Date: 14 Mar 2002 13:53:50 +0200
From: "Tahir Wood" <twood-AT-uwc.ac.za>
Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist cuba?




>>> whauge51-AT-hotmail.com 03/13/02 02:56PM >>>
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?

I don't agree with the idea of transition from feudalism to capitalism, which was I think a purely European phenomenon at the dawn of capitalism itself. What we have in Cuba seems to me rather capitalist development; if there is a transition it is from a backward, 'underdeveloped' form of capitalism to more modern and developed one. Sometimes, in such cases, the term 'semi-feudal' is used descriptively to allude to the fact that there is still a large peasantry and that social relations in the countryside still have something of a pre-capitalist aspect to them. In Europe itself we have seen examples of this, e.g. Spain in the early twentieth century. Such countries were capitalist, but a backward form of capitalism. The 'solution' to this is always an authoritarian discipline with a strongly nationalist character. In Spain the term 'iron surgeon' was used I think almost a hundred years ago to refer to what it would take the country to catch up with the developed world. It found its iron surgeon in Franco. It is a mistake to describe a rightwing nationalist movement like this as simply reactionary (see Proyect's recent post on this) - this would contradict the fact that it sets its sights on capitalist modernisation as a path to national salvation. This is not at all different from what the Chinese have achieved, far more successfully than the case of the Soviet Union, and Cuba too I would say, because the Chinese leadership has been much more clear that this is what they were trying to do. So: feudalism no; distorted, backward, peripheral capitalism yes.

Tahir





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