Re: [Marxism] Cuba: the litmus test?

[Eli Stephens <elishastephens@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark L. asks: "What does this mean in practical terms for people outside of 
Cuba?  How does this look any different on the ground than the militant defense 
of the right of self-determination by Cuba?  Or Venezuela?  Or Nicaragua?  Or 
Iraq?"

Well, for starters, it  might mean moving past the kind of idealist sentiment 
you might find from a church pulpit - "a better world is possible" - to the 
very 
practical and much more effective sentiment of "a better world is possible, and 
see how much Cuba, with a fraction of the resources of the advanced capitalist 
countries and their implacable hostility, is able to accomplish."

Mark (and the ISO - see my previous posts) want us to appeal to U.S. workers 
based on an abstraction - "the militant defense of the right of 
self-determination." But that runs into reality. Look at the appearance of 
Lincoln Diaz-Balart on C-SPAN the other day, who justified the blockade on the 
grounds that all the aid goes either into the pockets of the leadership and/or 
to support "terrorism" (like Grenada and the "invasion" of Africa). If you, 
like 
Jim McGovern, fail to rebut such absurdities, and inform the world of what the 
resources Cuba is losing would ACTUALLY be used for, with concrete information, 
then you have lost the argument and the potential support of the people you are 
trying to reach, and the people of Cuba have lost, and the people of the world 
have lost, and that includes the people of the advanced capitalist countries.

Mark closes by asking, "How is this not placing an abstraction about somewhere 
else over the concrete requirements of building a movement where we are?" And 
that is his problem. Because this talk about Cuba is not "an abstraction." It 
is 
a very concrete reality, that is very much relevant to "building a movement 
where we are."


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