Those are all websites of right wing Cubans in the US. While I'm sure Castro & co. did a lot of violent stuff to gain power, they were fighting a brutal Batista dictatorship. I didn't notice anything on those sites that was critical of Batista. I'd say most of the stuff presented is right wing propaganda. I think most Cuban Americans are wingnuts, especially the older ones.My list would contain their excellent prison system.
http://www.cubaverdad.net/torture_in_cuba.htm
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y03/nov03/10e8.htm
And Castro's humanitarian attitude.
http://www.therealcuba.com/page5.htm
Hope his brother is a bit friendlier than he was.
Communist states
- Thread starter derf
- Start date
Yea, I visited Guatemala a couple years ago. Literally half the people there had no access to health care at all. I admire much of what Castro did in Cuba but, that gov, like all communist govs I know of that have ever existed, is a dictatorship with no press or individual freedom & will not let it's people leave the country without special permission. What are they so afraid of?
I don't think authoritarianism is OK no matter what the economic system. Communism has failed wherever it's been tried. With all it's problems, democratic capitalism with a decent social safety net should be the goal.
DownwardDog
Well-Known Member
Do you have no hope that socialism could be sustained without all the secret police and surveillance bollocks? Is repression always going to be necessary to defend the revolutionary gains?
goosegrease
Cheap fish products here
Some pretty vile atrocities have been carried out in the name of Communism or Marxism. Throughout the 20th century the Stalinist model has been followed by regimes claiming to be Communist. Partly because any genuine moves towards the working class taking power were such a threat to both the capitalist class and the beurocrats running the Communist states that any genuine working class empowerment was crushed. Spain comes to mind as well as the early days of the Solidarity movement in Poland.
Within the USSR and the Eastern block and Cuba and China there was a glimpse of how a planned economy could be a progressive force. It maintained a basic standard of living for the first time for many people, banished the most exploitative aspects of imperialism. Gangsterism and prostitution in Cuba for example.
Was the fall of communism in the USSR a victory for the workers of that country? After all they made the revolution it was just usurped by Bolsheviks. I would say no. Never been to Russia but I believe that the crushing poverty and the development of a super rich elite who today have a strangle hold of power in that country are not the conditions that anyone would chose live under (apart from the super rich). Journalists are regulary murdered in Russia today.
True communism is attainable, the working class globally is capable of organising independent political organisations. Through unions, grass roots workers' organisations and political parties the working class can take power for it's self. Never again a one party state.
Within the USSR and the Eastern block and Cuba and China there was a glimpse of how a planned economy could be a progressive force. It maintained a basic standard of living for the first time for many people, banished the most exploitative aspects of imperialism. Gangsterism and prostitution in Cuba for example.
Was the fall of communism in the USSR a victory for the workers of that country? After all they made the revolution it was just usurped by Bolsheviks. I would say no. Never been to Russia but I believe that the crushing poverty and the development of a super rich elite who today have a strangle hold of power in that country are not the conditions that anyone would chose live under (apart from the super rich). Journalists are regulary murdered in Russia today.
True communism is attainable, the working class globally is capable of organising independent political organisations. Through unions, grass roots workers' organisations and political parties the working class can take power for it's self. Never again a one party state.
It depends on what that authoritarianism consists of for me.....
If its the will of the majority fair enough but if its the will of a minority over the majority not fine....
The problem with more libertarian thinking is that concensus does not always`work....Some decisions will be unpopular with lots of people but be seen by the majority as best.....fair enough....
goosegrease
Cheap fish products here
I can sympathise with that point of view. You have to ask yourself some questions tho. How has democracy come about within capitalism? In Britian, it was not bestowed by some liberal minded generousity. The Workers' movement through out the 19th century fought hard for universal (male) sufferage. The Chartist movement demanded secret ballots, an end to the property qualification for voters and that MPs receive some kind of wage (without it only those with a private income could afford to sit in parliament). These demands were won through working class militancy and the democtratic organisation of the working class. The female sufferagets eventually gained the vote only after long and bitter struggle.
This safety net was again only achieved by working class struggle. The post ww2 Labour government implemented the NHS and the welfare state as part of a wider, failed program of developing a "mixed economy" or Keynessianism that gurenteed decent wages, integrated the trade union movement within the state, a "cradle to grave" vision of welfare.
Both this democracy and the welfare state are now failing. The nationalised industries have been long sold off and what's left of the safety net is a shambles. An underfunded and over stretched NHS and a benefit system that actually benefits no one but the government stats.
Voter turn out is low, the BNP are on the rise and none of the main parties has either the trust or the respect of the British people.
To my mind the only answer both in Britain and internationally is a working class movement to bring about democratic socialism. The horrific regiemes of the old Communist block should serve as a warning, an examination of how they came about should be the first thing that any young person with an interest in progressive/left wing politics should do. Just as the nature of global capitalism and why as I write one billion people, a fifth of humanity are going hungry.
Don't write off communism because capitalism is creating catastrophy for human kind and democratic working class control of the recourses we have is, to my mind the only way out.
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
Depends what you mean by "the Russian Revolution". If you mean the March revolution that overthrew the Tsar, I don't think anybody would disagree. But the Bolshevik coup d'etat in November was something else. It ushered in one of the most long-lasting brutal modern dictatorships that has ever existed. I don't know about anyone else, but I for one am not glad about that any more than I'm glad about Hitler coming to power in Germany in 1933. The fact that it was done in the name of apparently rational and humanitarian ideals makes it worse not better.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
VOtE SDP - it that you polly?
goosegrease
Cheap fish products here
What do you mean by coup d'etat? Cant be bothered to get my history books out right now (I could do) but I think it's an important point. The Bolsheviks won a majority within the soviets during the creation of a workers' state in Russia. The history of the Russian Revolution from then on is the history of how they tightened their bear hold on the whole emerging apparatus of the workers state.
As early as 1919 the Bolsheviks, under the sway of Lenin were clamping down on any opposition from within the revolutionary movement. In terms of siezing power from within then yes, it was a coup d'etat.
When I look at the revolutionaries of today and how they all seem to polarise them selves within any campaign they take part in and, in the case of the trots like to paper over the fatal mistakes made by the the Bolsheviks I can't help but wonder if anyone has learned the lessons of the failed Russian Revolution. You give a well meaning hirachy an inch of power, they take the whole lot. Grass roots democracy is the only answer and that aint so easy to achieve.
goosegrease
Cheap fish products here
What do you mean by coup d'etat? Cant be bothered to get my history books out right now (I could do) but I think it's an important point. The Bolsheviks won a majority within the soviets during the creation of a workers' state in Russia. The history of the Russian Revolution from then on is the history of how they tightened their bear hold on the whole emerging apparatus of the workers state.
As early as 1919 the Bolsheviks, under the sway of Lenin were clamping down on any opposition from within the revolutionary movement. In terms of siezing power from within then yes, it was a coup d'etat.
When I look at the revolutionaries of today and how they all seem to polarise them selves within any campaign they take part in and, in the case of the trots like to paper over the fatal mistakes made by the the Bolsheviks I can't help but wonder if anyone has learned the lessons of the failed Russian Revolution. You give a well meaning hirachy an inch of power, they take the whole lot. Grass roots democracy is the only answer and that aint so easy to achieve.
I'm unconvinced that China under Mao reflects these aspects. The Great Leap Forward was an utter disaster for hundreds of millions and (in order to retain power after this disaster,) his promulgation of the cultural revolution continued the mayhem.
China during the 50's, 60's and most of the 70's was no better for the vast majority than in previous decades - even given ensuing wars of the 30's and 40's - and was much worse for many/the majority.
Woof
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
Is this a misprint for SPD?
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
true, but the fact is, they didn't, and for the same reason that underpins all of US policy in thwe Americas - the monroe doctrine, and the belief that the US can do exactly what it wants in that part of the world. In other words, Pinochet, the Brazil/Goulart coup, Somoza, trujillo and batista are all sides of the same coin
Combustible
Well-Known Member
Indicators such as literacy, life expectancy and infant mortality say otherwise. I can't find the source now although there is some information here. In fact I believe that life expectancy only dropped below pre 1949 levels for one year of the Great Leap Forward and after the famines infant mortality continued to decrease and life expectancy continued to increase.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
If you're making a historiclaly relevant joke then
If not, then i don't think it matters that much if we say SDP or SPD.
JimW
支那暗杀团
Disagree entirely Jessie - you only have to look at the mortality stats to see that general well-being was rising even despite the well-known criminal failures like the Great Leap and Cultural Revolution.
Doesn't excuse those (or the price scissors tactic of gouging the peasantry to accumulate capital to build industry), but it is easy to forget the endemic famines of the Nationalist era that resulted from comprador capitalism impacting the hinterland (even excusing the direct results of warlordism and foreign invasion). They've re-issued Two Kinds of Time by a young American journo here at the time which gives an accessible account of that.
It certainly is true that unsavoury elements like child labour which were rampant in the nationalist years, were stamped out under the communists...
goosegrease
Cheap fish products here
Interesting. Would you describe modern China as a Communist country today? Apart from the fact that The Communist Party has held on to power unlike in the former USSR where some of it's leaders have come to form part of a ruling capitalist elite?
JimW
支那暗杀团
No - corporatism at home and surrender to neo-liberalism internationally have been the main features of the reform era. Currently reading Wang Hui's China's New Order where he argues the neo-liberal bit but only part of the way in.
ETA: he also points out that unlike its imposition in the diverse civil societies of early 20th C Europe, corporatism is coming from the other direction here, i.e. as a relaxation of the previously totalitarian order. Err, not sure what point I have there other than it is in some sense reform, but aimed solely at co-opting a new nexus of elites sufficient to deliver capitalist goals, or something.
Nigel
For A Degenerates' Workers State
When did the rot set in: Great Leap Forward, Gang Of Four, Deng Xiaoping
Interesting article in Aufheben 2008, how PRC kept hold of traditional Clan system work units to maintain social order:-
".....The obvious resolution of this problem was to raise the productivity of labour, but the autarchic command economy, which had grown up under Mao, imposed formidable barriers for such a solution. Firstly, China's isolation, particularly following its break with the USSR in 1960, had meant that much of Chinese industry remained technologically backward. .....collective integration of the large sections of the industrial working class into the danwei system was perhaps an important reason why China had been able to avoid the phenomena of endemic waste that in the USSR had led to falling labour productivity. However, the danwei system did serve to prevent attempts to introduce new working practices that would have intensified labour and raised the rate of exploitation. Moreover, the danwei system gave the workers a certain collective power of veto over the running of their factories. At the same time, factory managers and party secretaries in the workplace owed as much allegiance to 'their' danwei as they did to the imperatives of increased production emanating from higher levels of the Party-State."
http://libcom.org/files/Welcome to the 'Chinese century'_0.pdf
Nigel
For A Degenerates' Workers State
Tito was Croat, in fact one of his notorious and almost prophetical lines was, 'A weak serbia makes a strong Yugoslavia'.
In fact he spent almost as much time fighting Chetniks under Mihailovic as he did fighting the Nazis!
goosegrease
Cheap fish products here
I would never have described it as communist, in the sense that the working class never took power there. I do need to read up on modern China, can't be an expert on everything, big head.
The 1990s didn't suggest that the Croats were all that bothered about killers in their midst.
There have never been any Communist countries (a meaningless term), only countries ruled by Communist Parties. So in that sense both Cuba and China are Communist countries. And so are Vietnam and North Korea.
JimW
支那暗杀团
You have that thing same as in Russia where it's an old agrarian empire, so obv doesn't fit the model, but while I also agree at no stage was the totality communism in any sense I want it achieved, there was communist content in the early programme - land reform, the organisation of industry etc., and it was in so far as it was communist that it achieved anything worthwhile in terms of the lived lives of Chinese people.
Also seems to me there were things that would have never been achieved under a continued Nationalist administration or non-communist successor, though you can look at Taiwan and argue against that.
Thanks for making my point.
All these revolutions set out but rely on the good will of all to avoid ending up as murderous dictatorships.
That goodwill is never shared by all so a few, or a one, take control and impose their will on the rest.
Usually backed up by a bunch of murderous bastards.
You get me wrong. The ideals of communism are great but they are also a load of bollocks that can never work on a large scale as it's all based on false equalities and the good graces of all involved.
Nah - I'm not talking about the Maoist years - I don't subscribe to hottotrot 'Well communism's never been tried' bollocks. Communism has been tried, under Mao, Stalin, etc.
I'm talking about the china of *today*, which is arch-capitalist, just with a government which very tightly controls political freedoms
Probably more like the regimes that the USA supported against communism (Pinochet, etc) than actual communist regimes.
I'm talking about the china of *today*, which is arch-capitalist, just with a government which very tightly controls political freedoms
Probably more like the regimes that the USA supported against communism (Pinochet, etc) than actual communist regimes.
Yes. But they are all self-described communist states. All devotees of big-beard Marxism. Marx serves revolutionaries well in opposition but once in power it can only be sustained by departments of secret police, informers, the criminalisation of dissent and the fetishism of labour.
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