From: "commie00" <commie00-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Capitalist Cuba ?
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 14:07:39 -0500


> >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.
>
> Citation?

it is hardly a secret that lenin viewed "socialism" (which he understood to
be something different from communism) to be state capitalism...

"socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the
whole people." 1917

unfortunately, when i wrote this quote down i didn't write down the
particular essay... but i got it while reading the collected works several
years ago. so lenin, at least, was clearly aware of what he was building,
and was not afraid to call it what it was: state capitalism. to his credit,
i feel he honestly thought that this would somehow dissolve into
communism... but this does not, in my mind, excuse his counter-revolutionary
behavior in the russian revolution (see _the bolsheviks and workers control_
by maurice brinton :
http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/2163/bolintro.html)

anyway, this formulation by lenin would seem to possibly apply very well to
cuba. that is: perhaps people are generally, in some senses, better off
under the cp than anything prior... but this does not necessarily mean it is
not "state capitalist", only that this state capitalism is being made to
benefit people more generally, and not just the cuban ruling class. does
this mean that its not capitalism? no. does this mean its a higher state of
capitalism than what we live under in most of the rest of the world? no. in
my mind it just means that the cuban ruling class is, perhaps to their
credit, in some ways genuinely concerned with the welfare of the cuban
people. or, they are terrified of what would happen to them if their was a
mass revolt against them...



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