Re: [Marxism] Communist conspiracy

[Ruthless Critic of All that Exists <ok.president+nbsy@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 2:34 AM, S. Artesian <sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I don't think that ranks up there with providing weapons to Savimbi....

Well, presumably groups like the WSWS would say that Castro's sympathy
with Franco is not surprising -- because Castro is (according to the
WSWS) a petty-bourgeois statist nationalist. Their analysis is
thought-provoking.

Here's what the WSWS says:

"Castro subsequently would reinterpret his own political past,
declaring that he had become a "Marxist- Leninist'' long before the
Batista coup, though "not quite'' a communist. All of his political
adventures, from his days with the armed anti-communist gangs on the
university to his campaign as a Congressional candidate for a
bourgeois party, were recast as mere tactical initiatives aimed at
preparing the conditions for a socialist revolution.

What was it that Castro, as well as other left bourgeois nationalists,
found in "Marxism-Leninism"? Clearly, they were not seeking a
scientific perspective to guide the struggle of the working class for
its own social and political emancipation. At the same time it was
more than just a pretense aimed at winning support from Moscow.

They saw the Marxism-Leninism they learned from the Stalinists as a
policy which promoted the use of the state to effect desired changes
in the social order. They also found in it a justification for their
own unrestricted control over this state, ruling through an omnipotent
"revolutionary party" headed by an infallible and irreplaceable
national leader. It should be recalled that Chiang kai shek also
modeled his party, the Kuomintang, on what he learned from Stalinism.

Like virtually all the nationalist regimes and tendencies that emerged
in the postwar period, Castroism has rested on a set of myths
concerning its own origins and development. Such mythologizing is
inevitable, given the class character of these movements, resting as
they do upon the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie, while
claiming to represent the interests of the oppressed masses."

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