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Title: Cuba: The Economy Changes Author: Octavio Alberola Date: 2021, Summer Language: en Topics: Cuba, economy, authoritarian left, the left, Fifth Estate, Fifth Estate #409 Source: Fifth Estate #409, Summer, 2021, accessed July 6, 2022 at https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/409-summer-2021/cuba-the-economy-changes/
The Cuban state has usually been able to keep a tight lid on protests.
Generally, it only allows demonstrations that have been organized by
government ministries. However, during the fall and winter of 2020-21
the dissident San Isidro Movement in Havana began publicly defying the
rules by demonstrating for freedom of expression for artists. The
government responded with intimidation and even arrests.
Another group, comprised of 300 Cubans of several professions and
political persuasions in Cuba and abroad, recently signed an open letter
to U.S. President Biden, asking him to end the economic blockade of
Cuba. The letter acknowledges the United States is not solely
responsible for the problems facing the country, and that the Cuban
state is far from democratic. But it is only admitted privately by some
of the signatories that Cuban government restrictions on freedom also
prevent solving the island’s economic problems.
In February, in response to these expressions of dissent, the regime
announced the expansion of regulations and security measures to prohibit
protests in the Havana neighborhoods where Cuba’s powerful elite usually
live and work, including state ministries and other government
buildings, as well as areas where tourists shop.
Official history dates the birth of the Cuban Revolution from the
triumphal entry of the guerrillas into Havana on January 1, 1959. But it
was not until April 16, 1961 that Fidel Castro declared the nation was
undertaking what he characterized as a socialist revolution, initiating
the eradication of the exploitation of some people by others.
The daily life of Cuban workers has belied the proclaimed emancipatory
objective of the revolution. It served as an ideological justification
for the seizure and retention of power. Castro’s socialism was actually
a simple Caribbean expression of Eastern European style state
capitalism.
In reality, the regime has never tried to fulfill the promise of
eradicating capitalist exploitation or suppressing class differences.
It expropriated and nationalized the means of production and
consumption, making the State and its bureaucracy managers, keeping
everyone else as employees and servants. Workers have been denied the
right to organize in autonomous unions, to defend their class interests.
Anarchists and others who tried to defend self-management of work places
have been repressed.
Starting in 1964, the Soviet Union assisted the Cuban state through
trade concessions, including purchasing sugar at a price higher than the
world market. In 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed and its economic
support ended. To cope with the economic difficulties this caused, at
the beginning of the 1990s what was known as the Special Period was
initiated.
The government invited foreign investment in tourism, free-trade zones,
and joint-venture projects that produce goods and services most Cubans
could not buy. They were barred from markets, hotels, hospitals and
recreation centers that were only open to diplomats, tourists and Cubans
who were able to obtain dollars through jobs catering to foreign
visitors or from families abroad.
At the same time, the supply of basic ration products from the state-run
supermarkets was diminished. The majority of the population continued to
live under austere conditions, and for some, poverty was intensified.
Many had to commit illegal acts to survive, such as workplace theft and
engaging in prostitution (the jineteras) with tourists.
All this enabled the regime and the party to increase their authority
over Cuban society. By legalizing some forms of private employment, the
government was able to set the rules and demand tax payments. It
intensified competitiveness while suppressing cooperative endeavors and
solidarity. It also stymied attempts at making the society freer and
more egalitarian.
The reforms begun in the 1990s, and increased since Fidel left
leadership of the State to his brother Raul in 2006, have been
concentrated in the economic sphere. The only changes made have been
those needed to maintain the traditional relationship between the elite
and society.
When Chávez became president of Venezuela at the turn of the 21st
century, that country began providing economic assistance to the Cuban
state. The Cuban authorities resumed primary reliance on centralized
supervision and nationalized enterprises. Nevertheless, many Cubans
remained economically deprived.
In 2006, Fidel’s brother Raul took over the presidency and restrictions
on private enterprise began to be loosened again. From 2007 on, Cubans
were allowed to stay in any hotel in their country, rent a vehicle or a
tourist motorcycle and spend their vacation in a tourist establishment
on the island (depending on their resources). The laws for selling real
estate and cars were also loosened.
In 2011, 181 previously illegal private occupations were legalized.
These included such jobs as self-employed taxi drivers and shoeshine
services. Two years later, 201 more occupations were made legal. In
addition, Cubans were allowed to legally leave the country for two years
without losing the right of residence. The reforms of immigration laws
in 2016 and 2018 enabled Cubans who had left the country illegally
before 2013 to visit the island.
In 2019, Raul Castro retired from the presidency, and Miguel Mario
DĂaz-Canel Bermudez replaced him. During the subsequent year, several
reforms were announced to address economic and health problems
afflicting the country.
As part of the celebration of the 62nd anniversary of the so-called
revolution, DĂaz-Canel announced new economic regulations decided upon
by the Communist Party, to take effect on January 1, 2021. These
included fixing monetary exchange rates between the dollar and peso. The
government will also permit more categories of self-employment to help
people survive in the midst of the serious crisis. Nevertheless, a list
of 124 forbidden occupations remains.
DĂaz-Canel assured the population that permission to participate in the
private sector will be on the basis of guaranteeing all Cubans equal
opportunities, rights and social justice, by promoting interest and
motivation for work. It remains a government managed process, not one
involving equality and opportunities for self-managed choices.
State capitalism is giving way more and more to private capitalism. The
much-vaunted reforms will result in reductions in government subsidies,
such as income and rent assistance, free health care for people with low
incomes and other support for poor people. This change from relying
primarily on state capitalism to empowering private enterprise is
justified as making the Cuban economy more efficient.
The reforms came in time for people to celebrate the New Year and the
62nd anniversary of the Revolution according to each one’s wallet (some
in palaces, others in huts) as in any capitalist country.
Over the years, the Cuban rulers have continually rejected and repressed
proposals and attempts from inside and outside revolutionary circles to
democratize and influence the so-called Revolution towards truly
emancipatory objectives. They have acted against such attempts with
equal or greater zeal than they have against the right-wingers exiled in
Miami, who would like to reinstall bourgeois democracy on the island.
Nothing indicates that a more democratic or liberatory outcome is on the
horizon for Cuba very soon. Given this reality, during the regime’s time
in power the majority of Cubans have sought ways to survive in a country
where everything depends on the State. Dissenters have met with
repression and large numbers of people have left the island. In these
circumstances, it has not been possible to develop broad opposition
capable of expressing real alternatives to the regime. Only a fragmented
and polarized political spectrum currently exists.
There are social explosions and there is much frustration and
discontent, but different groups are responding to their own narrow
issues with limited demands. As a result, emancipatory perspectives for
the society as a whole have remained undeveloped.
Neither the San Isidro Movement nor the other initiatives question the
government’s holding onto capitalism in one form or another. Hence, no
matter how much media noise is made about such initiatives, it is not
from them that emancipatory or even democratizing perspectives will
emerge for the Cuban people.
Although ideologists of the status quo often say that capitalism
supports democracy, in fact, there have been and are many examples of
capitalism supporting dictatorships of all kinds. In the Cuban
situation, the ongoing drift towards private capitalism is compatible
with maintenance of the dictatorship of one-party government with the
extension of the business economy to all sectors of economic activity
(except the 124 prohibited ones). It is to be a gradual process managed
by the same elite that has controlled the government and the party
during the 62 years of the so-called Revolution.
Being aware of this does not prevent us from continuing to desire and
advocate for a society where all public affairs are resolved through the
self-organization of those of us who live, work, create and love, in
Cuba and worldwide. As anarchists we look forward to the end of wage
labor, imposed authority, the cult of personality, direct structural and
symbolic violence, hyper-competitiveness, bureaucracy, decisions in the
hands of an elite, concentration of wealth and unequal appropriation of
knowledge.
This is what Cuban anarchists want and what all the world’s anarchists
fight for.
[Translation from Spanish by FE staff.]