Peace without Borders Concert in Cuba

Havana, Sep 20 (Prensa Latina) The Revolution Square is expected to become a seething mass of people Sunday afternoon, with peace and music as leitmotiv for a unique five-hour concert by Colombian Juanes and 14 other artists, who will perform for 11 million Cubans. Its identity seal is "Peace without Borders," the name of this Juanes' project first materialized on the Colombian border in 2008 and now in Havana.For his dream to become a reality, Juanes had to face aggressions and strong criticism from the most recalcitrant sectors in Miami.It is a dream that beat fear to emerge stronger. This way to Cuba has helped me understand many things. There will be a Juanes before and after this concert. The Juanes after Cuba is the one I want to be, he told Prensa Latina.The enormous perimeter of the Revolution Square, linked to the history and life of Cubans, is an enviable open-air scene, with 12 cameras on different brackets to facilitate better images and a sort of dialogue between artists and audience, with music as a communicating bridge.A sound test was carried out on Saturday, with musicians expressing satisfaction for the hard work done by technicians, engineers and specialists from several countries, including a US technician, who has been in charge of mounting a giant screen for the audience to be able to follow details of the concert from any angle of the Square.I think we have to be there, and not only in Cuba, but also in Ecuador, Mexico, everywhere, always remembering that we can no longer let them divide us, stressed Juanes.

High Tech, Low Pay

How changes in capitalist cycle

have impacted workers

Following are excerpts from a new introduction to the book “High Tech, Low Pay.” This ground-breaking work by Sam Marcy, written in 1986 during the early stages of capitalist restructuring, has long been out of print but will soon be reissued. Fred Goldstein, author of “Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay,” wrote the introduction for the new book.

The workers & the business cycle

One of Marcy’s concerns was to show how the capitalist business cycle put limits upon what the workers could get and what they would have to give up, so long as they accepted the traditional capital-labor relationship. This problem becomes extremely aggravated during the downturn part of the cycle or the “bust” part of the boom-and-bust, which he took up in Chapter 3.

When Marcy wrote this book, the working class had recently lived through the sharp recession of 1980-1982. Official unemployment reached a post-World War II high of 11 percent. The bosses used the recession to demand concessions and carry out restructuring. The unions were thrust onto the defensive. During a downturn, the bosses shrink production and there is high unemployment. Marcy showed that, at such times, if the labor leadership simply confines itself to bargaining for wages and conditions, concessions must necessarily follow. He wanted to signal to the more advanced workers in the labor movement that the next time the cycle turned down again, new strategies would be required to combat the bosses’ offensive.

Marcy’s concern has an urgent relevance in the midst of the current global capitalist crisis, when workers are on the defensive because of the severe rise in unemployment. But it is also timely in a deeper sense because, since he wrote, the capitalist business cycle has changed in general, making the situation even worse as far as the workers are concerned. The “boom” has weakened and the “bust” has dragged on and deepened.

Traditionally, during a capitalist boom the workers can regain some of the positions they lost during the previous bust phase. The bosses, in the race to take advantage of new profit opportunities presented by the capitalist revival, are in great need of expanding their workforce. The reserve army of unemployed contracts sharply. This reduces the competition among the workers, puts them in a stronger bargaining position, and leads to higher wages. At the same time it also leads to much higher profits for the bosses.

The era of ‘jobless recoveries’

As the scientific-technological revolution was progressing “at breakneck speed,” as Marcy put it, there occurred a change in the historic pattern of the business cycle. After the recession of 1990-1991, U.S. capitalism entered the era of “jobless recoveries.” For the first time, employment either continued to decline or remained flat long after the economy began to recover. Jobs were either being lost or remained flat for 18 months after the start of the economic upturn. Prior to that time, there had been a typical lag of one quarter, or three months, between the start of economic expansion and job recovery.

The divergence between economic growth and joblessness caused concern among bourgeois economists for a while. However, after the 1990-1991 recession came the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe. There followed a surge in investment abroad, a technology boom at home, and the longest period of economic expansion in U.S. history.

The economists promptly forgot about the jobless recovery of 1991-92. They declared the arrival of the “new economy” and the “end of history,” speculating about the end of the business cycle.

The hopes were that, after 75 years of being constrained by socialist revolution and national liberation struggles, the collapse of the material center of the socialist camp would somehow allow infinite expansion and enable the capitalists to overcome the inner contradictions of their system. But as Karl Marx wrote: “The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself.” (“Capital,” Vol. 3)

The hopes of the bourgeoisie came crashing down in 2000 with the collapse of the technology bubble and the loss of jobs along with $5 trillion in paper wealth. The vast expansion of capital to every corner of the globe could not eradicate the contradictions inherent in the profit system. It took a speculative boom in technology, with hundreds of companies being created every week, to pump up the economy even with the overseas expansion. The capitalist downturn followed the boom, just as it had since 1825 when the first global downturn took place.
More important than the downturn itself was the nature of the second “jobless recovery” that followed. It turned out that the jobless recovery of 1991- 1992 had not been an anomaly but an ominous harbinger of things to come. During the first 27 months of the next recovery, from November 2001 to March 2004, there was a net loss of 594,000 jobs. It took more than five years for the job level to reach the point at which it had been before the downturn began. According to Stephen Roach, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley at the time, job growth by 2004 was 8 million less than growth in a “normal” recovery.

It is no accident that Marcy focused on the business cycle and its consequences for the workers. The question of the business cycle has been of great concern to the working class since Marx first subjected it to scientific analysis. The boom-and-bust cycle is an essential expression of the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist system. Historically, it has brought both opportunity for struggle as well as shock and disaster to the workers. Understanding it is key to preparing for the class struggle. Studying changes in the boom-and-bust cycle can reveal important underlying features of the evolution of capitalism that the workers need to be aware of.

Marx & Engels on the business cycle

As far back as 1847, in “Wage Labor and Capital,” Marx discussed the question of the workers and the business cycle. Referring to the upside or boom part of the cycle, the period of rapid growth in profits and capitalist accumulation, Marx wrote:
“Even the most favorable situation for the working class, the most rapid possible growth of capital, however much it may improve the material existence of the worker, does not remove the antagonism between his interests and the interests of the bourgeoisie, the interests of the capitalists. Profit and wages remain as before in inverse proportion.
“If capital is growing rapidly, wages may rise; the profit of capital rises incomparably more rapidly. The material position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of his social position. The social gulf that divides him from the capitalist has widened.
“Finally:
“To say that the most favorable condition for wage labor is the most rapid possible growth of productive capital is only to say that the more rapidly the working class increases and enlarges the power that is hostile to it, the more favorable will be the conditions under which it is allowed to labor anew at increasing bourgeois wealth, at enlarging the power of capital, content with forging for itself the golden chains by which the bourgeoisie drags it in its train.” [Emphasis added—Goldstein.]
Engels gave the classic description of the capitalist boom-and-bust cycle in his work “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,” published in 1880.
“As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis broke out, the whole industrial and commercial world ... [is] thrown out of joint once every ten years. Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsalable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy.... The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filters off ... until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, and speculation which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends up where it began—in the ditch of crisis. And over and over again.”
Thus it was Marx who gave a description of the situation of the workers as regards the capitalist business cycle of the time. The period of “rapid accumulation,” that is, the period of the vigorous boom of business following a downturn, has been the most favorable historically for the working class. And it was Engels who described how capitalism goes from crisis to boom to crisis, continuing in that cycle “over and over.”
Even before the 1990s the capitalist business cycle, described a century earlier by Engels, had changed in favor of capital. Marcy, in Chapter 3, focuses on the fact that capitalist recession lengthened in the post-World War II period and that “this is very important in relation to strike strategy, which had a lot to do with the duration of the capitalist economic crisis.” It raises the question of what workers can do if a recession turns out to be protracted and the bosses can hold out for a long time.

Following is the second part of an excerpt from the introduction by Fred Goldstein to an upcoming reprint of the ground-breaking work “High Tech, Low Pay” written by Sam Marcy in 1986 during the early stages of capitalist restructuring. Goldstein is the author of “Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus With Feet of Clay.”

Even before the 1990s the capitalist business cycle, described a century earlier by Engels, had changed in favor of capital. Marcy, in Chapter 3, focuses on the fact that capitalist recession lengthened in the post-World War II period and that “this is very important in relation to strike strategy, which had a lot to do with the duration of the capitalist economic crisis.” It raises the question of what workers can do if a recession turns out to be protracted and the bosses can hold out for a long time.

Workers, ‘boom-and-bust’ and low-wage capitalism

The new era of low-wage capitalism, worldwide wage competition and slowing capitalist economic growth has put workers under pressure even during times of capitalist upturn. The booms have weakened, benefiting only the bosses, with not even relative gain for the workers.

The era of rapid accumulation, that is, rapid and tempestuous growth of capital investment, has been undercut by the growing productivity of labor and the speed with which markets become saturated. The relative labor shortage during the upturn is a thing of the past. Instead, there are jobless recoveries and the consequent eradication of the opportunity for the workers to make up lost wages by forcing increases on the bosses.
The “golden chains” Marx referred to are not so golden anymore. Marx spoke of workers getting higher wages during a boom while the capitalist got even higher profits. This meant that workers’ real wages went up, although their wages declined relative to the larger profit gains of the bosses. In the present era, these conditions no longer obtain.

For the last several decades, with a slight exception in the mid 1990s, workers’ real wages have gone down or stagnated even during the periods of expanded capitalist accumulation—during upturns. Because of off-shoring, outsourcing and wage competition with workers in low-wage areas, workers in the United States went into massive personal debt and worked extra jobs; whole families worked just to compensate for the wage decline. Not only did the relative wages of the workers decline, but their absolute standard of living plummeted—and this was before the crisis.

This makes Marcy’s work, his admonitions to the labor movement to develop new strategies to deal with protracted crisis, to engage in class-wide struggle, to break out of the traditional capital-labor relationship, more pressing than ever before.

Engels spoke of the continuous cycle of boom and bust. Certainly the cycle continues, but under conditions of structural changes to capitalism. Booms have become weaker and weaker over time. The classic booms that reemploy most of the workers laid off during the bust are a thing of the past. That is the meaning of the increasingly protracted jobless recoveries.

Solving a crisis by creating a bigger one

In fact, the immediate roots of the latest global capitalist crisis, which began in December 2007, can be traced back to the attempt by the financial authorities to overcome the jobless recovery of 2001-2004 and the weakness of the capitalist upturn.

The Federal Reserve System pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy by lowering interest rates from 5.5 percent to 1 percent. Alan Green-span directed much of this credit toward creating an artificial housing boom. He publicly urged home buyers to take out adjustable-rate mortgages. The housing market regulators gave a pass to the most egregious, often racist, subprime mortgage-lending practices. The Securities and Exchange Commission synchronized its efforts with the Fed by deliberately closing its eyes to the burgeoning market in mortgage-backed securities, derivatives and other shady practices. The rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s played their part by giving potentially toxic assets triple-A ratings.

Much of the credit made available went straight to stock market speculation and banking operations. Huge sums of fictitious capital, paper wealth with no underlying value, found their way through an unregulated conduit known as the shadow banking system—hedge funds, private equity funds and insurance companies—backed by the big Wall Street banks. This shadow system was used to evade even the minimal constraints on finance capital.
In the end, a crisis emerged in the overproduction of housing. The bubble burst, housing prices plummeted and masses of people lost their homes. Throughout the economy, production had outstripped consumption. Auto sales and construction collapsed. Record credit-card debt could not bridge the gap. Debts based on housing sales, credit cards, student loans and auto loans became bad debts. Banks were insolvent.

As Engels had predicted, hard cash disappeared, credit vanished, goods piled up, means of production were destroyed. And in the end the attempt to stem the original crisis by artificially creating a housing boom led to an even greater crisis that enveloped the globe at the speed of light.

Here is the third installment of excerpts from a new introduction to the ground-breaking work “High Tech, Low Pay.” The book, written by Sam Marcy during the early stages of capitalist restructuring and first published in 1986, has long been out of print and will soon be reissued. Fred Goldstein, who wrote this introduction, is author of “Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay.”

Analyzing the present crisis

The meaning of the crisis and its ultimate direction are questions for the ruling class and for the working class, from diametrically opposed points of view. The bourgeoisie has no theoretical framework within which to begin to approach the question. Their system is anarchic. Even government intervention and some limited planning cannot eradicate the anarchy imposed on a system based on private profit.

The bosses operate in competition and in secrecy. Their economists can really only look backward over time at what has happened and hope to divine some pattern that can be used for the future. But they cannot, dare not, analyze the system; they can only describe its behavior in a pragmatic, strictly empirical fashion.

Marxists have a broad theoretical framework combined with powerful, scientific analytical tools at their disposal. These tools must be wielded on behalf of the struggle of the workers and therefore cannot be based upon wishful thinking or pure speculation.

The broad theoretical framework within which to analyze the present situation was laid out by Marx in 1857, in his Preface to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”:
“In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. ... At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change in the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.”
This is Marx’s most general statement about the basis for the revolutionary transformation of society. In numerous places throughout his writings he applies this theory to the capitalist system. He describes how capitalism concentrates the proletariat into factories and workplaces, creating an increasingly complex division of labor in the productive process that involves more and varied types of labor from geographically diverse regions.
Marx showed how capitalism, by constantly revolutionizing the means of production under the internal compulsion of the system, socializes the productive forces—bringing workers everywhere into objective cooperation in the production of commodities. He scientifically demonstrated how this socialized production comes into conflict with private property, resulting in repetitive crises for the workers and, ultimately, for society in general.

The fundamental assertion implied by the paragraph quoted above is that sooner or later, capitalist property relations become a “fetter,” a brake on further development of the productive forces. Society cannot move forward any longer because of the stranglehold of private property. Revolution then ensues. The clash between socialized production and private ownership can only be resolved by socializing the ownership—that is, by bringing socialized ownership into harmony with socialized production and setting society on a new course of planned production for human need.

Marx was referring not just to the periodic crises and suffering brought about by capitalism. Nor does his point refer to capitalism holding back development that would be of great benefit to society—such as environmentally safe methods of production and green products. Nor is it a question of the enormous waste and gross inefficiency produced by capitalism. These are relative brakes on development.

Marx posits that at some point, capitalism inevitably becomes an absolute brake on the development of the productive forces, with a consequent crisis for the masses. Society is stymied by capitalist private property and cannot go on in the old way.

It is always helpful for clarity and educational purposes to discuss this fundamental premise put forward by Marx. It is the starting point of understanding Marxism. But it is only at rare historical moments that the discussion goes beyond making a general historical point and is raised in relation to imminent developments.

This question arose at the end of World War I when the economies of Europe had collapsed in the face of military devastation. There was revolutionary ferment in Germany, Hungary and other countries in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution. Capitalism seemed to be on the ropes. World War I had signified the beginning of the historic crisis of the capitalist system.

The development of imperialism soon resulted in the complete division of the globe among the imperialist powers, as described by Lenin in 1916 in his book “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.” It meant that capitalism had outgrown the national state as a framework for development. Soon it came to pass that even imperialist expansion could not give capitalism sufficient room to grow by ordinary economic means. It had reached such an impasse that it could only resolve its contradictions through a devastating imperialist war.

The ruling classes in Europe survived these post-war revolutionary crises, only to soon be plunged into the Great Depression. It was during the world depression of the 1930s that the question of the absolute decline of capitalism was widely discussed in concrete terms pertaining to the immediate perspective of proletarian revolution.

For the entire decade, save for a brief period in the mid 1930s, capitalist society appeared to be in a downward spiral with no end in sight. Capitalism had reached a dead end. It seemed to fulfill Marx’s general prognosis that social revolution was on the agenda.

Capitalist property, private property in the means of production, the profit system itself, had become a “fetter” on the further development of the productive forces. Capitalism had brought about the socialization of the productive process on a world scale. Yet a small group of property owners, monopolists, owned and operated this global system for the narrow purposes of enriching themselves through exploitation and profit.

The Great Depression seemed to be the end of the line. Capitalism was unable to revive itself by economic means. In the mid thirties there was a slight upturn, but then world production continued to decline. Massive unemployment remained. The colonial countries staggered under the weight of the world depression, which struck them even more drastically than the imperialist countries.

In the present period it is once again helpful from a working-class point of view to revive this discussion in order to get an accurate estimate of the period, clarify a perspective and prepare for struggle.

Here is our fourth installment of excerpts from a new introduction to the ground-breaking work “High Tech, Low Pay.” The book, written by Sam Marcy during the early stages of capitalist restructuring and first published in 1986, has long been out of print and will soon be reissued. Fred Goldstein, who wrote this introduction, is author of “Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay.”

Many comparisons are made between the present crisis and the Great Depression. But while the depression of the 1930s is fully known, the present crisis is in its early stages and has yet to be played out. Many specifics cannot be known at this point. It is best from a Marxist point of view, i.e., from a materialist standpoint, to focus on what can be studied right now.

What can be compared are the historic periods leading up to the depression of the 1930s and later to the present crisis, which began with the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007. These periods can be effectively compared.

From Civil War to Great Depression

In the first crisis, the economic forces that drove U.S. capitalism forward in the 70 years from the U.S. Civil War to the world depression of the 1930s had exhausted themselves. They were no longer able to stimulate any significant capitalist revival during the entire decade from 1929 to 1939. No economic means could bring back capitalist prosperity.

What were those forces? The Indigenous nations had finally been driven from all their lands. The so-called “frontier” had been occupied, including the half of Mexico that was annexed to become the Southwest of the United States. After the Civil War the African-American population of the South had again been subjugated, this time into a state of semi-slavery through the sharecropping system. The railroad boom had run its course. Imperialist expansion in the so-called Spanish-American War of 1898 had brought Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines into the U.S. empire, along with Samoa and Hawaii. U.S. businesses had pushed deeper into China and Latin America.

Profits rolled in from World War I and helped sustain the system for a period. There was rapid expansion of the auto industry, the electrification of the country and mass production of appliances. But by the late 1920s the expansion had led to overproduction. Massive credit and land speculation led to a crash in real estate and the stock market crash in 1929.

These were the forces that drove capitalism for 70 years after the Civil War. Once they were exhausted, the system went into a state of absolute decline and could only be revived by war preparations and, finally, World War II itself.

It took 15 million U.S. soldiers under arms and an emergency regime of total war production to alleviate mass unemployment in the U.S. It took the deaths of 50 million people or more and the destruction of factories, mines, ports, railroads, bridges and residential buildings throughout Europe and Asia to overcome the pre-war economic crisis and put capitalism back on its feet.

From World War II to 2007

A review of the situation leading up to the present crisis bears an ominous resemblance to that which preceded the Great Depression. Namely, the forces that have propelled U.S. capitalism and the development of the means of production to higher and higher levels throughout the last 70 years, since the beginning of World War II, have exhausted themselves. Artificial means employed to keep the system going are no longer sufficient to revive it in any significant way. This has led to a period of profound stagnation and perhaps to absolute decline.
In the period since World War II, U.S. capitalism has relied on various artificial methods to keep the system from collapsing. War and war preparation were a basic stimulant for decades during the post-war period. The Korean War, the Vietnam War, the military buildup during the Cold War—all served to generate capitalist production and profits, as the system could not rely on the civilian economy to automatically keep it going.

But by the end of the 1980s, even the $2 trillion Reagan military buildup in a “full-court press” to undermine the Soviet Union and the socialist camp was insufficient to sustain capitalist prosperity. The monstrous growth of the military-industrial complex has it limits as an economic stimulant.

Marcy dealt with the role of the military in bolstering the capitalist economy in Chapter 2. He showed how it fostered the scientific-technological revolution and shaped crucial sectors of the corporate economic structure to aid its design for world empire. At the same time, he showed how dependent even the largest corporations had become on the military.

The continuous development of the scientific-technological revolution, the restructuring of capitalist industry, the relentless anti-labor campaign of union-busting, the extraction of concessions, the destruction of benefits, the driving down of manufacturing wages and the steady expansion of the low-wage service economy—all enormously increased inequality in the national income in favor of capital and at the expense of the workers. All this served to bolster the profitability of the bosses and bankers. It gave the bosses a great infusion of surplus value, stolen from the workers, to ease the crisis of capital.

The collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe in the 1990s and the opening up of China to capitalist investment gave imperialism a brief period of unprecedented global expansion. The monopolies seized this opportunity to create global networks of exploitation and vast super-profits as they engineered a worldwide wage competition among the international working class and promoted the vicious race to the bottom previously referred to. Driving down the value of labor is the time-tested method of capital for combating the declining rate of profit brought about by the growing cost allocated to constant capital (plant, equipment and raw materials) and the reduction in variable capital (wages).

Globalized production has now brought a worldwide epidemic of layoffs and mass unemployment.
Militarism, technological development and anti-labor attacks were not enough to save the banks and corporations. Huge injections of credit were required. The ruling class resorted to speculation, credit bubbles, mortgage schemes, exotic financial instruments and all manner of fraud to make profits based on trading in fictitious capital. To overcome the limitations on the profitability of industry, unlimited paper profits were conjured up.

Following is the fifth part of an excerpt from the introduction by Fred Goldstein to an upcoming reprint of the groundbreaking work “High Tech, Low Pay,” written by Sam Marcy in 1986 during the early stages of capitalist restructuring. Goldstein is the author of “Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay.”

In the present crisis, none of these measures is available to restart the system in any significant way.
The two wars now underway in Iraq and Afghanistan are draining the coffers of U.S. imperialism. Overall militarization has largely been accomplished. New rounds of military development are technology intensive, such as laser-guided bombs, satellite-guided missiles, Predator drones, high-tech missile ships and fighter planes. Current imperialist wars are limited and heavily dependent on air power. The hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on militarism are essential to the system, but, at best, military spending can only help to slow down the economic crisis. It cannot restart the capitalist economy and generate prosperity.

The long period of creating a regime of low-wage capitalism, with a working class in debt and living closer and closer to the poverty level, has intensified. As this trend deepens it only aggravates the crisis of overproduction by further reducing the buying power of the masses. Driving down wages any more will only intensify the contradictions of the system.

Further use of credit on a major scale is a vanishing option. Credit has been stretched to its limit as a mechanism for reviving capitalist accumulation. The government’s handout of trillions of dollars in financial bailouts to the banks and other financial institutions has stretched the credit option even beyond the limit.

Capitalism has reached a point where, even if the trillions of dollars that the ruling class is spending in an attempt to mitigate the crisis were to result in a revival, it would be weak and short-lived, leaving many millions unemployed as jobs continue to be lost even as capital accumulation expands. Capitalism is entering a period of permanent and deepening crisis for the masses.

In the present crisis the historic methods of reviving the profitability of capitalism, of restoring capitalist accumulation and prosperity, appear to have run their course, as they did leading up to the Great Depression. This is what has the ruling class running scared.

Marx’s proposition about the inevitability of social revolution, already quoted, bears repeating here. It was phrased in the most general way:
“At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with existing relations of production or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.”

This is a summary of the broad contours of history. The specifics can only be filled in by analyzing the concrete development of the productive forces of capitalism at each stage.

Sam Marcy in his foreword to this book gave an economic characterization of the period that pointed clearly in the direction of the present profound crisis of capitalism.

“The justification for each new social system as against its predecessor is that it raises society to a higher level. It has done so in each succeeding social order by raising the productivity of labor. The great achievement of capitalism was that it not only promoted a tempestuous development of the productive forces, of science and invention on an unheard of scale, but it raised the productivity of labor. Over a period of centuries it laid the basis for raising the material standards of society and the wage levels of the working class as a whole.

“The distinctive feature of this particular phase of capitalist development, the scientific-technological phase, is that while it enormously raises the productivity of labor, it for the first time simultaneously lowers the general wage patterns and demolishes the more high-skilled, high-paid workers. It enhances the general pauperization of the population.”

But Marcy looked beyond the crisis to the future of the struggle. He discussed the changing character of the working class from a revolutionary, optimistic point of view that was firmly rooted in a materialist analysis.
He spoke at that time of the fundamental trend arising out of the objective changes in the capitalist economy: the vast expansion of lower-paid workers and the decline of the higher-paid, which he regarded as one of the most significant and profound developments to emerge in the history of capitalism.

Its significance is ultimately political. It means that the lower-paid workers, the downtrodden and oppressed who can ill afford to be held down by a conservative labor leadership, will ultimately become the predominant voice in the labor movement and provide it with the militant and ultimately revolutionary energy to challenge capital. He showed that this transformation of the working class must ultimately have a political expression.

The consciousness of the workers is forced to catch up to their condition. A delay in this process is inevitable, but overcoming this lag is equally inevitable. Being ultimately determines consciousness. Historical circumstances have delayed this radical development among the workers. But Marcy’s projection of the pauperization of the working class has developed more fully since he wrote.

Following is the sixth and final part of an excerpt from the introduction by Fred Goldstein to an upcoming reprint of the ground-breaking work “High Tech, Low Pay,” which was written by Sam Marcy in 1986, during the early stages of capitalist restructuring. Goldstein is the author of “Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay.”

The days when the conservative labor leadership has been able to hold the working class in check are numbered. Its base is shrinking with each round of concessions it makes to the bosses, with each sweetheart contract it signs. As Marcy noted, at the beginning of each crisis the workers are thrown back onto the defensive. But sooner or later they will cry “Enough is enough!” Then the tide will turn.

There is no bourgeois economist who can see ahead past one quarter. Yet Marcy’s analysis of 25 years ago, proceeding from Marxist theory, put a sharp focus on trends deep within the organism of capitalism and outlined the forces that have shaped the present.

The inevitable imbalance between production and consumption has finally led to a protracted and profound crisis of overproduction. This is certainly the worst crisis in the post-World War II era. As of June 2009, it has lasted the longest—19 months. The measures taken by the world capitalist class to overcome it are by far the greatest. It follows two previous jobless recoveries, the second far more pronounced than the first, which were only overcome by extraordinary, nonreproducible measures (expansion in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, massive bubble-creating measures in the dot-com and housing markets).

Even the most optimistic bourgeois economists concede that a recovery of capitalist production would still leave massive unemployment, as the system will be unable to reabsorb a large proportion of the workers laid off in the present crisis.

Furthermore, in the era of imperialism and the scientific-technological revolution, each round of new technological innovation by the ruling class makes it more and more difficult to start the capitalist system up again after a bust. The two most important reasons are that technology reduces the skills and buying power of the workers, while at the same time increasing productivity, thus insuring that production saturates the markets at a faster and faster rate.

The question that remains for the working class is whether or not quantity has turned into quality in the matter of the capitalist recovery—that is, whether or not the scientific-technological revolution and its effects, so profoundly analyzed by Marcy, have brought capitalism to the point where society will not be able to go forward. Has the profit system reached an impasse?

Because of the previous period of expansive globalization of capital, this crisis is the most far-reaching in terms of the numbers of workers affected. The world socialization of the production process has been brought to an extraordinarily high level. Private property is becoming a more and more intolerable brake internationally.
The ruling class is trying to shift this crisis entirely onto the backs of the workers and the oppressed, just as it did during the Great Depression.

Many are promoting the notion that crisis automatically leads to uprisings and the collapse of capitalism. This is sterile, abstract thinking, far removed from the reality of the working class. It fails to take into account the disintegrating forces exerted upon the workers by a capitalist crisis of unemployment. The workers become atomized and lose the sense of strength derived from being together on the job. Their sense of confidence and of their potential power is undermined by a crisis.

It takes great efforts by working-class leaders to find strategies and tactics to counteract the effects of the downturn, develop methods of resistance to every attack and take advantage of every upturn in the economic situation to push the struggle forward onto the offensive.

This was the principal purpose of “High Tech, Low Pay” and of much of Marcy’s life work, for that matter.
Marxism has no crystal ball. It does not dole out prescriptive formulas for how a major, global capitalist crisis of profound dimensions will play itself out.

Capitalism experienced a global economic collapse during the Great Depression. A decade of mass unemployment ensued that could not be overcome except by rearmament in the U.S. and Europe and ultimately war. Thus the manifestation of the absolute, general crisis of capitalism has been economic collapse. This variant must be taken seriously. But the possibility of a protracted period of weak and short-lived recoveries alongside growing and irreversible mass unemployment must also be considered. There could be a temporary delay in a sharp crisis as a result of massive financial manipulation and capitalist state intervention. However, that it could end either in collapse or war or both must also be considered.

The precise, immediate future cannot be known. What is known is that genuine working-class leaders must prepare for struggle and adapt to any eventuality to assist the workers in dealing with the crisis, whatever form it takes. Above all, the working class must rise to assume its historic destiny as the subject of history and lead the way out of the state of permanent crisis, into which capitalism has led humanity, towards a socialist future.

Workers World

Confused About Venezuela?

Over the past few days, major newspapers in the United States, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, have published editorials aggressively and harshly criticizing recent declarations and decisions made by re-elected President Hugo Chávez and his cabinet. A large percentage of the content of these editorials, which reflect the viewpoints of the newspapers, are based on a distortion and misconception of new policies being implemented in Venezuela and the overall way government is functioning. In the Washington Post’s “Venezuela’s Leap Backward”, published on January 10, the editorial board intentionally and mistakenly portrays the recent presidential elections this past December in Venezuela as illegitimate and unfair. By falsely claiming that Chávez conducted a “one-sided campaign that left a majority of Venezuelans believing they might be punished if they did not cast their ballots for him”, the Post wants its readers to think Venezuelans who voted for Chávez did so under duress and fear. Nothing could be further from the truth. A majority of Venezuelans publicly express their sincere admiration and approval of President Chávez in an open and fearless way on a daily basis in this country. Most Venezuelans believe Chávez is the best president the nation has ever had, and statistics prove that his government has built more bridges, railroads, hospitals, clinics, universities, schools, highways and houses than any administration in the past. The Post editorial also attempts to downplay the “only 7 million votes” Chávez received, not mentioning that those seven million votes represent more than 63% of total votes – a landslide victory to the opposition candidate’s 37% - and that no president in Venezuelan history has ever, ever received such a large number of votes in an election.The New York Times editorial, also published on January 10, attacks a recent statement made by President Chávez regarding the nationalization of one telephone company, CANTV, and an electric company. However the Times doesn’t explain that the CANTV is the only non-cellular telephone company in the country, giving it a complete monopoly on national land-line telecommunications and control over a majority of Internet service as well. Furthermore, the CANTV was privatized only in 1991, during the second non-consecutive term of Carlos Andrés Pérez, a president later impeached for corruption who implemented a series of privatization measures, despite having run for office on a non-privatization platform just three years before. In fact, as soon as Carlos Andrés Pérez won office in 1988 after convincing the Venezuelan people he would not permit “neo-liberalism” on Venezuelan shores, he immediately began to announce the privatization of several national industries, including telecommunications, education and the medical and petroleum sectors. This deception led to massive anti-privatization protests during February 1989 during which the government ordered the armed forces to “open-fire” on the demonstrators and arrest and torture those not killed. The result was the “Caracazo,” a tragic scar on contemporary Venezuelan history that left more than 3,000 dead in mass gravesites and thousands more injured and detained. The re-nationalizing of Venezuela’s one landline phone company is a strategic necessity and an anti-monopoly measure necessary to ensure that Venezuelans have access to telecommunications service. (Take it from someone who lives here. You can’t even get a landline if it isn’t already installed in your residence. The waiting list is over 2 years and you have to bribe someone to actually do the job). And furthermore, the new Minister of Telecommunications, Jesse Chacón, announced that any company “nationalized” will be fully compensated for its shares and property at market value.The third issue put forth in the editorials is the recent announcement by President Chávez that the license of private television station RCTV to operate on the public airwaves is up for review in May 2007 and most likely will not be renewed. The government has based its denial of the license renewal on RCTV’s lack of cooperation with tax laws, its failure to pay fines issued by the telecommunications commission, CONATEL, over the past twenty years, and its refusal to abide by constitutional laws prohibiting incitation to political violence, indecency, obscenity and the distortion of facts and information. The public airwaves, as in the case of the United States, are regulated by government. Television and radio stations apply for licenses from the telecommunications commission and are granted those licenses based on conditional compliance with articulated regulations. When a station does not abide by the requirements, it generally is fined and warned, repeatedly, until compliance is assured. In the specific case of RCTV, the station and its owner, multi-millionaire Marcel Granier, have refused to comply with the law and have continued to abuse and violate the clear and concise regulations that are supposed to guarantee Venezuelan citizens their constitutional right to “true and accurate information” (Article 58 of the Constitution).RCTV’s owner, Marcel Granier, played a key role in the April 2002 coup d’etat against President Chávez and has used his station to engage in an ongoing campaign of anti-Chávez propaganda and efforts to destabilize the nation through distorting and manipulating information to create panic, apathy, fear and violence in Venezuelan society. The station’s clear violations of the telecommunications regulations and the Constitutional guarantees that protect freedom of speech and access to true and accurate information provide sufficient reason to deny the renewal of its license to use the public airwaves. Unlike the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times (Fidel Chávez?, January 11, 2007) mistakenly claims, Chávez and his government are not “shutting down” the private media station. RCTV can continue to operate on the private airwaves, i.e. cable and satellite television. As would be the case in any country where law and order are respected, RCTV will not receive a renewal on its license to remain on the public airwaves because it repeatedly violated the law during more than a decade.Unfortunately, international groups that allegedly protect freedom of the press and of speech around the world, have fallen under the influence and manipulation of RCTV president Marcel Granier, who through his close relationship with Washington, is conducting a campaign to defend his station by user the banner of freedom and liberty. But consistent lawbreakers and coup leaders should not receive the support of international press watchdog groups and human rights defenders. Rather, those groups should praise the decision of the Venezuelan government to maintain the public airwaves in the hands of the public. The license so abused by RCTV will most likely be granted to various community and alternative media groups and stations in Venezuela that have emerged over the past few years as a result of the direct encouragement and support of the Chávez administration.Finally, the editorials in the Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, all criticize President Chávez’s announcement to create a new political party in Venezuela: the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The editorials inaccurately claim that Chávez will dissolve all political parties in the country and allow only one party to operate. This is a dangerous and false inference. What Chávez really declared was the formation of a new revolutionary party that would be open to all parties that support the revolution. There will be no closing down or abolishing of other political parties in the nation; they can all remain as they wish and those that choose to merger or support the new party can also freely do so. Furthermore, Chávez indicated that the reason for the designing of a new political party is to break free from the old corrupt hierarchical party structures of the past that concentrate power in the hands of few and exclude and ignore the vast majority of supporters. Chávez remarked that the new party he seeks to promote will be formed by grassroots community movements, and that there will be no power structures that isolate and marginalize constituents.If you only read the US press, you must be very confused about Venezuela. The extreme levels of distortion, lack of fact checking and source verification and outright manipulation of information in the US media on Venezuela is quite troubling and dangerous in a nation that has waged wars based on false data and misleading policies.
EVA GOLINGER

REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL

Almeida is more alive today than ever

I have spent hours listening by television to the entire country’s tribute to Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida Bosque. I think that confronting death was for him a duty like all of those that he fulfilled throughout his life; he did not know, nor did we, how much sadness the news of his physical absence would bring to us.
I had the privilege of knowing him: a young black man, a worker, combative who, successively, was chief of his revolutionary cell, a Moncada combatant, a prison compañero, platoon captain in the Granma landing, Rebel Army officer — brought to a standstill during his advance by a shot to the chest in the violent Combat of Uvero — a Column commander, marching to create the Third Eastern Front, a compañero who shared the leadership of our forces in the last victorious battles to overthrow the dictatorship.
I was a privileged witness to his exemplary conduct for more than half a century of heroic and victorious resistance, in the struggle against bandits, the counter-blow of Girón, the October Crisis, the internationalist missions and the resistance to the imperialist blockade.
I listened with pleasure to some of his songs, and especially that one of impassioned emotion which, in response to the homeland’s call for "victory or death," bade farewell to human dreams. I did not know that he had written more than 300 of them that joined his literary work, a source of enjoyable reading and of historic events. He defended principles of justice that will be defended at all times and during any period, as long as human beings breathe on Earth.
Let us not say that Almeida has died! He is more alive today than ever!

Speech by Raúl Castro

The modest results reaffirm our optimism and confidence that

Yes, we can do it!

Speech by General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz, president of the Councils of State and Ministers, at the central rally commemorating the 56th anniversary of the assault on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Garrisons, in the Mayor General Calixto García Plaza, Holguín, July 26, 2009, "Year of the 50th anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution."
Combatants of July 26, 1953 (Applause), of the Rebel Army, the clandestine struggle and the glorious internationalist missions (Applause;
Families of the fallen;
Women and men of Holguín (Applause); compatriots:
We could begin by asking a question out of pure personal curiosity. You all know that I am from here (Applause and exclamations), and therefore I have the right to pry in the context of knowing, if possible, which co-province-dweller thought of placing us here with the sun behind us (Laughter), which doesn’t bother me, but I’m sure that none of you can see me; you will see, perhaps, a shadow: that’s me (Applause).
"For those reasons, at this commemoration of the 56th anniversary of the assault on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Garrisons, my speech will be very brief, considering the high temperatures that have characterized our summer this year, even though we are beginning earlier than usual — at 7:00 hours — and knowing that all of you have been here since 6:00 a.m, the majority of you have come on foot from your respective homes (Applause), and that last night, as I briefly saw on television, you were precisely celebrating this anniversary. And, moreover, that sun, placed in front of you by who knows who.
For these reasons, I will be brief, I repeat, and in the coming days, very soon, we will be having important meetings that will serve as highly appropriate scenarios for exploring complex questions in depth.
The first is the Council of Ministers, the day after tomorrow, dedicated to analyzing the second adjustment to expenditure in this year’s plan, due to the effects on our economy of the world economic crisis, particularly the significant reduction in income from exports and additional restrictions on access to sources of external financing.
As you all know, for 11 days I was touring several countries in friendly Africa, and participating – until very recently – as president of the Non-Aligned Movement, and handing over that responsibility to the president of Egypt.
The time that I have available is very little and tight on account of these meetings and the important issues that I am informing you about.
The day after the Council of Ministers meeting, on July 29, we will hold the 7th Plenary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, in which, for an entire day, according to the program and agenda to be discussed, we will be analyzing vital issues related to the national and international situation.
And moreover, lastly, the ordinary session of the National Assembly of People’s Power is convened for August 1, when, among other things, the draft Law for the General Comptroller of the Republic will be subjected to debate. That office will contribute to raising exigency in implementation of existing legislation and in terms of control for all structures of the country’s leadership.
REWARD FOR EFFORTS AND WORK
This year, the selection of the venue for the central event of the 26th of July did not strictly follow the established indicators. It would have been illogical to base the selection solely on the degree of meeting those indicators, when since September, after the devastating passing of the hurricanes, it was evident that, in a large part of the country, it was simply impossible to meet them.
Do not forget, as we reported in our Parliament at the time, that the destruction — without saying that the figures are all perfectly reconciled or accounted for – totals approximately $10 billion, the equivalent of 20% of the gross domestic product; or in other words, of the value of everything we did in terms of work and production during last year.
For those reasons the Political Bureau, in determining that Holguín should be the venue and naming as "outstanding" the provinces of Villa Clara, Granma and City of Havana, balanced what had been achieved in the first months of the year, in more or less normal circumstances, with – above all – the efforts of the provinces, first to deal with the meteorological phenomena and ensure the fewest human and material losses, and then particularly in the recovery work.
In that, a great responsibility has fallen on Holguín. It is an extensive province, with more than one million inhabitants and a considerable influence on the national economy because of its nickel industry, it being the third largest tourist destination in the country and other important production. It is a reward for the efforts made and the work done.
Therefore, we congratulate the women and men of Holguín (Applause); compañero Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (Applause), first secretary of the Party in the province during that difficult time and in previous years, which were also ones of intensive work. We extend those congratulations to compañero Jorge Cuevas Ramos (Applause) of Las Tunas, another province hit hard by Hurricane Ike; since elected head of the Party in Holguín; he has carried out enthusiastic and active work.
We likewise congratulate the outstanding provinces, without failing to recognize the efforts made by everybody; the compatriots of Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth (Applause), in the west, who faced extremely severe damage, and the people of Camagüey and Las Tunas, particularly the inhabitants of Santa Cruz del Sur and Guayabal, towns that were considerably affected, in some cases causing total destruction (Applause).
A PEOPLE EDUCATED IN GENUINE SOLIDARITY
I have just mentioned some of the places that suffered the greatest damage. There have been really difficult months of arduous work from one end of the nation to the other. All over the country, our people’s capacity for resistance, organization and solidarity has been demonstrated. Examples abound of how work should be undertaken in these times.
That was the conduct of the immense majority of compatriots in this province during the passing of Hurricane Ike and subsequent months. That is how it was everywhere.
Many compañeros have remained mobilized far from their families, even though more than a few of them also suffered serious limitations, often housed in shelters after having lost all or part of their homes.
They trusted in the Revolution and carried out their assigned tasks, conscious of their importance and confident that their loved ones would not be neglected.
Likewise, it says a lot about the human quality of our people how they were massively willing to welcome into their homes neighbors whose houses were unsafe, an attitude that has become everyday in the face of adversities of every type.
It is in these values that our people are educated, in genuine solidarity; they share what they have with their brothers and sisters, be they Cuban or from other lands, not what is left over, and here nothing is left over, usually just problems (Applause).
In that same measure, the Cuban people are grateful for the help, gestures of generosity and support received from many places all over the world. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the noble and honorable work of the interreligious foundation Pastors for Peace (Applause), and its leader, the Reverend Lucius Walker (Applause), and the members of the 20th U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan, as well as the Venceremos Brigade that is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and its representatives who are here with us at this rally (Applause).
DAMAGE TO HOUSING IS A VERY SERIOUS MATTER
The damage to housing is a very serious matter. In Holguín alone, almost 125,000 homes were affected, about half of which have been restored.
Nationwide, if we combine the damage from these three hurricanes with that still pending solution from previous years, above all at the beginning of the century for similar reasons of hurricanes, at the end of 2008, these added up to more than 600,000; that is why I warned then that time would be needed to radically turn around that situation.
An effort has been made that is worthy of being recognized, by agencies, workplaces and residents themselves. It is significant that as of July 20, some 43% of damages had been resolved; that is, more than 260,000 homes.
Nevertheless, there is a great deal of work to be done, and moreover it is necessary to avoid such enormous figures accumulating again in the future, taking into account that, due to climate change, many scientists are predicting that hurricanes may become more intense and much more frequent.
BEING IN A POSITION TO ANTICIPATE AND DEAL WITH DROUGHT
Likewise, work is underway to be in a position to anticipate and deal with the effects of recurrent periods of drought, increasingly long and intense, via different measures, including water pipelines, even from one province to another.
Remember the three difficult years of drought from 2000 to 2005 when, it was necessary to transport water all over the country — even on trains and in every kind of vehicle and container — to close to 3.5 million Cubans (Applause).
That is why we are constructing those strategic water pipelines in different places, which will enable us to maneuver with that vital liquid from one province to another.
As everybody knows, this monumental project began here in Holguín, where the paradox is presented of two regions side by side: one of the highest rainfall on the island — there on the outskirts of Baracoa, Guantánamo province — and one of the driest, which a few years ago endangered the water supply of this well-populated city.
In the coming days — we were going to do it today after this rally, but because of the previously stated reasons at the beginning of my remarks, we will do so during the course of August, later on — we will formally inaugurate the first stage of the East-West pipeline (Applause), which includes the pipeline from the Nipe Reservoir — there near the river of the same name in Mayarí municipality — to the Gibara Reservoir, not in the vicinity of the city of Gibara, but more to the north, one that is here, closer to the city of Holguín, east of it.
Or, in other words, Nipe Reservoir to Gibara; from there, downstream, via the river which I believe has the same name, to the Colorado Reservoir, which is further north, and from this Colorado Reservoir, it goes back, but through the north, via another pipeline that has been constructed, to the El Naranjo Reservoir, with a capacity of about 11 or 12 million cubic meters, but which is often dry, and which supplies that area and the Guardalavaca tourism complex, where during those years of drought it was necessary to close down some hotels.
Once finished and in use, this costly project — and this is just the beginning —will ensure a stable water supply for northern Holguín, including its capital.
The continuation of the project, which is in an advanced stage, includes the construction of a reservoir called Melones, which, to be more exact, I propose calling Mayarí, after the river that feeds it (Applause), whose curtain — the only one of its type built in Cuba with that technology — will be closed by April 2011, although it will begin storing water next year, 2010.
The Nipe Reservoir, with about 130 million cubic meters, was under construction for 25 years without giving it any use value.
At the time of the aforementioned inauguration of the first stage in August, which I already mentioned to you; that is, of the East-West pipeline, the television will broadcast an extensive report on this large-scale and extremely important project, which moreover will explain the entire system of interprovincial water pipelines under construction.
It is a program for the present and above all for the future, when water will be an increasingly scarcer resource, above all on a long, narrow island like ours, where the precious liquid is lost in rapid flows into the sea.
I have only mentioned one stage of this program, which covers a large part of the country, from Sancti Spíritus, in the center of the island, to Guantánamo. In the first semester of next year, this latter province, concretely the fertile valley of Caujerí, will begin receiving water by gravity via tunnels bored through the mountains — in this case built by the armed forces — which will imply considerable fuel savings by eliminating its costly pumping.
Work is also underway to rebuild this province’s aqueduct and sewer systems, including the municipalities of Cacocum and Urbano Noris, and specific actions in Frank País, Gibara and Banes. In the city of Holguín, 114 km of lines have been laid, with 21,620 pipes feeding houses and a benefited population of 86,400 inhabitants.
With the arrival of new equipment in the coming months, the pace of this work will be stepped up in Holguín, the location of one of the three factories that produce the necessary pipes of different sizes. As is known, another costly investment is underway to definitively solve the water supply problem in Santiago de Cuba, and which should be finished in 2010. And in 2011, work is should be completed on the El Cristo and El Cobre aqueducts in that Santiago municipality, and the one in Palma Soriano is now being studied.
RETURNING TO THE LAND, MAKING IT PRODUCE MORE
Moving onto another subject, of the few that I plan to touch on this morning, on July 26, 2007 in Camagüey, I referred to the pressing need for us to return to the land, to make it produce more. At that time, almost half the arable area was idle or under-exploited. We called at the time for generalizing – with the greatest speed possible and without improvisations – every experience of outstanding producers in the state and campesino sector, and to stimulate their hard work, as well as to definitively resolve the state’s damaging failure to make payments in that sector.
The handover of land in usufruct is progressing satisfactorily, although shortcomings persist, in some municipalities more than in others. Of the 110,000-plus applications made, close to 82,000 have been approved to date, covering 690,000 hectares; in other words, 39 percent of idle land.
I believe that it is little. It is not a question now of rushing to distribute it without control; it is doing so more efficiently, it is doing it in an organized way, and it is a task of top strategic priority. One of the speakers who preceded me referred to the fact that it is a matter of national security to produce the products used in this country and on which we spend hundreds and thousands of millions of dollars — and I am not exaggerating — transporting them from other countries.
The land is there, here are the Cuban people, let us see if we work or not, if we produce or not, if we keep our word or not! It is not a question of shouting ‘Homeland or Death!’ ‘Down with imperialism!’ ‘The blockade is hurting us!’ while the land is there, waiting for our sweat. Despite the increasingly greater heat, we have no choice but to make it produce. I think we agree (Exclamations of "Yes!" and applause)
Flying, mostly by helicopter, all over the country, I sometimes order the pilot to take a detour and fly over any town, city, etc. I can assure you that in the majority, there is an abundance of land, and good quality land, right outside our backyards, which is not being cultivated; and that is where a plan is being made to advance, with intensive crops, irrigating wherever possible, where there is water and the resources to do so. If one day there is no fuel left in this crazy, changing world, we should have our food close by, to be able to bring it in a cart with horses, an ox, or pushing it ourselves (Applause).
Of the land distributed, close to half has been declared free of marabú and other undesirable plants, and almost 225,000 hectares have been planted — that is, one-third.
We cannot be satisfied as long as a single hectare of land exists without being usefully employed, and while a person willing to make it produce is waiting for an answer.
Land that is no good for producing food should be used for planting trees, which are, moreover, a great resource. And the person who is talking to you has experimented for many years, especially in recent years, with planting small forests, and I have had the pleasure and satisfaction of watching them grow, and according to the type of tree, sometimes, within five years, I have formed a small forest with several hundred different types (of trees); but every time we talk about this subject, officials from the Ministry of Agriculture appear — the current one, and all the previous ministers of agriculture — with an endless list of millions of pesos or foreign currency requested for the task assigned, and if a little plastic bag doesn’t appear, the planting can’t be done. I don’t know what the hell our grandparents planted with (Laughter and applause), but there they all are, and we are eating the mangos that they planted (Applause).
We are not educating children to love trees, and that they should plant some— where there is land, of course — over the course of their years in elementary and high school. Some of the youth leaders are hearing me here; but planting trees can be done by young people of the third age, like me; in other words, it is not just a task for the young (Applause).
There are encouraging results for the milk distribution process, which has grown by more than 100 million liters annually in the last two years, given that from 272 million in 2006, it went up to 403 million in 2008, and this year everything seems to indicate that the increase will be higher. I spoke about this in 2007 in Camagüey, on a day like today.
I have very briefly addressed two aspects of the decisive issue of food production, which holds great importance in replacing imports, as I was saying to you, and in reducing the country’s hard-currency expenditure.
OUR PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF OVERCOMING ALL DIFFICULTIES
The progress ratified, despite the shortages in material and financial resources, while insufficient, confirm the enormous potential that we have yet to exploit in agriculture and in all sectors of the economy.
The modest results reaffirm for us once again the optimism and confidence that yes, we can do it! And that our heroic people are capable of overcoming all difficulties, no matter how large (Applause).
It is without any doubt an enormous challenge in the midst of an economic blockade and many other aggressions conceived of precisely to prevent the nation’s development.
Our people have never failed when the country has called. Invariably, they have said "Present!" from the times when the Mambí troops of Calixto García, the general of three wars, with his star on his forehead, committed suicide before letting himself be taken prisoner; the son of a heroic mother, he faced in these lands many thousands of soldiers with far superior weapons, far more, in the largest army sent by the Spanish colonial power to the Americas.
And together with the Liberation Army, the population withstood, stoically and without ceasing the struggle, the countless hardships caused by the war and the cruel repression of the colonial authorities. That was our lineage and we will continue to be true to their legacy (Applause).
With the monolithic unity of our people, its most powerful weapon, forged in the crucible of the struggle under the guidance of the leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz (Applause), no matter how great the difficulties and dangers may be, we will continue forward! (Applause)
Glory to the country’s martyrs! (Exclamations of "Glory!") Viva Fidel! (Exclamations of: "Viva!")¡Viva Cuba libre! (Exclamations of: "Viva!") (Ovation).
Translated by Granma

THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE CUBAN FIVE (PART II)

The Face of Impunity

By Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly of People's Power

• As they recognized during voir dire, the kidnapping of Elian González and its consequences for the community was very much in the minds of those chosen to be jurors at the trial of the Cuban Five a few months after the six-year-old boy was rescued by the federals.
Like everybody else they had followed the events related to Elian which saturated the news. The faces of the kidnappers, their promoters and supporters, as well as others involved in the scandal had become quite familiar to the jury members. The faces, and two features of the Elian drama: its unique nature and its direct connection with the trial of the five Cubans.
First, the perplexing behavior of every Miami public official, from its Federal Congress members, the mayor and the city commissioners, to firefighters and members of the police force, who openly refused to obey the law and did nothing to put an end to the most publicized case of child abuse ever to occur. And, secondly, but no less incredibly, that nothing happened to a group of individuals who had so clearly violated the law with the abduction of a child and the violence and disturbances that they created all over the city when he was rescued by the federal government. Nobody was prosecuted, arrested, or fined. No local authority was dismissed, replaced or asked to resign. The Elian case demonstrated how anti-Castro impunity reigns in Miami.
When the jurors first took their seats in the Court room to do their citizens’ duty they were probably taken by surprise. There, live, were the "Miami celebrities" that they were so used to seeing, day and night, on local TV. And they were together, sometimes smiling and embracing each other, like old pals. The kidnappers and the "law enforcement" guys hand and glove with the prosecutors (those valiant people who never showed up when a little boy was being molested in front of the media).
The jurors spent seven months in that room looking at, and being watched by the same people so familiar to them who now were on the witness stand, in the public area or at the news corner, the same people there frequently going to find in the parking lot, at the building entrance, in the corridors. Some of them now and then proudly displaying the attire used for their last military incursion to Cuba.
The jurors heard them explaining in detail their criminal exploits and saying time and again that they were not talking about the past. It was a strange parade of individuals to appear in a court of law, acknowledging their violent acts against Cuba planned, prepared and launched from their own neighborhood.
There, making speeches, demanding the worst punishment, slandering and threatening the defense lawyers.
The judge did what she could to try to preserve calm and dignity. She certainly ordered the jury, many times, not to consider certain inappropriate remarks but, in doing so, could not erase their prejudicial and fearsome effects from the jurors’ minds.
The consequences were obvious. The Court of Appeal panel’s decision stated it in clear terms: "The evidence at trial disclosed the clandestine activities not only of the defendants, but also of the various Cuba exile groups and their military camps that continue to operate in the Miami area. The perception that these groups could inflict harm on jurors who rendered a verdict unfavorable to their views was palpable". (Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal, No. 01-17176, 03-11087)
But there was more. After hearing and seeing the abundant evidence of terrorist acts that the defendants had tried to avert, the government succeeded in defending the terrorists by having the Court inexplicably agree to remove from the jury the right to exonerate the Five on the basis of legal necessity, which was the foundation of their defense.
The heart of the matter, in this case, was the need for Cuba to protect its people from the criminal attempts of terrorists who enjoy total impunity in U.S. territory. The law in the United States is clear: if persons act to prevent a greater harm, even if they violate the law in the process, they will be excused from any criminality because society recognizes the necessity – even the benefit – of taking such action.
The United States, the only world superpower, has interpreted that universal principle to take war to distant lands in the name of fighting terrorism. But at the same time it refused to recognize it in the case of five unarmed, peaceful, non-violent persons who, on behalf of a small country, without causing harm to anybody, tried to avert the illegal acts of criminals who have found shelter and support in the United States.
The U.S. government, through the Miami prosecutors, went even further, to the last mile, to help those terrorists. They did it very openly, in writing and with passionate speeches that, curiously, were not considered newsworthy.
That was happening in 2001. While the Southern Florida prosecutors and the local FBI were so caught up in harshly punishing the Cuban Five and protecting "their" terrorists, the criminals preparing the 9/11 attack had been training, unmolested, in Miami for quite some time. They must have had a weighty reason for preferring that location. (Taken from Counterpunch) •

The Untold Story of the Cuban Five (Part 1)

Forbidden Heroes

By Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada

"It takes all the running you can do,to keep in the same place"Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

• REMEMBER Elian?
The case of Elian González, a six year-old boy forcefully retained by his unknown great-uncles against the will of his father and in clear defiance of U.S. law and decency was widely reported by media around the world. Miami, the place of the kidnapping, became a kind of secessionist city in North America when the Mayor, the chief of police, the politicians, every newspaper and local radio and TV broadcasters, together with religious and business institutions, joined with some of the most notorious terrorist and violent groups in opposing the courts' and government's orders to free the boy.
It was necessary for a Special Forces team sent from Washington DC to launch a surreptitious and swift operation to occupy several houses, disarm the heavily armed individuals hidden there and in the neighborhood to save the child and restore law.
Everybody followed that story. Day in and day out.
But practically nobody knew that, at the very same time, in exactly the same place--Miami--five other young Cubans were arbitrarily deprived of their freedom and subjected to a gross miscarriage of justice.
Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González were detained in the early hours of Saturday September 12th, 1998, and locked for the next 17 months in punishment cells, in solitary confinement. The main accusation against them--as recognized by the prosecutors and the judge from their indictment to the last day of the trial--was that they had peacefully, with no weapons, penetrated ant-Cuban terrorist groups with a view of reporting back to Cuba about their criminal plans.
Was it conceivable to have a fair trial in Miami for any Cuban revolutionary facing such an accusation? Could that happen while the kidnapping of Elian was going on with its surrounding atmosphere of violence, hatred and fear?
According to the prosecution it was perfectly possible. In their words Miami was "a very large, diverse, heterogeneous community" capable of handling any sensitive issue, even those involving the Cuban Revolution. The prosecutors repeated that line when rejecting the more than ten motions presented by the defense lawyers requesting a change of venue before the start of the trial.
The same government that was obligated to deal with Miami as a sort of rebel city and to secretly send there its forces to restore legality, lied repeatedly about the venue issue, denying the defendants a right so cherished by Americans, and refused to move the proceedings to the neighboring city of Fort Lauderdale, half an hour away from Miami.
Ironically, a few years later, in 2002, when the government was the object of a civilian complaint of an administrative nature, of far lesser significance--later resolved by an out of Court settlement--and only indirectly related to the Elian case, they asked for a change of venue to Fort Lauderdale, affirming that "anything related to Cuba" was impossible to get a fair trial in Miami. (Ramírez vs. Ashcroft, 01-4835 Civ-Huck, June 25, 2002)
Such a flagrant contradiction, a clear proof of prosecutorial misconduct, of real prevarication, was one of the main factors leading to the unanimous decision of the Court of Appeals panel, in 2005, to vacate the convictions of the Five and order a new trial. (Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, No. 01-17176, 03-11087).
That historic decision was later reversed by the majority of the entire Court under pressure from Attorney General Alberto González in an action that went contrary to the normal US legal practice. Mr. González's successful move, a manifestation of his peculiar legal philosophy, foreclosed the possibility of a just resolution of this case in a manner that would have honored the United States.
The panel decision, an exceptionally sound and solid 93 pages document, including irrefutable facts about the half century old terrorist war against Cuba, remains an outstanding moment in the best American tradition and will continue to be a text to be analyzed with respect by scholars and law school students.
But that’s another chapter in the long saga of the Cuban Five.
Elián González now is about to finish high school and continues to attract the attention of foreign media and visitors who keep going to Cardenas, the beautiful town where he lives. When traveling towards Elian’s home they will be surprised by billboards demanding freedom for five youngsters they never heard off before.
In Leonard Weinglass’s words:
"The trial was kept secret by the American media. It is inconceivable that the longest trial in the United States at the time it was taking place was only covered by the local Miami press, particularly where generals and an admiral as well as a White House advisor were all called to testify for the defense. Where was the American media for six months? Not only was this the longest trial, but it was the one case involving mayor issues of foreign policy and international terrorism. The question should be directed to the American media, with continues to refuse to cover a case with such gross violations of fundamental rights, and even violations of human rights of prisoner". (Response by Leonard Weinglass in the forum organized by www.antiterroristas.cu on September 12, 2003).
Elian was saved because Americans knew about his case and got involved and made justice prevail. The Five are still incarcerated – it will be 11 years next September – victims of a terrible injustice, because Americans are not permitted to know.
The Five are being cruelly punished because they fought against terrorism. They are heroes. But forbidden heroes. •

Forbidden Heroes

Justice in Wonderland

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada —

President of the National Assembly of People’s Power

"Sentence first-verdict afterwards"Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

• Having been defeated on the issue of venue the outcome of the Cuban Five's trial was predetermined. It will go strictly in accordance with the Queen’s prophecy.
The American media played a very important two-pronged role. Outside Miami it was, and it continues to be, how Attorney Leonard Weinglass so aptly described contrasting sharply with their role within Dade County, both offering an impressive show of discipline.
The local media not only intensively covered the case, but intervened actively in it, as if they were part of the prosecution. The Five were condemned by the media even before they were indicted.
Very early in the morning on Saturday September 12th 1998, each media outlet in Miami was talking breathlessly about the capture of some "terrible" Cuban agents "bent to destroy the United States" (the phrase that prosecutors love so much and will repeat time and again during the entire process). "Spies among us" was the headline that morning. At the same time, by the way, the Miami FBI chief was meeting with Lincoln Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ross Lehtinen, representatives of the old Batista gang in federal Congress.
An unprecedented propaganda campaign was launched against five individuals who could not defend themselves, due to the fact that they were completely isolated from the outside world, day and night, for a year and a half, in what is accurately described in prison jargon as the "hole".
A media circus has surrounded the Five since they were detained all the way until now. But only in Miami. Elsewhere in the United States the ordeal of the Five has only gotten silence. The rest of the country does not know much about this case and is kept in the dark, as if everybody accepted that Miami--that "very diverse, extremely heterogeneous community" as described by the D.A.--belongs to another planet.
That might have been a reasonable proposition, if it were not for some rather embarrassing facts recently discovered. Some of the media people involved in the Miami campaign--"journalists" and others--were paid by the US government, were in its payroll as employees of the radio and TV anti-Cuban propaganda machine that has cost many hundreds of millions of US tax payer’s dollars.
Without knowing it, Americans were forced to be very generous, indeed. There is a long list of "journalists" from Miami who covered the entire trial of the Five and, at the same time, were receiving juicy federal checks (for more on the "work" of these journalist see: www.freethefive.org).
The Court of Appeals decision in 2005 provides also a good summary of the propaganda campaign before and during the trial. That was one of the reasons leading the panel "to vacate the convictions and order a new trial". Miami was not a place to have even the appearance of justice. As the judges said "the evidence submitted in support of the motions for change of venue was massive". (Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, No. 01-17176, 03-11087)
Let’s clarify something. Here we are not talking about journalists in the sense Americans outside Miami may be thinking of. We are referring to Miami "journalists," something quite different.
Their role was not to report the news, but to create a climate guaranteeing conviction. They even called for public demonstrations outside the office of the defense counsel and harassed prospective jurors during the pretrial phase. The Court itself expressed concern about the "tremendous amount of requests for the voir questions in advance of them being asked, apparently destined to inform their listeners, including members of the venire, of the questions prior to the time they are posed to them by the Court".
We are talking about a bunch of individuals who harassed the jurors, following them, with cameras, through the streets, filming their car licenses and showing them on TV, tracking them inside the Court building, down to the jury room’s door, during the entire seven months trial proceedings, all the way to the last day.
Judge Leonard more than once protested and begged the government to stop such a deplorable masquerade. She did that at the very beginning of the trial, on several occasions thereafter and until the very end. To no avail. (Official transcripts of the trial, pp. 22, 23, 111, 112, 625, 14644-14646).
The government was not interested in having a fair trial. During the jury selection process, the prosecution was very keen to exclude the majority of African American prospective jurors. It also excluded the three individuals who didn’t manifest strong anti-Castro sentiments.
By that time Elian González has been rescued but he was very much in the minds of the jurors. As one of them said during voir dire: "I would be concerned about the reaction that might take place … I don’t want rioting and stuff like that to happen like what happened in the Elian case". Or in the words of another: "I would be a nervous wreck if you wanted to know the truth … I would have actual fear for my own safety if I didn’t come back with a verdict that was in agreement with the Cuban community".
In that ambience of fear began the longest trial to date in American history. And the one that the big media "chose" to ignore.