Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 05:00:21 +0100 (CET)
From: zxmzc14 <birgit.bock-AT-student.uni-tuebingen.de>
Subject: Re: AUT: Capitalist Cuba ?


Ja would say this are goog points which need to be asked at some level,
but the fact is that to have any revolutionary project you need a state,
good or bad the relations of citizens too their state is important in
the geopolitical struggle of things, and as one who had only visited and
not lived in socialist states. So i mean the people living in cuba, (like
the  yogoslavs for that matte) are living in a certain tradition and state
which
it conflict with a bigger CAPITALISM than their own. ANd why should 60ies
amd 70ies marxism developed in western university be the measure of social
for the third world. Maybe third world socialism is it own thing.

JEremiah


On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Kurasje Archive wrote:

> Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 07:53:13 +0800
> From: Kurasje Archive <kurasje-AT-iname.com>
> Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: AUT: Capitalist Cuba ?
>
> I do not have much time for reading all these postings in detail, but get rather supprised of the bad level of historical and theoretical clarity on this thread on 'state capitalism in cuba'  -  at least from some of the participants.
>
> Back since the break between russian bolshevics and the west-european communists in the first half of the 20'ies it was clear to everyone with a minimum of critical and open mind that USSR was state capitalist. Lenin and others from the new soviet leadership admitted openly that the revolution was dead and that state capitalism was the order of the day in Russia.
>
> The Bolshevics were trapped by their own political project and made the special idea that state capitalism under 'workers control' - i.e. under the CP-leadership  -  were somehow morally better than the alternatives. It might have been or not  -  that's speculation. Fact is that the bolshevics made state capitalism the model of the CP-ideology and did all they could afterwards to hide this behind obscure pseudo-scientific propaganda. Trotsky and Stalin did not differ essentially on this.
>
> The independent western communist tendencies had their problems in this 'theoretical' battle of understanding the 'nature of the soviet system'. Many different attempts has been made to understand the USSR.
>
> But back from the 20'ies and especially from the vawe of 'academic' systematical re-reading of Marx in the 60'ies it has become clear that such political and social 'revolutions' as the russian as well as the cuban has ben nothing but specific transitions of capitalism from 'classical/typical' private bourgois institutionalisation into some alternative public organisation.
>
> The anarchists said so spontaniously very early on, council communists like Rhle, Pannekoek and others tried to argue with more traditional 'marxist' arguments. From around the 2.WW even left-trotzkyists begann to get the picture as stalinism has turned the official 'socialist' paint on state-capitalism into the absurde. Tony Cliff is best known and did some of it. The 'Johnsom/Forest'-tendency is less known, but did it even better.
>
> The academic re-reading of Marx in the 60'ies and beginning of the 70'ies did the final (Roman Rosdolsky, Helmuth Reichelt just to name a few). On the grounds of the systematic 'reconstruction' of Marx's methodological and conceptual project of the critique of political economy (based on all available manuscripts, i.e. Grundrisse, the original manuscripts of Zur Kritik ... and the various drafts of chapters to Das Kapital etc.) it became well established as the kernel of his theory that commodity production, money-economy and capitalism are inseparable:
>
> The formal and juridical ownership to the means of production is only of secundary interest and importance  -  the official political paint/ideology of society is even only third.  -  When you have a society based on commodity production and money exchange you have also wage labour on one side and capital on the other. The basic relations of production in this world is one of the producers seperated from the means of production as wage labours confronted with capital. To this essential relation of social life it does no real difference if capital is represented as a small shopkeeper, one big industialist, an anonymous group of finansial shareholders or the more or less de-personalized fiction of 'public ownership'.
>
> Secondly the carefull re-reading of Marx through the Grundrisse-manuscript to the volume 3-manuscipts-level of Das Kapital also made another essential point very clear: through the immanent and self-contradictionary (crisis-ridden) law law of capitalist accumulation and development capitalism is by nature global and leaves no room for escape.
>
> It may be for short periods and outbreaks of more or less radical 'revolutions' that smaller or larger areas of the globe will be able to challenge the 'public order' on the surface. But if such 'revolutions' does not radicalize and spread (in a Luxemburg/Pannekoek 'mass-strike'-sence) they will be defeated objectively by the global laws of capitalist accumulation and competition. Even if the personal/political expression of such 'revolutionary' outbursts surviwe they will get caught by the necessaties of the daily administration of 'war-communism', which stabilized and agreed to within global capitalism can be nothing but state capitalism.   -  Lenin experienced this and admitted it partly (that much he should actually be credited for).
>
> And so to the present discussion: what is going on in Cuba ?
>
> The basic 'marxist' questions are simple:
> - do they have commodity production ?
> - do they have money based economy ?
> - is wage labour the existential way of life for the immediate producers ?
>
> If so - its capitalism, no matter what government and ideological disguise.
>
> We could set up another angle and ask more historical questions such as:
> - did the Cuban revolution ever challenge the fundamental wage labour/capital-relation ?
> That may be interesting from a historical point of view, but leads to nowhere.
>
> greeting to all
> j.
> --
>
>
> Kurasje - Council Communist Archive
> http://kurasje.tripod.com
>
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