Richard Levins
Travelers from the United States to Cuba cross more than ninety miles of sea: they cross decades of history. They may be limited to one suitcase, but they carry trunks full of ideological baggage, including biases about Cuba, beliefs about communists, commitments as to what a good society should be like, and a collection of conventional poli-sci formulas about power, government, and human behavior.
One Cuban commentator notes:
Coming from North America or Europe to a typical Cuban urban neighborhood, the visitor’s first impression might be one of poverty: crumbling or poorly maintained buildings, pot-holed streets, ancient cars, homes where there are few “extras” etc. On the other hand, if you arrive from Latin America or another developing country, other aspects of Cuban life might get your attention: no street kids, no malnourished faces, no beggars, and people walking the streets at night with almost no fear.1
http://www.monthlyreview.org/100401levins.php
This is a long essay. It only starts out by discussing travel and visitor impgressions. It goes on to develop what I think of as Cuban communist political philosophy in a lot of detail. It sometimes borders on the propagandistic, but usually to make a point, not disguise a problem. Who knew you could learn from what at first glance sounds like excuses. The later section on Democracy is particularly relevant to the liberal and progressive mind set. It will sound like an excuse for not having a more familiar kind of political organization, and might read as counter intuitative. What's needed to undertand this section is some direct experience with social service programs that grew from within a larger socio-political movement. If the section is read with such experience in mind, it makes sense as democratic socialism.
It is very good, and opens up the concepts we all seem to carry around as a rather closed set of what such a society should be.
CG