Hey Michael Balter!

What are the FREEDOMS Cubans lack? The Right to a decent job? the
Right to free healthcare? the Right to a free education all the way
thru graduate school? The right to constructively criticize the
government? The right to a roof over your head at no more than 10% of
your income? The Right to equal pay for equal work? The right to equal
access to any job regardless of gender or race? The freedom to
artistically express yourself without demeaning your people and your
nation? The right to food? The right that every baby have the
nutritional basics to grow into healthy children and adults?

Or is it the right/freedom to pursue the amassing of private wealth by
any means necessary? Or the freedom/right to take CIA money to help
undermine the present Cuban government?

Please specify for me these "FREEDOMS" that are lacking in Cuba.

in Struggle,

Sam Anderson

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
On Apr 29, 2008, at 10:44 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:

> Michael Balter wrote:
>> Let's have one last go at this. The clear lack of freedoms in a
>> country like Cuba, which too many leftists still see as a last
>> beacon of socialism, discredit socialism in the eyes of most of the
>> world--including those who would have every reason to embrace
>> socialist ideals otherwise. Those who make excuses for the lack of
>> democracy, as Louis does consistently on this list, give objective
>> aid to the discrediting of socialism, just as those who defended
>> the Soviet Union through thick and thin objectively helped doomed
>> the socialist project for generations. Full stop.
>
> But you are not interested in socialism except in the sense that
> Michael Harrington was for it. You are a liberal, not a socialist.
> That confusion has existed since the early part of the 20th century.
> In the thousands of words you have unleashed on this poor mailing
> list, you have never once addressed the question of *economics*. It
> does not make sense to talk about socialism without addressing the
> mode of production. Cuba was forced to tighten controls over the
> political system because it tightened controls over the economy.
> When American corporations saw their assets being returned to the
> Cuban people, they promoted military aggression. If Latin American
> history in the 20th century has taught us anything, it is that
> radical economics invites American intervention. In order for
> American intervention to be successful, it needs an open door into
> the political process of the country it seeks to overthrow. It uses
> the NED and other such subversive institutions in order to corrupt
> the political process. Marc Cooper and the bourgeois media promote
> the right of the NED to throw millions of dollars around in Cuba in
> order to create "dissident" movements. I can understand why you
> would support this right since both of you look at the world through
> the eyes of the millionaires who employ you. How sad that 1960s
> radicals could end up in such a groveling, sycophantic state. Just
> look at Cooper's tirade at Jeremiah Wright today to see how far to
> the right people like you have traveled.