Is Cuba Socialist?: 2

by René Dumont

English, French (translation)

159 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

René Dumont was a French engineer in agronomy, a sociologist, and an environmental politician.

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read best following up from Dumont's earlier Socialism and Development, written from the author's earlier advisory trips to Cuba in 1960 and 1963. This book builds upon that earlier experience and analysis to again recommend agronomic and economic reforms, after another decade of experience, to better build towards communism.

But as there is no economy without the political, he recognizes and diagnoses the origin of many of Cuba's (still to this day) continued struggle with economic underdevelopment in its lack of political development, the continued lack of popular democratic participation in decision making. Cuba's leaders instead saw the Communist Man of the future, with perfect ideology and strictest discipline, as the solution. How were they—not himself—to make this Man (notably excluding women)? Through the militarization of society and the imposition of discipline from above to make every man a heroic guerilla. Revolution for the proletariat, not by it, with an appealing militant aesthetic.