"Cuba: Socialist or Revisionist?"

[Andrei Kuznetsov]

This is an essay I did for a debate on another message board, so I decided to share it with you guys:

"Cuba: Socialist or Revisionist?"
by Andrei Andreiovich Mazenov

In 1959, a popular uprising led by Fidel Castro toppled the Batista dictatorship and is backers, the American imperialist lackeys within Havana. Gangsters and pimps were run out of the country, U.S. holdings and the nation's old businesses were nationalized. When the Americans tried reinvade Cuba AGAIN in 1961, they were crushed outrightly through the sheer force of the Cuban masses, and when the American government has tried to hold Cuba down with its embargo and it various military and political actions against them, the Cuban people have resisted with upmost strength. Because of this, as well as the fact that the Cuban people enjoy wonderful social services and living standards as compared to the rest of the "third world", as well as the fact that most of the nation's industries are under state ownership and the Communist Party of Cuba is in power, it is easy to think that Cuba is a socialist nation. However, when we look deeper into the facts, such an assumption could be seen as rather questionable.

Soon after the Cuban Revolution, the Communist Party of Cuba decided not to dismantle the one-crop sugar economy or carry out a thoroughgoing agrarian revolution in the countryside. They broke key ties to the U.S., but did not break capitalist economic relations characteristic of colonialism. Instead, Castro moved Cuba into a new relationship of dependence--with a new foreign imperialist master, the Soviet Union (which had restored capitalism in the mid-1950s- see my post about the USSR from 1956 to 1991). As the Maoists predicted at the time, this non-revolutionary road had many negative consequences for the Cuban people and for the revolutionary movements of Latin America. Without the thoroughgoing revolutionary transformation of agriculture, Cuban "socialism" basically came to mean doing a better job at running the same old plantations! In fact, Cuba never succeeded in developing socialism- instead of seeing socialism as building up an economy to serve social needs, they only saw the development of profitable forces in order to step up their trade with the USSR in 1963- which laid the ground for the Cuban economy to be driven by profit rather than social need- thus laying the groundwork for a capitalist system.

This was all rooted in Cuba's inability to break free of its dependency on sugar cane. From 1963-1970, the Cuban government attempted to run the economy by direct command from top officials to achieve increased sugar production- something which created an unequal development of productive forces (in other words, most of the country's money was going into sugar production and very little was going into growing other crops and building up other industries that could have been used to help better the people's lives). Cuba worked for "Russian" goals- i.e. accumulating surplus in the most profitable sectors of the economy rather than in an all-around way, based on balanced and simultaneous development of agriculture, light industry, and heavy industry. Castro subordinated everything to sugar production, and by 1965 the Socialist Republic of Cuba was a fully state-capitalist nation that was imperialized by the USSR.

In 1965, to better trade with the USSR, Cuba adopted the same economic calculus formulated by the Soviet revisionists during the Kosygin Reforms of 1965. Basically, this form of economic theory formulates economic plans by weighing possible profit and loss, as well as simulating free markets and applying market-capitalist criteria at every level, while maintaing state ownership over the most basic means of production. An interesting thing to note is that while all of these theories were immediately and completely implemented in Cuba, they were not fully implemented in the Soviet Union until Gorbachev's perestroika- so, in a sense, the Cubans had perestroika before the Soviets did!

At the First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1975, it was declared that "The peso should control all economic activity." This declared that accumulating capital was the sole purpose of the nation's economy- admitting, basically, that they were no longer socialist! The Worker's Councils in Cuban workplaces are largely inactive and forgotten; as one of Cuba's economic planning board leaders said to one researcher in the late 1980's, "We do not discuss balance of payments problems with factory workers." In 1980 the Cuban government gave their managers the right to hire and fire freely as well as determine the basic modes of production within the factories, workplaces, etc. The managers pays became far higher than the workers with far less work on their part- something that points to the rise of a new bourgeoisie within the state and party, something which Mao Tse-Tung observed when capitalism was restored by Khrushchev and other counterrevolutionaries within the CPSU in the USSR in 1956.

Some argue that without producing sugar cane for the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc nations that Cuba would have collapsed economically a long time ago, but the sugar industry itself (which was originally built up intending to get more money to build the nation) is the driving factor in Cuba's economic disasters; it has only brought them increased dependency (be it with the USSR or with Western Europe). 1/3 of Cuba's economy is devoted to the sugar cane industry- and 75% of arable land is devoted to cane (while arable land is decreasing due to soil exhaustion). Imagine if the Cubans had instead tried to carry out land reform and used more land for livestock and growing a rich variety of other foods which they have shown to be very capable of growing! Imagine how much better off the Cuban people would be and how much closer they might be to self-sufficiency! What prevents Cuba from developing socialism isn't a lack of natural resources, but the simple fact that it continues to allow commodity relations, capital, and profit to determine their economy- and because of this, Cuba is dependant on importing and exporting most of what it produces, trapping it as a victim of imperialism.

"Imperialism?! What do you mean by imperialism?!" you may say. It's true- Cuba's sugar is useless without imperialist trade transforming it into capital to produce more sugar (instead of that money going to help develop other industries and overall boost Cuba's economy). Castro did not achieve economic independence or national liberation; if Cuba had burned their canefields, distributed the land to the masses, and built of industry and agriculture in an all-around even way that served the needs of the people, it would have achieved national liberation and socialism. Unfortunately, it did not, and from 1959-1991 Cuba was dependent on Soviet social-imperialism and today is dependent on Western Europe and many other parts of the world into keep up these imperialist production relations.

Many people argue that nevertheless the Cuban goverment has brought forth a better life for the people with its amazing welfare state and social services. Well, that's all fine and good, but social services does not a socialist system make! Sweden is much like Cuba, but nobody's under the delusion that Sweden is a worker's state. Cuba does have a high life expectancy of 73, one of the best health care systems in the world, the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America, and a literacy rate of 99-100%. And yet...

The Cuban people have a rather high suicide rate (21.7 per 100,000 deaths) and their average diet is, nutritionally, very poor (thanks to the lack of agrarian land reform). Because of this diet, the Cubans have trouble with many health problems such as heart disease, cancer, obesity, etc.- things that the United States has a big problem with! Most Cuban families live in the same home or village they did when Batista was in power- something that shows how little social transformation has occurred in Cuba since 1959. And personally, I find it rather suspicious that Cuba ha the same percentage of its population in prison as the U.S. (30,000 out of 10.36 million), and sometimes that figure is higher! The Soviet Union's prison population was never that high during the genuinely-socialist Stalin administration. Not to mention the fact that the government encourages private construction and private ownership of housing, something that Castro seems to have learned a bit from good ol' Maggie Thatcher...

Going back to the question of imperialism in Cuba, some people say that Soviet aid is not necessarily social-imperialism. Well, that's true- the People's Republic of China was aided by the Soviet Union during the 1950's, but always used that aid in an all-around way that eventually allowed them to become self-sufficient. Soviet aid to Cuba took 3 forms: aid for particular projects, subsidies in the form of favorable prices for import and export commodities, and balance of payments loans to cover the difference between was Cuba exports and its import needs. Soviet developmental aid was always the smallest component of Soviet aid, amounting to $883.5 million in 1986. It is true, as some argue, that the Soviet Union paid Cuba far above the world market price, but less that 20% of the world's sugar was (and still is) sold at that price! The U.S. does the exact same thing to places like the Philippines and Haiti, but certainly not out of benevolence or in order to help those nation's economies! Long-term above-market contract-price contract arrangements are advantageous because they secure an assured quality and quantity of sugar at an assured time, which is of great importance for the continuous operation of vast markets. Even the Cuban Central Bank itself admitted that "Soviet aid to Cuba conceals Soviet extraction of Cuban surplus value"- something that blatantly admits that this ain't simply trade between two socialist nations!

The USSR's loans to cover Cuba's negative balance of trade ($5 billion) were on unequal terms and were on the exact terms of America's old loans during the Batista era. Even the Soviet-Cuban oil trade was imperialistic too: Cuba imported more oil than it needed, but used all of it for re-exporting at world market prices to Europe, Africa, Asia, etc. so that it could pay off its debts to the USSR. It paid for the oil by selling 3/4 of its sugar to the USSR- which meant that 56.25% of Cuba's economic output went to the USSR instead of its own people! This uneven trade relation still continues today, with the former Soviet republics and Western European/E.U. nations continuing to do the exact same thing to Cuba- in fact, Cuba gets most of its oil that it uses not from its own oil wells or from the former USSR; it has to import from other Latin American nations such as Venezuela because of the vampiric imperialist relations it has trapped itself in. In 1988 alone, Cuba's debt to U.S.-bloc Western European nations such as the U.K., France, (West) Germany, etc. reached $5.7 billion. Cuba's oil and non-Soviet sugar sales were (and still are) based on the U.S. dollar and the North American/European Union market despite the U.S. embargo- something that has made the Cuban economy basically dependent on capitalist nations and allowed it accumulate one of the highest debts in the "Third World". This only has resulting in extending the reproduction of dependent relations, and has moved the "Socialist" Republic of Cuba farther and farther away from genuine socialism.

Since the fall of the Eastern Bloc nations, Cuba has decided to make tourism account for 40% of its present export earning. This means more mooney is going into the profitable (notice that rather capitalist word coming back in again?) tourist industry rather than going to serve the needs of the Cuban masses. Even prostitution, the exploitation and sexual objectification of women, is allowed by the Cuban government in some tourist areas. What kind of socialist nation is that?! Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao all clearly stated that the purpose of production under socialism should be to serve the people at ALL TIMES and do EVERYTHING for them, instead of basing the economy on profit and "supply/demand" bourgeois economics. If the law of value determines what gets produced and how, capitalist exploitation will be reproduced. Social inequalities will be considered too costly to overcome and social inequality, economic injustice, and political oppression will stay in place. This is why Cuba has never become genuinely socialist and it is why it depended on the social-imperialist/state-capitalist Soviet Union to bail it out all the time from 1959 to 1991.

Castro constantly praised Gorbachev and adapted Cuba's economy to his policies; if the Soviet-Cuban trade partnership were simply a socialist trade partnership, Cuba wouldn't have had to change its economy alongside the USSR's in order to survive! Cuba's entire army was for decades dependent on the USSR and aided in the Soviet invasions of Eriteria and Angola. Many people defend Cuba's resignation to social-imperialism saying that without it that the USA would have invaded them again and this time succeeded. But after the Bay of Pigs incident, the USA was rather demoralized in terms of Cuba, and it was too busy protecting its interests in Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and many of its other Cold War disputes; thus it is doubtable whether the USA would have crushed Cuba or not. That is beside the point, however- even is Cuba WAS crushed, it wouldn't have made it wrong to have tried, since the USSR and China were also overthrown and they certainly weren't wrong for trying to developing socialism (also, keep in mind that the level of "living standards" should always be subordinate to the goal of advancing toward communism; in other words, it is better to go without if the only way to obtain certain desired goods is by falling back on capitalist strategies or by becoming a new exploiter state)!

If the Cuban masses are to truly attain national liberation, build socialism, and pave the way to communism, they must grasp Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as their ideology and build a New Democratic Revolution with a protracted People's War. They must overthrow the old revisionists and pro-social-imperialist lackeys within the old government and establish a new, TRULY socialist Republic of Cuba guided by the revolutionary science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. This is the only way they can achieve liberation, and this is what we must uphold for them.

Sources:
1. "Burn Down the Cane Fields!: Notes on the Political Economy of Cuba, Part II" A World to Win! magazine #15, 1990.
2. Lina Fuller, "Power at the Workplace: The Resolution of Worker-Management Conflict in Cuba", in Andrew Zimbalist, ed. 1987 p. 152
3. Cuban Central Bank study cited by Zimbalist and Eckstein, p. 20.
4. The First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, 1975.
5. Latin America Regional Reports: Caribbean, 21 July, 1988
6. "Elian Amid the Sharks", Revolutionary Worker newspaper #1051, April 23, 2000

[flyby]

deep.

and very factual.

In some ways, I see the cuban experience as the road we DON'T want to take...
where a popular revolution leads to a new order -- but can't proceed on the road to communism. Instead a kind of "social welfare state" with a self-appointed clique that rules in the "name of the people" without really "expanding the 'we' who rules" and so ultimately ends up being a new exploiting class (and ends up selling the people -- first to the USSR social imperialists, as both labor and cannon fodder -- and then ultimately to western imperialists as sex trade and waiters)

[Paradox]

Even prostitution, the exploitation and sexual objectification of women, is allowed by the Cuban government in some tourist areas.

Hasn't Cuba inacted some of the toughest anti-prostitution laws in the world? Are you saying that these laws only apply outside the tourist areas where the Cuban government allows such activity? If that were the case, then president bush (horrible as it sounds) would be correct in accusing the Cuban government of being involved in sex tourism. That would be very disappointing, and disgusting.


Since the fall of the Eastern Bloc nations, Cuba has decided to make tourism account for 40% of its present export earning. This means more money is going into the profitable (notice that rather capitalist word coming back in again?) tourist industry rather than going to serve the needs of the Cuban masses.

Yeah, I don't like that either. It's pretty obvious that you're not a self-sufficient nation when you're economy is crippled by the fall of another nation. And I doubt that all the nations in the UN that are against the embargo on Cuba, feel that way because they support Communism. As you said, Cuba is too dependent on other nations, nations which are capitalist.


it has to import from other Latin American nations such as Venezuela because of the vampiric imperialist relations it has trapped itself in.

Are you saying that Venezuela is imperialist? Or are you just saying that Cuba has to rely on other nations because it never eliminated imperialism?


If the Cuban masses are to truly attain national liberation, build socialism, and pave the way to communism, they must grasp Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as their ideology and build a New Democratic Revolution with a protracted People's War.

So I take it that you think Castro has no intentions of eliminating Cuba's reliance on tourism and other capitalistic practices, and he isn't concerned with building Socialism? And that the Cuban people should start a new revolution to overthrow the current Cuban government? Wow, that's something to think about.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

You're suggesting that the policy of the Cuban government was to both amass capital, yet they neglected measures that would have boosted the economy, such as the development of more efficient and productive industries...

Am I the only who sees this as questionable?

And I agree that Cuba suffers a lot from imperialism, but is it fair to blame them? They’re the victim, are they not?

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Andrei Mazenov
Many people defend Cuba's resignation to social-imperialism saying that without it that the USA would have invaded them again and this time succeeded...That is beside the point, however- even if Cuba WAS crushed, it wouldn't have made it wrong to have tried, since the USSR and China were also overthrown and they certainly weren't wrong for trying to develop socialism.

This is a curious inversion of what Leninists (including Maoists) usually say.

That is, when confronted with the glaring abyss between the establishment of communism and what the USSR, China, etc. actually did, the response is generally along the lines of "they had to do those un-communist things or otherwise their revolutions would have been crushed by the imperialists".

Why is that a "good excuse" for Lenin, Stalin, or Mao but not a "good excuse" for Castro?


also, keep in mind that the level of "living standards" should always be subordinate to the goal of advancing toward communism; in other words, it is better to go without if the only way to obtain certain desired goods is by falling back on capitalist strategies or by becoming a new exploiter state!

Well, that begs a rather thorny question, doesn't it? If the "only ways" that you can obtain "certain desired goods" is by "falling back on capitalist strategies", then you have a problem with objective material conditions, don't you?

You're trying to move "towards communism" in a situation where your technological development won't support that advance.

And when you tell people to "do without", how do you think they will respond?

How have they already responded!

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[Severian]

I used to post on the board where Andrei originally posted this. My original response is pasted before. I think I demolished it pretty thoroughly.
Andrei never attempted to reply to me.

Here's the thread; (http://www.socialistfront.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=13&t=984&st=0)I think some other posters also gave good reasons why Andrei's argument is false from beginning to end.

Paste begins:

Originally posted by Andrei [email protected] 3 2004, 12:42 AM
Soon after the Cuban Revolution, the Communist Party of Cuba decided not to dismantle the one-crop sugar economy or carry out a thoroughgoing agrarian revolution in the countryside.
What is this nonsense? All large landowners and other rural exploiters were eliminated. How much more "thoroughgoing" an "agrarian revolution" do you want?

If you're complaining about Cuba's refusal to follow Stalin and Mao in carrying out a forced collectivization campaign aimed at eliminating all individual farms, even small ones, please say so. For my part, I think that was an absolutely correct decision.

As for sugar...their initial policy was, in fact, to move away from a dependence on one crop. This changed due to the extremely favorable terms for export of sugar to the USSR. It was economically correct to concentrate on producing as much sugar as possible...except that this assumed the USSR would be there forever. That assumption was the only eror.

In any case, Cuba is now taking drastic steps to put less resources into sugar production - while protecting the interests of sugar workers, as I mentioned in my last post. Will you say, then, that Cuba has suddenly become socialist?
Article on this by reporters visiting Cuba (http://www.themilitant.com/2004/6805/680550.html)

From the article:
"70 of the island’s 155 sugar mills have been closed (50 had already been idled prior to the April 2002 decision);
3.4 million acres of land (1.38 million hectares) have been taken out of sugarcane—some 62 percent of the total land area previously devoted to the crop—and allotted to other agricultural uses;
the number of workers employed in sugar production has been reduced by one-quarter—from some 420,000 to 300,000; and
100,000 former sugar workers have been guaranteed their former wage rate as they take the opportunity to enroll in further education and job retraining, and make the transition to new occupations—where they will continue to receive no less than the wage they were earning as sugar workers for the rest of their lives. "


They broke key ties to the U.S., but did not break capitalist economic relations characteristic of colonialism. Instead, Castro moved Cuba into a new relationship of dependence--with a new foreign imperialist master, the Soviet Union (which had restored capitalism in the mid-1950s- see my post about the USSR from 1956 to 1991).

What? If you examine the economic relations between Cuba and the USSR, they are clearly not "capitalist economic relations characteristic of colonialism. " On the contrary, the terms of trade were favorable to Cuba and its economic development. The USSR bought sugar above the world market price, and sold oil, machinery, even whole factories, below the world market price. Cuba could not have survived, let alone made the advances it did during the 70s and 80s, without trade with the USSR.

If that kind of "economic relations" were "characteristic of colonialism", colonialism would start looking pretty damn good. No, the U.S. does not have this kind of relationship with the Phillipines or anywhere else. Sugar contracts sklightly above world market price, yes. The whole package on such favorable terms, no way.


! In fact, Cuba never succeeded in developing socialism- instead of seeing socialism as building up an economy to serve social needs,

Uh, what? Even imperialist opponents of the revolution admit what Cuba's done to advance social needs like education and health care. They've placed a much higher priority on social needs than Mao or Stalin ever did, that's for sure.


Cuba worked for "Russian" goals- i.e. accumulating surplus in the most profitable sectors of the economy

Why is accumulating surplus a "Russian" goal and not a Cuban goal? That surplus paid for Cuban programs meeting Cuban social needs.

I might comment that this "Cuba was a Russian colony" line is the same as the propaganda line of U.S. imperialism. (It's also the same excuse Mao gave for failing to aid the Vietnamese struggle.) The same facts refute it, whether it is made by Andrei or Uncle Sam:

1. If that's true, why didn't Cuban socialism fall when the regimes in Eastern Europe and the USSR did?
2. As mentioned earlier, the economic relationship benefited Cuba.
3. Cuba followed an independent revolutionary foreign policy, from Latin America to Angola, in contrast to the USSR's - and China's - pursuit of "detente" or "peaceful coexistence" - selling out revolutionary struggles through deals with imperialism. That was the USSR's policy under Stalin as well as Krushev, China's policy under Mao as well and Deng. It was never Cuba's policy.
4. Why was U.S. imperialist so much more hostile to Cuba than to Stalin, Mao, Krushev, or Deng, then? To find another example of such rabid hatred, we have to go back to Lenin's time.


In 1965, to better trade with the USSR, Cuba adopted the same economic calculus formulated by the Soviet revisionists during the Kosygin Reforms of 1965. Basically, this form of economic theory formulates economic plans by weighing possible profit and loss, as well as simulating free markets and applying market-capitalist criteria at every level, while maintaing state ownership over the most basic means of production.

Actually a problem...compared to what Che advocated, the "budgetary finance system." For a serious examination of this question - the role of the market, and whether state enterprises should be run on the basis of "profitability" - see Che's "Planning and Consciousness in the Transition to Socialism", or "The Economic Thought of Che Guevara" by Cuban economist Carlos Tablada. I say "for a serious examination" because when someone says that an error in the planning system means "the restoration of capitalism" - an instant, bloodless counterrevolution - it is impossible to take that seriously.


"Imperialism?! What do you mean by imperialism?!" you may say. It's true- Cuba's sugar is useless without imperialist trade

No, it is useless without trade, without exporting that sugar to other countries. Trade does not automatically equal imperialism. Self-sufficiency does not automatically equal socialism.

Who's the better revolutionary example today, Cuba or "self-sufficient" North Korea, currently engaged in trying to negotiate aid in exchange for disarmament? A lot more people seem inspired by Cuba.

Socialism cannot be built in one, "self-sufficient" country. To try would be a step backwards - for uniting different countries in the world market is one of the progressive accomplishments of capitalism. Only through the combined efforts of many peoples can socialism be achieved. In that context, it might well make sense for different parts of the world to concentrate on producing the things they are best at.

Some may reply that "globalizing" imperialists say the same thing. Sure, they do. The socialist answer to imperialist globalization, however, is that economic relations between areas at drastically different levels of development can only be mutually beneficial after capitalism is overthrown. Not "self-sufficiency" counterposed to trade.

Throughout Andrei's post, he assumes self-sufficiency is better and economic relations between trade is automatically imperialist - without proving it, or even explicitly stating his assumption.


The Cuban people have a rather high suicide rate (21.7 per 100,000 deaths) and their average diet is, nutritionally, very poor (thanks to the lack of agrarian land reform).

On suicide, we'll see in a minute that you're statistically challenged. It's true, though, that Cubans aren't getting enough to eat...since the end of trade with the USSR. Cuba is, however, recovering from that sudden blow. Conditions have improved since the mid-90s.


Because of this diet, the Cubans have trouble with many health problems such as heart disease, cancer, obesity, etc.- things that the United States has a big problem with!

Dunno if obesity is that common...if it is, that'd seem to indicate the mid-90s food shortages have definitely be overcome! Heart disease and cancer, you betcha. I'd add stroke. Those become leading causes of death in any country with a long life expectancy - e.g. in China recently. They indicate Cuba's success in keeping people from dying earlier from transmissible diseases that kill millions, especially children, throughout Latin America. In the words of a Cuban public health doctor I heard speak a couple years ago: "We die like rich people."


And personally, I find it rather suspicious that Cuba ha the same percentage of its population in prison as the U.S. (30,000 out of 10.36 million),

According to who, the Cuban American National Foundation? Even U.S. imperialism wouldn't make this particular false accusation against Cuba. The facts are: "The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 701 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by Russia (606), Belarus (554), Kazakhstan and the U.S. Virgin Islands (both 522), the Cayman Islands (501), Turkmenistan (489), Belize (459), Bermuda (447), Suriname (437), Dominica (420) and Ukraine (415)." source (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r234.pdf) I don't see Cuba on that list. If your numbers were accurate, Cuba would be about 289 per 100,000, less than a third of the U.S. incarceration rate...but in fact the population of Cuba is over 11 million, so I doubt your number of prisoners is accurate either.


Not to mention the fact that the government encourages private construction and private ownership of housing, something that Castro seems to have learned a bit from good ol' Maggie Thatcher...

Private construction? What are you talking about? There are no Cuban capitalists or employment of wage-labor, in construction or in any other sector.

Care to explain what's anti-socialist about people owning their own houses? Homeownership rates are typically higher in postcapitalist than in capitalist societies. That's a positive achievement. Communists seek to end ownership of the means of production by exploiters, not all ownership of personal property for personal use. Unless you're Pol Pot.


Even the Cuban Central Bank itself admitted that "Soviet aid to Cuba conceals Soviet extraction of Cuban surplus value"- something that blatantly admits that this ain't simply trade between two socialist nations!


Source? Context? Hello? You have footnotes at the bottom, but they're not connected to anything in the text.

Cubans - including Che - were sometimes critical of the terms of Soviet trade with Cuba and other Third World countries. Their solution, however, was better terms of trade, not an end to trade or "self-sufficiency."


The USSR's loans to cover Cuba's negative balance of trade ($5 billion) were on unequal terms and were on the exact terms of America's old loans during the Batista era

Source? Hello? Everything else I've seen indicates they were on better terms than typical capitalist loans...of the same time anyway.


This uneven trade relation still continues today, with the former Soviet republics and Western European/E.U. nations continuing to do the exact same thing to Cuba- in fact, Cuba gets most of its oil that it uses not from its own oil wells or from the former USSR; it has to import from other Latin American nations such as Venezuela because of the vampiric imperialist relations it has trapped itself in.

So? Would a Stalinist policy make oil reserves magically appear under Cuba? They are making an effort at offshore exploration - but you can't drill what ain't there.

Unequal trade is a reality of the world which would not disappear until capitalism is overthrown worldwide. Cuba's policies are aimed at doing everything they can to accelerate that revolution. In contrast to Stalinists' "peaceful coexistence", betrayal of revolutions...and "self-sufficiency".


This means more mooney is going into the profitable (notice that rather capitalist word coming back in again?) tourist industry rather than going to serve the needs of the Cuban masses.

Um, no, the tourist industry brings in money that serves the needs of the Cuban masses. There are certainly social problems associated with tourism, but I don't see what choice Cuba has in its current situation.


Even prostitution, the exploitation and sexual objectification of women, is allowed by the Cuban government in some tourist areas. What kind of socialist nation is that?!

Prostitution has, in fact, continued to exist in most countries calling themselves socialist. The abolition of prostitution - through finding them other jobs, not through punitive law enforcement - was one of the great accomplishments of the Cuban revolution. And the reason anyone mentions its existence in Cuba today - it's not newsworthy that prostitution exists elsewhere.

Prostitution is "allowed" only in the sense that the Cuban government does not punish the women involved, who are the victims of this crime if anyone is. They do try to discourage prostitution, including by keeping Cuban "guests" out of the tourist hotels. (Which, in turn, some visitors to Cuba complain about as a police-state measure.)


Castro constantly praised Gorbachev and adapted Cuba's economy to his policies

Were you around at the time? I remember Cuba being constantly attacked for failing to follow Gorbachev...by the same people who had claimed Cuba was a Russian colony.


Cuba's entire army was for decades dependent on the USSR and aided in the Soviet invasions of Eriteria and Angola

Wow! A pure bit of recycled U.S. imperialist propaganda.

1. Cuba did not in fact participate in Ethiopia's war in Eritrea, despite false accusations to this effect by Washington. Cuba called for a negotiated end to the conflict between the Ethiopean government and the Eritrean independence fighters. In contrast to Moscow, which advocated crushing them.

Cuba did help Ethiopia fight off an invasion by the Somalian regime, which was covertly armed by imperialism. This was a correct action in defense of the Ethiopian revolution, which had recently done away with feudalism and carried out the most thorough land reform anywhere in Africa. It highlights Cuba's revolutionary internationalism.

2. What Soviet invasion of Angola? Angola was in fact invaded by South Africa and Zaire with U.S. support. Cuba sent troops to Angola, at the request of the (newly independent) Angolan government, to defend it from invasion. Throughout the mission in Angola, Cuba carefully refrained from interfering in Angola's internal affairs.

U.S. imperialism claimed Cuba was acting as a Soviet proxy. But in fact, Cuba did not even inform the Soviet Union before beginning this revolutionary internationalist action. See "Conflicting Missions" by Piero Gliejeses for proof and more details. The Soviet Union did send some aid to Angola...and good for it, as far as that goes.

Angola and other Cuban internationalist actions highlight the difference between Cuba and the Stalinist and post-Stalinist USSR and China, which never stuck their necks out for the world revolution, and whose military interventions showed no respect for other countries self-determination.

Soviet trade and aid did help make it possible for Cuba to carry out these actions, which weakened imperialism and strengthened the world revolutionary movement.

Just another reason why it was correct for Cuba to trade with the Soviet Union.


Many people defend Cuba's resignation to social-imperialism saying that without it that the USA would have invaded them again and this time succeeded. But after the Bay of Pigs incident, the USA was rather demoralized in terms of Cuba, and it was too busy protecting its interests in Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and many of its other Cold War disputes; thus it is doubtable whether the USA would have crushed Cuba or not.

The fact is that the U.S. did continue to attack Cuba every way it can. And still does. "Operation Mongoose" - post Bay of Pigs, but pre Missile Crisis - was clearly aimed at leading up to a full-scale invasion.

Cuban communists, correctly, did not and do not base their actions on hoping that Washington will leave them alone. Rather, they choose the policies that will strengthen the defense of the revolution as much as possible...in order to deter invasion.

Which is the real reason the U.S. hasn't invaded. During the missile crisis, Kennedy requested an estimate of the casualties that would be invoved. The answer was remarkably high, and he didn't bring up the subject again.


even is Cuba WAS crushed, it wouldn't have made it wrong to have tried, since the USSR and China were also overthrown and they certainly weren't wrong for trying to developing socialism

They were wrong for NOT trying to develop socialism. Cuba carries out policies that were different and more socialist...part of the proof of which is, they are continuing to hold out and stand for socialism, where China and the USSR are not.

Why praise failure? Why attack success?

[flyby]

This is a great thread. And I think Andrei has kicked it off on a high level, and Severian is engaging important questions. Let me throw a few thought in, which may help a little.

Andrei wrote "Soon after the Cuban Revolution, the Communist Party of Cuba decided not to dismantle the one-crop sugar economy or carry out a thoroughgoing agrarian revolution in the countryside."

Severian answered: "What is this nonsense? All large landowners and other rural exploiters were eliminated. How much more "thoroughgoing" an "agrarian revolution" do you want? If you're complaining about Cuba's refusal to follow Stalin and Mao in carrying out a forced collectivization campaign aimed at eliminating all individual farms, even small ones, please say so. For my part, I think that was an absolutely correct decision."

This is the heart of the difference between a communist approach and the Castroite one.

The agrarian revolutin is land to the tiller -- it is the overthrow of semi-feudal relations in a way that unleashes the masses of peasants and brings real revolution deep into the stagnant and bitter heart of the countryside.

To take sugar plantations of the imperialists and just turning them into new plantations of the government -- all while keeping the colonial relations in tact, and keeping the masses in their place -- this is not agrarian revolution. This road is the slide from open old-skool capitalism to barely-disguised state capitalism. And that is the heart of what happened in Cuba.

Let me break that down:

Take imperialist and feudal landholdings (like for example big cotton plantations in the U.S. south in the 1930s, or sugar plantations in Cuba in the 1950s, or cocoa plantations in Ghana today). To have revolution, the masses need to be mobilized and relied on. the path to future collective ownership has to be "lant to the tiller" or else you exactly have forced and involuntary collectivization (what the shining path calls "new gamalismo" -- the old feudal order recreated by new state capitalist forces.

In china, the vast majority of the masses were impoverished peasants -- and they could not be mobilized and energized in a revolutonary way if the new relations of the countryside were simply imposed from the capital (no matter how well intentioned or revolutionary the central leadership believed themselves to be).

The path was first agrarian revolution: feudal property was broken up, land was given to the landless peasants. It was the largest transfer of wealth and property in history.

Immediately, of course, class struggle emerges: the newly divided lands is unequal, some is valuable, some is not. Some peasants have oxen, some even have mills for grinding grain. And so over time, without revolution, you would have the emergence of a capitalist agriculture.

But what happened under Mao's leadership, was a process of voluntary experimentation and class struggle: in particular the poorest peasants were led (by communists) to form cooperatives, where they pooled their labor to survive and prosper. Insead of falling into debt to the wealthier peasants, they formed cooperatives, dug wells, shared oxen, built roads, shared resources in hard times. And these cooperatives became the basis for the emergence of new, collective socialist forms of land ownership -- as cooperatives developed into communes.

This was a new and voluntary road to socialist transformation of the countryside. And the production of these farms was not for the capitalist market. It was not classic colonial commodity production (sugar cane, cocoa, coca, rubber etc. etc.) but was food for the workers in the city and for the rural population -- with "grain as the base."

Ok, now lets contrast the castroite road:

First the revolution itself was not a protracted peoples war, but essentially an armed coup from the countryside. The revolution had never developed real political base areas, or developed new organs of mass rule. They launched a foco, they fought for a short time, and when the batista government fell, they seized the time.

This meant that they had a weak base among the masses, and even had to rely on the organizational infrastructure of the utterly reactionary Cuban socialist party (the revisionists) to build a government and reach important sections of the masses.

On a very important decision: they decided to maintain the sugar economy, and remain focused on producing a cash crop for the world market. Because of that, they decided not to divide up the estates, but to impose state ownership of the old plantations (and even expand them, taking the remaining small farms and absorbing them into new plantations).

This had several impacts:

first you had a revolution that never deeply stirred the masses of peasants, or created the basis for them to rule. It was exactly the kind of "enlightened despotism" that I have been debating with redstar.

More important, it did not break the fundamental production relation of imperialism -- i.e. the production for the world market, and everything that htis implies (dependency, tied to world prices and loans, need to import food etc.)

Cuba stopped being self-sufficient in food -- and when the U.S. embargoed, the Cuban government NEEDED a big "sugar daddy" somewhere else -- and quickly found themselves in hock to the Soviet imperialists. And the old colonial relations were now reproduced -- in a new phony "socialist" form.

Mao struggled with castro over this. He urged them to break up the sugar plantations and focus on (a) rural revolution and transformation and (b) developing domestic self-reliant food productoin.

Taking the old plantations and painting a red star on them is not revolution. Much oppression in the last century has taken the form of state capitalism that claims to be socialist.

Severian writes: "As for sugar...their iniotial policy was, in fact, to move away from a dependence on one crop. This changed due to the extremely favorable terms for export of sugar to the USSR. It was economically correct to concentrate on producing as much sugar as possible...except that this assumed the USSR would be there forever. That assumption was the only eror."

this is exactly wrong.

The problem is not that "the soviet union went away" -- the problem is that they were a capitalist-imperialist power, and their domination over Cuba had a devastating impact on the course of the revolution. Soviet methods were imposed in factories (including under Che's time) -- which were nothing but draconian and alienated capitalist factory relations. Cuba backed away from supporting revolution (Castro called on Chilean people to take the path of Allende, and set up their massacre. He urged the Sandinistas to be even less revolutinary than the Cuban experience, and not touch the big southern estates etc.) The Soviet Union demanded that Cuban troops help consolidate new colonial areas for social-imperialism. They became armed bodyguards for the MPLA in angola. They were involved in the fighting of the eastern horn of africa. (all of it explained as "socialist internationalism" of course.)

Castro also supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. etc.

This was a very high price to pay for sugar sales!

Severian writes: "In any case, Cuba is now taking drastic steps to put less resources into sugar production - while protecting the interests of sugar workers, as I mentioned in my last post. Will you say, then, that Cuba has suddenly become socialist?"

Hardly!

And then, when their capitalist "sugar daddy" went away -- the extrme dependence of this kind of neocolonial economics revealed itself again.

and what did cuba do? switch to a other form of neocolonial econom: selling resources and labor to the French, Canadian and other imperialists. Opening up the notorious beach hotels again, with the reemergence of prostitution and sex tourism. Back to the Days of Batista!! To the genuine disgust of the Cuban people, and to the cancerous growth of some of the most reactionary relations imaginable.

(I won't go into details about this: but I have observed some aspects of this personally or talked to people who have.)

There is much more to say.....

but that is a start....

The Castro road is a road of neocolonialism with a very thin "communist" veneer -- it is exactly NOT the road to socialism and communism.

And the problems did not start in the late 1980s with gorbachev -- they were in the very earliest decisions of the Castro revolution (in how it was fought, in the foco approach, in the lack of revolutioanry political base areas and protracted revolutonary war, in the decision to uphold colonial sugar economic models in a new form, in the refusal to lead a genuine revolutionary break up of the plantations, and then in the "logic of the logic" -- ending up as a fig leaf for the social-imperialists, and even as colonial troops fighting for the new Soviet empire in different parts of the world, revisionist foreign legion.

We need to excavate this, analyze it from a revolutinary point of view, and uphold MLM in opposition to this revisionist road.

[flyby]

andrei writes: "The USSR's loans to cover Cuba's negative balance of trade ($5 billion) were on unequal terms and were on the exact terms of America's old loans during the Batista era."

severian answers: "Everything else I've seen indicates they were on better terms than typical capitalist loans...of the same time anyway."

I think that we should dig into sources. on this. But my impression is that severian is right.

There are several points:

(a) The Soviet Union used Cuba as a showcase as it was trying to expand its empire in the seventies and eighties. Cuba was a figleaf and a model for the first stages of a colonial empire the social-imperialists were seeking.

The neocolonial sugar deals produced dependence (cuba on the world market and on the Soviet Union in particular).

At the same time (on paper) the soviet union "gave a good deal" -- i.e. the prices they applied (on paper at least) were not the same as the rest of the world market.

In exchange, however, the Soviet Union got submarine bases on Cuba (for power projection), and they got Cuban troops for their adventures in Africa (a priceless addition to their arsenal, since Soviet colonial troops would have been much less acceptable in Angola or Ethiopia than Cuban-Afro troops, as you can imagine).

And in other ways, the Soviet social-imperialists got a "figleaf" -- this is a time (60s, 70s and 80s) when the soviet bloc was openly counterrevolutionary, and rather disgusting.the Soviet Union itself was a nightmare, the soviet imperialists could point to Cuba as their "revolutionary credentials."

It was a good deal for these imperialists, and a shitty deal for the Cuban people.

They gave up their revolution and all they got was slightly higher prices for their commodity. (Some socialism!!)

(b) In addition, the deals (typically for the soviet sociali impeiralists) required the cubans to spend their money (rubles) buying goods in the Soviet Union -- and these goods were notoriously shitty. Soviet industry produced few manufactured goods that could find markets in the world economy -- with the exception of weapons. So you got more money for sugar but had to buy busses that didn't run, shoes that were ugly, lightbulbs that broke, bulldozers that sat like doorstops.

The Egyptians building the Aswan Dam had voluminous literature documenting similar problems.

© The soviet method of extracting surplus labor took the form of unequal pricing arrangements. In other words, they did not (openly) "invest capital and demand the profit" -- since they were pretending to be "socialists." Their exploitation of cheap labor around the world (including especially India) took the form of "exchanges of commodities" where (after you did the math) you found out that the Soviet Union got "cheap inputs" and gave less in return.

Part of this was their revisionist theory of "socialist division of labor" -- in which they said that in their "socialist camp" each country would produce the goods they were "best suited for." And guess what? This "division of labor" was EXACTLY THE SAME as the other imperialist division of labor imposed by the U.S. and Europe!

Suddenly, it was said that the USSR (naturally) was best at manufacturing (unless it was labor intensive) and the "socialist" colonies were best at producing cheap commodities.

And guess what? These countries could send immigrants to the Soviet bloc as cheap labor -- so suddenly you had Vietnamese workers sweeping the streets in East Germany, just as you had Turkish workers sweeping the streets in West Germany.

you get the picture.

[Conghaileach]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 02:18 AM
In some ways, I see the cuban experience as the road we DON'T want to take...
where a popular revolution leads to a new order -- but can't proceed on the road to communism. Instead a kind of "social welfare state" with a self-appointed clique that rules in the "name of the people" without really "expanding the 'we' who rules" and so ultimately ends up being a new exploiting class (and ends up selling the people -- first to the USSR social imperialists, as both labor and cannon fodder -- and then ultimately to western imperialists as sex trade and waiters)
This is an interesting comment from a follower of the cult of Bob Avakian.

[flyby]

Originally posted by Conghaileach+Dec 18 2004, 04:50 PM--> (Conghaileach @ Dec 18 2004, 04:50 PM)
[email protected] 18 2004, 02:18 AM
In some ways, I see the cuban experience as the road we DON'T want to take...
where a popular revolution leads to a new order -- but can't proceed on the road to communism. Instead a kind of "social welfare state" with a self-appointed clique that rules in the "name of the people" without really "expanding the 'we' who rules" and so ultimately ends up being a new exploiting class (and ends up selling the people -- first to the USSR social imperialists, as both labor and cannon fodder -- and then ultimately to western imperialists as sex trade and waiters)
This is an interesting comment from a follower of the cult of Bob Avakian. [/b]
Thank you. I'm glad you found it interesting.

And, obviously, you are also being ironic, so let's explore it.

The core of what makes Chairman Avakian's work unique is exactly this: Seeing that consolidating a "welfare state ruled by benevolent saviors" is a road to capitalism (regardless of the intentions, good or bad, of those involved).

And Avakian is leading a deep and creative effort to uncover how to do something very different (different even from what Mao did.)

This is the heart of his seminal essay DICTATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY, AND THE SOCIALIST TRANSITION TO COMMUNISM (http://rwor.org/bob_avakian/new_speech/avakian_democracy_dictatorship_speech.htm)

The following quote (forgive the length) gets at what he is raising, which you can see is a sharp critique and rejection of the "second alternative":

"As the world exists today and as people seek to change it, and particularly in terms of the socialist transformation of society, as I see it there are basically three alternatives that are possible. One is the world as it is. Enough said about that. [Laughter].

The second one is in a certain sense, almost literally and mechanically, turning the world upside down. In other words, people who are now exploited will no longer be exploited in the same way, people who now rule this society will be prevented from ruling or influencing society in a significant way. The basic economic structure of society will change, some of the social relations will change, and some of the forms of political rule will change, and some of the forms of culture and ideology will change, but fundamentally the masses of people will not be increasingly and in one leap after another, drawn into the process of really transforming society. This is really a vision of a revisionist society. If you think back to the days of the Soviet Union, when it had become a revisionist society, capitalist and imperialist in essence, but still socialist in name, when they would be chided for their alleged or real violations of people's rights, they would often answer "Who are you in the west to be talking about the violation of human rights -- look at all the people in your society who are unemployed, what more basic human right is there than to have a job?"

Well, did they have a point? Yes, up to a point. But fundamentally what they were putting forward, the vision of society that they were projecting, was a social welfare kind of society in which fundamentally the role of the masses of people is no different than it is under the classical form of capitalism. The answer about the rights of the people cannot be reduced to the right to have a job and earn an income, as basic as that is. There is the question of are we really going to transform society so that in every respect, not only economically but socially, politically, ideologically and culturally, it really is superior to capitalist society. A society that not only meets the needs of the masses of people, but really is characterized increasingly by the conscious expression and initiative of the masses of people.

This is a more fundamental transformation than simply a kind of social welfare, socialist in name but really capitalist in essence society, where the role of the masses of people is still largely reduced to being producers of wealth, but not people who thrash out all the larger questions of affairs of state, the direction of society, culture, philosophy, science, the arts, and so on. The revisionist model is a narrow, economist view of socialism. It reduces the people, in their activity, to simply the economic sphere of society, and in a limited way at that -- simply their social welfare with regard to the economy. It doesn't even think about transforming the world outlook of the people as they in turn change the world around them.

And you cannot have a new society and a new world with the same outlook that people are indoctrinated and inculcated with in this society. You cannot have a real revolutionary transformation of society and abolition of unequal social as well as economic relations and political relations if people still approach the world in the way in which they're conditioned and limited and constrained to approach it now. How can the masses of people really take up the task of consciously changing the world if their outlook and their approach to the world remains what it is under this system? It's impossible, and this situation will simply reproduce the great inequalities in every sphere of society that I've been talking about.

The third alternative is a real radical rupture. Marx and Engels said in the Communist Manifesto that the communist revolution represents a radical rupture with traditional property relations and with traditional ideas. And the one is not possible without the other. They are mutually reinforcing, one way or the other.

If you have a society in which the fundamental role of women is to be breeders of children, how can you have a society in which there is equality between men and women? You cannot. And if you don't attack and uproot the traditions, the morals, and so on, that reinforce that role, how can you transform the relations between men and women and abolish the deep-seated inequalities that are bound up with the whole division of society into oppressors and oppressed, exploiters and exploited? You cannot.

So the third alternative is a real radical rupture in every sphere, a radically different synthesis, to put it that way. Or to put it another way, it's a society and a world that the great majority of people would actually want to live in. One in which not only do they not have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, or if they get sick whether they're going to be told that they can't have health care because they can't pay for it, as important as that is; but one in which they are actually taking up, wrangling with, and increasingly making their own province all the different spheres of society.

Achieving that kind of a society, and that kind of a world, is a very profound challenge. It's much more profound than simply changing a few forms of ownership of the economy and making sure that, on that basis, people's social welfare is taken care of, but you still have people who are taking care of that for the masses of people; and all the spheres of science, the arts, philosophy and all the rest are basically the province of a few. And the political decision-making process remains the province of a few.

To really leap beyond that is a tremendous and world-historic struggle that we've been embarked on since the Russian revolution (not counting the very short-lived and limited experience of the Paris Commune) -- and in which we reached the high point with the Chinese revolution and in particular the Cultural Revolution -- but from which we've been thrown back temporarily.

So we need to make a further leap on the basis of summing up very deeply all that experience. There are some very real and vexing problems that we have to confront and advance through in order to draw from the best of the past, but go further and do even better in the future.

[flyby]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 02:20 AM

Even prostitution, the exploitation and sexual objectification of women, is allowed by the Cuban government in some tourist areas.

Hasn't Cuba inacted some of the toughest anti-prostitution laws in the world? Are you saying that these laws only apply outside the tourist areas where the Cuban government allows such activity?... That would be very disappointing, and disgusting.

exactly.

Batista's Cuba was the modern world's most notorious "sex tourism" locale (as portrayed in the movie the godfather etc.)

When the cuban revolution happened, the mob and the pimps moved to Las Vegas.

And whatever other bullshit the revisionists did in Cuba (and there was a lot of counterrevolutionary bullshit that went down) they were proud of having ended the sale of Cuba's women to imperialist tourists.

That is now reversed. And it is a scandal, and an exposure, and something that makes Cuba's people heartsick. And it is also an explosive contradiction within the heart of cuba's society -- because a revisionist government (which prattles about moral incentives etc. etc. and revolutonary morality etc.) has allowed (and actually promoted) this return of the ugliest features of the past.

And of course they say it is all the result of "necessity" -- and the point of the revolutionary communist criticism is "what line and policies led to this so-called 'necessity' and defacto dependence?"

[flyby]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 02:20 AM

So I take it that you think Castro has no intentions of eliminating Cuba's reliance on tourism and other capitalistic practices, and he isn't concerned with building Socialism?

And that the Cuban people should start a new revolution to overthrow the current Cuban government?

Wow, that's something to think about.
yup to all those points.

[SonofRage]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 12:57 PM

The core of what makes Chairman Avakian's work unique is exactly this: Seeing that consolidating a "welfare state ruled by benevolent saviors" is a road to capitalism (regardless of the intentions, good or bad, of those involved).


Funny, Anarchists were saying that 100 years ago.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 10:00 AM
This is the heart of the difference between a communist approach and the Castroite one.

The agrarian revolutin is land to the tiller -- it is the overthrow of semi-feudal relations in a way that unleashes the masses of peasants and brings real revolution deep into the stagnant and bitter heart of the countryside.

To take sugar plantations of the imperialists and just turning them into new plantations of the government -- all while keeping the colonial relations in tact, and keeping the masses in their place -- this is not agrarian revolution. This road is the slide from open old-skool capitalism to barely-disguised state capitalism. And that is the heart of what happened in Cuba.


I'm sorry, but this is precisely backwards in theory and has nothing to do with actual events in Cuba.

As to the theory: there is nothing socialist about small peasant landholdings; "land to the tiller" is a bourgeois-democratic revolutionary measure. Indeed, small peasant commodity production + the market inevitably reproduce capitalism unless further socialist measures are taken. See Lenin on this.

State farms - like state-owned factories - are the form of property that is closest to socialism. They should not, however, be set up without regard to the wishes of the peasants and the concrete economic conditions of the time and place.

If you're going to say state farms are just the same relations as working for the capitalists, you might as well say the same about state-owned industry. So why be any kind of socialist or communist then?

As to the practice in Cuba: a fair number of land titles were in fact distributed to small farmers. Other large capitalist farms were converted to state farms - some of these have since become cooperatives.

The actual difference in practice between Cuba on the one hand, and the USSR and China on the other, is that Cuba has not forcibly taken small farmers' land and forced them into cooperatives. In other words, the precise opposite of the contrast you seem to imagine exists.



But what happened under Mao's leadership, was a process of voluntary experimentation and class struggle: in particular the poorest peasants were led (by communists) to form cooperatives, where they pooled their labor to survive and prosper. Insead of falling into debt to the wealthier peasants, they formed cooperatives, dug wells, shared oxen, built roads, shared resources in hard times. And these cooperatives became the basis for the emergence of new, collective socialist forms of land ownership -- as cooperatives developed into communes.

This was a new and voluntary road to socialist transformation of the countryside. And the production of these farms was not for the capitalist market. It was not classic colonial commodity production (sugar cane, cocoa, coca, rubber etc. etc.) but was food for the workers in the city and for the rural population -- with "grain as the base."


This has nothing to do with reality. The self-described "Chinese Stalin", like his role model, carried out forced collectivization in a short period. In '58, Mao decreed that everyone would join huge "communes" as part of the Great Leap Forward, and poof, everyone did. You think every peasant and China came to that conclusion voluntarily all at once?

As in the USSR, the immediate result was famine. Mao had to recognize the disaster and break up the communes into smaller collectives. A brief history of this - bourgeois but accurate. (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/great_leap_forward.htm)

The long-term result, as in the USSR and other Stalinist countries, was the eventual dissolution of the collectives and increasing inequality in the countryside. As I asked Andrei, why praise failure and criticize success? You haven't answered that any more than my other points.


First the revolution itself was not a protracted peoples war, but essentially an armed coup from the countryside. The revolution had never developed real political base areas, or developed new organs of mass rule. They launched a foco, they fought for a short time, and when the batista government fell, they seized the time.

This meant that they had a weak base among the masses, and even had to rely on the organizational infrastructure of the utterly reactionary Cuban socialist party (the revisionists) to build a government and reach important sections of the masses.

Uh, yeah, right, the Cuban revolution's really been characterized by weak support among the masses. Compared to, say, the attitude of Russians and Chinese towards their phony "communism". Even some capitalists would tell you this is false and have had to acknowledge the strong support of most Cubans for the revolution.


Cuba stopped being self-sufficient in food --

Uh, yeah, around the time of Columbus. That you would place the end of food self-sufficiency AFTER the Cuban revolution shows your deep ignorance of facts.

And, like Andrei, you haven't explained WHY self-sufficiency is better or more socialist than international economic cooperation. You repeat the U.S. imperialists' accusation that Cuba became a Soviet colony, without providing any evidence or answering my points on this. You even repeat the thoroughly disproven imperialist propaganda accusation that they were following Soviet orders and spreading the Soviet empire in Angola - as if communists need orders to motivate them to carry out revolutionary internationalist acts. Again, see Conflicting Missions for documentary proof.

Indeed, you haven't attempted to seriously refute any of my points; rather you've given a canned recitation of Holy Mao Tse-Tung thought. You haven't provided any evide, rather you've proclaimed The Truth in a papal-encyclical style as if everyone's just supposed to take it on faith, without needing any evidence.

It's a mode of argument I've frequently seen from RedStar as well; apparently it flows from Maoist training.

BTW, this "prolonged popular war" business is profoundly immoral as well as false; it says a rapid revolutionary victory is bad and it's better for working people to spend decades being napalmed. In reality, such a long, destructive war destroys the economic and cultural preconditions for socialism.

Why not admit the real reason you Maoists are denouncing Cuba?

1. Mao and Krushev had a petty border dispute.
2. Each side made up a bunch of ideological excuses for that border dispute.
3. Mao decided to break relations with anyone who accepted Soviet aid, and denounce them as puppets of "social-imperialism".

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 10:16 AM
And in other ways, the Soviet social-imperialists got a "figleaf" -- this is a time (60s, 70s and 80s) when the soviet bloc was openly counterrevolutionary, and rather disgusting.the Soviet Union itself was a nightmare, the soviet imperialists could point to Cuba as their "revolutionary credentials."
Sure.

[Except that should be "openly reformist" not "openly counterrevolutionary." It was China, with its friendship with Pinochet, Yahya Khan, the FNLA etc etc, the most rabidly prowar and anticommunist forces in the US and everywhere as long as they were anti-Soviet, which was openly counterrevolutionary during this period.]

This is, however, not characteristic of the relations of finance capital with the Third World. It is typical of Soviet relations with COMECON nations.

And it's a problem for your logic: if Cuba's just another "revisionist", "state capitalist" country....why would relations with Cuba carry this advantage for the USSR?

Makes more sense to see relations with a revolutionary government carrying the advantage of letting the USSR shine with a borrowed, reflected red glow.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 10:16 AM
© The soviet method of extracting surplus labor took the form of unequal pricing arrangements. In other words, they did not (openly) "invest capital and demand the profit" -- since they were pretending to be "socialists." Their exploitation of cheap labor around the world (including especially India) took the form of "exchanges of commodities" where (after you did the math) you found out that the Soviet Union got "cheap inputs" and gave less in return.
Relative to the amount of labor embodied in each commodity. Not relative to world market prices.

This kind of exploitation is endemic to trade relations between countries with different levels of productivity of labor, and is one of the main forms of the exploitation of the Third World by the advance capitalist countries. The less-developed commodity has to sell commodities embodying a larger quantity of labor-power and therefore greater in value. Especially when exchanging raw materials and agricultural products for manufactured goods - the productivity of labor is higher in manufacturing.

All this - including the role of the USSR in benefiting from it - was explained most clearly by Che Guevara and other leaders of the Cuban revolution, so it's ironic to see Maoists using confused versions of it against the Cuban revolutionary leadership.

But of course it was the advanced capitalist countries - not the USSR - that created this situation and were the main beneficiaries by far. The USSR often gave better terms of exchange than were available elsewhere - and not just to Cuba.

Trade with the USSR offered far better terms than Cuba could get elsewhere. "National self-sufficiency" is a reactionary fantasy. And they did not, in fact, give up their revolution for it - their revolution is still there. Trade with the USSR was a correct policy, even if it required revolutionary leaders to bite their tongues over things like the invasion of Czechoslovakia. (Partially, not completely...have you read Castro's speech on Czechoslovakia? Let's just say there's a reason it never appeared in Pravda.)

You've offered no serious alternative policy that could have ensured the survival of the Cuban revolution, or enabled it to do more to advance the world revolution.

Incidentally, it was China, not the USSR that committed the most blatant attempt by a postcapitalist country to coerce Cuba by means of trade. As Castro explained at the time. (http://www1.lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/castro/1966/19660314)

Oh yeah, about prostitution: again, the only reason anyone talks about this is the contrast with Cuba's nearly unique achievement in abolishing - not just outlawing - it.

It is simply false that Cuba is encouraging prostitution - this is simply repeating yet another imperialist slander, one that Bush et all have been unable to give any evidence for either. Efforts to crack down on prostitution are so severe that many visitors to Cuba have commented on police making it difficult for them to associate with any young Cuban women, even a married couple with a tour guide.

Apparently something I said in my response to Andrei is out of date: the women are sometimes subject to criminal penalties. I'm inclined to think that's unfortunate. In any case, it's clearly untrue that Cuba is encouraging prostitution.
Sources: link (http://havanajournal.com/culture_comments/A1058_0_3_0_M/) link (http://www.canadiannetworkoncuba.ca/Documents/WSmith-prostitution-jul04.shtml)

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian
You [flyby] haven't provided any evidence, rather you've proclaimed The Truth in a papal-encyclical style as if everyone's just supposed to take it on faith, without needing any evidence.

It's a mode of argument I've frequently seen from RedStar as well; apparently it flows from Maoist training.

I can't imagine what prompted you to insert this little "dig" in the midst of your dispute with flyby -- especially since I also questioned Andrei's reasoning about Cuba.

But since you've invited me to comment, what about this little gem?


Apparently something I said in my response to Andrei is out of date: the women are sometimes subject to criminal penalties. I'm inclined to think that's unfortunate.

Unfortunate? Not outrageous? Not utterly inexcusable? Not disgusting or totally contemptible?

Yes, I guess if you are one of the persecuted women, it's certainly a "bad break"...very "unfortunate", no question about it.

One would think, however, that a self-styled "communist" could find better words to condemn the Cuban government's persecution of poor women trying to survive in a harsh environment than "unfortunate".

An example of "Trotskyist training" perhaps?

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[RagsToRevolution]

While it is often the enviromental conditions that would force someone into prostitution, and I do oppose the criminal penalty for prostitution rather than rehabilitation, a question has been troubling me.

Why exactly are the prostitutes in question doing this?

One of the first reasons I myself have seen is also a reason I support the ban on the U$ dollar in Cuba.

The U$ dollar is greatly more valuable than a peso. When American tourism existed and those using American dollars to purchase prostitution, the prostitutes in question gained the U$ dollars, and were able to purchase form the more "elite" dollar economy that once exised in Cuba.

This I saw as a core reason, it was not necessity (as far as I know, you can get job/unemployment benefits) but essentially greed, then again, when the U$ dollar circulated in Cuba, it created a new economic divide, thus sometimes the dollar was necessary to gain certain goods.

However, now that Castro has banned the use of the U$ dollar in Cuba, this may also indirectly greatly reduce the amount of prostitution in Cuba. I applaud Castro for, even if it was not intentional, helping alleviate one of the root problems of the Cuban economy and also prostitution.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2004, 10:52 AM
One of the first reasons I myself have seen is also a reason I support the ban on the U$ dollar in Cuba.



However, now that Castro has banned the use of the U$ dollar in Cuba, this may also indirectly greatly reduce the amount of prostitution in Cuba. I applaud Castro for, even if it was not intentional, helping alleviate one of the root problems of the Cuban economy and also prostitution.
Right.


This I saw as a core reason, it was not necessity (as far as I know, you can get job/unemployment benefits) but essentially greed, then again, when the U$ dollar circulated in Cuba, it created a new economic divide, thus sometimes the dollar was necessary to gain certain goods.

I think "greed" would be an overstatement. Nobody starves in Cuba, with or without dollars, but many people have gone hungry during the early 90s...and as you say without dollars it's been often hard to get soap, toilet paper, and other things modern people think of as necessities.

Incidentally, I don't think Cuba's passed a law criminalizing prostitution specifically. Rather, the vagrancy law is used....they're warned and, potentially, jailed after repeated warnings.

Don't take it personally, Redstar, it's a point about methods of logic.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian
Incidentally, I don't think Cuba's passed a law criminalizing prostitution specifically. Rather, the vagrancy law is used....they're warned and, potentially, jailed after repeated warnings.

Or, if she's less "unfortunate", the cops simply take her money and make her give them a free blow-job.

That's how it works in San Francisco, anyway. :angry:

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[RagsToRevolution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2004, 11:27 PM
I think "greed" would be an overstatement. Nobody starves in Cuba, with or without dollars, but many people have gone hungry during the early 90s...and as you say without dollars it's been often hard to get soap, toilet paper, and other things modern people think of as necessities.
And, incidentally, the mid-90s was the era in which prostitution was most rampant.

[flyby]

socialism is not welfare measures.

You can't "prove" a place is socialist by listing "free education" or "guaranteed jobs."

And socialism is not simply the existance or dominance of state ownership as a form of property relations.

After all, if the bourgeoisie owns the state, then state ownership is a bourgeois property relation.

socialism is something very different.....

That is why the transition (in cuba) from western-style private-owned sugar plantation system to Soviet-style state-owned sugar plantation system was not a socialist measure...

It was, in fact, the prevention of the socialist road in agriculture, which can only happen through agrarian revolution, cooperatives and then "higher" forms of social ownership (including communes and collectives.)

Let me give you an example:

In Peru, there was a military dictatorship in the 1970s. It was oppressive, but leaned toward the Soviet Union. And it sought to impose changes in the interior of the country -- largely by replacing the old aristocratic ranching and farming system (called gamalismo) with state collectives.

The Maoists in Peru called this change "new gamalismo" -- because the pro-government peasants in charge of these collectives quickly set themselves up as new aristocrats and oppressors, and (like the old gamalismo) could rely on the army to back them up (against the peasants!)

In fact, the agrarian revolution in peru (Led by the Communist Party of Peru, known as Shining path) was aimed at overthrowing both old and new gamalismo, giving "land to the tiller," and then on the basis of those revolutionary changes, developing new forms of revolutionary collective ownership in a new society.

so, once again, it is common in the U.S. for conservatives to equate "socialism" with "government ownership" and varoius "welfare measures." As if the liberal reforms are "creeping socialism."

This is not the kind of socialism that maoists are fighting for -- and it is not what "socialism" means in Marxist discussions.

Socialism is a transitional society -- between capitalism and communism. It is a tumultous period of transition, in which there are corresponding production relations.

This issue of production relations has three levels:

1) There are "ownership relations" -- i.e. at what level in society is the decisionmaking make over the production units.

2) there are relations OF production -- i.e. what are the relationships between human beings like within the production process (is it one-man management? is it nose to the grindstone and punishment? Are new socialist and communist relations happening, where managers work, and workers manage?)

3) There are relations of distribution (which affects what real world production relations are like -- if goods are distributed extremely unequally, as they were in the Soviet Union for example, and if such inequalities are widening, as they have been in Cuba -- it reflects the underlying totality of production relations).

Fundamentally, a society is socialist if its relations are being transformed through revolutionary struggle to the degree possible, and if the structures, remnants, dynamics of capitalism (and commodity production0 are being exposed, overthrown and restricted.

This is a very different view of socialism from western conservatives (see above) or Soviet revisionists (who essentially portray socialism as "state ownership plus some welfare guarantees.")

[Comrade Marcel]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2004, 02:29 AM

Even prostitution, the exploitation and sexual objectification of women, is allowed by the Cuban government in some tourist areas.

Hasn't Cuba inacted some of the toughest anti-prostitution laws in the world? Are you saying that these laws only apply outside the tourist areas where the Cuban government allows such activity? If that were the case, then president bush (horrible as it sounds) would be correct in accusing the Cuban government of being involved in sex tourism. That would be very disappointing, and disgusting.


Anyone who criticizes Cuba on prostitution needs a reality check.

What kind of a "socialist" nation would criminalize wimmin for prostitution anyways? Don't you think it's the western men who are doing the exploiting that should be punished? That being said, the "prostitution" in Cuba is a lot more "consentual" then what normally comes to mind when you hear the word; and should be more compared to escort service type prostitution in the west. I really don't think that there is a huge benefit for Cuba to go around arresting tourists for this; unless of course they are doing something beyond a private exchange and is deplorable and merits it being treated criminal.

The following is a post I made on another forum:

http://www.thecomputermechanics.com/forums...47&postcount=12 (http://www.thecomputermechanics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=74447&postcount=12)

Some middle class Spanish womyn visits Cuba and is disappointed. The world's tiniest violin must be playing a song just for her. It's no different from that middle class Chinese womyn who now writes for The Post (I think) who was a Maoist in the 1970s. Went to China and couldn't take the hard work. I'm sorry, but if you go to Cuba after living in Newmarket your whole life, you have no empirical reality to base your expectations on.

Myself, having grown up in an purely urban environment with poverty and struggle around - though far from as harsh as the 3rd world - have a little more rational prespective.

Some comments on a few things that pop out from this womyn's mouth:


But they hadn't mentioned the prostitution either...

I dare Isane to compare the hejentaros in Cuba with the prostitution in other third world countries. Before the collapse of the USSR, before Cuba had to resort to opening tourism for economical growth, there was virtually no prostitution in Cuba. Because the tourists - western men - are looking for sex as a commodity it is something that has reappeared. The hejentaros find that they can get things which are harder to obtain by working legit by being a prostitute. You only need $18 (or 200 Cuban pesos) per month to live in Cuba, but a hejentaro can make $15 or more in one night.

It is fair to mention, that even though it is obvsiously an oppressive relationship (mostly white 1st world men in a patriarchy and privleged position and a womyn of colour in a poor country), the prostitutes in Cuba don't have to be prostitutes to survive. They have homes, they get food, they can get an education, health care, etc (this is not to say they don't face barriers or need more attention and resources, I'm not discounting their struggles).

BUT...

If you go to the Philippines, Thailand, or other Latin American or Carribean countries, the situation is much different. There you will find brothels, where the wimmin are pimped (there are NO pimps in Cuba; and if any tried they would not last long. The hejentaros work independently.) Many of the wimmin in these countries CAN'T leave prostitution because they will be beaten, have family members hurt, or killed themselves. Many of them are indebted to the brothel/pimp anywhere from $200 to $30,000 US dollars or more, and counting (the pimps charge intrest, room/board, food and anything you can imagine you could scam or charge someone as a fee). Some of these wimmin have been kidnapped, many not even wimmin but still girls or young boys. These people are literally sex slaves, mail order brides, etc. and stay that way for years or in many cases their whole lives. They are often locked up, beaten, forced to do things they would not want to, and generally treated much worse then most would treat an animal.

You can find this even in North America, though the child sex slaves are much more rare. There was a movie that depicted this aired on CTV recently, starring Mira Sorvino, the daughter of the guy that played the detective on Law and Order (and I think she was also in a Jet Li movie). Well this movie focused on Russian wimmin, this is also happening to Latin American, Mexican, Carribean, African, Arab, and Asian wimmin; many who have already been sexually abused/assaulted or raped before being forced into prositution.

They are forced to service a dozen or more clients (and can't say no) per night with no pay; in fact they are more and more indebted, probably will get an STD and or die of drug addiction, if not commit suicide. Even if they survive, the psychological trauma could very well overcome them (see the movie "Monster", based on the true story of a prostitute who went psycho from trauma).

Even here in Canada, it is not at all uncommon for rural / small town youth (male and female) to be kidnapped / forced / coeirced / blackmailed or otherwise convinced in to prostitution, locked into drug addiction and pimped. And then you have the Aboriginal community, where thanks to colonialism and cultural imperialism, 200 years of rape, sexual abuse and residential schools has left many in these communities striken with rape, prostitution and alcoholism.

This in NO WAY compares to the experience of Cuban hejentaros, who can pick and choose the man/men they want to hang with for the night, get free drinks, dinner, and paid for sex. I don't want to romantacise this, it's still prostitution. It's still an oppressive relationship. BUT if you must compare it, compare it to the "higher class" or escort service prostitutes here in North America who make pretty decent money, have access to health and services (can get tested for HIV and STDS, etc.)

In Cuba, the prostitutes will not be drug addicts (maybe an alcoholic at the most), they get chronic care for HIV or STDS (or anything else like cancer for that matter), and tend to be healthy just like the rest of the Cuban people.

Not to mention Cuba's HIV rate is the lowest in the Carribean, and second only to Canada as the lowest in the western hemisphere (my source on Cuba's HIV rate is the CIA - yes the Central Intelligence Agency - factbook).

More in awhile...

[Red Heretic]

Why not admit the real reason you Maoists are denouncing Cuba?

1. Mao and Krushev had a petty border dispute.
2. Each side made up a bunch of ideological excuses for that border dispute.
3. Mao decided to break relations with anyone who accepted Soviet aid, and denounce them as puppets of "social-imperialism".

A petty border dispute? Khruschev restored capitalism in the Soviet Union, and used the vast wealth that the Soviet proletariat had produced, to create an imperialist empire.

Do you think the Berlin Wall is a symbol of socialism?

What about the expulsion of Albania from the Cominform? Why was it that Khruschev threatened to use nuclear weapons against two different socialist countries.. and the only remaining socialist countries in the world (while at the same time preaching peaceful co-existence with capitalist/imperialist countries!)?

Why do you suppose it was that Khruschev suppressed to communist revolution in France?

The Cuban Revolution was that of a switch from US imperialism, to Soviet revisionist imperialism.

If you honestly think capitalist restoration started with Gorbachev, you need a serious reality check.

[red team]

I think this page would answer the question as to what khrushchev and Castro was all about:

It's the economy stupid!

Real economic policy changes made in the Khrushchev era: Economic Policy (http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/wim/wyl/hoxha/bland/index.html)

[chebol]

"Cuba's western critics: Blind or Just Stupid"

Sorry, but that's my immediate response to the tone of the initial article and much of the commentary since.

This won't be resolved on this board. It will be resolved either by the critics of Cuba learning what political economy means in the Cuban context (which means finding out what has actually been going on in Cuba all these decades, instead of pretending like it doesn't matter, and making it up as they go along), or by the fact that the socialist revolution in Cuba will not go away, and, as it's influence spreads, as is happening in Venezuela and throughout Latin America and the world, the same critics come to reassess (or should I say "revise") their position on the Cuban revolution because it politically expediant to do so). This process has, in fact, already begun.

Alternatively, the revolution in Cuba could fail, thereby proving all those critics right. Of cause, bang goes another argument that socialism is even slightly possible, so forget about explaining that having a revolution is anything other than a theoretical exercise, undertaken by bored, disillusioned types with nothing better to do than criticise those that try, and do, because they do not fit the required abstract formulae to the most tiny of minutiae.

Sound cynical? Comrades, I feel like taking a poll about what precisely (ie. which books, websites, articles, accounts) you have actually used to arrive at your position. Think of it like an audit, if you like. The criticisms of the initial post stand out like sore thumbs- references (and only 6 of them!!!) in an article that proposes to be so damning of Cuba- and they aren't even tied into the text!

Not to mention the proportion of points that are wrong, misleading (because out of context or dated), or (apparently) consciously slanderous.

And finally, in full realisation that I have in this post provided no concrete arguments and no references, I would like to contend that the posted article is nothing other than specious bullshit. If I get the time (in between organising real struggles) to respond in detail to, I might just bother. No promises, though, only the advice that people should really do some research. There are more than enough extant resources to provide all necessary refutations to the claims made above without my input, if you can be bothered to look (which the author clearly wasn't).
:angry: :castro: :hammer:

[CubaSocialista]

marcel

-you are right about the HIV rate, but it is because HIV+ individuals are controversially quarantined.

of course, US Conservatives, though apathetic to HIV and homosexuals, suddenly found empathy and compassion for these individuals, and cited it as a human rights abuse.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2006, 08:47 PM
marcel

-you are right about the HIV rate, but it is because HIV+ individuals are controversially quarantined.
Not any more. HIV+ individuals are now free to leave the sanatoria...but many choose not to do so.

And that's not why Cuba's AIDS rate is low. It's because of the quality of Cuba's public health system, the priority they've placed on old-fashioned public health measures long used in many countries for preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases - the priority they've placed on things like contact tracing, and testing.

Additionally, it helps to have a generally healthy population! If other STDS are prevalent, that helps spread AIDS more quickly....

All this was admitted in an article in the super-conservative National Review, even. The article was titled "How Cuba Cured AIDS."

[Red1966]

Hi,

With regards to the debate over the prison popluation in Cuba, the web site www.building-block.org lists the countries with the highest prison populations per 100,000 of the population 2004/05:

1st: USA
2nd: Belarus
3rd: Kazakhstan
4th: US Virgin Islands
5th: Cayman Islands
6th: Belize
7th: Bermuda
8th: Suriname
9th: Dominica
10th: Ukraine
11th: CUBA
12th: South Africa

The website goes on to conclude that Cuba has a prison population of 55,000 (including pre trail detainees) in 2005 out of a population of 11.3 million, which is 487 out every 100,000 Cubans are in prison. Hope this helps.

[Red1966]

Hi,

With regards to the debate over the suicide rates in Cuba, the World Health Organisation provides the following statistics for Cuba:

In 1996 the suicide rate in Cuba is:

For men 24.5 per 100,000
For women 12 per 100,000

As a comparison to other countries this above average but by no means the highest.

[Red1966]

According to an article on the CNN website (June 28th 2005), Cuba needs to build 50,000 houses a year for a 10 years to solve its housing crises. Cuba requires half million homes and in response the Cuban government built 15,350 in 2004.

The housing crises in Cuba has been described as the one ‘governments most serious challenges’ by Parliament speaker Ricardo Alarcon.

Apparently 43% of Cuban housing is ‘in mediocre or poor shape’ and the average cost of building a new house in Cuba is $8,000, the average salary is $10 per month.

This may well indicate that the vast majority of Cubans are excluded from private ownership of property and it could be argued these figures are self explanatory in explaining what is wrong with private ownership of property. The report does indicate that things have improved since Castro came to power but that would not take much.

[Janus]

I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve by posting those stats or reviving this thread especially when we've had much more recent Cuba threads:

Cuba (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=65406&hl=Cuba)
Cuba (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=62831&hl=Cuba)
Cuba (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=63053&hl=Cuba)

[Severian]

I already posted that about prison populations. And that it refutes Mazenov's bizarre claim that Cuba and the US have the same proportion in prison.

"This may well indicate that the vast majority of Cubans are excluded from private ownership of property" What? No, it doesn't say anything about that one way or another. But I already refuted the idea that there's something anti-socialist about private home-ownership. No Marxist has ever demanded the abolition of private property in the means of consumption.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

On a side note, and I do like your essay but I would like to comment.


Because of this diet, the Cubans have trouble with many health problems such as heart disease, cancer, obesity,
It is my understanding that obesity is not really a problem in Cuba.

During my latest trip to Cuba I noticed one fatty. He was some 350 lbs and I am amazed he even lived but that was the only one during that whole trip.

Due to a lot of economic difficulties Cubans often work hard and at least used to go all day long just to get food on the table, literally, and besides, sports are popular.

[Red1966]

Hi,

If I could first respond to Janus first, who asks, 'not sure what yuor trying to achieve by posting those stats', I was hoping it would help in the debate regarding the social conditions in Cuba and to what level the working class have benefited under the Castro regime. I make no apologies for re-opening the discussion on Cuba, as I think the achievements and failures of Castro are of immense importance to the world socialist movement and provide us with the opportunity to learn valuable lessons, which can only be learnt via debate and investigation.

Hi Severian,

You indicate in your response that with the average salary of $10 per month and the building of a new house costing $8000, this does not indicate ‘anything’ regarding exclusion from private ownership of property for the vast majority of Cubans.

Based on a salary of $10 per month it would take your average Cuban 66 years to earn $8000! With the average life expectancy in Cuba of 76.2 years (U.S. Census Bureau – International Data Base) this would mean that the average Cuban would have to start work at the age of 10! Do you support child labour?

In regards to your claim that ‘No Marxist has ever demanded the abolition of private property in the means of consumption’, in the ‘Communist Manifesto’ Marx and Engels quite clearly state ‘the theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property.’
You also fail address the poor quality of housing available in Cuba. June 26 1872, Engels contributed the first of a series of articles to the Volksstaat, entitled “The Housing Question” he stated, “it is not that the solution of the housing question simultaneously solves the social question, but that only by the solution of the social question, that is, by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, is the solution of the housing question made possible." Following your line of argument, it is quite apparent from Marx and Engels writings that Castro has failed to provide adequate qualityhousing for the vast majority of Cubans because, he has failed to abolish the capitalist mode of production and based on Engels anaylsis Castro has not acheived Socialsim.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24, 2007 05:48 am
You indicate in your response that with the average salary of $10 per month and the building of a new house costing $8000, this does not indicate ‘anything’ regarding exclusion from private ownership of property for the vast majority of Cubans.

Based on a salary of $10 per month it would take your average Cuban 66 years to earn $8000!
Which assumes that apartments and old houses do not exist - only new houses! Are you a moron or a troll, to use such an obviously false argument?

Also, your method of quoting Marx and Engels is like quoting the Bible, out-of-context snippets. You make no attempt at a reasonable explanation of why private ownership of homes is bad.

Now to set the factual record straight. First, 85% of the Cuban population do own their own homes, as even Mazenov originally stated.

So, rather than trying to proclaim that reality is impossible, we might try to understand why reality is as it is.

Housing Policy in Castro's Cuba (http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/education/oustanding_student_papers/kapur_smith_cuba_02.pdf) (pdf format)

Soon after coming to power during the 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro sought to release the grip landlords held on Cuban properties with a 1960 urban-reform law that
eliminated multiple ownership, gave renters a chance to buy their homes at low cost
and made the state responsible for providing housing. Later updates to the law
enshrined these principles, and the government now proudly claims that 85 percent of
Cubans own their homes. However, Cuban law prohibits homeowners from selling
their homes privately or buying properties because Castro believes land speculation
violates socialist principles.
....
From 1959 to 1993, the State, cooperatives and individuals
constructed 1.3 million dwellings. This level of production eased much of the
overcrowding as Cuban population only grew 57% while the housing stock grew 80%.
While the production efforts have not been universally successful, they have
unquestionably raised housing standards. The proportion of housing in good or
average condition grew from 53% in 1953 to 83% in 1993.6 The change in housing
conditions can be seen in greater detail below.
Change In The Condition Of Dwellings (% of stock in given condit ion)
URBAN RURAL
Good / Fair / Bad Good / Fair / Bad
1958 13 / 40 / 47 3 / 22 / 75
1998 60 / 27 / 13 32 / 36 / 32
Source: INV, leaflet presented at the International Seminar on Sustainable Habitat: Challenges for the New
Millennium, GDIC, Havana, May 22-24, 2000.
State Production
The reallocation of homes following the revolution raised the housing conditions of
many. As the wealthiest Cubans fled the country, many elegant homes were abandoned that could be easily redistributed among poorer residents. However, even this boon
proved short lived as many residents lacked the materials for proper upkeep.
Attention also was given to replace the shantytowns that had grown in the cities,
particularly Havana. Thirty-three such shantytowns were replaced with 4,700 new
units.
....
With a centrally managed socialist economy, Cuba, unlike most other nations, does not
allow the market play a primary role in distributing housing. Instead, financing and
allocation operate as two relatively independent systems to ensure a more equitable
distribution. Due to their unique system, the homeownership rate stands far beyond
that of other developed nations at 85 percent. Government intervention has also shaped
settlement patterns, and thus demand for housing in certain areas as well.
Financing
Cuban public policies have set up an intricate set of requirements that limit financing
options available to residents. The 1960 Urban Reform Law established several types of
payment. First, more than 200,000 tenant households that were converted into owners
after the revolution amortized the value of their units by continuing to pay rents for
between 5 and 20 years. Second, remaining leaseholders in most government housing
paid no more than 10% of their income on rent. The effective range spanned between 3-
7% because rents rarely adjusted upward when incomes increased or additional
household members took jobs. Finally, tenement dwellers and those living in rural new
towns were granted rent-free leases, and the government also began exempting very
low-income households from paying rent in the 1970s. In addition, the price of vacant
lots was set at a low price of $4 per square meter.25
The government’s rent-setting procedures encountered public opposition because they
were perceived to institutionalize unfairness among residents. For instance, incomebased
rents, which initially seemed equitable, were perceived as unjust because many
families paid high rents for small or poorly located housing, and others spent little for
large, centrally located units. In addition, regulations which stipulated that only
homeowners could acquire equity and sell and bequeath their property faced
opposition because no clear policy existed to determine who became a lender or owner.
....
The 1984 Housing Law established a new home financing system based on the “value”
of units. The value is set with consideration to location, land value, building type and
size, but is set at about less than half of the open market value. For a typical apartment
in Havana, the value may range between $4,500 - 10,500 pesos.
The government through the Banc Nacional de Cuba provides personal loans (not
mortgages) to purchase new units and for self-building and repairs. However, credit is
not available to buy existing units, privately owned land, or finance housing exchanges.
Residents unable to afford these payments can automatically have the term of the loan
extended and monthly payments reduced to 20 percent of their income. The 1984 Law
also allows low-interest bank loans to cover a wide range of building costs, including
materials for construction or repairs, land, architectural and technical assistance,
equipment rental, and contracted labor.26
No down payment is needed for the loans, and properties are not required as a
guarantee. The recapture rate is between 97-99 percent. The terms of the loans are
typically as follows27:
• Detached houses or walk-up flats– 3% interest rate, 15-year term.
• High rises - 2% interest rate, 20-year term.
• Mountain rural cooperatives – 2% interest rate, 25-year term.
• Other rural cooperatives – 3% interest rate, 30-year term.
• Self-help dwellings – 3% interest rate, 10-year term.
....
Distribution
The distribution of housing in Cuba has been based upon social values more than
market values. The government established its goal in 1959 of providing each family
with an adequate dwelling and has since been trying to allocate housing in a manner
that will advance this goal. This method of allocation guided the distribution of
government housing confiscated from people departing Cuba after the revolution.
Units were disbursed as determined by “need” defined in terms of living conditions
rather than income.29
The staggering need for housing has left the government in a perpetual chase to build
enough units to distribute to needy families. While the housing supply increased during
the 1960s, this growth was outpaced by rising demand. From 1971 to 1985, the need for
housing grew from 754,000 units to 888,000. With fewer units than needy families, the
government has instituted various tactics to distribute housing among Cuban residents.
In the early 1970s, 150,000 applications were received for allocating 7000 vacant
confiscated units, unduly raising expectations and making fair choice impossible.
Uncertain how to reconcile the gap between supply and demand, the government
called upon trade unions to distribute housing to their members based on need. As a
result, microbrigade housing and other scarce consumer durable goods were
distributed in a public and collective fashion in workplace assemblies.

There are, of course, serious problems with housing shortages - especially in Havana, where more and more people migrate. Also with poorly maintained housing.

This is part of the overall difficult economic situation faced by Cuba.

Nobody on this board has ever successfully explained what the Cuban government should be doing differently. Or, if you think it doesn't represent the working class....what would a government that does - do differently?

A few people have tried, but they've come up with truly awful and unrealistic ideas.

So if it walks like a workers' government, and quacks like a workers' government....maybe it is one?

[Red1966]

Hi Severian,

Thanks for your detailed reply, I would appreciate it if you could bear me with while I consume all the information. Before I attempt to respond, I would like to express my disappointment at the unnecessary use of insults in your posting.

To resort to such mindless and childish name calling, only results in me not really wanting to read and consider the arguments you advance in your posting. Which defeats the whole reason for exchanging opinions and information.

I appreciate your passion but you express it in an extremley negative manner.

Thanks for your response anyway!