[lbo-talk] Cuban HDI

[Brad DeLong]

>Clinton was big pals with Mas Canosa and the Gusano, I mean right 
>wing exile movement in Miami. That's how he nailed down Florida. He 
>did nothing about the blockade, Radio Marti, etc. So, no, I don't 
>think Clinton's policy was the benign neglect I'd like to see. It 
>was pretty consistent with the previous 30 years of post Bay of 
>Pigs hostility. Although Clinton's (and Bush I's, etc) policies 
>towards almost everyone were better than the Shrub's, I think you're 
>naive to suppose that Clinton would have allowed a fair and free 
>election to proceed in Cuba without Nicaraguanizing it. jks

You know, there is a certain "Oceania has always been at war with 
Eurasia" tone here. Castro's regime is claimed to be progressive, and 
popular, and one of the few gems of light in a dark world. Castro's 
regime is also so fragile that Castro has no choice but to send 
dissidents to jail for decades and rig every election--for otherwise 
Radio Marti will hypnotize the people and lead them to vote it out of 
office.

One of the great victories of the Eurocommunist movement was to have 
gotten the western Far Left to commit to the priority of bourgeois 
emancipation--that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to 
organize, and multi-party elections were key foundations without 
which nothing good could be built. It is curious to see such 
extraordinary backsliding in the interest of propping up an old 
dictator.

Lenin, after all, thought that the "dictatorship" part was temporary, 
until the state withered away and the government of men could be 
replaced by the administration of things. Castro thinks that the 
dictatorship is permanent.

Brad DeLong