Fidel Castro’s final reflections
Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Nine years after his death, we look back at some of the most relevant themes in Fidel Castro’s final writings after stepping down as President of Cuba.
Fidel Castro is often remembered as one of the most iconic leaders of the 20th century. Despite Washington’s unrelenting attempts to overthrow and even assassinate him, Fidel continued his rule and the development of the Cuban Revolution, which began in 1959 after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.
Much is written on his reflections on the development of the revolutionary struggle in the second half of the 20th century, his emblematic speeches, and his universal vision that combined the best of Leninist pragmatism with the sharpness of anti-colonial critical thinking. But Fidel’s vision of the future of humanity during his last years of life, an activity that demanded many hours of reading and writing, is often overlooked.
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In fact, Fidel resigned as President of Cuba in 2008, with the aim of ensuring that the transition to another leader would not jeopardize the existence of the Cuban Revolution; many believed that after his death, the Communist Party of Cuba’s government would collapse.
And while many said that Fidel continued to lead the country after his resignation, the truth is that his production of essays and articles increased exponentially. Foreign policy, ecology, coups d’état, and even reflections on baseball and sports were all topics that Castro covered in his copious written work, generally published in Cuban and international newspapers.
The right to live
Fidel insisted that if human beings continued down the path of savage capitalism, they would bring about the end of their own existence. For Fidel, climate change was not only a transformation of certain environmental aspects, but also the destruction of human existence: “Continuing the battle and demanding at all meetings, particularly those in Bonn and Mexico, the right of humanity to exist… is, in our opinion, the only way forward.”
Here Fidel took a stance far removed from any short- or medium-term ideological dispute to adopt a long-term vision, according to which human beings have been incapable of properly managing a legacy of billions of years once they appeared on Earth: “[Human beings] benefit from a fabulous legacy of 4 billion years provided by the Earth… They are only 200,000 years old, but they have already changed the face of the world.”
Furthermore, he found any kind of military spending deeply inappropriate in the face of the inexorable arrival of the end of humanity. “The world is suffering the consequences of climate change at the same time;… A war was the most inappropriate thing that could happen at this time.”
The nuclear danger
Few people knew more about an almost imminent nuclear war than Fidel Castro. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world was on the brink of self-destruction. This concern never left Castro, when he warned of the massacre that would take place years later in Palestine: “As soon as the warships of the United States and Israel take their positions… the terrible war will begin.”
Furthermore, he clearly understood that a large-scale war, especially a nuclear one, would not transform the balance of power between social classes. Thus, he warned that after such a war, only “the administration of goods and services” would remain, and it would be carried out by the same elites that currently exist.
Imperialism as a method of domination
Fidel never abandoned the idea that imperialism continued to be the capitalist system’s most refined method for extracting value and subjugating the peoples of the Third World. Militaristic policy, the essence of imperialism, could never abandon its development, even at the expense of other more pressing needs.
He emphasized that in 2008, 42% of global spending was on military expenses: “While USD 1.5 trillion is spent on defense, the number of hungry people in the world reaches 1 billion.” This disparity was no accident, but rather a strategy executed by the great powers, under the pretext of defense cooperation, to impose economic programs and projects that further dispossess Third World countries. Thus, he openly criticized Obama’s foreign policy for Latin America as a ploy to control the Amazon
Science and technology
Fidel’s Marxism could not ignore the impressive technological transformation that took place during the first decades of the 21st century. In this sense, his reflections often focused on the use that transnational companies were making, and could make, in the field of production.
“If robots in the hands of transnational corporations can replace imperial soldiers in wars of conquest… (they can) flood it with robots that displace millions of workers.” Thus, Fidel announced a new process of dispossession of labor, as carried out by the merchant bourgeoisie at the dawn of the Modern Age.
Thus, technology, climate change, imperialism, and so on, could give the impression of rampant pessimism. However, thinking that could be a mistake. It is true that there was a great deal of caution and concern in Fidel’s final reflections, but this should not be confused with a renunciation of collective struggle.
Castro’s final texts always called for organization, for not giving up the strength of will, for continuing to think and work toward another future, one that is not at the mercy of the designs of a few. In short, as Romain Rolland stated and Gramsci popularized, Fidel’s thinking perfectly executed the maxim “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”
Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
