I Support Cuba Because I am on the Side of Humanity and Life: an Interview With Gabriel Rockhill

I met Gabriel Rockhill by chance, but not by accident. We were introduced by Helen Yaffe, a dear friend of Cuba, in January of this year during the International Congress held at the University of Havana to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Tricontinental Conference (1966). The current political climate added a unique dimension to the event: those present were standing up to the recent display of aggressivity against our country, which includes the possibility of armed aggression. That is why the meeting was not by accident. It was driven by conviction.

Gabriel Rockhill—a philosopher, professor, researcher, and writer of U.S. American origin—recently published a book that has captured the interest of many. Its title already hints at the complexity of the plot: Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?

Motivated by the disruptive nature of this first volume, I contacted him with a proposal to interview Cubadebate. He agreed without hesitation. 

M: In your book, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?, you offer compelling evidence that helps dismantle what has been known as “Western Marxism”: Is there such a thing as a “reliable Marxism”? What alternatives do we in Latin America have to this “Western Marxism”?

The expression “Western Marxism” does not refer to all of the Marxist intellectual production in the Western world but rather to a specific form of Marxism that has arisen and become dominant in the imperial core. I used the expression “Western Marxism” in the title because it is a recognizable reference point, at least within certain sectors of the intelligentsia, due to a debate generated in and around the work of figures like Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Perry Anderson, and Domenico Losurdo. However, I also explain in the book that the more precise expression would be “imperial Marxism” because what we are dealing with is an ideological orientation more so than a rigorous geographic or cultural category. Moreover, this terminology has the advantage of specifying that the Marxism in question is one that has been transformed by imperialism into a subtle tool of empire (hence the dual meaning of imperial Marxism: it is a product of imperialism as well as an ideological force that contributes to empire).

My book elucidates how the dominant form of Marxism that has developed in the imperial core has tended toward social chauvinism and accommodation with capitalism, and even imperialism. This has been due, in part, to the formation of a labor aristocracy in the core, which benefits from imperial structures of accumulation. As Lenin explained with his signature acumen, the material situation of the workers in the leading capitalist countries, which is far superior to that of those in the periphery, has made them ideologically tend toward an acceptance of the imperial world order. This is ultimately what led to the split in the world socialist movement between those who would become known as the social democrats and those who were dedicated à la Lenin to breaking the chains of imperialism through revolutionary socialism. Losurdo, in his 2017 book on Western Marxism, drew on Lenin’s diagnosis to demonstrate that the contemporary left intelligentsia in the imperial core still manifests the same fundamental ideological orientation. In examining the academic left affiliated directly or indirectly with the Marxian heritage—from the Frankfurt School and postmodern theory to contemporary radical Anglophone thought and beyond—Losurdo reveals how it not only tends toward social chauvinism and imperial accommodation, but also, in practical terms, anticommunism.

In my own work, I draw on the writings of figures like Lenin and Losurdo to develop a political economy of knowledge that examines the material forces driving the promotion of specific forms of left theory, such as imperial or so-called Western Marxism. Far from being an autonomous intellectual development that has resulted from the free exercise of individual human reason or the so-called open marketplace of ideas, left theory in the imperial core has been shaped and directed by very material forces, including the entire institutional apparatus of knowledge production and distribution (universities, the publishing industry, the conference circuit, the media, etc.), as well as the powerful influence of the ruling class through its foundations and the state.

It is by no means by chance that the dominant Marxist positions in the imperial core have generally been Trotskyist, libertarian socialist, social democratic, anarcho-communist, or some other eclectic version, rather than Marxist in the Leninist sense just mentioned. Due to both the economic forces of the infrastructure and the ideological power of the superstructure, Marxism has tended to be transformed in the core into an imperial form of Marxism that not only accommodates capitalism and imperialism but is also openly anticommunist and rejects many, if not all, of the socialist state building projects. This is particularly clear in the case of the leading so-called Marxists promoted within the imperial superstructure, including the Frankfurt School theorists I analyze in the book (Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse), other prominent Western Marxists, and radical contemporary theorists who are sometimes described as post- or neo-Marxists (Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, etc.).

Regarding the question of alternatives, the answer is a resounding yes! Due to the effects of intellectual imperialism, the Marxism of empire has cast a long and dark shadow over the rich, deep, international tradition of anti-imperialist Marxism, which is simply Marxism in its authentic form. From Marx and Engels to Lenin, Mao, Hồ Chí Minh, and so many other leaders who embodied major liberation movements, the core of Marxism has always been the struggle against capitalism as a global system of accumulation that destroys human beings and nature. Unlike the social chauvinist and anticommunist travesty of Marxism that is prominent and promoted in the imperial core, genuine Marxism is an anticolonial and anti-imperialist project aimed at the real-world liberation of humanity and nature from the death grip of capital.

Cuba has made a foundational contribution to this tradition by bringing revolutionary socialism to the Western hemisphere. It has also fostered a rich Marxist intellectual culture that stretches from the work of figures like Fidel Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Haydée Santamaría, and Roberto Fernández Retamar, to contemporary thinkers like Raúl Antonio Capote, Antonio Berreiro Vázquez, Abel Prieto, and the group of young Marxists known as La Tizza. This is not, of course, a homogenous tradition, and there are important debates, as well as room for disagreement and innovation. Crucially, however, this tradition is not hemmed in by the dogmatic framework of imperial Marxism, which generally rejects real-world socialist projects as somehow being worse than capitalism.

M: In Cuba, we have also appropriated this “Western Marxism.” The ideas of Marx and Lenin reached the island almost immediately in the early 20th century, and the Revolution that triumphed in 1959—while heavily influenced, above all, by Soviet Marxism-Leninism—broadened access for the entire population to the study of Marxism in general (or of the various forms of Marxism). How can we distinguish and preserve within “Western Marxism” that which is integral to the struggle against capitalism?

To avoid any confusion that might be generated by the expression “Western Marxism,” it is useful to distinguish between the imperial Marxism that I was just discussing and Marxism proper, which is thoroughly anti-imperialist. It is certainly the case that imperial Marxism has been the dominant form in the Western world, if we understand that region more specifically as the imperial core of Western Europe, the United States, and their close allies in the global imperialist project. However, even within the imperial core, there are Marxists like Losurdo, Michael Parenti, John Bellamy Foster, Annie Lacroix-Riz, Saïd Bouamama, and many others, who are anti-imperialist Marxists. This is why it is ultimately more coherent to distinguish between two ideological orientations, one of which is powerfully promoted by imperial superstructures, rather than relying on what sound like geographic categories.

The anti-imperialist Marxist tradition has been a major force in the imperial periphery, where the victims of empire and their organic spokespeople—Lenin, Mao, Fidel, etc.—have situated the colonial question and imperialism at the core of their analyses, orienting Marxism toward the practical transformation of the world through the development of real-world socialism. However, there is also a comprador intellectual labor aristocracy in the periphery that takes its marching orders from the dominant discourses and debates in the core. This comprador intelligentsia plays an essential role in intellectual imperialism, ignoring or denigrating homegrown forms of anti-imperialist theory in favor of promoting the latest theoretical trends of the empire.

One of the goals of my book is to clarify the lines of theoretical class struggle in order to overcome any confusion. Due to class warfare and intellectual imperialism, workers in the imperial periphery are often trained to think that the theoretical production of those promoted as the world’s leading intellectuals is more advanced and sophisticated than that of the more practically engaged Marxists I have mentioned. Concretely, this means that people are taught to look to figures like Adorno, Marcuse, Negri, Badiou, or Žižek, rather than to Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Ali Kadri, Néstor Kohan, or Cheng Enfu. This has the ultimate consequence of confusing them regarding the basic reality of imperialism and the socialist project of overcoming it. This form of intellectual imperialism thereby aides and abets imperialism in general.

What my research demonstrates is that the imperial structures of knowledge production and distribution promote a travesty of Marxism, as well as various forms of radical theory that purport to surpass Marxism, which ultimately serve the interests of empire. If we simplify to the extreme, the point is rather easy to grasp: the empire does not promote work that is inimical to its interests. My book therefore seeks to provide readers with a theoretical compass whose North Pole is no longer the leading commodities of the imperial theory industry but rather the revolutionary anti-imperialist work of the international Marxist tradition.

M: Pessimism serves a key social function in support of capitalist ideology, which perpetuates the idea that “destroying the world is easier than transforming it.” This fosters demobilization, disarray, collective apathy, and rejection of communism. When we add to this the material hardships of a country like Cuba, which is suffocated daily by the U.S. economic, commercial, and financial blockade, the capacity to resist gradually loses its subversive quality. What intellectual and practical resources remain for anti-imperialist peoples like the Cuban people to avoid renouncing socialism, their alternative for building a better world?

The first half of my book provides a materialist analysis of the imperial superstructure, concentrating on the world’s most powerful imperialist country. Driven by the economic base, with which it is dialectically enmeshed, this superstructure has imposed a dominant ideology. This includes not only a worldview and set of ideas, but also a perceptual framework, a set of values, an affective matrix, a sense of history, routinized practices, and more. Ideological subjects, as I have argued elsewhere with Jennifer Ponce de León, are composed in every dimension of their existence, not only in their ideas or worldviews.

This brings us to the issue of pessimism, which was memorably codified by Mark Fisher in the title of the first chapter of his book Capitalist Realism: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” A similar sentiment is shared by many other prominent so-called Marxists in the imperial core, including most notably figures like Žižek and Fredric Jameson. In fact, it is so widespread, including well beyond Marxian circles, that the best summation of this position would be that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the dominant ideology.” Indeed, the very thought of the end of capitalism is like imagining the end of the world for thinkers like this since capitalism is the material lifeworld that sustains their theoretical practice and has promoted them as leading luminaries within the imperial theory industry. If it were to disappear, what would be left of their supposed intellectual contributions, and the ideology they promote? This is one of the reasons why, for them, it is easier to repeat the dominant ideology than resist it.

Although the idealist orientation of imperial Marxists encourages us to displace material reality by the ideal realm of the imagination and ideas, the very foundation for Fisher’s assertion is empirically incorrect. It is not a matter of “imagining” the end of capitalism but rather one of grasping reality for what it is and recognizing that there is already a historical process of materially overcoming it. Socialist states have been involved for over a century in the very difficult process of breaking the chains of imperialism and forging projects of national sovereignty that serve the interests of the people rather than the profiteers. This is not about imagination or utopian projections, but rather the very real, material struggle, to build a new, socialist world, out of the decaying remnants of the imperial world order.

The imperial superstructure promotes the worldview summed up by Fisher because it disarms people and encourages them to resign themselves to the dominant system of exploitation, oppression, and ecological destruction. If it is not even possible to imagine—let alone build—an alternative world, why expend any effort trying to do so? This subjective acquiescence to objective social forces amounts to aligning one’s agency with that of the dominant system, rather than mobilizing it for an autonomous project. It is quite literally an act of giving up on one’s freedom.

Regarding the resources that are available for anti-imperialists, we need a sober and clear-eyed analysis of the material reality that we are facing. Imperialism has driven the world to the brink of extinction, if it be through the cataclysmic destruction of the biosphere, unhinged fascist social murder, or the imminent possibility of wars of global annihilation. The only real, material alternative is socialism. However, the choice is no longer simply between socialism and barbarism; it is socialism or extermination. Rather than being in some imaginary world where we cannot even conceive of the end of capitalism, we are in a very real world in which we are faced with the starkest of alternatives: it is quite literally the end of capitalism or the end of life as we know it.

Cuba has never been free to develop socialism. It has, instead, always been forced to advance socialism under siege because the imperialists are terrified of the threat of a good example. And yet, against the greatest of odds, Cuba has lifted its population out of the systemic immiseration and ignorance imposed before 1959, providing education, healthcare, housing, employment, and cultural development, while also fostering a society founded on environmental sustainability. None of this has been easy, and it has always been in fits and starts, with inevitable setbacks and difficulties. Since Cuba is charting uncharted territory, by developing revolutionary socialism in the Americas, this should not at all be surprising. What is astonishing is the extent to which Cuba has been able to make so much progress only 90 miles from the world’s leading imperialist power. It is a testament to the resilience and ingenuity of the Cuban people, as well as its leadership, that so much has been done with so little and in such arduous conditions.

As the U.S. moves in an increasingly fascist direction, it is intensifying its war of repression on Cuba, in an effort to recolonize the Americas and stamp out any sign of socialism. This situation brings clearly into view the role that Cuba has played in the Western Hemisphere. The Cubans—and those who support them—are at the vanguard of the struggle for an America that is actually for all of us, not for the Epstein class that is intent on dividing and conquering us to maintain its evil empire. The Cubans are holding the flag of humanity high in our hemisphere, the red flag of liberation from imperial destruction. For anyone who does not recognize this, we can remind them, echoing yet again Fisher’s fatuous claim, that “it is easier to be oblivious to the gains of socialism than to ignore the dominant ideology.”

M: In your  latest book (mentioned earlier), you also discuss the close ties between the philo-Marxist intellectual Herbert Marcuse and U.S. intelligence agencies, as well as the consequences of that collaboration. Should we trust the theoretical discourse—or the media output—of “the left” and its CIA-funded intellectuals today?

We should approach intellectual production from a dialectical and historical materialist vantage point rather than simply blindly trusting the proclamations of the sanctified intellectuals of the imperial theory industry. If we understand how the material system of knowledge production operates in the imperial core, which includes its close connections with the state and with the capitalist ruling class, then we can more clearly comprehend the types of intellectuals that this system tends to produce. There is, of course, a margin of maneuver, so the term tendency is important to insist on: there is not a rigorous determinism but rather powerful conditioning forces. Nevertheless, there is a remarkable level of ideological consistency among the left thinkers that have the largest platforms. Although they often have intellectual disagreements, they converge on the most important issues and tend to be anticommunist capitalist accommodationists.

The Frankfurt School, which has made a foundational contribution to Western or imperial Marxism, is a case in point. Its leading figures, Adorno and Horkheimer, were resolute anticommunists who equated Stalin with Hitler. They were pro-Israel and openly supported certain imperial military interventions. They also cultivated a reputation for having developed an important analysis of fascism, while practically working—as I demonstrate in the book—with many former Nazis, integrating them into leadership positions in the Institute for Social Research (the official name of the Frankfurt School). The version of Marxism that they offer turns Marxism on its head.

Marcuse earned a well-deserved reputation as the most leftwing of the prominent members of the Frankfurt School. This is because he was radicalized in the 1960s and came out in support of the antiwar and student movements, as well as certain struggles for gender, sexual, racial, and ecological liberation. However, in working through the archival record, I discovered that he regularly lied about the work that he had done for the U.S. state and his relationship to the CIA. He actually collaborated closely with the Agency, and he was even involved in the process of drafting at least two National Intelligence Estimates (NIE), the highest level of intelligence for the U.S. government. He was one of the State Department’s leading experts on communism, and he continued to work with former or current state operatives long after he left Washington. He also played a leading role in the Rockefeller Foundation’s soft power projects in their intellectual world war on communism.

For instance, he was the point person for its Marxism-Leninism Project, which was a well-funded initiative that established a trans-Atlantic network for the production and dissemination of Marxist scholarship of the imperial sort. He worked closely with his friend Philip Mosely on this project, who was a longtime, high-level CIA consultant and the director of the Russian Institute at Columbia University. It is not the least bit surprising, then, that after the Bay of Pigs invasion, Marcuse declared: “I do not question the right of the United States to fight communism in the Western hemisphere.”

When it comes to an objective and systemic analysis of global class struggle, figures like Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse are not to be trusted, and the same could generally be said of the compatible left intelligentsia. This does not mean, of course, that they were wrong about everything or that all of their work should simply be disregarded. It is rather that any rigorous engagement with their theories should clearly position them within the social totality, elucidating how their subjective intellectual production was dialectically enmeshed within the objective framework of the imperial theory industry.

For instance, it is true that the leading figures of the Frankfurt School developed important critiques of consumer capitalism, which can be useful. If one pays attention to their analyses, however, one will notice a subtle perspectival orientation. They tend to concentrate on the phenomenological experience of the consumers of the middle layer, like them, not the exploitative social relations of the productive sector of the economy, meaning the lives of workers. If we put this in very simple terms, they generally spent more time criticizing the effects of the advertising industry on the manipulation of the thoughts and desires of consumers like them than on attacking the system of global super-exploitation and degradation that, to take but one example, forces children in the global South to work like slaves in mines.

Regarding the media output of the empire, it is not to be trusted in the least. As I outline in detail in the book, the CIA established a Mighty Wurlitzer, meaning an international network of media assets that it could play like a jukebox, pressing a single button at CIA headquarters and having the same tune play around the world. This Mighty Wurlitzer is still very much alive and well, and its depth and breadth far surpasses what most people imagine. To take but one example, the disinformation expert William Schaap publicly testified that the CIA “owned or controlled some 2,500 media entities all over the world. In addition, it had its people, ranging from stringers to highly visible journalists and editors, in virtually every major media organization.”[1]

M: Today, for example, there is talk of the ties between a progressive liberal thinker like Noam Chomsky and the imperial elite… Is it possible to overcome the intellectual establishment (academic, anticommunist, etc.) without challenging the global capitalist structures that produce it?

This question goes to the heart of my book. Although it includes critical materialist analyses of individuals and schools of thought, the real objective is to elucidate how the imperial superstructure systematically produces and reproduces the same fundamental types of intellectuals. In other words, instead of simply engaging in a subjective ideology critique of select individuals or their work, it also offers, crucially, an objective ideological criticism of the material system that produces and reproduces the same kinds of individuals, who then create work with a remarkable level of ideological consistency.

One key example of this phenomenon is the figure of the radical recuperator. This type of intellectual positions themselves on the left and often self-presents as radical. They are generally critical of capitalism and certain aspects of the foreign policy of the leading imperialist powers. However, they always respect—even if there are occasionally a few explainable exceptions—the most important ideological red lines by rejecting actually existing socialism as worse than capitalism.

There are, of course, different degrees of radical recuperation, and it is always important to engage in a dialectical analysis to highlight both the positive and negative contributions of an intellectual. Chomsky is an excellent example, and I will discuss him in a forthcoming book that is part of the same research project. The work that we have been talking about, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?, is actually the first volume of a trilogy entitled The Intellectual World War: Marxism versus the Imperial Theory Industry. The second volume, French Theory Made in USA, will be out next year. The third, Radical Theory’s Infantile Disorder, will be published a bit later, and it is in that work that I provide an assessment of Chomsky.

For the time being, let me say that it is certainly the case that he has provided significant empirical critiques of U.S. foreign policy and the effects of the corporatocracy on the media. As a libertarian socialist, he has also taken public positions against the blockade of Cuba, which is to be commended. However, he did not do this within the framework of a systemic understanding of imperialism and the struggle to break its chains through socialist state-building projects (as is the case, for instance, in the work of his contemporary Michael Parenti). In fact, Chomsky celebrated the destruction of socialism in much of the Soviet sphere as the end of a tyranny and an occasion for rejoicing.

As many have remarked, Chomsky focused on criticism, and his positive political project was woefully underdeveloped. He self-described as an anarcho-syndicalist, tracing the historical roots of his position back to Enlightenment liberalism, but he never coherently dealt with the fact that the project of workers’ self-management has always been precarious when it is bereft of state power. As such, he has led many readers down a blind alley, suggesting that the best that we could hope for would be that an imperial power like the U.S. would live up to its self-professed ideals, or that workers could exercise long-term democratic control over their workplace without seizing state power. He did not fully grasp the fact that the liberal ideals of the U.S. are there to provide cover for an imperial project, and that it is this project that is the real driving force, not its ideology. Given his anticommunist dismissal of Leninism as a counter-revolutionary philosophy, he clearly did not comprehend the necessity of anti-imperialist state building projects for overcoming the evils he diagnosed.

The most recent revelations concerning his close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein follow a pattern that was already established. Chomsky’s career is bound up in various ways with the military-industrial-academic complex. He taught at an institution, MIT, with deep ties to the Pentagon, from which it received 90 percent of its funding in the 1960s. He worked there in a military lab, and the linguistics research he was doing was supported by the Navy, Air Force, etc. He also had many questionable contacts and was friends with CIA director John Deutsch, whom he had supported in his campaign to become the president of MIT.

Although critical of Israel, Chomsky spoke out against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and claimed that Israel had a right to exist. It is therefore not particularly surprising that he was friends with a Zionist intelligence operator like Epstein, who provided financial advice and support for a regular prize in his name, fringe benefits, privileged contacts, and intellectual exchange. Given the public reputation that Chomsky cultivated as a profoundly moral person, it is nonetheless disturbing to get a glimpse into how he acted in private with a convicted sex offender.

Returning to the core of your question, the objective of this trilogy is precisely to criticize the global capitalist structures that have produced an intelligentsia of this sort. This is one of the reasons why it was important to me not to limit this research project to a critique of imperial Marxism. The second volume of this trilogy takes on postmodern French theory, and the third turns to the forms of contemporary radical theory that draw on imperial Marxism and/or French Theory, which include the third generation of the Frankfurt School, postcolonial and decolonial theory, liberal queer theory, the so-called communist event philosophy of figures like Badiou and Žižek, etc. The goal is precisely to elucidate the material system of knowledge production and circulation that produces and reproduces a left intelligentsia that—on the whole—rejects actually existing socialism and accommodates capitalism and imperialism (when it does not openly champion them).

Ideology is chameleonic. Since it misrepresents reality, the latter tends to seep through over time, and new ideological forms are necessary to dissimulate it. In critically evaluating the dominant ideology of the imperial left intelligentsia, I wanted to demonstrate how the material system of knowledge production regularly generates new forms that are superficially different but share the same fundamental ideological orientation. Just as within other capitalist industries, the theory industry fosters the illusion of progress by producing a dizzying degree of novel products for the market—new materialism, Afro-pessimism, etc.—which have the advantage of distracting people attentive to the reality that had seeped through earlier ideological forms. The cult of the new promoted by consumer capitalism convinces many people that each novel product on the market is deserving of our attention, if not our devotion, rather than recognizing it as simply the latest iteration of the dominant ideology. This has proven itself to be a particularly successful tactic in the endeavor to consign Marxism to the dustbin of history: there are so many new and innovative discourses opening multiple horizons and leading every which way!

Consider the case of the Frankfurt School and French Theory. Within bourgeois intellectual history, they are generally presented as opposites. There are, of course, significant differences. However, what my trilogy demonstrates is that they are both theoretical products of a material system of knowledge production within the imperial superstructure that promotes anticommunism and the accommodation to capitalism, and even imperialism. In spite of all of their differences, then, they agree on what is most essential. They are two different permutations of the dominant left ideology in the imperial core, and they need to be recognized as such.

M: Will the book be translated into Spanish? Will the Cuban public have the chance to read it?

Yes, Nuevo milenio is preparing a Spanish translation, and the book will also be published by El Viejo Topo in Spain and perhaps other Spanish publishers in Latin America. Néstor Kohan has agreed to write the preface to the Spanish edition. This is an incredible honor for me, and I hope the book will be able to make a contribution, however small, to debates in Cuba and the broader Spanish-speaking world.

The book actually begins with an opening salvo for the entire trilogy entitled “Che’s Head.” It tells the story of the global manhunt undertaken by the U.S. empire to track down Che and ignominiously murder him, in an effort to decapitate the global anti-imperialist movement. It brings to the fore how this vicious project went hand in hand with an intellectual world war on Che and his legacy, explaining how CIA assets sought to take control of parts of his literary estate and misrepresent his biography. This section of the book provides, in microcosm, an overview of the principle themes of the intellectual world war on communism.

More generally, the book is in dialogue with some of the excellent contemporary research on cultural warfare, such as the work of Fernández Retamar, Capote, Barreiro, and Kohan. It is essential to this project that the critique of imperial Marxism is ultimately situated within a positive project of uplifting and defending the rich international tradition of anti-imperialist Marxism. Given the leading role that Cuba has played in this tradition, both intellectually and practically, it is an important reference point for this research project as a whole.

M: You have visited Cuba, you condemn the U.S. blockade, and you openly defend our cause on social media. Why do you continue to support the Revolution today?

I am a child of empire, not a red diaper baby. Moreover, I was trained in imperial ignorance by some of the world’s so-called leading institutions. The material structures of knowledge production sought to make of me a member of the intellectual labor aristocracy who ignored, obscured, or misrepresented imperialism, while simultaneously denigrating and dismissing the socialist alternative.

Having grown up on a farm working construction, I was not born into the elite networks that I came to frequent through my education. Although I subjectively experienced this as being outclassed by my peers, I now recognize in retrospect that, objectively speaking, this was incredibly beneficial. It meant that I never really fit in, and I tended to question things that others took for granted as normal or natural. However, I was also deeply affected by the ideology of the imperial superstructure, and I needed to engage in a long and sometimes painful process of self-critique to arrive at my current views. I was helped in this process by the objective conditions of imperial decline and decadence, as well as by my involvement in practical organizing and popular education, not to mention the insightful influence of people close to me.

I had been trained to either ignore Cuba as irrelevant or to dismiss it as corrupt. Once I began questioning this dogmatic posture, I encountered pushback, in an obvious effort to keep me in my ideological place, so to speak. I distinctly remember the moment when I asked one of my former professors, Étienne Balibar, to sign a public letter calling for an end to the illegal blockade. To his credit, he agreed to sign the letter, which was expressly written to be acceptable to the liberal intelligentsia. However, this self-proclaimed Marxist also sent a message, copying me, to a group of prominent left intellectuals like Michael Hardt and Judith Butler insisting that “the US imperialist policy towards Cuba” should not “lead us to acclaim or support the corrupt dictatorship that ‘socialist’ Cuba has become.” As purported proof, he provided links to anti-Cuba propaganda from highly questionable sources like the compatible left intelligentsia and the NGO La Joven Cuba.

In spite of resistance like this, I continued to develop my critical media literacy skills and seriously study Cuban history, reading the works of its leaders and major intellectuals. I also explored the rich culture of Cuban cinema, art, and literature. In the process, I taught myself enough Spanish to be able to access untranslated material and break my dependence on the imperial translation regime.

I came to realize that, as Eduardo Galeano explained in his excellent book Patas arriba: La escuela del mundo al revés, I was living in an upside-down world. Nearly everything I had ever heard about Cuba was the mirror opposite of reality. I then became increasingly interested in the depth, breadth, and reach of the cultural war on Cuba that had shaped—often imperceptibly—my earlier worldview. I read widely and learned a lot from authors like Fernández Retamar, Capote, Barreiro, Kohan, Helen Yaffe, and many others, including you. I also visited Cuba twice, to see with my own eyes and learn more directly about the Cuban revolutionary process.

The reason that I have dwelled on the subjective aspects of my process of coming to learn about the Cuban Revolution is not for anecdotal or personal reasons but because of what it reveals about the objective conditions and how difficult it is to counter the ideological indoctrination fostered by the imperial superstructure. Part of our struggle is to release people from its grip and empower them to think for themselves and critically reflect on the forces that have shaped their worldviews, while encouraging dogmatic adherence to them.

I support Cuba because I am on the side of humanity and life, and I recognize the leading role it is playing in the struggle to put Nuestra América in the hands of its people, to release it from the death grip of the Epstein class.

Notes.

[1] Quoted in William F. Pepper, The Plot to Kill King (New York: Skyhorse, 2018), 186.

This interview first appeared in Spanish in Cubadebate.

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