Julio Pugot, Counsellor of the Cuban embassy in Britain speaks at a meeting to mark the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth held in April 2018 in Saklatvala Hall, Southall.
Comrade Pugot brings greetings from Cuba, where Comrade Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez has recently been elected president – the first leader of the country who did not directly take part in the revolution. Indeed, Comrade Díaz-Canel is the first who was born after the revolution took place, in 1960 in socialist Cuba – making him a true child of the revolution.
Comrade Raúl Castro continues to head the Communist Party of Cuba and the Cuban army, and this is a sign of strength and continuity in the revolution, the ambassador tells us.
Cuba continues to extend aid to workers in need throughout the world, despite the ongoing blockade that has been further entrenched by the regime of US president Donald Trump – following in the footsteps of the 11 presidents who preceded him.
Comrade Ranjeet, chairing the meeting for the CPGB-ML, thanks Comrade Pugot for speaking at the meeting and introduces the main speaker, Comrade Dan, noting that even the BBC and financial capital agreed, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, that Karl Marx had not only been the “greatest thinker of the millennium”, but that he had much to say about the nature of capitalist economy and crisis.
However, in doing so, they sought to strip Marx of his revolutionary essence, pretending that, while he had analysed the workings and inherent flaws of capitalism, he had been unable to offer any solutions.
And yet, quite the reverse is true. For Marx’s real conclusions were that workers must take control of the productive forces and institute the rule of the working class – the dictatorship of the proletariat; the rule of the majority – in place of the dictatorship of the financial oligarchy, and build a planned economy, capable of using the great productive power that presently exists to satisfy the needs of working masses and to build a sustainable and humane economic order.
