On Mon, 26 Jan 1998, Sid Shniad wrote, about the TINA line:
>
> How do you keep from careening along this slippery slope once you've set
> foot on it?
> Seems to me that this was the issue posed by Brian's interventions.
>
I agree this is a real question, but I thought Brian's intervention tried
to bypass the problem altogether by not even considering the difference
between tactical concessions and strategic concessions (poor choice of
words here, but all I can think of right now).
Castro explains each of these measures as concessions, as necessary evils,
as forced on Cuba by circumstances beyond its control. That they are
accepted as a _strategy_ is carefully rejected. Social democracy el all
around the world turn them from evils into virtues, and they don't even
have to change their strategy because that was it all along.
The strategy in Cuba is still to build socialism by appealing to the
higher qualities that human beings are capable of, not individual greed,
and to go down to defeat before submitting to imperialism.
The concessions to foreign capital are still minor exceptions in the Cuban
economy, and firmly within the control of the Cuban state.
As tricky as it is, this problem is trivial compared with the real
challenges in Cuba. For example, just how _do_ you overcome
bureaucratic tendencies in economic management that stifle workers
intitative and morale, especially in a poor country? This was the whole
theme of the "rectification campaign" against the USSR-type methods that
had prevailed for the previous decade or two. Much more interesting issue
for this list, IMHO.
Bill Burgess
Bill Burgess
