So, in order to survive, a socialist state needs to be able to trade with a capitalist state, and if the capitalist state refuses to trade with the socialist state (which fails), then the capitalist state is to blame for socialism's failure?

Huh?

And isn't the United States about the only country that won't trade with Cuba? Castro couldn't make a go of it, with the economies of the whole rest of the world at his trading disposal?

Orrin--

whose embargo quite simply gives Castro an insurance policy against needed change, injecting the energy of rightful defiance into the people? For it is the embargo that automatically explains each and every failure of the regime to provide for the Cuban people.

While I hate to defend Miller, it seems to me that Miller does not say that the embargo is to blame for all the poverty of Cuba. That's what the regime or Castro says when it fails "to provide for the Cuban people." Therefore, it is Castro (or "the man in the audience," I'm not sure from the excerpt) who

apparently maintains the illusions that structured his political successes even if they never had very much truth in them; to this day, as one example, he speaks of Gorbachev's dissolution of the Soviet Union as unnecessary, "a mistake."

OJ, when exactly did it become inarguable that witches existed? We're talking about real witches, with supernatural powers, not pretend witches, right?

That someone could, in 2004, refer unironically to "the Leader" is frightening.

Brian:

He also says:

" the relentless US blockade at the behest, so it appeared, of a defeated class of exploiters who had never had a problem with the previous dictatorship seemed to be something other than a principled democratic resistance. "

So, does a "committed human rights activist" who has dinner with Castro qualify as a part-time activist? Or an activist for only certain human rights?

And for Miller's assertion that the Russians deserted Castro - why didn't he stage a protest in Red Square?

These people shouls apply for the Alger Hiss chair.

On second reading, it looks like Brian's got a good point.

There's a pretty solid policy argument to make that lifting the embargo would hasten Castro's fall (which seems to be the point Miller's making). However, I tend to think it's the bootheel rather than mistaken popular "defiance" that's kept Castro in power so long. Certainly the Cuban people know that we're the only nation that enforces the embargo, don't they? It would seem that the economic failure of socialist ideology would have been clear long ago, and they would have agitated for change, if they could have.

Robert:

I was referring to his allegorical use of "witches" as a stand in for communists, but no one seriously argues that witchcraft wasn't real either. Both warranted persecution.

OJ--I don't doubt that Miller is an disgusting apologist for communism. It's just that a lot of these guys (including some of my own lefty relatives) have jumped off the Castro bandwagon in the last few years or even months, rats not usually swimming towards sinking ships.

Brian/Twn:

I changed the tag line.

Brian:

Then why'd he go there?

[W]hen my wife, the photographer Inge Morath, and I were invited in March 2000 to join a small group of "cultural visitors" for a short visit, we went along with no thought of actually meeting the Leader but merely to see a bit of the country.

I don't buy it either--but it could have been a little bit of nostalgia.

Why did he write the essay, then?

That was I, OJ.

One problem with Orrin's view is that both times -- in the middle ages and again in the '50s -- the real culprits were not the ones who were persecuted.

It is ironic to hear Orrin spout a Stalinist solution (If everybody is afraid, whether conformist or not, everyone will conform) after all the bad things he has had to say about him.

It would be interesting to hear who Orrin thinks represents the Cuban third way. They rebelled againts misgovernment in the '50s and allegedly are champing at the bit to rebel against the misgovernment since the '60s, but so far as I know, the only offer on the table is to go back to the '50s.

Perhaps that, rather than U.S. embargoes, explains their torpidity.

Harry:

Your defense of Stalinism is predictable but who was not guilty? The Rosenbergs, Hiss, the Hollywood blacklisted?

Harry --

Even if were the only option...by my count, one decade of "misgovernment" deserves a chance versus four. Resurrecting Cuba from four decades of turpitude (economic and moral) will indeed be hard (read Falcoff, Cuba: The Morning After). But it will be simpler than reforming the Middle East and cheaper.

People rebel for a reason, and it's always that they are being misgoverned. To go back to that is a mistake.

So, what's on offer? Where's the non-Castro, non-Batista party?

There isn't one. Cuba has never been well-governed. Orrin would have it that it must have been during the 19th century, when it had the advantage of constitutional monarchy, colonialism and Christianity; but somehow the Cubans didn't see it that way.

There a view of Cuban history that says that the Cubans did not choose Castroism. This is one of those appealing political frameworks that ought to be right but is unprovable.

Anyhow, the idea is that the populace was for anybody but Batista. The anybody was not selected according to a program but which group "had gas in the tank" to reach the capital when Batista ratted.

Under this view, Castro -- largely because unlike the other revolutionary groups he had maintained freedom of action (at the cost of, it seemed, a weaker base) -- got there first and foreclosed other options.

The pro-Batista faction fled to the the U.S. (I went to school with their children; they had nothing to offer). If there was any anti-Batista, anti-communist faction, it was too small to function. And, indeed, none has appeared since.

Actually, the great irony of history is that the rebellions only come after the reform has already begun and they usually put an end to it for at least some period of time, not least by destroying the traditional institutions which could have more easily effected the reform. Obviously Cuba would be far more advanced today had Castroism never happened.

Harry:

As with all communist dictatorships, all opposition (even those who don't personally threaten Castro) is jailed or dead. Some have probably been shipped here.

After 45 years of communist rule, the leaders of post-Castro Cuba will come from Miami, once the jefe is dead. It would have been better if we had dealt with him before, but killing him now would enunciate a new Monroe Doctrine (to a very different audience).

jim:

JFK had his eye on the wrong Monroe.

Jim --

I have to assume that Harry disdains Miami Cubans, and that he was including those in his statement that there is no alternative to Castro that has anything to offer. (Otherwise, your point is simply too sadly obvious. Of course, Castro ensured that there was no viable opposition locally.)

But of course, the answer lies both in Miami and in Cuba. And what each group has to offer is enough to replace Castroism with a much better alternative. While it is safe to say that anyone who was strongly pro-Batista probably left early (or was killed), it is completely absurd to believe that only those who were pro-Batista left Cuba. The reality (not the selective anectdote, which I can also evince, in abundance) of the Cuban exile is that by now the overwhelming majority of those who have left Cuba were either anti-Batista or Batista agnostics. (Among the early exiles, many who supported Ramon Grau San Martin and Carlos Prio, both popularly elected, staunchly anti-communist presidents. Among the latter groups, those who were originally communist sympathizers only to see the light.) But more importantly, regardless of where they started politically, forty years of constructive assimilation into the American democratic process has made Cubans immensily more politically sophisticated and responsive to Democratic ideals than when they arrived. To believe that from among this group there is not enough human intellectual, political and moral capital to be a key ingredient in the resurrection of Cuba would be terribly insulting to either (a) Cubans or (b) America. This group has been too busy building lives and communities in America to run a shadow cabinet for a givernment in exile. But you can be assured that when the time comes they will be ready to help.

One helpful way to consider the Castro regime is to ask yourself if you'd have the cojones to get on one of those rafts...I doubt I would. Life there must be unbearable for anyone with dreams of freedom.

oj --

And, complementarily, imagine the character of those who did do it (and people have been leaving Cuba under a wide range of very unfavorable/desperate conditions, the rafts being only the most extreme example). It never ceases to disgust me to see how the intellectual elite treats Cuban exiles.

The Vietnamese 'boat people' were similarly disparaged by the elites, although there were admiration and welcome shown from parts of America.

I would get on a raft... It's not necessarily cojones, it could easily be an indifference between death or Cuba.

The Cubans in Florida have had their revenge, for if it weren't for their Electoral College votes, the Cuban embargo would have ended a decade ago.

It's high time to bury Castro in blue jeans and Mickey Mouse. Or, McDonald's and KFC, if you prefer.

I did not say that everybody who left was pro-Batista. I said they were useless. So they were.

As for today's Florida Cubans, OK, where's the organization, what's the program, who has set up the government in exile? Useless.

Among the Cubans left behind, they are in a miserable condition, but not more miserable than their condition in 1958. And they must measure themselves not against what they might have been if things had worked out better, but against what they were.

No, the proper measure is where they'd have been without Fidel.

The first mistake was putting up with Castro in the first place. If Kennedy had either balls or judgement, he would have said "Bay of Pigs -- horseshit. Full scale invasion. We can't afford to screw around with this one."

That might be the proper measure, but it is not one they have access to.

The condition of the Cuban (and Puerto Rican) rural workers was better in 1958 than in 1898, dramatically so, but from their point of view, relatively not so great.

Revolutions are made by people, not theorists. If they feel oppressed, they're oppressed.

Excellent choice--compare Cuba to Puerto Rico. Note the lack of rafts departing one.

They get to go by plane from Puerto Rico.

A better comparison would be Cuba and Vietnam. In 1959, neither had a government than anybody wanted.

Harry:

Feeling oppressed seems a bit of a stretch. By that criterion, the readers of The Nation live in a penal colony (but how many have actually left for better shores?).

Your statement about governments nobody wants is onto something, though: if the only people defending a government are those who run it, then the populace is either spaced out or put down.

Harry:

So you really think these Marxist coups are popular revolutions? The Russian, Cuban, the armed defeat of South Vietnam by the North? Presumably North Korea is a popular regime too?

No, not necessarily. In the case of Cuba, I stated specifically that all the revolutionary groups were small and disjointed.

It appears that while no one wanted what they had, no one had a good idea of what to replace it with. As I said, useless.

I heard something this morning that I had not thought of before: I believe if you check, you will find that the percentages of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans in the U.S. are pretty close.

Makes me wonder if the Rio Grande had been as wide as the Florida Straits, might there have been an anti-PRI revolution in Mexico.

Oppression, like everything else is relative. If you feel oppressed, you're oppressed. An outsider might tell you to pull your socks up, but that's not really an answer, is it?

100% of Puerto Ricans are in the United States.

Sort of.

The ones on the island of Puerto Rico enjoy rather less than half our economic standards, and if you subtract food stamps, they are way closer to Cuban consumption than to ours.

If you were to also subtract remittances, I bet it would be nearly a wash.

It is curious how all three are failed states (or one a failed colony). Being Latin might have something to do with it.

Why, given their different access to all that is good (USA), have they remained failed after more than a century?

If you want to argue that Cuba is more failed, go ahead. Failed is failed.

On the other hand, if you were one of the 40% of Cubans who could not read in 1958, you may not think that everything in the last 40 years was retrograde.

Harry:

You Marxists are big on that literacy deal, huh? As if the comfort of knowing how to read made up for the Gulag.

In case you're curious about the facts, instead of Stalinist assertions, here's what Cuba pays for that literacy:

Puerto Rico

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rq.html

Literacy:
total population: 93.8%
male: 93.7%
female: 94% (2001)

GDP - per capita:
purchasing power parity - $11,100

Cuba
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cu.html

Literacy:
female: 96.9% (2003 est.)
male: 97.2%
total population: 97%

GDP - per capita:
purchasing power parity - $2,700

You add 3.5% to the literacy rate--assuming we take Castro's word for it--in exchange for a per capita GDP that's 1/5th of Puerto Rico's. Were it independent and not already a democracy, Puerto Rico would be the nation most likely to become a democracy next. Cuba's income level is so low that , absent the fact that American Cubans are going to be the determining factor, it's unlikely it would become one anytime soon.

I'll bet a greater proportion of Puerto Ricans are in New York than Cubans in Miami.

But never mind that. The thing that struck me most about the article was the complete lack of self criticism, and even more comprehensive inability to evidence critical thinking.

Which leads to my thesis: Statists are right brained. Conservatives are left brained.

Maybe all true, Orrin, though, as I said, if you adjusted Puerto Rican GDP for gifts, the spread would not be 5:1. It might even be closer to 1:1.

But that isn't the point, because nobody asked you to decide the Cuban revolution for the Cubans. They had to do it for themselves.

Given their position in 1958, almost no Cubans had any interest in maintaining the regime. Nor, apparently, did they have any strong opinions about what to replace it with.

Since Castro, Cubans have enjoyed peace and poverty for 40 years. Unlike, say, the Salvadorans, who got only the poverty.

And when we say "Cubans," there ain't no such animal. It was a society riven by class and race.

The anecdote I tell sometimes about the peasants cheering the final scene of "The Cherry Orchard" applies to Cuba about as well.

If you offer people nothing, you can hardly object when they pass on propping you up.