Fidel Castro (Capitalist Democracy vs Socialism)

[M. Porcius Cato]

Frankly I'm rather stunned at the level of antagonism given to the idea of democracy, especially liberal democracy, on this forum. ... Not allowing a pluralism in the field of political ideas or an individual's right to freedom of expression is repugnant to me and while an interest in a historical era is one thing, espousing a belief in the efficacy of their political structure as some sort of success to be emulated or even admired as an alternative is quiet another.

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you Virgil! Even as I was replying to this romantic notion of the benign dictatorship, I was thinking "Where the heck is Virgil when I need him?"

[Pertinax]

Yannqui Si! Fidel No!

 

Those who have democracy think it is a toy, idiots.

[Moonlapse]

Learn from history! Don't repeat it!

[Ursus]

Since this debate has shifted from Fidel Castro per se to Democracy versus Whatever, I do believe it's become argumentative and subjective enough to be sent to the Arena.

[Moonlapse]

Don't make me appeal to the Triumviri!

[Ludovicus]

Who provides the statistics for Cuban literacy and medical health and other bits of the great society propoganda? Castro and the communist party.

 

 

 

From the World CIA Fact Book:

 

Cuba definition: age 15 and over can read and write

total population: 97%

male: 97.2%

female: 96.9% (2003 est.)

 

This is the link:

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbo...ields/2103.html

[Moonlapse]

Who provides the statistics for Cuban literacy and medical health and other bits of the great society propoganda? Castro and the communist party.

 

 

 

From the World CIA Fact Book:

 

Cuba definition: age 15 and over can read and write

total population: 97%

male: 97.2%

female: 96.9% (2003 est.)

 

This is the link:

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbo...ields/2103.html

I'm really not surprised. Most school systems that are not designed to create dullards usually achieve this kind of result. In 1880, the literacy rate for 15 year olds in the U.S. exceeded 95% with no national compulsory schooling. It took over a century to bring literacy it to its current levels. The problem in Cuba is censorship.

 

BTW, what passes for literacy in those statistics is almost shameful. Do you think the 99% of the 'literate' people here in the United States could make it through some of the masterpiece novels?

[Gaius Octavius]

Perhaps I misunderstand. Is anyone saying that Cuba or any other nation that has ever existed had a 'democracy'?

[Moonlapse]

I think perhaps Athens had the closest thing to democracy at one point in time. The U.S. is (or was) a Republic.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy

[Gaius Octavius]

As usual, if one were well heeled, Athens was a 'democracy'.

 

In re censorship, what is the difference whether the government does it or the media does it?

Edited August 7, 2006 by Gaius Octavius

[Gaius Octavius]

Frankly I'm rather stunned at the level of antagonism given to the idea of democracy, especially liberal democracy, on this forum. ... Not allowing a pluralism in the field of political ideas or an individual's right to freedom of expression is repugnant to me and while an interest in a historical era is one thing, espousing a belief in the efficacy of their political structure as some sort of success to be emulated or even admired as an alternative is quiet another.

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you Virgil! Even as I was replying to this romantic notion of the benign dictatorship, I was thinking "Where the heck is Virgil when I need him?"

 

I don't think that anyone is antagonistic to the "idea of democracy'. Quite the contrary. The subject here originally was Cuba.

 

But at another level, what logical conclusion puts democracy and socialism or communism at antipodes?

[M. Porcius Cato]

From the World CIA Fact Book:

Cuba definition: age 15 and over can read and write

total population: 97%

I'm really not surprised. Most school systems that are not designed to create dullards usually achieve this kind of result. In 1880, the literacy rate for 15 year olds in the U.S. exceeded 95% with no national compulsory schooling.

 

Moonlapse is quite right. Just to put these numbers in context, nearly universal literacy had also been acheived in Great Britain BEFORE the institution of public schools in 1870. When the first generation of children affected by the 1870 law were registered in the 1891 British census, 93.6% of adults could read and write, just a tad higher than those registered in the 1881 census (86.5%), which was just a tad higher than the 1871 census (80.6%) and the 1861 census before that (75.4%). Indeed the percentage increase in literacy from the 1881 to 1891 census (i.e., after public schools) was lower than any previous decade since the 1841-1851 period. Most striking of all, between 1891 and 1946, a period that saw the elimination of the small fees (10s.) that were required for attendance (in 1918), the percentage of literate adults in England and Wales had only climbed from 93.6% to 95%.

 

The bottom line is that you don't need a communist dictatorship to achieve extremely high levels of literacy; in fact, you don't even need free (let alone compulsory) education.

 

Frankly, I'm astonished that anyone would even raise education as a justification for all the blood spilt by Castro. Perhaps we should also pat him on the back for the high rates of looking both ways when crossing the street and not running with scissors?

 

As usual, if one were well heeled, Athens was a 'democracy'.

 

Again, this cynicism is simply unfounded. Look at Thucydides for PLENTY of examples of the decidedly poorly-heeled running things. My favorite example (not from Thucydideds I think) was the simpleton who voted to exile Aristides the Just because he was sick of hearing people always talking about Aristides "the Just"!

 

But at another level, what logical conclusion puts democracy and socialism or communism at antipodes?

Are you kidding? How about one-party rule? Or executions without trial--or with a mock trial--for political offenses? Perhaps the grand scale theft of private property? Perhaps it's the censorship? Or maybe the inability to leave one's hell-hole of a country? Maybe it's the prosecution of innocents merely for TALKING with a foreigner? Yes, I do wonder how communism in Cuba (and everywhere) gets accused of being the antipode of a republic (or "democracy" if you don't care about an important though somewhat old-fashioned distinction).

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

I think perhaps Athens had the closest thing to democracy at one point in time. The U.S. is (or was) a Republic.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy

The only problem I have with that sort of Athenian democracy is that the people can subject their leaders to exile for 10 years after they find out they dislike him, meaning that they downgrade him to almost a criminal level and take all his money and then just send him to the countryside for 10 friggin years as if he were nothing.

 

I don't think democracy(only to the Greeks, since they created it) even exists, rather a modified form of Republicanism. There are too many holes in the concept that can make it look more like an aristocracy, oligarchy, or even just a mob, you name it.

[Virgil61]

Thank you, thank you, thank you Virgil! Even as I was replying to this romantic notion of the benign dictatorship, I was thinking "Where the heck is Virgil when I need him?"

 

I don't think that anyone is antagonistic to the "idea of democracy'. Quite the contrary. The subject here originally was Cuba.

 

Threads drift. The post MPC was replying to was clearly, if not antagonistic, certainly ambivalent to the idea.

 

But at another level, what logical conclusion puts democracy and socialism or communism at antipodes?

 

While not commenting on their respective arguments I will point out that the relationship between democracy and a capitalist economy has been written about for decades by people like Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter, Frederick Hayek and Milton Friedman. There's even a school of economic's called the Austrian School, with Nobel Prize winners like Hayek, that for the most part takes their interrelationship as gospel.

 

For me at least the issue is between the acceptability of authoritarian versus democratic models.

Edited August 7, 2006 by Virgil61

[Ludovicus]

The infant mortality rate (estimated) for Cuba in 2006 is 6.22 per 1,000 live births.

For the USA, the rate (estimated) for the same year is 6.43.

 

For the link:

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbo...r/2091rank.html