Is Cuba strongSocialiststrong - SLP.pdfVIP

Is Cuba Socialist? A Socialist Labor Party pamphlet. Socialist Labor Party of America P.O. Box 218 Mountain View, CA 94042-0218 ï socialists@ Preface The Cuban revolution is commonly regarded as the first socialist rev- olution in the Western Hemisphere. The following articles, written in early 1979 for the Weekly People, challenge this view and demonstrate that Cuba is neither socialist, nor a workers’ state building toward a socialist future. The three articles that comprised the original series on Cuba are pre- sented here together with two editorials published in conjunction with them. The first editorial, from which this pamphlet derives its title, serves as an introduction to the subject, while the second, “On Workers’ Government,” provides an excellent summary of the views presented. 2 Introduction “Socialism has become a word appropriated by so many different champions and causes that it threatens to become meaningless, and a new effort is needed to sort it out.” This was one of the observations made by Time magazine last March [1978] in its “special report” on socialism. And while Time’s contribution to “sorting things out” was another layer of distortion in the service of anti-Marxism, Time touched on a reality that is of crucial importance to Socialists—and workers everywhere. For in a world being brought to the brink of disaster by class-divided societies the world over, the need to establish the rele- vance and true essence of socialism in the eyes of workers has never been greater. In a more immediate sense, the use—or misuse—of the socialist label has again been brought to mind by the recent observance of the 20th annive