Cuba and worker's commune

[Jon Flanders <72763.2240@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 >> But my criterion for socialism is simple, "socialism == workers power == a
commune state" <<Adam Rose

 Jon Flanders:

  Have you read Marta Harnecker's book on the People's Power electoral system
in Cuba?


 "As this conversation was taking place with the delegate, elswhere in the
room the following exchange was taking place among some residents, early
arrivals at the accountability session.

  "Companero, how many candidates did you have in this district?"

   "Six."

   "And you voted for Orestes?"

    "Yes.".....................

     "Did you have a runoff election here?"

    "No, no way!"

     "Orestes just swept into office! He got 38 votess, more than half
      the total."...............

     "What has People's Power meant to you?"

      "A sucess," Maglio says with conviction. "Now we shoulder the people's
needs more directly. The people participate directly in all the population's
problems."

      "But before, with the CDR's, you also raised problems."

      "Yes, but the solutions were not so good."

       "But why do you have better solutions now.?"

       "Because People's Power gathers together more resources than Local
Power, more means.... Then too, every three months they have to make a report;
that wasn't so before."

       "And every first Saturday, every month," Grandman interjects, "theres a
meeting of delegates at the municipal level and the people can participate,
not with the right to speak, though, but to listen to what's been done, and to
learn of new proposals."

        "Have any of you ever attended the municipal assembly?"

        "I have," says Maglio, "and have done so because I like to watch.
 Many companeros come."

 Cuba, Dictatorship or Democracy?, Marta Harnecker, 1975-79, Lawrence Hill and
Co., p 134,135


 The Cuban system of local, regional and national assemblies is based on
multi-candidate elections with the right of recall. As I recollect, possibly
even a majority of officeholders are not members of the Cuban CP. There must
be more than one candidate for office, and there are many, many runoff
elections to choose between the two highest vote getters.

  Cuba with all its faults and problems has a more democratic system than our
vaunted "multi-party" bourgeois elections.

  E-mail from: Jonathan E. Flanders, 31-May-1996




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