Transcript Not differently from other revolutionary experiences,

Introduction:
Changes in Cuba: key political
and institutional determinants
by Juan Publio Triana Cordoví
Chapter 1:
Five Decades of State Socialism in Cuba: An Introduction to PostCongress Reform Challenges
by Alberto Gabriele
Chapter 2:
Evaluation of the impact of recent reform measures on Cuba’s
agricultural performance
by Armando Nova González
Chapter 3:
Cuba’s Macroeconomic Crisis and Reform. The Role of the New
Non-State Actors
by Pavel Vidal Alejandro and Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva (with a contribution by
Alexandra Wielink)
Chapter 4:
Commercial Circuits and Economic Inequality
by Sara Romano’
Chapter 5:
Cuban reforms at a crossroads
by Alberto Gabriele and Pavel Vidal Alejandro
THE ECONOMY OF CUBA
AFTER THE VI PARTY CONGRESS
• Nova Publishers, 2012
• Alberto Gabriele, UNCTAD,
DITC, TNCDB (ed.)
Introduction (i)
 This book is the product of collaboration between Cuban and European social
scientists. Without ignoring the devastating impact of the US embargo, it shows
that Cuba’s grave economic impasse is endogenously rooted in the contradictions
of its peculiar version of state socialism
 These contradictions led to a strongly idealistic and egalitarian bias in economic
and social policies, implying a severe underestimation of the objective
constraints imposed by the relevance of the law of value in the domain of social
relations of production and exchange
 Two of their most severe manifestations of the crisis of Cuba’s traditional state
socialist model are:
o
o
the parlous state of the agricultural sector
the emergence of multiple and novel forms of income inequality.
 In broad terms, the overall product of over fifty years of socialist survival has been
the well-known “Cuban paradox”, constituted by the coexistence of:
o
o
o
very high degree of human development
abysmally low capacity to produce material goods
In turn, the paradox is related to Cuba’s unique, ever-increasing and ultimately unsustainable
process of tertiarization
Introduction (ii)
Raul Castro’s administration:
•
•
identified the core roots of Cuba’s persisting underdevelopment
striving to implement a comprehensive program of policy measures aimed at achieving
decisive structural transformations. Their ultimate goal is to make Cuba’s economy more
efficient and sustainable, while preserving the fundamental values and principles of
socialism.
 So far, the liberalization of small-scale commercial activities and of some important
markets (such as those of cars and housing) has already advanced remarkably
 while productivity-enhancing changes in the key areas of industrial and agricultural
production and distributions system are proving far more difficult to achieve.*
•
Adopting an inter-disciplinary approach based on both economic and sociological
interpretative categories, this book analyzes the most crucial problems and
contradictions of Cuban socialism at the beginning of the second decade of the XXI
century.
•
The various chapters also critically evaluate the policy measures that have been announced
by the government and those that have already been implemented, and posit further or
alternative reform suggestions
* The recent, belated breakthrough in internet communications might herald other positive
developments
Chapter 1.
Five Decades of State Socialism in Cuba:
An Introduction to Post-Congress Reform Challenges
by Alberto Gabriele
Not differently from other revolutionary experiences
Challenge of building a structurally new type of economy under
conditions of:




technological backwardness
underdevelopment of production and exchange relations,
isolation from well-established international markets*
exodus of the former ruling class, with most of the country’s
knowledge endowment, especially in the areas of economic
management, administration, and organization
* Both
the USSR and China were hit for decades by various forms of trade embargoes imposed by the main
capitalist powers
Conversely, Cuba differed
From Russia and China as:
 It is a small country
 Its main economic and social problems did not stem mainly
from an embryonic degree of development of capitalist
relations of production and exchange, as it had been the case
in pre-revolutionary Russia and China
 Rather, they were caused by the articulation of these relations
– which were already prevalently capitalist in nature – around
the axis of the island’s dependency from the US
 A classical example of “underdevelopment” according to the
particular meaning attributed to this term by the
“dependencia” school
Little had been learnt
On the structural shortcomings of the Soviet economic model on the part of
world socialists, especially in the South.
Why?
 perception of the USSR success in contributing to the victory against Nazism in World
War II
 USSR’s decisive support for decolonization
 intellectual climate of the Cold War
 dearth of reliable data[1]
 conjunctural situation occurring in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the relative
performance of the USSR[2] vis-à-vis the US and other capitalist powers looked quite
good.[3]
[1]
[2]
[3]
This factor was to a large extent linked to the previous one. The propaganda dimension of the Cold War fed in both camps a
non-objective mindset and a proclivity to believe in their own discourse. Nowadays, the propaganda component of ideological
rivalries and geopolitical international relations, far from disappearing, is more hidden and sophisticated. However, more
relatively objective and reliable economic data on virtually all countries in the world are potentially available now than
was the case fifty years ago. Moreover, access to it by independent researchers is facilitated by the diffusion of modern
electronic technologies.
Actually, Guevara rapidly developed a deeply critical view of the Soviet economy. However, his perspective, while
ingenious, was vitiated by an idealistic bias, and did not withstand the test of historical experience.
The tragic failure of the Great Leap Forward was broadly contemporary to the victory of the Cuban Revolution. Little about
it, however, was known at the time even inside China itself.
Cuban leaders did not have
Much more theoretical tools to build up a socialist economy than
the Russians in 1917 or the Chinese in 1949
Rather they lacked:
 the deep intellectual tradition of Russian Marxists (which
contributed to allowed Lenin to revert to the NEP at a
relatively early stage)
 the administrative and managerial experience acquired by
the Chinese Communist Party in running the conomy in
vast regions under its military control (inhabited by tens of
millions of people) during the 1930s and 1940s
The US embargo had a far reaching
impact…
 Devastating ,due to Cuba’s extreme dependency
 Along with political and military threats, contributed to
perpetuate a sort of permanent quasi-emergency state, making
it particularly difficult to rationally plan and implement a longterm development strategy
 Forced Cuba to rely almost exclusively on the USSR and its
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) allies for
trade, economic, and financial cooperation, forging an uneven
partnership relation that led the country to adopt a paternalistic
and extremely distorted international trade pattern
…adding to the socialist system’s
distortions
 The de-linkage of Cuba’s terms of trade from the world
structure of relative prices not only deepened the island’s
dependence on exports of sugar and a few other raw or
primary commodities and traditional commodity-based
products…but also contributed to distort the range of
technological alternatives faced by planners.
 Goods-producing sectors, and agriculture in particular,
adopted more capital- and energy-intensive techniques than
those that would have prevailed under ‘normal’ market-based
capitalist conditions
 Dependence on imports intensified both in the primary and
secondary sectors
 These contradictions came with an enormous cost after the fall
of the USSR
Key theoretical fallacy (endogenous):
Denial
Of the basic and fundamental
difference between the socialist and
the communist principles of
production and distribution
Due to the continuing validity of the law
of value under socialism,as
demonstrated by
 theory (since the XIX century)
 almost a century of worldwide historical experience since 1917
Why is the law of value still around?
This key theoretical issue cannot be treated extensively here, but basically:
 both socialism and capitalism (in spite of their major differences[1]) are based on the
production and exchange of commodities and services
 in both systems the production and exchange in the productive sphere of the
economy generate a surplus
 relative prices must broadly reflect the underlying structure of costs
 a cost structure can be seen as correspondent to the average amount of human
labor time currently required to produce different goods and services, under the
environmental, technological, and institutional conditions prevailing in a given society
in a certain period of time
 if workers and machines are not allocated properly across the socialist economy, and
are not remunerated predominantly according to their contribution to social
production, basic economic equilibria are violated, and the socialist economy
cannot function well
[1] Various types of socialist systems can be considered either as
 historical variants of a mode of production different from capitalism
 different socioeconomic formations (as I maintain)
Prof. Vasapollo* argues
 “...monetary-commercial relation survive under socialism and
everything appears to suggest they will be there for a prolonged period of
time, the length of which is not clear, neither in theoretical nor in practical
terms”
 the (effective) realization of socialist property and of other forms of
property requires the…utilization of monetary-commercial relations during
the complex process of socialist transition. Yet, there were several
attempts to deny or minimize the role of these relations in almost all
socialist countries, and this mistake has implied a very high cost in the
endeavour to construct the new society”
This problem has been more severe in some countries and epochs than in
other ones:
 Great Leap Forward in China
 re-centralization periods in Cuba
*
Vasapollo L., 2011, (ed.) L’economia cubana non e’ una scienza triste, Achab, Verona
A particularly centralized version of the
Soviet socialist model
strong egalitarian policy bias
non-market policy approaches dominated
material incentive-based policy tools were
despised, underutilized
A cyclical, stop-and-go pattern of
economic policymaking
 Centralizing, excessively anti-market policies lead to hard
times:
o Inefficiency becomes evident
o Prudent market-oriented changes
Things slowly begin to improve thanks to:
o positive impact of partial reforms
o and/or favourable exogenous factors
 Policy-makers relax and attempt a new re-centralization drive
5 cycles since the 1980s
 1980-1986, decentralization (I)
 1987-1991, recentralization (II)
 1992-2001, decentralization (III)
•
•
•
•
USSR collapse forces Cuba’s planners to deal with world prices: deep crisis, special period
famine, mass starving avoided thanks to positive side of egalitarian institutions and culture
selective and cautions opening up to trade, FDI, market
Slow recovery, but…
 2002-2005, recentralization (IV)
 2006-present, decentralization (V)
Decentralization unambiguously led to efficiency gains and better economic performances,
and vice versa*
* See Doimeadiós Reyes Y., 2007, El crecimiento económico en Cuba: un análisis desde la productividad total de los factores Universidad de La Habana, La Habana,
2007
Decline of goods production (i)
In a small country, in the context of the modern globalizing world
 more and more difficult to sustain the domestic production of
tradables under excessively inefficient conditions
Traditionally, most goods are tradable, most services are not*
bulk of goods production is
shifting into GVC, less so services
 Nowadays, the
• GVCs, domestically and internationally, are an intensively price-, trade-,
market-based form of production
* OJO! Presently, this is less and less true, especially in Cuba
Decline of goods production (ii)
 Disrespect for the law of value
 Irrational price structure
 Over-egalitarian and distorted wage scales,
incentives
 Hyper-centralized planning
All but impossible
to achieve international
competitiveness in most goods producing
activities
Led therefore to their
continuous decline
Tertiarization
Two main contradictory forces drove this process
1.
The State’s extraordinary capability to capture resources from the
rest of the economy


and to earmark them (rather efficiently) towards the direct and universal
provision of social services
in order to satisfy the basic needs of the population[1]
2.
The combination of hyper-centralized planning with an extremely
distorted domestic structure of prices and wages

all but impossible to achieve international competitiveness in most goods producing
activities, and led therefore to their continuous decline
Thus, the relative weight of services kept increasing. But… which services?
[1] This capability explains the unique dichotomy between poor economic performance, on one hand, and good and ever-improving
human development, on the other hand, that is so typical of Cuba . Cuba’s Human Development Index, as estimated by UNDP,
is much higher than the Latin American average. Even more telling is the rank differential between human and economic
development: “If positive, this indicator shows that a country is faring better in terms of human development than in terms of
economic development than the world average, and vice versa. Cuba's rank differential is 44, the highest in the whole sample of
182 developed and developing countries
2 categories of services (SS)
Infrastructural and other goods production
supporting Services (IS)
Directly Needs-oriented Services (DNS)
Caveat: Validity and applicability of this aggregation criterion is limited, among other
things, by the availability of data.
IS
 Rather than directly satisfying human needs, they constitute a
necessary infrastructural support for the production and
transportation of goods
 Ex. Transport Telecom Energy
 capital-intensive
 Multiple backward and forward links
 IS performance strongly and robustly correlated
with that of goods-producing sectors
 Caveats:



Strength of forward and backward linkages with the production of goods varies from one services
activity to another
To some extent, for instance, services such as transport and communications also cater directly to
household's needs
Physical capital intensity also varies across both categories of services.
DNS




Mainly directly geared towards fulfilling basic human needs
also other types of services (R&D,S&T)
Labour-,skill- and knowledge-intensive
In many DNS (and particularly in health and education) knowledge and direct
human contact traditionally constitute the essential conditions for service
provision, with comparatively little need for any material support
 DNS are de-linked from the sphere of material goods production, and as such,
are also relatively self-sufficient and isolated from the rest of economy

Caveats:

In the peculiar Cuban reality also tourism is skill- and knowledge-intensive Tourism ( including its
ancillary and related activities, among them taxis and handicraft) is the only large and expanding sector
where relatively satisfactory incomes can be earned legally in the reality of the Cuban economy . As a
result, it attracts an inordinate amount of human capital.
Of course, this line of reasoning cannot be pushed too far, especially in the 21st century. In the old times,
knowledge was mostly transmitted orally from an individual teacher to a small number of pupils, and
doctors tried to save patients mostly prescribing health-enhancing behavioural changes or administering
homemade herbal potions. Modern health and education services are increasingly dependent on
access to goods such as drugs, medical equipment, books, journals, and computers

Goods production declines, services up to
over 80% of GDP
GDP STRUCTURE 2000-2010
90.0
80.0
70.0
60.0
PM
50.0
IS
40.0
SDN
30.0
20.0
10.0
0.0
2000
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
PM
25.0
21.6
19.0
17.5
19.0
19.1
19.4
18.2
IS
73.8
77.6
79.9
81.5
79.7
79.4
79.4
81.1
SDN
30.3
36.9
40.6
37.8
38.4
40.2
41.0
41.9
Unending tertiarization
 Services constituted over 2/3 of Cuba’s GDP already in the early 1990s,
and grew to ¾ by the turn of the century
 Since them, the weight of services in GDP kept increasing further (it is
presently around 4/5), while the share of GS is about 20%.[1] Thus, the
tertiarization of the Cuban economy further intensified in the 2000s
 The exacerbation of Cuba’s tertiarization process during the 2000s is
superficially similar to trends observed in some other Latin American
countries, but completely opposite to the trends exhibited both by Asian
market-socialist countries and by newly industrialized capitalist Asian
countries
[1] Trends in the employment structure broadly follow those of the GDP. However, there is still a
relatively high share of people living in rural areas, many of who are underemployed
DNS UP, IGPSS DOWN
Structure of the services sector, 2000-2010
70.0
60.0
50.0
40.0
IS
DNS
30.0
20.0
10.0
0.0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
IS
59.0
52.0
49.0
54.0
52.0
49.0
48.0
48.3
DNS
41.0
48.0
51.0
46.0
48.0
51.0
52.0
51.7
Internal evolution of services
 The negative performance of IS was broadly consistent with the -decline
of the GS
 In a specular fashion, DNSs increased both in terms of GDP share (to over
40%) and share in total services (to just over 50%)
 In turn, the performance of the various DNS activities was uneven.
 The GDP contributions of Hotels and Restaurants, S&T, and other
Personal, Community, and Association Activities declined slightly. Those
of Public Administration, Defence, Social Security, and Education
moderately increased.
 What really catches the eye is the major rise of the share of Health and
Social Assistance – from 7.7% in 2000, to 15.1% in 2005, and finally to
15.8% in 2009
 The extraordinary boom in health explains most of the overall increase
in the weight of the service sector in Cuba’s GDP[1]
Conversely, the GDP contribution of agriculture, which was already minimal at the beginning of
the decade, declined even further to less than 4% by the end of the decade
From a health-based survival pattern…
 The health boom reflects the surge of a new type of export, which
completely transformed the structure of Cuba’s foreign trade
 Professional services, and health services in particular, have become the
island's largest foreign exchange earner since the mid-2000
 Cuba had been serendipitously building up its comparative advantage in
this area through decades of human capital investment in social services
 Over 100,000 Cuban health workers have been travelling abroad, often for
prolonged periods, since the early 1960s.
 Cuba receives part of its health export earnings from services provided
to foreigners, who are treated in hospitals, clinics and other specialized
institutions (according to the modalities of so-called “health tourism”)
 Yet, the bulk of foreign exchange earnings stems from the services
provided by Cuban health specialist who reside abroad, working mostly
in Venezuela and other ALBA countries
…to a knowledge-based development path?
 The sustainability of such a peculiar trade structure is
precarious
 The exodus of the best doctors has already severely weakened
the ability of Cuba’s famed public health system to assist its
own citizens
 The potential for health services expansion in the short term
has been exhausted, as proven by their quasi-stagnation in
2009 and 2010
 In the future, professional services, and the health cluster in
particular, might not only contribute to gain foreign exchange,
but also to the emergence of a knowledge-based development
path
In the short- to medium-term, however
No escape from the urgency of revitalizing
goods production
Mainly agriculture and industry
Will the vicious circle be finally broken?

For the first time, and still often in a shy and cryptic form,
Cuba’s structural problems are now increasingly
acknowledged as being largely endogenous*

Raúl Castro’s leadership has the historical merit of
having begun to tackle them courageously and
systematically
* notwithstanding the gravity of the embargo
Raúl and the perfectioning of Cuban
socialism
 After a long period of uncertainty, the government began to
act forcefully towards the end of the first decade of the XXI
century
 Re-orienting the axis of economic policy towards
decentralization and liberalization
 Raúl Castro himself acknowledged the structural
shortcomings of the state socialist model with unusual
frankness[1]
 Concrete reform measures were slow to come
[1]
Among the main structural problems, acknowledged on several occasions by President Raul Castro, the
following are the most pressing ones: the scarcity of foreign exchange; the distortions in relative prices
caused by an overvalued exchange rate and by the lack of effective convertibility; monetary duality; the
segmentation of markets; the collapse of the sugar industry; the persisting crisis in the agricultural (and
especially food-producing) sector; the widespread lack of efficiency among public administration and Stateowned enterprises
2 necessary conditions:
 ENDOGENOUS: Respect for the law of value, and
more generally for the role of commercial-monetary
relations of production and exchange
• Drastic reform of prices structure (including
exchange rate and wages)
• EXOGENOUS (partly)*: Investment/credit
*ALBA, China, etc.: some room for geopolitically motivated – yet marketcompatible - FDI, South-South coop. No coming back to old times
The VI Congress:
is the glass half full or half empty? (i)
 In November, 2010, the PCC announced the long-awaited convocation of its VI
Congress for April, 2011, and issued a very important political document: the
proposal for the Guidelines of Economic and Social Policy[1] for the Party and
the Revolution.
 The proposal constituted the most important pre-congressional document, and
was to be discussed among grassroots party organizations as well as with
workers and the population at large.
 The draft was very comprehensive, and covered all the most crucial topics, such
as monetary, foreign exchange, tax and price policies, and the model of
economic management itself. Foreign trade and investment, agricultural, industrial,
energy, tourism, transportation, science, technology and innovation, domestic trade
policies are also open to discussion, as well as social policy in education, health,
sports, social security, culture, employment and salaries.
 The tone of the Guidelines proposal was very frank and self-critical, and it
appeared to invite the very essence of Cuban socialism to an open debate – as
long as socialism itself was not put into discussion.
[1] In Spanish, “Lineamientos de de la política económica y social”.
The VI Congress:
is the glass half full or half empty? (ii)
Contrary to what many superficial external observers
might have predicted:
• The debate before and during the Congress was a
real, vast and lively one
• Opposition to change was strong
• The result was a draw
• Many of the most crucial reform proposals were
watered down
An example on the principle of distribution (i)
 “the economic system that will prevail in our country
will keep being based on the socialist property of all
the people over the fundamental means of production,
in which the socialist distribution principle from
each one according to her/his ability, to each one
according to her/his work will be applied” (PCC
2011, p.5).
An example on the principle of distribution (ii)
 The socialist principle of distribution is simply “to each one
according to his work”, or i.e. his/her contribution in laborvalue terms, as famously argued by Marx in the Critique of the
Gotha program
•
This principle is consistent with the persistent validity of the law of value in a socialist economy,
and hence adequate to the Cuban situation.
• Conversely, the above-quoted formulation in the Guidelines
appears to hint to a strangely hybrid kind of society
•
people are expected to freely contribute to common prosperity as if they were living in a
communist world
• but are paid according to their work
 The latter point implies the existence of scarcity and, presumably, of money and markets.
 instead of having their needs satisfied just as citizens, independently from their personal
contribution
An example on the principle of distribution (iii)
What does this theoretical mix up mean? Two interpretations are possible:

A literary interpretation.
•
•
The government is willing to pay Cubans according to their work
but still expect everybody to contribute selflessly to the common good!


utilizing as much as possible his or her personal capacities
without any consideration for the relationship between each one’s human capital and working effort and his/her salary
However, the eventuality that such an absurd form of idealism can still permeate the approach to the
economy of PCC leaders is very remote
 A terminological confusion

What the Guidelines really mean is simply that the socialist principle of distribution according to work
will prevail
 This interpretation is the most plausible

would be both correct and
oriented line of the PCC
consistent with the rest of the Guidelines and the overall change-
 indicates a strong political willingness to embark in a process of radical
structural change
 an important, if still insufficient, step forward in the domain of theory
Chapter 2:
Evaluation of the impact of recent reform measures
on Cuba’s agricultural performance:
by Armando Nova González
Until recently, a paradoxical situation in this strategic sector:
 Over two million hectares of unused cultivable land
 Several research centers that produce concrete and potentially
useful scientific results
 Sizeable infrastructure endowment that (albeit deteriorated by over
ten years of lack of maintenance and investment) still embodies a
important productive potential
 Large and highly qualified human capital endowment.
 Yet, Cuban agriculture is increasingly import-dependent (and,
therefore, food-dependent), in spite of the fact that it could produce
most of the imported food products under competitive
conditions
 Several new measures have been implemented, yet results so far
are not as expected
3 crucial areas
 Have strongly contributed to the present dire situation
 Lack of realization of property rights
 Failure to acknowledge the real and objective
existence of the role of the market
 Non-existence of a systemic approach along the
production-distribution-exchange-consumption
cycle
 A manifestation of the relationship between the
macro and the microeconomic spheres
A moderately optimistic scenario
 Nova also carries out a vast analysis and evaluation of
the parts of the Guidelines affecting the agricultural
sector
 implementation of partial, half-hearted measures in
absence of a systemic policy approach could lead
once again to the unsuccessful conclusion of the
productive cycle and to the non-recognition of
producers’ property rights
 However, notwithstanding the shortcomings of the
approved version of the Guidelines, the author
concludes that the general scenario (and, in particular,
the new policy attitude towards the agricultural
sector, is very favorable in the quest for achieving a
renovated and effective economic model
Chapter 3:
Cuba’s Macroeconomic Crisis and Reform.
The Role of the New Non-State Actors:
by Pavel Vidal Alejandro and Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva
(with a contribution by Alexandra Wielink)
The authors describe the resurging role of non-state economic agents.
 Even if it is not proceeding as fast as initially planned, the large-scale
transfer of labor force from the State to the emerging private sector
has already begun
 the most relevant socioeconomic transformation taking place in the
country so far
 a clear indicator of Cuba’s movement towards a thoroughly reformed
model of socialism
 in which the non-State sector is likely to play a far more significant
economic role.
 The recent labor force and economic changes in Cuba do represent a step
in the right direction.
 However, the reform process faces a series of challenges that will require
further policy transformations, and greater flexibility on the part of the
Government
Chapter 4:
Commercial Circuits and Economic Inequality:
by Sara Romano’
Sara Romanó focuses on economic inequality:
 Her study adds to the growing body of literature on inequality in Cuba, most of which
focuses on specific categories of actors who have been in a position to cope better – or, in
some cases, worse – than others in the evolving socioeconomic environment that has
characterized Cuba since the early 1990s.
 A quantitative empirical study based on a model of a specific social mechanism that generates
one of the several forms of economic inequality presently prevailing in Cuba.
 A crucial feature of Cuba’s socio-economic structure is the coexistence of various
commercial circuits.
 Some individuals, in virtue of their official working position, can keep their feet on both
sides of social frontiers normally separating different social worlds. As people populating
these different social worlds are often willing to establish a contact between each other, the
aforementioned individuals can act as intermediaries, capturing significant advantages in
term of control and information.
 Moreover, they are more likely to develop entrepreneurial abilities than individuals who
live in socially homogeneous environments, because they are embedded in particular
relationships that are conducive to engaging in continual negotiations between people
holding contradictory expectations.
 The author’s main conclusion is that economic reforms since the 1990s contributed to
generate a new type of social structures of competition, triggering entrepreneurial
opportunities for some actors and consequently spurring economic inequalities.
Chapter 5: Cuban reforms at a crossroads:
by Alberto Gabriele and Pavel Vidal Alejandro
 Material conditions of the Cuban population remain
very hard
 The financial crisis has only partly been overcome
through a painful adjustment program.
 The structural character of the contradictions and
inadequacies of the traditional state socialist
model is becoming increasingly evident
 For the first time in Cuba’s post-revolutionary
history, this fact is also openly acknowledged and
recognized by the government
The PCC leadership does not officially declare that its strategic goal is to
transform Cuba into a market-socialist economy…
…along the lines of China and Vietnam. Yet, the direction of the reforms
inevitably
points towards:
 A reduction of the (still overwhelming) role of the State
 An expansion and upgrading of the role of the market and of monetarycommercial relations
 the emergence of a sizeable private sector as a legitimate and significant
component of the national economy
 The urgency of superseding the traditional, excessive egalitarian bias of
past economic policies is explicitly declared in the political discourse, along
with the determination to preserve everybody’s fundamental right to have
her or his minimum human needs met in terms of access to basic goods
and services
A hard task
To simultaneously achieve such diverse and intrinsically competing goals
while pushing the structural reform process forward is not easy,
especially in a context of extreme scarcity of domestic and international
resources
•
•
Even in the most optimistic scenario, large parts of the Cuban population will see
their welfare reduced in the short to medium term
Some, less numerous strata (who presently obtain modest but significant
positional rents and detain a certain amount of power by exploiting the
system’s very inefficiencies and contradictions) will definitely – and rightly
– lose, even in the long term
•
Various forms of resistance to change on the part of many, be they
inspired by social, ideological or even individualistic motivations, are
inevitable, and cannot be simply brushed away
•
In order to sustain the reform process through an adequate base of
consensus, a new social pact is needed