Revolutionary ‘Plattism’

Revolutionary 'Plattism'* / 14ymedio, Manuel Cuesta Morua
Posted on October 24, 2015

14ymedio, Manuel Cuesta Morua, Havana, 23 October 2015 — During the
State-sponsored 12th Forum of Cuban Civil Society Against the Blockade,
which ended last Friday at the Ministry of Public Health's auditorium in
Havana, a unique paper was presented. Under the title "The Blockade:
Methodology for Calculating Costs," Pico Nieves, and expert from the
National Institute of Economic Research, presented findings that deserve
political attention, but not economic.

After listening to the presentation, one question lingered in the air.
What logic does the Cuban government follow when it demands compensation
for the costs of a voluntary war and, moreover, one that it did not win?

There are at least six arguments that challenge the proposal from Pico's
research:

– Political: Two enemy States do not negotiate. Nothing in international
practice or in the literature on States in conflict shows or
demonstrates that the friend-enemy relationship, according to the German
political theorist Carl Schmitt, involves trade in goods and services
between them. The goal motivating such a pair is the disappearance of
the other, not business relations.

– Economic: The structure of the Cuban economy is not compatible with
the American economy. Goods and services that Cuba could offer are not
in the "market basket" of the American citizen, and, with regards to
what Cuba could receive from the United States, which is everything,
there is no Cuban monetary or wage structure, unless it was reproduced,
since the 1970s or '80s, of the type of a central or peripheral economic
relationship that supposedly justified the Cuban Revolution.

– Ownership structure: A privatized economy such as that of the United
States does not fit with an economy as nationalized as that of Cuba.
What would be the State partnership of Cuba with a country like the
United States where there isn't the most remote possibility for a role
like the State's in the Cuban economy, except with regards to trade
relations?

– Creating wealth: If the Cuban economic model of production was always
one of State capitalism, there is a key difference with the American
model. There the economic model is one of openness and plurality par
excellence, and in Cuba, on the contrary, we are faced with the most
closed and centralized economy. This leads to an increasingly important
difference, the technological differences which are enormous. In this
sense, the only option would have been for the United States to give
international organizations political license to flood Cuba with
credits. But again, we encounter the obstacle that we are enemies.

– Economic policy: The sectors that could be attractive to the United
States, for example tourism and cultural sectors, were only opened up in
Cuba in the nineties and then only reluctantly.** In the 1970s and '80s
allowing Yanke tourism in Cuba, the only potential area of economic
ties, would have run up against that era's most important concept of
political control: ideological diversionism. US tourism would have
brought the American Way of Life, inconceivable in that time.

– Ideological: The inevitable contamination from the United States can
only be assimilated in a Cuba faced with the exhaustion and advanced age
of the Revolution, and the cultural failure of "We will be like Che."
What's left of that model supposedly superior to and incompatible with
capitalism?

In reality, the only chance of economic relations with the United
States, in conditions of political peace, would have been through the
facilitation of credit and then we would have had a problem not only
with the Paris Club, but also with the Washington Consensus and the
vulture funds. The inefficiency of the Cuban economy cannot be solved
with money.

There is no analysis that could reconcile the Cuban Revolution being in
a normal economic relationship with the United States. The Cuban
Revolution is a "permanent revolution." Permanent revolution is war,
although it was a cold war, with the United States.

But the government's insistence on compensation for a voluntary war with
the United States, far beyond the political necessity of balancing the
accounts for the uncompensated nationalizations, reveals the
subconscious of those in power in Cuba: If the model of the command
economy was possible with a war mentality, it is only sustainable in
relation to the American economy. The Revolutionary "Plattism*" of the
better.

Translator's notes:
*The term "Plattism" refers to the Platt Amendment passed by the US
Congress and subsequently adopted into Cuba's first Constitution in 1901
as a condition for the United States removing its troops from the
island. The Amendment gave the United States authority to intervene in
Cuba's foreign affairs, an "occupation without occupiers."
**After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of its massive
subsidies to Cuba, the State was forced to seek other sources of foreign
exchange.

Source: Revolutionary 'Plattism'* / 14ymedio, Manuel Cuesta Morua |
Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/revolutionary-plattism-14ymedio-manuel-cuesta-morua/