Defend Cuba against Imperialism without Whitewashing the
Dictatorship!
On
the opportunist adaptation of PTS/CPR-FI to the Stalinist-Capitalist
regime of Castro/Diaz-Canel
By
Michael Pröbsting, Revolutionary Communist International Tendency
(RCIT), 4 February 2026
Trump’s
offensive to recolonise Latin America has opened a new phase in world
politics. After assaulting Venezuela and kidnapping its President,
Washington has imposed a total oil blockade on Cuba, hoping to push
the regime into collaboration – as they did already successfully
with the corrupted Venezuelan government of Delcy Rodríguez.
It is
the duty of Marxists to defend Cuba as we side with all other
capitalist semi-colonies facing imperialist aggression like Venezuela
or Iran. The RCIT has published a statement along these lines and so
have a number of other socialist organisations.
However, in order to defend Cuba and other countries which are
attacked by the U.S., one must have a clear analysis of the regimes
in these countries and their role in face of imperialist aggression.
The
Trotskyist Faction (recently renamed in Current for
Permanent Revolution - Fourth International), with the
Argentinean PTS as the leading party, recently published a statement
on this issue. While it correctly denounces the imperialist
aggression and calls for the defence of Cuba, the statement also
shows the opportunist adaptation of this organisation to the
Stalinist-Capitalist regime of Castro/Diaz-Canel.
The
PTS/CPR-FI considers Cuba still as a “deformed workers state”. In
its statement it accuses Trump to strive for a “complete
restoration of capitalism”. It criticises that “the
Diaz-Canel government has been passing reforms that strengthen
pro-capitalist tendencies.” It speaks
of “increasing measures to restore
capitalism.” All these formulations
suggest that capitalist restoration would only be a tendency and that
Cuba still would be a “deformed workers state”, i.e. a
post-capitalist state defending a planned economy based on
proletarian property relations.
Indeed,
this is the analysis of the PTS/CPR-FI as one can see in
an article published in 2021. Here it speaks about the Stalinist
regime as one which “is undermining
the foundations of the workers’ state.”
It characterizes the pro-market reforms since 2010/11 as “a
further step toward capitalist restoration. If completed, this
restoration will be a severe defeat. (…) Capitalist restoration
would entail the loss of historic gains like the nationalized economy
with its centralized planning…“
All
this suggests that the restoration of capitalism would only be a
possibility which lies in the future and that Cuba remains a
“deformed workers state”. However, as a matter of fact,
the regime has been committed to restore capitalism since more than
15 years as the PTS/CPR-FI comrades themselves suggest when they
speak about “pro-market reforms initiated by
Raúl Castro in 2010–11”. As we did show in our book
“Cuba‘s Revolution Sold Out?”,
published in 2013, the regime has undertaken a series of reforms
which all advance the restoration of capitalism. At the same time,
the regime keeps its political institutions in place, i.e. the
Stalinist dictatorship. This is why the RCIT characterises it as a
Stalinist-Capitalist regime.
In this
we follow the approach of Leon Trotsky, one of the greatest Marxist
thinkers of the 20th century, who elaborated a profound
analysis of Stalinism. Such he wrote: “The
class nature of the state is, consequently, determined not by its
political forms but by its social content; i.e., by the character of
the forms of property and productive relations which the given state
guards and defends.“
Hence,
the decisive question is which social relations does a given regime
defend? In the case of Cuba, we see that it is imposing austerity
measures and market reforms since a number of years, i.e. that it is
advancing capitalist property relations. Furthermore, it is a regime
which has aligned itself with Chinese and Russian imperialism.
The
PTS/CPR-FI comrades ignore these developments in order to claim that
defending Cuba would mean to defend a “deformed
workers state”.
Reform
or revolution in Cuba?
However,
even if Cuba would still be “deformed workers
state”, the position outlined in the PTS/CPR-FI is shameful.
Not a single time does it characterize the regime as a dictatorship,
not a single time does it call for political revolution – as
Trotskyists always did in Stalinist states – and not a single time
does it advocate the replacement of the regime by an authentic
workers and popular government!
It only
speaks about the “bureaucratic Cuban regime”.
It denounces that “the government
continues to restrict the independent organization of workers and
youth and represses demonstrations by the popular masses in response
to the worsening social crises” and
demands that “the Cuban government
must stop repressing, persecuting, and imprisoning those who denounce
the inequalities and political oppression.”
Naturally,
we always demand from a government that it stops repression. Such
socialists in the U.S. raise the demand that the Trump Administration
stops sending the ICE thugs to terrorise migrants and, likewise, that
it ends it plan to recolonise Latin America. But we also make clear
that we want to bring down the Trump Administration and that we want
to smash U.S. imperialism.
But as
the PTS/CPR-FI comrades are silent about the dictatorial character of
the regime, about the necessity to overthrow and to replace it, their
approach becomes a reformist one, i.e. they are calling the regime to
make some reforms. To make this look realistic they are minimising
the repressive character of the Stalinist regime. For example, the
formulation “the government continues to
restrict the independent organization of workers and youth”
can be called the understatement of the year. The Castroite regime
does not only “restrict” independent workers and mass
organisations. It brutally represses them since more than six decades
and does not allow any other party or trade union which is
independent of the regime to exist! When the masses demonstrate for
democratic rights, they face brutal repression as we saw in 2021.
This is
not a “bureaucratic government” making mistakes which need to be
corrected – this is a dictatorship which stays in power through
brutal repression. Effectively, the PTS/CPR-FI statement is
whitewashing the Stalinist Regime!
The
disappearance of dialectics
Finally,
it is also worth noting that the PTS/CPR-FI does not mention at all
the close relations of the Castroite regime with Chinese and Russian
imperialism. Again, this is not surprising not only because the
comrades have a soft approach to the regime but also because they
refuse to recognise the imperialist character of China and Russia, as
we discussed somewhere else.
Both in the case of the Stalinist-Capitalist character of the Cuban
regime as well as the imperialist nature of China and Russia, the
PTS/CPR-FI repeats the same mistake of ignoring fundamental laws of
materialist dialectic – the necessity of identifying the essence
behind appearance and the transformation of quantity into quality. In
his Notebooks on Philosophy Lenin approvingly quoted Hegel’s
dictum that „the truth of being is essence“
and emphasised that “the endless process of
the deepening of man’s knowledge of the thing, of phenomena,
processes, etc., [is] from appearance to essence and from less
profound to more profound essence.“
Unfortunately,
due to its strong orientation to universities, the PTS/CPR-FI
is too much influenced by neo-Gramscian and post-modernist ideas
dominating the progressive academic milieu.
Hence, they repeat since many years that China and Russia only “have
imperialist tendencies” but are not imperialist yet and that the
Cuban regime introduces pro-market reforms but has not become
capitalist yet. Everything is lost in an endless process without
essence and clear characterisation. Such vagueness is not only
confusing but also useful to justify an opportunist policy of
adaptation to Castro-Chavismo!
Authentic
Marxists must make a clear rupture with such undialectical and
opportunist methods and take a clear stance in defence of Cuba
against imperialist aggression but also in clear denunciation of the
Stalinist-Capitalist regime of Castro/Diaz-Canel!
