On 5/17/06, Charles Brown wrote:
> Reading this article itself what is striking is the proof that planned > obsolescence can be overcome, and the resourcefulness of the Cuban > revolution. ...
I wrote:
I don't know if it's the "resourcefulness of the Cuban revolution" as much as the resourcefulness of Cuban individuals, who fix up these cars.
Charles:
I doubt it. Individuals do very little alone in human society, which is highly social. Bourgeois media and conceptions like to portray all success in society as if there are billions of Robinson Crusoes , all doing their own little individual thing. All these resourceful individuals is what makes the world go 'round - NOT !
it's not _isolated_ individuals that I was talking about, but rather the kind of individuals you see in the US and everywhere else in the world, i.e., the tinkerers who scrounge up parts from here and there to solve technical problems, often working in their own garages or back yards. _Of course_ these folks exist in society -- and even exploit society. (One of the social influences on these people is the embargo itself. Not all influences come from Cuban society.)
It is not isolated individuals whose resources - mental, soulful and physical - fix- up and maintain these old cars, but collectives, social groups and their resources, organized within the Cuban social revolution.
I would bet that such collectives exist, but the biz of fixing old cars started with the start of the US embargo, before the current set-up of Cuban society was fully established.
It is more the resourcefulness of Cuban revolutionaries organized in collectives ( which is the Cuban revolution), not the resourcefulness of Cuban individuals.
such repetition makes your missive sound more like a political speech than a thoughtful comment. You wouldn't want to spout political rhetoric, would you? BTW, the fact that Cuban society (or non-isolated individuals in that society) is fixing up old cars is a bad thing in many ways. Instead of fully developing mass transit and non-polluting forms of personal transit, there's entirely too much emphasis on stinky (diesel) and unsafe vehicles. A more completely planned economy would likely move away from these horrors (if, that is, the democratically-organized citizenry willed it). The incompleteness of the democratic planning system is of course partly a result of the embargo (and the imperialist world-system in general), the prior poverty of Cuba, and the impossibility of creating socialism in one country. -- Jim Devine / "the world still seems stuck in greed-lock, ruled by fossilized fools fueled by fossil fuels." -- Swami Beyondananda
