Cuba's Stalinist rulers have begun the process of sacking 500,000 public-sector workers. The government claims the sackings are necessary because of the pressures the economic crisis has placed on the already cash-strapped state (a refrain familiar to working-class activists the world over).
In an interview with a state-run radio station, Salvador Valdes Mesa - the head of the country's main "union", the Cuban Workers' Federation (also effectively state-run) - said that the union would need to "convince (workers) of the need for these measures for the country's economy".
The picture is typical; a bosses' government making savage cuts under the pretext of a financial crisis and using a collaborationist "union" federation to sell the measures to the workers who'll be effected. Exactly the sort of thing any working-class socialist, wherever they are in the world, would be resolutely opposed to, right?
We'll see. Undoubtedly the sycophantic cheerleaders of the Cuban Stalinism will sink to new lows of political contortion in an attempt to justify the government's action and explain how they are somehow consistent with an assessment of Cuba as socialist, a degenerated or deformed workers' state, or otherwise "progressive."
For us, they are further confirmation that Cuba - like every other state on the planet - is one in which a boss class rules over an exploited class and in which the only ultimate avenue for real, fundamental change is a revolution in which that exploited class overthrows that boss class and smashes its state.
Where is Cuba headed? by Sam Farber
www.zcommunications.org/where-is-cuba-headed-by-sam-farber