Best Soviet Leader?

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How is self-sufficiency anything to do with socialism?

Radical wrote:

How can Cuba be a Self-Sufficient Society when it's turned to Tourism and Private Business? - You have no idea.

"Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy. "

Radical wrote:

Fidel never refused aid from USA. He never stopped the trade between USA. It was USA that stopped the trade between Cuba.

How was Cuba free from exploitation when they were Sugar Farming for the Soviet Union, instead of USA.

Radical wrote:

Very good, you sound exactly like an ignorant Capitalist that paraphrases what other people say, when they actually have no idea of what they're talking about. "Communism works on theory but not in practise".

Whitten wrote:

Again, Fidel has NEVER sook to create a genuine Socialist Society. - That is a fact, not an argument or an opinion.

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Your pathetic and you have no idea of what Socialism actually is Socialism. Socialism is a self-sufficiant society that has completely abolished ALL FORMS OF CAPITALISM. - Something which Cuba has not achieved. Therefore it is FACTUALLY not a Socialist Society.

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Cuba has remained the way it has because of the peoples support for Fidel, the government and its political system. Not because of "Socialism" because Cuba isent a Socialist society - FACT.

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Again, you have a Fetish for the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro. Your ideas are not Socialist.

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The embargo has forced Cuba to turn to these measures. It is also what contributes to Cuban self-sufficiency

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Nationalisation of industry, healthcare, and education. Agrarian redistribution. This looks like a move towards socialism to me... I could link the May Day speech of Fidel Castro if you insist

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Fidel Castro mouths Marxist phrases. But he is not a communist. And the revolution Castro led did not break Cuba out of the bounds of bourgeois economic, political, and social relations.

Castro sought to substitute one form of imperialist dependency for another. Prior to 1959, Cuba had been a “monoculture”: an economy based on sugar production for a world market dominated by U.S. imperialism. Castro did not lead and mobilize the Cuban people to fundamentally restructure this economic legacy. That would have required a radical and mass-based land reform to lay the foundations for a collective and self-sustaining agriculture that could feed the population. It would have required the step-by-step development of an industrial capability that would contribute to the development of a diversified agriculture and strengthen economic self-reliance.

Instead of making this kind of radical break with imperialism, Castro sought a “quick fix.” Sugar would remain king of the Cuban economy and Cuba would remain hostage to the world market. But in place of the United States, the social-imperialist Soviet Union became the linchpin of neocolonial arrangements (the Soviet Union ceased being socialist in the mid-1950s). The Soviet Union guaranteed Cuba a reliable market for sugar and provided Cuba with credits and oil, part of which it re-sold on the world market for food.

By the mid-1960s, Cuba became tightly enmeshed in the Soviet bloc. Castro supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and of Afghanistan in 1979. He launched ideological attacks on Mao and the Cultural Revolution. Castro also provided foot-soldiers for Soviet operations to expand imperial influence in Africa.

Cuba called itself socialist. But the entire Cuban economy was subordinated to a capitalist economic logic—produce, produce, and produce what you produce best: sugar. The masses of Cubans became wage slaves to this commodity logic. Their labor and energies were not serving the all-round transformation of society but rather the reproduction of relations of dependency and imperial exploitation.

Based on these economic arrangements, Castro was able to pump revenues from sugar sales into social programs, like health care and education. These measures produced certain benefits for Cuba’s poor. Politically, this helped solidify a base of popular support for Castro. Did this make Cuba socialist? No.

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However Fidel Castro NEVER sook to create a genuine Socialist Society, embargo or not.

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Fidel Castro mouths Marxist phrases. But he is not a communist. And the revolution Castro led did not break Cuba out of the bounds of bourgeois economic, political, and social relations.

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Castro supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and of Afghanistan in 1979.

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Cuba called itself socialist. But the entire Cuban economy was subordinated to a capitalist economic logic—produce, produce, and produce what you produce best: sugar.

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Castro was able to pump revenues from sugar sales into social programs, like health care and education.

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Your quote does not explain how trade is a bourgeois concept (its not) and how it makes a socialist country revisionist (starting to lose its meaning) or how self sufficiency (impossible in a country like cuba) is absolutely needed to achieve socialism. No socialist country in history has been self sufficient, even the USSR traded resources during its whole existence, especially during industrialization.

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For Cuba to become self-sufficiant it would have required a radical and mass-based land reform to lay the foundations for a collective and self-sustaining agriculture that could feed the population. It would have required the step-by-step development of an industrial capability that would contribute to the development of a diversified agriculture and strengthen economic self-reliance.

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Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; - Trade isen't included in a Self-Sufficient Society, aslong as the means which the State uses to trade were produced in the State in question.

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It's not impossable for any single country to be self-sufficient, it just requites Radical and mass-based land reform like which occured in the USSR under Lenin and Stalin, China under Mao and Albania under Hoxha.

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All of which were extremily close to total self-sufficiency.

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They were the only three countries that sook to establish a fundementally Socialistic economy.

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Albania under Hoxha

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That wasn't my point. I asked you how self sufficiency is needed for socialism and how trade makes a socialist country revisionist.

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The USSR under lenin and stalin wasn't self-sufficient, and they openly traded with the west.

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China's attempt at self-sufficiency weakened it, especially since it had a small proletariat. Their goods were cheap and unreliable. Metals made by peasants smelting their tools in their backyard doesn't work too well. And this is all assuming China was attempting to be self-sufficient, as you've said. Also Albania's isolationism left it incredibly poor...

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It doesn't have resources,it wasn't(isn't) industrialized,had(has) mostly uneducated workforce,poor infrastructure,backwards mean of production etc... Hoxha's Albania was the least successful country in "socialist block".Ultimately,it failed both in agricultural and industrial production advancement.

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Self-sufficiency is anti-socialist because socialism must be international.

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Self-sufficiency was never given by either Marx or any other sane communist as a criterion for socialism, because they supported free trade between nations.
You, as well as everyone else who has a self-sufficiency fetish, are pulling this out of their hats since there is no single logical reason as to why any country should strive to be self-sufficient.
Self-sufficiency lowers people's living standards and this fact alone makes it a Bad Thing.
Socialist countries strive to achieve global communism, where there are no states nor borders, which is directly at odds with self-sufficiency.

What you're doing is arbitrarily claiming that self-sufficiency is necessary for socialism, and then accusing all non-self-sufficient socialist countries

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What are you talking about? I never said trade had anything to do with being revisionist.

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Again, I never said the USSR was entirely self-sufficent.

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No, thats ridiculous and shows how little you know about the great leap forward. China is a country with a population of more than 1.4 Billion People. It's not as easy as you think - As I said, in order to create a self-sufficiant society it requires extremily radical reforms WHERE PEOPLE WILL SUFFER IN THE PROCESS.

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Hoxha never isolated Albania. He simply openely crititzed Revisionists movements. - Something people don't do enough. Revisionism is the very fact the Soviet Bloc fell, and your defending it like an idiot.

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"His economic revolution was even more advanced than Stalin’s, with even more working class control over production centers.

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Life expectancy under Hoxha went from 32 in the tribal days to 76.

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SELF-SUFFICIENCY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BETRAYING INTERNATIONALISM. IN YOUR TERMS LENIN WAS ANTI-SOCIALIST FOR WANTING TO DEVELOP SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY.

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HOW THE frag CAN WORKERS CHOOSE THE MEANS OF THEIR OWN LABOUR IF FOREIGN DEBTS NEED TO BE PAID OFF THROUGH PRODUCTION TO OTHER COUNTRIES ?????????

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For too long have I been seing you claim Albania had an uneducated population.(Which it diden't) Why don't you take into account that Albania was colonised until 1950 dickhead?