Fidel Castro Speeches, Vol. 2 1960-1982: Building Socialism in Cuba

At the beginning of this book, Fidel Castro exclaims to a multitude of cheering Cuban workers and peasants near the beginning of the revolution, " This is democracy !" The democracy of workers power in the factories, shops, and sugar mills and plantations. The democracy of the peasants owning the land they work. The democracy of almost two million Cubans armed and trained by their government to use modern weapons in a people's militia. The democracy that means the workers and farmers not empowered, but IN power. Cuban workers and farmers vote for their representatives, but this book shows that even before those revolutionary institutions were set up, Cubans had more democracy than ever existed here since Radical Reconstruction (from 1865-1877) ! This book also potrays the battle between the geniuine communist leaders around Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro, Che Guevara,et. al. and the pro-Moscow wannabe--capitalist Stalinist bureaucrats. Read the rest in the New International Marxist review # 8 : "Che Guevara, Cuba, and the Road to Socialism" and # 11 " Imperialism's March Toward Fascism and War."

More than twenty speeches and articles, spread out over more than two decades, describe the socialist system Cuba?s workers and farmers are creating. The fight against bureaucracy, the role of labor unions, and Cuba?s electoral system all illustrate the point that the Cuban revolution has produced a power that is deeply democratic.

In the first speech in this book, "This is Democracy!," given to a mass rally on May Day 1960, Cuban leader Fidel Castro discusses the new society that was beginning to be built in revolutionary Cuba after the 1950 overthrow of the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. The more than twenty speeches printed here detail the revolutionary course charted by leaders of the Cuban revolution and their response to big challenges along the way, from U.S. and Cuban capitalist attacks, lies and slanders to bureaucratic misleaders that developed within Cuba itself. Many of the speeches are from the 1970s, difficult years for Cuba given the failure of revolutionary movements elsewhere in Latin America and strong pressure to adapt to the bureaucratic methods and practices of the Soviet Union. I'd recommend reading this along with another book of Fidel's speeches, "Cuba's Internationalist Foreign Policy,"-- that details the worldwide perspective of solidarity and the selfless assistance Cuba gave to others fighting for their freedom at this time. The last speeches come from the early 1980s, after the worker and peasant revolutions in Nicaragua and Grenada gave new impetus to Cuban revolutionaries. You can see the seeds of the deep-going changes Fidel and the Cuban leadership led forward in the mid-1980s in the campaign known as "rectification." You can also read more about this in the book "In Defense of Socialism," a collection of Fidel's speeches from the late 1980s.