Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 09:03:22 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist cuba?


>My comment: What exactly is this sokalled socialist element?
>And while I agree that Cuba is a country in transition, is'nt the transition 
>more from feudal relations of productions towards capitalist and a mixture 
>of these and *something other* which is oppressive and state-ist, not 
>socialist?
>
>Martin

Cuba was feudal? Now I am beginning to understand the problem on aut-op-sy.
The comrades are basically unfamiliar with Marxist literature on the modes
of production, etc. If you want to understand how feudalism operated, I
suggest Marc Bloch's excellent "Feudal Society". If you want to understand
what took place in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, I suggest
Maurice Dobb's "Studies in the Development of Capitalism". To balance it,
I'd recommend Perry Anderson's "Lineages of the Absolutist State". For
transition from capitalism to socialism, I'd recommend Marx's "Civil War in
France", which is a defense of the Paris Commune, although I'm sure you'd
hate it because as everybody knows, "wage slavery" characterized the Paris
Commune. You might also look at Lenin's "State and Revolution" although you
might need a permission slip from Harry Cleaver on that one. In any case,
much of this "transition" stuff might be unfamiliar to you because you good
comrades are allergic to dialectics. Your idealist brand of communism has
much more in common with the nonscientific socialism of the 19th century,
with Proudhon's "property is theft", etc. Anything short of communism is
capitalism, etc. This is just the opposite of Marx's approach who writes in
"Critique of the Gotha Program": 

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has
developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges
from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically,
morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old
society from whose womb it emerges."


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org




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