Marxism, at it’s purest and best, provides a semblance of ‘equality’. But is ‘equally miserable’ really the sign of advanced civilization? I think not.

When Castro siezed power he promised people opportunity, liberty & justice. Decades later, he has still to make good on many of these promises. Don’t get me wrong, Castro is no Ceausescu or Hussein*. Although I will readily admit Cuba is not my subject of expertise, I have a hard time with some expatriates comparing of Castro to the likes of Pol-Pot of Hitler. That said, there is no denying that Fidel is a denier of rights & esp. progress and this hurts the people he purports to have ‘liberated’.

Castro started out as a lawyer, he did alot of work with the poor ‘peasant’ population. He was bold enough to openly charge the nation’s then president Batista (by Coup D’etat) with violating the constitution! In 1957 he even signed the Manifesto of the Sierra Madres, which was supposed to restore the constitution Batista had suspended and most importantly, to have elections within 18 months! 51 YEARS LATER, Cubans are still waiting for those elections, not to mention the right to speak out & self determine!

*as a side-note: there is one thing that Fidel shares with Saddam and his ilk, he absolutely LOVES to remind his people about the “glorious revolution”, you hear revolution songs EVERYWHERE, and propaganda billboards popup ALL OVER… One has to wonder though: if it’s so great, why do people need all these reminders?!.

The disease that afflicts Cuba today is one that afflicts many a Marxist experiment, stagnation, inefficiency & an overall lack of personal freedom & inertia. Nowhere is the poverty more apparent than in the large cities. We visited Santiago De Cuba and I was shocked when I realized the many outstretched hands weren’t begging for Pesos, they were begging for soap, shampoo, & tampons. Cuba is not my forte, so I’d like somebody to please enlighten me on WHY this is the case. I don’t buy that this is a result of the American Embargo as there are plenty of nations worldwide that manufacture and will supply Cuba with these super-cheap products.

As somebody who has worked and lived on a kibbutz I was also surprised at the fact that housing was NOT provided by the government/collective. The kibbutz movement addressed housing collectively. The Israeli communities would build dwelling as they were needed, & members lived there rent-free. The individual kibbutznik did not “own” the house he/she lived in, however, as part of the collective they essentially owned everything within the community (as an individual you own/are nothing, as part of a collective you own/are everything!). Our guide informed us that people were responsible for finding and paying for their own home, and that these costs were often over 50% of the income they brought in. The obvious result is that many cannot afford a place of their own, so you get super-crowded multi-generational homes. Furthermore, because different jobs pay differently (bartenders can take in a farmers monthly salary in one good night of tips), you can hardly call this ‘equal’.

As we drove explored the Southern Cuba region, the variety of houses was astonishing. Everything from rusty tenaments, to grass-roofed huts & even multi-floor brick houses -

One has to wonder if the people who reside within these dwellings get equally wet during a Cuban rainstorm .

The issue of housing is dear to me for it is one of the issues that eventually opened my eyes to the impossibility of Marx’ vision of ‘equality’ . Even in the purest Marxist communities, time & progress do not stand still – a house built using the materials and methods of 1970, will not be equal to a house built in 1990. Such matters have the potential to cause deep frictions in Marxist communities (& they do!).

marxism and innovation, oil & water?

The Holguin area is extremely sparse. There is so much space that is just stagnating, not being used at all. At very least, I expected to see low-level farming on a large scale but even the farms were tiny, backyard numbers. Why Cuba is not more involved in agriculture, fish-farming, & industry is something I do not have an answer for. Don’t get me wrong, I picked the Holguin countryside as my destination on purpose, I will always pick open country over city – I love open air, open spaces & abhor urban sprawl – still, with so much land, and so much NEED, I would have expected Cuba to utilize these spaces for the benefit of the Proletariat!

There seems to be a connection between Marxism and an overall lack of innovation or drive. This phenomenon spans the various implementations of the Manifesto, from East Germany (esp. when compared to West) to the Shomer Hatzair Kibbutz Movement (the kibbutz’s great downfall was that most drowned in debt, eventually the banks began to seize the fields & factories!). The repression of ego in favor of ‘communal identity’ combined with the rigidity of a dictatorial government seems to retard the type of “out of box” thinking that drives innovation & advancement. The valuation of conformity over competition only serves to further glue people to old, inefficient ways of being & doing.

POSITIVES

I have a hard time classifying Castro with other historical dictators for he does provide (at least somewhat) for his people. Cuba has an excellent health-care system. Education is also provided to the people. In Holguin, considered the ‘countryside’, you see windowless clay homes with Palm-leave roofs but they are more than meets the eye. The people have access to clean water and these primitive dwellings have electricity, televisions and refrigerators. Of course, if your appliance breaks down you are probably out of luck. The Cuban family we visited ran a fan in front of an refrigerator (a “Cuban fridge”).

Here again I must ask: whats the deal Castro? It’s not like America has a monopoly on spare parts & know-how! China has been cloning every invention & innovation for at least the past decade, why hasn’t Castro turned to them?

EMBARGO

Michael Moore and his ilk will have us believe that the Embargo started because the ‘USA didn’t like Castro’ – that is obviously a ton of rubbish. Still, if the USA today has an open relationship with Russia & China then one has to wonder why it is still so rigid on Cuba. If the Embargo where to end, Fidel would have one less scapegoat on which to blame all the woes of the world (maybe he’d jump the bandwagon and start blaming the Jews like everyone else ).

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Allie is Wired, third world county, Political Byline, Woman Honor Thyself, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, Rosemary’s News and Ideas, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.