If you want to believe in Marxist class warfare that means you haven't learned any of the lessons of the 20th century. The countries that aren't wealthy don't have the same private property rights we do and support lots of trade barriers and have lots of corruption. Mercantilism and Colonialism don't have to be a part of Capitalism. Most of what you talk about has to do with the fact that in the West we still support lots of trade barriers and don't live up to our promises completely. Two wrongs don't make a right.
You can't have personal freedom without control of a majority of your own pay cheque. The poor countries need to get on board because Capitalism is about human nature and to expect all politicians to always be altruistic is the naive point of view. People in all countries regardless of culture look out for themselves and when they join governments they try and feather their nests even quicker if they have a captive taxpayer to pay for it.
What Castro is doing is simply saying is that he wants to go towards a Chinese model because as long as he still has his dictatorship he can use markets to increase his funding because the state will in turn gain more power. A rich dictatorship is much more powerful than a poor one.
This fraternity you talk about is of course vague and that's why it hasn't be created in the real world. What equality exists between Fidel Castro and the general Cuban?
Marxist class warfare? Nothing to do with Marx. I simply stated that the world is divided into classes, in rich and poor. Of course, saying that simple truth, the warning light in your brain automatically flashes and you lump me together with Marx, Stalin and the Red Brigades.
Everyone saw that the world is divided into classes in the recent crisis, it happened in the U.S. Banks got bailed out with horrendous sums of taxpayers´ money, a gigantic exchange from poor to rich, while thousands of simple Americans got kicked out of their houses without mercy.
This division between poor and rich exists a) on a level that includes the whole globalised planet and b) on a national level. For example Angola: visit an oil-exporting country with offshore drill oil platforms, maintained by a) the international players. Luanda, the capital of Angola, boasts the most expensive real estate in the world, topping London, Tokyo, New York. Rent a flat there and see how long you can stay.. the oil managers live in a safe, walled compound so they´re not touched by poverty or crime. b) Angola´s political leadership is corrupt like shit (the point you mentioned, to which I reply: in reality it´s not a racial or national difference that divides people, but the separation into rich and poor class - you can see that in every country and yes, there are corrupt, black African leaders who play the game) and funnel billions to Switzerland, Liechenstein or remote Carribean islands. They don´t use the billions Angola earns (by giving away natural resources) to help the poor, to stabilize the country, but for their own wealth.
Just around the corner from the rich Chanel boulevards you´ll see the shacks of the slums.
Here´s an article on Angola´s oil tycoons
Developing countries don´t have any power to impose trade barriers. Trade barriers are maintained by Europe, the U.S. and Japan. Developing countries are always forced by international bodies (IMF. World Bank et al) to accept trade barriers where they fit the rich, stealing countries (who export their agricultural/ industrial goods, but do not import from developing countries - while maintaining heavily subsidized agro-business). I guess you didn´t get it, buddy: trade barriers are an integral part of capitalism nowadays, regardless of what your theory books say.
You say Mercantilism and Colonialism
don´t have to be a part of capitalism? Well, either you are completely naive or you are kidding me. Fact is that
colonialism was an integral part of capitalism,and fact is that without colonialism capitialists would have not been able to start plundering all the planet. You wouldn´t get any cheap bananas, coltane or coffee or chocolate or sweat-shirts or jeans (produced in Pakistan) without colonialism. Capitalism drives its "success", as you call it, from colonialism.
One thing Castro, or the USSR, if you wish, didn´t do on such a large scale was plundering the rest of the planet. Latin America and most parts of Africa were always plundered by the capitalist world, not by communists. Colonialism was capitalist ways of subordinating the rest of the world, not communist ways. While most people in the USSR were living under miserable conditions, most people in the Western capitalist centres were only able to afford luxury because their multinational corporations plundered Latin America, Africa, and large parts of Asia.
The result is that you, living in a rich nation, are an easy going advocate of capitalism, while you fail to see the damage and pain it brought and continues to bring to most poor people, and, of course, to nature, to wildlife, to the planet as a whole. You choose to enjoy the fruits of someone else´s labor (did you plant the coffee yourself? no. is your crop ruined because of a sandstorm? nope. are your children dying of malnutrition and diseases? no.), while you ignore the miserable conditions of the poor.
This fraternity you talk about is of course vague and that's why it hasn't be created in the real world says it all. You say fraternity is a wishy-washy theory ("of course, vague"), possibly what those weird tree-huggers, smiling dalai-lamas and stupid french revolutionists believe in, while of course, it doesn´t exist in the
real world. After all, in your opinion, the "real world" is cruel and everyone steals from his neighbor - and that´s just natural, isn´t it?
By the way, one equality between Fidel Castro and the general Cuban is that they go to the same hospitals for free (and they´re good!).
Despite a 50-year trade embargo by the United States and a post-Soviet collapse in international support, the impoverished nation has developed a world-class health care system. Average life expectancy is 77.5 years, compared to 78.1 years in the United States, and infant and child mortality rates match or beat the U.S. rates. There’s one doctor for every 170 people, more than twice the per-capita U.S. average.
While not everything is perfect in Cuba (serious shortages of medicines, the best care is reserved for elites) it’s still a powerful feat. In Cuba, a little over $300 per person is spent on health care each year. The U.S. doesn´t even provide free health care for everyone and as soon as the President (!) tries to make a first step, the rich class accuses him of abandoning the principles of health care. What a sad cartoon U.S. politics have become! In the U.S., you´re spending over $7,000 per person each year. Cubans are able to achieve great health outcomes on a modest budget.