• Kleptocratic regimes - why the left opposes them

A new thread to take up dalek and cyberman's question about Cuba, namely (cyberman): I'd like to ask what your party line is on Cuba? We might all have some reservations of the nature of the Castro government but nevertheless, I'd hope that we'd all support the Cuban revolution in principle. You couldn't possibly think that they were part of a world wide right wing conspiracy. Or could you?

First: there is no "party line" at this site. As far as I know, it is individuals who either share a view of what it means to be leftwing and/or who want to debate what it means. Some of us have a common history as 'Maoists' in the old days and some have a consistent history. I'm not in the latter consistent category.

Secondly, if you want to debate, stop accusing people of believing in stuff they don't believe in, such as "world wide right wing conspiracy". I for one will just stop debating with you, if you keep doing that.

Thirdly, I support the Cuban revolution and I support the Zimbabwean revolution. These revolutions happened a long time ago. They were right to overthrow the old regimes. Incidentally, Castro overthrew the Batista regime with relatively few forces. He was supported, not just by the Cuban people, but also by the US embargo against arms going to the Batista regime and also, of course, by the provision of US military hardware, including aricraft, from the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay. That was in the late 1950s.  We are now in the C21st.  Today, it would be crazy for anyone claiming to be leftwing to support either Castro or Mugabe. The Cuban revolution I support today is the one that I hope happens to overthrow the oppressive kleptocratic regime. Ditto: Zimbabwe.

The left is about defending and extending democracy, not about excusing or justifying tyranny. (The logic of democracy leads ultimately to the abolition of wage-slavery - this is why the left are, or should be, the true democrats).

Revolutions can go bad; things can turn into their opposite. I no longer call myself a Maoist but I retain enormous respect for Mao for the theoretical contribution to Marxism that warned people that, unless you keep rebelling (including against the Party), you're headed for big-time trouble. The old order will return and, it seems, this is what has happened in China post-Mao. Capitalism has replaced socialism, with the Communist Party in power.

The asbsence of any socialist model in the world should make the left stand on its own two feet, and draw the lessons of history. But instead, there's this strange need for some kind of shining example somewhere else. Of course, it helps - but when it no longer exists, you've got to get real. What is really strange to me is how people who call themselves leftwing have changed from a position of hostility to Castro in the late 1960s-early 1970s to a position of support for him - "Papa Fidel" they even call him (get Freud onto that one!). I'm speaking anecdotally now. My 'Maoist' and other leftwing university student comrades had very little time for Castro in the 1970s. A turning point occured in 1968 when a leftwing group at the University of Melbourne issued a leaflet titled "An open letter to Fidel". They were perplexed but angry at his unconditional support for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The left opposed that invasion and understood that the Soviet Union and its satellite regimes were not what the left was on about. Castro's first anti-workingclass strategic line was to tie the Cuban economy to the Soviet and to embrace the Soviet form of social-fascism (what Maoists regarded as 'socialism in words, fascism in deeds').

Human Rights Watch (and, presumably, the IPA, which therefore allows you to stop thinking) has documented the appalling oppression that is part of daily life for the Cubans. http://hrw.org/englishwr2k7/docs/2007/01/11/cuba14886.htm Yes, I know about the free telephones and the health-care. I watch the docos on SBS. When born-again supporters of the Castro regime tell me about these things, I keep hearing one of my old-timer Italian neighbours in Brunswick telling me about how good things were in Italy under Mussolini. He would also begin by saying: "We need a Mussolini in Australia, a strong leader" and then list the 'good things' he had done. And he would always conclude with: "And he went into the fields with the peasants and toiled with them". Well, cyberman, it's not about free health care, it's about freedom. It's about the people taking over and running things for themselves. The left stopped supporting Castro about 35 years ago once it became clear that he was betraying the revolution. There's no reason to support his kleptocratic regime now.

The puzzling thing for me is to understand why the comrades I was close to in 1968-1970s, who called a spade a spade back then, now have adopted the opposite position of enthusiastic support for Cuba as some kind of model of socialism. I guess it is a case of things turning into their opposite. It still puzzles me, though, as in private conversation, they don't say that they were wrong back then, and neither do they explain why they changed their view. I suspect it has something to do with kneejerk anti-American imperialism. As with Iraq: anti-imperialism before anti-fascism.

A good indicator of a regime's oppression of its people can be found in policies toward the Internet. The regime has been in power for decades and yet the internet is strictly controlled and restricted in Cuba, though, naturally ("where there is repression there is resistance"), Cubans are developing their own underground internet network. In seeing the writing on the wall, the Cuban regime has recently 'softened up' in some ways - not unlike the Middle East autocrats who are also trying to cling to life for a little longer. In Cuba, for instance, gays and lesbians are no longer exiled or imprisoned. I'm not sure whether they are still banned from Party membership or not. Castro has had to open up the economy as there are limits to the Cuban people's willingness to happily blame the US embargo for all Cuba's ills. And he will have to liberalize on the Internet too - which will help bring on the regime's downfall.

Mind you, I have opposed the US economic embargo of Cuba since it was imposed in 1962. (Well, I was born in 1951, so I've opposed it since I was politically conscious enough to do so, probably from around 1966). My reason for opposing it today is that it serves the regime by providing an excuse for its failures. It is a folly that allows the regime to unite its supporters under the anti-gringo banner. Guantanomo Bay should be returned, too, in my opinion. Then let the revolution begin: maybe, as in 1959, with military assistance from the US.

Barry

Last spring, I spent a most fascinating week in one of the world's last bastions of communism - Cuba. I had applied for a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury to travel to Cuba to conduct an informal study of the country's socialist economic system. (The Supreme Court has held that American citizens have a fundamental right to travel, but under the U.S. embargo, it is illegal for Americans to spend money in Cuba, which effectively trumps the so-called fundamental right to travel.) Once the license was issued, I contacted the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, D.C., and requested a special "fact-finding" visa, explaining that I wanted to study the effects of the U.S. embargo on Cuban life. The Cuban authorities granted me the visa, authorized me to speak to people on the street and, on my request, arranged interviews with various "research centers" at the University of Havana.

I flew to Havana on a charter flight from Miami. Most of the people on the plane were Cuban Americans who were going to visit relatives. Explaining to me how economically desperate Cubans are, most of the people on my flight were "layered" in clothing, which enabled them to take extra clothes to their relatives without having to pay excess baggage fees.

During the short flight to Havana (45 minutes), I reflected on Cuban history. In the late 1800s, the Cuban people revolted against Spanish rule and for many years were engaged in a brutal war for independence. In 1898, the U.S. government intervened in the conflict, purportedly to help the Cubans win their independence. The father of Cuban independence, José Martí, who was killed in the war, had warned the Cubans to beware of U.S. government "assistance" because such assistance was likely to be used as a vehicle for U.S. governmental control and domination of Cuba.

Martí's admonitions turned out to be right. At the end of the Spanish-American War, U.S. troops remained in Cuba (until 1902), and the American authorities required the Cubans to include a provision in their constitution that gave the U.S. government carte blanche to intervene in Cuban affairs whenever it deemed necessary. It was during that period that the United States acquired its base at Guantanamo Bay. (The Cubans were perhaps fortunate not to have resisted the new American imperialism more forcefully. The Philippine Islands had also rebelled against Spain, and after Spain's surrender, Filipinos had to fight a new, brutal war for independence against their U.S. government "saviors" - a war that resulted in tens of thousands of Filipino deaths and more American casualties than the original war against Spain.)

In 1940, army general Fulgencio Batista had won the presidential election and when his term expired in 1944, he retired to Florida, a multi-millionaire. Eight years later, Batista returned to Cuba and again sought the presidency. Realizing that he was going to lose the election, however, he took power in a coup d'état, dissolved the Congress, and canceled the election. One of the people who had intended to run for Congress as a reformer was a 25-year-old man named Fidel Castro. Castro had risen in popularity as an incorruptible critic of government corruption.

Among Batista's favorite cronies were Mafia bosses, who moved their operations to Havana when their casinos in Florida were shut down. With Batista's full blessing and assistance, the Mafia made Cuba its base of operations, not only for gambling, but for heroin and cocaine distribution into the United States as well. Of course, the Mafia bosses, in turn, kicked back nice sums of money to Batista.

Batista was the U.S. government's "man in Havana," even though U.S. officials knew that he was a brutal, antidemocratic, corrupt tyrant in full partnership with Mafia murderers and drug dealers. None of this mattered to Washington policymakers. What mattered was that as Washington's puppet, when Batista received orders from U.S. officials, he obeyed.

In July 1953, Castro began the Cuban revolution with an attack on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, but he was captured and put on trial. Castro used the trial, which was broadcast over national radio, to expose the corruption and brutality of the Batista regime. At the end of the trial, Castro issued what has become his most famous declaration: "Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me."

Castro was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but in 1955, after Batista had won the presidency in a rigged election, he was released. He moved to Mexico, where he began the next stage of his revolution. In 1956, he and 81 fellow revolutionaries departed Mexico in a 38-foot-long boat called the Granma to take on Batista's 40,000-man army. After they landed in Cuba, they were attacked by Batista's forces and lost more than 50 men. Castro and 28 others, including fellow revolutionary Che Guevara, barely survived.

With the U.S. government's full support, including arms, bombers, and fighter planes, Batista's forces fought to suppress the revolution and, during the course of the war, killed almost 20,000 Cubans. But the Cuban people had had enough of Batista, the Mafia, political corruption, tortures, and murders - as well as the U.S. government's support of it all. The Cuban poor joined up with Castro's forces. Later, Batista's army began to desert to the revolutionaries. On January 1, 1959, Batista fled the country, retiring in splendor in Spain with the money he had earned from his Mafia cohorts. On January 3, 1959, Castro rode triumphantly into Havana to the cheers of thousands of Cubans.

U.S. government officials, of course, realized that Fidel Castro was not "their man in Havana" and quite unlikely to take orders from them, especially since the U.S. had implicitly supported political corruption, drug dealing, kickbacks, torture, and murder, not to mention their having helped to kill thousands of Cuban revolutionaries. President Eisenhower ordered the CIA to oust Castro from office and install a new puppet president whose strings could be pulled by Washington. (Eisenhower and the CIA were still overly confident from what they had accomplished a few years before. In 1954, the CIA had succeeded in overthrowing Jacobo Arbenz, the duly elected president of Guatemala, an action that plunged Guatemala into a violent civil war that lasted decades and which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans.)

In 1960, John F. Kennedy won the presidency, and the following year authorized the CIA and Cuban exiles to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro from office. The attack failed for three primary reasons: the CIA double-crossed the Cuban invaders by advising Kennedy to deny them air support; Castro's forces were ready for the invasion; and the Cuban people were in little mood for another U.S. government-installed corrupt and brutal tyrant who depended on Mafia activities for his income.

Castro, in turn, had begun betraying the principles for which he had fought. Ultimately making himself dictator for life, he refused to permit open and honest presidential elections in Cuba. He executed opponents of his regime. Nationalizing the media, he brutally suppressed dissent and even made criticism of both the Cuban revolution and socialism a grave criminal offense. Through it all, Castro used the threat of U.S. intervention as a justification for expanding his control over the Cuban people.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va., and co-editor of the book The Case for Free Trade and Open Immigration.

Comrade Barry,

Thanks for the new thread. Its good to open a discussion on Cuba. Don't suppose that there is any chance of a change in the title though?

Have I got this correct? If I were a Stalinist I'd be 100% in favour of the Cuban revolution even now; if I were a Trot, Cuba would be a degenerate or imperfect workers' state, if I were a SWP(UK) style Trot they'd be  State Capitalist; and if a Maoist, they'd be Social-Fascist? 

Crikey! I think I might be a Trot! 

Quite reasonably, Davros requires substantiation for the following:  "Castro overthrew the Batista regime with relatively few forces. He was supported, not just by the Cuban people, but also by the US embargo against arms going to the Batista regime and also, of course, by the provision of US military hardware, including aircraft, from the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay. That was in the late 1950s"  Then: "Then let the revolution begin: maybe, as in 1959, (1956 actually) with military assistance from the US".

The source is the wikipedia entry on the Cuban revolution. Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Revolution#December_1956_to_Mid-1958  

The wiki article says the revolution began in 1953 - I was referring to later events.

Here's the quotes from wiki:

During this time, Castro's forces were quite small, at times less than 200 men, while the Cuban army and police force numbered between 30,000 and 40,000 in strength.^[1] Yet nearly every time the army fought against the revolutionaries, they were the ones who retreated from the fight. The Cuban military was remarkably ineffective. A growing problem for the Batista forces was an arms embargo imposed on the Cuban government by the United States government on March 14, 1958. The Cuban air force rapidly lost its power as planes could not be repaired without spare parts from the U.S.

And: In the question of support and supply for the insurgency, too, the official figures available from both the U. S. Government and the Cuban government are somewhat suspect. In fact, the 26th of July columns (i.e., the revolutionaries - Barry) were constantly supplied with ammunition, ordnance, and certain specialized communications equipment, by air and sea, from various locations in Florida and Louisiana. The bulk of the ordinary military stores were drawn from the armouries of the Alabama National Guard, which served as the 'augmentation' for the para-military operations conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in Latin America. Towards the final stages of the conflict, limited numbers of aircraft and armoured vehicles were supplied to the insurgents directly from the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, so that the handful of early, cast-hull M4A3 Shermans (equipped with the low-velocity 75mm gun) of the Cuban Army found themselves facing 'Easy Eights' (M4 Shermans with upgraded armour, high-velocity 76mm guns, and HVSS) 'issued' from U.S. Army National Guard and Reserve stores.Batista forces finally responded with an attack on the mountains called Operation Verano (the rebels called it "la Ofensiva"). Some 12,000 soldiers (more than half new, untrained recruits) attacked into the mountains. In a series of small-scale fights, the Cuban army was defeated by Castro's determined fighters.

I will always admit when I am wrong on matters of historical accuracy - but where have I mis-read the above? I am not an expert on Cuban history but had read previously of initial US support for Castro against Batista. Davros, your source doesn't impress me; though I will admit I am wrong if you can come up with something reputable that refutes the specific wikipedia claims.

I think the regime will collapse with Castro's death but I don't know enough to speculate about how that collapse will happen. I hope the result will be democratic elections in which the two million Cubans who fled the dictatorship and who reside in the US will have the right to vote, along with the 11 million in Cuba, as well as the inalienable right as refugees to return to their homeland.

cyberman, I go to trouble to respond and you come back at me with sheer flippancy. 

Barry

Comrade Barry,

I have looked and , apart from the Wikipedia comment, which is unreferenced apart from the date, I can't find any other mention of a embargo of the Batista regime by the USA.

Its possible that the US did score a stupid own -goal and I'd be interested to know more, if indeed, the Wiki comment is correct. Quoting from Wiki can be quite dangerous unless there is some independent verification or reference.  My understanding is that the US government at the time were ultra-complacent and certainly underestimated Castro and his revolutionaries. Perhaps they felt they could afford to take the moral high ground of neutrality and that it all backfired on them.

Any flippancy in my previous email was directed at myself- not you. There is a serious point there though. I personally find the sectarianism of the left very depressing and counterproductive. I'm not keen on the "state-capitalist" Tony Cliff analysis, and terms like "social-fascist" are just slanderous. The Stalinists used this term for the revolutionary left in the Spanish Civil War and many good comrades were imprisoned or killed by Republican forces after being incorrectly labelled in this way.

Davros, you are not 'mighty', you are pathetic. You cannot counter wikipedia so you resort to challenge its veracity. The source is a fake, no less, becuase it doesn't 'compute' with your world outlook. The "internal evidence" proves it is "bogus".

Davros and cyberman could have done their own google searches but they obviously haven't. There are other sources for the claim about the US embargo against arms to Batista. It should not be controversial. This link from the Cuba Study Group also makes the point: http://www.googobits.com/articles/137-explanation-of-the-us-embargo-on-cuba.html  

This is from the Cuba Study Group:

For about 400 years Cuba was controlled by Spain until the U.S. won the Spanish-American war in 1898. The win gave America four years of control in Cuba, until 1902 when the island was finally given its independence with one stipulation: the protection of U.S. interests in Cuba by military intervention (formally known as The Platt Amendment). However, Fulgencio Batista came to power in 1933 and abolished the aforementioned stipulation. The uprising along with Batista’s new power was largely Communist and therefore not recognized by the U.S. which viewed Communism as a threat to Democracy. U.S. President Eisenhower halted arms supplies to Cuba and Fidel Castro saw this weak point in relations as his chance to oust Batista and assume power which he did on January 1, 1959.

So too does the US-Cuba Timeline, at LJWorld.com:

1953

Fidel Castro leads a rebellion against Batista, fails, and is imprisoned.

1955

Batista releases Castro from prison.

1956

Castro, "Che" Guevara, and a band of revolutionaries leave Mexico for Cuba to launch guerrilla war against Batista.

1958

The U.S. withdraws military aid to Batista.

1959

Castro leads a guerrilla army into Havana, forcing Batista to flee

Davros, I could go to print sources, even the US Congressional record, for you - but you can do your own research from now on. Cover your eyes with your hands and block your ears all you like but in 1958 President Eisenhower imposed an embargo on arms supplies to Batista. (If you still can't accept that, then I suggest you also cover your mouth with your hands).

No doubt you will also be stunned into disbelief to know that early on Batista had support from the Cuban communists, and that is one reason why the US decided on the embargo. Of course, the US supported him to the full once he deserted his former communist allies. Something else that 'will not compute' is the fact that the US initially recognized the Castro revolutionary government - it was one of the first governments to do so. From what I can gather, the US wanted him overthrown as soon as he started nationalizing US interests without compensation and declared allegiance to the Soviet Union.

I have already stated that I support the Cuban revolution but think there is overwhelming evidence that it went very bad. I currently support another revolution - regime change - in Cuba for pretty much the same basic reasons as I supported the first one: I like to see tyranny overthrown and the people empowered.

Davros, you can start by acknowledging you are wrong. You asked for a source, I provided it. Now I have provided another source. Just admit you are wrong. Or, at least, go to a library that has US newspapers in microform and check for 14 March 1958. Then, let us know what the reports about the embargo said at the time. (Of course, the microfilm could be forged to trick you). Or, much easier, do some google searches using the words "US embargo Batista 1958'.

Either do this or stop wasting my time.

Barry

Hey guys this sounds like a primary school level dispute!

I'd be interested to know more of the history but I don't think this  has much political significance one way or the other. I was just thinking that the US, in  recent years ,  have armed both the Afghani Taliban and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. There was some talk that they'd even provided some of the Chemical weapons he used to gas the Kurdish villagers- though I'd need to check more sources  on this. The US also vetoed a couple of UN resolutions  condemning this genocide in the late 80s.

It is worth noting that the US , sorry,  the liberated Iraqi government, were pretty keen to hang SH before any of this more embarrassing stuff came to light at his trial.

Davros knows perfectly well that he DID challenge the claim that the US imposed an embargo against the Batista regime. He is only now saying that the issue is not contentious because I spent (too much) time providing further evidence from sources other than the wikipedia link that he regarded as bogus. This is what Davros originally said:

Barry, Davros demands that you substantiate: : "Castro overthrew the Batista regime with relatively few forces. He was supported, not just by the Cuban people, but also by the US embargo against arms going to the Batista regime and also, of course, by the provision of US military hardware, including aircraft, from the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay. That was in the late 1950s"  Then: "Then let the revolution begin: maybe, as in 1959, (1956 actually) with military assistance from the US". Surely a historian of your standing should be able to explain why all the other histories have the dates and facts wrong. (see below for an account by a very hostile source)

Clearly, Davros cannot claim that "all other histories" dispute this, when he now accepts that the US embargo against Batista did happen as I, citing wikipedia, said it did. He underlined the bit about the US embargo precisely because he did not believe it. 

Davros now wants me to do more research for him to prove that US military hardware was provided to the July 26th movement rebels. I will not waste further time, especially when he does not even admit that he was wrong about the embargo. But I will point out that, given that the US did impose an embargo against the Batista government, which DID strategically assist Castro's rise, why should there be any major problem in accepting that - at that point in time - the US government also supplied military hardware to the anti-Batista rebels? The fact that Castro did not declare his communism until later, and as Davros points out presented himself as a 'bourgeois democrat', also makes it plausible that the US would have provided his group with hardware.

The remaining contentious claim, that hardware was supplied, is foot-noted and I have no reason to doubt the sources - given that it is now "not contentious" that the US government, at that point in time, stopped supporting Batista. I'll repeat the wikipedia claim, followed by the foot-noted sources.

Here's the claim: In fact, the 26th of July columns were constantly supplied with ammunition, ordnance, and certain specialized communications equipment, by air and sea, from various locations in Florida and Louisiana. The bulk of the ordinary military stores were drawn from the armouries of the Alabama National Guard, which served as the 'augmentation' for the para-military operations conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in Latin America. Towards the final stages of the conflict, limited numbers of aircraft and armoured vehicles were supplied to the insurgents directly from the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, so that the handful of early, cast-hull M4A3 Shermans (equipped with the low-velocity 75mm gun) of the Cuban Army found themselves facing 'Easy Eights' (M4 Shermans with upgraded armour, high-velocity 76mm guns, and HVSS) 'issued' from U.S. Army National Guard and Reserve stores.

Here's the footnotes:

Pawley, William D. Unpublished manuscript and notes - A Concise Overview of the Central Intelligence Agency's paramilitary operations in the Caribbean, 1945 to 1965 Miami, 1977

Servicio de Inteligencia Militar Situation report, dated 23 November 1958 (Via LCOL Irenaldo Garcia Baez)

- Marquez Sterling, Carlos & Manuel Historia de la Isla de Cuba New York, Regents Publishing, 1975

- Portell Vila, Dr Herminio Nueva Historia de la Republica de Cuba Miami, La Moderna Poesia, 1986

- Fernandez Miranda, Roberto Mis Relaciones con el General Batista Miami, Ediciones Universales, 1999

- Dorschner, John & Fabricio, Roberto The Winds of December New York, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1980

And here's the bibliography used by the writer:

• Bonachea, Ramon L. and San Martin, Marta. The Cuban Insurrection: 1952–1959. New York, Transaction Books, 1974.

• The Spirit Of Moncada: Fidel Castro's Rise To Power, 1953–1959. Bockman, Larry (Major USMC), 1984.

• Sweig, Julia E. Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

• Radio Broadcasts
  • Unimaps.
  • Radio on the Fringes: 'Clandestine Radio'.

There is clearly no basis for continuing debate with Davros on this matter. He refuses to acknowledge facts, resorts to a kind of sarcastic clowning instead of argument, and completely misrepresents the opposing point of view through such unreal throwaway lines as: The importance of the "dispute" is that it now appears (according to Barry) that there was hardly a single  "revolutionary" movement any-where that was not supported and financed at some stage by the CIA or some other agency of the US.

Anyone who has followed my posts on this thread will know that this is just a lie and that I have not said or implied anything of the kind. The US shift in the groups it supported merely reflected altering perceptions of which group best served its national interests in the uncertain conditions of that period. This is just how politics works and why alliances change. It's also the reason why, after 60 years of propping up dictators like Saddam Hussein, the US is now toppling them. The Left continues to applaud the overthrow of fascists, whether they be Pinochet in Chile of Hussein in Iraq. And we have always demanded free multiparty elections as an alternative to fascist dictatorship which is why, to us, the Iraqi government has more legitimacy than the insurgents who are trying to wreck it.

And, by the way, cyberman, the term 'social-fascist' is entirely legitimate as a way of understanding the process whereby someone like Mugabe can end up violently oppressing his own people while still claiming to be a Marxist. Without that notion, which I believe is one of Mao's contributions to Marxist theory, we end up with the bizarre situation in which people calling themselves 'left' actually support dictatorial regimes.

As mentioned previously, I will be off-line next week.

Barry

I must say that I still have some slight reservation about the wording of the title on this thread. However, I did ask for a thread on Cuba, so let me thank LS for setting it up.

Let me start off my saying that many on the left, rightly or wrongly, do have a soft spot for the Cuban revolution. There aren't many countries in the world that even claim to be Marxist now.  It has had a difficult time, as you yourselves do acknowledge, and this can be used as an excuse, or a reason, depending on one's sympathies or political viewpoint. I would point to a clear socialist emphasis on many aspects of Cuban policy in the last 50 years. Data for 2004 show that Cuba has one of the highest life expectancy rates in Latin America.  In 2002 Cuba was found to have the lowest infant mortality rate in the Americas along with Canada. Since the revolution, Cuba has maintained high standards of educational development. In 1995 literacy rates were 96%. This was second after Argentina of thirteen Latin American countries surveyed. (this info is from Wiki! Is Wiki OK now?)

Marx didn't dismiss the achievements of the French 1790s bourgeois revolution, just because of its imperfections, and there is no reason to expect that he would have viewed Cuban workers and peasant revolution of the 1950s much differently. No point in arguing about that of course, we'll never really know.

What can we do to support and even get the revolution back on the right track? Socialists should certainly campaign through their political parties and trade unions for the removal of the US embargo. At the same time we should call for removal of any restrictions on the rights of Cuban citizens to freely leave, and re-enter, the country and, yes, have the internet as well.

However, we should resist any demands from the US that are tantamount to a requirement for a complete counter-revolutionary process to be undertaken. In the unlikely event that the US government ever seriously consider such a settlement the devil is likely to be in detail.

For instance, Cuba are one of the few countries which have managed to implement Marx's call for "Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State and .......Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly." Should they choose to, are they likley to be able to join the WTO or qualify for IMF loans unless they change this? Many other countries are forced to privatise, as a precondition for entry into the 'globalisation' club.

What about Marx's call, in the Communist Manifesto,  that land and property of emigrants should be confiscated? The Cubans have certainly done that. Are you in favour of a property restoration as part of any settlement with the US?
Maybe you'd like them to give up the whole revolution and concentrate on building up their productive base under capitalism?  As David Mc says in his article (with the uninspired title of 'Mix red and green and you get the colour of poo' , Strange Times No. 13 November 1991)  " modern industry is creating a level of material affluence that is absolutely necessary for a more advanced social system". Does Cuba have a level of material affluence that is "absolute necessary" for this transition? Marx would have thought so , the levels of capitalist production were quite low in Marx's time; but, David Mc obviously wouldn't agree. Maybe he could tell us what level of material affluence he had in mind when he wrote this?

Barry, does this mean the restoration of property rights as well?

"I think the regime will collapse with Castro's death but I don't know enough to speculate about how that collapse will happen. I hope the result will be democratic elections in which the two million Cubans who fled the dictatorship and who reside in the US will have the right to vote, along with the 11 million in Cuba, as well as the inalienable right as refugees to return to their homeland."

Nice of you to include those who reside in Cuba. ("Along with", well we see where your sympathies lie)

Dalek

dalek, you didn't support free multi-party elections after the overthrow of the fascist Saddam in Iraq so I don't expect you to support them in Cuba either. My sympathies have always been with the Cuban people, which is why I supported their initial revolution and support another one now. The two million who fled have every right to return, as with any other refugee group, including the Palestinians. Property in Cuba is owned by an oppressive state apparatus not by the people as a whole. It will be up to the Cuban people to decide the future steps, once 'Papa' is gone. I hope the positive achievements of the revolution will be retained by the people but they have no future under the current dictator.

Barry

Dalek,

Well Marx didn't exactly say that the state couldn't give the property  back if the rebels returned, so there may be a bit of "wiggle room" there under a strictly Marxist interpretation.

He did also say, again in the Communist Manifesto,  that all rights of inheritance should be abolished however. So, I'd say that any return of property would have to apply only to people who were alive at the time of the revolution, and actually had property in their name. Any return of property would not be possible for their heirs and descendents.