The Cuban Revolution Into The 1990s

Cuban Perspectives

Sobre America, Centro De Estudios Sobre America, Ronald H Chilcote, Centro De Estudios Sobre America "Attn: Luis Suarez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000315745
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Cuban Revolution succeeded in 1959 in the face of official U.S. opposition, an abortive Bay of Pigs invasion, and an economic embargo. Cuban dependence on the United States dated to the U.S. occupation of the island from 1898 to 1901 and subsequent interventions in 1906-1909, 1912, and 1917. Historically, the Cuban economy has depended on the export of sugar. Before the revolution the United States imported the largest share of Cuban sugar; after 1960 the Soviet Union assumed this role, and in exchange Cuba had to import its fuel and some of its foodstuffs, raw materials, and capital goods.

Part 1
Democracy and Socialism

1
Reform and the Future of Cuban Socialism

Julio Carranza Valdés

Translated by Clare Weber

One of the most worrisome issues in Cuba today is the impact of the changes taking place in socialist Europe. I will try to give an overview of the situation and offer some personal reflections.

When we examine the historical development of the Cuban Revolution, we can identify various moments of critical reflection on it and assessment of what remains to be done. The process of rectification initiated in 1986 is only one of these, and it will probably not be the last. It is an error to believe that this process is a consequence of perestroika and the changes occurring in socialist Europe; in fact it preceded those changes.

A very serious crisis of foreign exchange reserves in 1985 led to an urgent pursuit of renegotiation of the debt with member countries of the Paris Club. Although some agreements were reached, they were insufficient to resolve the crisis. The resulting tensions within the economy led to a set of measures to increase the availability of foreign exchange: the production of exportable goods for favorable placement in the international market, the reduction of imports, and an increase in efficiency in the internal economy. At this point one began to see failures in the planning and management of the economy that created new social and political problems.

Because of inefficiencies and other problems, scarce resources were squandered. Bureaucratism flourished, and, increasingly, payment was exacted for services not performed (for example, a business theoretically dedicated to the painting of buildings would simply sell paint to consumers instead of performing the actual painting service itself, although the cost of this service would be included in the price). Beyond this, there was excessive individual material interest, inordinate privatization of certain services, a predominance of undemocratic points of view, the use of positions to obtain privileges and material advantages, corruption, mockery of the legal and economic order by enterprises and organizations, lack of incentive, uncritical pursuit of other socialist experiments, and an impoverishment of political-ideological work.

The objective of the process of rectification is the resolution of these and other negative tendencies. This process has already produced an evaluation of the system of administration and planning of the economy initiated in 1975, the year of the first Party congress—a new chapter of a discussion that has been going on in Cuba since the 1960s. Today there is consensus within the country on the existence of these deviations and errors in the Cuban economy; the debate is associated with attempting to identify their causes.

The situation in Cuba has also produced a profound rethinking of the revolutionary experience in all sectors of society. On this there have been contradictory positions, ranging from that which regards the system of self-financing adopted in 1975 as contrary to the strategic interests of socialism to that which considers the system fundamentally correct but its implementation incomplete, inconsistent, and incoherent. Advocates of the latter see a solution in the revision and improvement of the system already established. In view of the complexity of the situation, the immediate decision has been to take time to discuss these aspects in depth and develop some experiments in certain enterprises. The resultant experiences will be incorporated into the debate that leads to the ultimate decisions on the most important issues.

A central point of all this discussion regards the political work required by a prerevolutionary process like that taking place in Cuba, an under-developed country located in an area of geopolitical interest to the United States, and the relation of that work to the operation of certain market mechanisms. Although the discussion is still in progress, the tendency has been to seek a balance that recognizes the role of economic stimulation and the solution of individual material problems as an important lever for development but also recovers the fundamental role of political work—construction of a social consciousness that guarantees the commitment of the majority to the objectives of the project and to the sacrifices that inevitably must be made to achieve it.

While these questions of direction and planning of the economy are being debated, measures have had to be taken to deal with a series of social problems whose solution the masses were strongly demanding. These measures have had to do with such programs as the construction of housing and of schools for the handicapped, the reconstruction of schools in the provinces, and the expansion of the health care system, which, although already operating at an impressive level, was insufficient to meet the demand. New hospitals have been built and many of the existing ones expanded. In addition, centers have been established throughout the country where resident doctors and nurses provide medical attention to the approximately 120 families of each barrio. Because the incorporation of a large part of the female work force into the workplace had been delayed by the scarcity of infant and child care centers, 54 such centers were constructed in one year in the city of Havana alone. Finally, new food programs have been developed to guarantee the population a substantial increase in basic foodstuffs.

At the same time, a set of strategic investments has been made for the development of export industries, for import substitution, and for the development of the tourist infrastructure as alternative sources of profits and foreign exchange for the future. There has also been an important move toward what we call “leading sectors”—research on and production of the products of the biotechnological and pharmaceutical industries, both of which are reaching important export levels. In 1989, the export of antimeningitis vaccine was one of the greatest earners of foreign exchange. All of this has been accompanied by the introduction of new forms of organization of the work force such as microbrigades and “contingents” that are expected to bring a higher level of efficiency. These efforts and the continuing debate on the organizational forms to be adopted in the economy and the society are taking place in the midst of financial pressures and the reinforcement of the North American blockade. The transformation of socialist Europe places additional pressure on the process of change.

In order to cope with the crises in the international economy, in 1985 Cuba reduced its commercial and financial relations with the West to a mere 13.8 percent, which meant that its trade and financial exchange with socialist Europe reached 86.2 percent of all its external economic relations. These proportions convey some idea of the strong impact on the Cuban economy of the changes in the economies of the socialist countries. Cancellations, modifications, and delays in previous agreements came from many of the governmental enterprises of socialist Europe. The Soviet government often expressed its willingness to maintain the historically supportive relations between the two countries. Nevertheless, and independent of this, the role granted to enterprises in the economic reorganization of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries impacted external economic relations. This impact forced a redefinition of Cuba’s participation in the world market and an attempt to reinvigorate the internal economy.

In 1988 Hungary was to have sent Cuba an important cargo of transmissions and engines for the construction of buses that would provide urban transportation in the major cities of the country. These shipments were delayed and when they arrived were incomplete because Hungarian enterprises found the world market a much more profitable place to sell products than Cuba. This situation resulted in a great shortage of replacement parts and caused serious problems for Cuban urban transportation. Beyond the economic implications there were political ones that resulted from public discomfort and dissatisfaction. The only viable course was to develop the production of transmissions and engines in Cuba, and a year and a half later the first Cuban transmissions and engines were in use.

The fundamental principle of all these adjustments has been to affect as little as possible the standard of living of the majority of the people and to maintain the principal social achievements of the revolution. During the past six years, in spite of the precariousness of resources, expenditures on social security and assistance (the first cuts that a country with these tensions would normally make) increased by 36.01 percent. Spending on education and health increased 45.5 percent and on sociocultural activities and scientific development 49.4 percent.

The accepted definition of democracy is equality plus participation—the involvement of the majority in discussion, decision making, and the implementation of the decisions that have been made. From this point of view, the Cuban Revolution has also been a process of democratic construction. In the first place, its redistribution of income has permitted the achievement of important levels of social equality. We see this achievement in the development of radical agrarian reform, urban reform, the nationalization of foreign-owned properties, the privatization of medium-sized and large enterprises, the system of social security, education, and free health care, and so on. Obviously, however, to reduce democratic practice to certain achievements in the economic field would be to impoverish the very concept of democracy. Democracy is incomplete if social equality is not accompanied by the participation of the majority in decisions on matters that affect their lives.

On a second level, therefore, is the construction of a political system that guarantees the participation of the majority, and here it is important that the existence of a single party in Cuba is not the result of any ideological conception but the outcome of a complicated historical process different from those that developed in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Central America. The bourgeois political parties of the opposition did not participate in the fight against the dictator, not even at the moment of revolutionary triumph: They went to Miami. Three parties of the left were able, in a complicated process, to agree to merge into a single party constructed not upon any philosophical-political doctrine but upon a concrete revolutionary program that responded to concrete Cuban problems. The result was the union in 1965–1967 of the Directorio Revolucionario (Revolutionary Directorate), the Movimiento 26 de Julio (26th of July Movement), and the Partido Socialista Popular (People’s Socialist Party) in the Partido Comunista de Cuba. Parallel to this party, the result of a historical process, there developed a number of mass organizations based upon popular participation: the Comités de Defensa de la Revolución, the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (Federation of Cuban Women), the student federations, the associations of farmers, artisans, economists, doctors, lawyers, architects, and so on, the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (Cuban Workers’ Federation), with its various unions, and the organs of popular power called Poder Popular. When they were set up they were submitted to a national plebiscite and were approved by an absolute majority.

In this process there have, of course, been restrictions of certain democratic liberties arising from the logic of a process that affected powerful interests in a country that had been dominated by the United States. To have made room, in the first years of the revolution, for interests that were in Miami and meant very little to the people would have reduced the rhythm of the revolution. Obviously, thirty-one years later the question of democracy has other components. Although the institutional apparatus that ought to guarantee broad popular participation has been created and is functioning, it is far from operating as it should. The revelations of corruption of the summer of 1989 unveiled a serious failure of the mechanisms of popular control whose effective functioning should be a fundamental component of democratic participation.

Discussions such as these, with a strong critical component, result in a demand for better performance on the part of the various institutions of power and popular control. Calls for the creation of other institutions or parties are heard only in Miami or in tiny, marginal sectors of Cuban society. The contradictions and fundamental revindications for the masses in Cuba today have to do with errors that have been committed in the Cuban revolutionary process. These differ from those committed in other socialist experiments just as does the context in which our revolution has developed. It would be false to assert that Cuba has no problems and tensions, but it is also an error to consider these problems and tensions the same as those that have been revealed in socialist Europe. The contradictions, tensions, and criticisms existing in Cuba today have to do with the pursuit of more and better spaces within the political system created through the revolution, not outside of it. It is recognized by the majority of the population that the system has permitted the achievement of an objective sought for more than a century: the recovery of the interests of Cuba as a nation.

2
Cuba: Utopia and Reality Thirty Years Later

Juan Antonio Blanco

Translated by James Bloyd

Three decades is not a significant amount of time in historical terms. No historian could have hoped to succeed in arriving at a final verdict on the eighteenth-century French or North American revolutionary process after its first thirty years. Even more difficult would be assessing the vitality and the prospects of a particular social system after that much time. It is sufficient to recall that, after its incipient and faltering first steps, European feudalism lasted for centuries and that the general crisis that gradually led to its disappearance spanned a century and a half. This is important to keep in mind if one is to prevent supposedly scientific attempts to evaluate a long-range historical process such as the Cuban Revolution from degenerating into a debate which simply examines part of the historical reality at the expense of others with an eye toward “proving” a political position.

Three decades can, however, be sufficient time for an examination of the correlation between a programmatic project and the practical course of a specific model for the functioning of a social system, which may be useful to the extent that it can be done as “objectively” as is possible for the social scientist (“neutral objectivity” in social research often being not only unattainable but undesirable as well). To establish the conditions for fruitful dialogue, it will therefore be necessary to set forth some methodological precepts:

1. The Cuban Revolution is not a historical fact but a historical process with profound implications, global and far-reaching in character, that transcend its national scope.
2. Because the context in which the revolution emerges is not propitious for its development free of traumas, detours, and corrections of course, it is essential to measure its results not only in the light of its project but in relation to the national and international environment in which that project has been implemented.
3. To discuss the applicability of the Cuban model to other realities is a mistake; what may be useful is to examine the Cuban option in its most general sense, comparing its current social reality with that of other countries that have pursued development through peripheral-capitalist structures.
4. The functional analysis of the Cuban process must be carried out in terms of its own logic and rationality and keeping in mind that it is unfinished.
5. No human process, however high the ideals that inspire it, is exempt from grave errors, shortcomings, and even excrescences, but the verdict on its course can only be drawn from the historical context in which it develops and is based on its global significance for human progress.

Having established these methodological 7’rules of the game,” we can move on to the key question: Does Cuban praxis up to the present legitimate the historical choice made by the Cuban people thirty years ago?

From the Moneada Program to the Socialist Revolution

In an evaluation of the Cuban Revolution it is pertinent to delineate the political program by which its results are to be measured and, if that original program underwent radical changes, to examine the necessity and legitimacy of those changes. It is therefore necessary to return to the program proposed by the Movimiento 26 de Julio after the assault on the Moneada barracks in 1953, which became the basis for the broad coalition of organizations and sectors of varying ideological and class origins that permitted the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista six years later.

Formally the Moneada Program certainly did not go beyond radical reform, anti-imperialist and popular in nature, within a capitalist legal-structural framework. Respect for private property, generally consecrated by the Constitution of 1940, continued to be indirectly accepted by the program’s tacit support of the program of that juridical instrument, and the promised nationalizations were aimed principally at the latifundios and foreign, mostly North American, monopolies. Still, certain projects and laws, such as the one introducing new forms of labor partnership and profit sharing and especially the agrarian reform, showed that the recognition of property rights would not constitute an obstacle to the necessary modification, of the way that property was used and to the eventual transformation of its forms and productive employment that would be required for the benefit of the working sectors.

The supposed “change of direction” of the revolution from this apparently reformist program (to the extent of its assertion that private property would remain the central pillar of its structure) toward a socialist one has long been a subject of debate. There are two principal interpretations of the leadership’s intention.

The first claims that the revolution was betrayed—that Fidel Castro and his closest collaborators were already Marxists and never took the Moneada Program seriously, their purpose being to deceive “everyone” in order to obtain power and thus declare “communism” in Cuba. The second asserts that Castro never intended to transform the revolution to socialism but was obliged to do so and to enter into his alliance with the Soviet Union. Ethical considerations aside, both these interpretations are implausible. Castro and a small group of revolutionary leaders did indeed have a Marxist understanding of history and a socialist vocation. However, to argue that this inevitably predetermined the course of the Cuban revolutionary process is to assume that history develops from the plotting of an elite operating in a vacuum. That a group of persons with similar ideologies constituting a party or a political movement should have come together in a systematic way to discuss what course to follow is nothing new; the question is whether a few men could have made history at the...