 Yeah, I think before we start what, as Mia said, is a very important discussion on the situation in Cuba. It's important to outline from which standpoint we approach this situation. And that is that we stand unconditionally in defense of the Cuban revolution against the attacks of imperialism and reaction. And we do so because the revolution was a tremendous step forward for the masses of Cuba and in the struggle against imperialism and capitalism, not just on the island, but in Latin America and indeed the world. Cuba in the 1950s may not have been the poorest country in the region, but it was getting poorer as a consequence of US imperialism. So US corporations owned 40% of Cuba's sugar producing land, 80% of its mines and mineral resources, 90% of its utilities and the entire oil refinery industry. And these statistics aren't quoted by the revolution. They're quoted by JFK, the president at the time of the radicalization of the revolution. And this economic domination laid the basis for political domination on the island by its aggressive northern neighbor, which militarily intervened on the islands in 1906 to 1909 in 1912 and 1917 to 1923, under the terms of something that was called the Platt Amendment, which is effectively an amendment that the US forced onto the Cuban constitution at the founding of the Republic in 1901, which basically gave the legal cover for the US to intervene in the island should its interests be compromised. And whilst this amendment was repealed as a consequence of the 1933 revolution, in reality, it was still in force, right? And in reality, the US continued to dominate the island. And this was seen actually immediately after the revolution, when the US ambassador, some the Wells, basically continued to call the shots. And he called for the overthrow of the petty bourgeois revolutionary government of Grau San Martín, which was carried out dutifully by Batista, who would go on to become dictator of the island in the 1950s. And so US domination effectively made Cuba a colony. And this was disastrously the case for the island's economy. Basically, US domination maintained and deepened the colonial nature of the island's economy, which was based on the production and export of a few key agricultural crops, like coffee, sugar and tobacco and so on. And this left it very vulnerable to the fluctuations of the world market and it held back the development of an industrial base on the island. And in the 1950s, the main exports of Cuba, which was sugar, that the world prices for sugar were plummeted as a consequence of new producers entering the market. Like for instance, Ghana entered the world market for the first time because it was no longer just producing sugar for Britain as it was in the colonial period. And this led to a profound crisis on the island and a complete collapse in living standards and a sharp decline of GDP per capita. And this crisis led to there being 700,000 people permanently unemployed, which is a chronic unemployment of 15% to 20%. And many more were underemployed because the dominance of the sugar industry meant that most workers in Cuba only worked for four months during the harvest season of sugar and were left to languish in idle poverty for the rest of it. And perversely, America treated the mineral resources, the scarce mineral resources on the island as a strategic reserve and so left them deliberately underdeveloped. And this, as well as the monstrous oppression of women that imperialist domination reinforced, meant that in 1958, Cuba had more registered prostitutes than it did mine workers. And so when we talk about the fact that the US used Cuba as a brothel, it's not just a rhetoric or rhetorical flourish. This was the reality for the island. And of course, much of this poverty and unemployment acutely affected the Afro-Cuban population, who were also victims of intense racism and segregation. And the revolution in Cuba swept so much of this away, it completely overturned this rotten situation. And it was a deep and popular revolution. Because of course, it's known like that the guerrilla army led the struggle. And that is undoubtedly true. But this was a very deeply popular revolution that mobilized the masses in every key city and town to overthrow the regime and batista dictatorship. And what were the achievements of this revolution? The revolution immediately alleviated the position of poor tenants by cutting rent by as much as 50% and making it illegal for landlords to evict their tenants. By June 1959, Fidel Castro set up the National Institute for Agrarian Reform to carry out the redistribution of large landholdings to landless peasants who would receive 67 acres of land each. And this was a major step forward for those landless peasants who were the victims of the fluctuations of the sugar industry, that layer that was drawn temporarily into work and forced into idle poverty for the rest of the year. But of course, these reforms were not welcomed by Cuba's bourgeois. They were fiercely opposed to it. And it was met with intense opposition on the island from that ruling class that looked immediately to US imperialism for its salvation. And so by 1960, the Cuban revolution was at a crossroads as the opposition of the ruling class backed by the US and so on only intensified. The choice was to back down and betray the masses, reversing the bourgeois democratic reforms that have been implemented or to go further. And it is to the credit of Castro and Guevara that they chose the latter. In doing so, they nationalized vast swathes of the economy in October 1960 that heralded the ending of capitalism on the island on the basis of economic planning. And it was from this basis that land reform was guaranteed and extended and landowners weren't compensated, the land was expropriated from them. It was on this basis that properties were handed over to longstanding tenants and landlordism on the island was abolished. But more gains were made possible by the expropriation of capitalist property. It was on this basis that the enormous strides forward in health care and education have been made. And it was also on this basis that Cuba guaranteed real and genuine self determination and a break with US imperialism. In health care, the island has just done the nine doctors per 1000 citizens, which is the highest rate in the world. And that has enabled them to achieve a life expectancy of 18, which is higher than that of the United States. In education, Cuba boasts nearly universal literacy, whilst Cubans can obtain a doctorate degree at no expense to themselves. And on the question of the transformation of the situation for Afro Cubans, they were able to immediately eliminate many of the racist impositions that face Afro Cubans before, because by taking the hands of the economy out of capitalists and into the hands of the state, the Ministry of Labour was immediately able to abolish the colour bar that existed that barred Afro Cubans from working in most of the skilled industries. And therefore, the immediate transformation of the situation enabled Afro Cubans to enter skilled work for the first time in the island's history. And this was an enormous step forward. Of course, also, there was an immediate end to the segregation that existed on the island. And it's an interesting aside that it was the white son of a Spanish immigrant that put forward this program that emancipated the Afro Cubans of the island when a mulatto president, Batista, had failed to do so. He was barred from entering certain clubs in his own island. And it was precisely because what matters is not this idea of representation, but the political program that's pursued. And it was a revolutionary political program that Castro based himself on. And so these enormous gains of the Cuban Revolution are the reason why there's a continued, deeper support for it, which was displayed in the protests that emerged and encountered to the ones that emerged on July 11th, the protests in support of the revolution. And so now we have to outline those events. What happened on that kind of infamous day of July 11th? So protests broke out in San Antonio de los Baños, which is a small town near Havana, where protesters were demanding an end to the blackouts, which are flicking the town up for up to six hours a day. And I'll come on to the reasons for that as to why they've emerged. And also we're calling for vaccines as well to be vaccinated, basically placing demands on the local administration. But of course, these protests, which were of a genuine character, quickly spread through the rest of the islands where the content of the demonstrations became much more openly counter-revolution, with slogans being raised such as Patria Ibiza, which is, you know, Homeland in Life, which is the counter slogan to the slogan of the revolution, which is Patria Muerte Benzaremos. And also other slogans like Down with the Dictatorship and so on were heard at many of these protests. And these were quickly spread over social media networks, which are the kind of the means and the weapons of the counter-revolution in Cuba to spread misinformation and so on, which I'll come on to. Now, these protests were, you know, mark a very important transformation in the situation, of course. The scale of the protests really, the largest since the Malacanazo of 1994, which took place at the height of the special period, when Cuba's economy shrank by 35% as a consequence of the collapse of the USSR and the intensification of the blockade. Even still, I think it's worth bearing in mind that these protests amounted at most to 2,000 people in a city of 3 million in Havana, for instance. And so we can't compare them to the mass movements that we've seen developing and breaking out all across Latin America. They're on a completely different scale. But nonetheless, we have to have a very serious attitude as to how such an event was able to emerge. And of course, there are very real objective conditions of hardship. There are shortages of key commodities in the island. There are regular blackouts, as I mentioned, there is intense inflation in part as a consequence of these shortages, but also policies pursued by the by the government itself, which I'll come on to. And of course, there's also this question of the vaccination program being hindered. Now, Cuba has been able to develop its own its own vaccine, which is a testament to the triumph of economic planning. But on the less, because of the because of certain positions of the blockade, it's not even able to import the necessary syringes and so on, that it requires to thank you, that it's that are required to vaccinate the population. And so that you know, led to the fact they have the vaccines, but they're unable to distribute them quickly enough and so on. Although this now has has transformed. But at this period, this was this was the situation. And so there's that this this laid basically the very fertile ground for the intrigues of US imperialism, right? These are very real hardships that Cubans were facing. But I'll now come on to these these intrigues. So there's something that comrades might have heard of called the SOS Cuba campaign, which involves these these deliberate distortions and exaggerations of the situation and deliberate and concerted efforts to turn the Cuban people against the revolution and so on. So for instance, in the Tanzas, which is an important province just east of Havana, one example I found was that lies were spread that the Cuban government was planning to attack a daycare center and then blame it on protest as some sort of false flag operation. And this is the kind of absurdity the lens to which this this this mere campaign goes to. And of course, these are designed to, as I say, break Cubans away from the revolution by you know, by take by basically saying that this real hardship you face, it's the fault entirely of this of this revolution. And this has of course been the policy of the United States for a very long long period, which I'll come on to in a second. But I think it's also important to point out that the rank hypocrisy of this campaign with celebrities and politicians across Cuba and also across the United States and so on, shedding crocodile tears about the mortality rates in Cuba, when they've not commented once on the situation in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, where the rate is far, far worse. You know, when you look at this, for instance, Cuba is an island of roughly 11 million people, where unfortunately 8,201 people have died as a consequence of COVID-19. But in Ecuador, which is a nation of roughly 17 million people, we've seen about 31,877 deaths, which is clearly far worse than the situation in Cuba. There's no call for humanitarian intervention in that country. And we know the reason why. And of course, I think the real attitude of the SOS Cuba campaign, the real attitude of American imperialism was summed up eloquently by Jose Martí, the national hero of Cuba, who struggles against Spanish domination of the island towards the end of the 19th century in the beginning of the 20th. As he put it, never, except as an idea hidden away in the depths of some generous souls, was Cuba anything more to the United States than a desirable possession whose only inconvenience is its population, which it considers to be unruly, lazy and worthy of scorn. This is the real attitude of U.S. imperialism that cannot accept the fact that Cuba was able to break three from its domination and provide a beacon of hope and optimism that an alternative society is possible. And as I say, this is a long, there's a long history of this, of course. For instance, commerce might not be aware that there's a program that's been in America since the 1960s, known as Cubanology, where the CIA basically provides money to academics to deliberately distort their analysis of the Cuban revolution in history, economics, sociology and so on. You know, recently it was revealed that an extra $20 million had been requested to conduct this mere campaign under this SOS Cuba campaign and so on. And U.S. policy, as I said, has always been about undermining this revolution. To the point obviously of, you know, as we know the embargo, which will come on to it and so on, the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, but also that more COVID measures like Operation Mungoose, which saw the Americans basically launch terrorist attacks against Cuba, which involved things like blowing up various port facilities, but also like, you know, just trying to spread pesticides onto the island to destroy crops and so on. All of these different measures to undermine the revolution and basically bring about an overthrow of the revolutionary government. But of course this has always been the case, right? Ever since the revolution dared to challenge U.S. domination, America has done its utmost to overthrow it. But there haven't always been these mass protests against the revolution. It hasn't always provoked that kind of response. And so it's important that we don't simply leave our level of analysis to say it's all at the door of imperialism. Because of course this plays a vital role, but this isn't enough. Why now? Why have protests broken out on the island? And I think really if we were to leave the discussion at this point, that's really the level of analysis of the Stalinists and the friendly reformists who do no good for the revolution. I think as revolutionaries, it's our duty to thoroughly understand the situation and humbly author our advice on which way forward. So I think now it's important to tend to what is brought about this crisis. And of course there are myriad factors that have brought Cuba to the situation. Some more important and decisive than others. You know, chief among the causes for Cuba's hardship is undoubtedly the blockade. So for instance, in 2020, Cuba submitted to the United Nations that the embargo had cost them $5.57 billion from April 2019 to March 2020. And for context of what this means for the island, the total food imports into Cuba in the same period amounted to about $2 billion. So this is the scale of the losses as a consequence of this criminal blockade. And of course, without a significant manufacturing base, Cuba must import the vast majority of the commodities it consumes. And this puts Cuba's planned economy in a completely unbalanced situation with respect to its relationship to the world market. And of course this is a consequence ultimately also of Cuba's relationship with the Soviet Union. Now of course this was not the same. There's this misunderstanding that basically the revolution like Cuba to trade US domination for Soviet domination. I think this is false and completely misunderstands the relationship. Because of course the relationship that America had with Cuba, which was to extract all it could from the island, it was a very different relationship that Cuba had with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union actually gave favorable terms of trade to Cuba, for instance, so that it would buy sugar at prices above the world market and provide oil below world market prices and so on. And in order to allow Cuba to finance these programs and healthcare and education and so on. But the consequence unfortunately of this was that Cuba failed to invest in industry and didn't build up an industrial basis when the Soviet aid was present. And the consequence of this now is that Cuba's economy is profoundly exposed to the vacillations of the world market. But of course the blockade only adds you know costs to importing and so on. It makes it far more difficult for Cuba to obtain the various commodities that it needs. And this is in a time of course during a health crisis when more and more imports are necessary. Things like various medicines that maybe the island doesn't produce. Things like syringes and so on that it can't obtain from its own industry. And you know this was of course a campaign that was intensified by the Trump administration which introduced 240 different measures to strangle the Cuban economy. And these have included for instance the preventing the sending of remittances which is an important source of hard currency for the island where Western Union was forbidden to send money to Cuba. But also it's involved the scandalous like prevention of Cuban doctors being able to work elsewhere in Latin America. So for instance in the Pan American Health Organization which by the way is funded almost entirely by the U.S. There was a scheme that existed which basically allowed Cuban doctors to work in Brazil and that was an important source of income for the island. But America leaned on this institution basically saying look if you don't obey we're going to withdraw that funding. And so Cuba was denied access to this important source of revenue. Brazil basically obviously of course this also relates to the internal situation Bolsonaro being an outright reactionary as well. But this imperialist pressure is cut off a vital source of income for the island as well. But perhaps most devastating I think of all these policies of the blockade is the is the full enactment of the Helms Burton Act of 1996 which allows the U.S. to find companies that trade with Cuba if that happens to involve any property that was expropriated in 1960 which is of course the vast majority of the Cuban economy. And also prevents a ship from the tap that's docked in Cuba in a Cuban harbor from docking in a U.S. port for 180 days which in effect means that trading with Cuba will deny access to several key commodities for the island and only drive up the prices of those that they do not have access to. And it should be noted that Biden has done absolutely nothing to reverse the policies of the Trump administration. In fact he's threatened to intensify them and he actually introduced legislation or at least called for the introduction of legislation to counter the police brutality that was dealt out in Cuba which is the most rank hypocrisy when you think of the police brutality that was met out in the United States in response to the Black Lives Matter movement just a year ago. Of course this isn't all that's affecting Cuba. Another key factor understanding the cause of this crisis is the impact of the pandemic. And this of course links again back to Cuba's lack of an industrial baseness. Reliance on tourism is a key source of income. Now it's worth pointing out that Trump's measures were already suffocating this to a certain degree because tourism was down by 20% in 2019 from the figure in 2018. But the pandemic then reduced it by a further 75% putting it almost completely to a stop by March 2020. And on top of this hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers normally engaged in economic activity were suddenly laid idle whilst the government had to continue to pay their wages and provide bread rations and so on. And all of these factors basically led to the 11% contraction in Cuba's GDP in 2020 and cut off sources of vital income for the importing of key commodities including food and medicines. And so tourism alone contributes three billion dollars to the national income. And so if you remember back to the statistic about the amount that they have to spend in importing food that gives you a sense of the again of the scale of the crisis. So its loss has been catastrophic at a time when as I say state expenditure on things to fight the pandemic has only sold. Then of course and this is particularly important for us as revolutionaries. There is the role of the bureaucracy and how it has handled this crisis and the isolation that Cuba has faced since 1991. So I think first off let's deal with the immediate response to the protests which was basically to shut them down with coercive force and to implement censorship and so on. And I think this is a very poor strategy on how to combat it because such repression only lends credence to the absurd claims of imperialism and so further discredits the revolution in the eyes of the masses and so on. And importantly now is the time not to censor the discussion on which way forward for the revolution but to launch a very serious campaign of ideological rearmament on a revolutionary basis. This is now the time to open these debates and discussions on a revolutionary basis for the islands and yet this is the precise opposite was being done. It is worth saying and it is worth mentioning that it's to the as canals credit that he called on the people to come out onto the streets to defend the revolution. I think such an act does reflect the confidence that the regime has in mobilizing the popular support that exists and so on. But I think importantly it must go further, far more must be done which I'll come on to later. And of course the support that exists as I say is a consequence of the outstanding triumphs of the revolution. But there are longer term developments of bureaucratic mismanagement and the policies pursued that have brought Cuba to this situation. Because the Communist Party has effectively slowly introduced concessions to the market since the 1990s but particularly after 2008 when Fidel resigned the presidency and the crisis of capitalism hit home that have really really worsened the situation. Now these measures for instance have involved the allowing of small private accumulation under the guise of being self-employed, particularly in hospitality to cater for tourism. In response for instance to the 2008 crisis that severely affected Cuba which was also in part because one of the key sources of revenue for the island is also the export of nickel. And so in 2007 the value of this commodity was at $50,000 a ton. And 2008 is a result of the crisis of capitalism this plummeted to $9,400 which gives you a sense of the loss of revenue faced by the island. In response to this crisis the government laid off 500,000 workers in the state sector and encouraged them to engage in self-employment. And this formed the basis for the development of the kind of private accumulation of capital and so on and the social differentiation that opened up in the island. The government also began the process of privatizing the housing market allowing people to own more than one home and relinquishing state control over house building. And these policies have after decades of egalitarianism as I say they've reintroduced significant social differentiation into the island and produced the kind of petty bourgeois layer whose interests are in complete contradiction to those of the revolution. And indeed these policies have created the social basis for the protests that we saw in July. Much more recently in response to this latest crisis the bureaucracy has undertaken an extensive monetary organization that takes Cuba much further down the road of capitalist restoration than at any other point since the overthrow of Batista. It might get a little bit complicated here but I'll do my best to outline this. So before this monetary organization Cuba actually had effectively two currencies the national peso and a convertible peso but the key thing was that there were two different exchange rates for these currencies. So in the state sector one national peso which is the currency that wages are paid in and so on was equivalent to one convertible peso which is the currency with which things are bought on the world markets and so on but in the private sector the relationship was 25 pesos national pesos were equivalent to one convertible peso and what this means is that it completely overvalues the national peso in the state sector right it completely overvalues the strength of that currency and what that allows for is much much cheaper imports and it makes the effective wages of Cuban workers far stronger and so the the proposal of the military organization which has been implemented since January to eliminate these exchange rates effectively meant a major devaluing of the Cuban currency of the national peso four millions of workers which immediately reduces the the spending power of those workers now they tried to kind of stave this off with wage increases about four times a fourfold wage increase and so to stave off the impact of this measure but it wasn't enough basically and it has led to this is part of the contribution behind the inflation that has been seen in Cuba as well as the the impact of the blockade of course another aspect of this monetary organization is is also to allow for a growing role of the market in the economy so there are a hundred export and import contracts signed have been signed up to by private Cuban companies and these companies are being allowed to obtain 80 percent of the foreign currency that they require and what this effectively means is a complete weakening of the state monopoly on foreign trade which is a vital tool for a planned economy which is unable to unable to compete with the advanced capitalist economies that that that's around it and of course this is very much the case for Cuba so Lenin argued staunchly in defense of this monopoly against Bukharan's proposal in the midst of the Russian Revolution to move towards a tariff system and he did so precisely because opening up Russia at the time in the in the 1920s to the penetration of capitalist commodities would have ruined the domestic industry and thus prevented socialist development and Trotsky similarly made the point that the monopoly of foreign trade is a vitally necessary weapon for socialist construction when the capitalist countries possess a higher technique and as I say this is clearly the case of Cuba's relationship to the world market there's also been the introduction of something where there's going to be the folding of state companies that are unable to obtain to become profitable after a certain transition period there's also been the introduction of wage incentives for those companies that are able to more successfully obtain foreign currency which will only further the social differentiation that exists on the island and it's worth pointing out that that by virtue of the kind of activity that's taking place some workers will be better placed to receive those wage incentives than others that have nothing to do with how hard they work or how efficiently they work but just simply because of the vacillations of the world market and so this social differentiation will introduce profound unfairness in Cuban society as well which undermines the revolution and I think you know all of these measures are catastrophic for the island and set about a very dangerous course in particular there's also another measure which basically sees the ending of universal benefits so to this point there were universal benefits that all Cubans had access to and these are being replaced by means tested ones which firstly of course reflects the fact that the level of social differentiation that is open that there are those that are considered poorer than others for the first time for many decades but of course to have such a means tested system will again only intensify that social differentiation which will undermine the revolution but of course we're not you know fools if you like to think that these concessions and so some concessions to the market weren't necessary but precisely because of the situation Cuba found itself in in 1991 completely isolated and cuts off from the rest of the world but of course the problem is is that they have not been presented as the retreat that they are and I think it's very important to draw a comparison with the new economic policy that was pursued by by Lenin in the 1920s which was again about allowing the private accumulation of capital particularly in agriculture and so in a clear retreat right that has been imposed upon us by the delay of the world revolution but you know in the Cuban example if we look for instance Raul Castro in his speech at the eighth party Congress of the Cuban Communist Party he made the claim that the economic and social model of socialist development requires us to have sufficient capacities to regulate the market but the greatest possible harmony for the use of indirect methods at less and less administrative in other words in order to build socialism the market must regulate economic economic activity more and more this is an absurd claim of course and tellingly a session in the run-up to that congress took place between Diaz Canal the president and private businesses to discuss the future of the non-state i.e capitalist enterprises within the economy now again this was presented as strengthening socialism on the island and this is a very dangerous game being played by the Cuban government and in fact a group of communists known as Letizza commented on this in 2018 during the discussions of the new constitution that was that has been put in place in 2019 basically commenting that revolutionaries must present the situation honestly and ideologically arm the workers not mislead them with promises that capitalist reform would guarantee socialism and we wholeheartedly agree with this proposal but of course there are also very you know long-standing issues as a consequence of bureaucratic rule you know and the kind of crippling effect that it has on the economy because workers feel that they have no ownership over the means of production even though that is officially the case because they make none of the decisions they're made from bureaucrats imposed from above and this only engenders an attitude of apathy and so on and it leads to bureaucratic mismanagement which can't be checked you know there's no one that can there's no way to to kind of regulate the decisions that are made and so on and so mistakes are made and they're covered up and then then they're redoubled and redoubled and redoubled over time which you know is a disastrous situation for the planning of an economy and I think a real criminal example of this is the rotting of agricultural produce that's taking place in the island because of bureaucratic mismanagement you know food is being produced in Cuba but it's not being distributed and this is this this can only occur because of the malaise and the apathy that is a product of bureaucratic mismanagement and such a phenomena could and should be corrected immediately with workers control which would see the workers have real ownership over the decision making processes so what has transpired since these protests in Cuba then the government is effectively attempted to offer concessions to the people but also continue to make concessions to the market but it's also importantly tried to combine this with with tours of working-class areas in order to hear the complaints and establish a dialogue in terms of medicines one of the measures for instance in terms of medicines they've eliminated customs charges on imports for personal consumption which is which is obviously a significant relief for humans in such a period but more importantly they've hastily rushed through the legalizing of small and medium enterprises basically private companies on the island and as I say this path can only strengthen the forces of reaction and the bureaucracy is conjuring up forces that it cannot control despite the best of intentions but I think as well an important question for Marx this isn't just the hard economic facts but also how these have impacted consciousness and the general mood that exists in society now of course we can't be absolutely exact about this important question but certain things have indicated the mood so as I say there's amongst a broad layer of the population there is a sense of malaise that things need to change and this has been the case for prolonged periods in fact in 2011 Renaud Lambert a journalist noted that this February workers at the clinic in central Havana met to discuss the linea mientos which were proposals to introduce market reforms it's 291 proposals include performance-based pay legalizing market prices and a review of social programs the documents was approved unanimously in just a few minutes but the workers stressed their attachment to Cuba's health and education systems some things should change but not those and in my conversations with Cubans in 2018 when I visited the island this was a familiar formulation the idea that capitalism can be solely introduced and restored but socialized health care and education be maintained but this is a utopia but what this importantly reflects is not just you know the malaise that exists and that has set in but also importantly that the fact there's the fall in political consciousness on the island as well that has taken place over a protracted period as a result of the failures of the revolutionary government to wage an ideological struggle as well there are also influential institutions such as the centre for the study of the Cuban economy that articulate a clearly pro-capitalist line Omar Eveleni a Cuban economist has talked up in the Havana Times the adoption of the Chinese or Vietnamese model which of course means the restoration of capitalism likewise Juan Triana Codobi and Ricardo Torres Perez of the same institute openly celebrate Cuba's move towards restoring capitalism was with various reforms that expanded the non-state sector this section of society is of course undoubtedly hopeful of what such reforms and the restoration of capitalism would mean for their position in society as salary professionals but there's also an aspect that their ideological perspective is informed entirely by their disconnection from the real economy simply analysing it rather than being actively a part of it but within the more the politically active layer in the communist party there are also various trends there is of course a right wing that is looking to emulate as I say this the Vietnamese or the Chinese way with more and more market reforms but this is by no means the only mood within the bureaucracy and the party there's also an important left wing that exists and is becoming increasingly vocal and is even being voiced in official channels of the state the communist party paper for instance grandma which is named after the small boat that ferries along the the guerilla fighters of the July 26 movement in 1956 put on a very interesting article in May 2020 this was titled the neoliberal goodness of zealous advisers and it was an attack on those who prescribed capitalist restoration as a solution to Cuba's ills and it makes the salient point that the world capitalist system is currently going into its worst crisis for centuries and so why is it that we're rushing to join this crisis interestingly enough in response to this article a right wing economist Pedro Monreal wrote in his blog that those opposed the development to small and medium enterprises are better off going to the big leagues and reading Trotsky in the left opposition and of course we can only agree with this but outside of the official structures there are many blogs and small groupings of all different political shades that are discussing which way forward for Cuba and I want to comment on some of the the left wing ones so as I mentioned there's this group Latissa which is a particular interest as they've written several articles as communists in opposition to bureaucracy and recommending workers control as a solution indeed they've been prompted by the protests of July 11 to be more openly critical of the bureaucracy and put forward a six point program that includes measures on redistributing wealth gained by corruption workers control and the redirection of investment from tourism to more vital industries like agriculture importantly they raise the need for the popular involvement of the workers in political and economic decisions as the main way to resolve the crisis in Cuba interestingly they talk about going beyond support for progressive governments in terms of foreign policy and for Cuba to link up with anti-capitalist movements now of course this formulation can be sharper but it's a very positive sign that they're looking to to an internationalist foreign policy which is absolutely vital another group called mass socialism or more socialism that was set up around the discussions of the Eighth party Congress of the Communist party professes to be a group of militant youth that have also formulated a program with workers control as a central feature and Lester Perot one of the main organizers of the group is articulated that it is not enough to condemn Yankee imperialism but you also must criticize the mistakes made by the government to criticize bureaucracy from a revolutionary standpoint and we again we can only agree and so clearly there is also a conscious and active left in Cuba that is the basis for leading Cuba out of this crisis in a revolutionary direction and so this brings me on to my final point which is which way forward for the revolution in Cuba? Now of course I think one thing that we would argue for is the freedom of expression for all revolutionaries to debate which way forward for the revolution that is absolutely vital that must be coupled with a campaign of ideological rearmament so Raul Castro's central speech which I mentioned before made this point on several occasions and notably he said it is necessary to raise the revolutionary militancy and intransigence and strengthen its contribution to ideological work the confrontation with the enemy's subversive plans and the creation and consolidation of values but of course we welcome this of course but it must go beyond an eloquent speech in front of the communist party it should be the priority of the party itself to wage a campaign of education within its own ranks and for these cadres to carry out work in the mass organizations and in the workplaces and so on the party should not shirk ideological battles that lie ahead and we welcome the decision of the party to put forward a clear proposal for the new family code challenging the reactionary position of the evangelical churches that marriages between a man and a woman and this frank ideological confrontation must not just be confined to this question of the family code but it must be repeated on all the vital questions affecting the course of the revolution and indeed this ideological rearmament is all the more important in the context of plans of the counter-revolution to hold a demonstration on the 15th of November so this demonstration was initially actually planned to be on the 20th because it was a deliberate reference to the velvet revolution that overthrew the plans economy in Czechoslovakia and this demo is being organized by forces that are known to be connected openly to the counter-revolution and terrorist organizations in Miami and so on and what we say to this is that police repression will not win the struggle the masses must be mobilized to defend the revolution but this can only be achieved with open revolutionary discussion and of course there is and we agree with those communists that are struggling in Cuba that there is a real need for genuine workers control over industries and over the mass organizations for instance at the CTC the national trade union confederation in 2010 Franck Jose Salah Cabrales a history professor in the Universidad de Oriente stated that for the Cuban revolution an internationalist policy is not only a moral obligation or a tradition it is also a question of survival and this is absolutely correct thank you the spreading of the revolution beyond the boundaries of Cuba this is an absolutely vital task and of course there are myriad opportunities and I would recommend that all those interested in the future of the Cuban revolution go along to the talk which is on tomorrow believe on the revolution in Latin America because these two questions are inextricably linked but it's important that the Cuban revolution plays plays a decisive role in this for instance there can be no repeat of the disastrous mistakes that were made in the Bolivarian revolution where basically the Cuban revolution advised Hugo Chávez to hold back not to carry out the expropriation of capitalist property basically saying look it was the 1960s things were different now you can't do this sort of thing this has been a disaster because that has paved the way for the crisis that afflicts Venezuela today that the failure to carry out a successful revolution to carry out to its completion and so Cuba must adopt a clearly revolutionary policy that actually calls for the overthrow of capitalism in any situation in Latin America and the world this is a vital importance and in a much more recent article about Latin American unity published on the 26th of September in Granmerg and the official party of the Communist Party again the same Cabrales makes the case that we need to articulate the struggles of all the oppressed peoples with a revolutionary leadership that identifies capitalism as the main and common enemy and concentrates all its energies against it and it is this revolutionary leadership that is everywhere lacking and that must be built only the spreads of the Cuban revolution can guarantee its survival thank you comrades