Raul Castro Urges Students to Debate 'Fearlessly'

mao did something like that once, and it resulted in tons of people thrown in jail when he was shocked to realize people had tons of criticisms

could be that he's sincere about it, perhaps thinking of changing things once fidel dies, but who knows? history will tell.

Yes and Raul is the mentalist of the two. He's famed for his totalitarian tendencies. He is probably doing a Mao.

I really hope you are joking but I got a strange feeling you are serious.

Definitely. I find Leninism quite objectionable.

Probably because the guerilla warfare and populism of his day was aimed against his authoritarianism.

I would think you would be joking because you initially wrote this:

What do you mean by not an absolute failure? Clearly the Cuban state is authoritarian and quite heavily entrenched in power.

I'm interested in any working class libertarian socialist currents that have managed to survive the Castro years and that could possibly assert itself during any post-Castro shake-up. But I don't see any evidence of this. What I have seen is just liberal-democratic rhetoric. I've jumped the gun a bit and assumed from your post that you're optimistic about a few potential democratic reforms. Please elaborate on your optimism for Cuba.

Ah well, first of all I'm not a libertarian communist, at least in the orthodox sense. I'm a left-communist with a wide range of influence [but particularly Rosa Luxemburg, the Black Panthers, & the autonomists]. So the issue for me isn't is the Cuba state 'authoritarian' and its degree of power but who is it authoritarian against and who wields power.

For the most part, the Cuban state is composed of members from either working class or middle class intellectual backgrounds. In this case Cuba is both progressive and reactionary — members of the working class create their own initiatives and wield influence but so do non-workers who do not necessarily have an interest in socialism.

It is important to remember that the Cuban Revolution was on multiple fronts. Castro led a left-leaning populist movement [the 26th of July movement] but as the movement overthrew the Batista dictatorship many different fronts began to crop up. Several soldiers rebelled against the Batista dictatorship, independent guerilla groups of ex-urban revolutionaries and peasants formed in the mountains, and across Cuba the working class started to take anti-capitalist action. In fact, the workers of Cuba were already expropriating former plantation owners before the revolution had even declared itself socialist. These different factions affected the historical trajectory of Cuba. Cuba is not a monolith of Leninism, echoes of past still manifest themselves.

I am optomistic about the future of Cuba. The youth of Cuba understand that even though their country has made great strides it hasn't finished the job. It's not the ideology that matters, but the consciousness of the people — and the people, especially young people, know what to do. For us [the members of the working class] it isn't a question about whether or not breakfast programs and urban communal farming are 'counter-hegemonic' or a 'proper deconstruction of modernism' but about people feeding people and taking power into our own hands one step at a time.

it really doesnt matter what a person's background is, when they're leading the state, because they've given up that background to be a politician. tons of bolsheviks would've been workers too, and mao was from a peasant family (though a well-off one), and it still turned out quite poorly. the ideal of socialism shouldnt be "choose our leaders/dictators from proper economic backgrounds," it should be to eliminate dictatorship and hierarchical leadership, as such. hell, the emperor who founded the Han Dynasty in china was a former peasant, it didnt turn ancient china into anything particularly socialist.

Feighnt's "it doesn't matter..." is worth quoting but mine isn't? Sniff

Cheer up bro, I was gonna ditto both of you yesterday but got a virus scare and went off line. Promise.

Autonome Brigade: I got issues with how you're framing this discussion. All past "revolutions" have suppressed autonomous action to entrench an elite. All countries have anti-authoritarian currents ranging from hypocritical liberalism to communism. I don't have faith in a younger more radical generation of Cubans taking over cos the second they do, they will act as a ruling class, i.e. anti-working-class.

I have problems particularly with this, in terms of some reforms Cuba is ahead of Latin America not to mention North America, but having been kept under a 'workers state' having their institutions quashed I think Cubans would more likely move towards free market capitalism than anywhere else.