A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerillas’ Victory

by Steve Cushion

Millions of words have been written about the Cuban Revolution, which, to both its supporters and detractors, is almost universally understood as being won by a small band of guerillas. In this unique and stimulating book, Stephen Cushion turns the conventional wisdom on its head, and argues that the Cuban working class played a much more decisive role in the Revolution’s outcome than previously understood. Although the working class was well-organized in the 1950s, it is believed to have been too influenced by corrupt trade union leaders, the Partido Socialist Popular, and a tradition of making primarily economic demands to have offered much support to the guerillas. Cushion contends that the opposite is true, and that significant portions of the Cuban working class launched an underground movement in tandem with the guerillas operating in the mountains.
Developed during five research trips to Cuba under the auspices of the Institute of Cuban History in Havana, this book analyzes a wealth of leaflets, pamphlets, clandestine newspapers, and other agitational material from the 1950s that has never before been systematically examined, along with many interviews with participants themselves. Cushion uncovers widespread militant activity, from illegal strikes to sabotage to armed conflict with the state, all of which culminated in two revolutionary workers’ congresses and the largest general strike in Cuban history. He argues that these efforts helped clinch the victory of the revolution, and thus presents a fresh and provocative take on the place of the working class in Cuban history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Latin American History

336 pages, Hardcover

First published February 22, 2016

Reviews

[Carlos Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful and informative addition to the literature on the Cuban Revolution, focussing on a largely ignored area: the rising militancy, organisation and unity of the Cuban working class, which formed a complex symbiosis with the guerrilla struggle in order to bring down the Batista dictatorship and lay the ground for the Cuban model of socialism.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerilla's Victory
Author: Steve Cushion
The Cuban revolution was one of the most significant moments of the 20th century. Its impact on global politics continues to stir debate today. Seemingly, out of nowhere, a small band of revolutionary guerilla's were able to forcibly seize power and overthrow a US-backed dictator, establishing a socialist government that achieved momentous social changes and controversially, formed ties with the Soviet Union.
The revolution completely reshaped Cuban society, nationalising the banking sector, oil and the landholdings of the notorious United Fruit Company. Agrarian reforms collectivised the ownership of what had been US owned sugar plantations. Through mass democratic assemblies, the working class was able to participate in a nationally planned economy; which laid the basis for the survival of the revolution, protecting it from both military and economic threats.
Through a mass voluntary movement of youth, illiteracy was eliminated and infant mortality became the lowest in the developing world. The revolution gave dignity to the descendants of Haitian slaves, eliminating segregation. Women entered the workforce and now hold the majority of technical and scientific positions within Cuban society.
The seizure of power by young idealistic bearded revolutionaries is often described derisively as a putsch. In the Western world, much of what exists of the socialist movement toady portrays it this way. We are led to believe by the popular narratives around the Cuban revolution, that the working class passively accepted the change of government and played no role in removing the corrupt and violent Fulgencio Batista dictatorship.
Steve Cushion's book is a valiant effort at uncovering the truth of the Cuban revolution; that the working class were not only in favour of the Cuban revolution, but were active participants and protagonists in their own right. The actions of the working class in overthrowing Batista went much deeper than supporting a small band of guerilla fighters in the Sierra Maestra. Cushion uncovers widespread militant activity either independently or in cooperation with Fidel Castro's guerilla army.
Cushion's compelling record of events relies on extensive archival research and interviews with trade union militants. Through five research trips, Cushion is able to recount all the manifestations of working class struggle, from illegal strikes of dockworkers, rail workers and cane-cutters, to acts of sabotage, armed conflicts, two revolutionary workers congresses and the largest general strike in Cuba's history. Cushion points out, that although the state apparatus was weakened by the guerilla war, without the active participation of the working class, the Cuban revolution could not have been successful.
This working-class support for the revolution was reflected in the consolidation of many social gains in the years that followed and the crushing of the “Bay of Pigs” invasion by US-backed militia. It's unfortunate that it has taken so long for a systematic account of working-class struggle in Cuba to surface. As Cushion points out, all the archival evidence is there, retained by the Institute of Cuban History in Havana.
Cushion charts the militancy, organisation and unity of the working class throughout the turmoil of the 1950s. The capitalist class in Cuba were confronted with a major crisis with the collapse of sugar prices globally in the early 1950s. This had dire consequences for Cuba as sugar comprised 80% of exports with the whole economy revolving around this single cash crop. Cuba was producing 18% of the world's sugar.
The tensions of the cold war, heightened by the US war on Korea had led to stockpiling of sugar globally, leading to new plantations with more advanced methods of production being established around the world. The inevitable collapse in the price of sugar that followed led the Cuban capitalist class to put restrictions on the amount of sugar harvested in an attempt to drive prices back up. This only reduced their market share and exacerbated the crisis they were facing.
Faced with a restive working class after years of political stability and a major economic crisis, the capitalist class gave their support to the Batista regime. The brutality of Batista's police state would be aimed directly at the working class forcing them into the choice of submission or conflict.
The plantation owners, sought massive wage cuts and increased mechanisation. Batista used a number of different methods to contain working-class struggle. Trade unionists were targets of assassination, torture and disappearances. He assumed total control of the country eliminating all forms of democracy.
One of the biggest barriers, workers faced was the dominance of Eussibio Mujal over the main trade union confederation, the CTC, (Conderación de Trabajadores de Cuba). Mujal had direct links to the dictatorship and eventually fled when it fell. The CTC was a major roadblock to the success of the Cuban revolution. It was not simply undemocratic and bureaucratic - but ruthlessly controlled by the mafia.
The history of Cuban trade unions is as long as its struggle for independence from colonialism, dating back to the age of guilds and craft unions, but it was not until 1925 that the trade union movement formed a national confederation, CNOC (Conderación Nacional Obrera de Cuba). This was the same year, with much promise General Machado was elected.
The Great depression of 1929 hit Cuba hard, with sugar exports plummeting. Machado, relied more and more on military repression to enforce his rule. The country entered a period of tumult, political instability and corruption that continued through to the 1950's. Machado's rule was overthrown by a brash young military officer, Fulgencio Batista.
Batista's government in the 1930's provided some basic reforms legalising trade union's that had been operating clandestinely. Under the influence of Moscow, the PSP (Partido Socialista Popular) called for a cross-class alliance during WW11.
Cuba was not immune to the cold war. Although strong militant traditions had been built in the early part of the 20th century, these had started to erode. The socialist movement, based in the wharves, railways and sugar plantations was very much marginalised and in retreat. Its leaders faced increasing persecution and demagogic attacks.
They had been discredited by supporting a no-strikes policy during the war, leaving the trade union movement in disarray and the PSP politically isolated.
The 1947 congress of the CTC marked a shift in the politics of the labour movement. The trade union leaders associated with the Cuban Communist Party, the PSP were ousted from office by an opportunist clique. Although pitching themselves as "practical", seeking "workable solutions", these leaders soon ingratiated themselves towards, first the government of Grau San Martin and then Batista's dictatorship in 1952.
They were unable to resolve the tensions created by Cuba's economic crisis - leading to a vacuum of leadership. Pre-revolutionary Cuba is often described as a place of prosperity. While it may have been a gangsters paradise and its GDP may have increased due to more US investment, the reality for the Cuban working class was severe immiseration resulting from the collapse of sugar prices.
Cushion notes the importance of this juncture in Cuban history: "There is, therefore, a link between the fall in the price in sugar, the resulting crisis in profitability, and the employers need to increase productivity that provides an explanation for the 1952 military coup and the support given to the resulting dictatorship by business interests" and further "...if changes in the political economy of the island resulted in a deterioration of the working and living conditions of workers, then this will have a bearing on the form and degree of their involvement in the revolutionary process".
These economic factors deepened the political divisions within society. The Cuban working class rejected the arguments from CTC leaders to accept increases in productivity and were embittered by mass layoffs and increasing workloads.
The blatant corruption of the CTC drew workers towards the PSP and the emerging July 26th Movement (M-26-7). Eventually, the two organisations would form links with one another and coordinate actions throughout the small island nation, particularly in the east where the rebel forces were stronger. This organisation spread to all the major urban centres. This impetus was pushed forward by objective necessity and the dynamic towards unity of the working class when they are propelled into struggle.
Cushion reveals, that the working class developed not only strong levels of organisation, but also possessed a radical and advanced political consciousness. Not only were they were able to overcome the hardships of struggle, but were capable of forming the correct tactical approaches to underground struggle and the mass work of creating an urban insurgency – they played a decisive role in the victory of the Cuban revolution.
The book was clearly a labour of love for Cushion and is rich in detail and useful in pinpointing key moments in the development of working class struggle in Cuba. What I found interesting was the relationship between the M-26-7 and the PSP, since in most historical accounts it is portrayed that these two organisations were at odds with each other. Cushion brings to life the complex struggle of rank and file members of the PSP and M-26-7 to combat the Batista regime, suggesting that unity started with the working class base of both organisations eventually coalescing in a united front that was formalised with the Frente Obrero Nacional Unido (FONU).
Cushion scoured through a mass collection of leaflets, pamphlets, clandestine newspapers and other agitational material from the 1950's as well as sourcing some statistics from dispatches from the US embassy and US department of Commerce. His systematic study, extensively indexed, gives the book genuine authenticity. The book does not present itself as a counter-position to the importance of guerilla struggle in the defeat of Batista, but enriches the understanding of the Cuban revolution and tells the untold story of the Cuban working class.
Although there is a brief outline of struggle preceding the 1950's, the book focusses mainly on the years of 1952 to 1959. The focus is on the insurrectionary activity of the working class, rather than the outcome of the revolution and the government that took power. It is not intended to be a complete analysis of the Cuban revolution, but it covers many important topics that are essential for its understanding, such as: the role of the trade union bureaucracy, the wave of strikes in 1955, the lessons learned from defeats, dealing with state terror, the variegation of the working class and the relationship of militants with the M-7-26.
Underlining the central thesis of Cushion's work is the historical account of workers congresses held within rebel territory, showing Castro's forces always had an orientation towards the working class. Indeed the future course of the revolution was fought within the ranks of the trade union movement eventually splitting the CTC away from the “Mujalista's”. At the local level, the authority of the CTC was always contested, it's power far from being monolithic. Without such a consolidation of working-class organisation, the Cuban revolution could never have advanced and survived incursions and economic attacks from US imperialism.
It's important to remember that the workers who led these struggles were not initially large in number. Neither did they all initially possess a revolutionary consciousness, but they learnt from the intensity of struggle that revolutionary action was the only way forward to liberation. They learned from their defeats, developed an extensive underground press and networks to support the guerilla struggle. Many of them lost their lives in the course of the struggle.
Cuba faces many struggles today, not least a US embargo that has lasted over sixty years and continues to strangle Cuba's development. Nevertheless, despite all the hardships, Cuba remains an alternative and beacon of hope to the neo-colonial world. Behind its tropical charm lies a resilience and determination that refuses to be beaten. Cuba shows another world is possible.

[Brendan Campisi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and well-argued reinterpretation of the victory of the Cuban Revolution. Cushion does an excellent job of situating the Batista regime and its opponents in the context of Cuba's political economy and class relations. The main body of the book gives an impressively detailed description of the way workers' struggles developed under the dictatorship and fed into the revolutionary struggle, and examines the way the July 26th Movement and the Communists both competed and cooperated in labour organizing and political struggle. His attention to the way that these two organizations were internally divided by ideological and geographic differences, with local cooperation developing in some places in advance of the formal alliance between the leaderships and in others lagging behind it, is especially valuable.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The world was a very different kind of place at the time of the Cuban Revolution. The aftermath of World War II resulted in an upsurge in the colonial revolution, in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. When the war against Japan ended, thousands of US GIs, many with trade union experience, demanded to be brought home, wanting no part of fighting for colonialism (see “1945: When U.S. Troops Said ‘No!’—A Hidden Chapter in the Fight Against War” in New International no. 7: Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's Assault on Iraq).

The Communist Party in the US had been the most gung-ho supporters of the no strike pledge, offering to continue it after the war (see Labor's Giant Step: The First Twenty Years of the CIO: 1936-55 and Fighting Racism in World War II: From the pages of the Militant), which put them in an isolated position after the military bloc between the US and the Soviet Union ended and the US launched the Cold War and the McCarthyite witch hunt.

The Stalinists (contrary to what you’re taught in school, but as Trotsky explained—see The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? were an obstacle to revolutions, especially in the advanced countries, but they didn’t succeed in selling them all out. In 1953 the US had to give up on trying to roll back the revolutions in Korea and China, although Korea remained divided, and still is. The next year (1954) Vietnam won a historic victory against France at Dien Bien Phu, although the Stalinists allowed Vietnam to be partitioned with the US building a garrison state in the south. The Algerian Revolution began later that year—Algeria had been considered by French imperialism to be part of France, and it was quite a battle! At one point a workers and peasants government was formed in Algeria under Ahmed Ben Bella. The French Communist Party never supported the Algerian Revolution, although some of their rank-and-file members did. In much of the rest of Africa, Britain and France allowed political independence, knowing they still had economic control.

In 1955, in the US there was the Montgomery bus boycott, the beginning of the end of Jim Crow. The first time Fidel Castro addressed the United Nations in 1960, he also met with Malcolm X, still a member of the Nation of Islam (see To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's 'cold War' Against Cuba Doesn't End. Also, in 1955 the AFL and CIO reunited, with a combined membership of 15 million members. Still, the sway of McCarthyism was not over. In many imperialist countries there were mass Stalinist and/or social democratic parties. The Stalinists were also strong in much of the colonial and semi-colonial world.

As those who work or have worked in factories (and much other concentrated work) know, the class struggle at one level or another takes place continuously. The bosses are always trying to produce more, with fewer workers who are paid less, with fewer benefits, and less or no safety provisions. The workers (even without unions, but especially with them) are always trying to defend themselves against this. One could call much of this, like a slowdown, a type of “guerrilla warfare,” with strikes and factory occupations becoming “war of columns” (which Fidel Castro considered was what was being fought in Cuba by December 1957.

Naturally, the level of the workers’ class struggle depends on factors, from the history of the workers movement in the particular country to the international situation. It is in this context that the class struggle merged with the revolutionary struggle for Cuban sovereignty and social justice. Cuba, including the working class, had a long history of fighting first Spanish and then US colonialism.

The struggle of the sugar workers had a special importance because of its central role in the Cuban economy. It also challenged the US quota system and was tied to the transportation industries—both dock and rail workers—who had a history of solidarity with cane-cutters and other sugar workers. Students also had a history of solidarity with the sugar workers. As the book explains, the 1956 sugar workers strike involved sabotage and other armed actions, and opened divisions in the labor bureaucracy.

The fact that workers of the Popular Socialist Party and the July 26th Movement were collaborating is not a surprise, especially since the rank-and-file of pro-Moscow parties were almost always to the left of the leaders. The author makes much of the fact that the PSP raised immediate demands, whereas the July 26th Movement usually didn’t. There was nothing wrong with raising immediate demands, but the Fidelistas viewed their work among workers not as everyday trade union work, but as preparation for a revolution, which was already in process. Steve Cushion mentions that “Of course, the PSP’s uncritical support of the USSR, in particular its support of the crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, played into the hands of its enemies. These attitudes affected the relationship between the PSP and the July 26th Movement.”

It should here be mentioned that Peter Fryer, a reporter for the British Communist Party newspaper, went to Hungary expecting to find a counterrevolution, and instead he found an anti-bureaucratic revolution with workers councils, i.e. soviets, see Hungarian Tragedy and Other Writings on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Several pro-Moscow parties came close to splitting over the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

Cushion writes: “But it is important to differentiate between right-wing anti-communism that is opposed to the potential threat that communists pose to property relations, which is more common among the petit-bourgeoisie and the professions with property to lose and the left-wing anti-communism that saw the PSP as too moderate and overly prepared to make compromises, which is more common among working-class militants. Torres, as a sometime Trotskyist, fell into the latter camp.”

I don’t know if rail worker Antonio “Ñico” Torres had a Trotskyist background or not, but it’s seriously wrong to refer to this as “left-wing anti-communism.” It isn’t any form of anti-communism. Raúl Castro had briefly been a member of the youth group of the pro-Moscow Popular Socialist Party but quit to follow his brother in the attack on Moncada. Fidel was reading Marx and Engels (purchased from the PSP bookstore) before Batista’s coup. And he started educating those who followed him in Marxism, see My Life: A Spoken Autobiography. He doesn’t say why he never joined the PSP, but I don’t think it has to be said—he didn’t consider them revolutionary. So, were Fidel, Raúl, Che and all those they influenced also “left-wing anti-communists”? I think in fact they were the only genuine communists in Cuba. Fidel read Trotsky's book on Stalin when in prison, and Che took a book by Trotsky to Bolivia. Both he and Pombo commented on its loss in their diaries.

Cushion writes, “Throughout the insurrectionary period the propaganda produced by the MR-26-7 was very strong in its denunciation of the iniquities of the regime and its allies, but much less specific about the proposed solutions, concerned mainly with a general appeal to rebellion and revolution. In this, there is a notable contrast with the printed material produced by the Communist Party, which contains detailed proposals. This is because the MR-26-7 did not see itself as a political party, but as a movement that could unite all patriotic Cubans who believed in democracy and social justice. Given the cross–class alliance that the organization represented, any attempt to be specific about the concrete meaning of these terms would have risked a split, which all sides of the movement wished to avoid.”

But the July 26th Movement had a program--Fidel Castro’s History Will Absolve Me laid out very concrete plans for a bourgeois-democratic revolution. (When it soon became clear this program couldn’t be carried out under Manuel Urrutia, because no section of the bourgeoisie favored radical land reform--they had the Rebel Army in place and the support of the working class). But Cushion mentions Castro’s document only once, in passing.

Steve Cushion makes quite a few references to the Second Column of the Rebel Army commanded by Raúl Castro. But is he aware that this column, which unlike the others usually stayed in one place, was starting to carry out the radical social program of the revolution, especially in regard to women’s rights, was being carried out (see ‘Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution within the Revolution).

The revolution had many fronts, and no one claims that Fidel Castro was responsible for all of them. There was also an opposition movement to Batista within the Cuban military, and while they were found out early and spent most of the revolutionary war in prison on the Isle of Pines, two of those officers became leaders of the Rebel Army upon their release, and both played a major role at Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs) and beyond (see Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces).

The failure of the general strike of April 1958 is discussed in this book; you can also read documents and letters on it in both Che's Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58 and Aldabonazo: Inside the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1952-58: A Participant's Account by Armando Hart.

After the revolution, the July 26th Movement, the PSP, and the Revolutionary Directorate fused into what was initially called The Integrated Revolutionary Organizations, then “the United Party of the Socialist Revolution, and after 1965 the Communist Party of Cuba.

But some members of the former PSP, led by Aníbal Escalante, plotted to overthrow the Castro leadership with the help of some people in the CP in Czechoslovakia (see ‘Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation by Joseph Hansen, who had been a secretary to Leon Trotsky and was a life-long leader of the Socialists Workers Party, and Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro.

Steve Cushion is trying to show the PSP as at least as important as the Fidelistas, if not more so. The Cuban authorities gave him every courtesy in researching what he calls “hidden history.” Not surprisingly, Cushion has also been involved in the campaign of Bernard Coard, the Stalinist who overthrew the Grenada Revolution and to discredit Maurice Bishop and his supporters. Fidel Castro called Coard's faction "the Pol Pot group" and it was a good analogy.

[Rhuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

British trade union socialist Steve Cushion has fashioned a necessary reconstruction of the Cuban Revolution from a labor perspective. Using original publications and interviews from participants he reconstructs the labor activism necessary to organize civilian support for the Sierra guerrillas, and form a resistance movement in its own right. Contrary to the prevailing myth of Cuban prosperity before Castro gummed it all up, Cushion emphasizes that the gains of the ‘50s were unevenly distributed, based on an inflationary neo-liberalism that mandated the poor get poorer so “the economy” – that is, stockholders, Cuban and American - could prosper accordingly. Batista’s dictatorship was seen as a necessary employer tool to keep the workers down and dividends up. Cushion’s thesis is that this common struggle, first against declining living standards and working conditions, then against Batista’s ever-escalating brutality, allied Communist and M-26-7 militants in a converging movement; culminating in a general strike that permitted the Rebel Army to consolidate its battlefield victory into real state power.

There is much to recommend this point of view. Cushion offers it as counter-narrative to the mainstream US/UK position, of Castro’s later Marxism as culmination of his “plot” to deliver the Revolution to International Communism. Much historiography of the Revolution is dedicated to that kind of academic criminal investigation: where and when did Castro really become a Marxist-Leninist, and what were the clues of action and motivation that could have “prevented” said crime. Cushion credibly claims that the “convergence” of M-26-7 and the old PSP/Communist Party of Cuba was forged under the common danger of Batista’s ruthless death-squad counter-insurgency, a circumstance often minimized by historian-prosecutors. Just as the threatened US invasion after March 1960 forged Castro’s ties to the Soviet Bloc, so did the spiraling struggle against Batista galvanize a united front between both movements and their labor sectors – especially in the old Oriente Province, the frontline of the Revolution.

Yet the “conspiracy theory” has a certain validity that Cushion’s mass-based analysis overlooks. The PSP served as a necessary counter-weight to Castro’s own decentralized movement, permitting the guerrilla “vanguard” to consolidate hegemony over the M-26-7 in general and the revolutionary labor movement in particular. This was openly evident after taking power, but could be discerned even before. Cushion even admits as much by citing the Party’s new-found belief in armed struggle and its willing subordination as Castro’s left hand, helping him assert command over his loose and divided grass-roots base. The counter-revolution emerging in 1959 only strengthened this alliance with handy “comrades” Castro could trust.

Yet one shouldn’t take this too far: in truth, the US would have opposed Castro’s revolution even if there had been no Communism; and by its Cuban enemies if there had been no United States. (And Castro would have assumed his title of El Lider Maximo regardless; the "revolutionary family" at the top remaining as inbred.) The presence of both antagonists in the era of Cold War gave each side a firmer platform for attack and counter-attack, but was not the *root* cause of the Revolution or its discontents. Resisting traditional hierarchies of power, local and otherwise, was sufficient: just as in the concurrent civil rights movement in the US, whose leadership was also denounced as Communist agents by the same persons taking insult at Castro’s victory.

Cushion offers a compelling insight into an aspect unfairly neglected by revolutionary romanticists and counter-revolutionaries. If this had been understood, the failure at the Bay of Pigs would not have been such a mystery – and, perhaps, not even attempted. There was no way to rebuild such a successful mass movement from the defeated scraps and disillusioned defectors who sheltered under the CIA wing.

Worth a read by anyone interested in the full story of the Cuban Revolution.