I agree democracy is good, and it should include the workplace. That is, I think, what the first priority should be. If democracy is good, then democracy is good in the workplace too as well as government.

That is the critical difference between leftist ideals and capitalist ideals. Capitalists are often accepting of democracy (when it's beneficial) in governments, but are always opposed with workplaces.

Leftists generally want more democracy everywhere. Authoritarianism is the issue with all nations, not capitalism or communism or whatever else. Capitalism just opposes democracy, and destroys and other non-capitalist government because it prevents their exploitation.

Again though, there are almost exclusively non-democratic leftist governments because anything else was destroyed because it couldn't maintain control when the capitalists got involved. Cuba is moving towards capitalism likely, or at least in part, because the US won't let them reach their potential if they don't play ball with US capitalist demands.

Edit: Also, what good is a poverty rate in a situation like Cuba? They have essentially zero outside trading partners and nearly everyone is equally impoverished. The US would have nearly a 100% poverty rate compared to the Dederation of Planets of Star Trek. It's useful for some statistics, but equality is probably a better measure for how they're doing internally. Poverty implies a certain standard created by an external source, which again can be useful but also misleading.