Flawed and unnecessarily repressive as Cuba's revolution is, could the left have survived if this situation had occurred?

Or would history truly have ended at that point?

I've often pondered these questions.

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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It would have meant there were no governments with progressive policies anywhere on the planet.

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ummm...Canada has Medicare and that is a progressive policy. There are dozens of countries that have specific progressive policies in specific areas and less so in others. Cuba apparently has somewhat progressive policies in health, but has totally regressive policies when it comes to civil liberties.

After all, it is not like we Canadians would suffer at all our politics being pure as a the driven snow.

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
It would have meant there were no governments with progressive policies anywhere on the planet.

Flawed and unnecessarily repressive as Cuba's revolution is, could the left have survived if this situation had occurred?

Or would history truly have ended at that point?

I've often pondered these questions.

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Dumb question, stop wasting you time thinking about it.

The Soviet Union fell, and nothing changed in Canada. Why would Cuba changing its form of government having any impact on progressive countries?

Here is a little secret you might not be aware of .... Cuba is moving towards capitalism ... sshhhhhh .. if you take a trip there you will find all kinds of capitalist endeavors. From the guy selling bootleg cigars on the beaches to the oil rigs with a Sherritt flags on them. There is a gentle revolution happening right this minute as money from Canada and many other nations flies into Cuba everyday. sshhhhh. .... its a secret.... dont let the American public find out.

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Dumb question, stop wasting you time thinking about it.

The Soviet Union fell, and nothing changed in Canada. Why would Cuba changing its form of government having any impact on progressive countries?

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It certainly is not a dumb question. I am also sure most people here are well aware their are American companies doing business with Cuba, as well as Cubans doing business amongst themselves. Your patronizing tone is annoying.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
I actually have a graduate degree in history. I'm just not a brainwashed member of a Castroite cult. I call things as i see them.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Banned_from_FD:
...The Soviet Union fell, and nothing changed in Canada. Why would Cuba changing its form of government having any impact on progressive countries?...

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I never was a great fan of Communism or any form of non-democratic socialism, but what I have noticed is that since the fall of the Soviet Union, the neo-con drive towards the right with its total disregard for the condition of the poor has became so much stronger in the western democracies. It's as if the capitalists said to the poor, "Can't stand our globilisation and race to the bottom, eh, well, what are you going to do about it?" The threat of communism no longer caused the capitalist class to believe that they had to provide a modicum of a social safety net for the poor.

Here in Ontario we had Harris and his cutbacks which devastated the poorer people of the province. Liberal McGuinty has never rectified them.

Obviously the survival of Cuba has not filled the capitalist class with so much fear that they have made sure there is a decent standard for all. Haiti for example has been and remains a viscious example of capitalist oppression.

Yet if we use the example of the effect of the fall of the Soviet Union on the rise of the extreme, neo-con right, it would lead one to believe that conditions in Latin America would have been even worse if Cuba had fallen.

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Banjo ]

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And, btw, the Swedish social democrats you so admire have never shared your obsession with forcing Cuba to go capitalist.

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I have no "obsession" with Cuba going "capitalist". My only obsession is with the principle that the Cuban people should be able to choose their government and its economic policies in a free election where all the choices are on the table.

Elections are well and good, but the real need, in Cuba as in everywhere else, is for direct democratic control of social and economic decisions, the decisions that really matter.
The real need is for genuinely worker-controlled industry, for democracy at a community level, for a break in the old corrupt model of contesting political parties. You live with the limitations mundane bourgeois elections put on Canada. Why not be open to other approaches?

And, as I've said in other threads, Stocks, whether or not conventional middle-class debating club elections happen, censorship should be ended in Cuba and everywhere else and any remaining political prisoners should be released.

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
If you think that the Cuban people cannot be entrusted with being allowed to choose their political system through an election...

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They can be trusted. It is monsters like the United States, which you call "democratic", that will never allow the Cuban people a free choice. I'm not sure if you understand that deep down, or are so wedded to the habit of provocation when it comes to Cuba that your basic progressive sentiments have long since died and been buried.

Well, you are either being willfully obtuse or you are in complete denial if you think the U.S. would allow Cuba to have an election on its own terms.

Nobody's expressing distrust of the people themselves, and you know it. What those who question your fixation on bourgeois elections are saying is that the people in Cuba would not be allowed, by their neighbor to the north, to vote without interference or harassment. Nicaragua in 1990 proves what the U.S. would do to get its way in an election result. Or do you honestly believe that the end of THAT Revolution and the loss of all hope for sixteen years was "all for the best in this best of all possible worlds"?

Cuba is different and you refuse to understand that. The main point there is to ease and remove repressive measures, not a meaningless "vote" that would only be to the benefit of the Miami exiles.

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

If you dismiss elections "bourgeois" then why do you support having elections in Canada? Why wouldn't it be better for Canada to have a "dictatorship of the proletariat". Why not go door to door campaigning in the next Canadian election for a party that openly says - "elect us and we will make sure that Canada never has another 'bourgeois election' again! Elect us once and we stay in power in perpetuity!"

At the same time why can't Cuba have the option that I have in Canada or something like it? Cuba is not a laboratory where they have to live out my leftist hopes. Just as they are not a playground for the right. Among many, I have one odd memory of being in Cuba. At a party my hosts were playing Madonna hits. At the time I was thinking why are we dancing to this bourgoise tripe when we could be playing the Clash? I didn't hear one Clash song in Cuba. Aaah, the contradictions!

Cubans - you know - the people that live in a huge prison camp, fearing for their lives if they step one inch out of line.

These same charitable Westerners also know what's good for the Afghan people. You know - "democracy" - "education for women and children" - of course, they (like the Cubans) are too stupid and backward and terrorized to get it on their own, so we send armies to deliver liberty and free enterprise to them.

Hey, like Iraq too. Yes, indeed. Free elections. Freedom from Saddam Hussein. Freedom!!

Ungrateful sods, all of them. Where are the garland-wearing Iraqis? Where are the Afghans, kissing our feet for "educating" their womenfolk?

The day the Cuban people rise up and declare that they want your White Man's Burden back on their backs, they will have it. Without your "help". Just as they won their freedom in 1959 - without anyone's "help".

I agree that elections don't have to be as limited everywhere as they are in Canada or the U.S. And I want repression to end in Cuba.

Cuba is different because elections would have to produce the result the U.S. demanded and nothing else. A century of imperialism demonstrates this. If Cuba voted even for Swedish social democracy, the U.S. would continue the embargo.

Much more important there to end censorship and release the remaining political prisoners.

And it's not about "my leftist dreams". It's about stopping imperialism. There is a
difference.

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

What the hell do you think the "Project for a New American Century" means?

Holding a dominant share of another country's economy is the same thing as making that country your colony. That country can never act independently again.

My country's leader's want to dominate the planet. Can you not see that?

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

The fact that it survives says that the picture is not that simple.

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:

The Cuban model is not the perfect model. It's not the model I would choose. But we need to make sure the good parts are saved and that U.S. influence is never restored, since that influence has never been and can never be for the good.

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You know, Ken, I do appreciate your defence of the Cuban people and their rights and the fact that you stand up to your government. But you and I have had this discussion before. It is not up to us to tell Cuba to end censorship and free political prisoners. It is none of your business - none of your business - just as it is none of my business.

But I am not undermining that by calling for the end of censorship.

Don't confuse me with Stockholm. I defend the Cuban people's right to choose their own course. It's in the name of that that I want the people, rather than merely the party hierarchy, to make that decision.

Your definition of "respecting the right of self-determination" is sometimes a bit too rigid. There's a difference between calling for the end of censorship and the release of political prisoners and calling for Stockholm's beloved U.S.-controlled elections.

You can't honestly say that "respecting a people's right to self-determination" means that no one outside a particular country has the right to express an opinion about that country. By that logic, it would have been a violation of other countries' right to "self-determination" for Canadians to oppose segretation in the U.S. or apartheid in South Africa, to denounce European fascism in the 30's or for that matter to criticize U.S. foreign policy.

It would even have been, arguably, a violation of U.S. "self-determination" for the people of Upper and Lower Canada to help slaves escape from the U.S. in the 1860's.

You can't put the left under that many constraints. Remember where that got us in the '30s and '40s when the idea was that it was a violation of the USSR's right to "self-determination" to oppose Stalinism.

Please don't try to turn ME into a counterrevolutionary. I'm just one person, a person who doesn't follow anybody's particular line. The Cuban revolution isn't going to fall because I call for them to establish free speech or cease jailing dissidents(in which category I would NOT have included, btw, those fascist bastards who tried to hijack that Cuban ferryboat).

We're on the same side, unionist.

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 28 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:

We're on the same side, unionist.

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I recognize that. And we had this same discussion about a year ago, only about some other foreign land. I don't put you in any camp anywhere near Stockholm.

But listen to me, please.

By February 2008, my country needs to decide what to do about Afghanistan. There will be a deafening chorus, starting around September, that we have to "reduce" or "change" our "counter-insurgency role" and withdraw from... "Kandahar" [sic].

The New Mr. Prime Minister Harper will try to build a "consensus" around this Big Lie, so that everyone can say: "Yes, of course we must stay in Afghanistan - but not as invaders and killers, no no, as coaches, trainers, doctors and nurses, teachers, architects - good good good nice Canadian people."

We have to be strong. We have to build a movement that says: "No! Out means out!" And when we are invited back by a government not installed by foreign bayonets to help keep a peace, or teach, or heal, then as a nation we should make our decision.

Even if it means the Taliban - or whoever - gains power in the meantime.

That's what respect for the right of people to determine their own future means - in my book.

As for Cuba, if the Cuban people determine that they are in a virtual state of war, of struggle for their very survival, and that they need censorship, and they need to imprison people that they think are trying to hand them over to the U.S. - well, I may like that or not, but I will not lecture to them. I will support them.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
I actually have a graduate degree in history.

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Originally posted by mayakovsky:
Ken, where did Stockholm call for US controlled elections?

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Exactly. And where and when did Salvadorans, Afghans or Iraqis call for U.S. managed elections ?