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Dissident Cuban Communism:
The Case of Trotskyism, 1932-65
This thesis, which traces the history of Trotskyism in Cuba, was accepted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Bradford in the summer of 1999. It focuses on the theoretical, tactical and organisational development of the Oposición Comunista de Cuba in the early 1930s, the Partido Bolchevique Leninista and the Partido Obrero Revolucionario in the 1930s and 40s, and the Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskista), the Trotskyist group which was reconstituted after the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
Hitherto, studies originating outside Cuba have generally argued that the Cuban Trotskyists were closer to Joaquín Maurín, the leader of the Bloque Obrero y Campesino in Spain, than to Trotsky. [1] Such 'Maurinista' interpretations suggest that in the 1930s the Cuban Trotskyists sought to unite proletarian, and national liberation movements in a struggle for a democratic anti-imperialist revolution. [2] Like the classical bourgeois revolution, this 'democratic' revolution was limited to securing the agrarian revolution and creating a relatively autonomous area within which all local classes could develop and expand. It was also seen as an independent stage on the path to socialism rather than a temporary phase in the deeper proletarian anti-imperialist revolution. This distinct proletarian revolution would not only be carried out against feudal and imperialist interests, but in line with Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution also against those of the national bourgeoisie. The only substantial Cuban work on the subject, the doctoral thesis by Rafael Soler Martínez El Trotskismo en la Revolución del 30. [3] has concluded that although the Cuban Trotskyists in the early 1930s constituted a revolutionary force, they were at the same time divisionists, sectarians and dogmatists who contributed to the division and defeat of the revolutionary movement. Although Soler's study contains valuable and extensive information on the social and geographical composition of the OCC and PBL, his emphasis on a descriptive, inventory-like account is also the major limitation of his work. Apart from repeating many of the old Stalinist fictions of Trotskyism, he makes little mention of the fundamental political issues at stake in the debates in the communist milieu. Indeed, in failing to discuss the crucial question of Trotskyists' attitude to the relationship between the democratic and socialist revolution, other than by bold unsupported statements of Stalinist 'truth', Soler fails to recognise that from the primary source material he himself cites the allegation of 'sectarianism' is largely baseless. He thereby also ignores the seemingly more apt accusation of 'opportunism'.
In contrast to these studies, particularly that of Soler, I argue that although the Cuban Trotskyists attempted to interpret the essence of Trotsky's thought in a way which took into account the peculiarities of the Cuban context, they never consistently and unambiguously insisted on a central tenet of Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, namely, the necessary proletarian nature of the anti-imperialist revolution. They did not unequivocally view the working class through its own democratic organisations as the leader of the revolutionary process and, consequently, failed to focus their attentions on forging a conscious proletarian leadership for a revolution which was carried out not only against feudal and imperialist interests, but also against capitalist relations of production. I argue that the reasons the Trotskyists followed this one-sided approach to revolution lay in the roots of the Oposición Comunista de Cuba (OCC). That is, the Opposition only began to emerge inside the Partido Comunista de Cuba after October-November 1930 when the Caribbean Bureau of the Comintern directed the party away from the broad front projects of working in the already constituted trade unions and away from supporting an armed insurrection initiated by the parties of petty bourgeois nationalism. Crucially, then, the fact that the Opposition only took shape after the Third Period turn had been implemented meant that at its inception the OCC had not developed a critique of the Comintern's former Second Period position of forming anti-imperialist blocs with bourgeois nationalist parties such as the Guomindang in China.
While a number of leading figures in the OCC challenged the broad Second Period trajectory of the early Oppositionists and orientated the OCC towards the International Left Opposition and the formal adoption of the fundamental postulates of the theory of Permanent Revolution, the OCC's birth mark of one-sidedly emphasising the slogans and struggle for national liberation and the democratic anti-imperialist revolution continued to shape the development of Trotskyism in Cuba in the subsequent years. The Partido Bolchevique Leninista's (PBL) largest branch, in Guantánamo, ignored the directives of the Central Committee and operated independently in pursuit of its policy of forming a broad 'progressive' association from the outset. [4] The conflict between the broad front, democratic anti-imperialist tendency and that of the more Trotskyist elements ultimately matured in 1934-35 in the debate over the so-called 'external road'. Although never advanced as a coherent thesis in any internal document or at any conference of the party, the central thread of the 'external road' theory was that the PBL should dissolve itself into the anti-imperialist bloc around Joven Cuba, a Left nationalist apparatus led by Antonio Guiteras which reduced the revolution to a military-technical affair. While the natural haven for the 'broad front' nationalist elements inside the PBL was Joven Cuba, those sectors of the PBL which rejected actual liquidation inside radical nationalist parties and blocs also promoted an ill-defined United Front with the Guiteristas. While this tactical alliance was narrowly based and sought to sharpen the revolutionary situation rather than deepen it, the alliance also marked the PBL's implicit acceptance in practice of the one-sided approach of forming an alliance for a democratic anti-imperialist revolution as a distinct stage on the path towards proletarian revolution.
A further central contention which I develop is that although the Cuban Trotskyists' theoretical understanding of the nature of the revolutionary process located them in what Donald Hodges has termed the 'national liberation' tendency in Latin American Trotskyism in the 1930s and 40s, [5] their failure to make clear delineations between proletarian and petty bourgeois anti-imperialist forces in the 1930s and 40s ended up with them making increasing political concessions to Stalinism in the 1960s. That is, along with major tendencies in the 'orthodox' international Trotskyist movement after the Second World War, they advocated a caricature of the Comintern's post-1924 conceptions of the revolutionary process which did not propose a politically independent course for the working class. In the mid- to late 1940s the much reduced Trotskyist group all but dissolved inside a number of dubious organisations which, though professing a continuity with Joven Cuba, largely focused on removing the official communists from leading positions in the labour movement by the use of various underhand, often violent, methods. In the 1950s and 60s the Cuban Trotskyists then transformed the theory of Permanent Revolution from a conscious proletarian strategy to an objective process guiding the Cuban Revolution by effectively viewing the radical petty bourgeoisie or 'deformed' Stalinist states as the leader of the anti-imperialist revolution.
My distinctive argument is based mainly on previously unused archival documents, from both Cuba and further afield, together with the oral and written testimonies of various participants. In terms of structure, the thesis is divided into two inter-related parts. Part One (Chapters Two and Three) outlines the international and national context to the development of Trotskyism in Cuba. In this part, importance is attached not only to patterns of development within the international, especially Latin American, official communist and Trotskyist movements, but also to an appreciation of the development of the Cuban political economy. This analysis sets out the backdrop to my argument that in addition to the Cuban Trotskyists' own political failings, their organisational fortunes were also conditioned by external factors, principally the weak local class formations and Bonapartist-type regimes in Cuba, both pre- and post-1959. These features, which led to the official communist party being granted state-sponsored control of the labour movement at various intervals in exchange for certain economic incentives, had the effect of debilitating further the potential for working class action and the construction of a powerful class-based revolutionary movement in Cuba. Part Two (Chapters Four to Seven) covers the evolution of Trotskyism in Cuba in terms of its ideas, organisation and activities. Beginning by analysing the origins of this dissident current in the ranks of the Cuban Communist Party, these chapters focus on the fundamental theoretical positions defended by the Cuban Trotskyists in an environment dominated by the incompleteness of the democratic revolution. Particular attention is given to their development during the so-called Revolution of the 1930s when the PBL, with approximately 800 members, constituted one of the largest and most influential Trotskyist parties in the world. Chapter Seven examines the Trotskyists' programmatic differences with the government of the, at least nominally, communist Cuban government in the 1960s which led to the Trotskyist party's subsequent suppression.
Gary Tennant, University of York
This work on dissident Cuban communism will go to make up the main body of material in the next issue of the journal Revolutionary History. Those interested in the content of this edition which will be dedicated to the history of the Trotskyist movement in Cuba should contact Ted Crawford at the publishers Socialist Platform.
