Sent on the go from my Peek ------------------------------------- c b<cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> In a few years Cuba will be a thoroughly mixed economy - but even this characterization will be deceptive, since it will obscure the trajectory of the country. It's interesting to me that here we have a case of the founding generation of a socialist revolution dismantling their own system. I don't know how anyone's supposed to take such Third World revolutionary projects seriously ever again.
You don't know where this is going. No one does. On the conference call, Sweig said that Cuba paid careful attention to the transitions in Eastern Europe and in Latin America (from military dictatorship to some kind of democracy), and they're going to take it slow and cautious.
Doug
^^^^^ CB: Then there's socialism is abolishing private property in the _basic_ means of production. Communism might have small "businesses"
Socialism in one country is a rough road, even if you are as big as Russia. Communism is a world system. Cuba even less than Russia can have socialism in one country.
We learned from the SU's history that It's not nice to fool Mother Capitalism with some socialism; she will annihilate you. Better to bend some rather than get busted. Until the US is a lot weaker or more socialist, it's not healthy to have socialism. As materialists and realists, we can't ignore actual historical experience.
The Leninists instituted an NEP.
Yugoslavia had a "mixed" economy.
China has lots of capitalism , but they are still building socialism ( I don't care what all the squealing Western leftists say).
Socialism replacing capitalism is an epochal process, in zigzags , one step forward , two steps backward, not a straight line.
Meanwhile, Communists should develop a more balanced way of writing the histories of the failures _and successes_ of the first socialist countries, with less "self-hatred". ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk