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Participatory Democracy In Cuba
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this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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chapotraphouse
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In Cuba, no political party, including the Communist party, nominates or campaigns for candidates for office- all candidates run as independents. Political parties under socialist systems play a different role than under Liberal capitalist systems. Parties under capitalism represent the competing interests of factions of the Bourgeois ruling class, while parties under socialism ideally (not always in practice, unfortunately) represent the interests of the whole of the working people and society. Socialist states also typically take the position that the process of democracy doesn't stop with elections and voting, but is a continual process whereby the people are consistently engaged and participating in their government. That is why this post emphasizes the role of various mass organizations in Cuban democracy- these are the democratic institutions of the country, not just political parties. You can contrast that to a bourgeois system, whereby two or more bourgeois parties run mass advertising campaigns, rendering the vote as essentially a consumer choice analogous to picking political representatives like choosing between Coke and Pepsi, while the people have little actual say in some of the most important parts of their lives.
Thanks! So this is what people mean by alternatives to liberal bourgeois democracy. Because I've always wondered what possible alternative to liberal democracy there could be that isn't just authoritarianism, which just sounds plain worse.
I seem to be in the minority whenever I bring it up, but I do like the idea of essentially removing political parties (because those seem to be terrible in the states) and channeling organizing through different ways instead of a limited set of private company cliques. As long as the mass organizations are democratic themselves and offer education and avenues for change, that's a good thing. Only thing is you need to have an idea of what the candidates will do when elected since you can't just rely on the trust of a political party who's ideals you believe in. Do the little notice boards they put out during elections in Cuba have their voting history, or just like their personalities and jobs? I've been meaning to look more into if democracy without political parties is possible.
Tbh, this seems similar to the US if they outlawed campaigning, political parties, and PAC's. They already have various organizations that endorse candidates (NRA, unions, ACLA, AIPAC, NAACP, churches, etc), so I guess those would be like the mass organizations or does that analogy not work?
Often times what you've been told is "authoritarianism" by socialists is actually a different organisational structure of democratic institutions that fundamentally produces a more democratic outcome than the liberal democracy you're familiar with. The problem for socialists is that it's very easy to slander a system nobody fully understands, and it takes a considerable amount of learning and investigating to learn that the system is actually good and provides more democracy, not less, DiEM standing for democracy in europe movement. This is in fact the angle that one of the main multi-country European socialist coalitions are pushing at the current moment in time, more democracy, not less. The point is that liberal democracy doesn't produce democratic outcomes and that is because it is structurally designed not to.
The Cuban system you are currently learning about here is actually a slight variant on the Soviet system.
China also uses a variant, with their own differences, as does Vietnam and several other socialist countries. Each have their peculiar differences, what's important to understand is that liberal democracy doesn't come in one flavour, it is adapted and different in every country, the same applies to socialist democracy as well.
This can be a lot to take in and a very deep rabbit hole to go down. I'm quite happy to answer any questions.
So the part I don't get is how a lot of these countries end up with the same leaders for life? You think if they were so democratic that they'd change out occasionally. I know the USSR changed leaders a few times after Stalin and not sure what's happening with Cuba now, I think they just put in term limits, but before that there was Stalin for decades, Fidel Castro for decades, Mao, now Xi Jinping, etc. Keeping one leader for that long gives an opportunity for them to centralize power.
I also worry that so many representative layers dilutes the people's will from the bottom to the top, but to be honest, I have no idea of that's true or just a gut feeling. I'd have to see some study, like the one that showed that popular will doesn't seem to affect whether something happens in the US unless rich people are also for it lol.
Other than that, it sounds pretty good. I definitely have to do more research in that European democracy movement. We could definitely do with some more democracy in the US (less gerrymandering, no electoral college, etc.). Thanks for the explanations!
Typically it's because to win the election in the first place, you need to be pretty popular. There are cases of unpopular leaders who, while they did some things right, had such massive problems that they were tossed out -- Khrushchev is the perfect example of that, but if someone proves that they are good at what they are doing, as Stalin did, as Fidel Castro did, and so on, people are going to generally support that person. Even when someone has a real decline in the quality of leadership (see Mao, though I think the issue is overstated beyond sheer senescence right at the end), if they were involved in something like personally saving the party and leading the revolution to victory while overseeing a doubling in life-expectancy and an end to the vast majority of colonial occupation and reactionary practices like footbinding, spread in literacy and healthcare, etc. etc.
Each of those individual things can completely change someone's life for the better, so you get a whole lot of good will you need to burn through by fucking up before people abandon you.
An example of this perspective can be seen in part of a talk Michael Parenti gave:
spoiler
If someone taught me to read when I grew up illiterate, gave me a hospital where before the nearest one was many hours away, gave my family a way to safely make a living, I'd probably be grateful to him for the rest of my life, too.
Now, there's the matter of what should happen, because term limits are principally reactionary (money has no term limit, so it ends up controlling elections that have them), but age limits* are necessary and part of the reason for the customary term limits in China after how old Mao got. We have yet to see what Xi will do or how long he will seek re-election for, but the thing keeping him there is that he has transformed people's lives by the tens of millions and improved lives by the hundreds of millions, so they believe in him.
*Or cognitive assessments
Damn that's a powerful passage. Thanks for that. It reminds me of the Jon Oliver segments where they interview normal people affected by terrible US policies or lack of regulation. So it's the same thing that probably would've allowed FDR to keep running if he hadn't died. Although that was scary enough that the US immediately put in term limits afterwards.
That's true, but scary for who?
Do you have a link to that talk, or just that quote in particular?
https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/d8evq0/a_transcription_of_michael_parenti_on_the_cuban/
Thank you!
you want office holders to develop leadership in subsequent generations rather than blocking it, and you don't want people making decisions who won't have to live with the consequences. age limits or a lifetime service limit are probably a better way to do that than term limits since someone spending 20-30 years in congress and then having three or four senate terms starting in his 60s is not actually addressing the problem of gerontocracy in US politics.
The tendency towards long-term political figureheads comes down to a few root causes generally:
The late stage Soviet system did have issues with this sort of thing, less so because those at the top were consolidating power and more because they weren't investing in the party and recruiting new blood into their ranks, which resulted in the same party members remaining in power for decades and contributed to the eventual collapse of the union later on as the common Soviet was less a devoted Marxist and more a person living within a Marxist society.
I've never actually learned this stuff, I'm reading through this thread and I'm still not getting some things that maybe should be obvious. What is the role/function (both ostensibly and in practice) of both the communist party itself and their leader more specifically?
The answer largely depends on the specific country/party; socialism is a scientific ideology, after all, and often experiments with new ideas or processes depending on the specific conditions of that country and its needs.
Generalizing though, the party is an ideological animal whereas the government/state is a practical one. The latter concentrates on day-to-day issues like infrastructure, education, the economy, etc while the former acts to guide the state towards the goals of socialism. As a practical example, the government may be working to expand light industry to create more luxury goods for its people while the party would be working to ensure the long-term benefits of such go to the working class and not get consolidated into the hands of a wealthy minority. Both the party and the state are tightly integrated to ensure that this isn't just a bunch of armchair Marxists reading theory and yelling at a government that largely ignores them, so you'll often find that party membership is essentially required to get into the state in the first place (though there are, contrary to popular belief, multiple parties within typical ML governments. China, North Korea, Cuba, etc all have multiple parties, just with a very dominant communist party, so there is some wiggle room here).
The confusion around long-lived leaders generally boils down to this separation of party and state: a populist figure like the Kims might start off as both head of state and head of party, but gradually shift duties more towards the latter until they completely abandon the head of state position. Since the party still has massive influence this means they still have quite a lot of sway, but they're not making the day-to-day decisions directly anymore.
Thanks for the good explanation. That last part is a problem I could see, too. I know I heard an issue the USSR had is that their bureaucracy class got too entrenched and separated from the people. No idea how to solve that, though, as I'm obviously still learning about this in general. This has been such an interesting thread lol.
The structure of the system generally results in a meritocratic (actually serious) result. Everyone in the system has started at the lowest council level, and then at each council they have been voted up based on actual ability to produce results to represent that council at the next tier. This process of each council selecting someone to represent the council at the next tier up continues all the way to the supreme congress.
Think of it this way... If you put a thousand extremely competent highly skilled carpenters in a room together and ask them to select the best person among them for the job, they're going to select someone who is an incredible master. Now wait 4 years and ask yourself whether they're going to select a different person, is someone else going to magically be a better master carpenter? Not likely. Quantity of experience plays a large role in ability, and the person with the highest quantity of that experience is still that master.
Stalin, was one of the most effective administrators of any government in history. This is just a simple fact, as leader he took a country without industry, a feudal backwater with no technology that was still doing horse-and-cart agriculture let alone any kind of industrial production, and in his time they defeated the nazis and literally went to space... in under 40 years. Mao? Mao was a hero revolutionary, the leader that freed the country. The average life expectancy was 33 when he started the revolution, and it was 60 when he died. This man has been villified to an absolutely ridiculous degree when literally any metric of comparison (before/after the revolution) you use demonstrates why he was kept. Were there dumb mistakes? Yes. But even with some mistakes things like ending the practice of foot-binding which affected near 50% of all working class women and 100% of all rich women is all-by-itself justification for Mao, without anything else. Castro falls into a similar boat, he was a hero revolutionary, brought incredible levels of improvement to his people, and not only was he seen as a hero but he was charismatic as fuck, watch any video of him and he's immediately likeable, even when he aged the man's earnestness and softness shines through.
As for Xi. He's only in a third term and his total time in the role is only at 10 years lmao. That's not even notable. The last Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel was in her role for 16 years. Tony fucking Blair was PM of the UK for 12 years. I can't take Americans seriously when they talk about this shit when he's not even past well known leaders of my own country.
There is a 3rd party Harvard study worth a read here on the Chinese system, it's the longest study of its kind (30 years long), independent, and can't be regarded as biased in favour of China (the opposite actually). It finds that 95% of the population support the government, it finds that they support the government because it has consistently improved their lives, and it finds that it's not because of "widespread propaganda" but because of real actual changes in their material lives.
The Chinese system produces results that reflect what the people actually want, partially because of one single policy - any constituency can remove its representative with a simple majority vote. I want you to consider what absolute fucking mayhem that policy would enable if it existed in your own country. How often would the local politician be getting campaigns to remove them for doing things the people don't want/like? If that policy existed right now in most western countries we could be getting rid of 90% of the politicians for their support for Israel and genocide. The very existence of this policy enforces an enormous pressure upon the representatives to actually represent the people - or else.
Contrast this study with studies you've seen of western democracies all having less than 50% support.
Don't get me wrong about this, I have criticisms too. I don't particularly like how slow the system is at bringing about cultural change, lgbt issues have moved slow as fuck toward improvement (improving more than the US which is going backwards right now) because old people are a bunch of homophobic bastards that slow the process of change down. Cuba is an exception to this because Mariela Castro, one of Fidel's family, took it upon herself to change things including changing the views of Fidel who later regretted and apologised for the mistakes of early homophobia in the country. I think it's likely that without the involvement of Castro himself the movement would have stalled or been slow there. Right now Cuba is the most progressive country in the world, with the most progressive laws for lgbt people as a result of their reforming of the family law in recent years. For reference, I am lgbt myself.
Interesting stuff. Being able to recall representatives sounds amazing. I wish the US had that. Although the UK and Australia have something similar to that Iirc and it's just lead to them speed running through prime ministers lol. Wonder what the difference there is.
Cultural issues do seem to be the weak point of this kind of populist policy making, because it's easy to convince the rmajority to hate some minority. Not sure what the solution to that is besides including strong protections in the initial Constitution of a state.
In liberal parliamentary systems like the UK (I am cursed to live here) it's just a vote of no confidence in government. It can only be performed by the elected MPs of the party currently sitting in government. It's happening frequently because FPTP voting has caused too many different political groups to join one party despite having views that would cause them to be in different parties in other countries. This results in very frequent governmental splits and rebellions. Unfortunately we have no such powers to change representatives.
It certainly is a weakpoint, but it's also important to note that it will resolve itself in the longterm. The cultural change is happening in the young people and the older generations will filter out. The change is inevitable. Most importantly things like transgender clinics for children are now being built all over because their state actually follows scientific advice strictly. When I say things there are heading in the right direction I also firmly believe here in the UK and the US we are heading in completely the opposite direction. That's not something liberals even want to resolve either given how little opposition they mount to anything.
Another thing to note is that abortion in the US has gone backwards, with no federal opposition at all, and only token gestures from the liberals. This while under their government. That shit is never ever going to happen in China. The direction of this kind of change is firmly in ONE direction, despite the west's best efforts to provoke foreign countries into homophobia via western homonationalism. That shit has been quite successful at turning other capitalist countries more homophobic and anti-lgbt though.
I forgot that it had to be done by MP's in their own party. Ya, that is a big difference. You have my condolences about the UK lol. They're looking more and more like the US these days.
I hope you're right that it changes as the generations move forward! I'm also hoping social media makes a difference. I know it also puts people in their own bubbles, but I could also see it allowing people to get exposed to different types of people. If you're an LGBTQ person, the only one in your small town or village for example, you can connect with others and see that you're not so strange. Hell, because of the internet, my eyes have opened to the Israel-Palestine conflict recently, something I never cared about in 2018, 2015, or any year prior, thinking it was too complicated. Now I'm arguing about it all over the place, looking up what places to boycott and shit. Changes is always possible.
I guess we won't truly know until we see how time passes in places like China or Vietnam. And we have to hope rich people don't invent an immortality portion like they keep trying to lol.
I've spent the last 15 years being called a tankie (a label I don't care about but the other side thinks it's a slur or something) and an antisemite for relentlessly fighting for Palestine. Since you're freshly out of the liberal bubble, did you know Nelson Mandela was a communist? Liberals love to invoke Mandela while mis-educating people on his actual beliefs. If you have any doubts about your support for Palestine, revisit the words he gave in his 1993 visit to Gaza.
Lenin gave us this little passage describing the phenomenon of Liberals to steal and deradicalise heroes from the left:
Applies to MLK, Mandela, Einstein, even Malcolm X to a lesser extent. And countless others.
Won't save them from China lmaoooo all-time billionaire execution record holders.
I'm not sure I can answer your questions in detail, but this video might help you:
How Democracy Works in Cuba
Thanks!