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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 30, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Editorial: Stand with Cuba

Despite the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, despite the tightened blockade by U.S. imperialism, the Cuban Revolution and the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party are standing strong and are determined to resist any return toward capitalism. That was the main message of the fifth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in Havana in early October.

This is a welcome message for partisans of socialism worldwide—at a time when world imperialism is trying to sow despair among the ranks of those who believe in working-class revolution.

The party’s first secretary, Cuban President Fidel Castro, took on Washington and the whole capitalist system in his talk to the Congress. He pulled no punches and painted no rosy pictures. The openings to the market in Cuba’s economy, he said, have brought inequalities. But, he affirmed strongly, no steps will be taken that threaten the existence of socialism. Castro said capitalism has no future—that it belongs to "pre-history." It has "no moral future, no political future and not even an economic future," the great revolutionary said.

After the Congress ended, the Cuban population spent the following days honoring revolutionary hero Che Guevara on the 30th anniversary of his death at the hands of the Bolivian military and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The people of Cuba buried Che’s remains. And they extolled his example as a communist human being—a worker and fighter who gave all for the revolution and therefore for humanity. On Oct. 15, there were municipal elections throughout Cuba. And then it was back to the daily tasks.

Meanwhile, asked about his Cuba policy while he was in Brazil, U.S. President Bill Clinton had to admit that Cuba has one of the best health and education systems, which he said "the Cubans think they might lose" if they turn toward "democracy"—read "capitalism."

You are wrong, Mr. President. The Cuban leaders are revolutionary Marxists. They—and the Cuban people—don’t just think they will lose it all if they turn toward capitalism. They know it. That’s why they’re sticking on the road to socialism. It’s the duty of partisans of the working-class struggle—and in the United States above all—to stick with socialist Cuba in the battle to defend it from the ongoing U.S. war against the Revolution.

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