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At Large
Fidel’s Communist Spin
At least for a moment he sounded less collectivist that our president.
At least for a few moments last week, we had the strange spectacle of President Obama sounding more like a collectivist than Fidel Castro.
With the federal payroll in the United States up by 200,000 positions and the private sector down by 7.8 million jobs since the current recession began, Mr. Obama continues to aggressively push a statist agenda of higher taxes and more regulations on the nation’s key job creators in the private sector.
Meanwhile in Cuba, retired dictator Fidel Castro dropped an anti-statist, anti-communist bomb during an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent for the Atlantic.
Asked by Mr. Goldberg if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting, Fidel replied, “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”
Mr. Castro also apologized during the interview for his regime’s treatment of gays, stated that Iran’s madcap president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should “stop slandering the Jews,” and expressed regret about trying to convince Khrushchev to nuke the United States.
A few days later, amid a worldwide flare-up about his about-face on communism, Castro said he was quoted correctly but misinterpreted.
“In reality, my answer meant exactly the opposite of what both American journalists interpreted regarding the Cuban model,” Castro claimed in a full switcheroo. “My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system no longer works for the United States or the world. How could such a system work for a socialist country like Cuba?”
In other words, “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore” really means “The capitalist system no longer works for the United States.” That’s nuts, but it’s the type of bold untruth that a dictator thinks he can get away with after spending a lifetime silencing dissent by way of bullets and dungeons.
Accustomed to a population of bobble heads that’s afraid to do anything but nod in submission, Fidel might well also claim that what he really said in the Goldberg interview was that Ahmadinejad loves Jews, Cuba was always nice to gays, and, in fact, that his best friends are fully uncloseted gays, and that he should’ve pushed Khrushchev harder to nuke the United States.
He might add that Cubans are doing better economically than ever. Why switch now when the average Cuban is making 67 cents a day?
In any case, events on the ground show that Fidel was telling the truth the first time around when he said that his island’s pinko economic model isn’t working.
Weighing in last month on the failure of Cuban socialism, Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and Cuba’s current despot, said, “We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working.”
For starters, more than half a million state workers will be cut from government payrolls over the next six months, Raul declared, and be sent off to find work as best they can in newly semi-legal and newly semi-encouraged private companies that are currently non-existent.
Over 85 percent of Cuba’s 5.5 million workers are on the state payroll. Raul Castro says that a million of those state employees, over 20 percent of the payroll, are in excess.
The country’s only authorized labor union obediently chimed in, saying, “Our state can’t keep maintaining bloated payrolls.”
About the Author
Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise and an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (21) | Leave a comment
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saleboter| 9.20.10 @ 7:53AM
I'm trying to imagine a US labor union saying that something can't be afforded.
Alan Brooks| 9.20.10 @ 9:54AM
"Cuba was always nice to gays,"
Gee, no wonder Anita Bryant didn't like Castro.
JmsA| 9.20.10 @ 12:00PM
Brooks,
Ever heard of the UMAP camps?
Alan Brooks| 9.20.10 @ 12:58PM
I answered sarcasm with a joke.
JmsA| 9.20.10 @ 9:11PM
That's fine, but I doubt the ones in said camps, including but not limited to the gays, had many laughs.
Jim O'Brien| 9.20.10 @ 8:12AM
Let's send Obama to Cuba to succeed Castro.
Nunya| 9.20.10 @ 3:47PM
I'd hate to do that to the Cubans, they've never done anything to me. :-)
GavInTucson| 9.23.10 @ 2:08AM
Send him to Cuba? Haven't the Cubans suffered enough?
Louis Jenkins| 9.20.10 @ 9:18AM
Maybe Fidel has Alzhimers disease. Can't remember what he said five minutes ago. Cuba is a basket case, and Fidel ain't helping matters one bit.
"We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working."
I thought that was the USA, not Cuba.
Steve A| 9.20.10 @ 9:22AM
Obama / Castro 2012. Although Castro may now be a bit too right wing for Obama.
GavInTucson| 9.23.10 @ 2:16AM
Maybe, but Obama's base would still get fired up. Better yet, they should dig up Che's corpse and put him on the ticket. It would put a dead-lock on the 18-24 demographic. They're just dumb enough to vote for a corpse simply because most of them have a Che t-shirt crumpled up on the floor somewhere.
Anthony| 9.20.10 @ 9:36AM
When Obozo's mouthpiece, Robert Gibbs, heads for the tall grass, perhaps Fidel can take over.
Otherwise, Steve A has it right, Obozo/Castro 2012, change we can believe in!!!
Si se puede!!!!
Reply in Kind| 9.20.10 @ 12:16PM
Castro said Reagan was a revolutionary and for that he should be commended. And he was, he took on the GOP establishment, Democrats, liberals, communists, unions, Russia, Cuba/Grenada, Carter, Mondale, Brown and vanquished them all.
GavInTucson| 9.23.10 @ 3:47AM
Vanquished? Hardly. Anyone who's spent a day or more in college knows otherwise. Liberals love to cocoon themselves in a federally funded environment, shielded from reality, and college professorships provide just that (and, perhaps, MSNBC).
It's a pretty sweet gig when you think about it. Think about what it takes these days to be a college professor: earning a tenured, 6-figure salary, while putting in "grueling" 4-6 hour days, "working" nine months out of the year, minus holidays, and producing mindless piles of mush that are only marginally dumber than they are from an academic standpoint.
It isn't exactly the resume of an over-achiever. In fact, I'd pit the average part-time laborer against a college professor any day. At the end of the day, the laborer actually produces something of value, whilst the average professor merely produces nothing more than a complete dumbing down of an entire generation (in order to secure his own job from them).
Sort of reminds me of that old saying... "Those who can... do." "Those who can't... teach."
Capitalism has risen far more people out of poverty than any other system yet devised, yet today's liberalism demands that everyone be reduced to an equal level of misery. So my question for the poor is simply this... would you like your living standard raised to theirs, or would you like theirs lowered to yours?
Eric Cartman| 9.20.10 @ 1:07PM
"We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working."
Don't worry, Raul. With the help of the SEIU. America will now take the place of "the only country in the world where one can live without working."
sinanju| 9.20.10 @ 1:24PM
This is the beginning of the end. I had a look at the new regulations over at babalublog. It is ridiculously restrictive. There won't be any semi-private sector big enough to absorb these million fired state workers. Raul doesn't know what he's doing. The collapse is coming.
Nunya| 9.20.10 @ 3:51PM
I can't wait. Maybe I can then get some decent Cuban cigars without having to go to South America first.
After being told by someone about 12 years ago that Cuba doesn't make any good cigars anymore, I finally got to try one a few years later. I can tell you from experience that they are still some of the best made anywhere, and usually end up at the top of Cigar Afficianado's "Best of" lists.
RCV| 9.21.10 @ 7:05PM
Cuba is indeed a basket case, and the collapse would have come years ago if it weren't for the insane economic embargo that has given the Castros a whipping boy to blame their failures on. Now that the embargo is weakening a bit, and the daily flights are going in and out of Miami, Cubans are once again getting a taste of what they could have without The Bearded One.
PCP Smoker| 9.20.10 @ 6:21PM
"...expressed regret about trying to convince Khrushchev to nuke the United States"
Glad that "nuclear freeze" business never got anywhere.
Imagine if the loquacious Fidel had convinced of one of those paranoid old men in the Kremlin to act on his little request.
Thank God for the nuclear scientists and the American nuclear umbrella.