Doesn't anyone who supports Ron Paul realize what they're supporting? He's a Republican, he answers to the Republican Party, the party answers to the bourgeois. Them evil rich "not real capitalism" corporations. If elected he will do exactly what he is told to do, no different than Obama, no different than Bush. Wars happen because the sustainment of capitalism needs them to. This infantile belief that real capitalism will magically make everything work with the deity the hidden hand with no regulation.

I can't describe how as a foreigner how astounded I am that Americans (even a minority of them) can believe this. Corporations are not socialism. How in the hell is a system not based on personal wealth responsible for a system based on the collection of person wealth? This is a quite frankly as stupid as Alex Jones saying Obama is a Marxist. (And yes "stupid" is a much deserved adjective.) Ron Paul is funded by Lew Rockwell, an owner of corporations! He says he's a libertarian, but he's in the Republican party. If he switched to the Libertarian Party he'd disappear off the political landscape.

It concerns me so much because we have a saying here in Canada when it comes to economics: "If the US sneezes, we get a cold. If they get a cold we get pneumonia."

If elected he'll kill all regulation that keeps poison out of drinking water and then do the bidding of the corporation that run the water. He's not any different, this whole "corporations aren't capitalism" is driving me nuts. His job is to get elected to make it look like Americans want deregulation and then carry it out. He'll do nothing to challenge the power of corporations, he'll hand them everything they want on a silver plate. But even then, real big capitalists know regulation must exist in order for the system to even run.

This should be Ron Paul's election slogan:

"Government is force, its wrong and it shouldn't exist. Vote me for president."

@MRN
I think think that the author's main point here isn't to support Ron Paul's candidacy-this piece i mainly about contrasting the image that progressives have about Obama with the reality of his policies. Rather than blindly marching with Obama, they need to engage in critical thinking and realize that he isn't progressive in any way. That is clearly shown in the last line before the update-
"It’s perfectly legitimate to criticize Paul harshly and point out the horrible aspects of his belief system and past actions. But that’s worthwhile only if it’s accompanied by a similarly candid assessment of all the candidates, including the sitting President."

I don't think Ron Paul would fix the USA if elected, his economic and social views are capitalistic and silly, but Obama's policies are every bit as corrupt and stupid, with extra layers of obstinance in the Drug War and hyper-imperialism.

This article isn't a rallying cry for Ron Paul's election, it's a condemnation of blind Obamabots. America needs communist revolution, not Ron Paul or Barack Obama, the sooner people start to see that, the sooner they critically analyze both candidates rather than following blind partisan impulses, the better for the US and the world.

(Nice to hear from you, Jason, I quite enjoy your videos.)

@Blake Edward Burns

I know that was his point, I know he wasn't trying to get people to vote for Paul, I was just pointing out how his positions are as fraudulent as everyone else's. I get what he's saying. I guess I was pointing out the similarity in the "Candidate of Change" image to Obama's. A same but different promise of change is be peddled and I guess I flashed back to everyone saying how Obama was going to change things and i told them it wasn't. now we see Obama as a lesser evil and before we were supposed to see him as hope. No different would come of Ron Paul. Except Ron Paul would obliterate the economy completely. Hell maybe people should vote for Ron Paul just so he will destroy the the country and help us along the path to an awakening of class consciousness.

"Hell maybe people should vote for Ron Paul just so he will destroy the the country and help us along the path to an awakening of class consciousness."

I've always held that it would be good if traditional Republican voters turned to Ron Paul. The only caveat I make on that is that no one to the Left of Ronald Reagan should associate themselves with a Paul campaign. My worst nightmare is that Paul will be elected and then as the economy collapses it will be revealed at the 11th hour that his staff of advisors is made up of the founders of the Committees of Correspondence who were trained by Gus Hall. If something like that were to occur then it would be just a re-run of the same game where Glenn Beck is able to insinuate that Barack Obama is a Marxist by pointing to some of the people who voted for him. That would not help anything. But if Paul can actually persuade the people who voted for Bush twice to vote for him, then I think that would be a positive sign.

Glenn Greenwald is what we used to call an honest , humanist liberal. He wants elections to be a fairly fought battleground of ideas, fully expressed and carried out on a level playing field, with the more rational and workable sets prevailing. Ordinary citizens get to casts their ballots with the ideas most in tune with their own, get them counted honestly, and the rewards distributed proportionally.

In a perfect world, I would agree with him. In this article, I fit in with those who tell the truth about all the evil doers, then cast my ballot, with eye wide open for the lesser--until I can get a better set of rules on a different playing field. so in that sense, I have no disagreement with him.

In that sense, my main object is to the title at the top. Lesser evils are not myths; they are facts. The question is do they make a big enough difference requiring us to act in some way, however limited and tactical.

But like many liberals, and even many on the left, I think Greenwald is unduly captivated by Ron Paul's nationalism and right libertarianism, which we can see in the video clips selected above. What we miss in fuller description is the states rights, Dixiecrat, John Birch, Ayn Rand sociopath and worse views that come with it. True, these are hinted at, but my advice to any enthralled is to study Ron Paul--the more you learn, the less you'll like him.

For some years now, I've viewed the divisions at the top in three camps--unilateral neoliberal US hegemonists, multilateral neoliberal globalists tempered with a bit of neoKeysianism, and anti-Global nationalists giving voice to the Hayek Austrian school to one degree or another. Since 1970, the old-style FDR Keynesians have been increasingly out in the cold. In a curious way, Nixon was the last of them.

The current contention between Obama, Romney (or whoever they pick) and Ron Paul fits rather well in this framework.

Unlike Greenwalds assertion above, US progressives have no party. At best, they have a small minority faction or trend represented by PDA and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, with 80 votes out of 535, with one in the Senate, Bernie Sanders. This is where you'll find a mixture of social democrats, Keynesians and even a few people who take Marx seriously. In the overall balance of forces, it's not much, and it's proposals are usually 'off the table,' ie, it's not strong enough.

One could even argue that the US has no political parties, at least in the European sense where there is a defined platform taken seriously with some discipline, and where major and minor voices are all represented in parliaments. Instead we have clusters of great wealth gathered around porous policy camps, with a very tight grip on media access and access to the ballot. In short, a dollarocracy. It's designed NOT to be a multiparty system, or even the humanist liberal one Greenwald yearns for.

One can fight it in various ways, or one can ignore it and try to chart and extra-parliamentary path to socialism that doesn't pass through it but tries to skip over it. I've put out my current ideas here often enough. Any other fresh approaches would be welcome to hear. But they'll have to be a bit tougher than Greenwald, as much as I enjoy his commentaries

"Greenwald is unduly captivated by Ron Paul’s nationalism and right libertarianism"

Greenwald seemed to rather be pointing out how too many "progressives" were unduly captivated by the "Hope & Change" candidate.

Oh are you talking about <a href="/http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&amp;rls=en&amp;q=%22Glenn+Greenwald%22+site:exiledonline.com" rel="nofollow">Glenn Greenwald of the libertarian Cato Institute?</a>

No, the CATO guy is someone else. the author above is with Salon:

Glenn Greenwald (email: GGreenwald@salon.com) is a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and is the author of two New York Times Bestselling books on the Bush administration’s executive power and foreign policy abuses. His just-released book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, is an indictment of America’s two-tiered system of justice, which vests political and financial elites with immunity even for egregious crimes while subjecting ordinary Americans to the world’s largest and most merciless penal state. Greenwald was named by The Atlantic as one of the 25 most influential political commentators in the nation. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and is the winner of the 2010 Online Journalism Association Award for his investigative work on the arrest and oppressive detention of Bradley Manning.

Oh alright, just making sure that this isn't the Glenn Greenwald who is <a href="/http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=5887" rel="nofollow">in this video</a>, lecturing at the libertarian Cato Institute. I hope that he isn't the Glenn Greenwald who wrote <a href="/http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/11/gop-fights-itself-on-illegal.html" rel="nofollow">this article about how Republicans need to get tough on illegal immigration, which he calls evil.</a> Nope, this is a completely different Glenn Greenwald, who is not affiliated with the libertarian Cato Institute and only shares the same name, telling us about the good person who is Ron Paul, who people concerned with civil liberties should definitely consider voting for. That's good because otherwise there would definitely be some conflict of interest in his stated "civil libertarian" views as there would be in the case of the Glenn Greenwald of the libertarian Cato Institute.

Perhaps this is my mistake, but I always had the impression that Glenn Greenwald of Cato &amp; Salon were one and the same.

Hmmm. Apparently I'm wrong. At least Salon's Greenwald was hired by CATO to do some writing and research on drug decriminalization. Learned something new today...Unless there's still another one out there!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald

Yes - and this might go some distance in clearing up any of the above confusion:

http://exiledonline.com/glenn-greenwald-of-the-libertarian-cato-institute-posts-his-defense-of-joshua-foust-the-exiled-responds-to-greenwald/

N. B. - I would also advise reading Ames' prior post on Josh Foust for appropriate context.

Is Kasama actually re-posting an article from Salon.com that tacitly defends Ron Paul?

http://www.walkingbutterfly.com/2011/12/22/ron-paul-is-the-one-percent/

So are we forming a "progressive" united front with the John Birch Society, Lew Rockwell, the Von Mises Institute, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Council of Concerned Citizens against Obama, Wall St., and the Fed?

From the Exiled article:

"Cato's 20th Annual Benefactor Summit in Las Vegas opened in typical Vegas fashion, as founder and president Ed Crane was escorted to the podium by a brace of showgirls [..] proceeded [...] with guest speeches by P.J. O'Rourke, Glenn Greenwald, and Michael Barone, and reports by more than a dozen Cato scholars. Among the more than 100 Benefactors in attendance were [etc.]"

Is this really the sort of heinous character that Kasama wants to promote? Someone who schmoozes with P.J. O'Rourke and Ed Crane at a Koch-funded bourgeois sleaze-fest where womyn are being openly exploited?

Greenwald's "progressive" article promotes the myth that Paul is anti-drug war and anti-imperialist. What sort of "anti-imperialist" wants to intensify the US war on Aztlan and other US internal colonies? (The imperialism in Pakistan and Libya is exactly the same as the imperialism in Arizona and Alabama, as any student of Marxist anti-imperialism knows) As for Paul's alleged anti-War on Drugs principles, this is the same Ron Paul who explicitly supports "states rights". As Corey Robin points out:

"Even people, no, especially people who focus on Paul’s position on the drug war should think about the perils of his federalism. There are 2 million people in prison in this country. At most 10 percent of them are in federal prisons; the rest are in state and local prisons. If Paul ended the drug war, maybe 1/2 of those in federal prison would be released."

This is also the same Ron Paul who calls the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional and along with Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard has basically advocated in the past that local police need more legal powers to extra-judicially harass and torture New Afrikan workers. Ron Paul is the perfect Euro-Amerikan "anti-imperialist" in the tradition of Mark Twain, who rightfully criticized the Philippines War but supported barbaric European settlers in South Afrika.

The Kasama Project must subject themselves to intense self-criticism for allowing this sort of reactionary filth on their website

Many articles posted here do not reflect the views of Kasama. We state this over and over. Posts reflect the views of their authors, and the comment threads reflect the views of those commenting. They are posted because they touch on important issues in interesting ways (and are often producing views NOT shared by anyone associated with the Kasama moderation team.

This is a way of creating a space for revolutionary and communist discussion (which in the threads produces insights into the posts).

<strong>Put another way:</strong> communist views on many questions emerge <em>after</em> exploring them, not before. That should be obvious, i suppose, but sometimes it sounds as if some people believe communist views are obvious and pre-known, so that open discussion in general can be suppressed or avoided.

I don't believe this. Communist and revolutionary views on Paul are not obvious or pre-known... and a discussion from many sides will be helpful for the many people confronting such things anew.

Speaking for myself: I would certainly never advocate any "united front" with paul (who is a racist, anti-Semitic, rabidly pro-capitalist reactionary of the far right). And these things have been repeatedly exposed here on Kasama: <a href="/http://kasamaproject.org/2010/06/05/rand-paul-white-supremacy-the-free-market-and-libertarianism/" rel="nofollow">here</a> for example, or <a href="/http://kasamaproject.org/2007/12/27/vid-ron-paul-on-fascism-flag-and-cross/" rel="nofollow">here</a>.

And those who do advocate such things are often trapped in a kind of single issue lesser-evil politics -- thinking he is antiwar so we could embrace him. And I have to say: there are many people who consider such "lesser evil" alliances of many kinds integral to communist politics (including the notion of alliances with forces like Assad of Syria or Obama of the U.S.) -- and this was (as many people know) the view of communists within the U.S. during World War 2 (when they scrambled to be loyal junior partners in the ruling New Deal coalition).

If you have opinions about Paul or about the politics of seeking lesser-evils within bourgeois politics, feel free to share them.

It is a side issue, but comparing (or worse equating) Ron Paul with Mark Twain is neither accurate or helpful (in my opinion).

Far from self-criticism, Kasama (and Mike Ely) are doing a good job on this. It's one reason Kasama is as widely read and discussed as it is.

I read, post and discuss articles from ruling class sources frequently in other sites I'm responsible for. Take Stratfor, a kind of private CIA for the oil industry. It puts out any number of policy papers and assessments of situations we need to know about and discuss, It goes back to Sun Tzu's 'Know your adversaries and know yourselves...'

Of course, the postings and articles from within the revolutionary or wider progressive movements are even more important, but even there, views will be far from monolithic.

It ain't broke, so don't fix it.

One of the places the lesser of two evils approach will land you:

http://www.countercurrents.org/cook040112.htm

I think communists need to take a vocal and defiant stance against Ron Paul's "anti-imperialist" credentials - which is nothing but a propaganda campaign blitz to endear Paul to young, independent, and left-leaning student voters. Far from not being pre-figured, this sort of Yanqui "anti-imperialism" has been critiqued time and time again by Marxists. E.g. Lenin famously wrote:



<blockquote>"In the United States, the imperialist war waged against Spain in 1898 stirred up the opposition of the 'anti-imperialists', the last of the Mohicans of bourgeois democracy who declared this war to be 'criminal', regarded the annexation of foreign territories as a violation of the Constitution, declared that the treatment of Aguinaldo, leader of the Filipinos (the Americans promised him the independence of his country, but later landed troops and annexed it), was 'jingo treachery', and quoted the words of Lincoln: 'When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs others, it is no longer self-government; it is despotism.' But as long, as all this criticism shrank from recognising the inseverable bond between imperialism and the trusts, and, therefore, between imperialism and the foundations of capitalism, while it shrank from joining the forces engendered by large-scale capitalism and its development-it remained a 'pious wish'."</blockquote>

- Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

(The only difference is that Paul would not agree with Lincoln that "when the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs others, it is no longer self-government; it is despotism")

In 1899, US "anti-imperialist" Carl Schurz said:

<blockquote>"Has not the career of the Republic almost from its very beginning been one of territorial expansion? Has it not acquired Louisiana, Florida, Texas, the vast countries that came to us through the Mexican war and alaska, and has it not digested them well? Were not these acquisitions much larger than those now in contemplation? If the Republic could digest the old, why not the new? What is the difference? [...] All the former acquisitions were on this continent and, excepting Alaska, contiguous to our borders. [...] They were but very thinly peopled - in fact, without any population that would have been in the way of new settlements. [...] They did not require a material increase of our Army and Navy [...] The scheme of Americanizing our 'new possessions' in that sense is therefore absolutely hopeless. the immutable forces of nature are against it. Whatever we may do for their improvement, the people of the Spanish Antilles will remain Spanish Creoles and Negroes, and the people of the Philippines, Filipinos, Malays, Tagals, and so on...a hopelessly heterogenous element - in some respects more hopeless even than the colored people now living among us.".</blockquote>



To quote J. Sakai:

<blockquote>"The politics of the [Anti-Imperialist] League did not support national liberation; they were not anti-capitalist or even anti-racist.The heart of their movement was the appeal of a false past,of the picture of Amerika as an insular European society,of an economy based on settlers' production, in small farms and workshops. They feared the new imperialist world of giant industrial trusts and banks, of international production where the labor of oppressed workers in far-flung colonies would give monopoly capital a financial whip over the common settler craftsman and farmer. They believed,incorrectly, that the settler economy could be sustained without continuing Amerika's history of conquest and annexation.These settlers were opposing imperialism from the ideological standpoint of petit-bourgeois settlerism. It is significant that the League refused to take a stand on the Boer War going on in South Afrika, or on the dispatch of U.S. Marines to join other Western Powers in crushing the Boxer Rebellion in China. And, obviously, the League had no objection to colonialismat home, in the annexed and settled territories of Mexico, the Indian nations,and New Afrika"</blockquote>

Ghan:

I'm well aware of Mark Twain's contradictions -- his view of Native Americans was not enlightened or progressive. And this was true of virtually every radical among Euro-Americans (including the socialists and communists until the 1960s....and the arrival of Wounded Knee and modern Maoism). American socialists didn't historically support the Indians over the cowboys. The CPUSA's books on American history (Anthony bimba's for example) and the non-CP left (like Leo Huberman's "We the People") are shocking when they discuss Native People (or when they don't).

But Mark Twain also was very sympathetic to the Paris Commune (this is rarely discussed in American memories of Twain, so you may not be aware of it).

But still, it is very mechanical to associate this remarkable, militantly blasphemous, anti-racist and very radical writer with a decrepit reactionary and racist hack like Ron Paul.

And I mention this because there are questions of method involved. I don't think a quote from Lenin is an analysis of actual political figures. So Lenin made a passing reference to the U.S. Anti-imperialists. And? This is automatically our view too? Is that how we make arguments now.... you just quote lenin and that settles a complex matter? Lenin described Native people (in passing) as a nation... does that settle this question too? Does this magically free us from actual investigation, debate and analysis?

It is true that the left edge of bourgeois democracy in the U.S. opposed the Spanish American war without crossing over to anti-capitalism. But how does that make Mark Twain into Ron Paul? This kind of argument doesn't satisfy me.

<strong>Anyway:</strong> I think things should be analyzed in their dynamics and context -- and NOT mainly by analogy and disconnected quote slinging.

* * * * * * *

Your main argument is:

<blockquote>"I think communists need to take a vocal and defiant stance against Ron Paul’s “anti-imperialist” credentials – which is nothing but a propaganda campaign blitz to endear Paul to young, independent, and left-leaning student voters."</blockquote>

And sure, i deeply agree. I have been (quite frankly) shocked when various radicals (and even revolutinaries and even communists!) raise their interest or respect in Ron Paul. I am not shocked <em>at them</em> -- these are sincere and honest people who are simply expressing questions and thoughts. But i am a bit shocked at the low level of our movement.

But that brings me to the importance of actually discussing such things... of actually talking them through. Not huffing and puffing and demanding (in some pompous way) that others do lots of self-criticism.

This world is not simple. The truth is not obvious. And when some people think their own views are obviously true it is usually a confession of superficial thinking.

No, the world is complex. The truth takes excavation, investigation and debate. And while we must fight to forge <em>communist</em> views on one key matter after another, we will also discover that we have much to learn (in that process) from others (including even from our opponents).

The word "anti-imperialist" is thrown around a lot these days. It is an honorable word -- I have always been proud to be anti-imperialist. But in the hand of some leftists it has become a way to prettify reactionary regimes in the Third World and (even) apparently a racist hack like Ron Paul. Well, lets get into it. And excavate it in a living and creative way... so people can see that just tailing existing politics of reactionaries is unlikely to serve the people.

* * * * * * * * *

A final point: I have great respect for J. Sakai's excavations of history, and have long used his writings as a source. But I would be careful about accepting his verdicts at face value. In fact, the trend of bourgeois politics that <em> became</em> the anti-imperialists in the late 1800s also opposed the Mexican annexations in the early 1800s. (Grant is an example of someone who, even while in the army and serving in the Mexican war, was clearly against the war -- along with many of his political complexion). Quite a few of the radical democrats of the north were opposed to such southern invasions and adventures because they foresaw the kind of enlarged and powerful slave empire that would/could emerge, and were not wanting to be part of that.


And it is true that many of the radical anti-slavery democrats (i.e. Seward and many like him) were already quite imperialist in their plans and goals.

You quote Sakai saying:

<blockquote>"They feared the new imperialist world of giant industrial trusts and banks, of international production where the labor of oppressed workers in far-flung colonies would give monopoly capital a financial whip over the common settler craftsman and farmer."
</blockquote>

Well, is that such a wrong or reactionary fear? It is not a revolutionary understanding of capitalism, but isn't it true that the <em>actual</em> seeds of a socialist movement emerged from such concerns, especially once it was fertilized with the advanced sentiments of the next waves of raw working class immigrants?

Where do revolutionary ideas and movements come from if not from the radical movements that preceded them, once those movements collide with new conditions and new ideas. How do we judge movements and people and ideas (now and historically)? Is it simply by putting ourselves next to them as some yardstick and finding them (over and over, inevitably) lacking? Isn't that idealist? With those methods everyone (but you!) will fall short. You can apply that method to prove everyone sux. And then what?

And aren't we too flawed and contradictory and in motion? Even you?

People (now and historically) take their political stands from their own understandings and interests. My goal is not to whitewash their contradictions, but to argue against simplistic, ahistorical and undialectical approaches. People enter into struggle with all their contradictions and prejudices -- they learn in the process (and <em>what</em> they learn is up for grabs).

But isn't the point to serve the people, even with their contradictions? Don't we have much to learn (even from people who sometimes know less than us on some points)? Won't people actually making revolution in their millions be animated by quite diverse ideas (that will, inevitably, include many we don't agree with)? Can we even imagine leading such a process if we adopt a mechanical process that remakes Mark Twain into a reactionary, or has an "either/or" approach to people and ideas?

<a href="/http://kasamaproject.org/2011/11/08/raise-the-bucket-from-the-ground/" rel="nofollow">We raise the bucket from the ground.</a> Or we don't really get a chance to raise it at all.

[moderator note: typo fixed.]

Thanks for correcting my original post, I appreciate it.

I think raising the bucket from the ground goes both ways. On the one hand, it means, as you say, "You can’t start at some imagined point midair, because that is where you prefer to begin". On the other hand, the bucket sure as hell can't stay on the ground.

You read into my suggestion that the Kasama Project conduct self-criticism for this article as "huffing and puffing and demanding in some pompous way". The demand for self-criticism among comrades is not pompous but is a revolutionary duty that should be cherished and appreciated. I am more than willing to criticize myself in any way possible, to debase my personal ego for the sake of the revolutionary movement and for my own learning.

My criticism of Kasama Project's inclusion of this article on the blog was all and all its presentation. Here we have Greenwald, a "free market libertarian", an open anti-immigrant racist, a CATO shill who attends Vegas Koch-orgies, writing an editorial that can be, at least in my opinion, only read one way: in a hypothetical election race against Paul and Obama, (which is not too absurd of an outcome to imagine given Paul's success in the Iowa caucus and the radicalization of the GOP center) Paul is somehow a more "progressive" candidate based on a selective interpretation of Paul's stance on cherry-picked "civil liberties" and "foreign policy" issues. Now, this article was printed in Salon.com, a bourgeois-left press outlet. There is, in my mind, no need for a revolutionary press outlet such as Kasama to reprint it, any more than there is a need for y'all to reprint any of the pro-Obama crap being generation by the election-cycle "left". In my mind, there is a need for revolutionary press outlets such as Kasama to focus on criticizing the bourgeois electoral process in the US as a whole, and all prospective candidates as being cut from the same imperialist-bourgeois cloth.

Paragraphs could be written on Paul's relationship to the drug war. As a wealthy doctor and pharmaceutical capitalist he's not exactly a neutral player. Paul doesn't oppose the bloody and genocidal production process, occurring in Latin American neo-colonies such as Mexico and Colombia, that allows the slums and suburbs to be bathed in cocaine, heroin, marijuana, etc. That's just "free markets". And he does not oppose the genocidal use of toxic commodities such as heroin, crack cocaine, etc. to kill off the surplus labor force of US internal colonies. That's more "consumer freedom" at work. Here in Appalachia, the primary tool used by the narco-bourgeoisie to exterminate oppressed peoples is not made out of opium or coca, but over-the-counter drugs that can be legally obtained in any Rite-Aid or CVS pharmacy. (I'm talking of course about crank) Ron Paul does not just oppose shoving black kids and Latina kids in jails - he claims he does, but this is a cover for his real class-interest as a bourgeois politician. Paul has never spoken against vagrancy, prostitution, or truancy laws. (Paul, Rothbard, Rockwell, et al were very frank about demanding local and state police have more legal power and funding to indiscriminately kill and arrest black and Latin youth, back when Paul's political machine was courting the openly fascist right-wing resistance instead of confused, dope-smoking college libertarians, and this political aspiration of the state and county bourgeoisie to get under the yoke of the federal government is the economic base of Paul's anti-fed sentiment) As a "free market capitalist" he enthusiastically supports property laws, yet at the same time as a protectionist interventionist he also enthusiastically supports immigration laws. (But then again, none of these laws effect white college students - Paul's constituency - in the same way that marijuana prohibition does) What Paul really opposes is not the war on drugs (which like all capitalist commodity markets remains in a constant state of war) but the monopoly of the drug market by the federal government and the lumpen-bourgeoisie. What for college left-libertarians and Fox News alike is a "radical, ultra-liberal agenda" is to Paul merely the entrepreneurial pipe-dream of a world where Bayer heroin is sold at Wal-Mart and 7-11 - which admittedly is no worse than what we have now, but also not much better.

I don't need to tell you this, you know it. But you need to tell your kids this. It's not just committed revolutionaries who read this blog, but also random kids from the Occupy movement who are curious about communism but might also still be into Ron Paul - the bucket that needs lifting. That's why posting this article - without even a "hey, this article has a good laundry list of reasons Obama sucks, but it's written by a CATO Paul supporter" disclaimer (rather than a vague suggestion that the article is "well worth the read" followed by a parade of YouTube videos that portray Paul in a positive light) - is so irresponsible. Because Kasama has been on the ground in the Occupy movement, and so has the Ron Paul campaign. And a lot of kids in the Occupy camps are the same kids who are voting for Paul in the caucuses, and would vote for him against Obama - and, somewhat paradoxically - voted for Obama in 2008 against McCain. Thus posting this article would be the equivalent of posting a pro-Obama article sometime in 2008, it provides support for the bourgeois electoral process.

The debates about Mark Twain, Grant's opinions on the Mexican War, the CPUSAs's attitude towards Indians, etc. are all of secondary importance. Sakai merely elaborated on a point initially made by Lenin about US "anti-imperialists" of the Schurz/Twain variety, that I also feel remains bitingly accurate in describing the "anti-imperialist" credentials of Ron Paul. Now remember, Ron Paul doesn't travel around to Iowa calling himself an "anti-imperialist", it's something that some of his more left-leaning supporters have projected onto him. So it's not about Ron Paul the person compared to Mark Twain the person, it's about Ron Paul the symbol of a class-element and a political tendency. The point is not to attack evil and stupid Ron Paul supporters. The point is to challenge them and their assumptions about what it means to be "anti-imperialist". To me being anti-imperialist does not mean ending the wars in Asia, especially if it means more troops to put on the Mexico border. To me anti-imperialism is not about protecting the USA but dismantling it. I'm sure you and I are in total agreement, which is why we need to work together to drive a stake through the Paul campaign's credibility among the left-wing youth counter-culture in the US.

What seems to be missing here is a discussion of class. It seems to me that Ron Paul promotes what is fairly standard petty bourgeois ideology (a particular concept of individual freedom closely tied up with property rights). At its core, the idea seems to be that if the government and the big bourgeois would just quit picking on them so much, the petty bourgeois could rise to their rightful place in society. Thus the opposition to the Federal Reserve and the call for greater financial regulation (it's the bankers keeping the virtuous small businessman down!) along with the opposition to labor and environmental laws (clearly just a government scheme to squelch the virtuous small businessman!), along with support for trade protectionism (the virtuous small businessman shouldn't have to compete with godless chinks!), along with the scorn for immigrants (the virtuous small businessman shouldn't have to compete with greasy Mexicans!) and the poor (not small businessmen and therefore not virtuous). The content is deeply reactionary rather than progressive, and consciously harkens back to a semi-imaginary time when things were better for the petty bourgeois. But it can superficially appear progressive to the extent that it is directed against the upper echelons of the big bourgeois. And, to the extent that it involves class consciousness at all (even if it is just the self-consciousness of the petty bourgeois against the big bourgeois), it probably has a minor salutary effect in a political climate where class is pretended not to exist. But the Occupy movement has already moved the existance of opposing classes back onto the political stage in a much, much bigger and more important way.

"Thus the opposition to the Federal Reserve and the call for greater financial regulation"

To clarify what may be a confusion, calls to dissolve the Fed are about deregulation, not greater regulation, at least as they come from libertarians like Paul.

@Dave - Obviously it's petit-bourgeois ideology we're talking about - I agree completely. It's actually very apropos that a couple of years back, in a frenzied rush to diss Ron Paul, a Fox News commentator once flippantly exclaimed that he "looks like Barney Fife". Behind that seemingly irreverent moment was actually a subconscious admission of the class dynamics at work.

It's certainly safe to say that folks like Fleischer and Rove hate Ron Paul a lot more than they hate Obama or Nancy Pelosi. Why would they? The "neo-conservative" GOP and the "Clinton democrat" DNC are just two wings of a single US ruling party, dedicated to the long-term class interest of the imperialist big-bourgeoisie as a whole. Ron Paul on the other hand, is the public electoral face of a militant white petit-bourgeois that is taking a stand for its own selfish class-interests against the global neo-colonial agenda of the big-bourgeoisie.

To elaborate: Mike Ely touched on an important point when he likened the "anti-imperialism" of Paul supporters to the anti-imperialism of "some leftists" (Not leftists at all in terms of geo-political outlook, but rather retrograde social-fascists) who support "reactionary regimes in the Third World". Both groups analyze geo-politics from a petit-bourgeois dinosaur lens. There's not much substantive difference between Ron Paul's hopes of "restoring America", and the hopes of National Bolsheviks who want to restore the former glory of Soviet social-imperialism.

Everything Ron Paul stands for is not just against the political aspirations of the working-class, but against the long-term class interests of 21st century neo-colonial imperialism. Both wings of the US ruling party recognize the importance of Latin immigrant labor in the US, both wings of the US ruling party want to integrate Mexico into the US power structure, both wings of the US ruling party couldn't give a shit about "energy independence", both wings of the US ruling party are well aware of, and have no problem with, US dependence on labor and other resources from the BRIC and other parts of the former third world. We need to understand what's going on here. When Ron Paul bashes Israel and Saudi Arabia, and when Obama calls Cambridge police "stupid" for hassling his buddy (and fellow neo-colonial comprador bourgeoisie) Professor Gates, we are looking at two sides of an important contradiction within the bourgeoisie. Obama represents a "multicultural", fully international global imperialist bourgeoisie. Ron Paul represents the yesteryear Andy Griffith Show fantasies of an old and decaying settler petit-bourgeoisie.

There's some element of truth when Fox News supporters say Ron Paul's foreign policy is "sympathizing with the enemy". Ron Paul revealed it himself when he spoke of the "real motivations" of militant Islamists at the Tea Party debate, much to the disgust of the neo-con astroturf-Tea Party "populist right" among the crowd. Remember: This is not something Ron Paul would have said in 1968. In 1968 he wouldn't have have been caught dead talking about the "real motivations" of Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Enver Hoxha, Samora Machel, Amilcar Cabral, Joshua Nkomo, Bobby Hutton, Valerie Solanas, Sylvia Rivera, Bernardine Dohrn, Filiberto Ojeda Rios, Pierre Vallieres, Raul Sendic, Benny Levy, or Andreas Baader. In 1968 he would have been another John Bircher fuming about the "global communist conspiracy". We need to emphasize this point.

In 1968 it was the left who "sympathized with the enemy". In 2001, sympathy for Al-Qaeda came from the right, from Billy Roper to Pat Robertson. When Rand Paul rails against the NDAA, do you think he has our backs? Hell no, he's looking out for his dad's buddies in the American Taliban. We need to remember this. The militant Islamists are the Ron Pauls of the Islamic world. Benjamin Barber has it wrong. They're not just fighting against "McWorld", the accelerated internationalism of the global imperialist bourgeoisie. It's actually a three-way fight between jihad, McWorld, and the real international and anti-patriarchal movement of the proletariat. That's what the Arab Spring is really about. That's what's going on when Ikhwanweb in Egypt tries to smear socialists as Mubarak sympathizers - they're equating two separate enemies. (Just like when brainwashed Ron Paul fascists accuse anyone who criticizes Paul from the left of simply being a dupe of the Obama-Romney conspiracy)

I guess I'll be the one to go in for a bit of "irresponsibility."

<blockquote>This article isn’t a rallying cry for Ron Paul’s election, it’s a condemnation of blind Obamabots. America needs communist revolution, not Ron Paul or Barack Obama, the sooner people start to see that, the sooner they critically analyze both candidates rather than following blind partisan impulses, the better for the US and the world.</blockquote>

A rather important point and one that a few commenters here have overlooked, which is pretty incredible given statements like:

<blockquote>So potent is this poison that no inoculation against it exists. No matter how expressly you repudiate the distortions in advance, they will freely flow. Hence: I’m about to discuss the candidacies of Barack Obama and Ron Paul, and no matter how many times I say that I am not “endorsing” or expressing support for anyone’s candidacy, the simple-minded Manicheans and the lying partisan enforcers will claim the opposite. But since it’s always inadvisable to refrain from expressing ideas in deference to the confusion and deceit of the lowest elements, I’m going to proceed to make a couple of important points about both candidacies even knowing in advance how wildly they will be distorted.</blockquote>

Yet somehow:

<blockquote>writing an editorial that can be, at least in my opinion, only read one way: in a hypothetical election race against Paul and Obama, (which is not too absurd of an outcome to imagine given Paul’s success in the Iowa caucus and the radicalization of the GOP center) Paul is somehow a more “progressive” candidate based on a selective interpretation of Paul’s stance on cherry-picked “civil liberties” and “foreign policy” issues.</blockquote>

No inoculation indeed.

Let's first get clear on the argument before we decide whether it's true or not.

Never at any point does Glenn Greenwald make the claim that Paul is more progressive overall than Obama or that progressives should support Paul in a hypothetical match up. Neither does he claim, however, the opposite. What he claims is that Paul is more progressive on certain issues have traditionally claimed to care about and that there's a fundamental intellectual dishonesty at work when Obamabots and "simple-minded Manicheans" refuse <em>apriori</em> this possibility because they're either apologists/shills for the Democratic Party and Barack Obama or because Ron Paul is, overall, a reactionary.

The partisan shills we don't have to worry about much around here. But there is a (rather common) error amongst revolutionary-minded people which also should be challenged, one that stems from dogmatic ideological assumptions about people and their motives.

Take, for example, the following:

<blockquote>I hope that he isn’t the Glenn Greenwald who wrote this article about how Republicans need to get tough on illegal immigration, which he calls evil.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Here we have Greenwald, a “free market libertarian”, an open anti-immigrant racist</blockquote>

Ah yes, Glenn Greenwald, the evil racist, immigrant-hating monster/Koch bros. shill. Why would a revolutionary website post an article from this horrible, horrible person? How can we trust anybody who might have a positive word to say about this man?

<blockquote>Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald)

Posted Sunday 24th April 2011 from Twitlonger
Tweet

@sahar_shafqat That was a 6 yrs ago: 3 weeks after I began blogging, when I had zero readers. I've discussed many times before how there were many uninformed things I believed back then, before I focused on politics full-time - due to uncritically ingesting conventional wisdom, propaganda, etc. I've written many times since then about how immigrants are exploited by the Right for fear-mongering purposes. I'm 100% in favor of amnesty, think defeat of the DREAM Act was an act of evil, etc. That said, I do think illegal immigration is a serious problem: having millions of people live without legal rights; having a legal scheme that is so pervasively disregarded breeds contempt for the rule of law; virtually every country - not just the U.S. insists on border control because having a manageable immigration process is vital on multiple levels. But that post is something I wrote literally a few weeks after I began blogging when nobody was reading my blog; it was anything but thoughtful, contemplative, and informed, and - like so many things I thought were true then - has nothing to do with what I believe now.</blockquote>

Oh wait....you mean that people sometimes make mistakes? That they sometimes say things that they later regret? That they don't always enter into the world from birth with fully worked out revolutionary views on every issue?

I guess what I find absolutely fucking remarkable here is that as communists we're supposed to believe in the movement of people and ideas, in the capacity of folks to come to a more a sophisticated understanding of the world through engagement with the world, and yet here we see absolutely no indication that this is possible. Glenn Greenwald wrote a stupid article back in 2005 when he first started blogging, which he has since repudiated, and that <em>proves</em>, beyond any doubt, that he is a horrible reactionary racist scumbag.

Really? I mean, <em>really</em>? Is that how we should go about evaluating people? "Glenn Greenwald said something stupid more than 6 years ago. We know, therefore, that Glenn Greenwald is a racist." What an incredibly ungenerous view of people!

<blockquote><strong>How do we judge movements and people and ideas (now and historically)? Is it simply by putting ourselves next to them as some yardstick and finding them (over and over, inevitably) lacking? Isn’t that idealist? With those methods everyone (but you!) will fall short. You can apply that method to prove everyone sux. And then what?</strong>

<strong>And aren’t we too flawed and contradictory and in motion? Even you?</strong>

People (now and historically) take their political stands from their own understandings and interests. My goal is not to whitewash their contradictions, but to argue against simplistic, ahistorical and undialectical approaches. <strong>People enter into struggle with all their contradictions and prejudices — they learn in the process (and what they learn is up for grabs).</strong>

But isn’t the point to serve the people, even with their contradictions? Don’t we have much to learn (even from people who sometimes know less than us on some points)? Won’t people actually making revolution in their millions be animated by quite diverse ideas (that will, inevitably, include many we don’t agree with)? Can we even imagine leading such a process if we adopt a mechanical process that remakes Mark Twain into a reactionary, or has an “either/or” approach to people and ideas?</blockquote>

What's also interesting to me is that this hit-job on Greenwald is the exact same one that's been pushed around the liberal blogosphere for months by the Obama apologists. "Anti-immigrant racist, libertarian Koch bros shill -- bad, evil person." It started appearing soon after Greenwald started taking a sledgehammer to the fraudulent, contemptible Mr. Obama and his policies. The years prior to that? Not a word. When Greenwald was hitting the Bush crime family over these same issues it was all good. Glenn back then was a "great progressive." But when phony, lying, despicable Barack Obama began being nailed over the exact same things, oh well then it's open season on apostates.

Of course, anybody who actually reads Glenn Greenwald with an honest conscience knows that, although not a communist, he's nowhere near being a racist or a libertarian Koch Bros. shill. The charges are completely and utterly absurd. And I'm surprised no one else here has said this yet.

@PatrickSMcNally

<blockquote>But if Paul can actually persuade the people who voted for Bush twice to vote for him, then I think that would be a positive sign.</blockquote>

Why would that be a positive sign?

@Carl Davidson

<blockquote>In that sense, my main object is to the title at the top. Lesser evils are not myths; they are facts. The question is do they make a big enough difference requiring us to act in some way, however limited and tactical.</blockquote>

The main point of the article was to critically examine the basis upon which we can judge whether or not the presumption in your question is correct: that Barack does indeed represent the lesser of two evils.

<blockquote>"Why would that be a positive sign?"</blockquote>



Well, of course, it would be.

<blockquote>"But if Paul can actually persuade the people who voted for Bush twice to vote for him, then I think that would be a positive sign."</blockquote>

If the main backbone of people who voted blatantly for war in 2004 and 2008 by casting Republican votes were to deliver a vote in support of Paul in 2012 then that would mark a positive shift in the climate. It would be evidence of accumulating disgust with the wars, and that certainly a good thing.
<blockquote>
"The only caveat I make on that is that no one to the Left of Ronald Reagan should associate themselves with a Paul campaign."</blockquote>

That much, too, should be self-evident.

When self-proclaimed "socialists" get themselves entangled in campaigning for candidates like Barack Obama or Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich or whoever then that just muddles the issues. One doesn't need to cast a vote for Obama (and I most certainly have never voted for any Democrat or Republican, and never would) in order to appreciate that Obama's election in 2008 was a sign of broad public disgust with 8 years of Bush. A nomination of Paul by Republican voters, if such were to occur, would be a further statement of disgust with the Bush legacy. It is not necessary to participate in casting a vote for such bourgeois candidates in order to make a note of the significance of such trends among the traditional voting public.

<blockquote>"My worst nightmare is that Paul will be elected and then as the economy collapses it will be revealed at the 11th hour that his staff of advisers is made up of the founders of the Committees of Correspondence who were trained by Gus Hall."</blockquote>

I can actually picture Ron Paul having an election campaign run for him by people from UFPJ. That would be absolutely terrible. It would provide the Right with a handy scapegoat for every free market disaster that occurred under a Paul presidency.

Thanks for the explanation, Patrick. I think I agree with you on both your major points.

First of all, Ron Paul will not win the Republican nomination. The people that exert the most influence on the Republican Party, the big bourgeoisie and Neocon imperialist set, do not like him, for all the reasons outlined here by others.

Certainly Ron Paul is not an anti-imperialist in the proletarian internationalist sense. If there is an anti-imperialist bent to his foreign policy it is one that stems not from a conviction that all human beings should be free and equal, but mostly from a reactionary, petty bourgeois nationalism. But the fact that millions of ordinary Republican voters are standing against the Neocons' agenda is one important indication of the disarray in the current model of imperialist bourgeois consensus.

Certainly leftists shouldn't support Ron Paul. But it does bring a smile to my face to see bourgeois hegemony starting to fracture a bit.

I'd like to add a couple small observations to this thread.

As a teenager in the late 70s/early 80s, I read Ayn Rand's books and was briefly an "Objectivist". It was my introduction to political philosophy and economics. I was drawn in by the emphasis on freedom and a rationalist world view. As I started to understand a little more about imperialism it wasn't too long before Marxism started to (very reluctantly!) make a lot more sense. My point is that young people today who are being suckered into the Paul campaign are not lost forever, especially given the magnitude of the global crisis we're facing.

I think that if a Communist movement really coalesces in this country, one theoretical task that will be necessary is a really deep debunking of the Austrian school economics of Mises and Hayek and the writings of Ayn Rand. There really needs to be something out there that students can read that drives a stake through their intellectual hearts. Maybe that exists and I just don't know about it?

On a side note, this same article was discussed on the Marxmail list a little while back; I think the discussion here is much deeper and informative -- "the thread is the locus" really seems to be working. Maybe a summary of that argument needs to put into a standard disclaimer link, sort of a "why are we publishing this tripe?" link beneath articles like this.

Anybody catch Ron Paul's proposed new campaign slogan? "Ein volk, Ein reich, Ayn Rand!" Has a certain ring, don't you think?

@mike

Now that we've agreed that the candidates are different, the question remains--is it a difference that makes a difference?

As to 'power to the people' and Harold, plenty of those engaged at the time thought so. As you'll recall, he split the Dems three ways, with the traditional forces running against him. Then there were the council wars. But having died in office, we'll not get the end of the story. Only that the machine forces fought ferociously to take back all their apparatus, and finally did so.

"I think that if a Communist movement really coalesces in this country, one theoretical task that will be necessary is a really deep debunking of the Austrian school economics of Mises and Hayek and the writings of Ayn Rand. There really needs to be something out there that students can read that drives a stake through their intellectual hearts. Maybe that exists and I just don’t know about it?"

Some general summaries can be found here:

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-ausmain.htm

I will say that one of the intellectual exercises that solidified my Marxism and communist identity was reading "Road to Serfdom". I realized that behind the claim that actually existing socialism was Serfdom, lies the truth that capitalism is Slavery. Hayek had a profound impact on me, even if it is diametrically opposed to his intent.

Philosophically, here is the anti-marxist, who embraces the freedom to oppress, rather than the freedom from oppression - and his contrast between individualism and collectivism is actually something I think we should embrace.

I agree that we need an updated critique of Hayek and the entire Austrian School. The heart of his criticism of socialism, however, is the so-called 'information problem,' which is a tougher nut to crack. It's one reason I like Schweickart, because I think he's one of those who cracks it, or at least gets around it. Anyone who has links on the topic, I'd loved to read them.

Thanks Patrick for the links, I will check that out.

It's funny how many Republican politicians claim they've read the "Road to Serfdom". They probably think it's a how-to manual, like "To Serve Man" was a cookbook in the Twilight Zone.

i've heard suggestions that the information problem Hayek puts at the heart of his critique is really not relevant in the age of near universal data about commodities, but I don't know of any theoretical work on the subject.

A breakdown of top Ron Paul contributors

http://imgur.com/a17Ac

I don't know if the information problem isn't relevant, but I'd say that Wal-Mart has made some pretty impressive strides towards solving it. Interestingly, one of Ché Guevara's criticisms of the Soviet model of accounting was that it didn't take sufficient advantage of either technological or organizational advances in capitalist planning within larger, often transnational, corporations. Obviously the advances since Ché's brief tenure as Minister of Industries have only accumulated.

@ TNL Regarding Walmart and systems of co-ordination of production, David Harvey said something similar at a talk he gave in Philadelphia a month ago. He pointed out that big integrated corporations haven't used market mechanisms to assign the allocation of resources <i>inside their own operations</i> for about a hundred years. Zizek suggests something similar very briefly in the interview posted on this site the other day.

What if instead of trying to win back parts of the welfare state we said

"Attention Walton family, board of directors, and shareholders: Walmart is now under the collective management of its employees and customers. From now on, we and the workers in China will be calling the shots. There will be some changes in how business is conducted. That is all"

To me the notion of just stitching a technological or organizational form developed under specific conditions of capitalist production onto a socialist project is a good example of why the Cuban socialism rapidly degenerated into capitalism.

Cuba degenerated into capitalism? Not by a long shot. It's a mixed economy, but the new reforms will be moving it in a good direction, in my book.

@Carl -

"Food allocations for lunches and snacks at most state workplaces were cut by 50 percent [...] Cubans typically get free state-provided meals when accompanying hospitalized relatives, but the new rules put a stop to that [...] " - Reuters - 06/01/09

"...the teenage boy in the barber's chair stared at his reflection, aghast and almost crying. 'What have you done?' he asked, caressing uneven clumps on a shorn scalp. [...] 'It's like ...,' he struggled for words,'a tennis ball. A bald bloody tennis ball.' [...] The barber took another drag [from his cigarette] and put out his hand. 'Forty pesos. Have a nice day.' [...] Authorities announced on Monday that they would lay off more than one-million state employees in the island's biggest economic shake-up since the 1960s. The cuts begin immediately, with 500 000 jobs due to go by March 2011. Loosened controls on private enterprise will, it is hoped, jump-start the private sector and turn former public workers into entrepreneurs. the changes started in April this year with a pilot scheme to privatise barbers and hairdressers. Formerly employees of the state -- about 85% of the labour force works for the communist state -- they were told to take over their own salons, charge whatever they wanted, pay tax -- and court customers." - Guardian, 09/17/10

"With Raúl Castro at the helm, many expect Cuba to follow the Chinese model of reform, where the gradual establishment of free-market incentives through partial economic liberalization is pursued..." - Brookings Institute, 01/12/12

"Cuba announced a new property law Thursday that promises to allow citizens and permanent residents to buy and sell real estate [...] Mario Coyula, Havana’s director of urbanism and architecture in the 1970s and ’80s, said that wide-scale buying and selling would lead to a 'huge rearrangement' in Havana and other cities as the wealthy move to better areas. He and others said it would inevitably exacerbate class conflict. And because the island has a shortage of housing — with many families and even divorced couples continuing to live together for lack of a better option — critics say that any displacement could raise the prospect of homelessness. For example, if two families are sharing a home and one holds what currently amounts to Cuban title with limited rights, the new law says that the titleholder can sell and the tenant family will eventually have to move. Many Cubans say they are afraid that the market system will leave them in the lurch. 'What happens if I sell my home and then I can’t find another one to buy? Where do I sleep?' said Félix Méndez, a 47-year-old hospital technician [...] One unanswered question involves the role of foreigners and Cuban exiles. The law generally requires permanent residency, but Mr. Freyre said the section of the law applying to areas of 'descanso' or “veraneo' — vacation or summer destinations — leaves open the possibility of looser enforcement in selected places, perhaps coastal areas, Old Havana and the golf communities that are currently under development with foreign investment." - New York Times, 10/03/11

"...the [Cuban] state will likely cut health, education, and food benefits, creating a significant gap between the rich and the poor. In fact, this is already happening. In recent years, as Cuba has experimented with market reform, studies have found a widening income gap between the country’s most wealthy and the poor. Since Castro reduced the food subsidy in 2009, Cuba’s poorest have faced serious hunger and malnutrition for the first time since the revolution." - Institute for Policy Studies, 09/29/10

The wonders of "mixed economy"

However, I wasn't making a statement about the current wave of liberal austerity "reforms" in Cuba but about how the post-revolutionary Cuban state was originally set up. Tell No Lies was touting the Cuban model of transplanting capitalist technological and organizational forms onto a socialist society. This model is a failure and leads to rapid capitalist restoration. A socialist transition to communism is a radical new social model with its own radically different modes of technological organization, to be created by vision of an army of construction workers, scientists, engineers, homemakers, horticulturalists, architects, artists, etc. freed from the task of providing labor for capital. Socialism actualized as a worker-controlled Wal-Mart would be hellish and I would guarantee it would lead to capitalist restoration in less than five years. Also, Che, like most people of his historical time, did not understand the ecological dimension of the capitalist crisis, an understanding that most people of our historical time take for granted. (Hence his enthusiasm for nuclear war) A global communist Wal-Mart would lead to complete ecological collapse in less than 30 years time.

Although no one's gotten it right, I honestly think the closest was the Chinese model, (despite all its glaring flaws) with its emphasis on decentralized rural light industry. We are conditioned to believe otherwise with all the "Great Leap Forward = Nazi Genocide of 80 Gazillion People" propaganda in western academia - it's left socialism with the notion that Soviet/Cuban shock-industrialization is the only alternative.

Ghari:

Inexpensive products come from an imperialist food chain of the predators on top and those who are metaphorically beaten up and ate alive for our own enjoyment on the bottom. I have no doubts that it is not sustainable to continue to produce on that trajectory.

But why shouldn't we have large retailers under socialism? Could you elaborate on your point?

@Ghan

Are you serious? One anecdote about a bad haircut is supposed to make your case? Or the fact that a blockaded country has shortages?

Cuba does well, even better than any country in Latin America, on things that matter most--health care, infant mortality, education and so on. It has difficulties due to 'over-nationalization,' which are being corrected with a new program for state-assisted worker cooperatives, among other things. In any case, Cuba will find a Cuban model--not Chinese, not Soviet, but its own way. Maybe it will do well, maybe not. Our task is to end the blockade and U.S. disruptive sabotage and interference.

"It has difficulties due to ‘over-nationalization,’"

In other words it has difficulties with socialism.

@Ghan

Do you really think socialism requires the nationalization of every shoeshine stand or vegetable peddler?

I think resources and planning are better spent on other matters

Socialism is a transition to communism, which is the abolition of class-divisions wage labor, money, bureaucracy, the division between mental and manual labor, and the commodity form. (In other words, under communism, everyone gets vegetables for free and people shine their own shoes) Cuba was stuck in socialism, degenerated into state-capitalism, and is now making the leap to neo-liberal capitalism. I find it disturbing that you would apologize for neo-liberal austerity....

@Ghan

Cuba is not 'stuck' in socialism. It's steadily making its way through a long zig-zag transition, step-by-step. Communism requires a far higher development of culture and productive forces, wherein the working day approaches zero and the amount of living labor in any given commodity approaches zero. Those are the conditions of abundance that allows nearly everything to be free, not just vegetable. It decades away, if not far longer, especially on a world scale.

Cuba is not making any 'leap' to 'neoliberal capitalism.' They are laying off nonproductive bureaucratic workers in state offices, and giving them assistance to set up worker-owned cooperatives to produce much-needed goods and services in an efficient way. We'll see soon enough how it works out.

Cuba faces austere conditions, and has done so for some time. This is simply a fact, and needs no 'apology' from me or anyone else. The new reforms are an attempt to do something about it in a mass and popular way that Cubans themselves have some enthusiasm for.

But your own thinking seems to argue that all they need do is rally everyone in the streets and make some Stakhanovist 'leaps' and they'll be able to abolish all classes and money lickety-split. Sorry, but I simply don't think revolutionary social change works that way. The masses make history, but not just as they choose. Despite old Maoist dogma, the productive forces matter as well, and often a great deal..

Your characterization of my position as "Stakhanovist" and "dogmatic Maoist" is a strawman...it is precisely because the productive forces are of primary concern that Cuba is objectively state-capitalist and its current "reforms" are objectively a transition from state-capitalism to liberal capitalism. It goes back to Lenin, who famously said "small-scale production gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie, constantly, daily, hourly, elementally and in vast proportions".

But I'm interested as how laying off hundreds of thousands of workers, slashing education, healthcare, and food programs, and privatizing housing so workers can be evicted and their homes turned into golf resorts for vacationing gusano yuppies constitutes "revolutionary social change".

@Ghan

Primary concern for developing productive forces in a small and relatively backward unicrop economy in the third world is 'objectively state-capitalist.' That's an interesting and odd theory. Until you can do better at unwinding that one, I'll stick with my 'strawman' description of it.

Cuba has made great advances in some sectors--biotech, health care schooling and so on. It wants to do more in oil production, which is necessary but problematic. Tourism is a natural advantage of all Caribbean countries, and there is no reason Cuba should not make use of it.

Cuba is indeed 'tightening its belt' in some sectors, so other sectors, more needed and more productive, can be advanced. You seem to think that it can simply choose to do whatever you think is 'Red', without regard to the financial resources available and the productive forces at hand. Your quote from Lenin is one side of the story; the other side is the NEP. Cuba's new efforts with worker-owned cooperatives doesn't even go that far.

Socialism is a transitional and mixed economy. That means it has a variety of classes and forms of ownership. The key question is the direction, the class in charge, and meeting the core needs of the masses, with their participation.

But then I'm one that agrees with the notion that one of the key contradictions in many socialist countries is between advanced social relations, on one hand, and backward productive forces, on the other. That puts me in the Bukharin, Liu Shao-chi, Chou En-lai and Deng Xiao-ping camp--but that's never been a secret around here.

In any case, I'm no expert on Cuba. I visited there a few times many years ago, and may do so again to learn more. But they seem to be headed in a decent direction, given their conditions and circumstances.