Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 08:34:28 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: re: The relative decline of material living standards


Harald wrote:
>Luois Proyect, you ask for sources. I did not supply those for two reason.
>One and most important. I have hard to believe that such basic facts where
>unknown to you, that is if you really know as much about Cuba and its
>and its comtemporary and past history as you seem to claim.

Oh, I see. That must mean that you can't provide a citation for the ILO
stats on wages. 

> Two,  I wrote
>about these things some years ago, I know to the anarchist Organise list,
>but maybe, I am unsure now, also to Aut-op-sy, after having looked up a
>lot of different sources - including official Cuban governmental ones (in
>Spanish) written from almost every political perspective. I would need some
>more time to find back to these now. At the moment I cannot even find what
>I wrote myself back then (far more concrete and detailed). May have been
>lost when my old computer broke down.

The dog ate your homework, I see.

>But here is something for now anyway: If you give me more time I can
>find more sources to back this up. But again, I do not believe that these
>are things that you do not already know, so it seems rather a wast of
>time. Cuba's infant mortality rate of 32 per 1,000 live births in 1957 was
>the lowest in Latin  America and the 13th lowest in the world, according
>to UN data.

(snip)

>Now according to "Resumen de Estadisticas de Poblacion no 3" printed
>in Havana in 1968 the mortality rate of children under one year  was 36, 3
>(per thousand  live births)  in 1958 and had risen to 39, 2 in the year
>1966.


United Nations Press Release, SG/SM/7358 
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2000/20000412.sgsm7358.doc.html

Following is the address of Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the “Group of
77” developing countries South Summit in Havana, Cuba, on 12 April: 

It is a great honour for me to address this South Summit. It is also a
special pleasure, for several reasons. 

First, I have always believed that we, the peoples of the South, should
play a more active and influential part in world affairs. We could do so
with great benefit to ourselves and to the world as a whole. 

But, in the last resort, our doing so depends on our own efforts -- those
each nation makes on its own behalf, and those we make to assist and learn
from each other. 

That belief has been the guiding principle of the Group of 77 from its
beginnings. And it has long been a guiding principle for the United
Nations, which was always at the side of the developing world in its
struggle against colonialism. Since the 1960s, newly independent States
have formed the majority in our Organization, and have sought to use the
United Nations as one of the mechanisms for coordinating their development
efforts. To assist that coordination and cooperation is one of the main
purposes of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), within which
there is a Special Unit for Technical Cooperation among Developing
Countries. And now, UNDP is making South-South cooperation a pillar of its
new approach. I myself, as Secretary-General, have also repeatedly stressed
the need for it. 

Another reason why I am pleased to be here is my gratitude for the chance
to visit Cuba once again -- a State which has shown that even a poor
country need not leave its people defenceless against some of life's worst
hardships. On the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures
education and life expectancy as well as income per head, Cuba consistently
ranks above other countries whose per capita product is much higher. 

Its efforts for public health are particularly impressive. As was
acknowledged last year by The Economist newspaper -- a source hardly to be
suspected of partiality towards a communist State -- "Cuba maintains levels
of health care unknown to most poor countries; and, rarer still, does so in
the countryside as in the cities". In this area, at least, our hosts have
set an example we can all learn from. 

>pensions they recieve. Even such a basic thing as soap became a luxury
>in the 1990ies, and the ordinary man and woman had to bring with them
>their own sheets to the hospital. It is also intersting to compare the
>number of car owners in Cuba compared to for instance Mexico. While I am no
>great entusiast for private motoring, that Cuba is probably the only country
>in the world where the percentage of car owners have actually slightly
>decreased since 1958 certainly says something. You where the one insisting
>on talking about bread. It would also be interesting to enter into Cuban
>rulings class economic imperialsm in other Latin-American countries
>during the last decade, but as I cannot find my sources at the moment,
>this would have to wait.

This is straight out of the gusano sourcebooks. Soap, and other consumer
goods, became a luxury in the 1990s because the USSR went out of business.
Since Harald left this historical context out, one must assume that he
chose deliberately to embarrass himself:

Financial Times (London), December 3, 1994, Saturday 

"Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, Cuba was consuming
Dollars 8bn worth of goods annually, most of it garnered through special
trade-and-aid agreements with the east bloc. Not only did the Soviet Union,
happy with a permanent foothold on the very doorstep of the enemy camp,
purchase Cuban sugar at above-world-market prices, it also supplied the
Caribbean client-state with subsidised oil, food, machinery, medicines,
vehicles, military hardware, technical advice, and cheap loans. 

"With the fall of the Soviet Union, it all vanished overnight. The goodwill
dried up, the teachers went home, the agreements were cancelled, the ships
stopped calling in at Havana harbour. 

"Without foreign exchange, Cuban imports have slowed to a trickle. Without
raw materials, Cuban factories have stopped operating. Without fertilisers
and pesticides, the Cuban sugar industry is floundering. Not only demanding
payment of a Dollars 30bn Cuban debt, Russia has now rejected as a risky
deal even the simplest form of trade - the bartering of oil for sugar. US
refusal to do business with its revolutionary neighbour remains as firm as
ever. 

"Two rolls of bread a day, one box of matches a month, one bar of soap a
month, two portions of mince-and-soya paste a month, two pairs of underwear
a year . . . armed with her government-issue ration book, such is the level
of provision Mercedes now manages to obtain through the state. Often not
even these meagre undertakings can be met. Mercedes has not seen soap in
the government shops for three months. 'Mierda de nada,' she whispers, for
good measure." (Financial Times, December 3, 1994)

I guess if the Cubans had read Pannekoek, the soap would have materialized
overnight.





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




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