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REVIEW: Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Pay and His Daring Quest for a Free Cuba

What would I be willing to risk or endure in order to live a life where free political discussion and action is possible? This is a question that readers of David Hoffmans Give Me Liberty might put to themselves after thinking through the life of Oswaldo Pay and his battle with communist tyranny in Cuba.

Pay was 13 years old when the Castro regime seized his fathers newspaper distribution business in 1965. Oswaldos father Alejandro was arrested. This was the beginning of a campaign against private businesses that lasted three yearsthe implementation of a socialist morality that denounced and punished vendors and businessmen as parasites. Young Oswaldo had been the only boy in his class to refuse entry into the Jose Mart Pioneersthe communist youth organization in Cuba. The familys observant Catholicism only added to the stigma the Pays experienced. Alejandro was released after one week and told his family not to express any complaint. He recommended a strategy of public compliance. He urged his children to do well in school, work hard, and prepare for the future. "You have to yieldin order to triumph," he said. This was not a strategy Oswaldo would adopt.

Hoffman interweaves two other stories around the central tale of Pays confrontation with the communist regime. First, he encapsulates Cubas post-colonial history, focusing in particular on the story of the Cuban constitution of 1940. We meet Gustavo Gutirrez, an advocate for constitutional democracy who wrote a draft constitution for Cuba in the mid-1930s. Important for Pays story, a key provision of Gutierrezs draft found its way into the Cuban constitution of 1940: new laws could be proposed by congressmen and Senators, but also by citizensin this latter case, the initiative would require the endorsement of "at least ten thousand citizens having the status of voters."

Second, Hoffman explores Fidel Castros rise to power and his construction of Cuban communism. Castro initially presented himself as an agent of Cuban democracy, promising elections in the aftermath of a successful revolutionary seizure of power. He even pledged to make the 1940 constitution the "supreme law of the land." By May 1961 he declared that constitution dead and promised a new "socialist constitution" that would introduce "a new social system without the exploitation of many by man." This purported end of exploitation would of course require extraordinary levels of surveillance and coercion. Already in 1960 Castro put in place Committees for the Defense of the Revolutionwhat he called a "system of collective vigilance." These organizations could be found in neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools. Hoffman calls them the "foundation stones of the police state" as they created a vast network of monitors and informants. By the mid-1960s the regime had built the UMAP (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Produccin) labor camp system to house anyone hostile or even potentially hostile to socialist revolution.

Oswaldo Pay ended up cutting sugar cane in one of the camps in the summer of 1969. After a year he was flown to the Isle of Pines, which housed a prison complex built in the 1920s where he would work breaking rocks in a quarry 10 hours a day. The restrictions here were less onerous than in the UMAP system, so Pay and some of his fellow prisoners were able to explore the small town of Nueva Gerona on the weekends. They stumbled on a library across the street from a church and read Orwells Animal Farm, Pasternaks Doctor Zhivago, and the works of the Spanish philosopher Jos Ortega y Gasset. These men who had been declared enemies or deviants found a refuge and "reveled in the freedom to think and talk." As Hoffman puts it, "The forced labor camps attempted to reeducate and retrain the outsiders, to coerce them to believe in the revolution. But for Oswaldo Pay, the experience was the opposite. They had not conquered his soul. They had nourished it."

Its not clear whether Pay would share the sentiments of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (one of his heroes), "Bless you, prison, for having been in my life," but he did find the atmosphere in Havana suffocating by contrast. He hoped to study physics at university but campus life was so conformist and ideologically charged he couldnt stand it. "They didnt kick me out but they asphyxiated me," he noted. He eventually got a degree in electrical engineering via night school in 1983. Shortly thereafter he found his vocation through the Catholic Church.

Castros revolution had brought the Church to the brink of destruction. Prior to the revolution there had been about 1 priest for every 9,000 people in Cuba. By 1980 that figure was about 1 priest for every 45,000. Fewer than 1 percent of Catholics were practicing. In 1985 the archbishop of Havana, Jaime Ortega, invited Pay to be one of 173 delegates to a conference on the future of the Cuban church. With his then-fianc Ofelia, he prepared a document called "Faith and Justice." In it he argued that Catholics must be free to speak the truth about injustice and oppression and to resist being pushed to the margins of society. He presented his ideas at a meeting of the delegates before the conference and was immediately denounced.

Just over a decade later Pay launched the Varela Project, a citizen petition demanding freedom of assembly, amnesty for political prisoners, the right to engage in private enterprise, and the establishment of a new electoral code allowing for free elections. The movement culminated in Pay submitting a formal citizens petition to the National Assembly on May 10, 2002with over 11,000 signatures.

Pays stature grew internationally as he was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Human Rights and Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament. He met with Vclav Havel and Pope John Paul II, and the Varela Project continued adding signatures to its petition. Cuban state security was not unprepared for this challenge. In the 1980s a Cuban named Jacinto Valds-Dapena had gone to Potsdam to study with the StasiEast German state security. There he learned a strategy for dealing with dissidents known as Zersetzung or decomposition. He brought back to Cuba techniques of covert psychological warfare to infiltrate dissident movements, sow distrust among members, and exploit envy and jealousy. Hoffman relates the grinding battles between Pay and his allies and Cuban state security in riveting detail.

Oswaldo Pay died in a car crash on July 22, 2012a crash many suspect was orchestrated by Cuban state security. Like many prominent dissidents of the 20th century, Pay embodied an extraordinary combination of courage and humility. Hoffmans book is a powerful antidote to delusions about the reality of Cuban communism. Perhaps more importantly, its a study of character in actiona test of virtue in a soil of unfreedom. One hopes that the seeds of virtue left by Pay will bear fruit soon.

Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Pay and His Daring Quest for a Free Cubaby David E. HoffmanSimon & Schuster, 544 pp., $32.50

Flagg Taylor, a professor in the department of political science at Skidmore College, was editor, most recently, ofThe Long Night of the Watchman: Essays by Vclav Benda, 1977-1989, and hosts the Enduring Interest Podcast.You can find him on Twitter: @FlaggTaylor4

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The Courage to Counter Castro - Washington Free Beacon

Call them the A, B Cs eight realities of Communist China. This is not your fathers sleepy, benign, creeping by the night, weak by day Communist China. Things are changing fast. In sum, we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

First, or A for those who like mnemonics, ways to remember:We are facing an A-frame in public understanding of the threat, half who gets that China aims to beat us, is an existential threat to our democracy, is waging unrestricted warfare the other half dopey, sleepy, disengaged, hopeful.

The unengaged half needs to get engaged, understand the stakes, pace of Chinas accelerating attack, multiple fronts on which China aims to best us, is making inroads, military, economic, ideological.

Second, B for recall, China is on a Beeline for supremacy, dominance in virtually every theater of political and military conflict. They are not there, but they are developing, modernizing, laying in ICBMS by the thousands, accelerating maritime abilities, practicing missile and fighter assaults on Taiwan.

That is not all, they are rapidly moving for dominance in quantum computing, cyberwarfare, pushing private and public installation in American engineering, social media, computing, education, and technology infrastructure, enabling everything from MASINT (measurement and signature intelligence) to surveillance, theft to blackmail, changing college curricula to pro-China foreign policy.

Third, or C, we need a political sea-change in this country. Beyond educating, we must understand right now what Reagan educated America about in the 1980s.Some governments are not legitimate. Communism is quintessentially illegitimate.Soviets Communism was; Chinese Communism is.

Any nation that kills its people for mild political objections, which traps, beats, tortures, and brain washes citizens for not accepting the oppression of religious, personal, and political views, which makes no apologies for inflicting Marxist carnage, suppression, coercion, intimidation, and a global virus, is illegitimate. Sovereignty resides in the people; that is the lesson of God-given rights.

Fourth, or D, deterrence is vital. It is possible still with China if we sit up, see the threat, and act. As Reagan demonstrated, peace through strength is the only way to turn back, roll back, stop aggression. We must do that again. Time is short, but concrete ways exist to show China we win if challenged.

Fifth, or E, enforcement of laws in the United States and on foreign soil, helping others call out Chinas corruption, political, governmental, and personal is vital. American companies are private in nature and bound by the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act; Chinas are governmentally tied and cheat all the time. We must use US laws, international tribunals, and allied action to prosecute their cheating.

Sixth, or F, finance is an Achilles heal for China. They such money out of free, free-market, enterprising and wealthy countries, especially the US, via publicly traded companies, US government investments, intellectual property theft, corporate coercion even corrupting politicians. That MUST stop. We would not have invested or indulged building the Soviet war machine; we must not build Chinas. They are corrupt, in debt, and endemically unapologetic about cheating we must stop it.

Seventh, or G, is game theory. China thinks ahead, around corners, aims for dominance, in 500 years, sure but also in five to fifteen years. We must understand the moves before they make them, prevent their information and influence warfare, be smarter by half, and understand the game.

Game is theory is not a game, it is a way of thinking strategically proactively, smartly, and winning. It is what China is doing, although the West typically does it better, is more nimble, has free thought, experience ideals, and individual enterprise to rely on.But we have to do this, think forward, engage, look around corners, plan our chess moves, by being ahead of where they are planning to be.

Finally, eighth or H, is for hidden battles for high ground, which China is totally committed to finding, and we will lose if we let them take those areas of high ground. Arguably, from the Revolutionary War through the Battle of Little Round Top at Gettysburg during the Civil War, to many of the big battles WWI and WWI, from Anzio to Iwo Jima, casualties, opportunities, and even outcomes are determined by high ground.

Where is the high ground in our epic contest with China? Brace yourself, because it is everywhere in near earth orbit and lunar orbit, in cyberspace, quantum computing, public awareness, information warfare, education, multilateral organization domination, the South China Sea, but also in commercial conquest of Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Western Hemisphere. It is in leasing ports, and militarizing them, recapturing the Solomon Islands which we died to free, and a thousand fronts.

So, how do we win since we must win, or over time perish to the power of illegitimate, but powerful communist coercion? We wake up, as one nation under God, remember who we are, remember what communist oppression looks like, and understand that we live in times not benign but malign.

If we do that, remember the A, B, Cs of beating Chinese communism stopping it before it wins we will prevail and, to borrow from Churchill, men and women for a thousand years will call this our finest hour. If we minimize, ignore, forget, or divide on the importance of unity to freedom, we lose. Either way, we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto time to say so.

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Xi Van Fleet, a survivor of Mao Zedong's communist revolution in China, joined "Fox & Friends Weekend" Saturday to share her experience living under and fleeing from communism. Van Fleet cautioned socialist supporters in the U.S. from embracing a dangerous ideology and "abandoning freedom."

AOC-BACKED NEW YORK DEMOCRAT CELEBRATES PRIMARY VICTORY BY DECLARING SOCIALISM WINS

XI VAN FLEET: I just want to say it's so ironic. 36 years ago, I run away from socialism when I left China to come to this great country for freedom. Today, so many Americans [are] abandoning freedom and arriving into socialism. They have no idea what socialism is about. I lived under Mao's socialism. When the government controls everything and makes all the decisions big and small and decide how much grain, meat [and] cooking oil I could have. What I should learn in school, where I should live, and what job I should have and how I should think. In the socialist society I lived under, there was no choices. There is no freedom. And that's what people do not know. Socialism becomes such a diluted word and it's intentional. I can tell you, China is a socialist country. Cuba is a socialist country and so is North Korea. They are a socialist country run by communist parties. And what's the difference? What's the difference between socialism and communism? Not much. Socialism is the initial stage of communism, according to Karl Marx.

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Communist China survivor issues warning to Americans: Socialism is only the first stage - Fox News

A political and economic ideology in which the means of production are owned communally

Communism is a social, political, and economic ideology in which the means of production are owned communally, and it advocates for a classless society with little or no private ownership of property. The Communist theory was founded by German political philosophers and economists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the second half of the 19thcentury.

In 1848, the pair wrote and published The Communist Manifesto, a detailed outline of communist principles. The book was circulated widely and referred to as the Communist Bible. It was adopted as the communist handbook by several emergent communist countries in the 19th and 20th centuries.

A major aim of communism was to end capitalism. It was to be achieved through a classless society where class conflict will be resolved, and proletarians (the majority working class) will revolt against the bourgeoisie (owners of the means of production) and end worker exploitation. The abolishment of private property ownership ensures a pure communist society is established. Communism meant people gave to society according to their abilities and received according to their needs and the needs of the society placed above the needs of individuals.

Communism is considered a variant or an advanced form of socialism. The debate on the distinction is still ongoing as the two are often used interchangeably throughout history, even by Karl Marx himself. However, communist ideology is largely based on Karl Marxs revolutionary communism philosophy.

Communism comes from the Latin word communis, which means common or shared. Communism is thought to come into existence in ancient times as considered in Platos Socratic dialogue Republic, published around 375 BC. Plato considered an ideal state in which a governing class of guardians serves the interests of the whole community by living as a large family sharing the ownership of goods and people (labor). Other early examples of communism are in Christianity, the formation of the monastic order, and others.

However, the emergence of modern communism was instigated by the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The major highlight of the revolution was the rapid industrialization of world economies, which increased economic productivity. However, the success was largely achieved at the back of exploitation of the proletariat through extreme working conditions and poor wages.

The above phenomenon convinced Karl Max, et al. to rethink a suitable system where there are fewer class struggles and are doing away with the allure of private property ownership that leads to greediness and inequalities in the society. Marx envisaged a society where prosperity is shared by everyone through common ownership of the means of production.

Marxist communism (Marxism) was founded by Karl Marx by laying out the theoretical and scientific foundations of communism. Karl Marx was born in Germany to middle-class Jewish parents who previously abandoned their religion. Marx studied philosophy at the University of Berlin and later moved to the University of Jena, where he obtained a doctorate in 1841.

Marx became a political radical because of his Jewish background living in a European nation. He moved from Germany fearing persecution and settled in Paris, France, where he met Friedrich Engels, a countryman. There, they developed a partnership that culminated in the publication of various communist journals, including The Communist Manifesto.

Marxist communism makes use of materialist methodology to explain and evaluate the development of class society and the role of class struggles in universal political, economic and social change. Marxism became the common ideology for communist movements around the world. The duo believed that challenges faced by the proletariat, such as poverty, early deaths, and diseases, were prevalent in a capitalist society. They argued that the systemic and structural challenges of capitalism could only be solved by replacing capitalism with communism. Marxist communism encompassed three main aspects.

The materialist conception theory, according to Karl Marx, is a series of class struggles and revolutions, which ultimately leads to freedom for all citizens. Marxs view stated that human activity begins with material production for their subsistence before they can embark on other human activities.

According to Karl Marx, material production requires two essential elements, such as:

Marx indicated that the material production process also underwent revolutionary and technological change such that the extractive process, as well as the processing of raw materials, greatly advanced and became more complex.

There are now advanced and complex tools in the hands of one class, i.e., the bourgeoisie ruling class and the proletariat must seek work from the bourgeoisie to be part of the production process. It means the working class lost their independence in material production, necessitating the establishment of a new kind of economic system that is not unfair to one social class.

The critique of capitalism theory is based on the history of societal class dominance over time, where the ruling aristocracy of ancient times was overthrown by the bourgeoisie, thereby replacing feudalism with capitalism. Marxs aim was the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, thereby replacing capitalism with communism in the process.

Marx regarded capitalism as a necessary stage in societal development mostly because of the conspicuous benefits derived from the economic system over time. The benefits include scientific and technological advancement, which helped humans to conquer nature. In the process, people managed to amass huge wealth but it was mainly concentrated on the capitalist elite, the bourgeoisie.

The unfair distribution of wealth is what concerned Marx as the proletariat were the actual producers of goods and services through their labor. According to Marxs labor theory of value, which states that the value of a product is determined by the amount of labor required to produce it.

It meant that the bourgeoisie was profiting unfairly over the proletariat, who produced the goods and received pity wages while they (the bourgeoisie) pocketed large sums of profits. Hence, one class got richer and more powerful whilst the other fell more and more into poverty. Capitalism causes poverty, inequality, false consciousness, and alienation. Alienation means the working class is separated from:

Marxism is anchored on the belief that capitalism is an unstable and inferior economic system that is destined to falter and fall through its inherent weaknesses that will cause a series of economic crisis events. Such challenges include turbulent economic cycles that produce economic depressions and recessions, which in turn yield to high unemployment, high inflation, poor wages, and misery, an increase in poverty levels among other downstream ills. The proletariat will be a major class severely affected by these economic changes as the bourgeoisie are able to insulate themselves through their accumulated wealth.

Marx believed the proletariat will seize and take over the means of production when they realize that the system is working against them through a process termed revolutionary class consciousness. The seizure should also spread to include institutions of state power, such as the judiciary, police, army, prisons among others.

They will establish a socialist state that Marx described as the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletariat will then rule placing their interest ahead and taking measures to prevent counterrevolution by the bourgeoisie. Eventually, the need for the state will disappear and will be replaced by an egalitarian communist society.

However, Marx could not paint a clear picture of this eventual communist society. Some of the features of this ideal society have been adopted in modern capitalist economies notably public education. Other views are still considered extreme in an economic and political sense and will probably never see mainstream adoption in world economies.

Arguably, there has never been a practical model of communism that had worked successfully for the greater good of all people concerned. Marx was also a believer in democracy, in terms of how institutions of the communist society are determined and designed.

The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed several countries that tried to implement communism and socialism to a certain extent. No single country has been able to clearly implement communism in its purest form. Communism was extensively implemented by the Soviet Union before its dissolution in 1991.

At present, there are only five remaining countries with communist ideologies in different forms and degrees. They include China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos. Most of the countries are in transition from communist/socialist systems to more capitalist or mixed economic systems. A brief look at the countries follows:

Communism was entrenched in China through the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party by Mao Zedong in 1949. However, China started moving towards a mixed economy through the Deng Xiaoping Chinese economic reform in the 1970s. The reforms encompassed allowing private enterprise and the phasing out of collective farms.

In 2004, China changed its constitution to recognize private property. The transition helped the country become the worlds second-largest economy in 2010 and the worlds largest exporter in 2014.

Fidel Castro took over Cuba in 1953 and established a communist state by 1965 with strong ties to the Soviet Union. However, when the Soviet Union dissolved, the country went into an economic crisis. The Partido Comunista de Cuba is described by the Cuban constitution as the leading force of society of the state. The party policies are strictly from Marxism-Leninism communist ideology. The country began to initiate a few market reforms after Raul Castro took over in 2008.

China and Russia helped North Korea declare independence to end the Korean War in 1953 led by Kim Il-Sung. North Koreas system involved central planning and communal farming. However, successive famines took place in the 1990s and 2000s. The country began allowing semi-private markets in 2002.

Vietnam became a communist nation in 1975 through communist leader Ho Chi Minh. However, the country began a slow transition to a market-based economy in 1986.

Laos became a communist state in 1975 following a revolution supported by Vietnam and the Soviet Union. However, in 1988, it started allowing some forms of private ownership and joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2013.

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Communism - Overview, History, Materialist Conception Theory

The Director of the House of Terror marked the Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes during an event held at the museum.

The two halves of Europe are still separated by the different experiences of dictatorships, Mria Schmidt, the Director of the House of Terror Museum said at an event marking the Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.

The West still shrugs its shoulders as a kind of disinterested outsider when we talk about the crimes of communism, she noted.

The conservative historian recalled that when the eastern half of Europe won back its freedom in 1990, Western Europe expected the East to embrace their view of history, which barely mentioned communism. We hoped our stories would be shared stories, but we are still the only ones bowing our heads, she added.

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The Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes was a Hungarian-Polish-Lithuanian initiative.Continue reading

According to Schmidt, Hungarians have a deep understanding of the national socialist and communist dictatorships, and hate both with all their hearts. Those who want to build dictatorships today have more sophisticated methods than weapons, the historian said. But we Hungarians will not let others tell us what to do and how to do it, and we will not let them take away our freedom, she added.

The memorial day marks the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939, the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Featured photo via MTI/Koszticsk Szilrd

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Conservative Historian Blames Western Indifference towards Communism - Hungary Today