These examples mean more to people than just the immediate issue they confront, but represent the latest way in which the capitalist organisation of society fails to deliver. In this new period of recession that is unfolding it is clear that the solution for the ruling class is to force ordinary people to accept a reduction of their living standards. They want us to pay for their crisis. This is a recipe for class struggle. It is the duty of the Marxists to carry the ideas of socialism into the labour movement. Learn the lessons of the past, in order to prepare for the future.

On the 14th of February Socialist Appeal held a day school in London on Cuba, Iran and the Communist International, all of which have important anniversaries in 2009. 

Fred Weston speaks on Cuba

The first session was on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. Fred Weston, editor of the In Defence of Marxism website, began by explaining the theory of the permanent revolution, which serves to explain the development of Cuba and the inability of the local bourgeoisie to take Cuban society forward. In fact in the 40 years previous to the revolution, Cuban society had degenerated, as Fred explained. A lower proportion of children went to school than in the 1920s, and the land was hugely concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy landowners. Cuba was a single-crop economy, wholly dependent on the production of sugar and under the sway of the brutal dictatorship of Batista, a subservient client to US imperialism, who presided over the death of 20,000 Cubans through political repression.

The coming to power of the guerrillas and Fidel Castro meant the attempt to assert a national independence, which immediately came into conflict with the US imperialism, much like Chavez and the Bolivarian movement did 40 years later. The attempt to achieve mild reforms like improved healthcare and universal education paid for by taxation led to the embargo, which still exists today. The refusal of US companies to pay taxation on their profits led to their nationalisation, which was 90% of the economy, abolishing capitalism in Cuba. Under the influence of the USSR Cuba adopted the planned economy.

Fred also spoke on the ‘special period’ that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. This led to extremely harsh conditions and a part-privatisation of the economy, although the bulk remains in state hands. Currently there is a lot of discussion in Cuba about the so-called ‘Chinese road to socialism’, which in effect means the adoption of capitalism. This would be disastrous for the people of Cuba, eradicating all the gains made by the revolution in the past 50 years.

Comrade Morad Shirin of the IRMT

In the next session comrade Morad Sharin, of the Iranian Marxist Tendency, spoke on the revolution and counterrevolution in Iran 30 years ago this month. He began by dispelling the most common myths of the revolution. The first was that the revolution was Islamic. He pointed out that the revolution began as a series of strikes in the late 1970s, which included 1.5 million workers and created strike committees (shoras) making economic and political demands such as the end of martial law and the release of political prisoners. Far from being a revolt against modernism - the idea that the Iranian revolution was a Luddite rebellion – the upheavals caused by land reform dispossessed millions of peasants; but rather than proletarianise them in industry in the cities, the reforms made meant the pauperisation of a huge influx of landless peasants that could not be given work in a backward capitalism that could only really develop economies for export – the oil industry. The Islamists were able to whip up this backward layer of the population, not because of an Iranian predisposition to oppose all things Western, but because of the inability of the Iranian bourgeoisie to develop the productive forces and the failure of ‘the left’ to offer an alternative.

Morad also talked of the lessons that can be learnt from the revolution. One is of revolutionary strategy – the Iranian left generally did not believe that the working class was strong enough to smash the bourgeois state and replace it with a workers’ state. They believed then - as many maintain today – that the next stage is the democratic revolution, one of bourgeois democracy and the support of private property. The illusion is that this will also develop the consciousness of the Iranian working class, and in time the conditions for the proletarian revolution will develop. This is the classic position of Menshevism. From the beginning the Marxists must have as their programme the socialist revolution and the conquest of state power by the working class.   

Mick Brooks speaks on the 3rd International

In the final session Mick Brooks, editor of Socialist Appeal, spoke on the Communist, International, which was formed 90 years ago this March. It was formed as the world party for socialist revolution and developed out of mass splits in the 2nd International, the majority of which had capitulated to their ruling classes in 1914 and supported the First World War. Mick explained the material foundations for the degeneration of the 2nd International, which left a tiny group of Internationalists that formed the embryo of the Communist International. This included Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

The coming of the Russian revolution in 1917 shook the world. As Lenin said, imperialism broke at its weakest link. The forces of the Bolsheviks, who were only 3% of the Russian working class at the beginning of the revolution, in the course of a year had conquered state power. This was not because of a putsch, or by going behind the backs of the workers, but by going through the experience of the revolution shoulder to shoulder with the working class. What it shows is that nothing can stop an idea whose time has come, and the idea that only the workers themselves could take control in the effective of the running of society was put on the order of the day.

Mick then went on to explain the degeneration of the Russian revolution, which was intimately linked to the fate of the world revolution. In turn the Communist International followed the fate of the Soviet Union, transformed by the Stalinists from a tool in the hands of the international working class to a mouthpiece of the bureaucracy.

In all sessions a lively discussion followed. It was clear that the common thread in all discussions was that the success or failure of a revolutionary movement depends on many factors; but in the last instance if there exists no revolutionary leadership that is prepared to offer a clear lead, inevitably that lead will be usurped by other elements unable to match up to the task posed by history: the conquest of power by the working class. The stories of the revolutionary movements of the 20th century are the stories of the heroic sacrifices of countless working class revolutionaries, often betrayed by the Stalinist and reformist leaderships. With a clear Marxist leadership the course of history could have been radically different.

Our ability to learn from the past will only be shown by our ability to intervene in the great events that loom on the horizon. Our success will show that the great revolutionaries of the 20th Century will not have fought in vain.