Smash liberalism! Discussion #1

Okay, well, sorry to rattle the cage right off of the bat, but I think that obvious question is, what is Fidel "I'm not a communist" Castro doing as the title picture of this group?

We all sympathize with the revolution in cuba to varying degrees, but remember that Fidel initially advocated Jeffersonian democracy for Cuba, and the communist party of Cuba, rather than leading the revolution, wasn't formed until 6 years after the revolutionary triumph, and included an amalgamation of Castros 26th of July movement with the fiercley anti-communist Directorio Revolucionario and the People’s Socialist Party (which had turned many student activists in to the Batista regime).

While some will note that the there were several communists in the 26th of July movement, may I remind everyone that there was also several communists in the Iranian revolution against the Shah in the 70's. The issue is not the persynal ideas of this or that combattant, but the over-all goals and the politics in command of the struggle.

While Cuba's national liberation struggle was just, it was always petty bourgeois in nature, as was the leadership of all revolutionary movements on the island at the time, so therefore the leadership and politics provided to the working people were petty-bourgeois in nature.

Many of the contemporary admirers of Castro will scoff at Castro's intial rejection of communism (in fact, initally, Castro presented himself to the Americans as a bulwark against the spread of communism in latin America,), saying that he was simply keeping his real allegiances on the D-L, only paying lip-service to Jeffersonian democracy, all in the interests of the revolution.

While I won't deny that Castro has been adept at playing different parts to different benefactors (everything from "I'm not a communist" to "I've always been a Marxist"), the objective actions of the Cuban revolution speak volumes, and like many other "socialist" countries, they did to a certain extent integrate their exploiter classes into the make-up of their state a bit.

If we are going to combat liberalism, I would think that illusions about Cuba would be a good place to start, as Cuba has become something of a paradise on earth not only to thousands of vacationers, but also to the left-wing of liberalism, like Michael Moore, Sean Penn, etc.

I'm not saying that we should denounce and reject the Cuban revolution (in fact, many genuine M-L's in Cuba today remain within the party, pushing for defense of the gains of revolution and a rectification movement), I'm only saying we should not embrace illusions about it.

Ha, yeah, thanks for starting us off.
The Castro picture was just a temporary pic as I thought his expression was cool and suitable. You're right, he's not the best symbol for anti-liberalism. I'll add a cooler one later.

Stalin is the most brutal image for combating liberalism.

Well I put Pol Pot up there for now, to piss off the liberals. If you can find a nicer pic then I'll put it up

Stalin's certainly good but I think Pol Pot is more potent

Yeah, I might recommend a different Cuban if not for the fact that I'd hate to invoke the shameful legacy of che-lives.com

I was blanking on good ideas for a replacement, so I wiki'd "anti-liberal" and ha ha ha oh my that was a dumb idea

I don't know, this is the best (very very obvious) thing I can come up with

Oh hella people posted while I was figuring out how to draw a circle in GIMP, how embarrassing

Obviously the 'Pot is way better

Nice thinking, comrade. Pol Pot is the iconic figure that will piss off the moralistic liberal that are plaguing revleft.

Look, can I just point out that the filename for the image I made is anti-locke.jpg and how funny that is

If you want to be really rough you can use images of anti-imperialist muslims, like the Taliban, ICU or Hamas. Liberals, on this forum in particular, hate those and refuse to support them in their fight against the plundering of their respective countries.

Hmm, that's not a bad idea mosfeld. Perhaps even 9/11, or is that going too far?

Hmmm... at least with Saloth Sar, there are some traces of revisionist pseudo socialism.

When opposing liberalism, be careful never to veer to the right.

When opposing liberalism, be careful never to veer to the right.

Are we?

Well a 9/11 icon clearly would be

I'm against Stalin or Mao because they're tendency-specific (and the former is currently being used by ~4,000 groups right now); the 'Pot is better as you'd have to be stupid to think we're seriously Pot-heads

The "mental disorder" one is I'm pretty sure of rightist origin; in any case I think psychopathologization in politics is annoying

I'm all for 9/11! That reeeally would piss people off selectively.

I believe that any revolutionary has enough of a critical mind not to take it seriously. Liberals would propably shit their pants though, I would like that.

But then again, I have never thought of the 911 as a big deal.

Personally, I like the Pol Pot avatar. Using Mao is too Maoist, especially in light of the fact that the quote originally comes from him, and would suggest an ideology-specific thing ("for Maoists") rather than a broad program against liberalism. Hell, it might even make it look like a study group!

Stalin, also, seems trollish and ideology-specific. "Islamist" imagery rather misses the point, as does 9/11.

"Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder" is a book by white nationalist Michael Savage.

Pol Pot has long been smeared, even by the Maoists, as a "brutal, savage, primitivist, anti-intellectual, anti-machinery, er...peasantry-focused, uh, counter-revolutionary and other hyphenated terms that exist!"

Pol Pot was a Dengist revisionist, no doubt, but I would seriously put forward that most of the left, even non-revisionists, have a knee-jerk reaction to him that does not take into account actually existing material conditions. He stands as a profoundly anti-liberal figure.

I say keep the avatar we have now.

To be honest, Hug's picture would work pretty well, seeing as the vast majority of liberals on this forum are "anarchists"

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?...pictureid=3607

I disagree with the OP. See Jon Lee Anderson's work on Che and in it his account of the Cuban Revolution. It's by no means the final word on this subject, and it only briefly touches on class struggle, but it sheds some light on this.

The Cuban guerrillas began their socialist policies way back in the Sierra Maestra days, actually forming the beginnings of mass organisations with the peasants there. these were incipient soviet-like bodies in which peasants could discuss their problems and the ways to overcome them.

Before the war was over, Che and Castro were carefully integrating communist advisors into the guerrilla army. These advisors were instructed to not make their communist politics obvious, and to use local and national examples to make their point so as not to scare the people raised in a conservative catholic society away.

It's more important to study deeds than rhetoric. Castro was wisely pretending to support bourgeois democracy to get money from people who valued that. Just like there's left wing republicans I know who were active in trade unions and supported socialist states, yet presented themselves to their conservative American cousins as green catholic nationalists and 'play the green card' to get some donations out of em.

More to the point, though, the Cuban Revolution did begin as a bourgeois revolution, although many of its personnel were leftist. It was formally for bourgeois democratic rights. In the process it was transformed into a leftist, mass struggle in which masses of workers took over their workplaces and laid the basis for socialism.

Lenin himself commented that revolts whcih begin as petit bourgeois nationalist struggles can eventually become proletarian socialist revolutions. One has to understand the dialectic of forces at work to grasp that reformist struggles can be taken over by the masses and transformed into revolutions.

to say that Fidel was not communist is more complex. What he seemed to disagree with most was not communism, but the dogmatic ideas most communists had about revolution. Fidel was stirring up strikes from his childhood, and spent his legal career defending the poorest in Cuba, this hardly seems like a Jeffersonian Democrat to me.

I disagree with the OP. See Jon Lee Anderson's work on Che and in it his account of the Cuban Revolution. It's by no means the final word on this subject, and it only briefly touches on class struggle, but it sheds some light on this.

The Cuban guerrillas began their socialist policies way back in the Sierra Maestra days, actually forming the beginnings of mass organisations with the peasants there. these were incipient soviet-like bodies in which peasants could discuss their problems and the ways to overcome them.

Before the war was over, Che and Castro were carefully integrating communist advisors into the guerrilla army. These advisors were instructed to not make their communist politics obvious, and to use local and national examples to make their point so as not to scare the people raised in a conservative catholic society away.

It's more important to study deeds than rhetoric. Castro was wisely pretending to support bourgeois democracy to get money from people who valued that. Just like there's left wing republicans I know who were active in trade unions and supported socialist states, yet presented themselves to their conservative American cousins as green catholic nationalists and 'play the green card' to get some donations out of em.

More to the point, though, the Cuban Revolution did begin as a bourgeois revolution, although many of its personnel were leftist. It was formally for bourgeois democratic rights. In the process it was transformed into a leftist, mass struggle in which masses of workers took over their workplaces and laid the basis for socialism.

Lenin himself commented that revolts whcih begin as petit bourgeois nationalist struggles can eventually become proletarian socialist revolutions. One has to understand the dialectic of forces at work to grasp that reformist struggles can be taken over by the masses and transformed into revolutions.

to say that Fidel was not communist is more complex. What he seemed to disagree with most was not communism, but the dogmatic ideas most communists had about revolution. Fidel was stirring up strikes from his childhood, and spent his legal career defending the poorest in Cuba, this hardly seems like a Jeffersonian Democrat to me.

A great reading can probably make this point much better than I can:

http://web.archive.org/web/200209180...101-Cuba92.htm