Fidel Castro?

[Viva Revolution!]

What are your views of Fidel Castro and how he is running Cuba? He has obviously done a lot for the country in terms of medical care and literacy levels, but what about their freedom? How will a pure communist state differ from Cuba?

[RedSonRising]

There are tons of threads on this. You'd do best to search the very thoroughly discussed topics concerning Cuba and Socialism already written.

Personally, I feel Cuban Socialism has succeeded in many ways, including providing a relatively high standard of living for its people, a flawed but existing model of participatory economics, and freeing and protecting the populous from some of the harms of imperialism. It's far from perfect but a Cuba without an embargo might see a less restrictive State and a less depraved set of material conditions.

[Dumb]

My take on Fidel Castro is that he and I both looked the same at 16.

[Wanted Man]

Fidel has not been "running Cuba" for years.

[pranabjyoti]

Well, sadly he is a shadow now of his former self.

[Ocean Seal]

What are your views of Fidel Castro and how he is running Cuba? He has obviously done a lot for the country in terms of medical care and literacy levels, but what about their freedom? How will a pure communist state differ from Cuba?
This is a common mistake but a communist state cannot exist. Communism is by definition a classless, stateless, moneyless society.
I think that by pure communism you are making a mistake common among both people new to leftism and capitalists. Oftentimes you'll hear people say, we'll I believe in "pure communism" not that other stuff, but "pure communism" will never work because people are greedy/lazy. Please don't use the phrase "pure communism," its rather meaningless as there is no "impure communism". The changes go like this: capitalism-->socialism-->communism
Communism, the last stage is rather far away in human development and will only result when we live in a society of abundance. No country has ever claimed to be communist. We are ideologically communists because we believe that communism will be achieved in the long run, however, we agitate for socialism. Capitalism is what the majority of the world is. Socialism is what the countries that many people call "communist" were.

In that sense the PRC pre-1978, the USSR, the Eastern Bloc, Cuba, etc. are/were all socialist countries (some comrades dispute this at varying levels and claim that some/all of these countries were state capitalist because the workers didn't directly control their production).
And there will be no communist state because communism requires no state, no nations, and no separations. It is the product of an abundant world economy.

Capitalism- the private ownership of the means of production (workplaces, factories, businesses, farms)
Ex: You go to work, get paid $10/hr by your boss to produce products/services which amount to $50 each hour. Therefore, 80% of your income goes to your boss who owns the means of production.

Socialism-the collective ownership of the mean of production. As in you go to work and earn based on your contribution but you own your workplace.
Ex: You produce $50/hr in products, you keep the equivalent of $50 minus a few dollars to keep the workplace running. Therefore you are in control of your production. You have a state, and many parts of the world may still be capitalist. From each according to his ability to each according to his contribution.

Communism-like socialism, but just a society of abundance. You no longer have to earn anything and instead you simply get the goods you need. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. And no state of course.

Pure communism is a misconception that many capitalists have that say that Marx tells us to immediately go to communism and thus anything that is not a stateless, classless, moneyless society is counter-Marxist or impure Marxism.

That being said, I think that Cuba is pretty cool. It has a very high living standard despite being a small island nation which has a US imposed embargo on it. As for freedom, ask the Cubans how free they are? It might be a one party state, but lets be honest state repression is rather low.

[Spawn of Stalin]

What are your views of Fidel Castro and how he is running Cuba? He has obviously done a lot for the country in terms of medical care and literacy levels, but what about their freedom? How will a pure communist state differ from Cuba?
Could you expand on this a bit? What about their freedom exactly are you referring to?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

1. Fidel doesn't run the country anymore and hasn't for a number of years

2. Communism will differ from Cuba in that it won't be a left-nationalist Socialist state, it will be a moneyless, classless, stateless, more or less egalitarian society. Quite a clear difference.

[Rakhmetov]

What are your views of Fidel Castro and how he is running Cuba? He has obviously done a lot for the country in terms of medical care and literacy levels, but what about their freedom? How will a pure communist state differ from Cuba?

How will it look?? Just read Lenin's State and Revolution

In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, The October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed master work on The State and Revolution ... This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Marxism, savaged his opponents and set out his trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions, the dismantling of the bourgeois state and the replacement of capitalism by the, dictatorship of the proletariat.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/

http://www.amazon.com/The-State-and-Revolution-ebook/dp/B0049U4OBI/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1307211139&sr=1-9

[tachosomoza]

Castro's probably dead and the Cubans won't admit it.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

How will it look?? Just read Lenin's State and Revolution

In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, The October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed master work on The State and Revolution ... This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Marxism, savaged his opponents and set out his trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions, the dismantling of the bourgeois state and the replacement of capitalism by the, dictatorship of the proletariat.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/

http://www.amazon.com/The-State-and-Revolution-ebook/dp/B0049U4OBI/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1307211139&sr=1-9

Well, seeing as democracy, genuine democracy, is a necessary pre-requisite for Socialism, and combining this with the fact that there are tendencies other than Leninism in the Socialist movement, it's probably unlikely that a future Socialist society will look exactly how one tendency imagines it.

[RedSonRising]

Castro's probably dead and the Cubans won't admit it.

He's made numerous appearances relatively recently and actively writes his reflections in the Granma newspaper.

[tachosomoza]

He's made numerous appearances relatively recently and actively writes his reflections in the Granma newspaper.

It doesn't necessarily have to be him. I can see benefits to keeping him "alive", simply due to his charisma and the fact that he personifies the Cuban Revolution to many people.

[RedSonRising]

It doesn't necessarily have to be him. I can see benefits to keeping him "alive", simply due to his charisma and the fact that he personifies the Cuban Revolution to many people.

Anyone could theoretically ghostwrite those reflections, but he has a particular style of writing and conceptualizing politics that wouldn't be easy to imitate. Regardless, if you see his most recent appearance at the National Congress, it is most certainly him. His death will likely be used as a rallying point for the people.

[tachosomoza]

Anyone could theoretically ghostwrite those reflections, but he has a particular style of writing and conceptualizing politics that wouldn't be easy to imitate. Regardless, if you see his most recent appearance at the National Congress, it is most certainly him. His death will likely be used as a rallying point for the people.

I don't know, man. Fidel has held stuff together down there. The rest of the old guard that were in the revolution of 1959 (Raul, etc.) simply don't have the organizational capacity, the leadership potential, or the ability to mobilize the people to the extent that Fidel has. Not only that, but the fact that some of the younger comrades and some of the old guard have expressed acceptance for allowing some marks of capitalism to infiltrate doesn't bode well for the system in Cuba. I certainly hope that I'm wrong. We can't afford to let another state revert to capitalism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Let's not become social analysts. As much as i'm not a fan of Raul Castro, and somewhat a fan of Fidel, it's simple not true to say that nobody but Fidel has the organisational capacity, leadership potential or whatever.

I doubt the elderly and frail Fidel has those abilities anymore, sadly.

[Jose Gracchus]

I think he made a career running a nationalist populist capitalist state on the autarchic-Soviet bureaucratic model, probably making the inhabitants materially better off than they would be in a marginal neo-colony of the world hegemon.

[RedSonRising]

I'm a fan of what the brothers have accomplished, but if it falls down with them (contrary to my hopes and expectations), then it wasn't a worthy model to begin with.

[RED DAVE]

I'm a fan of what the brothers have accomplished, but if it falls down with them (contrary to my hopes and expectations), then it wasn't a worthy model to begin with.Then watch as state capitalism morphs into private capitalism.


Cuba further loosens regulation of private sector

HAVANA (Reuters) – Communist-run Cuba has given all small businesses the authority to hire labor and will loosen other regulations governing private enterprise, the government said in a statement Monday.

The measure was the latest indication that President Raul Castro’s government has decided to loosen its grip on economic sectors that include retail services, construction and transportation in favor of private business.

Last year, the government allowed some types of family businesses and skilled trades to hire workers.

The government said that “the Council of Ministers agreed to extend to all non-state activities authorization to contract workers and continue the process of making more flexible regulations on self employment.”

It provided no further details in the statement read on state-run television.

The Cuban economy is dominated by the state, which employed about 85 percent of the labor force through 2009.

The government announced plans late last year to lay off hundreds of thousands of workers and move them to what it called the “non-state” sector as part of an efficiency drive.

In the years after the 1959 revolution, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, now retired, nationalized all small businesses.

Self-employment, often a euphemism for small private businesses, was first authorized in 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union plunged Cuba into crisis, but it was severely restricted until last year.

In September, the government began issuing new licenses, allowed family businesses to rent space outside their homes, sign contracts with the state, hire labor and seek bank credits, among other measures.

More than 200,000 new licenses have been granted since October, compared with less than 150,000 that existed previously.http://www.bestgrowthstock.com/stock-market-news/2011/05/17/cuba-further-loosens-regulation-of-private-sector/

RED DAVE

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The difference between the State Capitalism of the USSR and the left-populism of Cuba is that the USSR affected, negatively, many peoples' lives, in its role as a sometimes-imperial state. It was a very centralised system, which isn't healthy for a state that is geographically, politically and economically powerful.

Though neither has probably been the best poster for communism, Cuba has perhaps done more because, as a small, 3rd world state, it has lifted the living standards of its people higher than they could have dreamed under Capitalism. Granted, the Cuban model is peculiar, inefficient in many ways and totally unscaleable and unapplicable to almost anywhere else, but it must be said that it has done a lot of good for a lot of Cubans.