"Anti-socialist propaganda at the ISO's 'Socialism 2012' conference"

[Kassad]

This article was written by Barry Lyndon who used to post regularly on RevLeft. The posting of this article doesn't necessarily mean my endorsement of anything stated, but I found it incredibly interesting.

This is a first-hand account of statements from speakers from the Internationals Socialist Organization (ISO) on Cuba at their Socialism 2012 conference, which raised a relatively sizable controversy. For those unaware, the ISO considers Cuba to be a capitalist country. Here is the note:



I went to the 'Socialism 2012' conference held in Rosemont, IL(Near O'Hare airport) this past weekend. For those who are not familiar with the goings on of US 'leftist' politics, the International Socialist Organization, easily the largest and most visible leftist group in the United States, holds a three day conference every year in Chicago(their de facto base of operations), with dozens of speakers on all sorts of topics related to working class struggles, imperialism, and Marxist theory. I only went for a day because of the high cost of the whole three day conference(about $100 per person for the whole thing and far away from the main black and Latino working class neighborhoods of Chicago). While I was there, there were some pretty awesome workshops, one with a call in from Mumia Abu-Jamal, and another with Kevin Coval having an interview/conversation with revolutionary rapper Boots Riley.




In contrast to these informative and inspiring sessions, was the session the ISO had on Cuba. The speaker was Samuel Farber, a Cuban historian and academic who claims to be a socialist critiquing the Cuban economic and political system from the 'left'. Although at the beginning of the talk Farber acknowledged that the Cuban Revolution had accomplished positive things with regards to healthcare and education, he did not go into detail about what they were, and it was soon clear that he was more or less clearing his throat before he went into the main body of his talk, which was a vitriolic attack on Cuba's revolution and its leadership.




Among the claims made- Cuba is a brutal dictatorship, akin to Stalin's Soviet Union (Farber made this comparison repeatedly). There are no real elections, just rubber stamp sessions by technocrats who are compliant tools of the bureaucracy, workers are simply commanded to do whatever the Communist Party wants and exercise no say in major economic decisions, Fidel and Raul Castro have been running the island as a personal fiefdom for the last 50 years, treating the Cuban people "like children"(his words), instead of adults that can manage their own affairs. Moreover, he made the claim that the Cuban Revolution was never a socialist revolution to begin with because it was led by a handful of middle class professional revolutionaries, that the working class and the peasants played a insignificant role(a completely false claim-Louis Perez's masterly book 'Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution' demonstrates clearly that it was a revolution led jointly by workers and peasants). And finally, that there was no significant difference between racism in Cuba and racism in the United States, and institutionalized racism was as entrenched there as in the US. The only hope for Cuba, Farber concluded, was for a 'genuine revolutionary left' to take control-although he never specified who this revolutionary left was, although he grudgingly admitted it was rather small and located almost entirely outside of Cuba(rather like that much more well known 'Cuban opposition' in Miami).




During the Q&A session that followed Farber's talk, I was among many members of the audience who challenged Farber's claims. An African-American comrade stood up and asked Farber how he could say that Cuba was just as racist at the US given the fact that Cuba sent thousands of troops into Angola to defeat apartheid South Africa and has provided shelter to black revolutionaries such as Assata Shakur fleeing persecution in the US. He challenged Farber to give an example of anything like the murder of Trayvon Martin happening in Cuba. Farber could provide no such examples. Various comrades from different parts of Latin America, as well as Turkey, pointed to Cuba's massive medical internationalism, the tens of thousands of doctors it deploys all over the Third World that save countless lives every single year, which Farber didn't even mention, and how Cuba's example inspires countless millions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia by showing that successful resistance to capitalism and imperialism is really possible. Hardly the actions of a sadistic 'totalitarian' dictatorship.




I stood up and pointed out that Farber's claims that there is no 'workers democracy' in Cuba is false, when you consider that just this last year Cuba witnessed massive debates involving nearly 9 MILLION workers(this in a country of only 11 million), that took place in factories and farms and workplaces all over the country, about what economic reforms were necessary to make Cuba's economy more productive, and that far from being 'rubber stamp' sessions, literally dozens of laws were amended and changed because of grassroots workers opposition to certain proposals, as outlined in an excellent article put out in 'Liberation' newspaper(http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/the-role-of-unions-in.html) in response to Sam Farber's articles in 'Socialist Worker' on the subject, written by people who have been to Cuba and seen workers democracy there firsthand. Moreover, I said that it was an act of incredible intellectual laziness to simply equate present-day Cuba with the Soviet Union under Stalin, given that its a different country, a different revolution that happened decades apart and while socialist, has forged its own path independent of the Soviet model, which is all the more obvious given that Cuba has survived and maintained its socialist system over 20 years after the USSR collapsed.




Finally, I concluded by saying that in a week I am going to Cuba with the Venceremos brigade to provide material aid and solidarity with the Cuban people in defiance of the US travel ban, and that anyone interested should if they can go see Cuba themselves instead of listening to a 'sectarian hack'(my words). The ISO members in the room exploded into boos and yelled that I was 'rude' and 'disrespectful'. Nothing was disrespectful, apparently, about bashing and smearing an entire revolution involving millions of people. Only challenging and exposing such slander is objectionable.




The ISO members at the session, apparently keen to 'prove' that they are not aiding US imperialism, reiterated that they are against the US blockade against Cuba. But this is empty rhetoric, not backed up by any concrete action. The ISO has never shown up to ANY events protesting the blockade on Cuba(which are numerous in Chicago), and Stan Smith, an organizer for the Committee to Free the Cuban Five, recalls ISO members refusing to sign petitions in support of freeing the Five. For 'leftists' in the United States of all places to act in this way, this represents a total abandonment of internationalism, and worse, passive complicity in the US governments continuing war against the Cuban people.




I should add that it would be foolish to claim that Cuba is a perfect society without faults, or that there is no room for improvement. Within Cuba there are serious and real problems of bureaucracy, corruption, censorship, political repression, racism, sexism, homophobia, and dangerous concessions to capitalism such as the tourist industry. But as a strong supporter of self-determination, I fully expect the Cuban people to solve these problems themselves and within the parameters of a society that they have fought to build and defend against decades of embargo, terrorism, and threats from a imperialist behemoth 90 miles away. The role of progressives in the United States is to fight against the blockade, call for the release of the Cuban Five, and most certainly NOT lend credence to the corporate media's lies about Cuba by attacking it as a 'totalitarian' dictatorship.




The reason I am deeply bothered by this whole episode is that it does not speak well for what passes for the 'left' that while some say they want a radically transformed and egalitarian society, they trash any example of it occurring in the real world because it fails to live up to their standards of pie in the sky purity. Moreover, there was something grotesquely hypocritical about comfortable, mostly white middle class Americans(who compose the vast majority of the ISO's membership) who have never come close to making a revolution lecturing Latin Americans about what revolution and socialism 'really means'. The reason I bothered to argue against them at this forum is because I think that it is especially important, in the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street, to argue for and highlight real alternatives to capitalism. For the first time in decades, a considerable number of people, particularly young people, are looking for answers outside the corporate two-party oligarchy. It is a complete disgrace that the ISO, which arguably reaches more idealistic, progressive young people then any other leftist org in the United States, feeds them lies, slander and defeatist tripe about one of the most successful and inspiring revolutions in modern history. Fortunately, I am excited that I am very soon going to see this revolution for myself."

[Prometeo liberado]

ISO. I have no idea how these people look themselves in the mirror, I really dont. I was at a Solidarity meeting just a few weeks back and they were asking me why I don't join the ISO. Well this nonsense pretty much sums it up.

[Lucretia]

This article was written by Barry Lyndon who used to post regularly on RevLeft. The posting of this article doesn't necessarily mean my endorsement of anything stated, but I found it incredibly interesting.

This is a first-hand account of statements from speakers from the Internationals Socialist Organization (ISO) on Cuba at their Socialism 2012 conference, which raised a relatively sizable controversy. For those unaware, the ISO considers Cuba to be a capitalist country. Here is the note:



I went to the 'Socialism 2012' conference held in Rosemont, IL(Near O'Hare airport) this past weekend. For those who are not familiar with the goings on of US 'leftist' politics, the International Socialist Organization, easily the largest and most visible leftist group in the United States, holds a three day conference every year in Chicago(their de facto base of operations), with dozens of speakers on all sorts of topics related to working class struggles, imperialism, and Marxist theory. I only went for a day because of the high cost of the whole three day conference(about $100 per person for the whole thing and far away from the main black and Latino working class neighborhoods of Chicago). While I was there, there were some pretty awesome workshops, one with a call in from Mumia Abu-Jamal, and another with Kevin Coval having an interview/conversation with revolutionary rapper Boots Riley.




In contrast to these informative and inspiring sessions, was the session the ISO had on Cuba. The speaker was Samuel Farber, a Cuban historian and academic who claims to be a socialist critiquing the Cuban economic and political system from the 'left'. Although at the beginning of the talk Farber acknowledged that the Cuban Revolution had accomplished positive things with regards to healthcare and education, he did not go into detail about what they were, and it was soon clear that he was more or less clearing his throat before he went into the main body of his talk, which was a vitriolic attack on Cuba's revolution and its leadership.




Among the claims made- Cuba is a brutal dictatorship, akin to Stalin's Soviet Union (Farber made this comparison repeatedly). There are no real elections, just rubber stamp sessions by technocrats who are compliant tools of the bureaucracy, workers are simply commanded to do whatever the Communist Party wants and exercise no say in major economic decisions, Fidel and Raul Castro have been running the island as a personal fiefdom for the last 50 years, treating the Cuban people "like children"(his words), instead of adults that can manage their own affairs. Moreover, he made the claim that the Cuban Revolution was never a socialist revolution to begin with because it was led by a handful of middle class professional revolutionaries, that the working class and the peasants played a insignificant role(a completely false claim-Louis Perez's masterly book 'Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution' demonstrates clearly that it was a revolution led jointly by workers and peasants). And finally, that there was no significant difference between racism in Cuba and racism in the United States, and institutionalized racism was as entrenched there as in the US. The only hope for Cuba, Farber concluded, was for a 'genuine revolutionary left' to take control-although he never specified who this revolutionary left was, although he grudgingly admitted it was rather small and located almost entirely outside of Cuba(rather like that much more well known 'Cuban opposition' in Miami).




During the Q&A session that followed Farber's talk, I was among many members of the audience who challenged Farber's claims. An African-American comrade stood up and asked Farber how he could say that Cuba was just as racist at the US given the fact that Cuba sent thousands of troops into Angola to defeat apartheid South Africa and has provided shelter to black revolutionaries such as Assata Shakur fleeing persecution in the US. He challenged Farber to give an example of anything like the murder of Trayvon Martin happening in Cuba. Farber could provide no such examples. Various comrades from different parts of Latin America, as well as Turkey, pointed to Cuba's massive medical internationalism, the tens of thousands of doctors it deploys all over the Third World that save countless lives every single year, which Farber didn't even mention, and how Cuba's example inspires countless millions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia by showing that successful resistance to capitalism and imperialism is really possible. Hardly the actions of a sadistic 'totalitarian' dictatorship.




I stood up and pointed out that Farber's claims that there is no 'workers democracy' in Cuba is false, when you consider that just this last year Cuba witnessed massive debates involving nearly 9 MILLION workers(this in a country of only 11 million), that took place in factories and farms and workplaces all over the country, about what economic reforms were necessary to make Cuba's economy more productive, and that far from being 'rubber stamp' sessions, literally dozens of laws were amended and changed because of grassroots workers opposition to certain proposals, as outlined in an excellent article put out in 'Liberation' newspaper(http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/the-role-of-unions-in.html) in response to Sam Farber's articles in 'Socialist Worker' on the subject, written by people who have been to Cuba and seen workers democracy there firsthand. Moreover, I said that it was an act of incredible intellectual laziness to simply equate present-day Cuba with the Soviet Union under Stalin, given that its a different country, a different revolution that happened decades apart and while socialist, has forged its own path independent of the Soviet model, which is all the more obvious given that Cuba has survived and maintained its socialist system over 20 years after the USSR collapsed.




Finally, I concluded by saying that in a week I am going to Cuba with the Venceremos brigade to provide material aid and solidarity with the Cuban people in defiance of the US travel ban, and that anyone interested should if they can go see Cuba themselves instead of listening to a 'sectarian hack'(my words). The ISO members in the room exploded into boos and yelled that I was 'rude' and 'disrespectful'. Nothing was disrespectful, apparently, about bashing and smearing an entire revolution involving millions of people. Only challenging and exposing such slander is objectionable.




The ISO members at the session, apparently keen to 'prove' that they are not aiding US imperialism, reiterated that they are against the US blockade against Cuba. But this is empty rhetoric, not backed up by any concrete action. The ISO has never shown up to ANY events protesting the blockade on Cuba(which are numerous in Chicago), and Stan Smith, an organizer for the Committee to Free the Cuban Five, recalls ISO members refusing to sign petitions in support of freeing the Five. For 'leftists' in the United States of all places to act in this way, this represents a total abandonment of internationalism, and worse, passive complicity in the US governments continuing war against the Cuban people.




I should add that it would be foolish to claim that Cuba is a perfect society without faults, or that there is no room for improvement. Within Cuba there are serious and real problems of bureaucracy, corruption, censorship, political repression, racism, sexism, homophobia, and dangerous concessions to capitalism such as the tourist industry. But as a strong supporter of self-determination, I fully expect the Cuban people to solve these problems themselves and within the parameters of a society that they have fought to build and defend against decades of embargo, terrorism, and threats from a imperialist behemoth 90 miles away. The role of progressives in the United States is to fight against the blockade, call for the release of the Cuban Five, and most certainly NOT lend credence to the corporate media's lies about Cuba by attacking it as a 'totalitarian' dictatorship.




The reason I am deeply bothered by this whole episode is that it does not speak well for what passes for the 'left' that while some say they want a radically transformed and egalitarian society, they trash any example of it occurring in the real world because it fails to live up to their standards of pie in the sky purity. Moreover, there was something grotesquely hypocritical about comfortable, mostly white middle class Americans(who compose the vast majority of the ISO's membership) who have never come close to making a revolution lecturing Latin Americans about what revolution and socialism 'really means'. The reason I bothered to argue against them at this forum is because I think that it is especially important, in the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street, to argue for and highlight real alternatives to capitalism. For the first time in decades, a considerable number of people, particularly young people, are looking for answers outside the corporate two-party oligarchy. It is a complete disgrace that the ISO, which arguably reaches more idealistic, progressive young people then any other leftist org in the United States, feeds them lies, slander and defeatist tripe about one of the most successful and inspiring revolutions in modern history. Fortunately, I am excited that I am very soon going to see this revolution for myself."



Although I am not a member of the ISO, I was at this very session of the conference. The discussion period after Farber's talk consisted mostly of Marxist-Leninist types challenging Farber's claims on Cuba without really knowing what they were talking about, or in some cases twisting what Farber was saying. Probably the low point of the discussion was when a couple of Spart-sounding kids (who, I should mention, looked awfully white and middle class!) insulted Farber, calling him a "sectarian hack" grinding an ideological axe, and proceeded to lecture Farber -- who has lived in Cuba for many years -- on how there is no racism or things like "stop and frisk" there. But I also recall the point raised in the article about Cuba sending troops to Angola. What "Barry Lyndon" leaves out is that Farber acknowledged that, then gave examples of the Cuban regime sending troops abroad for decidedly reactionary purposes in Eritrea and Ethiopia. The deployment of Cuban forces abroad, it seems, was not really about liberating workers, but was consistent with the role Cuba played in aligning itself with the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. If you define the Soviet bloc, including the suppression of workers' uprisings in Eastern Europe, as "socialist," then I suppose Cuba's foreign policy was also "socialist."

From what I remember, most of the people who challenged Farber's facts did so not because they were well informed enough on Cuba to point out where Farber might have been in error, but because Farber's facts did not line up with their ideological preconceptions about what a socilialist country by definition had to be like. So, for example, since racism is a product of capitalism and class society, and Cuba is not a class society, by definition Cuba could not be a racist society. You can see the quality of the logic here, and I must say that Farber earned my respect with the patience and consideration he had for the people silly enough to make such claims even without knowing the empirical facts on the issue.

So take the article pasted above with a grain of salt. Farber's talk was "anti-socialist" insofar as it was anti-Castro-regime. Also the insinuations that the anti-Castro-regime policy is the result of the demographic backgrounds of the members of the ISO is laughable. In the very discussion period mentioned by this article, the majority of ISO members (I know they were members because they announced themselves as such) were people of color. One, I recall very specifically (and conveniently omitted by "Barry Lyndon," had fought with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, been a member of the ISO for over twenty years, had attended the ISO's conference for over a decade, and provided a moving and eloquent statement on the logic of opposing imperialism while at the same time opposing the ruling classes within the countries that might be the targets of imperialism.

I would also like note that I was surprised at just how open and democratic the discussion periods after the talks were. (In fact, I think it may have been a little TOO open.) The very same people who complain about how bourgeois and anti-Leninist the ISO is are the very same people who were not afraid to take advantage of the openness of the discussion period to say highly critical, at times even personally insulting, things that -- if said at a conference held by their tendency -- would have resulted in a rapid ejection from the premises. It says a lot about the ISO that they were not afraid to expose potential members or recruits to such highly critical viewpoints at an event designed, in part, to persuade them to join their organization.

[campesino]

do you have to be a Marxist-Leninist to be a member of the ISO?
what is the point of criticizing Cuba, when they are powerless to change the situation, are they plotting a revolution in Cuba.

[Art Vandelay]

do you have to be a Marxist-Leninist to be a member of the ISO?
what is the point of criticizing Cuba, when they are powerless to change the situation, are they plotting a revolution in Cuba.

The ISO is a Trotskyist party.

[RedHal]

even worse, the ISO are the Cliffite branch of Trotskyism

[Jimmie Higgins]

do you have to be a Marxist-Leninist to be a member of the ISO?No - if fact you'd have to be a pretty idiosyncratic M-L to even agree with most of the basic points of agreement for the group. The ISO's tradition is non-orthodox Trotskyism. I mention "non-orthodox" because most of the flack that we get is from other Trotskyist groups stems from not supporting Cuba or other so-called socialist countries as examples of socialism - we see them as qualitatively different and in some examples legitimately revolutionary, but national-liberation revolutionary, not proletarian.

what is the point of criticizing Cuba, when they are powerless to change the situation, are they plotting a revolution in Cuba.Ha, no. We defend Cuba against US propaganda or imperialist intentions, but the reason to criticize it is to dispel the idea that it sould be supported on the grounds of being or striving for socialism. We criticize the idea that it is "actual existing socialism" as the OP claims.

Farber's been giving a version of that talk for years and there are always some people from other views criticizing him in the discussions after those talks. Sometimes it seems sincere and comradely, people are upfornt and say I think it is socialist, look at X, Y, Z. Other times it's much less sincere and people interrupt or read these long denunciations in acts of revolutionary posturing, not a debate about what is or isn't socialism let alone the specifics of the actual presentation. It happens with some other talks too, but generally anything around criticism of Cuba or the USSR - Farber seems to have a special audience of detractors though that seem particularly nasty and often criticize him personally and whatnot.

[Art Vandelay]

I think the article's biggest problem, is that the author seems to think that "workers control," equals socialism.

[Veovis]

I think the article's biggest problem, is that the author seems to think that "workers control," equals socialism.

As opposed to bourgeois control?

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I do not fully understand the problem the ISO has with the Cuban regime. Are they denouncing the "totalitarian" state, or the socio-economic system, and if meant is the latter, what do Trotskyists want? It seems that Trotskyists are merely sectarian Leninists, i.e. don't have a fundamental critique of the organization of "Stalinist" economies.

[REDSOX]

We in Great britain have our own version of Sam faber. He is called Mike Gonzales and he is a member of the SWP. He too makes similar slanders against Cuba that faber does, and despite gonzale's claim to be against the blockade of Cuba, he and the SWP have not done anything to help the people of Cuba against the blockade either. I can only say they fucking deserve each other.

[Geiseric]

I do not fully understand the problem the ISO has with the Cuban regime. Are they denouncing the "totalitarian" state, or the socio-economic system, and if meant is the latter, what do Trotskyists want? It seems that Trotskyists are merely sectarian Leninists, i.e. don't have a fundamental critique of the organization of "Stalinist" economies.

Well Orthodox Trotskyists (I don't see any differences between this and Bolshevism) strive for a fully state controlled economy, the union apparatus should be kept independent, and the soviets are the ones in charge of organizing the state and productive forces.

Cuba as far as I know has a planned economy, or at least the main industries are state controlled, which is a good thing. the problem is that the Bureaucracy places themselves above the working class and starts making decisions for itself, for its own survival.

Before the U.S. started the Embargo, Fidel wanted to improve relations with them, and as far as I can tell, he was forced into his alliance with the USSR, not unlike Ho Chi Mihn, at the same time adopting the planned economy out of necessity.

ISO though believe that it's State Capitalism or something along those lines, which basically drops the marxist definition of a class and a state, since state bureaucrats are actually not owning any of the capital they manage. It could easilly be fixed, if the Cuban people force democracy inside of the CPC, or whatever the state's party is. Are there more than one party though?

[Art Vandelay]

As opposed to bourgeois control?

No as opposed to socialism. Simply because there is some degree of workers control (to what extent can be argued), does not mean that it is a socialist society.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Bald men fighting over a comb

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Well Orthodox Trotskyists (I don't see any differences between this and Bolshevism) strive for a fully state controlled economy, the union apparatus should be kept independent, and the soviets are the ones in charge of organizing the state and productive forces.

Cuba as far as I know has a planned economy, or at least the main industries are state controlled, which is a good thing. the problem is that the Bureaucracy places themselves above the working class and starts making decisions for itself, for its own survival.

Before the U.S. started the Embargo, Fidel wanted to improve relations with them, and as far as I can tell, he was forced into his alliance with the USSR, not unlike Ho Chi Mihn, at the same time adopting the planned economy out of necessity.

ISO though believe that it's State Capitalism or something along those lines, which basically drops the marxist definition of a class and a state, since state bureaucrats are actually not owning any of the capital they manage. It could easilly be fixed, if the Cuban people force democracy inside of the CPC, or whatever the state's party is. Are there more than one party though?

Wouldn't we all like to have Soviet control... Trotskyists are though precisely the same as "Stalinists" in that they seem to be unaware of alienation of labor. To be honest, the term "Trotskyist" seems synonymous with content-less sectarianism.

[Yuppie Grinder]

While those statements about Cuba have little to do with reality, Cuba is obviously capitalist.

[Art Vandelay]

For some reason one of my posts was removed from this thread, without note.

[HEAD ICE]

i have been on the website for over a month refreshing waiting for shawki's advertised talk on "left-wing communism" but i guess it isnt coming :(

[Positivist]

What is this about the 9 million strong workers debate drawing public policy changes? Is this true? And if so how is it organized?

[Lucretia]

No as opposed to socialism. Simply because there is some degree of workers control (to what extent can be argued), does not mean that it is a socialist society.

This is correct. Workers having some degree of control over production does not make that society socialist. Workers have *some* (mostly minimal) control over their workplace and over the economy in capitalism. The question isn't whether they have any control -- but as to whether their control is significant enough that it translates into political liberation, or rather, whether their control translates into the smashing of class power such that social relations in general, and not just social relations of production, can be organized along entirely different, more egalitarian lines.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

For some reason one of my posts was removed from this thread, without note.

I removed it because it was tendency and flame bait. I see anymore of those kinds of posts and I will delete them as well.

[Art Vandelay]

I removed it because it was tendency and flame bait. I see anymore of those kinds of posts and I will delete them as well.

Fair enough, I would have referred to it as tongue and cheek or hyperbole but whatever.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Fair enough, I would have referred to it as tongue and cheek or hyperbole but whatever.

Please keep those such posts confined to Chit Chat and Non-Political. I understand the need to voice your opinion but adding in some details to your assertion never hurt. :)

[Prometeo liberado]

Remember when this was about the comedy stylings of the ISO?:confused:

[Positivist]

The socio-economic system of Cuba today is certainly not socialist, but it isn't a bad intermediate society either assuming that the CP still is interested in moving to socialism. The problem I think with most people here is that we're not so sure that the CP is.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I do not fully understand the problem the ISO has with the Cuban regime. Are they denouncing the "totalitarian" state, or the socio-economic system, and if meant is the latter, what do Trotskyists want? It seems that Trotskyists are merely sectarian Leninists, i.e. don't have a fundamental critique of the organization of "Stalinist" economies.Really the "totalitarianism" of Cuba is pretty light compared to many countries blocked with either the US or USSR during the cold war. (Just as an annecdote, in the US we always hear stories about people going to Cuba and the police intimidating any locals the Americans talk to... well I was handing out fliers tonight in a largely black neighborhood and cops stood a foot away from me the whole time and followed me to make sure people would be too intimidated to take a flier. So even if those stories about Cuban police are really true, it really isn't much different than elsewhere).

In many ways there are admirable reforms in Cuba and the government's support of anti-imperialist struggles in other places in Latin America and the rest of the world is also admirable. But, it's not socialism if socialism is the self-emancipation of the working class and worker's power.

First, It was never even a socialist revolution in name or in form and only became "communist" because of Cold War politics and US's hostility to national liberation in "it's backyard". So having a revolution that is not a mass worker's revolution and doesn't even say it's fighting for socialism and then only becomes communist after siding with the USSR, should be suspect as far as having "socialist credentials". It's hard to self-emancipate when the emancipation is done by others and they don't even say it's for socialist reasons.

Second, for all the claims of "worker's involvement" in running the economy, it's not really run by workers in any meaningful way. I've brought this up before in these debates and people show how worker's get a democratic comment period on policy, but really they have in Castro's own workds "an advisory role" which when it comes down to it, US trade unions could claim they have the same "advisory powers" with their "partnerships" with the bosses. Or what about German unions who advise the bosses? But really who controls, and who makes the decisions in either US businesses or Cuba? Even the most advanced proposals for worker-self management in Cuba are incomplete because while each worksite would be self-managed, the overall economy would still be run by bureaucrats - so it would be like coops with orders from above - management of your own exploitation.

Then looking back at the history of Cuba has also shown that the economy and decsions are not made consciously by workers - all the policies in the past were based around USSR trade agreements, and top-down polices regarding trade or trying to be more self-sufficient.

Our fundamental critique is that like social democracy, the Stalinist model - particularly where it was adopted as part of national liberation struggles - is "socialism from above" and the worker's movement pulled and influenced by another class, the petty-bourgeois. After the USSR, many anti-imperialist movements looked to that model (as well as that block) as a way to push back against the power of French or US or whatever imperialism. It was able to rally workers and pesants and some of the local bourgeois that wasn't dependent on imperialism and recognized that development was held back by imperial arrangements and desired "modernization" of the local economy. This is accomplished through what we an other Stalinist critics call "State-capitalism" that is, rather than the social surplus being controlled and directed by private capitalists or groups of private capitalists, it's controlled by the governmnet which can then direct capital and develop the economy in ways that the native bourgeois is too weak, too dependent, or too disorganized to resist imperialism.

The model is not the same in all places, and many places had different paths, but overall it's the lack of actual worker's power from below and collective ownership and decision-making on all levels of the economy. While Cuba is not the tyranny it's sometimes presented as by the US, it's also no "socialism" in Marxist terms... at best it "nicer" but so are many Scandinavian social democratic countries.

[A Marxist Historian]

I do not fully understand the problem the ISO has with the Cuban regime. Are they denouncing the "totalitarian" state, or the socio-economic system, and if meant is the latter, what do Trotskyists want? It seems that Trotskyists are merely sectarian Leninists, i.e. don't have a fundamental critique of the organization of "Stalinist" economies.

As Jimmie Higgins was honest enough to state, the ISO are "nonorthodox" Trotskyists, i.e. the organization, though currently adopting Cliffism, is a lineal descendant of Max Shachtman and his organization, with whom Trotsky and the "orthodox" Trotskyists had a bitter break with in the last year of his life over exactly this stuff.

Shachtman himself took this direction of motion away from Trotskyism into "critically" supporting the Bay of Pigs, and in his last years became the godfather of neoconservatism.

Old Shactmanite Hal Draper, the mentor of the ISO's parent organization, the deceased former IS, refused to go that far. When the IS exploded in the 1970s, the most viable piece turned out to be the ISO, the chunk that turned to the theories of Tony Cliff, whose own variety of "third campism," Shachtman's idea that in conflicts between capitalist and Stalinist states you should support neither, but only an alleged "workers camp," originated out of the Korean War instead of WWII.

But the ISO, as is clear from this thread, are "third campists" too. They thought the collapse of the USSR was a wonderful thing that everyone should hail, not a return to capitalism but just a "step sideways" that didn't really mean too much.

And are now finally willing to publicly apply this, in classic Shachtmanite fashion, to Cuba. Barry Lyndon's notion that there is a whole lot of workers democracy in Cuba is piffle. But trying to claim that there is as much racism in Cuba as in the USA is downright insane.

Yes, Fidel and Raul are Stalinists (especially Raul) and the Cuban regime has all too much in common with the former regime in the USSR, with which Cuba was very closely allied. But that's not capitalism, and the Cuban working class and peasantry know the difference.

Despite all its faults, a vast improvement over Batista's colonial capitalism, and failing to support the Cuban workers state, however bureaucratically deformed, against capitalist forces, internal or external, is exactly like failing to support a union, say the ILWU, when it goes on strike in Longview because its bureaucratic leaders are no good.

In a word, it's scabbing.

And that's not just rhetoric. According to Barry Lyndon, the ISO refuses even to sign petitions for the Cuban Five! Horrifying.

-M.H.-

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't think there's anything controversial about pointing out the serious democratic deficit, bureaucracy, corruption, sexism, homophobia and lingering quasi-nationalist sentiment in Cuba, and how these things make Cuba incompatible with Socialism.

Sure, there's much to celebrate about Cuba - ejecting US imperialism and the Batista regime, doing much to reduce various inequalities in society and providing a decent level of living to all Cubans and the excellent successes in healthcare, education and bio-medicine.

But this is all ingenuity that has flourished under the Capitalist mode of production, and the Cubans are not particularly favourable to the 'Socialist' system in Cuba - i've been, i've spoken to Cubans.

[cynicles]

Even on some of the things that Cuba needs improving they've made progress on, they've managed to move forward on things like gay rights from where they were by a significant margin.

[Lucretia]

Even on some of the things that Cuba needs improving they've made progress on, they've managed to move forward on things like gay rights from where they were by a significant margin.

So has the United States. Doesn't make "socialist" or "transitioning to socialism."

[A Marxist Historian]

I don't think there's anything controversial about pointing out the serious democratic deficit, bureaucracy, corruption, sexism, homophobia and lingering quasi-nationalist sentiment in Cuba, and how these things make Cuba incompatible with Socialism.

Sure, there's much to celebrate about Cuba - ejecting US imperialism and the Batista regime, doing much to reduce various inequalities in society and providing a decent level of living to all Cubans and the excellent successes in healthcare, education and bio-medicine.

But this is all ingenuity that has flourished under the Capitalist mode of production, and the Cubans are not particularly favourable to the 'Socialist' system in Cuba - i've been, i've spoken to Cubans.

Yes, all those things The Boss point out exist, Cuba is not a socialist country, in fact there can be no such thing as socialism in a single country, that's basic Marxism, misnamed "Trotskyism" by our M-L's.

But neither is it a capitalist country. There have of course been a lot of concessions to private capitalism lately, as the Cuban economy heads toward collapse. But calling Cuba "capitalist" is exactly like calling the earth flat. It's just plain absurd, and gives alleged "Marxists" a bad name.

Cuba is a transitional society in between capitalism and socialism, which under the bureaucratic misleadership of the Castro brothers is currently heading back in the direction of capitalism. And have managed to give socialism a bad name with all too many Cubans by now, with the corruption, inefficiencies and economic failures of the Cuban system.

Or, putting that more succinctly but saying exactly the same thing, it is a Stalinist country.

Giving credit to all the good things about Cuba to capitalism is--pro capitalist garbage. Horrifying to hear an alleged socialist spouting capitalist propaganda like that.

Capitalism is a rotten system run by bosses the workers have to overthrow, not any basis for, as our local "Boss" here on Revleft puts it, "ingenuity that has flourished under the Capitalist mode of production."

I remember way back when when I was a PL supporter PL had a real nice chant:

"Kick the Bosses in the ass, power to the working class!"

-M.H.-

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Sorry, that's the most hack, un-Marxian viewpoint i've ever heard. The fact that it comes from a user called 'A Marxist Historian' is just comic irony.

HOW, pray tell, can you have a society that is 'not capitalist' and 'not socialist'? I mean, it's clearly not feudal...! Capitalism is where there are bosses, there are workers, there is surplus, a state, money and classes. All these things exist in Cuba. That is unarguable. Just because it has some excellent welfare, has a comradely foreign policy re: Venezuela, Angola, Haiti and once made the right noises with regards to Socialism, and has a 'Communist Party' as its ruling clique, does not make it Socialist.

It is an insult that you call yourself either of the terms 'Marxist and 'Historian'. Plainly, you have to fit your critique of Cuba somewhere into your anti-Stalin yet pro-Lenin worldview, meaning that you must imply that the bureaucratic state-managed Capitalism of Cuba is not the problem (even though you yourself admit that there cannot be Socialism in one country....if there's not Socialism, it's Capitalism!), but merely that it's the Stalinists running the show and not your precious lot. Obviously, if YOUR lot were in power Cuba would be a flourishing workers' democracy. Never mind that whole lark about, you know, analysing material conditions rather than purporting some great man, pro-ideology view of history, Mr. 'Marxist' Historian.

I mean yes, there has been some solid theory on the idea that Socialism is the transitional stage between Capitalism and the stateless, moneyless, classless society that we term 'communism'. But now you want to have a transition stage between Capitalism and Socialism too? I mean, I thought that you know, revolution brought down Capitalism and so begins Socialism, I must be wrong. Apparently you can transition from Capitalism to Communism, over a period of what, 50+ years? Well, if that's not blatant reformism then I don't know what is.

And yeah, instead of being able to actually critique my post in any meaningful way, you mis-quote me and use this shoddy piece of mis-quoting as 'evidence' that i'm some sort of dastardly Capitalist. I'm a Capitalist because....I call Cuba capitalist? Wtf? I call Cuba Capitalist because i'm a Marxist, and to me, as i've said before, if it has a state, money, classes, surplus, bosses, workers and elements of the free market, then it is Capitalist. Cuba, according to this basic truth, is quite clearly Capitalist.


You stick to your mindless sectarianism. I think it says a lot about you and me that, even with the admittedly vitriolic nature of this rant, i've at least provided a solid justification for my criticism of the pro-Cuba crowd, rather than just resorting to baseless, totally mis-construed and untruthful ad hominem attacks. I mean, where was the need to call me a Capitalist? What are you trying to gain? It's patently not true, so please just fuck off with such slander!

[Gormanilius]

Saw the original posting of this piece from said person's facebook a few weeks ago.

I am confused - how is a person sectarian for having criticisms? Healthy debate about issues we think to be genuine is a good thing. I would be concerned if someone silenced another because they disagreed with their viewpoint. We need to be critical of everyone, including ourselves. It is the only way we ensure that capitalism will be abolished.

Disagreement is not sectarianism. Sectarianism is wanting to silence the disagreement.

[Peoples' War]

Sorry, that's the most hack, un-Marxian viewpoint i've ever heard. The fact that it comes from a user called 'A Marxist Historian' is just comic irony.

HOW, pray tell, can you have a society that is 'not capitalist' and 'not socialist'? I mean, it's clearly not feudal...! Capitalism is where there are bosses, there are workers, there is surplus, a state, money and classes. All these things exist in Cuba. That is unarguable. Just because it has some excellent welfare, has a comradely foreign policy re: Venezuela, Angola, Haiti and once made the right noises with regards to Socialism, and has a 'Communist Party' as its ruling clique, does not make it Socialist.

It is an insult that you call yourself either of the terms 'Marxist and 'Historian'. Plainly, you have to fit your critique of Cuba somewhere into your anti-Stalin yet pro-Lenin worldview, meaning that you must imply that the bureaucratic state-managed Capitalism of Cuba is not the problem (even though you yourself admit that there cannot be Socialism in one country....if there's not Socialism, it's Capitalism!), but merely that it's the Stalinists running the show and not your precious lot. Obviously, if YOUR lot were in power Cuba would be a flourishing workers' democracy. Never mind that whole lark about, you know, analysing material conditions rather than purporting some great man, pro-ideology view of history, Mr. 'Marxist' Historian.

I mean yes, there has been some solid theory on the idea that Socialism is the transitional stage between Capitalism and the stateless, moneyless, classless society that we term 'communism'. But now you want to have a transition stage between Capitalism and Socialism too? I mean, I thought that you know, revolution brought down Capitalism and so begins Socialism, I must be wrong. Apparently you can transition from Capitalism to Communism, over a period of what, 50+ years? Well, if that's not blatant reformism then I don't know what is.

And yeah, instead of being able to actually critique my post in any meaningful way, you mis-quote me and use this shoddy piece of mis-quoting as 'evidence' that i'm some sort of dastardly Capitalist. I'm a Capitalist because....I call Cuba capitalist? Wtf? I call Cuba Capitalist because i'm a Marxist, and to me, as i've said before, if it has a state, money, classes, surplus, bosses, workers and elements of the free market, then it is Capitalist. Cuba, according to this basic truth, is quite clearly Capitalist.


You stick to your mindless sectarianism. I think it says a lot about you and me that, even with the admittedly vitriolic nature of this rant, i've at least provided a solid justification for my criticism of the pro-Cuba crowd, rather than just resorting to baseless, totally mis-construed and untruthful ad hominem attacks. I mean, where was the need to call me a Capitalist? What are you trying to gain? It's patently not true, so please just fuck off with such slander!
The transition is in reference to the transition from capitalism to the lower phase of communism (socialism).

"Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." - Marx

Marx says this, not in reference to transition, but to the first/lower phase of communism!: "What we have to deal with here [in analyzing the programme of the workers' party] is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it comes."

You have to be taking the piss if you think a revolution will occur and the next morning "SOCIALISM!", especially decades ago. This would also involve you believing in a warped "socialism in one country".

I'm not agreeing with AMH, but careful not to fall into falsehoods. AMH is arguing that it is a Degenerated Workers' State, a flawed idea in my opinion. However, it is not claiming socialism, it is claiming that the economy is in transition, the state is still a workers' state, and the degeneration can be fixed via political revolution.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The transition is in reference to the transition from capitalism to the lower phase of communism (socialism).

"Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." - Marx

Marx says this, not in reference to transition, but to the first/lower phase of communism!: "What we have to deal with here [in analyzing the programme of the workers' party] is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it comes."

You have to be taking the piss if you think a revolution will occur and the next morning "SOCIALISM!", especially decades ago. This would also involve you believing in a warped "socialism in one country".

I'm not agreeing with AMH, but careful not to fall into falsehoods. AMH is arguing that it is a Degenerated Workers' State, a flawed idea in my opinion. However, it is not claiming socialism, it is claiming that the economy is in transition, the state is still a workers' state, and the degeneration can be fixed via political revolution.

If the Cuban revolution was in 2011, or 2010 or 2009, the idea of the transition might hold weight, but clearly, given the context of the Cuban revolution occurring 50 years ago, it is absolutely bogus to suggest that Cuba is in a transition to Socialism.

You're right that I may have expressed myself better, though. I just find this whole degenerated workers' state a sell-out from the Trotskyists designed to distance themselves politically from the Stalinists, without actually having any concrete policy program of their own.

[Lucretia]

The transition is in reference to the transition from capitalism to the lower phase of communism (socialism).

"Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." - Marx

Marx says this, not in reference to transition, but to the first/lower phase of communism!: "What we have to deal with here [in analyzing the programme of the workers' party] is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it comes."

You have to be taking the piss if you think a revolution will occur and the next morning "SOCIALISM!", especially decades ago. This would also involve you believing in a warped "socialism in one country".

I'm not agreeing with AMH, but careful not to fall into falsehoods. AMH is arguing that it is a Degenerated Workers' State, a flawed idea in my opinion. However, it is not claiming socialism, it is claiming that the economy is in transition, the state is still a workers' state, and the degeneration can be fixed via political revolution.

I think The Boss's point is a good one: if you are talking about a society transitioning to socialism, this raises the question: which mode of production prevails? Capitalist? Socialist? A hybrid between the two? Obviously an orthodox Trotskyist would disavow the first two possiblities and choose the third, but this just begs the additional question of which aspects of capitalism still exist and which have been replaced by socialist content (not just socialized forms)? Is there still value production? Are there classes? Is there a ruling class? Again, the Orthodox Trotskyist would claim that there's no value production (because there is the form of planning, although I hope honest interlocutors will concede that these were really just failed attempts at planning), that there are classes, but that there is no ruling class. Despite the fact that state bureaucrats use their economic position to maintain political control over the levers of "planning" and distribution, they should be regarded as a parasitic "caste" rather than a ruling class.

This last claim is particularly perplexing in the context of Cuba, for the typical argument in support of politically ruling castes is the Bonapartist model. Yet no reasonable person can argue that such a Bonapartist state of affiars exists in Cuba, or has existed in some time if it ever even existed to begin with. There is no balance of class forces that would allow a military or bureaucratic caste to take advantage of a stalemate in the class war, such that they can retain political power even as class power actually exists in other hands. For decades the workers of Cuba have exercised very little control over economic decisions, and unlike class societies, a socialist mode of production is not one that can permit political control antagonistic to the workers themselves, for it is the state (or rather some agency of political authority) that the workers' use to plan and control the economy. If they have little-to-no control over the state (as in Cuba and the other Stalinist regimes), they have little-to-no economic planning power. They are not the ruling class, and the state is not a workers' state.

In other words, socialist production necessarily entails workers having control over production decisions. (And here it is important to note that when Russia was a workers' state with bureaucratic distortions in the 1920s, the working class still exercised power over production on the shop floor, and exercised considerable control over the production decisions of the state through grassroots union activity, though the state bureaucrats were no longer democratically elected) . To the extent that workers are not governing the economy, are not actively shaping the decisions of a worker's state, the economy in question is not socialist or "transitioning to socialism." Increasing workers' power over production, not state control over the economy, is the sole logic by which to measure the transition to socialism. These two can and should coincide, but they are not the same thing. And while some political substitution might be necessary to preserve a political context in which workers can maintain economic power (banning counter-revolutionary parties, for instance), such substitution is not "socialist substitution" -- it is a bureaucratic distortion that hopes to clear temporary political space for workers to continue to assert their control over production in the present and in the future. And as their control over production grows, so too will their control over political governance. The two go hand-in-hand dialectically, though not always in synch with one another.

To argue otherwise is to turn socialism into an abstract state of affairs (e.g., a question of distribution rather than production). Instead, socialism is the process by which the direct producers regulate their metabolism with one another as with nature itself. This is the mistake that Marxists-Leninists use when they argue, "Well, workers in X Stalinist country had a higher standard of living and free health care!" As though rising consumption by workers is the essence of socialism rather than one byproduct -- a byproduct that, as capitalist "social democracies" the world over have shown, a socialist society does not have a monopoly over.

[A Marxist Historian]

Sorry, that's the most hack, un-Marxian viewpoint i've ever heard. The fact that it comes from a user called 'A Marxist Historian' is just comic irony.

HOW, pray tell, can you have a society that is 'not capitalist' and 'not socialist'? I mean, it's clearly not feudal...! Capitalism is where there are bosses, there are workers, there is surplus, a state, money and classes. All these things exist in Cuba. That is unarguable. Just because it has some excellent welfare, has a comradely foreign policy re: Venezuela, Angola, Haiti and once made the right noises with regards to Socialism, and has a 'Communist Party' as its ruling clique, does not make it Socialist.

It is an insult that you call yourself either of the terms 'Marxist and 'Historian'. Plainly, you have to fit your critique of Cuba somewhere into your anti-Stalin yet pro-Lenin worldview, meaning that you must imply that the bureaucratic state-managed Capitalism of Cuba is not the problem (even though you yourself admit that there cannot be Socialism in one country....if there's not Socialism, it's Capitalism!), but merely that it's the Stalinists running the show and not your precious lot. Obviously, if YOUR lot were in power Cuba would be a flourishing workers' democracy. Never mind that whole lark about, you know, analysing material conditions rather than purporting some great man, pro-ideology view of history, Mr. 'Marxist' Historian.

I mean yes, there has been some solid theory on the idea that Socialism is the transitional stage between Capitalism and the stateless, moneyless, classless society that we term 'communism'. But now you want to have a transition stage between Capitalism and Socialism too? I mean, I thought that you know, revolution brought down Capitalism and so begins Socialism, I must be wrong. Apparently you can transition from Capitalism to Communism, over a period of what, 50+ years? Well, if that's not blatant reformism then I don't know what is.

And yeah, instead of being able to actually critique my post in any meaningful way, you mis-quote me and use this shoddy piece of mis-quoting as 'evidence' that i'm some sort of dastardly Capitalist. I'm a Capitalist because....I call Cuba capitalist? Wtf? I call Cuba Capitalist because i'm a Marxist, and to me, as i've said before, if it has a state, money, classes, surplus, bosses, workers and elements of the free market, then it is Capitalist. Cuba, according to this basic truth, is quite clearly Capitalist.


You stick to your mindless sectarianism. I think it says a lot about you and me that, even with the admittedly vitriolic nature of this rant, i've at least provided a solid justification for my criticism of the pro-Cuba crowd, rather than just resorting to baseless, totally mis-construed and untruthful ad hominem attacks. I mean, where was the need to call me a Capitalist? What are you trying to gain? It's patently not true, so please just fuck off with such slander!

Yes, I was a bit rude, 'cuz your post pissed me off, with you saying that yeah, there are all sorts of great things about Cuba, but it's still capitalist. That is pro-capitalist propaganda you're spreading here, pure and simple.

If all the things Cuba has achieved, despite it being an island 90 miles from Florida, under blockade from the imperialist power ruling the world, teetering on the edge of economic bankruptcy for a generation now, are possible under capitalism, then capitalism is a fine system, just needs to be cleaned up a little, and all socialists are stupid utopians.

And you think there is no transitional period between capitalism and socialism? Then where did that Marx fellow come up with that fool notion of his of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," overseeing society during the transitional period he talked about between capitalism and socialism? Was he a nitwit, or what?

Yes, there are elements of capitalism in Cuban society, because it isn't socialist yet, and, for that matter, obviously not headed in a socialist direction at the moment.

And you agree that you can't have socialism in one country. That means, doesn't it, that if the workers ever have a revolution anywhere, if it doesn't happen in the entire world all at once, that if there can be no such thing as a transition period between capitalism & socialism with elements of both, then ... workers who don't want capitalism should stay home and not get involved, because it's a waste of time, just get a bunch of people killed most likely. In fact, they should do their best to prevent any such thing.

Right?

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

If the Cuban revolution was in 2011, or 2010 or 2009, the idea of the transition might hold weight, but clearly, given the context of the Cuban revolution occurring 50 years ago, it is absolutely bogus to suggest that Cuba is in a transition to Socialism.

You're right that I may have expressed myself better, though. I just find this whole degenerated workers' state a sell-out from the Trotskyists designed to distance themselves politically from the Stalinists, without actually having any concrete policy program of their own.

OK, you are more rational now, and I have calmed down.

Ignoring your motivology, which even if absolutely true, which it absolutely isn't, would be just as absolutely irrelevant to the point at hand, the idea that Cuban society can't possibly be in transition 'cuz the revolution was a mere half century ago, shows an even more absolute lack of historical understanding.

Yes, Cuba is a museum piece frozen in a time warp, which economically is in much worse shape, and capitalist elements are seeping in at the pores, but at its core is remarkably unchanged from what it was, say, in 1962 as opposed to 2012.

Fidel is by far the oldest leader of a country on planet earth, far older even than California's eternal governor, Jerry Brown. That's not just a weird historical accident.

The human race has been around for, what, a million years now? To you, fifty years may seem like a long time. From the standpoint of human history, it's an eyeblink.

-M.H.-

[Peoples' War]

What should ultimately determine whether or not the economy is still in transition to socialism, or is that transition stopped completely -- enough to characterize it as capitalism proper, can be determined by who holds the political power, and who makes the decisions in the economy? Certainly not the workers.

What is the nature of the socialist gains now? Do they resemble Social Democracy more so than transition? Looks more like a social democracy/state capitalist situation.

What gains, exactly, are being defended by the current state, and what about them maintains a proletariat character, as opposed to state capitalist ventures, or what have you?

That is my issue with DWS theory.

[Jimmie Higgins]

If anyone would like to hear the talk in question, the audio is here:

http://wearemany.org/a/2012/06/cuba-since-revolution-of-1959-critical-assessment

Also an article Farber wrote is in a recent ISR here (but for some reason on my computer the article looks like it was written by ants!:sneaky:):

http://www.isreview.org/issues/82/feat-cubasfuture.shtml

At any rate while I've heard him speak before I haven't heard this particular talk yet. The ISR article though should put to rest any charge (regardless of agreeing with his assessment and opinions on Cuba or not) that he's parroting US propaganda or crudely painting a picture of Cuba as some totalitarian nightmare.

[Thirsty Crow]

The rationale behind the bulk of these famous "anti-socialis" accusations is childishly ridiculous. It's fundamental trait is to denounce any criticism put forward as "anti-socialists" becuase pro-capitalists also state the same thing! In effect, the focus shifts from a criticism of the existing state of things to avoiding making even a similar argument, pertaining to a spefiic social and political problem, as the class enemy.

With regard to the whole transition story about Cuba, it is impossible to argue that it is so and affirm at the same time that socialism - a mode of production different from the capitalist mode of production - cannot be achieved in a single country.
The whole point to transition is precisely that it cannot proceed in conditions of the continued worldwide dominance of capital. Exactly how does the Cuban society progress in this transition? The reality of the imperatives of the world market isn't and cannot be avoided by Cuba. Value and commodity production still hold, be they tarnished by certain aspects of political control and influence. Furhtermore, economic planning cannot be opposed to the anarchy of the market since planned value production, to differing extents, is a historical fact.

[A Marxist Historian]

The rationale behind the bulk of these famous "anti-socialis" accusations is childishly ridiculous. It's fundamental trait is to denounce any criticism put forward as "anti-socialists" becuase pro-capitalists also state the same thing! In effect, the focus shifts from a criticism of the existing state of things to avoiding making even a similar argument, pertaining to a spefiic social and political problem, as the class enemy.

With regard to the whole transition story about Cuba, it is impossible to argue that it is so and affirm at the same time that socialism - a mode of production different from the capitalist mode of production - cannot be achieved in a single country.
The whole point to transition is precisely that it cannot proceed in conditions of the continued worldwide dominance of capital. Exactly how does the Cuban society progress in this transition? The reality of the imperatives of the world market isn't and cannot be avoided by Cuba. Value and commodity production still hold, be they tarnished by certain aspects of political control and influence. Furhtermore, economic planning cannot be opposed to the anarchy of the market since planned value production, to differing extents, is a historical fact.

Menocchio's argument is a mirror image of the arguments Stalin's supporters made vs. Trotsky in the 1920s. They said that Trotsky was a hypocrite in claiming that he was a Bolshevik who wanted the Soviet Communist Party to fight as hard as it could to lead Soviet society in the direction of socialism, since he didn't believe it was possible.

So Trotsky wrote articles explaining how no, it was impossible to achieve socialism, to finish that transition, but that pushing that transition forward as far as practical was what the Left Opposition wanted. Those same articles would be his refutation of Menoccio's ideas also, word for word.

How would Cuban society progress in this transition? Clearly, to whatever degree social equality is increased and the regime is democratized and the forces of production of Cuban society grow, enabling better medical care, education, housing, wage levels etc. etc., then Cuban society is making progress in the transition to socialism.

But now, the wheel of history is moving in the opposite direction in Cuba, unfortunately.

I'm not clear as to what Menocchio means about "planned value production." Exchange or use value?

Since Cuba is to a considerable degree barred from exchange with foreigners, and internally the market is still subordinate economically to planned use value production through central state planning, "planned exchange value production" is not yet a historical fact in Cuba. And if the market does devour the Cuban economy, increasingly looking like a possibility, that would mark the breakdown of the Cuban system not some form of "planned exchange value production."

Planned exchange value production is a good description of what the IMF and World Bank try to shove down the throats of Third World countries, sometimes resulting in starvation as countries in Africa end up with high profit margins for those who own the farmland monocropped to export crops, while the people starve as enough food, the prime use value, is no longer produced. As a description of a Stalinist economy, it couldn't be wronger.

-M.H.-

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

What should ultimately determine whether or not the economy is still in transition to socialism, or is that transition stopped completely -- enough to characterize it as capitalism proper, can be determined by who holds the political power, and who makes the decisions in the economy? Certainly not the workers.

What is the nature of the socialist gains now? Do they resemble Social Democracy more so than transition? Looks more like a social democracy/state capitalist situation.

What gains, exactly, are being defended by the current state, and what about them maintains a proletariat character, as opposed to state capitalist ventures, or what have you?

That is my issue with DWS theory.

You think then that an economic and sociological question, whether society is progressing towards socialism, is determined by the political factor of who holds power?

At one level this is true, simply because nonrevolutionaries in charge of society will not want to push social development in the direction of socialism, unless that is simple and easy, which of course it is not. But basically, that is an elementary logical fallacy.

What gains are defended by a DWS? That society not private capitalists owns the "commanding heights" of the means of production, the banks, etc. etc. That first and foremost. As that is the most basic of all economic questions, it will almost invariably mean that there will be other gains for the working class, as the working class is the only class in society which objectively benefits from the socialization of the means of production. All that obvious stuff like no unemployment, no homelessness, cheap or free education, medical care and public transit, etc. etc., which you get in most, though not all DWS'es.

And even where you don't get that, notably China lately, you get the tremendous benefit that economic and social progress becomes possible in a Third World country, which otherwise is not the case in the era of imperialism, except under special circumstances.

-M.H.-

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Yes, I was a bit rude, 'cuz your post pissed me off, with you saying that yeah, there are all sorts of great things about Cuba, but it's still capitalist. That is pro-capitalist propaganda you're spreading here, pure and simple.




If all the things Cuba has achieved, despite it being an island 90 miles from Florida, under blockade from the imperialist power ruling the world, teetering on the edge of economic bankruptcy for a generation now, are possible under capitalism, then capitalism is a fine system, just needs to be cleaned up a little, and all socialists are stupid utopians.

And you think there is no transitional period between capitalism and socialism? Then where did that Marx fellow come up with that fool notion of his of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," overseeing society during the transitional period he talked about between capitalism and socialism? Was he a nitwit, or what?

Yes, there are elements of capitalism in Cuban society, because it isn't socialist yet, and, for that matter, obviously not headed in a socialist direction at the moment.

And you agree that you can't have socialism in one country. That means, doesn't it, that if the workers ever have a revolution anywhere, if it doesn't happen in the entire world all at once, that if there can be no such thing as a transition period between capitalism & socialism with elements of both, then ... workers who don't want capitalism should stay home and not get involved, because it's a waste of time, just get a bunch of people killed most likely. In fact, they should do their best to prevent any such thing.

Right?

-M.H.-[/QUOTE]

Barely 100 years ago, there were parts of the world where Capitalism was still the most revolutionary politico-economic system to have existed hitherto. There is this horrendous, sectarian tendency for some on the left to proclaim everything capitalist = bad, everything 'socialist = good. This is un-Marxist. It implies that by waving a red flag and proclaiming Socialism, society X is always qualitatively better than Capitalist, non-red flag waving society Y. Look, i've said it many times, Cuba has a system that has provided a marked improvement on what came before it, and this is not something that we should turn our nose up at. It has provided a better quality of life for a great deal of the poorest people. Cuba could have become a Haiti with a playground for rich expats, but it's become a society that, until recently, was quite strictly egalitarian. It has given the world some great bio-med inventions, it has been comradely in sending doctors to places of great need in the world. Some of the human interventions Cuba has made - in Angola, in Haita, in Venezuela - have been remarkable. But - but - Capitalism and Socialism are politico-economic systems, and there are some pretty solid criteria for what constitutes a Capitalist society: the existence of classes, money, a state, a market, private property. All of these do exist within Cuba and, as has been said above, there exists a working class which is largely divorced from the important political decisions (Been there, witnessed this!). Now, you are correct that there can be a transition to communism (but not a transition to the DotP - I believe you are from a tendency that sees Socialism as the transition to communism; there cannot be a transition from Capitalism to the transition period [Socialism], that is ridiculous), but Cuba has been transitioning back to Capitalism for near enough 20 years now, since the periodico especiale forced Cuba to institute a pro-tourist economic policy. The logical extension of such policies are now being seen - pro-petit bourgeois policies, the re-introduction of both private property and a market to facilitate it.

If you were arguing that, in the 1970s/1980s Cuba was a transitional society, I might politely disagree but nonetheless acknolwedge that your argument has some logical underpinning. But for near enough 2 decades, Cuba has been moving towards Capitalism, not transitioning away from it. Thus, your argument is really poor in this regard, and comes across as petty anti-Stalinist politicking (not that, as you know, I have any love for Marxist-Leninist politics!).

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

AMH - this shouldn't be about judging the Cuban government's response to its struggles from a moralistic standpoint. It should be about calling a spade a spade. If Cuba's in a phase of supposed "transition" yet with an economy deeply rooted in trade with capitalist nations around the world, it's not a socialist country.

A transitory economy can only be called that when the economy is actively "transiting" as it were towards its stated goal.

[Peoples' War]

You think then that an economic and sociological question, whether society is progressing towards socialism, is determined by the political factor of who holds power? According to Marx, the "transition" is accompanied by nothing bu the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The DOTP does not exist. Nationalized industry does not indicate transition, unless the control of that industry is by the workers.


At one level this is true, simply because nonrevolutionaries in charge of society will not want to push social development in the direction of socialism, unless that is simple and easy, which of course it is not. But basically, that is an elementary logical fallacy.How so?


What gains are defended by a DWS? That society not private capitalists owns the "commanding heights" of the means of production, the banks, etc. etc.So, the State = society? If the workers hold do not control the state/political power, how do they control state owned things?


That first and foremost. As that is the most basic of all economic questions, it will almost invariably mean that there will be other gains for the working class, as the working class is the only class in society which objectively benefits from the socialization of the means of production.Which means of production are "socialized"? As I said, the state controls the means of production, but the workers do not control the state, ergo we have an issue.


All that obvious stuff like no unemployment, no homelessness, cheap or free education, medical care and public transit, etc. etc., which you get in most, though not all DWS'es.How, again, is it a workers state, if the workers do not control the state?


And even where you don't get that, notably China lately, you get the tremendous benefit that economic and social progress becomes possible in a Third World country, which otherwise is not the case in the era of imperialism, except under special circumstances. -M.H.-Yes, glorious authoritarian capitalism.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

As Hailtothethief posted, Marx writes "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other." and further "What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it comes"

It is my understanding that Marx was for centralisation during the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. But the DotP has come to be used interchangeably with "socialism" through practical experience, it [I]is interchangeable. I don't remember Marx ever writing about Socialism, do you? I would like to know how many people can find me Marx writing about Socialism. Until anyone can, i will continue using the word Socialism interchangeably with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. My goal is communism, and to get there we have to overthrow the bourgeoisie of the country in which we live, know the language of, know the culture of etc. When the DotP emerges in similarly developed and neighboring countries, of course there would be a union of socialist countries then, but Socialism is the transition in which there are still contradictions among the people that need to gradually be fought collectively and combated by the workers state to reach a completely socialised, co-operative communist society.

[A Marxist Historian]

Barely 100 years ago, there were parts of the world where Capitalism was still the most revolutionary politico-economic system to have existed hitherto. There is this horrendous, sectarian tendency for some on the left to proclaim everything capitalist = bad, everything 'socialist = good. This is un-Marxist. It implies that by waving a red flag and proclaiming Socialism, society X is always qualitatively better than Capitalist, non-red flag waving society Y.

There you go. This is exactly where you are wrong. Me, I am a socialist first, and a Marxist second. If it turns out that Marxism means capitalism is better than socialism nowadays, then, to quote Karl Marx, "I am no Marxist."

A hundred and fifty years ago Marx thought that capitalism still played a useful role in society. He even took this to the point of thinking capitalist imperialism might be a good thing. He was wrong about that, but right that capitalism could still bring the human race forward, proof being the American Civil War, where that ultra-bourgeois revolutionary Abraham Lincoln was the leader of the successful struggle against slavery.

But then is then, and now is now. Nowadays capitalism is destroying human society and dragging us all back to barbarism, war, fascism and ethnic genocide, as well as forward to ecological destruction, global warming etc.

For me, that is the reason to be a socialist, and a revolutionary. No more, no less. Socialism isn't just a thing that might be nice, it is absolutely necessary for human survival, therefore justifying all the suffering and death that social revolution will automatically bring with it. That you don't have the same attitude is why I find your posts so annoying.




Look, i've said it many times, Cuba has a system that has provided a marked improvement on what came before it, and this is not something that we should turn our nose up at. It has provided a better quality of life for a great deal of the poorest people. Cuba could have become a Haiti with a playground for rich expats, but it's become a society that, until recently, was quite strictly egalitarian. It has given the world some great bio-med inventions, it has been comradely in sending doctors to places of great need in the world. Some of the human interventions Cuba has made - in Angola, in Haita, in Venezuela - have been remarkable. But - but - Capitalism and Socialism are politico-economic systems, and there are some pretty solid criteria for what constitutes a Capitalist society: the existence of classes, money, a state, a market, private property. All of these do exist within Cuba and, as has been said above, there exists a working class which is largely divorced from the important political decisions (Been there, witnessed this!). Now, you are correct that there can be a transition to communism (but not a transition to the DotP - I believe you are from a tendency that sees Socialism as the transition to communism; there cannot be a transition from Capitalism to the transition period [Socialism], that is ridiculous),

There you go again, I thought we straightened you out on that. On this, the "tendency" I follow is the Karl Marx tendency.

There can be no "transition" to the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is reformism. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the political form that corresponds to the transition period in between capitalism and communism, and in this category I include socialism too, which is not a "transition period," but, as Marx explained, the lower form of communism.

You seem to follow the classic Stalinist conception that you can have the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism at the same time. The problem with that is obvious. Socialism is a classless society. So, since there is no proletariat in a socialist society, a nonexistent proletariat cannot be the dictator of that society.



but Cuba has been transitioning back to Capitalism for near enough 20 years now, since the periodico especiale forced Cuba to institute a pro-tourist economic policy. The logical extension of such policies are now being seen - pro-petit bourgeois policies, the re-introduction of both private property and a market to facilitate it.

If you were arguing that, in the 1970s/1980s Cuba was a transitional society, I might politely disagree but nonetheless acknolwedge that your argument has some logical underpinning. But for near enough 2 decades, Cuba has been moving towards Capitalism, not transitioning away from it. Thus, your argument is really poor in this regard, and comes across as petty anti-Stalinist politicking (not that, as you know, I have any love for Marxist-Leninist politics!).

Yup, for two decades now, Cuba has been gradually moving back towards capitalism.

Has it arrived there yet? Nope. But what has happened lately is explicitly "pro petty bourgeois" policies. A quite accurate way of putting it. But has Cuba become some sort of a petty bourgeois state? Are those small businessmen the Castro brothers are encouraging running the country?

Hell no. The Cuban CP runs the country, and is still quite capable if it so feels like it of nationalizing all those petty business people it is encouraging this week next week. It's just not their state.

And you could never have a petty bourgeois state anyway, that could never work. A bourgeois state would be a state of the big Cuban bourgeoisie, and they are still all 90 miles away in Miami. And the Castro brothers still intend to keep things that way.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

...
A transitory economy can only be called that when the economy is actively "transiting" as it were towards its stated goal.

Why?

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

...
So, the State = society? If the workers hold do not control the state/political power, how do they control state owned things?

Which means of production are "socialized"? As I said, the state controls the means of production, but the workers do not control the state, ergo we have an issue.

How, again, is it a workers state, if the workers do not control the state?

.

Control is a side issue of lesser importance, which is why the phrase "workers control" was never used by Marx or Engels. What matters is ownership.

I went hunting through Das Kapital for the concept if not the phrase "workers control," and I finally found it. Can give you the ref if you like. What he says, interestingly, is that in the early stages of capitalism, the workers still control the means of production, but the capitalists own them! So not only is workers control not the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it's something which, according to Marx, you can perfectly well have under capitalism.

A deformed or degenerated workers state is best and most simply defined as one in which capitalism has been abolished, or at least the capitalist state has been destroyed, and the means of production are owned by society as a whole, but are controlled not by the workers, but by a social elite--a bureaucracy.

And what is a state anyway? Lenin's definition works for me. It's armed bodies of men committed to defend certain sets of property relations. The Soviet or Cuban states defended and defend the noncapitalist property relations in their respective countries, arms in hand, and those who tried then or try now to introduce capitalism end up in jail now in Cuba, and worse things happened to them under Stalin.

Therefore, since, as Marx explained in the Manifesto, objectively the proletariat is the only class in society whose objective class need is socialism, a state which defends proletarian property forms is objectively a workers state, regardless of whether workers democratically control it in any way, shape or form.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

As Hailtothethief posted, Marx writes "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other." and further "What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it comes"

It is my understanding that Marx was for centralisation during the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. But the DotP has come to be used interchangeably with "socialism" through practical experience, it [I]is interchangeable. I don't remember Marx ever writing about Socialism, do you? I would like to know how many people can find me Marx writing about Socialism. Until anyone can, i will continue using the word Socialism interchangeably with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. My goal is communism, and to get there we have to overthrow the bourgeoisie of the country in which we live, know the language of, know the culture of etc. When the DotP emerges in similarly developed and neighboring countries, of course there would be a union of socialist countries then, but Socialism is the transition in which there are still contradictions among the people that need to gradually be fought collectively and combated by the workers state to reach a completely socialised, co-operative communist society.

Try reading Critique of the Gotha Program by Marx, and, of course, State and Revolution by Lenin, which is even clearer on this. If you think that socialism and the D of the P are the same thing, well, whatever you are, you aren't a Marxist and you aren't a Leninist.

-M.H.-

[Ocean Seal]

We really aren't in position to do anything about Cuba... so can we stop the posturing.

[Chrome_Fist]

"an economy deeply rooted in trade with capitalist nations around the world, it's not a socialist country."


Perfectly said, Sinister, thats mostly why I'm a Hoxhaist

[Red Banana]

Therefore, since, as Marx explained in the Manifesto, objectively the proletariat is the only class in society whose objective class need is socialism, a state which defends proletarian property forms is objectively a workers state, regardless of whether workers democratically control it in any way, shape or form.

-M.H.-

If the workers do not control the means of production but simply "own" them, what is the point at all? The purpose of property isn't to just be able to say "This is mine" it is to have unilateral control over said property and reap its benefits. If the workers don't control the means of production but simply have some kind of superficial communal deed for them what will we have won? Nothing.
Just as Capitalists would never let the workers control the means of production while retaining ownership (because, as you say "ownership" is all that matters) because we would push forward measures that would only benefit us, so to would workers, in their own interest never hand control to some higher decision making bureau/agency as it would just enact policies to its own benefit, thus acting as de facto Capitalists.
The question should also be raised that if some entity controls something, couldn't it just, through its control, transfer ownership to itself, since it's the only entity with any power over decision making?
My main point: what is ownership if not control over a particular object?

[Thirsty Crow]

Menocchio's argument is a mirror image of the arguments Stalin's supporters made vs. Trotsky in the 1920s. They said that Trotsky was a hypocrite in claiming that he was a Bolshevik who wanted the Soviet Communist Party to fight as hard as it could to lead Soviet society in the direction of socialism, since he didn't believe it was possible.Nice smear attempt.


So Trotsky wrote articles explaining how no, it was impossible to achieve socialism, to finish that transition, but that pushing that transition forward as far as practical was what the Left Opposition wanted. Those same articles would be his refutation of Menoccio's ideas also, word for word.You really have to be a fool to think that Trotsky's argument, which was made entirely in relation to advancing industrialization in USSR, can apply to Cuba.



How would Cuban society progress in this transition? Clearly, to whatever degree social equality is increased and the regime is democratized and the forces of production of Cuban society grow, enabling better medical care, education, housing, wage levels etc. etc., then Cuban society is making progress in the transition to socialism.Yeah, all well and nice, these little formulas. Though, they do not correspond to the realities of Cuban society, which as you stated, has remained pretty much stagnant from the time of the revolution. Do you really think that an isolated, tiny island state can progress along this path of transition in the conditions of the post-soviet world? How can they develop their forces of production if not by succumbing to the imperatives of the world market?



But now, the wheel of history is moving in the opposite direction in Cuba, unfortunately.Nice metaphor. How about an analysis of the class dynamics at stake? If, as you contend, the social and political structure of Cuba remained pretty much the same during these decades, what social forces propelled this turning of direction?


I'm not clear as to what Menocchio means about "planned value production." Exchange or use value? Exchange value as capital.



Since Cuba is to a considerable degree barred from exchange with foreigners, and internally the market is still subordinate economically to planned use value production through central state planning...Actually, that would mean that monetary relations have been abolished altogether and replaced by direct political coercion in the form of strict rationing enforced by the state apparatus, which in itself cannot be taken to constitute the social and political core of workers' emancipation and socialism.
Tell me, do Cuban workers produce any surplus? If yes, how is the appropriation of said surplus organized?



A deformed or degenerated workers state is best and most simply defined as one in which capitalism has been abolished, or at least the capitalist state has been destroyed, and the means of production are owned by society as a whole, but are controlled not by the workers, but by a social elite--a bureaucracy.

You really need to take heed of the crucial difference between de iure ownership - a part of the legal superstructure of society - and de facto ownership, which amounts to control, not only of immediate workplace conditions and practices, but to social control over production.

It's hard to believe that self-described Marxists can so easily forget about this distinction and claim that control is an issue of lesser importance.


A transitory economy can only be called that when the economy is actively "transiting" as it were towards its stated goal.

Why?

You're for real? You're really asking why would a criterion for a society in transition be that the actual process of transition is actively underway?
That's ridiculous.

What makes an economy and society in transition then? You're essentially saying that an economy need not show any signs of transition towards socialism in order that it might be called "in transition". Which is plain ridiculius, and amounts to saying that a dog is a duck.

[DaringMehring]

I don't think you can say it is anti-socialist to attack Cuba, since Cuba is not socialist.

I do think it is damaging and wrong to run down Cuba though. The basic crime isn't anti-socialism, it is siding with one's bourgeoisie. They put out anti-Cuban propaganda in a constant stream. You have to fight and expose their lies. Not reinforce them by coming up with some leftist version of the same thing that is intended to be inoffensive to people who have been brainwashed by the bourgeoisie's lies.

Cuba may not be socialist, it may be a kind of petit-bourgeoise anti-imperial nationalism, but that has enabled progress despite world capital's monstrous embargo and attacks. Never side with world capitalism. USA is the world's leading imperialist power and if we who live here won't stand up for Cuba, then we're complicit in it.

However my experience with the ISO members was that they're reasonably friendly to Cuba. Not everyone there is a Schachtman pro-Vietnam War crusader. In fact I think they generally regard Schachtman as having ultimately gone over to the other side of the barricades.

[Jimmie Higgins]

However my experience with the ISO members was that they're reasonably friendly to Cuba. No one there is a Schachtman pro-Vietnam War crusader. In fact I think they generally regard Schachtman as having ultimately gone over to the other side of the barricades. Fixed that for you:lol:. It would be a breech of our basic organizational points of agreement to support Vietnam. Our slogan during the cold war, adopted from the SWP, was "neither Washington nor Moscow" so of course not supporting the USSR or Cuba "as examples of existing socialism" doesn't mean supporting the US against them. We participated and organized protests in solidarity with resistance against the Coup in Venezuela and we certainty don't think Chavez is a Socialist either.

So a lot of these charges of "attacking Cuba" or siding with the US are totally overblown - the real issue is ideological: the political difference is over how radicals should view Cuba and what it represents.

Again if there's any doubt as to what Farber is arguing with regards to Cuba and US imperialism, here's the conclusion to that piece from the ISR:


What is the way forward? It would be presumptuous of me, comfortably living in New York, to preach a program to people in Cuba. All I can say is that for Cuba to go forward, number one, its prospects depend on the total and unconditional rejection of the criminal blockade of the United States. That is a must. There is in addition, the nascent left wing. This developing left should be encouraged and supported, for example by collaborating with havanatimes.com, although unfortunately most people don’t have access to the Internet in Cuba.


I have no illusions that this developing left in Cuba can be a contender for power when a transition comes after Raúl Castro’s demise. But I think that this left can be essential to the development of a progressive opposition to whatever comes about in Cuba: an opposition that unites workers, blacks, women, gays, and others rather than pitting them against each other; that unites the workers, especially those in the winning sectors of the economy, such as tourism, with the workers in the losing sectors, such as “uncompetitive” manufacturing and most of the agricultural sector. In that context, a developing left can play a very important role. But most important of all is that Cubans decide what happens to them, not the people here, and especially not the government here.

[WanderingCactus]

We really aren't in position to do anything about Cuba... so can we stop the posturing.

This is dumb.

We really aren't in a position to do anything about anything, so why even bother having a board like RevLeft?

[A Marxist Historian]

Fixed that for you:lol:. It would be a breech of our basic organizational points of agreement to support Vietnam. Our slogan during the cold war, adopted from the SWP, was "neither Washington nor Moscow" so of course not supporting the USSR or Cuba "as examples of existing socialism" doesn't mean supporting the US against them. We participated and organized protests in solidarity with resistance against the Coup in Venezuela and we certainty don't think Chavez is a Socialist either.

So a lot of these charges of "attacking Cuba" or siding with the US are totally overblown - the real issue is ideological: the political difference is over how radicals should view Cuba and what it represents.

Again if there's any doubt as to what Farber is arguing with regards to Cuba and US imperialism, here's the conclusion to that piece from the ISR:

This is all good Draperism. Neither Draper, the IS nor any of its descendants wanted to be on the beach with Max Shachtman during the Bay of Pigs.

Of course, a truly consistent "neither Washington nor Moscow" position would mean neutralism as to the Bay of Pigs, and with respect to the Vietnam War too, but the IS family, unlike various state cap Revleft posters, never wanted to be that consistent, for which I give them two cheers. How from a "state cap" POV either Vietnam or Cuba could have been seen as anything other than "a colony of Russian imperialism" I fail to see, but they say consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

I recall in the late '60s the IS adopted one of those old spirituals the Civil Rights movement used for anti-Vietnam war marches, with a line about "I'll go home to my Lord and be free," as

"I'll go home to the North and be free-relatively."

Referring to North Vietnam.

However, judging by the ISO's refusal to sign Cuban Five petitions, this attitude is wearing off.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

You really have to be a fool to think that Trotsky's argument, which was made entirely in relation to advancing industrialization in USSR, can apply to Cuba.

Why? Because Latins are lousy lovers? Or what?

One thing you sure can't say about the Castro brothers is that they aren't interested in advancing industrialization in Cuba.

Anyone who can't see the similarities between Cuba and the USSR is truly a fool.



Yeah, all well and nice, these little formulas. Though, they do not correspond to the realities of Cuban society, which as you stated, has remained pretty much stagnant from the time of the revolution. Do you really think that an isolated, tiny island state can progress along this path of transition in the conditions of the post-soviet world? How can they develop their forces of production if not by succumbing to the imperatives of the world market?

They can't in any fundamental way. If they could, then it would be possible to build socialism on that little island.

But Cuba did make a hell of a lot of progress since 1960, didn't it? Free medical care and education, lower child mortality than in the USA, running the Mafia out of Havana, workers taking over all capitalist businesses, etc. etc. etc. If that's not progress in the transition to socialism, what would be?

Now, they could get a lot farther if you had a political revolution and replaced the bureaucratic rule of the Castro brothers with workers democracy, but even in that case they'd have lots of trouble developing the forces of production without making compromises with the world market. Ya can't build socialism in one country after all, and especially not one island. But I repeat myself.



Nice metaphor. How about an analysis of the class dynamics at stake? If, as you contend, the social and political structure of Cuba remained pretty much the same during these decades, what social forces propelled this turning of direction?

Yes, there's been a turning of direction since 1992, with retrograde motion back towards capitalism. What social force propelled this? Do I really have to say it? The collapse of the Soviet workers' state, that's what, which cut out Cuba's economic lifeline and gravely undermined the regime ideologically.

The class dynamics of Cuba are that it is an isolated fortress, grimly holding out against the forces of capitalism besieging and infiltrating it, which is why Cuban society is so static. It has managed to survive essentially because, after the collapse of the USSR, accompanied by ideological surrender to capitalism by the essentially Castroite Sandinistas and Castroite guerilla movements in El Salvador and elsewhere, Cuba was no longer seen as a menace to capitalist stability in Latin America. So American imperialism has been much more interested in controlling the Middle East and mobilizing ideological and military pressure on China than doing anything serious about Castro's Cuba.

Which in turn has had an interesting impact on class dynamics in Latin America generally. As Cuba, unlike the USSR, has survived, the concept that "communism is a failure" is less powerful in Latin America than any other continent, the Latin American working class is less demoralized than elsewhere, and the general Latin American political atmosphere is to the left of other continents.



...
Tell me, do Cuban workers produce any surplus? If yes, how is the appropriation of said surplus organized?

Do they produce any surplus? I should hope so, a society in which no surplus is produced is in extremely deep trouble, no matter what its social system. I don't think Cuba is in that much economic trouble yet.

Now, is said surplus "appropriated"? i.e. taken away from them and put into the pockets of another social class, as in capitalism or feudalism or what have you? No. Certainly the bureaucrats who organize the utilization of the social surplus skim a bit off the top, but by and large, the social surplus in Cuba is devoted to expanding the forces of production, social services like education and medical care, building up the military to fend off the USA, etc. etc. As it should be. Though not nearly as well as a democratic workers regime would.



You really need to take heed of the crucial difference between de iure ownership - a part of the legal superstructure of society - and de facto ownership, which amounts to control, not only of immediate workplace conditions and practices, but to social control over production.

It's hard to believe that self-described Marxists can so easily forget about this distinction and claim that control is an issue of lesser importance.

I'm fully aware of that distinction, which has nothing to do with the question of who directly controls production. It doesn't apply to Cuba or to any Stalinist state. Cuban bureaucrats don't have either de jure or de facto ownership of the means of production.

If they had de facto ownership, then regardless of how the Cuban law books read, they could sell the means of production they administer for money, use that money to buy more means of production or just put it in Swiss bank accounts, pass the factories they run down to their children, etc. etc. But a Cuban bureaucrat who is fired from his job has--nothing. No legal rights to anything in Cuba any different from a factory worker fired from his job.

No different from management at a capitalist business, who don't own it and can be fired at any time. Or rather, quite different, because nowadays most capitalist business managers have stock options, contractual guarantees of huge payoffs if fired if they are top management, etc. etc., so they do have a piece of the pie. Unlike Stalinist bureaucrats.

In short, Cuba can't be considered capitalist, as it has no capitalist class (let us disregard for the moment the petty capitalists the Castros are favoring at the moment, as they clearly don't rule Cuba.)


You're for real? You're really asking why would a criterion for a society in transition be that the actual process of transition is actively underway?
That's ridiculous.

What makes an economy and society in transition then? You're essentially saying that an economy need not show any signs of transition towards socialism in order that it might be called "in transition". Which is plain ridiculius, and amounts to saying that a dog is a duck.

Word games on your part. I didn't say Cuba was a "society in transition," but that it was a transitional society, with elements of both socialism and capitalism in its economy. That is simply an empirical description, whose accuracy is obvious to anyone not blind as a bat.

That description in no way implies that the society is transforming in any particular direction. Your attempt to claim that it does is just playing with words.

In fact, Cuban society seems to be in transition back to capitalism at the moment. Can't get there as long as the Cuban CP is still running the country. It would have to be destroyed or at least thoroughly transformed into a different party than it is now, for that transition to arrive at its destination. As what happened in the USSR and Eastern Europe illustrated.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

If the workers do not control the means of production but simply "own" them, what is the point at all? The purpose of property isn't to just be able to say "This is mine" it is to have unilateral control over said property and reap its benefits. If the workers don't control the means of production but simply have some kind of superficial communal deed for them what will we have won? Nothing.
Just as Capitalists would never let the workers control the means of production while retaining ownership (because, as you say "ownership" is all that matters) because we would push forward measures that would only benefit us, so to would workers, in their own interest never hand control to some higher decision making bureau/agency as it would just enact policies to its own benefit, thus acting as de facto Capitalists.
The question should also be raised that if some entity controls something, couldn't it just, through its control, transfer ownership to itself, since it's the only entity with any power over decision making?
My main point: what is ownership if not control over a particular object?

Did workers in the Soviet Union voluntarily hand control over production to higher making decision bodies during the Russian Civil War? Yes, of course they did. Why? Because when they tried running the factories themselves, after chasing out the engineers, they weren't able to successfully. The country was too economically and socially backward, and the general education level was too low. You can't run a modern factory without having studied engineering for years, that's just reality.

In practice, in the Soviet Union or Cuba, no, the bureaucrats couldn't, and now can't, transfor ownership to themselves. That is exactly why the lower levels of the Soviet bureaucracy decided to dump the old system, so they could do exactly that, which many of them have now done.

Control is not ownership. Corporate managers control corporations, but the stockholders are the owners. When the corporate managers disregard the interests of the stockholders, some takeover artist comes in and mobilizes the stockholders to kick them out.

Similarly, the Soviet state rested ultimately on the consent of the Soviet working class, its ultimate base of power. When the Soviet bureaucracy finally lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the Soviet working class in the Gorbachev era, it collapsed like a paper bag.

If the Castros ever lost their legitimacy in the eyes of the people as the leaders of the Cuban Revolution, which Cuban workers and peasants see as their revolution, similarly they would be out of power so fast their heads would spin.

By contrast, in a capitalist country like the USA, ulimately the legitimacy of the US government rests not on consent of the governed, but on the consent of the US ruling class, despite all those trappings of democracy we have. Nowadays you can't even run for office without millions of dollars behind you.

-M.H.-

[Thirsty Crow]

Why? Because Latins are lousy lovers? Or what?

One thing you sure can't say about the Castro brothers is that they aren't interested in advancing industrialization in Cuba.

Anyone who can't see the similarities between Cuba and the USSR is truly a fool.
This is getting just absurd.
First of all, I'd appreciate if you'd stop with these insinuations. I'm not either echoing stalinist arguments nor do I think that Latin Americans are somehow inferior.

And secondly, if you really think that a comparison between Cuba and the USSR with reagard to resource availability, labour power availability, and the overall prosepcts for rapid inudstrial growth might be made - then you are truly a fool. You do realize that we're talking about an isolated island here?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

They can't in any fundamental way. If they could, then it would be possible to build socialism on that little island.

But Cuba did make a hell of a lot of progress since 1960, didn't it? Free medical care and education, lower child mortality than in the USA, running the Mafia out of Havana, workers taking over all capitalist businesses, etc. etc. etc. If that's not progress in the transition to socialism, what would be?

Now, they could get a lot farther if you had a political revolution and replaced the bureaucratic rule of the Castro brothers with workers democracy, but even in that case they'd have lots of trouble developing the forces of production without making compromises with the world market. Ya can't build socialism in one country after all, and especially not one island. But I repeat myself.


Sure, Cuba made a lot of progress since the 60s, but that's not what this is about. Nor is it about a moralistic judgement of whether the Castro brothers could have gotten closer to Socialism (they cannot be blamed for the failure of the USSR, for instance). This is about whether Cuba, as it exists today, is actually "socialist" in its economic model, and whether particular government failures need to be criticized.



Do they produce any surplus? I should hope so, a society in which no surplus is produced is in extremely deep trouble, no matter what its social system. I don't think Cuba is in that much economic trouble yet.

Now, is said surplus "appropriated"? i.e. taken away from them and put into the pockets of another social class, as in capitalism or feudalism or what have you? No. Certainly the bureaucrats who organize the utilization of the social surplus skim a bit off the top, but by and large, the social surplus in Cuba is devoted to expanding the forces of production, social services like education and medical care, building up the military to fend off the USA, etc. etc. As it should be. Though not nearly as well as a democratic workers regime would.
What kind of evidence is there for the assertion that corruption is so mild? Surely more of the surplus goes to medicine, education, etc than in the USA, but nonetheless an unacceptable amount seems to go on. The problem is that Cuba is not a very transparent country, so there's really no way to establish with any certainty how much



I'm fully aware of that distinction, which has nothing to do with the question of who directly controls production. It doesn't apply to Cuba or to any Stalinist state. Cuban bureaucrats don't have either de jure or de facto ownership of the means of production.

If they had de facto ownership, then regardless of how the Cuban law books read, they could sell the means of production they administer for money, use that money to buy more means of production or just put it in Swiss bank accounts, pass the factories they run down to their children, etc. etc. But a Cuban bureaucrat who is fired from his job has--nothing. No legal rights to anything in Cuba any different from a factory worker fired from his job.

No different from management at a capitalist business, who don't own it and can be fired at any time. Or rather, quite different, because nowadays most capitalist business managers have stock options, contractual guarantees of huge payoffs if fired if they are top management, etc. etc., so they do have a piece of the pie. Unlike Stalinist bureaucrats.

In short, Cuba can't be considered capitalist, as it has no capitalist class (let us disregard for the moment the petty capitalists the Castros are favoring at the moment, as they clearly don't rule Cuba.)
That seems to completely ignore the importance of exchange economy within Cuba. Foreign currency functions as small capital, and access to this American or other foreign money is a massive economic advantage. This has contributed to huge economic inequalities.

A bureaucrat can be fired, but this doesn't mean the lack of legal ownership does not imply effective control over sectors of a local economy which give greater access to foreign currency, black market goods and other profitable areas.





Word games on your part. I didn't say Cuba was a "society in transition," but that it was a transitional society, with elements of both socialism and capitalism in its economy. That is simply an empirical description, whose accuracy is obvious to anyone not blind as a bat.

That description in no way implies that the society is transforming in any particular direction. Your attempt to claim that it does is just playing with words.

In fact, Cuban society seems to be in transition back to capitalism at the moment. Can't get there as long as the Cuban CP is still running the country. It would have to be destroyed or at least thoroughly transformed into a different party than it is now, for that transition to arrive at its destination. As what happened in the USSR and Eastern Europe illustrated.

-M.H.-It's not wordplay, it's a tautology. A society in transition is by definition transiting. X in transition is in motion between points A and B. If it is moving back towards its point of origin A, then it is not in transition. Cuba is just a capitalist country with many "socialist" characteristics, but materially speaking it is not "in transition" between these two.

[Lucretia]

Did workers in the Soviet Union voluntarily hand control over production to higher making decision bodies during the Russian Civil War? Yes, of course they did. Why? Because when they tried running the factories themselves, after chasing out the engineers, they weren't able to successfully. The country was too economically and socially backward, and the general education level was too low. You can't run a modern factory without having studied engineering for years, that's just reality.

In practice, in the Soviet Union or Cuba, no, the bureaucrats couldn't, and now can't, transfor ownership to themselves. That is exactly why the lower levels of the Soviet bureaucracy decided to dump the old system, so they could do exactly that, which many of them have now done.

Control is not ownership. Corporate managers control corporations, but the stockholders are the owners. When the corporate managers disregard the interests of the stockholders, some takeover artist comes in and mobilizes the stockholders to kick them out.

Similarly, the Soviet state rested ultimately on the consent of the Soviet working class, its ultimate base of power. When the Soviet bureaucracy finally lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the Soviet working class in the Gorbachev era, it collapsed like a paper bag.

If the Castros ever lost their legitimacy in the eyes of the people as the leaders of the Cuban Revolution, which Cuban workers and peasants see as their revolution, similarly they would be out of power so fast their heads would spin.

By contrast, in a capitalist country like the USA, ulimately the legitimacy of the US government rests not on consent of the governed, but on the consent of the US ruling class, despite all those trappings of democracy we have. Nowadays you can't even run for office without millions of dollars behind you.

-M.H.-

Oy vey. The analytical payoff of Marx's discussions on "ownership" was that it denoted a person or group of people's effective and exclusive control over productive property, such that they were able to extract surplus labor from the direct producers. When this class power over productive property is stable enough, it tends to be exercised through superstructural institutions that further stabilize and reinforce control, thereby becoming "property ownership" in the sense you fetishize it in your adherence to the Ortho-Trot line. In other words, the key to Marx's analysis is not "ownership" in the superstructural sense, but class power derived from dictating the terms of the use of productive property -- the relations of control and effective possession.

Now, in the case of state capitalism as theorized by the classical Marxist theorists before the Russian Revolution even transpired, it was accepted without question that you could have an exploiting class in the form of state managers who do not individually (or even collectively) "own" the productive proprety. Why? For the very reasons I stated above: individually owned private property forms are not essential to the process of exploitation. In class societies with the tributary mode of production, and -- yes -- in state capitalist societies (even if you reject the argument that the USSR was state capitalist) the direct producers are compelled through their lack of power over productive property to labor on behalf of others, producing a surplus product that is appropriated by them and used as they wish, whether they "skim" it into personal accounts, reinvest it in production, or do whatever else they wish to do with it.

You're correct in stating that "control is not ownership." Your confusion seems to stem from the relationship between these two concepts to Marx's analysis of class. Class for him is not a product of superstructural ownership, but of the power dynamics that underlie superstructural ownership -- or in cases of collective exploiters, state forms of property. His theory stems from the reality of a specific type of control, one not necessarily enformed in "private ownership." That type of control is stable command over productive property that enables exploitation to occur and the possessors to determine how to dispose of the resultant surplus product. Any aspiring "historian" who doesn't grasp this is one whose work likely manifests the crassest empiricism.

[Peoples' War]

Control is a side issue of lesser importance, which is why the phrase "workers control" was never used by Marx or Engels. What matters is ownership.

I went hunting through Das Kapital for the concept if not the phrase "workers control," and I finally found it. Can give you the ref if you like. What he says, interestingly, is that in the early stages of capitalism, the workers still control the means of production, but the capitalists own them! So not only is workers control not the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it's something which, according to Marx, you can perfectly well have under capitalism.

A deformed or degenerated workers state is best and most simply defined as one in which capitalism has been abolished, or at least the capitalist state has been destroyed, and the means of production are owned by society as a whole, but are controlled not by the workers, but by a social elite--a bureaucracy.

And what is a state anyway? Lenin's definition works for me. It's armed bodies of men committed to defend certain sets of property relations. The Soviet or Cuban states defended and defend the noncapitalist property relations in their respective countries, arms in hand, and those who tried then or try now to introduce capitalism end up in jail now in Cuba, and worse things happened to them under Stalin.

Therefore, since, as Marx explained in the Manifesto, objectively the proletariat is the only class in society whose objective class need is socialism, a state which defends proletarian property forms is objectively a workers state, regardless of whether workers democratically control it in any way, shape or form.

-M.H.-
What does ownership mean? Is it some term determined by a law, citing that "under the law, it belongs to you" but X controls it.

What good is the notion of ownership, if you have no say, no push with the object in question.

Can workers "own" political power? Or just control it?

It seems your defense has come down to some semantics issue.

[A Marxist Historian]

This is getting just absurd.
First of all, I'd appreciate if you'd stop with these insinuations. I'm not either echoing stalinist arguments nor do I think that Latin Americans are somehow inferior.

And secondly, if you really think that a comparison between Cuba and the USSR with reagard to resource availability, labour power availability, and the overall prosepcts for rapid inudstrial growth might be made - then you are truly a fool. You do realize that we're talking about an isolated island here?

So then, you are merely saying that socialism in one country is even more impractical on a small island than in a big country like the USSR? OK fine, at least that's not a chauvinist argument as such. But the difference is quantitative not qualitative. You couldn't build socialism in one country in the USSR either--or the USA for that matter.

The policy choices that would face a revolutionary leadership should it take command in Cuba would be pretty much the same as those the Bolsheviks faced in the 1920s. If anything, the Cubans would have some advantages over the Bolsheviks in the 1920s, as the percentage of the population that is working class is far, far higher in contemporary Cuba than in NEP Russia, where 90% of the population were still peasants, and the farms weren't collective. So everything that Trotsky wrote then about industrial policy etc. is actually quite relevant to Cuba today.

The main difference being that, given Cuba's much smaller size, the need to spread the revolution to other countries would be even greater than it was for Soviet Russia in the 1920s. But, if you had a working class political revolution in Cuba replacing the Castros with a democratic workers regime, the impact on the Caribbean and Central and Latin America would be immense. I think you would have revolution all over the area in short order, which would transform industrial possibilities in Cuba fairly quickly.

Be it noted that until the collapse of the USSR Cuba was not an isolated island, but was getting huge amounts of support from the USSR. Since then, things have gone from bad to worse in Cuba, and it is indeed quite possible that the Cuban regime will simply collapse in the next period.

Why hasn't it? Because of the Castros being brilliant or something? Hardly.

It is because the Cuban people are still by and large grimly determined to defend their Revolution, despite all the disgruntlement and anti-communism created by the heavy handed bureaucratism, personality cultism and downright incompetence of the Cuban leadership.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Sure, Cuba made a lot of progress since the 60s, but that's not what this is about. Nor is it about a moralistic judgement of whether the Castro brothers could have gotten closer to Socialism (they cannot be blamed for the failure of the USSR, for instance). This is about whether Cuba, as it exists today, is actually "socialist" in its economic model, and whether particular government failures need to be criticized.

To which questions my answers are no and yes. Cuba isn't socialist, you can't build socialism in one country, as I'm saying over and over again. And damn right the government needs to be criticized. In fact, not just criticized, but replaced, kicked out. Cuba needs workers democracy, and can only get that through a political revolution. But it doesn't need a social revolution, as it is just as wrong to describe Cuba as "socialist" as to describe it as "capitalist." It's a transitional society, stuck in between.


What kind of evidence is there for the assertion that corruption is so mild? Surely more of the surplus goes to medicine, education, etc than in the USA, but nonetheless an unacceptable amount seems to go on. The problem is that Cuba is not a very transparent country, so there's really no way to establish with any certainty how much

Corruption? Yes, that's it exactly. In a capitalist country, for wealth to go to the capitalists is not a form of corruption, that's the way it's supposed to be. If unacceptable amounts of wealth go to private individuals only by way of corruption, then ipso facto that is not a capitalist country you are dealing with.

Corruption is illegitimate wealth transfer that is against the laws and rules of society. If people can only get rich through corruption, you have a system that is socialist in its basic type.


That seems to completely ignore the importance of exchange economy within Cuba. Foreign currency functions as small capital, and access to this American or other foreign money is a massive economic advantage. This has contributed to huge economic inequalities.

A bureaucrat can be fired, but this doesn't mean the lack of legal ownership does not imply effective control over sectors of a local economy which give greater access to foreign currency, black market goods and other profitable areas.


Absolutely. Like I keep saying, the Cuban system is in big danger, and could collapse altogether at this point. Why? Because of all the concessions to small scale private capitalism the Castro brothers have desperately allowed.

If all those small and by now maybe not so small capitalists popping up like mushrooms get tired of the Castro brothers and organize to overthrow them, which is quite possible, then Cuba becomes a capitalist country, and all the old crap comes back. Could happen!

Given rising inequalities in society, quite likely a number of bureaucrats could jump on that bandwagon, though hardly the Castros themselves, as they wouldn't want to end up like Najibullah or Ceaucescu, and are not stupid.


It's not wordplay, it's a tautology. A society in transition is by definition transiting. X in transition is in motion between points A and B. If it is moving back towards its point of origin A, then it is not in transition. Cuba is just a capitalist country with many "socialist" characteristics, but materially speaking it is not "in transition" between these two.

Do I have to repeat myself? Like I said in the last posting, I never called Cuba a "society in transition." That's your coinage.

I called it a "transitional society." Which is, unlike a society in transition, not "by definition transiting," according to your syntax manipulation. It can perfectly well, as in the case of Cuba, be stuck in a transitional state indefinitely, if the balance of class forces in society gives that transitional state enough inertia.

If this is not clear to you, study chemistry, and you'll find examples of this in nature. Or biology.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

What does ownership mean? Is it some term determined by a law, citing that "under the law, it belongs to you" but X controls it.

What good is the notion of ownership, if you have no say, no push with the object in question.

Can workers "own" political power? Or just control it?

It seems your defense has come down to some semantics issue.

Ownership is not a legal term, although there's lots of law around it, being that it is the most important thing in society there is. Like the classic legal expression, "property is nine tenths of the law."

You own something, not if you administer it, but if you are the beneficiary of it.

So, if bureaucrats owned the means of production, they couldn't just corruptly and illicitly skim stuff of the top, like all bureaucrats do in all societies until they get caught, but they would get all the benefits from them. They could sell them, buy them, pass 'em down to their children, and not have to worry night and day if they get fired and upper echelon bureaucrats take it all away from them

That's what former bureaucrats who ended up at the top of the Yeltsinoid greasy pole can do in Russia now. That's what they couldn't do before. So the difference from their POV is night and day--though not as much night and day as that of the workers, whose pay rates are half what they used to be, who've lost free education and medical care, millions of whom are homeless, and millions of whom died in the process.

-H,H.-