the_dunk_tank

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Members of DSA went to Cuba and met with Dissidents (and declined to meet with the President) (redstarcaucus.org)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The entire article is very good and gives a solid reasoning (for baby leftists, not anyone here) of why we need to support Cuba. It also highlights the weakness of both the DSA and the DSA IC from within that allowed this to happen + the steps they need to take. Give it a read. (The more I read stuff like this plus the history of real movements I realize why things like DemCent and other hardline ML things are needed but that's not a discussion for here).

I'm highlighting just the parts relevant to the title.

Multiple delegates chose to skip out on parts of the programming, including declining to meet with the president of Cuba, who held a frank conversation with the delegates who did attend for more than two hours.

Throughout the trip, members of the delegation from the Reform & Revolution Caucus (R&R) and the Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC) criticized the Cuban government both to our Cuban hosts and other DSA members, and skipped out on multiple delegation events. Most shamefully, both Maria (representing R&R) and Renée (representing SMC, and a member of the current NPC) skipped out on meeting with President Díaz-Canel, who spent more than 2 hours in a frank discussion specifically addressing the critiques these very same DSA members brought up to their Cuban hosts earlier on the trip. This means that the Cuban hosts were listening thoughtfully to the critiques and relayed them back to the President. That our Cuban comrades would care this deeply and thoroughly about our critiques is a sign that they honor us as equals and truly want to make ties with U.S. socialists, as relatively powerless as we are.

Maria in particular met with anti-government opposition groups while on delegation, which when taken together with the fact of her skipping the meeting with the comrade President suggests a goal of undermining the Cuban socialist state, not defending it against U.S. imperialism. Furthermore, R&R declined to follow what few guidelines the International Committee offered around discussion of the trip after returning. Delegates were instructed to keep news of the conversation with President Díaz-Canel private until an official reportback; R&R decided instead to discuss this at their caucus panel, pre-empting the official reportback.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

it's an engels quote that's a bit controversial round these parts

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/letters/73_06_20.htm

There's some good advice for communist orgs in here:

it is easy to pay too much attention to one's rival and to get into the habit of always thinking about him first. But both the General Association of German Workers and the Social-Democratic Workers' Party together still only form a very small minority of the German working class. Our view, which we have found confirmed by long practice, is that the correct tactic in propaganda is not to draw away a few individuals and members here and there from one's opponent, but to work on the great mass which still remains apathetic.

So people in PSL, PCUSA, CPUSA, DSA, etc. need to avoid poaching each other and blood feuds and work in parallel. There are so many potential comrades sitting in squalor and indolence and ignorance. There is a great field to be harvested going to rot, while we try to eat each other. That's not to say they should never critique one another, but it should not be the primary focus of the organization such as certain Maoist sects that focus entirely on sabotaging other leftist groups.

For the rest, old Hegel has already said: A party proves itself a victorious party by the fact that it splits and can stand the split. The movement of the proletariat necessarily passes through different stages of development; at every stage one section of people lags behind and does not join in the further advance; and this alone explains why it is that actually the "solidarity of the proletariat" is everywhere realised in different party groupings which carry on life and death feuds with one another, as the Christian sects in the Roman Empire did amidst the worst persecutions.

If the Neue Sozial-Demokrat for example has more subscribers than the Volksstaat, you ought not to forget either that each sect is necessarily fanatic and through this fanaticism obtains, particularly in regions where it is new (as for instance the General Association of German Workers is in Schleswig-Holstein), much greater momentary successes than the Party, which simply represents the real movement, without any sectarian oddities. But on the other hand, fanaticism does not last long.

Once there's a party that represents the real movement, it's one of those things you'll know when you see it. When the masses are actually on board it's a lot different than how it is now in the west with little fractured fanatical oddities. One of them may seize the moment and make the correct decisions and become a vanguard when the real movement is swelling. Or if none of them do, hopefully a new party forms that can. If none can then the moment will pass.