how communist is Cuba? (daily liberties as compared elsewhere, like the US?

submitted by Drizzt from (self.AskSaidIt)

Cuba sounds like a pretty successful place, for example a literacy rate of more than 98%. is it really soviet russia level communist? i have read that the lack of dominate religious groups is a sort of evidence to that face that its still very communist.

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[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good question, but define "communist".

They had Castro as a leader for a long time, in a basic dictatorship. That's pretty communist.

They also have had free public health care, and a super-tight trade embargo, which is why they all drive cars from the 1950s.

Apparently the quality of life is fairly high, and the people are friendly. But it's not exactly a wealthy place by any means.

Under the national constitution, Cuba is a socialist democracy, with the Communist Party of Cuba as the "leading force of society and of the state", although elections are nominally non-partisan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Cuba

So they're run by a party called "The Communist Party of Cuba". That's pretty communist.

But then there's this:

In 2011, "The new economic reforms were introduced, effectively creating a new economic system, referred by some as the "New Cuban Economy". Since then, over 400,000 Cubans have signed up to be entrepreneurs. As of 2012, the government lists 181 official jobs no longer under their control—such as taxi driver, construction worker and shopkeeper.

So it's not super-duper communist. Just mostly communist, I guess? Kind of like China, they're becoming more interested in free trade, but at the same time the Communist party maintains a complete stranglehold over the governmental system and has for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cuba#Post-Fidel_reforms

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I've been to Cuba. Besides the Cubans which are not the most refined or civilized of peoples, it would be a paradise without all the embargoes and sanctions against them. It's still a nice place for vacations, other than the fact that the water's edge itself is public property, meaning that these people are entitled to invade those beaches we pay thousands of dollars to visit, and if a resort chair is somewhat close to the water's edge, they will feel entitled to occupy those chairs, while we pay big money to what amounts to exclusive rights to said longchair on the beach. So in this way they are very much communist: there's a chair, I'll use it (no matter that somebody paid thousands of dollars for EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to use said chair).

Besides this, these people have tremendous envy and jealousy of our VERY RELATIVE material wealth, but they have zero stress in their lives. They also love walking resort beaches and staring down the shapelier ladies. Very annoying.