Polemic with the World and Latin American Left

When Castroism is ready to impose the capitalist restoration and the fate of the Cuban workers state depends entirely on the fights of the international proletariat, the renegades of Trotskyism seal their historical subordination to the Castroite bureaucracy

The renegades of Trotskyism supported on the left for decades the counterrevolutionary policy of the Castroite bureaucracy. On the one hand there are those who openly became Castroites, such as SWP of USA that have become a travel agency to La Habana inside USA. Also Alan Woods’ current became direct advisers of the Chavezist bourgeoisie and open supporters of Castro brothers. Mandelism and Lambertism have declared themselves decades ago defenders of the Castroite bureaucracy. The other sector of the renegades of Trotskyism are those who today cover up the Cuban restorationist bureaucracy by guising themselves as “critical” to Castroism, such as Morenoinsm and Gramscian PTS, in order to “wash their clothes” so they don’t “be stuck with them” before the deep events that are already happening. For that, we see in their literature of the last week “tough polemics” pouring reformist confusion over the international proletarian vanguard. Both sectors of the fake Trotskyists, openly Castroites and “critical”, are in the opposite barricade of the historical interests of the Cuban proletariat, since they are destroyers of the Trotskyist program and of the Fourth International, as we will prove as follows.

The Morenoites call to “Fight Castroism” with a “democratic front” together with the bourgeoisie…
As in Bolivia and Honduras: always at the feet of the “democratic bourgeoisie”
The Morenoites that yesterday under Nahuel Moreno’s 1965 world situation document affirmed that Castro and Che Guevara were “Jacobin revolutionaries” only comparable (according to them) to Lenin and Trotsky, today they try to move away from Castroism, but in their attempt they just deepen their reformism and bankruptcy.
Under the banners of the “democratic front”, the Morenoites, renegades of Trotskyism apply the policy of class collaboration, subordination of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. Some of them apply it in Cuba “against the bureaucracy” as the most classical Morenoites from Left Convergence (CI), Socialist Left (IS) and the Workers Socialist Movement (MST) that call to make a front with the bourgeoisie for “more democracy”; and other Morenoites as LIT-CI apply the same policy of front with the bourgeoisie but “against the dictatorship” in Cuba, where they say capitalism was definitively restored in the 1990s.
So in an article released on April 12th, 2010, Left Convergence says: “Sooner or later the Castroite regime will fall for the huge people’s dissatisfaction, and not by the gusanos (worms) of Miami, it is very likely that a space of broad democratic liberties will be opened, and it is likely that the majority of the population turn into the pro-capitalist parties due to the absence of revolutionary Trotskyist parties.
Will we ban them? Will we accept that the CP, that throws away all the gains of the revolution, would be the only legal party? Or should we freeze the revolution until the parties -that we would like to have- emerge?
We side along the workers and people who in the middle of big confusions will Fight against the imperialist embargo, against the castroists allied to the multinationals…” and finally to end their argument of their policy and program, they claim: “We can’t replace the inevitable experience that the Cuban workers will do with the capitalist parties in order to reach the conclusion that they need to set up a revolutionary party and seize power, this time as it should be: with the democratic organisms of the working class.”

These confessed reformists tell the proletariat that to fight the Castroite bureaucracy we must ally to the exploiter bourgeoisie. They talk about a first “stage of the democratic revolution” calling to unity with the bourgeoisie under the excuse of “joining the masses in their experience with the capitalists parties” since “there is no revolutionary party” in Cuba. What capitalist parties are they talking about? The main agents of capitalism on the island today are the Castros and his clique that from the military apparatus controls the economy in dollars and the business deals with joint companies. These senile Morenoites are suggesting the unity with a wing of the restorationist party that speaks about “democractic freedom” to accelerate the consummation of the capitalist restoration. That is to say, their “first stage” of the “democratic revolution” is just their fight for a democratic republic… bourgeois. This is what Morenoism meant in the 80’s when they said like parrots the words: “the model of socialism was Cuba, plus democracy”.

These scammers that speak on behalf of Marxism say that in “the second stage” of their revolution the class independence will be conquered and head towards socialism “this time as it should be: with the democratic organisms of the working class”. Nevertheless, if the Cuban proletariat establishes an alliance with the “democratic bourgeoisie” to “defeat Castroism” as reformism says, what is defeated in the first place is the Cuban proletariat which remains subjected to the bourgeoisie, closing definitively the path to the emerging of soviets as organisms of maximum class independence of the proletariat, guaranteeing the absolute triumph of the bourgeoisie over the working class with the capitalist restoration.
Left Convergence and the classical Morenoites as Socialist Left call to an absolute subordination of the Cuban proletariat to the “democratic” bourgeoisie, which won’t attack the essence of the restorationist policy of Castro at all. Which bourgeois, friends of Morenoism, will raise the demand “Down with the social and wage unevenness!”? Only the vanguard of the proletariat, fighting against the restorationist bureaucracy can rise Down with the social unevenness! Down with the parasitic bureaucracy and its privileges! For wage equality! These are the demands that spur the political revolution.
On the other hand, LIT-CI, another version of the Morenoites, affirms that the capitalist restoration has already imposed in Cuba definitively, and that we are before a bourgeois dictatorship. They have the same policy of CI, IS, MST, etc. since they also call the proletariat to unify with the bourgeoisie, but this time “to fight against the dictatorship”. And they say this arguing with the Brazilian Communist Party, that is, with the same Castrism -agent of the restoration.

The theory of the “democratic revolution” and “democratic front” is just a Morenoite re-edition of the “stage-ist revolution” of Stalinism which carried out a several number of bloody defeats for the world proletariat, policy which was firmly fought by the Fourth International with the theory-program of the Permanent Revolution.
It is the same class collaboration policy that applied all the Morenoites and the rest of the renegades of Trotskyism in Honduras, where they subordinated the mass resistance to the “democratic front” of Zelaya against Micheletti’s dictatorship. There the masses fought, and left their blood in the streets, while Zelaya, that Bolivarian coward, to whom LIT-CI called to support, was exiled very comfortable in Dominican Republic. The same “democratic front” was applied by all the reformist in Bolivia in 2008, the LIT-CI including, subordinating the proletariat to Evo Morales for “not letting the fascism from Media Luna to win”, when it was actually the same government of popular front of Morales the one that prevented the revolutionary smashing of fascism by dealing with it. On the other hand the internationalists Trotskyists claim that the proletariat is able to defend the democracy and confront fascism only with the methods of the proletarian revolution, dividing the army, with soldiers committees, workers’ militias preparing the conditions to seize power, fighting for land, destroying the US military base in the case of Honduras and breaking with the “popular front” in Bolivia.
 The morenoism policy of “democratic front” was already applied in Russia and Poland with the restoration of capitalism

Before the processes of the political revolution in the former USSR against the Stalinist restorationist bureaucracy, Nahuel Moreno and his current LIT-CI launched their entire opportunist program. Thus, in the political revolution of Poland in 1980-82, the working class upraised against the bureaucracy setting up a mass union called Solidarity from outside the Stalinist control. This had acquired a character of semi-soviet-“semi” because it was not able to organize the armed soldiers. 
Facing these events Morenoism stated that a government of Walesa had to emerge leaned on the union Solidarity. A government that would break with the bureaucracy since this would mean the establishment of a worker and peasant government, that is, the triumph of the political revolution. But this government would not be a “worker and peasant government” but just the opposite. Walesa was a restorationist direct agent of Vatican and imperialism, and “a government of Walesa leaned on Solidarity” would have been nothing more than a government of “Príncipe Lyov” leaned on a soviet led by the conciliators, that is, a restorationist Menshevik government that never could “break with the bureaucracy”. Different to this was to fight for All the power to Solidarity! That meant that workers overthrew the bureaucracy through the civil war and imposed their own power by confronting and kicking out the agents of imperialism and church-like Walesa- from the core of the soviets
Then, after the events of 1989, the proletariat reached this period with huge defeats not only within the workers states but in the whole Europe. The restore regime led the productive forces to an absolute decomposition sinking the Russian masses in the misery. The gains of the workers state were liquidated and thus the the conscious of equality of the masses. The entire East Europe was in debt with IMF and the Stalinist bureaucracy became bourgeois by plundering everything at hand and running away millions and millions of dollars towards the capitalist fiscal paradises. Such as Trotsky and the Fourth International foresaw, the restoration did not come with the military invasion but the entrance of merchandise, this time, under the shape of debt of the state. The mass uprisings in 1989 were thereby delayed political revolutions. The masses did not have gains to defend any more and get rebelled for bread, soap, and basic elements, identifying “socialism” with the major misery. The absent of the Fourth International usurped by the liquidators was a key factor for the triumph of the restoration of capitalism.
Trotsky did not take into account any “democratic revolution”, that is, any intermediate stage, on the contrary, for the fourth International  meant the abortion of the political revolution, that is,  one of the ways of the counterrevolution. This was in this way, because as a difference in comparison to capitalism, socialism is not reproduced automatically but it implies a conscious construction. If the “revolution” of these morenoists is done in Cuba, the only thing established would be an automatic reproduction of capitalism. Effectively, the program of “democratic front” of morenoism with the bourgeoisie today in Cuba is equal to: the capitalist restoration.
PTS on the Cuban question: a program for the “pacific way to the political revolution”
PTS published its statement on March 25th in which they pose their gramscian policy and program facing this transcendental question for the world working class. They pointed out that today the real threat against the gains of the Cuban revolution are the “imperialism and bureaucracy” , they said that “the program of the political revolution is the only way to state the defense of the gains of 1959 by the fight against the blockade and imperialist threats, against the repressive policies and privileges of the bureaucracy and new rich men by demanding the revision of the whole economic plan under workers and peasant control and the widest democratic and political liberties for the masses and all the parties that defend the conquests of the 1959 revolution, by propelling the creation of independent organizations of the masses and their revolutionary mobilization in defense of the gains and popular rights. It is about to oppose to the two policies of the forces propelling the restoration-the bureaucracy and imperialism- the regeneration of the workers state via the instauration of the workers and peasants council power  where the parties that defend the revolution have liberty”. (La Verdad Obrera 367)
For the PTS and its program of “political revolution” in Cuba, the Fight for ending with the social inequalityand the privileges of the bureaucracy has nothing to do with the revolutionary overthrowing of Castroism, when that is the essence of the program of the political revolution for the Trotskyists. So the Transitional Program said, on the political revolution in the USSR: “A fresh upsurge of the revolution in the USSR will undoubtedly begin under the banner of the struggle against social inequality and political oppression. Down with the privileges of the bureaucracy! Down with Stakhanovism! Down with the Soviet aristocracy and its ranks and orders! Greater equality of wages for all forms of labor! (…) It is impossible to fulfill this program without overthrowing the bureaucracy, which sustains itself by violence and falsification. Only the victorious revolutionary uprising of the oppressed masses can revive the Soviet regime and guarantee its further development toward socialism.”
We are before a pacifist pettybourgeois current that does not prepare the Cuban proletariat for a violent clash against the restorationist bureaucracy. It is clear that Albamonte’s leadership, re-taking the steps of Pabloism, raises a reformist program against the Castroite bureaucracy as if it was about a bureaucracy that is not counterrevolutionary yet, but centrist, and can be “demanded the review of the entire economic plan”, and can even impose “the control of workers and peasants”. Thus, PTS embraces the program of James Petras that “criticizes” the restorationist bureaucracy saying that it has to add some drops of Gorbachev’s “glasnost”, that is to say “democracy”, to the capitalist restoration, warning that so much enrichment of the Castroite parasites may cause an eruption of the proletariat.

PTS does not say a word that in the “independent mass organizations” there cannot be any place for the Castroite labour aristocracy and bureaucracy. For that, such mass organisms can only emerge in the road of the struggle against the bureaucracy, in the fight for overthrowing it, as Trotsky said: “Real Soviets of workers and peasants can come forth only in the course of the uprising against the bureaucracy. Such Soviets will be bitterly pitted against the military-police apparatus of the bureaucracy. How then can we admit representatives into the Soviets from that camp against which the uprising itself is proceeding??” (“It is necessary to drive the bureaucracy and the new aristocracy out of the soviets”, 1938).
For them the Fight for the workers democracy in Cuba does not have the condition to set up self-determination and direct democracy organisms, without the bureaucracy, that mean real, since with the bureaucracy within, they will just be organisms fully controlled by Castroism, for which Trotsky said: “The demand to drive out the bureaucracy can in no case be counterposed to the demand for the legalization of Soviet parties. In reality these slogans complement each other. At present the Soviets are a decorative appendage to the bureaucracy. Only the driving out of the bureaucracy, which is unthinkable without a revolutionary uprising, can regenerate the struggle of various tendencies and parties within the Soviets.” (Idem)
The PTS ends up proposing the legalization of parties that defend the conquests of the revolution against the revolutionary overthrow of the bureaucracy because for them it is all about of achieving democracy by formal means, demanding “broad democratic freedom”.

Trotsky said the opposite: “It is not a question of a constitutional “delimitation” which is applied on the basis of fixed juridical qualifications, but of the real self-determination of the struggling camps. The Soviets can arise only in the course of a decisive struggle. They will be created by those layers of the toilers who are drawn into the movement. The significance of the Soviets consists precisely in the fact that their composition is determined not by formal criteria but by the dynamics of the class struggle. Certain layers of the Soviet “aristocracy” will vacillate between the camp of the revolutionary workers and the camp of the bureaucracy. Whether these layers enter the Soviets and at what period will depend on the general development of the struggle and on the attitude which different groups of the Soviet aristocracy take in this struggle. Those elements of the bureaucracy and aristocracy who in the course of the revolution go over to the side of the rebels will certainly find a place for themselves also in the Soviets. But this time not as bureaucrats and “aristocrats” but as participants in the rebellion against the bureaucracy. The demand to drive out the bureaucracy can in no case be counterposed to the demand for the legalization of Soviet parties. In reality these slogans complement each other” (Idem). For the PTS giving the broadest democratic freedom does not mean, at the same time, overthrowing the bureaucracy to conquer the soviets and the workers democracy. With this policy they subordinate themselves to the bureaucracy in exchange of being able to show its books in the “Havana's International Book Fair”…what a shame! 
PTS is talking about a peaceful “political revolution”, in a Gramsci way, where the workers councils for which they fight for, without overthrowing the restorationist bureaucracy wouldn’t be other thing that a reform in the bonapartist regime of Castro. Actually, for the PTS those “organisms” are a way of “accumulating power”, organisms which can pressure the bureaucracy, which is characterized by the PTS as centrist and not as counterrevolutionary, to take measures for lowering the social inequality and not organisms independent from the bureaucracy to prepare its violent revolutionary overthrowing, the only way to defend Cuba against imperialism.
The Fourth International claimed the program of the political revolution, which is in essence the revolutionary overthrowing of the bureaucracy with civil war methods, policy that PTS openly reviews and liquidates as a true representative of Antonio Gramsci’s reformism.
The Cuban restorationist Castroite bureaucracy has no right to judge or penalize political prisoners
During these last weeks, Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after a long hunger strike. This action was followed by other political prisoners, which were opponents to Raul Castro’s Government. This fact leads all the fake Trotskyists to declare themselves about this event that shook the worldwide political situation.
PO in an article (March, 18th), appeals for “international humanitarian inspection”, opening the door to the intervention of the Imperialist Institutions that act in the name of the “human rights” while massacre the oppressed people around the world. Let’s see “…we ask for all the demands of Fariñas’ hunger strike to be fulfilled (…) For the international humanitarian inspection of any prison institution (and all kind of prisoners)”. (Workers Press 1120). Thus, Mr. Altamira has become the UN, the NGOs and the Red Cross’ advisor.
On the other hand, PTS tries to be far away from the shameful position of the PO, saying “in the fight against repression before the imperialist attack we defend Cuba’s right to judge and penalize all the imperialist agents, especially in case of civil war and imperialist attacks”; and also: “The freedom of Cuban political prisoners who were not related to terrorism or supported by the CIA, without any kind of solidarity about their political positions, it is an elemental demand against the bureaucracy’s abuses. For independent workers and peasants commissions to revise case by case.” 
However, this position typical of a student current from Buenos Aires University is an absolute capitulation to Castroism. To “bureaucracy’s abuses”, the PTS raises “workers and peasants commissions”, as if the Cuban proletariat had the possibility of setting up such workers and peasants commissions without defeating the Cuban restorationist bureaucracy with civil war methods. But the most servile attitude of the PTS is that they call these “workers commissions” to revise only the prisoners the bureaucracy didn’t accuse of “terrorism or supporting by the CIA”, meanwhile the others, the ones accused of agents of the imperialism can be judge by the Castroite regime. PTS gives the restorationist bureaucracy the authority to consider, accuse and judge the political prisoners as agents of the CIA.
The revolutionaries affirm we don’t recognize to the counterrevolutionary bureaucracy the right to judge any political prisoner nor to define who is fascist and who’s not, nor who belongs to the CIA or not. The counterrevolutionary bureaucracy was responsible for the consequent repression of all workers’ oppositions and the led the persecution against Trotskyists in the whole continent. It gave political asylum and decorated as a hero to Mercader, the Stalinist who killed comrade Leon Trotsky. Now it is ready to restore capitalism, and it has the same bourgeois program for workers and the exploited masses pay for the crisis with misery and massive layoffs. And also, the counterrevolutionary bureaucracy was responsible for each combat of the revolutionary proletariat’s defeat.
Only the Cuban workers, peasants and soldiers, who earn a 18 U$S monthly wage -while the bureaucrats earn a lot of money with the dollars of the Tourism and Nickel industry- are the ones who can define in Cuba who are true counterrevolutionaries and who are not. Only to the workers and peasants who bare the parasitic bureaucratic scum, we -the Trotskyist- recognize them the right to investigate and to act upon all the prisoners in Cuba. They are who must summon delegates from all the working organizations of Latin America and USA to set up a Congress of the exploited masses in La Habana to investigate the situation of the political prisoners with Workers and Popular Courts to investigate, judge and penalize. 
In opposition to this, the fake Trotskyists recognize the democratic right of judging who is guilty and who’s not to the “democratic” bourgeoisie (in the case of the LIT); or, in the case of the PTS, they recognize the democratic right of judging who is a CIA agent and who’s not to the Castroite bureaucracy.
This combat for justice and workers democracy is inseparable of the fight to defeat the Castro brothers who attack their opponents accusing them of “agents of the CIA”, because they are preparing to repress anyone who may fight against the capitalist restoration in Cuba.
If a Trotskyist party exists today in Cuba, we have no doubt that many of their members would be in jail, on hunger strike, like the Trotskyists in the USSR that in the concentration camps of Vorkuta, they were murdered by the Stalinist bureaucracy, slandered as “agents of the Mikado and the Gestapo”. The fake Trotskyist with their policy of capitulation to Castroism, are not like the Trostkyists murdered in Vorkuta, rather their denial.
Revisionism vs. Trotskyism: National socialism vs. International socialist revolution
Renegades’ hands off the IV International founded in 1938!
All kinds of the fake Trotskyists consider the Cuban question as a national revolution, and this unifies them beyond Morenoite, Altamiraite or Gramscite nunaces. This means that in Cuba they support reformist recipes of “revolution”, while for decades they have been subordinated to the Castroite bureaucracy and its international policy of class collaboration and conciliation, ensuring the bureaucracy attachment to the island. So in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and in the first decade of twenty-first century, the former Trotskyists followed step by step the orders of Castro, being a left support to him. So they bear with the responsibility for the betrayals of the Castroism that systematically prevented, under influxes of two or three successful proletarian revolutions in the continent, to provoke the political revolution against the Castroite bureaucracy in the island.
In the Transitional Program, Trotsky analyzed the relation between the policy of the Comintern with the Stalinist bureaucracy: “…Each day added to its domination (referring to Stalinist bureaucracy, TN) It helps to undermine the socialist elements of the economy and increases the chances for capitalist restoration. the Comintern acts In the same way as the agent and accomplice of the Stalinist clique in strangling the Spanish Revolution and demoralizing the international proletariat” (“The USSR and the tasks of the transitional epoch”, Leon Trotsky. Our bold).
The Fourth International always stated that the fate of the USSR was closely related to the international class struggle, as Trotsky said in “The Revolution Betrayed”: “…g) a further development of the accumulating contradictions can as well lead to socialism as back to capitalism; (h) on the road to capitalism the counterrevolution would have to break the resistance of the workers; (i) on the road to socialism the workers would have to overthrow the bureaucracy. In the last analysis, the question will be decided by a struggle of living social forces, both on the national and the world arena”. Exactly the same prognosis was fit for the deformed workers’ states emerged after the WW2 as China, Vietnam, Eastern  Europe, Eastern Germany and, by the way, Cuba.
That’s why we Trotskyists raise the real program for the political revolution, for defeating the Menshevik government attached to power that decomposed the productive forces to an extreme degree, interrupting the transitional regime from capitalism to socialism, this is: imposing the capitalist restoration. However we say to the working class that the final fate of the Cuban revolution’s gains is now defined in the streets of Greece, where the proletariat bids to open the revolution. It is defined in Kirgizstan, where the masses open the revolution after 20 years of bloody capitalist restoration. In Bolivia the industrial workers are already fighting with the warcry “Traitors out of the workers organizations!” against the bureaucracy of the COB, which supports the pact between Evo Morales and the fascism of the Media Luna. The industrial workers, with the dynamite, are showing the Cuban workers and peasants to settle things straight with the restorers. In the combats where the proletariat raises the banners of “Make the capitalists pay for the crisis” and “Down with the treacherous leaderships!”, the Cuban proletariat will find the impulse to “Make the Castroite bureaucracy and its parasitic clique pay for the crisis!” The Cuban revolution and its destiny will be defined in the international class struggle. As Trotsky said in the Transitional Program: “The struggle against the Comintern on the world arena is the most important part today of the struggle against the Stalinist dictatorship” (Idem)
The fake Trotskyists apply the policy of “democratic front” in Cuba with the pretext that “there is no revolutionary party” when actually they were the main obstacle for the emergence of a Trotskyist party in Cuba for 40 years, because of its subordination to Castroism.
After dissolving the International Secretariat during WW2, leading the national sections to the capitulation of its national section and having started a centrist course, the Pabloites, Cannonites and Morenoites were reunited in the Congress of 1963 without any evaluation of their adaptations and capitulations to the bourgeoisie, but fundamentally to Stalinism. The Pabloism, for instance, dissolved most of the forces of the IV International in the communists’ parties in the “sui generis entrism”. But all of them came from betraying the Bolivian revolution in 1952, capitulating to bourgeois nationalism. In 1963 they were reunited around a single point: “the recognition of the Cuban workers’ state”. But the history has shown that far from being reunited to defend the Cuban workers’ state they were reunited to support the Castroist bureaucracy as part of their strategy of seeking the “left wings” of Stalinism. So as in 1989, the IV International didn’t count with a revolutionary section in the USSR to lead the process of political revolution to triumph; today, the Cuban proletariat doesn’t count so far with a revolutionary leadership to lead the combat against the restoration. Why? Because of the implacable betrayal of the renegades of Trotskyism, liquidators of the IV International.