Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 18:21:06 +0200 (MET DST)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: Re: M-G: Re: greetings


Bruce B wrote, on 29.07 

- and here some brief replies:
>
>On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Rolf Martens wrote:
>
>> Hello Bruce,
>> 
>> Always nice to see new people here!
>> 
>> On your request for comments, though, I have to say at
>> once that I don't agree with you at all on the Cuban
>> revolution. In my opinion, it was betrayed in the early
>> sixties by its leadership, who got "under the wings of"
>> a power that eventually developed to be no better at all
>> than US imperialism, namely the social-imperialism of
>> the (today, former) Soviet Union.
>
>Well we disagree here, big-time.  My opinion is that Cuba, while
>by no means a perfect example of socialism, is the closest thing
>the planet has to socialism at this time.  Despite what the
>capitalist media and textbooks tell us (e.g. about Fidel the
>Terrible Awful Dictator, etc)--which I'm sad to say most of the
>left buys into their reports--Cuba is actually a highly
>democratic society.  And I think it is in fact much more demo-
>cratic now than it was during the Soviet years.   

I actually don't have much information on the conditions in
Cuba concerning democracy. I know enough to doubt very much
US (official) statements, of course. But the thing, quite
generally, is that a people may come under fire from two
competing directions. Not believing US statements does not,
I think, necessarily accept Cuban (official) ones.

>No doubt that Cuba did fall into heavy influence by stalinism 
>in the time when they depended on the USSR for trade; that was
>inevitable due to the U.S. blockade.  Cuba had to trade with
>SOMEONE and the USSR was available for both trade and anti
>imperialist defense agreements.  

In this region are my main arguments against the Cuban
leadership.

Actually, as far as I know, there in the early 60s was a debate
in Cuba on that matter, "having to trade with someone".

The Chinese NB *real* communists said: It's necessary relying
mainly on one own's forces - admittedly, much more difficult
then for small Cuba than for big China.

But they said (the Chinese): "Try to develop a more all-round
economy; you have nickel and iron; you can cultivate wheat in
part instead of just sugar". I remember something vaguely
about Che Guevara's supposedly supporting such a line but
I'm not certain of it.

Anyway, that would have been the right thing, I'm certain
- concerning the economy, which of course is always bound
up with different political lines too. The Chinese advice
was also based in the fact, which the Chinese knew, that the
Soviet Union was *another gangster power* wishing the peoples
in the world no good at all. It went in the direction too of
Cuba's being able to get, in a certain way, at least, the 
support of the peoples of the world by steering a *just* course.

But Castro chose another road - that of massive development
of sugar production in order to get capital for the further
construction etc. The "only" thing was, Cuba then got into
the claws of the Soviet social-imperialists, who i.a. used
Cuban troops *against* other peoples in Africa, above all,
under a *false* signboard of "liberation struggle support".
Also those later developments when social-imperialism fell.
>
>As I'm sure you know, the USSR is gone but Cuba remains, in a
>quandary sometimes referred to as a "special period."  The 
>government and the masses have had no choice but to take measures
>similar to those Lenin took in the New Economic Policy: to reallow
>foreign capitalist investment.  The bottom line is tha Cuba needs
>cash -- money to keep up the gains made by the Revolution 
>(health care, education, food, housing, everything).
>
>I myself am not terribly optimistic about the future of Cuban
>socialism, though.  Socialism cannot survive in one single
>country indefinitely, surrounded in a capitalist world.  I
>think eventually either Cuba will revert to full capitalism, 
>unless other countries undergo a socialist revolution and unite
>with Cuba.

The system on Cuba cannot be called "socialism". Even after
the vanishing of Soviet social-imperialism the system on
Cuba is too much geared to and connected to that former
power still today.

>I do know that the vast majority of Cubans support their 
>revolution and that Fidel (whatever his flaws and leadership
>mistakes) remains incredibly popular there.   In Cuban
>elections, for instance (i.e. the People's Power elections),
>usually voter turnout is at least 90 percent.  That kind of
>puts bourgeois democracies to shame, I would say.
>
>Bruce Burleson

Castro *may* still be popular - I cannot pretend to know
much about that. I suspect you're painting it in to rosy
colours, though. One thing that would make the people
support Castro, despite the *very* bad sides of his system,
of course is precisely the threat from the USA.

In North Korea, there seems to be a similar phenomenon.
The government there isn't socialist either.

It's a question with people being *confronted with Scylla
and Charybdis*, being subjected to a *pincer movement*, so
to speak, by two rivalling and at the same time co-operating
forces.

A friend of mine several years ago, at some time in the
early 80s, told me of an experiance he had when teaching
Swedish to a group of immigrants who were from several
diferent countries:

There used to be intensive debates, he said, and diametri-
cally opposite views, among the Poles (etc), on the one
hand, and the Latin Americans on the other, about, as
he said, who was "the world's devil".

The Latin Americans said "the US", the Poles "the Soviet
Union". They absolutely couldn't agree.

I told my friend then that in my opinion *both sides*
were *right*. But they both needed to see that too.

I think such is the case with you too, Bruce!

Rolf M.



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