Open Letter to the Left

Dear comrades,

The Cuban Revolution faces its gravest danger in decades. With Cuba under relentless siege by U.S. imperialism and subject to a crippling blockade, the Communist Party (PCC) leadership has responded by capitulating and opening the door to far-reaching marketization and foreign capital. This course threatens the very social foundations of the 1959 Revolution and risks repeating, under different conditions, the disastrous events that culminated in capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union.

We therefore appeal to every organization and comrade on the left prepared to defend the conquests of the Cuban Revolution—from revolutionary socialists to dissidents in the PCC and trade-union militants within and outside Cuba—to reject these reforms and collaborate to defend the Revolution. Whatever our differences on broader strategic questions, we share an urgent responsibility to oppose capitalist restoration, demand an end to the U.S. blockade and fight for the preservation of the planned economy. The decisive question is whether we are prepared to act together against the counterrevolutionary danger.

Such collaboration could take the form of organizing joint events, demonstrations, or statements, and publicizing the urgent need for a left opposition to the disastrous course of the PCC leadership as widely as possible in the countries and arenas in which we work. This must be combined with the broadest possible debate among the working masses on the way forward. The ICL has put forward some elements of such a program in our articles “Cuba: How to Stop the Catastrophe” (30 June) and “Cuban CP ‘Reforms’ Open the Door to Counterrevolution” (20 June) as well as our 23 June podcast “Fight counterrevolution in Cuba! Oppose reforms, for a left opposition!”

We welcome any suggestions for initiatives and joint work. Now more than ever, a united anti-imperialist campaign is urgent to offer the Cuban people a socialist alternative to both bureaucratic stagnation and capitalist counterrevolution.

Communist greetings,

Julia Emery

For the International Communist League (Spartacist)