Challenges Facing Cuba’s New Left

Erasmo Calzadilla

HAVANA TIMES, 11 ene — Cuban political scientist and columnist Haroldo Dilla recently published an essay on the need for a new left to be born in our country.

Nevertheless for me, as someone who considers themself a member of that political wing, those words (at least most of them) didn’t resonate. Nor did they resonate with most of the “new leftists” I know.

Haroldo’s commentary invites us try to specify what is (and what is not) the “new left,” who belongs to it and who doesn’t – a task that I leave for the wisest among us.

Instead, I’m going to discuss the “new leftist spirit” that has been astir here in Cuba.

In recent decades there has been born not one or two isolated groups, but an entire spirit, a new (or deeper) consciousness among earthlings, and also among Cubans.

This new awareness includes a lot of environmentalism, queerness, cool solidarity (also with other species), pantheistic religion that ubiquitously assumes a divinity threatened by the consumerist and alienating praxis of the current regimes, and of politics in the sense of activism from below against the established powers.

I would suggest, though not everyone will agree, that this is a left motion.

Like with the “indignados” at Puerta del Sol (Madrid) and elsewhere, this new left is far removed from centralism, authoritarianism, chauvinism, the traditional symbols of the left as well as representative democracy. It distances itself from the spectacle of the struggle between parties, elections, private ownership and other aspects in common with the “Western” paradigm.
I don’t deny that some people in this new wave (I’d say that only a minority feel fairly strongly about this) still believe that this regime is not beyond hope and that the “historic leaders” can lead the change.

Another minority (one that is given much attention and fanfare) consists of those who only focus on the issues of civil and human rights, and who believe that social democracy is a way out. (This is a minority within this “new leftist spirit” to which I’m referring, though perhaps not among the general population).

But back to Dilla. Later in his commentary he states: “But at the same time, I think that this emerging left is facing several critical issues that it must resolve if it wants to actually be a political alternative in Cuban society.”

A “political alternative in Cuban society”? What a joke! For the time being, I don’t think such a thing can be hoped for, and for several reasons.

Building from the ashes

In the first place this is because the movement is still very immature and (in my opinion) too few in number. Castro Stalinism fell like an atomic bomb on the left tradition, hurling people — by their natural rejection — into the arms of capitalism and liberalism.

The left now has to reconstitute itself from the ashes and it must do it at the rhythm of those who are little by little building a new paradigm.

Secondly this is because participating in the political struggle in the traditional style would mean renouncing the essence of the movement. It would involve, for example, the role of an “enlightened vanguard” and everything derived from that: top-down “verticalism,” internal police organization, the frequent purging of heretics, demagoguery, representativeness as a mode of relations between professionals and the rest of the movement, and so on.

However, what’s clear is that the new left should propose (explicitly or by example) the alternative of “achievable good living” (i.e. not committing the idealist’s sin).

There is much talk of cooperatives but — be careful! — when some new leftists suggest this as a way of organizing work (versus private enterprise and wage labor), aren’t they invoking another form of totalitarianism where everything would have to be turned into cooperatives, and where everyone would have to be connected to work in that manner?

In any case, I’m not denying that this movement has before it plenty of dilemmas constituting veritable mountains in its path. It wouldn’t be bad to hear “And you, on your tiptoes!”(*), but maturity can’t be rushed.

As for the question of time running out, I think the left can take it easy regarding this point: there will always be plenty of work for it.
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* In Mambi mythology, when one of the Maceos died in combat with the Spanish, the mother, Mariana Grajales, said to another of her sons who was still a minor “And you, stand on your tiptoes so that you can head for the jungle to fight.” Maybe that wasn’t the exact expression – but who really knows?