`Is Cuba done with equality?' NOT!
By Fred Feldman
June 28, 2008 -- I am responding to ``Of Pay and Productivity: Is Cuba Done With
Equality?'', an article by Moshe Adler, director of Public Interest
Economics, which appeared in the June 20 Counterpunch (a radical monthly print
and daily webzine based in the US.) The article deals with the latest
modifications of the country's wage structure made public June 11.
Effect of media exaggerations
The debate is influenced by the widespread lack of information about
The New York Times began its initial report on the new wage incentive
with the statement that this was the first radical change in the Cuban wage
structure since 1959, when Castro decreed that all Cuban workers would receive
the same wage. This is a complete fantasy. No such decree was ever issued, and
there have been many changes in the wage structure as significant as this one.
An Agence France Presse article claimed, ``For years the pay for
street sweepers and brain surgeons has been separated by just a few dollars a
month.''An urban legend, pure and simple. Personally, I find nothing objectionable about a street sweeper and a
brain surgeon getting the same pay, but no country in the world is, has been
or is likely soon to be close to this situation.
The fact that in Cuba, a street sweeper and a brain surgeon will both
have a place to live, that their families will not suffer from malnutrition,
have competent medical care, and that they and their children will be literate
and have educational opportunities does not mean they are paid at basically the
same rate. They are not. Of course, it is characteristic of
I have noticed that such claims in the ignorant big-business media
about the level of wage and salary equality in
As a bourgeois economist, Adler might seem quite peripheral to a
discussion among supporters of socialism and the Cuban Revolution. But he is
genuinely sorrowful about the sad fate awaiting the Cubans as a result of this
wage reform. Nothing less than the restoration of capitalism and social
catastrophe. This sorrowful mood does find an echo among those friends of
I want to admit my own biases. I love the Cuban Revolution and have
learned to love it more with the passage of time. I have learned to respect the
opinions of the leaders who, though far from perfect in their judgment unlike
my infallible self, have managed with considerable skill and thoughtfulness
overall in a wide variety of challenging situations.
As a result the revolution, as a revolution based on the people not the
interests of a clique or caste of top officials, has survived longer than any
of this kind in history. So I approach their actions with a certain respect. I
keep my critical faculties alive alert but also try to arm myself against
knee-jerk "revolutionary" reactions stemming from my own political
training (far from all bad in my opinion). More importantly, I keep in mind my
lack of knowledge of the details wherein, scientists like to say, God dwells.
Also, I don't claim to know the future, as Adler and others do.
Pro-capitalist course in
"The Communist Party of Cuba has seen the light; it has just announced that from now on wages in Cuba will not be determined by the government, which kept them nearly equal, but by workers' productivity."
Exciting, no? But he doesn't stop there:
"Of course, since it was the Party itself that made this change,
ideologically this is as momentous as the fall of the Berlin Wall." Hot
puppies!
This proclamation of a world-historic shift is based on a statement
that is factually inaccurate.
The Cuban government has not surrendered control of wages to the
market, to productivity statistics, or to anything else. The Cuban government
proclaimed the new wage incentive for increasing production. If they concluded
this was not was called for, they could rescind it tomorrow.
This measure does not abandon government direction in regard to wages
and can be modified by the government as and when it thinks best. In almost any
capitalist country today, this wage decree by a government would be considered
intolerable micromanagement, not as the surrender of all control.
End of equality as social goal?
"That this is an ideological defeat for equality and for communism
there can be no doubt," writes Adler.
Does the measure overturn a condition of near-complete equality which
existed up till now? No. Nor does it reverse the long-term course toward
equality in
There is a general misunderstanding of what the term
"equalitarianism" means in Cuban economic debates. The term is not a
new one there. This refers to efforts to prioritise creating immediate
simon-pure equality above everything else that is needful, regardless of the
real practical social or economic consequences. This can actually have
destructive and demoralising consequences in a transitional (still far from
fully socialist or communist) society. It can obstruct the needs of social
development that advances in a socialist direction, which alone can create the
possibility of a world without economic inequality.
Che and material incentives
In that sense, Che Guevara also used the term, in contrast to the
portrayals of him in the capitalist media and sometimes on the left as a
simon-pure utopian "equalitarian". Another view falsely attributed to
Che is that "material incentives don't work".
In a letter to the Guardian, Helen Yaffe neatly punctures the myth of
wage equality in
"In reality, there has never been an `egalitarian wage
system' (i.e. one where every worker was paid the same): Che Guevara himself
devised a new salary scale, introduced in 1964, with 24 different basic wage
levels, plus a 15% bonus for over-completion. This scale -- which I
studied during my research in
"The new pay regulations were introduced to standardise salary
policy across the economy as part of the general implementation of the economic
management system operating in army enterprises since 1987. Capped or not,
bonus payments in
"The new salary incentives -- to increase internal production and
productivity, particularly in agriculture and exports -- reflect
There is no necessary tendency of the wage incentive to divide the
working class along hostile lines, as in incentives to intensified and more
efficient labor can and do in the
Whether fundamental inequality will deepen or decrease in the next
period will depend ultimately on whether the benefits of a rise in
productivity, if the Cubans are able to achieve this as they intend, are
socially shared rather than concentrated in the hands of individuals. The whole
Cuban tradition in better times and worse says that the former will be the
case.
Unlike in the United States and other imperialist countries, where we
have to live with the fact that when we produce for capital -- which we must do
to live and raise families -- everything we produce goes into the hands of our
class enemy and strengthens their hand against us. They own the means of
production, they hire us to work them, they own the goods we produce, and they
reap the profits of our labour.
The wage incentive decreed by the Cuban government seems to me to be
considerably less stratifying in its effects by far than the tourist industry
and remittances from the
Why workers need material incentives
Why are material incentives a necessary component of planning for such
a society? Because the working people, even though the capitalists have been
thrown out of power, still must live by the sweat of their brow. And I might
add, in a well ordered society, intensified labour can be recognised as costing
more to produce.
The purpose of the incentive in this case is an elementary but
perfectly legitimate one -- to inspire workers by a modest, uncorrupting (in my
opinion) incentive to intensify their labour, take better care of their
machines, and so on.
This is an attempt to move the working class, the agricultural workers and the society as a whole (not just individual model workers) away from the
truly demoralising and corrupting "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to
work" mentality. This has social roots in the conservative administration
of factories, and became the norm in the former Soviet and Eastern European
post-capitalist societies.
The "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work" mentality
was institutionalised in the Soviet and Eastern European post-capitalist
societies in their last decades, ultimately stemming from the officialdom's
need to pacify and live-and-let-live with the workers under their thumbs. But
it also affects revolutionary societies like
There are, of course, those counterpose material incentives (bad) to
moral and social and internationalist incentives (good), and who attribute
their preconception to Che Guevara. But this "incentive" is linked
organically to the perspective that their work can better the conditions of
all; that it can make their country stronger; that increasing the productivity
of labour will strengthen the position of their country in the world relative to
the imperialist enemies; that it will make Cuba a more effective contributor to
the advancing process of economic social, political and diplomatic change,
integration and unification in Latin America; and the simple fact that Cuba's
unprecedented commitment to provide universal education and medical care cannot be sustained over time without a growing productivity of labour.
It is also linked to the victory, the advance the Cuban Revolution won
in surviving and even going forward in some respects in the "special
period". This was the catastrophic economic situation and potentially
ruinous political situation caused by the disintegration and disappearance of
the Soviet bloc to which
Have the Cubans become bourgeois economists?
Adler insists that the Cuban leadership has "fallen for the
fallacy that the wages in market economies are determined by
productivity". There are two unexamined givens here for the price of one.
First, that the wage incentive demonstrates a decision to imitate the methods
of "market economies". Aside from his insistence on the world-shaking
significance of the adoption of this wage incentive, no evidence is provided.
The other unexamined given in Adler's assertion is that the Cuban
leaders believe that wages in capitalist societies are determined by
productivity. No evidence beyond the mere fact of the wage incentive is
presented to support this.
But Raul Castro and other Cuban leaders are quite insistent that they are
Marxists. And Marx explained that wages are determined in capitalist societies
by the cost of reproduction of labour power (that is, of workers), as affected
by such factors of the as the relationship of forces in the class struggle, and
(in imperialist countries) the added flexibility the ruling classes gain by
raking in super-profits from around the world.
There is plenty of evidence that the Cuban leaders take Marx's analysis
more seriously than Adler, who doesn't consider it at all. (His economic
concepts apparently begin and end with Ricardo, the great British economist of
the early 19th century. Marx learned much from Ricardo but surpassed him by
analysing the workings of capital from the standpoint of the exploited class in
struggle.)
Adler vs. Marx on workers as
producers
Adler believes that the whole idea that the productivity of labour can
be increased is a fallacy, and that attempting this in
"As economist David Ricardo explained some two hundred years ago,
the very idea of `worker productivity' is a hollow concept. Not only
can a worker's productivity not be measured, it cannot even be defined.
"Ricardo pointed out that production is normally performed by
workers who work not with their bare hands but with machines, producing not a
whole product but instead performing only one step in a production process that
has many. Therefore, Ricardo explained, a worker's productivity cannot be
separated either from the productivity of the machine that she works with, or
from the productivity of the rest of the workers in the production process.
When a skyscraper goes up, how much of a building would there be with only a
crane operator but no crane, or with only crane and operator but no workers to
pour the concrete? The workers and machines together form a team, and measuring
the productivity of the team is easy."
(Not having studied Ricardo, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of Adler's version of his theory.)
Except in Marx, of course. He explains it almost from the get-go.
And his argument, in this case, is readily comprehensible from the
standpoint elementary commonsense and natural materialism. Unlike other
arguments Marx's, which -- though generally equally correct -- run counter to
the ordinary appearance of things.
Human labour produces machines. Machines are not beings, but simply
products of human labour -- in many ways the central, most indispensable products
of human labour today. They are produced by workers, labouring farmers and
artisans. Everything that is not produced by nature (including by
non-human animals) is produced by human beings.
Machines produce nothing, except as tools created and utilised by human
beings for the purpose of enabling human beings to produce more with less
effort. A part of the machine's power is expended in producing each product,
and as a result a portion of the cost of production of the machine enters into
the cost of production of each item produced by the human labourer utilising the
machine..
And that's that. The machine has no productivity as such, only as an
instrument for use in human production. It is created by human production to
serve human purposes.
Of course, if the point ever comes where machines become producers and
creators in their own right, I will be all for welcoming R2D2 and C3PO into trade
unions, explaining to them socialist views on everything from the Cuban Revolution to
But until that actually happens, I think that Marx's approach works
better than Adler's. Working people, not machines, are the producers of goods,
including machines. The power of machines to contribute to production is a
human product, as are the goods that human beings produce with machines as
their tools.
Importance of labour productivity
So labour productivity exists (unlike machine productivity) and is
measurable. Today in capitalist countries it gets measured in the interests of
the capitalists, and workers find the time and motion specialist standing over their
shoulder, looking for ways to squeeze more out of them to enrich the boss.
But after a socialist revolution, the productivity of labour remains a
key guideline of how far forward the new society has gone and can go. The
increase in the productivity of labour is one of the central material forces for
progress. And without a growing productivity of labour, socialism and communism
would never be attainable. So when the Cuban government attempts to measure the
productivity of labour and seeks ways to improve it, this should not be taken as
evidence that they have turned against the labouring majority that brought them
to power and keeps them there.
Cuba's grim future, according to
Adler
Adler concludes: ``Since productivity is not measurable, how is the
Communist Party of Cuba likely to implement its plan to pay workers according
to their productivity? Having fallen for the fallacy that the wages in market
economies are determined by productivity, the Party will probably observe the
pay differentials that exist in the West and implement them at home. What's in
store for Cuba is the standard menu that comes with wage inequality, including
poor public education but first-rate private schools, insufficient or no health
care for the majority but excellent medical care for CEOs and government
officials, a substantial increase in the length of the working day, with fewer
vacations and job insecurity to boot."
Wow! Talk about how great oaks from little acorns grow! The alleged
acorn in this case being the proffering of a modest wage increase to encourage
increases in labour productivity. And the great oak being the destruction of
public education, the elimination of universal medical care, growing
illiteracy, a declining life span for the people, mass poverty and so on! And
no need to show how any of this comes about, let alone why it must come about!
(If Adler is right, I fear I will be duty bound to refuse my next
annual pay increase, due in April. Twenty-five cents an hour, $8 dollars a
week, about $34 a month -- pretty much comparable to the Cuban wage incentive.
After all if a wage increase in a revolutionary, anti-capitalist, relatively
equalitarian country like Cuba must have such catastrophic consequences, imagine
what the consequences of a wage increase in the much more reactionary
imperialist environment in the United States must be -- fascism, world war and
the holocaust at least. Let the boss have the quarter. I don't know about the
rest of my co-workers but I don't want those things on my conscience.)
But I think the matter can be presented more accurately in the opposite
way. The advanced and still advancing systems of medical care and universal
public education in
It takes more than positive ideals and ethics to create a socialist
society. The possibility of a socialist future for the world was opened up in
part by the increase in the productivity of labour represented by the creation
and rise of the modern working class. And worldwide, further increases in the
productivity of labour, oriented in a quite different social direction, are
needed if socialism is to be won. (And only human beings can increase
productivity in industry and agriculture -- if you ask a machine to do it,
however politely and whether with moral, material or mixed incentives, nothing
will happen.)
Gorbachev's Soviet Union and Raulista
Mikhail Gorbachev took some measures like these in the Soviet Union at the beginning of his regime.
I didn't find the measures at that initial point wildly objectionable either.
But the context proved to be all important. The Russian Revolution was
one in which the forward drive of the workers and peasants as governing classes
was decisively pushed back from the mid-1920s to the 1930s. A caste of
officials took command of the state, and the party was purged of all
revolutionary-minded elements. The non-capitalist state survived with sharp ups
and downs, but beginning in the late 1960s, stagnation and decay became the
norm in the government and economy and profound demoralisation took hold among
the people.
By the time Gorbachev took power, matters had come to a pass where
neither moral nor material nor social incentives could move things forward.
Could you imagine appealing to the workers to produce more based on ideals or
the future of socialism in those years?
In
Cuba is not turning away from socialism
Is
The army, though substantially draftee, remains from all reports highly
motivated politically and socially, and internationalist in outlook. The
officers and ranks are not concerned only about their own material benefits.
Willingness to sacrifice, including their lives, for the defence of the
revolution seems to me to be widespread in the working class, the agricultural
sector, the working class and the intelligentsia.
Cuba, though no communist utopia by any means, remains a long, long way from a dog-eat-dog society, including with the new organisation of wages.
But
Of course, whether these moves will have the desired results is another
question. That involves many questions, not least the parlous condition of the
world capitalist economy and the fate of the national salvation,
anti-imperialist and social transformations being attempted in a growing
number of Latin American countries.
If the new measures turn out to be flawed or imperfect, well, they can
be corrected, adjusted, reversed or extended -- whatever is needed for the
preservation of
[Fred Feldman has been an activist, beginning in the US civil rights movement, for 47 years. He is a factory worker who lives in Newark, New Jersey.]