Thanks, Brian, for the specific examples I asked for. It makes for a more
useful discussion. Having said that, I'm running up against the limits of
my knowledge on specifics, so my replies are not really adequate. But, a
few points:
On Mon, 26 Jan 1998, Brian Green wrote: >
> There are many. I'll list just a few in point form:
> - 1990, law promulgated for the tourist sector (Cuba's fastest-growing)
> releasing management from the requirement to follow the Labour Code;
> workers in tourism could be made to work overtime, and country-wide
> grievance procedures were not available to tourist sector workers.
I belive it was _some_ parts of the Labour code. Not, for example, the
part that guarantees union representation. But the main point is that if
you want to attract foreign capital, some adjustments are necessary. The
fact remains that workers in the foreign sectors are the highest paid in
Cuba, almost a 'labour aristoracy' by comparison.
> - 1992, law passes allowing foriegn individuals and enterprises to buy
> property and housing in Cuba, despite chronic shortage of housing for Cubans
> - indeed, a few years later Cuba actually had to open homeless shelters!!!!
> - also 1992, a constitutional ammendment allowing for privatization of state
> property
As before: if you want to attract foreign capital... Are you opposed to
this in principle, or in Cuba's specific circumstances? There is a
terrible lack of housing stock in Cuba, mainly because they can't afford
to build it, including importing the furnishings, elevators etc. Cuba does
not have the capacity to produce. That is why they need the foreign
capital! Still, Cubans are better housed than any other population in a
poor country. There is very high security of tenure, because most Cubans
actually _own_ their own apartment! Mortgage payments and rents are at
_most_ 10% of income/15 years (someone correct me if I am wrong). I met
Cubans who told me their rents were 5.5% of income. And there were
"homless shelters" when I was there too, i.e. _dormitories_ for workers on
seasonal assignments, people whose new housing was not ready, etc. There
are no "homeless" in Cuba in the way we know of. Let's stick to real
issues; there are enough of them!
> - free trade zones were established; these are open to 100% foreign-owned
> enterprises, and wages and conditions are set by 'competitive market
> standards' rather than Cuban laws and regulations (what is more, the foreign
> companies themselves are responsible for determining those 'competitive
> market standards'.
This one is new to me. Is it any different than the examples discussed
above, i.e. tax and labour contract concessions to attract foreign
investment? Are these unlimited free trade zones, e.g. any economic
activity; no restrictions on profit repatriation, no conditions for
technology transfer, etc. etc? Hosting foreign capitalits is not
necessarily becoming capitalist yourself. "Free enterprise" is not
transmitted by virus.
> - Cuban government has helped Plyaboy seek models for a 'Girls of Cuba'
> pictorial
What, did they give a visa for a Playboy photographer who got around in a
government-owned taxi? Anyway, so what? The Young Communists organized
beauty pagents for awhile. You and I would vote against this shit, but we
aren't Cuban and socialism and Cuba is strong enough to recover. Now, if
they made abortion illegal that would be something. The Pope's #1 theme in
Cuba was to push women back, but as the coverage shows, he didn't get very
far.
> - austerity has been imposed in areas of basic subsistence -- food,
> medicine, gasoline -- while all of these are avaialable in abundance to
> tourists, visiting business people etc.
Cuba is _desparate_ for foreign exchange, foreign capital, etc. People
_die_ because they can't buy drugs, etc. You can't get it without giving
the tourists and business people that they pay for! Castro is right
to call it a petty-bourgeois attitude to pretend that Cuba is not a poor
country, and to oppose selling things to rich people, even when you don't
have enough for yourself.
> - unemployment has become a reality; what is more, unemploymt benefits have
> been capped and time-restrictions applied
Unemployment as we know it (i.e. due to overproduction) does not exist.
During the worst of the "special period" most (over 60%?) of the
countries enterprises were shut for lack of supplies, parts etc. Of course
they had to curtail unemployment benefits (still far better than anyting
here). Managers also got sent home. There are no capitalists in Cuba who
kept on clipping coupons.
> - the state has blamed its crisis on 'excessive egalitarianism' of socialism
> ; such egalitarianism has had an 'anti-economic and anti-efficient
> connotation' - these are our revolutionary heroes??
I don't know what these quotes may mean. The basic point, that I think is
hard to avoid, is that Cuban policy is to _not_ follow the x-USSR-type
strategy of "using market mechanisms to build socialism", but rather to
foster what Che called the "new man". You may think this is what they say
rather than what they do, but it _is_ what they say. At least it is what
Castro and the central CPC leaders say. There are lots of Cubans who
thought the capitalist or the USSR way was the way to go. They _lost_ the
debate in the CPC, at least for now.
> - the state has actually advertised its "labour discipline" as a selling
> point to potential foriegn investors
>
> What is wrong with that? It is a huge selling point, i.e. an incredibly
well-education and trained labour force, healthy and without
problems of child care availability, etc., accustomed to working
collectively, unlikely to have to strike because of the protection
assured by virtue of the role of the unions, CPC and government in the
economy, etc. etc.
> Lest we forget, the Cuba Workers Confederation is not an autonomous workers
> organization - it is a state body! It's newspaper, Trabajadores, is a state
> paper!
Depending what you mean by "autonomous".
>Throughout the crisis, the Union position has been indistinguishable
> from other state bodies. Indeed, the union has demanded that workers
> develop 'discipline, efficiency and a new mentality', as this is what is
> required in the new partnership with global capital.
Not true; there have been real sharp debates over many questions - but
they are issues "within socialism", and since you don't think it exists, I
suspect they wouldn't seem relevent. Discipline, efficiency and a new
mentality _are_ needed to move forward to socialism. In Cuba these terms
do _not_ have the connotation you put on them. The second part of your
statment is a slander: no Cuban unions talk about a "new partnership with
global capital", and nor does the government or CPC.
> So what the Union Congress says is one thing; what you will hear
speaking with displaced workers on the street corner is something very different.
>
Yes, often this is the case. If it wasn't you'd have to wonder. I'd add
that some Cubans I spoke to who had no job said they could work if they
wanted to, but the minimum wage was too low or the work, often
agriculture-related, was too hard. As I said above, this is not
unemployement as we know it in capitalist countries. It is poverty.
> State farms were officially named co-ops, yes. You are referring here to the
> 'basic units of cooperative production'. Here's the deal with these. Workers
> collectively 'own' the machinery and the harvest; land, however, remains in
> state hands, production quotas are set by the state, and the coop can only
> sell its produce to the state, at government-set prices. The country's
> established pay scales do not apply, but rather wages vary according to
> productivity, a measure intended to establish a subsistence-based incentive
> to labour - sounds alot like pieve-work/ commission to me!
There is nothing unsocialist about piece-work/commission pay!
The state> privatizes machinery, so workers now have to pay for repairs and
> replacements themselves; the state privatizes the harvest, so a bad year is
> the responsibility of the workers, and so that workers are responsible for
> their own subsistence. But the state retains control over land, and over the
> price produce will be sold at? Over all, the state has simply renounced its
> responsibility for the subsistence needs of farmers without surrendering its
> control over production quotas, market prices, and land use.
>
My point was that the turning _some_ state farms
into co-ops was a step backward in the generally progressive trend of
extending wage labour. But in this case it was a necessary and positive
step 'backwards', because of the burden of a bureaucratic layer in state
farms who stood in the way of producers having more direct say (and in
agriculture, above all, this is crucial, because it is a labour of
nurture), and who ate up too much of the output. There is still extensive
_private_ (gasp!) ownership of agricultural land in Cuba too. Probably the
most positive thing about the Cuban revolution is that it did
not forcably collectivize agriculture. It is nonsence to say that the
Cuban government has given up its responsibility to the subsistance needs
of farmers: these measures, following the initiatives of the former state
farm workers themselves, were to _increase_ their subsistance needs,
by attacking bureaucratic management approaches which had failed.
Bill Burgess
