Marvin:
> Which at least implies more relative sympathy for
the
> regime judged to be "probably" less repressive.
No, not at all, "implies" is a weasel word.
I don't want to get involved in "quantitative comparative analysis of repression" or whatever we want to call it, but I have no problem saying that we have to consider the *content* of repression, and in this respect I have no problem saying that my sympathies are squarely on the side of Cuba, because Cuba is fighting for entirely different goals than fascist Italy.
This has some bearing, incidentally, upon the recent, vicious red-baiting smear campaign against Christel Wegener, a member of the DKP who was running on the electoral list of Die Linke in Lower Saxony. She made the (entirely correct) statement that any society will have mechanisms in place to repress attempts to subvert or overthrow that society. The bourgeois media then decided that this meant that she is a supporter of the Berlin Wall who pines for a return to the Stasi.
Die Linke, courageous and principled as they are, promptly sacked Wegener from their electoral list.
"Totalitarianism theory" is pure bullshit, because it presumes to isolate repression from any social context. Thus a tiny carribean island fighting for survival against the most militarily powerful capitalist nation-state is compared to a second-tier major capitalist power crushing trade unions and invading Ethiopia.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.