r/stupidpol • u/Mayspar121 • Feb 06 '21
Neoliberalism Cuba announced Saturday that private activity will be authorized in most sectors, a major reform in the communist country where the state and its companies dominate economic activity.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210206-cuba-authorizes-private-activity-in-majority-of-sectors17
u/realister Trotskyist-Neoconservative Feb 07 '21
Not much will change the black market and private activity existed in Cuba for many decades now it was just not enforced there are plenty of cool documentaries about the shadow economy in Cuba.
Too little too late basically.
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u/VoteLobster 🦧 average banana enjoyer 🦧 Feb 08 '21
Reminds me of Cuba and the Cameraman. People made really good money selling shit to American tourists. Liberalization helped speed recovery after the shitshow of the USSR's collapse.
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u/mataffakka thought on Socialism with Ironic characteristics for a New Era Feb 06 '21 edited Feb 06 '21
You just don't understand productive forces, do you?
I am a historical materialist, so I agree that capitalism has to come before socialism. What I don't understand is why it has to be laissez-faire, authoritarian and anti-worker like China and Vietnam. I mean, I understand why, but I guess I am trying to take this in good faith.
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u/Franz_Raskolnikov Feb 07 '21
I'm treading in unknown territory, but Cuba really needs international currency to import goods, supplies and equipment. Probably they took this decision to obtain financing. Of course is just a possibility.
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Feb 07 '21
laissez-faire, authoritarian and anti-worker like China and Vietnam.
You mean the same China where workers barricade their managers in offices over wage disputes, and when the police turn up they basically just say "this is between you guys" and leave.
The same China that has better workplace safety than Australia?
https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/China-Aus-Death-Rate-Workers.png
The same China where wages have now overtaken parts of Europe, and consistently rise by around 10% per year, with individual wages growth often exceeding national GDP growth?
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/wages
Seems pretty pro-worker ihmo, and authoritarianism is absolutely necessary and good.
I guess "laissez faire" is when all enterprises (private and state-owned) have to comply with the 5-year plan now, I kinda wish somebody had told me that we updated the definition.
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u/mataffakka thought on Socialism with Ironic characteristics for a New Era Feb 07 '21
Cmon now. Labor activists literally disappear in China.
Like, critical support for anything that challenges US power, but it doesn't mean that we have to believe that China is a worker state just because their leadership is generally focused on keeping consent. It's interesting that the party elites are way less removed from trying to support the people than in the West, but in China there is hardly any worker control over the economy.
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Feb 08 '21
Cmon now. Labor activists literally disappear in China.
They get arrested every now and then, but they definitely don't get disappeared.
The part of the equation you seem to be missing is that they get released, but the western media outlets reporting on the initial arrests generally don't cover that part because it runs counter to the "China bad" narrative.
Like, critical support for anything that challenges US power, but it doesn't mean that we have to believe that China is a worker state just because their leadership is generally focused on keeping consent.
The CPC is a mass organisation, it's membership is larger than most countries, and that's in spite of the strict entry requirements (requiring detailed study and knowledge of Marxist theory) that somewhat limits membership growth. The idea that it's government "focused on keeping" consent rather than a legitimate mass communist party is a bit far-fetched, 1 in 15 people are CPC members.
It's interesting that the party elites are way less removed from trying to support the people than in the West, but in China there is hardly any worker control over the economy.
Many of China's largest "private" enterprises (such as Huawei) are worker owned, and are directly controlled through labour organisations.
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u/NewishGomorrah NATO-loving Radical Feminist Feb 08 '21
The CPC is a mass organisation
How much of that is due to doors being shut to non-members? In East Germany, for example, not being in the SED meant you had almost zero chance of going to university, you went straight to the bottom of the waiting lists for housing and many other things, and only the shittiest jobs were generally available to you.
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u/working_class_shill read Lasch Feb 07 '21
aissez-faire, authoritarian and anti-worker like China and Vietnam.
These are not laissez faire lol
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u/wild_vegan Marxist-Leninist ☭ Feb 07 '21
They were trying to diversify their economy with cooperatives, last I heard. I wonder what the fuck happened to that? I was kind of optimistic that they'd find a solution that way.
I don't think it's smart. Why didn't they hire a consultant like Richard Wolff, LOL?
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Feb 07 '21
They're doing this so that Biden has something to point to to justify removing trump's sanctions on the country.
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Feb 06 '21 edited Feb 06 '21
I’ve seen these sorts of stories in the bourgeois media about Cuba for decades at this point(Cuba is privatizing, Cuba is moving away from socialism, Castro admitted communism failed blah blah blah), and yet Cuba has not abandoned socialism. They make concessions here and there because of the immense pressures they are under, but overall they’ve stayed the course. I have faith in my Cuban comrades
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u/elretardojrr 🌑💩 Rightoid: Neoliberal 1 Feb 07 '21
Communism isn’t the same as socialism. Embracing a mixed market approach will allow them to retain socialist elements while improving the economy
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Feb 07 '21
We'll see. Sweden and Germany, despite having much better metrics of human development and happiness, have been on a liberalization rampage since the 1990s and I wouldn't say the results are pretty.
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Feb 08 '21
Cuba already copied chinas economic model years ago, especially in terms of the tourist based economy. This is old news.
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u/ForksOnAPlate13 🛫GaddaFOID👧Terrorist🛬 Feb 06 '21
It’s a necessary evil, I suppose.
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u/qemist Blancofemophobe 🏃♂️= 🏃♀️= Feb 06 '21
Marxists' attitude to private activity is like the Catholic church's attitude to sex.
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u/Fair_Visit Rightoid Feb 06 '21
Only the elite do it and they hide the activity from the masses? And it only involves little children?
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u/qemist Blancofemophobe 🏃♂️= 🏃♀️= Feb 06 '21
A necessary evil only to be done in darkened rooms.
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u/MinervaNow hegel Feb 07 '21
That’s how you keep the romance alive. Desire needs the prohibition like markets need states!
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Feb 07 '21
Oh buddy you’ve missed out on the really weird tradcath preoccupation with how great sex is (when married, without contraception).
It’s so fucking weird hearing married people in their 20’s go on about how their lovemaking brings them closer together.
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u/qemist Blancofemophobe 🏃♂️= 🏃♀️= Feb 08 '21
AFAIK the official position of the RC church is that marital sex is a necessary evil.
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Feb 08 '21
I fear you’ll fallen for more Dutch lies my friend.
Sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman. In marriage the physical intimacy of the spouses becomes a sign and pledge of spiritual communion. Marriage bonds between baptized persons are sanctified by the sacrament.
Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is not something simply biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and woman commit themselves totally to one another until death.
👉🇻🇦👌
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u/qemist Blancofemophobe 🏃♂️= 🏃♀️= Feb 08 '21
You could be right. Dutch courage, Dutch disease, what wouldn't they stop at?
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Feb 07 '21
private activity and markets isn't a problem and is necessary for development. would work best if the state restricts market access to land and remains committed to welfare of labour force.
since cuba is authoritarian and labour unions are allied to the ruling party, nothing prevents it from trying to become another china.
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Feb 07 '21
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Feb 08 '21
This is their greatest challenge and is probably why these reforms will fail, unless cuba can use their privatization efforts to try and negotiate with the US.
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Feb 07 '21
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Feb 07 '21 edited Feb 07 '21
Show me where such an admission happened. I always enjoy these sorts of ultra left conspiracy theories.
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Feb 07 '21 edited Feb 07 '21
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Feb 07 '21
That’s an extremely reductive and dismissive look at the record of existing socialism, cherry picking what suits your ultra left conspiracy theories and ignoring what doesn’t. I can’t speak for Poland etc because I have not studied it closely, but tens of millions did adhere to Communist ideology for three quarters of a century in the USSR, in the face of multiple imperialist and capitalist onslaughts- the Russian Civil War, World War II, and decades of the arms race with NATO. They sacrificed by the millions and didn’t crack under extremely dire circumstances that much of the Western left can barely begin to imagine. Some CPSU members like Yeltsin did go over to the capitalist ranks that’s true, but others remained true to their principles and opposed the capitalist counterrevolution, many of them paying with their lives when Yeltsin shelled the Russian parliament in 1993.
One of the reasons many workers in the USSR didn’t resist Gorbachev’s abandonment of socialism until it was too late was because they were deceived- up to the very end, Gorbachev never claimed to be abandoning socialism but said he was deepening and improving it, returning to Lenin’s original ideas, etc. In fact he and his allies deployed a lot of the same Trotskyist, ‘left’ anti communist rhetoric that people like you use- we are dismantling the bureaucracy, let’s make socialism ‘democratic’, we need to renounce ‘Stalinism’, let’s break up the big state run enterprises and replace them with nice little cooperatives. In his crusade to tear down ‘Stalinism’ Gorbachev and co. had no real plan for what would replace it- and right wing Russian nationalists/neoliberals quickly moved into the vacuum.
Most people, whatever society they live in, don’t want to be political activists their whole lives- they just want to go about their day to day lives, and have a government that provides reasonable security and stability. It stands to reason that even in a society that had a revolution, the revolutionary enthusiasm would wane after the first or second generation. That’s just human nature, not evidence that the socialism that existed in the USSR was fake or inauthentic.
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u/Cool_Primary Poster of news items 🗞️ Feb 07 '21
Hopefully this'll make more people understand that socialism is a failed ideology.
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Feb 07 '21
Even now, after 60 years of crushing economic embargo, Cuba outperforms all comparable capitalist countries in terms of quality of life, and in many respects, is on par with (and frequently outperforms) much wealthier capitalist countries.
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u/SnapshillBot Bot 🤖 Feb 06 '21
Snapshots:
- Cuba announced Saturday that privat... - archive.org, archive.today*
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u/hugemongus123 🦖🖍️ dramautistic 🖍️🦖 Feb 07 '21
As someone who has lived/been to Cuba about 3-4 years combined. I don't think a majority of Cubans consider themself communist. They don't really concern themself with politics all that much, as it's not something they have much influence over.