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Current Issue #52
Vol 24, No. 1

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Table of Contents

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52 (Volume 24, No. 1)

Cuban Perspectives on Cuban Socialism


Preface by The Editors

Introduction, by Alfredo Prieto

Rafael Hernández
, Revolution/Reform and Other Cuban Dilemmas

Juan Valdés Paz, Cuba: The Left in Government, 1959-2008

Emilio Duharte Díaz, Cuba at the Onset of the 21st Century: Socialism, Democracy, and Political Reforms

Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva and Pavel Vidal Alejandro, Cuba’s Economy: A Current Evaluation and Several Necessary Proposals

Mayra Espina, Looking at Cuba Today: Four Assumptions and Six Intertwined Problems

María del Carmen Zabala Argüelles, Poverty and Vulnerability in Cuba Today

Marta Núñez Sarmiento, Cuban Development Strategies and Gender Relations

Aurelio Alonso, Religion in Cuba’s Socialist Transition

Rodrigo Espina Prieto and Pablo Rodríguez Ruiz, Race and Inequality in Cuba Today

Notes on Contributors







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9. On Harrison as the "Father of Harlem Radicalism" see Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 79f.

10. Rogers, WGMC, 2:432; AHHR, 294.

11. Baptism Record of "Hubert Henry [Harrison]," July 7, 1883, St. John's Anglican Church, Christiansted, St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands, 9; HH, "Diary," cover, possession of author; Rogers, WGMC, 2:433.

12. AHHR, 241-50, esp. 243, 420f, nn. 48-49. For the St. Croix years see Perry, "Hubert Henry Harrison," 1-40.

13. AHHR, 247; Perry, "Hubert Henry Harrison," 7-12; Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race 2 vols. (New York: Verso, 1994, 1997) 1:113, 2:238; and Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia, 5.

14. AHHR, 240-41, 420 n. 48; Perry, "Hubert Henry Harrison," 14-19.

15. Daniel Bell, "The Background and Development of Marxian Socialism in the United States," in Donald Drew Egbert and Stow Persons, eds., Socialism and American Life, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), 1:213-405, quote 268, and Rayford W. Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson, New Enlarged Edition (1954; New York: Macmillan Company, 1970), 11, 62.

16. AHHR, 36-39, 428-429 n. 8. Harrison considered his agnosticism to be similar to that of Thomas Huxley. Huxley explained his agnosticism as "not a creed but a method, the essence of which lies in the vigorous application of a single principle... the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed as in matters of intellect, follow your reason as far as it can carry you without other considerations. And negatively, in matters of the intellect, do not pretend the conclusions are certain that are not demonstrated or demonstrable." With such a perspective, a person "shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store." See Thomas Henry Huxley, "Agnosticism," (1889), rptd. in Gordon Stein, ed., An Anthology of Atheism amd Rationalism (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1980), 42-45, quote 43, 44.

Harrison's break from religion made possible a critical approach to all matters as had been noted in 1844 by a young Karl Marx who pithily concluded that "criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism." See Karl Marx, "Toward the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," in Lewis S. Feuer, ed., Marx & Engels: Basic Writings on Philosophy and Politics (Garden City: Doubleday, 1959), 262-66, quote 262. Freethought also influenced other Black activists and writers of Harrison's era including Randolph, Rogers, Briggs, Moore, Claude McKay, Chandler Owen, Walter Everette Hawkins, George S. Schuyler, and Rothschild Francis, while Du Bois was influenced by agnosticism. See AHHR, 35f, 427f, nn. 6-7.

17. AHHR, 33-39; Antonio Gramsci, "The Modern Prince" and Other Writings (New York: International Publishers, 1957), 118-20 and Manning Marable, Black Leadership (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 97-101.

18. AHHR, 13, 442 n. 58.

19. HH, "The Negro American Vol. VIII: The Negro Factions. The Negro Factions, The Protestants, The Subservients," scrapbook [5], HH Papers.

20. AHHR, 129-36, 151-61.

21. HH to the Editor, New York Times Saturday Review of Books, April 13, 1907, 242 and April 27, 1907, 274; HH to the editor, New York Sun, December 8, 1910, 8 and December 19, 1910, 8; Charles W. Anderson to Booker T. Washington September 10 and October 30, 1911, in Louis R. Harlan & Raymond W. Smock, eds. The Booker T. Washington Papers, 13 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972-1984), 11:300-01, 351.

22. AHHR, 52-62, 71-78, 107-116, quotes p. 73.

23. AHHR, 54f.

24. AHHR, 75; "'Socialists' Despise Negroes in South," NYC, August 21, 1911, 3.

25. AHHR, 60-62, 76.

26. AHHR, 76; Seth M. Scheiner, Negro Mecca: A History of the Negro in New York City, 1865-1920 (New York: New York University Press, 1965), 73.

27. David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America: A History (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1955), 10f; Bell, "The Background and Development of Marxian Socialism in the United States," 275, 277.

28. Socialist Party, National Convention of the Socialist Party Held at Indianapolis, Ind., May 12 to 18, 1912, Stenographic Report by Wilson E. McDermut, assisted by Charles W. Phillips, ed. by John Spargo (Chicago, 1912), 209-11; Philip S. Foner, American Socialism and Black Americans: From the Age of Jackson to World War II (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975), 350.

29. AHHR, 55f.

30. Socialist Party, National Convention... 1912, 210. Harrison writes that "The quoted passage [on immigration] cuts the very heart out of their [the Socialists'] case." See AHHR, 109, 113-17. See Foner, American Socialism and Black Americans, 258; Mark Naison, "Marxism and Black Radicalism: Notes on a Long (and continuing) Journey," Radical America, May-June 1971, 3-25, quote 6.

31. Werner Sombart, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? [1906], ed. and with an introductory essay by C. T. Husbands (White Plains, N.Y., 1976), esp. xix-xxiii.

Theodore W. Allen is instructive on the theme of white supremacy and class consciousness in the U.S. Allen reviews a host of Marxist and labor historians (including Frederick Engels, Frederick A. Sorge, Richard T. Ely, Morris Hillquit, William Z. Foster, John R. Commons, Selig Perlman, Norman J. Ware, Mary and Charles Beard, Allan Nevins, Henry Steele Commager, and Frederick Jackson Turner) who, he argues, created a classic consensus which ascribes the low level of class consciousness to "six peculiar objective factors of United States historical development." The six factors which Allen maintains were adopted, at least in part, by all of the writers he cites, include: 1) early existence of the right to vote and other democratic liberties; 2) heterogeneity of the working class; 3) the "safety valve" of western homesteading opportunities; 4) social mobility; 5) relative shortage of labor and higher wages; and 6) development of trade unions prior to development of a labor party. Allen argues that each point of this six-pronged rationale is refuted or seriously challenged by factual analysis and that each thesis of the consensus "must be decisively revised in the light of the question of white supremacy." For Allen, "the key to the defeat of labor and popular forces" in the U.S. has historically been the theory and the practice [as exhibited by the Socialist Party in 1912] of white supremacy. See Theodore W. Allen, "'The Kernel and the Meaning...,' A Contribution to a Proletarian Critique of United States History," n.p., c. 1967, possession of author, 1-41, esp. 8-9, 13-14, 20-21; Theodore W. Allen, "Can White Radicals Be Radicalized?," in Noel Ignatin and Ted Allen, "White Blindspot" "Can White Radicals Be Radicalized?" (New York, 1969), 12-18, esp. 13; and Theodore W. Allen, "On Roediger's Wages of Whiteness," CLogic, 4:2, esp. paragraphs 7-10, at http://eserver.org/clogic/4-2/allen.html .

32. Sally M. Miller, "Other Socialists: Native Born and Immigrant Women in the Socialist Party of America, 1900-1917," Labor History, 24, No. 1 (Winter 1983), 84-102, esp. 101.

33. HH, "Diary," September 28, 1914.

34. "The Reminiscences of A. Philip Randolph," interview with Wendell Wray, July 25, 1972, 152, in Oral History Project, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York; Lester A. Walton, "Street Speaker Heralds Spring in Harlem," New York World, March 23, 1928, 17.

35. HH, "Introductory," in HH, When Africa Awakes: The "Inside Story" of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World (New York: Porro Press, 1920), 5-8; HH, The Negro and the Nation (New York: Cosmo-Advocate Publishing Co., 2305 Seventh Avenue, 1917), 3 n.

36. AHHR, 370-76.

37. AHHR, 86-88, 143-47.

38. AHHR, 177f.

39. AHHR, 97f; Nathan Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 53-59; Alain Leroy Locke, The New Negro (1925; New York: Athenaeum, 1968). Tony Martin in Literary Garveyism: Garvey Black Arts and the Harlem Renaissance (Dover, MA: The Majority Press, 1983), ix-x, 2, 5 and African Fundamentalism: A Literary and Cultural Anthology of Garvey's Harlem Renaissance (1983; Dover, MA: The Majority Press, 1991), xv-xvi, emphasizes the major literary importance of the Garvey movement and the Negro World (starting around 1920 [when Harrison became editor-JP]) to the literary epoch known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harrison Papers make clear that the Garvey movement was a component of the New Negro movement and that Harrison's book review and poetry sections were central to the Negro World's literary appeal.

40. AHHR, 104, 196f.

41. W.E.B. Du Bois, "Close Ranks," Crisis, 16 (July 1918): 111; AHHR, 168-174; Ernest Allen, Jr., "'Close Ranks': Major Joel E. Spingarn and the Two Souls of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois," Contributions in Black Studies, No. 3 (1979-1980), 25-38; AHHR, 173-74; Mark Ellis, "W.E.B. Du Bois and the Formation of Black Opinion in World War I: A Commentary on 'The Damnable Dilemma,'" Journal of American History 81, no. 4 (March 1995): 1584-90. According to Mark Ellis, over the next forty years, Du Bois would refer to his activity around the period of the Great War with "a mixture of shame and bitterness." See Mark Ellis, "'Closing Ranks' and 'Seeking Honors': W.E.B. Du Bois in World War I," Journal of American History, 79, no. 1 (June 1992), 96-124, esp. 96, 98, 122.

42. AHHR, 170-73.

43. The MOWM led to president Franklin D. Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order 8802 (on June 25, 1941) which stated that it shall be the "policy of the United States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or Government because of race, creed, color, or national origin" and called for the establishment of a Fair Employment Practices Committee. The 1963 march led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act (that forbade discrimination in public accommodations and employment). See Herbert Garfinkel, When Negroes March: The March on Washington Movement in the Organizational Politics for FEPC (1959; New York: Athenaeum, 1969), 56-61, 117-31; James Gilbert Cassedy, "African Americans and the American Labor Movement," Prologue, 29, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 113-20, esp. 119.

44. AHHR, 170-182, esp. 179f.

45. AHHR, 20-21,216-19; HH, "The Problems of Leadership," When Africa Awakes, 54f.

46. AHHR, 202-12, 229-34.

47. [HH,] "The Voice Is Coming Out to Stay!" c. July 4, 1918, HH Papers, Writings; Voice, July 11, 1918.

48. AHHR, 101-02, 216-19

49. AHHR, 402-04. Du Bois reached a similar conclusion in 1940 in his autobiography. At that time Du Bois explained that Booker T. Washington had proposed "a flight of class from mass in wealth with the idea of escaping the masses or ruling the masses through power placed by white capitalists into the hands of those with larger income. My own panacea of earlier days was flight of class from mass through the development of a Talented Tenth." See W.E.B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept [1940] (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 216f; Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, 5.

50. AHHR, 122-28, 183-88; HH, "Opening the Doors," Boston Chronicle, April 5, 1924, and HH, "The Feet of the Young Men," Boston Chronicle, March 22, 1924, both in HH Papers, Writings.

51. AHHR, 182-88, 191-94. Comments from activist Bill Fletcher and historians Ernest Allen, Gerald Horne, and Portia James say much about the caliber of Harrison's editorials. Fletcher writes that Harrison was "a revolutionary intellectual who wrote eye-opening exposures and rigorous political analysis" that "ideologically and politically" were "clearly in the vanguard of Black political thought of the time." Allen views Harrison as "pivotal to black intellectual life from the Progressive to the post-war era" and he adds that "his editorials and commentary were certainly no less insightful-and often a good deal more so-than anything in this vein that Du Bois ever produced in the Crisis magazine." His writings "fill a gap not only in our understanding of black radical and nationalist writings around the World War I period and beyond, but [they] also,... change the way in which we have tended to look at black thought generally in this period." Horne agrees that "in many ways Harrison's analyses of the World War I era-and countless other matters-are sharper than those of Du Bois." Historian Portia James concludes that "It is impossible to have a full understanding of the 1900-1930 period in Black politics without knowing Harrison and his influential work." See Fletcher, Jr., "Radicals Known and Unknown," 58; Ernest Allen, letter to Suzanna Tammimen, June 21, 1999, copy in possession of author; Horne, BRC-Discuss, June 1, 2001; Portia James, letter to Suzanna Tammimen, c. June 1999, copy in possession of author.

52. AHHR, 182-200.

53. AHHR, 399-402; "Negroes Plan New American State," Christian Science Monitor, June 7, 1924, 5B; "Separate Colored State Urged by Harrison," New York News, August 2, 1924; and "Wants Exclusive Negro Territory in U.S.," New York World, August 3, 1924.

54. Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem: Collected Writings 1920-1972, ed. by W. Burghardt and Joyce Moore Turner (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 216. Cary D. Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance (Houston: Rice University Press, 1988), 3, writes that Harlem "symbolized the central experience of American blacks in the early twentieth century-the urbanization of black America."

55. Rogers, WGMC, 2:433, 437; AHHR, 9.

56. Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976). Race First, 360, points out, "for two decades or so after his death [in 1940] Garvey was all but relegated to the position of an unperson." It was only with "the Black Power revolution of the 1960s" that the race activist Garvey received renewed recognition.

57. AHHR, 42-46, 175-77; Rogers, WGMC, 2:439.

58. Ralph Dumain of the C.L.R. James Institute writes that Harrison had "very admirable traits." He was "A working class autodidact, a street agitator, organizer, educator, critic, and ... closer to the black working class than any other revolutionary intellectual of his time." He was "relentlessly independent, ruthlessly objective, intellectually rigorous" and devoted to "education, erudition, scientific method, and the intellectual elevation of his constituency." Ralph Dumain, to author, June 17, 2001, possession of author.

59. Theodore W. Allen discusses the origins of the system of racial oppression and its centrality to class rule in the U.S. in Allen, Invention of the White Race, 1:32-35, 133-35; 143-50 and 2:221-22 and 239-59.

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