Cuba to have Crucial Congress in April
By Circles Robinson
HAVANA TIMES, Nov. 8 — A long awaited congress of the Communist Party of Cuba was announced Monday by President Raul Castro for April, 2011.
Cuba’s only allowed political party “will center it’s analysis on the economic and social model of the country,” said President Raul Castro who is the second secretary of the organization still led by Fidel Castro.
The last congress was held in 1997. A congress is supposed to take place every five years but prolonged crisis has led the Party leaders to put off the important meeting where major policy changes are usually announced.
Raul Castro said that other pressing topics including an “analysis of internal organizational matters and others of national importance” would be taken up at the end of 2011 by the 1st National Conference of the Party.
In preparation for the decisive April meeting a process of debate will take place from December 1, 2010 to Feb. 28, 2011 based on a document to be sold as of Tuesday at newsstands for one peso, noted the Cubadebate.cu website.
PS: Ron, I regret that you have not yet awakened from the cult-like sectarianism of state monopolism. It may appear to you that I’m talking “over” you rather than “with” you, but the reality is that you have lost the ability to examine things objectively and reasonably. Your perception of my point of view is grossly obstructed because your ego can’t stand the possibility that your quasi-religious ultra-leftism might be erroneous.
Even so, I still believe that you–like leading members of the PCC–may still come back to an open-minded reexamination of socialist theory and program, and help revitalize the world socialist movement.
Well, Ron, it’s obvious you’re in a great huff. And yes, I did ask for it . . . but you haven’t graced me with “it.”
As is my right as a socialist I poised a simple, straight-forward question: “What is the nature of real, workable socialism?” If you were going to reply, it seems that you should have at least attempted an answer. But you did not–correct me if I’m wrong.
You dodged giving one . . . but why? Perhaps it’s because you don’t have one.
Perhaps it’s because, since you have no clear idea as to the nature of real, workable socialism, you feel you must hide this by shifting to an irrelevant question as to whether I’ve ever fought in a revolution. What does my combat record have to do with the question?
Nothing.
In my “glorious” theory there are two forms of socialism in which a sincere transformational party has state power in hand. One is where the state owns all the instruments of production. This is the form that exists in Cuba. It is a form that we call “state monopoly” socialism because the socialist state “monopolizes” ownership of all the instruments of production.
The other form is but a theoretical construct, because no transformational party as yet has implemented it. It is based on (1) the repeated failure of the state monopoly form; and (2) the successes of both the Gung Ho Chinese industrial cooperatives (1938-1949) and the Mondragon cooperatives (1956-present day). We call this second form “state participation” socialism.
The difference is that, in the second form, the state participates by holding a sizable but non-controlling chunk of ownership of the instruments of production. It gets its revenues from this share on a quarterly dividend basis, but leaves running the Mondragon-type corporations in the hands of the employees (the workers). Workplace democracy thereby is assured, because how the employees own the instruments of production cooperatively and directly.
But the transformational political party still holds state power and adroitly utilizes the institutions of private property rights and the trading market for the construction of a dynamic, socialist society building toward a classless society.
Our nascent movement respectfully asks the PCC to consider experimenting with and perhaps implementing this new concept of “real, workable” socialism–which is our right as socialists to do.
But, Ron, if you have a better concept of real, workable socialism, please share it with us.
If you do not, then at least tell us what might be wrong with our state participation concept.
OK Grady your asked for it!
This is what you, in your glorious wisdom, wrote:
“What is the nature of real, workable socialism.”…”This is the question that needs to be addressed and debated in preparation for the upcoming April 2011 congress, as well as resolved during the congress. Unless the question of workability is answered and done so correctly,…[the revolutions is only] waiting for the final, dismal end…”
“State participatory socialism should be decided upon at the congress. This would mean partial state ownership of the main instruments of production, that is, partial ownership alongside direct worker cooperative ownership.
“Only such a principle can give democratic worker control of the workplace to the working class.
“Only such a principle can get rid…
How audacious of you! Have you ever fought in or for a revolution? Do you have any real idea of what is might take to organize, create, defend…a new revolutionary rule on a small island 90 miles from the imperialist monster? No. And where do you get the balls to tell an entire people and a government, which, despite all sorts of errors and faulty judgments, has resisted that monster and survived and helped several other Latin American lands begin a progressive, anti-capitalist course? The use of absolute formulas: “correctly” with no definition; “only” if you do what I say will it work otherwise you are doomed to the “dismal end”.
Jesus Christ, man, wake up and begin to speak WITH us not OVER us.
It is unfortunate that socialist thinkers–including those who have commented here, thus far–are still avoiding the central programmatic question of socialist transformation: “What is the nature of real, workable socialism.”
This is the question that needs to be addressed and debated in preparation for the upcoming April 2011 congress, as well as resolved during the congress. Unless the question of workability is answered and done so correctly, Cuba will continue stumbling along in the mess that’s been made by the long-held principle of socialism, waiting for the final, dismal end.
The old principle was and still is “state monopoly.” This principle comes directly from the next-to-last page of the second chapter of the Communist Manifesto of 1848. According to this stipulation, all the means of production are to be concentrated in the hands of the state.
Whether we agree that this is where the principle originated, we still cannot ignore the fact that this is the principle that has been tried and tried again, beginning in the early twentieth century. It still is being “tried” in Cuba and North Korea. It has destroyed every revolution thus far, and it is clearly doing its traditional wrecking job in Cuba.
It is our view that only the principle of “state participatory” socialism should be decided upon at the congress. This would mean partial state ownership of the main instruments of production, that is, partial ownership alongside direct worker cooperative ownership. Only such a principle can give democratic worker control of the workplace to the working class. Only such a principle can get rid of the choking bureaucracy and revitalize the Cuban economy along socialist lines, leaving state power in the hands of the PCC.
If Cuban cannot thus achieve a socialist cooperative republic, two options seem to be left: (1) Go down the Chinese road and allow the creation of a new capitalist class to lead production and relieve the constipation of state monopolism; or (2) revert to capitalism outright.
Best wishes and good luck to the PCC in its forthcoming congress.
Finally. I wondered if the leaders were thinking of postponing the congress until the passing of Fidel.
To get out of economic doldrums requires either whipping workers into slave labor or allowing workers to be producers who decide the conditions of production. Workers will not perform better than they are now IF the state continues to dominate the decision-making process or if the state sell out to private companies, which would take over that role.
It is time, long overdue, for the Cuban revolution to take the most radical and unique step in history: fulfill the mandate it assumed half-a-century, which is to conduct the transition from capitalist producitve relations to socialist ones, which requires the working class to be the power in charge and that also means that the governing apparatus must be reconstructed by workers and bureaucracy thrown asunder.
Please read aryicle below by going to the url:
http://www.marxist.com/21-century-socialism-nothing-new-under-sun.htm
XXI Century Socialism, or There is nothing new under the sun
Written by Alan Woods Monday, 08 November 2010
At a time when the Cuban Revolution is facing great dangers, a serious debate is opening up in the ranks of the Cuban Communists. Last week’s Marxist conference organised by the study group Cuba and Society under the auspices of the Instituto de Filosofia de La Habana in November 2010 to discuss Socialism in the XXI Century in the run-up to the forthcoming Party Congress therefore assumes a particular importance.
Among the few foreign guests invited to address this event was the editor of Marxist.com, Alan Woods, whose latest book Reformism or Revolution, has attracted a lot of interest in Cuba. We are publishing today the text submitted by comrade Woods to the conference.
The times we