How a Communist Regime Gains Power

Typically communists come to power by overthrowing corrupt governments that oppress their own people (fueling the overthrow).

Can you provide an exact quote so we can know what you are talking about? To use the phrase "Bernie Sanders has spoken of...." without saying Bernie Sanders actually said seems a bit unfair.

maxdancona-

Thank you.

New York Times, dated 2/28/2020:

"MIAMI — In the spring of 1989, as the outgoing mayor of Burlington, Vt., Bernie Sanders and his wife, Jane, traveled to Cuba on an eight-day trip, with the hopes of meeting the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro.

​The 47-year-old ​Mr. Sanders ​didn’t get time with Mr. Castro, but he ​toured Havana​, met with its mayor and marveled that visitors could take a cab anywhere in the country​. “The revolution there is far deeper and more profound than I understood it to be,”​ he said back home, according to The Burlington Free Press, and commended Cuba ​for providing free health care, free education and free housing."

I did a bit of reading, and apparently there is a recent kerfuffle over something more recent.

If Bernie Sanders is giving two separate messages...

1) Fidel Castro was a brutal dictator who oppressed his people.
2) Fidel Castro improved healthcare and education for Cubans after he rose to power.

Would this be OK with you? To me this seems like two comments on two different issues. Does the fact that he said something positive about changes after Castro negate the fact he condemns Castro overall?

There was a revolution in Russia in March, 1917 (February by the calendar they used). This was followed in November, 1917, by the Bolshevik Revolution (October by the calendar they used, and hence, Red October). Bolshevik means a member of the majority. That was purest horsepoop. The Bolsheviks declared that they were the majority based on parliamentary maneuvers on the part of Vladimir Ulyaov--Lenin--at the time of the second party congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903. In fact, the majority of supporters of the RSDLP did not support Lenin's agenda, and, known as the Mensheviks (the members of the minority). There was a Menshevik uprising in 1905, which was crushed by the Imperial government. There is a lot more relevant detail, but I'm not going to go into here. After the successful Russian revolution in March, 1917, the Germans negotiated with Lenin, and eventually shipped him off to Finland, from whence he traveled to Petrograd.

The best source for the successful Bolshevik revolution in 1917 (in English) is Ten Days that Shook the World, by John Reed, an American journalist and socialist. It should be read while keeping in mind that Reed approved of Lenin's take over.

I have both a sense of fascination and of dread when I think about the increasingly likely Sanders v. Trump election.

I think there are about 40% of votes that are hard cast on either side and aren't changing no matter what happens. The question is whether the 20% in the middle can will by Bernie's account of his socialism, or Trumps.

It is clear that Trump is coming out swinging. It is not clear that he can connect.

Me too!

Trump has proved a president can't destroy our government by himself even with the help of a republican senate and supreme court. Bernie, if elected will be closely watched by both houses of ccongress.I don't think we need to worry about communism.

maxdancona-

Thank you.

My original question was when Castro was originally seeking power in Cuba, did he tell people that he would allow democracy?

After he came to power, did he execute or lock up anyone seeking democracy?

maxdancona-

Thank you.

Where do you get the evidence to support your statement that Castro improved healthcare & education for Cubans after he rose to power?

Cuban government figures?

My understanding is that Cuba was already ahead of other Caribbean nations in education & health care 10 years before Castro came to power.

I don't know... I guess I am basing this on news reports. We know the Castro government was repressive; they tortured people and put dissidents in jail. I don't see the point... beyond this.

I think the point of the current story is to attack Bernie Sanders for things he said. I don't buy it.

Am I missing something?

maxdancona-

Thank you.

No. We need the facts on the educational level of the Cuban people before Castro and after. We also need to compare that level to that of the other nations in the Caribbean.

What is the point of this exercise? Are you trying to prove that all Communist governments lead to a change in the educational level?

I really mistook this thread as an attack on Bernie Sanders.

If educational level improves in the wake of post-capitalist changes, it is because the poor are deprived of easy money as a better alternative to education.

Teachers in rich countries also try to convince poor kids to stay in school and study hard, but many think they can just get rich in pro-sports, the music industry, or in other ways that don't require education. These are all mostly either pipe dreams that only a very small percentage of people will actually achieve, or they're illegal industries that will eventually land kids in jail or worse, but it creates a culture of education not being worth enough to put effort into.

In poor/communist countries, there's no (fake) dream of easy money and getting rich quick, so education is people's best hope. This is true whether 'communism' had been adopted, as in Cuba, or whether there's just widespread poverty and missionaries come in and offer people education along with other basic services that are better than nothing.

In countries that are rich/well-off, there's always an easy-money-dream deterrent from education. Even educational institutions in such countries/economies cater to the will to only focus on what is needed to get jobs and make money. Once upon a time, Europe and its diaspora was motivated by poverty and war to cultivate a higher culture through liberal arts education, in hopes that wisdom would avert social problems and more war. What has happened, however, is that economic growth has brought with it more and more specialization and arrogance vis-a-vis liberal arts, philosophy, etc. so now people are morally/ethically poor despite material wealth, which doesn't satisfy them because they quantify their wealth relative to others who have more instead of focusing on the immense wealth that even the lowest middle-class people have in developed countries/economies.

So now the moral/ethical gap has evolved into social-justice inequality thinking that only stokes envy and social division, and people are dismissing traditional morality and ethics as some kind of bourgeoisie-trick-over-the-proletariat wash. The global middle-class needs a reality check and a back-to-basics step-back from industrial-consumerist materialism that drives global markets, not socialism/communism that seeks to further enrich the middle-class by increasing taxes and spending to invigorate even more economic growth.

No one is starting by saying ''I will be a brutal dictator and will oppress you heavily''. You start with promises of improving any social problems that the country has. Then when you get in power, you work on undermining the institutions and controlling the media. So, it is possible to have a dictator that improved healthcare and killed many people at the same time.

I don't know who voted your post down, but I voted it up. A simple, and to my mind, rather obvious point to have been made.