Why Socialism for Cuba?

Why Socialism for Cuba?
April 8, 2013
Armando Chaguaceda

HAVANA TIMES — A few days ago I shared an evening with a young couple of
compatriots to discuss the ideological colors of the island's future.
Though these were sensitive and well-educated people, children of the
fine educational legacy of the Cuban Revolution, these friends were
pessimistic about the chances of a socialist alternative being a
solution to the problems in Cuba.

"No way," they told me. "Though it will take its toll, it seems that the
solution will be to hit bottom and then accelerate the capitalist
reforms to resolve the accumulated clutter and backwardness."

Such a reflection by people who I admire and respect for their values
??and social commitment — shown in inspiring everyday pursuits ranging
from ecology to free-software — got me thinking about the discrediting
of the socialist idea among many Cubans.

Living (and suffering) the rigors of a state centralized model that has
lasted half a century, it's understandable that some residents in
neighborhoods like Marianao or Placetas would be horrified with the
thought of giving this "ism" another chance.

On the other hand, a non-negligible sector of the population (aging,
resigned) is making the decision to continue living under the current
model out of their fear of change. Frightened by the East European
experience, their concern is that here too, a new direction would
certainly be traumatic. Neo-liberalism or neo-Stalinism: this seems to
be the restricted menu of options for our island.

However, given the problems of the present (ranging from the accumulated
material shortages to undermined freedoms and human rights) and those
approaching (increasing inequalities of all types) I believe that — far
from giving up — our task is to battle for the future of the socialist
alternative.

This is certainly difficult to sustain under the expansive capitalist
hegemony to which the island is subjected, hegemony that weighs on
cultural consumption, the devaluation of self-organized solidarity and
the visible leadership role of economists and technocrats from Cuban
academia and politics.

But if we want Cuba not to become a "market without a republic" (as
predicted in the dismal prophecy of one prestigious Cuban intellectual),
it seems to me we'll have to fight.

To do so implies abandoning abstract utopianisms, far from what some
proclaim. It's about defending viable proposals for managing social
services, regulating fundamental businesses and bringing up for
discussion state spending at all levels. It's about promoting
cooperatives, participatory budgeting and independent unions.

It means demonstrating with examples — which exist like islands of
self-determination within this capitalist world — that what's collective
isn't the same at what's state-owned and run. What's truly participatory
is not a mere guise for what's actually authoritarian, and "socialist"
inefficiency can't be remedied by privatization.

We need to look to real and virtuous experiences, like the Nordic social
protection systems, the social economy networks in Uruguay and the
public policy of the current government of Ecuador.

In the specifically political realm, it's about building a substantive
(representative, participatory, deliberative) democracy, where there are
no exclusions for ideological reasons, and hegemony is achieved with
reason and debate not through force nor accompanied by irreversible
bouts of institutional sclerosis.

This would mean trans-institutional democracy in which the citizenry
rules through political and social organizations, and the arrogance of
bureaucrats is not merely replaced by new and refurbished
self-referencing party and business elites. This would be where battles
of ideas were not supplanted by marketing campaigns.

The history of pre-revolutionary Cuba was a long sequence of
authoritarian governments that began with our colonial status and
included two ironhanded anti-communist dictatorships supported by
Washington.

Notwithstanding, today there's no shortage of Cuban liberals, democrats
and patriots — an unavoidable part of the nation — who are reintroducing
the legacy of the pluralistic press (such as the Republican press) and
progressive constitutionalism (like the one of 1940) to continue
striving towards the establishment of a state of rights with the
tri-partition of powers and multi-partyism, akin to the classical canons
of representative democracy.

Therefore, if others have all the energy and right to dream a different
future, why should we on the left refuse to aim for a different form of
socialism as an alternative to the current regime and to any neoliberal
substitutes?

In a few weeks we'll be marking five years since that Mayday march when,
despite threats of repression, a small group of comrades went out to
Revolution Square to march in the Labor Day parade carrying a banner
reading: "Down with bureaucracy! Long live the workers! More socialism!"

In light of this, I can only recognize the relevance of that action,
where we overcame our fears to defend national and popular sovereignty.

I remember how we began to detect — in the joy, surprise and warm
acceptance of other marchers — for the possibility of a socialist future.

If there's something (I think) should distinguish a socialist, it's not
seeking a pure and unreal world, but the reasoned, free and collective
construction of better ways and places for living, here and now, as
human beings.

This is a search in which we will need to accompany (and join) the
struggles and contributions of all movements – pro-democracy,
environmentalist, feminist and anti-imperialist.

Anything that threatens the happy advent of this emancipatory plurality
— be they the holy words of a messiah or the preaching of merchants —
is, in the crudest sense, profoundly reactionary.

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