Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 10:45:08 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist cuba?


Martin:
>If in pre-revolution Cuba, as you say, feudal elements remained largely, (I 
>do'nt kwow how strong these were then, BUT I SUPPOSE that the REALTIONS OF 
>PRODUCTION and ideological habits as cult of leadership were partly feudal 
>and partly capitalist), then if you believe that the new, read: post-rev 
>Cuba, arised from this, and was born in the wombs of the old society, as 
>Marx terms transition, then Cuba was in the years after revolution (now it 
>is more pure capitalistic) characterised by remnants of feudal habits and 
>some so-called collective aspirations from above.

I don't know how to break the news to you, but the last time there was
feudalism in Latin America was when the Aztecs and Incas ruled. From early
in the 16th century, the Spanish, British and Portuguese colonists
introduced commodity production on the basis of forced labor, either
slavery or peonage. The Jamaican sugar mills were far more technologically
advanced and employed larger concentrations of workers than any factory in
Europe. Potosi was one of the largest cities in the world in the 1600s.
Just because somebody called himself Don Francisco, it does not make him a
feudalist. In Europe, feudalism was characterized by underutilization of
labor power and resources. In "The Invention of Capitalism", Michael
Perelman points out:

"Although their standard of living may not have been particularly lavish,
the people of precapitalistic northern Europe, like most traditional
people, enjoyed a great deal of free time. The common people maintained
innumerable religious holidays that punctuated the tempo of work. Joan
Thirsk estimated that in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
about one-third of the working days, including Sundays, were spent in
leisure. Karl Kautsky offered a much more extravagant estimate that 204
annual holidays were celebrated in medieval Lower Bavaria."

Nothing like this existed in the Mexican, Peruvian or Bolivian mines of the
16th to 18th centuries which had more in common with Auschwitz than feudal
Europe.

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




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