Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 10:00:41 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist cuba?


Harry Cleaver:
>Assuming that such things as kulaks existed, what crackdown would you have
>favored Louis? Shooting the lot and taking over their land and then
>putting other peasants to work on it to produce a surplus by the
>state with little in return? That's pretty much what happened isn't it?
>Yes, that was Soviet socialism and one of the many reasons why lots of us
>want nothing to do with anything that even remotely resembles it.

I would have advocated the same course as took place in Cuba after the 
overthrow of Batista. Of course, the US political class described this 
process as cruel as any that took place in Stalin's Russia. They were 
lying. It is too bad that there is a tendency to see Cuba here refracted 
through the lens of Russia in the 1930s.

---

The Castro government instituted a series of structural economic changes 
that resolved many of the long-standing weaknesses of the economy. These 
changes must be understood in class terms. While Batista and Castro both 
stressed "development", it will be obvious that Castro's path followed an 
entirely class dynamic.

Since Cuban capitalism was mostly based on agriculture, it would be useful 
to review the changes that took place in this part of the economy. From its 
beginnings in radical agrarian reform, the Cuban revolution rapidly began 
to attack private property at its roots. This left Cuban agriculture as one 
of the most purely socialist in character the world had ever seen.

Agrarian reform was the most important "class" question the Cuban 
revolution faced. The agency that took charge was the newly-formed National 
Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), most of whose leadership was drawn 
from the battle-tested guerrilla ranks. The Communist Party, like their 
cothinkers in the Spanish Civil War, counseled moderation to the 
"barbudos", but the Castroites paid no attention.

Cattle ranchers were first on INRA's hit-list. In Camaguey province, the 
cattle-raising heartland, the local INRA chief ordered the confiscation of 
all large and medium sized ranches. In 1959, 900 ranches totaling over a 
million hectares became state property. The confiscations actually led to 
some economic chaos not entirely dissimilar to what occurred in the USSR in 
the late 1920s as many of the bigger ranches rapidly liquidated their 
assets. The Cuban revolutionaries made a political calculation that such 
sweeping transformations would strengthen the revolution in the long run 
since the elimination of the latifundio would garner it support from the 
land- starved rural masses.

Since sugar cane was the linchpin of the Cuban economy, the rural workers 
based in this sector could serve as a powerful locomotive for the 
revolution. They outnumbered the middle-class sugar farmers by five to one. 
They were also the favored class of the revolution which promised to bring 
full-time employment, higher wages, medical care, education and 
recreational facilities to the deprived countryside.Thus the large and 
middle-sized farms were confiscated in an effort to provide a better life 
for the workers. By the end of 1960, the state controlled most of Cuba's 
productive farmland: 4 million hectares of sugar and ranch land and over 2 
million acres of rice, tobacco and other properties. The rural bourgeoisie 
had been expropriated.

Now that the land belonged to the state, what development strategies could 
be carried out? Cuba's prospects were good. Unlike the Soviet Union, China 
or Nicaragua, the Cuba revolution inherited an economy that was not 
devastated by civil war. The factories, fields, ports, railroads, and 
communications were in good shape. Neither was there the runaway inflation 
that paralyzed development efforts in Nicaragua. The Cuban Peso was at a 
par with the US dollar when Batista was overthrown.

Since the Cuban bourgeoisie had not made efficient use of the generous 
holdings of land at its disposal, the government calculated that two birds 
could be killed with one stone. Unemployment would be attacked by creating 
state farms out of the confiscated properties. Also, Cuba's trade imbalance 
could be remedied by making better use of farmland, thereby increasing 
export commodities. These interrelated goals became the driving-force 
behind agrarian planning.

Planning went through two general stages: January-December, 1959; to 63; 
and from 1963 on.

In the first phase, Castro attempted to divert land from sugar production 
into the production of food crops. The notion was that Cuba needed to rely 
less on food imports. The government also expected to use advanced 
technology in the sugar fields to increase yields in the reduced acreage.

This phase of planning was quite daring and reflected growing confidence in 
Cuba's rural proletariat and impoverished peasants. First, INRA ordered the 
immediate, large-scale diversification of agriculture on sugar cooperatives 
and state farms. Almost overnight, Cuba's farmers and workers were expected 
to transform agriculture from a more or less monoculture based on sugar to 
one more closely resembling Western Europe's more variegated farmlands. 
Rene Dumont, a French agronomist who later would become hostile to Castro, 
put forward an extreme version of this policy.

This phase of agricultural planning looked better on paper than it did in 
reality. The big problem was that Cuba lacked the technical education and 
training of the rural popular classes to carry it out. Like Nicaragua and 
the USSR, Cuba was hampered by the poor cultural conditions inherited from 
the previous regimes. Castro had hoped that the pre-revolutionary slogan of 
"sin azucar no hay pais" (without sugar, there is no Cuba) would be a thing 
of the past.

Unfortunately, Cuba could not bypass objective conditions. It was forced to 
retreat and make sugar the central focus of all development efforts. If 
enough revenues could be generated from the sale of sugar abroad, then 
investments into technical training could allow diversification of Cuban 
agriculture in the future.

All of these calculations, needless to say, were made on behalf of the 
Cuban proletarian and poor peasantry in the countryside. As opposed to 
Algeria, where they were simply "inputs" into a technocratic development 
model, the Cuban revolution put the people first.

By comparison, the third phase of agricultural planning from 1963 on was 
much more realistic. Not only did it make the decision to focus on sugar 
production, it also decided to pursue the advantage of becoming integrated 
with the world socialist economy. Unlike Algeria, which opted to forge 
alliances with Western banks and multinational corporations, Cuba elected 
to cast its fate with the planned economies of the USSR and her allies. By 
1965 this strategy began to bear fruit, as production rose by 25 %.

The turn toward more intensive export agriculture required more irrigation, 
fertilizer and mechanical equipment than ever before. Unlike the 
unproductive cartel economy of Batista's days, the socialist farming sector 
of Cuba was driven at full force. Workers were more productive than ever 
because they felt that they had a stake in the system. The growth of 
hospitals, schools and recreational facilities in the countryside, an end 
to unemployment, and sharp attacks on racism convinced the rural masses to 
produce harder than ever since they were in essence producing for themselves.

As the revolution deepened and took on more and more of a proletarian 
character, profound political changes began to take place within Cuba. 
These changes also acted upon the tempo of the revolution, adding fuel to 
the locomotive that was pushing it in a more and more radical direction. 
Once Castro had decided to align himself with the workers, he never turned 
back. He was never one to waver.

  from: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/cuba.htm



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