Owen Jones:
> I think that the proposition that the Cuban and Russian Revolutions have
>little differences is absurd. The Russian Revolution was led by the
>revolutionary proletariat, whilst in the Cuban Revolution, the peasantry
>were in the driving seat. That is hardly a subtle difference, and in both
>cases that force which carried out the revolution reflected on to the state
>that was created.
Actually the Cuban countryside was distinguished by large scale wage labor
on plantations, while Czarist Russia had extensive subsistence holdings,
sharecropping and other semifeudal class relations. When you are in the
library studying about the Yugoslav economy, you might want to take a look
at James O'Connor's "Origins of Socialism in Cuba".
> Anyway, the October Revolution was led by a party that represented the very
>vanguard of the most revolutionary workers, with a consciously revolutionary
>programme for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a
>socialist society under the dictatorship of the working class, with the
>ultimate aim of communism.
Actually the historic program of the Bolshevik party called for no such
thing. Instead it called for a radical republicanism with the Bolsheviks
functioning as Jacobins. That is why the central committee objected to the
April Theses. It went against their "program".
> The Cuban Revolution was led by the peasantry, not by the most advanced
>section of the proletariat. Its held a radical bourgeois-democratic
>programme that included land reform and independence from US imperialism. It
>would never have become any form of workers' state if it had not been for
>the existence of the Soviet Union; if such a revolution were repeated today,
>capitalism would not be overturned.
But what if Nazi spies had assassinated Churchill?
>Because the insurrection was led by a
>peasant guerrilla army, from its ranks rose the bureaucracy; not necessarily
>a Stalinist bureaucracy, and indeed in the first regime there were bourgeois
>ministers.
Can you name them?
>But in this revolution it was the peasantry that carried out the
>historic tasks of the proletariat, not the working class itself. Because of
>its petty-bourgeois nature, it did not have a revolutionary proletarian
>revolution that called for world revolution or accepted that its continued
>existence depended on workers' revolution in the advanced capitalist
>nations.
You have to get away from this "called for" stuff. It is the bane of the
"T-----ist" movement.
>inevitably doomed to failure. There is no form of workers' democracy - and
>no, these "mass organisations" Castro fans speaking about were established
>and run by the bureaucracy to aid its continued rule, far from being any
>organ of workers' political rule.
Did you ever hear of Escalante?
> The glorification of the Cuban regime, even by those on the Trotskyist
>Left, is as a result of the relative benevolence of the bureaucracy compared
>to, say, Romania.
A puzzling bureaucracy that enjoys no material priviliges.
> Stalinism is not the same everywhere. Romanian Stalinism as different to
>Polish Stalinism, which differed from North Korean Stalinism, and so on.
Yes, but the July 26th movement was inspired ideologically by Mariategui,
not Stalin. You don't even have to go to the library to find out what he
stands for. His writings are online at the Marxists archives.
> Someone I spoke to who visited Cuba as part of a German Communist Party
>delegation (i.e. she is NOT a Trotskyist and I didn't read it in Workers'
>Liberty) spoke of how when she was there, there was discontent amongst
>workers, and how two were simply sacked with impunity for being mildly late.
I guess that settles it.
> The "Friends of the USSR" of the 30s are really not that different from the
>"Friends of Cuba", whose members range from bored old Trots to soft-hearted
>liberals. I realise in an epoch of reaction it's tempting to clutch at
>straws and to think that there is at least some refuge on the planet, but
>these illusions are misplaced and hardly confidence inspiring.
Hmmm. During the 1930s visits to the USSR were carefully managed by the
state. Hence the "Potemkin Villages". In the year 2000 people visiting Cuba
are free to go where they want and when they want. Most report that despite
consumer good shortages, the government enjoys extraordinary support. I
suppose that if you go to the island with ideological predispositions you
will see none of this. Basically I think that if you can't see it, you are
allowing sectarian biases to cloud your thinking.
Louis Proyect
The Marxism mailing-list: http://www.marxmail.org
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