Marx was right a lot of the time.

Right on the business cycle ; on alienation ; on the development of a class struggle ; on the tendency towards monopolism ; on exploitation, the existence of surplus value ; commodity fetishism ; the pressures on the middle class...

Where he was wrong: labour theory of value neglected the subjective factor - though the MECHANISM of surplus value remains ; capitalism adapted again and again ; workers did not 'essentially' embrace communism - many turned to fascism given unfavourable circumstances ; the market remained necessary for flexible determination of personal needs structures. The means of social control became more and more complex with the rise of information and communications technology. Capitalism also increased its survivability through brining women into the workforce ; through the 'total mobilisation' of WWI ; through the extension of the world market to its furthermost limits...

Things to watch for: My much further can the global market go? Environmental constraints ; global division of labour being questioned and resisted - where will that leave us? Will class struggle re-emerge if living standards fall?

Also will the current and future waves of communications technology actually challenge social control by doing away with 'one way information flows'?

Also perhaps Marx's final aim of communism is possible because of flaws of human nature. But you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

sorry typo - should have read "total mobilisation of WWII" ;

Tristan - sorry but most of the stuff you attribute to Marx was in fact recognised long before his time. One at least by Adam Smith (it starts with m). The rest is, as I said, new ways of looking at interactions which have some use in analysis.

The rest is just nonsense which, to judge from you post, has clouded your thinking. To take just one example of many "one-way information flows". Tristan I'm a journalist who was retrenched some months ago because no-one advertises in conventional media anymore.

But even in the hey day of that conventional media, which you fondly image to be controlled by mysterious right-wing forces, you still had the Green-Left Weekly, letters sections (I was a letters editor for some years and I was not controlled by right wing forces), academic journals of varying repute and wacky radio stations broadcasting any nonsense. Now its a free for all. If you want to see actual one-way information flows go to China or Russia.

Tristan for heaven sake stop studying Marx while you still have some critical faculties left, drop the long obsolete nonsense about class struggle, and look about you. Leave it with you.

The most basic of human rights in any society are the right to food, shelter and basic medical assistance and there are several "democratic" societies that don't freely provide for these things. Homeless people still freeze to death during Winter within miles of the White House.

Popular revolutions are typically the result of a backlash against general oppression and nothing much has been said about how life was for Cubans under the previous Batista regime.

The fact that Cuba survived despite extreme economic sanctions for decades (also condemned as inhumane by the UN) and remained independent of US doctrine is one of their greatest achievements and America's greatest political embarrassment.

Likewise Castro's response to US demands to free citizens led him to empty his prisons and asylums and send the inmates to Florida where some went on to create a lot of the crime gangs that persist today.

Locally, it's also interesting to hear about how successful the Cuban international indigenous literacy programme has been for residents of Wilcannia.

Nevertheless the myths about Castro will continue.

For example -
JBowyer, please tell us more about Castro's money, yachts and girlfriends.
McCackie - how was Castro a "mate of Stalin" when he publicly despised the Russians for being Stalinist traitors and not true Marxists?
Agronomist - Some clarification. Cuba was reluctantly driven into partnership with the Russians when Castro tried to buy weapons for his army after the Bay of Pigs. The prominent international arms dealer at the time was the UK and the USA instructed the UK not to deal with Castro because "he will have to go to the Russians and that would automatically make him our official enemy".

“The most prominent right in socialism is freedom from economic exploitation”

Does Dorothea Anthony really believe Cuba had that under Fidel Castro?

In reporting his legacy, the SMH included a report from someone whose father's business had (along with all other private businesses) been seized by the Cuban government on Fidel Castro's orders. That's something that wouldn't've happened if they had freedom from economic exploitation.

That article went on to say that subsequently his father applied to leave Cuba... and was forced him to work in the cane fields because the state took the attitude that anyone who wants to leave must be an enemy. Again that wouldn't've happened if they had freedom from economic exploitation. Eventually Cuba let him and his family leave, but they weren't allowed to take any valuables with them. More economic exploitation!

So was this article written because Dorothy Anthony...
a) Was ignorant of all that?
b) Believes that to be fictitious American propaganda rather than something that actually happened?
c) Doesn't consider economic exploitation to count as economic exploitation when communist states do it?

And we can take it that had Cuba been run along the lines of a US paradise, that there would have been free, top quality health care, free education through to Uni, they would not have been divided by their colour, they would not have been shot indiscriminately by the police, they would not have a huge percentage living below the poverty line and a small minority obscenely rich, they would not have been sent to fight wars all around the world at the behest of the military/industrial forces that actually run the US.
Oh they would have been so well off that they would not have turned out in their thousands for the funeral of Castro.
I wonder if there is ever going to be a US president that they turn out so grief stricken for?