Reviews
The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course and Legacy by Marifeli Perez-Stable, Oxford University Press, 1993, 236 pp., $23 (cloth). Marifeli Pdrez-Stable, a CubanAmerican sociologist, tells...
...She traces how, over the years, the revolutionary leadership wrestled with the theoretical and actual heritage of socialism...
...In this engrossing, lucidly written book that grapples with the question of democracy in Cuba, Carollee Bengelsdorf argues that the inability of the Cuban revolution to implement Karl Marx's vision of the rule "of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority" can be traced in large measure to the "unresolved and perhaps unresolvable weaknesses" of Marx's conception of socialism and democracy...
...Marifeli Pdrez-Stable, a CubanAmerican sociologist, tells the story of the origins and trajectory of the Cuban revolution from a point of view that combines her appreciation of its egalitarian social and economic accomplishments and her sharp critique of its centralized planning structures and done-party political system...
...The triumph of the Cuban revolution, Bengelsdorf argues, offered an opportunity to recover the profoundly emancipatory vision at the heart of Marxist theory...
...If the leadership refuses to cede a reasonable amount of autonomy to civil society, she concludes, the revolutionary project must in the end fail...
...As a prelude to her detailed discussion of the Cuban revolution, Bengelsdorf reviews Marx's writings on democracy and the state, Lenin's reworking and adaption of that theoretical heritage, and the distortions of this legacy in the practice of Soviet socialism over the course of the twentieth century...
...They shouted back, P6rez-Stable tells us, that the people had already "voted," and the rest, as they say, is history...
...The last element required that a vanguard be formed to safeguard the revolution from dissent, to build socialism, and to educate workers who might be "confused" about the nature of their long-term interests...
...The most crucial of these, she claims, was Marx's failure to acknowledge the need for boundaries between the state and civil society...
...attempts to undermine the revolution, Fidel informed a million Cubans in Havana that there would be no elections...
...She understands the mid-1980s "rectification" process-the attempt to return to the charismatic roots of the revolution-as well as the current attempts to institute market-oriented reforms within the one-party context as later moments within this same dynamic...
...She traces the dynamic from May, 1960 when, against the backdrop of unrelenting U.S...
...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS The Problem of Democracy in Cuba: Between Vision and Reality by Carollee Bengelsdorf, Oxford University Press, 1994, 229 pp., $45 (cloth), $16.95 (paper...
...She makes a compelling case that the government at critical moments reopened the discussion of how to achieve full democratic participation, but then-in the interest of party unity-implemented policy changes that significantly hedged its bets...
...Weaving through the book is Pdrez-Stable's elaboration of what she calls "the dynamic of Fidelpatria-revolution," which she defines as "the affirmation of national sovereignty, the promulgation of social justice, and the integrity of revolutionary leadership...
...There is a wealth of historical information here, all tied into the well-argued premise that the great successes and failures of the past 36 years must be understood as part of the dynamic in which the country itself became identified with the revolution, and the revolution with the charisma of one man...
...Today, with the revolution once again at a moment of transition and redefinition, there is yet another chance to deal with these issues...
Vol. 29 • September 1995 • No. 2
