Cuba: No ‘New Man’

[ygalan]

Adam,You quote Lenin re "prerequisites of civilisation" etc, and you answer "him" thus"Answer: in everything that Karl Marx wrote."Don't you think you ought to be more specific?! 

[PJShannon]

Following is a discussion on the page titled: Cuba: No ‘New Man’.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!

[ALB]

I thought it was well-known that Marx held that capitalism paved the way for socialism, by developing the productive forces to the point where plenty for all was possible and educating and training a population able to operate them. The implication being that a socialist revolution was not possible in the absence of these conditions and that any attempt to establish socialism in their absence was doomed to failure.You seem to have overlooked that the article did go on to quote a passage from the German Ideology to back this up:

Quote:

Marx and Engels pointed this out in a passage in The German Ideology which is the perfect answer to Lenin’s question (though Lenin was not aware of it since this work wasn’t published until 1932). Discussing ‘the alien relation between men and what they themselves produce’ when there is private property, they wrote:'This “alienation” (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, ie. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced .'

[Anonymous]

ALB wrote:

I thought it was well-known that Marx held that capitalism paved the way for socialism, by developing the productive forces to the point where plenty for all was possible and educating and training a population able to operate them. The implication being that a socialist revolution was not possible in the absence of these conditions and that any attempt to establish socialism in their absence was doomed to failure.You seem to have overlooked that the article did go on to quote a passage from the German Ideology to back this up:

Quote:

Marx and Engels pointed this out in a passage in The German Ideology which is the perfect answer to Lenin’s question (though Lenin was not aware of it since this work wasn’t published until 1932). Discussing ‘the alien relation between men and what they themselves produce’ when there is private property, they wrote:'This “alienation” (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, ie. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced .'

There were many works of Marx and Engels that Lenin did not read, and the one that he read were distorted by him. 

[Anonymous]

Ernesto Che Guevara is a whole contradiction,  he supported a moneyless society but he became the head of Industrial and Commerce of Cuba and he also was the head of the Central Bank of Cuba. He was against Soviet imperialism but he went to Africa to defend the interests of the Soviet Union, and he negotiated the installation of Soviet Missiles in Cuba. The only real socialist group which has existed in Latin America was formed in Jamaica. 

[ALB]

Actually I think that Lenin's last articles, of which his Notes on Sukhanov was one, show that Lenin realised that Marx had been right and that the only way forward for Russia was capitalism, albeit under the control of the Bolshevik government (which he called the "proletarian state").More evidence to suggest that Lenin admitted Marx was right in this article:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1970/no-788-april-1970/did-lenin-admit-defeat

[Anonymous]

ALB wrote:

Actually I think that Lenin's last articles, of which his Notes on Sukhanov was one, show that Lenin realised that Marx had been right and that the only way forward for Russia was capitalism, albeit under the control of the Bolshevik government (which he called the "proletarian state").More evidence to suggest that Lenin admitted Marx was right in this article:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1970/no-788-april-1970/did-lenin-admit-defeat

At the end of his life, he wrote certain articles which show the opposite that he said when he was younger and he was very active within the Bolsheviks. The problem is that Leninists do not want to admit that he admitted that he was wrong. There is no such thing as an ambivalent Lenin as has been indicated by Kevin Anderson a Marxist Humanists

[Anonymous]

It looks like the concept of the new man did not work for the oldest son of Fidel Castro known as Fidelito which committed suicide a few days ago, and also the daughter and the sister of Salvador Allende committed suicide in Cuba several years ago https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/world/americas/fidel-castros-eldest-son-commits-suicide-cuban-media-says.html

[Author]

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