Castros embrace reform at Cuba's communist congress

[derby378]

Source: The Telegraph (UK)

Military music and revolutionary slogans were broadcast from loudspeakers as ranks of soldiers marched through Revolution Square past President Raul Castro and fellow regime dignitaries.

...

But away from the communist fervour and propaganda, the country’s ageing leaders were preparing for a party congress that will be crucial for the regime’s survival.

Raul Castro is seeking his comrades’ endorsement for market reforms designed to bolster the creaking Soviet-style economy while maintaining their firm grip on one-party power.

Since succeeding his brother as president, he has repeatedly emphasised the country’s economic troubles and need to embrace change.

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/cuba/8455944/Castros-embrace-reform-at-Cubas-communist-congress.html

[Proletariatprincess]

1. Cuba could be successful

if the USA minds it's own business and keeps it's hands off the affairs of Cuba. Most of the problems Cuba has endured since the revolution have been brought about by US/CIA intervention and dirty tricks. Viva Cuba!

[joshcryer]

2. Will they allow candidates to be chosen by the population at large?

I'm OK with "one party" that's fine. I'm not OK with Candidate Commissions which are undemocratic to the core.

[originalpckelly]

5. Why would you be OK with one party?

We're only one party better than Cuba in practice, but really what?

It is technically possible for other parties to exist and they do in a extremely minor manner, but come on?

[joshcryer]

6. Because parties are largely subjective when you are able to chose your candiates.

That's why "one party" is in double quotes because if you're allowed to chose candidates with differing views about how Cuban Society is implemented that party is allowed to change internally.

Obviously unlimited parties would be desirable, but the Valara Project does not propose to create parties in Cuba, it merely proposes that people be allowed to chose their candidates rather than rely on the State to do so for them.

[Proletariatprincess]

7. I will repeat.

It is not our business how they elect leaders. I doesn't matter if we approve of their system. It is their system.

[joshcryer]

10. As long as they don't lie to me and tell me their system is democratic, I'm fine with that.

[BOG PERSON]

3. you can hardly call cuba a soviet-style economy

soviets produced a diverse range of stuff, some of which was high up the value chain. cuba does not have a very diverse economy in comparison. not that it's their fault of course.

[joshcryer]

4. By "soviet style" they mean "employeed by the government."

ie, a big corporation. It's one reason the anarchists considered the soviets capitalists.

[HankyDubs]

8. None of these governments

represent the beliefs of Marx. They are twisted jokes who rely on the moral force of socialism to take power, but immediately afterward they simply become shades of the totalitarian regimes they replaced.

[rayofreason]

9. And yet...

...every government that is founded by people who claim that they are implementing the beliefs of Marx turns into one of these "twisted jokes." There is no exception. Thus the proof that socialism is a religion. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many still have faith that the next time Marxists will get it right.

And so the excitement of those true believers about "reforms" in Cuba is all the more pitiful, since any "market-based reform" is an admission that the underlying assumptions by Marxists about the way real economies with real people function is just nonsense. If those underlying assumptions were a useful guide to the real world there would be no need for market-based reforms.

[Proletariatprincess]

11. and yet....

Marx was more right about the nature of capitalism than most capitalist are today.
He may not have got all the solutions right, but he really identified the problems it causes the the future it would bring.

[joshcryer]

13. Marx was the biggest boon to capitalism there ever was. The "proletariat" was a minority...

...and indeed, bolstered the class distinction that Marx was so famous for, pitting the proletariat against the peasants and artisans (yeah, *now* the proletariat is the majority, thanks to Marx). For socialism to succeed class distinctions must be dissolved, and for that to happen, the state must be dissolved.

Of course, a long running tenet of Communism is to be "stateless," (which Karl Marx himself believed was the end result) but Cuba has had 50 years, North Korea, China, and Soviet Russia (now defunct, I know) all had plenty of time to realize the full potential of socialism or communism, but none of them did. Because Marx and his advocates were dead ass wrong.

[Hannah Bell]

17. where was this that the proletariat was a minority and independent peasants & artisans a majority?

in pre-castro cuba? no.

in revolutionary russia? no. after the serfs were liberated most became the equivalent of sharecroppers, working for someone else.

[joshcryer]

19. In France and Germany where Marx's critique was circulated initially?

Where he started the critique? One wonders what the world would look like now had he a proper analysis of socialism and it been widely adopted.

There's a reason anarchists rejected Marx's critique, because it pitted people against one another and was not wholly socialist in a libertarian sense.

[Hannah Bell]

20. in france & germany? when was that?

[Ghost Dog]

12. Looking forward to an evolved, neo-socialism

or anarcho-socialism, it will be important to recognise that it is not capital nor capitalism as such that is the problem. Capital, whether accumulating in private or in public (collective or state) hands is an inevitable product of as well as feedstock for healthy economic activity, which always involves markets, regardless of the degree of regulation and planning in the marketplace itself.

What is the problem, what is at issue as we appear to face at this time an onslaught of wealth and power-accumulating (capital) neo-feudalism, is what use is made of that accumulating capital. Is it to be re-invested intelligently to build a more resilient, less energy-intensive and environmentally-destructive and more socially just future society or is it to continue to accumulate in the hands of a small elite which essentially then largely spends only on its own 'little luxuries' and perhaps on various intrigues, feuds and rivalries with others of the elite and for the most part otherwise merely speculates rather than invests with the continuously accumulating capital (until such an economy inevitably sickens) in a sort of gambling-casino atmosphere where the goal is always the accumulation in the same hands of yet more capital, or gambling-chips, entirely regardless (as long as there is 'law and order') of the effects of this 'economic activity' on society, environment or even neo-feudalism's own viability, insane eaters of their own entrails as they are.

[joshcryer]

14. That's an extremely technocratic view, imo.

The part about "reinvesting accumulated capital intelligently to build..." that you wrote. The goal should not be to expropriate and reinvest that capital, it should be to abolish capital altogether and emancipate technology and resources from those past accumulators. That's the key failing of Marxist / atypical state socialist thought, to expropriate capital and continue using it as capital.

There's no fundamental difference between state socialism and capitalism. In both everyone works for large corporations (state socialism it would be whatever party mechanisms exist, capitalism it would be the largest most powerful corporations), no one is an owner of their works (state socialism the "party" controls all, capitalism the largest investors or owners control all).

[Ghost Dog]

16. Well, I do tend to favor 'applied science',

or 'applied enlightenment', I think I'd prefer.

But, no to the above. Capital is always there. In its most basic form, of course, it's human capital, ie. labor. You cannot 'abolish capital', only specific categories, expressions or uses of capital. Sophisticated societies employ sophisticated financial instruments, such as money itself just for a start, to measure, manage and channel economic activity. I would have all forms of capital, and the instruments of economic control, spread as widely as possble amongst all of the people, self-organizing individually or collectively on the basis of bottom-up democracy, with only minimalist aggregation of actual coercive power to some over-arching institutions defending essential rule of law.

Through anarchist grass-roots 'institutions', 'non-institutions', methods, non-methods etc. of collective organization through freedom of information, thought, speech, open discussion and consensus-building, and with a great emphasis on education, I would expect intelligent problem-solving and forward planning to emerge.

[joshcryer]

18. I think you're using a more general definition of capital, I'm using one as it relates to Marxism:

http://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/a.htm#capital

I do not believe in a monetarist relation, nor do I believe in an active exchange of goods (I earn no capital from you for exhaling carbon dioxide though our ecosystem relies on it on a very minute level), however, both capitalism and Marxism (in its infancy which no "Marxist" state has ever overcome) do.

[joshcryer]

15. Marx defended the very mechanisms these governments use to maintain power.

Expropritation of capital, state bodies controlling capital, indeed, I would argue that Cuba has effectively implemented Marxism extremely well (China and North Korea are differing examples, the latter being more of a Stalinism).

[HankyDubs]

21. As you seem to realize

the concept of a "marxist state" is in itself oxymoronic. Marx makes bold predictions, and he surely was wrong about a great many things. Some of these have been detailed her. Bakunin was also wrong about a great many things, but does that invalidate the entire anarchist point of view? The problem with anarchism and marxism is identical...there is NO utopian society, systems that aim to achieve utopias are bound to fail.

But riddle me this one:

Which one of these societies is not better off now than they were before "Marxist" revolutions?

Cuba under Batista? Nope, better off under Castro.

Russia under the Tsars? Nope, in fact many Russians pine for the good old days under Stalin (STALIN FFS!)

The Chinese under the Qing Dynasty? Nope, better off today.

Nicaragua under Samoza? Nope, better off under Ortega.

Vietnam under the puppet king Bao Dai and French domination? Nope, better off today.

Venezuela under Carlos Perez? Nope, better off under Chavez. Compare Venezuela to its neighbor, Colombia...

The best case for opponents of Marx is Cambodia, which was obviously better off under Sihanouk than Pol Pot. Sihanouk is one of these rare exceptions, a benevolent autocrat.

[joshcryer]

22. What the hell? Stalin executed 1k people a day, the Tsars executed 1 a *week.*

And that's assuming the lowest estimates in the "Great Purge." (Around 50 million were executed, if I recall correctly.) Now, I'm not by any means defending the Tsars, but historical revisionism isn't necessary here. The "Cultural Revolution" killed at the minimum a million people (through direct persecution), with some estimates as high as 20 million. If you want to speak of general welfare, the "Great Leap Forward" killed almost 50 million people by some estimates.

I believe very strongly in non-violence (except in the case of self-defense, in which case it is acceptable), which is why if a state has to utilize violence or the threat of violence to suppress its citizens, then it is incompatible with a truly egalitarian socialism, imo. Because the person wielding the power has a higher class and status than the person being persecuted by that power.

[HankyDubs]

24. you didn't actually respond...

I pointed out that many Russians pine for the days of Stalin. That's just a fact, hard as that may be for you to accept. Significant portions of the country admire him.

The Tsars invented the pogroms dude. There's a reason why one of them was named "the terrible." There is no revisionism here whatsoever. Whatever the failings of the USSR, the people weren't serfs tied to the land.

Now you can give me estimates of the cultural revolution, but can you tell me how many chinese laborers are buried in the Great Wall? How many died in the Taiping rebellion and an hundred other civil wars and dynastic clashes?

My point was that people are better off today in most of these societies. You failed to address that point.

[Hannah Bell]

26. there is no evidence that stalin executed 1K a day.

[Blue_Tires]

23. hopefully trade relations will be normalized sometime in my lifetime...

[FLPanhandle]

25. Maybe if they actually had an opposition party those reform ideas would have been implemented by now

Of course now that the Castro brothers have benefited by being on top for decades and are nearing the end of their lives, they are "open for reform"