This is the
second and concluding part of my review of the First International Academic
Meeting on Trotsky in Cuba. Link to
Part I: First International Academic Conference on Trotsky in Cuba.
Addendum
I
received the following note from Suzi Weissman - adding some qualifications to
my account - shortly after I published my review of the first two days of the
conference.
Just
for the record, I too, because of time constraints, was unable to develop my
arguments, but I certainly don't think Serge was at the level of leadership of
the revolutionary generation that Trotsky was, nor was he the kind of towering
theoretical giant. But his writings give us a real sense of the struggle of the
left opposition and he was its best chronicler and historian, not to mention
novelist. Serge lived his political life in Trotsky's orbit, though there were
real differences between them, that were exacerbated by Etienne.
Day
Three: Morning Session
The
third and final day of the Conference witnessed some fireworks. This was inevitable given that many of the
conference participants had diametrically opposed views and were very
passionate in defending their position.
The only surprise for me was that the conference did not feature more of
these contentious dust-ups. Undoubtedly
that would have been the case had there been more time for discussion. As it was, much of these debates took place
during the question and answer sessions when many delegates, instead of asking
a question, used their time to make a speech defending their position or
opposing a rival position. This was
unfortunate but completely understandable as there was no other outlet for
airing disagreements.
The
morning session was largely devoted to the development of Trotsky’s views
during his period of exile in Mexico. Daniel Perseguim from Brazil gave a
fascinating presentation on how Trotsky’s experience in the New World led him
to explore new dimensions in art and culture.
He began his talk by discussing Trotsky’s contributions to the Bulletin
of the Opposition when he was in Mexico. ( Being something of an amateur
archivist myself, I was very impressed by the fact that Perseguim had in his
possession the last issue of the Bulletin of the Opposition.) Paul LeBlanc provided the following excellent
summary of Perseguim’s talk.
Daniel Perseguim, commenting
that Trotsky’s ongoing contributions to a variety of journals over the years
(in a sense, his work as “a journalist”) reveal an evolution of
thinking and sensibilities, from the first issue of Iskra in
1900 to the last issue of the Russian-language Bulletin of the
Opposition. This has framed Perseguim’s own research project of tracing
Trotsky’s writings in his final period of exile, in Mexico, within which the
final issues of the Bulletin of the Opposition (from number
54-55 in 1937 to number 87 in 1941) were published. Trotsky’s emigration to
Mexico provided a relative freedom that, according to Perseguim, changed the
relationship of forces on the Left to the detriment of the Kremlin. One source
of enrichment in the thought of Trotsky and his co-thinkers was the influence
of the indigenous cultures of the Americas – an important assertion for which
there was an unfortunate lack of time to develop. A clear example of evolution
in Trotsky’s thinking on the relationship of art and revolutionary politics was
provided by comparing a formulation in his 1924 work Literature and
Revolution and the 1938 manifesto he drafted for the International
Federation of Independent Revolutionary Art (FIARI), the latter emphasizing the
absolute necessity for autonomous artistic creativity missing from his writings
of fourteen years earlier. Perseguim argued that further systematic research
into Trotsky’s writings during his final exile might change our understanding
of this revolutionary theorist. (Trotsky
in Cuba, 2019)
The
next speaker was José Alberto Fonseca Ornelas from Mexico. His theme was
Trotsky’s insistence on the independence of the working class in the struggle
against imperialism. He noted that the Popular Front policy of Stalinism in the
1930’s, when translated to the conditions existing in Latin America, meant the
subordination of the working class to the forces of bourgeois nationalism. He
discussed two examples where the Stalinist policy had a disastrous effect, that
of Cuba and of Mexico. He noted that in
Cuba the Stalinist Communist Party actually supported the dictator Fulgencio
Batista in the 1940’s. In Mexico the Communist Party urged the powerful trade
union movement to align itself with the radical nationalist regime of Lázaro
Cardenas. This eventually resulted in
the Mexican unions becoming little more than an appendage of the bourgeois
Mexican state and has had a debilitating effect on the class struggle in Mexico
to this day. He noted that whereas
Trotsky was grateful to Cardenas for providing him with asylum in Mexico and defended
the Cardenas government against U.S. imperialism when it expropriated the
foreign owned oil companies, he insisted that the Mexican working class needed
to form its own independent political party and never subordinate itself to the
PRI or Cardenas.
Kaveh
Bovieri from Montreal next presented a paper that attempted to explain the
difference between a historical account from a Marxist perspective and
conventional bourgeois historiography through the lens of Hegel’s Philosophy
of History. He noted that in the Introduction to the Philosophy of
History Hegel discusses three types of historical accounts: First is what
Hegel called “Original history”, which is an empirical account of events by
contemporary witnesses. Herodotus and
Thucydides are prime examples of this type of history. Next is what Hegel
called “Reflective History”. This type of history attempts to work up the
empirical material contained in Original History and find some kind of pattern
or lesson. At its best this type of history can give us genuine insights into
the historical process whereas at its worst it can become a rationalization for
an ideology. Christian historical accounts of the lives of the saints and
martyrs that justify the triumph of Christianity over the previous pagan
culture are a good example of the worst type of Reflective History. The best of Reflective History would be
accounts that look back into the records of historical events in order to find
the real patterns and separate those from myths and apologetics. Examples of this kind of history would be
recent accounts of the post-Civil War period of Reconstruction in the Southern states of the U.S. that depict its radical and democratic nature while disposing of the myths
propagated by historians sympathetic to the Confederacy that the period of
Reconstruction represented a corrupt takeover of Southern states by Northern carpet-baggers.
The
third type of historical account Hegel discusses is what he calls
“Philosophical History”. It is far from
obvious what is meant by this as philosophy deals with universal concepts whereas
history supposedly deals with contingent particulars. How can these two be put together? It is best to quote Hegel’s own description
of Philosophical History:
The only Thought which Philosophy
brings with it to the contemplation of History, is the simple conception of
Reason; that Reason is the Sovereign of the World; that the history of the
world, therefore, presents us with a rational process. (The Philosophy of
History, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, translated by J. Sibree, page 22, Batochie Books.)
After
briefly discussing Hegel’s classification of historical explanations, Bovieri
contended that Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution presents us
with a synthesis of all three types of accounts. Bovieri’s argument relied on a close reading
not only of Trotsky but of Marx’s statement,
No social order is ever destroyed
before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been
developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones
before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the
framework of the old society.(Marx, Preface to Critique of Political Economy)
I
cannot do justice to Bovieri’s presentation although I agree with his main
point. One illustration of his thesis is
the difference between the kind of historical explanation provided by Trotsky
and the kind provided by the best non-Marxist account of the Russian
Revolution, Alexander Rabinowitch’s 3 volume work, Prelude to Revolution,
The Bolsheviks Come to Power, and The Bolsheviks in Power.
Rabinowitch provides, in the lexicon of Hegelian terminology, a synthesis of
Original History and Reflective History. He presents a wealth of contemporary
material from the Russian archives, much of it new, and uses it to make the
point that the Russian Revolution was a genuine popular uprising led by the
Bolsheviks and not a coup by a tiny minority as legions of anti-communist
historians had long maintained. I interviewed Rabinowitch in 2017, the
centenary year of the Russian Revolution, when he summarized his findings about
the popular nature of the revolution.
Missing
in Rabinowitch’s account however is what Hegel called Philosophical History. It
is this dimension that Trotsky adds to the historical narrative. To quote from
his Preface to the History of the Russian Revolution,
The history of a revolution, like
every other history, ought first of all to tell what happened and how. That,
however, is little enough. From the very telling it ought to become clear why
it happened thus and not otherwise. Events can neither be regarded as a series
of adventures, nor strung on the thread of a preconceived moral. They must obey
their own laws. The discovery of these laws is the author’s task.
The
next presenter, Héctor Puenta Sierra, from the Socialist Workers Party in the
U.K., defended Tony Cliff’s analysis of the Soviet Union as a form of “state
capitalism”. He argued that Cliff’s analysis resolved some problems in
Trotsky’s original analysis of the Stalinist bureaucracy as a parasitical
growth on a degenerated “workers state”. Sierra’s
presentation triggered much contentious debates during the question and answer
session, particularly when he said that the classification of the Soviet Union
as “state capitalist” had the advantage that one need not equate the demise of
the Soviet Union with the death of socialism. Paul LeBlanc responded that no
Trotskyist ever equated the fall of the Soviet Union with the end of socialism,
regardless of one’s estimation of the class nature of the Soviet state.
S.
Sándor John, a supporter of The Internationlist group, spoke
forcefully about the necessity to defend the gains of the Soviet Union against
imperialism and denounced those tendencies, such as Cliff’s and Shachtman’s, that considered the Soviet Union
as just another variety of capitalism and imperialism, as a betrayal of
internationalism. In response Dan LaBotz defended Shachtman’s thesis, “Neither
Washington nor Moscow”, as being consistent with the position of Lenin and
Trotsky during World War I, that no support be given to any of the contending
imperialist powers.
The
final presentation of the morning session was by Gabriela Pérez Noriega,
Director of the Museo Casa de León Trotsky. Perez first introduced
a video featuring a recent interview by Alan Woods, the leader of the International
Marxist Tendency, with Trotsky’s grandson, Esteban Volkov. Volkov, now in his
nineties, was unfortunately not able to travel to attend the conference in
person. I had met Volkov at a conference
on Trotsky at Fordham University in New York back in 2008 and was gratified to
see that he is still politically active. Volkov greeted the conference and
noted its historic significance. He paid homage to his grandfather; whose ideas
are still relevant to the struggle for socialism. Following the video Pérez spoke. LeBlanc,
once again, has provided a nice summary:
After the short video, Pérez (citing
the Russian’s historian Dmitri Volkoganov findings of materials in the Stalin
archives) emphasized that the dictator was animated by great fear of Trotsky,
which is why he sent an agent with an ice-axe to destroy one of the greatest
brains of revolutionary Marxism. She observed that such enemies continued to
slander Trotsky viciously down to the present day, pointing to the recent
anti-Trotsky film series produced by right-wing filmmakers in Russia and
distributed globally through Netflix. Those at the conference and others, with
their own serious work, were pushing back against such assaults. Pérez then
discussed the development of the Museo Casa de León Trotsky, noting
that it had in recent years added to its mission an emphasis on defending the
right to asylum for the oppressed and the persecuted – which had been central
to the last chapter of Trotsky’s struggle. Revitalizing the Museo,
this commitment was reflected in its investigations of and support for the
recent migration movement that had surged through Mexico. Inviting everyone to
visit the Museo Casa de León Trotsky, she concluded with a quote
from Trotsky’s final testament: “Life is beautiful. Let the future generations
cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence and enjoy it to the full.”
Day
Three: Afternoon Session
The
afternoon session was packed with a number of presentations. The overall theme was Trotskyism in Latin
America and the struggle against imperialism.
The final three sessions were devoted to an examination of Trotskyism in
Cuba. I can only mention a few
impressions from the afternoon session. I once more refer to Paul LeBlanc’s
summary for a more thorough description.
Ernest Tate,
a veteran activist from Canada, gave a presentation on the role of the Fair
Play for Cuba Committee in changing the political climate in Canada towards an
acceptance of the Cuban Revolution. His talk was largely a summary of a chapter
from his memoir, Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s and 1960s. (The
chapter is available online at Tate memoir Chapter 15.)
Tate
generalized the experiences of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee as an
example of the importance of international solidarity work for the defense of
anti-colonial revolutions not only in Cuba, but also Vietnam and Algeria. He
defended the politics of gathering political resistance around a single
issue.
Another
presenter, Burak Sayim, a member of the DIP (Workers Revolutionary Party) of
Turkey, gave a talk on Che Guevara and Trotsky’s theory of permanent
revolution. He maintained that Che subscribed in practice to the theory of
permanent revolution. I would have
questioned Sayim on this had there been time. While it is true that Che departed
from the Stalinists by devoting his last years to the expansion of the
revolution internationally, he at the same time failed to see the revolutionary
potential of the working class, concentrating his activity on the attempt to
create guerilla foci among the peasants in the countryside. Che’s ideas were based not only on the
experience of the Cuban Revolution, but on what he took to be the model of the
Chinese Revolution. While there may have been some outward resemblance, Che’s rejection
of the revolutionary role of the working class was, I would maintain,
completely at odds with Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution.
Rafael
Bernabé from Puerto Rico, gave a presentation on the role of the Communist
Party in Puerto Rico in defanging the labor movement on that island. To quote LeBlanc’s summary,
The Puerto Rican Communist Party – the
central force in building Puerto Rico’s powerful labor movement of the 1930s
and 1940s – was committed to building an alliance with the “progressive” and
“democratic” imperialism of the United States, particularly in the struggle
against fascism during World War II. To facilitate this, the Puerto Rican
Communist Party liquidated itself, which consequently facilitated the collapse
of the labor movement. An economic boom combined with Cold War anti-Communism
resulted in substantial political disorientation. Bernabé recalled that Trotsky
had emphasized the need, in the Americas, for an “Americanized” Bolshevism to
confront and defeat American imperialism. Instead, a bureaucratized Bolshevism
(in the form of Stalinism) ended up confronting American imperialism – and had
proved incapable of bringing victory. The struggle must continue, based on
lessons learned from the past.
Bryan
Palmer from Canada, the author of an important biography of the founder of
American Trotskyism, James P. Cannon, gave a presentation on Cannon that emphasized
that the stereotypical view of Cannon as lacking theoretical depth is
completely mistaken. I quote from Paul
LeBlanc’s excellent summary of Palmer’s remarks,
Bryan Palmer, drawing on new research
for the upcoming second volume of his James P. Cannon biography, discussed the
relationship of Cannon and another founder of US Trotskyism, Max Shachtman,
with each other and with Trotsky, from 1928 through the 1930s. Cannon has had
an misleading reputation of being provincial, weak on internationalism, and
“innocent of theory,” while his former young protégé Shachtman has often been
seen as cosmopolitan and theoretically sophisticated. Trotsky’s assessment in
the early 1930s was that Shachtman was overly inclined to place “chumminess”
above principle and too often unreliable on political matters; eventually he
placed greater trust in Cannon. In the early 1930s a generational divide had
opened up among US Trotskyists, with a younger group headed by Shachtman
impatient and hostile toward the older Cannon – bringing to mind a Freudian
sons-slay-the-father dynamic. Shachtman was soon reconciled with Cannon, a
close and fruitful cooperation being generated by several major developments:
the New York hotel workers strike; the Minneapolis teamsters strikes; the struggles
against fascism and Stalinism; merger with another left-wing group headed by
A.J. Muste; a battle against internal sectarian tendencies; and a decision to
merge the US Trotskyists into the Socialist Party. Yet differences between the
two reemerged: Shachtman was inclined to focus on negotiations and maneuvers
with an organized tendency of militants in the Socialist Party (with hopes of
perhaps taking over the Socialist Party), while Cannon (anticipating a split)
preferred to build Socialist Party branches outside the control of the
Socialist Party leadership, and helping advance labor struggles in California
and Minnesota. When Trotskyists were – as Cannon anticipated – ejected from the
Socialist Party, they took many labor militants and youth with them to form the
Socialist Workers Party, that was able to play a leading role in helping to
found the Fourth International in 1938.
S.
Sándor John from the U.S. provided a riveting account of the Trotskyist
movement in Bolivia in the 1950’s.
Bolivia was one of the few countries in the world, the others being Sri
Lanka and Vietnam, where Trotskyism became a mass movement and captured a
significant following in the working class. In Bolivia, the most important
segment of society, the powerful the tin miners’ union, were solidly in the
camp of Trotskyism. Sandor described
several near revolutions in the 1950’s and both the heroism and the errors on
the part of the Bolivian Trotskyists. Those errors lead to the consolidation of
power by a bourgeois nationalist party that turned against the working
class. Sandor, a Latin American
historian, did a great deal of original research and interviews with veterans
of this struggle. It is not possible to capture the flavor of his presentation
in a broad-brush overview.
There
were three presentations on the history of Trotskyism in Cuba. I was only able to absorb a few pieces of
information from these presentations. Hopefully when all this material is
published it will open new doors to research in this area. There were two
separate periods in the history of Trotskyism in Cuba. The first was initially
inspired by Trotsky and the struggle of the Left Opposition in the 1920’s and
1930’s. This current of Cuban Trotskyism seems to have disappeared sometime in
the 1940’s as a result of repression by both the Cuban government and the
Stalinists. A separate current of Cuban Trotskyism emerged in the 1950’s that
originated out of the work of Juan Posadas.
This current of Cuban Trotskyism survived sometime into the late 1960’s (there
are some disputes as to the exact date).
While the Trotskyists were supportive of the Cuban Revolution, they ran
afoul of the Stalinist elements in the Cuban leadership. The upshot was the
proscription of their newspaper and the jailing of its remaining members in the
mid 1960’s. Rafael Acosta from
Cuba spoke about the last days of
Cuban Trotskyism after the revolution.
Ricardo Márquez from Mexico spoke about one of the founders of the Cuban Communist
Party who became sympathetic to the Left Opposition, Julio Antonio Mella. Caridad
Massòn from Cuba spoke about an early leader of Cuban Trotskyism, Sandalio
Junco. Massòn questioned whether Junco
could really be considered a Trotskyist.
She questioned whether Junco, who was murdered by Stalinist assassins in
1942, was killed for his political affiliation or for some other unkown
reason.
I may have misinterpreted her
remarks, but I thought this was a back-handed attempt to legitimize the history
of Cuban Stalinism. I was not the only
one who had this reaction to Massòn’s remarks.
One of the panelists from Mexico got up and stated that while there may
be different currents within the Marxist tradition, Stalinism is not a Marxist
current in any sense. A lively discusion
was elicited by these presentations which touched on the hostility towards
Trotskyism in Cuba. Castro’s diatribe against Trotskyism at the Tri-Continental
Congress in 1966 was mentioned. But it was also mentioned that there were
periods in which the Cuban leadership evinced, if not a sympathy for Trotsky,
then a certain degree of respect. The turning point in the attitude to
Trotsky came with the publication in 2008 of Leonardo Padura’s novel, The
Man Who Loved Dogs, which for the first time depicted to the Cuban public a
sympathetic if not uncritical portrait of Trotsky. (See my Interview with Frank García
Hernández for more on this topic.)
The
conference formally ended with the singing of the Internationale by the
audience.
Farewell
to Cuba
Frank had planned one last event
following the conference – an original musical arrangement composed especially
for the Conference. The composers were a duo from Colombia and Cuba, Santiago Barbosa and Luna Catalina
Tinoco. Frank had arranged for us to convene in a bar and performance space
that evening, La Bombilla Verde, where we were treated to the world
premiere of a musical piece dedicated to Trotsky. This was truly a unique
experience, one that I will always remember fondly. Following the musical event there was some discussion
about making this an annual event, with the next edition possibly to take place
in Brazil next year. I said my goodbye’s
to Frank and the international friends I made at this conference.
I left Cuba the next day with a
positive feeling knowing that some seeds had been planted. We will see what fruit they bear.
Alex Steiner, New York, June 17, 2019
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