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mikelepore
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mikelepore
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 Posted:
22 Feb 2008 09:01 am Post subject:
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Some gems of wisdom I found at revleft.com
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1077866&postcount=38
posted by: Ultra-Violence
I Love You Fidel!
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1077916&postcount=42
posted by: CubaSocialista
Fidel Castro has been, pretty much, my political
mentor. His speeches, his writings, have inspired me.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1078137&postcount=46
posted by: SouthernBelle82
Aw I'm sorry you're so down. *hugs* I'm actually
not that surprised really. I think it's just surprising because it's
unexpected. I have been thinking he'd probably resign sometime soon but
just didn't know when. Hopefully Raul will help to inspire the people to
continue what Fidel started.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1078206&postcount=56
posted by: Trystan
Castro is opposed to free speech, has murdered and
imprisoned people who expressed opposing views, and as someone who
considers socialism to be about social struggle, he has little sympathy
from me.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1078259&postcount=64
posted by: Lenin II
Quote: Castro is opposed to free speech.
Oh Lenin. Here we go again with the bourgeoisie
"human rights" argument, the argument posed by many socialists
who cry crocodile tears over the reactionaries and landlords imprisoned
and not allowed to vote in state matters. Guess what? It is fine. It's not
"terrible" at all. It is anything but terrible. The concern for
"human rights" is nothing more than a tool for combating the
rise of the peasants an proletariat against the interests of the
landlords; it is a counter-revolutionary theory.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1078271&postcount=68
posted by: Trystan
Why do you assume that all people opposed to Castro
are "bourgeois"? Have you considered that maybe some of Castro's
opponents are actually socialists? Today, most of the people who speak
out against Castro are not bourgeois but proletarians. But perhaps you
share Lenin's view that the people are too stupid to think for themselves
and have to be lead toward a great future that they are too dumb to be
able to envision for themselves.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1078273&postcount=69
posted by: Captain Communism
He has outlived 9 US presidents, this guy is a
living legend, I just hope his voice is still heard for as long as he
lives.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1078356&postcount=75
posted by: Nothing Human Is Alien
Quote: Why do you assume that all people opposed to
Castro are "bourgeois"?
With "leftists" like these, who needs
rightists? You should see if you can get a job writing press releases for
the State Department.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
22 Feb 2008 09:17 am Post subject:
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Castro said in his announcement of Feb. 19: "the
complex and almost unattainable art of organizing and leading a
revolution". I guess it would seem difficult when an aim of that
"revolution" is to suppress the people's freedom of speech and
other individual rights. The supporters of the Cuban government often
speak of their "revolution" in the present tense - they're
fighting it right now. Ever wonder why? No one has lifted a finger
against them since the Kennedy administration. I think it's because the
process of suppressing personal freedoms must be an ongoing process, many
decades after the old propertied class has been abolished.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
22 Feb 2008 11:09 am Post subject:
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If two or more topics related to current events get
started by anyone, that is, this topic and at least one other, then I
probably should make a new forum category for current events and then
move this topic there.
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The Greenman
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Posted:
22 Feb 2008 03:53 pm Post subject:
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Well we do see the sick puppies over at revleft are
either in tears over Castro like this rather odd fellow is over... ah
hem:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LWSjUe0FyxQ
Spongebob did it better:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=va7q7rZifQ8&feature=related
It is really a shame that "human rights
abuses" are nothing more than bourgeoisie arguments. Free speech,
freedom of assembly, etc., have to repressed simply because they are
bourgeoisie? Come on now. It's okay to torture people, use them as slave
labor or kill them just because they don't agree with Leninist ideology.
I am afraid that it might be necessary to contain and control these crazy
ideological worshipers or better yet, give them their own island to
argue, kill or enslave each other as they fight to be "King of the
Hill." Ah, wait a minute...they already have an island.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
23 Feb 2008 05:08 am Post subject:
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Yes, that's probably the most deplorable thing about
the left, belittling basic human rights as "bourgeois values",
"a bourgeois abstraction", etc. They will never recruit many
people, and it's a good thing too.
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davesearles
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Posted:
25 Aug 2008 02:07 pm Post subject:
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the below from an article
Will the Real "Che" Guevara Please Stand
Up? Labor and Authoritarianism in Sandinista Nicaragua by Stephen F.
Diamond, Santa Clara University School of Law
Whether or not the new revolutionary State was a
"Boss" is central to understanding the
tension between a national liberation movement and
a trade union movement. To Guevara, and
to the FSLN some years later and to similar
movements today, because the vanguard
organization had taken state power in the name of
the working class and had established some
form of input into decision-making for workers,
then workers were no longer allowed to view the
State as an adversary.
Instead of fighting for workers' basic interests,
defined democratically from below by the
workers themselves, it was now the role of labor
leaders to implement State policies elaborated
by the revolutionary vanguard. "What should be
clear...is what Fidel said the other day: The best
labor leader is not the one who fights for his
comrades' daily bread. The best labor leader is the
one who fights for everybody's daily bread, the one
who understands the revolutionary process
completely, and who, analyzing it and understanding
it in depth, will support the government and
convince his comrades by explaining the reasons for
the revolutionary measures." This is, of
course, "transmission belt" trade
unionism so familiar to students of Stalin's Russia
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=stephen_diamond
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mikelepore
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Posted:
25 Aug 2008 09:28 pm Post subject:
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How do they pick their leader?
Was Fidel Castro reelected by the people each
consecutive term of office from 1959 to 2008, or was he appointed
dictator for life like Julius Caesar?
Do they have no-reason-to-waste-your-shoe-leather
elections in Cuba, that is, only one name appearing on the ballot? Or do
they have real elections, that is, the incumbant challenged by other
candidates?
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davesearles
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Posted:
26 Aug 2008 11:21 am Post subject:
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The point that I took from it was that the
"vanguard" instead of the representatives of the workers seems
to become the state. The article went on to suggest this same phenomenon
occuring in Nicaragua and Venezuela.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
26 Aug 2008 06:32 pm Post subject:
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Quote:
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that the
"vanguard" instead of the representatives of the workers
seems to become the state
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In such a system, the party line would be to say
that they are all identical in their case --- that they're the vanguard,
they're the representatives of the workers, and they're also the state.
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davesearles
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Posted:
26 Aug 2008 07:11 pm Post subject:
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No not identical identical. Becuase then the lowly
worker just might get it into his counter revolutionary head that s/he's
a a part of the vanguard. You know that's not going to fly down at party
hdqts.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
26 Aug 2008 09:43 pm Post subject:
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In any system, the average person can't stroll in and
declare that he or she is on the city council or national council. There
has to be a process for naming the people who are part of it. So the quality
of any political system depends largely on what their elections look
like.
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davesearles
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Posted:
27 Aug 2008 03:37 am Post subject:
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ml:
the party line would be to say that they are all
identical in their case
ds:
Duh, I though that it was you who were saying
identical - the party line says that they're identical. OK, got it.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
27 Aug 2008 10:10 am Post subject:
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Anyhoo, this is what I feel is most non-socialist
about the "socialist countries" -- that lacking the freedom to
dissent and having one name on the ballot is to have no election at all.
If they had fair political elections then everything else probably would
converge, with workers and communities really controlling the industries.
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davesearles
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Posted:
27 Aug 2008 12:19 pm Post subject:
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As in Russia??
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mikelepore
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Posted:
27 Aug 2008 10:52 pm Post subject:
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All of them. Everywhere in the world that a
"Communist Party" acquired power, its distrusted the people,
forbidding the people to speak and or to write or to assemble. To say
that you would like to challenge a government official by runing for
office yourself was considered by the government to be an act of disloyalty.
Whenever people ask us "How is your goal different from the
'Coommunist' regimes?", I believe our answer should begin with the
issue of democratic practices and individual freedom, not with the issue
of workers managing the industries. The USSR's network of soviets and a
supreme soviet probably would have been functional as workers' management
if the government had only permitted debate and debates and contested
elections.
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Jacob Richter
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Posted:
28 Aug 2008 02:01 am Post subject:
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Since you've probably read Chapter 6 of my work
already, I stated the case that even such network of soviets isn't really
"enough," per se. I read some CPGB stuff recently on how
soviets, when initially created for strikes and what not, were tools of
various political parties (which have the explicit goal of taking power).
Yes, democratic practices and what not should be
the starting point, but within a party that aims to encompass, in very
literal terms, the vast majority of the proletariat. After all, parties
are the only groups that have the explicit goal of taking power.
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davesearles
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Posted:
28 Aug 2008 04:01 am Post subject:
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"(which have the explicit goal of taking
power)."
From whom?
Or sharing power?
But Mike I would challnge whether the soviet
structure was ever so comprehensive that it could have operated the
industies as a whole on a workers' collective basis had they been
deomocratic.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
28 Aug 2008 05:39 am Post subject:
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If it wasn't already what it needed to be, then it was
close enough so that it could have been reformed to become what it needed
to be -- if the people had the power to do that.
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davesearles
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Posted:
28 Aug 2008 07:44 am Post subject:
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If the wizard were a wizard who would serve.
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davesearles
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Posted:
28 Aug 2008 11:00 pm Post subject:
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ml:
If it wasn't already what it needed to be, then it
was close enough so that it could have been reformed to become what it
needed to be -- if the people had the power to do that.
ds:
Are you telling us that we wasted all of those many
years propounding SIUism to the Soviet block when we should have simply
propounded actual soviet democracy?? Ouch baby!
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mikelepore
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Posted:
29 Aug 2008 12:32 am Post subject:
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What's
the difference between the two things? The USSR had the steel workers
elect delegates to the steel workers council, and the railroad workers
elect delegates to the railroad workers council, etc. Then they all got
together in a big hall that was full of about five thousand workers'
delegates. So far so good. Now what did they do? Now they said: just tell
us what the Central Committee of the Communist Party wants us to do and
we'll automatically rubber stamp it. So they were all there. They just
couldn't act independently.
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