http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/msg04556.html
Sent to PSN on the 8th or so...
M.Pugliese
Janette Habel's (French Trotskyist)
'Cuba. The Revolution
in Peril' (Verso, 1991)
http://www.unhcr.ch/refworld/country/writenet/wricub01.htm
http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue19/farber19.htm
Cuba: The One-Party State Continues
Samuel Farber
[from New Politics, vol. 5, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 19, Summer 1995]
Samuel Farber was born and grew up in Cuba. He is the author of Revolution
and Reaction in Cuba 1933-1960 (Wesleyan University Press, 1976) and
numerous articles dealing with that country. He teaches political science at
Brooklyn College and is a member of the editorial board of Against the
Current.
IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM in Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union, some leftists are willing to take a more critical look
at the socio-economic and political system that has prevailed in Cuba for
more than 35 years. Among them is Carollee Bengelsdorf, a professor of
politics at Hampshire College. Unlike many pro-Castro leftists, who
substitute Third Worldist clichés for their scant knowledge of Cuban society
and history, Bengelsdorf is intimately acquainted with Cuba. She must also
be given credit for affirming the need for democracy as a central element of
the necessary transformation of the Cuban polity and society.
But in spite of its virtues, The Problem of Democracy in Cuba is a deeply
flawed book.* Bengelsdorf's narrative often appears to be a history without
subjects making choices and taking decisions. This is particularly true of
her treatment of Fidel Castro, the most powerful actor in the Cuban drama.
Thus, Bengelsdorf advocates a democratization of Cuban society and at least
implicitly recognizes that neither Castro nor the Cuban Communist Party
shares her inclinations. Yet, she fails to follow through on her analysis
and confront the issue of whether the democratization she recommends is
compatible with the continuing rule of Fidel Castro and his Communist Party,
or whether it will have to be accomplished in opposition to these forces.
Moreover, she evades the issue of the continuing one-party state suggesting,
with little logic but a good deal of equivocation, that this state
in and of itself, does not spell doom for any movement toward
democratization, just as the existence of two or more parties in other
countries does not guarantee it. Rather, what is critical in this regard is
the Party's continuing effort to confiscate the political arena. (p. 171)
Bengelsdorf tiptoes around the question of Castro's leading role, or
addresses it with euphemisms and circumlocutions. A case in point is her
characterization of Castro's regime as paternalism, which she defines as the
practice of treating people as children instead of self-reliant adults
capable of making decisions. This approach captures an aspect of Castroism
but deflects attention from the major role repression has played in almost
four decades of rule. While the right-wing incorrectly claims that Castro
does not enjoy any popular support and that his regime rules only on the
basis of repression, it is disturbing that Bengelsdorf downplays the role of
State Security (Seguridad del Estado) and the neighborhood vigilance carried
out by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), resulting in
systematic violations of civil and political liberties.
SIMILARLY, BENGELSDORF ACCEPTS AT FACE VALUE Castro's espousal of the values
of national unity as a justification for his suppression of any expression
of political opinion potentially threatening his monopoly of power. She also
accepts Castro's claim that his approach is based on the views of Cuba's
Founding Father, Jose Marti. When Marti -- a Freemason with views deeply
rooted in 19th century traditions of progressive liberalism and
nationalism -- spoke about unity he was trying to overcome the petty
jealousies of the insurgent caudillos in order to bring about a united
military campaign against Spanish control of the island. Marti attempted to
accomplish this through political means: persuasion, education, and the
creation of a united organization to achieve Cuban independence. He did not
advocate forceful suppression, imprisonment or the execution of those who
resisted his efforts. Furthermore, Marti's views pertaining to "unity" in
the struggle against Spain had no relevance to the different issue of the
social, political and constitutional arrangements of the Cuban Republic to
be established after victory.
For Castro, the word unity has been a euphemism for monolithism and
autocratic power. As early as 1954 he wrote to Luis Conte Aguero, then his
close friend:
Conditions which are indispensable for the integration of a truly civic
moment: ideology, discipline and chieftainship. The three are essential but
chieftainship is basic...The apparatus of propaganda and organization must
be such and so powerful that it will implacably destroy him who will create
tendencies, cliques, or schisms, or will rise against the movement.
Thirty-eight years later, in a lengthy interview with Sandinista leader
Tomas Borge, Castro criticized Stalin on a number of grounds including the
invasion of Finland and the Stalin-Hitler Pact. But when Borge asked him
"What do you believe were Stalin's merits?" the first thing that Castro
mentioned was the following: "He [Stalin] established unity in the Soviet
Union. He consolidated what Lenin had begun: party unity."
Some leftists have ruled out any analysis that locates Castro and his close
associates as part of the Stalinist tradition, on the basis that Castro's
political current did not come out of the old pro-Moscow parties in Latin
America. However, the history of the left is littered with independent
Stalinists unaffiliated with Moscow franchise-holders and while it is
necessary to understand the Stalinist tradition in order to understand
Fidelista politics, it is not sufficient. The challenge posed by the
Fidelista tradition is to establish how and why a wing of the revolutionary
petty bourgeoisie and declassed elements discovered, as it became successful
beyond even its highest expectations, its strong elective affinity with
Stalinism.
The Stalinist and Fidelista traditions in Cuba fused under the aegis of
Castro while maintaining some of the original characteristics of Fidelismo,
particularly in the area of political and cultural style. For example, one
of the significant but little noticed contributions of Fidelismo to Cuban
Communism was the dropping of the old Communist form of address "camarada"
(comrade) and its replacement by the much broader political term
companero(a), the term historically used in the Cuban student and trade
union movements. This is of some significance because, in the Cuban context,
the words convey either a sense of inclusion [companero(a)] or sectarian
exclusion (camarada).
Many on the left tend to write about Cuba purely in national and sometimes
in Latin American or Third World terms without addressing the strong
systemic similarities between Cuban and Asian and East European Communism.
In part, this is due to the embarrassment caused by the decay, bureaucratic
stodginess and atrocities associated with old-style Communism long before
its collapse in the 80s and 90s. No sense can be made of Cuban Communism
without understanding Cuban radical nationalism but most forms of radical
nationalism in Latin America and elsewhere have not historically evolved
into Communism, while a Cuban variety of it did. This alone should suggest
that there is something more than radical nationalism involved in Cuba.
Radical Cuban nationalism had nothing to say about how to reorganize and
restructure a capitalist society into a "socialist" society. Thus, it was
not just the dependence on massive aid from the USSR that pulled Cuba in a
particular direction. There were also political and ideological factors. For
one, the authoritarian caudillismo of Castro. But also the paucity of
alternatives to both capitalism and Communism. Little wonder then that
whatever cultural and stylistic distinctiveness Cuban Communism undoubtedly
retained, when it came to the historically much more decisive question of
political and socio-economic organization, the Cuban government faithfully
copied, and with remarkably little originality, the then existing Communist
models in Asia and Europe. This produced a structural assimilation of Cuba
to European and Asian Communism. After all, even presumably original
Guevarist policies had many more similarities than differences with Maoism,
Third Period Stalinism and the policies of "War Communism" during the Civil
War in Russia.
Bengelsdorf is among those who pay attention only to Cuba's national
peculiarities. Thus, in analyzing the Cuban 60s, she insists in finding only
"transitory political forms," "avoidance of structure," and "flexibility."
(p. 67). Her avoidance of the larger question of Cuba becoming Communist
produces an analysis which misses the forest for the trees. What was
important about the Cuban 60s were not the differences with Asian and
European Communism but the dramatic transformation of what had been
originally a democratic and, shortly after the successful overthrow of
Batista, a radically reformist and anti-imperialist revolution into a member
of the Communist family. By the end of 1960, the trend was fairly clear: the
commanding heights of the Cuban economy had been nationalized; the trade
unions had come under state control after a thorough purge of the
democratically elected leadership; the press and other media had been
cleansed of opposition voices; and political opposition, even if loyal, had
been effectively placed beyond the pale.
The remainder of the 60s witnessed what was essentially a consolidation and
mopping up operation -- most of the remaining privately owned land was
nationalized as were practically all urban enterprises, even tiny ones. The
unified Communist Party was created in 1965 after a four-year gestation
period. Finally, after all opposition groups had been eliminated,
independent and critical voices within government circles were also silenced
(e.g. in 1961, the influential literary supplement of the government
newspaper Revolucion and in 1968, the so-called micro-faction of old-line
Communist Party members, whose members were imprisoned).
Granted, there was a good deal of improvisation on the part of young
political leaders and administrators who lacked any previous government
experience. But this improvisation took place within well established
systemic boundaries developed elsewhere long before the Cuban Revolution.
How could these improvisations, or the political differences between Che
Guevara and Moscow, as real as they were, compare with the momentous and
indeed historic overall transformation just described?
While the Cuban 60s constituted the decade of political and economic
consolidation, the 70s became the decade of "institutionalization," that is,
the decade of routinization after the tremendous revolutionary upheaval of
the 60s. In this period, the Cuban government introduced a significant
degree of decentralization primarily to alleviate the considerable
administrative inefficiencies generated by the over-centralization of the
previous revolutionary decade. Again, it is to Bengelsdorf's credit that,
unlike a number of apologists for the Cuban regime, she distinguishes
decentralization from democratization. Still, her analysis of the Cuban 70s
is limited by her "national" focus. If we look at the Cuban 60s, 70s and 80s
through the lens of comparative Communism, the presumed uniqueness of Cuban
developments disappear almost completely. Communist economies in the past
have tended to oscillate between statification offensives and pragmatic
adaptations to political reality which resulted in the relaxation of state
controls. Thus, for example, the Chinese Revolution fluctuated between land
distribution in the period immediately after the 1949 victory, to the
collectivization offensive in the latter 50s of "The Great Leap Forward,"
and back again to a relaxation of state economic controls.
While Bengelsdorf's analysis is limited and even parochial in its refusal to
place Cuba in the context of comparative Communism, the book is extremely
ambitious and anything but parochial in its attempt to root the problem of
the lack of democracy in Cuba in the thought and practices of Marx and
Lenin. There is no doubt that Bengelsdorf is well acquainted with the
critical literature on Marxism and Leninism. Unfortunately, her attempt to
connect the lack of democracy in Castro's Cuba with Marx and Lenin can only
be carried out by seriously distorting what Lenin and especially Marx stood
for, while granting too much credit to Castro's claim to Marxism and even
Leninism.
LET US FIRST TAKE THE ISSUE OF PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY. Bengelsdorf leaves
little doubt that she sees the Cuban regime, particularly in the 60s, as
encouraging "participatory democracy" since it was only through practicing
it, "that the problems of underdevelopment, resource scarcity, and constant
external threat could be overcome." (p. 8). Although Marx did not use this
term, a strong case can be made that his conception of democracy was highly
participatory as seen in his praise for the institutions developed by the
Paris Commune in 1871. But Marx took it for granted that this participation
was to be an advance over the political freedoms already gained in the
struggle against feudal rule and royal absolutism, not a denial of those
freedoms. Furthermore, participation was intended to enrich and secure the
political power acquired by the workers' movement and its allies, not to be
an alternative to that power.
While Marx was not confronted with anything like the Fidelista phenomenon,
the idea that he would have endorsed participation without independent
popular power or without political freedoms is absurd on the face of it.
Indeed, a strong case can be made that participation without power or
political freedom is a regressive practice that has more in common with
political systems such as Gaullism and fascism than with socialism. Finally,
we should keep in mind that there exists by now an extensive "tradition" of
both capitalist and Communist power-holders utilizing participation to
derail the development of power and democracy from below. As the slogan of
the 1968 French movement put it so well: "I participate, you participate,
they control."
Like so many on the left, Bengelsdorf utilizes the distinction between
formal and substantive democracy in a manner detrimental to democracy which
she falsely attributes to Marx. The distinction is useful to the extent that
it identifies those regimes that pretend to be democratic because they use
certain ostensibly democratic formal mechanisms which are nevertheless
devoid of significant democratic content. However, it does not follow that
there can be a substantive democracy that is not also formal. Thus, for
example, the Paris Commune established mechanisms for election and recall of
delegates. Similarly, the Russian soviets (before they lost their democratic
character in mid-1918) established mechanisms for the allocation of
representatives and for elections which had to take place at least every
three months. The notion that formal democracy can be ignored means nothing
less than the very undemocratic idea that the mass of the population can
somehow have "democratic" leaders without voting and without protections for
minority views. The motivation behind this obfuscation is rather plain; to
make it appear that Castro's rule has been substantively, although not
formally, democratic despite the Cuban people's total lack of independent
political power.
For Marx, even the purest form of democracy signified coercion, i.e.,
majority rule of a still existing state implementing the decisions of the
majority over the obviously dissenting wishes of the minority, and of course
with the forceful suppression of any violent resistance to majority rule.
Thus, he looked forward to the higher stage of communism where any kind of
rule or coercion, even that of the democratically elected workers'
government, would altogether disappear. It is quite legitimate to wonder
whether the "higher stage of communism" could ever be attained. What is not
legitimate is to take comments Marx made about the democratic workers' state
(first or lower stage of communism) from the perspective of the higher stage
of stateless communism, and make it appear that these comments represent a
Marxian defense of authoritarianism.
Thus, Bengelsdorf suggests that Marx and Engels' rejection of the term "free
people's state" for the post-revolutionary system signified an endorsement
of authoritarianism in the usual, invidious sense of the term. However, what
Marx and Engels claimed was that it was nonsense to speak of a "free
people's state" since the state by definition implied coercion and could not
therefore be free. By calling the post-revolutionary state "authoritarian,"
Marx and Engels were not wavering in their commitment to democracy, but were
arguing instead that post-revolutionary democracy was not yet as free as
stateless communism and was therefore "authoritarian." In decontextualizing
Marx and Engels' statements on the state and freedom and calling them
authoritarian in the normal, non-democratic sense of the term (p. 21),
Bengelsdorf is creating a spurious link between Marx and Castro in order to
legitimize Fidel's ideological credentials.
IN REVIEWING THE EXTENSIVE LITERATURE ON MARX, Bengelsdorf finds a number of
problem areas in Marx's political thought which deserve serious discussion.
Among these are the apparent inconsistencies between Marx's centralizing and
decentralizing views of socialism and whether he was correct in thinking
that politics as such could eventually disappear into mere administration.
But whatever views one may have on these important questions, it cannot be
denied that Marx put forward a democratic vision of the socialist
revolution, and took it for granted that a variety of views would contend
for hegemony within the revolutionary camp. In this context, it is worth
noting that as critical as Marx was of the Paris Commune leadership's
failure to take decisive actions against the enemy, it did not occur to him
to attribute this failure to the diversity of views among the Communards,
which is precisely the kind of argument favored by Castro and the Stalinist
tradition in general.
To analyze the relevance of Lenin and Leninism (not the same thing) to the
politics of the Fidelista leadership would require a more extensive
discussion of the relationship of Lenin to Stalinism than would be
appropriate here. The interested reader is invited to examine my book,
Before Stalinism (Verso, 1990) which contains a discussion and materials
relevant to the question. Nevertheless, I would like to note some major
features of Lenin's politics which seriously call into question Castro's
Leninist claims. Lenin was the first among equals in the Bolshevik
leadership. It is quite inconceivable that Castro could tolerate -- let
alone collaborate with --other party leaders of the caliber of a Trotsky or
a Bukharin. It is also inconceivable that Castro could tolerate as
factionalized a party as the Bolsheviks were before and after the seizure of
power. Whatever may have been wrong with Lenin or the Bolshevik Party, the
fact remains that until the Civil War, any comparison between the Bolsheviks
and other political parties would show that the Bolsheviks had more internal
democracy, a clearer ideology and program, and a firmer class commitment.
While investing considerable intellectual effort in discussing Marx and
Lenin and their possible impact on Fidelismo, Bengelsdorf pays much less
attention to the influence of Stalinism on Cuban events. Yet, I would
contend that it is the latter that is really important. While Lenin's
"Leninism" had meant different things at different times and therefore
constituted an ambiguous legacy, Stalinism presented itself to the world as
a finished system for all times and places. Similarly, while Lenin, in the
early 20s, had come to justify repression and lack of democracy as a virtue
rather than as an unavoidable necessity, the political and economic regime
established under Lenin never quite lost its provisional and historically
conditioned flavor. By the 30s there was nothing provisional left in
Stalin's system which was characterized by such structural features as full
nationalization of the means of production, a one-party state and statified
unions, the absence of the right to strike or any other civil and political
liberties, and an all-embracing secret police to help maintain the regime in
power. By this time, the newly predominant Stalinist system had made the
strong claim that it was only those influenced by bourgeois thought who
would worry about such insignificant matters as freedom and democracy. For
these new recruits to Communism, the history of Marxism previous to Stalin's
rule was the caricature provided by Soviet manuals distorting socialist
history.
Nowhere was this more evident than in Cuba. By the time Fidel Castro became
a student activist at the University of Havana in the mid- and late 40s, the
very word and meaning of socialism had become coterminous with the Popular
Socialist Party (PSP), Moscow's franchise in Cuba. The once important
anarchist movement had disappeared from the scene by the 20s, and the small
but at one time influential Cuban Trotskyists had dissolved into the
Autentico nationalist-populist camp and had become virtually invisible as a
distinct political tendency. Yet, while the Cuban followers of Moscow were
by then the only significant tendency espousing socialism, the PSP was
organizationally very sectarian and compromised by its betrayals of
populist-nationalist causes and by unscrupulous political deals. In one
notorious instance, the Cuban Communists exchanged political support for
Batista for control of the trade union movement during the years 1938-1944.
Thus, the peculiarities of the Cuban PSP left open a niche for an
independent non-sectarian Stalinism untainted by the PSP's betrayals, a
niche that was eventually filled by Fidelismo after the revolution.
It is difficult to assess the political significance of The Problem of
Democracy in Cuba. Does it portend a more politically and intellectually
respectable stance for non-Communist supporters of the Cuban regime during
this era of right-wing political pressures? My hope is that it is part of a
perhaps unfinished but genuine democratic-socialist process of
reconsideration of the Cuban experience.
Note
* The Problem of Democracy in Cuba by Carollee Bengelsdorf. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1994. return
Contents of No. 19
New Politics home page
----- Original Message -----
From: Alan Spector
To: Sanjay Bhatikar ; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2001 1:08 PM
Subject: Re: More on Cuban totalitarianism -- & Orwell, semantics, etc.
Responsed to "Fact 1"
Your use of the word "unjust" to describe regimes which have killed
hundreds of thousands in Latin America is EXACTLY what George Orwell was
writing about in his discussions of deceptive language. Let's get to facts.
Those "unjust regimes" were far more than merely "unjust." They were
murderous on a scale that far, far exceeds whatever wrongdoing the Castro
regime has committed. Do you really want to compare numbers? It is EXACTLY
the "Orwellian" misuse of language to use a soft term like "unjust" to
describe those regimes and then use words like "brutal" and "pure hell" to
describe Cuba.
Response to "Fact 2"
To compare life in the wealthy USA to life in Cuba evades the reality that
it is the US government which sustains (and often put into power) the
murderous regimes that are far worse than Castro's. It is rather like
commenting that a murderous gangster treats his own family well, while the
families of his victims live in poverty, and then commenting that this is
proof that the gangster is really a nicer fellow than his victims!
And as a second point: it is not as if life in the USA is so great. Fact:
the USA has a higher proportion of its population is in jail or prison than
Cuba. For black people in the inner cities, life really is much like the
"police state" we have been told exists in Cuba. Police really do stop
people at random, search them, assault and beat many, and kill more than a
few. And infant mortality really is higher in many of those areas of the US
than it is in Cuba. Dispute this with facts if you choose, but not
unsubstantiated rhetoric.
Response to "Fact 3"
Tens of thousands are also trying to leave Mexico and Haiti for the USA and
nobody is breaking the doors to come in. In fact, something like ONE THIRD
of the population of Puerto Rico has left Puerto Rico for the mainland USA
in the past few decades. Were they seeking the "freedom" of life in the USA?
Uh, Puerto Rico IS part of the USA.
So it isn't political freedom that they are seeking. It's a chance to make
more money. (for which we shouldn't condemn them, of course.) Many of us
were strongly opposed to the regimes that controlled Eastern Europe during
the 1980's (before the collapse), despite the fact that they used "Marxist"
rhetoric. But there is no doubt that life has gotten much, much worse in
most of Eastern Europe since corporate style capitalism has been allowed to
grow so rapidly. I'm reminded of the fable of the slave owner who treated
his field slaves much worse than his house slaves, who were also viciously
abused. When questioned about slavery, he replied: "I'm good to my slaves.
They all love having me for a master. The proof is that so many of my field
slaves would rather work in my house. It must be because they love me and
want to be close to me."
Also, the "Little House on the Prairie" version of imaginary Reagan-myth
capitalism, namely that anyone can open up an independent bookstore and
succeed displays an incredibly naive view of how capitalism works.
Monopolies gain advantages (economies of scale). They also buy politicians.
And control the political machine. The choice is not between "big government
that treats people like numbers" versus "government that is responsive to
the people." One way or another there will be big government for the
forseeable future. Do you want it controlled by the people, or by Toyota?
Response to "Fact 0"
In "communist Cuba" you would probably not be "as good as dead." You would
probably be one of the ones that Castro would allow to leave, after having
gotten your free university education skimmed from the labor of the Cuban
working class, and then taking your education to the USA where you could get
a lot more money, rather than returning the benefits of that education to
the Cuban people who worked while you went to school. And if you did stay
behind, I doubt that you would be "put to death." Texas has a higher rate
of executions than Cuba.
Response to "PS" -- Marxists are not "against" intellectuals. Just those who
use the rhetoric of intellectualism to provide a camouflage for their own
biases. And those who trust the Toyota Board of Trustees more than they
trust the working class. As to "spiritualism" -- some of my best friends
believe in various gods. I even have some friends who are ministers, and
I've learned some things from them. But I also know that "spiritualism" can
be used by those who do not want to deal with facts, and when confronted by
facts, they resort to the language of "spiritualism" to assert that "their
knowledge" comes from a Higher Authority that they understand and their
opponent cannot understand. Claiming that one is "correct" and his/her
opponent is "wrong" because one has spiritual knowledge that does not have
to be verified is what is known as "dogma" -- EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF
CRITICAL THINKING. (And yes, sometimes people who call themselves "Marxist"
have made that mistake also.)
Being concerned about "facts" rather than "Sanjay's particular brand of
spiritualism" does not make one "animalistic." (Talk about "Orwellian"
argumentation...)
To imply that people who do not accept your particular conclusions that are
based on your particular "spiritualism" (rather than data) are therefore
acting in accordance with their "lower, animalistic" selves might make you
feel good. But it doesn't convince anyone who is concerned about
understanding things more accurately.
----------Alan Spector--------------
----- Original Message -----
From: Sanjay Bhatikar
To: Alan Spector ; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2001 1:32 PM
Subject: More on Cuban totalitarianism
George Orwell ring a bell?
FACT 1 -
I've been opening my mouth to complain about all unjust US-supported regimes
in South Ameria. I've been opening my mouth to shout and scream about
environmentally destructive timber-harvesting practices of corporations such
as Maxxam. I've been opening my mouth to yell against the inherent injustice
in inequitable distribution of wealth and reckless materialism. I've been
opening my mouth to make noise against the US Navy's defence spending.
FACT 2 - I'm still alive.
There is ABSOLUTELY no comparison between a brutal communist regime such as
Castro's and a democracy. The capitalist democracy of the USA is far from
perfect, but the communist dictatorship if Castro's Cuba is pure hell!
Unless of course, you happen to be one of Castro's henchmen or buy into his
sophistry. In which case you are headed for hell anyway.
Democratic rights are not ensured by the existence of a democratic system.
Like happiness, they have to be fought for and won again and again. THAT is
where our energies should be directed. But democratic rights are
systematically murdered and finished by communist mafiosi. Which leads to
FACT 3 -
Thousands are trying to leave Cuba and almost no one is tearing down doors
to get in.
Democracy works, but it takes the will of people to make it work. For
example, if you think chain stores are imposing an unaesthetic uniformity
across the land, the democratic system gives you the chance to start your
own locally-owned bookstore. BOTTOMLINE - ONLY THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE CAN
MAKE DEMOCRACY WORK.
Repression, treating people as numbers is as idiotic as it is futile. By the
same token crictical thinking applies to people as a whole only so far -
which is to say so far as it does not negate the individual with his dreams
and aspirationsm, his positive and negative inclinations.
FACT 0 -
In communist Cuba, I'm as good as dead.
PS _ I'm not surprised by the attack on intellectuals. It is typical of
communism, as of any form of undemocratic totalitarianism, to hit out
against intellectuals who are at the cutting edge of change. Such systems
can only succeed by rewarding blind conformance. Let me define what is an
intellectual: a person who consistently and consciously acts in accordance
with his higher, spiritual self than his lower, animal self. No doubt, the
word 'spiritual' has no place in the lexicon of a communist. Critical
thinking surely dismisses it outright.
Lastly, its plain foolish for workers to take complete control of the means
of production. If anyone is interested, I'll discuss the profit-sharing
schemes of Toyota Motor Corp. in Japan and SAS Insititute in the USA.
----- Original Message -----
From: Alan Spector
To: Alan Thomas Harrison ; Sanjay Bhatikar
Cc: psn
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2001 10:42 AM
Subject: Re: World Bank on Cuba--
> On Tue, 5 Jun 2001 13:07:51 -0600 Sanjay Bhatikar
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Whats the point of this? Open your mouth to criticize Castro in Cuba and
you
> > go to jail. Thats a fact.
==============================================
Open your mouth to criticize many of the U.S. supported regimes in Latin
America, and you don't end up in jail. You end up dead. And maybe your
family also. Hundreds of thousands in just Chile, Hondouras, Guatemala, and
El Salvador.
Don't open your mouth, but just happen to live in the black neighborhoods of
Panama City, and the U.S. invasion to kill their own former ally, the
criminal Noriega, will also kill a few thousand of you (more in one day than
were executed in Cuba over a forty year period.)
Open your mouth for food in many parts of the world, including Latin
America, and you end up dead because there is not adequate food, nor clean
water to put in your mouth. Because cash crops enforced by U.S. armed
capitalist regimes have replaced food crops, and the impoverished working
class dies from needless diseases.
A baby who dies needlessly at the age of 9 months has never had "the right
to vote" nor even the "right to speak" at all.
Pro-capitalists are VERY SELECTIVE about what they consider "rights."
Intellectuals, in particular, jealously guard "their own rights", including
the right to be an intellectual, and somehow downplay as irrelevant, the
fundamental rights of others, by intellectually separating out on - paper
"political" rights from the real world political-economic situations that
destroy the lives of so many people. That's why they can callously say
"What's the point?" about policies, however imperfect, that have saved the
lives of thousands of children.
---Alan Spector
=========================================
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Thomas Harrison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Sanjay Bhatikar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "psn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2001 11:06 AM
Subject: Re: World Bank on Cuba
>
> On Tue, 5 Jun 2001 13:07:51 -0600 Sanjay Bhatikar
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Whats the point of this? Open your mouth to criticize Castro in Cuba and
you
> > go to jail. Thats a fact.
>
> Whether it is a fact or not is something don't know. What I do know is
> that my mate Sergio, who found himself in one of Pinochet's concentration
> camps for criticising his regime, rather likes Sr. Castro's government.
>
> Again, I am aware that many countries, including this one, have placed
> restrictions on freedom of speech in emergency conditions. Sir Oswald
> Mosley opened his mouth to criticise Churchill's regime, and was thrown
> into gaol. "Lord Haw-Haw" (William Joyce) opened his mouth to criticise
> Churchill, and he was hanged, despite his having done so from Berlin,
which
> was not under British jurisdiction at the time.
>
> The imbalance of power between Cuba and that country which has proclaimed
> it an "enemy" is, I think, rather greater than that between Britain and
> Germany in 1939-45. Despite the vicious, spiteful enmity of a much more
> powerful neighbour, Cuba has continually punched above its weight, both in
> respect of healthcare and education, and in the support it has given to
> those fighting imperialism.
>
> Alan Harrison
> Brunel University, UK
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 12:39 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:13972] Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)
> Yoshie:
> >Cuban socialists aren't opposed to genetic engineering per se, though
> >I don't know if they like eatin' tuna & doubt that they are sanguine
> >about trends in corporate genetic engineering. :->
>
> Cubans also use nuclear power. In any case, it does not make sense to
> extrapolate from the economic development model of a besieged island
bereft
> of its main trading partner, except to say that you are always better off
> eliminating the profit motive--this despite the seething hostility of
> social democrats like Sam Farber who has written screeds against Cuba for
> New Politics.
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
>
