Popular debate on Cuba’s economy
By Antonio Díaz
For many in Cuba, Friday has become the golden day of the press. It’s for a very simple reason: it is the day when Granma, the central information organ of Cuba’s Central Committee of the Communist Party, not only doubles its size in pages to 16 but also includes a two-page section titled “Letters to the Editor,” where readers can express their points of view and see them published in the island nation’s most widely printed newspaper.
The letters’ or articles’ tone are mostly critical, denouncing concrete societal problems as diverse as the society itself. That’s how it started and it is how it has progressed during the last year, but since all that is born develops and, for the good of its readers and the country, it has happily broken off into writings of opinion about issues as dicey as the Cuban economy
Some of the latest editions include articles which offer a polemic vision on the economy’s ruinous condition and ways to improve it, dealing with such topics as the privatizing, or not, of certain shops or enterprises, basically in the gastronomic sector. As recently as January 15th, four of the articles included are coincidental in emphasizing, not privatizing but an enhancement in basic organization and sense of responsibility as a sure way to change in the administration of gastronomic services. And not only those, for such principles can come in handy in other areas of similar complexity such as cooperatives in agriculture which have lately obtained positive results either in production or income.
Also dealt with is an endemic problem in Cuba, throughout its economy, and a great part of its businesses, establishments and other components of the same: the weak internal control that allows the loss of materials and utensils in considerable quantities which nourishes the black market which creates a system of fraudulent remuneration that honest employees don’t receive.
It is the issue of corruption that hangs over the entire society like a certain threat of elimination if something is not done soon.
In one way or the other, those articles deal with what I call the “AIDS of economics” affecting Cuban society; what we discover as we read them is a lack of defensive capacity in enterprises and their structures, in all sorts of production or service institutions which can hardly protect themselves from systematic thefts and whose internal frameworks are unable to generate protection, thus depending on rigorous external controls or superior structures.
To admit the current condition of the economic system, whatever it is, as suffering from AIDS, is already an important step in the path towards solutions. Society, as it is put in one of the letters, does tolerate that “resources which belong to all of us end up in the hands of a few.”
The best part of this debate are those ideas which, on the one hand make it clear that the private-social dichotomy is not the point and, on the other hand, opens it up for popular as well as official consideration to see all those alternatives implied in socialist property which enable it to work properly without necessarily resorting to the use of private means of production in all fields and levels of society.
The cooperative model, based as it is on collective decision-making on the side of those workers offering some sort of service or production – and which already has some presence in agriculture — is being proposed for the other sectors of the economy, commencing with services. The concept of usufruct is being discussed as well as the need to rigorously apply it on legal and contractual bases in each and every shop or small enterprise.
The internal market is analyzed as seriously as the need to strengthen it and see it as a priority. These texts do not possess the conceptual depth characteristic of a specialized economic discourse; they are, so far, common people’s visions based on their everyday experiences which make them feel so dissatisfied with current modes of production that they understand the need to solve the most elementary problems by promoting more production and more effective control of productive means. It is just simple human intuition and logics. Nevertheless, the pages of this and other publications should eventually be open for analyses of academic value, because it is crucial, in order to save the Cuban economy, to understand that economy is no less than a science. If we forget this, we may be making the same hypothetical mistake and be ready to pay the price of someone who takes his ill son to an economist instead of visiting a pediatrician.
The economy is a science like any other, with its triumphs and limitations, just like any other, including medicine. Economic problems must be dealt with as such, and authority given for it. This must be respected or the price paid the cost being in the form of taking the grave child to an economist to save him, without lessening intuition and common sense, which are always indispensible, and of which true science nurtures and serves itself.
But this does not obliterate the even greater importance of giving air to public debate, and even if the process is in a primary stage and seems limited in reach and variety of topics, it is an encouraging start. I see President Raúl Castro’s call to honestly share one’s viewpoints and to even defend them as an indication to fight the bureaucratic and mimetic tendencies proliferating, together with other vices, in Cuban society. These pages in Granma are a contribution towards this path.
These are very positive signs of a move towards a culture of debate, one that I have seen being vehemently defended by honest young citizens eager to share their revolutionary ideas with the rest of society. These attempts should be given free space and stimuli in every way possible. It is the best economy school we can think of, for the whole of society and, above all, for those who have responsibilities in the economic direction of the country.
Antonio Diaz Medina is a licensed Cuban economist.
