On 7/28/06, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
in an easier-to-read format:
July 26th: History absolved him. Now what?
By Saul Landau
<snip>
In 1968, while filming Fidel, a PBS documentary, Fidel told me that
"socialist democracy should assure everyone's constant participation
in political activity." This insight is incompatible with fatherly
control - even for people's "own good." Paternal attitudes sapped
initiative from Cuban society. By "giving" people what they needed
without demanding mature responsibility and by maintaining control of
virtually all projects, the Communist Party and government helped
depoliticize the very people they had educated.
About this problem, Venezuela has presented leftists of the world with
a kind of solution: to think of the revolution as a process in which
multiple tendencies on the Left coexist, challenge one another, and
cooperate. I don't know if the process will survive forever,
especially when the government moves to expropriate more private means
of production, but so far it's been working.
I wonder, however, if the Bolivarian process can learn to live without
the iconic figure of Hugo Chavez, cultivating the next leaders, before
Chavez gets too old.
Cubans consume - not as much as they want - but don't produce goods
that bring in foreign exchange.
That's a problem but I don't know how anyone can solve that. The
world already has more than enough of nearly everything, except basic
necessities like electricity and clean water for the poorest. What
would the world want from Cubans?
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
