Stated differently, the success of socialism in the 20th century were grounded in the fact that it offered innovative and effective solutions to the host of problems that plagued capitalist economy at that time. These solutions, including macro-economic planning and social investment, had a spectacular success in the first half of the 20th century, and people took note.
But the world moved on, and the nominally capitalist countries came with their own versions of macro-economic planning and social investment that proved to be superior in the management of the economy and the state. However, socialism stuck to its old innovations without offering anything new. It is as if someone were insisting on using typewriters in the age of computers. There are of course, institutional reasons (called path dependencies in economic theory) why things went that way, but that is the subject of another discussion.
The point is that solutions offered by socialism ceased to be relevant, and socialism failed to develop new ones, thus ceding the ground to other systems of thought - not just neliberalism, but also nationalism and religion. So today, when the macro-economic planning and social investment schemes that succeeded socialism hit a brick wall, socialism still does not seem to have a relevant solution. It seems that some of its old proponents suggest turning back the clock and go back to using typewriters.
A big part of the problem, in my view, is branding. There are many good solutions floating around that are in principle consistent with the spirit (if not the letter) of the "old school" socialism, but they are not branded as socialist. The opponents, conservatives and neo-liberals are much better at adopting useful ideas and branding them as their own.
But the branding issue aside, the crucial point is that these solutions tend not to come from backward and underdeveloped countries anymore. The come mostly from the developed G20 countries. So the old leftist habit of "looking into the third world for leadership" is an anachronism that inhibits the adoption of new ideas and solutions that may be branded as relevant of the 21st century world.
So the bottom line is this - whether Cuban socialism (or whatever one wants to call it) goes down the drain or not does not matter much. It is just another regime change in one of many "pissant" countries. It certainly does not mean anything for the "old school" socialism that has been dead since the 1950s. It does not make the old corpse any more dead if it is replaced by a privatization model, nor does it make it look more alive if it survives under the socialist label. The future of socialism, if it has any, is elsewhere, namely in the technological and organizational ideas developed largely in G20 countries.
Wojtek
On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 3:16 AM, Somebody Somebody
<philos_case at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Marvin: I hope you're both right, but I don't detect much conviction behind your statements. I guess it's because you're both aware, as I am, that the historical precedents are not encouraging. I expect Cuba's future development will have less to do with the hopes and intentions of its leadership than with the logic of the path on which it has embarked, which is not a new or uncharted one.
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> Somebody: This is the crucial point. Capitalist reforms tend to be self-reinforcing past a certain point. Modest NEP type reforms can be curtailed, as they were in Cuba following the early 90's (and in the Soviet Union itself, of course). But, the type of robust market reforms now being initiated in Cuba are, based upon extensive historical precedent, essentially irreversible.
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> Ironically, the falsification of Marxism as a mode of production also confirms it's class-struggle perspective - once a new bourgeoisie is established, it won't surrender it's control without an entirely new revolution. Which of course, contrary to Trotsky, won't happen. The workers aren't going to resurrect the ancien régime once it's own founding fathers have abandoned it.
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> I know Carrol seems to think ideology and a belief in socialism as a viable economic alternative doesn't really matter, but historical experience seems to suggest otherwise. Was it a coincidence that the *only* region of the world to have a resurgence of the left in the first decade of the 21st century was also the homeland of an enduring Cuban revolution? Of course not. There would be no Bolivarian left if Fidel had cried uncle in 1992 and joined the rest of the international old guard in embracing capitalism. It doesn't take a clairvoyant to predict what's likely to happen to the Latin American left in the coming years.
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