RE: [Marxism] David Keil report on the ISO conference

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David Keil writes very clearly and coherently.
His report appears objective and gives a very
realistic sense of what the ISO conference
must have felt like. It was good to see this.

There are some interesting messages at the SWP
list from time to time. Nat Weinstein's story
about the gay issue in the SWP seemed to me to
be very sincere. I wish he'd write more of that
stuff. It was reasonable in tone and presented
very well.

What does David Keil describe his political
project as being these days? Until this story,
I don't think I've heard of Keil over the past
thirty five years or so, so I'm wondering what
he has been doing in the intervening decades?
Is he part of an organization or tendency?

Keil holds the very familiar, traditional
Trotskyist opinion of Cuba, that is, Cuba is
a bureaucratically-deformed workers state
ruled by a one-party Stalinist party, and he
would logically, therefore, be in favor of
the overthrow of the Cuban government today
(by "the workers", of course). This is the
view which most people who designate them-
selves as Trotskyist continue to maintain.

With this point of view, the difference that
separates such a "workers state" viewpoint
and the "bureaucratic collectivist" one that
would not seem to be a critical dividing line.

Both groupings agree that the government of
Cuba is bureaucratic and is Stalinist and it
should also be overthrown (by the workers).
Both think of themselves as being much more
revolutionary than the Cubans are.

They differ, apparently, on whether or not
to designate what they call for as a "social"
or else a "political" revolution. In other
words, it's a terminological dispute. They
tendencies would probably agree on practical
tasks. That's why Keil evidently sees no big
reason to be separate from them, as his last
paragraph on the subject clearly indicates.



Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
http://www.walterlippmann.com
=============================================
State capitalism

ISO members are very much focused on their theory of the
state as applied to Cuba and other countries that are
called "socialist" by their leaderships. Therefore some of
my thinking and discussions in Chicago were about state
capitalism.

Capitalism is characterized or defined by socialized
production, combined with private appropriation under
private ownership of the main means of production. The
profit motive that drives the system refers to a private
form of profit. In Cuba, owners of the main means of
production are not private, and appropriation of the
results of production is social or public. Hence Cuba is a
post-capitalist society, not a capitalist one, though the
state that defends social ownership is deformed by
one-party bureaucratic rule under a Stalinist party.

Some people fail to see the Stalinist character of the
Cuban CP or erroneously call Cuba "capitalist." Such people
may nevertheless be able to defend a revolutionary program
and build a revolutionary party, because theoretical or
political errors do not always have fatal consequences.
Some people have even been able to defend a revolutionary
program while believing in gods of various kinds, clearly a
significant theoretical error.



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