If you really think that’s a useful description of Gorbeschev, where are you getting your history from?

Is Cuba a “tyrannical dictatorship”?

How did Pinochet fall?

Cuba is indeed a tyrannical dictatorship and has been for decades. A one-party state that regularly arrested dissidents and those who simply didn't fit its ideal narratives even if they had committed no normally defined criminal offense. I can't at all imagine how you could define the decades under castro and his brother as anything close to democratic. By definition that would require political plurality, freedom of association and freedom of expression, all of which were and still are very visibly lacking in Cuban society.

To say all of the above, by the way, is in no way to defend the also barbaric practices of the Pinochet regime. Pinochet however at least left power after a forceful referendum and peaceful transition to democracy. The ruling elite of Cuba never did and in no way ever even let things reach the point of an honest referendum.

Gorbachiov? That dude who ordered tanks on my countrymen on 1991-01-13 yet he still pretends to be a peace savior? He can rot in hell.

Gorby appears to be the sole exception. Might have something to do with having close family killed in the famines, and tortured in the Gulags. Every European other regime fell under pressure from the streets.

Cuba is a tyranny. They've soften up to get European investment and tourists, but they're brutal in their indoctrination, imprisonment of dissidents, etc. They're also an important (and beloved) backstop preventing American domination in L. America.

Pinochet didn't fall, he basically handed over power peacefully. His (surprisingly liberal) constitution of 1980 established him as head of the armed forces (which he was until he died) and promised free elections. He allowed for a fair and free elections in '88 that he lost and whose result he respected paving the way for the 1990 presidential elections. Again he lost and respected the result.

He's also a murderer who slaughtered thousands of innocents, but that's peanuts compared what the commies have wrought.

Everything I wrote is a gross oversimplification. Volumes have been written for each of the three topics you glibly referenced.

Gorby is not exception. He was bad at his job, yet he still tried to do same shit. E.g. January 1991 events. Looking at the big picture it's clear that either he ordered tanks on his own civilians OR he knew about them and was too coward to come out that he lost chain-of-command.

You do realize Pinochet was a capitalist dictator and the people he murdered were socialists, no?

And you have to be absolutely brainwashed to believe Cuba is a “tyrannical dictatorship.”

And what would you call the Cuba of the last several decades? A democratic politically liberal state that respects personal and political freedoms? I'm honestly curious. Also, you don't need to be brainwashed, you simply need to read, observe and speak to people who live or have lived there.

"Pinochet was a capitalist dictator"

If you read my comment carefully I clearly state:

- Pinochet slaughtered (tens) thousands of innocents

- Cuba is a backstop to American imperialism in the region which I clearly eluded as a good thing for those L. Americans outside of Cuba (at least until Americans drop their Monroe BS).

My parents are from Argentina and lost many friends, students and professors (luckily no family) to capitalist dictators. The battles of L. America literally run through my blood. I think I am very well aware who the Chilean equivalent of Videla is. Pinochet, however, must be recognized for having relinquished power unlike his Argentine capitalist counter parts and Cuban socialist counterparts.

Anyway, I think I have demonstrated a little more nuance in this very complicated topic than trite single line slogans. I am not a "capitalist", whatever that means. I reject the destructive "socialism" vs "capitalism" false dichotomy.

> I reject the destructive "socialism" vs "capitalism" false dichotomy.

Nothing could expose your class position as much as your suggestion that Cuba’s leaders are Pinochet’s “counterparts.”

Pinochet was lifted into power by the American capitalist empire. Castro was lifted into power by the Cuban working class. It takes a lot of nerve to equate the two in any way, and even more to suggest that the latter should step down in spite of overwhelming support from the Cuban people.

Nothing I said contradicts what you wrote. The US did assist Pinochet (bad). The Cuban people did revolt against Battista (good).

You'd be surprised, however, how popular Pinochet is particularly among working class Chileans, just as you'd obviously be surprised how much support Cuba needed from the USSR to keep the regime together. Material support and training manuals on how to buttstock resistive people.

Battista fell over 60 years ago, Cubans want something else.

Reality is complicated, it cannot be reduced to pretty slogans.

I am not surprised by either! But, in both cases, the US has played an extremely aggressive role in generating the circumstances.

> Is Cuba a “tyrannical dictatorship”?

Yes, looks like it works just like any other communist state. Communism needs to be maintained through tyranny, people wouldn't vote for it if they could which is why communist states must constantly supress dissent and never allow people to vote for other parties. When people can vote they quickly vote out communism in favor of more liberal parties, communism is very short lived in free societies as when people try it they quickly learn to hate it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/world/americas/cuba-judge...

Do you know anything about Cuba besides what the children of ex-Cuban plantation owners say?

Could Cubans vote away communism if they wanted? If not then it isn't free. People could vote away capitalism in USA and become communist if they wanted. Every democracy could.

Absolutely, but Cuba’s democracy is very localized and bottom up in order to prevent a wealthy ruling class from controlling dominant narratives, i.e. oligarchy like in the US. And they don’t hold ridiculous election performances every 4 years to wrangle consent from the public.

Democracy is very sensitive and the liberal democracies in Western capitalist countries are brutally anti-democratic. Most Americans realize this but will be so quick to presume any other country a dictatorship.

Cuba has never been a “dictatorship”. Castro and his successors were and still are deeply loved by the Cuban working class that put them into power. US leaders understand this and it’s why none of their attacks have penetrated. See: Bay of Pigs

This is not accurate. Cubans could not vote out the Communist Party since it is enshrined in the Cuban constitution that there is only one party, the Communist Party, and all other political parties are classed as "illegal".

"Cuba is a one-party state, with the Communist Party of Cuba being described as the "superior driving force of the society and the state" in the Constitution of Cuba, and all other political parties are illegal. Elections in Cuba are not democratic because the government does not allow free and fair voting." ~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Cuba

So how would that work?

“Free and fair voting” is an extremely subjective phrase. In many liberal democracies, this just means “the rich get their way.”

Call it what you want, how do you defeat the communist party in elections if it is enshrined in the Cuban constitution that there can only be one legal party, and that party is the communist party?

How does that jibe with democracy and free elections?

It's very easy to love your leader when the only alternative is the labor camp.

??? Do you even have the first idea what you’re talking about? The other “option” was Batista. And Cuba is more democratic than the US, but it doesn’t allow oligarchs to astroturf consent like in liberal democracies.

There are always a lot of options if you don't have marxists around :)

Cuba was just a Soviet Union's project to burn enough money to show that socialism works. But it didn't. And I very unhappy that we were living so poor in soviet era while paying those "democracies" which were modeled just like our country - with literally no choice on any elections.

And being rich is not a sin, btw.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. The Soviet Union had no role whatsoever in the Cuban revolution.

>Is Cuba a “tyrannical dictatorship”?

People aren't dying on makeshift rafts trying to get there, they're dying on makeshift rafts trying to escape.

This is unfortunately not a joke. It blows my mind that many people today don't understand that communism can only work in a primitive society (the "pure" form that many dream about) or it inevitably leads to an authoritarian dictatorship (in more advanced societies).

(I wouldn't lump "socialism" in there because it's more vague; social-democracy can and does work).

Isn’t the issue less to do with “communism” than with concentrating too much power in too few hands? It seems to me all political systems tend toward autocracy and the only thing preventing that eventuality are robust systems in place that disperse power.

Yeah but communism as a doctrine will inevitably lead to exactly that, concentrating too much power into too few hands. Because if you want to look for the "collective interest" of the people, then people will disagree. Musk can do rockets not because he convinced everyone that it's in our collective interest (though he may believe so) - he can do them because he doesn't have to justify the collective interest. As soon as the collective interest is a matter of doctrine, some group of people will be in charge of it, and they will by necessity suppress other opinions about what "collective interest" might be.

In 1919 no one in the world would have thought the backward, fledgling Soviet Union would be the first in space. Your example is not apt.

But it is - they could because the party leadership wanted to/ decided it was important. My point isn't that communism can't achieve anything, it's that you can't have private initiative that's against the party line - and that's not an accident of one particular implementation, that is a "feature" of communism itself.

"Unanimous" agreement on the collective good/collective interests only works, at all, in small groups (primitive societies) and dictatorships. That was really my point.

A person (or persons) with sufficient power/influence decided to pursue space flight and it happened. Which example does the previous sentence refer to?

When Musk decided to pursue space (or EV for that matter) he had very little power. Wasn't even a billionaire yet. There are thousands of people with similar fortunes that you never hear about.

So you don’t know which situation I was referring to? The fact the Musk accomplished what he did with SpaceX is prima facie proof that he had sufficient power/influence to accomplish the goal.

Which is exactly what I'm talking about. Communism = "for sufficient power to influence/accomplish a goal, you must be in the party elite (tens, at most hundreds of persons)". Liberal democracy: "for sufficient power to influence/accomplish a goal, you must start at least reasonably well off" (3 to 4 orders of magnitude more people)

"power" is distributed in democracies; The centralized nature of communism is its weakest spot, and it is by design.

Another person with sufficient power/influence decided that computing is evil and USSR fell behind in (micro)computers and chips terribly.

Also, a lot of USSR space advancements were made thanks thanks to captured Nazi scientists. If they had to rely purely on homegrown science, they'd have had much harder time.

Look up Wernher Von Braun. A group of people thought Jim Crow was a great idea. A group of BP executives thought it was a great idea to not fix oil leaks in Nigeria and poison a bunch of people. I think you miss the point. People with power in any system can use that power for bad. It’s not the economic system that causes this it’s shitty humans that do.

Thing is, in democratic market economy system there're various checks & balances. Sooner or later (usually, sooner) we learn about all of those issues. If somebody just bids on a wrong evolutionary path... Well, there're many investors bidding on all possible paths. Some win, some loose.

In soviet central planning system, few people make decisions that affect many and there's was redundancy. No free press. No political opposition. No economic rivalries to challenge. Same in civic/industrial evolution. If a committee decides to pursue idea X and drop idea Y.... So be it.

There was no democratic feedback mechanism either. Public is not happy that state money is used to prop up revolutions all around the world while one's citizen are living in poor condition? Tough luck, party line is never wrong.

I think different systems work best at different levels of scale. Power needs to be accountable and visible to the people affected by it. The more local it is, the more you can safely do.

NN Taleb stated it well on Twitter, I think: "At Fed level, libertarian; state, Republican; local, Democrat; family/friends, socialist."

Democracies never end up in dictatorships? How much historical data do we have on that? I'm pretty sure at least brazil was democratic and then was ruled by military dictatorship (juntas) for a long time. 1940s Germany as well right? I just realized I've never seen the breakdown on that for any length of time, lets say going back to the first republics?

I don't know, it seems like a lot of European countries with a pluralistic party system are heavily "Christian Socialist" (pro free market, pro property ownership, pro capitalist, pro safety net) and they don't seem to be any more prone to slide into dictatorship?

I've actually have never read a compiled lists of stats of what types of government make a country impervious to dictatorial rule.

Thing is, marxist-communist-socialist countries don't even stay non-dehumanizing-regimes. Revolution happens, then terrible things kick in.. And then regime flames out over a loooong time. Usually accepting at least some parts of free market and plural democracy.

Nazi (national-socialist) Germany was totally socialist.

P.S. Your description of „socialism“ is a veeeery weird one. Apparently everything is socialist.

> Thing is, marxist-communist-socialist countries don't even stay non-dehumanizing-regimes.

There are no Marxist regimes; all “Communist” regimes are (or are derived from) Leninism which introduces vanguardism and other changes to avoid the prerequisite of developing proletarian class consciousness through mature capitalism in Marxism, and feature a (theoretically) transitional initial phase to replace development through private capitalism, which none have ever escaped from to anything that was supposed to be beyond it (though China rewrote the plan to include authoritarian quasi-private capitalism.)

There's a wide array of arguably socialist non-“Communist” regimes, but all of them are democratic/market socialism that explicitly accepts plural democracy and regulated (not “free”) markets as important elements.

> Nazi (national-socialist) Germany was totally socialist.

This is true to about the same extent as “the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is totally a democratic republic” is true.

If you redefine socialism as "what most Western Europe countries do" you can have some real paradoxical views.

I didn't.