Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 09:43:04 -0700 From: joanna bujes <joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com> Subject: Re: Cuba
At 01:12 AM 07/10/2002 -0400, you wrote: If I had to choose a country in Latin America to live in, it would be Cuba. I am fully aware of the political problems; but as for consumer goods, fuck them. Joanna
Joanna, there's so much that could be said in response to these sorts of arguments. Firstly, I think you confuse consumer goods with luxury goods. People do actually need to consume things you know, and the fact is that there are many things that are in short supply (to put it mildly) in Cuba that hardly fall into the category of luxury goods. Yes, I know that's partly due to the embargo, but one could with equal justification say that it goes back to an almost total dependence on the FSU. Cuban people will tell you the difference between before and after 'the fall' in terms of their standard of living. I think it also needs to be pointed out to people, particularly US citizens, who express the sentiment that you do above, that they are actually quite free to go and live in Cuba. This makes me wonder: Cuba is the best place in Latin America to go and live, but it doesn't quite beat the old US of A, or what?
On the question that Doug raised, there is a general answer: actually you cannot create socialism in one country (of the marxist variety, that is), you will simply become a junior manager for the capitalist system. And Cuba is capitalist - the dollar reigns supreme there. The greatest ambition of many, many Cubans is to leave, because they take as their example of the 'foreigner' those tourists who visit the island. Let's face it, Cuba is a fun place to visit, if you're a foreigner with dollars that is. The Cubans are also warm and friendly people and they like to party. But a lot of them are extemely bitter about the regime, ranging from down and out people begging on the street to professionals who believe they are being denied their middle class status and lifestyle. Visiting Cuba leaves a bad taste in the mouth for many people. It is not nice as a foreigner to feel so privileged, to know that you are segregated from the Cubans, who are chased out of tourist hotels and re! st! aurants (unless they have a lot of dollars themselves). Which leads on to the next point, the stratification of Cubans themselves: Cubans now range from beggars to businessmen. How can this dollarisation of Cuba be reversed? It cannot of course. The peso is little more than a ration coupon currency, you can only buy the barest staples with it, yet everything else is available to the foreigner and to the prosperous Cuban with dollars.
And the regime is repressive. People are snooped on and have their mail opened. Now, if Doug's point was that you can only maintain a 'socialist state' with repression of this kind, then what exactly is this socialism? In certain areas of Havana there is an armed policeman on every corner. This is to protect tourists from dollar-crazed hustlers and beggars. Secondly, it is to police the sex industry.
Prostitution in Cuba is a many-sided and revealing phenomenon. When Fidel talks about cracking down on crime, he is often referring to sex work. Why should this be such a preoccupation (leaving aside the ridiculous and utterly conservative equation of sex work with 'crime')? Because it is highly embarrassing. There are many prostitutes in Cuba - and many women are prepared to be such on a casual and part-time basis too, so that there is a very fine line to judge between meeting a prostitute in a bar or a friendly woman. This is very embarrassing to the regime because it demonstrates dollar hunger in the most vivid fashion. And there is nothing to be done about it, except more repression, which in this case means persecution of women who are doing what they can to raise their miserable standard of living (and probably that of their families too).
My marxist background tells me that socialism is the lower stage of communism, i.e. of classlessness. One can allow in principle for a period of transition under some sort of quasi-state for the military defence of the revolution, but that is not in itself socialism. If the revolution becomes frozen at that point and the statism becomes entrenched, then the revolution is already recouped by a counter-revolution which still manages to call itself the revolution. That is the situation in Cuba. The idea of a 'socialist state' is and should be understood by communists as a bastard theoretical notion, which was used to rationalise the state capitalist regimes. There cannot be in communist terms a 'socialist state'. At best such a state is in transition from a form of underdeveloped capitalism to a more developed capitalism. (Witness how people praise the education system, etc. in the FSU which 'socialism' delivered to its new rulers). The capitalist face reveals itself fully when!
t! he time is right.
The myth of socialism in such countries still has a powerful grip on the intellectual imagination of the West. This is unfortunate because it helps to block the revolutionary project. There are those among us, the Proyects and the Joneses and other luminaries of the Leninist left, who will still argue that Cuba represents the future. Imagine the pathos when the true state of affairs finally dawns.
Give it up comrades, it's a distraction from the real thing.
(Of course none of the above is any justification for US aggression and victimisation - I hope I don't have to point that out. We don't need a rerun of the arguments that any criticism of the Taliban and their maltreatment of women is an apologia for imperialism, please)
Tahir