I’m not sure if anybody else would have had the prestige and influence to go against the grain and usher in a period of reforms of Cuba’s economy and society. He challenged some of the outdated thinking and practices in the party as well. In doing so he breathed new life into the Cuban Revolution. It’s ironic that many of the economic reforms that Gorbachev introduced in the mid-1980s and met such derision within the communist movement were not that much different than what Cuba and other socialist countries have done since in their economic reformation process.

What made Gorbachev’s reforms different was his readiness to give up the party’s monopoly on political power and its control over civil society too, including the media and other means of communication.

In the Communist Party I learned that the struggle against racism, is at the core of any strategy that envisions a just, democratic, equal, and socialist society. I also learned that in joining this struggle white people are not doing people of color any favors. To the contrary, it’s in their moral, economic, and political interests too, white privilege notwithstanding. And, finally, I gained an appreciation that people of color are not only racism’s immediate, hardest hit, and daily victims and its most enduring opponents and tested leaders on freedom road, but constitute as well the most powerful, eloquent, and consistent voice and material force for progressive and radical change generally.

I’m not suggesting that similar, in some cases, better anti-racist understandings can’t be gained in other organizations and in the course of one’s life experiences in a changing world. They can. My only claim is what I learned in the “party” gave me a new framework to look at racism, politics and the world and a vision to measure up to, even if my understandings and actions haven’t always kept abreast with the times and the requirements of the moment.

My uncle Johnny would say to me on more than one occasion when I was young, “Sammy or Webb, stay sober and keep the faith.” I think he had heard through one or more of the grapevines that tie together extended families and small towns that my youthful escapades were a bit outside the bounds of what was considered proper and acceptable behavior for a teenage (Catholic) boy. I always acknowledged what he said and loved him for giving me his advice. But then I promptly ignored it, both then and to this day. No regrets! We have to make the journey fun as well as noble.

Below is my reply to a comment on a facebook thread that claimed that the anti-Chinese propaganda today is much like the Cold War hype against the Soviet Union. In other words, pure invention and not to be believed:

Some of the anti-Soviet rhetoric wasn’t BS, but our ideological blinders and political commitments didn’t allow us (in the Communist Party) to make a distinction between Cold War hype and the democratic distortions and crimes of the Soviet Union. And not just in the Stalin period.

We acted as if (and said that) the Soviet state was free of authoritarian practices and constituted a new type of democracy in which workers ruled. In effect, we mistook proclamation and form for essence and practice. Or to put it differently, we assumed that the formal and proclaimed relations of democracy and democratic governance were a more or less exact representation of the real, actual relations. How naive (or opportunistic) we were.

One would hope that the communist movement have learned from this experience, which reflected negatively on it then. But the uncritical embrace of current Chinese political practices and rhetoric makes me wonder if the thinking of some has shifted at all.

The great cultural theorist Stuart Hall once wrote, “interests are not given but always have to be politically and ideologically constructed.” Or, to put it differently, they aren’t belched out of the bowels of economic and class structures. This observation of Hall’s strikes me as pretty much on the mark, finding fresh confirmation in the formation of the working class in recent years.