[Marxism] Something revealed by the debate over Canada

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rubinelli opens:
Star to steer by, litmus test?  What's the difference really?  Same-same
in the
scheme of things.

[So Cuba as a star to steer by for American revolutionists is a very bad
thing. Or maybe not? Rubinelli actually doesn't say. He frotheth muchly
but explaineth not.]

Rubinelli asks but offers no answer to the following question:
Does that policy have any material impact on the advancement of social
revolution,
internally for the Canadian workers, or internationally for other
workers? [Well, does it or doesn't it? The suspense is killing me!]

And closes:
Before we clasps the Canadian bougeoisie to our bosoms, embracing them
as white on
the outside but really red on the inside, we should also look at the
tourism and the
impact of tourism on the stratification of Cuban society, the multiple
tiers of  the
economy,  the power of "hard" currencies (before dollars, now maybe
Euros) on a
proto-class differentiation inside the still dominant collective
relations.



[Maybe the US blockade is such a gross mistake that it  has become,
given the character of the Castro leadership, the last
line of defense of the Cuban revolution.  Maybe but Rubinelli again
expresses no opinions on the issues he raises.  Is that because he has
none, but is waiting for information? Permit me to doubt it.]


Characteristically much more civilly, David Walters writes:


My whole point is that the Canadian revolutionaries need to develop a
totally independent position vis-a-vis politics in the Canadian state
and not subordinate their positions to what is on the minds of the
Cuban Foreign Ministry on any given day. This also means, and
especially, how to extend solidarity to Cuba, from the point of view,
and from the parameters of, the Canadian working class and oppressed
peoples.


Now lets face up to what's happening.  Did Walter say anything like
clasping "the Canadian bourgeoisie to our bosoms, embracing them as
white on the ou tside but really red on the inside...."

Did Walter Lippmann call for Canadians to "subordinate their positions
to what is on the minds of the Cuban Foreign Ministry on any given day."

Didn't Walter support the general approach of the Canadian article, but
suggest adding something to the point on Guantanamo. In retrospect
actually, Walter's point makes me think that socialists should take the
opportunity to include opposition to the occupation of Guantanamo, and
to Canadian support of this in the article.  Thus we learn from each
other, even when we disagree to one degree or another. Hell, I even
learn from Rubinelli.


Why does David feel so threatened by Walter's tendency to take seriously
Cuban foreign policy assessments (which are written, in my opinion, in a
politically serious revolutionary spirit, reflecting Cuba's foreign
policy which has advancing the struggle for progress at home and abroad
as a central axis)?  The effort to turn this by constant implication
into a form of Stalinist repression of the list is basically pretty
weird.  The extreme reactions and assertions which consistently rise in
response to Walter's contributions -- the refusal to take his
contributions one at a time and separate actual agreement from actual
disagreement (as David made a good faith attempt to do but couldn't
quite  manage it completely -- is actuaslly  strange. Why do members of
the list get outraged at Walter's view of Cuba as a "star to steer by."
What is so terrible about Cuba as a "star to steer by"? (And I don't
care that Hugh Mulzac, the union mariner  and ship captain in World War
II who titled his biography that way, was a Cper. It's a great title and
I always thought so.)


So I ask: Is Walter Lippmann the Albania of a debate in which Cuba is
the real issue?

I'm not trying to force the debate.  Frankly I see no need for it at the
moment, and contrary to what may be common opinion, I hate debating
questions I don't think are urgent. I have no doubt that just about
every active contributor to the list is going to defend Cuba in a pinch,
although I admit I worry a bit about China. (I worry more, in the
general class struggle, about the defense of Afghanistan -- but that's
another story.)

Finally, I want to mention one final point, which I am finding valuable
to keep in mind in off-list discussions, particularly about method.  I
have seen references to "Lippmann's method."  According to Lippmann's
method, this. And according to Lippmann's method, that.  I am officially
announcing, for good or ill, right or wrong, I have yet to find anyone
on the list whose political method is the same as mine. And I am not
sure that any two members actually have the same method. I know that
differences in how we think can affect political questions, and even
decisively.  I am one of those who think that Trotsky was right to bring
the question of method into the 1940 discussion.

But I have learned that differences in method are pretty universal even
among Marxists.  Noone has the same balance of thought (a product of
flesh with its own characteristics,  bocy, ideas, the material world,
dialectics, observation, and all the rest of it.  So let's get a grip
and not factionalize differences over "method" which are partly an
inevitable product of different human experiences  and responses to
same.

Fred Feldman




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