Paper presented April 4, 2009 at the University of California, Irvine.
EXTRACT:
Wertkritik focuses its analysis on abstract value as a “real abstraction” that constitutes an end in itself and that generates capital’s overall dynamic. Anticapitalist movements have all failed because they have been unable to alter this dynamic, which would entail truly overcoming the commodity fetish by abolishing abstract value. I won’t go into more detail here, but will only say that, within this critical paradigm, Cuba, along with the former Soviet Bloc, is seen as a manifestation of a global trend within capital. This trend, dominant from the post-war period until the early 70s, can be called “state interventionist capitalism,” the two major variants of which are Keynesianism and “actually existing socialism.”
