Politics of Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro proclaimed himself to be "a socialist, a Marxist, and a Leninist". As a Marxist and Leninist, Castro believed strongly in converting Cuba, and the wider world, from a capitalist system in which individuals own the means of production, into a socialist system in which the means of production are owned by the workers. In the former, there is a class divide between the wealthy classes who control the means of production (i.e. the factories, farms, media etc.) and the poorer working classes who labor on them, whilst in the latter there is a decreasing class divide as the state withers away to form communism.

Marxism is the socio-political theory developed by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid-19th century. It holds as its foundation the idea of class struggle; that society mainly changes and progresses as one socio-economic class takes power from another. Thus Marxists believe that capitalism replaced feudalism in the Early Modern period as the wealthy industrial class, or bourgeoisie, took political and economic power from the traditional land-owning class, the aristocracy and monarchy. In the same process, Marxists predict that socialism will replace capitalism as the industrial working class, or proletariat, seize power from the bourgeoisie through revolutionary action. In this way, Marxism is believed by its supporters to provide a scientific explanation for why socialism should, and will, replace capitalism in human society.

Leninism refers to the theories put forward by Russian revolutionary, political theorist and politician Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party who was a leading figure in the October Revolution that overthrew the Russian Provisional Government and replaced it with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic under the rule of the Communist Party. Taking Marxism as its basis, Leninism revolves around putting forward ideas for how to convert a capitalist state into a socialist one. Castro used Leninist thought as a model upon which to convert the Cuban state and society into a socialist form.

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