Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 08:58:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: State Capitalism and Cuba


Kevin Cabral:
------------
You're still dodging the question with your normal irritating
personal attacks. I'm interested in your answer. Do you see a
difference between nationalized and socialized (or socialist) forms of
production. Within nationalized forms of production could you draw a
distinct line between what is state capitalist, and what is a degenerate
worker's state. Are any of these categories sufficient to describe some of
the countries we have been talking about (ex. PRC, Vietnam, Cuba)? 

Adam Rose:
---------
Kevin is right.
 
This IS the nub of the question, and you have never put forward an answer.
I think this is because you don't have one that you are happy with . . . 
well, fair enough.

Louis:
-----
First of all, I have made no "personal attacks" except to the
obnoxious ISer from Canada who deserved it. Secondly, I tend to view state
firms in context. A state firm in Algeria or Venezuela for that matter
functions within a network of class relations domestically and
internationally. In Algeria, as I just explained, the context is
capitalism. In Cuba, the context is socialist.

By the way, Adam would serve his ideological cause a whole lot better by
not throwing "brain stumpers" at me, but by offering a counter-analysis
based on a detailed study of social relations. My methodology is not to
discuss questions like "what is socialism" in the abstract, but to
uncover concrete relations between classes, even to quantify them if need
be.

Adam and Jorn are comfortable raising issues in terms of "how would you
define..." or "what is the difference between...". This is alien to me.
This is the method of petty-bourgeois social scientists. Marxism is much
less interested in fixed categories than it is in revealing motion,
dynamics, and tendencies. Marxism is about *change*.

Adam and Jorn's problem is that they are much too smug to rely on anything
except their own party press which they have been conned into believing is
something like the tablets that Charlton Heston brought down to the
Israelites. Unfortunately, you will not find any Marxist analysis of Cuba
or the more contradictory societies like Algeria in their literature. The
reason for this is that their current has a dismissive attitude toward the
struggles in the Third World. Until the Danish and British workers form
worker's councils under the leadership of the Cliff acolytes, they don't
want to be bothered by all those side-shows in places like Cuba and
Nicaragua.







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