Fidel Castro on Homosexuality

Excerpted from Face to Face with Fidel Castro: A Conversation with Tomas Borge, Ocean Press, 1992, 139-141.

Tomas Borge: What is your view of homosexuality?

Fidel Castro: There is still machismo in our people. I believe a much lower level than any other people in Latin America, but there is still machismo. That has been part of the idiosyncrasy of our people for centuries. I won't deny that, at a certain time, this machista thing influenced the attitude toward homosexuality. I, personally, do not suffer from that sort of phobia against homosexuals. I have never been in favor of, nor promoted, nor supported policy against homosexuals. That corresponded, I would say, to a particular stage and is very much associated with that legacy, with machismo.

Tomas Borge: Many people think that their is sexual discrimination in Cuba. What are your views on homosexuality..?

Fidel Castro: We inherited male chauvinism-and many other bad habits-from the conquistadores. That was an historical legacy..We have made a real advance-we can see it, especially in the young people, but we can't say that sexual discrimination has been completely wiped out and we mustn't lower our guard...

For example, men's and women's conduct was judged by different standards. We had that for years in the Party, and I waged battles and argued a lot about it. If a man was unfaithful, it didn't constitute a problem or a worry, but if a woman was unfaithful, that became the subject of discussion in the Party nucleus. There was a double standard for judging the sexual relations of men and women. I had to fight hard, very hard, against those deep-rooted prejudices. There wasn't any doctrine or education in this regard, instead, there were many male chauvinist concepts and prejudices in our society...

I am not going to deny that, at one point, male chauvinism also influenced our attitude toward homosexuality. I, myself, you're asking me for my own opinion-don't have any phobia toward homosexuals. I've never felt that phobia and I've never promoted or supported policies against homosexuals I would say that it corresponded to a given stage and is largely associated with that legacy of chauvinism. I try to have a more humane, scientific approach to the problem. Often, it becomes a tragedy, because of what the parents think-some parents whose son is homosexual turn it into a tragedy. It's really too bad they react this way and make it a tragedy for the individual, as well.

I don't consider homosexuality to be a phenomenon of degeneration. I've always had a more rational approach, considering it to be one of the natural aspects and tendencies of human beings which should be respected...It would be good if the families themselves had another mentality, another approach, when a circumstance of this nature occurs. I am absolutely opposed to any form of repression, contempt, scorn, or discrimination with regard to homosexuals. That's what I think.

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In a misguided scheme to put thousands of draft dodgers - from gay men and transvestites, to Jehovah's Witnesses - to work to bolster sugar yields, the government initiated Military Units for the Aid of Production (UMAP).

Ensuing domestic and international pressure, along with direct political intervention by Fidel Castro, shut down the penal labor brigades after only 18 months. Cubans consider the UMAP project a serious error and a breach of the principle of socialist equality. Yet, right-wingers persist in describing UMAPs as concentration camps, and imply they still exist.

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Its nice to know that castro feels this way now, but in the 60s he had all gays sent to concentration camps because they were supposed to be example of "bourgeois decadence".

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It does say one positive thing about Cuba, though. The country is very sensitive to outside public opinion, especially left public opinion as it needs support against the US embargo and military threats. Cuba is very different from, say, North Korea.

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. I am absolutely opposed to any form of repression, contempt, scorn, or discrimination with regard to homosexuals. That's what I think.

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
So, let me get this straight. Fidel isn't a phobe, but a large proportion of people in Cuba are anti gay. Does that mean the law preventing homsexuals from being publicly gay was written to placate the Cuban masses?
Maybe Cuba is more democratic then I first thought.

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Yes, by all means, get it straight. Revolutionary Cuba did not pass a law "preventing homosexuals from being publicly gay". Rather, it has gradually removed all anti-gay laws from its books - laws that were passed before the revolution, and certainly not for the purpose of placating the masses.

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Why is it that over 2 million African-American males, heterosexual or otherwise, don't have the basic right to vote in elections ?. Just that figure alone represents 22% of Cuba's entire population who don't have the basic human right to particpate in mock elections in the US of A.

[ 15 August 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Apperently homosexuals who are gay in public can expect to spend three months in jail.

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1988: Law against "flaunting homosexuality" is rescinded. Fidel Castro explains the need to reject rigidity and change negative party and societal attitudes towards gays.

1992: Vilma Espin, a leader of the revolution and president of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), condemns prejudicial views against lesbians and gays. Castro speaks in defense of women's equality and rebukes anti-gay sentiments: "I am absolutely opposed to any form of repression, contempt, scorn or discrimination with regard to homosexuals. [It is] a natural human tendency that must simply be respected."

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[ 17 August 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

This discourse would penalize Cuba for all its faults, while giving a pass to others who don't make much noise due to their subservience to the West.

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Why?

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Originally posted by lagatta:

I don't think those of us who stand up for Cuba against imperialism should try to deny past or present policies that are undemocratic; it is no service to the Cuban people or to socialism.

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You'll have The Other Todd to answer to for that counterrevolutionary insolence, lagatta. I pity you.

For those interested in informing themselves on this subject, I strongly recommend finding the films "Strawberry & Chocolate" and "Before Night Falls".

[ 12 September 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I just find it difficult to accept that established leftists can be guilty of the same kind of persecution of gays, Jehovah's, Catholics, Protestants, specific ethnicities, twin children or skin colour than the ultra-right has been guilty as charged with in recent history.

The island of Cuba has made great strides with respect to "race" relations and being much improved since the days when the blacker the skin was, the more likely that person would carry luggage for organised crime bosses up the stairs of the Hotel Riviera or dig ditches or cut sugar cain in blistering heat from sunup to sundown or be twice as likely than white Hispanics to die of tuberculosis. Today, Cuba's full range of skin colours share equal access to education and participation in Cuban society. Cuba's achievments since 1959 far outweigh what Batista and organised crime had to offer the people.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Plans to legalise gay marriage and offer sex change operations free of charge mean Cuba is set to become the most socially liberal country in the Americas.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Its nice to know that castro feels this way now, but in the 60s he had all gays sent to concentration camps because they were supposed to be example of "bourgeois decadence".

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Originally posted by West Coast Greeny:

More so than Canada?

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Most provinces don't offer sex change surgery as part of their health insurance plans. So that would be more advanced than Canada.

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Originally posted by Doug:

Most provinces don't offer sex change surgery as part of their health insurance plans. So that would be more advanced than Canada.

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Most provinces are short of family physicians, and so achieving Cuba's per capita doctor supply would be an improvement to socialized medicine in Canada as maintained/sabotaged by our two old line plutocratic parties.

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However, as someone who values my right to criticize and organize against the government politically as much as my right to be gay, I'd say Cuba still has a ways to go.

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Former CIA specialist on Latin America, Philip Agee said U.S. "ambassador" to Cuba Cason and the "dissidents" were running around Havana free as birds and committing sedition in broad daylight for several weeks on end. Sedition is illegal and a law on the books of every country in the world. The Cuban Five are currently sitting in U.S. gulags on trumped up charges while their basic human rights are being violated.

In fact, U.S. gulags for torture at Guantanamo Bay are the largest threat to human rights on the island of Cuba.

[ 10 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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The Cuban Five are currently sitting in U.S. gulags on trumped up charges while their basic human rights are being violated.

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Who are the Cuban five?

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Fidel, is it possible to publish an anti government pamphlet in Cuba without being arrested and thrown in jail?

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You can complain about the government in Cuba the live long day. Just don't get caught with tens of thousands of USAID dollars in your possession while transmitting seditious propaganda bullshit to Spain's conservative politicos and known CIA spooks in Miami. Because I'll beat the snot out of you with a cane myself.!

And you can go to the island and report on any serious matter concerning Cuba as it might relate to ordinary, relevant issues.

And you can actually wear an anti-Bush T-Shirt in Cuba without fear of arrest and being thrown in jail.

And you can protest state-funded School of the Americas Skool for International Terrorism anywhere in Cuba without fear of being arrested and thrown in an American gulag.

Meet the Cuban Five

[ 10 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Well, okay. If you want to go there, then let's talk about Tommy Douglas's support for eugenics and the labelling of homosexuality as a "disease".

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Not exactly the same, Moderator Michelle. It's one thing to accept what is considered modern science at the time. It's quite another to take away people's democratic rights.

Tommy Douglas never advocated jailing, persecuting or deporting anybody.

The fundamental point is that it doesn't matter if homosexuality is a disease or some biological quirk (apparently male homosexuality is now believed to be caused by some chromosome dysfunction or something like that, whereas lesbianism is supposedly a social phenomenon) or whatever.

What matters is the homosexuals and lesbians are human beings who are entitled to the same basic general democratic rights as the rest of us (to the extent any of us actually have these), and to deny them this is a form of discrimination and oppression.

Period.

Where did Dougals explicitly say he opposed the incarceration of gay persons in psychiatric insitutions or otherwise defend their rights?

I think you have just made this up, because it makes you feel more comfortable.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
The fundamental point is that it doesn't matter if homosexuality is a disease or some biological quirk (apparently male homosexuality is now believed to be caused by some chromosome dysfunction or something like that, whereas lesbianism is supposedly a social phenomenon) or whatever.

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I can see why you don't have a problem with Tommy Douglas's views. You basicly just restated them.

[ 10 April 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

[ 10 April 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Tommy Douglas never advocated jailing, persecuting or deporting anybody.

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Originally posted by Michelle:

Well, okay. If you want to go there, then let's talk about Tommy Douglas's support for eugenics and the labelling of homosexuality as a "disease".

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Or we could go forward in time from there and note Prescott Bush's continued support for eugenics right up to the time of his death. While old Prescott, the corporate and banking cabal were aiding and abetting the eventual biggest mass murderer of the last century, Tommy was the first western politician to speak out publicly against the author of Mein Kampf.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Or we could go forward in time from there and note Prescott Bush's continued support for eugenics right up to the time of his death. While old Prescott, the corporate and banking cabal were aiding and abetting the eventual biggest mass murderer of the last century, Tommy was the first western politician to speak out publicly against the author of Mein Kampf.

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Where did Dougals explicitly say he opposed the incarceration of gay persons in psychiatric insitutions or otherwise defend their rights?

I think you have just made this up, because it makes you feel more comfortable.

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And I think you are acting again like the malicious little CCF-basher you sometimes love to be. Well, it won’t help you as usual.

I said in my last post I know of no evidence anywhere that shows Douglas supported the incarceration of anybody other than convicted violent felons.

Since you're the one on a smear campaign against him, the onus is on you to find verified evidence of him supporting the persecution of any identified group, instead of insisting that I try to make your case for you.

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Neither did Castro.
So what's your point?

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My point was that there's a difference between accepting commonly assumed medical or psychiatric opinions and actually advocating taking people's rights away.

I don't know whether Castro himself did or did not advocate this

(Although the Cuban government has apparently done so at times)

But as far as I can tell Tommy Douglas never did.

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Or we could go forward in time from there and note Prescott Bush's continued support for eugenics right up to the time of his death. While old Prescott, the corporate and banking cabal were aiding and abetting the eventual biggest mass murderer of the last century, Tommy was the first western politician to speak out publicly against the author of Mien Kampf.

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It's true that the CCF was condemning the racist, war-mongering hyper-capitalistic policies of the Nazi regime while many of the corporatist forces were quietly and not so quietly admiring the Nazis for their brutal suppression of unions, co-ops, socialists, free thinkers and the various ethnic and religious groups they didn't (and still don't) like.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

And I think you are acting again like the malicious little CCF-basher you sometimes love to be. Well, it won’t help you as usual.

I said in my last post I know of no evidence anywhere that shows Douglas supported the incarceration of anybody other than convicted violent felons.

Since you're the one on a smear campaign against him, the onus is on you to find verified evidence of him supporting the persecution of any identified group, instead of insisting that I try to make your case for you.

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No. You made some very specific claims about what Douglas did and did not believe. Douglas is clearly on record as saying that he thought homosexuality was a psychological disease. You said he did not support taking away the rights of homosexuals.

I submit that by the standards of the day, Douglas new full well that psychological diseases were often treated by application of legal force directly infringing upon a persons freedoms, including incarceration, shock treatment, lobotomies and all kinds of other barbaric psychiatric practices, which were the norm.

Therefore, unless Douglas stated clearly that he catergorized homosexuality as a psychological disease of an order that was different form other psychological diseases, and did not potentially warrant such forms of treatment "for the good of the patient," then it is safe to assume that Douglas would consider that on occassion the maximum treatement for "cases" of homosexuality would be justifiable.

Needless to say he made no such qualifications. And you know it very well.

As for bashing the NDP and the CCF, it is hard not to when faced with the kind dissembling that is being made here in defence of Douglas.

It is simple enough to say that Tommy was a "man of his time," and that despite his numerous good points he had some failings, and among those was his understanding of homosexuality, and his ignorance of it, and his belief that it was a "disease," which presumably could be "treated" through psychiatric means, whatever those might be.

That said, I am interested in your view that homosexuality is not a psychological disease, but as you stated above a genetic "dysfunction"? For instance, do you think that the "chromosome dysfunction" could be "treated" by genetic modifications?

[ 10 April 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Michelle: Well, okay. If you want to go there, then let's talk about Tommy Douglas's support for eugenics and the labelling of homosexuality as a "disease".

Not exactly the same, Moderator Michelle. It's one thing to accept what is considered modern science at the time. It's quite another to take away people's democratic rights.

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No. You made some very specific claims about what Douglas did and did not believe. Douglas is clearly on record as saying that he thought homosexuality was a psychological disease. You said he did not support taking away the rights of homosexuals.

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FYI, the American Psychiatric Association regarded homosexuality as a disease up until 1973.

I remember reading that the issue of homosexuality came up in the leaders debate in 1968. Douglas took the view that homosexuality was a disease and that homosexuals shoudl be treated with compassion and humanity. The mainstream view at the time was to criminalizxe it and jail people.

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Originally posted by unionist:

"Modern science" considered homosexuality as a "disease" in 1968?

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I think modern science was referring to AIDS as a gay-related disease up to the 1980s. And I think there has been a history of racism within health care and medicine in North America as recently as the cold war era. Blacks were considered game in the U.S. for all kinds of horrible experimentation.

Velma Orlikow, wife of NDP politician David Orlikow, was a subject of Dr Ewen (Mein fuhrer, I can walk) Cameron's "MK Ultra" mind control experiments in Montreal, conducted in secret on behalf of the American CIA.

Modern science wasn't all that modern for a long time.

[ 10 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by unionist:

"Modern science" considered homosexuality as a "disease" in 1968?

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

FYI, the American Psychiatric Association regarded homosexuality as a disease up until 1973.

I remember reading that the issue of homosexuality came up in the leaders debate in 1968. Douglas took the view that homosexuality was a disease and that homosexuals shoudl be treated with compassion and humanity. The mainstream view at the time was to criminalizxe it and jail people.

By today's standards it wasn't perfect, but at the tiem he was way more gay positive than any other politician.

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People thought at the time that treating people with psychiatirc diseases with "humanity and compassion" could mean attaching electrodes to their head, sticking a piece of wood in their mouth and running eletric current through their body. It was all for the "good of the patient".

Unless there is clear evidence that Douglas, opposed the use of invasive pychiatric procedures, we have to assume that Douglas likely supported whatever the psychiatirst thought was best for the patient, and that could include any and all of the barbaric types of "treatements" that psychiatrists metted out to the people they were torturing.

[ 10 April 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:

The fact that Castro was saying in 1992 - fifteen years ago - that he had no problem with homosexuality and was actually critiquing male chauvanism and machismo is pretty awesome.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Plans to legalise gay marriage and offer sex change operations free of charge mean Cuba is set to become the most socially liberal country in the Americas.

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No. You made some very specific claims about what Douglas did and did not believe. Douglas is clearly on record as saying that he thought homosexuality was a psychological disease. You said he did not support taking away the rights of homosexuals.

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Quit wriggling. You don't do it very well.

I clearly said:

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Tommy Douglas never advocated jailing, persecuting or deporting anybody.

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and I stand by that, because from all that I read and learned I know it to be true.

And all your guilt-by-irrelevant assumptions and convenient dodges can't change that--like this beauty:

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Therefore, unless Douglas stated clearly that he catergorized homosexuality as a psychological disease of an order that was different form other psychological diseases, and did not potentially warrant such forms of treatment "for the good of the patient," then it is safe to assume that Douglas would consider that on occassion the maximum treatement for "cases" of homosexuality would be justifiable.

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I asked you to show me specific verified info on where Douglas openly supported persecuting homosexuals (or any other identified group). You clearly can’t do that.

I never asked for you to waste everyone's time with your factless speculations on what he might have thought about something based on what some people generally believed about whatever.

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It is simple enough to say that Tommy was a "man of his time," and that despite his numerous good points he had some failings,

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Yes, well all this shows is that wise words don't necessarily come from wise people. I know damn well he, like everyone else, had his failings, short-comings, contradictions, bad moods and habits, etc.

The fact is you are obviously being malicious since you clearly can't back up any of your charges that Douglas advocated incarcerating homosexuals, which is what I asked you for.

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Actually, Argentina beat Cuba to the Punch.

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[ 10 April 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Unless there is clear evidence that Douglas, opposed the use of invasive pychiatric procedures, we have to assume that Douglas likely supported whatever the psychiatirst thought was best for the patient, and that could include any and all of the barbaric types of "treatements" that psychiatrists metted out to the people they were torturing.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Holy Moly Cueball, you really need to take some lessons in keeping a story straight. Trying to duck my challenge to you will not let you off the hook.

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And my point is quite simple. Advocating decriminalization of homosexuality, in favour of its classification as a psychiatric problem, does NOT mean that peoples rights can not be taken away. Psychiatirc courts, and in fact psychiatrist themselves have incredible power over people. This is what you do not seem to be able to fathom.

Psychiatrists, for instance, can, I believe, simply based on their own, and one other confirming opinion, incarcerate people for weeks at a time for observation. That observational period can then be extended, more or less indefinitely. Psychiatric courts can likewise order more or less permanent incarceration.

Simply because it is not a "criminal" proceeding, in no way changes that fact.

It was even worse at the time of Mr. Douglas's statements.

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It was not until the civil liberties movement of the early 1970's that the power of the psychiatrist was first questioned and ultimately revoked (2). The prevailing role of the psychiatrist in many instances "not only as arresting officer, but as prosecutor, judge, and jailer as well" (3) was contested. The "need for treatment" criteria introduced by Dr. Ray were therefore replaced with a new framework: the "dangerousness" criteria (4-6). A person could not be detained merely because a doctor thought she needed treatment, but only if she was deemed dangerous to herself or others.

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Psychiatry and the Law: A History of Our Duty to Protect

[ 10 April 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
The link you provided does not bear out your statement.

[ 10 April 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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How many would give a damn if you were dying of AIDS in Haiti ?.

And I wonder what it's like to be a poor woman in Guatemala ?.

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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I wonder what it's like to be gay in El Salvador?. A gay youth incarcerated in an adult prison for the crime of "vagrancy" ?. It's only a few days drive from Texas.
How many would give a damn if you were dying of AIDS in Haiti ?.

And I wonder what it's like to be a poor woman in Guatemala ?.

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Are you adressing me? Well even if your not, I'll respond. Yes, a homosexual living in an American backed banana republic will be horrendously miserable, but the fact is that homosexuals are margenalized in Kurschner's Argentina, Chavez's Venezuala, and Lula's Brazil. Socialism does not garauntee tolerence.

Look at Switzerland for Christ sakes!

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

That was always the Soviet answer when anyone pointed to the Gulags.

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Originally posted by jeff house:
Yes, and "what about the Negroes in the South?"

That was always the Soviet answer when anyone pointed to the Gulags.

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The British army had to accomodate Jim Crow when the Americans arrived in England. There were segregated barracks for blacks and whites on British soil during the war. The Nazis pointed to Jim Crow law in respect for American tradition in their POW camps and all.

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The tradition lives on.

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Yes, and "what about the Negroes in the South?"

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Couldn't it be argued that some injustices are easier to deal with then others? People may say look at problem X instead of problem Y simply because problem X is much less of a threat to their physical saftey and/or sanity then problem Y. You have to admit that campaigning on behalf of oppressed Afro Americans south of the mason dixon line is a lot less stessful(and a lot less futile) then mounting a sustained campagn to bring down a monsterous totalitarian super power half a world away.

[ 11 April 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 12 April 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 13 April 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 12 April 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Why not just toss soviet and Maoist coommunism into the political dustbin and continue your support for Fidel Castro, Lula Disilva, Nestor Kirchner or Hugo Chavez.

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this is a very good question, CMOT Dibbler (I still would like to know what that stands for), especially since the Chinese and Soviet/Eastern Bloc regimes and economies were, for the most part, anything but socialist or communist, even by the admission of their own leaders, business officials and economists.

Lenin: Industrial Management under a State Capitalist Monopoly Framework

Lenin on State Capitalism During the Transition to Socialism excerpts

Stalin: State Capitalism to Close the Historic Gap Between Russia and the West

Mao: State capitalism on Building the Economy-- Conference on Financial and Economic Framework 1953

The fact is--and I have said this many times before and will continue to say it, because it's sadly true--despite what various governments and politicians and the corporate media claim, every modern economy sadly is or has been primarily capitalistic in nature. That’s is the main reason for so many seemingly irresolvable world-wide and local injustice, destruction and oppression, poverty, dictatorship, war, and similar problems.

The fact is there is and always has been far more practical socialism, and socialist political influence, in western Europe than there ever was in the old Eastern Bloc. That’s why western Europe, especially Scandinavia, has better overall living standards and freedoms that most other economies, including the less-socialistic-influenced backward-ass corporate capitalist ones of North America.

But again, sadly, while there are scores of examples of successful socialistic/communistic economic developments at the local and regional levels, and various ventures of every kind, around the globe, no economy that I know of is or has ever been predominantly socialist/communist in practice.

Those newly elected democratic left/center-left coalitions in South America you mention certainly have a socialistic agenda and outlook, or at least to some degree in many of their initiatives, but their economies are overwhelmingly capitalistic and likely will be for a long time yet.

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
When it comes to it, no country should be Angelized or demonized. No nation is perfect.

[ 12 April 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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We're not interested in putting past or current world leaders on pedestals, just the truth. The cold war was a significant part of recent history, and not too many significant events happened by accident. One of the long-standing views held by too many people in the know today I think is the opinion that the Soviet Union collapsed all by itself. The truth is, it didn't. The events leading up to the dissolution of the USSR were the end result of a several trillion dollar taxpayer funded cold war waged by western nations, MNCs and an international banking cabal against a Soviet Block of nations controlling about a third of world trade at the peak of Soviet empire.

In fact, I believe the very notion was put forth by western news media, right-wing economists and politicians as a large dose of propaganda to detract from the truth of what actually occurred with our own 30 year-long experiment in laissez-faire capitalism which collapsed in 1929 and was transformed by the end of the 1930's. The US and Canada did not endure trade embargoes, world war or civil war and revolution on our doorsteps. There was no Keynesian militarism then or billions of dollars funelled away from societal needs and diverted to a propaganda war every year. Laissez-faire capitalism just keeled over and died in much the same way it did during the Chicago School of Economics experiment in Chile from 1973 to 1985. Laissez-faire capitalism really did collapse "all by itself" without an evil empire to push it over the cliff. Capitalism hurled itself off the cliff edge in 1929 around the western world, and this historical fact loomed large in the events leading up to World War Two and where we are today with mixed market economies having been largely responsible for building the richest and most advanced economies in world history.

Is the poster Fidel stuck in the past, enamored with what could have been?

Yes and no. The reason why I think we should understand what actually happened, as I mention time and again whether anyone cares, is that laissez-faire capitalism collapsed not once but twice under optimal conditions in real western world experiments lasting 30 years the first time and just 16 years in Chile, and as Greg Palast said, under near perfect laboratory conditions. Why is this relevant today ?. Because socialism is dead as well all know, or at least have been propagandized into believing. The establishment, the big winners of the cold war, are now attempting to reintroduce the same political and economic ideology which did our socities great harm leading up to collapse in the 1930's. It was a really miserable system, and some who lived it said laissez-faire capitalism was duller and greyer than Soviet communism. The elitists don't want all of that system back again, just the really incredibly stupid parts where everything is made a free market of and social advances workers gained reversed and public enterprise privatized/briberized. And it will happen again unless people and workers everywhere make a stand. Someone once said that capitalism is fascism with the mask on, and so it's of paramamount importance to recognize it when the mask does begin to peel away.

ETA: Imagine that the USSR really was a perfect people's democracy able to trade freely with all other nations over the 70 year-long experiment in fair and democratic political and economic system. Would the cold war still have been waged by the imperialist west regardless in order to kill an idea ?. And I think before anyone answers that, just observe how many brutal right-wing dictatorships were propped up by the western world over the duration.

[ 13 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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That’s why western Europe, especially Scandinavia, has better overall living standards and freedoms that most other economies...

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I think one could argue that the economic model that most european countries operate under isn't very affective anymore. People who endorse this system believe that in order for capitalism to benifit the many, it just needs to be monitored by public sector agencies and unions. The problem is that corporations are getting to big, governments can't monitor them properly. Social democratic governments are still functioning quite well within the capitalist framework. However, eventually capitalism will win out.
The best system is one that has a communist economy and a democratic government.

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Imagine that the USSR really was a perfect people's democracy able to trade freely with all other nations over the 70 year-long experiment in fair and democratic political and economic system. Would the cold war still have been waged by the imperialist west regardless in order to kill an idea ?. And I think before anyone answers that, just observe how many brutal right-wing dictatorships were propped up by the western world over the duration.

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That would have been nice. I'm having difficulty seeing the Soviet Union as a victim state, the way that Cuba or Iraq is. The Soviets were responsible for oppression in Uzbekistan, they denied the Siberian Inuit the right to practice their religion, they propped up Asaad in Syria, Kamal in Afganistan...
None of this excuses the atrocities comitted by the American armed forces or by American backed dictatorships, but I don't think leftists should be saying that the Soviet Union was better then The United States. the USSR deserves to be held up as an example of how not to forge a socalist state.

[ 13 April 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

quote:

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:

That would have been nice. I'm having difficulty seeing the Soviet Union as a victim state, the way that Cuba or Iraq is.

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36 brutal right-wing dictatorships aside, the capitalist west controlled about two-thirds of world trade during the cold war. That was significant for the cold war of ideologies.

Afghanistan was Russia's "Vietnam", although the similarity ends where any meaningful comparison might begin. The western world paid for the Talibanization of Pakistan and Afghanistan. British SAS were training KLA mercenaries and mujahideen for guerilla warfare in Kosovo and Albania. The Balkans became a conduit for drugs flowing into Europe and North America. And while the most vicious of mujahideen and war lords tore Afghanistan apart after 1992, there were covert western operations said to have taken place on Russian soil proper leading up to dissolution of the USSR. Commentators said in considering that Russia was a nuclear superpower at the time, their military and national leaders showed remarkable restraint then.

Russia was definitely not "the" most aggressive military power then or today, CMOT. The Russians weren't innocent of imperialism, but they weren't doing half the shit around the world that the US and Co. were pulling and continue to in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Russians didn't assassinate Patrice Lumumba or Dag Hammersjold. They didn't fly U2's over Norad. The Russians didn't perpetrate what has been described as a Latin American holocaust and bombing schools and hospitals built by Marxists.

"Soviet communism accepted its own demise; Western capitalism has not accepted it yet”. -- Stafford Beer

[ 13 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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I think one could argue that the economic model that most european countries operate under isn't very affective anymore. People who endorse this system believe that in order for capitalism to benifit the many, it just needs to be monitored by public sector agencies and unions. The problem is that corporations are getting to big, governments can't monitor them properly. Social democratic governments are still functioning quite well within the capitalist framework. However, eventually capitalism will win out.

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Agreed. I didn't say I thought this model was the answer. All I said was it shows that the greater the socialist influence on what is otherwise and capitalist-dominated economy, the better the standard of living, freedoms, health and ecological well-being overall of the population.

What I was also trying to point out is that the socialist influence comes from far more than just political/electoral efforts, although those are important as well. Rather, they come from the success of practical socialist economics and ventures in action and having a huge positive impact on the economy —as in worker-run or union-sponsored businesses, employee-ownership, multitudes of varying cooperative ventures, sustainability-focused community economic development etc.

As much as almost 40 per cent of these domestic economies are made up of such businesses and economic models—and that could actually be higher when you include small single-outlet family businesses, many of which are fully unionized and are supported by a cooperative investment network or labour-sponsored venture capital fund.

While, as said, all modern economies are and have been predominantly capitalist-dominated (including Russia, China, eastern Europe, etc.), the fact is there is far more practical socialism/economic democracy in Scandinavia than there has ever been in countries with governments using shallow rhetoric and wholly abusing terms like communism and socialism or Marxism (much like the US and its suck-hole states abuse terms like freedom, democracy, liberty, free market, etc.).

Hollow terms like “Soviet Communism” etc., are actually describing, as shown from the links in my last post, various forms of state capitalism with all of its failings and problems, and, as history shows, actual socialist economic development in those countries was either ruthlessly suppressed or co-opted and defunct by oppressive regimes and the various state capitalist ventures and institutions that sustained them.

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The Soviets were responsible for oppression in Uzbekistan, they denied the Siberian Inuit the right to practice their religion, they propped up Asaad in Syria, Kamal in Afganistan...

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The Soviet Union was never a victim state. Rather, it was an aggressive imperialistic power that, in accordance with Stalinist dictate, used its state capitalist dominated economy to expand its influence and control over the markets, resources and economies of many of its surrounding nations and elsewhere. They got involved in Afghanistan for the same reasons as the British did before them, and the Americans since: to get control of the real estate in order to build the Trans-Afghanistan Oil Pipeline.

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The best system is one that has a communist economy and a democratic government.

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Agreed. However, we should note that it’s impossible to have a communist, or any type of genuinely socialistic economy, with having a democratic government. The fact is, terms like communism and socialist historically define economies that are based on the democratic cooperative ownership and control of the means of production and trade by those who work in them and their communities. You can’t have that in any serious way without a democratic governance system.

[ 13 April 2007: Message edited by: Steppenwolf Allende ]

U.S. Policy Has Betrayed Afghan Women for 20 Years

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Before the reform-minded PDPA took power in the late 1970s, Afghan women were forced to wear the stifling head to toe veil, and had no right to own property, go to school, or divorce. They were considered non-persons in the eyes of the law. The female literacy rate was one percent and polygamy was common.

The PDPA regime promoted education for girls, gave women the right to divorce and own property, and reduced the bride price to a nominal fee. It also distributed land to the impoverished peasants and restrained the power of the mullahs, the Muslim clergy.

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What authority bears witness to this? None other than the U.S. Department of the Army itself.

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The Pentagon puts out what it calls country study books on almost every country in the world. They are updated every few years. These books contain basic information for the use of U.S. personnel traveling or working abroad.

There's nothing classified in them. They're available in most libraries... How U.S. destroyed progressive secular forces in Afghanistan

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The PDPA government was actually the first to ban opium cultivation in Afghanistan. After the CIA began passing aid and weapons directly to the most brutal and vicious of war lords from 1992 onward, opium exports from Afghanistan soared. Heroin addiction in Islamabad was flat before the proxy war and was said to have become a permanent feature of that city by 1985.

Berkeley Interview with Khaled Ahmed, Lahore Newspaper Editor The Talibanization of Pakistan and Afganistan in the 1980's by General Zia, Pakistani ISI and American CIA

Of three(four counting the "Pentagon") sources I've listed, two are independent reports. I believe our own Jerry West is a UCal degree holder. That's a world class university.

Imagine the shit-fan scenario had the Soviets supplied the FMLN and Sandinistas with shoulder rockets and bullets costing taxpayers $5 dollars a piece to bring down helicopter gunships unleashed on peasants and indigenous people during those wars waged by Uncle Sam on his own back doorsteps?. Former death squad ambassador to Honduras, John Negroponte, and CIA "troubleshooter" Robert Blackwill actually did follow through with the "Salvador option" in Iraq.

=============================

RAWA on Afghanistan today after all the bullshit about communist oppression and "freedom". Those lying bastards!, We know whose freedom the west was meaning all along.

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Opium poppy cultivation has expanded and the government has stopped poor and hungry farmers from growing opium but let the powerful warlords keep dealing in the dirty drug trade. It is a shameful fact for Karzai and the US government that Afghanistan now produces 92 percent of the world’s supply of opium. Even some ministers have acknowledged the fact that some cabinet ministers are deeply implicated in the drug trade. Afghanistan has become a Narco-State.

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Sounds like the CIA (aka the world's biggest dope delivery service) is at it again. Are we to believe western news agencies and the CIA themselves that they are the victims in all this ?. Bullshit! And they continue over-stepping their imperialist boundaries in Iraq and Afghanistan as we speak. The Soviets actually pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989. Former Soviet military commanders have advised the west not to get bogged down in Afghanistan. It's almost as if our elected officials still refuse to accept first-hand experience. Although considering that the Russians are no strangers to funding proxy wars, ie. Vietnam, I wouldn't be surprised if they are one of the proxy nations aiding and abetting the Afghan resistance today. Xtreme ways are back again.

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Hollow terms like “Soviet Communism” etc., are actually describing, as shown from the links in my last post, various forms of state capitalism with

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quote:

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Agreed. However, we should note that it’s impossible to have a communist, or any type of genuinely socialistic economy, with having a democratic government.

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First communism was not an idea invented by Marx. Marx adpoted a conception of a future society as one that he thought ideal. He did not expound upon the nature of that society, and when he did he was paraphrasing other ideas that were current at the time. Marx did not invent communism, and very rarely expounded upon its nature.

Second, one of the only times Marx discusses the nature of communist society, in any depth is in the Critique of the Gotha Program. However the main body of that is about economy, and not how society is managed, though this is the only occassion where Marx uses the term "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," but it is clear that if there is to be a dictatorship, it is a transitory phase of the revolutionary period of social development, not a permanent state. Furthermore, it is an aside, and not the main thrust of his work.

In the main Marx's work followed two threads of thought:

• a) critique of the economic mechanism of capitalism
• b a theory of the process of social development

So much to say any musings about the nature of communist society by Marx are generally asides, based in the general theory propounded by the communists movement as a whole, of which he was a part.

Thirdly, Engels also uses the phrase "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" rhetorcially in his postscript to the essay on the "Civil War in France":

quote:

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Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

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In summary, the phrase, "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" appears twice in the entire body of the works of Marx and Engles, and in that it is hardly central to their work. In the first instance it is an aside, in the second a rhetorical expression, from which it is hard to glean any very conclusive meanings. So much to say there is not a single essay written by either Marx or Engels about the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," expounding upon it.

At best it is a rhetorical aside, and not central to the thrust of their work.

However, this phrase, was siezed upon by the Leninists and raised to the level of having a central meaning to their world view, interpreting it as being central to Marx and Engels even though they hardly ever said anything about it. It is largely the result of Leninist and Soviet propoganda, not to mention their political enemies, that the phrase has gotten the attention that it has.

In reality the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is central to Lenin's theories of revolution, as evolved on a Marxist ideas, based on these two minor mentions of the phrase, and not something espoused by Marx or Engels as a revolutionary theory.

Marx, for instance can also be correctly quoted as saying: "Democracy is the road to socialism," but saying we can devine the real nature of Marx's views on communism (or anything else for that matter) from these type of decontextualized quotes is a very dubious propostion.

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Isn't communism inherently undemocratic?

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Nope. Those who claim this were mostly Cold War liars and BS artists.

The historic fact is the term ""Communism" comes from the word "commune," which defines the numerous cooperative democratically self-reliant townships throughout central Europe, and the Communist Manifesto was written to advocate this form of democratic economy and government on a global scale (i.e.; socialism).

Communes were set up largely by Christian Socialist groups, like the Quakers, Icarians, Phalanx movements, and the secular Home Colony and New Jerusalem movements, and also by many trade and craft guilds (pre-industrial style trade unions) and the Knights of Labor in the US, as well as anarchist farmer groups, like the Gleaners and the Diggers, throughout the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution.

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I relize that in theory it is supposed bring about a democratic workers paradise,

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It is democracy in practice as well. The communes, which essentially have provided the basis for democratic municipal governments throughout the world (including here), were/are center-points for democratic development.

For example, it was the Quakers (Ben Franklin was one)—communists--who wrote most of the Bill of Rights for the US Constitution. If it had been left up to George Washington & Co., the US would like degenerated into a Napoleon-like regime, like what happened in France, after the corporate parties got control of the directorate.

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but didn't Marxist ideas about the dictatorship of the prolotariate garauntee that communist regimes would be authoritarian?

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Nope. The term “dictatorship of the proletariat,” much like the term “workers’ state,” was a play on words to argue that so far in history all societies were in fact dictatorships of a privileged minority over the working class majority; whereas a socialist economy would require that the working class be free to govern itself democratically without the coercive influence of ruling special interests—in other words, as Marx and Engels wrote in their book the Paris Commune , the “dictatorship of the proletariat is a state where the majority can democratically govern itself, free from all bourgeois inhibition.”

Needless to say the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is not at all central to their thesis on capitalism, social development and movement toward communism, and nor is it meant to indicate an actual dictatorship, in the sense that dictatorship is generally understood. It is little more than a rhetorical flourish, as SA has shown.

The literal reading is a latter day invention of Soviet revolutionary theory, co-opted for the use of anti-communist theologians.

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

The term was fraudulently divorced from its true historic meaning first in 1925 when the Russian Bolshevik Party changed its name to “Communist;” and again in 1947 when the US State Department, as part of its Cold War efforts, adopted the term to describe anything to do with Soviet foreign policy.

Karl Marx never said "Democracy is the road to socialism." It's an internet myth, spread like a virus throughout the web.

In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx said:

quote:

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The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word 'people' with the word 'state'.

Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

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The United States came closest to parting with the old Liberal system. They at least attempted to break with old European rule by monarchs and influence on power by finance and declared a new constitutional purpose of government for the people instead of the banking cabal. For centuries, money followed power. Today it's the reverse, and Wall Street and Bay Street are said to be where real power resides, in North America anyway. We don't have democratic control of money and finance, and, we don't have democracy. We are pacified by the illusion of democracy. Cuba is more democratic by comparison.

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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Originally posted by M. Spector:

In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx said: Karl Marx was all about the transition period from capitalist to communist society. To dismiss this statement of his as not being central to his "thesis on capitalism, social development and movement toward communism" is to misrepresent Marxism.

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Is to msirepresent me:

quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:

Second, one of the only times Marx discusses the nature of communist society, in any depth is in the Critique of the Gotha Program. However the main body of that is about economy, and not how society is managed, though this is the only occassion where Marx uses the term "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," but it is clear that if there is to be a dictatorship, it is a transitory phase of the revolutionary period of social development, not a permanent state. Furthermore, it is an aside, and not the main thrust of his work.

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So, if your comprenension skills regarding what Marx intended, and meant, and in fact said, are to be interpreted, I think I would go with someone who can do better than criticizing someone by asserting exactly the same thing but as an argumentative contradiction, since they are evidently incapable of reading for content.

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:
Needless to say the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is not at all central to their thesis on capitalism, social development and movement toward communism, and nor is it meant to indicate an actual dictatorship, in the sense that dictatorship is generally understood. It is little more than a rhetorical flourish, as SA has shown.

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[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

quote:

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Everybody loves to quote Karl Marx, but it seems nobody likes to read him.

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Judging from your last post, this could easily include you.

quote:

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In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx said:

quote:
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...
Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

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So what? I just showed in my last post what he meant by that term--that he was describing a democratic worker-run economy. What's the fight about?

If you go back to the Communist Manifesto, you read:

quote:

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Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

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And further:

quote:

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Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat.

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In the Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith, written by Engels as a working document for the Communist League in 1847:

quote:

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The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution.

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Add to this, Marx and Engels first coined the term “social democracy” to describe the growing socialist movements in Europe seeking to eventually establish a socialist economy by expanding democracy to every aspect of society (including the economy)--hence the obvious term.

So it’s true that terms like “dictatorship of the proletariat” are just a play on words to describe a democratic worker-run economy, and don’t mean much else. To say that Marx didn’t recognize the fundamental importance of democracy in both achieving and maintaining a successful socialist economy or communist society is to fundamentally misrepresent and outright slander Marxism and Marx himself.

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: Steppenwolf Allende ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

So it’s true that terms like “dictatorship of the proletariat” are just a play on words to describe a democratic worker-run economy, and don’t mean much else.

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Perhaps, but this is from your source:

quote:

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Will the peaceful abolition of private property be possible?

It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would certainly be the last to oppose it. Communists know only too well that all conspiracies are not only useless, but even harmful. They know all too well that revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes.

But they also see that the development of the proletariat in nearly all civilized countries has been violently suppressed, and that in this way the opponents of communism have been working toward a revolution with all their strength. If the oppressed proletariat is finally driven to revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds as we now defend them with words.

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There have been revisionists around for over 100 years who have tried to paint Marx as some kind of Tommy-Douglas-like social democrat. In fact, the entire Second International was founded on such dishonest fallacies.

You are carrying on a well-established tradition.

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:

Do you think he meant, "we'll vote the enemy into oblivion"?

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quote:

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There have been revisionists around for over 100 years who have tried to paint Marx as some kind of Tommy-Douglas-like social democrat. In fact, the entire Second International was founded on such dishonest fallacies.

You are carrying on a well-established tradition.

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Hey Spector,

I have no idea whether Karl Marx would compare himself to Tommy Douglas, since the former died about 15 years before the latter was born.

However, it's clear, given from Marx' writings, he would have liked a social democrat like Tommy a lot more than he would have liked an authoritarian state capitalist autocrat like Lenin--who openly and admittedly rejected his ideas for post-revolutionary Russia, and again by his own admission, helped set up a state capitalist bureaucracy that in varying ways still rules that part of the world today.

And as you know and likely celebrate, the whole Third International and Stalinist atrocity propagated this bald-faced lie of a selling gimmick, known by this flaky useless term "Marxism"-Leninism, to push a corporatist state capitalist order by a new Stalinist hierarchy much like the Nazis and their corporate capitalist backers pushed their monopoly capitalist agenda under the fraudulent meaningless term "National Socialism."

quote:

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Now you are going to compound your dishonest representation of Marx and Engels by lying about what you said?

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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quote:

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Do you think he meant, "we'll vote the enemy into oblivion"?

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I don't know. But when most intelligent people read:

quote:

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If the oppressed proletariat is finally driven to revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds as we now defend them with words.

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I don't think restricting or circumventing democracy would come to mind. In fact, it would likely be the opposite: stand up for workers' rights against those who oppose them.

Ever seen Naomi Klein’s film The Take, about workers seizing abandoned factories and re-opening them as cooperative venture, thus helping Argentina climb out of years of economic depression and despair?

Progress was progress, in his view. Even the bourgeoisie was a "revolutionary class," in his view, and progress included a phase of ridding the world of the feudal monarchists, as part of the path to "socialism", and this could include capitalist democracy as one of the phases of development on the road to socialism.

Marx was flexible in his analysis, and rarely reduced things to absolutes equations. So, while he is clearly not opposed to violent revolution, this does not necessarily translate into believing that violent revolution is the only means of achieving socialist reform -- that is a Leninist-Troskiest imposition on Marx. notice in the segment of the Communist Manifesto quoted by SA, we read "Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat."

Emphasis on the "Perhaps."

The Leninists have reduced that nuanced and flexible view with "the revolution" or not, and "dictatorship of the proletariat" or not. They are the "revisionists".

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
And as you know and likely celebrate, the whole Third International and Stalinist atrocity propagated this bald-faced lie of a selling gimmick, known by this flaky useless term "Marxism"-Leninism, to push a corporatist state capitalist order by a new Stalinist hierarchy much like the Nazis and their corporate capitalist backers pushed their monopoly capitalist agenda under the fraudulent meaningless term "National Socialism.

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I think that's one of the reasons the west under-estimated the readiness of Soviet industrialism after so much destruction and loss of life occurred in Russia at the turn of the previous decade. The corporate-spondored Nazis even had a head start with infusions of investment from America's unpatriotic capitalists unwilling to participate in New Deal socialism at home.

Capitalism had suffered a major breakdown in the western world. Factories sat idle, and Steinbeck would later write about the Harvest Gypsies, and government-sponsored collective farms and co-ops which sprang up in America.

Both the Nazis and New Dealers adopted socialist policies in re-building Germany for war, and in repairing the damage done by laissez-faire capitalism in America. Keynesian-militarism was born. In years later, the sweeping economic reforms became what some have described as a kind of socialism for the rich. Capitalism as Lenin and Bukharin knew it died and was buried under a Wall Street gravemarker in 1932. Capitalism ground to a halt in 1929 and was replaced with a hybrid system of mixed public and private sector economy. Our Liberals even nationalised the Bank of Canada in 1938 and remains under democratic control to this day.

quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:
I am not the one elevating a phrase used only once in a serious manner, in all of Marx and Engels, as the defining point of Marx's social thoery.

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quote:

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originally posted by Cueball
Marx, for instance can also be correctly quoted as saying: "Democracy is the road to socialism," but saying we can devine the real nature of Marx's views on communism (or anything else for that matter) from these type of decontextualized quotes is a very dubious propostion.

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As I said your inability to read for content is highly indicative of how we should treat your summaries of Marx's ideas.

The reason, I suspect the quote (or something very like it) is actually in Marx, is that it seems likely based on his view of historical progress, wherein even Capitalism is a stage on the "road to socialism" from feudalism, though, it is true I have never actually read the quote itself in Marx. My supposition was that the quote is real but that decontextualized it would appear to have a meaning other than one associated with his theory of historical materialism.

Therein everything is part of the "road to socialism".

My point was precisely the danger inherent in asserting the primacy of the importance of stray phrases, such as "dictatorship of the proletariat," out of their greater context, and I was using "democracy is the road to socialism," as another example of that.

I didn't say the quote fairly represented Marx. In fact, I implied that it did not.

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:
My point was precisely the danger inherent in asserting the primacy of the importance of stray phrases, such as "dictatorship of the proletariat," out of their greater context, and I was using "democracy is the road to socialism," as another example of that.

I didn't say the quote fairly represented Marx. In fact, I implied that it did not.

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quote:

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And my point was that your characterization of "dictatorship of the proletariat" as a "stray phrase" is an attempt to drive a phony wedge between Marx and Lenin;

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Phony Wedge?! He doens't need to drive a wedge through them, phony or otherwise, since in fact the link between them is so stretched, the only people who alleged there even is a link are the usual Stalinist/Maoist con artists to try use as a cover for their twist state capitalist agendas.

Here's a great line from Lenin's book State Capitalism During the Transition to Socialism , the basic business plan for setting up the SOviet economic model, which to some extent still exists today:

quote:

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While the revolution in Germany is slow in "coming forth," our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to do this even more thoroughly than Peter* hastened the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, and he did not hesitate to use barbarian methods in fighting against barbarism.

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In other words, the Soviet economy was to be based on German state capitalism that dates back to the regime Bismark--the same Bismark who was denounced by socialists, including Marx, for his oppressive state capitalist policies (and whom were persecuted for speaking out against it).

Yep, sure thing Marx would have loooooooooooovvvvvvvvvvvved that one! And pink elephants fly to eden too.

Here's another beauty:

quote:

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Unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of labour processes that are based on large-scale machine industry… today the same revolution demands, in the interests of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process

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Great! Unquestioning obedience to the corporate bosses. Yet, no wedge there! And UFOs are real. The airforce doesn't exist.

The big prize:

quote:

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Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Socialist Soviet Republic implies the determination of the Soviet government to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the new economic order is a socialist order.

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Uh-huh! SO the government is supposedly determined to set up a "socialist order," yet the order it's setting up actually isn't socialist.

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Here's a great line from Lenin's book State Capitalism During the Transition to Socialism ...

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You are obviously under the delusion that Lenin actually wrote a book called "State Capitalism During the Transition to Socialism." He never did any such thing. If such a book exists, the title was invented by your lunatic friends in the WSM, and it consists of excerpts from Lenin's writings, ripped from their context, in an effort to libel him and Marxism in general.

Imagine a different outcome of the Nazi invasion of Russia had the Russians pursued meek and mild socialism based on agriculture, social equality and progressive socialism. They'd have gone through Russia like shit through a goose and still be there occupying Eastern Europe today.

In an alternate universe, Stalin would have pounded his fist on the table at Casablanca and demanded, "I want a second front of sweeping social reforms against these bastards!!!"

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Enjoy your fantasy world.

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I don't think SA is delusional 99 percent of the time. It only happens whenever the words "state capitalism" and "Lenin" are mentioned. Then watch out, because everything and anything gets tarred with the Leninist "state capitalist" brush.

Economic Concepts: Kapitalism, Socialism and Mixed Economy

And in spite of what our federal government web site says about it, American economists like James Galbraith explain why the U.S. is by and large a mixed economy and absorbing all kinds of punishment the Bush Republicans throw at it. Because if it really was State capitalist, "starve the beast" conservatives in that country would have to change their paleocon agenda somewhat.

[ 14 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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I'm not even going to bother debating with your childish anti-communism, your distortions and lies.

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

You all can likely tell now how the Stalinist, the Nazi and the Neo-Conservative all rely on the same tactic to justify their worthless existence: stare at the plain verified truth and call it a lie repeatedly and with such ferocity that hopefully people will no longer believe it even though it is fact.

SO now tries out of total desperation to accuse me of "anti=communism."

All anyone here has to do is scroll up a half page or so and see who it is who has dug up the historic facts about what communism is, what it means--as opposed to the fraudulent vicious lies of the Bolshevik debacle--and who is advocating for it based on its true history. It sure ain't Spector.

Now who is spreading anti-communism? Me, who's gone out of the way to define it, provide the history behind it and show what it really stands for, or M. Spector, who rejects that fact-based history to push a twisted authoritarian fraud?

Of course he’s not going to debate me. He knows he can’t.

quote:

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You are obviously under the delusion that Lenin actually wrote a book called "State Capitalism During the Transition to Socialism." He never did any such thing.

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Oh really? SO I guess this book that is available at the SFU and Downtown Libraries, from Progress Publishers in Moscow, listed as this:

Progress Publishers Lenin: State Capitalism During the Transition to Socialism & Index doesn’t exist. It’s just an illusion put there by some vast conspiracy to undermine Stalinism—just like that vast conspiracy that still claims there was a Holocaust, right Spector?

Essays from that book of the business plans for post-1917 Russia showing its fundamental capitalist character are readily available anyone, like The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government[1] is another essay from that book, where I got the second quote from on page 342.

“Left-Wing” Childishness, is where I got the last two of those quotes from on pages 360 and 365.

Now try this one on page 367:

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But try to substitute for the Junker-capitalist state, for the landlord-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state (i.e., such as will destroy all privileges in a revolutionary way without being afraid of introducing in a revolutionary way the fullest possible democracy), and you will see that, in a truly revolutionary-democratic state, state monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably means progress towards socialism! "… For socialism is nothing but the next step forward after state capitalist monopoly. "… State monopoly capitalism is the fullest material preparation for socialism, it is its threshold, it is that rung on the historical ladder between which and the rung called socialism there are no intervening rungs."

Please note that this was written when Kerensky was in power, that we are discussing, not the dictatorship of the proletariat, not the socialist state, but the "revolutionary-democratic" state… Is it not clear that from the material, economic and productive point of view, we are not yet "on the threshold" of socialism?

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So there’s Lenin himself saying that a state capitalist economic model is a necessary step for Russia before it can build a democratic socialist economy.

Hey Spector, still going to keep with the bald-faced lie that he didn’t write this?

I guess then he didn’t write this either:

Lenin: Industrial Management under a State Capitalist Monopoly Framework

Or this:

on state capitalism and the New Economic Policy, Collected Works, Volume 42, pages 425-427 Progress Publishers and many other things about implementing state capitalism

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the title was invented by your lunatic friends in the WSM, and it consists of excerpts from Lenin's writings, ripped from their context, in an effort to libel him and Marxism in general.

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Wow, your lies are the result of some serious pathology, aren't they. Before you go calling WSM or anyone else "loony" and "libeling Marxism," just look at the above quoted, and linked proof at what atrocious fraudulent crap your Leninist/Stalinist heroes were/are pushing as socialism.

BTW, the WSM dates all the way back to the 1870s--pre-dating your sick Red Fascist frauds—and advocating for Marxism, thereby saving it from being slandered and defamed by being associated with murdering, money-grubbing imperialistic Stalinist lying scum like you.

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I don't think SA is delusional 99 percent of the time. It only happens whenever the words "state capitalism" and "Lenin" are mentioned. Then watch out, because everything and anything gets tarred with the Leninist "state capitalist" brush.

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Gee, thanks, Fidel. But before you worry about my supposed one-per-cent delusion on state capitalism and Lenin (and Stalin and Mao), maybe, for once, you should take notice that when I state that fact, I quote and link to what the man himself actually wrote on the subject (as I do with Stalin and Mao). That's not delusional. That's reality.

Funny thing is, I don’t entirely disagree with Lenin that state capitalism was inevitable in post-1917 Russia. While the Bolsheviks weren’t exactly the sweetest on democracy, the harsh truth is both the material conditions and the level of education and consciousness among people weren’t developed enough to set up a fully socialistic economy. Hell, they still aren’t in many cases today.

What bugs me are the bald-faced lies that started spewing out of Bolshevik PR hacks, especially after Stalin took power, that all of a sudden “socialism” was “firmly established,” when in fact the evolutionary process that Lenin talked about was scrapped and state capitalism was in fact made permanent.

Then these same frauds started attacking social democrats for “compromising with capitalism,” while they did far worse by entrenching one of the worst kinds of it as the dominant force over their economy leading to some of the worst horrors and atrocities of the 20th Century.

The fact is, and Lenin himself had to admit it (even though many of his lying followers like Spector don’t), is that the struggle for a democratic socialist economy, and ultimately and communistic society, is pretty much an evolutionary one—that is people have to actually learn collectively how to live and work together to the point where it can be done.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
And my point was that your characterization of "dictatorship of the proletariat" as a "stray phrase" is an attempt to drive a phony wedge between Marx and Lenin; I also provided the context to the phrase that you never did, when I quoted from the Critique. The context makes it clear it was no "stray phrase".

I see you are still referring to "democracy is the road to socialism," as an example of a quotation from Marx taken out of context. I'm still waiting for you to acknowledge that it's not a quote from Marx at all, and therefore the question of context never even arises.

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I am not going to play trivial pursuit with someone who clearly can't even read what is in black and white before him on his computer screen. I already stated that I have not personally read the quote in Marx.

Now you want me to attest that it absolutely does not, even though I have not read the entire body of Marx's work, just based on your authority? This when you have repeatedly asserted that I have said things here, such as that I thought that "democracy is the Road to socialism" was a defining point in Marx's social theory," that I did not say.

Your record for misrepresentation is not even good on this thread.

[ 15 April 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]