Intransigence Is Not Revolutionary

Pedro Campos

HAVANA TIMES, April 10 — Last Sunday, President Raul Castro continued his discourse with flexible language that tried to offer hope for the future – though without offering any substantial concrete changes.

However, life teaches us that if you want different results, you cannot continue repeating the same thing.

“(We must) foster frank discussions and not see having differences as being a problem; on the contrary, these are the sources of the best solutions… We must consciously suppress everything that fuels simulation and opportunism.  (We must) learn how to incorporate different opinions, stimulate unity and strengthen collective leadership…” said the nation’s president at the 9th Congress of the Cuban Young Communist League (UJC).

In this I support him completely.

With that said, what relation do these lines have with the intransigence reflected in other paragraphs of the same speech?

How is it possible to foster frank discussion, eliminate simulation and opportunism, incorporate opinions, stimulate unity and strengthen collective leadership and —at the same time— continue with the old Statist wage-labor economic model?  Such a system is only attempting to upgrade itself, not make substantial change.  It remains intimately connected to the bureaucratic, interventionist, centralized, vertical, sectarian, authoritarian and intransigent political system, which is not even mentioned as an object of transformation?

How can you achieve change when there is no real dialogue, not even among revolutionaries themselves; or when they don’t give space in the country’s only press to the opinions of communists and revolutionaries who promote a socialist perspective different from the failed official outlook; or when they reject other writings dealing with those issues?

There’s no doubt about the desires of the historic leadership to prevent the reversal of the Revolution.  However, their obstinacy in continuing with the failed neo-Stalinist model, their resistance to dialogue and their intolerance, all call into question their willingness to make concrete steps in the direction of the socialization and democratization of economic and political power – the sole real possibility for ensuring the historical continuity of the revolutionary process.

It’s not a question of walking more quickly, but of changing paths…of abandoning the capitalist logic of the obtaining of wage-labor derived profits, which are concentrated in the hands of only a few in power who decide on how these profits are used.

Since when is intransigence revolutionary?  Since when has it had anything to do with the Marxist dialectic?  Since when is flexibility incompatible with the will to triumph?  Since when is tolerance synonymous with hesitation? …or negotiating with surrendering? …or conceding with losing?

We need to be as flexible as steel, which bends and doesn’t break; but not rigid like glass, that cracks easily with the slightest touch.

The siege in the Sierra Maestra [in the late 1950s] was not defeated by the intolerance of the rebels, but by their readiness and confidence of victory, by the flexibility of “hit and run” tactics, the constant changing of positions and the support of the urban underground “Llano” wing.

We won at the Bay of Pigs not from intolerance, but due to the capacity to flexibly combine the militia with the police, the air force, the cavalry, artillery and the infantry.  There was not a nuclear war in 1962 thanks to the tolerance of others, not to the intransigence of the Cuban leaders.

Has the Cuban Revolution remained on its feet after the fall of the socialist camp thanks to its intransigence? …or was it thanks to momentous changes in the economy, and in international relationships and in changes to the electoral system itself between 1989 and 1996 (which then began to be disassembled when the support of oil from Chávez was felt)?

Is it necessary to recall what good was so much Statism in eastern Europe, so much “dictatorship of the proletariat,” so much one-party rule, so much authoritarianism, so much anti-democratic extremist communism?  Is it necessary to recall the result of so much uncompromising armed struggle in Latin America?

Is it necessary to recall how much tolerance the Cuban people have had with unsuccessful economic plans over a half century by the same government?  Is it necessary to recall that only the tolerance of many of today’s Cuban communists and socialists prevented a division in the revolutionary camp in the face of such intransigence by the historic leadership?

Peace only can be obtained through peaceful means, just as socialism through socialist means, democracy through democratic means, freedom through emancipatory means, understanding through dialogue, and a new world through new means and methods.

We have experienced much glory; however, today it could be much greater and everlasting, and this world would be very different had all revolutionaries of the 20th century been more tolerant and truly democratic and libertarian – as is consistent with socialism.

If the historic leadership does not want to bury the Cuban revolution itself, than it must abandon its prosaic intransigence, which seems more like suicidal machismo inherited from bellicose ancestors than the scientific and revolutionary politics of [national hero] Jose Marti.

Is it necessary to recall that the valorous, valiant and uncompromising attitude of General Antonio Maceo in the Protest of Baragua had to be changed for a more a flexible position a short time later.  This allowed for entering into terms with the enemy for a retreat that prevented his unnecessary self-sacrifice, as well as those of many other mambises (independence fighters), and the frustration of the revolution itself?

perucho1949@yahoo.es