cuba and venezuela - the nemeses of imperialism

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1The Nemeses of Imperialism

CUBAandVENEZUELA

The Nemeses of Imperialism

by

Frederic F. Clairmont

C I T I Z E N S I N T E R N A T I O N A L


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Cuba and Venezuela2

Published byCitizens International10 Jalan Masjid Negeri

11600 Pulau PinangMalaysia

2007

Printed byJutaprint

2, Solok Sungai Pinang 3Sungai Pinang

11600 Pulau PinangMalaysia

ISBN 978-983-3302-14-7


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FOREWORD

Frederic F. Clairmonts Cuba and Venezuela: The Nemeses of Imperialism

follows on from his earlier work, The Rise and Fall of Economic Liberalism:

The Making of the Economic Gulag*, as well as his later writings on Iraq, in

which the author demonstrated how the miring of the United States in the

Mesopotamian conflict heralded the decline and fall of the American

empire.

In this new work, Frederic Clairmont returns to a subject that he knows

particularly well, Latin America, and the conflictual and domineering

relationship that Washington has historically maintained with the region.

The author, with the aid of copious and irrefutable documentation, recalls

how under the leadership of Fidel Castro, Cuba a small country of 100

square kilometres and 11 million inhabitants has been able to maintain

a policy of resistance for almost 50 years, and engage in a trial of strength

with the United States, whose leaders were unable either to topple the

Cuban president, eliminate him, or modify the direction taken by the

Cuban revolution.

A third world war could have erupted in October 1962 because of

Washingtons objection to the installation in Cuba of Soviet nuclear

* Southbound Press and Third World Network, Penang, 1996.


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Cuba and Venezuela4

missiles whose function was primarily defensive and dissuasive: to prevent

a new invasion like that of Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs) in 1961, but this time

directly organized by the Americans, to overthrow the Cuban revolution.

Since 1960, the United States, despite the increasingly vigorous

opposition of the United Nations, has waged economic war against Cuba

and, unilaterally, imposed a devastating commercial blockade (augmented

in the 1990s by the Helms-Burton and Torricelli Acts, and again reinforced

by the Bush administration in May 2004). This impedes Cubas normal

development and hampers its economic growth, with tragic consequences

for the islands population.

Moreover, by means of the powerful Radio Marti and TV Marti based

in Florida, Washington conducts a permanent ideological and media war

against Havana, inundating Cuba with propaganda reminiscent of the

worst periods of the Cold War. The American authorities, sometimes

through front organizations such as the National Endowment for

Democracy (NED), an NGO set up by Ronald Reagan in 1983, finance

groups abroad that disseminate anti-Cuban propaganda. For example,

according to the US press agency Associated Press, in 2005 NED disbursed

$2.4 million among organizations in Europe campaigning for regime

change in Cuba. In addition, the United States Agency for International

Development (USAID), which is directly dependent on the US

Government, has provided more than $65 million since 1996 to mainly

Florida-based groups active against Cuba. Again, in May 2004 the Bush

administration set up a supplementary fund of $80 million to bolster

assistance to these groups.

Throughout the world dozens of journalists are paid to disseminate

information concocted against Cuba. Some of the money, however,

subsidizes terrorist organizations hostile to the Cuban regime, among

others Alpha-66 and Omega-7. Based in Florida where they have training

camps, they regularly send armed commandos, with the tacit complicity

of the American authorities, to carry out attacks and sabotage. Cuba is a


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country that has sustained an outstanding number of victims of violence

(almost 3,500 dead and 2,000 permanently handicapped) and that has

most suffered from terrorism over the past forty years.

In 2005, with total disdain for Cuban sovereignty, and considering the

island to be, so to speak, an internal matter, Washington unhesitatingly

appointed a Cuba Transition Coordinator, Mr Caleb McCarry (formerly

assigned to Afghanistan). On 10 July 2006, a report of the Commission

for Assistance to a Free Cuba, co-chaired by Secretary of State Condoleezza

Riceand Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutirrez, demanded that everything

be done to ensure that... the Castro regime's succession strategy does not

succeed.

Specifying that United States aid to their allies within the island such

persons as the American writer Ernest Hemingway in a quite different

context categorized as a fifth column would total more than 62.8

million, the document states that the sum should be delivered directly to

the dissidents, who will receive matrieland training. This constitutes

blatant meddling by a great power to destabilize a small country. It is also

a veritable kiss of death for the opposition since, as the president of the

Cuban parliament Ricardo Alarcn stressed: As long as this policy

continues, Cubans will become involved in plotting with the Americans

and accepting their money, and . . . no country I know of would not

categorize such an activity as a crime.

It is all the more criminal in that the American plan includes a

classified annex for reasons of national security to ensure its effective

implementation. As far as covert action is concerned, the history of

Latin America offers numerous examples from the Chile of Salvador

Allende to the Nicaragua of the Sandinistas. Let us not be nave. Indubitably

this is a question of covert war.

Despite American remorselessness and some 600 acts of aggression,

Cuba has never responded with violence. In 48 years not a single violent


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Cuba and Venezuela6

act instigated by Havana was recorded in the United States. On the contrary,

following the despicable attacks of 11 September 2001 on New York and

Washington, Fidel Castro declared: Their attitude towards us diminishes

in no way the profound pain we feel concerning the victims of the terrorist

attack of 11 September.

The Cuban diplomatic service is one of the most active in the world. In

the years 1960-80 the revolution buttressed guerillas in several Central

American (El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua) and South American

(Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina) countries. The armed forces

it dispatched across the world took part in important military campaigns,

particularly in the wars in Ethiopia and Angola. Cuban intervention in

the latter country ended with the routing of the elite divisions of the

Republic of South Africa, undoubtedly speeding up the independence of

Namibia and the collapse of the racist apartheid regime, and paving the

way for the liberation of Nelson Mandela, who never misses an opportunity

to recall his friendship with Fidel Castro and his debt to the Cuban

revolution.

In the 1980s, Cuba assumed the leadership of the Non-Aligned

Movement and undertook an intensive international campaign for the

non-payment of the Latin American countries foreign debt. Following

the debacle of the socialist bloc of Eastern Europe and the collapse of the

Soviet Union in 1991, however, the Cuban revolution experienced some

agonizing years, dubbed a Special Period, but nevertheless managed to

survive, much to the astonishment of most of its adversaries.

For the first time in its history, Cuba is no longer answerable to an

empire, neither to that of Spain, nor the United States, nor the Soviet

Union. It has embarked on a new kind of political life, to the left of the

international left, joining the vast offensive against neoliberalism and

globalization.


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In this new geopolitical context the Cuban revolution still remains,

thanks to its successes and despite its serious deficiencies (economic

problems, colossal bureaucratic incompetence, widespread small-scale

corruption, hardship of daily life, food shortages, power cuts, chronic lack

of transport, rationing, limitation of certain freedoms), an important model

for thousands of the deprived throughout the world. In many regions of

the globe men and women protest, struggle and sometimes die in attempts

to achieve some of the social gains that characterize the Cuban example.

This is strikingly true in Latin America where solidarity with Cuba and

recognition of the stature of Fidel Castro have never been so strong. Since

the electoral victory of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1998, the polls have

enabled the election (or re-election) of several candidates of the left: Nestor

Kirchner in Argentina, Lula da Silva in Brazil, Tabar Vazquez in Uruguay,

Martin Torrijos in Panama, Ren Prval in Haiti, Michelle Bachelet in

Chile, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Rafael

Correa in Ecuador. In Mexico in July 2006, only apparent fraud prevented

the representative of the left, Andrs Manuel Lopez Obrador, from

winning. (The margin was 0.56%!) And even in Colombia, where Alvaro

Uribe was re-elected in May 2006, the results obtained by the leftwing

candidates were remarkably strong.

Latin Americas situation is wholly unprecedented. It was not so long

ago that a military coup under whatever pretext (the most recent attempt

was in 2002 against President Hugo Chavez), or direct intervention by the

United States (the last was in Panama in December 1989 against Manuel

Noriega), would quickly have aborted any plan for economic and social

reform, even if supported by a majority of the electorate.

The author reminds us that democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz in

Guatemala, Joao Goulart in Brazil, Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic,

and Salvador Allende in Chile, to name the most noteworthy, were ousted

in 1954, 1964, 1965 and 1973 respectively, by military coups orchestrated

by the United States to prevent the introduction of structural reforms into


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Cuba and Venezuela8

non-egalitarian societies. Such reforms would have adversely affected the

interests of the United States and it being the era of the Cold War (1947-

1989) could have led to a modification of alliances that Washington

would not have tolerated.

In the geopolitical context of the time, the only leftwing experiment

that managed to survive was that of Cuba. But we know the price that was

paid. External pressure compelled Cuba to toughen its policies excessively.

For more than two decades it strove to overcome political isolation and

economic strangulation organized by the United States. To escape these

constraints it entered into a somewhat unnatural alliance with the remote

Soviet Union, whose sudden disappearance in 1991 brought in its wake

grave difficulties.

Except in the case of Cuba, all attempts to change the pattern of

ownership, or redistribute the continents wealth more equitably, were

brutally suppressed.

Why then should the United States accept today that which it rejected

for decades? How could a pinkish or scarlet wave now flow across so many

Latin American states without being broken as in the past? What has

changed?

In the first place, a major factor has been the failure in most of Latin

America of the sometimes radical neoliberal experiments of the 1990s. In

several countries such policies resulted in shameless pillage, massive

impoverishment of the middle and working classes, destruction of entire

sectors of national industry, and finally widespread social upheaval.

In Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Peru and in Argentina, veritable civil

insurrections succeeded in toppling presidents who, although

democratically elected, had, once in office, considered that they had a

blank cheque for the duration of their mandate to act as they pleased and

in some instances to ignore the programme they had offered to the

electorate.


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In this regard, the collapse in Argentina of the neoliberal policies of

Mr Carlos Menem in 1999, and the mass uprising of 21 December 2001

that forced the departure of President Fernando De La Rua, are in a way

the counterpart in Latin America of what the collapse of the Berlin Wall

on 9 November 1989 represented for Europeans, that is to say, the

permanent rejection of a dogmatic and arrogant model that ill-served the

population.

Another basic element is that since the Gulf War of 1991, and even

more so since 11 September 2001, the United States, godfather of the

region it regards as its backyard, has reoriented its geopolitical

preoccupations towards Iraq and the Near and Middle East, where oil and

its principal current enemies are to be found.

This diversion favoured the blossoming in Latin America of several

leftwing experiments, notably the Bolivarian revolution of President Hugo

Chavez in Venezuela, and doubtless spared them from being rapidly stifled

at birth. This was particularly fortunate for Caracas and Havana, who have

seen their new regional allies proliferating, allies with whom they have

increased their political and economic ties. Thus on 21 July 2006, at the

Mercosur summit in Cordoba (Argentina), Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez

signed an important commercial agreement with Mercosur member

countries, including Brazil and Argentina. In so doing they openly

challenged the American blockade and paid homage to a small country

like Cuba that for almost 50 years has refused to submit to the worldsmajor power. [Translated from the French by Carl Freeman]

Ignacio Ramonet

Ignacio Ramonet is the Director ofLe Monde Diplomatique, one of the founders

of ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions to Aid

Citizens) and a leading figure in the anti-neoliberal-globalization movement.


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Cuba and Venezuela10


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D e d i c a t i o n

To the tens of thousands of young Cuban medical, educational

and other professional workers who irrepressibly continue to fling

themselves selflessly without respite into the war against disease,

poverty and illiteracy on a scale that has never been witnessed, not

only in Latin America but worldwide.


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Within the Revolution there is a place for

everyone; against the Revolution there is room for

none. This is a life-and-death struggle that can

only end with the death and destruction of the

Revolution or the counter-revolution.

Fidel Castro

I have lived in the belly of the beast and I know

its entrails.

Jose Marti

History does nothing, it possesses no immense

wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, real

living man who does everything, who possesses and

fights.

Karl Marx

Freedom is a function of power.

Harold Joseph Laski


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13The Nemeses of ImperialismRecent Trends in Global Financial Flows

CUBA AND VENEZUELA:

The Nemeses of Imperialism

M

y reflections on the revolutionary processes now sweeping

through Latin America are based on researches and lengthy

discussions with many Latin American leaders and civil

servants that were initiated during my years as a senior economic affairs

officer in the United Nations, specifically the secretariat of the United

Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). My sojourns

in Latin America in 2006 came at a crucial tipping point in the grim and

exploitation-ridden history of the region. What we are now seeing are the

convulsions of a region that is hungering for authentic freedom, extending

from the Mexican frontier to the southernmost extremity of Tierra del

Fuego. These mark the massive erosion of the imperial power of the US

oligarchy and its domesticated political quislings that have bled the region

since its countries acquired formal independence in the early part of the

19th century.

Despite the fact that US imperialism has butchered more than 655,000

Iraqi men, women and children, as The Lancetconfirms, it has lost the

colonial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The estimated cost of Bushsundeclared war of exterminism in Iraq against an innocent people will be

well over $1.2 trillion. It is one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated

against any people at any moment in history. Referring to the genocide of


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the peoples of Indochina in which 3 million were butchered, Martin Luther

King declared: He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as

he who helps to perpetuate evil. He who accepts evil without protesting

against it is really cooperating with evil. The peoples of Cuba and Venezuela

have now raised the ante: there is at present not only a mighty voice against

evil, but also an active combatant that has taken its struggle for

emancipation into the very backyard of imperialism. Although the

economic, political and military power of the US still prevails in Latin

America, it is fairly obvious that in this crucial region of revolutionary

change its overwhelming hegemonic control is rapidly ebbing.

This work is concerned primarily with the freedom struggle of two

still-poor nations against the evil of imperial carnage and pillage. It is a

struggle rooted in the choice of their masses to reject the dictates of

imperialism and advance on the broad highways of social justice and

dignity; this can be encapsulated in one word: socialism. What matters, as

we shall see, is that these fighting nations have not merely refused to

relinquish their sovereignty as free peoples and accept meekly the yoke ofthe colonial empire whose crimes have been touted under the most

mellifluous of high-sounding moral platitudes. Of primordial importance

is that these two oppressed peoples of colour have fought back successfully

in the battering of imperialism. The combined freedom forces led by

Cuban President Fidel Castro and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo

Chavez represent today leaving aside the heroic resistance of the people

of Iraq and, more recently, of Iran the most formidable nemeses everfaced by the now crumbling and moribund forces of empire.

This work first examines the consequences of the unstoppable

breakdown of American capitalism, of which its many layers of

indebtedness are but one facet. We then turn our attention to the

emergence of Cuba as a world power, and subsequently chart the course

taken in Venezuela by the leadership of Hugo Chavez that is forging ahead

under the banner of socialism of the 21st century. Cuba and Venezuelaremain the salient inspirers of the drive for freedom that is sweeping Latin

America.


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Fidel Castro

Cuba, the beacon of socialist freedom in the Americas, has not

merely survived but has successfully beaten back the half-century-

long annexationist onslaughts of the US corporate gulag. We have

no illusions, however, of the price that it has paid and continues to pay toretain its socialist gains. In the extended scale of human history there is

nothing remotely comparable to the unremitting savagery of the US

blockades, embargos and mass assassinations that have incessantly battered

the first socialist nation in the Americas since its liberation in 1959. In

but one year, 2006, the cost of the US embargo on Cuba which has time

and again been repudiated by the UN General Assembly was an estimated

$4 billion. The US is not alone. In this criminal conspiracy the US gulag

has been joined by the European bourgeoisie. The US has internationalized

the embargo, whose overriding goal let this be stressed is the liquidation

of socialism and the reimplantation of the US colonial order in Cuba.


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1 Barcelona, 2006. The biography was written by Ignacio Ramonet, the director

ofLe Monde Diplomatique.

The horrendous toll exacted by the embargo tells us much, for what it

highlights is the recognition by the US caste oligarchy that Cuba remains

one of the greatest ramparts for human freedom (a word that is

inconceivable in the lexicon of imperialism) in the Americas, hence the

compulsive lunge for its extermination. What is of importance, however,

as we shall see, is that the brightest firmament in the Americas has ceased

to be alone, and its spiritual aura is ramified throughout the region. We

must understand clearly that Venezuela, which has now emerged as one

of the leading powers in the Americas, is pursuing its own anti-imperialist

trajectory, indeed its own specific socialist trajectory.

One of the most elating stories in the odyssey of Hugo Chavez took

place during the April 2002 coup in Venezuela, when he was a prisoner of

the putschists in the island of Orchila. The role played by Fidel Castro at

this time was spelt out in his biography, Fidel Castro: Biografia a dos voces.1

He communicated to Chavez: Dont immolate yourself, Hugo. Dont

repeat the mistake of Allende. He was an isolated individual without the

support of a single soldier. A large part of the army is backing you. Do notresign. Do not relinquish power. The rest, as they say, is history, with

Chavez and his Fifth Republic Movement rapidly striding from one victory

to another.

Embargo is too mild a word to describe the barbarous, unrelenting

economic war waged by the US against Cuba, a small island nation with

11 million souls, for almost half a century. The dust had barely settled on

the triumphant revolution proclaimed on 1 January 1959 when the entireUS apparatus of counter-revolutionary state terrorism was unleashed. Let

us briefly glance at the first two years of its agonizing but immensely

creative existence. This was a barefaced attempt at ousting a government

whose ideals of social justice and freedom were incompatible with those

of the US caste oligarchy and its domestic Cuban puppets, the Batistianos.

It started with sabotage, targeted assassinations of revolutionary leaders,

and the infiltration of terrorists and highly trained killers, many of whom


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were the gunmen of the American Mafiosi, and hired mercenaries from

the Americas and Europe.

The US-bankrolled terror apparatus was engineered to turn the newlyliberated people of Cuba against the government and ultimately to smash

it. Hospitals, schools, kindergartens and retirement homes for the aged

were set on fire, their inmates butchered and wounded. B-26 bombers

using incendiary and phosphorous bombs were deployed to destroy

sugarcane, tobacco and vegetable plantations and irrigation and industrial

facilities. Piratical attacks hammered the nations coastal ports and fishing

boats. Poisons were stuffed into cigar boxes, time bombs deployed intheatres and shops. The big newspaper owners, most of whom were North

American capitalists, unleashed a hate campaign inciting readers to destroy

the regime, in much the same manner as the media moguls are doing in

Venezuela today. The Roman Catholic hierarchy dominated by pro-Franco

Spanish priests and the white-skinned oligarchy were among the most

vociferous conspirators in this ideological campaign. Keep in mind that

all of these crimes against humanity were perpetrated and sanctified inthe name of human rights and the preservation of property rights.

The gains of the revolution were under attack by highly trained

commandos armed with sophisticated weapons. Among their targets were

the young volunteers who went into the countryside in great numbers to

wipe out illiteracy. In March 1960, the French ship La Coubrewas sabotaged

in the port of Havana, with more than 100 dead and hundreds of wounded.

The major oil refinery in Havana was destroyed in April 1961. Such actscontinued in the ensuing years, the most perfidious of these being the

blowing up in 1976 of a Cuban airliner in Barbados airspace, killing 73

people. It was carried out by Cuban-born Venezuelan national Luis Posada

Carriles, an agent of the CIA. (The US government has till this day

adamantly refused to extradite him to Venezuela or Cuba so that he may

be prosecuted for this and other heinous crimes against humanity.) In

addition, the innumerable abortive attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro,which are revelatory of the reach of the state terror apparatus, have been

well documented over the years and hence will not be commented on

here.


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T

he emergence today of Cuba and Venezuela as major world actors

in the anti-imperialist front must be scrutinized in the context of

the wilting power of American imperialism. Indeed, context is

everything. The expanding world business cycle that lasted five years has

now turned, with the discernible fall in the growth of world gross domestic

product (GDP), trade and international capital flows. Since the end of

World War 2, the US dollar has been the worlds reserve currency. Almost

75% of primary commodities are denominated in dollars. The dollar is

the monetary unit in which international trade and financial accounts

are settled. However, this monetary bludgeon of American imperialism

has weakened with the march of time, and sharply so in 2006, with present

trends ominously indicating that the greenbacks value will continue to

shrink into the foreseeable future. Many central banks have already

switched from the dollar to the euro as a unit of account. The continuing

massive US trade and payments deficits must indubitably precipitate a

run on the dollar, triggering an international financial explosion. It can

never be overemphasized that the dollar, as the bloodiest of weapons in the

arsenal of the US gulag, is living off borrowed time and underpinned by

borrowed money. What is of central importance to our thesis is that the

current American business cycle is in its death throes. The dotcom bubble

has burst and the housing bubble has followed in its wake. The economic

and political implications of this are already ominous. In the not too long

run this will prove fatal for the survival of empire.

This is not synonymous with the death of capitalism, however, butwith an intensifying slowdown related to stagnation in production,

consumption, investment and real wages. I am not talking of the collapse

of capitalism and hence its obituary cannot as yet be written, nor requiems

sung to its inglorious past. I am talking of the US meltdown and its impact

on the rest of global capitalism, strikingly so for those addicted to the

American market for a sizeable segment of their export earnings. In the

case of China and the Asian region, they will inevitably be battered by themagnitude of the deceleration and the rising tidal waves of American

protectionism. As the repositories of US debt to a degree unprecedented

in the annals of financial history, their assets will simply be wiped out.


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This will be a slump whose power demonstrates a capacity to lurch at

devastating speed into a depression tsunami. Globalization is on the rocks.

The onslaughts against globalization are manifest in, among others, the

ignominious debacle of the World Trade Organization (WTO)s

deadlocked Doha Round of international trade negotiations, which

dramatizes the irrelevance of a WTO that had long basked under the

spurious slogan of a free multilateral trading system.

The downturn of the cycle is not impacting in the same way on all

social classes, however. This is so because one of the leading traits of capital

accumulation on a world scale is the law of unequal developmentmirrored in the divergent cyclicality of capital movements, profits, savings

and investment. We must also clearly understand that these trends and

movements are not isolated elements. They must be seen as part of the

process of capital accumulation in its historical dimensions as it unfolded

in the critical period of imperialisms gestation in the decades 1870-1914,

and the subsequent implosion that followed in the imperialist holocaust

of 1914-18.

The present downturn must not be likened to the Great Depression in

1929-32. Then, profits fell and so did wages. The contractionary forces at

work at present are unsynchronized. Simply to bandy about the overworked

clich of crisis leads us into a cul de sac. If there is a crisis, as there

clearly is, we must identify the gainers and the losers. In so doing we bring

to the fore the fundamental concepts of labour and capital whose interplay

constitutes the national and international class struggle.

According to the estimates of Forbes magazine, the number of

billionaires rocketed from 793 to 946 between 2006 and 2007, the space

of just one year. No less mind-boggling is the spiralling concentration of

this highest caste of hyper-rich, with more than half of them coming from

just three countries: the US (415), Germany (55) and Russia (53). For the

overwhelming majority of the worlds population of 6 billion, however,real incomes slumped or stagnated. The total wealth of the billionaire

masters of the globalizing corporate gulag hit $3.5 trillion. This is the

quintessence of the pickings of neoliberalism: a Himalayan figure that is


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49% larger than Chinas (2005) GDP. What was the origin of this boundless

accumulation and exponential income increase? It came from rampant

speculation in derivatives and currency markets, not from productive

investments that would have generated employment and wages in the

primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of the real economy. This in essence

is descriptive of the criminalization of global capitalism.

As a Financial Timesanalyst noted ironically: It has been a great time

to be a capitalist. All around the world profits have been rising as a

percentage of gross domestic product. According to the HSBC banking

group, UK profits were the highest in 2005 since records began in 1950.In the US, Japan and Euroland profits as a share of national income are at

historic highs. Corporate America has rocketed its share of national income

from 7% at the start of the cyclical recovery in 2001 to 15% in 2006, or an

annualized compound rate of 52%. However, to the extent that the

corporate behemoths enshrined in the Fortune500 have gained, others

have lost. According to the Bank for International Settlements, wages as a

percentage of national income fell from 60% in 1975 to around 55% in2006, with no possibility of reversal in the present configuration of the

worlds distribution of economic power.

Illustrative is the fate of American labour, whose real wages have steadily

shrunk over the last three decades. The real weekly wage of a typical

American worker in the middle of the income distribution fell by 4%

since the start of the cyclical recovery in 2001. (Total compensation, if we

take into consideration health and pension benefits, barely rose by slightlymore than 1% in real terms.) However, labour productivity rose by 18%

between 2000 and 2006. In short, more and more goods and services are

being produced with smaller and smaller labour inputs receiving falling

real wages. This is what we mean when we say that the cycle constituted a

wageless recovery. Or to put it another way, the working class is producing

more and more per unit of labour (thereby generating enhanced profits

for the capitalists) but receiving less and less. This is precisely what ismeant by the global acceleration of the exploitative process.


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The sham is exposed for what it always was: the gains in labour

productivity are not shared with labour but grabbed by the owners of

capital. This is a reality that exemplifies the nature of the exploited/exploiter

relationship that forms the matrix of capitalist social relations. Or better

still, a reality that depicts the dynamics of the class struggle. The Economist,

a publication owned by Big Capital and a virulent propagandist of

neoliberal globalization, departs from its byzantine neoliberal orthodoxy

when it is compelled to admit: [T]he usual argument in favour of

globalization that it will make more workers better off, with only a few

low-skilled workers losing out has not so far been borne out by the facts.

Most workers are being squeezed. Coming from the mouthpiece of Big

Capital, this is a confession of startling dimensions.

The reason why workers are being squeezed is that larger and larger

shares are being gobbled up by Big Capital. Let us be clear: the bleeding of

the world of labour is not a unique attribute of the Bush/Blair regimes. We

are dealing with the exploitative workings of the capitalist engine itself

and not the aberration of its political domestics. This is one of the crucialupshots of globalization. The headlong rush of the national bourgeoisie to

create national champions to secure ever-larger market shares and kill

off competition is commonplace, be it in Russia, China or the European

Union, and the tragic but highly successful blitz against the world of labour

is also a part of the crisis and the contradictions it spawns.

Neoliberalism, the ruling ideology of globalized capitalism, places

emphasis on privatization, deregulation and the unquestioned

hegemony of corporate capital. Its quintessential and undeviating

strategy is to penetrate where it wants and when it wants, and on conditions

dictated by its own political specificities. However, the current phase of

capitalism marks the approaching end of its ascendancy. Its institutional

handmaidens, the WTO, the World Bank and the International MonetaryFund (IMF), are in their death throes. Or if I should change the metaphor,

they are gasping in a raging sea of irrelevance. Venezuelas liquidity alone,


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i.e., its foreign exchange reserves combined with the funds that it is raising

in its domestic market, is immensely larger than the combined funds of

these dinosaurs, and growing exponentially. To this, of course, could also

be added the capital liquidity of the planned Bank of the South promoted

by Chavez.

The Washington Consensus, as the bourgeois press called it, is swilling

in the gutter, akin to the battering the US caste oligarchy experienced and

is experiencing in its four front wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and

Lebanon. (In the latter two I have not separated Israel from the US caste

oligarchy because their interests are harmoniously blended.) Inasmuchas globalization is synonymous with imperialism, what we are witnessing

is at once its dual debacle military and economic.

The government of the US gulag and its ruling class have appropriated

all the trimmings of formal democracy, but there it stops. The definition

of oligarchy given by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia spells out its

wider significance: Oligarchies are often controlled by a few powerful

families whose children are raised and mentored to be heirs of the power

of the oligarchy, often at some sort of expense to those governed. Seen in

this light, there is a politico-money oligarchy in the US, a country with one

of the highest levels of income inequality in the world and which proclaims

its antipathy to all democratizing forces Cuba and Venezuela are but

two sterling illustrations that choose an alternative development path.

Growth in inequality is not an aberration. It owes nothing to chance. Itstems from the drive of corporate power to accumulate. Accumulation

thus becomes the sole condition of survival; in the gripping epithet of

Marx: Accumulate, accumulate. That is Moses and the prophets.

Competition in all its varied manifestations is the pivot of the system. It is

an instrument of war in the battle for bigger and bigger market shares. It is

here that we see competition not as a thing of fixity and permanence, but

as an evolving historical reality that underpins the system. It is here thatwe see how, historically, competition kills competition; it is the spawning

ground of monopoly.


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This is the unfolding process of imperialism in which we study how

capitalisms relations of production are being engineered and reshaped.

This transformation becomes evident with a perusal not only of the rapidly

changing market capitalization and revenues of the 500 largest

multinational corporations in a given time span, but also of the profits of

individual capitalists. It is not surprising that the frantic pace of corporate

mergers and acquisitions, or better still the drive to concentration and

centralization of capital, has scaled heights unprecedented in capitalisms

history. The gains of this concentration of capital are appropriated by an

infinitesimal minority of mega-capitalists that include the likes of Bill

Gates, Warren Buffett, Lakshmi Mittal, etc., even as this same concentration

and centralization of capital has brought in its wake the liquidation of

millions of jobs. It is a movement that stems not only from the internal

dynamics of a corporation to maximize its profitability and liquidate its

competitors. It is also being propelled by national state apparatuses in

their headlong quest for the buildup of national champions.

The drive for corporate aggrandizement is synonymous withglobalization. This is true of all sectors. Consider the 10 major US

investment banks, with Citicorp a leader of the band. The search for overseas

acquisitions continues apace. The Mexican banking industry, for

example, has been gobbled up by foreign banks. Already 55% of the

earnings of the big 10 US investment banks come from outside the United

States. This phenomenon that conspicuously surfaced in the decades 1870-

1914 continues unabated. Even a liberal economist understands that thestage is set for a backlash. As Joseph Stiglitz pithily puts it: What is

remarkable about globalization is the disparity between its promise and

what has happened. Globalization seems to have unified so much of the

world against it. The word seems is wholly superfluous though. With

so many losers and so few winners, even the developed capitalist countries

are becoming rich countries with poor people.


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Neoliberalism of the American model may have been touted as the

solution to world poverty, but the reality is totally different. Neoliberal

orthodoxy, as Mica Panic of Cambridge University pinpoints in an

illuminating comparative study2, is traversing the wretched policy collapses

as it did in the inter-war period. The ideology of uninhibited laisser faireis

anathema to economic welfare. One statistic alone, revealed in a report by

the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), serves to

encapsulate the horrendous inequalities engendered by neoliberalism

and the dismantling of the welfare state: A baby boy from a family in the

top 5% of the US income distribution will enjoy a lifespan 25% longer

than a boy born in the bottom 5%.

Let us cast a brief glance at the extent to which the protagonists of

American free-market orthodoxy who prattle on endlessly about human

rights have in fact scuttled these rights:

l The US is unique in being the only country in the developed

capitalist world that does not have a universal health system. According

to a study by the US Census Bureau, the number of people without

health insurance coverage climbed to 46.6 million in 2005. This was

15.9% of the total population, up 1.3 million over 2004.

l The US Census Bureau has also noted that there were 37 million

people living in poverty in 2005, or 12.6% of the total US population.

The poverty rates of Cleveland and Detroit were as high as 32.4% and

31.4% respectively, and nearly 1 out of 3 was living under the povertyline.

l According to a November 2006 report by the US Department of

Agriculture, 34.8 million Americans did not have enough financial

2 Mica Panic, Does Europe need neoliberal reforms?, Cambridge Journal of

Economics, Vol. 31, No. 1, January 2007. The author is a Keynesian socialdemocrat and his study is limited to the United States and the Nordic countries.

It is a useful comparative study of different models of development, but stops

short of being a critique of imperialism.


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resources to buy food. A survey of 23 US cities, including Chicago,

Boston and Los Angeles, by the US Conference of Mayors reported that

in 2006 requests for emergency food aid rose by 7% over 2005, with

74% of the cities registering an increase.

l A study of 173 countries with high, middle and low incomes

carried out by Harvard and McGill universities indicates that the US is

one of only five countries that do not guarantee some form of paid

maternity leave. (The other four are Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland and

Papua New Guinea.) Of the 173 countries, 137 provide paid annual

leave, but there is no US federal law to guarantee such leave. The countryalso has no federal law on maximum work-week length nor a limit on

mandatory overtime.

l Racism and all its corollaries are rampant. According to 2005

data released by the US Census Bureau in November 2006, average

yearly household income was $50,622 for whites as against $36,278 for

Hispanics and $30,940 for blacks. The income of whites was 64% more

than that of blacks and 40% more than that of Hispanics. According to

a US Department of Labour report, the unemployment rate was 8.6%

for blacks and 3.9% for whites. The same grim picture holds for ever-

widening disparities in education between whites and non-whites.

l According to a report issued by the US Department of Justice on

30 November 2006, nearly 2.2 million inmates were held in state and

federal prisons or county and municipal jails by the end of 2005.Although blacks account for 12.2% of the US population, they account

for 40% of all prisoners. The adult US correctional population,

including those on probation or parole, hit a high of more than 7

million men and women for the first time. About 3% of the US adult

population, or one in every 32 adults, were in the nations prisons and

jails or on probation or parole.

What these figures so graphically indicate is that the US is a failedsociety. It is precisely for this reason that Cuba and Venezuela have chosen

alternative, revolutionary paths that meet the highest standards of human


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dignity and justice. It is precisely for this reason also that their leadership

has been targeted for personal liquidation, for their designs for socialism

clash at every point of the compass with neoliberalism.

Since the late 1970s, the income of the richest 1% of the US population

has roughly doubled, and the income of the top 0.01% has risen by a factor

of five. Economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez show that even if

capital gains from a rising stock market are excluded, in 2004 the real

income of the richest 1% of Americans surged by almost 12.5%. The

average real income of the bottom 99% of the population, however, rose

by barely over 1%. Other statisticians have also noted that growth bypassednot only the poor and the lower middle class but the upper middle class as

well. Even people at the 95th percentile of the income distribution that

is, people richer than 19 out of 20 Americans gained only fractionally.

Paul Krugman of Princeton University is correct: the winners were those

that were already in the upper reaches of the economic stratosphere.

This is also clearly

brought out in the findings

of Doug Henwood, the

editor of Left Business

Observer, as seen in his

chart (right) on the Gini

index of the United States.

Income inequality, he

notes, pursuing its well-

established trend, rose in

2005 to the highest levels

in more than 70 years. The

index is the most

comprehensive measure-

ment of inequality. It is a

number between 0 and 1,

with 0 representing an

economy or social group


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whose members enjoy perfect income equality. In contrast, 1 represents

perfect inequality, with one individual gobbling up everything. The Gini

index for the United States was .469 in 2005 (as against Swedens .250, for

example), a staggering rise from its post-war nadir of .386 in 1968. This

movement continues its remorseless ascendancy.

A profile of New York City, the mecca of global capitalism, reveals the

morphology of its impoverishment. According to the New York Times(8

October 2006), the city has a population of 8 million. A fifth of these are

poor. One-third of all the children in the city under five are poor. This is

what some have labelled, employing an appropriate image, the deep riversof poverty flowing beneath the glittering surface of Wall Street. Indeed, it

is the barefaced image of American capitalism as a whole and its workings.

We must recall that when we use the metric of GDP we are dealing

with averages. It is thus misleading to contend that if one averaged the

income of Bill Gates and ones personal income, one would magically be

transformed into a multi-billionaire. The system of national accounting

is a useful instrument of analysis, but it fails, and indeed it is not designed,

to give us an insight into the nature of the class distribution of income.

Certainly, by the metrics of national accounts, the world economy has

grown. But who are the beneficiaries of this growth? The preceding

discussion on inequalities highlights the fact something not evident in

national GDP figures that the gainers are the rich, the super-rich and the

plutocracy enshrined in the uppermost niches of the multinational

corporation. But there is yet another facet of the national accounts that wemust examine to grasp the extent to which they are the objects of creative

manipulation. This was brought out when the Greek government found

itself 25% richer in 2006 because its national accounts were revised

upward to capture, according to its national-account creators, the most

lucrative and dynamic sectors of the Greek services industry: prostitution

and money laundering.


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W

e shall now shift our attention to the imbalances within the US

balance of payments. This will give us the insight necessary to

understand that the crisis of US imperialism has been affected

by the workings of the financial system. The current account of a countrys

balance of payments is the broadest measure of its balance of trade in

goods and services. The current-account deficit (CAD) is equal to the

trade deficit plus the cost of servicing the countrys net international asset

position (i.e., the net rent, interest and dividends owed to foreigners who

have invested their capital in domestic assets and securities). What the

evidence from the US balance of payments suggests is the alarming

worsening of the US net international investment position (NIIP) since

1985: from the worlds strongest asset position to the worlds largest liability

position. That is a downward shift from being the worlds biggest creditor

to being the worlds biggest debtor. A deficit is a debt that has to be either

repaid or repudiated. As deficits pile up year in year out, the cost of servicing

the NIIP climbs. The awesome implication of a CAD of over $1 trillion is

that the US must increasingly sell more of its assets to foreigners or slash

the stock of US assets held abroad.


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With interest rates climbing, the situation will become even more

perilous. The massive scale of the funding of the CAD, which ran at an

annual rate of over $1 trillion in the third quarter of 2006, requires $3.5

billion in capital inflows of fresh money every single business day of the

year. There is nothing fixed about this number. If lenders chose to restrict

or abscond from the capital markets, it would lead to an implosion of

interest rates kicking the greenback into a freefall.

The American external imbalances are a euphemism relating to the

central fact that the United States imports more than it exports. Over time

it has become the worlds leading debtor, owing hundreds of billions ofdollars to the likes of China, Japan and its other trading partners. This is

what we mean when we say that it is a giant living off borrowed time and

borrowed money. The United States has neither the will nor the wherewithal

to reimburse these debts. China has reason to be apprehensive of a dollar

meltdown and the financial debacle that will inevitably follow. It is this

which explains the massive shift from dollars to euros by the central banks

of China, Venezuela and Iran, among others. As it stands, China hasalready lost billions of dollars because of the systematic devaluation of the

dollar over the last four years, and is on course to losing even more.

The collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement (1971) offers us an

illustrative lesson. Then, as now, external imbalances revealed the fissures

within financial markets. The US government suspended the convertibility

of the dollar into gold and imposed a 10% tariff surcharge because other

countries dollar holdings escalated in relation to the US shrinking stockof gold. The old belief that the dollar was as good as gold was shattered.

Then, as now, the US balance-of-payments deficits led to an undermining

of confidence in the dollar.

The erosion of the balance of payments is but one vital aspect of the

current crisis bedevilling US finance capital. Although there may be a

pause in raising interest rates after 17 successive hikes, central bankersfiddling with interest rates is like doling out an aspirin tablet to an AIDS

patient. Misleading clichs like soft and hard landings are not only


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useless as guides to understanding the system but noxious devices to

stymie our rationality. The pursuit of monetary policy, whose scope of

effectiveness is narrowly circumscribed, is little more than a gimmick to

delude us into believing that the system can be corrected by manipulating

interest rates.

It is highly improbable that there will be any shrinkage in the external

imbalance of the US trade deficit in the short term. Appalling deficit

arithmetic unmasks the vicious circle in which US capitalism is quagmired.

With nominal imports of goods and services 57% more than exports, it is

apparent that exports will have to grow that much faster than imports justto hold the deficit constant.

Another factor that needs to be considered is the US loss of market

share, given the extent to which the US has outsourced production. One of

the prevailing myths is that a shrinking and enfeebled dollar will give a

boost to exports. Such a dollar devaluation, it is believed, would slash the

trade deficit, but the affirmation ignores the degree to which industrial

output is outsourced. The upshot is a cutback in US exports. US production

is increasingly being outsourced because of cheaper foreign labour.

Outsourcing affects both tradable and non-tradable sectors, as seen in the

evolution of both financial and non-financial services over the last 15

years.

There is little hope of US capitalism exporting its way out of its deficit

through dollar devaluation. The game of competitive devaluation, orbeggar-my-neighbour policy as Joan Robinson of Cambridge University

christened it in the 1930s, is a petty little game that can be played by all.

The US master class has been able, so far successfully, to exploit the world

by printing greenbacks without limit, extracting value from the dollars

hegemonic status. It is paying for imports with paper money by running

sustained current-account deficits. However, let us repeat what we have

already said: deficits are debts. Debts must be repaid (at compound interestrates) or repudiated.


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The deficit stems from a critical shortage of savings (see savings graphs

on p. 31). According to the US Department of Commerce, the economys

net national saving (which is the combined saving of individuals, the

government and the business sector net of depreciation) fell to an all-

time low of 0.9% of GDP. In short, the US must pull in money from

abroad to finance the deficit. The dollar has lost a third of its value vis--vis

the euro over the last two years (2004-2006) and yet during that interval

EU exports rose 20%. Even assuming there is a 30% or bigger revaluation

of the Chinese renminbi, which is highly implausible, it will not in any

way diminish the US external trade imbalance. Bashing China and raising

protectionist barriers against that country will not tackle the problem of

low saving rates. What it will do is boost the rate of inflation. Indeed, the

external deficit is only one segment of the US economic pathology.

Another segment, the federal budget deficit, is out of control like a drunk

hobbling from one lamppost to another.

The numbers and their growth tell the story. The disparity between the

worlds current-account surpluses and deficits highlights the parasitismof American capitalism. The US is living off the worlds savings, accounting

for 71% of the worlds deficits. This is perhaps one of the biggest differences

between British and American imperialism. In the heyday of British

imperialism straddling the Victorian and Edwardian ages from 1880 to

1914, Britain, basking in the glories of the sustained and successful pillage

of its empire, was able to run an annual current-account surplus of 5%.

The US empire, in contrast, now has an annual chronic and rising current-account deficit of 7%, which has been on the boil since the early 1980s.

The deficit sums are agonizingly huge, with not the remotest possibility

of a respite in sight. The sheer size and speed of the CADs growth during

the years 2000-2005 indicate the depth of the cataclysm. It swelled from

$415 billion to almost $900 billion, passing from 4% of GDP to around

7% in 2007. This is an annual compound rate of 14%, outstripping the

growth of national income by a factor of six.

We must consider not only the CAD at a given moment but also its

trajectory over time. The cumulative CAD already tops 50% of US GDP.


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On present trends, this could surge to 60-65% in just three years. It is not

only that this tempestuous growth cannot be sustained in the very short

run. It points to a currency collapse that will have serious reverberations

in international financial markets inasmuch as the dollar is still although

its power is rapidly wilting the paramount medium of exchange in these

markets. Moreover, this economic affliction is being exacerbated by the

confluence of high energy prices, mounting debt-servicing burdens,

negative personal saving rates, non-competitive export capabilities, and a

crumbling manufacturing and transport infrastructure. For how long

will a parasitical American capitalism be able to draw on the pool of world

savings? The year 2007 should give us an answer to that question.

The US aggregate domestic and foreign debts (household,

government and corporate) are around $41 trillion or about the

size of world GDP. US government payments to foreign holders of

this debt amount to $120 billion yearly. The handouts can no longer

come from the coffers of Asian central banks, including the main money

man China, or from the reserves of Venezuela, Russia or Iran. These

countries have rapidly been switching their reserve holdings to the euro,

gold and other assets.


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As long as the United States runs a near-zero net national saving rate,

it is perpetually doomed to run monstrously large current-account and

trade deficits. The net national saving rate is today lower than it was in the

peak year of the Great Depression in 1932. This leaves US capitalism with

the grim prospect of repudiating its debts as it did at Bretton Woods. It

bears repeating that US capitalism is parasitically sucking in 71% of the

worlds savings. The endgame is approaching, but the meltdown will not

occur from one day to the other. The inferences that must be drawn from

this are obvious. It is not only the cataclysmic tableau of a nation that is

irretrievably in debt, but one in which the debt hole that it has dug for itself

is getting bigger and bigger, and from which it will be insuperably difficult

to extricate itself.

The crisis in the US balance of payments that we have briefly scrutinized

is not an isolated phenomenon that can be abstracted from the universe of

capitalist accumulation. The pathology, the monstrous inequalities and

class iniquities of American capitalism are shared with all the other

national agents of global capitalism. The overriding characteristic ofinternational capitalism now is overproduction of all goods and services.

The cyclical boom of 2001-2006 is fizzling out.

The US growth engine is in a state of semi-paralysis. Job growth has

been running at 30-35% below average since 2001. More than 3.7 million

industrial jobs, according to the US Labour Department, were scrubbed

between 1998 and 2006. Is it surprising, then, that inflation-adjusted

spending growth is on the ropes? There are no countervailing forces. Thecrumbling of the US housing market or, better still, the bursting of the

speculative housing bubble is a terrible reminder that the implosion of

the dotcom bubble in 2001 is now being trailed by others, including,

notably, the market for financial derivatives that could explode at any

moment, as Mr Warren Buffett obsessively reminds us. (Let us not forget

that the size of the derivatives market now stands at $160 trillion or four

times as much as global GDP and is growing three times faster than theglobal economy.) The rise and fall of the housing market has already had

devastating repercussions on the structure of overall output and


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employment, and its adverse impacts are spilling over into the financial

markets.

The housing market had become a grand casino because it gave thehapless consumer the possibility of equity extraction, or converting

rising home values into cash through mortgage refinancing. The American

consumer is drowning in a sea of debt. Real personal consumption (2002-

2006) rocketed at a 4% average annual rate or almost three times as fast as

disposable income. Consumption was bankrolled by debt. This uninhibited

financial debauchery comes with a price. Neither corporate investment

nor exports are capable of growing at a pace to offset the housing slump.Indeed, the crash of the housing sector is a mirror image of the external

sector as foreign capital inflows into dollar-denominated assets stem from

the absence of labour-generated income savings. The spillover effects of a

post-bubble housing economy are everywhere in sight. Recall that the

unwinding of the speculative dotcom mania triggered the recession of

2000-01. Likewise, the spillover effects of the housing bubble (seen in

sub-prime mortgage lending) are characteristic of asset-dependenteconomies as they spawn an explosion of domestic demand that is not

matched, or complemented, by effective purchasing power of labours

gains.

Significantly, the industrial capacity of the United States has withered

and what remains of its huge industrial heritage, a legacy of the decades

1865-1914, is being swiftly offshored. Let us look at a specific case to

better comprehend the unfolding of this process. Electronic Data Systems,an American firm, is to speed up the shift of its workforce to India and

other low-cost centres. It is part of the offshoring wave at a time when the

pressure to boost productivity in the labour-intensive information

technology sector is rising. EDS plans to shift to low-cost centres half of its

workforce over the next couple of years. With armies of employees that

represent around two-thirds of their overall costs, and with Indian rivals

growing fast, the US companies that dominate the industry have intensifiedtheir focus on offshore hiring.


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On the domestic front we are confronted with the spectacle of desolation.

General Motors and Ford are a shadow of their earlier selves, with 80,000

workers slated for the axe. Daimler-Chrysler is on the auction block. The

shares of these blue-chip corporations that represented the apex of

American industrial supremacy have slid into the gutter of junk-bond

status. John Pickering, a stellar automotive engineer from Michigan,

accurately describes the debacle of the industry in words that represent its

epitaph: I was always proud to be an automotive engineer from my earliest

youth. Today our industry has been mangled. We are bankrupt and

demoralized. We are caught in the grips of an economic war that we have

lost. In much the same way as we lost the way in Iraq. Let us be honest with

ourselves. We have lost our independence. We are colonized. Our industry

is in the hands of foreigners. The only noise thats coming from us is the

death rattle. That savage depiction could not be more accurate. Detroit

presents today a spectacle of an industrial wasteland. We have come a

long way in the history of American capitalism since GMs boss Charlie

Wilson thundered: Whats good for America is good for GM, and whats

good for GM is good for America.

In short impressionistic brushstrokes I have portrayed the major lines

of the apoplexy of US capitalism. It is within this context of the implosion

of American imperialism that we shall be better positioned to evaluate the

strides made by socialist Cuba since the advent of the Special Period.

This period, entailed by the demolition of the Soviet Union, was marked

by harsh austerity. There were those who believed that a socialist Cubacould not survive. However, it has not only survived, but today enjoys the

highest standard of living at any time in its history, despite the most savage

embargo that has endured since the start of the revolution.


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Hastening the crumbling of imperialism is the revolutionary

upsurge in Latin America that is headed in an ever more militant

socialist direction as time rolls on. Latin America is not an

abstraction, but a region that has been reduced by the holocaust of imperial

capital to grinding poverty. The following set of figures tells the story. The

regions population is 561 million. As recent data from the UNs Economic

Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean indicates, it is blighted

with one of the worlds highest levels of inequality, with the richest 20%

having an income more than 20 times that of the poorest 20%; more than

135 million are without regular and basic health services; more than 150

million are without sanitary services; more than 80 million are without

regular water supplies; around 1 million have not been or been

incompletely vaccinated; there are over 3 million cases of malaria; and

the infant mortality rate stands at 2.1 per thousand. All this and much

more in a region designated as the free world by the masters of this

imperial holocaust.

This litany of human misery serves as the indispensable background

to understanding why the Cuban revolution stands out as one of the most

dazzling beacons of humanity. Cuba is an integral part of Latin America


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because of its colonial history, language, culture and the extent to which it

has been a victim of the most brutal and sustained powers of imperialist

pillage; but at this point in history it demarcates itself from the rest of the

continent as a result of its triumphant shift from Batistas despotism to

socialist construction, the first nation in the Americas to have made this

leap into freedom.

The texture of Cuban civilization is distinct from that of all other

nations. It is not only a socialist society but a unique socialist order. I have

closely followed the Cuban revolutionary experience since its exuberant

birth on 1 January 1959. Over the decades, I have never been separatedfrom its strivings and its exalted attainments, not least of which is the

absence of racialism. The racial mix in Cuba is 51% mulatto, 37% white

and 11% black. Under Cubas education system, which is ranked among

the best in the world by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization (UNESCO), there are no private or religious schools or

exclusive schools that cater, as in pre-liberation Cuba, for the progeny of

the white-skinned elite. Education is free. Meals are provided free, as areschool uniforms.

All of this is of course more than a symbol of equality; it is proof that

Cuba has passed the test of civilization with flying colours. The economy,

growing by a robust 10% yearly over the last three years, according to the

national accounting metrics of the UN, has now attained the nirvana of

full employment, a treasured goal that eludes all in the capitalist galaxy.

The Cuban national accounts now include services, which marks adeparture from the earlier Soviet model, as Cuba has become a robust

exporter of medical, engineering and software services. It is no longer

dependent on sugar although that remains an important export alongside

nickel. Cubas brisk industrialization is evidenced in the exponential

growth of the biotechnology sector and its offshoot, the pharmaceutical

industry, a brainchild of the Comandante Fidel Castro which now accounts

for $900 million worth of exports. The sheer power of this massivetechnological complex is omnipresent but it would have been


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inconceivable without the educational revolution in the sciences over

successive decades, notably in physics, chemistry and mathematics.

Cubas industrial momentum and its overall harmonious and balanceddevelopment has been vastly boosted by several joint ventures with

Venezuela, China, Iran, Russia, Vietnam, Belarus, India and others, with

Cuba having over half of the equity. The pace of industrialization straddles

a staggering array of manufactured goods for both national and

international markets: refrigerators, air conditioners, automobile and

engineering goods, shoes, textiles and other products.

The cumulative cost of the US embargo, one of the longest and cruellest

in world history, is estimated at around $85 billion. However, the barbarity

of this embargo has failed to shake the foundations of this unique socialist

country. Indeed, in certain ways, the embargo has acted as a spur to Cubas

advance. What it has done is generate a leadership and a massively coherent

working class that has become steeled and creative, as a perfunctory visit

to the countrys sparkling industrial plants, mines and collective farm

projects would suggest.

The isolation of Cuba planned by the corporate-politico gulag has not

materialized. In the 2006 session of the UN General Assembly there were

only four countries that voted against the end of the embargo: the United

States and its three satraps, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau. Nelson

Mandela was right on target when he said in his superb tribute to the

Comandante when the latter visited South Africa in the aftermath of itsliberation:

We and all of the peoples of the Free World are honoured to have you

here. And by the Free World we refer to the peoples whose blood has

been shed profusely to liquidate imperialism. Consider South Africa

as your land. We shall not forget the decisive role you played militarily

in destroying the South African army. You fought nobly, unstintingly

and shed your blood to ensure our freedom. Without you our freedomwould not have been consummated.


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To talk of Cubas isolation, as the Bush cabal continually does, is a

falsification of the record, like everything else that emanates from the

sewers of that administration. What we are seeing is not the isolation of

this socialist beacon but the extent to which Bush has become a

schizophrenic grovelling in a ghetto of his own creation. Indeed,

representatives of 126 nations attended the Non-Aligned Movement

(NAM) summit in Havana in September 2006. (There is also no point in

discussing one of the vilest of Bushs crimes, the Agenda for Freedom. It

is as stale as yesterdays bread, an echo of what we have heard over the

decades dressed up in a fancy set of clothes with a price tag of $80 million.)

Havana is now a world cultural metropolis for ballet, music and the

arts affordable to rank-and-file Cubans. What country in the so-called

developed capitalist world can say the same? Elitism has been dealt a

death blow in Cuba. It matters little what the Mafiosi in Miami and others

believe or say. They inhabit a different celestial orbit. Like schizophrenics

they have lost touch with reality. Their blindness and abysmal ignorance

and I have talked at length with many of them are self-imposed.

Regarding Cubas isolation, all I will add is that there are only two

countries in Latin America that do not have diplomatic relations with

Cuba: the banana republics of Costa Rica and El Salvador. The presence of

Cuba is almost universal. Thousands of Americans (who come via Jamaica

and Mexico) and Canadians are flowing into Cubas extraordinary health

clinics and centres for first-class medical treatment, in much the same

manner as the rich Arabs once flooded into Geneva, Switzerland. The keydifference between the two is a matter of price. Dozens of Americans on

scholarships are studying at Cubas institutions of higher learning, many

of them in the medical colleges.

Dozens of the rich and the super-rich have sent and are sending their

children to be educated in Cuba. This is not merely a matter of getting a

first-class education, although that is a vital component. No less importanta factor is the total absence of a criminal and drug culture, in contrast to

the majority of South American cities, which have become drug-infested,

violent, unlivable and polluted urban slums. The quality of life in Cuba


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stems from the very texture of what we may designate as Cuban civilization,

with a socialist ethos that lifts its health, educational and cultural facilities

to the worlds highest pinnacles. Few would disagree with the claims of a

Japanese ambassador that his children are getting the best education in

the world in Cuba. As one Cuban Ministry of Education official said:

The Latin American bourgeoisie are banging on our doors and are coming

in droves to get their children enrolled in our schools, and although we

charge them for our services, we cant entirely accommodate the influx.

Cubas achievements indeed, the word achievement is wholly

inadequate are one of the great triumphs of the revolution. It emergedfrom being the worlds biggest bordello and Mafiosi gambling paradise,

whose criminality moved hand in hand with mass poverty, to effect the

profoundest of social transitions. For example, there are few Cubans today

who are aware that Varadero Beach, with its wondrous white sands that are

marvelled at by tens of thousands of holiday makers, was once upon a

time the private retreat of the Du Pont de Nemours dynasty, masters of the

worlds biggest chemical corporation. This huge splendid area was reservedfor the exclusive use of the family and their friends. It had been grabbed

for a pittance by the dynasty in the aftermath of the American occupation

in 1898.

Among Cubas numerous other achievements, many recall the 120

Cuban medical volunteers who went to the earthquake-stricken areas of

Pakistan in the depths of the Himalayan winter. I refer also to the 20,000

medical volunteers who serve the impoverished barrios in Caracas and inthe hinterland of the Orinoco Delta, and with many of whom I had

illuminating discussions. I also saw the impact in the barrios of Cubas

software educational revolution Yo si puedo that has contributed to

illiteracy-eradication efforts in Venezuela and Bolivia and elsewhere. The

world knows about the tragedy of Chernobyl and the terrible radiation-

induced deaths that followed, but what is far less known is that despite the

austerity imposed by the Special Period, Cuba continued to treat over theyears thousands of children exposed to radiation with free medical care

and medication innovated by Cuban scientists.


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Cuban doctors doing volunteer service in other countries.

What has the cabal that rules Washington, or for that matter any

European country that boasts of its cultural attributes and its civilizing

mission, done to match these humanitarian achievements? We all know

the answer. The recent wanton annihilation of Lebanon, executed with its

Zionist henchman at an estimated cost of $14 billion, gives us a partial

picture of the politics of US exterminism, as do the 655,000 dead in Iraq.

By the same token, the meaningless nostrums of human rights and the

rule of law peddled by Washington can be dumped into the trashcan of

history. Indeed, the very march of US history, with its vicious colonial

past, repudiates the idea of human rights and the rule of law.

Like many millions, I was saddened by the affliction of Fidel Castro in

July 2006. I leave it to the likes of the vermin in Miami and others of their

species to, on hearing the news of his ill health, chant the fascist slogan that


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surfaced in Francos ranks in 1936: Viva la muerte. Although the

Comandantes recovery is now well underway, we ought not to forget that

we are all biological creatures with a beginning and an end, and are but

tenants on this earth. Nevertheless, the scale and scope of the Cuban

revolution is incomparably larger than any individual. Inherent in the

revolution is its sparkling capacity for renewal, innovation and, above all,

continuity of purpose.

What the US caste oligarchy fully understands, despite its persistent

uproar for demolishing the socialist order, is that Cuba is now militarily

secure. A military assault against Cuba, irrespective of whether it is byland, sea or air, will encounter a crushing response that will not be confined

to the nations shores, and thus not a replay of the aborted Bay of Pigs

invasion. Ignorant and callous though he is, Bush should not ignore the

declaration of Chavez at the Non-Aligned Movement: An attack against

Cuba is an attack against Venezuela. It will lead to a flow of blood including

Venezuelan blood because Cuba and Venezuela are blended in the struggle

against imperialism. It will be a horrendous war if the masters of theempire are so stupid as to unleash it. And I need hardly stress that it will be

a war that overspills the confines of Cuba. This is the acme of clear

revolutionary thinking and the boldest articulation of internationalism.

There are those simpletons who nourish the delusion that Cuba will

succumb to the fate of the Soviet Union, which was demolished in1991. However, it is worth noting that the Soviet Union did not die

in a moment of unexpected apoplexy. It succumbed to a degenerative

bureaucratic disease that had begun many years earlier. A disease incubated

by a leadership that lost contact with the masses and was subsequently

exploited by imperialism to carve up the Union. A perfunctory visit to

Cuba will amply confirm that this self-destructive Soviet ailment is

singularly absent in this nation that has never abandoned its socialistprinciples.

There are also those prophets of neoliberalism that are mouthing the

miracles of the market place and calling for the adoption of the Chinese


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model in Cuba. Or in Deng Xiaopings formula: To be rich is glorious.

There is nothing new or attractive in this formula. It is a putrid morsel of

bourgeois demagogy. It has its roots in 19th-century classical economic

liberalism. What is Dengs formula other than a resounding and

unvarnished exhortation for the restoration of the bourgeoisie and of

capitalism? What we are witnessing in China today is the war of opposed

classes, between the owners of the means of production and those whose

surplus labour has been expropriated. China has become a country with

highly unequal income distribution, comparable, as measured by the Gini

index, to the United States. Such is the reality of the prevailing Chinese

class struggle.

Let us look at two small southern territories that are part of China. I

will cite their experience to indicate the reasons why Cubas ethically

inspired leadership totally repudiates the repellent class nature of the

Chinese neoliberal model. (Such a policy choice is, however, by no means

incompatible with the strongest economic ties and cooperation at the

Party and other levels.)

Macao and Hong Kong are owned and dominated politically by at

most a dozen mega-capitalist families that are entrenched through

marriages, extended family connections and financial dealings. They are

the pristine embodiment of neoliberalism. Let us zoom in for a moment

on Macao. Once upon a time a murky, small-scale gambling den, it has

now escalated into the worlds biggest gambling market, outstripping the

profits of the legendary swindlers paradise that is the Las Vegas Strip inNevada. Central to our thinking is that capital and capitalism are never an

abstraction but are epitomized in the powers of individual capitalists.

Such is the case with Stanley Ho, billed as the worlds biggest casino tycoon,

who owns at least half of Macao. He generously doles out some of his

pickings to his cronies in the ruling political party and other officials in

recognition of their protection and services. Through Shun Tak Holdings,

his Hong Kong-listed company, he controls stakes in 16 casinos, Macaosdominant ferry company and helicopter service, its duty-free monopoly,

the territorys airport, its flag-carrier, its only short-range budget airline


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and many hotels. And, obviously, that is only a small part of his sprawling

big-money empire.

Is this, then, the Chinese model that the propagandists of neoliberalismintend to foist on Cuba? What these advocates are forgetting is that the

Cuba of old was the drug, prostitution and gambling paradise of the

Americas, ruled by the Mafia and policed by the Batista regime and the

masters of the American occupation. It was indeed a model of disease,

vice and capitalist decadence that has been liquidated.

There is of course no such thing as an irreversible historical process;

the Soviet Unions trajectory is confirmatory of retrogression. But I do

not believe and this is more than just an act of faith on my part that

revolutionary Cuba will swing into that orbit with or without the leadership

of the Comandante. What is important is not so much his physical presence

as his enduring legacy that reveals the profound democratic fusion of the

leadership and the working masses. To understand the nature and thrust

of the Cuban revolutionary movement, it is necessary to say a few brief

words about the dynamics of his teaching.

As a Marxist, to whom theory and practice are indissolubly linked, he

had read about and long reflected on the class nature of the state so

trenchantly formulated by Lenin in The State and Revolutionon the eve of

the October Revolution. The Comandantes grasp of the dynamics of

revolution its causes and reverberations stems not only from his

profound reading of the Marxist classics The 18th Brumaire of LouisBonaparteand The Civil War in Francebut also from his own revolutionary

practices that began with the unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks

in July 1953. His study of the state as an organ of repression moved in

tandem with his intense study of the evolution of the Cuban struggle for

independence from Spain that raged from 1868 to 1898 and the history of

the subsequent colonial American occupation from 1898 to its end in

1959. As a rigorous intellectual, he plunged, in his prison years followingMoncada and after, into a profound reflection of the role of the national

quislings and the compradors that enriched his understanding of their

imbrications with their im

cuba and venezuela - the nemeses of imperialism

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