(1) Castro and his followers became involved in and led a revolutionary movement.

(2) Whether in prison or exile or in the field, the revolutionaries who persisted did so for a number of reasons, all of which required personal courage.

(3) Successful revolutions are never structurally democratic. They are authoritarian, disciplined, tightly organized. Discussion and debate within them is always present. Consider the volumes of essays that Lenin and Mao wrote before and during the Russian and Chinese revolutions – essays focusing on “What is to be Done”? However, the freedoms Canadian enjoy and take for granted and the parliamentary institutional arrangements that govern federal, provincial and municipal politics are absent in revolutionary movements.

(4) Castro and company overthrew a right-wing dictatorship over an economy that was based on natural resources and finance (i.e. gambling). That economy was controlled by American capital.

(5) When Castro and company took power, the Americans and capital believed the economy would remain the same. Only the process of government would change.

(6) In this they proved mistaken. To the shock and unease of the Cuban Communist Party, not to mention the US State Department and corporate America, Castro and company decided to transform the economy in what they considered to be the interest of those men and women who labour,. who, in the words of Adam Smith, produce wealth.

(7) A digression. I suspect Castro was acquainted with the Communist Manifesto at the time. But I doubt if he was, at that time, a serious student of Marx’s and Engels’works or the revolutionary writings of Lenin and Mao. He was probably like the Christian who has read the Sermon on the Mount but has no command of the rest of the New and Old Testaments.

(8) Castro and company were wise enough to know that this decision would be strenuously opposed by small capital within Cuba, foreign capital within the country, and an imperialist USA. In this they were correct. Readers of this blog will be acquainted with the lengths to which this combined opposition would go.

(9) They also correctly concluded that a dictatorship of some kind would be required to accomplish their mission.

(10) For over 50 years, the Cuban Government and leadership have defeated invasion, survived embargoes and CIA “dirty tricks”, confronted capital and the US Government with resolute defiance. These accomplishments do not arise out of cowardice.

(11) As I am suggesting, the reasons for dictatorship lie elsewhere.

(12) Upon taking power, Castro and company probably discovered that foreign (i.e. American) capital had a far greater stranglehold over the Cuban economy – such as it was – than they previously imagined.

(13) They had not risked life and limb to merely overthrow a corrupt regime – one with which American capital was quite comfortable. They desired to raise the vast majority of men and women out of the unspeakable poverty in which they were UNNECESSARYLY mired. In addition, they wished to raise the standard of living – in health, housing and education.

(14) They appreciated that Cuba was not a nation with strong, embedded traditions and institutions associated with modern, liberal democracies. The country was not endowed with a plethora of strong, militant trade unions or populist, advocacy groups.

(15) They concluded that the miserable conditions of life suffered by most Cubans was a direct consequence of the political economy of the day. The men and women who owned and controlled that economy had an objective interest in maintaining that ownership and control. Real change in the economy – change in the interests of the many –would come at a price. The few were not prepared to pay it. I refer, for example, to the United Fruit Company and the mobsters.

(16) Castro and company reasonably concluded that their revolutionary party would have to take charge and establish some kind of authoritarian (i.e.non-democratic) rule to achieve their larger, political goals. Even the Government of the USSR was surprised and skeptical when Castro’s plans began to take shape and unfold.

(17) To conclude that Castro and company were brave or cowards is beside the point. Neither claim EXPLAINS what happened.

(18) More to the point, the Government’s Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and Revolution, adopted by the Communist Party Congress in February, 2012, acknowledge that the present organization of the state economy is not producing the wealth that the human and natural resources of the island are capable of achieving.

(19) How, then, to change the way men and women relate to each other in the production of goods and services?

(20) Put another way, how does one encourage human imagination and entrepreneurship that has innovative, but not exploitative consequences? How does one provide incentives to labour without creating unnecessary and vast differences in wealth? How does one encourage civic responsibility and democratic practices in public life and the affairs of state? Clearly, a historical struggle is unfolding in Cuba. THE CUBAN ECONOMY has become an important watchdog over history in the making.