Tony Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 Cuba.. hmm yes there is an interesting one. People are so desperate to stay there that the USA has had to impose a ceiling of 20,000 cuban immigrants per annum. How about this from 2003...? 'In March of this year, the Cuban government announced it had arrested, tried and convicted 75 dissidents, sentencing them to prison terms of up to 28 years. In April, three Cubans who took over a ferry and sought, unsuccessfully, to take it to the United States, were executed. These actions once again have sparked international condemnation of the Cuban government’s human rights practices. Moreover, they have led the Bush Administration to voice concerns about the possibility of a new Cuban boat lift to Florida similar to the Mariel boat lift in 1980. News reports indicate that if a significant number of Cubans were to seek freedom in the United States, the anticipated response from the Bush Administration, dubbed “Operation Distant Shore,” would involve “a dramatic escalation in the number of Coast Guard and other military vessels patrolling the Florida Straits – a veritable floating wall designed to interdict as many migrants as possible at sea.” source Doesn't sound like a very successful model of communism to me, even if we ignore the fact that Cuba was a the centre of causing the worst threat to the annihilation of the human race EVER. The fact that the dictatorship that is Castro is also gearing up a capitalist system for after he dies is hardly going to convince anyone of the merits of communism either eh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nomme Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 Yes very interesting. Forgive me I don't laugh at the Bush administration going on about human rights (cf Iraq) and take with a pinch of salt your american source. You seem to have missed out the fact a lot of Cuba's problems are caused by Americas enforcement of a humanitarian and economic embargo. What a nice capitalist bunch they are. "Other political issues include illegal emigration to the US, the economic and humanitarian embargo enforced by the United States and how much truth there is behind stories of things like the government's imprisonment of political dissidents." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba) You said : Well to be honest nomme, I will consider anything. So consider this as a measure: Literacy. They have a 96.8% literacy rate. That's just 0.1% behind the good ole USA. and better than some EU countries eg Greece and Portugal. I'll take that as a measure of success. YMMV. http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=cu&v=39 Nomme Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 I have some problems with the USA as you do nomme, and I have to be honest, I'm surprised that literacy in the USA is as high as that! However... the USA's stance on Cuba is reactionary, not causatory. Ultimately though, in the USA you have a more than equal chance to progress. In Cuba, you do not. Even at the simplest analysis Cuba quickly becomes apparent as a dictatorship. Why does the Castro regime not allow its people the very basic human right to travel freely? America may not be perfect, but it offers more freedom and human rights to more people than any communist state does. You cannot throw in a few isolated human rights abuses as citation that Cuba is more successful than the USA, because it plainly is not. Cuba has endemic widespread human rights abuses, the USA, or to be more faithful to the thread, capitalism, simply does not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
t020 Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 Question: would you rather live in the UK or Cuba?? Precisely... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 I think a better question would be 'would you rather be Cuban in Cuba or British in Britain. Our 'western well-to-do foriegn holiday in the sunshine with cheap wine and lovely tapas while the sun sets' gene will kick in far too easily otherwise. Cubans don't have a 'western well-to-do foriegn holiday in the sunshine with cheap wine and lovely tapas while the sun sets' gene. They just go to work, then home to a state apartment block or shack to feed the baby. Heres's another statistic. 78% of the Cuban population work in nationalised industries and there is still 4.1% unemployment. We're still waiting for an example of successful communism Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ned Ludd Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 Originally posted by Tony We're talking about the comparisons between capitalism and communism (+ other isms). Yes and some of us still wonder how Chinese Infanticide and Burmese isolation falls into this comparison Originally posted by Tony I don't claim that capitalism is perfect by a long chalk, but it's by far and away the very best system of economic and populace governance that has ever come about. The 90,000 Mayan Indians slaughtered by US sponsored death squads would obviously agree with that. Their democratic goverment which nationalised fruit growing to give land to malnourished, jobless landless peasants had to go for interferring with US agribusiness. CIA coup, military dictatorship, a 30 year genocide, torture (what better friend for the US than "Major Blowtorch", what a fine Vice-President) Hitler's version of capitalism turned mass murder into a production line efficiency. (National Socialism has nothing in common with Socialism!) Stalin's secret police and Gulags were hopelessly inefficient in comparison to this fine example of Capitalism in action. The extraction of the Jews' gold fillings and recycling of clothing into military uniforms, a superb example of asset stripping in action and let's not forget...best ever profits for the chemical companies who manufactured the all important gases. Henry Ford would have been well impressed. I admit that with the state involved it could be seen as a prototype PPI but these are a facet of capitalist economies anyway. The fact that this efficient system could only be developed after the liquidation of assorted Trade Unionists, Socialists, Communists and their sympathisers is testament to the adverse effect these groups have on the Capitalist economy Originally posted by Tony Can you point to successful communism, anywhere, ever? Please don't quote Marx et al, as these are mere ideologies Seems a bit a unfair as he wrote the Communist Manifesto (which Stalin, The Great Leader, et al wouldn't recognise anyway)[ Originally posted by Tony all attempts at communism have been completely unworkable and ALWAYS result in totalitarianism, They usually result in rightwing totalitarianism Originally posted by Tony I ask again... can you point to successful communism, anywhere, ever? Attempts are always strangled at birth. Allende's democratic regime overthrown by the CIA in Chile with only Pinochet and Thatcher thinking it was an improvement. Stalin and Franco acted in concert to crush the Spanish Republic, Social Democrats ending the fledgling communist state in Germany (opening the way to Hitler) US blockade on Cuba (Although Castro is still a vast improvement on the US stooge who preceeded him) The invasion of russia by 19 foreign armies lead to Civil War, the Red Terror and then Stalin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanerothyme Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 Originally posted by Tony We're still waiting for an example of successful communism Are we? I'm still waiting for a successful example of free market capitalism, doesn't mean one will just turn up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nomme Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 Originally posted by Tony We're still waiting for an example of successful communism Well I'm still waiting for you to define how you measure success. The only answer you've given so far to paraphase you is 'I'll consider anything'. When I suggested Cuba you chose to measure sucess in terms of human rights. Not really a good argument - it would seem that capitalist and communist societies are as bad as each other on that score. I then suggested a measure of success might be the literacy of the society and using this measure went on to suggest that Cuba could be considered successful. You don't aappear to have disputed that. So I'll ask (again) : By what quantative or qualative measures do you think we can measure the 'success' of a society? Nomme Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
t020 Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 Strength of economy - e.g. GDP Wealth of citizens - e.g. average salaries Freedom of citizens - e.g. being able to buy what they like, move where they like, etc Opportunity for citizens - e.g. job prospects, education, entrepeneurship, etc Quality of life - e.g. life expectancy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 OK, there are some interesting anomalies, but at the end of the day I would suggest that a pretty good measure of a successful communist regime is one that its people wish to continue partaking in voluntarily. Once again I would not suggest that capitalism is perfect, but it is the model that all nations peoples move to when they have the choice. I would call that successful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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