There’s government spin — and then there’s dizzying levels of disillusionment and disingenuousness. This is what Cuban President Raul Castro said last Sunday:
“With experience accumulated in more than 55 years of revolutionary struggle, it doesn’t seem like we’re doing too badly, nor that desperation or frustration have been our companions along the way.”
He really did.
There’s a reason that only Cuba and North Korea remain among the Marxist-Leninist hard core. Everyone else has acknowledged that command economies and governmental control over the means of production have not, well, worked. The you-pretend-to-work, we’ll-pretend-to-pay you system is ultimately not sustainable. A government-run economy that still proscribes private ownership and marginalizes incentives is antithetical to certain facets of, well, human nature.
Ration cards after a half century. Dependence on a subsidizing patron, from the Soviet Union to Venezuela, to stay afloat. Needing to reference North Korea to feel any sense of progress. How revolting. So, what exactly would a credible definition of “doing too badly” be?