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Revolutions Can Survive

But we needn’t make the pessimistic assumption that any revolution will automatically degenerate into a bureaucratic regime if it faces hardships or attacks. Again, Cuba serves as a positive example. With the collapse of its main trading partners, the USSR and the Eastern European countries, Cuba faced a massive economic crisis. Between 1989 and 1992, imports of machinery and spare parts fell by 80%, pesticides by 60% and fertiliser by 77%. Oil imports fell 53%. Food imports fell by half. To multiply the damage, the US reinforced its economic blockade and increased its support to right-wing, anti-Cuban terrorist groups. Severe austerity measures such as rationing had to be introduced in order to survive. But the Cuban Revolution did not repress popular organisation and replace it with arbitrary bureaucracy. It survived by doing exactly the opposite-by strengthening its People’s Power system. Workers’ parliaments, responsible for developing and implementing local economic policy, were introduced at the local government level. Every measure adopted to survive the crisis was discussed in hundreds of thousands of assemblies in factories, workplaces, trade unions, universities, high schools, farmers’, women’s and neighbourhood organisations. In this crisis, Cuba had to make some concessions to international capitalism, such as allowing limited foreign investment in tourism and some industries. But because the population was fully involved in discussing these changes, and fully aware of their implications, they did not lead to bureaucratic privileges and degeneration. Moreover, not a single school, clinic, hospital, university or sports facility was closed, and all unemployed continued to receive 70% of their wages and basic rations of free food. Cuba continued to provide more doctors to Third World countries than any other country in the world. Some of the innovations the Cuban people came up with to deal with the crisis have made it a model of environmental sustainability. Because it was no longer receiving much pesticide, fertiliser or farm machinery imports, Cuba was forced to carry out the largest conversion from conventional to organic farming in history. Artificial fertilisers were replaced with livestock manure and large-scale collection of household compost. To reduce the need for transportation of food into urban areas, a network of neighbourhood and backyard vegetable gardens has been promoted, using the new organic model. In Havana alone there are 50,000 community gardens. When the drop in oil imports forced cancellation of 85% of bus services, the government bought a million cheap bicycles from China and distributed them free to the population. The remaining busses were fitted with racks to carry the bicycles, so people could still get around. Immense effort was put into developing wind, solar, sugarcane-residue and micro-hydroelectricity power to deal with the collapse of output from oilburning power plants. No capitalist country could survive the economic collapse that Cuba went through in the early 1990s without massive chaos, starvation and violence. Cuba’s survival owes everything to its high levels of social equality and a free education system that promotes solidarity and dedication to social, rather than individual, advancement. Because of this, Cuba entered its crisis with 5.5 times as many scientists per capita as the rest of Latin America, an excellent health system and an active alternative agriculture movement.

Socialism and Human Nature

It’s a dog eat dog world. Whites are susceptible to racism against people of colour, men to sexism against women etc. But this isn’t "human nature". Greed and competition are not instincts. Early tribal societies didn’t teach their children concepts like "winning" and "losing". Those values are learned. People have to be taught by the system to hate, to be greedy, selfish and individualistic. Capitalism creates the values it needs to survive. We’re supposed to believe that the only incentives for human effort and progress are material possessions and profit. But think of all the scientists, artists and writers who have worked without consideration for their personal fortune in order to discover and create. Capitalism has distorted and corrupted art and science, but it hasn’t been able to completely destroy basic human creativity. A person in today’s society is like a plant trying to survive in a gloomy flat in a large city. The plant has no sun, polluted air, it’s choked with dust. You look at this dying, withering thing and wonder if you can really still call it a plant. But if the same plant grew in some rich, cultivated soil, with plenty of sunshine and fresh air and clean water, it would blossom. If people had the chance to grow in the soil of a different society, isn’t it obvious they would change too? Imagine a society free of violence, poverty and sexist, homophobic and racist oppression, where the individual can develop freely. Imagine a society where human creativity is unleashed for the benefit and enrichment of all, where competing ideas and theories are debated in a spirit of solidarity. That will be an exciting and vibrant society, in which it will be worthwhile being alive. When humanity has been freed from material want and greed, we will be able to discover and learn about what we know least: ourselves. Imagine a truly equal society where everyone’s needs are met, where people work together for each other’s benefit, where technology and production are under democratic control, where wasteful production of tanks, bombs and sports cars that hold only two people has been eliminated. In such a society, even the need for government would ultimately whither away. When people have overcome the alienation that prevents them from feeling a sense of responsibility for society, when everyone is fully educated and conscious of what needs to be done to ensure human welfare, when no-one has special access to wealth or privileged information at someone else’s expense, there will be no need for police, military, bureaucracies or any form of coercion.