[R-G] Cuban CP urges "alliances of Marxist left" as "step toward convergence, unity, fusion"

[Fred Feldman]

The Marxist Left's Politics of Alliances at the Beginning of the 21st
Century
José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, Member of the Political Bureau of the
Communist Party of Cuba

On the basis of their own experiences and of the analysis of the
victories and setbacks that make up the history of the popular
struggles, the Communist Party of Cuba considers that a series of
premises exist for the formulation of the politics of alliances,
applicable not only to the communist parties, but to all contemporary
Marxist organizations as well: How we characterize the situation and
perspectives of the capitalist system of production at the beginning
of the 21st century? Based on that definition, what objectives do we
propose for ourselves? What social class sector or sectors make up the
subject or fundamental block of the struggle for the achievement of
such objectives? What other sectors constitute the spectrum of their
potential allies? And, what are the conditions and foundations for the
establishment of alliances between the subject or fundamental block of
the struggles, and the rest of the sectors susceptible to participate
in them?

Only the first two of these questions have a universal, categorical
and unequivocal answer, that being the characterization of capitalism
as a moribund social system in an advanced and irreversible state of
decomposition, and the strategic objective of building a socialist
society, the only alternative to the barbarism Rosa Luxemburg referred
to. As for to the rest of the problems that present themselves, while
it is possible and necessary to make general considerations that would
help to provide adequate solutions, it is the conditions prevailing in
each continent, region and nation and perhaps in each context, that
determine the content of such solutions.



Contemporary Imperialism and the Validity of the Struggle for
Socialism

In virtue of the political and ideological impact of the disappearance
of the Soviet Union and the other countries of what was called the
European Socialist Community, which left the terrain open for the
consolidation of the neo-liberal doctrine, together with the broad
gamut of pseudo theories associated with it, like the one about the
"end of history," two myths have played a decisive role in the
theoretical and political production since the beginning of the 1990's
concerning contemporary capitalism: the first is that "globalization"
causes a drastic rupture in the historical development of humanity,
impeding the understanding and transformation of society; the second
consists in attributing to the so-called Scientific-technical
Revolution the capacity to exorcise or indefinitely postpone the
explosion of the capitalist system's antagonistic contradictions.

The fetishes of "globalization" and the "Scientific-technical
Revolution" constitute the fundamental basis of the different variants
of today's "third way." They no longer try to position themselves
between the political and ideological poles postdating the October
Revolution of 1917, that is, between capitalism and socialism.
Instead, they place themselves openly within capitalism, saying they
occupy a "democratic" and "socially motivated" space between the
starkest neo-liberalism (symbolized by the governments of Ronald
Reagan and Margaret Thatcher), and the remnants of the so-called
Welfare State that functioned in part of Western Europe during the
20th century's post Second World War period.

Corresponding to this characterization of "historical rupture," and
the "permanent self renewal" capacity of the capitalist system of
production, there is: a) a strategy oriented toward limiting the most
destabilizing effects of the process of concentration of political and
economic power, with absolutely no proposal to alter it in its
essence; b) a tactic based on concessions directed to win or maintain
capital's tolerance for the exercise of the function of government or
the preservation of the ratio of forces of institutional
representation, deprived of the ability to exercise real political
power on central questions; c) a non-class definition of the subject
of the struggles which, in spite of the unprecedented process of
concentration of wealth and social polarization unfolding on the world
scale, ignores the position of human beings with respect to property
relations; d) an imprecise definition of the "allies," derived first
and foremost from the lack of a class conception of who forms the
fundamental subject of the struggles and; e) the playing of a
subordinate and secondary role in the politics of alliances.

Contrary to the image it projects of itself, contemporary imperialism
is characterized by the increasing concentration of property,
production and political power to a qualitatively higher level; in
other words, by the escalation to a level of transnational
concentration of property, production and political power, whose
nucleus is comprised of the transnational monopolies,1 that are fused
with the states of the main imperialist powers, which also take on
transnational functions. This process, which constitutes the present
stage of the development toward the universalization of human
relations analyzed by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, is what is
alluded to more and more often by the term "globalization."

Globalization is the historical continuation of capitalism's tendency
toward universalization, initiated with the formation of the world
market. It is based on political and economic conditions created in
the course of the 20th century and, in particular, during the post
Second World War period. It began to unfold in the 70's, that is,
beginning with the end of two decades of expansive growth of the world
capitalist economy opened by the destruction of productive forces
caused by the Second World War and it received a decisive political
and ideological impulse with the sharpening of the Soviet Union's
crisis and its collapse, reaching its maximum intensity and violence.

Also contrary to the postulates of the apologists of capitalism, the
so-called Scientific-technical Revolution in no way resolves or allows
indefinite postponement of the capitalist system of production's
antagonistic contradictions. The term Scientific-technical Revolution
is the one most used to refer to the development achieved by the
productive forces of capital during the postwar period, which among
other things was due to the stimulation of productive processes caused
by European reconstruction and the arms race. But the notion of an
exorcism of the contradictions is false because, precisely, it was
this development which, at the end of the 60's, once the productive
capacity of Western Europe and Japan had been reconstructed, caused
the return of the crisis of overproduction of commodities, capital and
population.

The reign of the transnational monopolies did not come about as
claimed by those imposing the unilateral opening and deregulation of
the underdeveloped countries under the signboard of universal
expansion of productive investment, the "transfer" of the advances of
science and technology, access to the markets of the "First World," or
the "trickle down" of wealth. On the contrary, in a world economy over
saturated with commodities, capital and labour power, in which the law
of the most powerful rules, the transnational monopoly corporations
use, with an unprecedented intensity, all their economic power and
their control over the scientific-technical innovations, together with
the political and military power of the imperialist states of their
nations of origin, in order to penetrate the areas of greater relative
development of the so-called Third World, with the aim of absorbing or
destroying local bodies of capital, whose markets they need to capture
in order to guarantee their own subsistence.

In the underdeveloped world, the empire of the transnational
monopolies has enthroned a vicious cycle of unrestricted opening to
the import of commodities and capital, bankruptcy of national
industry, dollarization or monetary overvaluation guaranteeing maximum
value in the export of profits, growing unemployment and
informalization of work, decline in the living standards of the people
and, consequently, decrease of the capacity for solvency of the
national market they have appropriated. The equilibrium of the balance
of payments is maintained in a temporary and precarious manner by
means of increasing interest rates to attract the flows of speculative
capital that constitute imperialism's main instrument of
expropriation.

How has this been demonstrated by the Argentine crisis amongst other
examples? Once all the blood had been sucked out, once all
possibilities of capturing the income and reducing the spending of the
dependent national state so as to maintain the spiral of external
indebtedness had been exhausted, once the cadaver of the national
market that had been so diligently "restructured" and "reformed"
according to the neo-liberal recipes was abandoned by the vampires,
only the fear of a chain reaction of the economic and financial crisis
solicits a "rescue" package which then in turn only further
compromises the future of the nation.

The obsolescent nature of capitalism today is evident because a
society which by definition is based on wage labour and the sale of
commodities increasingly depends on the reduction of labour and wages
and, as such, is forced to limit the horizon of the market that
constitutes its source of subsistence. The political, economic,
social, moral and environmental degradation of the present is the
greatest indication that the world has already entered the phase of
barbarism. The fable about the "trickle down effect" did not last
long. According to this fable, the whole world was supposed to reach
the levels of economic development now monopolized by the United
States, the European Union and Japan. Fewer and fewer are those who
refuse to recognize that the program of unilateral opening and
deregulation imposed by neo-liberalism is not the stairway to the
"First World" but that it is a wide open door to political, economic,
social and moral crisis. Those who think the big imperialist powers
can take refuge in a "Noah's Ark" that will save them from the
"universal flood," are deluding themselves.

The terrorist crimes of September 11, 2001, constitute a tragic and
unjustifiable reminder that the borders of the big imperialist powers
are unable to contain the universal effects of underdevelopment,
poverty, unhealthy conditions, lack of culture, illiteracy, drug
trafficking, wars, terrorism, or the economic and financial crises
that originate, precisely, from capitalism's inability to orient
production toward the satisfaction of the material and spiritual needs
of all the human beings inhabiting the planet. This is the reality
that is already knocking on our doors, which puts humanity face to
face with the alternative stated by Rosa: "socialism or barbarism." In
other words, this is the reality that reaffirms our conviction that
the strategic objective of the struggle of the peoples must be the
construction of socialism.


The Development of Marxism:
Key to Determining the Content of the Struggles and its Potential
Allies

The class struggle and the politics of alliances have been the object
of basic Marxist theoretical study and practical politics from the
beginning of the classic writings. In the Manifesto of the Communist
Party, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels declare that "of all the classes
that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat
alone is a genuinely revolutionary class."2 Starting from that
premise, they directed their analysis to the role of the "middle
strata" which plays an ambivalent role between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat and they derived their conclusions about the conditions in
which those who form the "middle strata" keep their reactionary
nature, that is they "try to roll back the wheel of history," and
about the conditions in which they can become participants in the
social revolution, "in view of their impending transfer into the
proletariat."3 Marx and Engels also focus their attention on the
lumpen proletariat which "may, here and there, be swept into the
movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however,
prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary
intrigue."4

After the publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, many
authors, some considered to be continuing the work of Marx, have
glossed over the word today contained in the statement made in that
work that "the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class"
and, from this, multiple vulgarizations of Marxist thought are
derived, including the notion that in whatever historical circumstance
the proletariat is necessarily called upon to exercise that role, or
that this character is reserved for it exclusively.

Those who fall into these errors loose sight of the fact it was Marx
and Engels themselves who first analyzed problems like the effect of
the introduction of new machinery on the increase of competition
between workers, and of each worker for her/himself; the effect of the
increasing division of labour against the organization and struggle of
the proletariat, which effectively reaches its maximum expression with
the introduction of the transnational division of labour and the
political and ideological consequences of the appearance of the
"labour aristocracy" which benefits from the most straightforward
exploitation of the colonies and other sectors of its own class. This
was to have a decisive impact on the success achieved by social
democratic reformism in the European labour movement during the course
of the 20th century. In the other direction, the vulgarizers of
Marxism also loose sight of the fact that independent of the changes
that have occurred over the last one hundred and fifty years, the
contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat continues to
be the fundamental antagonistic contradiction of capitalism.

It is not the intention of this paper to go more deeply into the role
of the proletariat and within that, into the role of the proletariat
of the imperialist powers in the present phase of the historical
development of the class struggle. However, just to refute some of the
principal pseudo theories in vogue, let us remember that: 1) the
working class continues to be the producer of almost the entire social
wealth upon which not only development, but also humanity's survival
itself are based, and thus its role in the class struggle continues to
be decisive, and 2) contrary to what happened during the expansive
growth of the postwar world capitalist economy, the process of
increasing the value of capital within the main imperialist powers is
no longer compatible with the general increase of employment, wages
and other forms of social redistribution. This conspires against
maintaining the so-called Welfare State, still today erroneously
considered by some to be the final and definitive stage toward which
the capitalist system of production is advancing.

Instead of going into details about the composition of European social
classes at the time when the Manifesto of the Communist Party or other
works of Marx and Engels were written, it is more appropriate to make
use of their method of analysis in order to apply it to today's world.
In Czarist Russia, the weakest link in the imperialist chain at the
beginning of the 20th century, with three million workers and eighteen
million poor peasants, Lenin was aware of the revolutionary role the
peasantry had to play together with the working class and on that
basis proclaimed the worker-peasant alliance. The coherence of this
contribution to the Marxist tradition is unquestionable: in the second
Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party published in
1882, Engels was already analyzing the potential role of the poor
peasantry in view of an eventual outbreak of the socialist revolution
in that country.5

A great deal has been written in recent years about the social
struggles that do not originate in class contradictions although every
social struggle inevitably carries the imprint of the class structure
in which it unfolds. Without doubt, this element must be incorporated
into the Marxist analysis of contemporary capitalism. The point of
view of Marx is always that of the totality of the space in which
capital circulates: if the space broadens, it is necessary to broaden
the theoretical outlook. As a consequence of the universalization of
the capitalist relations of production which has unfolded under the
effects of the law of unequal economic and political development
formulated by Lenin, the horizon that the material and spiritual
production process of capitalism occupies is no longer just or even
eminently European, "western," christian, white, male, of "pure"
bourgeois and proletarians, ruled by the general parameters of
bourgeois liberal democracy, with a relatively homogeneous degree of
economic, political and social development, and beneficiary of a
planet in which the devastating effects of capital on the natural
environment had not yet accumulated.

The creation of a single transnational space of capital circulation
incorporating the material and spiritual production process of
bourgeois societies into nations with diverse degrees of political,
economic and social underdevelopment, with non-christian religions and
cultures like the Islamic, Hindu and African ones, with indigenous
national majorities and minorities, with black populations descendants
of African slaves, with Asian populations descendants of indentured
labourers also in conditions of slavery, with ancestral practices of
discrimination against women, among other characteristics, means that
a broad and varied range of social class contradictions and subjects
come to occupy central places in the struggle against capital. All
these factors must be incorporated into the Marxist analysis
concerning the composition of the fundamental block of the popular
struggles, the identification of their potential allies and the
definition of the foundations on which it is possible to establish
such an alliance, both on the world scale and in the indispensable
reading of the particular and singular circumstances in which each
Marxist party or political movement develops its struggles.

As a logical consequence of the political and ideological intentions
of its pseudo theories about the omnipotence of contemporary
capitalism, social democratic third way-ism does a partial,
fragmentary and one sided reading of the social class transformations
supposedly caused by "globalization" and the "Scientific-technical
Revolution." Among its principal "arguments" these stand out: the
"indefensible" situation in which governments, political parties and
unions supposedly find themselves as a consequence of the
transnational mobility of capital that allows it to migrate if it does
not receive every kind of concessions and privileges, and the
fragmentation contemporary capitalism causes in the working class and
other oppressed social class sectors as an negative element for
popular organization and struggle.

With respect to the supposed "indefensible" position into which
nations and peoples have sunk, it is worth saying that it is
undeniable that capital and especially speculative capital use their
mobility as a mechanism of pressure and blackmail in order to force
governments, political parties and unions of different countries and
regions to compete among themselves, but it is also undeniable that 1)
the over saturation of the goods, services and capital markets, a
characteristic of the present world capitalist economy, forces capital
to "anchor" itself in the increasingly reduced spaces on the world
scale where it can guarantee its extended reproduction; 2) that
"anchorage" must be maintained even if the governments, political
parties and unions of the country in question take up and hold to a
posture of defense of the legitimate national interests and; 3) such
an "anchorage" would be even more solid and effective if the
governments, political parties and unions of the whole world or at
least of a region, like Latin America and the Caribbean, for example,
managed to harmonize and unite their positions in defense of
sovereignty and national interests. We insist that the issue is not so
much the power the "objective" factors attributed to "globalization"
and the "Scientific-technical Revolution" give to transnational
finance capital for domination of governments, parties and unions, as
the ideological success they have harvested by convincing them of the
supposed invincibility of a social system in a state of decomposition,
and of the supposed weakness of the peoples to successfully fight
against it.

With respect to the difficulties of organizing and mobilizing for
popular struggle, it is unquestionable that the metamorphosis of
contemporary capitalism causes changes in the social class structure
with a tendency toward the fragmentation of the sectors composing the
popular block, but it also fragments and polarizes, perhaps to a
greater extent, the bourgeoisie itself, because the basic form of
reproduction of capital is the expropriation of some capitalists by
others.
Given capital's tendency to concentrate and universalize, today we can
state that the "middle strata" of contemporary "global society" are
not just traditional small- and medium-size industry, but also
enterprises considered large by the standards of the so-called "third
world," but incomparable to the power of the great transnational
monopolies that need to corner their markets in order to guarantee the
latter's own extended reproduction. Projected on the world scale
today, this consists of a situation analogous to the one analyzed in
the Manifesto of the Communist Party when it refers to the "middle
strata" that "sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because
their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which
Modern

Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the
large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered
worthless by new methods of production."6 As such, the essence of
Marxist analysis needs to be recovered in order to evaluate when the
"middle strata" of contemporary capitalism are trying to "roll back
the wheel of history" and when they become potential allies of the
popular block. To this central question there is no single and
immutable answer: it is necessary to conduct this political reading
again and again in each place and context.


The Cuban Revolution's Politics of Alliances

When he carried out an X-ray of mid 20th century Cuban society in
"History Shall Absolve Me," Fidel Castro Ruz followed the path of José
Martí and established the foundations for a policy of alliances which
included, integrating and unifying all the then oppressed and
exploited social class sectors — workers, peasants, unemployed, small
owners, professionals, intellectuals, illiterates, whites, blacks,
Chinese, mestizos, catholics, protestants, men, women, youth, elderly
and others; a policy of alliances that not only lead to the triumph of
the Cuban Revolution, but which also serves it to maintain the
broadest and most solid unity of the whole people, the indispensable
condition for dealing with the multiple aggressions and dangers that
have intervened in the process of building socialism.

The inclusive, integrating and unifying approach of the Cuban
Revolution was what guided the process of transformation of the
alliance into unity, and of unity into fusion and synthesis of the
organizations that fought against the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista,
the "26th of July" Movement, the People's Socialist Party and the
"13th of March" Student Directorate; allies first in the Integrated
Revolutionary Organizations, brought together in the United Party of
the Socialist Revolution, and fused and synthesized since 1967 in the
Communist Party of Cuba, which is the only party of the Cuban nation,
not because of omission or exclusion of other political forces, but as
a result of the most profound and solid political and ideological
convergence.

The foreign policy of the Cuban Revolution since January 1, 1959 has
also followed the path of José Martí, aimed at promoting the
convergence, unity and integration of the nations, peoples, popular
movements and political forces of the whole world, on the basis of an
anti-imperialist platform, of the defense of the sovereignty,
self-determination and independence that constitute the starting point
for the conception and execution of any strategy oriented to achieving
sustainable economic and social development with a true sense of
justice and equity.

With this objective in mind, the Cuban Revolution 1) encouraged, in
its time, the approach to and collaboration among the Soviet Union and
the other socialist countries and democratic, progressive and
revolutionary forces of the "Third World," for purposes of fostering
the mutual benefit derived from the interaction of two fundamental
streams of the popular movement of the second half of the 20th
century; 2) played an active role in the Movement of Non-Aligned
Countries and other organisms and conferences representative of the
underdeveloped world, in which the sharpening of contradictions as a
result of the increasingly voracious political, economic and military
action of one imperialism was notable; 3) broadened and deepened its
relations with the most diverse popular political forces and movements
world wide and; 4) maintained an unshakable policy of
internationalism, corresponding to the requirements of each historical
period.

Battles like the campaign for non-payment of the external debt, the
fight against neo-liberal globalization, and the promotion of the
globalization of solidarity and, more recently, the encouragement
provided to the continental movement against the Free Trade Area of
the Americas (FTAA), are examples of the inclusive, integrating and
unifying vision of the Cuban Revolution, that starts from the
identification of the national and social class contradictions of the
inter-centuries' world, sharpened to an extreme degree by the
exclusionary and polarizing nature of transnational monopoly
capitalism.

With this same commitment, Cuba incorporates into its battle of ideas
the struggle against the growth of imperialism's aggressiveness,
which, under the cover of the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, is
unleashing a bellicose crusade against the nations, popular political
forces and movements that stand up to its domination. This is the
commitment that impels the Cuban Revolution to give priority attention
to spaces like the Sao Paulo Forum and the World Social Forum, which
constitute laboratories for ideas and actions in which the politics of
alliances that shall bear fruit for the popular and political forces
of the world in the 21st century, are being designed and put to the
test.

The formula the Communist Party of Cuba proposes for the success of
the politics of alliances of the Marxist left is the conception of the
alliances as a first step toward convergence, unity, fusion and
synthesis of the demands, needs, aspirations and interests of all the
oppressed and exploited social class sectors; that is, not as a mere
and circumstantial electoral coalition in which the different factions
"negotiate" the exchange of reciprocal support for realizing their
respective particular interests — something that leads to
contradictions over the path to follow, eventually causing the rupture
of the alliance — but as the beginning of a strategic process
conceived for the long term, of building consensus and elaborating a
common programme of government that not only confronts but also
reverses the consequences of neo-liberalism.

The continuation and results of this programme would be guaranteed by
the broadest and most democratic participation and representation of
all those sectors. The organizational forms this process takes would
be determined by the conditions in which the struggles of each people
unfold, be that of one or various parties, a movement, a front, a
coalition or an alliance with which the social revolutionary subject
provides itself to undertake this difficult but unavoidable road
toward unity.

In Latin America at the beginning of the 21st century, the politics of
alliance of the communist parties and other Marxist organizations has
a broad radius of action on themes like defense of sovereignty,
independence and national self-determination, the promotion of a true
regional integration and unity with respect to the interests of the
peoples, the reversal of the opening, deregulation, privatization and
foreignization process of the neo-liberal stamp, and opposition to war
and the attempts to criminalize the popular struggles. A good starting
point for the building of our alliances is the battle against the
FTAA, which embodies the worst annexationist designs of U.S.
imperialism.
----
1. In the words of the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba,
Fidel Castro Ruz, "the transnational monopolies represent the most
perfect synthesis, the more developed expression of monopoly
capitalism in this phase of its general crisis," and therefore "they
are the international carriers of all the laws that govern the
capitalist mode of production in its present imperialistic phase, of
all its contradictions, and are the most efficient mechanism for the
development and intensification of the process of subordination of
labour to capital on the world scale." Fidel Castro Ruz. La Crisis
económica y social del mundo, Ediciones del Consejo de Estado, La
Habana, 1983, p. 153.
2. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist Party,"
Selected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968, p. 44.
3. "The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper,
the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to
save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class.
They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay, more,
they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history.
If, by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of
their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not
their present, but their future interests; they desert their own
standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat."
4. Ibid.
5. See "Preface to the Second Russian Edition (1882) of the Manifesto
of the Communist Party," Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected
Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, vol. 6.
6. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist Party,"
Selected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968, p. 42.






----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
Hot chart ringtones and polyphonics. Click here

Visit http://www.greenleft.org.au



----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
Yahoo! Groups Links

To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
GreenLeft_discussion-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.