Harry Targ
The
Cuban Case
Spanish colonialism came to the Western Hemisphere
in the fifteenth century. Indigenous people were killed or enslaved. Africans
were brought to the occupied land to produce sugar, tobacco, coffee, dyes, and
other commodities that would find their way to Europe and processing for sale
in the new global market place. The era of primitive accumulation, as Marx
called it, marked the “happy dawn” of a new era.
Cuba became part of this new imperial system.
Indigenous people were destroyed. Sugar plantations were established. And Cuba
became an administrative center of Spanish colonialism in the “new world.” Some
of Havana’s landmark buildings were constructed in the fifteenth century to
house Spanish administrators.
Resistance and the passion for national autonomy
were embedded in Cuban culture. Slave revolts and revolutionary campaigns
occurred throughout the nineteenth century. The so-called “Spanish American
War” constituted the culmination of Cuba’s anti-colonial struggle and the
imposition of United States neo-colonialism on the island.
From 1898 until 1959, U.S. investors controlled the
plantations, businesses, tourist enterprises, and public utilities while
American tourists enjoyed Cuban beaches and culture. When the Fidelistas
marched joyfully into Havana in early January, 1959 after Fulgencio Batista’s
armies were defeated, a new era of hostile Cuban/U.S. relations was born. From
1959 to the present, the Cuban regime has experienced non-recognition, an
economic blockade, a nuclear crisis, sabotage, efforts to cut off Cuban
relations with neighboring governments as well as those in Europe, and
sustained campaigns to undermine and overthrow the Cuban revolution. Despite
enormous pain and suffering and extensive internal debates about the direction
the revolution should take, the Cuban revolution survives until this day.
Socialist
Paths: Material vs. Moral Incentives, the Socialist Command Economy,
Rectification, the Special Period, to 313 Guidelines
The United States project from 1959 on was to
stifle, dismantle, and destroy the Cuban Revolution. The Cuban revolutionaries
had two main projects in mind: national self-determination and achievement of
the basic social and economic rights referred to in Fidel Castro’s “History
Will Absolve Me” speech. In this speech Castro proclaimed that the Cuban people
wanted to secure basic social and economic justice within a framework of
national independence.
Over the next sixty years, Cuban society has been an
experimental laboratory for testing and evaluating the effectiveness of
economic and political policies designed to achieve the goals of the
revolution. During the 1960s, leaders of the revolution debated whether the
Cuban people were ready to embrace fully an economic system of moral incentives
modeled after altruism and self-sacrifice or whether, given the neo-colonial
capitalist system out of which the revolution occurred, a period of continuing
material incentives was needed to encourage production for revolutionary
change. The system of moral incentives was put to the ultimate test during the
campaign of the late 1960s to produce 10 million tons of sugar. It failed.
After the disastrous sugar campaign, Cuba joined the
Eastern European common market (COMECON) and shifted more in the direction of
Soviet bloc command economies. Despite economic growth over the 15 years of
command economy experience, the Cubans, in 1986 committed themselves to a
campaign of “rectification” or reintroducing incentives and exhortations to
rebuild revolutionary enthusiasm which they believed had been stifled by the
Soviet state socialist model. From the point of view of the Cuban leadership,
bureaucratization and centralization of control had reduced ties between the
revolution and the popular classes.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and COMECON,
the Cuban regime, because of deep economic crisis, shifted away from socialist
command economy policies and revolutionary enthusiasm to policies, referred to
as the special period, designed to save the revolution from collapse. The Cuban
economy was opened to foreign investment, tourism was reinstituted as a core
foreign exchange earner, some shift to small scale markets was allowed to
resume, and state farms were shifted to cooperatives. The result was, despite
the predictions of U.S. “experts” on Cuba, some economic recovery and growth
from the depths of depression in the mid-1990s until 2006.
For a variety of reasons, including the retirement
of Fidel Castro, rising generations of post-revolutionary youth, reduced growth
in tourism due to global recession, and severe natural disasters, the Cuban
economy’s growth rates were modest after its remarkable recovery from the
special period. Economic inequality and inadequate absorption of a highly
skilled work force added to a growing malaise. Leaders of the Cuban Communist
Party, economists, and social movement activists began to argue that
substantial changes needed to be made to better satisfy the twenty-first
century needs and wants of the Cuban people and to sustain economic growth in a
world still dominated by global capitalism. The state-dominated economy led to
excessive bureaucratization, corruption, too many state employees, and
insufficient innovation and competition.
Raul Castro, who replaced his brother in 2006,
initiated a public discussion of Cuba’s economic future. Literally 2.3 million
proposals for policy changes were introduced in various assemblies over a three
year period. These were concretized and publicized as 291 “Economic and Social
Policy Guidelines for the Party and the Revolution.” In April, 2011 after
extensive debate a new document with 313 guidelines was presented and adopted
by the 6th Party Congress of the Cuban Communist Party.
These guidelines have become the basis of a model of
21st century socialism that incorporates a strong but rationalized state
sector, expanding markets, and the encouragement of workers to form various
cooperatives in urban as well as rural areas. Also the guidelines allowed the expansion
of private enterprises in small business, service, production, and agricultural
sectors. Almost two million state workers overtime would be shifted to the
non-state sector of the economy, private enterprises and cooperatives.
While the guidelines have begun to be translated
into policy, Camila Pineiro Harnecker suggests debates continue between those
Cubans who believe that the regime should continue to maximize the role of the
state, those who argue that markets should become primary, and those who see
economic democracy and workers’ cooperatives as central to Cuba’s future
development of twenty-first century socialism. Interestingly, all three
positions are represented in the guidelines; a better organized state sector,
broadening of markets, and a growing sector based on workers’ control of
production and distribution.
Among the central features of the guidelines are the
following:
-socialist planning will continue more efficiently
and will open spaces for other forms of management, production, and
distribution of goods and services in the economy. A significant shift in
employment from the state sector to the marketplace and cooperatives will
proceed over a modest time period.
-along with state enterprises, the guidelines allow
capitalist enterprises including foreign investment, the leasing of state-owned
farmland, the leasing of state owned premises, self-employment, and the
encouragement of urban and rural workers’ cooperatives.
-Expansion of categories of self-employment.
-Economic entities of all kinds will be required to
maintain themselves financially, without subsidies for losses.
-Wages and incomes in state, private, and
cooperative sectors will be determined by real earnings.
-Self-sustaining cooperatives will be encouraged that
will decide on the income of workers and the distribution of profits after
taxes.
The guidelines, while incomplete and still being
developed, represent an effort to move beyond the dilemmas of a poor, but developing
country historically committed to improving the quality of life of its people
as to education, health care, culture, and economic security.
Vietnam,
Cuba, and 21st Century Socialism: A Work in Progress
Vietnam and Cuba share many experiences in common.
They both are historic products of years of colonial and/or neo-colonial
domination and patterns of national resistance. Twentieth century nationhood was
formed during the period of emerging global industrial and finance capitalism.
Both Vietnam and Cuba resisted imperialism and won revolutionary wars against
it only to be forced to survive in an era of harsh neoliberal globalization and
political/military subversion. Concretely both experienced economic blockades
from the United States at their most vulnerable time of economic
reconstruction. And both as allies of the Soviet Union were forced to embark on
the path of transitioning to socialism at a time when the socialist bloc was
collapsing.
The generation of revolutionaries who fought the
U.S. marines in the countryside and creatively withstood horrific bombing in
Vietnam and fought against U.S. puppet armies in the mountains of Cuba, brought
to victory a hardened vision of constructing a radically new society based on
state socialism. With the collapse of state socialism as a world force and the
shift virtually everywhere to neoliberal economic policies, Vietnamese and
Cubans came to the realization that transitioning to 21st century
socialism would require the construction of a more complicated economic model
that continued to support a renovated state sector, allowed a regulated
marketplace, and encouraged local socialist forms, such as workers cooperatives.
Presently advocacy of workers' cooperatives seems
stronger in Cuba than Vietnam. As the Cuban guidelines suggest, workers
cooperatives are advocated to continue the socialist vision by more effectively
institutionalizing worker participation in decisions that affect their lives.
Decisions about management, distribution of profits, commitments to the
communities in which they work all would be determined largely by those in the
cooperative units. Given the broad array of grassroots mobilizations that dot
the map from the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America, some
creative combination of workers’ states and workers’ cooperatives might constitute
the centerpiece of a 21st century socialism.
Sources
The discussion of Cuba draws upon Cliff DuRand, “Renovation
of Cuban Socialism,” March, 2013, (and insightful editorial comments on a draft
of this paper from that author) and Camila Pineiro Harnecker, “Visions of
Socialism Guiding the Current Changes in Cuba,” translated by Emily Myers,
Center for Global Justice, both available from Cuba@globaljusticecenter.org ;
Roger Burbach, “A Cuba Spring?” NACLA
Reports, Spring, 2013; Raul Castro, “Report to the 6th Communist
Party Congress,” http://lchjirino.wordpress.com/2011.04/16/raul-castro-report-to-the-6-communist-party-congress-full-text/;
Olga Fernandez Rios, “The Socialist Transition in Cuba: Economic Adjustments
and Socio-Political Challenges, Institute of Philosophy, University of Havana,
translated by Emily Myers, Center for Global Justice, 2012; Pedro Campos, “New
Cooperative Policy Big for Socialism,” Havana
Times, April 9, 2012, http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=66858
Part
2 of a presentation prepared for The Labor and Working-Class Studies Project,
Working Class Studies Association, Madison College, Madison Wisconsin, June
12-15, 2013. To access Part 1 see www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com
