Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 14:00:56 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist cuba?


At 07:43 PM 3/5/2002 +0100, you wrote:
>
>"This is called lying with statistics," according to Louis Proyect
>when I pointed to information such as that "infant mortalliy also actually
>rose during the first years of Castro." As I found this a couple of
>years ago on the regime's own website (though hardly as a
>headline) I am in case not the one lying. 

Why don't you start actually giving the citations for the stuff you post
here, either as above or in the case of the ILO or whatever. Until you do,
people should remain skeptical.

>My point was hardly of giving a full picture of Cuba society and
>and its devopment in the 20th century, before and after Castro.
>People tend to compare Cuba to places as Bolivia and Columbia,
>rather than for instance Costa Rica where both illiteracy rates and
>infant mortality according to WTO statistics actually have
>decreased more than in Cuba in the period of question, as they
>were originally somewhat higher. I am no what claiming that this
>says everything but it puts things somewhat into proportions.

You obviously know about as much about Costa Rica as you do about Cuba.
Costa Rica is the only country in Central America that had no substantial
indigenous population. It was largely a country of European immigrants.
That being said, the welfare state provisions (now under attack from
neoliberalism) were won in the course of an armed struggle led by
Communists in in 1948. 

>Nor am I saying that the level of wages says everything. It is actually
>you who are making the argument, even if  you seem unaware of it.
>Generalised wage slavery tells us however that we are talking about
>capitalism.

Yawn. More Kautskyite arguments against attempts to overthrow capitalism in
non-G7 nations.

>But iif we are to talk about the wage level, according to ILO it was
>higher in Cuba during the Batista regime than in many West-European
>countries, despite colonial history.

Citation? Or was this a dream you had.

>There are far worse places to live than in Cuba. There are also far
>worse places to live than in South Korea. That does not make any
>of these countries less capitalist.

It is not about whether places or better or worse. It is about whether
capitalist accumulation is taking place. Since for you, all peripheral
countries are doomed to be capitalist, there is nothing you have to say to
90 percent of the people living on the planet. Perhaps you should stick to
the aptly named aut-op-sy where you have kindred spirits.

>Though I find it quite funny this reference to "under the revolution,"
>even if I would be very much pleased if  a social revolution was actually
>taking place. In all circumstances, the same could be said about
>quite a few countries. What about:  "The Human Development
>Indicators would reveal that, whatever the wage rate, the average
>Irish, South Korean,  Taiwanese and Costa Rician live better under
>the revolution [today] than before1958.  Even ... a bourgeois economist
>is forced to admit [that]?" Any bourgeois economist would also have
>to admit that this would be true for the end of the Franco period
>compared to Republician Spain of 30ies.

It is not a question of living better, it is a question of society
guaranteeing a job, a home, health care and education. Cuba is the only
country in Latin America that does. As far as South Korea and Taiwan are
concerned, perhaps you should study the history of the Cold War to
understand why these countries fared somewhat better than they might have
if they were in Africa instead.

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




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