Arguing Over Cuba

By: Samuel Farber

Far too often, US intellectuals either defended Cuban Communism uncritically or fed into Washington propaganda.

For many American intellectuals, how to respond to the early stages of the Cuban Revolution was the key issue of the early 1960s.

Liberal cold warriors like Arthur Schlesinger Jr defended the aggressive line against the Cuban government taken by the new Kennedy administration.

But leftist intellectuals railed against Washington. One of the most prominent among them, radical sociologist C. Wright Mills, argued that unlike both the developed capitalist countries and Soviet Communism, Cuba’s revolution spoke for Third World nations.

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For many American intellectuals, how to respond to the early stages of the Cuban Revolution was the key issue of the early 1960s. Liberal cold warriors like Arthur Schlesinger Jr defended the aggressive line against the Cuban government taken by the new Kennedy administration. But leftist intellectuals railed against Washington. One of the most prominent among them, radical sociologist C. Wright Mills, argued that unlike both the developed capitalist countries...

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