Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.  V. I. Lenin 
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
Subscriptions (£25 p a.) & circulation:  078679 96074  [P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [ Post Office Regd.]     
No 0883 December 10 1996                                                                         10p
Xmas Social Saturday, 2.

SHIRE PANIC

Tory turmoil over German imperialist pressure for tighter political and monetary union within the Common Market (now called EU or European Union) hides their real fears over even bigger questions.

British imperialism is facing the coming period of intensified international trade war and world economic crisis in the weakest position in its whole history.

Its real choice is not about the difficult enough challenge of the proposed single European currency and the tight and restrictive disciplines this will impose on a British government's freedom of policy, but about who to side with in the approaching great inter-imperialist conflict.

Half the ruling class says stick with the USA. The other half of the ruling class says stick with the European resistance to American pressure.

It is possible that yet a third group would favour an alliance with Japan in the imminent trade-war bust-up, but it is the more powerful lobbies for or against the US, for or against Germany, which dominate the capitalist press and television.

The thing which is depressing and dividing Tories most, however, is not the unpleasant choice of which big imperialist camp to be dominated by, but the awareness that British imperialism will suffer enormously either way, added to the demoralising certainty that Britain would be even more devastated if it tried to go it alone, outside of either foreign dominated alliance.

It is in such despair and fear that the splits in the ranks, - and the bitter recriminations about whose fault it all is, - become uncontainable.

No ordinary dispute about what policy or promises to make for the next general election could produce this degree of savage in-fighting within the ruling-class party which has centuries of experience of quietly resolving such differences, and never letting the working masses have the remotest idea about ruling-class divisions.

And even the question of a single currency for Europe, as vast a leap as that would be in market harmonisation and political federalism in Europe, would not necessarily so disrupt and alarm the Tory party as to almost paralyse it. Joining the Common Market in the first place, after much agonising, created no such traumas, neither did joining the common currency discipline of the ERM (Exchange rate mechanism) of the EU in the 1980s, the trial run for the single currency.

The doubts and panic now at this next big decision on closer European cooperation have been shifted up to hysteria and Tory disintegration level by the intervening years of the further dramatic weakening of British imperialism's competitive position relative to the three major imperialist powers, and by the relentless approach of a new 1930s crash in the world’s economies, and uncontrollable tradewar thereafter.

This coming markets collapse is dimly understood by everyone as basically inevitable, but is simply not spoken of aloud so as not to set it off even more certainly and prematurely.

It was in this direction of a new Wall Street crash that stock exchanges worldwide plunged last Friday on one word from US state-bank chairman Greenspan that share prices were rising irrationally, and that a small fall now might prevent a total collapse later. Other leading experts noted that panic selling had now replaced panic buying. The message? Just keep panicking.

Market anarchy is the essence of capitalism and is, by definition, potentially completely irrational. The whole history of the capitalist system of devastating slumps and genocidal inter-imperialist conflicts testifies to this complete irrationality.

The British Tory ruling class knows that the cut-throat tradewar-competition ahead is going to threaten total disaster for the now ageing and weak British imperialist economy.

Therefore, the choice of which gang of cut-throats to fight alongside, - the USA, Germany, or Japan, - was never going to be anything other than a process of paralysing misery and fear for the British ruling class, leading to no firm decision but only to indecisive splits, hesitancy, and confusion.

The Labour Party 'shadow' of the British imperialist ruling class will almost certainly reflect the same divisions and indecisiveness before much longer. As a bourgeois party wholly dedicated to class compromise with British imperialism (see subsequent story), Labour can hardly do anything other than reflect the same tensions which dominate the ruling class that Labour has always so loyally shadowed.

The pretence, of course, is that there is now no alternative to the capitalist system, and that 'socialism is dead'.

How astonishing, therefore, to find the capitalist media so full of incessant lying propaganda against little Serbia.

The Milosevic mixture of nationalism and authoritarian revisionism is not the most progressive, far-sighted or reliable of systems, but of more than 150 countries in the United Nations, there are more than 100 with seriously corrupt and barbaric regimes which might merit the attention of 'free world' posturing but never get it. 

Serbia, however, is being vilified and ridiculed on a massive scale and on a daily basis, with incessant incitement from the whole of Western press and television for a revolt.

Anti-Milosevic radio stations and newspapers inside Serbia are being directly financed by the West, and no lies or distortions are too obscene in this huge international campaign to bring Milosevic down. And why? Although in biased terms, the capitalist press itself reveals the real story about the West's 'concern' over Serbia:

After a six-year flirtation with nationalist rhetoric, the language of the Serbian court has reverted to familiar Marxist jargon.

"They have seized control of the trade departments. so it means they have the final say in who gets import and export licenses. Those are the key in such a closed economy."

Bratislav Grubacic, a Belgrade political analyst, thinks Serbia's ruling couple may actually believe in what they are doing.

“I think in their minds, they are remaking history, and they believe they can make communism work this time. They've had their war, the partisans have won again and we will enter paradise." he said.

And even more revealing is this capitalist press admission of why Lukashenko in Belarus has been turned into a similar hate-figure by the West:

THE STRANGE thing about the highly authoritarian constitution which the Belarus president, Alexander Lukashenko, has just had endorsed by referendum is its similarity to Boris Yeltsin's. Indeed, whole sections - particularly those which give the president enormous powers and reduce parliament to impotence are taken verbatim from the Russian text.

The way it was adopted also bears the hallmarks of Russia's December 1993 referendum. Just like Yeltsin, Lukashenko allowed no opponents access to state television to campaign against the referendum. Out of 2,249 minutes of broadcasting devoted to the issue, not one reflected the parliament's point of view.

Allegations of fraud cropped up in both countries. In Russia the margin of victory was much narrower and a shift of a few percentage points could have meant the turnout was too low to ensure the Russian constitution's passage.

Why then, has the West used Lukashenko's long-running struggle with parliament to turn him into a hate figure and make his country a pariah, denied the friendly advice of the International Monetary Fund and a seat in the Council of Europe? The reasons have little to do with Lukashenko's lack of democracy and much to do with the market economy and Western foreign policy imperatives.

The Belarus president is the only leader of post-Soviet eastern or central Europe with the temerity to resist privatisation. He re-nationalised most banks, has prevented shops being sold off to their managers, and insists that the state and collective farms (of which he was once a chairman) continue to supply them.

Although the economy suffers many of Russia's market traumas even Lukashenko's opponents concede that inequalities are less glaring, crime is lower, and the mafia less prevalent. Street-begging and homelessness are rare, and prices in the shops are between a half and a third of those in Russia.

And it all explains why some Trot groups (see next story) have devoted their life to vilifying Serbia.

These revisionist regimes have little future, possibly. But workers states as such are the only future. Rebuild Leninism. Tom Baxter

Workers confidence in Labour has vanished. Incessant pro-Blair propaganda will confuse things for a while, but a powerful SLP workers party is now on the cards. Trotskyite diversions become more bankrupt and foolishly irrelevant by the day. CPGB admits own goal. Anti-communism remains the same old brain-numbing poison for the political class forces of petty-bourgeois individualism. The Militant Labour vote is sterile.

The Leicester City council by-election result, and canvassing in the Barnsley parliamentary contest, both confirm a key fact of the contemporary political struggle, - that the working class no longer looks firmly to Labour to represent it.

Support for Blair & Co is fragile to non-existent. Only the power of media repetition, plus the blatant advertising gimmickry of New Labour, will mean that contempt for the Tory Government could put Blair into office next time.

But only the most gullible, plus a certain layer of self-righteous middle-class poseurs, can even pretend the remotest enthusiasm for Labour's calculated electoral posture.

Now openly supporting the corrupt capitalist system out of the imbecile belief that 'socialism is dead', New Labour only dares commit itself to shallow spin-doctored sound-bites about the major issues for fear that a new lurch in the political & economic crisis could catch them out, either in the workers' eyes or the bosses' eyes.

But such crass and meaningless opportunism makes Labour's electoral support hopelessly volatile. Although never deserved, the working class used to trust Labour. Now no-one does, or can.

Trivial opinion-poll verdicts can show Labour soaring out of sight, but then come a string of by-election results where Tory unpopularity is almost matched by the decline in Labour's vote, and where anti-Labour working-class votes swell to more than half New Labour's total.

In Leicester, the anti-Labour agitation on the doorstep for a socialist alternative scored two-thirds of the Labour vote, 20% to 30%, and lost Labour this safe seat to the Lib-Dems who scraped in with 33%.

This is the measure of working-class discontent with Blair's show-business cavortings which now replace solid policy statements, and which no longer hide the potential threats in them to working class interests.

With every new capitalist media excitation, - whether against the long-term unemployed, pensioners, the chronically sick, young offenders, immigrants, single mums, school drop-outs, strong trade-union struggles, etc, etc, - no one but the wilfully blind can fail to see New Labour striking a pose only in accordance with how it thinks it will affect the next opinion surveys in the Tory press.

No matter which minority or unfortunate section of the population might be threatened by the latest media campaign or stunt, Labour immediately hops onto any bourgeois opinion-poll bandwagon that is moving.

This is going down catastrophically with workers, - hence the loss of another Labour safe-seat in a by-election.

But all this superficial nonsense of Blair & Co shooting themselves in the foot as often as soaring high with their carefully-tailored media posturing, - also hides deeper developments which are even more interesting.

The eventual complete collapse of the Labour Party's previously dominant position in working-class politics is coinciding with the collapse of British imperialism's previously powerful positions in world economic trade and diplomatic influence.

Labour has always been a bourgeois party by virtue of its always compromised relationship with British imperialism.

The clever trick of parliamentary reformism, and local government reformism, was to concede these 'democratic rights' in an epoch when the triumphant British ruling class could guarantee that enough national prestige, and enough super-profits from colonial empire, would be available for spiritually and economically corrupting the 'labour aristocracy' layer of the trade-union movement and its subsequent Labour Party federation.

Only the eventual historic collapse of British imperialist power could finally free the working class from this ideological domination by the essential class compromising of the Labour and Trade Union aristocracy.

The game of always selling out to capitalist-imperialist interests is already rapidly falling apart, - which is what the remarkable rise of the Socialist Labour Party represents.

Sections of the traditional accepted labour and trade-union movement have themselves, in the form of the SLP, begun to break away from the old sacrosanct 'unity' of the Labour and TUC federation. The majority of the working class will follow in due course.

Labour will almost certainly win more by-elections, General Elections, and local government elections before the crisis of British imperialism (and of world imperialism in general) fully matures.

But the trends in the complete softening of the class vote for Labour are unmistakable, and the significance of this historic shift is beyond question. British imperialism's former world position is on its last legs. British imperialism's 'shadow', - the Labour Party, - is on its last legs too.

The Socialist Labour Party is nothing like "just another left group". The 57 varieties of petty-bourgeois 'revolutionary' posturing in Britain could not be more wrong in their silly subjective assessment of the SLP.

The EPS Review has already analysed (see EPSR 880, 881, 882, for example) the subjectivism of these idealist sects in deludedly wanting to substitute their own importance for the essential role the SLP alone can perform of turning the masses back towards socialism.

A mixture of personal vanity, group self-righteousness, and insane schematicism has pushed this basically petty-bourgeois-minded bureaucratic swamp into the most ridiculous hostility to the SLP. Their hostility is doomed to yet another failure which will give yet more sustenance to their lifelong defeatist philosophy.

Another head-banging group of born-again evangelising Trotskyites is currently out on the streets of Barnsley running a candidate with the sole purpose of trying to derail the SLP's progress.

These particular cranks are part of the tragic human detritus which was blasted into limbo when Healy's WRP monstrous racket of self-righteousness, brutality, and corruption exploded into smithereens of even worse sanctimoniousness and paranoia.

Now mysteriously calling themselves 'Socialist Equality Party' where before they used to flaunt an in-yer-face International Communist Party title, these dreadful clones of Healy's phony ultra-left opportunism are pushing the same old specious fallacies that Trotskyism's incurable defeatism has always 'thrived' on.

Arguments are raised about some obscure point in some trade-union negotiating deal or other for which Arthur Scargill or some SLP colleague of his can supposedly be 'blamed', - all in order to make the unstated point, by implication, that Scargill's political philosophy stands for organising the working class and trade union struggles in order to sell them out rotten!

Or there's some point about the SLP constitution or its longterm policy perspective on immigration controls which, subliminally translated, aims to create the impression that Scargill is building a racist party which wants to fully back the Tory Government's racist discrimination against immigrants!

And it is so-called 'revolutionaries' who want to go out of their way (to the tune of £500 and a lot more besides) to let the working class of Barnsley know this in order to disrupt the SLP campaign to challenge Labour.

And this is no different in its blind self-righteousness from what these Trots used to aggressively challenge and insult people with, on behalf of Healy's sick fantasies, lauding Ayatollah Khomeini as a "natural revolutionary genius" when it suited the WRP bank account, likewise praising the 'revolutionary socialist genius' of Saddam Hussein, or Gaddafi, or Arafat, or even Ken Livingstone, when it suited them, - then stabbing the IRA in the back for its 'barbarism', or covering up for Healy's rapacious criminality with diseased cant about "the leader's special needs", etc, etc.

All that these crazed evangelists tell about, with their holier-than-thou hypocrisy alleging 'sell-out' here and 'treachery' there, is the immature and unbalanced condition of their own minds.

Their real class-position is straightforward anti-communism. 

They have a special leaflet to tell the Barnsley working class certifiable lies about history that would make even the worst fascist-imperialists blush. Fifty years of Stalinism wiped out everything remotely 'socialist' in sight, they begin, via murder, assassination, and the gulag. 

"The false association of Stalinism with socialism had seriously weakened the political consciousness of the working class".

But paragraphs later, it is the 'Polish Stalinists', in league with American imperialism and Lech Walesa, who in 1989 "imposed the restoration of capitalism and the continuous undermining of workers social conditions" thereafter, - against the wishes of the best of Solidarnosc!!

This is their 'reply' to Scargill's denunciation of them as stooges for the CIA and the Solidarnosc counter-revolution which wrecked the Polish workers state.

Sane people know that it was the liquidation of the East European workers states which brought back capitalism, with catastrophic consequences for which these Trot anti-communists share full responsibility.

No hope in appealing to these Trot lunatics' sanity, but their less deranged members might ask how Stalin's destruction of any and everything 'socialist' 50 years earlier then made possible the "restoration of capitalism and the undermining of workers social conditions" in Poland in 1989? 

In 1945 when the 'Stalinists' liberated Poland from imperialist colonisation, there were only slave-labour conditions and death camps in Poland, a wholly capitalist country. So what was built between 1945 and 1989, and who built it, and why, which then made "capitalist restoration and the undermining of workers social conditions", another Stalinist anti-socialist crime, possible in 1989?

All Trotskyites are just incurable congenital petty-bourgeois class-demented anti-communists, never have been anything else, and never will be.

But in this they are no different from the slightly more 'sophisticated' Trot opponents of the SLP who masquerade under the pilfered and twisted label CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain).

Their hostile humbug against Scargill's party is launched from inside the SLP while claiming to be bona fide members of it.

The EPS Review has been exposing the CPGB's lying hypocrisy and false analysis of the Socialist Labour Party almost every week of late, and going all the way back to February when the first entryist takeover and wrong assessment of the SLP was agitated for by the Weekly Worker.

Its bogus SLP News pages regularly denounce the SLP leadership and membership for "barefaced lying", "Scargill dictatorship", "bureaucratic manipulation","anti-democratic straitjacket", "cowering the comrades", "loathsome little life forms in the SLP", "the slimy invertebrates of the SLP right", and "like flies unto shit, witch-hunters attract all manner of embittered failures, would-be sadists, and sectarian misfits", etc.

As last week's Review asked, based on that week's insults,- would any genuine SLP members (as these Trot entryists pretend to be) really be able to go canvassing for the party declaring: "I want you to vote for the SLP because its president is a liar, its executive is mendacious, its constitution is Bonapartist to allow Scargill to become worker-dictator just like Joseph Stalin, and its conference is a completely undemocratic stunt of gerrymandering and manoeuvring to make sure that witch-hunting and fear prevail and nothing gets discussed that will challenge the rightwing anti-communist bureaucracy's” — which is what the CPGB really thinks of the SLP, as compiled from the Weekly Worker's own anti-SLP abuse.

Impossible. The CPGB's 'entry' racket is a political fraud, as are its repeated typical Trotskyite boasts about the "open organisation of ideas" as the way to appeal to workers. The whole lives of this type of 'revolutionary' dilettante, are based on subjective fantasy, and all their political dealings are just one long dishonest political manoeuvre.

The anti-SLP campaigns are mere subjective point-scoring by these frustrated 'Marxist' posturers, and their deep-cover entryist tactics are just as individualist and devious.

Even in their occasional brushes with reality, these Trot Walter Mitties can never be straight with themselves or the working class, and can never stop adopting a posture.

The CPGB is in turmoil over its failed policy of deriding the SLP while simultaneously pretending to want to enter it as 'good comrades', yet ridiculously unwilling to accept the SLP's constitution.

This muddle-headed catastrophe has been made worse by ill-advised abusive insults by the CPGB against SLP Marxists who tried to persuade the CPGB that its tactics and its political perspective were wrong.

But even in owning up to this debacle, the Weekly Worker only feels comfortable in engineering an anonymous letter which merely hints at the painful lessons it is being faced with internally, indicating a tactical backing-off rather than any serious new understanding:

Unfortunately, the last few issues of the Weekly Worker  (November 7 and November 21 in particular) seem to have become derailed. The debate and reports around the SLP are reverting to the nasty, sneering, journalistic excess of the worst sect papers - those that used to be thrust at you as you emerged from the tube into Hyde Park for a demo.

Phrases such as, "Like flies unto shit, witch hunters attract all manner of embittered failures, would-be sadists and sectarian misfits" (Weekly Worker November 7) - to describe SLP member Tony Goss and the Stalin Society - are unacceptable and should be confined to those who have indulged too liberally of ale, not printed as informed comment.

Likewise, the article 'Strange Alliance' (Weekly Worker November 21) has a sneering attitude towards the Economic & Philosophical Science Review. While containing legitimate comment regarding the political direction EPSR comrades have taken, it then attacks the EPSR editor in the nastiest personal terms: "Having requested and then apparently declined CPGB membership - it required disciplined work, without the cash payments he felt entitled to..." 

This implies the comrade was involved in some kind of financial corruption, or at least questions his integrity as a communist.

I have known and worked with this comrade and others from the EPSR in the SLP. I have never had reason to question their integrity. Their politics have been somewhat interesting and their editor is no shrinking violet when it comes to putting his point across. I have always found that they have conducted themselves in a comradely manner even after fierce argument.

Comrades! It is time to stop this descent into the gutter of sectarianism. Many comrades around the Weekly Worker and SLP have past histories they might be glad to forget and leave behind. If the Weekly Worker is still serious with its rapprochement project, let us hope those responsible for writing and printing these aberrations put their house in order. Get the steam crane out and re-rail the Weekly Worker. A good start would be a retraction and apology. Remember: those who play with fire are likely to get seriously burnt.

This echoes EPSR condemnation of the Weekly Worker, without acknowledgement, and poses a retraction of libellous abuse as poor politics, — and a dangerous mistake to make with the wrong people, - but without actually admitting as much.

The subjective disorientation of Trotskyite individualist spleen is certain to continue because their defeatist petty-bourgeois class alignment is incurable, as is the flawed idealist basis of the whole of Trotsky's "everything is rotten" philosophy.

The 'perfect' revolution is fantasy. As Marxism explained scientifically more than 100 years ago, there can only be the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat, nothing in between. Because of specific historic and local conditions, either can come in a variety of tolerable qualities or perceived nastiness, depending on the class point of view.

But for the future, workers states have only their own low level of culture to overcome in order to become ever brighter poles of attraction such as Cuba is today for the whole of Latin America, and China is for the whole of the East that was formerly in the Third World. The capitalist states have to overcome the impossible class contradictions of their own internal devil-take-the-hindmost anarchy, and the impossible international contradictions of their incurable trade-war conflicts, - such as is tearing Europe, and the Tory Government, and all the bourgeois political parties apart today.

Workers parties do not come perfect either. But they can stand firmly in the tradition of the workers states and their defence, - or they can posture endlessly for 'democratic rights' of various kinds within the steadily decaying comforts of capitalist society.

All Trotskyism belongs to the latter kind of sect, endlessly carping and nit-picking at serious anti-imperialist struggles for this perceived fault, or that 'betrayal', or the other 'criminal negligence', etc, but basically content with bourgeois society, and therefore never bothered about going anywhere far with any working-class fight, - 'open criticism' being its watchword (to ridicule and criticise incessantly, but to never achieve anything itself).

Militant Labour fit this description exactly. These (and the SWP) are the serious anti-theory Philistines of Trotskyism. 

Abroad, no revolution has ever been good enough to win the support of these 'perfectionists'. At home, these great 'revolutionaries' have spent a lifetime bolstering up the Labour Party, giving it a fake-'left' cover long after the time has come for the working class to see through Labour's entire 'parliamentary socialism' racket and 'local government socialism' fraud.

Militant got a bigger share than the SLP of workers votes for a socialist alternative to Labour in the Leicester by-election because of the strength of past positions in the town inside Labour, and because of a massive campaign calling on its strength nationally to try to disrupt the SLP.

But this success is only going to feed the same old illusions that Trotskyism has always suffered under.

Militant Labour was always basically a parasite on the Labour Party, and its vote in Leicester now is only a belated continuation of that tradition.

Nationally, Militant's strength lives on where its parasitic survival off Labour's back did best, as Labour's hoax 'left'.

Independently, such cadre forces will survive for a while, naturally, and continue to have some impact.

But Militant are no more, and never can be any more, than barmy Trotskyites with a particularly nasty style in subjective conceit and pro-imperialist philistinism. They are eternal "everything is rotten" parasites on the bourgeois system, just as Trotskyism itself was only able to flourish parasitically on the Soviet workers state and the Third International.

The Socialist Labour Party is a different phenomenon entirely. It is a broad workers movement which has come out of the most competent and confident mainstream of the labour and trade-union struggle in Britain, too long mesmerised by Labour's great parliamentary and local government 'socialism' deception, but now historically released from that delusion by the New Labour belief in imperialism's bogus 'new world order', and by the actual disintegration of British imperialism's world positions.

The SLP is not just another 'left' sect, as the Trots foolishly kid themselves with their shallow 'Marxist' subjective muddleheadedness; but Militant Labour is only this, especially now shorn of its Labour Party prop.

The SLP will become a forceful workers party nationally. Militant will remain just another 'left' sect.

Temporarily, the Trotskyite swamp will point to the Leicester result and claim it proves that the SLP needs to bury itself under 57 varieties of sectarianism in order to flourish. Actual Marxist understanding points in exactly the opposite direction, telling the SLP to keep on building its broad socialist project under one united workers party as the best way to allow a serious understanding of anti-capitalist revolution to thrive.

In one or two places, Militant Labour, - or some other Trotskyite sect, - may outscore the SLP on one or two occasions.

But nationally, the SLP will become the major workers party in every constituency eventually, and in every extra-parliamentary struggle. The Trot 'left' swamp will remain virtually invisible, and still divided into 57 varieties of sectarian feuding rancour. J.H.

World Socialist Review 
(edited extracts form a variety of anti-imperialist struggles)

During the months of September and October 1995, the grass-roots Party and Young Communist League (UJC) organizations carried on a wide-ranging debate of the document entitled Party Work in the Current Circumstances. This document, issued by our Party's Central Committee, attempts to conceptualize the socio-economic, political and ideological reality which our country has lived through and in many ways continues to live in, as a consequence of the collapse of the socialist bloc, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the intensification of the U.S. blockade, which led us to adopt a survival and development strategy known as the special period in peacetime. This text was enriched by the opinions and suggestions of provincial Party committees, first secretaries of municipal committees, and comrades from the auxiliary structure of the Central Committee and other agencies.

Out of the grass-roots discussions came overwhelming approval of the document's content, even though some grass-roots organizations asked for explanations or expressed dissatisfaction with some specific aspects.

Although the document in question does not respond to all the questions a reader may have on this subject, it is a summary and evaluation of the difficult and complex situations in which our Party and the Cuban people in general have worked and continue to work.

For that reason, we have decided to offer this analytical document to the readers of Granma International.

Part three.

When reflecting on the context in which our Party carries out its activities, today and in the future, it is necessary to consider the social repercussions of the changes taking place in our national economy. This is indispensable for any analysis of the content, focus and forms of political and ideological actions. Some of these aspects are immediately and directly visible, while others are reflected indirectly and in many cases do not have any material repercussions, but instead have subjective repercussions expressed through behavior, emotional states or opinions of groups or persons.

In general, it can be said that the special period obliged us to adopt measures that guarantee a more egalitarian distribution of our limited resources and protect the sectors with the lowest income levels. This meant that the Cuban state assumed the greatest cost in confronting the crisis, and this is consistent with our policy of not solving the problem by allowing uncontrolled price rises, generalized unemployment, massive shutdowns, etc.

The adoption of measures within the framework of our strategy to overcome the special period led immediately to the emergence of inequalities and differences among sectors of our population and among workers in different branches of the economy.

In addition, in mid-1993, the decision was made to decriminalize the possession of foreign currency and to authorize remittances in foreign currency from abroad to Cuban citizens. Unlike other measures, this source of income was not associated with work or contributions to society, and is only justifiable as an extreme measure which the country was obliged to take in a moment when there was an acute shortage of foreign exchange.

Party members and a large portion of the people have, in general, shown understanding of the reasons for these measures. However, the objective existence of the inequalities generates opinions, disagreement and displeasure which can be utilized by those who wish to destroy the unity of the Revolution. Party cells and members must clarify and discuss the bases of our policies, explaining realistically the reasons for these decisions and above all gaining understanding about the fact that often the options from which we have to choose are not ideal but rather what is possible, within the context of the continuous siege and hostility imposed by the U.S. Blockade.

Some have even tried to present the economic measures adopted as a supposed surrender to capitalism and its economic formulas. This characterization is not only erroneous but also unjust, and has nothing to do with our leaders' statements to the effect that elements of capitalism have been introduced in our lives, referring to administrative, financial and market mechanisms which we utilize within an organizational and structural framework that preserves our socialist orientation. We must distinguish in our work between the political opportunism that can exist in these manifestations and statements made out of lack of knowledge or misunderstanding.

The differences existing among sectors and branches of the economy have produced a movement of our labor force toward certain sectors, with the goal of satisfying specific aspirations. This movement, which is foreseeable and desirable in many cases has also brought about losses for the country, especially in regard to persons with professional and technical training who work in jobs beneath their capacities and skills. A realistic evaluation of this phenomenon has shown us that the urgency to reorient the economy within a few short months did not allow us as much foresight as we should have had, but once this period has been overcome, the country could put into effect a set of measures aimed at gaining greater control of the process. This effort will be successful to the extent that we are able to reactivate other branches of the economy, thereby counteracting the differences that exist today.

Although much has been done in this regard, there is, not a clear understanding of the gradual manner in which these changes are being put into effect, of the need to preserve order and organization in this process, and of the fact that it is impossible to improve every aspect of the situation at the same time. In particular, the Party must strive to make it understood that there can be no way out of the crisis without hard work and efficiency, and that these are put into practice through the creation not only of consciousness, but also of the need to provide the proper conditions for all citizens, even though that need is not yet expressed in places and sectors where workers are needed.

The gradual recovery of the value of our Cuban peso demonstrates the effectiveness of the program which was adopted to improve internal finances, and that program must continue, since it is irreplaceable in stimulating an increase in production and for a constantly more just distribution in accordance with the work done. Likewise, it is not possible under current conditions to institute any wage reform which would put more money into circulation, without first consolidating the steps that have already been taken and without a real support in the form of goods and services created by the economic recovery. The workers' principal stimulus, which in the concrete case of Cuba (with measures that maintain social justice for all) is expressed essentially in terms of wages, must respond now and in the future to the economic results which are achieved.

As for our enterprise system, the fact that our economic reactivation is taking place, in part, on the basis of external financing of joint ventures, economic associations and other forms has certainly put the state enterprises at a disadvantage, since they do not have the funding, the supplies, the incentive mechanisms and other resources available to the other companies. This has translated into a mentality which considers privatization the only way to advance, on the one hand, and attributes to our state enterprise system a total incapacity to function efficiently. Our Party cells and members, especially those with direct responsibility in the operation and organization of state enterprises, must make an effort to demonstrate our enterprises' possibilities and capacities, in cases where the latter does not depend on external resources and the necessary supplies are acquired through reorganization, with a restructuring favoring economic management.

Most Cuban workers and members of the population do not see a return to capitalism as the solution to our current problems, especially those who saw firsthand what that system signified in Cuba's concrete conditions and those who, although they did not live through the capitalist period, can evaluate, as a result of knowledge and instruction, capitalism's inability to offer any valid response to the drama affecting the present-day Cuba. Nonetheless, there are a significant number of persons who doubt the efficiency of socialism and social property in providing production and services through small-scale enterprises; others express similar skepticism toward the whole system. 

Contributing to these arguments is the worldwide campaign begun following the socialist collapse in Europe, aimed at discrediting socialist ideas and practice; in addition to real problems faced by our enterprises, on one hand, and the accumulated effects of the special period and the wait—a long wait for many—for a way out of the crisis on the individual level.

It is essential that the Party and the rest of the political and mass organizations carry out an effort to explain and convince all of society, and particularly the young people, so that we do not become confused and think that there could be a capitalist solution for Cuba, that there is a form of "capitalism with a human face, capitalism with social justice; capitalism with advantages for all."

The above argument also reflects a misunderstanding shared by many of the true magnitude of the country's loss of economic relations and ties abroad, which meant that overnight we were left without supplies, markets or credits. The Revolution's serene, responsible and solid position, as well as the leadership's necessary discretion in dealing with this situation during these years, is part of the reason that, although the people have directly suffered the effects of the crisis, there has always been trust that a solution is possible.

These arguments are expressed in various forms within our society, reflected in:

-  Feelings of insecurity, fears, lack of confidence, confusion, discouragement, searches for personal salvation, exacerbation of individualism and selfishness among individuals.
-  Weakening of support for the Revolution among some social groups and individuals, especially those who attribute the cause of the crisis to our errors. Also, a position of unbridled criticism of the decisions made because they are considered insufficient.
- An increasing tendency to create entities uncommitted to state and government action which are utilized as a means of indirectly satisfying personal needs, or in other cases, attributing to these entities possibilities for solutions that really lie in the realm of improving the efficiency of existing mechanisms.
-  An increase in the incidence of certain types of crime against society and the family, as a means of obtaining easy money without working.
-  A search in other societies for the realization of aspirations for well-being and consumption levels which are not immediately available here, with this search resulting in the desire to emigrate or live abroad, in one capacity or another, for long periods of time.  

We should add to this the increased influence on our society of the Cuban community abroad (particularly in the United States), favored by our Party's and governments policy of normalizing the country's relations with its émigrés, excluding those who belong to the unpatriotic current and those who dream of destroying or annexing us. Our Party recognizes and supports those who are working to maintain normal relations with our country, and it continues to expect that in response and out of a moral duty toward our nation, they will denounce and act against those who dream of crushing and smothering our nation. The establishment of normal relations with Cuban émigrés does not, in and of itself, compromise our political system and the future of the country, as long as we do not make any concession of principles.

In this analysis, we must not fail to consider the impact on our whole society produced by U.S.-Cuba relations on a global scale and particularly the challenges they pose for the Party in its ideological and political work.

Although the subject requires a more profound and specific treatment, we would like to stress the following: there has been no variation in the objective of U.S. policy toward Cuba, which continues to be the disappearance of the Cuban Revolution, through a combination of variants and methods which depend more on the influence of ideas and capitalist lifestyles, through increased communication and information channels, with measures like the Helms-Burton Act, aimed at strengthening the economic blockade.

But a change in policy toward Cuba would not be less risky or dangerous for us; the demands on Party work would be more complex and difficult. We must keep our defenses high at all times; in that regard, we have our own experiences and the lessons we have learned from others the capacity demonstrated by the leadership of our Revolution, with Fidel at the helm, to succeed in our effort, with the Cuban people's determination to maintain its independence and social justice, with unity and the strength of our ideology.

One situation which is a frequent object of attention on the part of revolutionaries and the population in general is the increase observed in practices related to various religious beliefs existing in the country. This increase has been determined to a large extent by the psychological impact on many people of the special period's socio-economic  consequences, and is also linked to the more open expression of religious sentiments and concepts following the policy approved at the 4th Party Congress on the religious question and modifications made in the Constitution emphasizing even more the freedom of religion guaranteed by the Revolution.

Nor can we overlook the utilization of some practices which have little to do with authentic religious concepts and which are aimed at attracting ephemeral followers or people interested in obtaining material or political advantages

The increase in religious practices, in which a tendency toward stability can currently be seen, does not constitute a problem for the Revolution as long as it corresponds to an honest profession of any religious faith, whose principles — those which are not just formally proclaimed, but also consistently observed in personal and social behavior — promote love for fellow human beings, unselfishness, protection of the weak and disabled, family unity, social justice, moral and civil values, love and sacrifice for the country. Those who do not act in this way deny not only their people, but also their faith.

This is a good moment to point out that some revolutionary comrades are concerned that the transformations which we are making in the economic field and the interests of some sectors associated with new types of property not owned by the state express themselves in political interests which differ from our own. This concern is not unfounded, and it is up to the Party and the revolutionary state, in coordination with our members and the power structures, to regulate and control this process, so that we can assure that this continues to be a Revolution of the people, for the people and with the people, in whose most legitimate interests we act and will continue to act. The political changes we have made and will make are precisely aimed at securing, more and more, the direct participation of the people and the workers in the exercise of power, and making our society increasingly more democratic. 

To be continued.