Cuba

Obama and the Platismo dissidents

Barack Obama’s arrival in Cuba will mark the first visit by a United States president to the island since Calvin Coolidge went in 1928. His trip follows the reopening of diplomatic relations with Cuba on 17 December 2014 and various other steps taken to normalise relations — a welcome change after decades of hostility that include an ongoing economic blockade, sponsored invasions, and terrorist attacks. So far, everything seems to indicate a warm reception for Obama from most Cubans. But he is likely to be received with reservations, if not outright hostility, by pro-US right-wing dissidents...

Cuba: alternatives after the thaw

On December 17, 2014, Washington and Havana agreed to a pathbreaking change in a relationship that, for more than fifty years, was characterized by the United States’ efforts to overthrow the Cuban government, including the sponsorship of invasions, naval blockades, economic sabotage, assassination attempts, and terrorist attacks. The new accord set free the remaining three members of the “Cuban Five” group held in US prisons since 1998 and, in exchange, Cuba freed the American Alan Gross and Rolando Sarraf Trujillo, a previously unknown US intelligence agent imprisoned on the island for...

Hal Draper's polemic on Cuba, 1961

Hal Draper's polemic on Cuba, May 1961, from the pamphlet published in May 1961 by him . Max Shachtman's speech in Berkeley on April 18, in which he case out for the victory of the counter-revolutionary invasion of Cuba, makes a valuable document for discussion and study. Its centre of interest is not merely the Cuban question, important as that is especially at this writing when the U.S. say be moving toward some form of more direct intervention. Its centre of interest, from a longer-term point of view, is the methodology of its argumentation in favour of what was, in fact, predominantly an...

Hal Draper's leaflet on Cuba, 1961

Leaflet written by Hal Draper on Cuba, April 1961, from the pamphlet published in May 1961 by him . Public leaflet on the Cuban invasion, written by Hal Draper and published by the Socialist Party and the YPSL in the Bay Area, 25 April 1961 Five Questions On The Cuban Invasion Now that the CIA-organised invasion of Cuba has come to an inglorious end, President Kennedy's speech of April 20 has publicly admitted that he is heading toward open military intervention in Cuba by the forces of the U. S. - in violation of all promises, pledges, international agreements and morality. Any day now, the...

Max Shachtman on Cuba, 1961

Max Shachtman's presentation on Cuba, April 1961, from the pamphlet published in May 1961 by Hal Draper . How close this development has come to the finish that a totalitarian victory would represent, and how promising are the prospects of a reversal of this trend in this Cuban revolution - these are questions that may be on the verge of decision as we are sitting here. The invasion of the forces of the Revolutionary Council, as it is called, is now under way, and the two are locked in combat. What the actual development is down there militarily I do not know. I start my road to knowledge by...

For or Against The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba 1961: Max Shachtman Debates Hal Draper

The dispute over attitudes to the "Bay of Pigs" invasion was the first sharp break on a big world-political issue which separated the ageing Max Shachtman from long-time co-thinkers such as Hal Draper and Julius Jacobson. This pamphlet, published by Draper in May 1961, presents the dispute. Click here to download pdf (which includes excerpts from the contemporary press not transcribed below, giving factual background on the invasion). Contents and note Max Shachtman. Speech on the Cuban Invasion Hal Draper. Comments and Criticism Supplement: Hal Draper. Public leaflet on the invasion The...

Cuba's new oppositions

Fifty-five years after its revolution overthrowing the Batista dictatorship, its original generation of leadership has begun to pass away and the future of its “socialist” project remains uncertain. Will it experience capitalist “shock therapy” like the countries of the former Eastern bloc? Will it follow the state-capitalist road established in China and Vietnam? Will economic liberalization be accompanied, as some claim, by an expansion of political freedoms and tolerance for dissent? A socialist democracy may not be on the cards; if so, what does that mean for the nascent critical left on...

Cliff's state capitalism in perspective: The "Russian Question" in Britain in the 1940s

Click here to download as pdf Click here to download as epub Click here to download as mobi Or read online below: Introduction I. The great riddle of the twentieth century II. 1917 and Marxist socialism III. Trotsky IV. Trotsky's picture of the USSR V. 1933: Trotsky discusses state capitalism VI. 1933: Trotsky discusses 'bureaucratic collectivism' VII. Perspectives: before World War Two VIII. The results of World War Two IX. The other Trotskyists: the Workers' Party X. One, two, many state capitalisms XI. Tony Cliff's revolution in science XII. Cliff and Haston-Grant XIII. Being arbitrary XIV...

Fidel Castro's legacy: Cuba as a class society

Pablo Velasco and Sacha Ismail review Cuba since the revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment , by Cuban-American socialist Sam Farber . The 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro and his 26 July Movement to power was a bourgeois revolution which smashed Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship, but replaced it with their own Bonapartist regime. Half driven by US hostility and half by choice, this government opted to become a Stalinist state in 1961, adopting the model of the USSR and similar states. Farber calls this a “bureaucratic system of state collectivism”, in which society’s economic...

Qui était Che Guevara?

Texte provenant de la brochure We Stand for Workers Liberty (Nous défendons la liberté des travailleurs) publiée par l’organisation trotskyste britannique Alliance for Workers Liberty. Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928-1967) est né dans une famille aisée de l’Argentine, est devenu un étudiant en médecine, puis après avoir voyagé à travers l’Amérique latine, il s'est engagé dans un groupe révolutionnaire oeuvrant à renverser la dictature corrompue de Batista à Cuba, qui à l'époque était soutenue par les Etats-Unis. Il est devenu un dirigeant de la guérilla qui pris le pouvoir à Cuba en 1959. En 1965...

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