The following was a posting on the CubaNews Mailing List, of which Mr. Perez is owner and co-moderator. Cuban born, he is a California-based science journalist.
I think the experiences of East European socialism and Cuba are very different.
In countries like Poland, the socialist
transformation of society was a byproduct of the outcome of world war ii, not
the product of a popular, indigenous revolution which threw up its own very
fiercely independent leadership.
I know what is said by many Cuban exiles about Cuba, and what is being said now
by Venezuelans about Venezuelans, and it would be an exhausting exercise to go
through the various claims and lies and run them down to the ground.
So instead I will appeal to my own experiences that contradict that.
For example, in the mid-90's I went to Cuba as a government invitees to a
conference on "the nation and the emigration." At that time I went to
visit the house I had been a child in in Havana. It turned out that a civilian
pilot and his family lived there. These people knew nothing about me other than
I was in Cuba at the government's invitation, that a good friend of mine also
there on the same basis was with me, yet they immediately let loose with the
most incredible diatribe against the revolution and the government you can
imagine.
And I've had such experiences time and again --hearing people criticize the
government and its policies very sharply, although usually from the
"left" rather than the right -- i.e., people who wanted even more
radically egalitarian practices, or who wanted to deal with issues like
prostitution and so on through repressive measures, etc. I think in most of
these cases, people weren't necessarily even conscious that someone from
"the outside" was listening to them. It was just everyday
conversations on the street, waiting in line, on buses and in taxis.
It is true, and a disappointment, that Cuba's extremely rich political life on
the streets and in the local people's power and the national assembly doesn't
find much expression in the news media and especially the printed press. I
remember watching a televised session of the National Assembly where they had
quite a lively debate in the late 90's on "cattle rustling," and
basically contraband in meat, with rural representatives arguing for much
harsher penalties, and the urban ones against it. I don't remember what the
outcome was, but I do remember what an interesting and real discussion it was,
grounded in the reality of Cuba's difficulties in the 1990s, the need to
tolerate a certain amount of black marketeering because of the inefficiency of
the state, while placing limits on it, and even seeking channels to legalize it
and better control it.
If it was ever written up in the press, I am unaware of it. It is part of a
whole outlook on the work of the news media that has as a guiding principle not
to print stuff that could be manipulated by the enemy, even though it is
something everyone on the island is aware of, talking about, and has even been
covered live on TV.
Despite all that, however, I think there is a radical difference between Cuban
socialism and the bureaucratic socialism of Eastern Europe, and it starts with
its origins as a genuine popular revolution, and continues through the massive
involvement of the Cuban people in grappling with the issues and problems the
country faces.
Cuba's electoral system reflects that desire to draw in the population. The ban
on party campaigning is not only formal but REAL -- and if anything, at the
grass-roots municipal assembly level, I've been told there's really a tendency
to be a little sceptical of candidates who are also party members, because
people know that entails a lot of extra work and responsibilities, and being a
delegate to the people's power does too. People are nominated in community
meetings of a small area, a neighborhood. Periodically, the delegates elected
have to go back to the community and render accounts, tell the people what
they've done and face the heat from the population.
On opposition parties, I know we in the "western democracies" think
the existence of opposition parties is the be all and end all of democracy. It
is interesting to note that at least the founders of the United States thought
parties were a positive plague, and one of the reasons for the somewhat
convoluted design of the American constitution with its indirect elections and
so on was precisely to avoid --they hoped-- the emergence of parties.
But the idea that there are different major parties in places like the U.S. is
largely an illusion. The government is run, not by the democrats or republicans
but by the Democrats AND Republicans, a two-party system that, as someone once
aid, is ONE animal with TWO heads that feed from the same trough.
In the United States we like to say we have the best politicians money can buy,
and if you look at the huge sums spent on campaigns you have to agree. But just
like in the United States you can't be a Joe Shmoe worker and run for office, in
Cuba you can't be a Daddy Warbucks and buy yourself an elected position.
Cuba in the early years of the revolution did have a multi-party system. What
happened is that the revolutionary groups all joined together, and eventually
became the Cuban Communist Party, whereas the procapitalist groups all joined
the counterrevolution. And at that point the revolution adopted as its guideline
within the revolution, everything, against the revolution nothing.
The revolutionaries in Cuba prize highly the unity they conquered in the first
years of the revolution. And although there have been disagreements among the
Cuban revolutionaries over the years, no one has ever gone out and tried to
organize a second or different revolutionary party. The question of whether
another revolutionary party would be okay has never been posed in the concrete,
and I don't think it will be, because the kinds of things that drove to splits
in other situations don't happen in Cuba. If someone has a specific opinion on
some issue, like how best to organize the economy, they don't have to abandon it
or recant it or be purged. And the party and the country actually decide not on
what the best theory is, but on concrete measures, which means, even if you lost
some debate about some way to improve the sugar harvest this year, there is
still next year.
I suspect --I do not know for sure-- that the current retrenchment of the Cuban
sugar industry, for example, is something that some people in the leadership
have been raising, probably for several years. If so, I guess the comrades could
have tried to organize a communists-for-less-sugar party, but as a practical
matter, decided not to. I think it is pretty obvious to note that such an open
split within the leadership and cadre of the revolution might be turned to its
advantage by an enemy. And it is precisely because they respect the positions
and ideas of all the different comrades that they haven't has a break in their
unity.
And this isn't just or mostly a question of rules and discipline and so on, but,
on the one hand, of a leadership style that is inclusive, that is generous, and
even with those who make mistakes, and of conviction and confidence in a
leadership team that has steered the country for 4 tumultuous decades now and as
a result enjoys tremendous authority and prestige.
To try to bring into here the situation of the late bureaucratic socialist
countries of Eastern Europe, where there were all sorts of intrigues and
factionalism in the leading bodies, fueled by an entirely anti-socialist desire
for dachas and limousines and hard currency and privileges and comforts and
prestige, with the Soviet Big Brother meddling in the internal affairs of the
"sister parties", to imagine something like that is what dominates the
Cuban internal political scene, is a misunderstanding.
Cuba early on almost came to a break with the USSR leaders over their meddling
in Cuba's internal affairs; after that, the soviets were content to exercise
such influence as they had, and it was considerable, in a more general
ideological way rather than by trying to back this group or that one in the
Cuban leadership. (Ironically, some of the key figures among the so-called
"dissidents" in Havana over the past decade or so were people involved
with the pro-soviet "microfaction" as it was called of the 1960's.
They've changed everything about their politics except for one thing -- they
still don't like Fidel or the Fidelistas.)
So while I certainly understand a lot of your misgivings about a socialist
country due to your own experiences in Poland, and while there may be one or
another superficial resemblance, I think the situation in Cuba is entirely
different.
But rather than take my word for it, or Dan's, I would urge you to go to Cuba
and have a look for yourself. And remember above all this, that while in Eastern
Europe it was the pressure of the privileged bureaucracy, and its desire to keep
its privileged status, that was the main immediate driving force in the
repression of the population, in Cuba there isn't a generalized climate of fear
or anything like that. The government and leadership doesn't try to drive the
mass of the population out of politics, making political discussions and debates
taboo, on the contrary, it seeks to draw them in.
And those restrictions and structures that do exist that at first glance might
seem to be quite analogous to what went on in Eastern Europe in fact have quite
a different origin and cause. It doesn't come from the pressure of a bureaucracy
backed by the soviets, but rather are measures of self-defence by a small and
poor country against the very direct and very palpable and real hostility of
imperialism and especially American imperialism.
This doesn't mean other factors aren't involved. The Cuban revolution is made up
of people and they make mistakes, both honest mistakes and at other times
mistakes which evidence some of the same human weaknesses and frailties that
capitalism as a world system spontaneously generates, and which Cuba and the Cubans
cannot completely escape.
Yet clearly in Cuba's case it is the legitimate defence of the country and the
revolution against imperialism which is the main factor. Which means that,
whatever other factors we may think are involved, the most effective way to
fight to remove such limitations on personal and political freedoms as have been
imposed in Cuba is by fighting to end the hostile U.S. policy against the
revolution.
José
November 4, 2002