Fidel Castro RIP

[llap]

Didn't you used to have a Simpsons themed avatar? Please return to it or at least find a photo of that swimmer with a t-shirt or jumper on.

[Bobbie Bobster]

[Chinahand]

Castro - typical totalitarian socialist - shot or imprisoned those who disagreed with him and so created a climate of fear so no one would openly defy him. Seized private property and hence destroyed incentives, enforced a command economy which sapped the economy of strength, while blaming the US for every problem. The result poverty and corruption where you need a government permit to do anything, but where if you had the contacts and the bribes you could do what you wanted.

[llap]

Castro - typical totalitarian socialist - shot or imprisoned those who disagreed with him and so created a climate of fear so no one would openly defy him. Seized private property and hence destroyed incentives, enforced a command economy which sapped the economy of strength, while blaming the US for every problem. The result poverty and corruption where you need a government permit to do anything, but where if you had the contacts and the bribes you could do what you wanted.

 

Sorry, but the terms "totalitarian" and "socialist" are mutually exclusive.

[Gizo]

Cuba is ace. What a place Havana is.

 

Expect the states turn it into their 'Magaluf'.

[Shake me up Judy]

 

Castro - typical totalitarian socialist - shot or imprisoned those who disagreed with him and so created a climate of fear so no one would openly defy him. Seized private property and hence destroyed incentives, enforced a command economy which sapped the economy of strength, while blaming the US for every problem. The result poverty and corruption where you need a government permit to do anything, but where if you had the contacts and the bribes you could do what you wanted.

 

Sorry, but the terms "totalitarian" and "socialist" are mutually exclusive.

 

 

So what was the USSR then, under Uncle Joe ?

[llap]

 

Sorry, but the terms "totalitarian" and "socialist" are mutually exclusive.

 

 

So what was the USSR then, under Uncle Joe ?

 

 

A totalitarian state. Just because a country calls itself socialist, doesn't mean it is. The "R" also stands for Republic; by no stretch of the imagination were they a republic either. Calling the Soviet Union "socialist" was propaganda: positive propaganda on the part of the Soviet Union itself in claiming to be socialist, and negative propaganda by the United States in trying to demonise the Soviet Union (and, in doing so, demonise socialism). But they weren't socialist.

[Chinahand]

 

Castro - typical totalitarian socialist

 

Sorry, but the terms "totalitarian" and "socialist" are mutually exclusive.

Pedant, Castro enforced socialism - he shot land lords and entrepreneurs and enforced state control over not only the economy but most aspects of people's lives. You had to be either very brave or very foolish to defy him as you were likely to end up imprisioned or dead as a result.

 

Playing the pedant while ignoring the reality of revolutionary socialism may float your boat but it was an inhuman ideology which crushed and killed those who disagreed with it. The word totalitarian fits perfectly well.

[quilp]

Trotskyism, then Stalinism refined the idealism of what became Communism.

 

If you repeat that statement with a comb wrapped in greaseproof paper pressed against your lips, it sounds amazing!

[Chinahand]

Oh the no true Scotsman argument for socialism.

 

These regimes took the means of production under state control and used the planned command economy to provide for people's means rather than a market system.

 

That's a pretty good definition of socialism and how it is contrasted with capitalism - state control.

[llap]

Sorry, folks, but you appear to be confusing COMMUNISM and SOCIALISM.

 

There is nothing socialist about the reality of totalitarian dictatorship. You can't enforce socialism from above, like a benevolent dictator. Socialism is about communities making decisions for themselves, e.g. workings owning the means of production. The idea of a centralised state power running society or the state owning the means of production is not socialist at all -- that's totalitarian communism.

[quilp]

Fidel Castro, from terrorism to heroism eh? He was a torturing, murdering despotic ideologue: no better than Saddam or Gaddafi when it came to oppression and subjugation of a nation. Now now, let's not get all romantic about him.

[llap]

Who is romanticising him? I'm just pointing out that Castro was a communist dictator and not a socialist.

[quilp]

Parts of the sympathetic media are romanticizing him. RT, of course, are making a show of it.

 

I'd agree about the confusion between the two, definitively.

[P.K.]

Castro - typical totalitarian socialist - shot or imprisoned those who disagreed with him and so created a climate of fear so no one would openly defy him. Seized private property and hence destroyed incentives, enforced a command economy which sapped the economy of strength, while blaming the US for every problem. The result poverty and corruption where you need a government permit to do anything, but where if you had the contacts and the bribes you could do what you wanted.

 

His policies remind me of Mugabe...