• 420blazeit69 [he/him]
    ·
    11 months ago

    The straight up lead-in line from Google is

    slavery was not abolished on the island until 1886.

    You really don't see how this presents a problem?

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      11 months ago

      slavery was not abolished on the island

      Seems that by truncating the comment further, I can get it to once again agree with my point of view.

    • RedQuestionAsker2 [he/him, she/her]
      ·
      11 months ago

      Gotta agree with you here.

      Communist propaganda and is so strong because it's true. To say that Castro freed the slaves stretches the definition of slave beyond the point of usefulness.

      We often liken modern day proletarians to peasants for rhetorical reasons, but we recognize that they are distinctly different things despite the fact that many of their class dynamics are similar. The people of Cuba were facing slave like conditions, and we, as Marxists, acknowledge that there's not a huge gap between slavery and wage labor (unlike liberals). But the fact remains, they were not slaves.

      You can still say Castro liberated his people and greatly increased their quality of living, which is why he is so adored. These things are inarguably true.

      In fact, by saying the cuban people were facing slave-like conditions, I think you have a better case in convincing people that modern wage labor and especially the conditions of migrant workers are unjust even though they exist outside the framework of slavery.

    • iie [they/them, he/him]
      ·
      11 months ago

      What about saying serfs instead of slaves? It’s a term people are more willing to loosely define, but still makes a powerful statement I think

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        I think that's less arguable, but something like "Castro liberated his people and greatly increased their quality of living" is still concise but avoids any semantic distractions altogether.