[Marxism] Che Guevera - Myth and Reality

[Jscotlive@xxxxxxx]

They are a state capitlalist
nation with socialized medicine and  education, again, a qualitiative step to
the left, that would be  revolutionary in a place like
the US, but it still isn't Socialism.
 
Reply:
 
Or perhaps socialist with a state capitalist dual economy? 
 
The point is that socialism, capitalism, etc., are NOT fixed categories but  
processes - i.e., transitional states of development. That the Cuban 
Revolution  resulted in the expropriation of its bourgeoisie is a matter of 
historical  
record, that it expropriated the property of international capital is too, 
and  implemented a planned economy, land reform, healthcare, a nationwide 
literacy  programme - these are absolutely and definitely socialist advances.
 
Of course, missing conveniently from your analysis is the role of material  
conditions, the transitional nature of socialist development as it emerges from 
 in Cuba's case a very primitive capitalism, and the huge pressure arrayed  
against its development by US imperialism.
 
State Capitalism is an intellectually unsustainable theory popularised by  
Tony Cliff in order to distance himself and his party from the Soviet  Union 
and 
'really existing socialism' during the Cold War. It is, in truth,  
revisionism motivated by this petit bourgeois  retreat.  



   
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