Overwhelmed by over five decades of a brutal imperialist blockade, the Caribbean nation is going through a deep economic crisis. The Cuban leadership, far from trying to overcome this blockade by extending the revolution, has just passed a constitutional reform that legalizes private property, taking the path that leads to a capitalist restoration, like the USSR, China and the rest of the countries that were part of mistakenly called “real socialism”
Last July 23, the Cuban parliament passed a project with several reforms to the country’s Constitution, that will be ratified through a referendum held between August 13 and November 15. It is know that the project will be approved, given the anti-democratic regime of the one-party system the Cuban Communist Party sustains, which will not be modified by this constitutional reform.
In its 224 articles, this new project ratifies the “socialist character” of Cuba, but at the same time introduces reforms that legalize and help the introduction of capitalism in the island, such as the recognition of the market’s role in the economy, foreign investments and private property. they also take out from the constitution the part that mentions “communist society” as a goal to reach.
The gradual implementation of pro-capitalist reforms is expanding social inequality in Cuba and reducing the social benefits that were accomplished by the Cuban revolution. The poverty people live in now aggravated by austerity measures, like the firing of 600.000 state workers between 2010 and 2014 or the recent elimination of the gratuity of some medical services.
The economical constitutional changes reinforce the reforms made by Raul Castro that allowed private activity in branches such as the hotel industry, public transportation and other services. In 2014, the creation of corporations with 100% foreign funding was authorized in the investment law. Now, the new president Diaz Canel drives these reforms that facilitate private investment and the development of autonomous work, which is the main activity of 600.000 people of the 11 million that live on the island.
Since 2008, the Cuban government has leased 2.100.000 hectares of land in to legal and natural persons, around a third of the cultivable land. The duration of these concessions has been extended to 20 years, that can be successively renewed. These reforms are justified, according to the Agriculture Ministry, because Cuba imports 80% of the goods Cubans consume, and many of them could be produced locally.
Institutionally, the reforms establish the offices of president, vice-president and chief of the cabinet of ministers. It establishes 60 years at the maximum age for a president and limits the mandate to two five year terms, reflecting the changes and realignments in the ruling bureaucracy. It ratifies the role of the PC as the only party and does not leave any legal leeway for any opposition or dissent with the regime to be expressed.
Far from allowing democratic and political freedoms, the constitutional reform maintains the Bonapartist characteristics of the regime. The policy of not granting spaces of political freedom was clearly expressed in the recent sanction of Decree 349, which considers it criminal to be an artist or journalist without the approval of state authorities or the designation in the area of Culture of young officials known for their censorship practices.
In what is considered a democratic conquest of the struggle for gender rights, the changes proposed by the project pave the way for same-sex marriage, since it defines marriage as the concerted union between two people, without specifying sex like the current constitution does. This is an important reform in a country where homosexuals have been persecuted and even interned in “reeducation” camps by the Communist Party regime, which must now be regulated by the modification of current laws.
The end of the Cuban dream?
Slowly, Cuba is moving forward in a process of capitalist restoration. The heroic revolution installed a non-capitalist economy right under the imperialist monster´s nose. It won Cubans social conquests like no other capitalist country on the continent did, guaranteeing public education and excellent healthcare, having one of the best international standards. That revolutionary dream is undergoing a process of political and social decadence.
The US blockade is responsible for enormous hardships on the island. Its annual damage is of around 4,7 billion dollars (2016), and if we add the global damage since the blockade began, 54 years ago, the figure goes up to 121 billion dollars, according to government estimates. A financial, economic and commercial blockade that constitutes the longest blockade in history and that not only prevents direct operations with the US, but also affects other companies and countries, preventing them -under threat of US sanctions- from trading with the island. This affected Cubans in basic services such as health, education, technology and tourism.
Cuba also had to face other challenges, like the fall of the former Soviet Union and more recently the decline of the Venezuelan regime, which assisted the country with cheap oil, essential for its economy. The recent reforms that favor capitalist restoration are presented as a necessary evil to overcome the impoverished situation.
like in the restoration of capitalism in the former USSR or the former bureaucratic workers states, this economic opening promoted by the Cuban bureaucracy is supported by sectors of the population that experienced the failure of the current bureaucratic model, and the lack of a revolutionary alternative. They have expectations in investments and private activity reactivating the stagnant economy, when in reality it will only develop social inequality and exasperate the hardships of the majority of the Cuban people.
Many uncritical defenders of the Cuban leadership tend to justify these measures by blaming a lack of awareness of the new generations and on their supposed temptations of capitalist consumption. They repeat the methods of more than one failed leadership, blaming the people for their own mistakes.
On the other hand, others defend this new economic opening by pointing to the fact that the Bolsheviks used measures of capitalist development of the economy, such as the NEP, during Lenin’s lifetime. Without noting that that emergency measure, in an economy destroyed by a civil war, was a tactical turn in order to deepen the revolution, while in Cuba they’re applying reforms that lead to economic models like the capitalist restoration in China (based on the super-exploitation of workers) or like the rest of the countries that followed the Stalinist bureaucracy in its so-called “real socialism”.
Was here alternative path?
The great conquest of the people of America that was the Cuban revolution was not only the first socialist revolution on the continent, but the first in decades that was not led by Stalinism. It was the highest peak of a series of struggles and conflicts that impacted not only the American continent but had diverse expressions in other parts of the planet.
Che Guevara knew from the beginning that the fate of Cuba was tied to the extension and triumph of the revolution in other countries: “Create one, two, three Vietnams is the slogan” was one of his most famous phrases. Opposing this conception, the rest of the Cuban leadership preferred to tie the fate of the revolution to the demands and model of Stalinism.
The policy of respecting the “status quo” and the agreements of “peaceful coexistence” of the Kremlin bureaucracy with imperialism led Fidel’s leadership to miss the opportunity to break Cuban isolation and make the Central American revolution happen.
When the revolutions in Nicaragua and El Salvador broke out in the late 1970s, the enormous prestige and leading role of the Cuban leadership was not applied as a revolutionary instrument to turn these countries into new Cubas. On the contrary, Fidel advised: to “not turn Nicaragua into a new Cuba, nor El Salvador into a new Nicaragua”. The path taken by revolutionary Nicaragua was to make an agreement with the Chamorro bourgeoisie to co-govern with the Sandinista leadership and to preserve the capitalist economy under the misleading formula of a mixed economy. Almost 40 years later they support the Ortega government and its repressive policies to apply an austerity plan dictated by the IMF and stay in power.
More recently, when the Bolivarian revolution broke out, beginning with the historic “Caracazo” that shook the continent, giving rise to Chavismo as a petty-bourgeois anti-imperialist current that promoted important measures of resistance against corporate domination. The Cuban leadership, which had great influence in the revolutionary process of Venezuela, where it sent thousands of Cuban cadres to participate, instead of promoting progress towards anti-capitalist measures, helped accelerate bureaucratization and create the current disaster led by Maduro and the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) leadership.
The revolution centered in Venezuela was part of a global resistance of Latin American peoples against imperialist penetration. Hence the enormous prestige of the Bolivarian deeds and Chavez´s anti-imperialist message. The Cuban leaders were the most conservative sector and were against transforming these enormous revolutionary processes into revolutions to overthrow capitalism. Not only did they turn their backs on a new wave of the Latin American revolution but they also exasperated the isolation of the independent Cuba they lead.
Nicaragua and Venezuela are perhaps two of the best examples of how the Cuban leadership, by following the Stalinist manual, frustrated the possibility of a new socialist revolution winning in Latin America. Those who justify the abandonment of the policy of the OLAS (Latin American Solidarity Organization), which tried to extend the Cuban revolution to the whole continent, and Fidel’s turn in the 1960s towards Stalinism and the commitment to Moscow, claim that it was the only option for the leadership of a small country located in the imperialist giant´s neighborhood.
Nonetheless, the Cuban revolution was the triumphant link in a chain of crises and revolutions that marked the era. In ‘65 the revolution in the Dominican Republic caused the invasion of 50,000 US marines to stop it. In ‘68 an uprising of mostly young people caused the May events, the Cordobazo, the Prague spring, the uprising and subsequent massacre of Mexican students in Trateolco, the massive struggles of the US youth against the Vietnam War. In ‘71 there were the revolutions that gave birth to the Bolivian Popular Assembly and the rise of the Chilean revolution and the struggle of this people for a socialist country. Castroism had an important influence in several of these processes, mostly in Latin America, and its policy was accompanying the leaders who were unable to advance to new socialist revolutions.
In the 80s, when the external debt crisis shook all the countries of our subcontinent and people struggled to confront this new form of imperialist exploitation, Fidel correctly convoked to constitute a front of debtor countries to confront the IMF. The initial enthusiasm was quickly frustrated when it was made clear that the Cuban leadership did not want to develop this policy beyond some initial political propaganda rally.
Finally, the Cuban leaders´ campist position led them to justify the disasters of the Soviet leadership, being an obstacle in the path of several revolutions. And they maintain that policy to this day, supporting leaders repudiated by their people. That is why in 1968 they repudiated the Czechoslovak people’s uprising against the Soviet tanks and today they support the genocidal government of Syrian president Al Assad and Ortega´s brutalities against the Nicaraguan people.
We need a new revolution
The defense of Cuba against the imperialist blockade, now continued by Trump, is still an important vindication of all anti-imperialist fighters. But consistent anti-imperialists must know that the capitalist restoration was not initiated by the mercenaries that invaded the Bay of Pigs, nor by the hand of a military invasion, it is entering through the path of capitalist reforms that the Cuban leadership encourages, through the poverty and lack of democratic liberties that the people suffer, under a privileged caste.
The old regime that governs the island hasn’t followed Che´s example of trying to extend the revolution, which would be the only way to end the isolation and defeat the blockade. The PCC (Cuban Communist Party) plays a destructive role against the interests of the Cuban people. First it refused to extend the revolution, then it consolidated itself as a privileged bureaucratic caste around the party apparatus and the state, to finally become the main agent of the introduction of capitalism in the island.
This is why, to defend the conquests of the Cuban revolution, to maintain the independence of that heroic Caribbean nation, we need a new revolution.
A new revolution to end with the one-party regime and grant the democratic liberties that the Cuban people demand. A revolution to stop the economic reform, end with the privileges of the ruling caste and growing social inequality, and to reorganize the country to solve the needs of workers and the Cuban people in a truly democratic Constituent Assembly. And on that basis, appeal to the solidarity of the Latin American people and the world in defense of Cuba’s anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggle.
At the service of this task, we need to create a revolutionary party that, following the best revolutionary traditions, strives for a regime based on workers’ democracy, the defense of a socialist model and at the service of the Latin American and world revolution.