CUBA AN EXCITING EXPERIMENT IN MIXED GOVERNMENT

Cuba is in the news big time because President Obama has started to move toward normalizing relations between our two countries in a new and unique way. One of the arguments for establishing relation was that it would allow capitalism, or privately owned businesses, operate into Cuba, which will allow us to have influence in that country. One of the presidential candidates in the United States, Marco Rubio to be specific, cites the situation in China as evidence that allowing relations with Cuba will do nothing to advance human rights in that country because allowing capitalization in China has not done so in China. In fact, human rights have markedly deteriorated in that country. His contention is that communism and private capitalism cannot exist in the same country at the same time. This argument brought to my mind a bit of a dilemma. What he said about capitalization entering China and predicting that capitalism will enter Cuba is true. However, I strongly feel human rights will improve markedly in Cuba even though I am aware that they have deteriorated in China with capitalization. That being the case, what then is the difference between these two countries? Political scientists tell us that communistic governments base their form of government on giving power to the people, the workers, of those countries that have this form of government. They say the two forms of capitalization of corporations cannot work. The big selling point in trying to convince a population they should switch from capitalism to communism, it that it will empower the worker over the industrialist. The truth is that in democracy, the capitalization of industry is by the government versus capitalization by private individuals or corporations if the size of the investment corporations need to start the business exceeds the capabilities of private individuals, such as for a transcontinental railroad. The marriage of the two systems takes place when the government provides tax money to a privately managed corporation to build a company, which is what happens now in the United States and many other democracies. The other extreme of the private ownership scale is that one or more industrial dictators, such as we see in many third world countries. To avoid the perils of the extremes of all government to all private, a very wise president, FDR by name, allowed worker’s unions to form to counter management and to establish a fair wage. In contrast, Russia allowed workers to divert state capital to private workers without private management to counter this movement of cash, which as we all recognize was a recipe for disaster. We have the success of the United States as evidence of capitalization with unions. Lately, the Republican Party is trying to unbalance this success in the US by destroying unions. Given that background, why is Rubio so wrong in comparing China to Cuba? He is saying capitalism will not change Cuba because it did not do that in China. The difference is that the Chinese government is the management of the government corporations it capitalizes. In other words, the government diverted profit away from workers and into to government operations in its best interest, which is the diametric oppose to what happened with Russia. In Cuba, the Castro government wants to make money for the workers. The private owners are there to counter the greed of workers now in the form of the government, not unions. URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated