Ghost of “Communism” Walks Havana
Esteban Diaz
Havana Times
July 19, 2009

Esteban Diaz is from Buenos Aires, Argentina, currently in his sixth year of studies at the Latin American Medical School in Havana. He likes to travel in Cuba when there is no class in school.

They touch on issues that they would like to see improve:

- The struggle against national bureaucracy.

- The participation of workers in making decisions related to the trajectory of the country.

- The combination of agriculture and industry; a measure to gradually erase the differences between the cities and rural areas.

- Industrialization in order to decrease imports that drain the national economy.

- The inclusion of information in the media regarding problems affecting the daily lives of workers as well as social groups; together with all the news of revolutionary processes occurring in the world, especially those arising from workers’ organizations.

- Collectivization of the economy.

- etc., etc…

In general I am satisfied to participate in discussions with Cubans. Of course, what I listed above, I expressed in the form of conclusions, but in the end, it’s all centered on the same ideas.

These ideas for the development of a socialist country shouldn’t surprise anyone who is familiar with Marxist theory.

However it is not the conclusions that surprise many Cubans I know, but the fact that I confess to them that ¡OOOOH, HORROR!!! I am a Communist.

This fact has been a cause for alarm for the majority of Cubans that I have met.

This does nothing but confirm the bad reputation of this political movement stemming from the distortion created by Stalinism with its bureaucratic character, exchanging democratic centralism for bureaucratic centralism and absolute top-down decision making, which destroys a true democratic proletariat.

But, don’t be mistaken, the people are not against Marxism, but instead are against those who carry the Marxist flag but nullify its theories with their inconsequent practices.

Faced with such an “organized” phobia, all which is left for me is the revolutionary role of the worker ant: interacting with the workers and learning from one another.

However if we do not succeed in breaking the subjective-objective barrier that separates theory from praxis, we will be lost to empiricism.