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Hi Marce, Your link to Sexto's essay is in untranslated Spanish. (?) Nat On Jan 6, 2011, at 4:21 PM, Marce Cameron wrote: > ====================================================================== > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > ====================================================================== > > > From new Cuba blog "Cuba's Socialist Renewal" > http://cubasocialistrenewal.blogspot.com > To sign up as a follower or to receive email updates click on link above > > If you live, as I do, in a capitalist society, in which the essential > function of the mass media is to disorient, distract and divide in the > class interests of a tiny corporate elite (and to sell advertising > space), imagine if you opened the paper and read, over your morning > coffee, a commentary like Luis Sexto's below. You'd no doubt stare in > disbelief and wonder if, by some magical device, you'd woken up in a > kinder, saner society. > > Despite material constraints and much room for improvement, the basic > function of Cuba's revolutionary press is to orient and inform. > Increasingly, it is also to provoke and facilitate the striving for > consensus on how to carry through the urgent and necessary renovation > of Cuba's embattled socialist project. Such a consensus would be > unthinkable in capitalist Australia where the social domination of a > parasitic bourgeoisie rests on the political atomisation of the > working people; where meaningful participation in politics has been > reduced to ticking a ballot paper once every few years for one or > another gang of pro-corporate politicians. > > Participation in the construction of a new and better society, the > subject of Sexto's profound reflection, is of no interest whatsoever > to the staff writers of the tabloids and broadsheets of the capitalist > world. All they care about is sustaining the appearance, the fiction, > of participation. That the masses believe in the illusion of democracy > is what counts. In revolutionary Cuba it's the opposite: what matters > is the substance of participation, since without an ever-greater real > participation of the broad masses, not only in the carrying out of the > tasks of the Revolution but in deciding what those tasks will be, > there can be no progress towards socialism. > > Sexto's subtle, lyrical prose is difficult to translate. I hope my > attempt does justice to the original. > > Link to translation: > http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/columnas/coloquiando/2010-12-30/por-uno-y-por-todos/ > > ________________________________________________ > Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/nat%40socialistviewpoint.org ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
