There is no doubt in this reviewer’s mind that Theodore Draper is the most insightful of the many commentators on the Castro Revolution since 1959. In his magazine articles and first book on the subject Draper traced the origins and early evolution of the Cuban upheaval. In the present volume he continues the story down to the early months of 1965 and tries to put fidelismo in historical perspective.
The book is divided into three main parts: a study of the relationship of fidelismo or Castroism to the world Communist movement, a discussion of the class nature of the Cuban Revolution, and a description of the evolution of its economic policies. As a kind of postscript Draper offers a rebuttal to Senator J. William Fulbright’s famous speech advocating a change in United States relations with Castro’s Cuba.
Draper starts his discussion of the role of fidelismo in the international Communist movement by pointing out that there have been three basic schools of thought on the matter: that Castro has always been a Communist; that he is not and never has been a Communist; and that he was not one when he took power but became one. Draper himself strongly favors the last interpretation in this book, as he does in his earlier one.
The author traces the evolution of the Castro movement’s relations with the Communists, ending in the fusion in 1961. In explaining the reasons for this ultimate unification of fidelismo and Communism, Draper writes (p. 50):
Thus, the reason for Castroism’s coalescence with Communism can be explained less by what it was than by what it was not. It was not a movement with a serious political thought or a serious political thinker. It has had a leader with great gifts of popularization, demagogy, and dissimulation, with a contagious sense of mission and jefatura, with the physical attributes of a warrior-hero. But he has also had a deep, persistent feeling of intellectual inadequacy and inferiority, a tendency to depend on others for fundamental values or systematic theorizing, an inherent political superficiality and instability. Before taking power, he could put his name to fine democratic aims and principles, admittedly without believing in them, not because he was profoundly committed to other beliefs but because he did not believe in anything very profoundly.
Although Castro thus led his movement into the Communist ranks largely because he had no alternative ideology of his own, Draper accepts the fact that fidelismo is now part of the world Communist movement. On this point he writes (p. 52):
In short, Castroism today represents a tendency within the world Communist movement. There is no such thing as Castroism per se. Indeed, the term Castroism is not used in Cuba today, and Castro himself seems very coy about acknowledging the existence of Castroism. It is necessary to distinguish between the “ism” of the genus “Communism” and the “ism” of a species called “isms,” and this practice is not likely to be given up.
Draper notes that many different theories have been offered concerning the class nature of the Castro regime. He points out that when he first entered Havana, Castro himself credited his victory over Batista to support of “the whole people.” However, soon thereafter it became popular to picture the Castro movement as essentially an agrarian revolution, a groundswell of the peasantry. Subsequently, the official line has tended to downgrade the peasantry and to emphasize the role of the urban workers in more orthodox Communist fashion. Finally there have been many, Draper notes, who have insisted on the middle-class nature of the movement.
In an interesting passage Draper discusses the evolution of the “peasant theory,” focusing particularly on the writings of Ernesto Guevara. However, he points out that Guevara himself emphasized the supremacy of guerrilla warfare, not of the peasantry, and regarded agrarian reform as merely an instrument of guerrilla war. In summary: “Thus, Guevara does not derive guerrilla warfare from the nature of an agrarian revolution; he derives the agrarian revolution from guerrilla warfare” (p. 67).
With the adoption of Communism the Castro Revolution tended to emphasize the “working class” nature of the movement. However, Draper quite rightly dismisses this as largely nonsense. There was no leadership from the organized workers in the Revolution, and even in the countryside it was not the wage-earning plantation employees but the squatters who tended to join the revolutionaries’ ranks.
Draper makes an important point on the middle-class origins of the Revolution. He declares that most of the actual leaders of Castro’s movement were from the middle class, but he insists that they were not acting as spokesmen or representatives of that class, and that in fact it was the middle class who tended to suffer most from the denouement of the Cuban Revolution.
Draper sums up his conclusions as to the class nature of the Castro Revolution thus (p. 133):
Castroism is not a peasant movement or a proletarian movement any more than it was a middle-class movement. The declassé revolutionaries who have determined Cuba’s fate have used one class or another, or a combination of classes, for different purposes at different times. Their leader functions above classes, cuts across classes, or maneuvers between them. He belongs to a leadership type, not unprecedented in this century, which establishes a direct, personal, almost mystical relationship with the masses that frees him from dependence on classes….
The section of Draper’s book on the economic evolution of the Castro regime traces the sad story from the program of all-out industrialization and agricultural diversification during the first years of the Revolution to the retreat to sugar begun late in 1963. In this discussion he points out Castro’s tendency to blame the failures of the early years on everyone except the leaders of the Revolution and contrasts this with Guevara’s greater frankness on the subject.
Draper’s comment on the rise in Guevara’s influence during 1964 is especially interesting in view of his disappearance early in the following year. This disappearance seems all the more inexplicable considering Draper’s evidence that he apparently gave reluctant acceptance to the abandonment of policies which he had formerly advocated—industrialization and crop diversification.
This volume is certainly one of the best published so far on the Cuban Revolution. It will serve to dispel many illusions and to provide both useful facts and knowledgeable interpretation.
