Castroism Will Not Survive Castro (Fidel)

Irving Louis Horowitz who along with one of my favorite professors ever, Jaime Suchlicki (guess where I went to school?) puts together the indispensable anthology Cuban Communism (currently in its 11th edition) has a piece in the latest issue of The National Interest (sub. required). Horowitz draws interesting parallels between Spain's Francisco Franco and Fidel, noting that the system Franco did not survive him and that Castro's is unlikely to survive him. That does not mean however that he expects to democracy to flourish anytime soon:

Despite some of the more prevalent predictions regarding Cuba, my own thinking is that Cuba will become neither benevolent democracy nor benign dictatorship in the near future. Instead, one can expect a return to the classical Latin model of military authority. The fact that Raúl Castro has been Cuba’s defense minister since the early 1960s and has also served as a direct representative of Fidel in strategic policy issues provides a linchpin and continuum that may not be royal but is certainly dynastic.

The Cuban military, the only solid force in the nation other than the Communist Party, will indeed inhibit, if not dismantle, the current communist apparatus. At the same time, it will severely limit tendencies toward multiparty change. Even if Raúl Castro is open to some sort of power-sharing arrangement with others, his own strong links to the armed forces almost ensure his role as maximum leader. The transition from the charismatic Fidel to Raúl will be characterized by an elevated public presence of Cuba’s armed forces.

In the end, however, the system that Fidel hoped to create will go with him:

What I will forward with some certitude is that the same final judgment made by the fine historian Raymond Carr on the Spanish tyrant Franco will also await the Cuban tyrant, Fidel Castro: "His rule, he claimed, would be for life. And so it turned out to be. But ‘the novel solution’ could not outlast its architect. There was no Francoism after Franco." And so it will be with Fidel Castro: There will be no Castroism after Castro.

The common aspects of Francoism and Castroism limit their continuation. Both were driven by a cult of personality that becomes difficult to extend beyond the life of the person. And the sweeping repression so central to both dictatorships depends on an image of invincibility that is often undermined by the death of the leader. The reliance on foreign allies generally makes the dictatorship less tenable and the dependence on a command economy becomes unsustainable, particularly in the current Cuban context.

The expected death of Castroism becomes the ultimate irony and penalty of foisting upon a decent people a truncated Marxism-Stalinism, making endless appeals to personal sacrifice and metaphysical history, instead of governing through modest guidance and the presumption that human beings are quite capable of determining their own lives.