[Marxism] Does "socialism mean Big Brother state control of your life"??????????

[Walter Lippmann]

In the summer of 1964, along with Nat Weinstein, at that time a member
of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee, and New York City
organizer of the party, I spent a remarkable week in upstate New York
collecting signatures to put the SWP presidential candidates, Clifton
DeBerry for President and Ed Shaw for Vice-President on the ballot in
New York State. It was quite a task. In those days it was necessary to
collect a minimum of fifty signatures in every county in the state to
qualify for ballot status. Just like the state of Alaska receives two
members of the U.S. Senate as does the states like New York or else of
California also get two Senators, these distribution requirements were
designed to make it much harder to get on the ballot, but the SWP made
terrific efforts and succeeded in obtaining ballot status.

Joaquin is entitled to his memories. I recall that we tended to emphasize
the right of the candidates to appear on the ballot. When pressed, we
didn't make a point of our socialist politics, even less of our great
enthusiasm for certain developments 90 miles south of Florida, but put
our stress on the democratic right of different viewpoints to obtain the
right to participate in the formal political process. It was hard work,
but it helped to maintain the SWP's legal status, and it helped the SWP
to get a modest amount of publicity, too.

While I know I'm getting older and my memory isn't what is used to be, it
was my impression, once upon a time, that Joaquin Bustelo was a supporter
of the Cuban Revolution, which declared as early as 1961, that it had a
socialist character. Socialism was seen in Cuba then, and today it still 
is, seen as something favorable, not something pejorative. For Joaquin it
may be that this is no longer the case, as we're reading some of his more
recent contributions to discussions on the Internet. 

Cuba has many problems of course, of which not 100% are attributable to the
blockade of the island, but are we really reading Joaquin Bustelo saying:

"In my experience, socialism means Big Brother state control of your life"?
"In my experience, socialism means Big Brother state control of your life"?
"In my experience, socialism means Big Brother state control of your life"?
"In my experience, socialism means Big Brother state control of your life"?
"In my experience, socialism means Big Brother state control of your life"?
"In my experience, socialism means Big Brother state control of your life"?
"In my experience, socialism means Big Brother state control of your life"?

While we didn't emphasize our socialist politics when petitioning to get on
the ballot, we never went to this extent to conceal our politics so that they
wouldn't clash with the diseducation which was so widespread at the the time.
But perhaps having pleasant drinks with people whom Joaquin describes as being
gusanos has changed his opinion about some of these matters?


Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California
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JOAQUIN BUSTELO declares:
In my experience, socialism means Big Brother state control of your life,
like under Hitler and Stalin, at best, the Gulag or a firing squad at worst
-- like under Hitler and Stalin. Unless you get real unlucky and get a Pol
Pot and half the population of country gets exterminated in a year or two.  
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2008-September/036704.html
============================================================================
JOAQUIN BUSTELO advises:
Why don't you go join a KKK or CANF mailing list, where your disruptions
would do some good?
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2008-September/036703.html
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JOAQUIN BUSTELO reports:
As for Sam Farber, he is a gusano who genuinely wants to be a socialist, and
a very pleasant person to have a drink or two with. Just don't talk about
Che, because it brinhs out the contradiction between what he is and what he
imagines himself to be. Otherwise he is ok.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/swp_usa/message/6761
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NESTOR GOROJOWSKI writes:
Joaquín remembers Peter Camejo telling a youthful audience of the YSL
«how you got these statements from the ACLU or a judge or something in
favor of third parties being allowed to participate and this being
part of democracy and all that, and used that statement on an index
card to cover up the name of the party and the candidates at the top
of the petition sheet. And he related going up to a middle aged woman
and recounted the motherhood-and-apple-pie spiel he presented
--basically, if you didn't sign, you were a Benedict Arnold running
guns to the Brits at the Battle of Bunker Hill and trying to sink
Washington's rowboat while crossing the Potomac-- and the woman was
just about to sign when she hesitated and said, "you're not
communists, are you?"  And Peter, play acting himself, put on an
outraged face and said, feigning tremendous offense, "Excuse Me!!!!"
To which, as he related it, the woman replied, "of course not," and
signed.»



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     WALTER LIPPMANN
     Los Angeles, California
     Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
     "Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"
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