Cuba and 21st-Century socialism

By Weekly Archive On Jul 12, 2007

By Manuel Alberto Ramy
maprogre@gmail.com

I have just read a work by German theoretician Heinz Dieterich published in www.rebelion.org that says he is happy because "the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC) decided that 21st-Century socialism should be included among the research priorities in social sciences and humanities."

Dieterich points out that the idea of 21st-Century socialism goes back before the rise to power of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who has described its process as the socialism of our century. Dieterich adds that several years ago he himself posited the topic, but that the attitude that existed in Cuba was that "there is only one socialism" and that there is no need to talk about "a 21st-Century socialism," a position he considered "untenable." Now, the doors are open to research.

I am neither a theoretician nor an academician; just a working journalist. However, I am a Cuban who has lived through almost the 50 years of the process that began in 1959. Like everyone else, I have a number of questions and opinions.

It is wonderful to open a serious debate about socialism — which various institutions have been conducting quietly, as I’ve reported before — and also to brand it as the hallmark of the new century, as long as it is not done just to put a date on it, like we date cars to show new features that vary little from the previous year’s.

There is an inseparable link between theory and practice, a most necessary feedback between them. Life experience — which consists of the caresses and the scars that reality leaves on the skin of society — is more eloquent than any theory. No wonder Lenin said: "Practice is the criterion of truth."

If anything is well-defined to socialists, it is the objective in sight: the task begins with a single step and consists of the method and ways to complete it. The task responds not only to the will of the revolutionaries and is greatly affected by the unavoidable confrontations with the reality that needs to be changed and with the foreign sponsors of that reality.

This confrontation is real (we Cubans are experts on the subject) but even though it is real and current, even though it calls for skills, talent and some prudence, it must not be a permanent excuse to shut ourselves from creative debate and the exploration of novel ideas and solutions.

We have experienced the huge failures (and their consequences) that marked the end of the past century and the start of the new one:
• in the USSR and the former socialist camp, "real socialism" turned out to be unreal;
• the active participation of society became a verticality of directives;
• a journalism that utilized criticism slipped into apologetic inventions;
• from open debates within the project (not outside it) we went on to the reading of manuals with dogmatic characteristics;
• and the wages we received for our productivity were replaced to a large extent by the place we occupied in the productive chain.

In sum, the socialization of the activities involving products and services became a state capitalism that reverted values in an indirect manner, according to the wishes of a bureaucracy that eventually decided the outcome of the game.

Man-the-producer is a consumer; that’s a fact. The satisfactions and dissatisfactions of this dual condition are determinant. A breakdown of this dual condition is fatal. For many years, the Empire has worked in this direction, and while at this point there are not enough material resources to harmonize that duality, there are other means, such as real and effective participation in the making of decisions.

The man who truly participates commits himself and enriches the ideas and dispositions of his leaders. I’m talking about an elevator that goes down but also rises.

I recall that at the start of the crisis of the Nineties, the Communist Party called for open assemblies in all work and service places so that everyone — militants and nonmilitants — could speak and opine freely about the most pressing issues.

From these assemblies came measures like the decentralization of the economy, the farmers’ markets, the depenalization of the dollar and other, less visible steps. The assemblies, which didn’t immediately solve the "problems of the stomach," partly satisfied the problems of the spirit: I count for something, I am worth something, I opine, I participate.

And we moved up. Hauling ballast, true, burdened with problems that we still drag behind us, such as corruption and a crisis of values, but we climbed out of the hole.

Now the idea is to resume that path, even with the ballast, but with a greater experience as a Cuban process that must include the failures of an unreal socialism and the new experiences that can be found in other countries. Plus any positive elements that existed in certain measures adopted in the Nineties and that can be refitted to the present circumstances.

The Cuban process is almost 50 years old. Doesn’t it have enough praxis (as theoreticians say) to allow us to go inside and realize that after all those years there are still areas in the economy (particularly in the service sector) that have not worked? And I’m not talking about education and health care. What are we going to do about it? Continue as we are or rethink the procedures creatively?

I’m not talking about copying the Chinese or Vietnamese models, because those who copy eventually fail the course. Life is implacable. Everyone must carry on with his own requirements, circumstances and needs.

The Chinese, who created the socialist market economy and who by the mid-century will have the world’s most powerful economy, are involved in a process that — while it doesn’t dismantle certain apertures — seeks a better control of those apertures so the final objective is not lost. The balance between economic gains and possible political losses is their task. Their task alone?

The Cuban situation is different. We have not achieved an economic lift-off; we spend more than $1 billion in food; we buy 85 percent of what we eat; and our agricultural production declined 10 percent in 2006. Do we need to meditate for long about 21st-Century socialism (a process whose characteristics I do not know) to solve a situation that impacts negatively on our people for reasons different from the Chinese? Or should we explore new experiences in the farm sector?

Theoretical research is welcome and necessary, but why can’t we begin from our own experience with successes, inefficiencies and errors?

Manuel Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief for Radio Progreso Alternativa and editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso Weekly.