Thoughts on Cuba
Free speech and free elections
I’ve been reading some of the stuff coming out of the “left” on Cuba. Denying that the country is well and truly on the capitalist road is becoming an increasing challenge. So solidarity with the regime is looking increasingly ridiculous. And its reliance on Chinese and Russian imperialism for life-support also causes muttering.
Not that its ongoing abandonment of Brezhnevite zombie socialism is anything to bemoan. The regime never deserved any support once it joined the Soviet bloc and fully signed on to “actually existing socialism”. And as history has revealed said system turned “socialism” into an empty carcass with none of the living innards, and with people behaving in ways better suited to capitalism. Socialism was so sabotaged that capitalism became the superior option.
As we know all the countries in “the socialist camp” eventually discarded the old corpse. In Russia and eastern Europe the previous regimes were totally junked. In Belarus and the various Stans the old communist parties retained power but changed their names and stopped pretending. Then we had the countries where the communist parties retained power but continued pretending. China and Vietnam are the stars here but Cuba is not far behind.
In Cuba, over the last decade or so, a million or more state employees have been sacked and told to find work in the non-state sector. Private agriculture is now predominant. Self-employment is big. Small and medium sized firms that employ workers have taken off now that they are legal. State enterprises now operate as independent profit centers. Then there is much of the tourist industry that is run separately by the army. The Mariel Special Development Zone is there to attract foreign participation. The number of foreign companies operating in the country is growing, and the government would be able to welcome a lot more but for US sanctions. The private sector is now believed to contribute about a third of GDP and employs a similar proportion.
If you want to say something about Cuba may I suggest the slogan “free speech and free elections”. The result of course would be something similar to eastern Europe 35 years ago, although there are those who hope for something more radical.
The Trot group Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) adopts this position:
“If socialists refuse to join the mass mobilizations, they leave the field to the worms and other reactionaries. If they side with the regime against the people, they will become counterrevolutionaries. The only way forward is to participate in the popular protests, to defend an independent socialist program, to work towards the creation of direct-democratic popular councils, to fight against any reactionary influences for the revolutionary overthrow of the regime and for its replacement by a workers and poor peasant government. In order to advance this process, it is essential for authentic socialists to unite and to build a revolutionary party.” [Link]
The small number of radicals in Cuba should certainly spread such ideas but they should not expect to have much of an impact. Getting Cubans interested in socialism will be a long haul. Furthermore, whatever democratic process emerges will require the compliance, under mass pressure, of a certain section of the present ruling class, plus the military standing aside. So at best you can expect a rather imperfect bourgeois democracy. Indeed it is the best environment for any sort of embryonic radical left.
As a group with orthodox Marxist pretensions it is odd they are making noises that sound very much like peaceful transition to socialism. And as Trots I cannot imagine they would be endorsing socialism in one (tiny) country. Any revolution in Cuba would have to be in tandem with similar events in the neighborhood including Mexico and the USA. As a non-Trot I can perfectly agree with that. Socialism in one country made sense in a giant country like the Soviet Union but not some pipsqueak island in the Caribbean.