uhh can anyone debunk this if it isn't true, or clarify if this is some dengist thing
Labour Minister Marta Elena Feito said the list of authorised industries had expanded from 127 to more than 2,000.
Only a minority of industries would be reserved for the state, she said.
From a Richard Wolf video it seemed like they were opening themselves up to private co-ops more than anything else, but I don't remember any specifics of it.
Also there was a Cuban Anarchist who said this was basically to remove the black market that exists so that they can regulate/control it better.
Small businesses have been operating in Cuba for a while now. Most Cubans have a side job or side business alongside their “main job”. I think this move just legitimizes the informal economy that exists alongside the state economy. Not really a big deal as the media is making it out to be unless someone wants to correct me.
There were some articles I was reading on Cuban cooperatives which the state is trying to push as a form of middle ground for their economy. So I hope Cuba at least moves to a more market socialist economy in the near future to continue their development.
It's not a socialist economy if it's doing the same things capitalist economies are doing lol
im imagining a world where apps like uber exist but the only cut from the courier's labor is whatever is required to develop and maintain the app/infrastructure. non-profit uber. it would be great, and an excellent service job. drivers could be making bank if companies like grub hub and uber weren't, well, companies
Ah yes its got a bunch of homeless jobless people without healthcare dying of covid like its capitalist neighbor.
My real question is.
If a REAL communist society managed to spring up. How long would the US wait to nuke it? So many leftist people i see dont think about how the US and capital will react (and interact/interfere). Not just physically but with spies and propaganda and embargoes.
Its almost like we were trained from birth to have some sort of automatic reaction to certain places and groups and leftism doesnt automatically remove brainworms.
Ah yes its got a bunch of homeless jobless people without healthcare dying of covid like its capitalist neighbor.
There is plenty of poverty in Cuba and there are plenty of capitalist countries that do far better in terms of healthcare and overall living standards. Of course, it isn't a fair comparison because these countries have gotten much richer via imperialism and, well, not getting embargoed and bullied. However you are explaining why they failed, which doesn't show they didn't fail. They did. It's mostly not their fault, but they did.
Ah, they want to tax people side hustles, get a piece of the action haha
sauce on the cuban anarchist?
it's also interesting, the dual currency situation in Cuba. Lot of fascinating ethnography on that subject.
It seems like Cuba changed a lot over time. Right after the revolution, there were executions of thousands of anarchists. I'd have to have been on the island in the beginning, but right now it sounds a lot better than places i've lived in my life, jeez
Well put. A state in prolonged economic warfare with the worldwide empire is going to have to make a lot of complex and difficult decisions.
We need to end the blockade (said economic warfare), N.O.W!
Cuba was never socialist. They are moving from a misguided inefficient form of capitalism to a proven efficient form of capitalism. This is good for the Cuban people, but the move itself is irrelevant as far as socialism is concerned.
Love to make jokes about abuse. Guess the "woke" facade drops when people who can actually smell ur bullshit come in.
All discussion of 'woke' aside it would be pretty suspect for a Marxist to deride any discussion of the commodity form as something 'purely imaginary' that 'haunts' an individuals psyche. Why do you think Marx spends so much time in the beginning of Capital about the appearance of the commodity? Yeah its not real in the sense of an actualized, material thing, but things can and do emerge out of relations. So what actually is your point?
Honestly this whole thread is filled with dumpster-tier thinking that is just memes, and pointing at meaningless signs. So very few have even attempted at answering as to what actually is happening / how this changes things, and even fewer as to how this applies to anything. As materialists we should be concerned with the mechanics of society, not be reduced to mere petty arguments about 'good' versus 'bad'--as if being 'Left' is a subculture.
Wait ur username of a pedophile isnt ironic? Stalin fucked a 13 year old when he was 40.
cope even harder. Imagine im a blonde blue eyed imperialist billionaire if it makes you feel better.
Never was is a huge overstatement but they definitely looking to capitalism since the 90s
Nope, they were never socialist. Can you define socialism for me? Because if your definition of socialism is "state owns capital", then yes it is socialist, but no Marxist would call it socialist.
lmfao cope, they are telling you to read lenin so you know their working definition of what a socialist state is.
According to Lenin, the socialist state must abolish the police, the burueacracy, the standing army and replace them all with Soviets and worker militias. Please read Lenin.
I'm sorry for being such a white imperialist Amerikkkan leftkkkom ultra
while fidel is no doubt great, that doesn't mean people embrace communism. lots of reactionary russians stan stalin.
I wish I could remember the podcast where I heard someone who had gone to Cuba and interviewed people, but lots of Cubans were saying "I dunno about this Communism, but I love Fidel"
how many communal toothbrushes do the population have access to in total?
Hot take: if the embargo against Cuba either ended by the 1970s or never existed at all, Cuba would likely be a smaller version of China by now.
Vietnam is probably a more apt comparison.
I was more going for the angle of the allowance of private (perhaps non-worker controlled) businesses to have a presence in the country.
It's one thing to allow a private sector, it's another to be run by private the private sector. I think some form of a private sector is going to be inevitable for any AES state that exists under capitalist global hegemony. How else are you supposed to interface with the global economy?
That being said, if a there isn't a strong enforcement of labor rights and development of labor unions in tandem with that allowance, it's a bad sign. It's easier to trake over a private business of the workforce is organized into a union that friendly to the party.
All Actually Existing Socialist states have been at least a little Dengist for a while now.
Except for the DPRK :juche: of course.
Even the DPRK has some contracting with outside companies for mineral mining I think. It's just the natural thing to do without the trading bloc, organization, support, etc. with the Soviet Union. Implementing socialism will require surviving in the current capitalist world and more future revolutions and socialist movements to appear to reduce the stress that socialist countries face from global capitalism. Better to have socialists remain in power with a partially or mostly capitalist economy than have capitalist wreckers undo all the progress of the revolution using propaganda and terror.
Fidel spoke about this when he talked about China while he was alive
"I think China is a socialist country, and Vietnam is a socialist nation as well. And they insist that they have introduced all the necessary reforms in order to motivate national development and to continue seeking the objectives of socialism.
"There are no fully pure regimes or systems. In Cuba, for instance, we have many forms of private property. We have hundreds of thousands of farm owners. In some cases they own up to 110 acres. In Europe they would be considered large landholders. Practically all Cubans own their own home and, what is more, we welcome foreign investment. But that does not mean Cuba has stopped being socialist.
Try not to use Google AMP links, comrade! I think there is a Firefox extension that cleans urls but I don't remember which because I use DuckDuckGo https://duckduckgo.com instead of Google which I really recommend btw both for privacy and for degoogling your life
Sorry, yeah I can’t stand google amp shit but it seems like it’s everywhere and hard to avoid.
I mean, not that I disagree with you, but there is a Russian saying: "People outside of a burning building have a better view of the fire".
This "wEll YoU dON't LiVE tHEre!!!" line isn't really a very compelling argument.
Yeah but the firefighter starts out standing outside the building.
IDK I guess like all analogies this one has limitations.
Does Fidel Castro count as a true leftist?
"I think China is a socialist country, and Vietnam is a socialist nation as well. And they insist that they have introduced all the necessary reforms in order to motivate national development and to continue seeking the objectives of socialism.
"There are no fully pure regimes or systems. In Cuba, for instance, we have many forms of private property. We have hundreds of thousands of farm owners. In some cases they own up to 110 acres. In Europe they would be considered large landholders. Practically all Cubans own their own home and, what is more, we welcome foreign investment. But that does not mean Cuba has stopped being socialist
Capitalism with open markets and competition is better than capitalism with state ownership, made up prices and closed markets, aka "AESC" .
yes that is why china’s gdp growth has been so inefficient compared to USA
We're talking about Cuba, I know reading is hard, but try to keep up. No one here is even dumb enough to think that China is "socialist" in the same sense as Cuba. What was China's GDP growth like when they had an economic model similar to Cuba during Mao?
According to this x-post from the other day,
From 2017, a new constitution was written, also from the bottom up, which recognised same sex marriage and private businesses, which is ultimately better because they are now regulated.
so I assume it’s true.
For me, i have no reason to believe it wasn’t a pretty democratic process, also that only Cubans know what’s best for Cuba, so I just hope it works out.
Yeah, this has been in the works for a while. I’m thinking there have been people in the party who have wanted to move this direction since Fidel died.
they're not 'just another capitalist hell', obvs they still provide doctors for like the entire southern hemisphere but I no longer have a surplus of hope for them, and they're no longer a relatively-shiny beacon of socialism.
well, there's plenty of support for China here, and they have far more private business than Cuba ever will right? Alibaba alone, I mean jeez. This, it seems is just to take advantage of US tourists being able to come now that Biden is president and the regulations will be relaxed again, post-covid vaccine rollout.
i think the prc is a vile piece of shit imperialist stain on the world map since dengism, and I question whether it's any less awful than the american empire. I certainly don't think it's worse, but I do not think it is a good place.
Yes I forgot about that part of Lenin’s Imperialism where he talks about how imperialism is when countries are big.
I often question whether China, Russia, etc. could manage to be truly imperialst of they wanted to. Like the U.S has both countries almost completely surrounded by propped up western puppet states.
oh they're better and tend to move with a softer less anvilicious hand than the west, but they are. if you want to to deny that, I want some of your drugs.
unless youve spent hours obsessively learning about china and its system please shut the fuck up, us people with a special interest in China's economic and political system are laughing at you
ive spent a lot of time learning about capitalism, yes. I don't love maoism, but I have a certain grudging respect, and I've taken some important lessons from it that are very dear to me. I mourn its loss in its homeland.
Huh, interesting. I didn't realize there were people on the board that had this point of view, I was downvoted to hell on another account months ago for questioning the party's narrative around some parts of Chinese history. People were very...well, from my perspective, they were defensive.
South Korea and Singapore brought people out of poverty faster.
You say you’re a leftcom, but you’re standing for right wing regimes pretty hard in this thread. 🤔
South Korea
That place that was essentially rebuilt with the help of the West in order to project western power next to North Korea? You don't say.
Dude piss off with that shit, this is happening because they failed, which is understandable, but this is a failure. Neither the situation in Cuba nor China is going towards "socialism". There is this really fucking weird belief that somehow the state is just above society and despite the structure of the system changing and the bourgeoisie gaining more and more power, this will somehow not be reflected in the policies of the state.
You might as well be a neolib Park Chunghee stan dude. You're making the same point.
increasing productivity at the cost of increasing inequality. that's literally capitalism, crab.
Cuba was a majority state owned social democracy now planning to become a majority privately owned social democracy. Glad to see the meme of "AESC" dying. North Korea looks like its next with their new reforms. If you're gonna do capitalism, you may as well do it right.
