Cuba’s likely transition
BY SAMUEL FARBER
It is highly likely that Cuba will undergo a post-“Communist” transition beyond the mere replacement of Fidel Castro as the head of the Cuban state.
Social and economic changes have been taking place notwithstanding episodically increased political repression such as the harsh crackdown on dissidents in the spring of 2003. Specifically, there has been a significant degree of cultural and religious liberalization and a number of important but limited market oriented economic reforms, most notably the growth of substantial foreign investment in the form of joint ventures with the Cuban government, and the legalization and establishment of the dollar economy in 1993. On the political front, however, the hold of the one-party state continues to be very strong.
The natural death of Fidel Castro will remove the most cohesive element of Cuba’s political system. The regime’s popular support and legitimacy will decline. There is little doubt that the regime has already lost popular support. Yet, Fidel Castro retains significant popular backing, or at least the awe and respect, of a substantial part of the Cuban population. It is doubtful that other leaders, including Fidel’s non-charismatic brother Raúl, will be able to fill Fidel Castro’s shoes. The main problem is that Fidel Castro has been the sole and final arbiter of the differences within the state and party bureaucracies, and the irreplaceable “caudillo” (strong man) who initiates and dictates the main political line from above.
Fidel Castro’s unique power has been strengthened by the Cuban leaders’ fear of the likely consequences of political divisions within the ruling circles. The absence of democratic mechanisms to resolve disagreements within the Communist party-state leadership almost automatically converts disagreements into at best enforced anonymity, if not charges of disloyalty. With Fidel Castro gone, there will be no one who will settle such differences.
The passing of Fidel Castro will open the possibility that one or more factions of the bureaucratic apparatus will attempt to obtain support outside the top echelons of the system, and appeal for popular support of their positions. This appeal for support will find an echo in the pent-up frustrations and long suppressed hunger for consumer goods among the population at large, and in the sense of hopelessness about obtaining a better future, particularly among the young. The turmoil created by the factional conflict is likely to provoke Army intervention. Army intervention could possibly take place either through an open coup that would lead to an outright military dictatorship, or through the preservation of the outward trappings of civilian rule.
The natural demise of Fidel Castro will also have a serious impact on Cuba’s foreign relations, particularly with the US. The end of the Cold War vastly reduced Cuba’s importance for US foreign policy, making domestic political considerations the principal force determining Washington’s policy towards the island republic. Notwithstanding the repeated assertions of the Cuban government, a US military invasion of the island has not been an option for a long time. The military option has been replaced by an aggressive imperialist policy of continual economic and political harassment trying to make life as difficult as possible for the Cuban government and people, with the aim of hastening the internal collapse of the regime. Yet, at the same time, the massive export of hundreds of millions of dollars a year of food and processed goods to Cuba, allowed for the last several years as a “humanitarian” exception to the US blockade, has created a very powerful business bloc interested in doing business with Cuba and ending the economic war against that country. This bloc has attained some success with several bipartisan congressional votes (that did not become law due to presidential veto threats) that would have dealt serious blows to the blockade. It is not too much to speculate that these forces will grow in strength and will succeed after Fidel Castro dies, even if Raúl Castro, or some other top Communist leader, hold on to power.
THE ARMY
It is difficult to imagine a Cuban transition without the Army playing a major role in the process. First, the Cuban Army is, relatively speaking, the best organized institution in the island. Second, the Army has not been involved in internal repression except for situations of armed rebellion and combat
(under the Soviet model operating in Cuba, it is the state security organs, organizationally distinct from the armed forces, which are in charge of carrying out the tasks of internal repression). Third, due to compulsory military service, the Cuban Army has been a more inclusive institution than the more exclusive Communist Party. Fourth, the Cuban Army has for some time been a major player in Cuban economic life. The Army’s economic role includes both its own businesses, such as the huge business conglomerate GAESA that includes the tourist enterprise Gaviota, as well as high army officers occupying leading positions in other key areas of the Cuban economy such as the sugar industry. In the process, the Cuban Army has educated and developed an important group of technocrats who, together with a group of civilian technicians, have for some time played a major role in the Cuban economy and society. Fifth, there is evidence to suggest that Raúl Castro and the Cuban military that he heads have tried, in the past, to build bridges with the US, possibly in preparation for a transition in Cuba. On various occasions during 2001 Raúl Castro declared that the US and Cuba should widen their areas of cooperation “in spite of political differences” on issues such as drugs, emigration, and the struggle against terrorism. In 2002, he pledged his cooperation with US forces at the Guantánamo Naval Base, when it became a camp for prisoners of the “War on Terror.”
Raúl has acquired a reputation as an advocate and organizer of political repression, but also as an able administrator and economic pragmatist who, according to reports, advised and urged his brother Fidel to carry out the economic reforms, such as the legalization of dollars, which were implemented in the nineties. Regardless of who occupies the Cuban presidency after Fidel Castro’s demise, the Cuban armed forces have positioned themselves as the logical successors to Fidel in real power terms.
IDEOLOGY AND POLITICS
One of the many unknowns about a Cuban transition is whether the Army- led road towards a form of state controlled capitalism, will take place along the “Chinese” road of a strongly repressive one-party state with very little room for the development of independent popular organizations, or whether it will take the less likely authoritarian “Russian” form of an ostensible formally democratic society with little democratic content. One “advantage” of the “Russian” course is that it would allow a little more room for the expression of political currents than under the “Chinese” model.
Any degree of political opening in Cuban society will result in an explosion of previously suppressed political and cultural expressions. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have long resented the inability to speak up and the “double morality” that they have been forced to practice in their daily existence. But the main political thrust of the transition will be to disregard any social or human considerations that may stand in the way of the new state-controlled capitalist road.
State policies will likely promote “winners”: tourism and the industries supplying it, biotechnology, tobacco, extractive industries such as nickel and oil and possibly a newly developed maquiladora industry. The “losers” will be neglected: a good part of “noncompetitive” manufacturing, the sugar industry and, with some exceptions such as citrus, agriculture in general. The Cuban welfare state, already under severe strain after the collapse of the Stalinist bloc, will probably decay even further. Black Cubans will continue to suffer more than others as they already have in the “special period” that began in the nineties, except that it will get even worse for them, at least in relative terms. Regions of the country with a “losing” economy will continue to suffer disproportionately. Inequality is likely to grow even within the metropolitan area of Havana itself.
To the degree that an open political life will exist during the transition, a hard right will develop based on native conservative elements in addition to the Cuban- American rightists returning to the island. Communist Fidelismo is likely to remain an important political force. Neo-Fidelismo will increasingly draw on Cuban nationalism and gradually dispose of Marxist language while maintaining some form of “socialist” ideology. It will resist the neo-liberal trend in Cuban politics during a post-Communist transition, in the only way it knows: a bureaucratic, authoritarian and paternalist manner unable to tap the democratic roots of the popular resistance to capitalist neoliberalism.
There will be two fronts of resistance in the transition: first, in defense of the welfare state, national sovereignty and self-determination against US, Canadian and European encroachment, and second, for workers’ rights, civil liberties, women’s liberation and democracy against the new authoritarianism that is likely to replace the Communist system.
There are two factors that will make it difficult to build a democratic revolutionary left alternative to capitalist neoliberalism and to neo-Fidelismo: the small size and weakness of the groups and individuals who have been left-wing opponents of the Castro regime, and the likelihood the hegemony of neoliberalism will continue to prevail throughout most of the world. The one-party dictatorship’s discrediting of socialism will further add to the difficulties.
.
.
Samuel Farber is a long-time socialist. He was born and grew up in Cuba. His most recent work is The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered, published in 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. This article is an edited and revised version of an article holds on to published in International Socialist Review.
