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On Feb 8, 2013, at 12:55 PM, John Wesley wrote:
Ever heard of "microfactionalism" ? Ever heard of anibal Escalante?
He was expelled from the Cuban CP on that accusation. His "crime"?
He was too pro-Soviet. lol
Indeed. The Escalante affair was a major point I raised in the SWP at
that time. At issue, of course, was the fact that he had been
expelled on undefined charges of "bureaucratism" without ever being
allowed to present his case to anyone outside the Castroite
leadership. The hacks running the SWP plus their acolytes Barnes,
Camejo, and Sheppard of course were applauding. I objected on the
ground that if Cuba claimed to be democratic Escalante's political
views, right or wrong, needed to be debated in front of the Cuban
workers rather than being administratively suppressed. Which of
course made me and my views a target for administrative suppression.
On Feb 8, 2013, at 11:52 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:
The Cuban CP does not have factions but that does not mean that
there are not fierce debates.
And there were, no doubt, even fiercer debates [post-Stalin] on the
CPSU's politbureau (as Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev et. al.) could
attest. But (until Gorbachev) not a word of those debates was ever
heard in public. As in Cuba (cf. Carlos Lage). The debates take
place behind closed doors and are decided by a self-coopting bunch
quite willing to "demote" dissenters. In a democratic organization
or in a democratic country the only meaningful debate is that which
takes place in public, and the only legitimate decisions on policy
are made after that debate by majority vote of the members or
citizens. The Communist Manifesto proclaimed that the *first* act
of the working class upon seizing power is to "establish
democracy." The power of the soviets was a democratic power, and
that was why Lenin and Trotsky were right to proclaim the Russian
revolution as "proletarian"--and why the Cuban revolution and its
state Party are not.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
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