Iskra, expected Trotsky, then 23, to side with the new guard and wrote,  that they co-opt 'Pero' as  a   member of the board on the same basis as other members. 1903- at the second congress of the RSDLP, Plekhanov broke with Lenin and sided with the Mensheviks. During World War I, he took a "nationalist" position (as opposed to the Bolsheviks' "proletarian internationalism"), calling for the defeat of Germany. Lenin accused Plekhanov, along with his other critics, of "social chauvinism". 1905 - Father Gapon led a massive crowd to the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg to present a petition to the tsar and the official response was Cossacks opening fire on the crowd, killing hundreds. Following this brutal massacre, a general strike was declared demanding a democratic republic.  Nicholas issued the October Manifesto, which contained promises to provide changes to Russia's political system as well as the recognition of basic civil liberties for most citizens. It included the creation of a national Duma (parliament), universal male suffrage and essential civil freedoms (conscience, speech, assembly and association). However, the socialists rejected the concessions as insufficient and tried to organize new strikes. One recurrent argument was that  the Tsar maintained the power to veto any legislation he wished and the power to disband the body if he and the Duma could not reach an agreement

1906- NEW IDEAS EMERGE.- the first Russian constitution was established as a revision of the 1832 Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire. It restricted the State Duma's authority in many ways, including a complete lack of parliamentary control over the appointment or dismissal of cabinet ministers. Trade unions and strikes were legalized, provided that they did not engage in what were considered as "illegal political activities" by the police. The representatives who accepted these changes formed a political party, the Octobrists. As for the Kadets, they advocated universal suffrage. Because of their continued involvement in armed uprisings, parties of Marxist inspiration were undecided whether to participate in the upcoming Duma elections. Stolypin's most ambitious move was his peasant reform program. It would allow the establishment of private property and reorganize communes. The political reward expected by Stolypin was the emergence of a class of conservative landowning farmers loyal to the Tsar. However most peasants did not want to permit outsiders to buy land or to lose the safety of the commune. Stalin and Lenin attended the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in London. This congress consolidated the supremacy of Lenin's Bolshevik Party and debated strategy for communist revolution in Russia.In the period after the Revolution of 1905. Stalin led "fighting squads" in bank robberies to raise funds for the Bolshevik Party. His practical experience made him useful to the party, and gained him a place on its Central Committee. Trotsky moved to France  as a war correspondent. He began editing (at first with Martov, who soon resigned as the paper moved to the Left) Nashe Slovo ("Our Word"), an internationalist socialist newspaper, in Paris. He adopted the slogan of "peace without indemnities or annexations, peace without conquerors or conquered", which didn't go quite as far as Lenin, who advocated Russia's defeat in the war and demanded a complete break with the Second International.Trotsky attended the Zimmerwald Conference of anti-war socialists  and advocated a middle course between those who, like Martov, would stay within the Second International at any cost. The Bolsheviks' plan, as theorized by Lenin in State and Revolution was to turn the global war into a civil war of the proletarian soldiers against their own governments, and should a proletarian victory emerge from this in Russia, then their duty would be to spread the revolution across Europe. However, it should be noted that at this point Lenin had fewer than 10,000 followers. Then, his leading role in executing the successful Petrograd protests earned him a larger audience due to his strategic skills. 

1915- THERE IS A SHIFT TO REVOLUTION.-(L & R)  In the October Revolution, the Bolshevik party, led by Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various ministries, established a political police (the Cheka) and seized control of the countryside.  The Tsarist regime's inability to accept reasonable constitutional reforms (combined with poor economic policies) was once again a direct explanation of the emergence of violent alternatives. Lenin wrote the important theoretical work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. In this work Lenin argues that the merging of banks and industrial cartels give rise to finance capital. In the last stage of capitalism, in pursuit of greater profits than the home market can offer, capital is exported. This leads to globalization---the division of the world between international monopolist firms and to European states colonizing large parts of the world in support of their businesses. Imperialism is thus an advanced stage of capitalism, one relying on the rise of monopolies and on the export of capital (rather than goods), and of which colonialism is one feature. Due to the democratization of politics after the February Revolution, which legalized formerly banned political parties, Lenin took the opportunity to go back to Russia after living in exile in Switzerland. However, the possibility to return to Russia did not mean it had suddenly become easy. Hoping that his activities would weaken Russia or even, if the Bolsheviks came to power, lead to Russia's withdrawal from the war, German officials arranged for Lenin to pass through their territory. Kerensky became its new head. He was more progressive than his predecessor but not radical enough for the Bolsheviks and the large part of the Russian population who could not stand the deepening economic crisis and the continuation of the war any longer.  As minister of war and later Prime Minister, Kerensky promoted freedom of speech which materialized by the release of thousands of political prisoners but he was no more successful than his predecessors regarding the war issue.

1917-THE BOLSHEVIK TERROR AGAINST THEIR ENEMIES-  the Cheka (Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya – Extraordinary Commission) was created by a decree issued by Lenin to defend the Russian Revolution. The establishment of the Cheka, secret service formally consolidated the censorship established earlier, with a decree giving the Bolsheviks control over all newsprint and wide powers of closing down newspapers critical of the régime. . . ."; non-Bolshevik soviets were disbanded; anti-soviet newspapers were closed until Pravda (Truth) and Izvestia (The News) established their communications monopoly.  The Bolshevik refusal to come to terms with the [Revolutionary] socialists, and the dispersal of the Constituent assembly, led to the logical result that revolutionary terror would now be directed, not only against traditional enemies, such as the bourgeoisie or right-wing opponents, but against anyone, be he socialist, worker, or peasant, who opposed Bolshevik rule. Lenin valued the work of the Cheka in protecting the security of the Russian Revolution: When the Soviet government is experiencing a difficult period and plots are   being hatched by bourgeois elements and when at a critical moment we manage to  lay bare these plots —  the Bolshevik failure in the July Days proved temporary, thanks to a massive growth in membership. Indeed, from February to September 1917 the party's audience increased almost tenfold, thereby overtaking the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries as majority factions in Petrograd and Moscow. The Bolsheviks used their influence on the Petrograd Soviet to organize the revolutionary forces. Under the authority of the Military Revolutionary Committee, Bolshevik Red Guards began the takeover of government buildings on October 24th (O.S.). The Winter Palace was captured the following day. They elected a Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) as the basis of a new government, before the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, and passed the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land. The latter legalized the actions of the peasants who seized private land and redistributed it among themselves throughout Russia. The alliance between factory workers and peasants. Other decrees included nationalization of all Russian banks along with confiscation of private bank accounts and repudiation of all foreign debts, seizure of The Church's properties  and new labor law (higher wages, introduction of an eight-hour working day and control of the factories was given to the soviets).  The Council of People's Commissars promptly organized a political repression campaign by arresting the leaders of opposition parties, thereby tearing apart freedom of speech and association promises. In the process, major members of the Constituent Assembly, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) as well as Menshevik leaders were imprisoned. Following  the successful assassination of Petrograd chief of secret police Moisei Uritsky, Stalin, in a telegram to Lenin, argued that a policy of "open and systematic mass terror" be instigated against "those responsible". Lenin and the other Bolsheviks agreed, and instructed Felix Dzerzhinsky, whom Lenin had appointed to head the Cheka  which was announced to the public  by the Bolshevik newspaper, Krasnaya Gazeta.  Those were executed  for taking part in rebellions,  for membership of counter-revolutionary organizations,  for gangsterism, for incitement to revolution,  for corruption,  for desertion and  for espionage. 

1917- COUNTERREVOLUTION.-  Because of the Bolsheviks' decision to continue on the autocratic path of previous centuries, constitutional monarchists and liberals gathered their forces into the White Army, which immediately declared war against the Bolsheviks' Red Army, thereby opening a new phase, that of Civil War. Besides, the Whites had backing from Great Britain, France, the USA and Japan, which feared that the government would default on its foreign loans and that the communist ideology would spread in the West, setting the stage for Truman's future "Containment" strategy. Not all Russian socialists supported transferring all power to the  Soviets. The Right SRs and Mensheviks walked out of this very first session of  the Congress of Soviets in protest at the overthrow of the Provisional Government, of which their parties had been members. The next day, on the evening of 26 October O.S., Lenin attended the Congress of Soviets: undisguised, in public for the first time, to "a thundering wave of  cheers." Ayn Rand fled to the West, where she announced that the world was divided between a small minority of Supermen who are productive and "the naked, twisted, mindless figure of the human Incompetent" who, like the Leninists, try to feed off them. The proletariat, she said, are mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned". The only difference was that Lenin thought the parasites to be stomped on were the rich, while Rand thought they were the poor. When the Socialist Revolutionary Fanya Kaplan called to Lenin, and when he turned to face her, she shot at him three times. The first bullet struck his arm, the second bullet his jaw and neck, and the third missed him, wounding the woman with whom he was speaking. On July 16th, 1918 the Tsar, along with his wife, his children, his physician and several servants were taken into the basement and killed.  In September 1919, the high tide of the White movement against the Soviets had been reached. By this time, counter-revolutionary forces were overextended. Lacking all necessary military and human supplies, the army led by Denikin was decisively defeated in a series of battles in the couple of months. The Red Army recaptured Kiev and the defeated Cossacks fled back towards the Black Sea. 

ULTRA LEFT DEVIATION - In Ukraine, the Bolshevik government signed a political and military alliance with anarchist  the Black Guards, which attacked from the ultra left and which until then fought against both sides in the wake of Ukraine's annexation to Germany by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Black Guards were able to defeat several regiments of Wrangel's troops in the southern part of the country, forcing him to retreat before harvest time. When delegates representing the Kronstadt sailors arrived in Petrograd for negotiations, they raised 15 demands which mainly concerned the right to freedom. The Government's response was to firmly denounce the requests as a reminiscence of Social Revolutionary ideas, a political party that refused to cooperate with the Bolsheviks. Obviously, these revolts were quelled and  casualties before the Red Army entered the city of Kronstadt. Exile seemed like the last option available to these rebels. Anti-anarchists attacks by the Bolsheviks increased in ferocity. 

1922 - SYNTHESIS.- Committee General Secretary earlier in the year), Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev  formed a (triumvirate) to ensure that Trotsky, publicly the number two man in the country and Lenin's heir presumptive, would not succeed Lenin.The rest of the recently expanded Politburo (Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky, Bukharin) was at first uncommitted, but eventually joined the troika. Stalin abandoned the traditional Bolshevik emphasis on international revolution in favor of a policy of building "Socialism in One Country", in contrast to Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. In the struggle for leadership one thing was evident: whoever ended up ruling the party had to be considered very loyal to Lenin. Stalin organized Lenin's funeral. .  He undermined Trotsky, who was sick at the time,  misleading him about the date of the funeral. Thus although Trotsky was Lenin's associate throughout the early days of the Soviet regime, he lost ground to Stalin. Trotsky argued that this approach was a shift away from the theory of Marx and Lenin, while others argued that it was a practical compromise fit for the times.The postwar revolutionary upsurge provoked a powerful reaction from the forces of conservatism. Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle". The invasion of Russia by the Allies, their trade embargo and backing for the White forces fighting against the Red Army in the civil war in the Soviet Union is cited  as  the main cause of the Russian revolution's turning to the dictatorship of the proletariat.  

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THE CUBAN REVOLUTION-

1947 - BACKGROUND- Castro joined the Partido Ortodoxo  formed by Eduardo Chibás,  with his message of social justice, honest government, and political freedom. The Partido Ortodoxo publicly exposed corruption and demanded government and social reform, defending Cuban sovereignty, the end to a one crop economy and large landed estates, agricultural diversity, the development of industry, the nationalizing of public services and utilities, the clean management of public funds and workers' guarantees.  Menéndez had fought for important gains in the introduction of hygiene in the sugar refineries, the raising of salaries, and the creation of a clinic for the workers and  the sugar differential, by which the US is obligated to pay for the price of sugar it imports at the same rate as the price increase  of Yankees goods that enter the island.   Gen. Fulgencio Batista overthrew Prío Socorras and assumed power. During the next seven years, Batista allowed U.S. influence to pervade the entire Cuban economy, including public utilities, petroleum, sugar, and tourism. Famous for its African-Cuban music and freewheeling nightlife, Havana became the tourism capital of the Americas.The Batista dictatorship begins, and with it the struggle for national and social liberation. New insurrectionist groups develop, but are unable to do more than store arms and justify further repression by the dictatorship.  People's silence, their unwillingness to assume their revolutionary duties, their splitting off  into fractions, their political opportunism, all prevent the development of policies at a level demanded by the situation.  The University students issue a manifesto to the people  "Not to allow themselves to be dragged by provocateurs into a useless massacre and to continue the fight against the dictatorship, because the time does not allow for vacillations and backtracking."  Defeatist myths abound in the bosom of the people. The worker's movement is disorganized, its leaders are gangsters bought by the imperialists and the bosses.  The Marxist-Leninist Party is isolated and repressed, the bourgeois parties are disunited and disoriented..  The people are unarmed and without military experience, cynical about the sham of politics.  The tyranny is all-powerful with the full backing of Washington.   The coup eliminates democratic rights, such as the right to strike, and the most important civil rights.  They dissolve the Congress, substituting it with a  Congress made up of landowners, sections of the bourgeoisie, including the sell-out labor leader Mujal. Unemployment increases, real income decreases, as well as the State fiscal income.  Added to this situation are the worsening concessions by the tyrannical government owed the imperialist monopolies, which take a 50% slice of the pie in the form of stocks and bonds. 

NEW IDEAS EMERGE.-  On July 26,1953 the Revolutionaries attacked Moncada Barracks. The Céspedes garrison in Bayamo was also attacked as a diversion. The attack proved disastrous and more than sixty of the one-hundred and thirty-five militants involved were killed. Castro and other surviving members of his group managed to escape to a part of the rugged Sierra Maestra mountains east of Santiago where they were eventually discovered and captured. Castro was  sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison. During his trial Castro delivered his famous defense speech History Will Absolve Me, upholding his rebellious actions and boldly declaring his political views:  I warn you, I am just beginning! If there is in your hearts a vestige of love for your country, love for humanity, love for justice, listen carefully... I  know that the regime will try to suppress the truth by all possible means; I  know that there will be a conspiracy to bury me in oblivion. But my voice will not be stifled – it will rise from my breast even when I feel most alone, and  my heart will give it all the fire that callous cowards deny it... Condemn me.  It does not matter. History will absolve me." Revolutionary martyrs begin to appear.  Outstanding is the candlelight march, with 500 young people  In the political positions the young lawyer takes one can see Marxist-Leninist ideas.  Rejecting the "don't rock the boat" and reformist attitudes of the established left leaders, Fidel and his companions begin to recruit people who come out of the Orthodox Party, and he separates himself from it before the end of the year, forming an independent group.  This organization eventually has 1,500 members structured in 150 cells. Each cell has a head who mediates between it and the leadership.  The plan was to attack the Moncada Garrison on Santiago to arm the people and begin the general uprising. In response to the failed action of the 26th, Batista orders 10 prisoners to be assassinated for each soldier that died.  If 10 moncadistas fell, 70 more die after being caught and tortured.  The Santiago population hides the moncadista leaders in their homes, who are able to avoid arrest.   The old problem of the revolutionary movement is brought to light again--that of the relation between objective conditions and the subjective factor in making the Revolution.  Moncada opens the way for armed struggle by the new Revolutionary vanguard, which will fight for six more years to victory.   The six main problems at this time are; unemployment, lack of industrialization, the agrarian problem, housing, health and education. Batista announce new elections, the opposition party is headed by Grau, and Fidel calls the charade "a battle between thieves".  The bourgeoisie tries to legitimize its administration.  The student movement undergoes a radical change, where tactics and strategy are specifically outlined to overthrow the Batista regime.

THERE IS A SHIFT TO REVOLUTION.-  After having served less than two years, Fidel was released in May  due to a general amnesty from Batista who was under political pressure. Once in Mexico, Castro reunited with other Cuban exiles and founded the July 26 Movement, named after the date of the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks. The goal remained the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista. This time, the plan was to use underground guerrilla tactics. In Mexico Castro met Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a proponent of guerrilla warfare. Guevara joined the group of rebels and became an important force in shaping Castro's evolving political beliefs.   The popular movement is successful in pressuring the government to a general amnesty, that allows the MR 26-7 to be freed from jail.  The combatants leave with a well developed strategy.  They understand that there is no political solution possible,  that armed struggle is the only way.  They establish under a single centralized  authority a wide distribution of functions by fronts, such as, that of armed and active combat, finances, propaganda, worker's issues, youth and students, projecting a willingness to work with different sectors and using varied forms of struggle, which guarantees the close ties with the masses who agree with the tactical and strategic objectives of the movement.  The social base of the movement is made up of working class youth, representatives of the industrial and agricultural workers, and radical sectors of the petty bourgeoisie.  The political-strategic objectives of the movement are national and social liberation.  The tactical objectives are armed insurrection and a general revolutionary strike.   Those who remain in Cuba need to prepare others who will support the revolutionary movement.  In the meantime, Fidel embarks on an intensive political and ideological activity publicizing in the  US,  Mexico and Cuba the aims of the Revolution.    Ernesto Che Guevara promotes among the combatants issues leading to ideological clarity. The center of attention of the Communist Party at this time is taken up by the unified worker's movement.   The Party works in the sugar strike, whose main demand is the payment of the sugar differential,  which the government wants to manipulate for its own ends.   There are actions in a dozen cities throughout the island.  The Communist leader Flavio Bravo goes to México to interview Fidel and to coordinate actions against the dictatorship.  There are University student demonstrations .  The beaten and arrested demonstrators provoke a new wave of protest.  At a baseball game, the students unfurl a banner that says "free political prisoners".  In spite of the fact that the repressive forces react immediately, the television transmission is not cut off, and the people can see first hand the violence unleashed by the police against unarmed students

 On November 26,, Castro and his group of 81 followers, mostly Cuban exiles, set out from Tuxpan, Veracruz, aboard the yacht Granma for the purpose of starting a rebellion in Cuba. In short order, most of Castro's men were killed, dispersed, or taken prisoner by Batista's forces.  They regrouped in the Sierra Maestra in Oriente province and organized a column under Fidel Castro's command.From their encampment in the Sierra Maestra mountains, July 26 Movement waged a guerrilla war against the Batista government. In the cities and major towns also, resistance groups were organizing until underground groups were everywhere.  A profound social and economic revolution was initiated among a people where illiteracy was rife; 30% of adults did not know how to read or write, while up to another 50% had not completed fifth grade. The literacy campaign was the first step toward raising the educational level of the Cuban people, in a process that has generated 600,000 university graduates in the population today. At the outset the Cuban people had to overcome a fierce anti-communism which continues to thrive in propaganda directed against the Revolution, in an attempt to discredit it in the eyes of the world. Washington is frightened by the gains of the Cuban Revolution, its steadfastness and strength.  During the guerrilla campaign, Guevara was also feared for his  ruthlessness, and was responsible for the execution of a number of men accused  of being informers, deserters or spies. 60%  of families live in shacks with dirt floor and guano roofing. 85%  have no beds-30%  have no electricity 43%  is illiterate 14%  has tuberculosis 11%  have milk to drink  4%  eat meat.   A broad united action is planned in Santiago, one which includes arresting of the maritime police, the police station, the airport, preventing the use of reinforcements from Moncada, the freeing of some prisoners from the Boniato jail, and other actions. The tactic and strategy of the Revolutionary Command (DR) are based on urban struggle, combining mass action with armed action.  The FEU, through the DR, sparks Revolutionary comradeship among all the civil elements; the embattled student, the militant worker, the unsubmissive woman, the just owner, the soldier who refuses to commit crimes, the forgotten peasant. Fidel stated that "we are fighting to do away with dictatorship in Cuba and to establish the foundations of genuine representative government" and promised to "prepare and conduct truly honest general elections within twelve months" after success. Although on paper heavily outnumbered, Castro's guerrilla forces scored a series of victories, largely aided by mass desertions from Batista's army of poorly trained and uncommitted young conscripts. During the Battle of La Plata, Castro's forces defeated an entire battalion. While pro-Castro Cuban sources later emphasized the role of Castro's guerrilla forces in these battles, other groups and leaders were also involved. During the Battle of Las Mercedes, Castro's small army came close to defeat but he managed to pull his troops out by opening up negotiations with General Cantillo while secretly slipping his soldiers out of a trap.When Operation Verano ended, Castro ordered three columns commanded by Guevara, Jaime Vega and Camilo Cienfuegos to invade central Cuba where they were strongly supported by rebellious elements who had long been operating in the area. One of Castro's columns moved out onto the Cauto Plains. Here, they were supported by Huber Matos, Raúl Castro and others who were operating in the eastern-most part of the province. On the plains, Castro's forces first surrounded the town of Guisa in Granma Province and drove out their enemies, then proceeded to take most of the towns. In December, the columns of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos continued their advance through Las Villas province. They succeeded in occupying several towns, and then began preparations for an attack on Santa Clara, the provincial capital. Guevara's fighters launched a fierce assault on the Cuban army surrounding Santa Clara, and a vicious house-to-house battle ensued. They also derailed an armored train which Batista had sent to aid his troops in the city while Cienfuegos won the Battle of Yaguajay. Defeated on all sides, Batista's forces crumbled. The provincial capital was captured after less than a day of fighting on December 31. When the objective and subjective forces are in congruence, the tyranny falls.  

Batista fled  to the Dominican Republic on January 1, 1959.  Radio Rebelde takes to the air to break the monopoly on information.  At the same time it becomes a means of communication among the guerrillas.  Accompanying Batista into exile was an amassed fortune of more than $300,000,000 that he acquired through "graft and payoffs."The rebel forces of Fidel Castro moved swiftly to seize power throughout the island. At the age of 32, Castro had successfully masterminded a classic guerrilla campaign from his headquarters in the Sierra Maestra and ousted Batista.New government. On January 8, 1959, Castro's army rolled victoriously into Havana and would shortly thereafter declare that "power does not interest me, and I will not take it." As news of the fall of Batista's government spread through Havana, The New York Times described the scene as one of jubilant crowds pouring into the streets and automobile horns honking. The black and red flag of July 26 Movement waved on automobiles and buildings. The atmosphere was chaotic. Castro called a general strike in protest of the Piedra government.  Castro himself arrived in Havana to cheering crowds and assumed the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces on January 8. In February professor José Miró Cardona had to resign because of Castro's attacks. On February 16, 1959, Castro was sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba. Professor Miró soon went into exile in the United States, and would later participate in the Bay of Pigs Invasion against Castro's form of government. Castro's slogan was "Revolution first, elections later. Castro signed into law the First Agrarian Reform, which limited landholdings to 993 acres (4 km²) per owner and forbade foreign land ownership. Castro's sentiments received widespread support as organized crowds surrounded the presidential palace demanding Urrutia's resignation, which was duly received. On July 23, Castro resumed his position as premier and appointed Osvaldo Dorticós as the new president.

Subsequently, the USSR sent over one hundred mostly Spanish speaking advisors, including Enrique Líster Forján, to organize the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.In February 1960, Cuba signed an agreement to buy oil from the USSR. When the U.S.-owned refineries in Cuba refused to process the oil, they were expropriated, and the United States broke off diplomatic relations with the Castro government soon afterward. An agrarian reform law was promulgated, providing for appropriation (with remuneration) of large landholdings. U.S. sugar companies, expecting to lose 1,666,000 acres, responded by demanding full and prompt payment in cash. Maj. Huber Matos, revolutionary leader and virulent anti-Communist, was arrested for treason. His trial, which resulted in a 20-year prison sentence , indicated the direction of the revolution.   The revolutionary process wipes out the connection between capitalism and feudal vestiges  that had perpetuated themselves since Colonial times and had been taken advantage of by the Imperialists to turn Cuba into a source of cheap raw materials and to submit the nation to a process of deformation and backwardness based on the stagnation of sugar production, unemployment, perpetual maladjustment in the balance of payments and the increase of contradictions between the development of productive forces and the social relations of capitalist production, which prevented the attainment of social progress by reformist means. Batista's thugs torturers and snitches  are put on  trial for their crimes during the dictatorship.  Batista's property and that of his collaborators is confiscated.  The Ministry for the  Recovery of Ill-gotten Property is created to carry out confiscation of property and transfer it to the power of the Cuban State, obeying an elementary sense of justice in returning to the Nation the wealth that had been stolen by Batista and his collaborators.  318 construction companies are recovered, as well as sugar refineries, 3.7% of the land, 50 land, air and water  transport companies, 400 million pesos, etc.  Corruption, inherited from the Batista dictatorship, is eliminated, and the participation of the workers in power sharing is guaranteed, as a future seed of the socialist sector in the economy. The ministry proposes Law 87 against irresponsible land holdings, takes over the Cuban Telephone Company, a US monopoly that was involved in shady dealings with the Batista tyranny, and there is an immediate lowering of telephone and electric fees.  The department of reforestation is created, allowing credit of 5 million pesos for tree planting.  The Council of Ministers reduces housing rents by 50% in the whole country.  Construction is given new impetus.  The National Printing Press, the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, The Cuban Institute for the Arts and Cinematography, the National Tourist Industry, the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces  (FAR) are created.  Barracks are turned into schools.  200 rural schools and 9000 urban classrooms are created, text books prices are lowered between 25 and 30%.  The Oriente University City is founded.  The price of medicines is reduced between 15% and 20%.  The Council approves credits for the protection of infants, the rehabilitation of minors and the fight against hoodlums, and imposes a tax on liquor.  These measures elicit the protest of sections of the bourgeoisie who see their class interests threatened.   The Law of Agrarian Reform counters the critical situation in the countryside, that is, where 15% of the landowners control half of arable lands, there are large land holdings of up to 18,000 caballerías (each caballería equals 134,300 square meters).  Peasants pay rents in money or up to half their crop for the use of the land.  There is a large number of unemployed worsened by "dead time' since harvesting only takes between 76 to 131 days of the year.  Agricultural salaries are  a miserable 50 cents a day.  US companies control a  high percentage of the best lands.  Health in the countryside is precarious.  There are few means of communication, as well as electrical power.  Housing and education are a disaster.  The Law proscribes large land holdings (there are exceptions which allow up to 100 caballerías).  Lands are distributed, rents, sharecropping and insufficiency are mitigated, the land is nationalized, a minimum of 2 caballerías is established as a minimum living parcel for a family of five. Scientific and technical advances are applied, cooperatives are established.  Under the guidance of El Che, departments of Industry,  Commerce and Fishing are created, among others.  People's Militia units are created, the literacy campaign is supported, antitank and antiair schools are created.  The Law of Agrarian Reform is the first measure taken to wipe out underdevelopment and economic dependency.  It is a revolutionary law because it initiates profound economic and political transformations, and weakens the bourgeoisie.  It substitutes state property over private property.  It strengthens the alliance between peasants and workers. The class struggle is unleashed at the heart of the Revolution, characterized on the one hand by Yankee imperialism and the social classes displaced by political power, and the acceleration of the Revolutionary process on the other At this time the imperialists fiercely support the monopolies, the landowners and  bourgeois that are still the owners of the media, radio, televison, movies, press, and the economy of the country.  

THE TERROR. -  In June, Eisenhower reduced Cuba's sugar import quota by 7,000,000 tons, and in response, Cuba nationalized some $850 million worth of U.S. property and businesses. Health care was socialized. The new government took control of the country by nationalizing industry, redistributing property, collectivizing agriculture and creating policies that would benefit the poor. While popular among the poor, these policies alienated many former supporters of the revolution among the Cuban middle and upper-classes. In September, Castro created Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, which implemented neighborhood spying in an effort to weed out counter-revolutionary  activities. All opposition newspapers had been closed down and all radio and television stations were in state control, run under the Leninist principle of Democratic Centralism. Moderates, teachers and professors were purged. Castro was accused of keeping about 20,000 dissidents held captive and tortured under inhuman prison conditions.Groups such as homosexuals  were subject to medical-political "re-education". Castro stated that  The Communist Party strengthened its one-party rule, with Castro as the Prime Minister. El Che officially represents a new organization, the Association of Young Rebels,  (AJR) who dedicate themselves to study, work and the defense against subversion. Telephones, electricity, oil refineries, 36 sugar refineries and all the US banks are nationalized.   The Urban Reform law is passed, rescuing housing as a means of exploitation, benefitting large sectors of the population.  The functions of worker's control are; to watch over the safety of  the industries, prevent the paralyzation of production, guard raw materials, and send out production orders.  All these measures signify the culmination of the democratic-popular-agrarian-antiimperialist stage and the beginnings of the socialist stage.  International solidarity materializes in economic, military technical and educational terms, on the part of the USSR, progressive governments and the peoples of the world, especially of Latin America, and this prevents the Revolution from being  thwarted.   The Habana Declaration, proclaims the rights of people to work, to the land, to education, to health, to social assistance, to equality, to the rights of peoples to free trade, to full sovereignty, to defense of their rights by the use of arms. Distribution of consumer goods to the population are guaranteed, State commercial companies are administered, commercial activity of private companies is regulated, the Law of Nationalization of Education is passed, making it completely public and free of charge, the Ministry of Health and welfare is dissolved, replaced by free medical services.  Cultural, sports, and recreational  organizations are created, for mass participation and the rescue of Cuban values and traditions, without, however, ignoring universal culture.  People's tribunals are created which are competent to judge cases that do not exceed 180 days of arrest.  These tribunals are made up of judges who are elected in mass assemblies.  These measures involve a greater centralization of the state apparatus, and the leaders promote measures to achieve an adequate equivalency between centralism and democracy, tying the masses in directly with People's Power, through representation in mass organizations, and the right of every citizen to address them and give his/her criteria and viewpoints. The AJR  becomes more active, with multiple areas of work, such as the constitution of youth work brigades, the mobilization of thousands of young people in activities such as the harvest, sugar cane cutting, cleaning up, the construction of the José Antonio Echeverría University,  the incorporation of the young in the militias, their greater participation in cultural and sports activities, support of education,   The AJR is destined to become the youth wing of the Party, so that it ceases to become a mass organization and becomes a selective organization made up of the most capable.  The functioning of the base committees is guided by the principles of democratic centralism, selection of membership,  criticism and self-criticism and the obligation to carry out an active life in the organization, do ideological work, and to fight evils such as bureaucracy, routine attitudes and sectarianism.  The Federation of Cuban Women is founded, which dedicates itself to the reeducation of prostitutes and their reintroduction into the work force, to participation in the literacy campaign, to massive support of scholarships, the construction of preschool centers, attention to school lunchrooms, the incorporation of women into work in the fields, support for health issues, raising the cultural level of women, encouraging their studies in advanced fieldsThe Cuban bourgeoisie is not able to adopt a position contrary to Yankee imperialism, and accelerates its own destruction as a class.

COUNTERREVOLUTION - Cuba is infested with reactionary ideology.  The media succeed in putting forth a great anti-communist campaign to confuse the people, to divide them and to even affect the Rebel Army.  The offensive on the part of the US comprises an ideological offensive  military,  political , and economic .  Classes are polarized in the same measure that the Revolution deepens and develops.  The Revolution answers the aggression with a firm backing, with the suppression of counterrevolutionary strikes, with the raising of salaries by 4%, with the creation of worker's militias arm in arm with the Rebel Army to guarantee the defense of the motherland, with the purge of the worker's movement, and with a vote of censure of the reactionary press at the service of the Revolution's enemies.  The rights of women are instituted, along with child care centers for working mothers.  The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) are created.  Their main objective is revolutionary vigilance, as an auxiliary to State security.  Their tasks are related to education, public health, savings and volunteer work.  These measures are feared and hated by the imperialists and the reactionaries.  aparece en el periódico Verde Olivo, vocero de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (FAR) las primeras manifestaciones en favor de llevar a la revolución hacia el comunismo. The US  felt double crossed when Castro closed the casinos and nationalized the businesses. Coca Cola was furious when Castro told them they had to pay for sugar at the market price, not at the low prices they were used to. The mafia lost fortunes when gambling was closed down. They swore revenge. They  trained the renegade bands of assasins to kill Castro. They produced the Bay of Pigs. They invaded Cuba without Kennedys permission and he refused to provide air back up.The Cuban Revolution  AFTER two years and 13 days, the Rebel Army had defeated a force of 80,000 men.  Fidel had  returned with a promise to the people, which he kept on January 1, 1959, when the Rebel Army was victorious. Banditry becomes a problem, with vigilantes and traitors who seek refuge in the mountainous and undeveloped areas of the country.  The Escambray Sierra is the center of banditry in the country, thanks to the pseudo revolutionary Escambray National Front, which mistreats the peasants, gives a false idea of the Revolution where there is political and ideological weakness in Revolutionary work, and where there exists  support for imperialism in the declassé elements.   Using the lowest type of persons, ex-military members of Batistas army, traitors to the Revolution, pseudo revolutionaries, lumpens, foremen of the old  landed estates and malcontents of all classes, the CIA organizes and gives money and equipment to several bands, who engage in terrorism, sabotage, attacks on populations, and assassinations of innocent people.  There are eventually 179 bands with a total of 3,591 members in 6 provinces.  The first cleansing of Escambray is initiated, liquidating more than 1,000 bandits, cutting off any internal support to the US invasion, which is being planned in Washington. The freighter La Coubre, a  French vessel carrying munitions from the port of Antwerp, exploded while it was  being unloaded in Havana harbor, in a CIA engineered operation. A rescue operation immediately ensued but went  awry when a second explosion occurred, resulting in well over a hundred  dead.  A group of revanchist military officers rebelled. CIA-trained Cuban exiles were used to suppress the revolt while U.S. warships waited off the coast. The survivors fell back to the countryside and began a low-intensity guerrilla war.  After American-owned oil companies (on the advice of the U.S. State Department) refused to process Soviet crude oil, Castro seized the refineries. In retaliation for the oil refinery incident, Pres. Eisenhower cut Cuba's sugar quota by 95 percent. Eisenhower declared economic war on Cuba, stating that the U.S. would never allow a regime "dominated by international Communism" in the Western Hemisphere. The Cuban gobernment began expropriating all US owned property in Cuba, without compensation.The U.S. imposed an embargo on all exports to Cuba except for medical supplies and most foodstuffs. 

OPERACION PETER PAN.  Vuelos de Pan Am llevaron a los niños a Miami, Florida, que, en la jerga de la operación era llamada "La tierra de Nunca Jamás" (Never-Never Land) En 1961, los Estados Unidos cerraron su embajada en Cuba como parte de los preparativos para la Invasión del Giron. En respuesta a la invasión, Cuba llegó a un acuerdo con el premier soviético Nikita Jrushchov para trasladar armas nucleares al país, lo que llevó a la Crisis de los Misiles en 196-2. Durante esta crisis, el Gobierno de los Estados Unidos canceló los vuelos entre los dos países; esto tuvo un efecto dramático, dejando a ochocientos niños a la espera de sus padres en Miami.  Cuando se hizo obvio que los padres no llegarían pronto a los Estados Unidos, grupos católicos recogieron a los niños de Miami y los ubicaron en diferentes orfanatos, o con diversas familias por todo el país, para que fueran adoptados. Después del cese de los vuelos comerciales entre Cuba y EE.UU. se delinearon otras rutas alternativas para el éxodo de los niños desde Cuba.   Estudiosos y participantes de la Operación usaron esta estratagema de la que Estados Unidos se valió para generar mayor presión y malestar en las capas medias de Cuba, y así lograr un mayor apoyo a sus actos y actividades en contra del gobierno de Castro.   La emisión radial alertaba sobre el asunto diciendo: "Madres cubanas, no dejen que les quiten a sus hijos! El Gobierno Revolucionario se los quitará a ustedes cuando cumplan cinco años y los retendrá hasta que tengan 18."   . 

The invasion plan was launched . The Cuban armed forces, trained and equipped by Eastern Bloc nations, defeated the exile combatants in three days.  On February 7, 1962, the US imposed an embargo against Cuba. An attempt by CIA-sponsored Cuban nationals to foment an anti-Castro rebellion in Cuba failed. The botched invasion embarrassed the new Kennedy administration and strained U.S.-Soviet relations. A Cuban rebel force of about 1,600 men, funded and trained by the CIA, invaded soutern Cuba and established a beachhead near the Playa Giron, but it was driven off with heavy losses.  This sparked the undying hatred of the Cuban exiles against Kennedy. In the aftermath of the invasion, popular support for Castro in Cuba reached new heights, and Castro began to refer to the revolution as a socialist one. Members of the former PSP also assumed more prominent roles in his government .   From Nicaragua, 8 B-26 bombers attack 3 Cuban airports.  Their victims are buried in a gigantic demonstration of popular mourning.  The plan has been  worked out by the CIA, who creates 20 bases for instruction and training in the US, Guatemala,  and Nicaragua, eventually training more than 7,000 counterrevolutionary emigrés.The mercenary invasion begins, coded "Operation Pluto", made up of 1,500 men who land at the Bay of Pigs.  The plan includes Playa Girón, Playa Larga and Caleta Buena.  The fundamental objective is to establish a beach head, occupy a part of the national territory as a base for future operations, and install a provisionary government with José Miró Cardona at the head, who would immediately be recognized by the US.   The CDR are mobilized to arrest 2,500 malcontents disaffected with the Revolution  or collaborators with the CIA.  Militia battalions are mobilized, as well as the Revolutionary Army.  Weapons from the USSR and Czechoslovakia, welded to the fearlessness and bravery  of the men who carried them, make possible the defeat of the invaders in less than 72 hours, with a count of 89 dead, 250 wounded and 197 prisoners.  Among the mercenaries there are 100 landed gentry, 67 property owners of estates, 112 businessmen, 37 capitalists and 194 Batista war criminals.  Cuban losses number 157 dead.  e Girón is the first defeat of Yankee Imperialism in America, and socialism is definitely established therein on the continent.  Not for nothing  does the US try to counter the force of this example, promoting an aggressive social and reformist alternative called "Alliance for Progress", which contemplates an annual donation  to other Latin American states of 2 billion dollars, 1,1 billion given through government channels and the rest through investments.  The result of this "progress" is shown in the crushing foreign debt, the decrease in the gross national product and the per capita income,  the increase in social ills and underdevelopment. The second cleansing of Escambray takes place, provoked by the need of Imperialism to continue encouraging banditry after the Girón defeat.  Of the 6,000 doctors that existed in Cuba before the Revolution, 3,000 abandon the country.  FALSE FLAG. The planned, but never executed, 196-2 Operation Northwoods plot by the US Department of Defense for a war with Cuba involved scenarios such as hijacking a passenger plane and blaming it on Cuba. It was authored by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nixed by John F. Kennedy, came to light through the Freedom of Information Act.    Problems of this period are; the heavy influence of external factors in the economy, Cuba's dependency on getting raw materials and equipment, the low level of training of the work force, the absence of an infrastructure for industrialization, the effects of the economic blockade, the unfavorable weather conditions, and the sharpening of the military struggle in defense of the Revolution.  An important role was played by the agrarian sector and the sugar industry.  The Agrarian Reform Law is promulgated.  The counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie in the countryside, which owns 30% of the land,  is each day more active supporting uprisings sabotage, and the black market.  Landownership is reduced  to the limit of hectares, the rest is nationalized 

 

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ULTRALEFT DEVIATION- Guevara played a key role in bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic  missiles that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 196-2. During an  interview with the British newspaper Daily Worker some weeks later, he stated  that, if the missiles had been under Cuban control, they would have fired them  against major U.S. cities. Sectarianism manifests itself in the lack of confidence by those who have had an old communist militant trajectory, believing that only the old militants can have political and administrative responsibilities.  There are even those who install themselves in certain administrative posts to obtain the highest pay and benefits

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SYNTHESIS -  Fidel proclaims the socialist character of the Revolution.    The tasks corresponding to the democratic, popular, agrarian and anti-imperialist stage had been fulfilled.  This involves a superior stage, that of socialist construction.  The masses are ready not only to embrace socialism, but to defend it with all their strength, a situation which contributes to weeding out anticommunist prejudices that had  been inculcated through bourgeois propaganda.   The need for the Party is necessary for the following reasons; the existence of a revolutionary vanguard,  which results in a joining of forces to the detriment of the rightist and anticommunist ones which try to brake the Revolution or sidetrack it into reformism.  This situation allows the masses to free themselves of anticommunist prejudices fomented by imperialist propaganda and its servants, and with the existence of a large combative working class allows it to be transformed  into a class for itself.  The members of the Party of a New Type struggle to retain the principles of selection, democratic centralism and the ties of the Party with the masses.  .  Voluntary cooperatives spring up.  Private capitalist property owners are  liquidated as a social class.  Agricultural workers remain tied to state enterprises, and the peasants are either small property owners or cooperativists.  The growth of the State sector, (property of all the people), guarantees production relations in the countryside, which in turn creates favorable conditions for a planned economy.  At this time the Revolution controls 70% of agriculture, 95% of industry, 98%  in construction, 100% of the banks and 100% of wholesale foreign trade.  Electric energy is developed, as well as the merchant marine, the highway system, the construction materials industry, hydraulic works, the mechanization of the farming and fishing industries, and the training of technical cadres.  These policies express the humanist essence of the Revolutionary process and the possibility of success in development.The State apparatus at this time has the following characteristics; the need to have an efficient structure, which can operate dynamically and make rapid decisions without delays, to be able to successfully  face imperialist and internal counterrevolutionary aggressions, and to achieve the main transformation.  The Party is organized as the  leading force in the society and of the political system, which strengthens mass and social organizations.  The negative experiences with "representative democracy", with its trail of cheap politics, theft,  corruption, fraud, racketeering, misappropriation of funds, and renouncing of principles, is not to be copied.  Many of the laws passed are throughly discussed by the people, such as the Social Welfare Law, the Worker's Justice Project, the Military Draft Law, all of which show democratic forms that the Cuban Revolution is taking.  Unions mobilize dozens of thousands of voluntary macheteros to cut the sugar cane, keep up production in the face of the US blockade, keep a militant stance in the face of the October crisis, encourage socialist emulation among the people at a nationwide level, and mobilize to mitigate the harm caused by Hurricane Flora. Many workers  further advance their studies as technicians, to the tune of 800,000 workers enrolled in higher level courses, including University.  The CDRs engage in work that includes, the literacy campaign, the sponsoring of schools, participation in massive vaccination campaigns, the raising of hygiene awareness and the beautifying of housing and neighborhoods, the massive donating of blood, the encouragement of saving and recycling of raw materials, the collaborating on the delivery of supplies, the contining work on the ideological formation of the  masses, and the promotion of solidarity with all peoples in defense of peace and disarmament. Castro announced that Cubans were free to leave. On Nov. 6 an agreement was reached with the U.S. government to airlift 3,000-4,000 Cuban refugees monthly. In the next five years several hundred thousand, many from the educated classes, left the island, joining those who had left during the first great wave of out-migration from 1959 to 1961 CHE.  After serving in various important posts in the new government and writing a number of articles and books on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare, Guevara left Cuba in 1965.  

TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM

SOCIALISM puts an end to exploitation. Working people are organized as the ruling class. Banks, Railways, communications, shipping, large agribusiness and industrial corporations, the military, will all belong to the people, who will decide policy by means of  meeting halls, Internet, press, radio and TV. The work week is reduced, with annual paid vacations, free hotels and spas, free medical care, free education  including university, culture by and for the people, equality for women in economic, cultural and political life, child care centers. Unemployment is done away with, trade unions assure that workers cannot be fired, the State pays pensions and disability compensation, there is a distribution of housing so that homelessness is done away with, rent is less than 5% of income, all debts are canceled. War propaganda will be outlawed, as will war itself. Poverty will be ended with the recovery of the vast resources now wasted in war production, corporate profits and the extravagant lifestyles of the filthy rich. Production increases, science and technology are advanced, and the environment is protected. With capitalism gone, crime will begin to disappear. It is the profit system that corrupts and breeds crime.

REACTION TO OPPRESSION. Capitalism forces the transition  to socialism by way of its heartless exploitation of labor, the rapacious monopolies that victimize the middle class and small farmers, the offensive against democracy and toward fascism, the threat of a new world war. ALL have their origin in capitalism. This push for oppression cannot but result in a push back. That push back is socialism.

Socialism starts as a political act, capitalist power is overthrown and the workers are installed in power. But because this involves millions, with different agendas, the revolution is much more complex. Today, with a conscious working class, with instant means of communication, the passage toward revolution is much more secure. The success of the revolution is based on four things; the widely held conviction that it is worth the struggle, the degree of consciousness and organizational capacity of the workers, the class struggle as a thing that is never abandoned, the raising of political consciousness and capacity to fight. The very development of capitalism pushes the population into a socialist way of life, by providing the things that are denied to them by capitalism. This is what "sharpening of contradictions" means. This is so intransigent that it becomes an objective law. It is this imperative that fills the workers, along with their vanguard, with unending energy in the revolutionary struggle.

A PLANNED ECONOMY- A planned economy is an economic system in which a single agency makes all decisions about the production and allocation of goods and services. The term is used most often to refer to a centrally-planned economy (or command economy), in which the state or government controls the factors of production and makes all decisions about their use and about the distribution of income. In a centrally-planned economy, the planners decide what should be produced and direct enterprises to produce those goods. A planned economy is usually contrasted with a market economy, where production, distribution, and pricing decisions are made by the private owners of the factors of production and influenced by market forces. A planned economy may either consist of state owned enterprises, private enterprises who are directed by the state, or a combination of both. Though planned economies are usually defined in contrast to market economies, it is not necessary for an economy to be either market-based or centrally-planned; other systems also exist. Important planned economies that existed in the past include the Economy of the Soviet Union, which was for a time the world's second-largest economy. Beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, many governments presiding over planned economies began deregulating and moving toward market based economies by introducing market forces to determine pricing, distribution, and production. Although economies today are market economies or mixed economies, planned economies exist in some countries such as Cuba and North Korea.  While the term planned economy usually refers to centrally-planned economies, it may also be used to refer to decentralized systems of planning such as participatory economics.

WORKER'S DICTATORSHIP AND WORKER'S DEMOCRACY

The socialist revolution carries the workers to power under the leadership of the working class. The exploiting classes- capitalists and landowners are cut off from politics, although this does not mean the end of the class struggle.  The worker's rule has as its goal the transition from capitalism to socialism. Factory and industrial workers, and all who are exploited bring down the yoke of capitalism toward the construction of a classless society. This exploiting class, who was once supreme, and has now fallen out of power, marshals a desperate resistance and as long they continue to have money (much of it hidden) the possibility of restoration of capitalism does not disappear (USSR).

THE ECOLOGICAL MARXIST ANALYSIS. Marxist science cannot be dogmatic. A dogma can charge copyright fees, but not a science. One speaks of mathematics, physics or anthropology without calling them galeleism, newtonsim, etc. During the time of Stalin, when it was transformed into an official dogma, Marxism became an anti-science which retarded the movement for decades. It is paradoxical that capitalists now use parts of that Marxism for their counter-revolutionary strategies. Marx pointed out that capitalist production undermines the land- all production eventually leaves the ground sterile, and the land deteriorates as a result of the changes in country-city relations. With the increase in urban populations, the great centers of capitalist production have concentrated into a motor force capable of changing society, but the relations man-earth have been disturbed, and the conditions for permanent fertility of the soil have been broken. Capitalism measures everything in terms of monetary value and does not ask if production really serves human beings, neither does it worry about the effects it can have over nature. The left needs to ask what is the degree of social efficiency or environmental rationality or technological productivity. This is unthinkable within capitalism and this is why it is necessary to struggle for a socialist society. The left must devote time to theory, winning over intellectuals, forming communities of scientific research, making popular schools and permanent cadres a reality. Only socialism can resolve the contradiction between conservation and growth, between the laws of the market, of economic interests, of cultural and ethical values, and of popular demands of appropriation and self-determination on the use of natural resources. An eco-Marxist theory will give new orientation and foundation to the development of productive forces that make up ecology, technology and culture in within the ambit of equal and sustainable productive forces. At the same time, the Latin American left is going through a profound programmatic crisis. After 1.- The fall of Soviet socialism, 2.- The crisis of the welfare state promoted by European social democracy, 3.- Ideas of populist development in Latin America, To which one can add, 4.- The potential that still is possible within capitalism. The left has had great difficulty in designing a project that can transform and take on the new world reality in a single unit that can unite all the social sectors that are affected by the regime in power.