Literacy Rates (USA vs. Cuba)

Well, we here in the Northeast US are snowed in today.  Thankfully, my work decided to close for the day... They told us as last minute as possible.  Last week in class I was asked to assemble some statistics for us: the literacy rate of a capitalist nation and a socialist nation.  Now, while I technically don't believe there are any socialist nations, even if they call themselves that, I'm just going to play ball for right now.  In this case, our capitalist nation will be home sweet home, the United States of America and our socialist country will be our friends to the south -- Cuba!  You may have heard that relations between our nations thawed lately.  Some on the Left were concerned this would impact the number of former American radicals who had fled to Cuba after state repression in the 1970s and 1980s (notably former Black Panther Assata Shakur).

Anyways, those statistics (taken from our friends at the CIA):

The United States of America - 99%

The Republic of Cuba - 99.8%

Additionally, it is probably worth noting that according to this infographic, the United States achieves 99% literacy with $7,743 spent per child annually.  Meanwhile, this one shows that Cuba achieves their with only $834 per capita spent on each student.  Education takes up 12% of their GDP.  For the US it is 5.4% of its GDP.

The more you know.

An Introduction

This blog has been created for the Spring 2015 History 350 course.  The topic is "Class Matters" and this blog will come at the issue of class with the perspective that is something that must be overcome.  This blog takes an compositional analysis of class, rather than some of the widely known theories, such as intersectionality.  While intersectionality is a useful way to picture society, it is also a very limited tool, as it is often reduced to battles for recognition and representation within class society, rather than its abolition.  Instead, this blog will approach the topics of course with an analysis that asks "what are classes, who is in the classes, and what are the classes doing?"  By asking these questions, we invariably are taken to looking at issues of race and gender.  Several foundational pieces for the authors understanding of class are:

• The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson
• Sex, Race, and Class by Selma James
• The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James
• How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev
• Black Skin, White Masks by Franz Fanon
• Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici
• Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism by Steve Wright
• Capital by Karl Marx