Source: Daily Worker, May 28, 1934
Transcription/Markup: Paul Saba
Copyleft: Internet
Archive (marxists.org) 2018. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons License.
(The following is the second article on the recent historical second Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, which took place after the overthrow of the rule of Butcher Machado. The concluding article will appear tomorrow.)
* * *
The Congress emphasizes the correct strategy the Party followed in rooting itself in the basic proletariat of the country, particularly in the sugar industry.
At the beginning of 1932, the Party commenced seriously to apply its plan of concentration in the plantations and mills of the sugar industry, leading militant strikes which produced constant armed struggles against the rural guards of Machado. This helped the Party very greatly to head struggles against the feudal remnants on the land, struggles which culminated in the general strike of August, which overthrew Machado, thus opening the way to the agrarian anti-imperialist revolution in Cuba.
The delegation of the Second Congress demonstrated in large part the orientation of the Party toward the basic industries of the country, although it reflected at the same time all the weaknesses of the Party among certain other sections of the basic proletariat, especially the railroad workers. Of the 67 delegates, 43 were workers. Of these, three were sugar workers, nine tobacco workers, six transport workers, two metal workers, and the rest were from light industries. There were only three peasant delegates which demonstrates the serious weakness of the work of the Party in the countryside.
Although insufficient, the presence of 14 Negro delegates indicated a more effective understanding of the Negro question in the ranks of the Party.
The Second Congress severely criticized the weaknesses of the Party, especially of the grave mistakes of August, 1933, which would have been disastrous for the revolutionary movement without rapid correction. In the report of the Central Committee, as well as in the political theses, these mistakes were underlined and characterized as social-democratic theory of the “lesser evil.” The mistakes consisted in calling upon the workers during the general strike of August to go back to work because “it was necessary to choose between Yankee intervention and a weakened Machado.”
The Congress pointed out the necessity of an implacable struggle against the remnants of this theory, which still persists, as well as against the vestiges of anarcho-syndicalism, which is an obstacle to the winning of the masses for decisive struggles. We must point out the weakness of the Congress reflected in the lack of a serious analysis of the causes for the lack of consolidation of the Soviets in the places where the high level of the struggles of the workers and peasants culminated in the taking over of local power (Mabay, Jaronu). We must also emphasize the weakness of the struggle against Yankee intervention, which reflects not only the organizational deficiency of the Party, but particularly the lack of a revolutionary perspective.
The Second Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba in taking a balance of the economic and political situation of the country which becomes more aggravated every day. In analyzing the period since the overthrow of Machado placed very sharply the question of realizing transitory slogans: worker control, confiscation and distribution of the land of the Yankee and native landlords, as a lever for higher struggles toward taking over power and the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ government. Discussion around this question was very weak in the Congress.
The great weaknesses of the Party in the face of the problems of revolution were laid bare. The danger of a setback in the struggles of the peasants, because of the slowness with which the Party organizes the agrarian struggles and the winning over of the peasants as the most revolutionary ally of the proletariat was sharply pointed out.
The central slogan launched by the Central Committee and confirmed by the Congress, was that of the preparation for and organization of taking over the land and its distribution among the peasants, agricultural workers and soldiers; the organization of Peasant committees as well as the strengthening of the Party organization among them.
No less sharply placed was the question of winning over the Negro masses. The Congress severely criticized the tendency to hide the face of the Party before the Negro masses and the resistance to bringing into the Party Negro workers and peasants who showed a desire to enter the Party (Oriente). Other concrete acts of white chauvinism, open expression of right opportunism, were exposed, which consisted in resisting struggle against discrimination of Negroes, their segregation in the parks and main streets as in the South of the United States. Especially did the Congress point out the necessity of a greater classification of the Negro question as a national rather than a “racial” question, typified in the slogan for self-determination of the Negroes in the Black Belt of Oriente province.