if the americans are in a "cold war mentality" with cuba, they were in that same mentality when they crushed land revolts in the eighteenth century and when they crushed the occupy protests a few years ago. even it's use during the cold war, and especially in latin america, was generally little more than a flimsy excuse to exert property rights by extreme force. this has nothing to do with democracy, with castro, with dissidents or with russia. it has to do with ideas that the american elite has never and will never coexist peacefully with because, if exported, they would pose a threat to their own power.
Kevin
The US as a whole was not "violently anti-socialist centuries before the russian revolution." In fact, there was quite a lot of sympathy for the labor movement especially among immigrants but also in society at large. In many places around the country, socialists were elected to local and state governments throughout the late nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, even during the Cold War. The idea that socialism is somehow inherently un-American and has no native history here or is some sort of alien ideology is incorrect. I do agree with you that the elites in the US are definitely violently anti-socialist and that the US used anti-Communism during the Cold War as a flimsy excuse to intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries.
deathtokoalas
i apologize if i wasn't clear.
an early source of violently anti-socialist writing from a prominent member of the united states elite is in the writings of james madison.
this is probably the most insightful paragraph in all of the literature written in the period. madison is explaining why he prefers a system of devolved power (states' rights) rather than a centralized federal government.
"The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State."
that is, the entire system was designed to limit the cancer of socialism to a small area where it can be isolated and attacked. it's modular thinking. divide and conquer. and it's pretty smart, if you're a powerful landowner trying to prevent an actual revolution.
Kevin
The thing is, socialism, in particular the Marxist variety, did not exist until after the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, long after Madison's time. While French socialism has its roots in the French Revolution, it isn't really an actual force until after the 1830s. I'm just trying to suggest that your timeline is a bit off, that's all.
deathtokoalas
it would be difficult to speak of industrial age economic systems before the industrial revolution. marxism doesn't make any more sense in a pre-industrial society than it does in a post-industrial one. but, ideas of collective ownership can be traced very far back into history. there were crusades launched against socialists in france. you just have to understand that the economic systems were different, so they had different forms - as future (current, really) forms of socialism in a post-industrial reality will not have much in common with marxism. madison lived in an essentially feudal society, which meant that the socialism of his period had to do with social ownership of land (farming co-operatives, essentially) rather than social ownership of production. when there were revolutions in this period (and there were.), that's what it had to do with.
it's actually quite relevant, as cuba is not a productive force and does not threaten to export worker ownership of factories. the threat that cuba poses is in the way that it organizes farming and land use in general, and the place that it poses a threat is in the rest of latin america, which is largely still under the boot of american plantations. even venezuela still exports well over half of the food it produces, and the united states is it's largest customer.