Cuba: Socialism and Democracy
by Peter Taaffe
Footnotes
Chapter 1 - Cuba Today
1. Financial Times, London, 24 March, 1999
2. Keesing’s Record of World Events, 1991, p37814
3. Ibid, p38141
4. The Independent, London, 20 July, 1998
5. Cuban Foreign Trade Minister, Ricardo Cabrisas, 2 May 1996, quoted in Keesing’s, May 1996
6. The Guardian, London, 16 November, 1999
7. The Independent, 19 October, 1999
8. The Guardian, 10 August, 1998
9. John Percy, "A History of the Democratic Socialist Party – The First Two Decades", p33
10. Ibid, p35
11. Ibid, p47
12. This individual attended the International Executive Committee of the CWI in November 1997, as a visitor with full rights to speak and participate in the weeklong meeting. Yet, he achieved the rare feat of not uttering a word in the official discussions, and very little in any private discussions which took place!
13. Doug Lorimer, "The Cuban Revolution and Its Leadership: A Criticism of Peter Taaffe’s Pamphlet ‘Cuba: Analysis of the Revolution" in The Activist, p3
14. Percy, p37
15. Three Conceptions of the Russian Revolution, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40), p59
16. Ibid, p60
17. Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution, Pathfinder, 1969, p142
18. Lorimer, "Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution: A Leninist critique" p13
19. Ibid, p14
20. Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution, pp171-2
21. Ibid, p226
22. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p8
23. For example, John Bulaitis and Phil Hearse opposed our proposals to change the name of our party from Militant Labour to the Socialist Party. However, once our conference had rejected their position by a massive majority they promptly deserted, Hearse to Mexico City and Bulaitis to his own tiny sectarian organisation in Britain. Bulaitis has ended up as a self-confessed ‘liquidationist’; he no longer believes in the need for a revolutionary party based on the ideas of democratic centralism, while Hearse occasionally threatens to come out of retirement to denounce the CWI. He was invited to the DSP-sponsored ‘Socialism 2000’ held in Sydney at the beginning of that year.
24. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p3
25. Ibid, p3
Chapter 2 - Lenin & Castro
26. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p5
27. Peter Taaffe "Cuba: Analysis of the Revolution", p5
28. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, pp6-7
29. Carlos Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel, p149
30. Ibid, pp152-153
31. Franqui, ‘Journal de la révolution cubaine’, quoted by Janette Habel, Cuba: the Revolution in Peril, p107
32. Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel, p153
33. Ibid, pp153-154
34. Castro quoted in Hugh Thomas, ‘Cuba – The Pursuit of Freedom’, p829
35. Ibid, p831-2
36. Ibid, p833
37. Ibid, p921
38. Ibid, p921
39. Che Guevara, Notes for the Study of the Ideology of the Cuban Revolution, republished in Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution, p133
40. Jon Lee Anderson, "Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life", p235
41. Ibid, p245
42. Tad Szulc, "Fidel a Critical Portrait", p373
43. Ibid, p391
44. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p7
45. John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World, p129
46. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p7
47. Che Guevara, The Essence of Guerrilla Struggle, the first part of chapter 1 of La guerra de guerrillas, republished in Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution, pp76 and 77.
48. Thomas, pp1108-1109
49. Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution, p79
50. Taaffe, p5
Chapter 3 - The World Balance of Forces
51. Szulc, pp397-398
52. Anderson p413
53. Ibid, p414
54. Ibid, p415
55. Szulc, p424
56. Andrew St George, ‘A Visit with a Revolutionary’, published in ‘Coronet’, February 1958, and reprinted in Robert Scheer and Maurice Zeitlin, ‘Cuba: an American Tragedy’, p63
57. Quoted by Scheer and Zeitlin, p64
58. Look magazine, November 1960, quoted by Scheer and Zeitlin, p64
59. Anderson, p476
60. Javier Pazoz, a son of a former president of the Cuban National Bank, who himself was a civil servant in the Ministry of Economics before going into exile, reported in New Republic, 12 January 1963 and quoted by Scheer and Zeitlin, p87
61. Anderson, p482
62. Ibid, p471
63. This is a reference to the Cuban Stalinists and not to genuine ‘communists’.
64. Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel, pp32-33
65. Interview in Scheer and Zeitlin, pp341-342
66. Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel, pp76-77
67. Franqui is wrong to describe Russia as imperialist. It is true that the Russian bureaucracy acted in the world arena to ensure the maintenance and enhancement of their own national interests. However, it generally supplied Cuba and other states in the neo-colonial world with resources, particularly primary products, at below their prices on the world market.
68. Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel pp77-78
69. Ibid, pp78-79
70. Ibid, pp104-105
71. Ibid, pp219-221
72. Szulc, pp428-429
73. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p12
74. Ibid, p18
75. Szulc, p482
76. Ibid, p513
77. Ibid, p514
78. Ibid, p514
79. Ibid, p530
80. Ibid, p531
81. Ibid, p532
82. Ibid, pp532-533
Chapter 4 - Is there a Privileged Elite?
83. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p13
84. Anderson, p593
85. Ibid p503
86. Maspero in Habel, preface, p.xxiii
87. Ibid, p.xxii
88. Aspillaga was associated with the British secret services.
89. Habel, pp58-60
90. Ibid, p60
91. Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel, p145
92. Originally in Nation magazine by Maurice Zeitlin, republished in Scheer and Zeitlin, p238
93. Ibid, pp233-234
94. Ibid, p234
95. Ibid, p238
96. Ibid, p238
97. Zeitlin, "Cuba’s Workers, Workers’ Cuba, p.xvi
98. Ibid, pp xix-xx
99. Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel, pp117-118
100. Ibid, p118
101. Zeitlin, 1969, pp.xxv-xxvi
102. Ibid, p.xxvii
103. Ibid, p.xxviii
104. Ibid, p.xxix
105. Ibid, p.xl
106. Ibid, p.xlvii (Zeitlin’s emphasis)
107. Ibid, p.xlviii
108. KS Karol, Guerrillas in Power, pp184-185
109. Ibid, p328
110. Ibid, p452
111. Ibid, p459
112. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p16
113. Habel, p81
114. Ibid, p81
115. Ibid, p82
116. Pisani, writing in Le Monde diplomatique, December 1987, quoted by Habel, p84
117. Szulc, p29
118. Ibid, p498
119. Félix de la Uz, quoted in Habel, p80
120. Pisani, ibid, quoted by Habel pp84-85
121. Habel, p85
122. Anderson, p416
Chapter 5 - Foreign Policy
123. Che Guevara, ‘Cuba: Historical Exception or Vanguard of the Anti-Colonialist Struggle?’ First published in Verde Olivio, 9 April, 1961, quoted in Anderson, p505
124. KS Karol, ‘Cuba and the USSR’, in ‘Cuban Communism’, p759
125. Marx was referring to the prolonged mass uprising of the peasants against feudalism in Germany in the sixteenth century.
126. The size and influence of the Indonesian working class is indicated by the following extract from the excellent pamphlet of the CWI on Indonesia: "The total labour force in Indonesia is 86 million strong. About 15% work in the manufacturing and petrochemical sector, 35% in service industries and 50% in agriculture. The number of industrial workers has vastly increased in recent decades because of the industrialisation of Indonesia. At the beginning of the ’90s there was a big rise in the number of working class struggles. In 1994 there was a total of 1,130 strikes – an increase of 350% in relation to 1993! In the same year there were 100 student demonstrations and 50 peasant actions." [‘Indonesia: An Unfinished Revolution’]
127. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p22
128. Ibid, pp22-23
129. Ibid, p23
130. Habel, p124
131. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p24
132. Ibid, p26
133. Castro, speaking on 23 August 1968, quoted ibid, p24
134. Ibid, p26
135. Anderson, p586
136. Taaffe, p13
137. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p26
138. Ibid, p27
139. Szulc, p527
140. Tony Saunois, Che Guevara, Symbol of Struggle, p54
141. Lorimer, The Cuban Revolution, p27
142. Szulc, p535
Chapter 6 - Conclusion
143. Szulc, p499
144. Ibid, pp499-500
145. Quoted in Szulc, p500
146. Ibid, pp498-499
147. Financial Times,4 January 2000
148. Ibid
149. Saunois, p62
150. Ibid, p63