Good Riddance to Fidel Castro!

Fidel Castro has retired. Good riddance!!

That the Lenin-Trotsky-Stalin Authoritarian Project of which Fidel Castro was the next-to-last exemplar was not an advance toward but a retreat from a better world was obvious long, long ago. Quite early--Kronstadt?--it was clear to all save the dead-enders that the project was a mistake. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote in "The Russian Revolution":

Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party -- however numerous they may be -- is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently... because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic....

The tacit assumption underlying the Lenin-Trotsky theory of dictatorship is this: that the socialist transformation is something for which a ready-made formula lies completed in the pocket of the revolutionary party, which needs only to be carried out energetically in practice. This is, unfortunately -- or perhaps fortunately -- not the case.... What we possess in our program is nothing but a few main signposts which indicate the general direction in which to look.... The socialist system of society should only be, and can only be, an historical product, born out of the school of its own experiences, born in the course of its realization, as a result of the developments of living history... socialism by its very nature cannot be decreed or introduced by ukase. It has as its prerequisite a number of measures of force -- against property, etc. The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed; the building up, the positive, cannot. New Territory. A thousand problems. Only experience is capable of correcting and opening new ways. Only unobstructed, effervescing life falls into a thousand new forms and improvisations, brings to light creative new force, itself corrects all mistaken attempts. The public life of countries with limited freedom is so poverty-stricken, so miserable, so rigid, so unfruitful, precisely because, through the exclusion of democracy, it cuts off the living sources of all spiritual riches and progress.... The whole mass of the people must take part in it. Otherwise, socialism will be decreed from behind a few official desks by a dozen intellectuals.... [Lenin] is completely mistaken in the means he employs. Decree, dictatorial force of the factory overseer, draconian penalties, rule by terror.... It is rule by terror which demoralizes.

When all this is eliminated, what really remains?... Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Among them, in reality only a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud the speeches of the leaders, and to approve proposed resolutions unanimously -- at bottom, then, a clique affair -- a dictatorship, to be sure, not the dictatorship of the proletariat but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense.... Yes, we can go even further: such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shooting of hostages, etc....

That--written some ninety years ago--strikes me as a good epitaph for Castro's rule.

But there are, of course, dead-enders like Chris Bertram of Crooked Timber, who makes an impressive play for the stupidest man alive crown with:

: [W]hat the capitalists and their lackeys really really hated about Soviet Russia was not its tyrannical nature but the fact that there was a whole chunk of the earth's surface where they were no longer able to operate. Ditto Cuba, for a much smaller chunk. So let's hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care. Let's hear it for the Cubans who help defeat the South Africans and their allies in Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid. Let's hear it for the middle-aged Cuban construction workers who held off the US forces for a while on Grenada. Let's hear it for Elian Gonzalez. Let's hear it for 49 years of defiance in the face of the US blockade. Hasta la victoria siempre!

Comments

[Bloix]

[Wrong comparison: Cuba in 1960 is like Costa Rica, northern Mexico, Puerto Rico, or Portugal. The fact that we today think of Cuba as in the same basket as Guatemala, Haiti, or the Dominican Republic is Castro's doing, and is worth thinking about.]

Let's do a thought experiment:

Imagine that the year is 1960 and that you are a soul about to be inspirited into a foetus about to be born. God gives you a choice: you may become the son or daughter of a poor rural woman in either Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, or the Dominican Republic. What would you choose?

[david]

All depends on what you mean by "is like," doesn't it.

[prov]

Too bad for an academic like you using such a language. you clearly depict the other side of the communist coin that of brutal capitalism, of dictatorships in Latin America etc.. Too bad taking an extreme position in an issue that must always be addressed in a more serious way. Too bad that you used Rosa's words to support you anti communist feelings

[Ken Houghton]

"Let's hear it for 49 years of defiance in the face of the US blockade"??

Lost me there. Down with the universal health care and literacy efforts.

"[Brad: The fact that we today think of Cuba as in the same basket as Guatemala, Haiti, or the Dominican Republic is Castro's doing, and is worth thinking about.]"

Model that one up and show me the results. Your major local trading partner when you were run by a Mob-backed dictator unilaterally refuses to buy your goods, or to import anything to you.

All of your costs rise (goods transport, import costs, import transport portion). Your people end up having to extend the lives of 1960s Chevrolets (poor mileage, emissions issues reducing QALYs), while watching the DR boost its income because it sells "Cuban" cigars (right seeds, wrong climate).

Would you even pretend to expect to be able to be able to maintain Convergence? Remember, Solow is an expotent-based formula: the transition from 75/25 in Cobb & Douglas (1920) to 70/30 or even 67/33 in the current Solow estimates will in itself have a negative impact on an undercapitalized society.

I won't miss Fidel, and the recent experience of a Western hemisphere democracy that (after a prosperous pause) replaced a leader with a relative of his--a somewhat younger drunk with the same last name--should give the locals pause. But the claim that the trade policy changes were unilateral on the Cuban side is disingenuous at best.

[bacon]

[Wrong comparison: Cuba in 1960 is like Costa Rica, northern Mexico, Puerto Rico, or Portugal. The fact that we today think of Cuba as in the same basket as Guatemala, Haiti, or the Dominican Republic is Castro's doing, and is worth thinking about.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista:
It is estimated that over 20,000 people were murdered by the Batista regime in acts of political repression, most of whom were tortured.

Costa Rica? Portugal?

[kamov]

Oh c'mon Brad, Chris is just a very good troll. Not as good as his co-blogger Abu Napoleon Adolf, but then again few are.

[Rickster Sherpa]

Lots of European and South American capitalists have been able to "operate" with payments of bakeesh to, to borrow the word "clique" from Rosa Luxembourg, the Castro clique.

This does not minimize the malevolence of America's far right wing and their friends in the Cuban exile community which, when they bleat about "Freedom and Democracy" mean "give us our property back, with interest, and line all the Commies up against the wall for summary executions.

Regarding Ms. Luxembourg, a garet voice was silenced when the German Army shot her.

[gculhane]

I remember it pretty well, when I saw this scene on a Cuban beach, with mercenaries scrambling into the sea while a crowd of people with machetes ( it looked like) were running down the beach toward them. They were shouting "we are with you Fidele", only it was in Spanish according to the press report with the picture. That night I heard a radio broadcast from a station high in a New York tower where a very confident anchor was stating, with precision "they were hired, trained, financed and transported by the Central Intelligence Agency".
Boy, those were big days for the Cubans, and for the Americans who still had balls and a genuine working press. Now, after 50 years of unregenerate, constantly primed hatred and every device of pressure, short of war, the Cubans are still standing but having a hard time, and the Americans are under the thumb of a rogue state gone mad with attempts to stop anyone from doing anything anywhere. How many bases was it, 767? How many trillions have been poured down the drain after the giant US industrial vacuum has sucked up a good part of all the world's commodities and turned them into the US war machine. And your president wants the Cubans, whom he arrogantly and ignorantly addresses today, to look to the USA. Heck, they can see what awaits them if they do by just looking down to the end of their Island, Guantanamo, where the USA practices torture, murder, treachery, and endless deceit as the true expression of its foreign policy.Your nation has heaped up a fearful and vast debt to be paid, some of it owed to the Cuban nation.

[dsquared]

I'm not getting this Brad. At precisely which point after the Cuban revolution would it have made sense for Cuba to decide to switch allegiances, throw itself open to American capitalism and step onto the development path of Honduras, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean and Central American quasi-colonies? Or is the idea that Castro should have tried to start a revolution in a banana republic in the backyard of a superpower without any support from the other superpower? Or that all things considered, life under Batista wasn't so bad and the Cubans ought to have toughed it out for another forty years?

Or is the point just that you're still playing the "Ha! I am Just As Anti-Communist As Any Man Jack Of Ye!" game that lost its vital spark about ten years ago, in which case let's wait until you post up some patriotic guff this July 4th and we can all stitch you up as the "Stupidest Man Alive" and an apologist for genocide to boot?

[ferd]

As others have said, the split isn't between left and right, it's between forms of tyranny and forms of democracy. George Washington refused to wear the crown, Fidel couldn't.

Representative Democracy, for me.

[anne]

Yes; the project was a sad mistake, but it has long been a mistake to collectively punish the Cuban people by embargo because of their government. I am sure the embargo has prolonged and still prolongs the mistake.

[Robin]

Quite early--Kronstadt?

Maybe even the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the elections for which the Bolsheviks lost, what, some 60 days after the October revolution...

[Paul J. Reber]

I read Bertram baiting DeLong earlier, so I guess I'm not surprised to see the response. Rather than argue the hard part about capitalism/communism, dictators of the left & right, economic effects of forced equality versus the trade embargo, another point really caught my attention:

Bertram:
"So let's hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care."

Right after 9/11, I was reading up on the central Asia republics around Afghanistan and noticed that the CIA factbook had reported literacy rates for men and women in all these countries in the 90+% range. In contrast, Afghanistan had very low literacy for men (~40%) and abysmal rates for women (~10%). The obvious inference being that being a Soviet state had an amazing positive impact on literacy rates and probably general education. Note that these appear to be confirmed even in more recent literacy rate estimates (e.g., 2003).

The point is, while a communist government is terrible for growth and the overall well-being of the people, it seems there are some things it appears to be good at.

Perhaps while we bid Castro farewell and hope for better things for the people of Cuba (and more rational policies towards Cuba by our own government), we should also note what things did not go so poorly for Cuba under Castro. If he did 100 bad things and one good, we can still learn from the one good.

[sm]

When we try to figure whether Castro was good or bad for Cuba, let's not forget that big chunk of Cuba that relocated to Florida. Surely they weren't all oligarchs in league with gangsters.

[One Salient Oversight]

Was Castro good or bad? He was both.

Forget for a moment the brutality of his regime, especially in the early days. Instead focus upon what the nation has achieved since he took power.

The United Nations Human Development Index has Cuba at a respectable 0.838 - a number higher than Mexico and can be defined as a nation with "High Human Development". If this increase in standards of living continues for another 10-20 years, Cuba will be considered a "First World Nation".

I'm not going to defend Castro's sins. He did, however, prove to the world that Communism could improve the living standards of its citizens

[Max]

High literacy rate? Cool. What are they allowed to read?

[Frank Dean]

"One Salient Oversight" -- I look forward to Brad's response.

Measured by the UN Human Development Index, Cuba (.838) is a whopping 0.008 points behind his favoured comparison of Costa Rica (.846).

Surely economists interested in growth and development should be deeply interested in why Costa Rica has not done better, given the advantages of democracy, free markets, and no US embargo.

http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/

[Jessica]

Cuba is certainly something there are intensely felt emotions about on all sides.
I would not put Castro in a class with Stalin at all.
Nor with Mother Theresa. Best comparisons would be Muhammed Ali of 19th century Egypt. Some elements of Menachim Begin/Ariel Sharon.
I see him more as a tragic figure. He tried for something noble and did the best he could with a pretty weak hand. I do believe that things would have turned out very differently if he had not faced so much unremitting hostility from such an overwhelmingly stronger neighbor. Given that the constant real threat from the super-power to the north pretty much required strong-man rule, he probably held the reins as gently as anyone else has done who faced a similar situation.
And given what we now know about how economic development has progressed in South Korea (well thanks to integration with global capitalist market), Argentina (not so well, thanks to remaining more apart from global capitalist market, and the former Soviet bloc (poor during communist days and in many ways, not much better since), Castro's choice for the Soviet economic model turned out very poorly. But this was not at all obvious back when he was making that choice (and making it under severe pressure). Back then, North Korea was economically in far better shape than South Korea. (I know it's hard to believe, but that was the world in which Castro made his choices.) And once that die was cast, I don't see where Castro ever had a chance to switch directions without risking not only US invasion, but vindictive and brutal US invasion.
And I think he knows that he has fallen short and is pained by that. And to have his life evaluated by a moral midget like George Bush and his ilk must gall him.
Having said that, the real decision on Castro will be made by the Cuban people and above all I wish them as much freedom as possible to do this. Freedom from their own government trying to hold on to power the old way even if that is no longer appropriate. But even more, freedom from those in our country would be willing to slaughter large numbers of Cubans and destroy what good Cuba has created over these past.
Whatever Castro has been, the Cuban people have paid a high price and achieved genuine social development. The worst tragedy would be for this to be taken from them in a wave of Thatcher-Reagan-Yeltsin privatization combined with America bringing "freedom" to Cuba the way we have brought it to Iraq.

[Jessica]

Brad,
I am sure you will disagree thoroughly with what I have just said about Castro but I hope you can see the possibility of having a complex view of Castro without being a pro-Soviet museum piece.
And perhaps the most interesting comparison would be with Indira Ghandi during the Emergency of the late 70s.
Jessica

[sm]

I think Castro was a pretty typical dictator/egomaniac, but I can see how Cubans still in Cuba (no one but me has brought them into the picture yet) might be worried about the future (as much exiles as the USA itself).

BTW, all these people who give Castro high points for development despite his purges and his anti-democratic regime -- what about Chile since 1973?

[eRobin]

Wow, Jessica. That was the kindest, most insightful and most reasoned post-mortem of Castro's Cuba I've read yet. Thanks so much for posting it.

[londo]

Let's just hope that when the economists go to fix Cuba they do a better job than they did with Russia.

[Neal]

Revolutions do not happen without conditions sufficiently bad to revolt against.

Which sides were the Cuban revolutionaries to choose? Was the American government offering to remove a corrupt and brutal dictator? Or were the Soviets? Who should Castro have appealed to? He chose the side offering "Change".

Castro, along with the Russian, Indian and China revolutions changed their economies and living standards of a large portions of their populations at a far faster pace than has ever been seen in the world. Contrast that with languishing development of the African countries.

Much innocent blood was spilled along the way. Who knows how much would have spilled on the alternate routes to today.

Freedom and elections are fine sentiments for the comfortable--as long as you have enough to eat.

As for how long the Castro regime continued beyond its days of progress--I think there is much strong evidence that the boycotts of the West had as much blame as the strength of the Castro regime, itself.

Triumphalism is pretty thin soup, especially when you vanquish your "enemy" through their old age and failing health.

[James Killus]

The last time I calculated the difference between infant mortality in Cuba vs the average in Latin America, it amounted to something like 3,000 per year infants that did not die in Cuba, but would have had they been born elsewhere in Latin America. Apparently the "stupidest man alive" contender thinks that this amounts to something. Apparently, smarter men do not believe it does.

from The Challenges of measuring child mortality when birth registration is incomplete∗
Prepared by Diana Alarcón
UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs
Marcos Robles
Inter-American Development Bank

Table 3. Infant Mortality Rate in 1990 and 2004
Infant Mortality
Infant mortality rate (per 1000 under 1)
Country 1990 2004
Argentina 26 16
Belize 39 32
Bolivia 89 54
Brazil 50 32
Chile 17 8
Colombia 30 18
Costa Rica 16 11
Cuba 11 6
Dominican Republic 50 27
Ecuador 43 23
El Salvador 47 24
Guatemala 60 33
Haiti 102 74
Honduras 44 31
Mexico 37 23
Nicaragua 52 31
Panama 27 19
Paraguay 33 21
Peru 60 24
Uruguay 20 15
Venezuela 24 16
Latin America and Caribbean 43 26

It may be noted that, in the early 1960s, "Operation Pedro Pan" involved the sending of some 14,000 or so Cuban children away from their parents, to the United States. I have some sympathy for any of these children who believes Castro to be Satan incarnate. Otherwise, they might entertain the possibility that their parents simply abandoned them.

The rest of us have no such excuse.

[Charles]

Castro is one of those subjects about whom many intelligent people are incapable of being reasonable.

* Was he a dictator? Yes. Was he a Stalin? No.
* Did he improve Cuba's median living standards? Yes. Could he have done better? Maybe.
* Will Cuba be better off after he and his coterie are gone? Probably. Will it be more free? Unlikely.

I think our host would benefit from a few years of living on $3 a day. It might help him to understand why people are willing to trade what we call freedom for freedom from from overwhelming want.

The arrogance of this age, an age when the American elite have destroyed their own empire by imagining that they know how other people should live, is beyond belief.

[andres]

I generally sympathize with the impulse to categorize specific outbursts as coming from the Stupidest Man Alive(tm). Stupidity should not be treated politely, lest it become generally tolerated. At the same time, stupidity should always be attacked with a strong undercurrent of humility and not by charging in like a wild boar, for when you write stuff like this,

"[Wrong comparison: Cuba in 1960 is like Costa Rica, northern Mexico, Puerto Rico, or Portugal. The fact that we today think of Cuba as in the same basket as Guatemala, Haiti, or the Dominican Republic is Castro's doing, and is worth thinking about.]"

you are definitely straying into Don Luskin/Bill Kristol territory.

As posters like James Killus have pointed above, Cuba's vital statistics today are still comparable to those of Costa Rica, northern Mexico, Puerto Rico, or Portugal in spite of its drastically lower income.

As for the other three countries Brad mentions, it is both sad, and laughable.

[Stop right there: I didn't mention them: Bloix mentioned them. Read more carefully.]

Cuba as badly off as Guatemala, the country that had a 30-year attempted genocide of its indigenous population? As badly off as Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, that has never within living memory had a stable democratic government? As badly off as the DR, which has a rate of outmigration equal if larger to Cuba's, even though it has a democratic government?

Perhaps Brad should start widening his perspective and look at measures of social well being other than GDP per capita. Even a mere change or arithmetic, for example counting median income including social benefits such as health care, will place Cuba in a much higher position than the three latter countries he mentions.

If you want to criticize Castro for being an authoritarian, human rights-violating dictator, more power to you. If you want to criticize him for having failed to enrich his country in a Chilean-style growth drive, that's fine also. But to say that Cuba today is in the same realm of reality as a criminal kleptocracy where the only law comes from the machetes of the ton ton macoutes or the M-16s of the local paracos, then you have a big problem with your grasp of reality, and have been sitting inside an office way too long.

[andres]

Brad, you don't sound like you were reading Bloix carefully either. His point was precisely that you can't compare Cuba today to Guatemala, Haiti, and the DR. You said it, he didn't. In fact, Cuba was more comparable to G, H and theDR in Batista's day than at the end of Fidel Castro's reign.

[pgl]

If this were the end of the Castro regime, I'd celebrate too. But isn't Raul replacing Fidel? We'll have to see how this all works out.

[pgl]

If this were the end of the Castro regime, I'd celebrate too. But isn't Raul replacing Fidel? We'll have to see how this all works out.

[Silentgorilla]

Lets all please remember not to be one sided on this. Yes he made many mistakes in his life but at the same time he started out with good intentions, without his I say that Cuba would be in worse shape than if it had been left in the hands of Fulgencio Batista.
To point something else out though Cuba has gone in and out of the hands of dictator to dictator, why should Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz be any better than his older brother.