Click to die
https://twitter.com/AnarkYouTube/status/1359271454513262598?s=19
Any post about the Cuban economy that doesn't mention the embargo should be laughed out of the room.
Any post about the Cuban economy that doesnt mention that it is capitalist should be laughed out of the room.
Imagine not being able to attain full autarky as an isolated island nation.
edit: I hate these takes so much because they are fiercely ahistorical. "Cuba is capitalist" ignores all realities of the world for the last 30 years.
MLs always fail and turn back to capitalism is such a garbage ill informed take that it's honestly just offensive. How many of these states got attacked/sabotaged/had leaders assassinated/had genocides perpetrated against their people.
These people will go from not knowing who Sankara is to condenming him as "authoritarian" and shitting on their revolution.
(to be clear I'm ranting about twitter people at this point, not anyone who actually makes an effort).
Is my criticism that Cuba is not becoming an autarky? My criticism is that Cuba exploits its workers the same way that any capitalist nation does. According to ML's there is no alternative between standard capitalism and the specific form of state capitalism practices by Cuba and NK. Do you understand how horrible it feels to have no connection between your labor efforts and your wage? This is 1000x worse in ML states where prices are arbitrarily set by the state and have no relation to SNLT.
The fact that these states were attacked is due to competition between the state that owns all capital vs private capitalists who want to own capital. The workers have little to say in this matter.
North Korea is an interesting example of what would happen if Cuba didn't engage with capitalists.
NK also engages with capitalists lmfao. Their main trading partner is China, they have SEZs where Chinese and SK firms operate. They have a massive black market, and they tax profits. That's right, they tax profits, not only is all profit not going to the state, they only tax 50% of it. It's not even socialist by the perverse ML standard.
It's not a bit. Im here to stay, out of the 10000 libs on this site, even if 10 become actual Marxist socialists instead of socdems and red capitalists, it's worth it.
Damn. I, personally, would feel really fucking embarrassed if I publicly gave a take this fucking bad.
Here's a good rule of thumb for you non-anarchists and baby anarchists still learning who has good takes: if they're on Twitter, they're shit. This, coincidentally, also applies to all flavors of ML on Twitter. If you had good takes, you'd be writing a zine instead of poisoning your brain with the hellsite.
There are good MLs on twitter but they don't usually go around yelling about it online.
Not all zines specifically, but news sites and aggregators:
:anarkitty: :cia:
All the love to my anarchist comrades, but this type of person will criticize socialist states for making compromises with capitalism out of necessity and then will deadass argue that you can build socialism inside capitalism without blinking an eye.
While also saying it's cool to vote for the harm reduction candidate! That's the thing that gets my goat. Not this dude in particular but probably him too, signing off on the capitalist representative in your backyard is actually necessary but you also have to oppose the imperfect socialist countries your capitalist representative tells you to hate ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Not this dude in particular but probably him too
not this dude in particular https://nitter.42l.fr/AnarkYouTube/status/1306600225654665216#m
there's literally a Wikipedia article dedicated to current existing anarchist communities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_communities
but you're also telling self identified anarchists they're not anarchist enough. I thought we weren't supposed to do that as white western leftists?
His main criticism is that they are not socialist at all. They are capitalist states, which is correct. They are more specifically social democracies, like Norway or China, except with even more state ownership. The same basic capitalist process that Marx describes is present in Cuba, the only notable differences are lack of competition between capitals and price-setting by the state, both of which has resulted in economic inefficiency.
The main argument from MLs is that these states have made improvements in the standard of living of people. But not only has private capitalism brought more people out of poverty faster, MLs are only praising state capitalism rather than socialism.
The second argument from MLs are that these states represent a transitional period to socialism, and this somehow makes it necessary to have exploitation, repression and all other things that these states do. This is opportunism of the highest order, it brings an easy excuse to justify any amount of exploitation because "productive forces bro".
Imagine naming yourself after Marx and having these kinds of takes.
When did you figure out how much of “first world” nations’ development can be attributed to capitalism being a more effective mode of production from important things like industrialization, colonialism, and literal genocide to seize resources? The extent to which you can quickly attribute that material development to capitalism would combine all of those things into one: “first world” capitalism as practiced through international extraction and violence.
Industrialization is capital accumulation. Colonialism is expanding markets and exporting capital. It's all capitalism. Capitalism is the mode of production that encompasses all these things. Are you having some kind of petty-bourgeois delusion of "pure capitalism"?
Heavily subsidized by the United States for decades and decades because they were developing more poorly than NK. Even that wasn’t really working to achieve the desired effect until the embargo on NK and the fall of the USSR.
So subsidizing makes it not capitalism? The total aid to SK was $35 billion over decades. USA exports more than that to SK every year. Subsidizing helped, but the real reason for SK's development was their initial protectionism, strong state support and intelligent industrial policy. Taiwan followed similar developmental policies. Ignoring all that and handwaving their economic success to US subsidies is like ignoring the real efforts of the SK and Taiwanese people in their economic success.
And what do you mean "c'mon" for Japan? Japan was a capitalist country through and through. Being a socialist doesnt mean you stick your head in the sand about capitalists track record of economic growth.
These countries are only those that managed to get to first world status. There are others which didnt develop too much, but still made massive successes in economic growth and poverty reduction, like India, Mexico, Botswana, Mauritius, many EE-EU countries, Thailand, Vietnam etc.
China was already developing pre-Deng, with life expectancy way up. Dengism is not “development due to capitalism” in the sense that I’m sure you mean to talk about, which is “capitalism being a more effective mode of production” historically. It’s based on a very specific strategy of doing capitalist things to gain entry to international markets, essentially allowing large sections of the economy to be subservient to capital in order to avoid the worst of those external forces I mentioned. It’s not hard to see that this is more capitalist than most socialist countries’ compromises, but it’s also incredibly simplistic (and wrong) to say “China developed because capitalism effective”.
Chinese economy was capitalist pre-Deng and capitalist post-Deng, the major difference being state-ownership and mixed-ownership. You havent actually explained why Dengism isnt just capitalism, you're just saying its simplistic to say so without any explanation. Instead of throwing words at me and hoping I'll buy your bullshit, try to form logical and consistent arguments.
Socialism is the inversion of the class dynamic from being capitalist-dominated to being worker-dominated.
Therefore China is capitalist.
There’s plenty of arguments to be had regarding the status of China as a project that is achieving or on a trajectory to achieve that inversion, but dismissing it as merely capitalist because private ownership exists is to misunderstand the basics of socialism. And there’s no need to try and head me off about social democracy.
Lol China literally is a social democracy. You're right, we can have plently of arguments about the future trajectory of any nation, and that is mostly fruitless because we cannot predict the future. We can talk about the present, which is that China is a capitalist country, its economic success is due to capitalism, they openly talk about furthering "reform and opening up", they are committed to a free and open world market even more than the USA, and that they engage in worker repression and prevent formation of independent trade unions.
Literally not what capitalism means.
Right, commodity production and money has nothing to do with capitalism, Marx never identiified them as the fundamental aspect of capitalism.
Incorrect.
Great argument.
Industrialization is capital accumulation.
The Marx understander as logged on
Right, commodity production and money has nothing to do with capitalism, Marx never identiified them as the fundamental aspect of capitalism.
Actually try reading Marx. The existence of commodities and money does not mean capitalism exists. Capital is created in very specific circumstances
"The historic conditions of its existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It [capitalism] can spring into life only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence meets in the market with the free laborer selling his labor power." (Capital, Vol. I, International ed., p. 170.)
"In themselves money and commodities are no more capital than are the means of production and of subsistence. They want transforming into capital. But this transformation can only take place under certain circumstances that center in this, viz., that two very different kinds of commodity-possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sums of values they possess, by buying other people's labor power; on the other hand, free laborers, the sellers of their own labor power and therefore the sellers of labor.... With this polarization of the market for commodities, the fundamental conditions of capitalist production are given. The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the laborers from all property in the means by which they can realize their labor. As soon as capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scale." (Capital, p. 714.)
If workers do not meet owners of production in a free market to sell their labour power as a commodity and instead are allocated work via a central planning directive to workplace that is state owned and nationalised that's not capitalism and capital has not been created as much you'd like it to be. If the direct producers, the workers, are not divorced from the means of production, and if consequently neither these means nor labor power function as commodities, then no survivals of "bourgeois right," nor any amount of other inequities and injustices, can allow of such a society being properly termed capitalist.
Inversely, if the direct producers have been separated from the means of production, and consequently both labor power and means of production are exchanged as commodities, then no amount of social welfare benefits, no nationalizations, no statutory curbs on excess profiteering, no ameliorative measures whatever can conceal or modify the capitalist character of such a society.
You can call it camels, heavy petting or circus clowns but you can't call Socialist societies that existed that organised under those principles capitalist
Also money had a very different function under Socialist countries. You couldn't buy the means of production for one no matter how much you saved up
The Marx understander as logged on
Ok explain to me what is Industrialization according to your own interpretation of Marx. I'll try not to laugh.
Actually try reading Marx. The existence of commodities and money does not mean capitalism exists. Capital is created in very specific circumstances
Ah the famous "socialist commodities" of Stalin.
“The historic conditions of its existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It [capitalism] can spring into life only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence meets in the market with the free laborer selling his labor power.” (Capital, Vol. I, International ed., p. 170.)
Cuba has laborers working for a wage with which they buy goods on the market. According to this definition by Marx, Cuba is capitalist. Do you read your own quote spam?
If workers do not meet owners of production in a free market to sell their labour power as a commodity and instead are allocated work via a central planning directive to workplace that is state owned and nationalised that’s not capitalism and capital has not been created as much you’d like it to be. If the direct producers, the workers, are not divorced from the means of production, and if consequently neither these means nor labor power function as commodities, then no survivals of “bourgeois right,” nor any amount of other inequities and injustices, can allow of such a society being properly termed capitalist.
Cuba famously does not produce commodities, what is sells on the world market and in its own markets are simply socialist commodities. This proves that Cuba is not capitalist. Money is not money when you cant buy capital with it because the state already owns all capital. Money stops being money when Amazon and Walmart merge and start owning the entire country.
There is no cure to Stalinist revisionism. Luckily, the Dengization of "socialist" states is helping to improve the standard of living in those countries.
"Producing commodities for sale is not capitalism. Capitalism is only when bad rich man doesnt pay you." - Karl Marx.
Commodity exchange existed a hell of a long time before capitalism, and it probably will for a while afterwards too. Capitalism is just the commodification of basically everything, though most importantly the commodification of labor power and the means of production (especially land).
There is nothing problematic with decentralizing the economy some and allowing people to engage in production using only their own labor and what meager means of production that they own and realizing the value of their labor via sale on the market.
I dont see how to get around this issue, other than either just not instituting any legal framework for this economic activity and letting the black market run rampant or somehow magically getting rid of money at the flick of a hand.
For these reasons it looks like the Cuban people and state made the right call by extending legal frameworks and thus protections to people who were otherwise falling through the cracks.
Because thats exactly what was happening: people sometimes werent able to suppprt their family just off of the sales from their farm through the coop or from their wages from state employment (big surprise when you're sanctioned to hell and back theres not much money to go around), and thus they had to independantly labor as freelancers to support themselves.
Thankfully they have a state that at least even pretends to care about its people and thus it empowered these workers by providing a legal framework and protections for them as self employed persons.
As long as they are not facilitating the employment of laborers by private capitalists in order to reap their surplus value in the form of profits, or allowing people to own whole apartment complexes, engage in private usury, etc. i really dont see any major problem.
Theres definately a lot to be done, but it looks like Cuba has done a pretty decent job of balancing the tightrope it was placed on, and is not succumbing to either full liberalization or insane adventurist ultraleft bullshit.
Since you said you're being serious, I'm going to try to actually engage on this point. Those nations developed due to a number of factors: investment from the west (who obtained their capital to invest through colonialism and the post WW2 economic boom), outright colonialism in the case of Singapore, and/or being a puppet for US interests in the region with a dictatorship in exchange for US investment. And I know what you're going to say, that's all part of capitalism right? And you would be correct. So why doesn't every country adopt these policies? For a very simple reason, in order for those countries to make these gains other countries have to be exploited under a capitalistic system. Many countries in Africa have attempted neoliberal market reforms and made massive attempts to attract investment from the west, but to no avail. That is because these are the countries being exploited under the current capitalist system in order for the west, and the countries you mentioned, to "prosper".
But not only has private capitalism brought more people out of poverty faster, MLs are only praising state capitalism rather than socialism.
Holy fucking shit just go ahead and deepthroat the boot
Capitalists call living on 1$ a day as "not poverty" according to capitalist institutions like the US owned World Bank and Imf while the UN states to live a basic dignified life you need 7 dollars and if you took China off the map in the last forty years poverty has increased worldwide even according to their shitty definitions
Maybe read a book before spraying your diarrhoea round the globe
Did I say poverty has stopped existing? I said that wherever poverty has decreased, it is due to capitalism, even in China.
Except the 2 countries that made the most dramatic shift in poverty reduction: Soviet Union under Stalin and China under Mao where they double the life expectancy of their populations within 20 years without capitalism existing
:LIB:
Wtf no. Even the worldbank/IMF are saying that the decades of cooked up poverty reduction stats are complete bunk. China is the exception, so even you do want to consider it capitalist, you cannot attribute its successes to capitalism in general, as most countries it touches are undeveloped through brutal exploitation and resource extraction.
Try actually reading Marx? Even he says that countries have to establish capitalism before they can get to socialism.
that's like the main thing he got wrong. There were no succesful revolutions in Germany, France or England, but there were in feudal Russia and China.
But not only has private capitalism brought more people out of poverty faster
Source on that wild claim?
Do you live on the same planet as I do? What are the wealthiest countries on the planet. Which economic system do they use? Which economic system do "emerging" economies use?
What are the wealthiest countries on the planet.
The US has the most wealth on earth and homeless people.
Okay.
Cuba #1 (Serbia has no data) with 0 homeless per night.
US has 17 per 10k.
What good is wealth when you don't take care of people?
Cuba is a poor Island nation stuck under the thumb of the largest military and economic empire on Earth. What exactly would you have them do?
They can start by not exploiting their workers. They can end their misguided state capitalist policies. They can actually give power to the working class instead of repressing them.
Liberalism is when you defend capitalist states because they have red flags. Not when you criticize them.
This liberal learned this from the BBC twisting a minor change into a big thing .
In reality all Cuba has done is legitimise businesses that already exist, small side-businesses that people in many households had. All it does is remove the black market and causes no functional change to the way their economy operates because it was literally already operating with these businesses existing.
But as per usual this lib would do no further research other than reading an imperialist news source and taking their framing of the topic as fact.
And most of these people are self employed and aren’t hiring anyone. So yeah it sucks they have to rely on a second job but they’re not exploiting anyone.
Putting on my leftcom glasses, but they are exploiting themselves which is still bad, but not evil. Same thing why coops are not entirely without criticism.
I know actual anarchists, I've camped on rooftops of drone factories producing drones to bomb Yemen with some. They are cool af and I love them as my comrades.
This is not an anarchist, this is a lib wearing leftist aesthetics.
As someone who used to principally identify as anarchist first and foremost, really glad I've moved past that label as more and more people who adopt the label have been posting L after L.
just noticed the name and cringed... wtf is it with every other physicist but me
struggle session for us cool informed physics geniuses: is anyone cool except for Einstein? 19th century physicists were mostly nobles, tons of German physicists were nazis, prominent amerikan scientists were part of Manhattan, just learned about this cringe episode in the life of Landau
On 27 April 1938, Landau was arrested for the leaflet which compared Stalinism to German Nazism and Italian Fascism.[17][23] He was held in the NKVD's Lubyanka prison until his release, on 29 April 1939, after Pyotr Kapitsa, an experimental low-temperature physicist and the founder and head of the institute, wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin in which he personally vouched for Landau's behaviour and threatened to quit the institute if Landau were not released.
Alferov is somewhat cool, well a lot of russian scientists are, except the super big boys:(
Edit: by a lot of accounts, landau was a dick btw till his 50s
Feynman was kind of a hippy who went to stripclubs to sit in the corner and draw.
maybe, but that's not proof that they couldn't. plus, they absolutely have been through hell and back.
If the US really gave a shit about getting rid of the Zapatistas, they'd have done so. They only have like 7,000 people in poorly armed militias, and their combined population isn't even half a million. What they've done is genuinely amazing, but their situation is not at all comparable to Cuba. They're just a handful of people living in small villages in a jungle of little geopolitical importance.
they're still a stateless society, even if they don't self identify as anarchist. I never called the zapatistas anarchists, just stateless socialism.
it seemed more to ask people to stop purity testing them. doesn't sound like they give a shit if someone criticizes China or Cuba or something.
yeah you're right, when I say China should legalize gay marriage and be less shit to trans people, I'm actually doing colonialism.
air forces notoriously couldn't possibly fly over the zapatistas
Are you saying the US would invade Mexico just to fuck with the Zapatistas for some reason?
no I'm saying its silly to play a game of "which leftist place I'll never go to is having a harder time surviving"
a narrow strait between them and Florida, plus the US seems to have lost interest in them since the San Andres accords, not to say that they haven't suffered
For the record, Cuba is still almost entirely arranged in the same way as the Soviet Union was - and, predictably, it suffers from a lot of the same problems the Soviet Union did, albiet on a smaller scale. The difference is that Raul Castro wants to adjust the system to make it work better instead of illegally dissolving it in favor of a purely capitalist resource-extraction based one.
"Real socialism" probably isn't possible until the majority of the world's economy is taking place under socialism, which is why AES states have turned to things like the New Economic Policy, Dengism, and IMF loans (with all of the strings that come attached to those) to build their economies.
instead of illegally dissolving it
Cuba also benefits from not having any long-standing separatist/nationalist movements within its borders, which the USSR and Yugoslavia did.
and, predictably, it suffers from a lot of the same problems the Soviet Union did, albiet on a smaller scale.
Probably the only reason it survived as it is today. The SU was so large with so many nationalities/ethnicities that it Balkanized after before/after the August coup. Cuba can't really balkanize for a number of reasons, but size is definitely one.
Raul Castro
I really don't think Raul Castro has much to do with running the country, if I'm not mistaken he is more of a figurehead, and he isn't the president (who is Miguel Diaz Canel, considered the head of state) nor the prime minister (who is Manuel Marrero Cruz).
You're right, even lib publications no longer pretend that Raul Castro is in charge of the country, even though they'd love to say something like "the Castro line"
doing heavy lifting for the US state departments current foreign policy
Exactly how does an anarchist disliking Cuba's capitalist reforms align with the US foreign policy? It doesn't. If you disagree with him you can and should do it without positioning it as a sectarian battle against "anarchists, useful idiots of American imperialism".
How many “Here’s my take as an American leftist, the one true kind” posts do we need ?
I think maybe twitter screenshots of a glib anarchist aren't the best thread starter, and I doubt anarchists are making them.
I really really want to engage positively and in good faith with my ML comrades, but this just means everyone starts off mad. I don't know the guy in the screenshot and I would report that tweet for sectarianism if it was a thread, but it's OK for a thread subject?
The EZLN might have something to say about this. The survival rate of ML projects is better, though.
The no throw only fetch comic but it’s “no historical materialism, only utopia”
You fools. The important part is that no one can call you ((authoritarian))
Material conditions made it necessary to have arbitrary prices, extreme exploitation, political repression of unions and lack of investment in economic growth.
oh god oh fuck an actual bordigist is here to own me. well, do material conditions necessitate a lack of communism?
The only alternative to communism is the kind of exploitation and repression seen in ML states.
To the mod who removed my post: identities formed in oppression and solidarity have a material basis in reality, unlike misunderstood anarchism found on twitter. have a nice day :)
As an anarkiddie, (almost) uncritical support to Cuba.
Also as a straight guy, I still thirst for Fidel.
The thing is you'll never see a ML shitting on the Zapatista's or the YPG.
