`Orientalism' and Cuba: How Western media get it wrong
By Tim Anderson
September 14, 2010 -- Misunderstandings over Cuba run very deep, and not just among the enemies of socialism, or those who have had little contact with the country.
Naturally, people are influenced by the corporate media, which wages a ferocious and relentless propaganda campaign against the little independent island. As Salvador Allende told the Chilean Senate in 1960 “day by day and minute by minute ... they [the corporate media monopolies] misrepresent what is happening in Cuba”.
However, we can also see elements of what Edward Said called "orientalism" – a series of false assumptions about the country, conditioned by cultural prejudice.
For example, the constant moral pressures of the revolution are often misinterpreted as state "coercion"; while a well-coordinated and caring health system has been derided as "paternalistic" and denying "choice" in health care. These are the results of trying to understand Cuba through a set of individualistic, liberal assumptions.
Let's look at some recent misinterpretations.
The corporate media has seized on Fidel Castro’s comment to US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine that “the 'Cuban model' now doesn't work even for us” as an admission that Cuban socialism had failed and that Cuba would now have to take on US-style capitalism. Julia Sweig, Goldberg’s adviser on Cuba, said she took the comment “to be an acknowledgment that ... the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country”. Goldberg excitedly interpreted the comment to mean “Cuba is beginning to adopt the sort of economic ideas that America has long demanded it adopt”. Goldberg’s article launched thousands of other stories.
Ahem. Neither writer had much sense of Cuban phraseology. On September 13 Fidel clarified and Cuban television pointed out (by reference to an episode of The Simpsons, in which Fidel is shown as admitting the defeat of "communism") that the Cuban leader meant Cuba was constantly adapting, and that there had never been a rigid "Cuban model". What they have held onto are principles, not models.
Furthermore, and in response to Goldberg's specific question about "exporting" a Cuban "model", Fidel was repeating an old theme that "we don't export any model". Among English-language articles on the Atlantic interview only a few, such as Steven Wilkinson’s in the September 10 British Guardian ("Cuba: from communist to co-operative?"), noted this point.
The misinterpretation of this simple phrase is a good example of the "orientalism" regarding Cuba, where a revolutionary country, constantly adapting, is portrayed by its enemies as representing a rigid model of the past. Any change or admission is seen as the fracture of a monolith; but what monolith?
A second example of this same process can be seen in stories on the restructuring of state enterprises in Cuba. The BBC reports on September 14 ("Cuba to cut one million public sector jobs") that Cuba’s peak trade union body the CTC says “more than a million workers would lose their jobs ... [they] will be encouraged to become self-employed or join new private enterprises” and half a million will be laid off in the next six months. On the back of this a multitude of right and left commentators predict Cuba’s reversion to capitalism.
The thinking here is that a major efficiency drive in Cuban state enterprises must mean a surrender to the logic of private corporations. Never mind that hundreds of thousands were laid off from Cuba’s sugar industry, almost two decades ago when the sugar-for-oil agreement with the Soviet bloc collapsed. In its much worse economic crisis of the 1990s, Cuba maintained its system of social guarantees, allowing foreign investment through joint ventures and a small private business sector.
On the current restructuring, if the BBC and others had read further in the September 13 CTC statement, they would have seen that the “alternative employment” for the laid-off workers comprises “land renting and usufruct leases, cooperatives and small business”. Big corporations don’t get a mention; where they exist in Cuba they are joint ventures in which the state owns land and buildings and hires all the labour. Nevertheless, work bonuses are being revised in a wider range of sectors.
The CTC says state employment is to be maintained in some sectors of agriculture, in construction, teaching and industrial work. Furthermore, there is an ongoing diversification of state industry into petroleum (Cuba is developing its own reserves and is set to become an oil exporter), construction (including for expanded tourism), biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, tourism and other areas.
Change is a constant in Cuba, as one might logically expect of a self-described "revolutionary" society. However others portray this society as a monolithic state.
Does any of this matter to Western audiences, with their short attention spans and modernist tendencies to see the world through their own self-image? Outside commentators have been characterising Cuban socialism according to their cultural prejudices for half a century now, and no doubt will continue to do so. Those who look closer might understand a bit more.
[Tim Anderson is a senior lecturer in political economy at Sydney University.]
Cuban "private"
In Cuban usage, "private" includes all non-state enterprises such as cooperatives, independent artisans, homesteaders, family farmers, and small businesses such as restaurants with a few tables.
Invitation to discussion of Cuba and its ongoing revolution
Socialists everywhere have a stake in the Cuban Revolution and its ability to successfully maintain Cuba's independence. This is the essential pre-requisite to Cuba's efforts to build a society based on the prioritizing of social needs over corporate greed and imperial violence.
Tim Anderson's discussion of the media's misinterpretation of Fidel's comments, not to speak of its wishful DISINTERPRETATIONS helpfully frame the discussions which socialists outside the island can have as they try to understand the Cuban process.
Fidel Castro pointed out five years ago, "Here is a conclusion I’ve come to after many years: among all the errors we may have committed, the greatest of them all was that we believed that someone really knew something about socialism, or that someone actually knew how to build socialism."
If you haven't taken the time to read the full speech - 35,000 words long, I urge you to take the time to do that:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/fc-11-17-2005.html
The CubaNews list has assembled and shared information from, about and related to Cuba for over a decade. Readers of LINKS are invited to subscribe to CubaNews and to contribute your thoughts and reflections to the ongoing process.
: )
Thankyou for this explanation, Comrade : )
"Apologeticism" and Cuba: Where Tim Anderson Gets It Wrong
To defend the Cuban revolution, as to defend anything worthwhile, requires facing up to its shortcomings and calling things as they are. Anderson's article represents a methodological example of how not to defend the gains of the Cuban revolution. The article at the level of method reminds me ever so much as the type of articles Sidney and Beatrice Webb used to write, extolling the virtues of the Stalin constitution of the USSR, while conveniently ignoring the purges and show trials.
Anderson sets up two "straw men" in this article: the abstract monolithic society vs. the abstract changing society; and a supposed "orientalism" of those who, either on the left or the right, just can't understand what Anderson understands (ahem!).
All societies constantly change and evolve, whether feudal, capitalist or socialist. That is a given. For Anderson to reach this level of understand is a good thing. The issue for revolutionary Marxists however is to determine how, why and in what direction is that society evolving.
In this specific instance, of the so-called "efficiency drive" of the Cuban state, a number of questions need to be asked, to determine the meaning of this policy pronouncement by Raul Castro and repeated by the Cuban trade union central, the CTC.
Questions like: how did it come to pass that the state sector has reached such "bloated proportions"? Raul has said that there are a million "excess" workers. Who has made the decision to layoff the number of workers who are deemed redundant? Who decides which workers are to be fired? In deed, who decided that it was in the overall interests of the Cuban people to make such a major restructuring? What are the alternatives, if any? What are the politics behind such decisions?
The ex-cathedra nature of the announcements by Raul, signifying this major policy switch, were obviously discussed at the level of the Central Committee and the the Council of Ministers, and in a vaguer form, in discussions leading up to the Congress of the Union of Young Communists (UJC). To what extent they have been discussed in detail at the lower level of the Party and within the working class as a whole is much less clear. The statement of 13 September by the CTC does nothing to clarify this but indicates, by its defensive tone, that it is part of the campaign to justify the decisions made at the upper level of the state bureaucracy.
Lacking an independent trade union federation, the response of the workers does not have an authentic voice to these proposals. Lacking organs of direct democracy, the working class as a whole does not have a say, nay the decisional capacity, to provide alternatives to these policies which are, after all, a response to the failure of the state bureaucracy and its lack of socialist democratic accountability.
Let us say straight up that Anderson's apologetics for the actions of the Cuban state bureaucracy, hiding behind accusations of "orientalism", would be laughable if it were not for the serious situation which the Cuban people face, not just from the imperialist pressures, but from a social caste which, as is the very nature of Bureaucracy, defends its own interests to the detriment of the people as a whole. The situation at the level of socio-political development faced by the Cuban people is in some respects more dangerous than, though conditioned by, the experiences of the "special period".
"Orientalism" is the phrase used to mask a theoretical deficiency normally called "exceptionalism", by those who can see no deeper than a distorted surface of things. In this case, the "exceptional" nature of the Cuban revolution can only be understood by a select few, and even those, who like myself have stood by and defended the Cuba revolution for more years than I care to remember,who have developed friendships and bonds of solidarity with many, many Cuban Marxists, and who are growing more and more uneasy over the internal processes at work within the revolution, are portrayed as not being sufficiently sophisticated to know "what is really going on".
"Orientalism" is the same methodology used by academic Maoists in the 1960's and 1970's to try and explain the Cultural Revolution, and the the killing of Lin Piao, and the rise of Disco Deng, etc.etc. etc. To see it raise its ugly head in an article trying to explain what is happening in Cuba says a great deal about its author.
The unhappy part of this discussion is that the evolution of the Cuban revolution is now taking place within a framework more favourable to it than at any time in its history, at a geo-political level. The advances of the Venezuelan and Bolivian revolutions, the integration of Cuba within the ALBA agencies (like the Banco del Sur), the rising tide of the mass movement throughout Spanish speaking America - from the struggles of the Mapuche people in Chile to the general strikes in Panama and Honduras, to the defeat of the PRI in Oaxaca, are indications that the regional relationship of forces is moving to the advantage of Cuba and Nicaragua, and away from North American imperialism. Che's call to create two, three, many Vietnams as a way of defending the Cuban revolution is being answered in reality by the tens of millions of workers and campesinos struggling against imperialism and its neo-liberal face.
Cuba cannot be, nor will it be immune from this rising revolutionary tide. There are only two primary responses available for the Cuban masses. One is to advance forward by breaking with the bureaucratic methods of decision making and create organs of workers, campesino and popular community councils, to create factory and farm councils to develop the plans necessary to efficiently develop the Cuban economy. Let me be extremely clear: the major danger facing the Cuban revolution is from the developing bureaucracy with few if any ties to the revolutionary generations of the past, and from its attendant cancer, corruption.
This is not an assessment from the mind of a delusional ultra-left. This is the assessment made by, in the first case Raul Castro. In his speech to the closing of the congress of the UJC, and which has been reprinted on this website, Raul time and again presented examples of how bureaucracy was not only a drag on the development of the productive forces, an impediment to developing the managerial capacities of thousands of young people who are not necessarily members of the UJC, but was a block in developing Cuban society as a whole.
Or, if this is not sufficient authority, let me quote el Commandante: "The greatest danger for us (the Cuban people) and the continuation of the revolution, comes from within. It is corruption."
The recent revelations of the corruption within the bureaucracy published elsewhere on this website confirm Fidel's prophetic words. It also points the way forward in a clear and political direction. To advance the revolution means to fight bureaucracy, not just its manifestations, but to destroy the superstructure which allows it to florish.
For those of us who defend the Cuban revolution as another step forward for humanity, but who refuse to apologize for its shortcomings, our solidarity work must carry within it a message to and with the Cuban comrades: against the bureaucracy and its logic, struggle for socialist democracy, for workers' power and workers' control. Against imperialism and its maneuvers,extend the revolutionary solidarity amongst all peoples. Create two, three many workers' states.
The intersection of the struggle for workers' control of industry and for the creation of communal councils and the emerging Commune structure in Venezuela will form the backdrop for the struggle for revolutionary workers' democracy in Cuba itself. The enrichment of the process of revolutionary theory produced by the struggle of the Venezuelan masses, and the legitimacy of different forms of popular control as has arisen in the context of Bolivian revolution, allows revolutionary Marxists to speak quite openly of the essence of 21st century socialism: socialist democracy and its explicit rejection of bureaucratic conceptions.
This conversation amongst revolutionaries should not exclude the Cuban comrades. The high level of political consciousness amongst the Cuban people, their hatred of imperialism and their willingness to engage make a discussion of this type a valuable resource for not just the Latin American comrades, but a valuable resource for the struggle against imperialism and for socialism, for all of us fighting for a socialist America.
Cuban workers' democracy
I wrote the following article following discussions that I had with the Cuban Workers' Confederation (CTC) in December 2008. It was published in early 2009 in Green Left Weekly 785.
I commend it to Elena Zeledon as a cure for her cynicism towards the Cuban Revolution. It’s a pity that she didn’t read it before talking about “ex-cathedra nature of the announcements by Raul” and the need for the CTC to “justify the decisions made at the upper level of the state bureaucracy”.
In fact the CTC have been conducting extremely detailed discussions of this policy change with workers across the entire length and breadth of Cuba for years. The workers, I was told, have shaped the proposals and they have been taken to other governmental levels and back down to the factory floor for further sharpening.
During this interview with Alfredo Vazquez I was struck, among many other things, by the figures that he gave for the “brokers” who were coming in from the cold of the black market into formal employment.
The significance of those figures is this: the Cuban constitution requires the government to ensure that every person has a job. It may not be a job of the individuals liking, but they must perform it when it is assigned to them. Given the embargo-distorted Cuban economy this results in highly educated citizens pushing brooms and feeling frustrated.
Black marketeers – “brokers” in Cuban slang – evade that system and operate a clandestine tumour of capitalist economics within the socialist system. How many of them flourished during the Special Period? Read below for an indication the scale.
But most importantly, what scared them out of the shadows? Discussions at the factory level that were reported in the Cuban press.
As for the danger of corruption, Zeledon is not “a delusional ultra-left”, merely behind the times. One of the most reprinted posters in Cuba shows Fidel holding up a rifle, surrounded by members of the Young Communists (UJC). The accompanying text is excerpted from a speech he made in the early 1990’s (from memory), in which he lists the virtues of a revolutionary. One of the things he hammers is the danger of corruption.
These just some examples of the fascinating complexity of Cuba that Tim Anderson is talking about. I agree with every word of what he has written.
Cuba: 'No one is excess'
Saturday, February 28, 2009 - 11:00
By Barry Healy, Havana
Cuba is struggling to exit the "Special Period" — as the period of economic crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main trading partner, in the early 1990s is known — and the trade union movement is helping to chart the way forward, a leading Cuban unionist told Green Left Weekly in December.
Despite the massive problems Cuba continues to face, its handling of this crisis indicates the potential for an alternative way of handling the economic crisis, and subsequent job losses, hitting Australia and the rest of the world right now.
It indicates there are measures beyond governments simply throwing their hands in the air or throwing money at the same corporate interests that caused the crisis.
The catastrophic economic collapse caused by the end of the Eastern European COMECON economic bloc (when Cuba lost 80% of its export market) produced many problems, Alfredo Vazquez, head of the economic business section of the Cuban Workers' Confederation (CTC) explained.
Despite the ongoing impact of the decades-long US economic blockade, trade with revolutionary Venezuela and an easing of its isolation across Latin America means that Cuba is heading towards the end of the Special Period.
However, this transition is producing its own problems.
"The most difficult years of the Special Period have finished", he explained. "But the Special Period has not yet finished."
During the Special Period, factories experienced disruptions due to shortages of materials.
Despite this, workers were not sacked, but stayed at home on full pay. "In Cuba, no one is excess", Vazquez said.
But with little to buy because of the US blockade, many people turned to self-interest to survive, producing a black market and leading to weakened support for the socialist ideals of Cuba's revolution.
The growth of tourism as a source of foreign currency also produced a certain social inequality (depending on access to tourist dollars), with ostentatious consumerism among some and individual competition.
Vazquez said the CTC was "in the middle of a struggle to reverse the situation".
At the heart of this is the struggle to reactivate production in the country while staving off inflation. The unions have had to explain that production needs to be doubled to revive the economy, and the lax work practices learned during the Special Period have to end.
"During the Special Period, people got paid a full wage for a half-day's work; now salaries must reflect production because inflation is the problem", according to Vazquez.
The unions "have to lead, so that people regain the need to work. We have to look for ideological and economic mechanisms", he said.
The CTC had been facilitating workers' meetings all over Cuba to discuss the new social security law, which includes the need for increased production.
Vazquez said the workers had very bluntly said that if they were expected to work harder then they wanted the black marketeers dealt with, revealing a lot about Cuban power relations.
"We have been accused of being a dictatorship [by foreign powers]", Vazquez said. "We are a dictatorship of the workers, not a dictatorship of a personality."
The workers in their discussions pointed out the many "brokers" (the Cuban expression for black market dealers), demanding that the state act against them. "People know that when the workers discuss something then the law will back them", Vazquez said.
Reports of the workers' discussions caused a flood of people previously surviving through black market activity to register as officially unemployed, legalising their status.
Between January and September last year, 23,000 had registered, according to Vazquez. In October, a further 45,000 jumped out of the black market.
This surge in job seekers has created the need to generate many more jobs.
"In Cuba, we need all workers", Vazquez said, because there is a need for production. Constitutionally in Cuba, work is a duty and a right, but cannot be imposed.
A worker can be moved to another job if they are capable of doing it, but the unions see to it that individuals are protected in such circumstances.
While the pressure of the world market means Cuba must become more efficient, "we prefer to be less efficient but more human", he said.
For example, when sugarcane workers became redundant, they were paid for three years to retrain for other jobs.
The human values of the Cuban Revolution are expressed in facts like the existence throughout the Special Period of 117 schools for children with special needs with a teacher/student ratio of one to three.
Education and health care are free and people pay a maximum of 10% of their salary for their housing until it is paid off. Eighty percent of housing is privately owned.
"Cuba has only a few facilities like mobile phones and the internet due to the blockade", he said. "But we have subsidised access for people in remote areas."
Vazquez told GLW: "In Cuba, such things are not a matter of business but a problem of equality of access."
Among other acts of international solidarity, Cuba has thousands of doctors working as volunteers providing free health care to the poor in dozens of countries around the world. Vazquez explained the principle: "In Cuba, we don't give from our excess; we share what we have."
From GLW issue 785
Goldberg analyzes his visit with Fidel Castro
From: http://www.peoplesworld.org/goldberg-analyzes-his-visit-with-fidel-cast…
by: Joel Wendland
September 14 2010
After Fidel Castro stirred up some controversy last week with an offhand comment made to The Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg about ineffectiveness of Cuba's socialist "model," Goldberg says the former Cuban president may have sought to alleviate some controversy within Cuba's governing institutions by "walking back" his comment.
In explaining further his take on Fidel's remarks, Goldberg ended up describing Castro positively, declaring some of his comments as "sane" and "moral."
During a several hours-long interview over the course of three days in Havana, Goldberg asked Castro about Cuba's economy in the context of a larger discussion of Latin America and trade. In a manner that Goldberg described as almost a "throw away remark" Castro said, "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."
Interpreting the remark literally, and borrowing insights about the context of the comment from his friend Julia Sweig, an expert on Cuba with the Council on Foreign Relations, who traveled with him and listened to the conversation, Goldberg wrote that the former president's comments suggested the need for big changes in Cuba's political and economic system, changes that have been underway for several years now, including in the final years of Fidel's presidency.
In his original post, Goldberg went on to describe some of those changes and even hinted that the ongoing U.S. policy toward Cuba is "hypocritical" and "stupidly self-defeating."
After Goldberg's reporting was published at The Atlantic's website late last week, President Castro delivered a talk Friday, Sept. 10, at the University of Havana promoting his new book, "The Strategic Counteroffensive," in which he said Goldberg had misinterpreted his comment.
Though insisting Goldberg had quoted him accurately and praising Goldberg's skills and professionalism, Castro said, "the truth is that the meaning of my response was exactly the opposite of the interpretation made by both American journalists of the Cuban model."
"My idea, as everybody knows," Castro explained, "is that the capitalist system does not work anymore either for the United States or the world, which jumps from one crisis into the next, and these are ever more serious, global and frequent and there is no way the world could escape from them. How could such a system work for a socialist country like Cuba?"
This clarification of the comment didn't sit well with Goldberg. In a teleconference with reporters Sept. 13, in which both Goldberg and Sweig sought to clarify their perspective on the situation, Goldberg expressed some doubts about Castro's response. "I don't know how you can interpret [the quote] as its opposite," Goldberg said in defense of his reporting.
Julia Sweig, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, added that Castro's "clarification was intended to signal to certain domestic constituents." She said "it's common knowledge" and "widely discussed" in Cuba that they are going to "fix the model" the questions are how and "where they're going to go in terms of economic liberalization."
But Sweig acknowledged this did not mean throwing socialism overboard. She said, "What he wanted to say is that although we're changing our model, that doesn't mean that we're importing U.S.-style capitalism."
Sweig added she believes both Fidel and Cuban President Raul Castro are of a single mind on the need for these changes to Cuba's economic system.
Cuba's leading institutions of governance have set the stage for a number of important systemic changes toward a market-oriented economy, Sweig explained. New proposals include private ownership of land, the shift from collective farming to cooperative farming with private ownership rights, the licensing of the 250,000 to 500,000 small businesses with non-family employees (as long as social security taxes are paid), and introduction of limited foreign investments in real estate.
Just this week, the Cuban government announced a plan to shift 500,000 government workers into the private sector in order to cut unsustainable budget expenditures.
Sweig said Cuba's internal changes and other global realities show that U.S. attempts at economic isolation of Cuba have failed and are unnecessary.
The embargo is not a foreign policy; it is a domestic policy aimed at nothing more than addressing "a perception of the Cuban American vote" in Florida, she said. "I think it's time for the United States to recognize that 50 years of one policy haven't achieved the intention which was to block the revolution, stop them from exporting it, and overthrow etc.," she noted. "I think it is time to take 'yes' for an answer."
"To be fair," she continued, "this administration, the Obama administration, while moving very slowly, recognizes that this is an obsolete policy."
Right now, other major foreign policy considerations have pushed Cuba policy to the back burner and the Florida issue remains a stumbling block in terms of domestic U.S. elections, she said, describing as positive President Obama's lifting of harsh Bush era travel bans on Cuban Americans and recent considerations in Congress to change the rules governing trade and travel with Cuba.
"I think it is just a matter of time," she indicated, referring to the likelihood of lifting the embargo.
For his part, Goldberg initially insisted that Castro's motives for opening this discussion were personal rather than part of a strategic Cuban foreign policy initiative. "I think it's Fidel wanting to insert himself on the international stage a little bit," he said.
Goldberg revisited Castro's original remarks to him on anti-Semitism. In the original interview Castro said Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism from some quarters, especially in the Iranian government, were an anathema and especially harmful to pursuing peace.
To reporters, Goldberg said, "I have no way of judging this for sure, I can't look into a man's heart, but I think that the idea of Holocaust denial in particular seems to genuinely offend him, as it should offend any sane moral person. And I think he had a very specific strong feeling to what Ahmadinejad has been saying."
Goldberg described his experience with Castro as "very spontaneous."
"In other words," he added, "I don't think this was a Foreign Ministry derived plan."
"Fidel's Fidel," Goldberg explained. "It's good to be in essence the retired king, and I think a lot of it has been spontaneous. I have no doubt that the Council of State, the Foreign Ministry, and various other people would like to harness his new energy ... in ways they thought were productive."
"He wants to talk about Iran one day, and go to the Aquarium the next, and that's what he's going to do," Goldberg insisted.
Sweig took a different tack and suggested Fidel's actions may not be an official act but were by no means "in contradiction" to Raul Castro's agenda.
When pressed further on whether or not the trip and the comments may have originated as an unofficial signal in favor of resetting U.S.-Cuba relations, Goldberg backed away a bit.
"It is very hard to see the deliberateness of what we experienced when we were there. It might be true that there might be a deliberateness, or that, that Fidel certainly didn't do what he did and say what he said without Raul's knowledge and approval. Those things are all possibilities. We have no way of discerning that."
"Functionally," Goldberg went on, "I would have to say yes, some of the things he is doing could set the stage for a slightly different relationship between the U.S. and Cuba."
Sweig agreed, but emphasized that changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba will happen only after domestic political dynamics within the U.S. change in favor of opening friendlier relations with the island country.
Photo: Fidel Castro, left, stands with U.S. journalist of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, second from right, and Cuban Jewish Community President Adela Dworin, third from right, at the National Aquarium in Havana, Cuba, Aug. 30. (Estudios Revolucion, Cubadebate)
The 'Cuban adjustment model': Some preliminary observations
From: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/117742
The 'Cuban adjustment model' to the effects of the global crisis (as
reported in the MSNBC report below) makes for interesting comparisons with
the adjustment model under dependent capitalism (IMF-administered, as in
Jamaica). Some interesting points about the report--:
- the changes have been discussed for some time. If past experience is a
guide, they have been the subject of intense internal consultations,
explanation, and planning (see Isaac Saney's book on this)
- The announcement was made by the Cuban Labour Confederation, not by the
Government as such. Seems to the that this is very significant, as it
suggests active participation in the preparation and implementation of the
changes by the national workers organisation. (The same day as this was
announced the British Trade Union Movement was announcing plans for a
national protest against the Government's plans for job cuts)
- they affect about 10 percent of state sector employment (500,000 out of 5
million). Ultimately the plan is for a total of 1 million; or one in
five--definitely a major change--the biggest sinec the 1960s
nationialsations, according to the report
.
- the employees are not being "laid off" in the capitalist sense of being
thrown onto the labour market and effectively left to fend for themselves.
The plan is for all to be offered alternative employment opportunities in
the non-state sector. Of course, actual implementation of this 'plan' is
crucial.
- the changes are being phased in over a period of 6 months; which should
help ease the transition.
- According to the report, employees that do not accept the alternatives
offered will have unemployment pay of up to 70 percent of their salary for
up to 3 months. Presumably, after that they are on their own. This will of
course, act as an incentive to accept, or actively seek, alternatives (but
could also encourage informal sector activity).
- as the MSNBC item points out, there is a further safety net for the
unemployed in the form of free education and health care and subsidised food
and rent. (This should help prevent extreme poverty and minimise the
possibility of social unrest).
- in spite of Fidel's contradiction of the interpretation of his remark that
"The Cuban Model isn't working", this announcement will revive speculation
that he was referring obliquely to that aspect of the model which virtually
guaranteed state employment to all, irrespective of individual productivity
and enterprise profitability. The statement makes it clear that that aspect
of the Cuban model is being abandoned.
- Nontheless these features of the Cuban "adjustment model" are certainly
distinct from the IMF adjustment model in terms of its people
impact---participation of labour unions, timing, phasing, plans for
reabsorbtion of retrenched public sector employees, and existence of a
social safety net.
There are some further questions:
- what criteria of selection will be used in deciding which employees are to
be restructured in any given Ministry/industry/enterprise? Will there be
enterprise-level discussions? What role will the the Cuban Labour
Conferedraton play in the determination?
- what will be the gender and ethnic impact of the restructuring?
- what will be the effect on the cultural ethos of Cuban society--the
possible growth of individualism and the 'hustling mentality' and erosion of
solidarity and social capital, as we have seen in other parts of the
Caribbean?
Indeed, the cultural impact of the change may be the most important to
consider.
Norman
----------------------------------------------------------------------
MSNBC
Cuba to eliminate 500,000 state jobs, spur private sector
Layoffs amount to biggest shift to the private sector since the 1960s
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39152912/ns/world_news-americas/
Cuban Labor Reorganisation: Guarantee of Efficiency, Rationality
Prensa Latina
September 14, 2010
http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=220494
Havana, Sep 14 (Prensa Latina) Achieving labor efficiency and the best use of available resources to meet the county's needs are two goals guiding the reorganization of the workforce and its remuneration in Cuba today.
This step is part of the renovation of the Cuban economic model, and the first ideas for accomplishing that were decided in a Council of Ministers meeting held on July 16 and 17.
At the close of the fifth session of the 7th Legislature of the National Assembly of People's Power on August 1, President Raul Castro stated that a series of measures would be taken to gradually reduce considerably inflated payrolls in the state sector.
In the first phase, which is planned to conclude in the first quarter of 2011, work and wages will be modified for available and laid-off workers in a number of agencies of the central state administration, the president said.
To achieve that objective, Cuba will eradicate paternalist approaches that discourage the need to work for a living and with that, reduce unproductive expenditures, which involves egalitarian pay regardless of years of employment, a wage guarantee for long periods for people who do not work, he said.
The head of State recommended creating an atmosphere of transparency and dialogue, where opportune and transparent information for workers predominates, and in which decisions are agreed upon together appropriately and the required organizational conditions are created.
[hr/rab/iff/dsa Modificado el ( martes, 14 de septiembre de 2010 )]
What did Fidel mean?
By Ron Ridenour
September 15, 2010 -- A former self-confessed socialist turned mass media career writer and friend of Zionism, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote an important think piece on a probable war against Iran: “The Point of No Return”, The Atlantic, September, 2010 issue.
A prolific reader and analyst of world affairs, Fidel Castro read the article and took a unique tactical step: he invited the Establishment writer to hear the leader of Cuba’s revolution “warn the world public opinion hoping…to contribute to avoid” yet another war in the Middle East that could “have lethal consequences for the rest of the world. This is what Fidel told his University of Havana audience, September 10, in response to Goldberg’s writings. (http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=29161
Fidel accepted the presence of Goldberg’s friend, Julia Sweig, the Council of Foreign Relations director for Latin American Studies, a Rockefeller Senior Fellow. Fidel and Sweig also know one another. I believe Fidel knew that with Sweig present he could send a message directly to the major capitalist class and its politicians in Washington and Jerusalem. (http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/anniversary_foreword.html
But Fidel made a mistake by not having the sessions tape recorded—or did he. Perhaps his people did record the conversations but Fidel decided to let his style of talking between the lines lead to interpretations of what he meant. As it stands now there is voluminous speculation about what Fidel really meant about two important issues: 1) Does the Cuban “model” work? 2) Did Fidel make a mistake in the 1962 missile crisis?
1) What did Fidel mean when he replied to Goldberg’s question: “I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting.” Both Goldberg and Fidel agree that Fidel replied: “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”
(http://www.theatlantic.com/jeffrey-goldberg
Goldberg wants us to believe that there can only be the literal interpretation: it doesn’t work. And then, one is to assume Fidel is advocating some form of capitalism. Goldberg, however, is unaware of how humorous Fidel is.
Fidel explained his reply during his September 10 speech, in which his new book, “The strategic counteroffensive”, was launched. He said that Goldberg’s question “implicitly suggested that Cuba exported the Revolution”, something Fidel has long denied, at least since the end of the 1960s. So, I think that Fidel’s reply was a humorous way of saying Cuba does not export its economy or its revolution generally.
Fidel has always opposed the capitalist system, as he reiterated in this speech, but his government was forced to survive upon the fall of Cuba’s economic-political partners in 1989-90, and it adopted various market mechanisms, partial sales of some property and joint ventures with foreign capital, plus the use of foreign currency by all who can acquire such—still a minority of the population. These regressions from socialism have sometimes been employed by nearly all communist party-led governments from the time of the New Deal during Lenin’s life down to today.
Cuban leaders are indicating that the economy is failing, and more reforms are about to occur. But are the ones just announced—cutting out one million state employees, encouraging them to become self-employed or join new private companies—the best for a socialist economy and equalitarianism? I doubt it. What should be reformed?
As a solidarity worker-writer for and with Cuba since April 1961, and during eight years working for Cuban media, I have long encouraged implementing worker control, putting the working class truly in power by diminishing the nearly exclusive power of government officials (and civil servant bureaucrats) to make the most important decisions. In short, to stimulate worker enthusiasm, worker creativity and production, let Cuba be what is called a “proletarian dictatorship”, and thereby a more true democracy. That cannot happen if “new private enterprises”, as the government announces, are in the hands of employers, that is, capitalists. Workers must be the owners and producers, and decision-makers.
2) On the matter of whether Fidel was mistaken about the 1962 missile crisis when, according to Goldberg, Fidel “recommend[ed] that the Soviets bomb the U.S.” And Fidel allegedly answered, “After I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn’t worth it all.”
I will not try to interpret what Fidel meant, but he did not say he had been mistaken in his September 10 speech. Read Fidel’s reply. (http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=29161
I must admit I am uncertain what Fidel really did mean. He goes on to talk about a drunken Russian president.
What is important about this question of possible nuclear war back then is that Fidel is worried about nuclear war today. It seems that he is so worried that he has taken the extraordinary step of criticizing an ally, Iran, which is aiding Cuba economically. According to Goldberg, Fidel “criticized Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and explained why the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the `unique´ history of anti-Semitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.”
Unfortunately, in this writing on his blog, Goldberg does not actually quote Fidel’s criticism but rather describes and interprets it. The same can be said about the title of this September 7 piece: “Fidel to Ahmadinejad: `Stop Slandering the Jews´”. While the inter-quotes indicate these are Fidel’s words, this is not written in the text.
Fidel seems to appeal to Jews around the world, including Zionists, by speaking favorably about them, their culture and religion, their long struggle of survival against pogroms and the Holocaust, and he spoke admiringly of their resistance and intelligence. He told Goldberg, “I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims.”
Fidel seems to appeal to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Muslims around the world, in his September 10 speech: “Muslims were attacked and persecuted for their beliefs by the European Christians for much more than 12 centuries.”
He added: “Palestinians are deprived [of] their lands, their homes are demolished by gigantic equipment, and men, women and children are bombed with white phosphorous and other extermination means.” And he added that other Muslims in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq are being murdered by conflicts imposed upon them by US presidents.
Conclusion:
1. To Goldberg: Perhaps you were not allowed to tape record, otherwise tape recording important interviews with leaders is essential to avoid just what is happening: “I didn’t mean that”. Always double check when in doubt about what leaders mean, especially if you are not allowed to tape record. Then again, perhaps Goldberg was pleased that the meaning was vague, not elaborated upon. In that way, he could make a sensation.
2. Regardless of the exactness of the statements in question what is important about Fidel’s initiative here is that this great political leader and statesman is speaking directly to the major players and encouraging an ally and two enemies to accept the olive branch.
3. Fidel is also encouraging criticism and self-critique among friends and allies.
I hope that political leaders, communist party members, solidarity workers with Cuba, with all ALBA lands and oppressed peoples take Fidel’s intentions to heart. We must be open to dialogue, to criticism and self-critique. And we must work tirelessly to prevent and stop wars.
PS: Fidel invited Goldberg, Sweig and Adela Dworin, the president of Cuba’s Jewish community to see his favorite animals exercise in Cuba’s dolphin aquarium. Goldberg wrote that Fidel thinks the dolphin show is the best in the world, “completely unique”, because it is an underwater show with human divers performing acrobatics with them. And Goldberg concluded that he had never seen anyone enjoy a dolphin show as much as Fidel did.
I know the show myself. It was a favorite of mine when I lived there. What is interesting to me about this is: a) The world’s major communist leader is a fan of these intelligent kindly animals and sends a message to war makers: be as gentle as dolphins; b) On the same day, I was observing a wild dolphin “show” where Rio Sado meets the Atlantic Ocean, in Setúbal, Portugal. And this was during Europe’s largest festival (Avante newspaper) of communists and other leftists sending a message of world peace.
Cooperatives, not corporate capitalism, in Cuba
What Cuba is moving to is very different from capitalism as we know it. The government is encouraging small scale entrepreneurship and cooperatives, not corporate capitalism.
What we will likely see is a limited free market largely made up of trade workers, small shop owners etc and cooperatives for medium sized enterprises like auto repair, fabrication, small factories, and supermarkets. They will likely impose large taxes on excessive profits, but if they are smart they will allow a great deal of capital reinvestment.
With the money freed up by removing these workers from the payrolls, the state will invest in large-scale, capital intensive projects such as heavy industry, petrol imports, and things that we typically associate with states like building roads and ports.
These are free market reforms, but this is not the type of corporate capitalism practiced in most of the world. They will likely do everything they can to keep corporate interests out, except maybe in operating hotels. Nevertheless, they will be heavily regulated by the state with restrictions on capital outflows making it unlikely that most corporations will bite.
I don't think that what liberal media (liberalism, not the US sense) is saying is so much Orientalism as it is projecting liberal values onto Cuba. There has been so much discussion of capitalist reform in Cuba after Castro so that is what they are looking for. They misread what the Cuban government is saying and see exactly what they want.
Richard Gott: What Castro really means (UK Guardian)
By Richard Gott
Friday 17 September 2010
The ever-surprising island of Cuba has come up with some fresh economic measures this week that pose the question: is this the end of socialism? For President Raúl Castro to sack half a million state employees, and then allow his brother Fidel to hint to an American reporter from the Atlantic that the country's economic model is not working, suggests that there is certainly something significant in the pipeline. But this is not the end of the revolutionary dream, nor is it a simple rectification of policy, of which there have been many over the years. It is, more importantly, the start of a major new programme, long-awaited. How it should be ideologically defined remains to be seen.
Everyone who lives in Cuba and those who follow Cuban affairs closely know that the existing economic model has not been working well. It hardly needs Fidel to spell this out. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago, which deprived the island of its principal model and benefactor, the Cuban authorities have improvised brilliantly, breaking every rule in the rulebook, both socialist and capitalist. Tourism has replaced sugar as the country's principal earner of foreign currency. Collective farms have been broken up. Hundreds of thousands of people now work on their own account, soon to be joined by half a million others – or possibly more.
The outlines of the new programme are still barely visible, but will become more so in the months to come, as an embryonic private sector begins to re-emerge. In 1968, at the height of the Prague Spring, Fidel shut down all small enterprises, as well as cafes, bars and nightclubs, accusing them of fostering a counter-revolution. Havana and Cuba's other cities soon lost much of their sophisticated charm. The commanding heights of the economy were already in the hands of the state by then, so the attack on tiny businesses seemed motivated more by ideological severity than economic necessity.
Today the wheel has turned full circle and the small-scale private enterprises that characterise a city, and make it worth living in, will return. Yet the changes outlined this week have more to do with the wider plan for the future economic organisation of the country than any desire to make the cities more attractive. The plan has been worked on and endorsed by the country's powerful state trade union federation, and there is no doubt that the new policies will be well received by most people.
The Cubans are by no means thirsting to embrace the capitalist system, as some commentators have suggested, but they are certainly ready to take more responsibility for their own lives. Unlike many other people in Latin America (or indeed in the US), they are well educated, well looked after, and healthy. The state will not just throw the workers in at the deep end. There will be programmes of training to ease the move from state employment into the world of private enterprise.
This is the first step in the reorganisation of the Cuban economy, and the Cubans are fortunate in having the powerful backing of oil-rich Venezuela. Hugo Chávez will be helpful during this transition period, not least because the Cubans will be moving closer to the mixed economy that he has always favoured. The current arrangements, with Cuban doctors working in Venezuela and being paid for with subsidised oil, work well for both parties.
But what of the larger question of the wider economic framework? The Cubans, government and population, have been well informed about the collapse of the communist system in Russia and eastern Europe, and its replacement by unbridled capitalism of the most vicious and corrupt kind. There is little enthusiasm to start down that road. Nor does anyone want to see the rich Cuban millionaires in Florida returning to reclaim their homeland. (Nor, to be fair, do most of the millionaires.)
So, with private enterprise back on the agenda, the Cubans will soon have to formulate a strategy for relinking their economy with the wider world. Much has already been done. Cuba trades with Latin America with few problems, as it does with Canada, Europe and Asia, and of course with Russia and China. Even US agricultural produce now arrives by regular boat.
Foreign investment is another matter. Cuba wants a decent relationship with the US, and an end to the economic embargo, but it will be a long time before it welcomes foreign investment without strings attached. The Cuban revolution was always more nationalist than socialist, and while elements of socialism can be surrendered relatively easily, the nationalist achievements of the past half-century will not be lightly abandoned. The Cuban model, however modified, has life in it yet.
"A new, risky Cuban revolution"?
To: Editors, The Globe and Mail
Re: Your editorial "A new, risky Cuban revolution" (September 20) [posted below].
The announcement of the new Cuban economic measures did not come as a
surprise to any serious journalist or observer. In July 2007 a nation-wide
consultation and debate (a frequent practice in Cuba) was initiated on the
Cuban economy. The planned restructuring of the state sector has been
discussed by all the trade unions and mass organizations, in the newspapers,
on radio and television. Workers have themselves decided that the measures
are necessary to strengthen Cuba's economy upon which they depend for their
living, and how they will be implemented. A substantial number of the
500,000 affected workers are to be absorbed into the non-state sector while
a considerable number are being offered alternative state employment
opportunities. Many will continue in their current jobs either working for
themselves or in cooperatives.
This is not the shock therapy used in eastern Europe or demanded by the
World Bank and IMF in developing countries. The new arrangements are being
phased in and no one is being abandoned or left to fend for themselves. All
the social guarantees remain in force. The aim of the restructuring is to
strengthen social programmes, not privatize nor dismantle, them. This
includes universal free health care and education, subsidized utilities, a
subsidized food ration and controlled prices; mortgage payments pegged at 10
percent of the highest income earned in the household (more than 80% of
Cubans own their own homes).
For any country to try to overcome the worldwide economic crisis in a manner
that favours its people, not the global monopolies, would be no small feat.
This is all the more true for a country like Cuba which is subjected to a
brutal all-sided commercial, trade and financial embargo from the United
States, with extra territorial consequences which even affect Canadian
businesses which trade or would like to trade with Cuba.
Many Canadians admire the Cuban people's unrelenting defence of their
sovereignty in the face of tremendous odds. The changes your editorial
misrepresents may be new, but they are not risky in the sense that the
Cubans are not gamblers. They closed down all the mafia-run casinos more
than 50 years ago and ended that regime, which permitted the impoverishment
of the majority of the people and the corruption of all of Cuban life.
If measures which defend this are a risk, we can confidently say that for
fifty years the Cubans have shown themselves capable of meeting the
challenges they take up.
Isaac Saney
Spokesperson, Canadian Network On Cuba (http://www.canadiannetworkoncuba.ca/)
Faculty member, College of Continuing Education,
Dalhousie University & Department of History, Saint Mary's University
* * *
TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL
Editorial: "A new, risky Cuban revolution",
Monday, September 20, 2010
The Cuban government's surprise announcement this week that it is laying off
500,000 state employees - about 10 per cent of the state sector - shows the
desperate state of the economy. Free-market reforms are long overdue in the
Caribbean island, one of the last bastions of Soviet-style Communism. But to
expect state employees, especially the least enterprising, to succeed in the
private sector is politically risky.
By 2011, the government will lay off workers from every government sector,
selecting those who are least productive. These workers will then be
expected to form private co-operatives, find jobs at foreign-run companies
or set up their own small businesses. The government helpfully suggests a
list of possibilities, including raising rabbits, making bricks, driving a
taxi and organizing parties. Cubans who are not made redundant will face a
new salary structure that rewards productivity.
This is the most significant economic shift since the 1990s, when the
collapse of the Soviet Union forced Cuba to legalize use of the U.S. dollar,
and allow people to operate restaurants in their homes, initiatives that
were scaled back once the economy improved.
This development, however, appears to be longer-term. It will allow the
government to rid itself of unproductive workers, and indicates that Cuba is
ready to move in the direction of a more "marketized economy," says Arch
Ritter, an expert on the Cuban economy at Carleton University. "Once people
aren't reliant on the goodwill of the state, they are much less manageable.
So there is a political risk," he adds.
Cubans will still be entitled to a few months of unemployment benefits, as
well as subsidized housing expenses and free education and health care.
Isaac Saney, an author and Cuba solidarity activist, has answered a recent
editorial on the changes taking place there. Actual.ly the Globe and Mail's
misrepresents the situation somewhat less than the Canadian 'National Post,"
which went so far as to claim that Cuba's free education and medical care
vanished after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The text pf the
Globe and Mail edit is appended to Saney's reply.
Saney's letter is also good at describing the process that led to adoption
of the measures, which were hardly suddenly dropped on the workers in a
crushing blow like a brick dropped from an airplane.
Fred Feldman
While the government of President Raul Castro made the announcements, his
older brother Fidel appeared to agree, recently telling an American
journalist that the "Cuban economy doesn't work." Mr. Castro later said he
had been misinterpreted, but the comment could also be read as tacit support
for Raul's reforms.
An internal government document acknowledges the difficulty of this
strategic transition, noting many businesses won't last because Cubans lack
experience, drive and initiative to succeed in the private sector.
While the Cuban government doesn't appear to have a strategy to help them
make the transition, some Cubans may adapt more quickly than predicted. For
years, Cubans have been forced to supplement their meagre state earnings and
insufficient food rations by reselling stolen products on the black market -
everything from cigars and cement to second-hand clothing. They already make
exceptionally good capitalists.
Cuba is still far from fully embracing the free market to the extent that
China and Vietnam have. But these reforms are a welcome first step.
Saul Landau on `Is Cuba going capitalist?'
The Forever Fidel Obsession
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_forever_fidel_obsession_2010091…
Posted on Sep 19, 2010
By Saul Landau
In late September 2009, shortly after Fidel Castro and I exchanged hugs of greeting, I flashed back to my first visits to Cuba, in 1960 and 1961. In the six months I spent there, I experienced a sense of creative anarchy in which people my age (I was 24) ran government ministries and the revolutionary leader was only 33. Hundreds of thousands showed support at rallies where Fidel announced expropriations of U.S. property. Not all Cubans felt this way. Hundreds of thousands fled the island for Miami.
In February 1961, when I left Havana after my second visit, I had doubts whether the revolution could survive. Two months later, Fidel declared himself a socialist, and shortly afterward some who had fled returned to Cuba, backed by the CIA, in an incursion at the Bay of Pigs, a development that became known as a fiasco.
Forty-nine years and dozens of visits later, a small group—which included myself; Harry Belafonte; his wife, Pam; his daughter, Shari; Danny Glover; and James Early—went to Fidel Castro’s house on the outskirts of Havana. After his wife, Dalia, and his grandsons and youngest son had greeted us, we sat and listened to Fidel talk. On each side of his chair sat piles of books. He had read Barack Obama’s autobiographies, installing heavy underlining and margin notes on most pages. He praised the U.S. president on his writing style, honesty and intelligence, recognizing the difficulties he faced trying to make even the smallest changes.
After three hours of conversation, in which he did most of the talking, as we all had hoped, several things became clear. First, Fidel had definitely retired, thanks to a near-death surgical trauma, followed by serious infections.
The revolution he directed until 2006 when the illness obliged him to pass the reins to his younger brother, Raul, his close partner since 1953, had achieved its goals, but was also in serious economic difficulty.
Cuba had survived a half-century of U.S. hostility and remained a sovereign nation, with a healthy and educated population that played many roles in world geopolitics—unknown even to most educated Americans. Moreover, people from an island nation without strategic resources danced on the stage of history.
Some know of Che Guevara’s failed 1965 guerrilla mission in the Congo. Few know that in 1963, Cuban troops helped Algeria deflect an invasion threat from Tunisia; or that Cuban doctors served as battlefield medical personnel in the Vietnam War. In 1973, Fidel dispatched a 1,500-man tank division to fight alongside Syria against Israel.
In 1975, Cuban soldiers fought U.S.-backed forces from Zaire and South African armored divisions to maintain the integrity of Angola, and later helped bring about Namibian independence. Cuba’s successful military engagement against the South African apartheid regime in the 1987-88 battles of Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola helped shape the future of the region. Just four years later, at his inauguration, Nelson Mandela shook the hands of heads of state but grabbed Fidel in a bear hug and said in a voice audible to the network microphones: “You made this possible.”
This history has given Cubans a sense of pride—not to be mistaken for democracy. But Fidel now avoids discussions of Cuban politics or policy, making it clear he has retired and his brother now presides. Rather, in the discussion with us he focused his intellect on how climate change threatened future life on the planet and how the situation demanded unity among nations and people to stop the process. He described the contemporary world as being full of daunting “challenges facing today’s politicians.”
He leaned forward as if confiding in us and said: “I pity them, you know. I used to be a politician also.”
Over the decades he outfoxed U.S. strategists. Like a modern Machiavelli he exported his enemies to his larger enemy—or induced Washington to import more than 1 million Cubans who opposed revolutionary policies. When resources became scarce after 1991, hundreds of thousands more left the island for the United States.
His other side, a modern Don Quixote, inspired young Cubans—and others—to look to the “new man,” modeled on the legendary Che Guevara, building a just and egalitarian society.
This politician who outlasted 10 U.S. presidents bent on overthrowing him now spins his worldly concerns to those who publicize them. Two weeks ago Fidel gave long interviews to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations in which he discussed his appreciation for Jews, among other topics.
I recall him telling me during a 1968 film trip (“Fidel,” broadcast on PBS in 1969) of his admiration for Israelis, “surrounded by enemies and showing determination to defend themselves.” He also referred to their “initiative in making the desert bloom.” The Israeli ambassador to Cuba was an ex-kibbutznik who distinguished himself also as a champion volunteer cane-cutter. Israeli policy, however, clashed with Cuba’s interests and Fidel thought it might lead the world into nuclear war by 2010.
In 1991, when the Soviet Union disappeared, Cuba no longer possessed the resources to maintain a military role in world affairs (it now exports doctors). This “special period” (beginning in 1991 with the Soviet demise), as Fidel dubbed it, meant the state could no longer fulfill its commitment to provide for the needs of the people with fully subsidized food. The population also faced prolonged power outages, a scarce water supply and growing inequality as those with relatives in Miami began receiving remittances from them.
The heroic language of the revolution no longer applied. The play, to use a metaphor, was over. The revolution had achieved success in the world and in health and education at home, but, as the Cuban joke goes, there are three minor problems: breakfast, lunch and dinner.
In the late 1990s, with the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela as a Cuban ally, money again began to flow into the island’s economy and material life improved. But it’s a far cry from the cradle-to-grave security days of the 1970s.
In 2010, Cuba still faces an intimidating U.S. embargo, or blockade as they call it because it reaches beyond bilateral lengths and punishes countries and businesses that do business with Cuba.
With Cuba no longer receiving Soviet aid, the U.S. embargo interferes not only with the needs of daily life—some products are hard or impossible to get—but demoralizes the population. “No hay” (there isn’t any) has become the daily cliché. U.S. recalcitrance has made it more difficult for Cubans to write the script for the next period: how does the revolution convert from a highly centralized and authoritarian model into a functional society where the healthy and educated population can take initiative, without falling into capitalism, which Fidel and Raul Castro hate. Incidentally, Cuban newspapers don’t hesitate to report facts about U.S. hunger, unemployment, foreclosures (300,000 in July), homelessness and the massive and unmet needs of the American infrastructure over the past two years.
The Cuban economy suffers, as Raul related in his August 2009 speech, from serious problems: 1 million superfluous workers on the state payroll while there exists an acute shortage of labor in agriculture and construction. In recent weeks, 500,000 workers received notice of their impending layoff and were told to start looking for private sector jobs, and to form private cooperatives.
“Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities, services and budgeted sectors with bloated payrolls [and] losses that hurt the economy,” said the official Cuban labor federation statement that announced the layoffs. “We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world in which people can live without working.”
The sight of idle Cubans on the street in the middle of the workday, drinking beer, playing dominoes, listening to music on boomboxes and basking in the sunshine had become an omnipresent irritant to working Cubans. From an apartment balcony in Playa, a Havana neighborhood, earlier this year, a 55-year-old working woman sneered at the young men on the corner. “Look at those bums, living off the state and not working. Where do they get the money to buy the beer?”
I thought about the “welfare cheat” clichés heard at times in the U.S. What became clear to me in my recent visits to Cuba, which I make at least once a year, was that the economy had become dysfunctional. Centralized authority—the political companion of the state-controlled economy—had also become a cruel joke.
Over the years I asked people I knew why they didn’t organize activities for the kids playing amid rocks and rubble, and why neighbors didn’t clear the streets. I got the same answer I received from people who would not allow me to film: “It isn’t authorized.”
Nor is the black market authorized, I thought. But it functions very well. Under the state-controlled system, thieves stole material, exacerbating the already difficult shortages, and sold the stolen goods back to the people for higher prices. Farmers could make more selling privately than through state-controlled prices, so, duh, that’s what they did.
Raul Castro’s initiative involves not only laying off unproductive workers from state payroll and pushing them toward the private sector—especially agriculture, where the labor shortage is acute—but decentralizing as well
Anyone who thinks Cuba is going capitalist, however, should check more carefully with the facts and the half-century dedication of its leaders to socialism. The small private sector that will gradually reopen, under President Raul’s announced reforms, existed until 1968 when the “revolutionary offensive” shut down the small stores, street peddlers, service providers and artisans.
The changes, compelled by economic reality, should not blind observers to the fact the generation that made the revolution had pledged to carry out the goals that their revolutionary ancestors had in the 1860s, 1890s and 1930s. Under Fidel, Cubans’ deep sense of their role in the island’s history helped them to have the courage to commit the unpardonable sin: disobedience to the United States.
Cuba is still paying the price. The embargo is 50 years old. Hey! Give it time!
[Saul Landau is finishing a film with Jack Willis, “Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up,” about 50 years of U.S.-Cuba relations and five Cuban spies in U.S. prisons. He is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.]
Cuban Economy: A Current Evaluation and Proposals
Last December, a paper was published in Japan, called The Cuban Economy: A Current Evaluation and Proposals for Necessary Policy Changes, written by Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, a professor at the University of Havana's Centre for Studies of the Cuban Economy. It's available online as a .pdf document here: https://ir.ide.go.jp/dspace/bitstream/2344/872/1/217.pdf
Valuable Resource and Indictment
Thanks you to Cuban Observer for this valuable resource. It is such a damning indictment of the failures of the bureaucracy and illustrates the need for workers and popular control over the economy. Hopefully Anderson and Healy take the time to read this, and then ask themselves, how did it get to be this way?