Re: [Marxism] The two souls of socialism (was: RE: John Holloway-AlexCallinicos debate)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ian wrote:
> I think that the fact that Cuba is a small country, hardly a major world
> industrial power now or previously, makes it of questionable value to
> extrapolate from it towards other possibilities.

I would suggest another way of looking at this. If a country that relies
primarily on the export of agricultural goods, that is subject to economic
sabotage from the most powerful imperialist nation in history, that is
forced to spend an inordinate amount of its national income to defend
itself militarily, that has been forced to reinvent itself economically as
a result of the collapse of the USSR can achieve Human Development
Indicator statistics comparable to Sweden, Canada and other G8
nations--this tells me that a country without such obstacles can become a
virtual paradise.

We must study Cuba for the same reason that we might have studied the USSR
during the NEP. For all its flaws, Russia in the early 1920s was a
incubator for socialist development.

It is a big mistake to dwell on ideal forms of socialism. Marx wrote very
few prescriptions about what should be but oriented to concrete examples of
workers taking power, like the Paris Commune. Much later, he even held out
hopes that the Russian rural communes could be a springboard for the
advance of socialism.

Here's one of my favorite quotes:

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has
developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges
from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically,
morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old
society from whose womb it emerges."

Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme


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