Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 18:57:30 -0500 (EST) From: "Liam R.Flynn" <trinity-AT-hot-shot.com> Subject: M-I: Cuban economics and L.Godena . It's a clear fact that with the fall of the Soviet Union the Cuban economy is faced with massive reconstructionThis reconstruction will determine the fate of Cuba and the very survival of Socialist Cuba itself.Cuba now finds itself in a position that parallels some what the conditions in Russia shortly after the revolution,and the debates that took place then are in many ways relevant to the situation Cuba faces today.Keep in mind these debates took place before the super industrialization of the Stalinist period. Is Cuba doomed to a socialism of poverty?Again there are parallels in history .The debates which raged among the Bolsheviks,most notably:Lenin,Trotsky,Bukharin,Krasin,andPreobrazhensky,on how to construct a socialist society in the face of hostile and conflicting forces. At the twelfth party congress in 1923 we see the questions of how the foundations of a socialist economy are to be laid.I.Deutscher noted the following debate between Trotsky and Krasin. "In the debate Krasin addressed himself directly to Trotsky and asked whether he had thought out to the end the implications of primitive socialist accumulation?Krasin approached it from his particular angle:as Commissar of Foreign Trade.He had tried to persuade the Central Committee of the need for more foreign trade-and the need to make more concessions to foreign capital.Everyone took this for granted-they must seek to attract foreign loans:and that foreign capital might help Russia to proceed with primitive accumulation and to avoid the horrors that had accompanied such accumulation in the west.The Bolsheviks,however,had found out by now that they had little chance of attracting foreign credits on acceptable terms." Again does not Cuba find itself in the same situation today?Replace "hostile west",with hostile United States. Trotsky was even willing to take up proposals put forward by Lenin at an earlier date(at Lenin's behest?that is unknown). "We ourselves have been extremely cautious,one might even say say too cautious with respect to concessions agreements.We were too poor and to weak.Our industry and our entire economy were too ruined and we were afraid that the introduction of foreign capital would undermine the still weak foundations of socialist industry...We are still very backward in a technical sense.We are interested in using every possible means to accelerate our technical progress...We are in need of credit,and we need concessions as well in order to speed up our economic growth and thereby increase the well-being of the masses." Again Cuba is now faced with the very same economic reality. Trotsky stated the facts sharply: "....to think that the correct political maneuvering...frees us from world economic dependencies,means falling into a dreadful national limitation.We must renew our basic capital,which is presently passing through a crisis.Whoever imagines that we will be able to build all of our equipment in the coming years,or even the greater part of it,is a dreamer.The industrialization of our country ...means...not a decrease,but on the contrary,a growth of our connections with the outside world,which means...our growing dependance...on the world market,on capitalism,on its technical equipment and its economy." Cuba today is faced with replacing a decaying and decrepit technical infrastructure provided by the Soviets.Do they have any other choice but to seek economic integration with Western capitalists? I do not understand L.Godena's criticism of the current Cuban leadership.Is this criticism based only on some doctrinaire dogmatic interpretation of Marxism?Divorced from economic reality. In the end it may come down to only-as someone said"Cubans right of economic self determination". Liam R.Flynn liam-AT-stones.com ---------------------------------------------------------- Free thought,necessarily involving freedom of speech and press,I may tersely define thus:no opinion a law-no opinion a crime. Alexander Berkman --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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