Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 09:02:35 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist cuba?


Harry Cleaver:
>Sorry, that is not my reading of those economists who studied the Soviet
>Union at all. The production of surplus mattered a great deal to the
>planners. The whole push for industrialization was based on not only the
>desire but the reality of realizing as much surplus as possible as quickly
>as possible. Their problem was that not enough Soviet citizens cooperated
>with that goal. Thus collectivization to collect the agrarian surplus,
>thus the gulag to force labor out the recalcitrant.

Yes, this is what Adam Ulam wrote as well. He also considered the 1930s as
tantamount to primitive accumulation in the sense that Marx described. Of
course, if the USSR continued to function that way into the 1980s, one
might have to reconsider the class nature of the USSR. As we know, however,
the period of the 40 years or so until the collapse of the USSR was marked
by a rather lax labor discipline, which was almost guaranteed to be a
problem where the lash of layoffs did not exist and where the workforce had
pretty much grown cynical about the people on top. During the time when
market socialism solutions were being considered to fix these chronic
problems, some like Janos Kornai argued that the only answer was to
introduce a free market in labor, ie., the threat of unemployment. For all
of the facility with which my autonomist friends apply Marxist terms to
societies in the so-callled Leninist model, the one category they seem
unininterested in is unemployment. Odd that would be this the case, since
it is the single thread that runs through all societies that have been
undergoing neoliberal solutions, like a knife cut.

>Virtually the whole Western economic literature is devoted to
>demonstrating the relative inefficiency of Soviet efforts to extract
>surpluses and invest it in development. Given the ideological bias of most
>of the commentators the accent is on rigidities of planning and lack of
>incentives. Both can be read in terms of resistance.

I think that there is lots of ideological bias on all fronts. During the
1950s, the USSR had the highest growth rate in the world by the admission
of the CIA. North Korea, which is probably to most people on this list as
Jane Fonda is to Rush Limbaugh fans, also had a phenomenal growth rate.

Martin Hart-Landsberg, Korea: Division, Reunification, and U.S. Foreign
Policy:

During the first two decades after division, many Koreans, perhaps even a
significant majority, viewed North Korea more favorably than South Korea.
Reflecting this sense of superiority, it was the North, not the South, that
made repeated offers for greater North-South communication and exchange.
The South Korean government not only rejected these offers, it refused to
make any counterproposals. Perhaps even more revealing of Korean
impressions of the two Koreas is the fact that in 1960, some 450,000
Koreans living in Japan officially selected North Korea as their "mother
country," as compared with 165,000 that selected the South. This difference
is even more impressive because the great majority of Koreans living in
Japan were originally from southern Korea. Between 1959 and 1962,
approximately 75,000 Koreans left Japan to permanently settle in the DPRK.

One reason that North Korea was able to confidently approach the South and
attract tens of thousands of Koreans from Japan was its economic
superiority. While South Korea struggled with recession and high rates of
unemployment during the 1950s, the North Korean economy generated full
employment and rapid growth. And even though new state-dominated relations
of production enabled the South Korean economy to grow rapidly over the
following decade, the North Korean economy continued to outperform it in
terms of employment, income distribution, and growth.

North Korea's strong economic performance was the result of a thorough
state-directed transformation of Northern economic and social relations.
Although Japan did "industrialize" Korea, it did so in an uneven way. In
1940, approximately 85 percent of Korea's heavy industry was in the north
while 75 percent of the country's light manufacturing and almost all its
agricultural production was in the south. The division of the country left
each side with half an economy. The North Korean leadership responded to
this historical legacy by implementing a number of sweeping reforms which
radically changed workplace, gender, and ownership relations. It also
launched a series of economic plans-one-year plans in 1947 and 1948, and a
two-year plan covering 1949 to 1950--that were designed to create a more
balanced and self-sufficient economy. These initiatives were both popular
and effective.

North Korea's economic progress was temporarily interrupted by the Korean
War. At the end of the war, power production was only 26 percent of what it
had been in 1949, fuel 11 percent, chemicals 22 percent, and metallurgy 10
percent. Agriculture was also in chaos (primarily because of the massive
U.S. bombing of the country's dikes and dams).

Almost immediately after the armistice, the North began an impressive
rebuilding program, pursuing what Stewart Lone and Gavan McCormack call
"possibly the most centralized and planned economic development strategy of
any country in the world." A three-year plan was produced for 1954 to 1956
that gave priority to the development of heavy industry. The plan's targets
were actually met some six months ahead of schedule. A five-year plan was
then drawn up covering 1957-1961, and its targets were also met ahead of
schedule. According to the DPRK, its completion meant that the country had
successfully built "a base for the development of an independent national
economy." A new seven-year plan was launched in 1961, with the aim of
modernizing the country's newly created industrial base, as well as
establishing more technologically advanced industries.

In the postwar period, the state also completed the task of eliminating
private ownership of productive assets. Agriculture went through a process
of collectivization which proceeded in stages between 1953 to 1958, a
process largely driven by the destruction left by the Korean War, which
made the pooling of limited resources and labor necessary for survival.
Lone and McCormack describe the collectivization experience as follows:

"Despite the urgency of the task of capital accumulation for
industrialization, the regime seems not to have squeezed the farmers too
hard, allowing them to experience gradually rising living standards and
reduced taxation levels, until the tax on the agricultural yield was
eliminated entirely in 1966. Irrigation, terracing of hillsides,
mechanization (large scale production and allocation of tractors) and
chemicalization (use of fertilizers) were promoted on a large scale."

Urban handicraft as well as small-scale, privately owned enterprises
involved in commerce and industry also went through a similar process of
collectivization. By August 1958, the North Korean leadership, basing its
assessment on the extent of state ownership, announced that the country had
achieved "the socialist transformation of the relations of production, in
both the rural and the urban communities."

North Korea's economic achievements were truly remarkable. Agricultural
output grew by an average of 10 percent a year during the 1950s and 6.3
percent during the 1960s. By the end of the 1960s, the government was able
to declare that the country had achieved food self-sufficiency. Industrial
growth rates were even more noteworthy. Gross Industrial Product in 1956
was almost three times what it had been in 1953; in 1960 it was almost 3.5
times what it had been in 1956. As a result, industry's share of national
income rose from 16.8 percent in 1946 to 64.2 percent in 1965. And by 1960,
machine-building had become the country's largest industrial sector. These
achievements were so remarkable that even Western economists began to speak
of the "North Korean Miracle." In fact, according to the economist Joan
Robinson, writing in 1965, "All economic miracles of the postwar world are
put in the shade by these achievements."

(Hart-Landsberg is the chair of the East Asian Studies Department at
Lewis-Clark College in Oregon and editor of "Bulletin of Concerned Asian
Scholars")


>Financial data? It would be more interesting to know what, if any, methods
>are used to determine the desires of the Cuban people and what methods are
>used, and to what degree, to meet those desires. Che. at least, apologized
>for the taste of Cuban cola after the revolution.

I guess you are implying that the Cuba does not have a planned economy and
that investment dollars flow to whatever commodity is most profitable. If
so, I can't blame you for failing to provide empirical evidence to back
that up. You know and I know that's how capitalism works. You know and I
know that investment in Cuba does not proceed along those lines. My only
question is why you don't just come right out and say that Cuba does not
represent any more of a realization of Karl Marx's hopes than Jamaica or
the Dominican Republic. It is one thing to harp on Russia in the 1930s. It
is another to cast Cuba in the same light, when tens of thousands of
leftwing activists with nothing in common with CPers in the 1930s have
visited Cuba and come away with a perception entirely different than your
own. It is your contradiction, not theirs.

>It may not be of interest to you Louis, but it was of interest to the
>person who raised the question. Instead of trying to drag the discussion
>onto my favorite terrain where I can beat my favorite drums, I tried to
>answer the question. If the question bores you, ignore it.

I am trying to broaden the question out beyond abstract discussions of
value, price and profit. I am trying to engage people, including you, with
the social reality of Cuba.

This has been the ongoing reality of Cuba:

Edward Boorstein, "The Economic Transformation of Cuba", MR Press:

By October 1960 most of this administrative and technical personnel had
left Cuba. The Americans and some of the Cubans were withdrawn by the home
companies of the plants for which they worked, or left of their own accord:
they found themselves unable to understand the struggle with the United
States, unwilling to accept the new way of life that was opening up before
them.

The Revolutionary Government had to keep the factories and mines going only
with a minute proportion of the usual trained and experienced personnel. A
few examples can perhaps best give an idea of what happened.

Five of us from the Ministry of Foreign Commerce, on a business visit, were
being taken through the Moa nickel plant. In the electric power
station--itself a large plant--which served the rest of the complex, our
guide was an enthusiastic youngster of about 22. He did an excellent job as
guide, but his modesty as well as his age deceived us and only toward the
end of our tour did we realize that he was not some sort of apprentice
engineer or assistant--he was in charge of the plant. I noticed that he
spoke English well and asked him if he had lived in the States. "Sure," he
answered, "I studied engineering at Tulane." As soon as he finished, he had
come back to work for the Revolution and had been placed in charge of the
power plant.

In another part of the complex, the head of one of the key departments was
a black Cuban who had about four years of elementary school education. He
had been an observant worker and when engineer of his department left he
knew what to do--although he didn't really know why, or how his department
related to the others in the plant. Now to learn why, he was plugging away
at his minimo tecnico manual--one of the little mimeographed booklets which
had been distributed throughout industry to improve people's knowledge of
their jobs.

And so on throughout the Moa plant. The engineer in charge of the whole
enterprise, who had a long cigar in his hand and his feet on the desk as he
gave us his criticisms of the way our Ministry was handling his import
requirements, was about 28 years old. His chief assistants were about the
same age and some of them were obviously not engineers.

Yet Moa was made to function. Even laymen are struck with its delicate
beauty--a testament to American engineering skill. 'Es una joya'--it's a
jewel, say the Cubans. It is much more impressive than the larger but older
nickel plant at Nicaro. Shortly after the nickel ore is clawed out of the
earth by giant Bucyrus power shovels, it a pulverized and mixed with water
to form a mixture 55 percent and 45 percent water. From then on all
materials movement is liquids, in pipes, automatically controlled. The
liquids move through the several miles of the complex, in and out of the
separate plants, with the reducers, mixing vats, etc. Everything depends on
innumerable delicate instruments, and on unusual materials, resistant to
exceptions high temperatures and various kinds of chemical reaction. The
margin for improvising in repairing or replacing parts is small-much
smaller than in the mechanized rather than the automated Nicaro plant. Yet
the Moa plant was in operation when we were there: two of the main
production lines were going-and all four would have been going jf it had
not been necessary to cannibalize two lines to get replacement parts for
the other two.

Except that Moa was an especially complex and difficult operation, jt was
typical of what happened throughout the mines and factories, and far that
matter in the railroads, banks, department stores, and movie houses that
had been taken over. The large oil companies had expected that the Cubans
would not be able to run the oil refineries. But they were wrong. When a
co-worker and I talked to the young administrator of the now combined
Esso-Shell refineries across the bay from Havana, he said, only
half-jokingly, that he was about two lessons ahead of us in his
understanding of how the refinery worked--and I wondered how it was kept
going. But we had been around the ten minutes earlier and there it was--going.

A textile plant was placed in the charge of a bearded young man of about 23
who had impressed Major Guevara with his courage and resourcefulness in the
Rebel Army. The former Procter and Gamble plant, which each year turns out
several million dollars worth of soaps, and tooth paste, was run by a
former physician who, besides being generally able, knew some chemistry.
For many months, the Matahambre copper mine was in the charge of an
American geologist, a friend of mine. After coming to Cuba to work for the
Revolution, he had been pressed into service, though he was not a mining
engineer and had never run a mine, because he was still the most qualified
person available. He had to educate himself rapidly in mine ventilation;
this was one of Matahambre's biggest problems at the time. I went through
the mine with him once end it was obvious from the way the men treated him
that he had gained their respect for the way he was handling his job.

Once an economist from the Ministry of Industry and I visited a large plant
near Matanzas that produced rayon for tires, textiles, and export. We
sensed at the plant that the harassed, outspoken administrator, almost the
only engineer left, was all but sustaining the whole operation by himself.
We got into a conversation about him with one one of his assistants. It
turned out he had a bad leg of some sort which was giving him trouble; his
father, who had owned valuable property in the nearby swanky bathing resort
at Varadero was out of sympathy with the Revolution; and his brother, also
an engineer, had left for Venezuela or some such place. But there he was,
holding a meeting with his staff at 11 P.M., using all his energy to help
keep the rayonera going.

When you walked through a Cuban factory, you didn't need to be told that it
was under new management--you could see and feel it everywhere. In the
Pheldrake plant for producing wire and cable, formerly owned by Dutch and
American interests, the whole office of administration was filled by men in
shirt-sleeves who were unmistakably workers; the engineers had gone and the
workers had taken over. On the main floor, a group of them were
struggling--using baling wire techniques--to repair one of the extrusion
machines so that the wire required by the Cuban telephone industry could be
kept coming. In a large tobacco factory, the administrator was black; in
the metal-working plant formerly owned by the American Car and Foundry
Company, the head of a department turning out chicken incubators was black.
Black people had not held such positions before the Revolution.



Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org




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