Notes on the ideology of the Cuban Revolution
Our ideology is defined by the guiding principles of Cuba’s struggle for national liberation and social justice, on the development of our own thought, characterized, as Martí explained, by placing universal thought within the unique, Cuban context

Author: Eduardo Torres-Cuevas | internet@granma.cu
february 7, 2022 11:02:39

Photo: Anabel Díaz
I believe that what can give coherence to cultural, political and ideological work is a definition of the ideology of the Cuban Revolution.
Our ideology is based on the guiding principles of Cuba’s national liberation and social emancipation processes; on the development of our own thought characterized, as pointed out by José Martí, by placing universal thought within a relative, singular context, according to the specific demands of Cuba’s reality.
Fidel Castro, deeply knowledgeable of Marti’s thought, was the architect of the Cuban revolutionary project and the person who gave it, in praxis and in his dialectical thought, both universal and particular content. As he stated, his contribution to revolutionary theory was uniting Marxist thought with Marti’s. It follows that the Ideology of the Cuban Revolution contains two guiding components: Cuban revolutionary thought and Marxist thought, adapted to our reality.
This combination is absolutely necessary to understand Cuba’s historical processes and current complexities, as well as those of Third World countries, which have evolved in a manner very different from that of countries in the First World. While the latter are the center of developed capitalist modernity, the former constitute the periphery, the modern world’s marginal areas.
This implies a complexity emerging from the domination and exploitation by imperialist countries which characterize sour historical evolution and the current struggles we face.
In this regard Karl Marx writes, in a letter to the Russian magazine Otiéchestviennie Zapiski, addressing N. K. Mikhailovki’s attempt to schematically extrapolate contents of Capital to the Russian reality: “At all costs he wants to convert my historical sketch on the origins of capitalism in Western Europe into a philosophical-historical theory on the general trajectory to which all peoples are unavoidably subjected, whatever the historical circumstances that affect them, to finally take shape in an economic formation which, along with an expansion of the productive forces, of social labor, ensures the development of man in each and every one of his aspects. (This shows me too great an honor and, at the same time, too much contempt.)”
The characteristics of Cuban society and its evolution are based on elements very different from those of Europe and the United States, since our lot was colonizer -colonized, slave holder-enslaved, producer of raw materials within the north-south and east-west commercial network, according to Martí, “the fulcrum of America.”
The study of this complexity and the evolution of Cuban revolutionary thought allow us to understand why in our country, an uninterrupted process of national liberation and social justice has unfolded, and converged in socialism as a consequence of class, social and ideological struggles.

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