# How deep is Cuba's communism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 28, 2016, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259 "2016-11-28T05:03:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/1 "2016-11-28T05:03:54Z")
Probably a poorly worded title, so I’ll explain my question further here. The Soviet Union had a pretty extensive Communist movement going back to the Bolsheviks that was filled with a lot of thinkers and intellectuals. Educating new communists under the Soviet government was considered a priority. So whenever a key communist figure died, there was always someone to replace him. And at the risk of complimenting such an oppressive government, the replacement wasn’t always allied to the exact same doctrines as the man he replaced. Stalin was not Lenin and Kruschev was not Stalin and so on until we got to Gorbachev. There seemed to be a limited amount of free thought and debate among the top leadership. But in Cuba, it seems that the movement was very small to begin with, and even 50 years later doesn’t seem to extend far beyond Castro’s immediate family. Does this mean that when Raul is gone that it might just end due to not enough people being left to run the government who are really committed to Castroism? Is there even a named successor to the decrepit Raul? ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/2 "2016-11-28T05:28:57Z")
A fellow named Miguel Díaz-Canel is First Vice-President of the Council of State and Raul’s designated successor. Whether he had the clout to carry it out appears to be an open question, according to this Miami Herald article from earlier this year: [https://www.google.ca/amp/s/miamiherald.relaymedia.com/amp/news/nation-world/world/americas/fidel-castro-en/article117215268.html?client=safari](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/miamiherald.relaymedia.com/amp/news/nation-world/world/americas/fidel-castro-en/article117215268.html?client=safari) ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/3 "2016-11-28T11:36:01Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > But in Cuba, it seems that the movement was very small to begin with, and even 50 years later doesn’t seem to extend far beyond Castro’s immediate family. Someone’s running all the different branches of government, geeing up the local committees and campaigns, and so on. How committed any of those people are to maintaining everything exactly as it was under Fidel, or as it is after his brother’s reforms, remains to be seen, but that there are cadres of people involved in the system with probably more than nominal commitment to it, seems undeniable. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/4 "2016-11-28T11:55:00Z")
I have no doubt of that, if there are positions of power to be occupied, someone will occupy them. I just wonder how many of those people are actually committed communists or anti-democrats. I think it’s a bad sign when a dictator sees family as the best hope for continuation of his regime. That indicates weakness in the structure. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/5 "2016-11-28T14:01:07Z")
I was reading where Fidel himself knew that his country would not be able to resist the tourist industry and all the cruise ships full of people who would want to deluge Cuba if things REALLY opened up. I mean look at the US coastline. Every strip of it has some sort of hotel or condominium or fancy mansion on it. Deveopers would love for a shot at Cuba. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/6 "2016-11-28T14:01:35Z")
> [@George Orwell](#): > > One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship. Castro was nearly a billionaire in a poor country. The ideology was an excuse. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Waxwinged](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@Waxwinged](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waxwinged)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/7 "2016-11-28T14:07:12Z")
About as deep as America’s capitalism, I’d imagine. Ask an average 12 year old to define capitalism, and I doubt you’d get much of a sensible answer. Heck, ask them to define communism, and you’d get similar. ---
**Author:** ![doubleminus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@doubleminus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doubleminus)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/8 "2016-11-28T14:36:26Z")
As someone who emigrated from a Communist country, no one there believes a iota in communism, including (maybe especially) people in positions of power. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/9 "2016-11-28T16:00:03Z")
I think the key question is: How loyal is the military. No military, no power. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/10 "2016-11-28T17:17:10Z")
How deep is communism? Not very. How deep is dictatorship? Probably very. Some kind of dictator/strongman will emerge, quite possibly someone with blood ties to Fidel. Communism will probably fade, and Cuba will become just another poor, Latin American country with a dynasty of tyrants. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2016, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/11 "2016-11-30T05:07:56Z")
What do you think the Cubans talk about in their councils of state – Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2016, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-deep-is-cubas-communism/773259/12 "2016-11-30T08:40:41Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > What do you think the Cubans talk about in their councils of state – Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. Those tend to be fancy ways of applying the question Lenin formulated as “Who Whom?”, which is what most political decisions come down to in any polity. The difficult questions in any sort of systemic transition are whether or not the system can open up to new ideas and new people without collapsing completely, or whether those who’ve got power and status in one system will manage to transition themselves into equivalent positions in the new system - as well as whether or not the abuses of the old system will simply be replicated in a new form in the new system. In this case, for example, who will get to decide on whether and where all those new tourist developments will go, and who will get the money?