According to a recent news item from Agence France-Presse (AFP), the socialist president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is having chilly relations with Cuba's newest communist president, Raul Castro. The story, written by Rosanna Mina, alleges Chavez backed a coup d'etat against Raul and implicates some of Fidel's advisers. Former Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, Vice President Carlos Lage, both appointed by Fidel, and the other recently dismissed government ministers were co-conspirators.
Truth or fiction? I know from a cursury reading of history that the West is quite prone to psy-ops/PSYWAR, psychological-operations/psychological warfare , whereby Western institutions will spread malicious lies about a group so that their official enemies will turn on each other and devour their own. This is to be expected, anticipated, and guarded against.
Famous examples include the US government, the Chandler Family-run Los Angeles Times undermining the increasingly popular End Poverty in California Program of socialist gubernatorial candidate, Upton Sinclair, in 1934, by telling voters Sinclair was going to take their children away. The US Phoenix Program in Viet Nam to make monsters of Vietnamese freedom fighters and anti-colonialists. COINTELPRO against Black Panthers, Weather Underground, Women's Movement, leftwing artists, like John Lennon and Paul Newman. Nixon's Enemies List and the use of government institutions, like the IRS, to harrass dissidents. Shock and awe in Iraq and Afghanistan. Spreading the lies that Cuba's revolutionary government in 1959 would force Blacks and Whites to marry, take children away, and force Believers to throw all religious artifacts into the sea ...
But even former president Bill Clinton, in one of his final interviews, dismissed much animosity against the Republicans saying he knew it wasn't personal. The fight was about Power. We forget politics is like playing chess.
Which begs the Question: what differences might exist between Fidel's appointees, like Perez Roque, and Raul? During the USSR's glasnost/perestroika under Mikael Gorbachev, Fidel stood firmly against any such reformism in Cuba. Raul reportedly favored it. Going back to the early years of Cuba's revolutionary struggle against the US-backed and funded regime, Raul is said to have embraced communism early, the first to befriend Dr. Ernesto Guevara ["Che"], and was instrumental in introducing Fidel to both. Fidel, contrastly, had married into one of Cuba's ruling-class families, the Diaz-Balarts, and it is his own nephews who sit in the US Congress staunchly against Fidel, the Cuban revolution, and communism. Fidel was by many accounts a Cuban Nationalist, wanting Cuba's wealth for Cuba.
Do these differences inhibit the development of a socialist society? Cllearly, the Diaz-Balart nephews in Florida have nothing to add to the building of socialism, but what about within Cuba or within a socialist movement anywhere?
Again, history: we might see these differences as a Threat rather than the "necessary fund of options" lesbian communist poet Audre Lorde spoke of.
A revolutionary ally, Carlos Franqui, fell out of favor in the early 1960's largely because Franqui, a member of the Cuban Communist Party, soured at seeing revolutionary Cuba go from being a US protectorate and sugar provider to being the same under Kruschev's USSR.
Whether Fidel Castro was a crypto-Communist we do not know. We only know his actions as a nationalist, Orthodox Party senatorial candidate, and married into one of Cuba's prominent families.
But I do not intend in any way to dispute that Fidel became a deeply orthodox and sincere communist, and his brilliant mind and political sensibilities saw him excel his brother. He undoubtedly went throough a similar transformation as what happened to our Beatniks, Flower Children, and home-grown dissidents of the 1960's: awed by Cuba's old colonial institutions he grew to believe they were like the Wizard of Oz, thunderous and powerless. This transformation must be behind his "charisma" as a public speaker, having the distinction of giving the longest public address by the Guinness Book of World Records, when he addressed the United Nations for almost 7 hours.
In the US we fare no better. Our debates are between factions of the Property Party, a capitalist fundamentalist party having two wings: the Republicans and the Democrats. This is one party that serves capitalism's interest, and each faction will resort to lies, blackmails, smears, and even robbing the opponent's offices to keep the balance from tipping one way or another. Remember: a fish rots from the head down. Poor George. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth. Swift Boats. Watergate.
In the perfect world, which is acheivable, we would have a broad menu of political parties, left and right, capitalist and communist, and the system would defend and protect all sides, and each ideology would be given free and open access to make its arguments to perfect our Civilization. Presently, no such defense exists to defend us against the Nixons and J Edgar Hoovers and the COINTELPRO and or own home-grown purges. We, the marginalized, the poor, the LGBT, the women, the dark, the light, the laborer are not defended. The US rivals more Third World countries in that we have no workers party. We are the only first-world country without one.
The Property Party will argue socialism doesn't work; that it has failed; that leftwing third parties cannot garner public support to be included in debates or covered by mainstream media. There is no Voice allowed to dispute this refrain. But this is a Lie.
Socialism has not failed. It was failed. Fidel employed the perfect metaphor years ago when he lambasted the US policymakers for "hanging us by our necks and criticizing us for not breathing." Since the Revoution's inception, the US has sought to undermine it and this government used its hegemony over the Organization of American States to have Cuba expelled (only Mexico retained diplomatic relations to Revolution Cuba, the last to re-establish relations happened just the other day: Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, a man who compared Fidel to Chile's Pinochet, which was not evicted from the OAS). No where has socialism been allowed to live and thrive or crash and burn by its own devices and aspirations: it simply has not been allowed to acheive its aims ... except one place, not a country, but in the US public school system.
Despite popular criticism of our poor public schools - a critcism I believe is founded on a hatred of the Masses - the creation and funding of this most public institution has educated mass numbers of young people, cultivated them to a multi-dimensional society, socialized them to working with other genders and groups of people, fed them free- and reduced-lunches.
So socialism can and must work. It will not work if we do to other socialists and communists what the Property Party does to us, the Third Parties, the anti-parties, the socialists, communists, or those still not matured to these bold ideas: the "progressives." A Socialist array of parties would argue for the perfection of socialism/communism. So one imagines while the US is utterly capable of domestic and international terrorism, psyhcological warfare against domestic and foreign populations, one also dreams that Cuba - which inspired Ho Chi Minh's revolution in Viet Nam - would see in the AFP story a genuine and healthy struggle between a Raulista Camp, a Fidelistia Camp, and other Camps, like one comprehending the socialism of the late Celia Hart (see It is Never too Late to Love or to Rebel), among others. All would have the sole aim of making socialism/communism more effective, more real for working people, benefitting children and the elderly.
Our socialist tendencies are too big to fail, our socialist voices too vital in the construction of a better society: that is, after all, what government is for.
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