Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 10:42:55 +0000 (GMT)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Scott=20Hamilton?= <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist cuba?


 
The way I see it the two sides in this debate have two
different but perhaps equally difficult tasks.

The 'Cuba as capitalist' side has to account for the
seemingly-anomalous level of the 'social wage'
(health, education etc) enjoyed by the Cuban people.
The 'Cuba as socialist' side has to explain the
repressive side of Cuban society - the gulags where
all too many Cuban Trotskyists and anarchists have
found themselves, for instance. 

I think that Louis Proyect hits the mark with his
criticisms of the mostly sterile, utopian arguments
paraded by the 'Cuba as capitalist' camp. I have been
making similar criticisms for some time in relation to
the post-imperialist and anti-national liberation
arguments which also mar this list. 

It seems though, that Proyect, whom I gather is an
ex-member of the US SWP, has a very uncritical
attitude to Cuba, and thus falls prey to another, less
naive strain of utopianism. Proyect might justify the
repressive side of the Cuban regime as a necessary
condition for socialist contruction in a backward,
isolated society, but it seems to me that the best
Trotskyists have tended to present bureaucracy and
repression as *constraints* on socialist development.
The Communist Workers Group of NZ, for instance,
presents the failure of the 5 year plans of the USSR
as importantly the result of the undemocratic way they
were drawn up - workers' needs could not be expressed
by bureaucrats' plans, they suggest. 

Would it be possible to synthesise the best parts of
both sides' arguments, and argue for the retention of
the positive features of Cuban society as well as the
destruction of the Castroite ruling caste and
bureaucracy and their replacement with real direct
democracy? 

Failing that, one way forward in this debate may be to
shift focus to the practical consequences of the two
sides' analyses of Cuba. How does the 'Cuba as
capitalist' camp think the cause of real communism can
be advanced in Cuba today, and how do I (and Proyect?)
think that a recognition of the positive elements of
Cuban society can be combined with a programme for the
elimination of what is negative? 

If it does nothing else, such a focus should frighten
off those who are uninterested in using this and
similar lists as an aid to real political activism. It
might also expose those who (rightly, if very
repititively) condemn the abuses of 'actually existing
socialism' but never feel the need to call foul play
on their own side. (I'm thinking, for instance, of the
way that one person who apparently wants to send Louis
off the field recently defended Toni Negri's excuses
for backing a counter-revolutionary Porto Allegro
summit...)

Cheers
Scott



===="Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"

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