Dayan Jayatilleka, Fidel's Ethics of Violence: The Moral Dimension of the Political Thought of Fidel Castro (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. x+235, £17.99, pb.
(militarisation, the Left, and Cuban foreign policy’s Soviet dependence). In fact, it is noticeable that by the 1980s (and into the 1990s), the essays show much less evidence of academic rigour and greater evidence of polemic on the familiar themes – some of them even being speeches or lectures rather than essays. It is as if, by then, Horowitz had abandoned any claim to his earlier radicalism and was entrenched in a Cold War anti-communism. That the 1990s produced so many writings on Cuba seems almost to have demonstrated a belief that the system which he had spent three decades condemning was in its death throes ; indeed, Horowitz is to be congratulated for his honesty in including a 1991 lecture where he predicted the collapse of the Cuban system in 1992. However, the essays of that decade add nothing new; the fire of the rigorous social scientist seemed to have gone out, replaced by the image on an old warrior repeating old complaints. Where, then, does this collection take us? In his heyday of 1965–79, Horowitz was an admirable political scientist ; for all his obsessions, he was always capable of reminding us to look carefully, logically and imaginatively at a system which few examined in such a way, and at aspects which more sympathetic observers preferred to ignore. The best essays belong to the canon of Cuban studies, but the post-1980s work also illustrates the growing poverty of much of the Cold War-fossilised interpretations of the Cuban reality which continued to dominate a part of the literature on Cuban politics. As a collection, therefore, The Long Night of Dark Intent ends up telling us more about ‘Cubanology ’ than it does about the revolution.