Pretty young but having seen the injustices of this world in the name of capitalist progress, I have come to realise that Karl Marx’s Das Kapital was not a lie but the prophecy of what would happen to this world if we stuck to capitalism as the main mode of production.
Capitalism in my view is the sure descent into hell as portrayed by Dante Alighieri in his Inferno; the world now finds itself stuck in some isthmus, not exactly knowing which way to head: though through sheer pretence and hypocrisy none concerned will acknowledge that the world is in need of a new way to deal with salient matters. Dante penned his Divine Comedy (La Commedia Divina) close to 600 years ago, but the words thereof are proving to be true:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita (in the middle of the way of our life)
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura (I found myself in a murky woodland)
Ché la diritta via era smaritta (because the right road was lost)
The world of capitalism is going through a kind of mid-life crisis that leaves many dismally impoverished and only a small fraction of the superlatively rich and in control of the means of existence. The policies in the name of development are countless, and the visions that never reach their goals are dispensed like rolls of toilet paper at the rate of a billion ineffective visions for development per second.
That they never reach maturity is never the concern, the concern is that only a minute number of individuals ever benefit from them, leaving the rest stuck in the murky depths of squalid poverty and starvation conditions.
We need not pretend that the scope of our livelihoods is not shrinking at an alarming rate due to controls instituted by greedy systems whose sole aim seems to be to take, take, and always take the little that which the poor folks eke out of their miserable lives.
Pretending that all is well is the worst sin we can commit on our sorry selves; we have to find the right way, the right mode of production that will serve all equally, like Comrade Fidel Castro strove in the 90 years he spent on this earth as the best communist leader I have seen.
When they came back from exile, they came back gallant men received in a hero’s welcome . . . they wore their hair and their beards with pride.
Come independence and a seat in parliament after polls, all the hair was gone and in its place fancy suits, chauffeur driven cars, cavalcades of sirens and tinted windshields; and the hair was gone, and with it the promises of a better Africa where all would be treated equally, where all would benefit equally from the resources of the land . . . but those were just speeches . . . for men who are true to their word shave not their hair until the day they go to their graves.
And if one is to look at the pictures of Fidel Castro with Che Guevara just after their victory over the forces of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, one realises that the face and the resolve of the man never for a moment changed, and he stayed the same staunch believer in communism until the day he died.
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on August the 13th, 1926 and passed away on November the 25th, 2016.
He was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who governed the Republic of Cuba as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2008.
Politically a Marxist-Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011.
Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party socialist state; industry and business were nationalised, and state socialist reforms implemented throughout society (the fruits of which are being enjoyed by the whole of the Third world through Cuban medical missions installed for the sole purpose of aiding those countries that lack medical professionals including Lesotho).
One grew up thinking that being a communist meant being a guerrilla whose sole aim was to destabilise government, but deeper reading made me realise that communism is not about killing rich folks for their money and property; it is a philosophy whose tenets are rooted in humanism.
One cannot be stinking rich and be surrounded emaciated children and women in torn rags and still think that the state is being run in an appropriate manner.
All are equally entitled to equal treatment in terms of access to the basic needs in life, that is, shelter, clothing, and food.
The “democracies” of Africa where one side of society lives in squalid shanty towns and squatter camps without clinics or other vital services facilities, while another lives in opulence are in essence dictatorships that subject the masses to a form of mental oppression that foments extreme jealousy in the hearts of the poor, stirring them to acts of violence and uprising against the system.
The problem is not that they are ungrateful for the little they get, the problem is that they are conned into believing that they should be grateful to receive less than what they deserve, and as soon as they realise that they deserve more; uprising becomes the only way they can reclaim that which they by right rightly deserve.
The tendency of the capitalist is to render the mind of the proletariat (the worker) incondite by giving him less than what he deserves so that he spends more time worrying about what to do to supplement the little they get, than to focus on how they can better their lives; through private banks, taxes, controls, the ordinary proletariat who is not part of the bourgeois class spends more time worrying about the way out of the murky forest of imposed troubles than he does about taking his children and family on holiday as he should.
Commandante Castro in his policies saw to the eradication of the maladies of capitalism and was hated for it, but he strove on and succeeded in making Cuba the only country in the world where the Doctor-to-Patient ratio is the most balanced.
First World countries are advanced in terms of medical healthcare, but their models are nothing compared in terms of policy to what Fidel Castro implemented in the short space of the 47 years he spent as the leader of a communist Cuba.
This need to ensure the welfare and well-being of his people and the human race stems from the fact that, Fidel Castro and his fellow communist comrades are at their most basic, human . . . human enough to know that the face of poverty is very ugly, that hunger and starvation and disease form a monster whose face we should not wish to see in our lives on a daily basis like it happens in the capitalist world.
And in a conference he held in Havana on the 10th of February 2012 (“Year 54 of the Revolution”) he spoke to a panel of writers and his address went:
Of course we are not referring to the skills and know-how placed at the beck and call of domination, genocide, and the domestication of persons; we refer instead to humanistic knowledge and socially committed science, the kind that makes mankind the alpha and omega of all its efforts; to ethics and solidarity as the pillars of human relations; to the defense of the cultural identity of communities and peoples; and to the harmonious relationship between Man and Nature.
That the main preoccupation of capitalism is domination is a known fact, just watch them come with their machines and speeches in superlative terms, and you will know as fact; capitalists have arrived.
Superlative terms such as “the best”, “the biggest”, “most effective”, are all one hears when it comes to the speeches of leaders who have swallowed the acid opiates of the capitalist lords of the world whose main preoccupation is counting the numbers and figures on pieces of paper money and stock-market walls.
Placebos are sold as medicine, and untested development plans are presented as long-term; and the world goes on to suffer because the poor people have been taught that slavery in offices and projects and factories for meagre pay is a good way to lead one’s life.
The welfare of one is taught as the best maxim to follow, and the plight of another can in the rat race be forgotten, their children can suffer and go emaciated with hunger and starvation whilst the dustbins feed better than they do . . . that is the way of the capitalist who remembers not that the wealth he has gathered is the direct result of the poor people toiling in sweatshops disguised as textile and clothing factories.
The capitalist forgets that he should give to the roots of his wealth like the tree does . . . and Comrade Castro taught against this mentality and was hated for it, but he chinned on with steely will, and the fruits of his tenacity in the face of adversity can be seen in the state Cuba is in at this moment of his passing.
He was not a dictator as many are taught of him; he is the man of the people who always declared that he would never rule a state with a machine gun like dictators do. He was a compadre until the end.
I watched Ernesto Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries and I remember the scene where he meets the couple from the copper mine who were cold and hungry because there was no work, and they had on frayed clothes and a single blanket to keep them warm in the cold Andes nights.
Che gave them all the money he had because he was human, Alberto Granada complained but he had to understand that there were people less fortunate than he was. Fidel and Che fought and won a revolutionary war together, and when one reads the words of Fidel, it is as if they are hearing the echo of the other fellow brother who unfortunately met an early end. In his fidelity to the revolution, Fidel would thus state in a few excerpted quotes I came across:
I stated that the second consideration on which we based our chances for success was one of social order because we were assured of the people’s support. When we speak of the people we do not mean the comfortable ones, the conservative elements of the nation, who welcome any regime of oppression, any dictatorship, any despotism, prostrating themselves before the master of the moment until they grind their foreheads into the ground.
When we speak of struggle, the people means the vast unredeemed masses, to whom all make promises and whom all deceive; we mean the people who yearn for a better, more dignified and more just nation; who are moved by ancestral aspirations of justice, for they have suffered injustice and mockery, generation after generation; who long for great and wise changes in all aspects of their life; people, who, to attain these changes, are ready to give even the very last breath of their lives — when they believe in something or in someone, especially when they believe in themselves.
Ten thousand young professionals: doctors, engineers, lawyers, veterinarians, school teachers, dentists, pharmacists, newspapermen, painters, sculptors, etc., who come forth from school with their degrees, anxious to work and full of hope, only to find themselves at a dead end with all doors closed, and where no ear hears their clamor or supplication.
Fidel Castro was never a dictator. He was concerned with the welfare of the people viewed only as dispensable tools of convenience by the systems of governance that rule them. The sad thing is; capitalism is in a crisis, and the only lame excuse one hears these days is, ‘times are hard, jobs are scarce…’ and such other rigmarole, and dog turd.
These are just capitalist lies Il Padre Commandante fought against all his life. I guess Fidel will not be dead for a long time, as we wake to the reality that the society of today is a capitalist construct designed only to serve the needs of the imperialist forces of the world.
They want to kill us, the want to leave us thirsty in the midst of the rivers of our fatherland, they want to steal our diamonds and leave us poor . . . and we shall speak against it with a clear voice without fear as the faithful Fidel spoke to us in his words. Clarity, sincerity, daring, are all marks of true purpose. So you said Commandante… Hasta la Victoria Siempre nuestro Commandante. History will indeed come to absolve you, as you prophesied. Hasta la vista Commandante.