To foresee is to save
By José Alejandro Rodríguez
pepe@juventudrebelde.cu
From Juventud Rebelde
“In foreseeing lies the art of saving,” predicted José Martí, who always looked ahead. And that apothegm summarized the complex and non-lineal changes involved in the updating of the Cuban economic model.
Yes, because it will take God’s help and men’s effort to go from excessive centralization to horizontal autonomy and power, to diversify the forms of process and property, to eradicate the government’s paternalism and achieve the long-hoped-for “e’s” – efficiency, efficacy and effectiveness – at all levels.
But the most delicate task will be to deal with the Market and not succumb to it, so we may continue to engage in a Revolution.
The voyage toward a fuller socialism will not be expeditious. There will be no seductive highways, but abrupt sidewalks covered with obstacles. And the pebble in the shoe, the tortoise that replaces the hare, is the resistance to movement by everything that’s bureaucratically obsolete and inoperative, which tends to perpetuate itself under camouflage.
Some call that situation a “difficult change in mindset.” Along with Silvio, I prefer to call it a “fear to lose the helm.” It is to cling to orders and command, to manage everything as if it were a grocery store, even individuals. It is not knowing shadings and differences; living in wishfulness, not in reality. To mistrust initiatives, to understand politics as a brake, not as a liberating force.
The Cuban president himself has criticized the resistance to change expressed by some “field bosses” of socialism, the people who created an internal blockade. And he agrees with the popular feeling that today asks him to do the same that, early in the Revolution, folks asked the Maximum Leader to do: “Shake the tree.”
We’ll have to protect ourselves from the naive perception that guarantees the success of the new objectives only if new measures and laws are adopted; protect ourselves from the technocrats who ignore the human face of the economy and seek only macroeconomic balance.
Because of that, we’ll have to leap ahead of life and watch closely the sequels that the economic changes may cause in the more vulnerable sectors. We’ll have to leap ahead of the problems and find alternatives, not arrive after the painful results in a country that has proclaimed that no citizen will be left shelterless.
We’ll have to acknowledge that the nation is transforming itself, being fully aware that this is the only way to make our socialism viable. Cuba will save itself from falling into the nets of voracious capitalism using Martí’s ability to look ahead, a skill we haven’t always practiced. Often, ills and deviations step on our heels and that’s when we recognize and confront them. “To foresee is to win,” said the Apostle of our independence.
The Guidelines used for the update, the fruit of widespread popular debate, are not dogmas and need to be aired every day with the results of their application, because of the saying “new solutions, new problems.” They imply a permanent observatory to detect what needs a continuing modification.
One example of the necessary dialectics on a subject with strategic value for the country was the substitution of Law Decree 259 by L.D. 300, regarding the distribution of idle lands in usufruct. The latter law grants the land holder the right to build homes in his territory and bequeath the land. Other examples were the expansion and flexibility of the laws concerning non-State labor.
We must retain the urgency to rethink everything among everyone; the balance between realism and the desire for the greatest possible justice under the current circumstances; the certainty that we mustn’t become complacent or trust blindly in our own schemes for the good of the nation.
Inevitably, the stubborn life will lead us to seek the greatest and most democratic participation and decisions from the main artificer of the changes: the people, who – come hell or high water – have supported the changing and difficult process called the Revolution.
