The Problem of Democracy in Cuba: Between Vision & Reality - Softcover

Bengelsdorf, Carollee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195090144 ISBN 13: 9780195090147

Publisher: Oxford University Press USA, 1994

Synopsis

Drawing on years of field research in Cuba, this text examines the relationship between socialism and democracy, in classical Marxist theory and in the practice of the Cuban revolution. While the author notes the roles that underdevelopment and external threat have played in undermining the possibility for democratic socialism in this century, she focuses specifically upon a theoretical heritage plagued by silences, absences and simplifications concerning key political questions. Within this framework, she then turns to the Cuban revolution and, in a revisionist interpretation, identifies the succession of critical moments at which the question of democracy was raised and the nature of the leadership's response, or lack thereof. She maintains that the consistency with which the leadership reined in, at these moments, the possibilities it itself had evoked, compounded by its extreme paternalism, has been as destructive of the social project of the revolution as the dire economic straits in which Cuba finds itself in a post-socialist world. This probing analysis provides a unique and informative look at the ideological legacy of a nation struggling to endure the changing tides of history.

About this title

Review

The ideas have been distilled and refined, nothing has been improvised. There are very few, if any, of those errors of fact that are fateful turn-offs. (Latin American Studies)

Sad, controlled, serious and very interesting analyses of different aspects of the origins, course and legacy of the Cuban revolution. (Political Studies)

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195090144
• ISBN 13: 9780195090147
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240