Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 10:24:40 -0600 (CST)
From: "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist cuba?


On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Louis Proyect wrote:

> Harry Cleaver:
> >Sorry, that is not my reading of those economists who studied the Soviet
> >Union at all. The production of surplus mattered a great deal to the
> >planners. The whole push for industrialization was based on not only the
> >desire but the reality of realizing as much surplus as possible as quickly
> >as possible. Their problem was that not enough Soviet citizens cooperated
> >with that goal. Thus collectivization to collect the agrarian surplus,
> >thus the gulag to force labor out the recalcitrant.
>
> Yes, this is what Adam Ulam wrote as well. He also considered the 1930s as
> tantamount to primitive accumulation in the sense that Marx described.

Preobrazhensky called it "primitive socialist accumulation" during the
industrialization debates. And the only thing 'socialist" about his
approach to exploiting the peasantry was the word.

> Of
> course, if the USSR continued to function that way into the 1980s, one
> might have to reconsider the class nature of the USSR.

I see no evidence of any change in the antagonism between the Soviet
people and the Soviet state that continued to strive to accumulate capital
right through to the end.

> As we know, however,
> the period of the 40 years or so until the collapse of the USSR was marked
> by a rather lax labor discipline,

That "lax labor discipline" was a form of resistance: one of the few forms
of resistance available in a police state. All through the post-WWII
period the state tried one form after another to impose work on the
recalcitrant population.

> which was almost guaranteed to be a
> problem where the lash of layoffs did not exist and where the workforce had
> pretty much grown cynical about the people on top.

It's only a problem when work is being imposed and resisted. And the
cynicism derived from the combination of imposed work and restricted
production of quality consumer goods. Why give of your time and energy to
work when the product of your labor is being accumulated by the state for
your further enslavement.

> During the time when
> market socialism solutions were being considered to fix these chronic
> problems, some like Janos Kornai argued that the only answer was to
> introduce a free market in labor, ie., the threat of unemployment. For all
> of the facility with which my autonomist friends apply Marxist terms to
> societies in the so-callled Leninist model, the one category they seem
> unininterested in is unemployment.

There was plenty of unemployment in the USSR. Some was overt; most was
covert: "hidden" unemployment where people were kept "at work" but were
doing nothing in exchange for minimial subsistence. There were also plenty
of labor markets in the USSR, workers moved or refused to move from job to
job. They were not puppets of the state. In order to get labor for onerous
jobs such as mining in Siberia or coke mills the state had to pay double
and triple wages and better benefits. I talked with Kornai and his
proposals were like contemporary neoliberal ones: designed to shift the
market forces against labor, essentially what was done after 1989 in
Eastern Europe. That's what the rhetoric of "free" markets has always been
about, not the creation of markets but changing the rules of the game in
favor of capital.

> Odd that would be this the case, since
> it is the single thread that runs through all societies that have been
> undergoing neoliberal solutions, like a knife cut.

Not the single thread, but certainly a prominent one.

<snip>

> >Financial data? It would be more interesting to know what, if any, methods
> >are used to determine the desires of the Cuban people and what methods are
> >used, and to what degree, to meet those desires. Che. at least, apologized
> >for the taste of Cuban cola after the revolution.
>
> I guess you are implying that the Cuba does not have a planned economy and
> that investment dollars flow to whatever commodity is most profitable.

No Louis, I was implying no such thing. You want to see Cuba as a
socialist country whose government is more responsive to the needs of its
citizens than capitalist countries. Because you don't see that government
fitting production to demand as in capitalism (and I would suppose not
trying to manipulate that demand either) then I was wondering about any
evidence about how the Cuban planning state knows what production is
needed and desired by the population.

> If
> so, I can't blame you for failing to provide empirical evidence to back
> that up.

Moot.

> You know and I know that's how capitalism works. You know and I
> know that investment in Cuba does not proceed along those lines.

The allocation of capital to the production of the most highly profitable
commodities is, in part, how in capitalism stuff gets produced that people
actually want. Profitability is determined, in part, by demand. Of course
the capitalist try to manipulate demand, through advertizing, culture
etc., but nevertheless not all demand can be dismissed as the result of
such manipulation. Marketing and market research, old style and internet
style with cookies, is designed to reveal what people want and will spend
their money on. We may reject this whole institutional framework and point
out its many dark sides, but that doesn't change the fact that it does
provide information that results in gearing production, to some degree, to
people's wants and desires (however manipulated they may be). If such
methods are not used in Cuba, then what methods, if any, are used by the
planning state to determine those desires and wants? If there are none,
then what you have is a paternalistic state deciding what's "good" for
people without regard to their own desires.

> My only
> question is why you don't just come right out and say that Cuba does not
> represent any more of a realization of Karl Marx's hopes than Jamaica or
> the Dominican Republic.

Cuba does not represent any more of a realization of Karl Marx's hopes
than Jamaica or the Dominican Republic. Caveat: there was a revolution
in Cuba. Marx certainly hoped for revolution. But he didn't hope for
revolution just cause he liked revolutions; he hoped for them as a means
to get beyond the endless subordination of peoples lives to capitalist
accumulation.

The point has already been made by others debating with you: just because
people struggle and win some improvement in their lives doesn't mean they
have moved beyond capitalism. This is obvious to you in the case of the
US or Western Europe, etc., where workers have fought for and won higher
wages, better standards of living, etc. It should be obvious that just
because standards of living are higher in Cuba than they are in Jamaica
or the Dominican Republic (if they are higher, and I haven't looked at the
data) that doesn't, per se, make Cuba something beyond capitalism.

> It is one thing to harp on Russia in the 1930s. It
> is another to cast Cuba in the same light, when tens of thousands of
> leftwing activists with nothing in common with CPers in the 1930s have
> visited Cuba and come away with a perception entirely different than your
> own. It is your contradiction, not theirs.

Tens of thousands of leftwing activists though Mao was God's gift to
humanity. Hardly a persuasive argument.

> >It may not be of interest to you Louis, but it was of interest to the
> >person who raised the question. Instead of trying to drag the discussion
> >onto my favorite terrain where I can beat my favorite drums, I tried to
> >answer the question. If the question bores you, ignore it.
>
> I am trying to broaden the question out beyond abstract discussions of
> value, price and profit. I am trying to engage people, including you, with
> the social reality of Cuba.

Yes, that has become obvious. And I don't hold that against you. It's your
present agenda. It's not mine. Sorry.

>
> This has been the ongoing reality of Cuba:
>
> Edward Boorstein, "The Economic Transformation of Cuba", MR Press:

<snip> I read Boorstein when it came out, years ago. I think that's where
the story about Che apologizing for the taste of Cuban cola is.

H.

............................................................................
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Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
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............................................................................



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