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Drawing on twenty-five years of first-hand research in Cuba, this book examines the relationship between socialism and democracy, in classical Marxist theory and in the practice of the Cuban revolution. While the author notes the role which underdevelopment and external threat have played in undermining the possibility for democratic socialism in this century, she focuses specifically upon a theoretical heritage plagued by silences, absences and simplifications concerning key political issues. In her application of this focus to the Cuban revolution, Bengelsdorf traces a pattern of confrontation with these absences around the issues of democracy. In this revisionist interpretation, she examines the succession of critical moments at which the question of democracy was raised and the nature of the leadership's response. She argues that the paternalism of the leadership in reining in possibilities it itself had evoked has been as destructive of the social project of the revolution as the dire economic straits in which Cuba finds itself in a post-socialist world.

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• Preface(p. vii)
• Introduction(p. 3)
• 1 Marx and the State In the First phase of Communism(p. 12)
• 2 Lenin and the Dictatorship of the proletariat(p. 33)
• 3 The Dictatorship of The proletariat"" in practice: Actually Existing Socialism In the Soviet Union""(p. 50)
• 4 Cuba--The First Decade: paternalist Centralization and Anarchic Decentralization(p. 66)
• 5 Cuba in the Seventies: Centralized Decentralization(p. 99)
• 6 The 1980s--Unchanging Change: Cuba in the Era of perestroika(p. 134)
• 7 popular power: The Reckoning(p. 155)
• 8 Into the 1990s: Socialism on One Island--Or, Cuba In a World Without Alternatives(p. 166)
• Conclusion(p. 177)
• Notes(p. 181)
• Bibliography(p. 207)
• Index(p. 225)

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CHOICE Review

This reviewer's first reaction was, "Not another book on Cuba!" However, Bengelsdorf has produced a theoretically elegant book dealing not only with postrevolutionary Cuba but also with the much deeper definitions and redefinitions of democracy. The author's thesis is that both capitalist and Marxist ideas of democracy are wanting. She points out a truth largely ignored in the West: world capitalism " ... continues to live down to its critics' expectations." Or, democracy in both its capitalist and Marxist manifestations has not lived up to its promise in the poorer nations of the world. Yet Marxist theory, which continues to address many of the problems of mankind, will continue to be relevant in some form. Cuba, in the last throes of command socialism, provides a case study of the failings of both capitalist and Marxist democracy. Bengelsdorf's work is an extremely sophisticated critique of Cuban politics from the 1960s to the present. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through faculty. E. A. Duff; Randolph-Macon Woman's College