Wojtek
On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 11:58 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
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>
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."