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

[Marcel Hatch]

Dear Eric,

Thanks for your considered and comradely response. I agree with much 
of what you've leveled and I have differences with some of your 
stands, analysis and perspectives. Let this note remain as a friendly 
acknowledgement and welcome of a future discussion.

I will respond at length to you soon.

For now let us say that my take on Cuban society is that it is a 
democratic workers state aspiring towards socialism. It fulfills the 
basic requirements of a workers state in that it has a monopoly on 
foreign trade and investment. It has nationalized banking and the 
commanding heights of industry and production. It has as well 
consolidated all services and made them universal. It has prohibited 
the employment of labour for personal gain. And so on, consistent 
with the prescriptions of Engles and Marx.

Cuba is a transitional state between capitalism and socialism and a 
long ways from communism. It is in flux and it can not hope to 
achieve socialism, let alone survive, without the broad and vast 
support of other-to-become workers states in the near future. What 
the Cubans have accomplished is beyond that of all the other attempts 
at socialism combined historically, and I will add in the critical 
domain of democracy. The Cubans are proud of their gains and in 
general defend them to death. To be certain their victories are the 
envy of Latin American workers and workers of the Third World, and 
indeed soon ours as the rapacious effects of globalization take hold 
here.

Naturally, I support the Cuban struggle personally and historically 
with few reservations. I do firmly believe in the immediate necessity 
for the Cubans to call upon working people everywhere to topple 
capitalism, lead this struggle, and work collectively and 
internationally to rise the entire planet to a new higher standard of 
cooperation along democratic socialist lines.

And you know me well enough that should we begin a discussion on 
social justice and equality in Cuba, I will inundate you with pages 
and pages. The stupendous gains of women, Blacks, mulattos, youth, 
the elderly, handicapped, and lesbians and gay are simply without 
parallel. The internationalist spirit and commitment of the Cuban 
population to defend liberation struggles beyond their borders is 
exemplary -- without example. On so on, don't get me started.

With this said, I hope you will join with the millions of your 
collectivist socialist looking comrade workers in Cuba to defend what 
they've won and advance their victories by working for and in support 
of anti-capitalist revolutions here and beyond.

Internationalism is too defending every advance against imperialism 
and every struggle that reduces the strength of capitalist relations. 
On this score the Cubans get an triple A+.

Yours in solidarity,

Marcel Hatch

At 00:50 -0800 11/5/02, Eric R. wrote:
>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/
>
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