How Cuban Stalinism Adapts to the Market
mebe...@hotmail.com
In a series of articles published in book form the Cuban regime is
attempting to conceal the true nature of globalisation and the advance
of a world dictatorship of transnationals by asserting the old
inter-imperialist contradictions are at play and that the world economy
is fragmenting into regionally competing economic trade blocks.
The issue at hand is a book entitled 'Neo-Liberalism in Crisis' by
Osvaldo Martinez a Professor of Economic Science at the University of
Havana and Chair of the Permanent Committee of the Cuban Parliaments
Economic Affairs Department. Whilst correct in criticising the economic
effects of globalisation and its effects on the worlds poor he leaves
the door open to the notion that the new world order will fragment into
competing trade blocks which can then probably be successfully utilised
to break the stranglehold of US domination. Whilst not presenting a
coherent case how this can be done, it is nevertheless implied.
"Undoubtedly, globalisation is an objective fact but it is not true at
all that it is an absolutely new process, that it is equal to the
universal and definitive victory of capitalism, to the annulment of
revolutionary transformations, or to the contradictions among social
classes and countriesů
Fax, e-mail, jet planes, the big means of communications, the
transportation and transmission of data would be the current symbols of
that process of globalisation as an objective phenomena based on
profound technological changes, that has resulted in the current real
existence of more interpenetrated economies that are closer to and have
better communications with each other and are integrated into a
transnational financial and commercial network, a network woven by
transnational companies availing themselves of the collossal dimensions
of their current mightů"
Globalisation is a new process in the sense that it negates the old
nation state structure of capitalism. The growth of the transnationals
is the attempt by imperialism to surpass the contradictions of the
nation state, by abolishing the nation state, not erecting three new
super nation states. NAFTA, the EEC and the ASEAN trade blocks under the
WTO seek to globalise the rule of the transnationals, not to fragment
them. In that sense globalisation is a new phenomena which seeks to
accomplish everything behind the military unification of all the
capitalist nation states: evidence the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia
and the UN Australian led intervention in Indonesia. These are the
precursors to a global order whose scope and territory will be far more
reaching than the old British Empire.
Martinez argues "relations among the blocs prove that the usual
struggles have not dissapeared in a globalised oasis, but are extant,
grow and become more dangerous after the element of contention that was
the Soviet Union dissapeared. Japans commercial tension surplus with the
USA continues to be a bone of contention. The US government struggles to
open the Japanese market to US exports in order to reduce its deficit,
availing itself of a broad gamut of violations of free trade that,
however, is simultaneously revered as a fetishů.
"Another harsh battle is under way between the United States and the
European Union. The US government accuses the European Union of applying
protectionist tarriffs in its agricultural sectors to products like
grains, dairy products, beef, poultry and eggs. This irritates US
interests that want their agricultrual surpluses to access the large
European market."
In other words a totally false picture is painted of the world economy.
Inter-imperialist contradictions are presented as the key problem of
globalisation. Irrespective of the objective reality: transnationals are
growing at the expense of the nation state and the possibility of
inter-imperialist contradictions. WWII led to the collapse of Germany
and Japan and led Britain to become a satellite of the American
superpower. The G7, the World Bank, the IMF are all institutions which
herald the unity of imperialism against the planet, not the division of
the imperialists. By asserting that imperialism is divided, without
providing any economic evidence, just skirmishes amongst friends,
Martinez hopes to achieve the impossible: to convince the reader that
investment in Cuba by all nations apart from the USA is evidence of
Cubas intranginence in not being dominated by capitalism.
Here is what he says: "The grotesque attempt at recreating the Platt
Amendment almost one century later with what is known as the
Helms-Burton Act also has - besides its main objective, aimed at
destroying the Cuban Revolution and its unbearable example of resistance
- a component of wounded and challenged imperial interest in what it
deems its regional economic bloc for the preferential movement of its
capitals. The presence of European capitals and - even more humiliating
- Canada and Mexico, its associates in the Free trade Agreement, is a
condensed expression of US inability to order the globalised economy
after its own fashion and at the same time of its dangerous intentions
to do it."
As if Canada and Mexico are players on the world stage on their own. As
if America doesn't know that they are both investing heavily in Cuba in
the tourist and other sectors of the economy. As if the Canadian and
Mexican corporations don't get financing from Wall Street. As if it is
suddenly a plus to argue, look we have attracted investment from the
good capitalists not the bad ones in the USA. In other words 40 years of
Cuban 'socialism' is reduced on an economic level of praising investment
from capitalist countries, even if they are given the label of not being
part of the USA, which they most definitely are.
Cuban stalinisms embrace of the market is theoretically justified by
creating false disunity among the imperialists and pretending that as
long as Canada or Spain are investing in Cuba all is well. They are
earning the hard currency they need to survive and their social system
will remain intact. Peaceful coexistence has been replaced by the Cuban
variant of economic coexistence. The Cuban peso side by side with the US
dollar.
Meberry68
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Stephen R. Diamond
<rog...@blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> <mebe...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:8iloi2$slr$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
>
> > Globalisation is a new process in the sense that it negates the old
> > nation state structure of capitalism. The growth of the
> > transnationals is the attempt by imperialism to surpass the
> > contradictions of the nation state, by abolishing the nation state,
> > not erecting three new super nation states. NAFTA, the EEC and the
> > ASEAN trade blocks under the WTO seek to globalise the rule of the
> > transnationals, not to fragment them. In that sense globalisation
> > is a new phenomena which seeks to accomplish everything behind the
> > military unification of all the capitalist nation states: evidence
> > the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia and the UN Australian led
> > intervention in Indonesia. These are the precursors to a global
> > order whose scope and territory will be far more reaching than the
> > old British Empire.
>
> This is a very wooden *analysis* to say the least. The growth of the
> transnationals is not some *imperialist plot*, but is part of the
> objective develop of capitalism.
What is "wooden" here is your reaching into the Healyite grab bag of
"arguments," and finding one about capitalism not being a "plot," and
applying it without the slightest concern for relevance. Where does
Meberry say or imply there is a plot? PRODUCE OR RETRACT.
Contrasting the growth of the
> transnationals with the development of the EU, NAFTA and ASEAN is
> disingenuous, because these trading blocs are developing alongside
> the transnational corporations. The same needs of the imperialists
> that currently unites them against the working class and the poorer
> nations can also divide them when push comes to shove. The idealist
> meberry is utterly incapable of grasping this simple point.
No, you are incapable of reading, since Meberry no where "contrasted" EU
etc. with the transnationals, but arguing they are its intrusments.
Just as a worker unemployed for too long forgets the habits of work, and
become lumpenized, so a read such as Roger, who thinks he understands
when he reads without analysis, forgets how to read altogether.
srd
rabhegmarlen
> Globalisation is a new process in the sense that it negates the old
> nation state structure of capitalism. The growth of the transnationals
> is the attempt by imperialism to surpass the contradictions of the
> nation state, by abolishing the nation state, not erecting three new
> super nation states. NAFTA, the EEC and the ASEAN trade blocks under the
> WTO seek to globalise the rule of the transnationals, not to fragment
> them. In that sense globalisation is a new phenomena which seeks to
> accomplish everything behind the military unification of all the
> capitalist nation states: evidence the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia
> and the UN Australian led intervention in Indonesia. These are the
> precursors to a global order whose scope and territory will be far more
> reaching than the old British Empire.
This is a very wooden *analysis* to say the least. The growth of the
transnationals is not some *imperialist plot*, but is part of the objective
develop of capitalism. Contrasting the growth of the transnationals with
the development of the EU, NAFTA and ASEAN is disingenuous, because these
trading blocs are developing alongside the transnational corporations. The
same needs of the imperialists that currently unites them against the
working class and the poorer nations can also divide them when push comes to
shove. The idealist meberry is utterly incapable of grasping this simple
point.
rab
--
Roger Blackwell, Norwich, NR3, Britain
Pager: 01523 187644, ICQ 71780619
www.blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk
www.delphi.com/norwich/start
constantin
abondoning logic for idiocy and fascism n-17
way..........welkome to the red brigades of greece mebbery
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The opening of the Genoa conference on April 10, 1922, found the
Soviet delegation in a far more impressive position than there had
been reason to expect a few weeks earlier. Poincaré, refusing himself
to attend the conference, had sent Barthou with instructions to be
intractable; Lloyd George badly needed an agreement with Russia in
order to revive his wilting prestige; Anglo-French friction and
Poincaré’s attitude to Germany had virtually killed the menacing
project of an international corporation; and Soviet Russia had the
prospect of a separate agreement with Germany to strengthen her hand
against the western Powers. On the other hand, Soviet Russia
desperately needed capital investments which could only come from the
west. Chicherin’s initial speech at the conference, delivered in
French and inflated by journalistic curiosity into an international
event, ranged far. He opened up visions of the vast potential
contribution of Russia’s untapped resources, developed and made
available through the cooperation of western capitalists, to the cause
of world-wide economic recovery. He observed that the measures
introduced under NEP "go to meet the wishes contained in the Cannes
resolution in regard to the juridical guarantees necessary for the
economic cooperation with Soviet Russia of countries based on private
property ". Noting that the restoration of the world economy would be
impossible unless the threat of wars were removed, he announced that
the Soviet delegation would at a later stage of the conference "
propose a general reduction of armaments, and support all proposals
aimed at lightening the burden of militarism ". Finally, he thought
that the time had come for a world congress on the basis of equality
between all nations for the establishment of general peace "; the
Russian Government, for its part, was prepared to take existing
international agreements as a starting point, while " introducing into
these agreements necessary amendments ", and even to participate in a
revision of the statute of the League of Nations " in order to convert
it into a genuine alliance of peoples, excluding the domination of
some by others and doing away with the present division into victors
and vanquished.
During the course of the conference the terms of the draft agreement
between the Royal Dutch-Shell group and the Soviet Government were
published in the American press as if the agreement had actually been
concluded. This provoked a flood of denials, including one from Austen
Chamberlain in the House of Commons) The struggle was none the less
acute, and French and Belgian opposition to the British attitude was
believed by many to have been inspired from Washington. In the last
stages of the conference, on May 11, 1922, the American State
Department itself intervened with an uncompromising pronouncement
issued in Genoa by the American Ambassador in Rome:
The United States [ran the operative clause] will never consent that
any scheme whatsoever, national or international, shall be applied
unless it takes account of the principle of the open door for all and
recognises equal rights for all. This statement, which finally
dissolved the dream of an exclusive British, or British-Dutch, oil
concession in Soviet Russia, happened to coincide in date with the
Soviet memorandum. Both together signalled the end of the conference.
The allies, rather in order to wind up the conference with an agreed
conclusion than for any more practical purpose, seized on the Soviet
proposal for a commission of experts to pursue the study of
outstanding differences. It was decided that the experts should meet
in The Hague at the end of June 1922. Thereupon the conference
dispersed.
Louis Proyect
The Marxism List is at: http://www.marxmail.org
Bob Malecki
>Cuban Stalinism's Theoretical Adaptation to the Market
Meberry,
Are yo saying Kautsky was right? I still hold to the Leninist view
that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. You argue the
case of Kautsky and super imperialism.
Warm regards
Bob malecki
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David Stevens
"Wilfrid Ruigrok and Ron van Tulder have shown (_The: Logic of
International Restructuring_) that not oneof the largest 100 core
firms in the world is truly'global,' 'footloose,' or 'borderless.'
In fact only about 40 major firms on the whole planet generate half
their assets abroad and less than 20 keep as much as half their
production facilities on other countries. Executive boards, research
and development, even management styles and, most crucially, ownership,
remain solidly national." [1]
Roger Blackwell <rabhegmarlen> wrote:
>
> <mebe...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:8iloi2$slr$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
>
> > Globalisation is a new process in the sense that it negates the old
> > nation state structure of capitalism. ... globalisation is a new
> > phenomena which seeks to accomplish everything behind the military
> > unification of all the capitalist nation states: evidence the NATO
> > intervention in Yugoslavia and the UN Australian led intervention in
> > Indonesia. These are the precursors to a global order whose scope and
> > territory will be far more reaching than the old British Empire.
>
> This is a very wooden *analysis* to say the least. The growth of the
> transnationals is not some *imperialist plot*, but is part of the objective
> develop of capitalism. Contrasting the growth of the transnationals with
> the development of the EU, NAFTA and ASEAN is disingenuous, because these
> trading blocs are developing alongside the transnational corporations. The
> same needs of the imperialists that currently unites them against the
> working class and the poorer nations can also divide them when push comes to
> shove. The idealist meberry is utterly incapable of grasping this simple
> point.
Meberry68 is consistently impressionistic. ;-|
Meberry's anti-immigrant globalization dogma dramatically overplays
the economic power of the transnationals. Even the true transnationals
--
Coca Cola, Philip Morris, Royal Dutch Petroleum, Nestle and the handful
of their actual peers -- still rest on a firmly national base, with
preponderantly national officers and boards of directors. Royal Dutch
is quite unusual in that it has approximately as many shares held in US
as in Netherlands; yet its top corporate management is thoroughly Dutch.
The most 'multinational' company on the planet is probably Nestle,
with 95% of its assets located outside Switzerland. Yet fully 97%
of Nestle's stockholders are Swiss citizens.
It's _wrong_ to characterize all industrial megacorporations with
overseas operations as if they were true transnationals in the same
vein as Nestle. "General Motots, Siemans, and Toyota are _national_
firms with international operations," says Joseph Seymour. "They
are no more multinational or transnational than was the British East
India Company, which organized and carried out the colonial conquest
of India in the 18th century." [2] That Mitsubishi and General
Motors have plants overseas in low-wage countries is nothing new:
"capitalism seeks everywhere, nestles everywhere." What would be
new would be if production of critical components were being moved
overseas. That isn't happening.
The Mitsubishis _will not_ expose themselves to the prospect of
substantial production being shut down worldwide because of a strike
in some developing country. "The huge Volkswagen plant in Brazil,
for example, does not produce crucial parts for the autos made
in Wolfsburg, Germany and sold throughout Europe. It assembles
cars, with some parts imported from Germany, which are sold in
Brazil and wthe rest of Latin America." [3] To have such control
of industry in the developing countries as they do in the
imperialist center, the imperial state apparatus itself must be
extended to those countries. (The collision between contending
imperialisms which Meberry68 claims doesn't happen anymore is
the whole reason that Indonesia is different from Puerto Rico).
The capitalists understand the national basis of their international
system better than impressionists like Meberry68 who conclude that
we have a sort of kautskyian ultraimperialism emerging under world
conditions objectively less 'globalized' than they were in 1914.
1914 saw the first bloody global spasms of world imperialism.
Now the impressionists claim _even less significant movements of
world capital_ as a basis for ending interimperialist squabbles
altogether!
"The income derived from British capitalists from their foreign
assets increased from 4% of total British national income in
the 1880s to 7% by 1903 to almost 10% on the eve of World War I
in 1914. Foreign investments were concentrated in Britain's
own colonies [including the 'Dominion' type - DS] (especially
India, South Africa, Canada, and Australia) as well as in
the United States and, to a lesser extent, Argentina. By 1914,
total productive assets held by British capitalists outside
Britain amounted to well _over one quarter_ of the capital
stock within Britain itself.
"While the globalization of pre-1914 British capitalism was
historically unique, the role of foreign investment for
French capitalism in this period likewise _greatly exceeded_
that of any present-day imperialist country. Between 1909
and 1913, almost 5% of French national income was derived
from French investments abroad (mainly in Russia, Turkey,
the Balkans, and France's own African and Asian colonies).
By 1914, the total value of French long-term foreign
investment (45 billion francs) amounted to 15% of the
productive wealth of France (295 billion francs).
"Now let us look at comparable figures for the United
States at present. In 1994, the total income derived
from the foreign assets of American capitalists, both
direct investment and stock and bond holdings, was
$167 billion. That amounted to _slightly less than 2%_
of the US gross domestic product of $6.7 trillion.
The current total value of American direct foreign investment
is about one trillion dollars, slightly less than 10% of
the $10.5 trillion in privately owned industrial assets
(plant and equipment) in the United States. In the case
of Japan, the relative weight of foreign investment
is even less than it is in the US, and in the case of
Germany it is substantially less." [4]
We're not seeing a return to the conditions of 1914 in part
because the bourgeoisie has never paid for its world wars.
Capitalism have lost the "gold standard" forever in favor of
deficit spending policies pursued on a _national basis_.
But the rank impressionism of many promoters of an All-New
Globaization Theory of Supra-Ultraimperialism has nothing
in common with the method of Lenin's analysis in _Imperialism:
The Highest Stage of Capitalism_, which relied on objective
data and such dry and boring statistics as Meberry is forever
unable to cite.
The (1993) US$100 billion record investment in 'Newly
Industrializing Countries' was only 3% of the total capital
investment in North America, Europe, and Japan. For every
dollar US capitalism spends on productive assets within its
own borders, it invests 9 cents in Canada and Western Europe,
but only 5 cents in the entire rest of the world. [5]
-- David Stevens
[stevensYO...@earthlink.net] (Remove YOUR_PANTS to reply)
Trotsky, Sex & Drugs http://home.earthlink.net/~stevensdr/
[1] Philip Ferguson, "Globalization demythstified,"
_revolution_ [NZ], No. 5 (March/April 1998), pp 18-21.
[2] Joseph Seymour, "Imperialist Rivalries Heat Up,"
_Imperialism, the 'Global Economy' and Labor Reformism_,
(Spartacist Publ., September 1999), p. 11.
[3] Seymour, pp. 11-12.
[4] [Spartacist], "The 'Global Economy' and Labor Reformism,'
_Imperialism, the 'Global Economy' and Labor Reformism_,
(Spartacist Publ., September 1999), p. 22; statistics
from Herbert Feis _Europe -- The World's Banker 1870-1914_
(1964).
[5] Ibid, p. 21.
Stephen R. Diamond
wrote:
> _revolution's_ Phil Ferguson wrote:
This is the same "Phillip Ferguson" who edits "Revolution," allied with
the erstwhile LM of Justine Flude et. al. And the nematode wonders why
the world calls it a neofascist nematode.
>
<Spews out meaningless data, it doesn't understand.>
> But the rank impressionism of many promoters of an All-New
> Globaization Theory of Supra-Ultraimperialism has nothing
> in common with the method of Lenin's analysis in _Imperialism:
> The Highest Stage of Capitalism_, which relied on objective
> data and such dry and boring statistics as Meberry is forever
> unable to cite.
Lenin knew what point he was making when he invoked data. You don't. You
say this picture militates against the demand to close the borders, yet
the fact that the transnationals strongly seek to employ foreign labor
IN THEIR NATIVE LANDS proves the opposite, lil 'tode.
To say that imperialism is not spurred to a new level of globalisation
by the instantaneous connections afford by the computer chip is to deny
the materialist interpreation of history.
By distorting the meaning of "ultra-imperialism," the nematode (or
Joseph Seymour, actually, on behalf of the spart without a card) tries
to obliterate its lesson for today. Imperialism and world peace cannot
co-exist. The Nematode, locating the major sources of war in obviously
insignificant inter-imperialist rivalries, gives backhanded support to
Kautskyism, while taking it a big step forward directly into
program--into his neofascist stew.
srd
Stephen R. Diamond
> employ foreign labor
> IN THEIR NATIVE LANDS proves the opposite, lil 'tode.
that is, in the land belonging to the transnational.
srd
rabhegmarlen
news:394FD68C...@earthlink.net...
> _revolution's_ Phil Ferguson wrote:
>
> "Wilfrid Ruigrok and Ron van Tulder have shown (_The: Logic of
> International Restructuring_) that not oneof the largest 100 core
> firms in the world is truly'global,' 'footloose,' or 'borderless.'
> In fact only about 40 major firms on the whole planet generate half
> their assets abroad and less than 20 keep as much as half their
> production facilities on other countries. Executive boards, research
> and development, even management styles and, most crucially, ownership,
> remain solidly national." [1]
> Meberry68 is consistently impressionistic. ;-|
A lot of meberry's reasoning is based upon the military alliances of
imperialism, which are directed against poorer countries and the working
class at home. However, the military is firmly based on the nation state
rather than the transnational corporation. Whilst it is true some
transnationals, such as in Colombia or Nigeria, have a certain amount of
state military backing, it is still the nation state that provides the
military forces. This is a fundamental problem for capitalism which it
tries to overcome by alliances such as NATO, but the bigger such alliances
get the more likely they are to implode into fighting between themselves.
Stephen R. Diamond
<rog...@blackwell23.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> However, the military is firmly based on the nation state
> rather than the transnational corporation. Whilst it is true some
> transnationals, such as in Colombia or Nigeria, have a certain amount of
> state military backing, it is still the nation state that provides the
> military forces. This is a fundamental problem for capitalism which it
> tries to overcome by alliances such as NATO, but the bigger such alliances
> get the more likely they are to implode into fighting between themselves.
The question is, which military. Increasingly the transnationals will be
defended by the U.S. military, almost entirely. As the military power of
the other imperialist countries dwindles relatively, there will be less
and less incentive for them to make their "fair" military contribution.
Why should they when their economic interests lie in tandem with the
U.S., and their relative military capability, in any given case, is
vanishingly small?
srd