14ymedio.com

In the absence of subsidies, the current state-centric political and economic model can only guarantee its survival with a significant increase in foreign capital investment in the joint development of state mega-enterprises or direct investment in support of the plans for its “portfolio of businesses.”

In the belief that foreign capital will save the state companies, the official economic policy prioritizes its alliance with foreign capital, while opposing the full and free development of independent “non-state” forms, whether joint-venture or fully private, because it considers them “enemies of state capital.” Not to mention the dreaded “big bad wolf”: self-management under workers’ control.

In these circumstances, a democratization of the economy that put the bulk of it in the hands of the people – workers in self-managed state enterprises, and medium and small businesses, private or state-associated—is what could cushion the impact, absorbing into the Cuban economy as a whole the expected US investment once the blockade-embargo is fully lifted.

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the state website CubaDebate that authorization for US telecommunications companies to operate on the island and financial support the non-state sector by the Obama administration only seeks to build opposition to the government of Raul Castro.

The internet and the development of the non-state sector are seen as “opposed to the government of Raul Castro.” To the bureaucracy it is the same whether the support for these activities comes from the US or from the Moon: the US has always interfered in the free development of”state socialism” in Cuba and wherever it has been tried.

It could not be otherwise for the “new class” generated by the statism that tries to preserve its control-power, which explains the limitations imposed on the internet, on self-employment and on the development of cooperatives, despite approval by the Sixth Congress the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) itself, to not mention that the term self-management has disappeared from the vocabulary.

The independent development of small and medium-sized private and associated businesses (cooperatives, mutual or stock) in the short and medium term would displace inefficient and anti-worker state enterprises, as is already happening, if the regime does not move quickly to self-management or co-management. Were they to do so, workers would no longer be simply underpaid employees, but can become become effective owners of companies and participate directly in the property, or carry over to full or partial control of domestic or foreign capitalist enterprises.

In the first variant, the current state monopoly savage capitalism, which exploits the workers and impoverishes them, would thus be forced to transfer real economic power to the workers, which it has always refused to do because it would imply a decrease in and/or disappearance of the power of the bureaucracy and the current control exercised on all dividends generated by state enterprises. This is why they have preferred the second variant, an alliance with international capital so that power can continue to support itself, now sharing the exploitation of its employees with foreign capital.

But this involves delivering much of the country’s economy to foreign capital and eventually to the great American capital.

The principal enemy, the limitless capital of the United States, would become the government’s main ally in the joint exploitation of Cuban workers and in a fundamental way would lead to a new socio-economic dependence: a kind of virtual annexation to the United States, where there is no blockade and it costs little more to travel to Miami than it does to go from Havana to Varadero.

The communists who still believe that socialism relies on the salaried state company, where the workers continue to be widgets for which they don’t even have to pay full cost, are making the game into one of virtual annexation.

The fault is not the United States’, but the official policy against free labor. Without democratization and socialization of the economy and politics there will be no guarantees for the future independence of Cuba.

Since Raul Castro has risen to the top leadership of the Party and the Government, processes have been developed for consulting the party training bases, the unions, the Union of Young Communists (UJC) and the People’s Power, with regards to the general problems of the country and especially in relation to the Guidelines of the Sixth Congress of the PCC.

It has been a concern of many Party members and ordinary citizens that the proposals don’t take their concerns sufficiently into account, and that other suggestions appear in a limited and biased way, tied to the old concepts of state and bureaucratic control.

Specifically, it happened with self-employment, cooperatives, independent entrepreneurial self-management independent of state control of the workers, and with the need to democratize the political system with freedom of expression and association and free elections, and strengthening the independence, abilities and autonomies of the local organs of People’s Power. The political and economic essence of a democratic society with broad support from the bases of the PCC, workers and citizens, according to what it has been possible to confirm in the opinions of thousands of Cubans expressed in the media, meetings, official conferences and not only among family and friends.

Recently, the Party leadership acknowledged that a portion of the Guidelines approved at the last Party Congress had not yet been implemented and had played only a small part.

During the five years since the Sixth Congress, hundreds of thousands of critiques have appeared in the Party press and in blogs and leftist alternative pages from the moderate opposition, about the inability, lack of will and even the obstacles evidenced in the leadership of the PCC and the government to implement their own agreements.

Raul Castro invited the Party bases to offer their opinions; the leadership of the Party and the government organized vertical consultations in Santiago to learn what Havanans thought and vice versa, and later the higher bodies reached agreements that bore no resemblance to what people from below had said. And then come the laws and decrees to implement them laden with bureaucratic constraints. Where is democracy?

This “system of participation” has demonstrated its inefficiency, people are dissatisfied with what has been done, including with the agreements of the PCC, and now, on top of that, the thousand or so representatives (a minuscule proportion of the population) who will meet in the Seventh Party Congress, will approve what economic, political and social model that will rule the destiny of 11 million Cubans on the island and another three million of us outside the island, and that will be the development plan for the next 15 years.

All Cubans of good will, Party members or not, inside or outside, should unite their voices and support the request from “Paquito de Cuba” for the postponement of the Seventh Congress and the democratic discussion of its documents so that they are subject to open, horizontal and free debate of the entire Party membership and all the Cuban people.

The streets of Cuba are not free filled with these slogans, but indeed all the official and non-official websites from Granma, Trabajadores, Juventud Rebelde, Cubadebate, and the rest of the social networks.

It is not a battle within the Party, it is the Cuban people’s battle for democratization, and on its outcome will depend, to a great extent, the future of the homeland of all Cubans.