Exodus, “Modernization,” Solutions and Demands from Democratic Socialism

Exodus, "Modernization," Solutions and Demands from Democratic Socialism
/ 14ymedio, Pedro Campos
Posted on November 15, 2014

We democratic socialists have made many proposals for overcoming "State
socialism." We are ignored in spite of our disposition towards dialogue.
The past is not the solution for the present, nor for the future.

14ymedio, PEDRO CAMPOS, 4 November 2014 — It is no secret to anyone that
in the last year, Cuba has experienced a considerable increase in
departures abroad, particularly to the United States, by all possible
avenues and, unfortunately, by the most dangerous, in improvised vessels
through the Florida Straits and cross-country through Central America,
crossing Mexico to arrive at the northern border. Some time ago the
topic was broached by the independent and international press. In
Cuba…silence.

The problem is, and it must be said loud and clear: The Raulist
"modernization," which offered hope and an interlude of awaiting better
times, is not producing the economic, political or social results that
it at first awoke among a good number of Cubans. And that is the
fundamental cause that is provoking this exodus that threatens to become
massive.

Raul Castro's government itself, without clearly saying it, has
recognized it with the announcement of that meager 0.6% growth in the
first six months and with the measures taken in the last meeting of the
Council of Ministers.

Cuban economists here in Cuba, including some who qualify as official,
have publicly manifested their dissatisfaction with the limits and
obstacles of the "modernization" measures. This is not about blaming or
attacking anyone in particular. But any government, in any part of the
world, is responsible for taking necessary measures to guarantee the
well-being and contentment of its people.

This silent exodus requires all of us who are interested in the good of
the Cuban people to think of solutions, throwing aside all prejudice,
mottos, or slogans like that of "without rest but without hurry," in
order to try to find and apply quick, practical and effective solutions.

The Cuban government again blames the imperialist blockade for all ills.
But it does nothing even to support the anti-embargo campaign that the
New York Times is leading.

The practical measures that it takes do not wind up freeing productive
forces, as Raul Castro himself has called for, and they maintain all
kinds of obstacles against self-employed work, against the expansion of
small business, and especially against autonomous cooperatives, without
which post-capitalist society, socialism, is an illusion.

The State, by various bureaucratic mechanisms, keeps monopolizing
internal trade and increasingly restricts the least chance for citizens
to import small-scale consumer media that the state-military monopoly
TRD* stores are incapable of offering.

Even though opposition politics and thought are peaceful and
inoffensive, their repression continues.

The internet continues to be inaccessible for the great majority of the
population, unaware of its importance and meaning for the broad
development of individual and collective abilities, for the market
between different sectors and areas of production, for culture and
scientific-technical growth.

The supposed decentralization of state enterprises has been nothing more
than a simulation with the creation of the Superior Organization of
Entrepreneurial Leadership (OSDE), an intermediate link subordinate to
the ministers who neutralize the announced entrepreneurial autonomy and,
instead of reducing bureaucracy, increase it.

On the other hand, there is not a single movement in the modernization
that points to the direct participation of workers in ownership,
leadership, management or profits in the businesses that the State
considers most important and productive.

Nevertheless, it organizes "cooperatives" in unprofitable state service
workshops that are in crisis, with a series of conditions and
dependencies that seem more devoted to demonstrating the failure of
cooperative business forms than searching for socialist solutions.

What is the consequence? The entrepreneurs, young technical and
professional workers who in some way hope to see positive results from
the "modernization," do not see in practice any real rectification of
the statist, bureaucratic, and centralized course and, simply tired,
they have decided to undertake the adventure of exile.

Raul said that the mindset had to change. And that is absolutely true.
But it is also true that a true process of rectification may be hard to
carry out by the same ones who for half a century have been working and
living with the mentality that has to change.

That philosophy that continues in force is seen every day in the Party
press, where the statements of high leaders continue blaming workers and
low-level bureaucrats for the country's serious problems and low
productivity, when we all know that the only thing responsible is that
salaried, centralized and bureaucratized state model that pretends to
change without changing essentially anything.

If Raul does not want to pass into history as a failed follower of
willfully traditional policies, he himself will have to produce a change
in his mentality, open himself to new times, forget the worn out
"Marxist/Leninist" theories of a single-party leader of a dictatorship
of the proletariat and of non-democratic centralism, and end up
achieving true changes guided by democratization and socialization of
politics and the economy.

This demand does not come from Miami, from the traditional opposition to
socialist ideas or from any organization financed by "the enemy." It
comes from the last deprived step of the pyramid—"the low man on the
totem pole"—with barely a crust of bread on the table, by the right of
having sacrificed and delivered the best years of our lives to a
revolutionary process into which we poured the great majority of our hopes.

We do it from that generation that today, courting 60 or 70 years of
age, has to invent for itself a means of living because the miserable
pensions do not cover food for a week; the generation that did not
hesitate to step to the front when called upon for Girón (the Bay of
Pigs), El Escambray, the Literacy Campaign or the Militias or when they
asked us for the unconditional delivery of thousands of hours of
voluntary work in the cane, coffee and tobacco fields.

We do it from the right given us for having completed international
missions in which life left us, not occasionally but almost daily, for
years and on the enemy field.

How to come out from this?

We democratic socialists from Cuba and all over the world have written
quite a lot about how to overcome the model of "State socialism" which
masks a monopolistic State capitalism. They have never wanted to hear
us, or our proposals have been applied in a skewed and incoherent manner
although we have always been open to dialogue. But some cheesy
bureaucrats have labeled us even as enemies and agents of imperialism.

For ourselves, old now, many sick, veterans of uncounted battles, we ask
for nothing; but we do demand with all the strength of our voices,
semi-muffled by the years and by intolerance, that they finally taking
practical steps, effective for getting the Cuban people out of this
situation, so that our children and grandchildren do not have to keep
risking their lives in the waters of the Caribbean or crossing Central
American borders and so that we do not have to repent on our death beds
for having served causes that have turned out to be ignoble.

We also know that there is more time than life and that the past is not
the solution for the present but for the future.

For a society of free workers.

*Translator's note: The State-run stores selling only in hard currency
are called "TRDs" – an acronym for the phrase: Currency Collection
Stores. In other words, they are designed to 'collect' the income some
Cubans receive from remittances sent by their family and friends abroad,
by selling products otherwise unavailable at hugely inflated prices.

Translated by MLK

Source: Exodus, "Modernization," Solutions and Demands from Democratic
Socialism / 14ymedio, Pedro Campos | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/exodus-modernization-solutions-and-demands-from-democratic-socialism-14ymedio-pedro-campos/