[lbo-talk] Limits on the Duration of Liberated Zones

[Carrol Cox]

The late Mark Jones (prior to his brain tumor) noted that the USSR should be
regarded not as some specifiable form of society but as a liberated zone --
one that lasted some seven decades. I think _all_ the revolutionary regimes
of the 20th-c should be so regarded, making nugatory the endless attempts to
define them as crippled workers' states, bureaucratic capitalist, etc etc
etc. This applies to Cuba as well -- and two or three posters on the SfTP
list are blathering away on what kind of a state Cuba is.

A Liberated Zone necessarily offers some protection to its people against
the ravages of world capitalism, and socialist rhetoric (though not
socialist principle) offers the best political language for organizing such
zones. And since they are under constant battering by the forces of world
capital they must _also_ be organized on semi-military principles. Hence
socialist democracy, if instituted . . . .But it is silly even to talk about
that topic. As silly as it would be to worry about food pavilions on the
beach in the midst of winter.

Such Zones cannot be maintained indefinitely. Both Cuba and the USSR had
pretty good runs of it, and their example encouraged resistance to capital
around the world. But it is the most naïve (retroactive) Voluntarism to harp
on their non-socialist features or to whine that their leadership were/are
"sell-outs" etc.

Carrol