The Nature of Socialism

The Nature of Socialism / Rafael Leon Rodriguez
Posted on April 23, 2013

The "handpicked" successor of the late comandante Hugo Chavez was
elected and is not the new president of the Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. Starting off, his first statements addresses
the aim of radicalizing the revolutionary process. On the one hand he
showed his fist and on the other he spoke of peace. All that was missing
were the doves.

Later we will surely hear about the imperialist enemy, the assassination
attempts, the bourgeois press, the economic sabotage, the
counterrevolution, etc. etc. etc.

Any resemblance to the tactics of the Cuban Revolution to install "the
dictatorship of the proletariat" is not a coincidence. But these are
other times. A great share of the Venezuelan people know where they're
trying to take them and made their rejection clear in the recent
elections. One can assume that half the population, or perhaps more,
voted for liberal democracy. It is going to be very difficult for Maduro
and his team to overcome the popular Venezuelan antipathy for
totalitarianism.

In Cuba, at the beginning of the process, events were handled very
discreetly, until control of the military, politics and the media was
total. Then, then the convenient enemy was used even directed. The rest
is history.

The point is that between the seven years of the dictatorship of
Fulgencio Batista from Banes, and the 54 years of that of his neighbors
from Biran, we have now had 61 years of oppression, poverty and despair.

Attempts to revive the economy through the so-called Guidelines, don't
appear to be having the promised results, in the face of the generalized
corruption and the apathy of the majority of the people.

In many cases, it's a return to the stages of the early years of the
Revolution; but now without the material resources available at the time
of the triumph, which were the result of a productive and prosperous
capitalist system of production.

It's like returning to the starting point, where on arrive we realize we
have lost time. So it is with the new travel/immigration law. People
have gone abroad and returned who, under the previous regulations, would
have been forbidden to travel. And what happened? Nothing. The country
is the same.

Years of restrictions, violating people's rights on a whim, a caprice,
or because it is the nature of the system called "real socialism." And
the inertia of that nature is so strong, that they still deny the rights
of some citizens to travel.

Among these are many living abroad whom they group into different
political categories. It's so obvious that those people who have a
judicial debt to the authorities are not going to travel here to face
them, that it is absurd to maintain the requirement for a permit to
enter the country for Cubans living abroad.

But it is also absurd to deny Internet access to citizens on the Island.
As is discriminating against them for thinking differently. Or for the
color of their skin. Or for their sexual differences.

There is the key: As long as they don't respect differences, all of
them, we will not begin to advance in a promising direction toward the
future.

23 April 2013

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