What's Next for Cuba?
Over the last several days, I have had a series of compelling and thought-provoking conversations on Castro and Cuba with a Cuban friend and classmate -- the same friend, in fact, who has perhaps most effectively challenged my faith in socialism. We're both enrolled in a graduate seminar, "Narratives of the Revolution in Cuba," and while the course has certainly encouraged me to think critically about Cuba and Cuban socialism, it has been the insights granted to me by my friend, who grew up in Cuba and only recently -- in the last several years, I believe -- moved to Miami, that have most forcefully challenged my preconceived nations about the island.
As for my evolving thoughts on Cuba, as a Democratic Socialist and admirer of Trotsky's brilliance, I have long been critical of the former Soviet Union, both during and after Stalin's long rule, but I have always more or less given the Castro regime a pass. Certainly, I condemn the human rights abuses which occur on the island and I am in favor of a liberalization of censorship and other restrictions on personal freedom, but, for whatever reason, I have had a tendency in the past to minimize some of these problems and even to justify them, to a certain extent, using the logic of the Revolution itself: that Cuba is under seige from the capitalist powers-that-be and must struggle, at all costs, to maintain the gains that it has made during almost fifty years of socialist experimentation.
While I have recanted many of those beliefs -- whether perpetrated in the United States or Cuba, there can be no apology or excuse for human rights abuses -- I do still maintain that Castro, alongside Ho Chi Minh, Josip Broz Tito, and even Lenin, is only a minor villain as far as revolutionary Communists go. Throw Stalin and Mao into the mix and the crimes committed by Castro -- who, it should not be forgotten, accomplished one of the two most profound social revolutions in the history of the western hemisphere, the other being the Haitian Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries -- are negligible. Inexcusable, but nevertheless nothing compared to the liquidation of the kulaks in Soviet Russia or the violence unleashed during the Cultural Revolution in China.
So where does this leave me today? I condemn Castro's past and present human rights abuses, but even now, although I support liberalization of restrictions on liberty such as those imposed on the press, I cannot help but ask myself: If all the good of the Revolution would never have come to pass -- and, in the early years at least, there was much good -- without censorship, doesn't that justify the state's policy? I still think it does. The problem is not, however, that the ends do not justify the means -- in the case of censorship, a minor evil, I believe that they do -- but that Cuba is no longer attaining the desired ends by those means. Between 1959 and 1961, the majority of Cubans freely handed over their democratic rights to Fidel Castro and his inner circle of revolutionaries because they were, at the time, making social and economic gains via his leadership. Today, however, my friend has made clear to me, in a way that no class ever could, that the material situation in Cuba is desparate; the state is no longer upholding its part of the bargain. How can we, under such conditions, continue to justify censorship and other similar, restrictive measures? When they were coupled with economic gains, perhaps; but now, no.
I ought to make clear, however, that while the disillusionment with Castro and Cuban socialism to which my friend has led me -- principally through his first-hand descriptions of the economic hardship and stultifying cultural and intellectual repression on the island -- forces me to question my own socialism, it has not led me to abandon it. On the contrary, I am still very much a "sometimes-socialist," or we might say an "agnostic socialist;" rather than impugn socialism for Cuba's economic hardships and the repression and dictatorship which persist on the island, I choose to first question whether Cuba is in fact socialist.
According to Mark Q. Sawyer in his brilliant book Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba, numerous African -American revolutionary black nationalists -- including the Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, among others -- traveled to Cuba in the 1960s and, disillusioned by the persistance of racism and racial inequality on the island, abandoned socialism. Unlike the Trots, who accused the Soviet Union of being an example of "state socialism" or a "degenerated worker's state" and had similar criticisms of Soviet-allied Cuba, they never questioned the socialist nature of Cuba: Cuba's socialism was taken for granted by the black nationalists in Sawyer's book and continues to be so by many who present the island's current situation as proof of the failures and inadequacies, or even the "evils," of socialism. Given the choices, I guess I agree with the Trots; I'd rather abandon Cuba than abandon socialism.
The socialism I have come to believe in, moreover, has no need for censorship or dictatorship; on the contrary, it can only be built by the opposite means -- through the attainment of liberty and democracy (both of which, I believe, we are sorely lacking in America today). And without these it is hardly worth building anyways. Dictatorial means may allow for radical positive social and economic restructuring and help us to fulfill humanity's most basic physical needs, as in Cuba under Castro; but they crush the spirit and prevent us from attaining our utmost potential as individuals and therefore cannot form the cornerstone of any socialism to which I would lend my support. As we ask ourselves what's next for Cuba, I think I would like to see a socialist Cuba without Castro. I guess I have come to realize that bread alone is not enough; we need roses too, and we'll fight for both.
"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love." -- Ernesto "Che" Guevara
"It doesn't matter that the valiant and worthy young men have been condemned if tomorrow the people will condemn the dictator and his thugs." -- Fidel Castro
As for my evolving thoughts on Cuba, as a Democratic Socialist and admirer of Trotsky's brilliance, I have long been critical of the former Soviet Union, both during and after Stalin's long rule, but I have always more or less given the Castro regime a pass. Certainly, I condemn the human rights abuses which occur on the island and I am in favor of a liberalization of censorship and other restrictions on personal freedom, but, for whatever reason, I have had a tendency in the past to minimize some of these problems and even to justify them, to a certain extent, using the logic of the Revolution itself: that Cuba is under seige from the capitalist powers-that-be and must struggle, at all costs, to maintain the gains that it has made during almost fifty years of socialist experimentation.
While I have recanted many of those beliefs -- whether perpetrated in the United States or Cuba, there can be no apology or excuse for human rights abuses -- I do still maintain that Castro, alongside Ho Chi Minh, Josip Broz Tito, and even Lenin, is only a minor villain as far as revolutionary Communists go. Throw Stalin and Mao into the mix and the crimes committed by Castro -- who, it should not be forgotten, accomplished one of the two most profound social revolutions in the history of the western hemisphere, the other being the Haitian Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries -- are negligible. Inexcusable, but nevertheless nothing compared to the liquidation of the kulaks in Soviet Russia or the violence unleashed during the Cultural Revolution in China.
So where does this leave me today? I condemn Castro's past and present human rights abuses, but even now, although I support liberalization of restrictions on liberty such as those imposed on the press, I cannot help but ask myself: If all the good of the Revolution would never have come to pass -- and, in the early years at least, there was much good -- without censorship, doesn't that justify the state's policy? I still think it does. The problem is not, however, that the ends do not justify the means -- in the case of censorship, a minor evil, I believe that they do -- but that Cuba is no longer attaining the desired ends by those means. Between 1959 and 1961, the majority of Cubans freely handed over their democratic rights to Fidel Castro and his inner circle of revolutionaries because they were, at the time, making social and economic gains via his leadership. Today, however, my friend has made clear to me, in a way that no class ever could, that the material situation in Cuba is desparate; the state is no longer upholding its part of the bargain. How can we, under such conditions, continue to justify censorship and other similar, restrictive measures? When they were coupled with economic gains, perhaps; but now, no.
I ought to make clear, however, that while the disillusionment with Castro and Cuban socialism to which my friend has led me -- principally through his first-hand descriptions of the economic hardship and stultifying cultural and intellectual repression on the island -- forces me to question my own socialism, it has not led me to abandon it. On the contrary, I am still very much a "sometimes-socialist," or we might say an "agnostic socialist;" rather than impugn socialism for Cuba's economic hardships and the repression and dictatorship which persist on the island, I choose to first question whether Cuba is in fact socialist.
According to Mark Q. Sawyer in his brilliant book Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba, numerous African -American revolutionary black nationalists -- including the Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, among others -- traveled to Cuba in the 1960s and, disillusioned by the persistance of racism and racial inequality on the island, abandoned socialism. Unlike the Trots, who accused the Soviet Union of being an example of "state socialism" or a "degenerated worker's state" and had similar criticisms of Soviet-allied Cuba, they never questioned the socialist nature of Cuba: Cuba's socialism was taken for granted by the black nationalists in Sawyer's book and continues to be so by many who present the island's current situation as proof of the failures and inadequacies, or even the "evils," of socialism. Given the choices, I guess I agree with the Trots; I'd rather abandon Cuba than abandon socialism.
The socialism I have come to believe in, moreover, has no need for censorship or dictatorship; on the contrary, it can only be built by the opposite means -- through the attainment of liberty and democracy (both of which, I believe, we are sorely lacking in America today). And without these it is hardly worth building anyways. Dictatorial means may allow for radical positive social and economic restructuring and help us to fulfill humanity's most basic physical needs, as in Cuba under Castro; but they crush the spirit and prevent us from attaining our utmost potential as individuals and therefore cannot form the cornerstone of any socialism to which I would lend my support. As we ask ourselves what's next for Cuba, I think I would like to see a socialist Cuba without Castro. I guess I have come to realize that bread alone is not enough; we need roses too, and we'll fight for both.
"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love." -- Ernesto "Che" Guevara
"It doesn't matter that the valiant and worthy young men have been condemned if tomorrow the people will condemn the dictator and his thugs." -- Fidel Castro
posted by Micah at 9:07 PM
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