lifting the blockade is not going the
>>be the death-knell of socialism in Cuba, because any meaningful socialism is
>>already dead!
>
>Either dead or alive... Either black or white... Either good or bad...
>Learn to think dialectically, Brian.
Socialism as it has existed - from the Soviet Union to Cuba - is dead, just
as Keynesianism is dead. Does this mean there is no alternative?No. Does
this mean that capital has won? Absolutely not, but it does mean that we
need to move beyond structures that have had their day. I would never
suggest that communism is a failed project, not for a minute; but I would
suggest that the state capitalist variety of socialism we have seen in Cuba
and elsewhere has had its day -- not in small part due to the active
resistance of workers in Cuba and elsewhere.
>
I simply
>don't know what other meaningful framework there is outside of the myriad
>of organizations--including Pastors for Peace--that maintain fraternal
>relations with the Cuban government. You really haven't provided a class
>analysis of the Cuban regime,
Perhaps we don't have an existing framework; but perhaps, too, that is
because our solidarity efforts have, up til now, been state-oriented -- in
Cuba as in Nicaragua and elsewhere. And if our solidarity is funelled
through the state, what do we do when the ostensibly 'socialist' regime
begins a systematic attack on workers' rights? Do we continue to support the
regime simply because we have no other phone numbers? Or do we at some point
break with the old pattern of state-oriented solidarity and begin to strike
out on a new path -- worker to worker. It may not be easy to get off the
ground, it may not have the same financial totals, but a soldarity with
workers themselves -- with the LEFT-wing Cuban dissidents, the independent
unionists, the feminists, the queer activists, the African-Cuban movements
-- this is where the life, the dynamism, the struggle of the Cuban working
class is to be found, and this is also where our prioirties for solidarity
should be.
Make no mistake about it, the Cuban state has been attacking workers'
hard-won rights. Certainly, it claims 'there is no alternative'; it claims
that global capital forces these concessions; it claims that objective
conditions in the world economy force a partnership with private capital.
Well, sorry if this is out of line with conventional left-wing thinking, but
I don't share the logic. When my liberal government negotiates the MAI
behind closed doors and cuts unemployment benefits, all the while claiming
"there is no alternative", I don't calmly accept it. When my social
democratic provincial government slashes welfare benefits and scapegoats the
poor for the deficit, all the while claiming "there is no alternative", I
don't shun from the critique. So why should I react any differently when the
Cuban regime spouts the same rhetoric, spews the same logic? Is not the very
basis of Marxism the profound necessity to reject that logic, and to
conceptualize a reality outside the boundaries of "there is no alternative"?
I don't buy the argument that socialist regimes share the same fundamental
interests as workers. I will support specific policies of a regime if those
policies serve (for the moment) to increase the power of workers in
relation to capital. Biut the minute I have to choose between supporting the
struggle of working people and supporting a regime which claims to act in
the best interests of the working class (all the while whittling away at
workers' gains) I will stand against the regime -- the state's logic that
'there is no alternative" does not mean that Cuban workers stop resisting
ever-increased imposition of work and ever-shrinking private and social
wages. So let's cut through the talk and get to the reality -- Cuba is
pursuing a logic very similar to those espoused by Canadian and US
governments. And following that logic, its course of action is the same -
cutback on workers' gains, bolster disiplinary institutions, and court
private capital as 'partner'. I don;t buy it here, and I don't buy it in Cuba.
>
>>Sorry. For I minute there I thought this list was actually a forum for
>>critical debate. It is possible to criticize actually-existing socialism
>>from within Marxism, and it is possible to carry on discussion of these
>>issues without resorting to elementary-school name-calling.
>
>I wasn't calling you a name. I was simply commenting on your "on one hand,
>and the other hand" posture. This sort of punditry rather turns my stomach
As the complete failure of so many Left-wingers to apply their critique
equally to Cuba turns mine.
Brian
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Brian Green |
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
