> I just think it is ridiculous to claim that Castro was "a great leader" when Cuba has fared very poorly under Castro in almost every respect. I felt obliged to point this out. Were they given the chance (cold war, embargo, et al)? I feel obliged to point this out too.
Exactly. It doesn't help that the biggest country in the international stage is doing everything it can to stop you from succeeding.
Well, they made their choice. They had the actual biggest country doing everything it can to make them succeed. Or is it better to forget because it was a failure?
Communism failed. Mistakes like that are unforgivable.
So I open a bottle of champagne as another surpressor is gone. He did not care about the lives of his opponents, so I have nothing against his own departure. Would have been great if he had used his power to build up something.
After reading some of the comments here, my fath in the human race is not enhanced. Castro was a genuine hero and a great man; indeed among the top 10 greatest individuals of the 20th century. He believed in freedom and dignity. He saw the US government as the enemy of progress everywhere in the world; he wanted people to be free and he devoted his life to that ideal. How many people can you say that of? > He was als…
>>I detest the hypocrisy I see in many (not all) western commentators. The spin and one sided arguments, the glossing over historical truths.
Well, yeah. After all, they have been fed anti-fidel/anti-communist propaganda for half a century.
Castro's poor judgement led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Afterwards John F Kennedy estimated there was between a one-third and one-half chance that it would have escalated to nuclear war [1]. That seems like an underestimate considering that we now know some of the missiles were fully operational [2] Yet today it's difficult for most people to appreciate the extreme threat and terror of nuclear weapons in th…
Wait, I thought it was Kennedy's poor judgement that "led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis" by placing nukes on the USSR border?
When you buy a beer for your friends at a bar and maybe next week they buy a round, that's communism. Communism is a central part of western society. China, the USSA and Cuba were never communism. They varied between heavy socialism (also a pinical of all high income countries: roads, trains, parks, police, fire, airports) and fascism. A lot of people who just go on about communists, today, in 2016, seemed to have no…
I'd recommend reading the communist manifesto to understand the issue better. Buying beer and sharing with friends week after week is a good example of capitalism, as the bar owner is profiting so much from you and your friends buying all this beer. Communism (of the Marxist variety) would be you and your friends being allocated the same amount of beer by the state, which owns the beer (along with all goods), and dea…
I'd recommend reading far more than The Communist Manifesto to understand the issue better. You're not describing Marx's conception and predictions of communism at all. And you seem to have misunderstood the Manifesto as the definition of communism. That was not its purpose. Its goal is to wake the consciousness of the working class to their condition, explain why this is important in simple terms, and suggest an immediate course of action for helping move society away from capitalism and toward communism. But the Manifesto was not a description of communism itself. For that, you must set the Manifesto aside and dig into Marx's other works. There is no state doling out equal portions of anything to anyone under communism—because, most critically, there is no state.
I agree. It's absolutely insane to side with Castro. Even if you agree with his political philosophy, there is overwhelming objective evidence of how awful it is: - Cuban economy - Cuban quality of life - basic Cuban freedoms (like supporting parties other than the one in power)
Insane ? I'll be the judge of my sanity, not you. >> -Cuban economy Destroyed by American embargo. >> -Cuban quality of life See above. I'm not arguing Castro was a saint, far from it. But you cannot lay blame of the suffering of Cuba at the feet of Castro only.
does communism really require trade with capitalist nations to succeed?
I'd recommend reading the communist manifesto to understand the issue better. Buying beer and sharing with friends week after week is a good example of capitalism, as the bar owner is profiting so much from you and your friends buying all this beer. Communism (of the Marxist variety) would be you and your friends being allocated the same amount of beer by the state, which owns the beer (along with all goods), and dea…
Communism proposes to collectivize the means of production; there's still _some_ individual ownership.
No, for Marx, there is no individual ownership, as the first, post-capital phase has removed private ownership of the means of production. There is social ownership only. There is individual participation as part of the social whole, but individual ownership and private property of any sort is abolished.
As an African, I'd say the world has lost one of the most influential leaders of the past century. To pretend here, for me, as if he was cruel to our continent would be both ungrateful and untrue. The man offered free training and medical school for most of our African doctors, he harbored, trained and armed many a guerilla group in our pursuit of independence from colonization. Up until today, Cuba still sends signi…
Cuba also sent lots of soldiers to foment revolutions and enforce dictatorships in African countries. It's pretty rich to thank him for sending doctors when he's also sending the people creating more injuries.
> He had his fights and ills, but not with us.
Yeah, generally with his own citizens who he stomped on for decades. But hey, at least you got a couple free doctors out of it so screw those guys.
>Way less crimes than those who accuse him. Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, never supported Pinochet et co, doesn't have 25% of the world's incarcerated in just 4% of the global population, and lots of other things besides. That's a logical fallacy. You can't say that Castro's crimes against humanity are okay because the US has committed worse o…
Further they received significant aid from the USSR.
And their economy wasn't half bad back then (from a communist standard). In Canada we always had a softer tone with Cuba. A lot of the US PoV seems propaganda driven. Sure, there is a vocal expat group that had very good reasons to leave and were definitely harassed/prosecuted/persecuted for their views/lifestyle. The same kind of minorities exists in the US (watch Trump speeches from the last year). On the other side, until the USSR collapsed, it went from the bottom of the list to near top on education, health access and [a few] other areas. Of course it stayed as corrupted as it was for the last 150 years, but don't blame the Castro regime for that, most Latin America and Caribbean nations are as bad in that regard, if not worst. As for the "capitalism is good, communism is evil" propaganda fueled argument, there isn't much to say. I prefer Capitalism. I acknowledge single party is more prone to corruption and nepotism while democracies es is at risk of populism waves, electoral counter intuitive promises and both are just as vulnerable to corporate/power influences. You have to wonder if for lesser economies, you are better off enslaved by landlords like during Batista days or kept poor, but with a proper social net, in the Castro state.