From: "Peter Jovanovic" <peterzoran-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist cuba?
Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 14:27:59 +1100


Hi All

>(Posted to Marxmail by Mohammad Alam, an undergraduate in the Boston area 
> >whose father contributes occasionally to Counterpunch)

Louis, is posting this crap from some icepickhead mate of yours an admission 
that you're losing this debate and need to call up reinforcements? And what 
the fuck does it matter if this guy's dad writes for Counterpunch? Is being 
related to someone who sometimes writes for an OK if liberalish zine a great 
achievement?

>The fundamental flaw behind the idea that Cuba is a capitalist state is 
> >that it smacks of crude formalism. Instead of starting out from
>actually-existing reality, the material conditions, historical  roots, and 
> >political processes of Cuba, these autonomists take their blueprint 
> >model, >hold it up next to the Cuban model, and declare the latter to be 
> >antithetical to socialism.

It's a pretty loose blueprint; communism = the proletariat's positive 
negation of capital. Now if you think replacing one set of politicians, 
bosses, cops and jailers with another is that positive negation fine but 
please forgive those of us who think it means getting rid of money, states 
etc.

>If capitalism prevails in Cuba as it does in the rest of Latin America, 
> >then why are there such huge discrepancies in the social relations, 
> >living >standards, and security levels between the island and the 
>mainland?

This has been pretty well dealt with by Harald among others but who here has 
claimed that capitalism implies equally bad living conditions everywhere?

>The easiest way to check the completeness of an idea is to check if an 
> >alternative is offered. In the case of the autonomists, who are quick to 
> >condemn the party, the vanguard, Lenin, and every other 
>socialist>development of the last 100 years out of hand,

Don't forget the gulag, the Cheka and the boring sacrificial nature of 
Leninoid politics.

Something Leninists never understand and/or acknowledge is that we don't 
think you are on the same side as us. You think of us as mistaken and 
sectarian but more or less comrades whereas we think of you as advocates of 
an alternative form of capitalist rule and dangerous because you have some 
(thankfully diminishing) appeal to parts of the proletariat. Given these 
wildly different mutual perceptions you can't grasp why we dislike you lot 
so much.

>Moreover, it is an insult to the struggles of the past
>half-century, and an insult to the dedication of revolutionaries who fought 
> >under the banner of Marxism, to claim that they were really just 
> >capitalists of some sort without knowing it.

I'm sorry that millions of peasants and proles fought under the banner of 
satate capitalist Marxism but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop 
criticising state capitalist Marxism.

Peter


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