From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 08:05:29 -0500
Subject: Re: AUT: alternatives to capitalist cuba?


>Tahir: This seizure of land by peasants occurred
>under the very nose of the Republican government
>in the thirties? This seems to me to be a very
>simplistic explanation of the rise of Franco's
>movement, but that was not my main point ...

Simplistic? The Spanish landed aristocracy and the land-owning 
Catholic church were the two main pillars of fascism. If that is 
"simplistic", then you need to provide some kind of alternative 
explanation.

>other. The fact is that any movement which has
>as its aim the development and modernisation of
>a particular nation (whether it openly calls
>this capitalism or not) will oversee certain
>processes which are intrinsic to the development
>of capitalism, like the proletarianisation of
>the peasants, the bringing of agriculture under
>a modern managerial mode of organisation and the
>accumulation of a surplus to enable industrial
>development. 

Capitalism in the 3rd world has failed to develop and modernize. As I 
pointed out here, the Cuban plantation owners were content to allow 
their land to lie fallow half the year while their hired hands and 
sharecroppers went hungry. If you studied Cuban history, you would 
know this. It took an armed struggle led by Marxists to abolish the 
old plantation system and introduce a more productive use of the 
country's resources. This is the main flaw in "state capitalist" 
analysis. It fails to recognize the reality of so called dependent 
countries, which is the development of underdevelopment as A.G. Frank 
put it.

>already. Look at the Cuban tourist industry,
>which is less than ten years old. The strategy
>of boosting tourism as a way of saving the
>bankrupt Cuban economy was only announced in
>Fidel's speech at the 4th party congress in
>1991.This achievement of a highly managed
>tourist industry emerging in about five years or
>so could not have come into being without there
>being a solid substrate of capitalism underlying
>it. You cannot liberalise non-capitalism.

A substrate of capitalism? You are so confused that it is 
frightening. The Cuban tourist industry is a beneficiary of a planned 
economy, just as the initiative in bioengineering is. Cuba is one of 
the most important producers of Interferon outside the imperialist 
world.

>authority. The turn towards 'communism' came
>only later and was always couched in nationalist
>terms. The Cuban revolution is shot through with
>nationalism and was so from the beginning. The
>national hero (that's official!) is Jose Marti,
>and just about everything in the country is
>named after him or other nationalist figures. 

I guess they should have renounced nationalism just the way that 
Hardt and Negri do. Not very good for mobilizing a people oppressed 
by neocolonialism, but very good for getting interviews on the 
Charlie Rose show or the NY Times.

>disobedience that I have mentioned. I have never
>been to any country where the national flag is
>as frequently displayed as it is in Cuba.

Try the USA. I can't walk down the street without being assaulted by 
the stars and stripes. At any rate, there is a class content to these 
respective flags. But in your idealist communist worldview, this 
would be indetectable.

>You see a man like yourself, Louis, who has a
>lot of trouble understanding abstract concepts,
>as you so frequently tell us, wouldn't
>understand the deeply layered or stratified
>nature of reality. There are all sorts of things
>that we as historical actors think we are doing,
>but there are deeper forces at work shaping our
>ends despite our best intentions. Hegel called
>this the cunning of reason. But at least we can
>learn from history (rather than just cite it as
>you do). You refuse to do this and cling
>stubbornly to a rationale that has lost any sort
>of basis in history at all.

Empty philosophizing.

-- 
Louis Proyect, lnp3-AT-panix.com on 03/12/2002

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