Proof of Popular Cuban Support

[Klashnekov]

A Counter-Protest against the US Funded Mercenries, out-numbered by thousands.

youtube.com/watch?v=FdiAx-HtLM0

Cuba is not a Dictatorship. Cuba is not a Police State. It is an on-going Socialist Revolution by and for the people.

CubaTruth.info

Don't let the Miami Mafia & Trotskyite Counter-Revolutionaries spread anymore lies about the Cuban Socialist Revolution.
Every Marxist-Leninist must support the Cuban Democracy and oppose the enemy from within that is severly delaying Revolution, Trotskyism.

[Kléber]

How would you define socialism?

[Nolan]

How would you define socialism?

Haha nice. Rewrote your post.

[Nolan]

Klashnekov, this is nice, but I'm somewhat skeptical. While the revolution still does have large popular support, I think this puts quite a bit of a spin on it. But Kleber is right, the bureaucracy has almost taken complete control. Cuba used to have more democracy, but corruption has set in. Also don't be so sectarian.

[Black Sheep]

OP,how does this logical process function exactly..?

1)Cuba is not a Dictatorship.
2) Cuba is not a Police State.

(1),(2)=> It is an on-going Socialist Revolution by and for the people.

Modus Ponens my ass.

[LeninistKing]

Very true !! Cuba is a welfare-state capitalist democracy on transition toward 100% socialism. (In other words: Cuba is waiting for the whole world to be socialist so that Cuba can turn to socialism. Becuase of the fact that socialism doesnt work in 1, 2 or 3 countries while all other countries are free-markets. So for Cuba and Venezuela to be full-socialist systems, most countries of the world would have to be 100% socialism)

.



A Counter-Protest against the US Funded Mercenries, out-numbered by thousands.

youtube.com/watch?v=FdiAx-HtLM0

Cuba is not a Dictatorship. Cuba is not a Police State. It is an on-going Socialist Revolution by and for the people.

CubaTruth.info

Don't let the Miami Mafia & Trotskyite Counter-Revolutionaries spread anymore lies about the Cuban Socialist Revolution.
Every Marxist-Leninist must support the Cuban Democracy and oppose the enemy from within that is severly delaying Revolution, Trotskyism.

[Nolan]

Very true !! Cuba is a welfare-state capitalist democracy on transition toward 100% socialism. (In other words: Cuba is waiting for the whole world to be socialist so that Cuba can turn to socialism. Becuase of the fact that socialism doesnt work in 1, 2 or 3 countries while all other countries are free-markets. So for Cuba and Venezuela to be full-socialist systems, most countries of the world would have to be 100% socialism)

.

I see your point, but we're building socialism where we can.

[Ovi]

OP,how does this logical process function exactly..?

What logic? Saying Cuba is a socialist country is beyond logic.

[Kléber]

Cuba is a welfare-state capitalist democracy(emphasis mine)
That's a contradiction. Capitalism is a fundamentally undemocratic mode of production. Even in the most immaculate bourgeois parliaments the capitalist class exercises a fundamental dictatorship over society through its monopoly as as class over the means of production. To muddle the difference between these terms is to revise Marxism. The Cuban state, moreover, in addition to the high salaries and privileges of officials, is quite undemocratic; the Trotskyists and anarchists, among others, were sent to jail and never seen again.


on transition toward 100% socialism.The only thing Cuba is transitioning to now is market capitalism. Revisionism, coupled with the suppression of communists who criticized it, might have enabled that.

[Red Commissar]

I wouldn't see that site as reliable. The only thing that tells me the Cubans are "supportive" is that regime has managed to stand despite the numerous attempts by the US to force it out, and later squeeze it out economically.

Then again, it's hard to determine whether that is because it has control over its people, or that they are truly content.

[manic expression]

The Cuban state, moreover, in addition to the high salaries and privileges of officials, is quite undemocratic; the Trotskyists and anarchists, among others, were sent to jail and never seen again.
Unequal salaries and benefits stemming from occupational necessity do not determine social relations. In fact, they are perfectly compatible with working-class control of society. How, exactly, would such things contradict the principles and relations of socialism?

On political freedom, I haven't seen much on the Trotskyists and anarchists of Cuba, so perhaps you could give us something specific instead of making vague accusations. One important question to answer is whether or not those groups opposed the Revolution. If this was the case, then their suppression was not an issue of democracy but of workers defending their gains from reactionaries.

Lastly, Cuba is very democratic, it is the very image of working-class democracy. It is based on local elections, the nomination of workers for office through local meetings (as opposed to through political parties), office-holders who receive no wage and keep the jobs they had when they were elected and more.

http://www.cubasolidarity.com/aboutcuba/topics/government/0504elecsys.htm
http://www.cubasolidarity.org.tt/?q=node/26
http://www.quaylargo.com/Productions/McCelvey.html


The only thing Cuba is transitioning to now is market capitalism. Revisionism, coupled with the suppression of communists who criticized it, might have enabled that.Yeah, we've all heard it before, both from capitalists and from ultra-lefts. Cuba is transitioning, the USSR has fallen! Cuba is transitioning, China and Russia are trading with the island! Cuba is transitioning, Fidel is retiring from public life! Lots of predictions, not a lot of fulfillment.


The only thing that tells me the Cubans are "supportive" is that regime has managed to stand despite the numerous attempts by the US to force it out, and later squeeze it out economically.
Just about everything points to the Cuban Revolution having the loyalty and support of the Cuban workers and peasants. Even the CIA, of all groups, admits that the vast majority of Cubans support the Revolution:

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/loyal.htm

[Kléber]

Unequal salaries and benefits stemming from occupational necessity do not determine social relations. In fact, they are perfectly compatible with working-class control of society.
Obviously, more strenuous, stressful, and/or dangerous work should be more generously remunerated. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that.

It is simply not socialist, however, for workers to receive 1/10 or 1/20 the pay of bureaucrats and managers. Whether or not it has to be done in a particular situation to ensure production doesn't change the fact that it is a retreat from our principles. If you would prefer to make the problem go away by renaming it, you are revising Lenin's analysis:

"State capitalism is not money but social relations. If we pay 2,000 in accordance with the railway decree, that is state capitalism."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/apr/29.htm


Lots of predictions, not a lot of fulfillment.
Sources sympathetic to the Cuban government prove absolutely nothing. They would have us believe, as Gorbachev would, that they are "perfecting socialism" while transitioning to market capitalism. The revisionist bureaucrats have a vested interest in falsely representing the exploitative relations over which they preside as "socialist."

Cuban "reforms" promote private property and social inequality (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/cuba-a17.shtml)

[Lolshevik]

The sectarian "mafia and trotskyite counter revolutionary" comment is not only idiotic, it's also misleading. Though the 'third camp' Trotskyists do regard Cuba as "state capitalist" (whatever that means), the majority of Trotskyists do recognize Cuba as some form of workers' state. And some, including myself, would characterize it as a healthy and democratic (given the circumstances they're in) workers' state.

[manic expression]

Obviously, more strenuous, stressful, and/or dangerous work should be more generously remunerated. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that.

It is simply not socialist, however, for workers to receive 1/10 or 1/20 the pay of bureaucrats and managers.
That doesn't follow whatsoever. Even if we ignore the fact that you haven't provided anything specific and have again stuck to vague accusations with no basis, you have yet to prove a correlation between such pay discrepancies and social relations.

For instance, doctors had greater access to beepers, cell phones and laptops before the general public did. However, that was largely because doctors need beepers and cell phones to respond to emergencies (and to maintain Cuba's incredible health standards) and laptops to organize their work. It's not a function of "doctors are better than janitors so they get x and y benefits", it's a function of occupational necessity. Again, this is a specific example, something we can deal with, unlike nebulous claims.


Whether or not it has to be done in a particular situation to ensure production doesn't change the fact that it is a retreat from our principles. If you would prefer to make the problem go away by renaming it, you are revising Lenin's analysis:

"State capitalism is not money but social relations. If we pay 2,000 in accordance with the railway decree, that is state capitalism."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/apr/29.htmI still don't understand why so many people insist that Lenin's words on state capitalism correspond to the contemporary use of the term. Lenin, when discussing "state capitalism", was referring to NEP and the introduction of a limited market in order to build some semblance of a working economy after the Russian Civil War. He wasn't, however, referring to "state capitalism" in the way you are using it, so the quote is wholly irrelevant here.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/14b.htm

And yet none of this explains why you are judging social relations from the fact that Cuban doctors have beepers.


Sources sympathetic to the Cuban government prove absolutely nothing. They would have us believe, as Gorbachev would, that they are "perfecting socialism" while transitioning to market capitalism. The revisionist bureaucrats have a vested interest in falsely representing the exploitative relations over which they preside as "socialist."

Cuban "reforms" promote private property and social inequality (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/cuba-a17.shtml)Where did my sources say anything about a "transition" to "market capitalism"? Obviously you didn't read them with enough care and attention. Further, my sources dealt with political processes first and foremost, so I have no idea where you got the whole "perfecting socialism" thing from. I suggest you go over the links again, because there's a lot of information that you clearly didn't get.

But aside from that, of course they prove something, because they're verified by every impartial study of the Cuban electoral system. Not only that, but the sociology professor I cited is far from a communist, he simply witnessed the Cuban political system firsthand and dispelled many myths that imperialists have spread about it. More importantly, pro-Cuban sources are still reliable if their claims are verifiable and factual, which they are. More substantiated proof of Cuban working-class democracy:

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/977/

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-1997-98-Elections-Arnold-August/dp/0968508405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265783406&sr=8-1

Are you going to deal with these facts or just ignore them?

The fact is that I'm citing substantiated studies while you're citing a source that is not only proudly sectarian but without any relevant evidence for its claims (so since cell phones cost money...socialism cannot exist? Is that even supposed to be an argument?). Your article is nothing but the same empty predictions we can hear from both imperialists and ultra-lefts, predictions which are even now being proven wrong by the Cuban workers. Cuba is transitioning, cell phones are being introduced! Too bad your newest prediction will be just as disappointing for you as your last dozen.

[Cooler Reds Will Prevail]

A Counter-Protest against the US Funded Mercenries, out-numbered by thousands.

youtube.com/watch?v=FdiAx-HtLM0

Cuba is not a Dictatorship. Cuba is not a Police State. It is an on-going Socialist Revolution by and for the people.

CubaTruth.info

Don't let the Miami Mafia & Trotskyite Counter-Revolutionaries spread anymore lies about the Cuban Socialist Revolution.
Every Marxist-Leninist must support the Cuban Democracy and oppose the enemy from within that is severly delaying Revolution, Trotskyism.

As much as I'm glad you posted the video, can you please give your anti-Trotskyist crusade a rest? I'm hardly a Trot but I have respect for my comrades that are and they deserve to be struggled with in a principled fashion, not to be subject to your absurd Stalinophile trolling.

[Kléber]

Where did my sources say anything about a "transition" to "market capitalism"?Sorry, I must have forgot that revisionists are really principled folks, and always publicly admit that they're restoring market capitalism. Gorbachev and Deng were soo honest.


I have no idea where you got the whole "perfecting socialism" thing fromA Raúl Castro quote.


Lenin, when discussing "state capitalism", was referring to NEP and the introduction of a limited market in order to build some semblance of a working economy after the Russian Civil War. He wasn't, however, referring to "state capitalism" in the way you are using it, so the quote is wholly irrelevant here.Check the date. That speech is from 1918, long before NEP. His simple logic is relevant here or anywhere: enough with the wrangling, if someone's making 2,000 while workers make 100, that is state capitalism.


The fact is that I'm citing substantiated studies while you're citing a source that is not only proudly sectarianOne of your sources was a memo from the Cuban Foreign Ministry! :p


the sociology professor I cited is far from a communist, he simply witnessed the Cuban political system firsthand and dispelled many myths that imperialists have spread about itHe makes broad claims beyond the scope of his brief anecdotal experience which were obviously based on statistics given him by the Cuban government and not the result of exhaustive independent research. And I wouldn't consider as credible any research that takes official pronouncements at face value and ignores the vested interest of the party-state in covering up the inequalities of Cuban society.


And yet none of this explains why you are judging social relations from the fact that Cuban doctors have beepers. ... but without any relevant evidence for its claims (so since cell phones cost money...socialism cannot exist? Is that even supposed to be an argument?)You must have done a great job of reading that article if your summary of it is to fabricate some hotch-potch about anti-beeperism.


Even if we ignore the fact that you haven't provided anything specific and have again stuck to vague accusations with no basis, you have yet to prove a correlation between such pay discrepancies and social relations.The article I posted has some clear evidence that you have done nothing to refute. And very little of it has to do with beepers. :lol:

I must, therefore, post the sections from the article here, which most clearly indicate the development of private property and social inequality in Cuba under the auspices of phony socialism:


The first set [of reforms] relates to internal consumption. Previously existing bans on the sale of computers, cell phones, DVD players and other home appliances have been lifted. The apartheid-style law that barred Cubans from hotels—and the country’s best beaches—reserved for foreign tourists has also been amended, guaranteeing the right of Cubans “regardless of skin color, gender, religious beliefs or national origin” to stay in “any hotel.”
Of course, the one rather considerable catch is that the newly available consumer items and the hotels whose doors have now been opened to Cubans are available only to those with the money to afford them. In a country where the average monthly wage stands around $18—with living standards subsidized by free health care and education as well as minimum food rations—most of what has been unbanned still remains out of reach for the vast majority of the island’s 11 million people.
Activation of a cell phone in Cuba—until now legally available only to foreigners, employees of foreign companies and authorized state officials—costs $120, or more than six months’ average salary. A single night in a tourist hotel would claim another six months’ wages.
Moreover, the vast majority who work for the Cuban state are paid in Cuban pesos, while the newly available consumer items are available only to those with the country’s convertible peso, known as the CUC, which is worth 25 times as much as the national peso. The dual-currency system reflects an increasingly stratified society, in which those employed in the tourist industry or foreign firms, top government officials, families receiving foreign remittances and those making money on the black market are being increasingly socially differentiated from the masses of working people.
More significant are the government decrees related to property and production.
In agriculture, the government has announced a plan to turn over massive amounts of state land to private peasant farmers and peasant cooperatives for cultivation. At present, the country’s 250,000 private farms and 1,100 private cooperatives control less than one third of the land, while accounting for close to 60 percent of nationally produced food. At the same time, Cuba is reportedly importing more than 80 percent of its food, while more than half of the arable state lands lie fallow.
The announced changes also increase prices paid by the government for agricultural goods, while significantly raising the quotas on the amount of these goods private producers will be allowed to sell directly at unregulated market prices. In some cases, this could rise to 70 percent of their production. The government is also opening up a market in agricultural tools and supplies, allowing producers to buy them directly themselves.
The official daily Granma, moreover, reported that the already announced agricultural reforms may serve as a “springboard” for “other changes.”
Among these changes is apparently a plan to open up the land to exploitation by foreign capital. “We are currently studying some business proposals in agriculture,” Minister of Foreign Investment Marta Lomas told a press conference last week. She added that in terms of foreign investment, “nothing is off the table.” She indicated that either joint ventures or foreign capitalist investment was being considered in “rice production” as well as “other sectors like livestock.”
According to some reports, foreign capital might be brought in to run sections of agriculture used to supply the tourist industry with fruit and fresh produce, which is now largely imported.
Asked whether such policies, combined with the lifting of the bans on consumer items, pointed towards Cuba imitating China’s path towards capitalist production, Lomas replied, “Cuba is Cuba, and models are studied, but the conditions of each country are different, and the conditions of Cuba are different.”
According to a recent official report, foreign investments in Cuba reached a record of $981 million in 2006, a 22 percent increase over the previous year. Foreign investment in Cuba was first authorized in the 1990s, following the liquidation of the Soviet Union, which had previously granted critical subsidies to the Cuban economy. Much of it has flowed into the tourist industry, which has surpassed sugar as the country’s leading source of revenue.
Also last week, the government announced that a new labor law is being enacted that will remove any ceiling on workers’ earnings, while tying them more directly to productivity.
“For the first time it is clearly and precisely stated that a salary does not have a limit, that the roof of a salary depends on productivity,” said Airel Terrero, the leading economics commentator in the state-run media...“One reason for low productivity is there is little wage incentive and this breaks productivity and stops bigger salaries,” he said.
...
The same defense of the new proposal was made more bluntly by the leader of the Cuban state-run trade union federation, the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC), Raymundo Navarro, who blamed the workers for the country’s economic crisis.
“In Cuba they say that people live without working,” said Navarro. “The moment has to arrive in which people have to feel the necessity of working.” He said that the new changes were designed to “bring about an organization of labor and salaries that stimulates results.”
There is increasing speculation that as part of imposing this “necessity,” the Cuban government may be preparing to do away with the system of food rationing that has assured minimal supplies to the population. This was hinted at in the speech given by Raul Castro upon assuming the presidency last February, in which he said that the system of ration books and subsidies “in the current conditions of our economy become irrational and unsustainable.” He also declared that the government’s “strategic objective” was to introduce a system in which “wages recover their role and the living standard of each individual is in relation to...the importance and quantity of labor that he gives to society.”
Finally, last Friday, the government announced a reform in housing policy, a measure that streamlines the legal process for state employees renting state-owned housing to gain legal title to the properties, which can then be inherited by their heirs as well as rented. Housing officials indicated that this was only the first step in a process of further changes to come, raising the possibility that the Cuban government will create conditions for a private real estate market.
Taken together, these measures represent a major turn towards intensifying social inequality and strengthening the grip of private ownership and foreign capital within Cuba. It is not a departure from socialism, which never existed in Cuba. The Castro regime was established in 1959 as the result not of a working class revolution, but rather the coming to power of a radical nationalist guerrilla movement that forged an alliance with the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy in the face of the implacable opposition of Washington to even minimal reforms. ...



Cuban “reforms” promote private property and social inequality (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/cuba-a17.shtml)

[manic expression]

He makes broad claims beyond the scope of his brief anecdotal experience which were obviously based on statistics given him by the Cuban government and not the result of exhaustive independent research. And I wouldn't consider as credible any research that takes official pronouncements at face value and ignores the vested interest of the party-state in covering up the inequalities of Cuban society.
There are quite a few accusations there, but no support for them whatsoever. First, his "anecdotal experience" was first-hand observations of the Cuban political system in action over multiple visits to the country, which is undoubtedly valid research. Second, you're simply making stuff up if you claim he based his conclusions on "statistics given him by the Cuban government". Do you have any evidence for this? Moreover, what makes you so sure that the Cuban government is lying in this instance? Because you said so? Third, those official pronouncements were compared with first-hand observations as well as further research on the subject. Fourth, I'd like to see you demonstrate how, exactly, this professor would have an interest in promoting "the vested interest of the party-state".

So really, your objections to my sources are paper-thin. What's most striking is your unwillingness to believe any source that doesn't explicitly agree with you. Not surprising, though.

I must, therefore, post the sections from the article here, which most clearly indicate the development of private property and social inequality in Cuba under the auspices of phony socialism:So it is your position that the lack of complete material equality is incompatible with socialism? Likewise, is it your position that wage inequity, in and of itself, is a rubric from which to judge social relations? Your article proudly asserts that all these three things are true. I will deal with these assumptions in turn.

First, complete material equality is not the goal of socialism, neither in theory nor in practice. The same goes for wages. It is perfectly acceptable for there to be several levels of wages, for occupational benefits to be granted and for society to not be wholly equal in entirety. Marx makes this clear here in a few areas, even saying that certain small-scale enterprise is not a target of working class revolution in the Manifesto. Engels echoes this here, in his correspondence to Bebel:

"The elimination of all social and political inequality,” rather than “the abolition of all class distinctions,” is similarly a most dubious expression. As between one country, one province and even one place and another, living conditions will always evince a certain inequality which may be reduced to a minimum but never wholly eliminated. The living conditions of Alpine dwellers will always be different from those of the plainsmen. The concept of a socialist society as a realm of equality is a one-sided French concept deriving from the old “liberty, equality, fraternity,” a concept which was justified in that, in its own time and place, it signified a phase of development, but which, like all the one-sided ideas of earlier socialist schools, ought now to be superseded, since they produce nothing but mental confusion, and more accurate ways of presenting the matter have been discovered.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_03_18.htm

So according to the founders of communism, your position on this issue is "a one-sided French concept". Not exactly a ringing endorsement of your opinion. Engels' argument was later furthered by the Bolsheviks, specifically by Leon Trotsky in this interview with Jack Reed:

Under capitalism, the worker must go where there is a job, whether he likes it or not; but he works for a capitalist, and not for the working-class, as he does here. We make it especially attractive and pleasant for workers who are ordered to distant places, to distasteful work, etc. - special rations, short hours, their families should be particularly well cared for, like the families of our Red Army soldiers. Add to this unlimited schools for technical and every kind of training, open to all, and you can see the opportunities.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1921/01/russianow.htm

Trotsky is quite explicit: special rations, better living conditions for families...like the families of soldiers. Clearly, there is no puritan insistence on wage equality here, even when it comes to non-workers such as military personnel. Thus, your article has committed a fundamental mistake in neglecting the experiences of the Russian Revolution and of its leaders. The fact is that working-class state power and socialism are compatible with differentiation of wages and living conditions. There is simply nothing to throw behind your argument other than some vaguely-defined idealism that could easily be mistaken for the words of the 19th Century utopian socialists. But that is not Marxism.

Lastly, the article's conclusions on the housing reform are as unfounded as they are absurd. From an AP report on the subject:

Thousands of Cubans could take advantage of this move, including military families, sugar workers, construction workers, teachers and doctors.

Essentially the opposite of what the article tried to portray the reform as (without evidence, of course). It continues:

By law, Cubans still cannot sell their homes to anyone but the government, though they can swap housing with government approval — a process that can take years to complete.

Emphasis mine. So how is there to be a housing market when it is illegal to sell to private individuals or entities? How, exactly, do you explain your obviously fabricated conclusions? How is your article anything but baseless conjecture from people who have an axe to grind against the Cuban Revolution? Some things you should think about.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24074142/

[Nwoye]

Did you read the article?

Moreover, the vast majority who work for the Cuban state are paid in Cuban pesos, while the newly available consumer items are available only to those with the country’s convertible peso, known as the CUC, which is worth 25 times as much as the national peso. The dual-currency system reflects an increasingly stratified society, in which those employed in the tourist industry or foreign firms, top government officials, families receiving foreign remittances and those making money on the black market are being increasingly socially differentiated from the masses of working people.and


In agriculture, the government has announced a plan to turn over massive amounts of state land to private peasant farmers and peasant cooperatives for cultivation. At present, the country’s 250,000 private farms and 1,100 private cooperatives control less than one third of the land, while accounting for close to 60 percent of nationally produced food. At the same time, Cuba is reportedly importing more than 80 percent of its food, while more than half of the arable state lands lie fallow.

The announced changes also increase prices paid by the government for agricultural goods, while significantly raising the quotas on the amount of these goods private producers will be allowed to sell directly at unregulated market prices. In some cases, this could rise to 70 percent of their production. The government is also opening up a market in agricultural tools and supplies, allowing producers to buy them directly themselves.also


According to a recent official report, foreign investments in Cuba reached a record of $981 million in 2006, a 22 percent increase over the previous year. Foreign investment in Cuba was first authorized in the 1990s, following the liquidation of the Soviet Union, which had previously granted critical subsidies to the Cuban economy. Much of it has flowed into the tourist industry, which has surpassed sugar as the country’s leading source of revenue.I agree with you that a simple wage inequality (in justified circumstances of course) is not in any way incompatible with socialism, but that's not his whole argument, and you could at least read the rest of the article.

[manic expression]

Did you read the article?
The CUC is just a way to facilitate tourism in a more effective manner. Paying state employees with the CUC is likely a good way of putting it into general circulation. Plus, the only reason the CUC is the way it is now is because the US Dollar was pulled out of circulation in 2004 IIRC. The Cuban workers have been trying to figure out the best way to handle this situation, which is not a straightforward one, and they've done a remarkable job if we are to believe the recent reports on ever-improving living conditions for the Cuban workers. That is their accomplishment, after all.

"Top government officials" and "those making money on the black market" have always been differentiated from the majority of people by their very nature. "Top government officials" are a group that occupy a relatively small number of positions of considerable importance, while "those making money on the black market" is based on illegal connections and is thus different from most people's livelihoods. Until we figure out a way to make every citizen a diplomat or minister of some sort, then I'm not sure how those distinctions can possibly be otherwise, and yet the article uses this as some sort of proof that Cuba isn't socialist.

And on foreign remittances, what is the government supposed to do? Stamp "return to sender" on the envelopes? I don't see what's wrong with letting families receive money from abroad, or what they're supposed to do about it.


andI'd like a source for the "unregulated market prices" claim, because the Cuban government has long made food available to all through its work with the peasants of Cuba. This is the government that steered Cuba through the Special Period safely, this is the government that is increasing food production. That seems like just another claim based on conjecture, much like the idea that there is now a "real estate market" in Cuba, when in fact the opposite is the case.

Further, I fail to see what's so wrong with peasants forming cooperatives. So long as they control the fruits of their labor, I think it's a way to facilitate working-class control.


alsoForeign investment is perfectly compatible with socialism and working-class state power. As long as the workers dictate the terms of the agreement, and as long as the workers stay in control of the process, then nothing changes. Working with investment from abroad is what the Cuban workers want, so why should we question that?


I agree with you that a simple wage inequality (in justified circumstances of course) is not in any way incompatible with socialism, but that's not his whole argument, and you could at least read the rest of the article.Understood, but I wanted to address the parts he highlighted, perhaps we'll move on to other parts of the article later.

[Kléber]

his "anecdotal experience" was ... undoubtedly valid research

So it is a system which pushes the principle of freedom of the press to a more advanced level than what occurs in capitalism, ensuring that all exercise this right equally and avoiding a situation where the wealthy exercise freedom of the press but the workers and farmers possess it only as an abstract right
The Cuban Trotskyists (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/index.html) had their press destroyed by Castro's thugs and their organization suppressed, which makes me wonder whether freedom of the press and democracy were indeed on "a more advanced level."


The mechanism for the removal of members of the Communist Party from positions of authority in the government is in place, should that desire be the popular sentiment. Considering that the only two tendencies which actually challenged the hegemony of the PSP/CP had their publications banned, members jailed and tortured, and organizations destroyed, I question whether "The mechanism ... is in place."


So it is your position that the lack of complete material equality is incompatible with socialism?

Obviously, more strenuous, stressful, and/or dangerous work should be more generously remunerated. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that.


So according to the founders of communism, your position on this issue is "a one-sided French concept"
According to Lenin, the industrial economy of the USSR was state capitalist. It never changed fundamentally from when he made that analysis, it was just renamed "socialism" by the revisionists.

Official Cuban wage differentials (at least until they abolished the maximum wage two years ago) were not much different to those in the USSR when Lenin made that declaration.



Lastly, the article's conclusions on the housing reform are as unfounded as they are absurd. From an AP report on the subject:

So this time you only read the very end instead of the very beginning. :lol:


So how is there to be a housing market when it is illegal to sell to private individuals or entities? How, exactly, do you explain your obviously fabricated conclusions? How is your article anything but baseless conjecture from people who have an axe to grind against the Cuban Revolution? Some things you should think about.
Allowing people to legally own houses, and rent/sublet them when that didn't used to be allowed, is definitely a step towards a housing market.


I fail to see what's so wrong with peasants forming cooperatives..
Once again, you really should have read the article before commenting because it was attacking land privatization, not cooperatives.


Foreign investment is perfectly compatible with socialism and working-class state power. As long as the workers dictate the terms of the agreement, and as long as the workers stay in control of the process, then nothing changes. Just like nothing changed when "socialist" China and Russia allowed massive amounts of foreign investment in the 1980's? :p


Working with investment from abroad is what the Cuban workers want, so why should we question that?Since you confuse the ideas of proletarian dictatorship and party dictatorship, why should we question anything that a self-proclaimed socialist leader does?


The CUC is just a way to facilitate tourism in a more effective manner. Paying state employees with the CUC is likely a good way of putting it into general circulation. Plus, the only reason the CUC is the way it is now is because the US Dollar was pulled out of circulation in 2004 IIRC.
I thought the Euro took over that role. The CUC is just an ugly form of class division that puts state employees in close social contact, even economic solidarity, with foreign bourgeois influence in the tourist economy. Don't you see how having a separate super-currency for the bureaucracy and foreign capitalists only could, oh, I don't know, link the interests of those two groups?

Look, here's a way to settle this debate: maybe you could provide wage info instead of nice stories by American sociologists. Shouldn't a socialist, worker-run economy have publicly accessible, transparent wage data? Since they abolished the maximum wage in Cuba two years ago it seems like this would be necessary than ever to preserve socialism.

[el_chavista]

The same defense of the new proposal was made more bluntly by the leader of the Cuban state-run trade union federation, the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC), Raymundo Navarro, who blamed the workers for the country’s economic crisis.
“In Cuba they say that people live without working,” said Navarro. “The moment has to arrive in which people have to feel the necessity of working.” He said that the new changes were designed to “bring about an organization of labor and salaries that stimulates results.”
This quote deserves an investigation of its sources. It looks like the old PC bureaucracy willing to increase the workers' productivity for the sake of the apparatchiki's own earnings.
One can see Bill Van's mark on the article, the most anti-Cuban-Revolution trotskyist ever .

[manic expression]

Considering that the Cuban Trotskyists (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/index.html) had their press destroyed by Castro's thugs and their organization suppressed makes me wonder whether freedom of the press and democracy were indeed on "a more advanced level."
Aha, so now we come to the real issue. Kleber isn't interested in whether or not Cuba is democratic or if the workers have free speech, Kleber is interested in how well-treated the Trotskyists are. Really shows you where his interests lie, doesn't it? Anyway, since you're still refusing to say anything specific about the situation, you're still at square one. I'll just re-post what I had to say before to the same nebulous, unsupported assertions:

On political freedom, I haven't seen much on the Trotskyists and anarchists of Cuba, so perhaps you could give us something specific instead of making vague accusations. One important question to answer is whether or not those groups opposed the Revolution. If this was the case, then their suppression was not an issue of democracy but of workers defending their gains from reactionaries.


So this time you only read the very end instead of the very beginning. :lol:
I responded precisely to what you highlighted, in detail. I don't blame you for running away from the very points you brought up, however, because it would be difficult for anyone to contradict the plain words of Marx, Engels and Trotsky, even if you completely disagree with all of them.

And on your position on wage equality, it is interesting that you are contradicting yourself. First you say that certain work should receive special compensation, but when Cuba does exactly that, you say they're capitalists! It seems that once again, your issue here is purely sectarian and has nothing to do with working-class power.


Allowing people to legally own houses, and rent/sublet them when that didn't used to be allowed, is definitely a step towards a housing market.
They can't sell the houses to any private individuals or entities, so no, they don't "own" them in any relevant sense, you're just trying to be sensationalist. There is no market unless one can buy and sell houses as commodities, and that is not the case. And letting people rent out their houses (the specifics of which you have failed to specify, once again) is hardly "a step towards a housing market", unless of course your entire argument rests on a pre-concocted, sectarian bias against the Cuban Revolution, which seems more and more evident with each passing word you post.

[Chambered Word]

Aha, so now we come to the real issue. Kleber isn't interested in whether or not Cuba is democratic or if the workers have free speech, Kleber is interested in how well-treated the Trotskyists are. Really shows you where his interests lie, doesn't it? Anyway, since you're still refusing to say anything specific about the situation, you're still at square one. I'll just re-post what I had to say before to the same nebulous, unsupported assertions:


Here come the ad hominems and such. I can already see where this discussion is heading. :rolleyes:

[Agnapostate]

The Cuban Revolution was and is deeply flawed. However, there remains substantial distortion of its nature in the U.S. mass media and common political discourse. We're never told, for example, that a substantial amount of refugees are not political refugees but economic refugees simply leaving the poor conditions that the embargo has left the country. Nor are we informed of the nature of many of the "victims," with many of them being somewhat like this (http://www.***************/forum/showpost.php?p=6443330&postcount=10).


I am in the upper middle class and my parents are both upper class and in the top tax bracket.
Most of our Cuban friends also have advanced degrees from American Universities and are upper middle class or higher up.

When Communism came to Cuba my family lost a lot. My great grandfather had owned a sugar mill and even had his own trains to carry sugar cane from the fields to the mill.
When he passed away the family sold the mill and invested the money in real estate and farmland. By the time Castro came to power our family had a lot of property, but the government seized it all.

That is what destroyed the White Cuban population and the reason most have left the country. Do you think a white man wants to live in the country that took everything his family had and gave it away to negroes and mullatos?
Do you know how I felt every time I walked by a house which my family had owned and saw a bunch of Negroes living in it? Negroes who never worked to own that house, who were only living there because those Cummunist pigs stole it from us and gave it to them. That is unforgivable.

This is not an attempt to deny the existence of legitimate political refugees or cheapen the suffering of anyone truly wronged, but many of the "poor fleeing victims" that left the island after the Revolution were upper-class white elitists that utilized their private ownership of major productive resources to exploit the black lower class.

[manic expression]

Considering that the only two tendencies which actually challenged the hegemony of the PSP/CP had their publications banned, members jailed and tortured, and organizations destroyed, I question whether "The mechanism ... is in place."
But you're neglecting the place of many anti-PCC dissidents in Cuba today who are allowed to speak their minds without repression. You're neglecting the fact that non-PCC members hold offices in the highest popular assemblies. You're neglecting how the leaders of the Cuban state are democratically elected by the workers in the processes I've illustrated time and again. You may "question" the facts all you like, and then again, you'd be betraying the fact that your entire mindset is a fixation on the treatment of Trotskyists instead of the conditions of the workers.


According to Lenin, the industrial economy of the USSR was state capitalist. It never changed fundamentally from when he made that analysis, it was just renamed "socialism" by the revisionists.But more importantly, ultra-lefts took the term "state capitalism" and ran with it to an area that had nothing to do with Lenin's words. Unless, of course, you are willing to concede that Cuba is under the full control of the working class, as that was a central factor of Lenin's definition of "state capitalism". Either take Lenin's use of the term or admit that you're manipulating his words for your own purposes.


Official Cuban wage differentials (at least until they abolished the maximum wage two years ago) were not much different to those in the USSR when Lenin made that declaration.Any proof of that? But still, you don't oppose wage differentials, either, so you're just wrapping yourself in your own logic.


Once again, you really should have read the article before commenting because it was attacking land privatization, not cooperatives.In agriculture, the government has announced a plan to turn over massive amounts of state land to private peasant farmers and peasant cooperatives for cultivation.

Individual farmers and peasant cooperatives from controlling their farms and the fruits of their labor. "Another step to capitalism!", the article booms.


Just like nothing changed when "socialist" China and Russia allowed massive amounts of foreign investment in the 1980's? :pNo, more like when the USSR had foreign investment throughout its history without changing its fundamental social relations. Let me know when you come up with a relevant point.


Since you confuse the ideas of proletarian dictatorship and party dictatorship, why should we question anything that a self-proclaimed socialist leader does?The party in power in Cuba is the vanguard party of the workers. The J26M led and won the Revolution, and the PCC (its successor) has defended and furthered it ever since. But when you see the ideas of proletarian dictatorship through the vanguard party (Lenin 101), you simply focus on the nonexistence of Trotskyists, which is evidently your only point of concern here. You bring up "free speech" but only care for the treatment of Trotskyists, just as you reject the revolutionary vanguard because they don't agree with you on everything. Mindless, desperate sectarianism: it's behavior befitting those who oppose the Cuban Revolution.


Look, here's a way to settle this debate: maybe you could provide wage info instead of nice stories by American sociologists. Shouldn't a socialist, worker-run economy have publicly accessible, transparent wage data? Since they abolished the maximum wage in Cuba two years ago it seems like this would be necessary than ever to preserve socialism.But again you are forgetting your own statements on this issue:

Obviously, more strenuous, stressful, and/or dangerous work should be more generously remunerated. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that.

Perhaps you'd like to explain this fresh contradiction you've just made.
(http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:%20leoHighlightsIFrameClose%28%29;)

(javascript: leoHighlightsIFrameClose();)

[Kléber]

Aha, so now we come to the real issue. Kleber isn't interested in whether or not Cuba is democratic or if the workers have free speech, Kleber is interested in how well-treated the Trotskyists are.First, you suggested that there was never any socialist opposition to the Castro regime. Now you suggest that it is irrelevant to the question of "democracy" whether that opposition is afforded democratic rights.


One important question to answer is whether or not those groups opposed the Revolution.Cuban anarchists and Trotskyists most certainly supported and took part in the fight against Batista. The Cuban Stalinists were actually pro-Batista (note that Fidel didn't come out as a "socialist" until after he had taken power as a capitalist).


I don't blame you for running away from the very points you brought upI'm the one running away from points? :rolleyes:


And on your position on wage equality, it is interesting that you are contradicting yourself. Actually my position is clear: if managers and officials get paid 10+ times as much money as workers, get rewarded with bonuses for exploiting their workers more, have prioritized access to better housing, food and transport, even get paid in a special tourist/foreigner currency worth 25 times more than the regular currency... that's not socialist. And Lenin wouldn't think so either.


letting people rent out their houses ... is hardly "a step towards a housing market"Restoration didn't happen all at once in China and Russia, it happened in steps.


But you're neglecting the place of many anti-PCC dissidents in Cuba today who are allowed to speak their minds without repression.Pffft, we have pathetic liberal intellectuals in the US too. Doesn't mean we have socialism or real democracy here. The Cuban "opposition" is a spineless joke and you know it. The Cuban military recently staged a mysterious purge (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/cuba-m13.shtml) where a bunch of ministers were forced to confess and apologize for unexplained "errors." It would be interesting to hear you try and explain that purge as an open, accountable, democratic process.


You're neglecting the fact that non-PCC members hold offices in the highest popular assemblies.There were many non-CPSU members in the Soviet government in 1937. Having non-communists in your government does not make your country socialist or democratic.


But more importantly, ultra-lefts took the term "state capitalism" and ran with it to an area that had nothing to do with Lenin's words.More like you took my justified criticisms of privilege and exploitation and ran with them into an alternate dimension where I am an "ultra-left."


Either take Lenin's use of the term or admit that you're manipulating his words for your own purposes.You are the one accidentally hitting yourself in the head as you hopelessly try to flail that Lenin quote back at me.


Any proof of that? But still, you don't oppose wage differentials, either, so you're just wrapping yourself in your own logic.I asked you for proof in the form of publicly accessible, transparent wage data. Any socialist, worker-run, democratic economy should have that. Where is it?

The fact that a "socialist" government is too embarrassed to publish such data is, on the other hand, rather telling evidence for the argument that such a state is not socialist at all.


more like when the USSR had foreign investment throughout its history without changing its fundamental social relationsYou seem to be in a state of denial about the last part of that history, where the USSR ceased to exist.

I would also be interested to see wage data about the USSR that proves it became socialist in the 1930's.


The party in power in Cuba is the vanguard party of the workers.Once again you start freaking out and shouting your slogans rather than consider that there may be a difference between dictatorship of the proletariat and dictatorship of the party.


But again you are forgetting your own statements on this issue:
Obviously, more strenuous, stressful, and/or dangerous work should be more generously remunerated. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that.
Perhaps you'd like to explain this fresh contradiction you've just made.lol, since I call for the government to publish data about the huge salaries, bonuses and privileges of officials and managers, therefore I'm an ultra-leftist who thinks coal miners should receive the same wage as kids who work at Starbucks. Please :p

Cuba abolished the maximum wage two years ago so you - as a defender of the claim that "socialism" exists in Cuba - have the burden of producing evidence. Prior to that the official minimum wage was 100 and the maximum was 800, although bonuses and corruption put the top incomes much higher. Even assuming there was no corruption or graft in either case, 1:8 isn't very far from 1:10 which Lenin considered a capitalist differential.

Now since there is no maximum wage, it is even harder to guess what the highest salaries are. Am I really "ultra-left" for being concerned that they abolished the maximum wage? For wanting to know what the top salaries are?


You bring up "free speech" but only care for the treatment of Trotskyists,News flash, "free speech" is just an empty phrase if it only applies to people who slavishly defend every action of the regime.


Mindless, desperate sectarianism: it's behavior befitting those who oppose the Cuban Revolution.Mindless, repetitive trolling, befitting since you don't have any wage data about those "socialist" economies.

[Kléber]

This quote deserves an investigation of its sources. It looks like the old PC bureaucracy willing to increase the workers' productivity for the sake of the apparatchiki's own earnings.
It surprised me too, but it appears to be legit.

"En Cuba se dice que la gente vive sin trabajar: tiene que llegar el momento en que la gente tenga que sentir la necesidad de trabajar."
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y08/abril08/14nter4.html



many of the "poor fleeing victims" that left the island after the Revolution were upper-class white elitists that utilized their private ownership of major productive resources to exploit the black lower class.
The Cuban-American community in Florida was actually founded more than 100 years ago largely by nationalist, socialist, and anarchist refugees fleeing Spanish political persecution, many of whom were Afro-Cuban. After Castro's government decided to ally with the USSR in 1959, much of the pro-US comprador bourgeoisie did indeed leave the island. But following the initial waves of migration, the Cuban-American community has become much more diverse. Since the 1980's the vast majority of people migrating from Cuba to the US have been working-class and many of them are Afro-Cuban. The established, white bourgeois exile community you describe is a tiny minority among Cuban-Americans now, most of whom are proletarians facing discrimination on the basis of their perceived ethnicity and primary language, and looked down on as "marielitos" by counter-revolutionary older-generation Cuban-Americans. Also, due to the fact that homosexuality was illegal in Cuba until recently, and LGBT people are still subject to persecution, many of them have left the island for very understandable reasons. During the 1970's, right-wing Cuban exile terrorist groups beat up and even in a couple cases assassinated Cuban-Americans who advocated an end to the embargo and restrictions against Cuba by the US government.

The Cuban-Americans are mostly workers. They are manipulated and misrepresented by petty-bourgeois right-wing "community leaders," but every culture has those kinds of reactionaries.

[manic expression]

First, you suggested that there was never any socialist opposition to the Castro regime. Now you suggest that it is irrelevant to the question of "democracy" whether that opposition is afforded democratic rights.
Obviously, you need to read my posts:

On political freedom, I haven't seen much on the Trotskyists and anarchists of Cuba, so perhaps you could give us something specific instead of making vague accusations. One important question to answer is whether or not those groups opposed the Revolution. If this was the case, then their suppression was not an issue of democracy but of workers defending their gains from reactionaries.

I've put this issue forth multiple times, and yet you keep ignoring it. Why are you either unwilling or unable to address this?

More importantly, my argument is that your priority here is not about democracy in Cuba, but about the treatment of Trotskyists. You have done nothing but neglect the substantiated evidence I've posted of democratic processes in Cuba, and to all that your only response is this vague, nebulous, unsupported and sectarian complaint. If that is to be the whole of your argument, then that is your problem, not mine.


Cuban anarchists and Trotskyists most certainly supported and took part in the fight against Batista. The Cuban Stalinists were actually pro-Batista (note that Fidel didn't come out as a "socialist" until after he had taken power as a capitalist).
Fidel didn't come out as a communist because it would have been the death knell of the Revolution. The imperialists were watching, wondering if there was any communist influence in the J26M, and if they found enough reason to believe that, they would have crushed the anti-Batista movement. Fidel's decision to remain officially vague in terms of ideology is an example of wise judgment and strategic thinking.

I'd like to see something specific about the Trotskyists and anarchists. "'Cause I said so" means nothing, and thus your position is based on nothing.


I'm the one running away from points? :rolleyes:
Indeed. By refusing to deal with my sources, by refusing to contend with the contradictions of your own statements, by refusing to provide anything but ultra-sectarian and counterfactual hit-pieces, you are running away from points. Try not to.

If you don't oppose wage inequality and hold that it is compatible with working-class state power (as you have clearly stated), then why are you bringing up wage inequality is proof of Cuba's supposed lack of socialism? Is it the degree of wage inequality? Is that it? If so, then you are dealing with semantics and trying to extrapolate it into an analysis of Cuba's social relations. I put it to you that your rubric for judging Cuba has nothing to do with social relations, as evidenced by this little piece of argumentation:

Obviously, more strenuous, stressful, and/or dangerous work should be more generously remunerated. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that.

But apparently, you disagree with that. Funny.


Actually my position is clear: if managers and officials get paid 10+ times as much money as workers, get rewarded with bonuses for exploiting their workers more, have prioritized access to better housing, food and transport, even get paid in a special tourist/foreigner currency worth 25 times more than the regular currency... that's not socialist. And Lenin wouldn't think so either.
:lol: Once again, lots of accusations with no support. How are officials and managers "exploiting their workers"? How, exactly, do you do that with no private ownership of industry, no employment, no generalized commodity production and the like? Looks like you're ignoring social relations because they don't fit into your imagination's idea of what Cuba is. This is, after all, the same way you've ignored the mountain of evidence of working-class democracy in Cuba, so it's not surprising.

I've addressed the CUC quite thoroughly, you're just ignoring my points because you're unwilling or unable to contend with the facts.

And in the end, your arguments fly in the face of Trotsky's plainest statements:

Under capitalism, the worker must go where there is a job, whether he likes it or not; but he works for a capitalist, and not for the working-class, as he does here. We make it especially attractive and pleasant for workers who are ordered to distant places, to distasteful work, etc. - special rations, short hours, their families should be particularly well cared for, like the families of our Red Army soldiers. Add to this unlimited schools for technical and every kind of training, open to all, and you can see the opportunities.

Remember that here he is talking of non-workers, too. Have fun arguing with Trotsky.


Restoration didn't happen all at once in China and Russia, it happened in steps.
Well, at least we now know that you want nothing to do with a materialist analysis. Just compare everything to China and Russia, maybe then you won't have to face the reality that contradicts your points (see above).


Pffft, we have pathetic liberal intellectuals in the US too. Doesn't mean we have socialism or real democracy here. The Cuban "opposition" is a spineless joke and you know it. The Cuban military recently staged a mysterious purge (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/cuba-m13.shtml) where a bunch of ministers were forced to confess and apologize for unexplained "errors." It would be interesting to hear you try and explain that purge as an open, accountable, democratic process.
You're forgetting the basis of Marxist analysis (again): liberal intellectuals in the US are aligned with the bourgeoisie and are against the working class. In Cuba, they are seen as the ideological enemies that they are. That doesn't mean, however, that they can't speak their minds, it just means that when they try to launch their demonstrations for "freedom", they get met by Cuban workers who support socialism. So the anti-government opposition IS allowed free speech and is allowed to organize, which contradicts what you've been saying this whole time. But since when did you care about consistency?

:lol: That article, just like your last one, is chock-full of sectarian accusations and devoid of facts. So since some officials apologized and/or were fired, Cuba is a "bourgeois nationalist regime deep in crisis"? :laugh: The leaps in logic are too many to comprehend. It would be interesting to have you post something factual and relevant, but that won't happen because you're not interested in either facts or relevance. Much easier to post hit-pieces from people with a hatred for the Cuban Revolution! :lol:


There were many non-CPSU members in the Soviet government in 1937. Having non-communists in your government does not make your country socialist or democratic.
But having all officials elected in an openly democratic fashion by their community members (see the articles I posted) does make your country a bastion of working-class democracy. Good to know you're still ignoring facts.


More like you took my justified criticisms of privilege and exploitation and ran with them into an alternate dimension where I am an "ultra-left."
Your criticisms cannot even find justification in your own words:

Obviously, more strenuous, stressful, and/or dangerous work should be more generously remunerated. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that.

You're arguing against yourself (not to mention against Marx, Engels and Trotsky). Further, you have posted nothing that suggests "privilege and exploitation", you have simply pointed out that Cuba's wages are not all equal. But you have utterly failed, at every turn, to establish a link between wage differentials and social relations. In fact, you have refused to deal with the facts of Cuba's social relations precisely because it flies in the face of your position. My "alternate dimension" consists of the facts and your earlier statements.


You are the one accidentally hitting yourself in the head as you hopelessly try to flail that Lenin quote back at me.
You have fully ignored my post. Lenin defined his "state capitalism" as being under the full control of the working class. Are you, then, prepared to concede that Cuba is under the full control of the working class? If you are not, then it is easy to assume that you are trying to manipulate Lenin's words by using a definition he never intended. Your choice.


I asked you for proof in the form of publicly accessible, transparent wage data. Any socialist, worker-run, democratic economy should have that. Where is it?

The fact that a "socialist" government is too embarrassed to publish such data is, on the other hand, rather telling evidence for the argument that such a state is not socialist at all.
:lol: Now you're really desperate. So if Cuba doesn't publish certain statistics, it's not socialist? How does that have anything to do with social relations, with a materialist analysis, with anything? Is that your best evidence that Cuba isn't socialist? Is it really? Think about that before answering.


You seem to be in a state of denial about the last part of that history, where the USSR ceased to exist.
So did the Paris Commune. So what?


I would also be interested to see wage data about the USSR that proves it became socialist in the 1930's.
Why would wage data prove that? Does that have anything to do with a materialist analysis?


Once again you start freaking out and shouting your slogans rather than consider that there may be a difference between dictatorship of the proletariat and dictatorship of the party.
Once again you tip-toe around the fact that you're arguing against Bolshevism. "There may be a difference", not in this case there isn't. The PCC is the working-class vanguard, just as the Bolsheviks were in the October Revolution. Good luck arguing against Lenin for a third time.


lol, since I call for the government to publish data about the huge salaries, bonuses and privileges of officials and managers, therefore I'm an ultra-leftist who thinks coal miners should receive the same wage as kids who work at Starbucks. Please :p
Since you use the availability of wage data as your primary rubric for judging a society's social relations, then no, you are hardly using a scientific analysis. Oh, and you're arguing against yourself, too.


Cuba abolished the maximum wage two years ago so you - as a defender of the claim that "socialism" exists in Cuba - have the burden of producing evidence.
You have the burden of telling us why it matters. After all:

Obviously, more strenuous, stressful, and/or dangerous work should be more generously remunerated. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that.


News flash, "free speech" is just an empty phrase if it only applies to people who slavishly defend every action of the regime.
News flash, you don't know what you're talking about:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4569981.stm

:lol: Clearly, you haven't done your homework. Any other pieces of slander you'd like to share with us?

Oh, and since you're naive enough to believe that the Cuban government doesn't publish wage data:

http://books.google.com/books?id=-kUbIoZ-AUIC&pg=PA203&lpg=PA203&dq=official+statistics+cuban+wages&source=bl&ots=snQ9DJZcuz&sig=_63SC_Q71v9gW1IaiHcWH-44JdM&hl=en&ei=ir9zS43ECM_r-Aa92-CqCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBwQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=official%20statistics%20cuban%20wages&f=false

Whoopsies.

The new pay regulations were introduced to standardise salary policy across the economy as part of the general implementation of the economic management system operating in army enterprises since 1987. Capped or not, bonus payments in Cuba are awarded for outperforming the national plan in the production of physical goods or services. Your article did not mention the fact that these payments remain capped at 30% of salary for various bureaucrats, technicians and economists - a measure to prevent the emergence of a technocratic elite.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/20/cuba


You, also, forgot to mention that little fact. I wonder why you insist on arguing against facts, against yourself and against Marx, Engels and Trotsky all at the same time.

[Kléber]

Due to the increasingly unpleasant nature of this thread, which is unbecoming of the Learning forum, I request this be moved to Politics or Chit Chat.


More importantly, my argument is that your priority here is not about democracy in Cuba, but about the treatment of Trotskyists... that is your problem, not mine.I wonder how you define democracy, if free speech isn't part of it.


You have done nothing but neglect the substantiated evidence I've posted of democratic processes in CubaA memo from the Cuban Foreign Ministry and a sympathetic American prof who visited some town hall meetings long after the socialist opposition to Castro had been purged and suppressed.. substantiated indeed!


Fidel didn't come out as a communist because it would have been the death knell of the Revolution. The imperialists were watching, wondering if there was any communist influence in the J26M, and if they found enough reason to believe that, they would have crushed the anti-Batista movement. Actually, the US was supporting Batista.


Fidel's decision to remain officially vague in terms of ideology is an example of wise judgment and strategic thinking.It sure isn't an example of Leninism.


I'd like to see something specific about the Trotskyists and anarchists. "'Cause I said so" means nothing, and thus your position is based on nothing.I already posted something but you skipped it without noticing, like so much of what I have written here.
http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Cuba


why are you bringing up wage inequality is proof of Cuba's supposed lack of socialism? Is it the degree of wage inequality? Is that it? If so, then you are dealing with semantics and trying to extrapolate it into an analysis of Cuba's social relations.lol, you have given up on analysis and retreated to semantics long ago.


How are officials and managers "exploiting their workers"? How, exactly, do you do that with no private ownership of industry, no employment[sic], no generalized commodity production and the like?By awarding yourself a huge salary perhaps.


I've addressed the CUC quite thoroughly, Uh, no you haven't. A special currency for bureaucrats, tourists and foreigners that is worth 25 times as much as the currency that regular workers receive, and can buy luxury goods and services that the regular currency can not, definitely seems like a form of class privilege.


And in the end, your arguments fly in the face of Trotsky's plainest statements:
Under capitalism, the worker must go where there is a job, whether he likes it or not; but he works for a capitalist, and not for the working-class, as he does here. We make it especially attractive and pleasant for workers who are ordered to distant places, to distasteful work, etc. - special rations, short hours, their families should be particularly well cared for, like the families of our Red Army soldiers. Add to this unlimited schools for technical and every kind of training, open to all, and you can see the opportunities.That quote didn't address high salaries, bureaucratic privileges or bonuses. It was just about compensation for relocated workers, and education stipends for workers who wanted to go to school. Once again you are pretending that I'm an ultra-leftist just because I want to materialistically analyze social differentiation within the USSR, China, Cuba etc. Furthermore, Trotsky never claimed the USSR was socialist.


So since some officials apologized and/or were fired, Cuba is a "bourgeois nationalist regime deep in crisis"? :laugh:I asked you to clarify why 1/3 of the Cuban government ministers were purged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Cuban_government_dismissals). You can't even explain what the hell they apologized for.


But having all officials elected in an openly democratic fashion by their community members (see the articles I posted) does make your country a bastion of working-class democracy. Good to know you're still ignoring facts.Municipal councils with open elections and little interference by the dominant party (or parties) are a common feature of many capitalist states, including the United States.


Now you're really desperate. So if Cuba doesn't publish certain statistics, it's not socialist? How does that have anything to do with social relations, with a materialist analysis, with anything? Is that your best evidence that Cuba isn't socialist? Is it really? Think about that before answering.If Cuba doesn't publicly and transparently publish information about the pay, bonuses, and privileges of its highest officials, then there is no way of knowing that they are paid according to the principle of the Paris Commune.


So did the Paris Commune [cease to exist]. So what?It was crushed by a capitalist army. The USSR was dismantled by the leaders of the Communist Party. So obviously there had to be some revisionism going on for a Communist Party to become capitalist. That revisionism got a fundamental kick-start in the 1930's when Stalin legitimized the 2,000-ruble salaries and luxurious lifestyles of bureaucrats by falsely declaring the achievement of "socialism." This may be difficult for you, but you have to choose between Stalin and materialist analysis. You can't have both. The claim that the USSR was socialist was plain and simple revisionism.


Why would wage data prove that [Cuba is socialist]? Does that have anything to do with a materialist analysis?Gee, why should facts and data have anything to do with materialist analysis? The Cuban revolution was the coolest thing to ever happen in North America, so we should just take everything the Cuban government says on faith!


Once again you tip-toe around the fact that you're arguing against Bolshevism. "There may be a difference", not in this case there isn't. The PCC is the working-class vanguard, just as the Bolsheviks were in the October Revolution. Good luck arguing against Lenin for a third time.And where was this PCC when Batista was in power? As I recall, Marx said that the socialist revolution would be the conscious action of the workers themselves, and Lenin said the vanguard party would lead that revolution. According to you, a socialist revolution happened with neither a proletarian vanguard nor proletarian class consciousness.


Your article did not mention the fact that these payments remain capped at 30% of salary for various bureaucrats, technicians and economists - a measure to prevent the emergence of a technocratic elite.Great to know, considering that we have no idea what that 30% is of, because the maximum wage has been abolished.

On that note, how's abolishing the maximum wage for a "measure to prevent the emergence of a technocratic elite?"


You, also, forgot to mention that little fact. I wonder why you insist on arguing against facts, against yourself and against Marx, Engels and Trotsky all at the same time.The little fact that bureaucrats can now get 30% capitalist bonuses on top of their no-longer-restricted salaries only supports my position.

Your source politely sidesteps the much more momentous development, the fact that the maximum wage was abolished as part of those reforms.


Oh, and since you're naive enough to believe that the Cuban government doesn't publish wage data:Oh and since you are clever enough to post another source without actually reading it, here's some info from your own source which proves how comprehensive that wage data the Cuban government "publishes" really is:


Table 2 brings together data on hourly wages for selected occupations and years over the period 1964-1986 ...
So this information is 24 years old.


collated from Cuba's responses to ILO October inquiries.
So the Cuban government does not regularly or entirely publish this type of information as you would like to think, but only grudgingly handed out some limited snippets about the Cuban wage system to satisfy the ILO.


These wages were presumably applicable to workers in the state sector, which in 1985 accounted for over 93 percent of total unemployment.
So this information, taken alone, is virtually useless to a discussion of the private and tourist sectors which have developed considerably between 1985 and 2010.


It should be noted at the outset that the data in table 2 do not present a complete picture of wages in Cuba, as they refer primarily to occupations in industrial sectors. Thus, wages for workers in agriculture and service sectors are either totally lacking or severely underrepresented. The revised inquiry goes partway toward addressing this problem ... but coverage of agricultural occupations remains minimal.

Here is the actual wage info: page 204 (http://books.google.com/books?id=-kUbIoZ-AUIC&lpg=PA203&ots=snQ9DJZcuz&dq=official%20statistics%20cuban%20wages&pg=PA204#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

That information is insufficient because it only addresses the difference between skilled workers and unskilled workers, and does not say anything about the maximum wages which were allotted to factory managers, state officials, military officers, etc. The elite has always enjoyed privileged access to superior housing, transportation, and consumer goods on top of that.



News flash, you don't know what you're talking about:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4569981.stm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4569981.stm)

:lol: Clearly, you haven't done your homework. Any other pieces of slander you'd like to share with us?So the state permitted a tea party to encourage rapprochement with the US, and reporters who tried to cover the event were arrested by police. I guess that changes everything, Cuba is a socialist democracy after all.


You're forgetting the basis of Marxist analysis (again): liberal intellectuals in the US are aligned with the bourgeoisie and are against the working class. In Cuba, they are seen as the ideological enemies that they are. That doesn't mean, however, that they can't speak their minds, it just means that when they try to launch their demonstrations for "freedom", they get met by Cuban workers who support socialism. So the anti-government opposition IS allowed free speech and is allowed to organize, which contradicts what you've been saying this whole time. But since when did you care about consistency?
There is more consistency in ostrich stool than in the words above.

[RED DAVE]

[Cuba] is an on-going Socialist Revolution by and for the people.All you have to do to demonstrate that is to show us the concrete organs of workers control of industry from the factory level on up.

If I want to show you concrete organs of capitalist control of industry from the factory level on up, I could demonstrate, giving cases and statistics, how management makes production decisions. I could show the overall management hierarchy, how decisions are made on higher levels and passed down to lower levels and finally to the workers, the laws that guarantee management power, etc.

Please do the same for the working class in Cuba.

RED DAVE

[manic expression]

I wonder how you define democracy, if free speech isn't part of it.
Of course it is, you're just ignoring my links. What do you call an anti-government meeting that President Bush called into? What do you call Oswaldo Paya? What do you call the Ladies in White? Looks like you need to do your homework.


A memo from the Cuban Foreign Ministry and a sympathetic American prof who visited some town hall meetings long after the socialist opposition to Castro had been purged and suppressed.. substantiated indeed!
Yes, substantiated because they've been confirmed by every impartial report on the subject (I've provided such reports but you seem uninterested in facts so there we are). You say "sympathetic", but you have yet to demonstrate this beyond the fact that the author doesn't agree with you, so basically you're just falling back on narrow-minded sectarianism again. But keep ignoring facts, it's the only defense you have left.


Actually, the US was supporting Batista.
I never said they didn't. However, they would have immediately crushed the J26M if they knew it was led by communists. Try to stay on topic.


It sure isn't an example of Leninism.
Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be? The working-class vanguard led the overthrow of capitalism in Cuba. That's Leninism 101, and it's something you apparently oppose.


I already posted something but you skipped it without noticing, like so much of what I have written here.
http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Cuba
You posted general sites. I want specific examples of what you're talking about, so we can determine whether it was mere repression or the workers defending their revolutionary gains from counterrevolutionaries. Keep dancing.


lol, you have given up on analysis and retreated to semantics long ago.
My argument rests on no semantics: I have shown that the Cuban workers control the means of production and society. You, on the other hand, are arguing that unequal wages are compatible with socialism, but that Cuba's unequal wages are incompatible with socialism for reasons you have failed to specify. So really, not only are you falling back on semantics, but you can't even tell us what those semantics are. Well done.


By awarding yourself a huge salary perhaps.
You could cite something specific instead of images in your imagination, perhaps. You could illustrate how a "huge salary" alters social relations, perhaps. You could make a materialist analysis, perhaps.


Uh, no you haven't. A special currency for bureaucrats, tourists and foreigners that is worth 25 times as much as the currency that regular workers receive, and can buy luxury goods and services that the regular currency can not, definitely seems like a form of class privilege.
Ah, yes, what a tragedy that Cubans want people from around the world to come and visit their country. What a travesty that they have come up with new ways to facilitate tourism. How terrible that they put it into general circulation.

By the way, if you're going to tell us that the currency is only available to certain sections of Cuban society, why not show us some numbers? After all, you must be basing your conclusions on something concrete (:lol:).

So really, your objection is a moral one, not a materialist one. Your position becomes more and more aligned with utopian socialism by the minute.


That quote didn't address high salaries, bureaucratic privileges or bonuses. It was just about compensation for relocated workers, and education stipends for workers who wanted to go to school.
Wrong. Obviously you can't comprehend Trotsky's plainest words, just as you can't read a study on the Cuban political system. Trotsky clearly said that military families were given special treatment, special rations and the like. Military families, not "relocated workers". Sorry, but in the argument of you against Trotsky, Trotsky wins.


I asked you to clarify why 1/3 of the Cuban government ministers were purged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Cuban_government_dismissals). You can't even explain what the hell they apologized for.
I don't need to clarify it at all. If you simply followed the references of the article you posted (imagine that, references):

The abrupt shake-up, which also consolidated some of Cuba's many ministries to create a "more compact and functional structure", was the first major reorganisation under Raúl Castro. It was announced at the end of the midday news, after the weather and sports.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/02/raul-castro-fidel-cuba-officials


Ministers were replaced by individuals seen as more fit for the jobs. What your problem with this is, I have no idea. More importantly, what are you implying? That the replacement of ministerial positions means there is no socialism? That no government which has top-level changes can possibly be socialist? You don't even have an argument here, just more moral indignation over nothing. Trotsky fired a few officials during the Civil War! He's a capitalist! :lol:



Municipal councils with open elections and little interference by the dominant party (or parties) are a common feature of many capitalist states, including the United States.
:lol: You really have no idea what you're talking about. Municipal councils are far more influential and powerful in Cuba than they are in the US. It's not even close. Cuban municipal councils directly elect those who stand for provincial assemblies and the National Assembly. Thus, the municipal assemblies are the organs that determine the highest legislative body in Cuba (that body, in turn, elects the executive). So no, there is no comparison, even on the basis of power.

And you're fooling yourself if you think that political parties don't have any input into municipal level-politics in the US. Even school board and city council elections are oftentimes broken down on party lines, and in many cities (I've seen it in NYC firsthand), candidates outside of the dominant parties (or outside of their own personal wealth, see Bloomberg) have obstacle after obstacle after obstacle in even getting on the ballot. That's not the case in Cuba: candidates are nominated in open local meetings without any processes of political parties.

You need to read the links I gave you. You really do, because you're entirely off-base here.


If Cuba doesn't publicly and transparently publish information about the pay, bonuses, and privileges of its highest officials, then there is no way of knowing that they are paid according to the principle of the Paris Commune.
I can't find Paris Commune wage info on the internet. Therefore, the Paris Commune was reactionary. Your logic, not mine.


It was crushed by a capitalist army. The USSR was dismantled by the leaders of the Communist Party. So obviously there had to be some revisionism going on for a Communist Party to become capitalist. That revisionism got a fundamental kick-start in the 1930's when Stalin legitimized the 2,000-ruble salaries and luxurious lifestyles of bureaucrats by falsely declaring the achievement of "socialism." This may be difficult for you, but you have to choose between Stalin and materialist analysis. You can't have both. The claim that the USSR was socialist was plain and simple revisionism.
Yeah, Gorbachev's policies were a direct continuation of Stalin's. :lol: Listen, perestroika and glasnost, as well as the demons they let loose and the "leaders" who were far too indecisive and stupid to deal with the problems they created, brought down the USSR. Blaming Stalin is anti-historical, the USSR in 1953 had just come out of the most vicious invasion in human history as a superpower and the world's leader in science and otherwise. If you want to believe that Stalin was the one who started the changes that led to the fall in the late 80's, then all I can say is that you have a wonderful imagination.

Stalin legitimized the Stakhanovite movement, that is rewarding workers for working productively with luxurious living standards. But since you're a utopian socialist you'd obviously have a problem with workers improving their lives through producing for their communities, right?


Gee, why should facts and data have anything to do with materialist analysis? The Cuban revolution was the coolest thing to ever happen in North America, so we should just take everything the Cuban government says on faith!
Gee, you should bring that up with the guy who said this:

Obviously, more strenuous, stressful, and/or dangerous work should be more generously remunerated. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that.

Watch out though, he usually doesn't pay too close attention to stuff like verified research and facts.


And where was this PCC when Batista was in power?
It was formed out of a merger of various revolutionary parties after the overthrow of Batista. It was the successor of the J26M, for all intents and purposes.

You should crack open a history book sometime.


Great to know, considering that we have no idea what that 30% is of, because the maximum wage has been abolished.
30% of bureaucrats' wages. It's quite clear. Do I really need to spoon-feed you this stuff or do you think you can comprehend an article on your own?


On that note, how's abolishing the maximum wage for a "measure to prevent the emergence of a technocratic elite?"
Because the workers of Cuba will benefit from now having higher wage possibilities:

Writing in the communist party newspaper Granma Mr Mateu said workers would receive a minimum 5% bonus for meeting targets but with no ceiling on salaries.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7449776.stm

But I guess you think more wages for workers is a bad thing...you are a utopian socialist and all.


The little fact that bureaucrats can now get 30% capitalist bonuses on top of their no-longer-restricted salaries only supports my position.
How, exactly, are bonuses intrinsically capitalist? "Your position" is that wage differentials are against socialism, even though you admitted you're not against wage differentials. You're tying yourself into knots even more since you refuse to square your own words.


Your source politely sidesteps the much more momentous development, the fact that the maximum wage was abolished as part of those reforms.
Yeah, so workers can earn more money. That must make you so angry.


Oh and since you are clever enough to post another source without actually reading it, here's some info from your own source which proves how comprehensive that wage data the Cuban government "publishes" really is:

So this information is 24 years old.
:lol: Moving the goalposts yet again, it seems. Your position was that the Cuban government didn't publish wage data. I have shown that they do, and quite thoroughly at that.


So the Cuban government does not regularly or entirely publish this type of information as you would like to think, but only grudgingly handed out some limited snippets about the Cuban wage system to satisfy the ILO.
No, they responded to a request with the statistics they were asked for. You can imagine that they did it grudgingly, and you can imagine that that proves anything about the availability of the statistics, but the fact is that the stats are published...so you're wrong. Well done.


So this information, taken alone, is virtually useless to a discussion of the private and tourist sectors which have developed considerably between 1985 and 2010.
No, this information, taken alone, is useful because it shows that you're making stuff up in an attempt to lie about the Cuban government. First they published no stats, and now you're changing your argument to more ultra-leftist semantics. Keep dancing.


Here is the actual wage info: page 204 (http://books.google.com/books?id=-kUbIoZ-AUIC&lpg=PA203&ots=snQ9DJZcuz&dq=official%20statistics%20cuban%20wages&pg=PA204#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

That information is insufficient because it only addresses the difference between skilled workers and unskilled workers, and does not say anything about the maximum wages which were allotted to factory managers, state officials, military officers, etc. The elite has always enjoyed privileged access to superior housing, transportation, and consumer goods on top of that.
Just like Trotsky said. Those who participate in strenuous work should have some special perks for what they do. In fact, Trotsky specifically mentioned military personnel in this category, a group you deem unworthy of anything more than anyone else. So again, you're arguing not with me, but with Leon Trotsky (and Marx and Engels).


So the state permitted a tea party to encourage rapprochement with the US, and reporters who tried to cover the event were arrested by police. I guess that changes everything, Cuba is a socialist democracy after all.
Yeah, reporters who covered it were arrested...which is why the BBC reported on it first-hand without being arrested. Your logic is laughably naive. The fact is that it's common for countries to have requirements for foreign journalists, and if they don't go through the proper channels then there are problems. But yeah, just ignore the fact that the BBC covered it first-hand, just ignore how the meeting went off without a hitch, just ignore how dissidents in Cuba are allowed to organize. Just ignore all that, because you don't know what you're talking about anyway. :lol:


There is more consistency in ostrich stool than in the words above.
The only consistency in your posts is your refusal to deal with the facts. Your line here is yet another example. I look forward to seeing how you side-step reality next time.

[Kléber]

Of course it is, you're just ignoring my links.
Please read the entire post before you reply from now on. There is no need to further reduce the intellectual level of this thread because of your own impatience and frustration.


I never said they didn't. However, they would have immediately crushed the J26M if they knew it was led by communists.So according to you, we need to abandon communism and switch to radical nationalism, or otherwise, the United States will crush us. :confused:


You say "sympathetic", but you have yet to demonstrate this beyond the fact that the author doesn't agree with you.He is some petty-bourgeois who went on a guided tour. Please. His anecdotes mixed with spotty 25-year-old data (which precedes the massive economic restructuring that started in 1993) about a couple industrial occupations, is not good evidence.


The working-class vanguard led the overthrow of capitalism in Cuba.Ah, right. Wait, who? Didn't you say the PCC was the vanguard? And where was this PCC (or rather its predecessor PSP) during the overthrow of Batista?


You posted general sites. I want specific examples of what you're talking about, so we can determine whether it was mere repression or the workers defending their revolutionary gains from counterrevolutionaries.It is not my problem that this or that source is too big for you to read.


Ah, yes, what a tragedy that Cubans want people from around the world to come and visit their country. What a travesty that they have come up with new ways to facilitate tourism. Sounds like a defense of the Batista regime. The tourist industry was and is a cancerous growth of international capitalism, which promoted and promotes class, race and gender stratification in Cuba.


if you're going to tell us that the currency is only available to certain sections of Cuban society, why not show us some numbers?Last post, you claimed to be an expert on the CUC. Now you claim to know absolutely nothing.

In fact, capitalist reforms and the two-currency system have contributed to the growth of social inequality in Cuba.

http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/7286/incomestatepeso.gif

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/1063/incomedollars.gif

http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/158/incpesosdollars.gif
http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/3759/incpurchases.jpg

Note: This information was collected prior to the issuance of the CUC or the recent reforms which allowed black people to enter hotels (similar to during the Batista regime, state anti-discrimination laws did not apply to the private/foreign sector which was highly discriminatory). So, in the two years since those reforms have been passed, Afro-Cubans may have gained greater access to the luxury currency and luxury goods. Private/tourist interests may just as well have flouted the new anti-discrimination laws, as they did after the official de-segregations of 1940 and 1959. However, the fact that the Cuban government had to pass laws to desegregate hotels and beaches, gives pause to your suggestion that tourism is a good central industry around which to build a socialist economy.


Trotsky clearly said that military families were given special treatment
Trotsky specifically mentioned military personnel in this category, a group you deem unworthy of anything more than anyone else.Does he say the richest military families get ten times as much pay as workers, exclusive access to bureaucrat/officer-only stores and restaurants, one or more countryside mansions (dacha), a limousine and driver, and dozens of servants? Does he then say that that system is socialist? No, so your attempt to turn Trotsky into a defender of Stalinism fails.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch06.htm


Trotsky fired a few officials during the Civil War! He's a capitalist! I could explain what anyone shot or dismissed by Trotsky was punished for despite the fact that it happened 100 years ago. You don't even care to try and explain the 2009 purge.


And you're fooling yourself if you think that political parties don't have any input into municipal level-politics in the US.Oh, yeah, because the PCC has no presence in local politics in Cuba. :rolleyes:



What do you call an anti-government meeting that President Bush called into? ... just ignore how the meeting went off without a hitch, just ignore how dissidents in Cuba are allowed to organize.Right wing clowns having a telephone chat with Bush is not working class dissent. That was obviously permitted (if not organized) by the state in order to encourage rapprochement with US imperialism.


Stalin legitimized the Stakhanovite movement, that is rewarding workers for working productively with luxurious living standards. But since you're a utopian socialist you'd obviously have a problem with workers improving their lives through producing for their communities, right?The Stakhanov movement was a fraud, through and through.


I can't find Paris Commune wage info on the internet. Therefore, the Paris Commune was reactionary.The constitution of the Paris Commune made clear that no official should be paid more than their constituents.


when Bukharin says, this is no violation of principle, I say that here we have a violation of the principle of the Paris Commune. State capitalism is not money but social relations. If we pay 2,000 in accordance with the railway decree, that is state capitalism.


Listen, perestroika and glasnost, as well as the demons they let loose and the "leaders" who were far too indecisive and stupid to deal with the problems they created, brought down the USSR.So, market capitalism was restored in the USSR because of stupid leaders.

You have a very interesting "materialist" view of history, where socialism can be established without a vanguard or conscious working class, and capitalism can be accidentally established by a stupid leader acting without any social base.

Restoration had nothing to do with any "stupid" leader. The bureaucrats who restored market capitalism were not stupid. They knew exactly what they were doing. A Marxist analysis of history does not say: stupid bozos like Deng and Gorby come along and wreck everything with their own stupidity. A materialist asks: what social interests were Deng and Gorbachev representing when they restored capitalism?

Did they restore capitalism by an accidental feat of their own "stupidity?" Or did they represent the social interests of some rich elite within the USSR/PRC, which wanted outright capitalism so that it could have more wealth and power? And if the latter is true, then I have every reason, as a historical materialist, to want to analyze social differentiation and see how that elite developed.

Just because official Cuban statistics avoid the issue of the salaries, bonuses and privileges of the ruling elite, doesn't mean that elite is not there. On the contrary, that elite has every reason to keep its privilege a secret.


Blaming Stalin is anti-historical, the USSR in 1953 had just come out of the most vicious invasion in human history as a superpower and the world's leader in science and otherwise.What is really ahistorical is giving Stalin the right to censor Lenin and revise Marxism and Leninism, because he ruled a superpower. I already noted how this kind of logic is identical to that of supporters of "democratic" US imperialism.

The USSR was not the world's leader in science in 1953, but it might have been if the scientific community had not been purged under Stalin. During the 1930's, Darwinism and evolution were banned, and nearly the entire Soviet scientific community (except for nuclear physicists) were driven from their positions, imprisoned or shot because they rejected Lysenkoism and Lamarckism. Some of the greatest Soviet scientists like Vavilov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov) were murdered for defending Mendelian genetics.

So, do you support Lysenko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko)? Was Lysenkoism an advanced science?


No, this information, taken alone, is useful because it shows that you're making stuff up in an attempt to lie about the Cuban government. First they published no stats, and now you're changing your argument to more ultra-leftist semantics. Keep dancing.Let's get something straight: you have totally failed to provide comprehensive or up-to-date wage data. Every post you make without such data only digs a deeper, more embarrassing hole for yourself.

The book you linked to only covers certain occupations from 1964-1986, prior to the privatizations of the special period and the expansion of the tourism industry to the point where it is now, in 2010, more substantial than sugar production. Also, the data you provided only cover the wages of industrial occupations and do not address the salaries and privileges of the bureaucrats who benefited from the 2008 abolition of the maximum wage.


30% of bureaucrats' wages. It's quite clear. As of two years ago, there is no more maximum wage. Therefore there is no more ceiling on what bureaucrats can be paid. You have provided no data about what the highest wages were or are. Therefore it is not clear what that 30% is of.


the workers of Cuba will benefit from now having higher wage possibilities:

Writing in the communist party newspaper Granma Mr Mateu said workers would receive a minimum 5% bonus for meeting targets but with no ceiling on salaries.A 5% bonus to workers who are already making relatively low wages, will not bring them close to the previous maximum wage. The claim that abolishing the maximum wage (which has only ever affected the top-paid officials) will help workers is very dubious indeed. On the contrary it could cause inflation which hurts real wages. Inflation has indeed increased slightly since the reforms (http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=cu&v=71).

On the other hand, the people who were making incomes at or above the maximum wage, definitely benefit from the maximum being legally abolished. Not only has the limit been abolished, they can now make 30% of whatever the hell their new salaries are. But according to you, it's "un-materialist" and un-socialist to ask what the highest salaries are, or why workers can only get 5% bonuses on their paltry wages and big shots can get 30% on their unlimited, unreported salaries.

[manic expression]

So according to you, we need to abandon communism and switch to radical nationalism, or otherwise, the United States will crush us. :confused:
No, but in certain situations, it helps to be ambiguous. Fidel played liberal capitalists in the US like a fiddle: the US wasn't prepared to intervene until the Revolution had conquered state power.


He is some petty-bourgeois who went on a guided tour. Please. His anecdotes mixed with spotty 25-year-old data (which precedes the massive economic restructuring that started in 1993) about a couple industrial occupations, is not good evidence.
:lol: Looks like you're making crap up, again:

I have been to Cuba four times since 1993. Last summer, I was there for ten weeks, and my activities included in-depth interviews of university professors and leaders in the Popular Councils concerning the political process in Cuba.

Your argument boils down to a rejection of facts.


Ah, right. Wait, who? Didn't you say the PCC was the vanguard? And where was this PCC (or rather its predecessor PSP) during that "revolution?"
The PCC is the successor to the J26M. Thus, it is the revolutionary vanguard.


It is not my problem that this source is too big for crybaby to read.
Not "too big", but worthless. Try again.


Sounds like a defense of the Batista regime. The tourist industry was and is a cancerous growth of international capitalism, which promoted and promotes class, race and gender stratification in Cuba.
Lots of indignation, no support. Tourism can be detrimental to workers, of course, but this is not inherent. Tourism is nothing more than foreigners traveling to another country for vacation. I fail to see what's so terrible about this, unless you're a utopian socialist...which you are.

Oh, and I'd love to see something about "promoting class, race and gender stratification", because to date, all your claims have been full of hot air.


Last post, you claimed to be an expert on the CUC. Now you claim to know absolutely nothing.
I didn't claim to be an expert, I claimed to have explained its basics and why it exists. This is all reasonable and true. But you're too busy making stuff up and being a utopianist.


In fact, capitalist reforms and the two-currency system have contributed to the growth of social inequality in Cuba.
Did I say that there isn't progress that remains to be made? The Cuban government openly admits that there are many things to be solved: treatment of LGBT citizens, racial discrimination and the like, but the Cuban government is also openly fighting these ills with proactive measures. Free sex change operations, the international anti-homophobia festival in Havana a few years back, the promotion of Afro-Cuban artforms and the like are all part of this. But you ignore it, because your new argument is now that if there's any imperfection, there is no socialism. You have cemented your status as a rank utopian socialist.


Note: This information was collected prior to the issuance of the CUC or the recent reforms which allowed black people to enter hotels (similar to during the Batista regime, state anti-discrimination laws did not apply to the private/foreign sector which was highly discriminatory). So, in the two years since those reforms have been passed, Afro-Cubans may have gained greater access to the luxury currency and luxury goods. Private/tourist interests may just as well have flouted the new anti-discrimination laws, as they did after the official de-segregations of 1940 and 1959. However, the fact that the Cuban government had to pass laws to desegregate hotels and beaches, gives pause to your suggestion that tourism is a good central industry around which to build a socialist economy.
You're obviously making stuff up yet again. The hotel rules reserved certain hotels for tourists, that's all it did, and now it's gone. It wasn't about skin color or any of the nonsense you've pulled out of thin air. Further, tourism is not Cuba's central industry, that's a lie by someone who doesn't have an argument.


Does he say the richest military families get ten times as much pay as workers, exclusive access to bureaucrat/officer-only stores and restaurants, one or more countryside mansions (dacha), a limousine and driver, and dozens of servants? Does he then say that that system is socialist? No, so your attempt to turn Trotsky into a defender of Stalinism fails.
Oh, I see. So now your problem is a matter of degrees. Tell me, then, what is the acceptable ratio of wage differential? What, precisely, is the maximum amount that earnings can vary? Since your entire argument is now based on the specific degree of difference, then perhaps you'd be kind enough to provide us with a congruent rubric from which to compare with Cuba. Until you do that, you're just making things up as you go along.

And that's before we talk about how baseless your specific claims are.


Notice how I could probably explain what those officials were fired for despite the fact that it happened 100 years ago. You don't even care to try and explain the 2009 purge.
Oftentimes it would come down to the fact that Trotsky thought someone else was the best candidate for the job. What makes you think that wasn't the case in 2009? Keep dancing.


Oh, yeah, because the PCC has no presence in local politics in Cuba. :rolleyes:
We're talking about the electoral system. Try to stay on topic for once.


Obviously, it
Go on.


Right wing clowns having a telephone chat with Bush is not working class dissent.
No, of course not, but it's dissent being tolerated by the Cuban government. Something you claimed didn't happen. Reality pulls one over on you yet again.


The Stakhanov movement was a fraud, through and through.
Do try to break the habit of making things up with no evidence. Thanks.


The constitution of the Paris Commune made clear that no official should be paid more than their constituents.
But obviously not everyone was living in the Isle of Paris. Housing being a central aspect to one's living standards, how do you square this clear disparity? Call them reactionary, I suppose.

And all genuine working-class governments openly publish their wage information. Constitutions don't count as that. Since I can't find any such publications on the internet, the Paris Commune is still reactionary by your logic. Have fun with that.


So, market capitalism was restored in the USSR because of stupid leaders.
Just as battles are often lost by stupid and incompetent generals. You do remember that class warfare is warfare, correct?


You have a very interesting "materialist" view of history, where socialism can be established without a vanguard or conscious working class, and capitalism can be accidentally established by a stupid leader acting without any social base.
You have a very simplistic view of my arguments, indeed. Gorbachev promoting nationalist reactionaries on the one hand, while hamstringing the defenders of socialism on the other, was a death knell to the Soviet Union. Yeltsin, Walesa and the like were allowed to practically run the show while Gorbachev waffled. With decisive leadership, the disaster could have been averted.

By your logic, Trotsky's leadership had nothing to do with the victory of the Red Army in the Civil War. Nothing at all. Keep dancing.


Restoration had nothing to do with any "stupid" leader. The bureaucrats who restored market capitalism were not stupid.
Gorbachev was and is. Moreover, many "bureaucrats" actively opposed the restoration of capitalism, even launching coups against it and military action against nationalist movements in Baku, Lithuania and elsewhere. The Duma even tried to impeach Yeltsin in the face of tank fire in 1993 because working-class forces rejected the disaster occurring. How do you explain those inconvenient realities? So really, it wasn't the party promoting capitalist restoration, it was its leader promoting reactionary movements while strangling the forces of socialism. So your thesis falls apart at the first sight of facts. Do your homework.


Just because official Cuban statistics avoid the issue of the salaries, bonuses and privileges of the ruling elite,
They don't avoid them, because there's nothing to avoid. The "privileges" of government officials come down to occupational necessity for the most part. The rest of your accusations are simply made up with no evidence, just paranoid ramblings.


What is really ahistorical is justifying everything Stalin did,
Good thing I don't do that. And I'm happy to see that the traditional point where Trotskyists' logic becomes warped to impossible degrees has now been passed...we're now talking about Stalin instead of the issue. Good job, Kleber, you've done your side proud.


The USSR was not the world's leader in science in 1953,
And here I thought sending the first man into outer space had something to do with science.


Let's get something straight:
Let's: you claimed that Cuba didn't publish any wage data, and I showed you a source that clearly proves that they do. Keep moving the goalposts, pretty soon you'll be outside of the stadium. :lol:


As of two years ago, there is no more maximum wage. Therefore there is no more ceiling on what bureaucrats can be paid. You have provided no data about what the highest wages were or are. Therefore we do indeed have no idea what that 30% is of.
Read the article with some care and attention this time. 30% of bureaucrats' wages. Just because there's no maximum doesn't mean there's no wage, and thus there is still a percentage of that wage. Nice try.


A 5% bonus to workers who are already making relatively low wages, will not bring them close to the previous maximum wage.
Relatively low wages, based on what scale? Further, it's a basic raise across the board, the whole point of the wage reforms was to reward the most productive workers. But remember, you oppose that since you're a utopian socialist.


On the other hand, the people who were making incomes at or above the maximum wage, definitely benefit from the maximum being legally abolished. Not only has the limit been abolished, they can now make 30% of whatever the hell their new salaries are. But according to you, it's "un-materialist" and un-socialist to ask what the highest salaries are.
Well, yes, because you've already admitted that socialism is compatible with wage differentiation. Trotsky admits the same. But you lost your argument with him, so I understand that you're a bit reluctant to engage the same point.


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[Kléber]

I request that this thread be moved to Politics.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

According to wikipedia,


Cuba has an elected national legislature, the National Assembly of People's Power (Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular), which has 609 members, elected every five years and holds brief sessions to ratify decisions by executive branch. The National Assembly convenes twice a year in ordinary periods of sessions. It has, though, permanent commissions to look after issues of legislative interest. Among its permanent or temporary commissions are those in charge of issues concerning the economy, the sugar industry, food production, industries, transportation and communications, constructions, foreign affairs, public health, defense and interior order. The National Assembly also has permanent departments that oversee the work of the Commissions, Local Assemblies of the People's Power, International Relations, Judicial Affairs and the Administration.Does anyone have information on these committees? A legislature that meets so infrequently would effectively be a rubber stamp parliament.

Also, the vast majority of Cuba's legislature is made up of CCP members, and so they are subordinated to decisions made by the top-down party hierarchy. Half of the national assembly is also not elected directly from municipal assemblies, but from nominees selected by an electoral commission including representatives of organizations such as unions, which as far as I know aren't particularly democratic. The commissions must take account of candidates "merit, patriotism, ethical values and revolutionary history."

[Kléber]

Looks like you're making crap up, again

I have been to Cuba four times since 1993. Last summer, I was there for ten weeks, and my activities included in-depth interviews of university professors and leaders in the Popular Councils concerning the political process in Cuba.So your sociologist had some fireside chats with Cuban officials during his guided tour. Great.

The most recent wage data you provided is from 1986. Major changes have taken place in the Cuban economy since then. That data only focused on limited occupational fields, and much of it had to be guessed by the author because of limited actual information. Most importantly, that data did not cover the salaries or privileges of bureaucrats. Nor did it reveal anything about the private or tourism sectors of the economy, which have grown considerably since 1993. The fact that a sociologist visited Cuba and loved it "four times since 1993" is not comprehensive, transparent, publicly available data on the salaries and privileges of officials.

All that information proved was that there was a wage differential of roughly 1:2.5 between unskilled and skilled labor from 1964 to 1986. However, since the minimum wage and maximum wages used to be 100 and 800 pesos respectively, it is obvious that a wage differential of 1:8 actually existed in the Cuban economy, assuming that no corruption or underemployment was taking place. Two years ago, the maximum wage was abolished, so now the wage differential is 1:"?" and you are going to have a hard time convincing me that "?" ≤ 8.

Furthermore, as regards McKelvey's guided tour of Cuba, he wrote that "The mechanism for the removal of members of the Communist Party from positions of authority in the government is in place, should that desire be the popular sentiment." Do you have any sources which document this mechanism actually being used by the people? Has any corrupt Party leader ever been exposed and recalled by a popular initiative?


The PCC is the successor to the J26M. Thus, it is the revolutionary vanguard.The PCC is also the successor to the PSP which supported Batista. Thus, it is a right-opportunist hotch-potch.


Not "too big", but worthless. Try again.The only thing that is worthless is your assumption that the Trotskyists and anarchists must have been bourgeois counter-revolutionary imperialist agents, or else they wouldn't have been suppressed. Until you prove your accusations, the fact that the only socialist opposition was banned actually hurts the case for socialism in Cuba.


Tourism can be detrimental to workers, of course, but this is not inherent. Tourism is nothing more than foreigners traveling to another country for vacation. I fail to see what's so terrible about this ... Further, tourism is not Cuba's central industry, that's a lie by someone who doesn't have an argument.Tourism has been the Cuban government's largest source of hard currency revenues since at least 2004 (Crawford (http://aysps.gsu.edu/urag/workingpapers/2004/urag_0410.pdf)). You haven't addressed the evidence I have provided (the charts above are from an article "The Erosion of Racial Equality in the Context of Cuba's Dual Economy" by Sarah A. Blue, that isn't freely available online, but I can post in full if you would like) which clearly indicates that the tourism economy has engendered social stratification. If you know anything about Cuban history, you should recall that the dominance of the tourism industry was the most hated symbol of the semi-colonial Batista regime, an imperialistic bulwark of social reaction and racism, that imported and reinforced discrimination, as well as encouraging prostitution, gambling and crime.


The Cuban government openly admits that there are many things to be solved: treatment of LGBT citizens, racial discrimination and the like, but the Cuban government is also openly fighting these ills with proactive measures. Free sex change operations, the international anti-homophobia festival in Havana a few years back, Those are all steps in the right direction, but you haven't explained why homosexuality was banned and LGBT people were a persecuted minority for decades.


the promotion of Afro-Cuban artforms and the like are all part of this.President Machado (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardo_Machado), a comprador bourgeois Cuban president who supported the 1912 genocidal massacre of the Independent Colored Party (Afro-Cuban liberals), was well known for his sponsorship of Afro-Cuban art forms like son music. Patronizing performances, or pretending that race doesn't matter, are not substitutes for material and political equality.

You fail to address the real contradiction, which is that Afro-Cubans are still disenfranchised and discriminated against after 50 years of "socialism." Which bourgeois argument will you use to explain that, since they aren't being exploited? Is it genetic deficiency? Cultural backwardness? Oppositional mentality?


You're obviously making stuff up yet again. The hotel rules reserved certain hotels for tourists, that's all it did, and now it's gone. It wasn't about skin color or any of the nonsense you've pulled out of thin air.Actually, skin color was very much involved. There is more to issues like this than the letter of the law. Those hotels and beaches would only invoke their right to turn away certain Cubans, in order to maintain a "respectable" appearance to foreigners. The new law basically forces hotels to comply with the universal anti-discrimination statutes of the 1992 constitution. But Afro-Cubans still experience effective discrimination in hotels because they are underrepresented in the income bracket with can actually afford to travel or rent a room.


Oh, I see. So now your problem is a matter of degrees. Tell me, then, what is the acceptable ratio of wage differential? What, precisely, is the maximum amount that earnings can vary? Since your entire argument is now based on the specific degree of differenceObviously, some degree of differential is unavoidable. However, you seem to be suggesting that there is no fundamental difference in principle between communism and unlimited social inequality.. and more importantly, you suggest that there is absolutely no reason why the working class would want to keep inequality in check, or even measure it!

If your lack of concern about this issue is any indication of the mindset of the actual fat cats themselves, it is no wonder that the "socialist" countries fared as well as they did! Your views on this matter are actually very similar to Bukharin's. He didn't think that market reforms were incompatible with socialism either.

If drawing a line anywhere is arbitrary, would you say that a society could have a 1:400 pay differential like Fortune 500 companies in the United States, and still be socialist?


perhaps you'd be kind enough to provide us with a congruent rubric from which to compare with Cuba.Such a comparison is impossible since we don't have comprehensive, let alone up-to-date information about the level of social inequality in Cuba.


Oftentimes it would come down to the fact that Trotsky thought someone else was the best candidate for the job.Trotsky never dismissed 1/3 of Soviet state ministers in a sweeping unexplained purge. Name an event where someone was dismissed or executed on Trotsky's order and he gave an unsatisfactory explanation.


What makes you think that wasn't the case in 2009? Keep dancing.The fact that they were forced to apologize for "errors" but there has been no explanation of what those errors actually were, and you are the one dancing around my request that you explain the 2009 purge.


And all genuine working-class governments openly publish their wage information.Why shouldn't they?


Since I can't find any such publications on the internet, the Paris Commune is still reactionary by your logic.I never said Cuba was "reactionary." You said that Cuba is socialist. The Paris Commune never claimed to have established socialism, nor did it even carry out any seizure of non-military property to my knowledge, IIRC they only called for the appropriation of abandoned factories.

The Paris Commune was drowned in blood before it could even set up an economy to collect data about, whereas the Cuban economy has been functionally "socialist" for some time according to you. So the comparison is wholly off.


dissent being tolerated by the Cuban government. Something you claimed didn't happen.I never claimed that. All I'm doing is pointing out the hypocrisy, that socialists and anarchists were tortured and had their publications banned, while rightist clowns get to skype with Dubya. For all we know the Cuban state orchestrated that "protest" as a Potemkin village to facilitate rapprochement with US imperialism.


Just as battles are often lost by stupid and incompetent generals. You do remember that class warfare is warfare, correct?So, in studying military history, all that should be addressed is the generals and how good they are? Only an anti-materialist Trot would care about how many soldiers, guns, supplies, etc..


You have a very simplistic view of my arguments, indeed. Gorbachev promoting nationalist reactionaries on the one hand, while hamstringing the defenders of socialism on the other, was a death knell to the Soviet Union. Yeltsin, Walesa and the like were allowed to practically run the show while Gorbachev waffled. With decisive leadership, the disaster could have been averted.So the USSR was still socialist until 1991, and mistakes made by Gorbachev were entirely responsible for its dissolution? There was no, like, social historical process going on under the surface of "this powerful man," "that powerful man," "the name of another powerful man" etc.? A very materialist analysis indeed!


By your logic, Trotsky's leadership had nothing to do with the victory of the Red Army in the Civil War. Nothing at all. Keep dancing.People make history, but not in circumstances of their choosing. A good general can turn the tide of a battle but he/she can't make extra divisions, armaments and supplies appear out of thin air. "Gorbachev was an idiot" is not a suitable explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union.


And I'm happy to see that the traditional point where Trotskyists' logic becomes warped to impossible degrees has now been passed...we're now talking about Stalin instead of the issue. Good job, Kleber, you've done your side proud.If you admit that the USSR was never socialist, then we can drop that point and return to Cuba.


The "privileges" of government officials come down to occupational necessity for the most part.How do we know? Got a source?

And what is this talk about "the most part?" What are you implying with that? How could there be any corruption at all, since that sociologist went there and found out everything was fine?


And here I thought sending the first man into outer space had something to do with science.That happened after Stalin died. Besides, having a successful space program does not make a country socialist.. You have yet to answer whether or not you uphold Lysenkoism.


Let's: you claimed that Cuba didn't publish any wage data,
and I showed you a source that clearly proves that they do.The publication you linked to wasn't Cuban, and the data was acquired not from any public material from the Cuban government, but was the result of persistent requests by the ILO. Therefore such data are not "publicly accessible" as I asked. I also used the word "transparent." The statistics in that book were cripplingly incomplete; not only did many of the figures have to be extrapolated, they didn't cover the highest income bracket, without which it is impossible to assess the level of social differentiation. This isn't the fault of the authors, but due to the shortage of data available.


Read the article with some care and attention this time. 30% of bureaucrats' wages. Just because there's no maximum doesn't mean there's no wage, and thus there is still a percentage of that wage. Nice try.So what are those wages? What are they getting paid now that the maximum is gone? "30% of '?'" is still a function of "?"

[manic expression]

So your sociologist had some fireside chats with Cuban officials during his guided tour. Great.
So you don't accept interviews with participants in a political process to be valid. Obviously, you're just hiding behind your own disbelief because your arguments mean nothing. Keep dancing!


The most recent wage data you provided is from 1986.
You claimed that Cuba didn't publish any wage data. I proved you wrong. The fact that you keep trying to move the goalposts is just more proof of how empty your arguments are.


All that information proved was that there was a wage differential of roughly 1:2.5 between unskilled and skilled labor from 1964 to 1986. However, since the minimum wage and maximum wages used to be 100 and 800 pesos respectively, it is obvious that a wage differential of 1:8 actually existed in the Cuban economy, assuming that no corruption or underemployment was taking place. Two years ago, the maximum wage was abolished, so now the wage differential is 1:"?" and you are going to have a hard time convincing me that "?" ≤ 8.
So what's your problem with wage differentials again? Aside from your utopian socialist rhetoric, you haven't given any reasons as to why this is pertinent.


Furthermore, as regards McKelvey's guided tour of Cuba, he wrote that "The mechanism for the removal of members of the Communist Party from positions of authority in the government is in place, should that desire be the popular sentiment." Do you have any sources which document this mechanism actually being used by the people? Has any corrupt Party leader ever been exposed and recalled by a popular initiative?
You really do need to be spoon fed like a child, don't you? Open wide:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-8131632.html


The PCC is also the successor to the PSP which supported Batista. Thus, it is a right-opportunist hotch-potch.
The PSP formed a far less influential part of the PCC, and its ideological flaws changed as part of the merger. But you don't care, because you don't know what you're talking about anyway.


The only thing that is worthless is your assumption that the Trotskyists and anarchists must have been bourgeois counter-revolutionary imperialist agents, or else they wouldn't have been suppressed.
So you're still refusing to provide a specific case of suppression of Trotskyists? Looks like you're proving your own incompetence. And I know for a fact that the anarchists were acting against the revolutionary government and thus helping imperialism, so if the Trotskyists were in the same pot, then they surely should have been suppressed for being rank counterrevolutionaries. Just like you are.

Tourism has been the Cuban government's largest source of hard currency revenues since at least 2004 (Crawford (http://aysps.gsu.edu/urag/workingpapers/2004/urag_0410.pdf)). You haven't addressed the evidence I have provided (the charts above are from an article "The Erosion of Racial Equality in the Context of Cuba's Dual Economy" by Sarah A. Blue, that isn't freely available online, but I can post in full if you would like) which clearly indicates that the tourism economy has engendered social stratification. If you know anything about Cuban history, you should recall that the dominance of the tourism industry was the most hated symbol of the semi-colonial Batista regime, an imperialistic bulwark of social reaction and racism, that imported and reinforced discrimination, as well as encouraging prostitution, gambling and crime.
But now the Cuban workers are in control of that process, and so the remnants of colonialism and capitalism are now being liquidated. Homophobia, racism, sexism and the like are being struggled against by the Cuban revolutionaries every day. But you don't care, because you're only interested in your poor little Trotskyist counterrevolutionaries.

Hard currency revenues are from foreign exchange, and do not signify the basis of an economy on their own right.


Those are all steps in the right direction, but you haven't explained why homosexuality was banned and LGBT people were a persecuted minority for decades.
The Cuban government has explained it as an unacceptable mistake. I think that's exactly what it was, too.


President Machado (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardo_Machado), a comprador bourgeois Cuban president who supported the 1912 genocidal massacre of the Independent Colored Party (Afro-Cuban liberals), was well known for his sponsorship of Afro-Cuban art forms like son music. Patronizing performances, or pretending that race doesn't matter, are not substitutes for material and political equality.
Patronizing performances isn't what's happening. The Cuban government is promoting hip hop because it empowers Afro-Cubans, and that's exactly what they want. Open wide again:

http://www.villagevoice.com/1999-09-28/music/not-only-built-4-cuban-bronx/


You fail to address the real contradiction, which is that Afro-Cubans are still disenfranchised and discriminated against after 50 years of "socialism." Which bourgeois argument will you use to explain that, since they aren't being exploited? Is it genetic deficiency? Cultural backwardness? Oppositional mentality?
Remnant reactionary mentalities left over from capitalism. You're expecting perfection because you're a utopian socialist.


Actually, skin color was very much involved. There is more to issues like this than the letter of the law. Those hotels and beaches would only invoke their right to turn away certain Cubans, in order to maintain a "respectable" appearance to foreigners.
More accusations without basis. And further, the government has taken steps to eliminate such loopholes for discrimination, so blaming them is as useless as it is mindless.


Obviously, some degree of differential is unavoidable. However, you seem to be suggesting that there is no fundamental difference in principle between communism and unlimited social inequality.. and more importantly, you suggest that there is absolutely no reason why the working class would want to keep inequality in check, or even measure it!
So you're NOT going to lay out a congruent argument for us. Until you tell us what's acceptable and what's not when it comes to wage differences, you have nothing but subjective banter. Try harder next time, you might even make an argument.


If your lack of concern about this issue is any indication of the mindset of the actual fat cats themselves, it is no wonder that the "socialist" countries fared as well as they did! Your views on this matter are actually very similar to Bukharin's. He didn't think that market reforms were incompatible with socialism either.
Yes, the "fat cats" who live in working-class districts in Havana. :lol: The real lack of concern here is your inability to accept facts.


If drawing a line anywhere is arbitrary, would you say that a society could have a 1:400 pay differential like Fortune 500 companies in the United States, and still be socialist?
I know it's hard for you to get this kind of stuff, but it's the system that materialists analyze, not the specifics of wage differential. If a society sees ownership of private property by a capitalist class, it is capitalist. If a society has abolished these relations and the workers control the means of production, it is a working-class society. Again, you ignore this because you've been focused on utopianist arguments.

Further, is there a 1:400 pay differential in Cuba? Are you just pulling comparisons out of your ass because you can't think of anything else?


Such a comparison is impossible since we don't have comprehensive, let alone up-to-date information about the level of social inequality in Cuba.
No, YOU don't have comprehensive, up-to-date information, and you're using your lack of knowledge as proof of Cuban social relations. I've shown you that the Cuban government does publish wage data, they just don't post it on wsws. So keep making assumptions out of thin air, because it just underlines how little materialist analysis you have.


Trotsky never dismissed 1/3 of Soviet state ministers in a sweeping unexplained purge. Name an event where someone was dismissed or executed on Trotsky's order and he gave an unsatisfactory explanation.
So the semantics of the thing are important. What's the acceptable number of ministers who can be replaced without the society turning capitalist automatically? I just love how scientific your rationale is.


The fact that they were forced to apologize for "errors" but there has been no explanation of what those errors actually were, and you are the one dancing around my request that you explain the 2009 purge.
Raul thought other people were better for the job. That's all the explaining I need to do. You can jump up and down all you like, but them's the facts, and you're not changing them.


Why shouldn't they?
Well, they should. That's why the Paris Commune was capitalist. I can't find their wage stats online, so they're capitalist. Your logic, not mine. :lol:


I never said Cuba was "reactionary." You said that Cuba is socialist. The Paris Commune never claimed to have established socialism, nor did it even carry out any seizure of non-military property to my knowledge, IIRC they only called for the appropriation of abandoned factories.
So you're willing to admit that Cuba is as much under the political sway of the working class and as much a revolutionary society as the Paris Commune?


The Paris Commune was drowned in blood before it could even set up an economy to collect data about, whereas the Cuban economy has been functionally "socialist" for some time according to you. So the comparison is wholly off.
No, it's not wholly off. Wages were still being received, and yet I can't find info on them on the internet. Moreover, not everyone lived on the Isle of Paris! That's clear inequity in living conditions, and therefore we can compare them to Fortune 500 companies! :lol:


I never claimed that. All I'm doing is pointing out the hypocrisy, that socialists and anarchists were tortured and had their publications banned, while rightist clowns get to skype with Dubya.
Check the dates...this is where a good history book might help you out. And no one was tortured. Stop lying.


So, in studying military history, all that should be addressed is the generals and how good they are? Only an anti-materialist Trot would care about how many soldiers, guns, supplies, etc..
It's not everything, but it can decide everything. Even the most well-trained army, superior in numbers and equipment to its enemy, can be destroyed under the weight of a leader's incompetence. The Romans were superior to the Carthaginians in every category at Cannae, except for one: leadership. The same goes for Pharsalus, Adrianople, Leuthen and many others.


So the USSR was still socialist until 1991, and mistakes made by Gorbachev were entirely responsible for its dissolution? There was no, like, social historical process going on under the surface of "this powerful man," "that powerful man," "the name of another powerful man" etc.? A very materialist analysis indeed!
Yes, it was socialist until its collapse. Why wouldn't it have been? The social relations were the same until capitalism was reestablished. And it is quite a materialist viewpoint because social relations set the conditions to which different forces meet. If one side's leader is incompetent, it will be reflected in history.

Let me ask you: did the German social-democrats betray Marxism because of the social conditions in Germany (as opposed to Russia), or was it because the party leadership had become ideologically corrupt and bankrupt? Perhaps, then, we can consider Lenin lucky to have avoided the social conditions of Germany, for if he ever lived in such a country he would have surely supported WWI. :lol:


People make history, but not in circumstances of their choosing. A good general can turn the tide of a battle but he/she can't make extra divisions, armaments and supplies appear out of thin air. "Gorbachev was an idiot" is not a suitable explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A good/great general can win battles against seemingly insurmountable odds. A bad general can lose them with everything else on their side. Obviously you need to open a book and read about military history...it wasn't divisions or armaments or supplies that won Austerlitz.


If you admit that the USSR was never socialist, then we can drop that point and return to Cuba.
If you admit that under your logic, the Paris Commune was capitalist, then perhaps we can all go home.


How do we know? Got a source?
The most known such privileges are those of Fidel. He has sports facilities and security in his residence. The reason for all that is because he has visitors, both official and family visitors, and some of the younger children want to play something during their stay. Quite reasonable, really. The security is self-explanatory. Information about Fidel's living quarters is all over the internet.


And what is this talk about "the most part?" What are you implying with that? How could there be any corruption at all, since that sociologist went there and found out everything was fine?
"The most part" = for all intents and purposes. Sure, there's some corruption, but thanks to the info in the link above, we know that it's being combated by the Cuban working-class government.


That happened after Stalin died. Besides, having a successful space program does not make a country socialist.. You have yet to answer whether or not you uphold Lysenkoism.
The scientific strides toward it were definitely made under Stalin (Sputnik, for one), and the USSR didn't stop being the USSR when Stalin died so what's your point? Lysenkoism does not contradict the overall point, it was an exception to the rule.


The publication you linked to wasn't Cuban, and the data was acquired not from any public material from the Cuban government, but was the result of persistent requests by the ILO.
You're making that up, the government was simply responding to requests for official info. You said this was impossible. Therefore, you're wrong. As usual.


So what are those wages? What are they getting paid now that the maximum is gone? "30% of '?'" is still a function of "?"
There are still wages, yes? Then it's 30% of whatever they are. You haven't shown how wages have actually risen, you've simply told us that they must have risen dramatically...because you said so. Keep dancing.


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[Kléber]

You claimed that Cuba didn't publish any wage data. I proved you wrong.Repeat and thou shalt be repeated to. The journal that put those statistics together into a publicly readable chart was not a Cuban publication. The most recent wage data contained were from 1986, before the massive economic changes which have taken place since 1993. Those only covered the difference between skilled and unskilled labor, without incorporating managerial pay, a factor of 1:2.5, whereas actual pay differentials between the lowest- and highest-paid sections of the population were at least 1:8 (assuming there was no underemployment and that nobody earned more than the maximum wage, which doesn't even exist anymore).


So what's your problem with wage differentials again?I want to know what they are.


You really do need to be spoon fed like a child, don't you? Open wide:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-8131632.htmlI asked for evidence of a successful popular, meaning non-Party-initiated, initiative to recall a corrupt Party member, since McKelvey claims that a "mechanism ... is in place" for such a thing, and bases his claim that Cuba is democratic on an argument that this "mechanism" could hypothetically be used to remove the PCC from power "should that desire be the popular sentiment."

The investigations and punishment in that article (which I would appreciate if you would post in full if you have access to it) do not appear to have been the result of any popular initiative. I have been asking you to explain the 2009 intra-party purge for a while now, so why would I be surprised that people were purged in 1989?


So you're still refusing to provide a specific case of suppression of Trotskyists? Looks like you're proving your own incompetence.Well, there was quite a bit of suppression of the Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) of Cuba, culminating in it being banned in 1965, but since the source I posted (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net) was apparently too cumbersome, here is the relevant section.. please try to read most of it this time.

Btw, the footnotes don't work properly, but if you click on them and go to the bottom of the page, the source is there.

Voz Proletaria's existence was also made known to the revolutionary leadership through the direct means of posting copies to the offices of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.(30) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote30) However, on 26 May 1961, before the May issue could be distributed, a group acting on behalf of an official of the PSP-controlled Imprenta Nacional, the National Printing Office, confiscated the entire print-run of the newspaper at the private printing works where it was being prepared. Later that same day, PSP state functionaries acting on orders from the Ministry of Labour confiscated the printing plates of an edition of Trotsky's book, The Permanent Revolution.(31) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote31)
While the order, apparently signed by the Minister of Labour himself, authorised the seizure of the POR(T)'s publications on the grounds that they constituted "counter-revolutionary propaganda",(32) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote32) the reasons for the intervention appear to be connected with the rise of pro-Moscow influence in the Revolution. As the Trotskyists themselves suggested, the actions against their publications had the approval of various officials of the Revolutionary Government precisely because in recent months PSP cadres had consolidated their positions in the state apparatus, particularly in the trade unions and large sections of the media. This process, the POR(T) correctly observed, had been facilitated by the Cuban government's increasing need for Soviet aid and trade in the face of economic dislocation.(33) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote33) The clamp-down had also been given the green light after Guevara sharply criticised the April 1961 edition of Voz Proletaria on national television. The particular article in question argued that the Technical Advisory Councils set up in the workplaces ostensibly to give the workers control over the production process in individual units had a bureaucratic character.(34) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote34) While there is no suggestion that Guevara himself personally sanctioned the seizure of the POR(T)'s press, in these early years of the Revolution he had nevertheless publicly signalled the Revolutionary Leadership's perception of Trotskyism as a counter-revolutionary force.(35) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote35)
The POR(T) immediately presented a series of protests to the Revolutionary Government, demanding democratic rights of freedom of press for all revolutionary anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist tendencies which unconditionally defended the Cuban Workers' State. However, all of these went unanswered at the time.(36) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote36) Only Guevara in response to direct questioning from foreign journalists and academics attempted to justify the suppression of the POR(T)'s press on the grounds that the Trotskyists did not have paper or permission to use paper and that they hindered the development of the Revolution. He even went so far as to suggest that the proximity of the POR(T)'s Guantánamo branch to the U.S. Naval Base might not be a casual coincidence.(37) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote37) In a later interview in September 1961, though, Guevara did concede that it had been error to smash the printing plates of Trotsky's The Permanent Revolution. However, he again reflected the general attitude of the PSP in reiterating that the POR(T) was acting against the Revolution. He repeated the accusation that the Trotskyists had effectively acted as provocateurs by agitating for the Cuban people to march on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo. He also confirmed his affinity with the PSP by asserting that because the communist party and the revolution marched together "[y]ou cannot be for the revolution and be against the Cuban Communist Party."(38) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote38)
The central accusation made by Guevara, which was also later raised by the SWP(US), that the Cuban Trotskyists were somehow ultra-leftist provocateurs is based on a campaign which the POR(T) allegedly launched from the pages of Voz Proletaria demanding the expulsion of U.S. military forces from Cuban territory. The principal reference to the POR(T)'s own publications to support this interpretation was an article in the first issue of the newspaper which discussed the conflict between the U.S. authorities and Cuban workers at the Base. This comprehensive article, though stating that "together, the workers of the Naval Base, the people of Guantánamo and Caímanera and the Cuban masses must prepare the struggle for the definitive expulsion of imperialism"(39) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote39) was far from a provocative incitement to storm the Naval Base. Instead it emphasised the defence of the trade union organisations inside the Base. The main point which the POR(T) made was that the workers of Guantánamo should not accept the dismissal of a single worker or trade union activist. The anti-trade union campaign, they claimed, was part of the U.S. authorities' attempt to demoralise the work-force and permit the growth of a pro-Batista trade union beach-head in the region. In also noting that the workers themselves had formed a guard to protect the base from U.S.-sponsored acts of auto-sabotage, the isolated phrase calling for the expulsion of imperialism from the Base can largely be seen, as Gilly has described, as a propaganda slogan similar to that of calling for the expulsion of imperialism from the Panama Canal.(40) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote40) Furthermore, as Gilly has noted, the absence of any other articles in Voz Proletaria about the Naval Base underlines the fact that even this call for the expulsion of imperialism was hardly central to the POR(T)'s programme.(41) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote41)

Up until this point in mid-1962, the POR(T) had only suffered the arrest and victimisation of one member, a railway worker in Guantánamo, in the run up to celebrations to mark the 26 July in 1961.(45) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote45) However, the PSP's focused attacks on Trotskyism in June 1962 served as a prelude to a more systematic campaign of physical harassment in mid- to late 1962. With the PSP having further secured leading positions and influence in the direction of the Revolution after Fidel Castro's open declaration of the socialist nature of the Revolution, leading Trotskyists were subjected to a round of arrests in the lead up to and in the aftermath of the POR(T)'s Second National Conference held between 24 and 26 August 1962.(46) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote46) Significantly, this event also challenged the one-party Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas (ORI) project which the Trotskyists did not apply to join as a group on the basis that it was not a political party within which ideas could be disseminated and a discussion of programme initiated, but was an apparatus of government operating in a Stalinist fashion.(47) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote47) On 18 August, Idalberto and Juan León Ferrera Ramírez were detained after having distributed a leaflet at a Congress of Sugar Cane Co-operatives,(48) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote48) and on 20 August, the anniversary of Trotsky's assassination, the police banned a commemorative meeting in Guantánamo.(49) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote49) Immediately following the POR(T)'s National Conference, the party's leader in Havana, Idalberto Ferrera Acosta together with José Lungarzo were arrested on 30 August. With no concrete charges being levelled against the POR(T) or its members, all four comrades were released on 1 September.(50) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote50)
The POR(T)'s Second National Conference, as well as the rise in tension in the lead up to the Missile Crisis, spurred the Cuban Trotskyists on to produce an A4-sized mimeographed fortnightly bulletin from September 1962 under the name of its old newspaper Voz Proletaria. The Trotskyists claimed that it had a circulation of 1,000 copies.(51) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote51) According to the POR(T) activists, while this newspaper was still not officially banned, their request that it be printed by state print works was formally rejected in November on the grounds that there was no paper.(52) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote52) Despite the heightening harassment and the bulletin's forced mimeographed format, the Trotskyists once more rejected the option of publishing their organ in a clandestine manner. While not able to influence the political make-up of any trade union or revolutionary organisation outside the centres in which their small group of members operated, the decision to publish the party's public address, the apartment of Idalberto Ferrera Acosta, and distribute the bulletin openly, was again important as a symbolic gesture. It was part of the struggle for the legal existence of all revolutionary tendencies in what they were then terming the Cuban 'Workers' State'.

From the launch of the Voz Proletaria bulletin in September 1962 until the forced dissolution of the POR(T) as an organised party in April 1965, the Trotskyists' activity was punctuated by even greater repression. At the time of the Missile Crisis in October 1962, the Guantánamo branch suffered the arrest of its leader José Medina and the transfer of a number of its members from their regular places of work.(53) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote53) In Havana the Argentinian envoy José Lungarzo was again arrested on 30 October 1962,(54) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote54) eventually being deported to Argentina on 21 December 1962 with no apparent concern for his life or liberty on arrival there.(55) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote55) On 6 March 1963 the State Security services confiscated the printing equipment for Voz Proletaria and detained Idalberto Ferrera Ramírez, its editor, for a day. Although such acts of repression had previously been carried out on the initiative of a PSP-influenced sector of the police and state apparatus, as the failed ORI project gave way to the Unified Party of Socialist Revolution (PURS) in 1963, for the first time the Cuban Trotskyists placed responsibility for these latest repressive measures on the Revolutionary Government itself.(56) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote56) Boldly rebutting the accusations of 'divisionism' levelled against those communists who proposed different strategies to those of the official communists, the POR(T) also referred to the repressive measures as "blackmail and political terrorism."(57) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote57)
The harassment was stepped up in mid-1963. Various Trotskyists were forcibly transferred to new centres of work where they had no contacts or influence. The late-May edition of Voz Proletaria reported how the transfer of Roberto Tejera, accused of being a 'Trotskyist divisionist' was proposed to a meeting of workers.(58) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote58) While this was rejected by the meeting, the attempt to implement transfers carried on elsewhere. On 8 June, Andrés Alfonso was arrested and threatened by State Security services, and though again released within a few hours, he had thereby been prevented from attending a trade union meeting. Amidst apparent calls from his work-mates against such intimidation he was transferred to another workplace outside Havana. As the POR(T) claimed, this was a de facto sacking.(59) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote59) In Guantánamo, a similar sanction of transfer was proposed in the case of José Medina. According to Voz Proletaria, his transfer from the railways to a farm was proposed as a punishment for publishing a leaflet calling for trade union democracy.(60) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote60) Medina was later suspended from his work without pay.(61) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote61) The dismissal of the Trotskyists from their workplaces not only removed them from the local trade union milieu in which they had a proven history of dedication to the labour movement, but also carried on the tradition of victimisation against the Trotskyists in the Guantánamo region which had started in the era of Batista.
Adolfo Gilly, after more than nine months of journalistic work and internal POR(T) activity was arrested and deported from Cuba in October 1963. This took place shortly after the POR(T)'s publication in September of the pamphlet Las Tareas Económicas y la Política del Estado Obrero which he had written under a pseudonym,(62) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote62) and a few weeks after an International Architecture Congress where the Trotskyists had intervened as an organised fraction.(63) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote63) Measures against the Cuban Trotskyists themselves led progressively to criminal charges and a trial. On 9 November 1963, when Andrés Alfonso went to discuss the possibility of his return to his original workplace, he was arrested for distributing copies of Voz Proletaria to those work-mates who usually took a copy.(64) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote64) After Alfonso's companion Floridia Fraga protested against his detention at her CDR, she was also arrested on 1 December. This was followed by the detention of Ricardo Ferrera on 2 December after he went to make enquiries about her.(65) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote65) Although the POR(T) held its Third National Conference in January 1964,(66) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote66) this round of arrests announced the beginning of the end for the POR(T) as an organised party. According to a report in the U.S. Trotskyist journal Spartacist based on an interview with Juan León Ferrera, in the spring of 1964 all three were taken to a trial which was closed to the public. "They were charged with: (1) distributing an illegal paper, (2) advocating the overthrow of the Cuban government, and (3) being critical of Fidel Castro. Floridia Fraga and Ricardo Ferrara [sic] were sentenced to two years each while Andrés Alfonso received a sentence of five years."(67) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote67)
The clamp-down continued when Roberto Tejera was arrested after he went to enquire about his three comrades. Then the POR(T)'s General Secretary, Idalberto Ferrera Acosta, was arrested at his home. With his apartment also serving as the POR(T)'s office, numerous "copies of the paper and other documents were confiscated."(68) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote68) After a trial at which both were found guilty on the same charges of alleged counter-revolutionary activity as the others, Tejera was sentenced to six years in prison and, indicating the political character of the repression, Ferrera received nine years, the most severe sentence.(69) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote69)
At this point in 1964, the fate of the Cuban Trotskyists imprisoned in this first round of political trials was conditioned by the intervention of Che Guevara. Guevara had attempted to justify the suppression of the Cuban Trotskyists in 1961, loyally repeating the criticisms of the pro-Moscow PSP members. However, his disillusionment with the Soviet Communist Party and the 'Sovietisation' of the direction of the Cuban Revolution had become increasingly apparent in the period following the Missile Crisis of October 1962. Not only had he vented his anger at the USSR's unwillingness to fulfil their commitment to send and, if necessary, use the nuclear missiles,(70) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote70) but he had partially broken with Stalinism over the issue of 'peaceful coexistence' and spreading the revolution to other countries. As described in Section 3.4.2, Guevara's criticisms of the Soviets' strategy led the more ardent pro-Moscow communists to characterise him privately as a Maoist if not Trotskyist.

As it became evident that Fidel Castro was beginning to align Cuba with the Soviet Union in the Sino-Soviet dispute, at the same time as Guevara's economic strategy was also losing ground in favour of the policy options desired by the pro-Soviet wing of the Cuban leadership, so Che's personal position towards the Cuban Trotskyists softened. A number of Latin American Trotskyists had been incorporated into his various guerrilla projects,(71) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote71) and Guevara simply no longer had any need to support the suppression of the dissident Trotskyist communists in order to defend a wider political position which he had evidently lost. Ricardo Napuri, a Peruvian who worked with Guevara in Cuba between 1959-64 in his various guerrilla projects, has gone so far as to argue that Guevara initially supported the suppression of the Cuban Trotskyists more out of the need to avoid losing positions in the leadership in the face of pressures from Moscow and the advance of the pro-Moscow PSP members in the G-2, the State Security services, and other revolutionary institutions, rather than out of any personal anti-Trotskyist conviction.(72) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote72)
Disillusioned with Moscow and finding himself on the losing slope in the internal leadership struggles, Guevara increasingly expressed and acted upon his own personal convictions. No longer having any particular axe to grind against the Trotskyists, who themselves shared Guevara's sympathies for the Chinese in the Sino-Soviet dispute, he was instrumental in freeing a number of the POR(T) members imprisoned in La Cabaña jail in Havana. Roberto Tejera was released on the orders of Guevara the day after he had been interviewed by Che personally about his supposed crimes.(73) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote73) Similarly, Armando Machado was released from prison in Havana on Guevara's initiative.(74) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote74)
However, in Oriente where Guevara had little influence over which individuals remained imprisoned, the repression against the POR(T) continued. It culminated in the arrest of the Guantánamo section of the POR(T) in late 1964 and early 1965, less than a year before the formal founding of the new Cuban Communist Party. With the Trotskyists' mimeographed bulletin Voz Proletaria having ceased publication and their small but symbolic intervention in revolutionary institutions having been broken, the members of the POR(T) found themselves in prison en masse. The political nature of this clamp-down in 1964-65 was demonstrated by the sensitivity which the authorities displayed in not arresting Mary Low Machado, a participant in POR(T) meetings, due to the protection which her foreign passport granted her,(75) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote75) or Juan León Ferrera Ramírez because he had worked in Guevara's own exemplary voluntary quartet of cane cutters.(76) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote76)
In Santiago de Cuba, José Medina Campos, Idalberto Ferrera Ramírez, Luciano García, Elías Suárez, Antonio Medina Campos, and Guido Brañas Medina were all charged with alleged crimes against the state. The tribunal which heard their case in March 1965 found them guilty of coming to agreement among themselves and with as yet unknown third persons to conspire against the Cuban government, and having "organised a counter-revolutionary movement called the 'Partido Obrero Revolucionario Trotskista'" in Guantánamo.(77) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote77) In language similar to that employed during the Moscow Show Trials in the 1930s, the Sentencing Report stated that "following the orientations of Yankee imperialism they formed a study circle in which they discussed the best way to sow confusionism and divisionism among the Cuban population [....] as well as publishing a counter-revolutionary bulletin [....] called 'La Voz Proletaria' in which they published false news and information and circulated a large amount of counter-revolutionary propaganda [....], defaming the leaders of the Revolution and criticising the Revolutionary Laws."(78) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote78) According to the tribunal, all this activity was apparently undertaken while the Trotskyists awaited the landing of mercenaries who sought to overthrow violently the Cuban government. Again demonstrating the political nature of the alleged crimes, Idalberto Ferrera Ramírez was sentenced to eight years imprisonment, José Medina received five years, and Luciano García, Elías Suárez, Antonio Medina and Guido Brañas each received three year sentences.(79) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote79)
In Havana, Roberto Acosta was also arrested in early 1965 after a mimeographed version of Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed with a new Cuban introduction was printed in his house.(80) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote80) When Guevara returned from Africa he apparently became aware of Acosta's arrest and detention because of the Trotskyist's absence from his post in the Ministry of Industry. Having already lost the strategic arguments over revolutionary strategy, Guevara convened a meeting with Acosta.(81) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote81) According to Roberto Acosta, although the meeting took place in the presence of officials from G-2, Guevara expressed the view that Acosta was a revolutionary, that if the Trotskyists thought they were right then they should continue the struggle to obtain what they were fighting for, and that at some point in the future Trotskyist publications would be legal.(82) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote82) As Guevara said, "Acosta, you can't kill ideas with blows".(83) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote83) Assuring Acosta that he would be freed shortly,(84) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote84) Guevara apparently closed the meeting with an embrace and the words: "See you in the next trenches".(85) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote85)
A few days later, officials of G-2 returned with the proposal that all the Trotskyists would be released on condition that they agreed to cease all organised activity and refrain from publishing any material.(86) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote86) While during previous periods of imprisonment the Trotskyists had carried out political work amongst other prisoners, drawing up re-educational plans which defended the Revolution at the same time as defending their own programme and the POR(T)'s right to legal existence,(87) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote87) other political considerations appear to have taken precedence. Specifically, with questions being raised about Guevara's whereabouts as his disappearance from public life became evident, the Trotskyists knew that they no longer had any protection from the prospect of lengthy periods of incarceration.(88) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote88)
Roberto Acosta and Idalberto Ferrera Ramírez consequently travelled to Santiago de Cuba where at a meeting of the imprisoned Trotskyists, their relatives and sympathisers as well as the security services, Ferrera spoke on behalf of the POR(T). Although he restated the POR(T)'s position of unconditional defence of the Cuban Revolution while criticising the Revolution's bureaucratic aspects, he also spoke of the need for unity.(89) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote89) Having agreed to dissolve the POR(T) and cease publishing the newspaper Voz Proletaria and all other Trotskyist material, the jailed Trotskyists were released before the end of April 1965.(90) (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap7.html#footnote90)
The POR(T), then, was only a small group whose limited base in the working class movement meant that its activity had little effect on the course of the Revolution. However, its fate in the period 1959-65 was in many respects a barometer for the ebb and flow of pro-Moscow influence on the course of the Revolution. That is, the Trotskyists' activity and struggle for existence was of significance in terms of demonstrating the fate of working class democracy in Cuba and the Revolutionary Leadership's alignment with the USSR on a number of central policy issues. In the first place, there is no question that the POR(T) was involved in counter-revolutionary insurgency and sabotage, or in acts to provoke U.S. military intervention in the Guantánamo region. On the contrary, their activity demonstrated that they generally sought to participate in the organisations of the new Cuban state and, however symbolically, in the unconditional defence of the Revolutionary Government against U.S. imperialism. Initially, the Revolution's 'free-wheeling' atmosphere protected the Trotskyists against the anti-democratic zeal of the PSP. Indeed, although the POR(T)'s activity in 1960 was met with the traditional invective which Stalinist groups reserved for their dissident Trotskyist rivals, these accusations initially found no support outside the confines of the PSP. It was only as the Revolutionary Leadership increasingly relied on Soviet aid that the old PSP cadres' attacks on the POR(T) were legitimised. That is, while the old pesepistas made opportunist use of periods of crisis, most notably the Playa Girón invasion and the Missile Crisis, to include the Trotskyists in a security clamp-down, the evidence indicates that the measures taken against the POR(T) were eventually sanctioned by the Revolutionary Leadership itself at a time when Fidel Castro was broadly acquiescing to policy options favoured by the Kremlin.



I know for a fact that the anarchists were acting against the revolutionary government and thus helping imperialismThen show us the facts.


if the Trotskyists were in the same pot, then they surely should have been suppressed for being rank counterrevolutionaries. Just like you are.If I am a "rank counterrevolutionary," then you should start a thread in the Members forum to try and have me "suppressed." Unless you have some evidence there, such allegations are sectarian twiddle that don't belong in the Learning forum.


But now the Cuban workers are in control of that process, and so the remnants of colonialism and capitalism are now being liquidated.The Cuban workers do not control the tourism industry today any more than they did in the 1930's.


Hard currency revenues are from foreign exchange, and do not signify the basis of an economy on their own right.Actually, sugar used to be the primary source of hard currency revenues, but it's been supplanted by tourism in that regard. And nobody ever said that there was only one industry in the Cuban economy.


The Cuban government has explained it as an unacceptable mistake. I think that's exactly what it was, too.Homosexual activity was legal during Lenin's administration in the RSFSR, so it was not just a mistake, but also a rightist deviation from Leninism.


The Cuban government is promoting hip hop because it empowers Afro-Cubans, and that's exactly what they want.Just like new GOP boss Michael Steele! He understands the hip hop generation.


Remnant reactionary mentalities left over from capitalism.The PCC is overseeing this economy where Afro-Cubans are marginalized, so they are the ones with the remnant reactionary capitalist mentality.


And further, the government has taken steps to eliminate such loopholes for discriminationWell, they have been taking steps for 50 years and a fundamental social divide along racial lines is still there. The USA didn't get a "get out of being accused of racism free card" in 1915 because it had been only 50 years since the end of slavery and they were still "taking steps."


Until you tell us what's acceptable and what's not when it comes to wage differences, you have nothing but subjective banter.I'd say 1:2 for a start for a differential that could be acceptably called socialist, and that's pushing it. Making twice as much money as someone else puts a huge difference between you and that person. I'm not alone in wanting to minimize inequality: Engels suggested that technology could be used to mechanize the filthiest and most strenuous types of labor and thereby mitigate inequalities within the proletariat.


Further, is there a 1:400 pay differential in Cuba? Are you just pulling comparisons out of your ass because you can't think of anything else?You didn't answer my question. If bourgeois pay differentials do not violate socialist principles (according to you), why can't someone get paid 400 times as much as someone else in socialism? You wouldn't... *gasp* draw a line somewhere? Congratulations, you're now "ultra-left" because you dared to think that too much inequality could be a bad thing.

So if it isn't 1:400, what is the ratio between the lowest and highest paid?


No, YOU don't have comprehensive, up-to-date information, and you're using your lack of knowledge as proof of Cuban social relations. That's true. I don't have comprehensive or up-to-date information, because the people who decide who gets paid what, don't make that information publicly available.


So the semantics of the thing are important. What's the acceptable number of ministers who can be replaced without the society turning capitalist automatically? I just love how scientific your rationale is.When did I say the 2009 purge proves Cuba is "turning capitalist automatically?" Care to quote me saying that? All I did was ask for an explanation.


Raul thought other people were better for the job. That's all the explaining I need to do. You can jump up and down all you like, but them's the facts, and you're not changing them.Actually, he said they "loved power" and committed "errors." What were those errors? Furthermore, investigating and recalling corrupt officials should be the work of the conscious working masses, not the whims of Raúl Castro.


A good/great general can win battles against seemingly insurmountable odds. A bad general can lose them with everything else on their side. Obviously you need to open a book and read about military history...it wasn't divisions or armaments or supplies that won Austerlitz.Obviously it is a mix of the subjective and objective factors.


Well, they should. That's why the Paris Commune was capitalist.
If you admit that under your logic, the Paris Commune was capitalist, then perhaps we can all go home.Yes, the economy in the area under the jurisdiction of the Paris Commune, to what extent it actually functioned during the upheaval, was still capitalist.

The Paris Commune never claimed to be socialist. The workers set up their own government, but they didn't expropriate the bourgeoisie.


No, it's not wholly off. Wages were still being received,Like I said, the Paris Commune didn't expropriate any factories. AFAIK the Commune never even issued any currency in its brief life, and the private industrial economy had collapsed, so your claim that "Wages were still[sic] being received" is a false assumption.

The workers' government of Paris was crushed by armed force soon after it was founded. In the short time that it existed, it neither set up socialist relations of production, nor claimed to.


So you're willing to admit that Cuba is as much under the political sway of the working class and as much a revolutionary society as the Paris Commune?As soon as you provide statistics that are recent, include managerial pay, cover more than a few occupations, and focus on all levels of Cuban society, including the top income bracket, then I will consider the claim that Cuba is socialist, thank you profusely, and spend a long time studying that information before I draw any conclusions one way or the other. If Cuba were socialist, that would make it a more progressive society than the Paris Commune, because the economy of the Commune was not socialist.


and yet I can't find info on them on the internet. You are implying that I, like you, think 5 minutes spent searching on the internet constitutes an exhaustive search for documentary evidence.

I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to find data about the Cuban wage system, among those of other "socialist" countries, in social science, political and economic journals, books and articles that are not available online, at various public and university libraries. I am simply trying to find out the facts, and decide for myself. But so far I have not been able to find any information that indicates Cuba has a socialist, democratic society. If you think that your pathetic, evasive bullying tactics will succeed where mountains of Stalinist academic literature failed you are sadly mistaken.


It's not everything, but it can decide everything. Even the most well-trained army, superior in numbers and equipment to its enemy, can be destroyed under the weight of a leader's incompetence. The Romans were superior to the Carthaginians in every category at Cannae, except for one: leadership. The same goes for Pharsalus, Adrianople, Leuthen and many others.Leadership is not a random god-given quantity. A skilled officer corps can only be formed as the product of expensive training and an extensive military tradition. Traditions of leadership and the individual leaders who constitute them function within a larger historical and social context; they can remain stagnant, be developed, or even be destroyed - from without or within. You mention Carthage; that republic fell roughly a half-century after its best general was forced into exile by political intrigue. Likewise, 50 years after the revolutionary generation of Bolshevik leaders had been purged (1937-8), a clique of CPSU leaders privatized the entire economy and made themselves the market capitalists. The "stupidity" of leaders like Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev was not an accident, but had everything to do with the fact that the most principled elements of the Bolshevik Party, with the most revolutionary experience, were murdered in the late 1930's, while the most cowardly and careerist elements wormed their way to the top.


Yes, it was socialist until its collapse. Why wouldn't it have been? The social relations were the same until capitalism was reestablished. The social relations were basically the same until market capitalism was established. What I'm asking is, when did they become "socialist" and why? Because in 1918, Lenin said that those social relations were "state capitalism." Yet by 1991, you claim they had changed to "socialism."

Also, what social force was Gorbachev representing when he restored market capitalism? Going back to the "politicians~generals" argument you seem obsessed with (probably because comparing everything to a war helps you rationalize the reduction of political contradictions to the most extreme and mechanical dichotomy imaginable), even the best general can't fight alone and unarmed. Who were Gorbachev's supporters and social base?


Let me ask you: did the German social-democrats betray Marxism because of the social conditions in Germany (as opposed to Russia), or was it because the party leadership had become ideologically corrupt and bankrupt? The revisionism of the Second International, like every historical process, does indeed have a materialist explanation and not a subjective one.

Social-Democracy in Britain, France and Germany grew in lock step with European imperialism. Prior to WWI, the super-profits accumulated from the colonies enriched Western capitalist classes and their states to the point where they could afford to grant important social reforms in the interests of quashing dissent and consolidating the home base for further imperialist activity abroad. Some saw in this a chance for peaceful evolution whereby capitalism could be abolished merely by elections and reforms. The revisionist social-democrats who adopted this course openly acknowledged the link between the labor aristocracy they represented and ruthless colonial exploitation. Apart from some principled "lefts," the Second International was openly pro-imperialist and cheered on genocidal wars in the colonies (not to mention against other workers), because maintenance of the status quo meant maintenance of the privileged social positions of Social-Democrat bureaucrats.


Perhaps, then, we can consider Lenin lucky to have avoided the social conditions of Germany, for if he ever lived in such a country he would have surely supported WWI. Actually, Lenin lived in Britain and Switzerland for a while, and breathing the corrupt air didn't turn him into a social-chauvinist.


The most known such privileges are those of Fidel. He has sports facilities and security in his residence. The reason for all that is because he has visitors, both official and family visitors, and some of the younger children want to play something during their stay. Quite reasonable, really. The security is self-explanatory. Information about Fidel's living quarters is all over the internet.How much does it cost to run all that? Can any Cuban citizen request the same amount of money to build sports facilities in their house so relatives can visit in style, and also a play area to keep the kids amused?


"The most part" = for all intents and purposes. Sure, there's some corruption, but thanks to the info in the link above, we know that it's being combated by the Cuban working-class government.If Party officials are corrupt, then a system in which they possess the exclusive authority and obligation to investigate or punish corruption is worse than useless. Especially when their salaries are top secret.



The scientific strides toward it were definitely made under Stalin (Sputnik, for one), Once again, that happened after 1953, when Stalin was dead.


and the USSR didn't stop being the USSR when Stalin died so what's your point?Your point was that the USSR must have been socialist because it was a superpower and "the world's leader in science" in 1953.


Lysenkoism does not contradict the overall point, it was an exception to the rule.Unfortunately, there were opportunists like Lysenko in all realms of science and even culture, who took advantage of the political atmosphere of the purges to politicize their discipline or art and then attack, ruin or destroy personal rivals by targeting their slowness or failure to graft the political slogans and watchwords of the day into their scientific work. The only Soviet scientific field that wasn't politically purged was the department of nuclear physics.


There are still wages, yes? Then it's 30% of whatever they are. You haven't shown how wages have actually risen, you've simply told us that they must have risen dramatically...because you said so.So why was the maximum wage abolished, if not to increase wages beyond the previous maximum? Can you suggest a single other possible reason?

[alphabetikal]

People should read this book 'Che Guevara Economics Of Revolution' and it definitly puts you in better perspective on why the revolution is ongoing and forever attacking problems in a concrete way

search for it on Amazon
www [dot] amazon.co.uk/Che-Guevara-Revolution-Helen-Yaffe/dp/0230218210

[manic expression]

Repeat and thou shalt be repeated to.
Of course, because you have no argument. I'll just keep repeating the fact that you claimed the Cuban government published no wage data, and now I showed that you were full of hot air. Keep dancing.

I want to know what they are.
I know that, but you haven't told us what is your problem with wage differentials. Right now, you're borrowing moralistic rhetoric from the utopian socialists, which makes sense because you're incapable of materialist argument anyway.


I asked for evidence of a successful popular, meaning non-Party-initiated, initiative to recall a corrupt Party member,
Of course they were popular, it was through the democratically-elected worker state. I've shown why this is the case many times before. Nice try.


Well, there was quite a bit of suppression of the Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) of Cuba, culminating in it being banned in 1965, but since the source I posted (http://www.cubantrotskyism.net) was apparently too cumbersome, here is the relevant section.. please try to read most of it this time.
Good. They were counterrevolutionaries who threatened the Revolution as imperialism was trying to destroy it. The workers were justified in suppressing those threats to the Revolution.


Then show us the facts.
I already have in the other thread. Good to know you haven't been paying too close attention.


If I am a "rank counterrevolutionary," then you should start a thread in the Members forum
Yeah, I already know you have a persecution complex, but I've already explained this, and you already dropped the issue in the other thread, so you're just being gratuitous at this point.


The Cuban workers do not control the tourism industry today any more than they did in the 1930's.
Yes, they do. I've proven as much time and again. You simply ignore the facts because you lack intellectual integrity.


Actually, sugar used to be the primary source of hard currency revenues, but it's been supplanted by tourism in that regard. And nobody ever said that there was only one industry in the Cuban economy.
Which means that the Cuban economy has changed to meet different situations and different challenges. Without diversifying its economy from sugar, Cuba would have had many problems, but those have been averted thanks to decisive action from the workers. Socialism in action.


Homosexual activity was legal during Lenin's administration in the RSFSR, so it was not just a mistake, but also a rightist deviation from Leninism.
It was a mistake that was corrected. You can put any label you want on it, the fact is that Cuba is moving forward for LGBT rights more than any other country on the planet, and that must make you so mad.


Just like new GOP boss Michael Steele! He understands the hip hop generation.
Good to know you're unwilling to read the article. They've done far more than "understand" hip hop. But since you lack intellectual integrity, you won't believe the Village Voice because they're not Trotskyists. :lol:


The PCC is overseeing this economy where Afro-Cubans are marginalized, so they are the ones with the remnant reactionary capitalist mentality.
They are struggling against those remnants of colonialism and capitalism. As any revolutionary vanguard should. Remnants of feudalism were left over in the USSR by 1924...so I guess Lenin is a capitalist by your logic, along with the Paris Commune.


Well, they have been taking steps for 50 years and a fundamental social divide along racial lines is still there.
But things are far better. Something you can't stand.


I'd say 1:2 for a start for a differential that could be acceptably called socialist, and that's pushing it.
Ah, I see. And what makes you think this line that you just made up is at all based on a materialist analysis?

So let's take the USSR for instance. Trotsky, then, could not have made more than double of what a Ukrainian peasant was making, when we include hard wages, state allotments (living quarters, rations, working quarters, etc.), right? If he did, then he would be exposed as anti-socialist.


You didn't answer my question. If bourgeois pay differentials do not violate socialist principles
But they very much do, because they are based on bourgeois social relations. That is what Marxists look to first and foremost. That is what you ignore because you can't stand materialist analyses.


That's true. I don't have comprehensive or up-to-date information, because the people who decide who gets paid what, don't make that information publicly available.
So you're making crap up again. Good to see you're coming to terms with it.


When did I say the 2009 purge proves Cuba is "turning capitalist automatically?" Care to quote me saying that? All I did was ask for an explanation.
And I gave you an explanation.


Actually, he said they "loved power" and committed "errors." What were those errors? Furthermore, investigating and recalling corrupt officials should be the work of the conscious working masses, not the whims of Raúl Castro.
Give the whole quote, stop being selective. Raul's position is the work of the conscious working masses, you just oppose all that because you're an admitted counterrevolutionary.


Obviously it is a mix of the subjective and objective factors.
Obviously you have no idea what you're talking about, and you're running away from the idiocy you pushed because military history proves you wrong entirely. Yeah, Cannae was won by extra supplies! :lol:


Yes, the economy in the area under the jurisdiction of the Paris Commune, to what extent it actually functioned during the upheaval, was still capitalist.But it was working-class state power. That's the point. Are you ready to deny that the Paris Commune saw such workers' power and was a progressive, revolutionary body? Consistency, consistency, it's so inconvenient when you're trying to hate socialism.


The Paris Commune never claimed to be socialist. The workers set up their own government, but they didn't expropriate the bourgeoisie.
The Paris Commune claimed to be revolutionary. I can't wait to see you dispute that claims, since we can't find any wage info on the internet. :laugh:


Like I said, the Paris Commune didn't expropriate any factories. AFAIK the Commune never even issued any currency in its brief life, and the private industrial economy had collapsed, so your claim that "Wages were still[sic] being received" is a false assumption.
It's not a false assumption. Wages were in existence at the time, and living quarters were certainly not equal. Are you ready to condemn the Commune, based on your counterrevolutionary logic?


The workers' government of Paris was crushed by armed force soon after it was founded. In the short time that it existed, it neither set up socialist relations of production, nor claimed to.
And if your Trotskyists had their way, the same would have been done onto the Cuban Revolution. Fortunately for the workers, they suppressed this threat.


As soon as you provide statistics that are recent, include managerial pay, cover more than a few occupations, and focus on all levels of Cuban society, including the top income bracket, then I will consider the claim that Cuba is socialist,
I'm not going to do your homework for you. Your claim is based on your superstitions about Cuba, which are admittedly based on absolutely nothing. YOU have to show ME the stats you're basing this on, and yet you won't, because you can't, because you lack intellectual integrity.


You are implying that I, like you, think 5 minutes spent searching on the internet constitutes an exhaustive search for documentary evidence.
You don't accept anything as documentary evidence unless it comes from wsws or an anarchist screed.


I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to find data about the Cuban wage system, among those of other "socialist" countries, in social science, political and economic journals, books and articles that are not available online, at various public and university libraries. I am simply trying to find out the facts,
No, you're making things up when you fail to find the facts. Big difference. I've shown that it is very possible to receive official wage data...what's stopping you from doing the same? Right, you don't WANT to find data because your entire argument consists of your own ignorance.


Leadership is not a random god-given quantity. A skilled officer corps can only be formed as the product of expensive training and an extensive military tradition. Traditions of leadership and the individual leaders who constitute them function within a larger historical and social context; they can remain stagnant, be developed, or even be destroyed - from without or within. You mention Carthage; that republic fell roughly a half-century after its best general was forced into exile by political intrigue. Likewise, 50 years after the revolutionary generation of Bolshevik leaders had been purged (1937-8), a clique of CPSU leaders privatized the entire economy and made themselves the market capitalists. The "stupidity" of leaders like Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev was not an accident, but had everything to do with the fact that the most principled elements of the Bolshevik Party, with the most revolutionary experience, were murdered in the late 1930's, while the most cowardly and careerist elements wormed their way to the top.
You're being mechanicalist in an attempt to hide your ignorance to history. Did the First French Republic have "an extensive military tradition"? No, it didn't, it had a nonexistent military tradition and was desperately trying to figure out what worked. Exceptional leaders, however, were to be found within its ranks, including a certain artillery officer from Corsica. Had the leadership of revolutionary France continued to fail, the French Revolution would have been overrun by foreign foes. Instead, the counterrevolution was crushed and the invaders turned away. Leadership played a central role there, as it did in the fall of the Soviet Union.


The social relations were basically the same until market capitalism was established. What I'm asking is, when did they become "socialist" and why? Because in 1918, Lenin said that those social relations were "state capitalism." Yet by 1991, you claim they had changed to "socialism."
I'd say sometime in the 1930's, after the industrialization process.


Also, what social force was Gorbachev representing when he restored market capitalism? Going back to the "politicians~generals" argument you seem obsessed with (probably because comparing everything to a war helps you rationalize the reduction of political contradictions to the most extreme and mechanical dichotomy imaginable), even the best general can't fight alone and unarmed. Who were Gorbachev's supporters and social base?
You're misunderstanding the comparison, but I shouldn't be too hard on you because you clearly have no grasp of military history anyway. Gorbachev was in the position of the leader of the communists in Russia. His "army" was the vanguard party of the Soviet Union. However, he was criminally negligent in this role at best, being terribly indecisive in his best moments. So the comparison is a general with a good army who squanders his advantages and gifts victory to the enemy through his bumbling incompetence. That's Gorbachev.

Gorbachev was essentially fanning the flames of the reactionary nationalists throughout the Soviet bloc. Yeltsin in Russia, Walesa in Poland, Havel in Czechoslovakia, Yurd and others in Azerbaijan, etc. While those forces mobilized and gained clout, Gorbachev did nothing to combat them rhetorically, ideologically or otherwise; the forces of socialism were forced into silence by Gorbachev's waffling. In almost every country, those nationalists began to outlaw socialism in various ways, either by coups or by "color revolution" protests. What did Gorbachev do? He gave them more room and offered less opposition. That's really what Gorbachev's role was.


The revisionism of the Second International, like every historical process, does indeed have a materialist explanation and not a subjective one.
So Lenin's understanding of Marxism had nothing to do with it? Lenin was entirely irrelevant to the whole issue? Bolshevism is but a result of the conditions of the late Russian Empire? If that's the case, then we should all just go home. Great logic. :lol:


Actually, Lenin lived in Britain and Switzerland for a while, and breathing the corrupt air didn't turn him into a social-chauvinist.
He was also in Germany. But wait, you said that the social conditions made the social-democrats social-chauvinists. Clearly, Lenin living in western Europe would make him subject to the same social conditions, yes? Great logic, once more.


How much does it cost to run all that? Can any Cuban citizen request the same amount of money to build sports facilities in their house so relatives can visit in style, and also a play area to keep the kids amused?
"Any Cuban citizen" hasn't been the target of multiple assassination attempts, and "any Cuban citizen" doesn't have official state visitors coming to their homes. Your utopian socialism becomes even more clear as you flail around in response to facts.


If Party officials are corrupt, then a system in which they possess the exclusive authority and obligation to investigate or punish corruption is worse than useless. Especially when their salaries are top secret.
Salaries aren't top secret, you're just too lazy to do research. Party officials aren't corrupt, the corrupt ones get punished. And the working-class democratic processes of Cuba make sure abuses of power are the exception and not the rule. Please see my links, even though I know how much you hate facts.


Once again, that happened after 1953, when Stalin was dead.
So it just popped out of thin air, I suppose.


Your point was that the USSR must have been socialist because it was a superpower and "the world's leader in science" in 1953.
It's about social conditions first and foremost (good job dodging the arguments). But the USSR's position as a leader in science and otherwise is just proof that socialism means workers directly improving their communities and directing their own destiny. But you hate that.


Unfortunately, there were opportunists like Lysenko in all realms of science and even culture, who took advantage of the political atmosphere of the purges to politicize their discipline or art and then attack, ruin or destroy personal rivals by targeting their slowness or failure to graft the political slogans and watchwords of the day into their scientific work. The only Soviet scientific field that wasn't politically purged was the department of nuclear physics.
So sending Sputnik and the first man into outer space in human history is the result of "Little Lysenkos"? Your imagination, once more, runs contrary to reality.


So why was the maximum wage abolished, if not to increase wages beyond the previous maximum? Can you suggest a single other possible reason?
Because a more flexible wage system that takes into account local conditions and productivity holds many advantages for workers. Because there's no need for a maximum wage if oversight is in the hands of democratically-elected representatives of the workers. Because the Cuban workers wanted to try something new. Because Cuba doesn't follow your brand of moralistic utopian socialism.

[RED DAVE]

The Cuban workers do not control the tourism industry today any more than they did in the 1930's.
Yes, they do.Okay, show us the actual institutions by which this control is exercised.

For example, how do the tour bus drivers control their garages? Are there workers councils in each garage that determine shifts, routes, salaries, vacations, etc.? If there are profits from the work, who controls these profits and how are decisions made? Do the workers meet once a week or so to make these decisions?

Questions From a Worker Who Reads

by Bertholt Brecht



Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?

And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?

Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada
Went down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Year's War. Who
Else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man?
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.
So many questions.RED DAVE

[Kléber]

Congrats, "manic expression." You wasted a lot of my time. Have the last word, knock yourself out. This ended a long time ago when you started talking in circles.