The following article is a speech, edited for publication, that was originally given at the “Detroit Workers' Voice” Discussion Group meeting on May 15, 2011. It discusses the dramatic changes in Cuba that were ratified at the Sixth Congress of the Cuban "Communist" Party, April 16-19th, 2011.
In this Detroit Workers' Voice Discussion Group meeting we will discuss Cuba and the recent economic changes and austerity measures there. The Detroit Workers' Voice leaflets and this discussion group have been created by supporters of the Communist Voice Organization, which upholds anti-revisionist communism. Naturally, we hope our views are taken up by other workers and activists. But this discussion group is not open merely to those who agree with all we have to say. We hope these discussions provide a forum for workers to speak up, learn, and give their opinions on how to advance the workers’ cause.
Solidarity with the Cuban working masses requires that workers here oppose the efforts of US imperialism to bully and blockade Cuba. Obama continues the economic embargo of past presidents since the 1959 revolution toppled the hated US-backed Batista dictatorship. Thus continues the arrogance of Republican and Democratic administrations. First US imperialism tried to strangle the revolution with the Bay of Pigs invasion and now hopes to economically deprive it.
But solidarity with the Cuban workers also requires opposition to the Cuban government and the social system it has overseen. While Raul Castro, who has replaced his brother Fidel as the leader of the Cuban bureaucracy, still claims to be "defending socialism", this road to "socialism" has long been a myth. It's not that they've simply hit some unfortunate setbacks while striving to bring about socialism. It’s that they long ago consolidated a new form of oppressive state-capitalist society that’s now more and more heading to market capitalism. That's why just as the capitalists of Europe, the US and elsewhere are pounding the masses with brutal austerity measures, so is the Cuban government.
Indeed, the Cuban regime is taking a backseat to no one when it
comes to austerity. The most stunning measure was the decision to
eventually cut over a million jobs in the state sector. Keep in mind,
the entire workforce of Cuba is about 5.5 million, with about 85%
employed by the state. Indeed already by the end of March, about half a
million state jobs were scheduled for elimination.
Raul Castro took no pains to conceal his disdain of the Cuban
worker. This past August he announced that "We have to permanently
erase the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where
people can live without working." And he ranted against "inflated
payrolls in nearly every field of national life" and "wages that have
no connection to results". He emphasized the need for "suppressing the
paternalistic approaches that discourage the need to work". As it turns
out with every capitalist, so it turns out for Raul: when the economy
tanks, turn on the workers.
Why, to listen to this, one would think the Cuban worker had it
easy. In fact, merely procuring enough food and the simplest
necessities has long been a monumental struggle for the Cuban worker no
matter how hard he or she worked. Much of the population is forced to
rely on the black market to get basic goods they need. No doubt such a
miserable return for their work hardly inspires the workers'
productivity, too. To the extent that some workers were placed in
fictitious jobs by the Cuban government, this was not because the
workers were too lazy to work real jobs, but because such jobs did not
exist. That policy was more or less a way for the Cuban rulers to cover
up the unemployment that existed in the state-capitalist economy. But
the fake "socialist" leaders of Cuba offer nothing to solve this
problem but further ruination of the workers. They seek to inspire
productivity in classic capitalist fashion, by mass layoffs and the
threat of destitution.
In line with tirades against "paternalistic" or "egalitarian"
treatment of the workers, the Cuban authorities have come out with big
cuts in the social programs. These social programs have been in tatters
for quite a while, but have at least kept the Cuban workers from utter
destitution or starvation. Well, it's a new day. For all of society,
the plan, according to a draft of the "Economic and Social Policy
Guidelines for the Party and the Revolution" of the pseudo-communist
party, is "the orderly elimination of the ration book system as a form
of distribution that is regulated, egalitarian and subsidized" (#162).(1)
The ration book was a big part of the social safety net that guaranteed
a certain, if very limited, amount of basic food and other items.
And what awaits the new army of unemployed? Unemployment benefits
will be cut after a few weeks. (Six weeks says Marc Frank, a long-time
apologist of the Cuban rulers.) After that, according to the official
pro-government Cuban trade union center, the unemployed are supposed to
largely wind up as "self-employed" or rent land from the state for
farming. What does self- employed mean in reality? That a million laid
off workers will magically become well-off businesspeople? No. It means
a giant army of unemployed workers will be forced into a des perate
struggle for survival. At best, it means converting workers who had
some stable income and benefits into petty entrepreneurs with no
stability, hoping to keep their tiny ventures afloat.
Of course the government admits that a lot of those ventures will
fail, and undoubtedly, such petty businesses always do. In fact, what
will pass as "self-employment" will, for many, likely be little more
than hustling in the streets and trying to get an odd job here or
there. Even assuming the best outcome, what will likely happen is what
always happens with small peasant production and small enterprise. A
relative handful will get ahead and will become real capitalists,
hiring (and exploiting) those whose ventures fail. So the basis for a
more expanded private capitalism is created as the answer to the
economic woes of the state sector. And the split of the masses into
workers and bosses becomes more commonplace. Indeed, laws forbidding
these types of enterprises from hiring outside their own family are
being abolished.
Some analysts think that the unemployment may be less than imagined.
Why? They think a number of the state enterprises will be privatized,
and the privatized enterprises will absorb back some of those who were
tossed out of the former state enterprise. That's possible.
This raises the question of how the state economy operates overall.
For many years, the Cuban regime has allowed certain state property to
be converted into private businesses legally owned by a section of the
elite. The new economic measures pave the way to greatly expand this
process. Moreover, even if the majority of the economy remains state
property, the enterprises themselves will more and more run much like
private businesses do in "normal" capitalism.
In fact, for decades Cuba state enterprises have actually adopted
many of the basic features of capitalist enterprises. After getting
underway with government assistance, enterprises were largely
"self-financed". Since each firm had to rely on its own resources, they
behaved according to their own financial needs, no matter what the
centralized state plan said. State plans were rarely fulfilled, and
gradually the plans themselves simply adapted themselves more and more
to the prevailing anarchy actually going on within the state sector.
This sort of state-capitalist economy has been the heart of the Cuban
economy since the 1970s, and on this basis grew the new
state-capitalist class structure, with well-off and privileged
bureaucrats and managers on one side, and impoverished workers on the
other.
Side by side with the failures of the state economy, the black
market grew, along with more experiments in private production and
sales. The increasing reliance on private capitalism zoomed with the
collapse of the state-capitalist Soviet Union, which the Cuban economy
was dependent on. This included a big push to bring in foreign
capitalist businesses, which today play a significant role in key
sectors of the Cuban economy.
While outright private and foreign capitalist enterprise has grown,
the state economy still remained dominant. But the conversion of state
property into private property and the incorporation of "free market"
practices by the state economy as a whole has been vigorously pursued
by the Cuban leadership.
Present Cuban leader Raul Castro and the ruling bureaucracy has
spent the better part of two decades pushing for privatization reforms
of the type reflected in the economic program announced over the past
months. To get some idea, one can look at the measures described in the
Cuban party's official document called Economic and Social Policy
Guideline for the Party and the Revolution. This document lists
over 290 measures on all facets of Cuban society, but here we will
confine ourselves to the section called "The Economic Management Model".
The essence of the reforms is scaling back state financing of the
Cuban economy and letting each enterprise sink or swim like private
capitalist businesses. The document declares there should be a big
reduction in enterprises getting government funding. It states that
while health care and education will remain government funded, "the
number of budgeted entities will be reduced to the minimum" and calls
for "the maximization of saving on personnel and for the state budget
with regard to material and financial resources."(#31) Leaving aside
the question that government support for health and education has also
been deteriorating, this indicates that the state sector is to be
greatly reduced. Indeed, this is the rationale for cutting the jobs of
around 20% of the total Cuban workforce.
And this theme of cutting state-financed enterprises is emphasized
again and again. The document states that "Budgeted entities to provide
productive services or for the production of goods will not be created.
Budgeted entities that can finance their costs from their own incomes
will become self-financing . . . or
they will be converted into
enterprises." (#32) "Self-financing" means, even if you are still
supposed to be a state enterprise, you're essentially operating like a
private enterprise. As to the difference between "self-financing"
entities and entities converted into enterprises, this latter entity
("enterprises") may in this context refer to state property converted
into legal private forms. But this is not spelled out in the document.
In any case, the Cuban policy is certainly to greatly expand the legal
private business sector. And when the document says budgeted entities
will not be created for regular goods and services, this means that
either the state sector will shrink to a large degree, or what's called
the state economy will be stripped of it's state funding. Probably a
combination of both will go on.
These economic reforms do not end the "self-financing"
state-capitalism
system. But they show how state ownership in Cuba adopts basic
capitalist features and is evolving more to "normal" capitalism. The
document states that "control over enterprise management will be based
principally on economic-financial mechanisms, in place of
administrative mechanisms, removing the burden of controls on
enterprise activity". (#14) This means each enterprise has more freedom
to do what it wants in its own economic self-interest without
government interference. It's further stated that "enterprises as a
rule will not receive budgetary financing to produce good and
services." (#17) So each enterprise will operate as an independent
entity whose existence depends on its own resources, that is to say,
whether it can turn a profit or not. Lest there be any doubt, the
document says that enterprises that have sustained financial losses
will be liquidated. (#16) By the same take token, profitable
enterprises can use their profits as they see fit for future
development. (#18) Further, enterprises can "independently decide the
number of workers on their payroll" (#22) and can set their own wages,
whether in the form of bonuses or slashing them if that's what's needed
to make them profitable (#18 and #19).
So we have enterprises that sink or swim according to their own
financial fortunes and whether they can turn a profit or not. We have
enterprises that can hire and fire workers as they chose. We have each
enterprise altering the wages of their workers to suit each particular
management's needs. In short, we have all the fundamental features of
capitalist enterprises. And since each enterprise is placed in the
position to turn profits or die, they are effectively placed in
competition with one another, and the anarchy of production found in
all capitalist countries soars, creating the grounds for further
economic crises. With such a state structure, or rapidly shrinking
state structure, there can be no real societal economic planning no
matter what hoped- for results some state planning body draws up and no
matter how many phrases about building socialism abound.
This has been the trajectory of the Cuban economy for many decades.
Whereas a society in transition to socialism would be overcoming each
part of the economy operating in independent and anarchic ways, the
Cuban economy has gone in the opposite direction. Real social control
by the masses over the economy has never existed, and now even the
pretense of overall planning is fading into the sunset.
The recent bombshell of austerity measures ushered in under Raul
Castro has been a long time in the making. Raul wanted to bring more
market capitalist methods into the Cuban economy. But he feared this
process might threaten the existence of the present ruling bureaucracy
itself, such as happened in the former Soviet Union and other phony
socialist countries. Raul made no secret of his fondness for the
Chinese government's method of transition to market capitalism, where
the process would take place under the tyranny of the phony communist
leadership. To do this, Raul and like-minded Cuban bureaucrats
including Fidel, began having the Cuban economy step-wise placed
largely under the control of armed forces officers. Raul had headed the
armed forces ministry since the early days following the revolution
before he assumed the duties of head of state and the party in 2006
when Fidel fell ill. Placing the army in control of the economy assured
that Raul could put his closest associates in charge of the economic
transition and shove out any rival bureaucrats with disagreements on
the pace and methods of capitalist reforms. And placing the armed
forces officers into economic management positions meant the officers
could get much better salaries and perks, including, in some cases,
direct ties to foreign capitalists who were entering the Cuban economy.
In other words, loyalty was assured in part by bribing the military
hierarchy.
This process started in the late 1980s. Raul began to send
high-ranking officers to Western Europe. There they studied the newest
business practices. Studying Marxist economics was not part of the
course. Rather, they studied the likes of the famous capitalist
management consultant Peter Drucker. Drucker was famous in capitalist
circles for advocating widescale outsourcing of jobs as well as various
bankrupt labor-management cooperation schemes to create the illusion
that workers and management had common goals. If you visit the Drucker
Institute web site, you will find how they admire such things as the
present sellout UAW leader Bob King's proposals that the UAW commit to
getting along with management rather than concentrating so much on
defending the workers. Of course, such labor-management cooperation has
been a disaster for auto workers, resulting in drastic concession like
cutting future workers' wages in half. Other capitalist management
training materials for the Cuban officers came from the IMF and the
World Bank, the notorious tools of imperialism which impose austerity
measures on country after country. And the training also included US
economists sponsored by the Ford Foundation and other US institutions.
The new economic methods associated with this training were called
the SPE (sistema de perfeccionamiento empresarial) or "business
improvement system." The army takeover, while designed to keep the
old-guard rulers in charge, was not designed to bring about stronger
state control over individual enterprises or convert employees into
military regiments. Rather it was about putting into practice the
trendy market-capitalist theories. A focus was on eliminating
government subsidies, implementing mass lay-offs, basing the
enterprises on what would improve profits, and having the economy based
on market demands of the moment. Socialist planning under the control
of the workers was nowhere in this plan. Even the old-style
bureaucratic centralized planning was kicked aside. One writer aptly
called the SPE business improvement system "the closest approximation
to a capitalist-type of organization within the current conflicting
trends and pace of reforms in Cuba" and "a peculiar experience of
privatizing the Cuban state."(2)
The SPE methods were first implemented over a decade ago within the
armed forces sector's civilian wing. 40% of the civilian workforce,
some 27,000 people, were canned. This "success" led to Raul Castro
announcing in 1998 the spread of these business methods throughout the
economy. About a third of state enterprises were targeted by the year
2000. Ever since, the armed forces have expanded their grip and the SPE
model to a vast amount of the economy. By 2003, the military controlled
89% of the export economy and dominated the foreign trade sectors,
tourism, civilian machinery repairs and parts and other sectors. Its
reach extended also to various goods and services including sugar
mills, biotechnology, consumer products, etc.
The spread of the SPE has created the basis for increasing the class
differences in Cuba between the workers and the bureaucratic, party and
military hierarchy. These class differences are not new, but they are
more pronounced than ever, and are embraced as official policy. In the
last two decades, state property has been parceled out to various top
bureaucrats and officers to run as private enterprises. For example,
there are the "sociedades anonimas" which are private companies where
the Cuban elite and foreign capitalists are shareholders.(3) These are big
players in the tourism industry, for instance, but also branch into
other fields. Various other legal types of private Cuban companies that
were formerly state property have also come into existence. The former
bureaucrat of a state enterprise is becoming a private capitalist.
The spread of privatization and capitalist-oriented entrepreneurs
from within the state economy has been the basis for corruption
scandals among the Cuban leadership. The government itself occasionally
has to prosecute high officials for corruption, but it cannot put the
genie back in the bottle. Corruption is widespread. That's why even a
loyal Cuban party commentator, Esteban Morales, recently published an
article called "Corruption, the true counter-revolution." The article
by no means questions the basic Cuban system, but it can't help but
note that corruption is rampant everywhere. And that includes the high
officials which Morales contends are the main danger to Cuba. He talks
of "people in positions of government and state who are girding
themselves financially for when the Revolution fails, and others who
may have everything almost ready to transfer state-owned assets to
private hands, as happened in the old USSR." He notes this sort of
corruption is what led to the recent removal of the head of the Air
Force, General Acevedo, and complains that the official Cuban press
hasn't provided an adequate account of what happened.(4) For this, Morales
was expelled from the Cuban party. According to other sources, Acevedo
and other airline officials secretly sold space on Cuban planes to
transport good for various Latin American companies, pocketing millions
of dollars off the books. There are even reports that Acevedo was
setting up his own private airline.
As mentioned above, a mutual-enrichment program exists between
foreign capitalist investors in Cuba and Cuban officials. This took off
in a big way in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union,
which the Cuban economy depended on. Today foreign capitalists have a
significant hold on important sectors of the economy. Tourism plays a
critical role in the economy and foreign firms have been building
luxury hotels and golf courses for tourists and the Cuban elite.
Foreign firms mine Cuban nickel deposits, which is one of the chief
exports. Cuba's largest citrus grove operation is run by an Israeli
capitalist, Rafi Eitan, who happens to have been the European chief of
operations for the Israeli Mossad, the terrorist Israeli secret
intelligence organization. While domestic enterprises account for the
largest part of the economy, foreign investment has increasingly become
critical to the Cuban economy. For example, tourism is a major source
of hard currency. This hard currency in turn is vital to whether Cubans
get enough food since the country's food supply is largely imported.
All sorts of measures have been taken by the Cuban government to
make sure the foreign investments are highly profitable. The Cuban
government builds infrastructure for foreign capitalist projects, and
it has relaxed the labor codes to entice investors. Recently foreign
capital got another treat, with the Cuban regime agreeing to lease
state property for foreign capitalist investors for as long as 99
years. Some Canadian developers, who are big players in Cuba's tourism
industry, said this was important to investors who see this as
tantamount to "virtually full ownership" and a long-term safeguard to
protect big projects from incursions by the Cuban government. Inspired
by such measures, two Canadian companies recently agreed on a new joint
venture, a fully self-owned business that's officially part of Cuba's
Ministry of Tourism that will build a $200 million luxury hotel. While
the Cuban workers suffer brutal austerity measures, the Cuban
leadership and outside capitalists are busy greasing each others' palms.
While capitalists from various countries are investing, the unjust
US blockade prevents US companies from doing so. This is despite the
fact that there is building pressure from US companies to get in on the
action. In fact, some US food producers actually do export to Cuba. But
while the US economic blockade is an outrage, this hardly means that US
investment or other foreign investment is going to be a means to "save
socialism" as the Cuban government maintains. No, foreign investments
in the Cuban context today are merely another route to the transition
from state-capitalism to market capitalism. It is not saving the Cuban
masses, who are being driven down as never before, but contributing to
the widening gap between the top Cuban officials and the impoverished
and unemployed workers.
So far we have tried to give a brief picture of how state-capitalism
is transitioning to private capitalism in Cuba. However, when we
critique fake communist regimes like Cuba, it's not merely to point out
they are exploiters and tyrants and imitate the normal capitalist
countries in many ways. We think that exposing such regimes is
necessary to salvage a vision of genuine communism, a vision that
reflects the outlook of Marx, Engels and Lenin. We stand against the
regimes that have revised communism into a state-capitalist nightmare,
and contrast their views to what we call anti-revisionist communism.
The American ruling class and their educational system and media
constantly drone against communism as synonymous with tyranny, or at
best a nice-sounding theory that can never exist. Of course they do
this to promote capitalism, to present it as salvation or eternal. But
when countries run by self-proclaimed communist parties betray
communist ideals, when they clearly have privileged party and state
officials lording over workers who can barely scrape by and have no
real say in how society is run, this makes the job of the apologists
for capitalism that much easier. The phony communist regimes undermine
workers entertaining a vision of a revolutionary alternative. And so do
left-wing groups that apologize the Cuban regime, that insist that
whatever goes on in Cuba, the Cuban rulers must be supported, or that
even if there are mistakes, Cuba is still some kind of workers' state
or socialist.
The workers' revolution, as envisioned by Marx, Engels and Lenin,
involved the workers overthrowing the capitalist system and eliminating
the private ownership of the productive resources of society. Instead
of the economy being run by capitalists for the purpose of amassing
profits, the workers would collectively own and run the economy, both
at the enterprise level and on an overall societal basis. The workers'
state would not be a state that merely provides some social programs,
but can only fulfill its role by drawing workers and other exploited
classes into running the affairs of society. This process would take a
protracted period of time. That's because the issue is not simply
seizing the workplaces from the defeated capitalists, and it takes time
for the workers to learn to run society, to learn to shed the habits
learned under capitalism. And it takes a protracted period to create
the economic conditions that allow workers to have the time and
training to run society. Thus, there is an unavoidable period of a
transition to socialism, a transition during which the division of
society into classes, into exploiters and exploited, breaks down. This
transition lays the groundwork for socialism. Only when the socialist
order is established can all the ills produced by the capitalist drive
for profit fully be overcome and production truly be based on the needs
of the masses. With the elimination of class divisions, eventually the
need for the state itself, even a workers' state, ceases to exist.
Societal control of production would continue, but this would no longer
require an apparatus that represses part of the population, even if, in
this case, we're talking about repressing the remnants of the
capitalist exploiters.
When we critique the systems that developed in Cuba, or the former
Soviet Union or China, it's not because they didn't instantly make the
transition to a fully socialist or communist society. Indeed, we
recognize that in the period of transition to socialism, various
capitalistic features will still have an important influence in the
transitional economy. There may be such things as "self-financing" of
enterprises for a period of time, as well as commodity exchange and
money. But unless these things are overcome, then a new form of
capitalism will arise, even if formally the economy is in the hands of
the state. The features of capitalism that remain in the transitional
economy can be eliminated only to the extent that the workers can bring
the economy under their conscious control and insure that the economy
is more and more run as a cohesive and collective whole.
The revolutions in Russia, China, Cuba and other countries got rid
of the horrible old social orders and brought with them certain
progressive changes and social programs. But the revolutionary motion
ebbed, and the issue of workers controlling things was shoved to the
side. The new political and economic institutions grew separate and
apart from the control of the working masses. In these conditions, the
lingering features of capitalism were not overcome, but grew, albeit in
new forms. Eventually, the new political and economic institutions
became, in fact, the property of a new bourgeois elite of economic
managers and high party officials. And on this basis, new class
antagonisms were created. What happened in these societies was not the
gradual overcoming of capitalist leftovers, but the growth of
capitalism under a state/party hierarchy, a new type of
state-capitalism. And as time passed, the capitalist nature of the
state economy became more naked, more room was given to private
ownership, and foreign capitalist influence increased. Market
capitalism began to grow within the womb of state-capitalism.
The Cuban revolution of 1959 was a great feat. The Batista
dictatorship and the dominance of US imperialism were done away with.
The Castroite leadership of the revolution initially had wide support
of the masses. But it never had a true socialist vision. Within a few
years it had hitched its fate to the Soviet Union, where the Stalinist
regime long ago transformed the workers' revolution into a
state-capitalist tyranny which subsequent Soviet regimes tried to keep
alive by adopting more market measures. As mentioned earlier, in the
1970s the Cuban leaders adopted much of the Soviet-style
"self-financing" enterprise system which meant enterprises had to act
more like private entities than the property of the whole society.
Along with this, the disparities in living standards in Cuba grew
between the official and managers and the working masses. Not only
could high officials legally make much more than the workers, there
were all sorts of perks and privileges. For example, the system of
official "parallel markets" arose, which became known among the masses
as rich people's markets because only the elite could afford the goods
there.
Officially, there was a communist party that ruled, but unlike a
real communist party, it was not a party of the workers but of the
privileged high party and state rulers. Yes, they provided some
meaningful social programs, but those programs have been whittled down
to the bare bones. More importantly, the workers never had control of
society, they never decided policy, but merely had to accept what the
party and its subservient mass organizations ordered. This is not just
our opinion but is widely admitted by groups that support the regime as
some sort of workers' state. They will say that the workers are
consulted about various things, but don't decide anything. In other
words, they say Cuba is a workers' state, or a deformed workers' state,
while acknowledging the workers aren't really in charge. Some allegedly
socialist defenders of Cuba admit that even their own friendly
criticisms of certain Cuban policies would get them banned in Cuba.
That shows that such apologists for the Cuban rulers can only continue
to support them by stripping any revolutionary content from the idea of
a workers' state.
But if the workers are not being converted into the rulers of
society, there can be no talk of a transition to socialism. Indeed,
what we have seen is that rather than various capitalist features being
overcome by the growing control of the workers, the exact opposite has
taken place. Workers have grown cynical about the fake communist
rulers, and the Castro regime is openly lashing out at the workers as
lazy bums who need to be beaten down so they will work harder. Fifty
years after the revolution, Cuba is transitioning from state-capitalism
to market capitalism. The left-wing groups that continue to promote
illusions in Cuba may claim that what is happening now is just a
temporary retreat. But it's a retreat for over 40 years with no end in
sight. The Cuban leaders today have made this clear. The future they
see for Cuba is austerity, private capitalist methods, and more
reliance on foreign capitalists.
Some may cry foul. They may say we criticize the moves made by the
Cuban leaders but don't offer an alternative policy that they should
follow that would put them on the socialist road. But from our
standpoint, there are not a series of mere policy changes that will
turn Cuba into a socialist country. We can no more recommend reforms to
the present Cuban system to make it socialist than we could recommend
reforms to the US capitalist system or the Bush or Obama regimes that
would produce socialism here. We are not against any reforms if they
really help workers in Cuba or the US. But there are no reforms that
could bring about socialism. Only a revolution can do that.
That by no means consigns us to a passive stand regarding the Cuban
workers. We must always stand against US bullying of Cuba. And our aim
in exposing the Cuban revisionist rulers is to encourage the Cuban
workers to take up the task of building up real class organization
independent of, and opposed to, the Castroite rulers. This is needed to
combat the austerity measures and political repression they face as
their rulers adopt capitalist market methods. It's needed to expose the
roots of the problem in the state-capitalist solutions of the past. And
it's needed to build a political party based on anti-revisionist
communism which can present to the workers, and eventually guide the
workers to, a genuinely socialist future. <>
(1)(#162) is the number of the policy guideline calling for eliminating the ration book in the first draft of the Cuban Communist Party document Economic and Social Policy Guidelines for the Party and the Revolution. In the text above, wherever a number appears between parentheses, it is the number of a policy guideline in that document. This document served as the basis for the policies adopted at the 6th Congress of the Cuban party in April 2011. The English translation used here is by Marce Cameron, of the Australian-Cuba Friendship Association. Cameron is a supporter of the Cuban regime and claims the document refutes the idea of the restoration of capitalism in Cuba. Cameron's translation was web-posted at: http://walterlippmann.com/ pcc--economic-and-social-policy-guidelines-2010.pdf.
(2)Amuchastegui, Domingo. "FAR: Mastering Reforms." Cuba in Transition: Volume 10. Papers and Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE), Coral Gables, Florida, August 5, 2000. p. 433. Amuchastegui was a political officer in the Cuban armed forces general staff and professor at Cuba's national defense college. He defected in 1994, and now writes for CubaNews, which seeks better relations between the US and Cuba from a bourgeois point of view.
(3)The term "sociedad anonima", "anonymous company", is used in various countries for joint-stock companies or corporations.
(4)https://progresoweekly.us/corruption-the-true-counter-revolution/.
Articles on CubaIn 1995-98, Communist Voice carried a series of articles on how the Castroist system has developed over the years and the different phases the economy has gone through. They show that the present Cuban crisis isn't simply a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and its aid to Cuba, but has strong roots in the class contradictions of Cuban state-capitalist society. They also show how the Castroist leadership has dressed up any measures it takes, no matter what impact they have on the workers, and no matter what Cuban workers thought of them, as "socialism". These articles are available at the CV website, see http://www.communistvoice.org/00Cuba.html. |
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Posted on January 3,
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Footnote 4 corrected on July 24, 2022.
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