The PCC and Today's Cuba

The Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) represents a specific national project based on social justice, sovereignty and anti-imperialism; a national project that is based on the interests of the working class, of the people

Author: Michel E. Torres Corona | informacion@granmai.cu

May 21, 2021 16:05:27

Martí, Mella and Fidel. Photo: Ilustrativa

The principal challenge of the Communist Party of Cuba is to be the vanguard: have the capacity to bring together the best of the good, as Che would say. And also, of course, be able to include those nuclei of intellectuals who are part to the system but may or may not have formal ties with the Party, and represent points of counter-hegemonic resistance, which must be assimilated, attracted and, in some way, offered an instrument for their thought.

The Party is not an entity for the preservation of the status quo. It is the force that organizes the popular masses to guide the revolutionary transformation of social reality. As the guiding political organization of Cuban society, it must channel the enthusiasm generated by the socio-political project that is the Revolution, the energy supporting the alternative system which the Party defends, and which, within or alongside the Party, we defend.

Moreover, the Party must work interacting within the ideological spaces that operate in Cuban society: schools, the media, etc. Based on the authority granted by the Constitution and that gained through its members work, the Party must have an influence in these environments to ensure that they do not simply reproduce liberal common sense, but rather contribute to the emancipation of human beings.

In its relationship with the press and mass media, the Party must modernize its communication methods, avoiding the danger of frivolity. The desire to reach "wider" audiences or the eagerness to be "modern" can divert the organization’s path and allow it to become a symbol of everything that the Revolution struggles against, of everything that should be rejected by the Revolution.

Socialism is not a model in the strictly economic sense, but rather a continuous process of struggle for a system with more advanced ideals and a deeper appreciation of human dimensions. No revolutionary, whether a Party member or not, can lose sight of this, or stop calling attention to this reality.

After the revolutionary victory, a popular phrase asserted, "The Revolution does not tell you to believe, the Revolution tells you to read." The people’s literacy was a major area of concern. Today we all know how to read and write, but we must deepen this literacy, develop new sensibilities, new intellectual perspectives. We can never be satisfied with what we have today: a reality of great achievements, but with shortcomings as well, not only in the material arena, which we must address.

The Party must therefore champion a society of ever more revolutionary and increasingly prepared members. The communist ideal has nothing in common with mediocrity and ignorance.

One of the party’s fundamental responsibilities is to determine the goals of the socialist society, to design a strategy to achieve medium and long term objectives. The party apparatus and its entire membership operate as a mechanism of political control of state administration, which must always be directed toward achieving the goals of socialism.

The Party must be present wherever the people are affected by any decision made by a local government, the administration at any level, or the central government.

Moreover, the Party must maintain strong ties with the people, beginning with its own members, and must overcome what is known as the iron law of Robert Michels, who asserted that any type of political organization tends to develop an oligarchy, that is, an elite which divorces itself from the will of the membership.

The PCC must prevent the stratification of its organizational structures, the bureaucratization of its officials (in the Leninist sense of the term). But the solution is not the sophism of some mid-point or the idea of radically separating the Party and the state: we are talking about a system in which the Party has no electoral role nor does it exercise authority (on the formal level) over state bodies, but it does have the constitutional established responsibility of guiding the efforts of Cuban society in the construction of socialism. The key lies in the differentiation of roles and their democratic nature.

Liberal thought suggests that there is a dichotomy, an irreconcilable contradiction between democracy and a single-party model. But a multiparty system existed in Cuba, and all types of liberal democratic and traditional party practices existent during the twentieth century were implemented. None of these was able to resolve our country’s systemic crises at the political and, of course, economic level.

It was the Revolution that freed the country from this dark and seemingly inexorable destiny. Although the logic of a vanguard is among the political values of socialist Cuba, it is always good to point out that it was not a Party that made the Revolution. It was within the heat of this process that a single Party emerged, as the organization that concentrated all revolutionary political forces.

The Communist Party of Cuba is not a political party in the liberal sense that has been given to parties: an ideological myth, a falsehood defining parties are mere electoral instruments. Parties are class-based organizations that represent class interests.

Our party represents a specific national project based on social justice, sovereignty, anti-imperialism; a national project that upholds the interests of the working class, of the people, which serves as the best guarantee of real exercise of democracy, which cannot be limited to formalities or rituals.

Our party is not a supranational, supra-state or supra-social organization, it is not a counter-power. It is one more channel for the exercise of popular sovereignty, without equidistance or opposition to the state. Our entire socialist political system clearly reflects the principle of the unity of power, the indivisibility of sovereignty which resides solely and exclusively in the people.

There is no separation or partition of powers, only differentiation of roles for all components of the political system.

The success of our single party system lies in the ability to convince those of us who live in Cuba to construct our life projects around the common project that is socialism, and that the manner of viewing reality required by this alternative model is our point of view, our way of assuming reality and, of course, of attempting to transform it. It is the hegemonic role of the Party, exercised in the ideological sphere, which is its principal and most important task.

Neither the PCC, nor any revolutionary should work on the basis of or for unanimity, but for the sake of unity. But not unity in the abstract, but precisely the unity of a people defending a specific national project, in opposition to other national projects that have been tried in Cuba and have not worked.

The future of our country, and the socialist dream with which we have been entrusted, depends on this unity.