[lbo-talk] in defence of the book

[Jurriaan Bendien]

I don't have a copy of that issue, and it's not available on-line. Therefore
I assume it is not priority reading anyway. Personally I am not interested
in reading moral disquisitions about how the Cuban political system should
be, especially since I haven't even been there. My theme is that if you
really want to achieve progress in another country, then you should do what
it takes to achieve it, and that involves mutual respect for starters, and
not general disquisitions about how what some other country does, fails to
conform to my picture of how the world ought to be. This view is premised on
a total rejection of the imperialist argument.

A theme of the US Leftwing group Solidarity is that they want to pronounce
on correct policy somewhere else in the world outside of the USA, instead of
concentrating on tackling the question of how their own government actually
pursues its foreign policy, and how that could be changed in a progressive
sense, and then relating to other countries on that basis. And I have a
different style, and do not want to be associated with that sort of
thinking, because otherwise I am getting into another quagmire where
personal opinions substitute for the political line of a bona fide political
organisation, and I am dealing with stuff that I cannot affect anyhow.

I am a financial and not very active ordinary member of the Dutch Socialist
Party, and we have a different style of work from Solidarity, and more
members. There is a very clear distinction in the Dutch SP between party
policy expressed by people mandated to do it, and individual opinions, and
we don't like to mix that up, and therefore I always distinguish clearly
between my own opinions and the opinions of the SP, also when I post info,
naming the source of translation. In the SP, there are in principle no
restrictions on individual opinions, except where people are willfully
misrepresenting party policy, or expressing views incompatible with party
membership.

J.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Pugliese" <debsian at pacbell.net>
To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 1:43 AM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] in defence of the book


>    Cuba: The Opposition and the Repression Haroldo Alfonso Dilla
>   Against The Current, current issue. By a Cuban marxist, expelled from
the
> Party in '99.
> http://solidarity.igc.org/indexATC.html
>
> --
> Michael Pugliese
>
>
>
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>
>