Honestly its rude to be invited by a country to meet their president who decided to respond to your criticisms of their administration only to not show up and go meet the opposition.
Being invided and then no showing shows complete disregard to basic diplomatic Etiquette since it was a mission to show solidarity against the embargo
Bonus socdems being cringe part 4.5: about another member that didnt show up to the presidential meeting
Deeply unserious people
Cool, why skip out on a meeting with the President of Cuba’s government to discuss it in a constructive way then?
“To indulge in irresponsible criticism in private instead of actively putting forward one’s suggestions to the organization. To say nothing to people to their faces but to gossip behind their backs, or to say nothing at a meeting but to gossip afterwards. To show no regard at all for the principles of collective life but to follow one’s own inclination. This is a second type.”
Maria has been working non stop for as long as I’ve known her. She’s one of the best comrades I’ve had the pleasure of working with. She is a machine that turns liberals into communists. She has tirelessly organized for trans rights in Florida of all places. She is an anti-imperialist through and through.
“To regard oneself as having rendered great service to the revolution, to pride oneself on being a veteran, to disdain minor assignments while being quite unequal to major tasks, to be slipshod in work and slack in study. This is a tenth type.”
To your first point, it seems as though her main complaint was there wasn’t much of a way to dialogue with both party officials and the critical left she talks about.
To your second, no one likes when someone they know and respect is being fed-jacketed.
How useful her critiques are when even the non-government critical-voice she talked to (Maykel Vivero) said:
the most systemic change must happen through a change of policy in the United States. Absent that, the most likely possibilities for Cuba’s future would be 1.) a Chinese-style mixed economy, which would significantly increase inequality and leave workers without a democratic voice, or 2.) a full capitalist restoration, which would be a world-historic disaster for the working-class.
I think even she doesn’t really see the realities, considering she thinks Cuba’s standard of living can be raised and there can be less discontent if more voices are heard.
She wants the support to be more critical, but considering how bad the embargo is (and everyone in her group and the Cubans she talk to agree about), it seems as if this is largely a pointless exercise. No government is perfect, but what can you do from America where more people are pushing for an overthrow than an embargo lift. Weird not to mention Allende in this whole discussion too.
She literally posted in her critique that she met Maykel Vivero, who did positive coverage of the San Isidro movement. The San Isidro Movement leader Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara took money from an org that gets money from USAID and NED. Like don’t do fed shit if you’re gonna complain about people thinking you’re a fed. And yea, fed jacketing is bad but that’s like literally fed shit.
Her criticisms come from an incredibly idealist perspective and are divorced from any understanding of power or how a communist party functions. Even lauding Fidel, but ignoring him: “within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing”. introducing “alternative leftist voices” for its own sake accomplishes nothing but sating the unending liberal tendency to act indecisively and fight amongst each other, even when facing an existential threat. Constantly railing against the “bureaucracy” and constantly trying to create a distinction between the communist party from the masses, from the perspective of an outsider… from the imperial core… from the US no less, the primary enemy of the Cuban revolution… It is incredibly telling that that is what she spends her time on. If she is such an incredible organizer and ardent communist then she should focus on revolution within the US
Her criticisms come from an incredibly idealist perspective and are divorced from any understanding of power or how a communist party functions
I’ll emphasize again, and not a attack on the person who wrote it but a reminder of reality, DSA is not a communist party.
It is not a leninist party of the new type, it is a social democratic party in function regardless of whatever form they or anyone else claim to be.
Organizing is about building capacity to engage in action. Recruiting, educating, and getting other people involved and connected.
If you’re really good at doing that for the purposes of chauvinism, ignorance, and toeing the line of the NED constellation of bullshit, you are not doing a good thing and are doing something that is actually very easy in the context of an the American supremacist liberal environment in which everyone has been raised.
