FRFI 207 February / March 2009

50 years of resistance and development in Cuba

‘I conclude wishing you and all of our compatriots, good health and much energy for the year 2009. We shall need them both...We Cuban revolutionaries can look at our past with our heads held high and into the future with the same confidence in our strength and our capacity to resist. Let’s congratulate ourselves on the 50th anniversary of the victory of the Revolution’. (Raul Castro, speech to National Assembly, 27 December 2008)

Throughout the world, individuals, communities and governments joined the Cuban people in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. The island is admired around the world. It has been respected for half a century for resisting imperialist aggression and providing military support to revolutionaries overseas, for its world-leading human development indicators resulting from its socialist welfare system, its internationalist education and health care programmes, its biotechnology industry, its ecologically sustainable development and its achievements in sport and culture.

Here in Britain, however, the 50th anniversary was marked by the sneering suggestion that the Revolution has failed to liberate the Cuban people from political repression and poverty and that contemporary reforms have been introduced in recognition of this failure – heralding the return of consumerism or even capitalism to the island. Such commentaries in the bourgeois media are based on profound mis-characterisations of the Revolution which obscure the way that development strategy has been formulated since 1959. These are:

1) Fidel Castro (and since 2006, Raul Castro) has been responsible for every decision and policy implemented and different stages within the Revolution are the product of his psychological whims and driven by his determination to maintain a monopoly on power.
2) There is no democracy and civil society is repressed.
3) All developments are ideological rather than practical measures for dealing with concrete problems.

Refusing to recognise the revolutionary process, these interpretations censor a rich history of internal debate, conflict, and consensus in Cuba. The opinions and values of the Cuban people are diverse and this is reflected in the coexistence of different political tendencies within their leadership. The measures introduced in each period have depended on which tendency has been able to win the argument or secure a consensus at each stage, and the outcome is largely determined by material conditions both on the island and internationally. Radical new measures or retreats, U-turns or consolidations, cannot be understood in terms of individual power politics.

To move beyond these crude and politically motivated caricatures, it is essential to understand the challenge which confronted the Cuban revolutionaries when they seized power 50 years ago. How can you achieve economic development with equity in an underdeveloped island, without relying on capitalist mechanisms (profit, material incentives, competition, the law of value) which undermine the collective consciousness and new social relations integral to socialism and communism? To this complex problem were added the further obstacles of having a small domestic market hugely reliant on international trade, the US blockade and its imposition on third countries, military, economic and political attack, and diplomatic isolation.

For half a century, policy in Cuba has been formulated within existing limits:

political commitments – socialist welfare, state planning, the predominance of state property, anti-imperialist internationalism;
economic constraints – the US blockade, trade dependency, difficulty with obtaining credit and the relative ‘backwardness’ of Cuban industry and agriculture outside pockets of advanced technology.

Policy has fluctuated between what is ideal – emphasising socialist consciousness – and what is necessary – conceding pragmatic reforms, but always within these limits. The Cuban Revolution has developed through various stages which reflect fluctuations in its ability to push forward socialist development, creating innovative new social and political forms, without falling back on capitalist mechanisms to solve economic problems.

The 1990s were difficult years for the Revolution. The collapse of the socialist bloc countries between 1989 and 1991 cut off around 80% of Cuba’s trade; GDP plummeted by 35% and food shortages decreased caloric intake by nearly 40%. The crisis was exacerbated by punitive laws tightening the US blockade in 1990, 1992, and 1996. During this ‘Special Period’ pragmatic reforms were introduced – joint ventures with foreign capital, the legalisation of the dollar, small-scale private enterprise and financial autonomy for state enterprises – to stimulate the economy and get vital goods to the people. Nonetheless, the Revolution did not renege on political commitment to socialist welfare, state planning and the predominance of state property. Once the economy stabilised and recovered, many pro-market measures were rolled back.

Material recovery was accompanied by the Battle of Ideas, a campaign of political regeneration initiated in 2000, involving hundreds of social programmes and investments to reverse the inequalities of the previous decade. This process of the reconsolidation of socialist principles is based on the concept that education and culture create commitment to political ideas but that these remain abstract if the standard of living is insufficient to alleviate daily concerns for survival. However, material improvements should not be achieved by promoting market exchanges and encouraging private enterprise, but by budgetary controls, central planning, and state investment in skills training and education, fostering industry, exploiting natural resources, diversifying agriculture, and investing in research and development for industrial production and the medical industry.

The many interesting developments in Cuba over these years have been closely followed and analysed in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! These have included:

• 2003-2005, measures introduced to recentralise financial resources, providing the state with a lever to foster productivity and efficiency gains via investments and planning, not via competition and ‘free enterprise’ (FRFI 182 and 183).
• December 2004, the initiation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), with the signing of trade deals between Cuba and Venezuela (FRFI 183). This built on previous cooperation in which Cuba sent educationalists and healthcare professionals to Venezuela en masse (FRFI 177). The programme was subsequently extended to Bolivia, Nicaragua and elsewhere in South America and simultaneously saw the development of emergency medical contingents to countries around the world (FRFI 190).
• 2005-2006, a campaign against corruption which emphasised the concept of work as a social duty (FRFI 189 and 194)
• 2006, the Energy Revolution, focusing on economic and ecological efficiency – reducing energy consumption, government subsidies and vulnerability to US attack (FRFI 189).
• 2007-2008 six months of elections for the Municipal, Provincial and the National Assemblies -culminating in a new government in which 61% of representatives were born after the Revolution and 63% were new to national government – a leadership which is both young and new, committed to the political principles of the Revolution and ready to adapt to contemporary challenges and consciousness (FRFI 201).
• Autumn 2007, a nationwide popular consultation during which millions of Cuban citizens discussed the country’s problems and made 1.3 million concrete proposals (FRFI 200 and 203).
• Autumn 2008, 3.4 million workers considered proposed changes to the social security law (FRFI 206).

The Cuban Revolution has demonstrated the real meaning of democracy – where the masses are active in determining the policies which affect them individually and collectively.

Bourgeois commentators have remained largely silent on these developments, banging on about Cuba’s material poverty even as economic growth ranged between 7.5% and 12.5% per annum from 2005 to 2007. Ignorant, lazy or malicious critics have distorted developments in Cuba. For example, new legislation allowing Cubans to buy computers, DVDs and mobile phones was celebrated as the embrace of consumerism, when it owed more to the installation of a new national grid significantly increasing the electrical supply (FRFI 203). In summer 2008, journalists cheered the end of the cap on wage bonuses as the death of egalitarianism – yet it was actually to standardise salary policy across the economy as part of the implementation of the enterprise perfection system of economic management, which had operated in army enterprises since 1987 (FRFI 204). When journalists celebrated the resurgence of private ownership, it was really a campaign to hand out idle arable land in usufruct (short-term rent free loan) for those who would produce food and sell it to the state at established prices (FRFI 205 and 206).

2008 was a difficult year for the Cuban Revolution because of:

• the fall in world prices of Cuba’s principal exports – nickel, sugar and sea food – and a rise in the cost of importing foodstuffs and fuel
• the world recession
• the devastating impact of three hurricanes which caused $10 billion of destruction, including 530,000 homes damaged.

Despite this, Cuba’s economic growth reached 4.3%, down from the 8% planned, but far superior to the advanced capitalist countries. Most importantly, economic growth in Cuba leads to increased social investments. Recently, transport has been massively improved, new jobs have been created in the state sector and millions of durable goods have been distributed under the Energy Revolution. Current priorities are to raise food production and to make progress in solving Cuba’s outstanding housing problem, which was exacerbated by the hurricanes.

‘The more Cuba resists the more she is respected and Cuba is ready to win the respect of the entire world.’

For 50 years, the Cuban people have resisted imperialism. However, their best form of resistance has not just been in asserting their national sovereignty, but in creating an alternative model of development which places human beings at its centre. They have consolidated their socialist Revolution without dogmatism, without fear of criticism, without compromise, with imagination, creativity and integrity – developing, improving and prospering.

Viva 50 years of the socialist revolution in Cuba! Forward to the next 50 years!

Helen Yaffe