DOCSLIB.ORG

Restructuring the Socialist Economy

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Restructuring the Socialist Economy CAPITAL AND CLASS IN CUBAN DEVELOPMENT: Restructuring the Socialist Economy Brian Green B.A. Simon Fraser University, 1994 THESISSUBMllTED IN PARTIAL FULFULLMENT OF THE REQUIREMEW FOR THE DEGREE OF MASER OF ARTS Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies O Brian Green 1996 All rights resewed. This work my not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. Siblioth&ye nationale du Canada Azcjuis;lrons and Direction des acquisitions et Bitjibgraphic Sewices Branch des services biblicxpphiques Youi hie Vofrergfereoce Our hie Ncfre rb1Prence The author has granted an L'auteur a accorde une licence irrevocable non-exclusive ficence irrevocable et non exclusive allowing the National Library of permettant & la Bibliotheque Canada to reproduce, loan, nationafe du Canada de distribute or sell copies of reproduire, preter, distribuer ou his/her thesis by any means and vendre des copies de sa these in any form or format, making de quelque maniere et sous this thesis available to interested quelque forme que ce soit pour persons. mettre des exemplaires de cette these a la disposition des personnes int6ress6es. The author retains ownership of L'auteur consenre la propriete du the copyright in his/her thesis. droit d'auteur qui protege sa Neither the thesis nor substantial th&se. Ni la thbe ni des extraits extracts from it may be printed or substantiefs de celle-ci ne otherwise reproduced without doivent 6tre imprimes ou his/her permission. autrement reproduits sans son autorisatiow. PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE I hereby grant to Sion Fraser Universi the sight to Iend my thesis, prosect or ex?ended essay (the title o7 which is shown below) to users o2 the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the Zibrary of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Title of Tbesis/Project f Extended Essay CAPITAL AND CLASS IN CUBAN DEYELOPMENT: RESTRUCTURING THE SOCIALIST ECONOMY Author:_ (signature) Brc. 3 14%. (date) APPROVAL Name: BRIAN S. GREEN Degree: Master of Arts Title: "Capital And Class In Cuban Development: Restructuring The Socialist Economy" Examining Commit tee: Chair: John ~&rnan, Assistant Professor, Geography Senior Supervisor Ronald'C. Newton Pmfejm, History GdoWro Associate Professor, Sociology & Anthropology G-ple Associate Professor, Sociology & Anthropology External Examiner ... Ill ASSTRACT Since the coilapse of the Soviet bloc, Cuba has entered what Fidel Castro refers to as a 'special period in peacetime', marked by severe economic crisis and an extensive search for new partners in trade and development. Concurrent with this process, the country has embarked on a massive campaign to restructure its labour laws, property rights and social policy, in order to re-make the Cuban economy as a climate conducive to investment and economic growth. Cuba's reform process has been watched carefully by international observers, and though opinion differs substantially, the vast majority of research and analysis assumes the progressive and inevitable nature of the island's restructuring. Analysts on both the Left and the Right conclude that contemporary economic constraints offer no alternative but a submission to capital's emerging world order. Similar sentiments are expressed by Cuban state leaders, who argue that socialism is no longer politically feasible, and that Cuba can retain its basic Revolutionary principles only through a temporary accomodation with global capitalist demands. This thesis traces the history of the Cuban alternative from the early years of the Revolution through the present, in order to explore how the current crisis emerged and why reform is taking the shape it is. I conclude that, despite its many transformations, the Cuban socialist project failed to address, let alone transcend, the ruie of capital; thus, if the current reform process has embraced ptmtly capitafist mechanisms, this is largely a result of the Revolution's faif ure fo overcome capital's basic components: alienated labour, exploitation, and the primacy of exchange over use value. This conclusion then calk for a rethinking of fundamental Left analytical categories in order that radical theory and politicai action can move beyond the limits of s:ate-led, economic Marxism such as that which has inspired Cuban development fw the past thirty-seven years. This study would not have been possible without considerable support from a number of institutions and individuals. A research grant from the International Development Research Centre made my work financially possible, and extensive logistical support was afforded by Cuban institutions (academic and otherwise) and official representatives. This thesis has been edited and revised a number of times, and I thank all those who have offered comments and suggestions on various aspects of the project: John M. Kirk, Sid Shniad, Marilyn Gates, Michael Lebowitz, and Chris Vance. A very special thanks is owed my thesis supervisors, Ronald C. Newton and Gerardo Otero, who have provided support from the first days searching for a thesis topic through to the last typos. And sincere thanks also to Gary Teeple, who agreed to serve as external examiner, and to Conrad Herold, who provided the spark which set this analysis in motion. Each of these peopie has offered knowledge and insight, and I have benefited a great deal from the various disciplines and perspectives they represent. kstly, I thank the innumerable friends and family members who have torerated my obsession with Cuba for the past two years. I dedicate this to Lucia and Maxwell Rupondo, who made communism a way of life, and my partner Joanna Shniad, without whose encouragement, commitment and understanding tkrb cau!d never have been written. capital: a labour relationship in which work is imposed for the express purpose of fueling accumulation and reproducing itself, rather than satisfying a specific need; a process in which objectified labour, i-e. property, is combined with labour objectified through the work-process to produce still more objectified labour, i.e. a commodity market capitalism: a political-economic system for the management of capital relations, generally characterized by private ownership of property, the buying and selling of labour-power, and the market as primary mechanism for determining productive goals, prices and wages socialism, actually-existing: a post-market political-economic system for the management of capital relations, generally characterized by state ownership of property, command mechanisms for surplus-value extraction, and a state- planned strategy for accumulation; esp. related to states headed by official Marxist-Leninist Parties socialism: any number of utopias or political-economic systems which post-date market capitalism; generally characterized by socialization of ownership or abolition of property and mechanisms for mass democracy; in this thesis, socialism generally refers to actually-existing socialism Approval Page Abstract Acknowledgements Definitions Table of Contents I. Introduction Cuba in the Emerging World Order Making Sense of Socialism: class analysis in a post-modern age Notes to Chapter One II. The Revolution: class and socialisms Revolution and State The 'Push for Communismf: Che Guevara and the moral revolution From Development to Crisis: Cuba's 'retreat' to socialism Notes to Chapter Two Ill. Restructuring Sociatism Crisis and Rectification The 'Periodo Especial' and Socialist Restructuring Notes to Chapter Three IV. Capital and Class in Cuban Socialism Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives in the Emerging World Order Theorizing State Socialism: situating capital and moving beyond Notes to Chapter Four V. Towards a Political Conclusion Politicat Implications of a Class Analysis of Cuban Socialism Notes to Chapter Five References 132 Chapter One ~~TRODUCTION Cuba in the Emerging World Order With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Cuba lost 85 percent of its foreign trade, as well as its primary sotme of political and ideolagical support. Between 1989 and the present, the country has undergone a period of dramatic restructuring that has left no sphere of life untouched; by its own definition, Cuba is attempting a thorough reform of its pofitical and economic structures in order to safeguard specific achievements as the country moves into a new era, one characterized by greater integration into the world economy and a significantly re-defined 'socialist future'. As the means of such restructuring, Cuba has introduced wide- ranging changes in recent years: the legalization of foreign ownership of property and of private enterprise, a sharp increase in joint ventures between the Cuban state and private foreign capital, the end of official 'full employment' and the re-establishment of the right to hire and fire labour, the opening of private markets, and the dismantling of many state farms and their transformation into workers' cooperatives. This research will reinterpret the origins of the contemporary Cuban crisis and efforts at reform in order to understand how it has developed historically and why restructuring is taking the shape it is.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Miércoles, 8 De Diciembre Del 2010 NACIONALES
    NACIONALES miércoles, 8 de diciembre del 2010 de cuál había sido siempre nuestra conducta con (Aplausos). ¡Ahora sí que el pueblo está armado! recibido la orden de marchar sobre la gran los militares, de todo el daño que le había hecho la Yo les aseguro que si cuando éramos 12 hombres Habana y asumir el mando del campamento tiranía al Ejército y cómo no era justo que se con- solamente no perdimos la fe (Aplausos), ahora militar de Columbia (Aplausos). Se cumplirán, siderase por igual a todos los militares; que los cri- que tenemos ahí 12 tanques cómo vamos a per- sencillamente, las órdenes del presidente de minales solo eran una minoría insignificante, y que der la fe. la República y el mandato de la Revolución había muchos militares honorables en el Ejército, Quiero aclarar que en el día de hoy, esta noche, (Aplausos). que yo sé que aborrecían el crimen, el abuso y la esta madrugada, porque es casi de día, tomará De los excesos que se hayan cometido en La injusticia. posesión de la presidencia de la República, el ilus- Habana, no se nos culpe a nosotros. Nosotros no No era fácil para los militares desarrollar un tipo tre magistrado, doctor Manuel Urrutia Lleó (aplau- estábamos en Habana. De los desórdenes ocurri- determinado de acción; era lógico, que cuando los sos). ¿Cuenta o no cuenta con el apoyo del pue- dos en La Habana, cúlpese al general Cantillo y a cargos más elevados del Ejército estaban en blo el doctor Urrutia? (Aplausos y gritos). Pero los golpistas de la madrugada, que creyeron que manos de los Tabernilla, de los Pilar García, de los quiere decir, que el presidente de la República, el iban a dominar la situación allí (Aplausos).
    [Show full text]
  • Ernesto 'Che' Guevara: the Existing Literature
    Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara: socialist political economy and economic management in Cuba, 1959-1965 Helen Yaffe London School of Economics and Political Science Doctor of Philosophy 1 UMI Number: U615258 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615258 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 I, Helen Yaffe, assert that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Helen Yaffe Date: 2 Iritish Library of Political nrjPr v . # ^pc £ i ! Abstract The problem facing the Cuban Revolution after 1959 was how to increase productive capacity and labour productivity, in conditions of underdevelopment and in transition to socialism, without relying on capitalist mechanisms that would undermine the formation of new consciousness and social relations integral to communism. Locating Guevara’s economic analysis at the heart of the research, the thesis examines policies and development strategies formulated to meet this challenge, thereby refuting the mainstream view that his emphasis on consciousness was idealist. Rather, it was intrinsic and instrumental to the economic philosophy and strategy for social change advocated.
    [Show full text]
  • Cuban Leadership Overview, Apr 2009
    16 April 2009 OpenȱSourceȱCenter Report Cuban Leadership Overview, Apr 2009 Raul Castro has overhauled the leadership of top government bodies, especially those dealing with the economy, since he formally succeeded his brother Fidel as president of the Councils of State and Ministers on 24 February 2008. Since then, almost all of the Council of Ministers vice presidents have been replaced, and more than half of all current ministers have been appointed. The changes have been relatively low-key, but the recent ousting of two prominent figures generated a rare public acknowledgement of official misconduct. Fidel Castro retains the position of Communist Party first secretary, and the party leadership has undergone less turnover. This may change, however, as the Sixth Party Congress is scheduled to be held at the end of this year. Cuba's top military leadership also has experienced significant turnover since Raul -- the former defense minister -- became president. Names and photos of key officials are provided in the graphic below; the accompanying text gives details of the changes since February 2008 and current listings of government and party officeholders. To view an enlarged, printable version of the chart, double-click on the following icon (.pdf): This OSC product is based exclusively on the content and behavior of selected media and has not been coordinated with other US Government components. This report is based on OSC's review of official Cuban websites, including those of the Cuban Government (www.cubagob.cu), the Communist Party (www.pcc.cu), the National Assembly (www.asanac.gov.cu), and the Constitution (www.cuba.cu/gobierno/cuba.htm).
    [Show full text]
  • Los Estudiantes Universitarios En La Revolución Cubana De 1959*
    LOS ESTUDIANTES UNIVERSITARIOS EN LA REVOLUCIÓN CUBANA DE 1959 Referencia para citar este artículo: Acevedo-Tarazona, Á., & Lagos-Cortés, E. (2019). Los estudiantes universitarios en la revolución cubana de 1959. Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Niñez y Juventud, 17(1), 89-101. doi:https://dx.doi.org/10.11600/1692715x.17105 Los estudiantes universitarios en la revolución cubana de 1959* ÁLVARO ACEVEDO-TARAZONA** Profesor Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia. EMILIO LAGOS-CORTÉS*** Candidato a Magíster Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia. «Los estudiantes son los baluartes de la libertad y su ejército más firme.» José Martí Artículo recibido en agosto 2 de 2018; artículo aceptado en octubre 24 de 2018 (Eds.) • Resumen (descriptivo): este artículo de reflexión aborda la actividad revolucionaria desarrollada por el movimiento estudiantil cubano de la Universidad de La Habana durante la lucha contra la dictadura de Fulgencio Batista entre los años de 1952 y 1959. A través del análisis de algunos documentos primarios se identifica el proceso de lucha entre los opositores conciliadores y los radicales ante la dictadura de Batista para obtener el apoyo del estudiantado cubano. Entre los radicales se ubicaron dos corrientes agrupadas en torno a Fidel Castro y José Antonio Echeverría; en la medida en que avanzó la lucha revolucionaria, la cor- riente propiamente estudiantil de Echeverría disminuyó su autonomía y terminó subordinándose política y militarmente a la dirección revolucionaria del Movimiento 26 de Julio. Palabras clave: Cuba, dictadura, historia, movimiento estudiantil, revolución, violencia (Tesauro digital Unesco). University students in the Cuban Revolution of 1959 • Summary (descriptive): This reflective article highlights the revolutionary activities carried out by the Cuban student movement at the University of Havana during the struggle against Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship between 1952 and 1959.
    [Show full text]
  • Che Guevara's Final Verdict on the Soviet Economy
    SOCIALIST VOICE / JUNE 2008 / 1 Contents 249. Che Guevara’s Final Verdict on the Soviet Economy. John Riddell 250. From Marx to Morales: Indigenous Socialism and the Latin Americanization of Marxism. John Riddell 251. Bolivian President Condemns Europe’s Anti-Migrant Law. Evo Morales 252. Harvest of Injustice: The Oppression of Migrant Workers on Canadian Farms. Adriana Paz 253. Revolutionary Organization Today: Part One. Paul Le Blanc and John Riddell 254. Revolutionary Organization Today: Part Two. Paul Le Blanc and John Riddell 255. The Harper ‘Apology’ — Saying ‘Sorry’ with a Forked Tongue. Mike Krebs ——————————————————————————————————— Socialist Voice #249, June 8, 2008 Che Guevara’s Final Verdict on the Soviet Economy By John Riddell One of the most important developments in Cuban Marxism in recent years has been increased attention to the writings of Ernesto Che Guevara on the economics and politics of the transition to socialism. A milestone in this process was the publication in 2006 by Ocean Press and Cuba’s Centro de Estudios Che Guevara of Apuntes criticos a la economía política [Critical Notes on Political Economy], a collection of Che’s writings from the years 1962 to 1965, many of them previously unpublished. The book includes a lengthy excerpt from a letter to Fidel Castro, entitled “Some Thoughts on the Transition to Socialism.” In it, in extremely condensed comments, Che presented his views on economic development in the Soviet Union.[1] In 1965, the Soviet economy stood at the end of a period of rapid growth that had brought improvements to the still very low living standards of working people.
    [Show full text]
  • Not for Distribution
    6 The decline of the legitimate monopoly of violence and the return of non-state warriors Cihan Tuğal Introduction For the last few decades, political sociology has focused on state-making. We are therefore quite ill equipped to understand the recent rise of non-state violence throughout the world. Even if states still seem to perform more violence than non- state actors, the latter’s actions have come to significantly transform relationships between citizens and states. Existing frameworks predispose scholars to treat non-state violence too as an instrument of state-building. However, we need to consider whether non-state violence serves other purposes as well. This chapter will first point out how the post-9/11 world problematises one of sociology’s major assumptions (the state’s monopolisation of legitimate violence). It will then trace the social prehistory of non-state political violence to highlight continui- ties with today’s intensifying religious violence. It will finally emphasise that the seemingly inevitable rise of non-state violence is inextricably tangled with the emergence of the subcontracting state. Neo-liberalisation aggravates the practico- ethical difficulties secular revolutionaries and religious radicals face (which I call ‘the Fanonite dilemma’ and ‘the Qutbi dilemma’). The monopolisation of violence: social implications War-making, military apparatuses and international military rivalry figure prominently in today’s political sociology. This came about as a reaction to the sociology and political science of the postwar era: for quite different rea- sons, both tended to ignore the influence of militaries and violence on domestic social structure. Political science unduly focused on the former and sociology on the latter, whereas (according to the new political sociology) international violence and domestic social structure are tightly linked (Mann 1986; Skocpol 1979; Tilly 1992).
    [Show full text]
  • Revolutionaries
    Relay May/June 2005 39 contexts. In his book Revolutionaries (New York: New Press, 2001), Eric Hobsbawm notes that “all revolutionaries must always believe in the necessity of taking the initia- tive, the refusal to wait upon events to make the revolu- tion for them.” This is what the practical lives of Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Mao, Fidel tell us. As Hobsbawm elabo- rates: “That is why the test of greatness in revolutionar- ies has always been their capacity to discover the new and unexpected characteristics of revolutionary situations and to adapt their tactics to them.... the revolutionary does not create the waves on which he rides, but balances on them.... sooner or later he must stop riding on the wave and must control its direction and movement.” The life of Che Guevara, and the Latin American insurgency that needs of humanity and for this to occur the individual as part ‘Guevaraism’ became associated with during the ‘years of this social mass must find the political space to express of lead’ of the 1960s to 1970s, also tells us that is not his/her social and cultural subjectivity. For Cuban’s therefore enough to want a revolution, and to pursue it unselfishly El Che was not merely a man of armed militancy, but a thinker and passionately. who had accepted thought, which the reality of what then was The course of the 20th century revolutions and revolu- the golden age of American imperialist hegemony and gave tionary movements and the consolidation of neoliberalism his life to fight against this blunt terrorizing instrument.
    [Show full text]
  • CHE, the ERRORS and the CUBAN REVOLUTION Dr
    ROCA. Revista científico - educacional de la provincia Granma. Vol.14 No.1, enero-marzo 2018. ISSN: 2074-0735. RNPS: 2090. [email protected] CHE, THE ERRORS AND THE CUBAN REVOLUTION Dr. C. Manuel de Jesús Verdecia-Tamayo, Profesor Asistente, University of Granma, [email protected], Cuba. Lic. Eleinis Rodríguez-Guisado, Profesora Instructora, University of Granma, [email protected], Cuba. Lic. Dangel Alexeis García-González, Profesor Instructor, University of Granma, [email protected], Cuba. INTRODUCTION The twentieth century and the passing of the new millennium confirm, dramatically, the need to reflect on how to build the Socialist Revolution from concrete potentialities, limitations, dangers and constraints, which are diverse but also common. This issue calls for the unprejudiced, honest and objective examination of the mistakes made in failed experiments and in the existing "socialist" models. In this context, the social sciences acquire a special significance, since they can offer answers through the examination of reality, and their perspectives, that allow to warn, to avoid or to solve errors that could hinder or make impossible the construction of the new society. The accumulated results indicate that to make socialism we cannot act and much think as we have done so far. The historical-social, theoretical-practical referents are not found in the collapsed experiments of Eastern Europe, nor in the former "real" Soviet socialism; nor on the roads that have survived. Moreover, the transformations that are now carried out in the current socialisms generate doubts, ruptures, resistances, incongruities, contradictions and questions still to be cleared. Examining errors becomes a vital condition for building the Socialist Revolution.
    [Show full text]
  • THE POLITICAL THOUGHT of the THIRD WORLD LEFT in POST-WAR AMERICA a Dissertation Submitted
    LIBERATION FROM THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE THIRD WORLD LEFT IN POST-WAR AMERICA A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Benjamin Feldman, M.A. Washington, DC August 6, 2020 Copyright 2020 by Benjamin Feldman All Rights Reserved ii LIBERATION FROM THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE THIRD WORLD LEFT IN POST-WAR AMERICA Benjamin Feldman, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Michael Kazin, Ph.D. ABSTRACT This dissertation traces the full intellectual history of the Third World Turn: when theorists and activists in the United States began to look to liberation movements within the colonized and formerly colonized nations of the ‘Third World’ in search of models for political, social, and cultural transformation. I argue that, understood as a critique of the limits of New Deal liberalism rather than just as an offshoot of New Left radicalism, Third Worldism must be placed at the center of the history of the post-war American Left. Rooting the Third World Turn in the work of theorists active in the 1940s, including the economists Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran, the writer Harold Cruse, and the Detroit organizers James and Grace Lee Boggs, my work moves beyond simple binaries of violence vs. non-violence, revolution vs. reform, and utopianism vs. realism, while throwing the political development of groups like the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the Third World Women’s Alliance into sharper relief.
    [Show full text]
  • Marxism and Guerrilla Warfare
    chapter 6 Marxism and Guerrilla Warfare Marx and Engels had noted the important role played by guerrilla warfare in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars (Marx 1980), in India during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (Marx and Engels 1959), and in the United States, particularly by Confederate forces, during the Civil War (Marx and Engels 1961), but they never made a direct connection between guerrilla warfare and proletarian rev- olution. Indeed, it is notable that Lenin, in writing about guerrilla warfare in the context of the 1905 revolution, made no mention of Marx and Engels in this regard. For Lenin, guerrilla warfare was a matter of tactics relevant “when the mass movement has actually reached the point of an uprising and when fairly large intervals occur between the ‘big engagements’ in the civil war” (Lenin 1972e: 219). Trotsky, as we saw in Chapter 5, thought of guerrilla warfare in the same way, relevant for the conditions of the Civil War but not so for the stand- ing Red Army after the Bolsheviks achieved victory. It was the association between guerrilla warfare and national liberation and anti-imperialist movements over the course of the twentieth century that el- evated guerrilla warfare to the level of strategy for Marxism. There was no one model of guerrilla warfare applied mechanically in every circumstance, but instead a variety of forms reflecting the specific social and historical condi- tions in which these struggles took place. In this chapter I examine the strategy of people’s war associated with Mao Zedong and the strategy of the foco as- sociated with Che Guevara.
    [Show full text]
  • The Communist International, the Soviet Union,And Their Impact on the Latin America Workers’ Movement
    The Communist International, the Soviet Union,and their impact on the Latin America Workers’ Movement DAN LA BOTZ Abstract: The Soviet Union and A L the Communist International had an adverse influence on the Latin CONTRA American workers’ movement, ), 1957-1964. continually diverting it fighting for UCIÓN L a democratic socialist society. They ALHE T REVO A DE subordinated the workers’ movements L ( to the interests of the Soviet . Union’s ruling class, the Communist IQUEIROS PORFIRIANA bureaucracy. At one moment, they led S the workers’ movement in disastrous ARO F L uprisings, while in a subsequent era A they encouraged it to build alliances DICTADURA AVID with capitalist and imperialist power. D Keywords: Soviet Union. Communist International. Communist Parties. Cuba. Workers Movement. A Internacional Comunista, a União Soviética e seu impacto no movimento de trabalhadores da América Latina Resumo: A União Soviética e a Internacional Comunista tiveram uma influência adversa no movimento latino-americano de trabalhadores, frequentemente, distraindo-o de sua luta por uma sociedade socialista democrática. Ambas subordinaram os movimentos de trabalhadores aos interesses da classe dominante na União Soviética, a burocracia comunista. Em um momento, dirigiram o movimento de trabalhadores para levantes desastrosos, DAN LA BOTZ enquanto em um período subsequente encorajaram-no a fazer alianças com Ph.D in American history and poderes capitalistas e imperialistas. professor at the Murphy Institute, the Palavras-chaves: União Soviética. labor school of the City University Internacional Comunista. Partidos of New York. He is the author of ten Comunistas. Cuba. Movimento de books on labor, social movements, Trabalhadores. and politics in the United States, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Indonesia.
    [Show full text]
  • Breaking the Spell
    Praise for Breaking the Spell “Christopher Robé’s meticulously researched Breaking the Spell traces the roots of contemporary, anarchist-inflected video and Internet activism and clearly demonstrates the affinities between the anti-authoritarian ethos and aesthetic of collectives from the ’60s and ’70s—such as Newsreel and the Videofreex—and their contemporary descendants. Robé’s nuanced perspective enables him to both celebrate and critique anarchist forays into guerrilla media. Breaking the Spell is an invaluable guide to the contempo- rary anarchist media landscape that will prove useful for activists as well as scholars.” —Richard Porton, author of Film and the Anarchist Imagination “Breaking the Spell is a highly readable history of U.S. activism against neo- liberal capitalism from the perspective of ‘Anarchist Filmmakers, Videotape Guerrillas, and Digital Ninjas,’ the subtitle of the book. Based on ninety interviews, careful readings of hundreds of videos, and his own participant observation, Robé links the development of better-known video makers such as Videofreex, Paper Tiger Television, ACT UP and Indymedia with activist media makers among key protest movements, such as the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit, Oregon’s Cascadia Forest Defenders, the day workers of Voces Mobiles/Mobile Voices in Los Angeles, and the indigenous youth in Outta Your Backpack Media. Underscored by significant tensions of class, race/ethnicity, and gender among the groups and the videos discussed, Robé traces the continuing concerns
    [Show full text]