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From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
MARXIST-HUMANIST ARCHIVES
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis tested anti-war Left
by Raya Dunayevskaya
Editor’s Note
This fall the world remembers the 40th anniversary of
the moment when, in October 1962, life as we know it almost ended. In the Cuban
Missile Crisis, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev brought the world to the
brink of nuclear war. With many of the ingredients for the analysis then having
been recast for today--including nuclear politics and a part of the Left that's
lost its critical capacities--we reprint excerpts of Raya Dunayevskaya's
"Weekly Political Letter" of Oct. 25, 1962. It was titled,
"Marxist-Humanism vs. the U.S. Blockade of Cuba, the Russian Missile
Bases There, Fidel Castro's 'Selective' Party, ALL Playing With Nuclear
Holocaust."
Footnotes by the editor have been added. The letter can
be found in THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION, 3082–3087.
***
October 29, 1962
My preliminary (Oct. 23, 1962) statement on the newly
created brink-of-war situation as a result of President John F. Kennedy's
blockade of Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev's missile bases there, and the impotence of
the UN the minute the two nuclear titans decide to unleash a war holocaust,
correctly stressed the following: "In opposing war, we make it clear that
we are opposed to BOTH nuclear giants: Russia and the U.S. Under no
circumstances do we get ourselves maneuvered into a position where we, for a
single moment, sound so much against either one of them that we APPEAR TO BE FOR
THE OTHER. ABOVE ALL WE OPPOSE WAR NOT ONLY AS "AGAINSTERS" BUT
PRIMARILY BECAUSE WE ARE FOR A TOTALLY NEW SOCIETY, ON NEW, ON HUMAN BEGINNINGS,
FREE FROM EXPLOITATION AND DISCRIMINATION, WHERE THE POPULATION TO A MAN, WOMAN
AND CHILD HAS THE DESTINY IN THEIR OWN HANDS, BEGINNING WITH THE WORKERS AT THE
POINT OF PRODUCTION.
Here I wish to develop this position on two levels: 1.
the objective situation and nearness of war; and 2. ramifications of this crisis
for our existence both as an organization and as a body of ideas, both on the
question of continuous activity and writings, beginning with the next issue of
the paper [NEWS & LETTERS].
I. BEFORE THE BLOCKADE
A good deal of illumination on both these factors can be
gained if we take it out of the present moment of crisis and see that which was
inherent in it the day before....Four days before the announcement of the
blockade of Cuba, I stressed that what was wrong with people who pretend that
Russia is not in Cuba is that they thereby cover up the fact that Russia is the
greatest exporter of COUNTER-revolution. It is easy to see counter-revolution
when it is as direct as it is in the outright squashing of a revolution, as the
Russian destruction of the Hungarian Revolution. It is not easy to see
counter-revolution when it is a question of PLANNED EXPLOITATION OF THE
PROLETARIAT IN HIS DAILY LIFE. Yet these Russian "technicians" have
been sent there, among other reasons, in order to compel the Cuban working
people, WHO ARE RESISTING ANTI-LABOR LAWS, FIGHTING THE DIVERSION OF THE CUBAN
REVOLUTION FROM ITS ANNOUNCED HUMANISM TO STATE-CAPITALIST CHANNELS, to compel
them to produce more and more for less and less, and at the same time leave
their political destiny to "the party and its leader."
Finally, those who can't get away from the spurious
ground for argument established by Communists for the special benefit of the
liberals, to the effect that if the U.S. has a "right" to bases in
Europe, Russia has a "right" to one in Cuba, fail to see that the
Russian arms imported into Cuba are not one-tenth of the threat to the U.S. THAT
THEY ARE TO THE CUBAN PEOPLE. Small Cuba, even when armed by Russia, is no match
for the U.S. might, but it is a power against the unarmed revolutionary
underground, AND IT IS FOR THIS PURPOSE PRECISELY THAT THEY ARE INTENDED.
II. THE BLOCKADE AND THE MOVEMENTS OPPOSED TO IT
Out of the clear blue, a few short days after he himself
argued against Republican opponents who urged a blockade, J.F. Kennedy made the
shocking, unilateral, war-like pronouncement of blockade. Outside of
Khrushchev's break-up of the summit as a result of the U-2 plane spy
incident,(1) when the two nuclear giants were pitted against each other with no
intermediaries, the people of the world were never closer to the brink of
nuclear holocaust. The present confrontation is not limited to verbal threats
and busted summits. It is now clear beyond a peradventure of a doubt that both
Kennedy and Khrushchev are mad enough to plunge the world into thermonuclear
war. If a summit meeting should result and stave off the day, it clearly will be
only a delaying action. It is likewise clear that Cuba has become the possible
locale of the outburst, as Berlin has been and remains to this day another focal
point, BUT WHAT IS INVOLVED IS THE U.S.-RUSSIAN COMPETITION FOR DOMINATION OF
THE WORLD.
It is at this point that the movements opposing war show
their own negative character. The falling into a trap is inevitable when one
does not view positively what they are fighting FOR, instead of only what they
are fighting against. Thus though the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (and
Committee of 100) are supposed to be for banning the bomb, they had not a word
to say against its spread to yet another country, in this case Cuba. Obviously,
the Trotskyites, along with the Communists, are not the only ones who think of
"good" bombs (Russian) and "bad" bombs (American). The
professional nuclear disarmament people have now discovered that, in Cuban hands
(or at least on Cuban soil for these are not really in Cuban, but in Russian,
hands), it inspires them to the following slogan, "Viva Fidel, Kennedy to
Hell."
OK, let's take up Fidel. Even without a bomb, he has
moved so far away from the revolution he led that it is hard to see what he is
making of Cuba other than a satellite of Russia, and I don't mean it only as a
storer of missile bases, but as an outpost of single party state-capitalism. In
the misnamed speech, "Marxism-Leninism," delivered on Dec. 2,
1961--nearly a year ago, that is--Fidel expounded his conception of why an
"integrated revolutionary organization," that is to say, a single
party in which the Communists and what was left of the July 26th movement,
merged.(2) From urging his comrades "to overcome (their) scorn for military
academies" through his love of The Plan ("I always had a plan")
as against the "anarchism" represented by opposition to him ("I
am not going to ask what Manolo Fernandez represented,(3) because I believe he
represented trash; he was a 'mad anarchist'") to his glorification of
Khrushchev ("one has only to read Khrushchev's report to the 22nd
Congress... The building of socialism follows a well-beaten path by now"),
this petty-bourgeois sees the truly independent third road--against both U.S.
and Russia--and for a new humanist society, as an incursion of the "strict
standard of selection" which must characterize "a party of
leadership." Now if only the workers will continue to work, only harder,
and agree that "The Ideal System of Government is the Party System,"
he can continue to lead "collectively"--a la Khrushchev in Russia.
Any one can--though it must be admitted that Fidel
doesn't do it very well--repeat generalizations of Marxism on the role of the
working class. The proof, THE ONLY PROOF, that it is a way of life, not a mere
weapon of propaganda, is its REALIZATION IN LIFE. No such thing is true in
Fidel's Cuba where not a single organ--from the trade unions to the peasant
unions, from the state to the party--is any longer controlled by the working
people. Nevertheless, because so many in the nuclear disarmament movement have
been forged as "againsters" rather than as proponents of a totally new
society, the Communists can set so fatal a trap for them that they forget what
their very reason for existence is--opposition to nuclear armament--and shout
"Viva Fidel."
On this life-and-death question, at this life-and-death
moment, we can under no circumstances allow ourselves to be swallowed up by this
curious movement. If nothing else can be left unsullied, let's at least make
sure that our Marxist-Humanist ideas remain the beacon for future generations as
they are for ours. Therefore we must unfurl our banner, and proceed with our
opposition to both poles of world capital, putting in its rightly subordinate
place those who "follow the leader," be that Khrushchev or Kennedy.
III. THE TESTING POINT
At the same time, we cannot minimize the totality of the
crisis by considering that Kennedy has finally exposed himself as no different
from the Republicans--who had urged blockade before and now urge
invasion--things will be in any way easier for the building of a
Marxist-Humanist movement. It is not only the Birchers that will take upon
themselves the role of extra "enforcers."(4) The hysteria created by
the administration is much more ominous than that by Sen. Joseph McCarthy who
had no such power as Kennedy. Whenever a political position was proven wrong,
there were those among the Marxists who tried to misuse a Marxist statement
about the whip of the counter-revolution helping the revolutionary development.
Its ultimate tragedy was Stalin's idiotic statement, "After Hitler,
us." First, the statement about the whip of the counter-revolution referred
to it urging the revolution on WHEN IT IS ALREADY IN PROCESS BUT HAS NOT YET
REACHED FULL FRUITION, as say, between February and before October 1917 when the
Kornilov episode exposed Kerensky and allowed the full development of the
revolution.(5) In a non-revolutionary period, the problems confronting
Marxist-Humanism are made harder, not lessened, by the blockade, for the man who
has the means to start a nuclear holocaust does not forget for a moment his
power to press down upon the opposition to his war-provoking policy.
Take even the minor question of Kennedy's timing his
announcement of nuclear bases in Cuba to when it would be most useful to the
Democrats running for election. Two percent one way or the other may win him the
election of a governor or a congressman. Once won--or lost--however, he has to
be concerned not with a 2% margin but with the fact that OVER 60% OF THE
AMERICAN ARE OPPOSED TO AN INVASION OF CUBA. As the capitalist ruler he is, he
then turns the power against his own people. Everyone who is not for his
suicidal policy becomes "the enemy."
Of course, we increase our activity, not lessen it. Of
course, we know the universal opposition to war and can build on that. Of
course, we build our organization along with developing our ideas
comprehensively, but we can do so only by being fully conscious of all the
obstacles in the way. This is why the preliminary statement emphasized that:
"[W]e have no power other than those of ideas even
as the working people have no arms other than those of their labor power.
Therefore it would be folly to act as if by opposition we mean the kind of arms
that only the bourgeoisie has. THEY--both Kennedy and Khrushchev--have arms and
ships and missiles and prisons and jet bombers. They can afford to play games as
to who is the 'aggressor' and 'deceiver' and who is the violated and deceived
while they jockey for the best position to attack. We refuse to get into any
such arguments...Our position must be as unique as it is, neither 'popular
frontism' nor pretense to power"...
Everything we now do--whether that be a frontpager, a
pamphlet, an educational, activity in a strike or picket line--must bear the
positive stamp of Marxist-Humanism and the totally new foundations for a truly
human society....We must learn to express our ideas clearly, in 25 words or
less, that is to say, with full consciousness that our time is not unlimited.
While we are under no illusion that times of such
heightened crises are propitious for building a mass organization, we are sure
that the new sense of urgency is just the impulse needed to intensify our
activity in a way that the meeting of the movement from theory with that from
practice will not be left to chance. It is a time of testing of individuals as
well as ideas and organization.
NOTES
1. On May 1, 1960, a U.S. U-2 spy plane piloted by
Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Russian air space, causing the breakup of
a U.S.-Russia summit on disarmament.
2. The July 26 Movement was a revolutionary group
organized to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Fidel Castro came to be
its leader.
3. Manolo Fernandez was a Cuban union leader who
was ousted by the government shortly after Castro took power.
4. The John Birch Society is a far-right
organization founded in 1958 that vehemently opposed the Civil Rights Movement
and promotes homophobia, sexism, and anti-Semitism under the guise of
anti-Communism. Still in existence today, it has links with Religious Right
groups such as the Christian Coalition and Eagle Forum, as well as with Pat
Buchanan.
5. Kerensky was a leader of the Provisional government
overthrown by the Bolsheviks. Kornilov was a reactionary general who earlier
tried to overthrow Kerensky.
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