This topic should be right up my alley, as an American Marxist at least ostensibly in solidarity with the government of Cuba. In fact, I am quite pleased with the idea of normalizing diplomatic relations and with the prospects of ending the embargo against Cuba, and I am simultaneously hopeful that Cuba will undertake a rethinking of its political structures, not to undermine the government's substantial efforts to enhance the quality of life of its citizens but to open up the larger direction of the government and its policy mechanisms to a wider spectrum within the Cuban polity. Succinctly, as a Western Marxist, indebted to a long tradition in the development of civic republican thinking, I think that Cuba needs to more forcefully democratize itself so that its citizens who have indisputably benefited from the socialist revolution will be able, through their personal involvement, to take ownership of the products of the revolution by some greater means than proxy ownership of the proletarian dictatorship.
Emphatically, for its limited successes, particularly in health care, Cuba deserves significant praise. On the other hand, as one of the discrete holdovers of the Cold War in the Soviet-socialist/Stalinist mode, I just cannot look at Cuba without jaundiced eyes, seeking to intellectually dismantle, from a Marxist perspective, what went wrong with the revolution and what needs to be changed to make it right! Succinctly, state socialism (a.k.a. state capitalism) deserves a serious reconsideration to determine where the actual collective appropriation of surplus labor (i.e. in Marx's sense, communism) actually takes place, how existing communist class structures (probably in clandestine private spaces and at the margins of the state economy) can be enhanced and multiplied (this is a project in which we might also benefit from an engagement in Massachusetts!). Perhaps a normalization of relations with the U.S. can aid in such a process. At the very least, the creeping presence of the market that such a normalization foretells might at least multiple the spaces within which economic development on entrepreneurial terms escapes the ruthless logic of the state, and, as such, maybe we will see increasing numbers of Cubans, unencumbered by state control, coming together to make better lives for themselves through collective appropriation and distribution of their surplus labor. Such a progression of market liberties might, as well, spill over into political life to introduce the legal expressions of view in contradiction to the political attitudes of the Castros, and into cultural life to introduce a new era of serious inquiry in Cuba into the nature of man, religion and the understanding of immateriality, spirit, and faith, and the importance of racial and sexual/gender equality. All such transformations would reinforce Cuba's place as a center and source of the progressive, socialistic, communist impulse in North America, for which all Western Marxists might simultaneously contribute and be perpetually indebted!
Moving past the possible/hopeful implications of normalization for Cuba, the past week has reintroduced, in distinctly visible expressions, the ubiquitous disfavor of a rabidly anti-Communist Cuban-American community in South Florida and other places. To be clear, I understand the position advocated by such individuals as U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (Republican-Florida) and by individuals situated within the first generation of Cuban emigres, many of whom had lost significant personal/familial assets and experienced imprisonment/exile since the revolution. To paraphrase Lenin in regard to revolution, "you cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs" - revolutionary transformations are always messy and uncomfortable, especially when your family stands with the old order. In 1959, those individuals who benefited from the dictatorship of Batista were up-ended and driven from prominence into poverty if not imprisonment and, eventually, exile. The same individuals or their descendants now stand as a significant Republican Party voting block in South Florida. That said, it stands to reason that Obama would decide to normalize relations now - he has nothing to lose from this group and, for that matter, neither does Hillary Clinton in 2016. Even as the first generation Cuban emigres rally against Obama's normalization of relations, their children, born Americans with the hope of reconnecting with the home of their ancestors, stand hopeful for the prospects of a reintegration with Cuba, particularly if such a normalization means that political change/liberalization in Cuba might accelerate. To a significant extent, Republican like Rubio have hashed their bets that the defeat of the Castros could never be realized by an extended coming out party for Cuba to the world as a new zone for capital investment and new, progressive political experiments - they appear to continue to hold out hope for some sort of successful Bay of Pigs transformation with the Castros in chains and capitalism striding victoriously in Havana. As an American Marxist, at least somewhat in sympathy and solidarity with the things that the Castros stood for, I hope that Rubio and his ilk are wrong, but, one way or another, I am confident that Obama has made them irrelevant, both in Miami and in Havana!
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