Cuba: Dellinger Returns from Animal Farm

David Dellinger, an editor of the Pacifist-Libertarian monthly, Liberation, attended the May Day celebration in Cuba as a guest of the Castro government. The first lengthy installment of his report has appeared in Liberation. It reminds us of the glowing, equally “objective” accounts of many international travelers of the [19]30’s whose chronic euphoria prevented them from seeing Stalin’s most glaring atrocities. All was well in Paradise; they saw and heard no evil. As to Cuba, Castro himself has been far more critical of the defects of his “revolution”, than Dellinger. Since [Dellinger] claims to be an Anarchist and has in effect become an apologist for the Castro dictatorship, we are obliged to do what he has failed to do – present certain fundamental facts and re-state briefly the libertarian position.

Following is the text of a leaflet distributed at our picketing of a recent meeting in New York sponsored by Liberation and addressed by Dellinger.

With the overthrow of Batista on New Year’s Day, 1959, the Cuban people freed itself from the tyranny of a dictator stooge of US imperialism. They strove to institute long overdue and deep-going social, economic and political changes in an atmosphere of freedom and equality. They had rallied behind Fidel Castro because his original program reflected their needs and their aspirations.

The high hopes of Cuban people have been sorely disappointed, and an old tyranny has been replaced by a new one. Castro’s government has denied the right to strike and the right of a free press. It has made State agencies of the labor unions. In place of the much heralded agricultural cooperatives, the Castro-Communist regime has set up a system of State farms with working conditions dictated by State employees. The so-called “voluntary militias” (the so-called “People in Arms”) has been superceded by a policy of military conscription, the conscripts being used as forced labor. The autonomy of the University has been suppressed for the first time in Cuban history. Private capitalism and exploitation have been supplanted by State Capitalism with a much greater exploitation by the monopolistic control of the State. People are encouraged to spy on their neighbors for the secret political police through local “Committees for Defense of the Revolution.”

For resisting the counter-revolutionary policies of the totalitarian Marxist State, sixty thousand Cuban workers now languish in prison. Other thousands, including many of Fidel’s closest early collaborators have escaped into exile. Most of Castro’s enemies are against both capitalist imperialism and communist imperialism, both of which would exploit the country as a semi-feudal sugar plantation. The Cuban workers need not choose between Castro and the CIA, both of which represent the counter-revolution. Actually, the activities of the CIA have helped Castro in his internal consolidation, and also – propagandistically – throughout the continent. The people of Cuba seek their social and economic freedom. In this we must support them. Workers and lovers of liberty everywhere must support them in their valiant underground struggle against both groups of exploiters.

AGAINST U.S. INTERVENTION IN CUBA

FOR THE FREEDOM OF CUBA FROM COMMUNIST TOTALITARIAN

FOR THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION OF THE CUBAN PEOPLE AGAINST ALL EXPLOITERS

Sam Dolgoff and others, Views and Comments, No. 47, Summer 1964, pp. 24–25