I have very little time all summer, but this thread is always on the back of my mind, because I feel I'm failing my promise to answer.
I think I left here
Quote:
Originally Posted by JCC
Given the growing interdependence of national economies as part of a wider global tapestry, how would a country largely bereft of an industrial base or natural resources that formerly depended upon the service sector survive without the global market, assuming that it is a singular, isolated Marxist state rather than part of a wider movement of Marxist revolutions?
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It wouldn't. Marx was an internationalist, as am I, and further Marxists just get more internationalist than Marx, with Lenin expanding on Marx to explain how imperialism tries to save capitalism, Trotsky proclaiming anything but an international revolution will fail, and several post-colonial Marxists analyzing what international socialism must imply without becoming Eurocentric.
There are some socialists who believe that socialism is possible in one sole country, but I am not one of them, and I can't defend that position.
Even less can I defend the idea of a pre-industrial country becoming independently socialist, and experience teaches us that all countries who fit this profile end in dictatorships.
This is because an isolated country without industrialization simply cannot produce the resources to supply all its people. Already in the capitalist system, countries like these have high inequality and high mortality and morbidity rates, but at least it is the norm, and can trade with most of the world to maintain a certain degree of wealth, even if it is to a small section of the population.
If this country were to become socialist it would have to spend much more in each of its citizens, and in the present political landscape this shift to the left would mean heavy sanctions, if not embargos, by the first world.
Cuba has miraculously survived (I have many problems with castro in the social and political aspects of his regime, but not so much in the economic one) but overall it's just an economic reality that if a state tries to control a pre-industrial economy, at best it will become a populist command economy (not necessarily bad or oppressive but certainly neither marxist nor liberal), or at worst it will be Khmer Rouge totalitarian. Hell, the Khmer Rouge is a good example of it.
On a related side-note, and also as a blatant self-promotion, my PhD. thesis will probably be related to this question. (decided to go into political science instead of philosophy)
The history of Latin America is overwhelmingly left-wing, and virtually all our heroes have been communists, anarchists, or very progressive social democrats (Simon Bolivar and his friends are basically the only traditional liberals and even he wanted some social securities for the underprivileged)
Empirically, studies have shown a correlation between the strength of left-wing parties and the amount of political and social liberties in the country. Nevertheless, strict Marxist parties never win, and in my opinion they cannot. All left-wing parties began as radical leftists, but they either had to readjust to the current game in play (Brazil's Partido Dos Trabalhadores), they compromised and coalesced to form unambiguously socialist but more reformist and moderate organizations than they initially wanted (Chile's Concertacion and Nicaragua's FSLN), they appeal to populist sentiments instead of socialist progress (Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez), or they remain in relative obscurity (Mexico's Partido del Trabajo)
Again, Cuba is an outlier, but even there, the revolution was actually largely middle class, with Castro even declaring that Cuba is neither socialist nor capitalist, but humanist. It's only later on that Cuba declared itself to be Marxist-Leninist.
The reason for this, I believe, is the immense informal economic sector of Latin American countries, that cannot be accounted for in Marxist orthodoxy. Where in orthodox Marxism the petit bourgeoisie wobbles between bourgeois and proletarian, this informal sector can drift into petit burgeoisie, proletariat, and even lumpenproletariat.
One can certainly offer workers equal social benefits, but the real interest in Marxism is how to organize them into a mass movement strong enough that can defend its own interests in the face of the government. How can the marxists do that in Latin America where half the population works in the informal sector of the economy, a sector so fluid and ambiguous, that it's hard to discover their collective interest, let alone mobilize them entirely in that direction?
Marx never would have thought of this. They are neither petit bourgeoisie, nor proletarians, nor lumpenproletarians; or they are all.
Latin American Marxism must find an answer to this, not only if it wants to be successful, but if it wants to be useful at all. For now, leftism will be almost certainly the norm, but not Marxism.
