[van-discuss] Re: [van-announce] Help a youth go to Cuba

[Eric R.]

On Monday, November 4, 2002 at 8:47 AM, Marcel Hatch wrote:

> Homelessness does not exist in Cuba. Hunger too is absent. To be
> certain, more housing IS needed and many Cubans would like and could
> use more food. The difference is that no one falls through the cracks
> because they've gotten rid of capitalism. An NDP couldn't exist in
> Cuba because social democracy exists in relation to capitalism.

You say that Cuba (that is to say, the government of Cuba) has "gotten rid
of capitalism". But what is capitalism? It is a social order which is built
on wage-labour based generalized commodity production. Capital employs
wage-labour in order to produce commodities for sale on markets. A means of
exchange is necessary in order sell these commodities, but also to purchase
the labour-power of the wage-slaves, without which the commodities would not
get produced. This means of exchange is typically money, but it could also
be some form of 'IOU' or credit; it could even be 'labour vouchers' (which
is what some 'socialists' propose to replace money with). Barter also
involves value-based exchange, since it uses some means of measurement in
order to compare the relative value of the things (goods, services,
whatever) being exchanged. Barter is still the exchange of equal value for
equal value, rather than production for, and distribution based on, real
needs (i.e. socialism or communism).

In order to have "gotten rid of capitalism", a society would have to have
gotten rid of commodity production, wage-labour (i.e. "employment"), money,
and markets. The key factor is labour-power as a commodity itself, subject
to the forces of the (labour) market. Once labour-power is no longer a
commodity, once those who are called "workers" under capitalism no longer
have to sell their labour-power to an employer -- which can obviously be the
state -- once those people have directly taken over complete control of the
means of production, then, and only then, can one speak of having gotten rid
of capitalism.

So how does Cuba measure up by this standard? I think the answer is pretty
obvious. An important point here -- one which Engels made clear in 1847 in
his "Principles of Communism" -- is that since capitalism is a global
system, it can only be "gotten rid of" on a global scale. That's because
markets and commodity exchange are global, and no single country can hold
itself aloof from global markets and commodity exchange, since no single
country can maintain complete self-sufficiency, and therefore, complete
isolation. Russia and China couldn't do it, so how could little Cuba do it?

One little socialist paradise within an imperialist, capitalist world order
would require an authoritarian state with a vast military apparatus and
arsenal in order to defend itself from imperialist domination; and that
military appartaus and arsenal would need to be in a constant state of
technological advancement and renewal in order to remain militarily
competetive with its capitalist enemies. And that is impossible without
BUYING the technological means to do so from other (i.e. capitalist)
countries. And that operation is impossible without an economy producing
commodities so as to obtain the required money, money which must be
convertible into the money of the country selling the technology. The end
result is that the little socialist paradise hasn't really gotten rid of
capitalism at all. And if it claims to have, then it is engaged in monstrous
falsification. It could only be a state-capitalist dictatorship.

Eric R.

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Revolutionary anti-capitalist website: www.geocities.com/wageslavex/