Louis writes: >Unless we're talking about the dark days of Soviet Stalinism, most non-capitalist societies have tremendous amounts of control from the bottom. Randy Martin, an editor at Social Text, comments that Cuba has had more significant policy changes over the past 20 years than the US has had in the entire 20th century. The only logical explanation for this is that the rank-and-file of Cuban society have better channels to express their ideas about "design, construction, use and modification" than we give them credit for.< The "only logical explanation"? Don't corporations, which are the ultimate in top-down institutions, regularly change their policy, often significantly? The late Ernest Mandel point to the bureaucratic twists and turns of the old USSR: couldn't the changes in Cuba's policies also fit within that rubric? In addition, note that we're talking about a relatively poor country with little control over its constantly changing international environment: isn't it reasonable to see a country in that situation regularly change its policies significantly, no matter the degree of rank-and-file involvement in decision-making? That said, of all of the "actually-existing socialist countries," Cuba is the one that has had the _most_ input from the rank-and-file (partly because of the small size of the population and its active involvement in defense at Playa Giron and afterwards, and the exit to Miami of the opposition). It's also provided the basics, despite its poverty and dependency (as seen in Louis' statistics). But I wouldn't say that the rank-and-file has control over Castro or the CCP. Note that I am not blaming Castro for this, since his actions are typical for rulers of countries in similar situations: Cuba's situation (the US blockade, dependency on the USSR until 1989, etc., etc., etc.) makes democracy extremely difficult if not impossible. (I'm in favor of more democracy, but it has to be the Cubans who create not, not some yanqui in LA.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
