NACLA Report on the Americas, March-April 1999 v32 i5 p17(4)

The Cuban Revolution: resilience and uncertainty. (Report on Cuba) Dick Parker.

Abstract: Fidel Castro's hold on Cuba has remained surprisingly strong despite the economic turbulence that has rocked his country since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. For all the improbable strength of his revolutionary government at a time when most Cubans have grown weary of economic stagnation, few observers actually believe that Cuban socialism will survive in a post-Castro era. For this reason, the future of Cuba is likely to depend on the political elite's willingness to construct an alternative model for Cuban society.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1999 North American Congress on Latin America Inc. (NACLA) There can be little doubt that Fidel Castro's regime has demonstrated a notable and, for many, surprising capacity for survival in the face of the economic crisis provoked by the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Not only the leaders of the Cuban exile community and the hawks in the U.S. government had anticipated Castro's fall. Many others, including sympathizers who had been uncomfortable with the evident influence of the Soviet model since the early 1970s, suspected that the apparent stability of the regime would prove as fragile as that of the erstwhile socialist states of Eastern Europe.

It soon became evident, however, that the Cuban socialist regime was more solid than many had thought. It did not have the ethnic complexity which had proved to be Gorbachev's Achilles heel when he attempted to introduce reforms in the Soviet Union and, unlike the East European satellite states, it had not been introduced at the behest of foreign tanks. On the contrary, it was the product of an authentic popular revolution which had early on stiffened its nationalist backbone standing up to the aggressive hostility of the United States. If nationalism in Eastern Europe contributed to the collapse of socialism, in Cuba it served to consolidate the regime, as did the undeniable social benefits which the socialist state had introduced over the three decades prior to the crisis.

Indeed, despite the dimensions of the crisis and the enormous restrictions which it continues to impose, the state's efforts to avoid unnecessary sacrifices on the part of the population doubtless help to explain the absence of any dramatic erosion of popular support for the regime, despite the dramatic levels of generalized poverty. The high level of domestic legitimacy which the regime enjoyed at the outset of the crisis became all the more important once it became evident that the crisis would be prolonged and that radical reforms would be necessary in order for the regime to survive.

Of all the different "roads to socialism," the Cuban experience was that which had accentuated most the state ownership of the means of production, so much so that other forms of property, if not entirely eliminated, had little or no political relevance. It had also demonstrated the most radical hostility to the use of the market for regulating distribution and, with the elimination of peasant markets in the mid-1980s, relied almost exclusively on centralized state planning. As had already occurred in European socialist countries, the limitations of excessively centralized state planning were becoming evident during the 1980s, as the return on investments diminished and the efforts to increase productivity proved unsuccessful.(1)

As a result, the reforms which the crisis activated were not simply required to reorient the external relations of the Cuban economy and to earn enough foreign exchange to prop up its existing productive capacity. Above all, reforms were urgently needed to overcome the obstacles which had impeded increases in labor productivity during the previous decade. While the initial emphasis was placed on the problem of earning the necessary foreign exchange, once the worst of the crisis had passed - roughly from 1993 on - the more basic problem had to be faced. And it had to be faced in the context of an accentuated U.S. blockade and the generally depressed world prices for Cuba's traditional export products, both of which seriously limited the process of economic recovery.

By 1994, the regime had introduced a number of key reforms designed to stimulate a gradual recovery of production levels. The reforms included the decentralization of the state sector, the introduction of cooperatives in the agricultural sector, the legalization of markets for agricultural products and in the service and artisan sectors, and the legalization of the dollar. In 1995, an already advanced opening to foreign investment culminated in a new legal framework facilitating agreements with potential investors. My concern here is not to examine the reforms themselves, and even less to speculate about their potential economic impact. What I want to emphasize is their social consequences and the problems they pose in terms of renovating the mechanisms which sustain the legitimacy of the regime and, in the longer term, the possibility of maintaining its socialist orientation.

Whereas in the late 1980s the state virtually monopolized property relations and employed about 95% of the total labor force, the reforms of the 1990s introduced or gave an altogether new importance to other forms of property, including joint ventures with foreign capital, cooperatives and small-scale private property. Recent estimates suggest that non-state employment has risen from 5% to between 15% and 20% of total employment. Furthermore, state control of distribution has ceded space to market mechanisms which, despite rigid controls designed to prevent an excess of private accumulation, have enhanced the opportunities for individuals to acquire an independent income. Given the extraordinarily low level of salaries in the state sector, these opportunities have offered prospects of higher living standards. If to this we add the importance of dollar remittances from the United States, it is clear that the traditionally egalitarian distribution of income has given way to a more differentiated income structure in which the possibilities of higher incomes are intimately related to the possibilities of access to dollars and/or to the market. Thus the redefinition of the role of the state, along with the ongoing process of social differentiation, have markedly changed the constellation of social actors in Cuba and have posed a potential challenge to the traditional mechanisms for generating and preserving acceptable levels of consent.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Cuban experience is that despite the dimensions of the crisis and the enormous sacrifices which the population has been forced to assume, the reforms have been widely discussed and there is a more or less public debate over fundamental issues. This is worth noting because many readers, even those most identified with the Cuban revolution, may naturally find it difficult to imagine the possibility of a genuine debate, given the state monopoly of the media.

Let me suggest a contrast with the most successful contemporary experience of socialist economic development. In China, the acceptance of foreign capital and the introduction of market mechanisms were accompanied, from 1978 on, by firm bureaucratic control and a persistent intolerance of any open political debate, let alone explicitly dissident opinions.(2) The other useful point of reference is the situation in Cuba in the early 1980s, when the revolution was apparently cruising rapidly in the same direction as the prevailing historical currents. Then as now, the mass media were basically propaganda instruments with all the advantages and limitations which this implies.

In addition, Cuban academic publications in the social sciences were almost religiously Marxist-Leninist. Almost without exception, they contained articles with an introductory paragraph which quoted with due deference one or another phrase of Marx, Engels, Lenin or, of course, Fidel Castro. And what followed had no apparent relation to the current debates within Marxism and, naturally, even less to other debates in the social sciences. In short there was little or no public debate, and I suspect that because the revolution appeared to be on the side of history, there were not even private discussions of issues which would later be seen as of fundamental importance.(3) The so-called "rectification process," initiated in the mid-1980s, was a first recognition that there were serious unresolved problems. Nevertheless, it was a process initiated and stimulated by Fidel Castro himself, and what is perhaps most surprising, seen from our present perspective, is that in the late 1980s - and despite the evident advances in the social sciences discussed here by Juan Luis Martin - there was still virtually no academic publication that suggested changes that had not been at least insinuated beforehand by Fidel.

By 1992, however, there was clear evidence of a new willingness to discuss the problems of the revolution without recurring to the fossilized bureaucratic jargon so characteristic in previous years. Particularly important was the contribution of Cuadernos de Nuestra America, a review which had already established a solid academic reputation in the field of international studies and which had begun to dedicate increasing attention to domestic issues. Of course, the change was not without its problems, as became evident in early 1996 when the government took control of the Center for Studies on the Americas (CEA), which published Cuadernos, and disbanded and dispersed its research staff. The fate of the center provoked serious concern among many of us who were familiar with its trajectory and convinced that the prospects of defending the socialist option were intimately linked to an open rethinking and debating of the basic issues. The incident suggested that the intellectual opening of the early 1990s might well give way to something more akin to the Chinese combination of economic liberalism and political repression.

Fortunately this did not occur, and most of the CEA researchers have been able to continue their critical work in other settings.(4) Two members of the original research group, Pedro Monreal and Haroldo Dilla, known for their willingness to confront the political and intellectual challenges of their commitment to Cuban socialism, are contributors to this Report. The increasing relaxation of restrictions in academic publications had been accompanied by government initiatives to organize assemblies at all levels to discuss the different reforms it proposes. Many observers underestimate the importance of these discussions and write them off as mere bureaucratic manipulation. Nevertheless, whatever their limitations, they have indicated a clear desire to create consensus and bolster the legitimacy of the regime. The contrast with China is obvious.

The main focus of discussion has naturally been the economic reforms and, as Monreal indicates in this Report, the seriousness of the structural problems which have had to be faced since the onset of the crisis. This has prompted concern over the long-term implications of economic measures, many of which have been simply imposed by the dramatic circumstances of the battle for survival.(5) In an earlier publication, Monreal, together with his colleagues Julio Carranza and Luis Gutierrez, had initiated the debate with a series of proposals designed to clarify the general criteria for building an alternative model capable of overcoming the bottlenecks inherited from the 1980s without abandoning the socialist orientation of the revolution.(6) Of course, the task is complicated by the fact, recognized by the authors, that after the collapse of the Soviet model, "in the theoretical discussion, the question of the viability of socialism has become basically a problem of a fundamental conceptual redefinition."(7) In any event, given the increasingly active role of the market in the assigning of resources and the growing variety of property relations, the central concern of Monreal and his colleagues is to guarantee "the hegemony of social property."(8)

How this is to be achieved is certainly not a simple problem of economic policy. As I have already suggested, the modifications in property relations and the ongoing process of social differentiation have generated a new constellation of social actors whose interaction can hardly be ignored in a debate over the prospects of building an alternative socialist model. Hence the importance of Haroldo Dilla's discussion of civil society in Cuba. As the author himself suggests, there is a clear - and I would add, profoundly unMarxist - bureaucratic tendency to deny the relevance of the new potential actors, to submit them to the straightjacket of the inherited mass organizations and to reject any concern with the problem as a simple expression of the U.S. interest in fomenting opposition to the regime. Dilla argues, to my mind convincingly, that a less biased approach to the question is crucial for defending the socialist option.

The way in which the different social forces intervene in the molding of future options obviously depends on many factors, but one of the most important and most difficult to gauge is what could be characterized as the "solidity of socialist values" in the population in general. Beyond the conceptual problems involved, the task is complicated in the Cuban case, as in that of other socialist experiences, by the state monopoly of the media and the recurring tendency of the "political vanguard" to promote and project what it considers desirable "values." This carries with it the evident risk of underestimating the real relative importance of more subterranean and less-publicized attitudes and opinions.

The potential dimensions of the gulf separating official perceptions and popular consciousness became painfully evident when the Soviet bloc collapsed. Aware of this problem, the Cuban Communist Party is permanently surveying public opinion and producing results which are not generally for public consumption but rather a source of information for the political leadership. It is not altogether clear whether the information used by Guillermo Milan in this Report is the product of these regular party surveys or of others. What is clear, however, is that the economic crisis and the increasing importance of the market unavoidably foment values which, to use Milan's expression, are "dysfunctional" for any socialist project. For this reason, in early 1998, the Writers' and Artists' Union published a severe criticism of the mercantilist values that are increasingly affecting Cuban culture and suggested the need for vigorous measures in order to counteract them.

As can be appreciated from a reading of the articles in this Report, the economic options in the foreseeable future are extremely limited, especially in terms of Cuba's external relations. On the domestic scene, economic recovery will necessarily continue to be slow and painful. The margin for maneuver is slim. This situation only serves to underline my main point: During the last decade, the capacity of the Cuban regime to resist has been due, above all, to its political capital and capability. In order to keep the socialist option open, its undeniable domestic legitimacy needs to be permanently recreated and reinforced. Maybe some day soon, the U.S. government will follow up on the openings detailed here by Philip Brenner and confront the regime with a policy of free and open exchange. Should this occur, Cuba might ironically be faced with an even more dangerous threat to its socialist legacy than that posed by the 40-year blockade.

NOTES

The Cuban Revolution: Resilience and Uncertainty

1. Perhaps the first Cuban economist to recognize publicly the true dimensions of the problem was Julio Carranza in "Cuba: los retos del futuro," Cuadernos de Nuestra America, Vol. 9, No. 19 (July-December 1992), pp. 1-28.

2. This point was argued by Francisco Dominguez in a seminar held in Caracas in November 1998. For an illuminating comparison of the reforms in China and Cuba, see Francisco Dominguez, "Cuba y China: Un estudio comparativo de las reformas de mercado," Revista Venezolana de Economia y Ciencias Sociales, Vol. 4, No. 2-3 (April-September 1998), pp. 35-60.

3. This point is developed at length in Dick Parker, "El proceso de rectificacion y su impacto en las ciencias sociales cubanas," paper presented to the Congress of the Latin American Sociology Association (ALAS), Caracas, May 9-13 1993.

4. For a detailed study of the case, see Mauricio Giuliani, El caso CEA: Intelectuales e inquisidores en Cuba (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1998), p. 288.

5. A useful volume on this issue is Dietmar Dirmoser and Jaime Estay, eds., Economia y reforma economica en Cuba (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1997), p. 538.

6. Julio Carranza Valdes, Luis Gutierrez Urdaneta and Pedro Monreal Gonzalez, Cuba, la reestructuracion economica: Una propuesta para el debate (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1995), p. 211.

7. Julio Carranza Valdes, Luis Gutierrez Urdaneta and Pedro Monreal Gonzalez, Cuba, la reestructuracion economica, p. 5.

8. Julio Carranza Valdes, Luis Gutierrez Urdaneta and Pedro Monreal Gonzalez, Cuba, la reestructuracion economica, p. 6.

Dick Parker is professor of political science at the Central University of Venezuela and editor of the Revista Venezolana de Economia y Ciencias Sociales.