09-27-2021, 07:43 AM
Not much beyond America... except that it remains a problem.
This is obsolete, but here is the rationale (by the late Fidel Castro) of the supposed need of a single-party State. This is from Granma, the official propaganda arm of the Communist Party of Cuba, and I cite it literally. It dates from before the anti-Communist revolutions that swept central and Balkan Europe in 1989 and 1990, so it is old. Some things change little.
Disagree with its premises? So do I.
http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2021-09-27/why-...-one-party
Personal comment:
The Commie regime in Cuba remains a useful bogeyman for American right-wingers to exploit for political ends. Such may be futile in effecting change in Cuba toward democracy, but it can certainly serve reactionary interests in America as a straw-man against anyone who disputes the tenets of neoliberal politics in America, basically a mirror image of Marxism in believing that capitalism must be a hierarchical, exploitative order in which the common man has responsibility to irresponsible elites -- a world of sweat-shops and sharecropper farming that Marxists excoriate but the Hard Right relishes.
If the Commie regime in Cuba were to disappear or even to mitigate itself, then the neoliberal cause would lose much support.
This is obsolete, but here is the rationale (by the late Fidel Castro) of the supposed need of a single-party State. This is from Granma, the official propaganda arm of the Communist Party of Cuba, and I cite it literally. It dates from before the anti-Communist revolutions that swept central and Balkan Europe in 1989 and 1990, so it is old. Some things change little.
Disagree with its premises? So do I.
Quote:Why we don’t need more than one party
Excerpts from speech delivered by Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro, July 26, 1988
There is one very essential idea, and that is never to forget where we are situated, which is not in the Black Sea, but in the Caribbean, not 90 miles from Odessa, but 90 miles from Miami, with a border on our own land, in an occupied part of our territory, with imperialism. Our people are in charge in our country; and our Party is responsible for its policy, its line, its defense.
Our Party knows that mistakes bemade that weaken it ideologically... There will be nothing to weaken the authority of the Party! Without the Party no revolution is possible, without the Party no construction of socialism is possible!
And we must say here, once and for all, that we do not need more than one party, in the same way that Martí did not need more than one party to wage the struggle for the independence of Cuba, in the same way that Lenin did not need more than one party to make the October Revolution. I say this so that those who believe that here we are going to begin to allow parties in the pockets of someone else. To organize who? Counter-revolutionaries, the pro-Yankees, the bourgeoisie? No, here there is only one party, which is the party of our proletariat, of our peasants, of our students, of our workers, of our people, solidly and indestructibly united…
We do not need capitalist political formulas, that is complete garbage, they are useless, with their penchant for incessant politicking. I was talking about how, here, they demanded votes in for exchange medical attention; none of these phenomena exist now. We have created our own form of political organization appropriate to the country, we do not copy; People's Power is our own form of organization...
We do not need to rectify anything at all, given that we have a very democratic system, much more democratic than all systems of the bourgeoisie, of millionaires, of the plutocracy which is, really, who governs, in general, in capitalist countries.
We have nothing to learn and we will not stray one iota from this path, on which power emanates from the people. And you know that our Party came from the people, it did not fall from the sky, and that our members are chosen among the best of the youth and among the best workers...
And you know very well what it means to be a Party member: It means being the first in everything when there is a difficult task, an internationalist mission, a sacrifice, a risk; taking the first shift, the first possibility is for the Party member, ours is not a party of the privileged, but a party born from the heart of the people, whose members must to serve as examples, and when they do not, the Party takes charge of removing them from its ranks.
http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2021-09-27/why-...-one-party
Personal comment:
The Commie regime in Cuba remains a useful bogeyman for American right-wingers to exploit for political ends. Such may be futile in effecting change in Cuba toward democracy, but it can certainly serve reactionary interests in America as a straw-man against anyone who disputes the tenets of neoliberal politics in America, basically a mirror image of Marxism in believing that capitalism must be a hierarchical, exploitative order in which the common man has responsibility to irresponsible elites -- a world of sweat-shops and sharecropper farming that Marxists excoriate but the Hard Right relishes.
If the Commie regime in Cuba were to disappear or even to mitigate itself, then the neoliberal cause would lose much support.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
