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Abstract
This article examines the kind of development and political model most likely to emerge in Cuba, particularly in the wake of the gradual US–Cuban normalisation currently taking place. The rapprochement process, culminating with President Obama’s historic visit in March 2016, has unleashed stiff resistance in both countries. The liberal democratisation paradigm is held up against what we have termed ‘socialist neo-patrimonialism’, with both seen as alternative tools for assessing the direction of social transformations underway in Cuba, focusing on the debate about the role of the national private sector. Paradoxically, normalisation with the USA may so far have had the contrary effect of what President Obama had in mind in this respect: judging from the 7th Congress of the Communist Party in April 2016, it seems that resistance against economic reforms has hardened, caused by a fear that Obama’s charm offensive, combined with a strengthened entrepreneurial sector, will undermine the entire revolutionary project. The article concludes with a discussion of four development scenarios.
Notes
1. See, for example, Kornai, The Socialist System; Przeworski, Democracy; andSaxonberg, Transitions.
2. When the official labour reduction campaign was launched in late 2010, the expressed objective was to lay off half a million employees over a few months (Granma, September 13, .2010). A projection by the Ministry of Finance and Prices estimated that the number of persons employed in the non-state sector would increase to 1.8 million in 2015, which would represent 35% of total employment. Lina Pedraza, Minister of Finance and Prices, quoted in Granma, December 16, 2010; Garcia and Piñeiro, Reestructuración del empleo. The official figure for private sector employment for 2014 is 1.147 million, 23% of the workforce, plus another 232,000 (5%) employed in cooperatives, making it a total of 28% non-public employees. ONEI, Anuario Estadístico, Table 7.2.) But the majority of private employees was probably outside of public employment before 2010 (eg only 15% of the half million self-employed workers were state employees before they got their self-employment licence). The total reduction of the state payroll in 2015 is therefore possibly not much higher after five years than what was set as a target for the first six months of 2011.
3. ONEI, Anuario Estadístico, Table 9.10 (non-sugarcane agricultural production, tobacco excluded).
4. Twenty per cent of those with a cuentapropista licence are registered as ‘contracted workers’, meaning that they are employed by other self-employed/TCPs. But according to the General Comptroller, Gladys Bejerano, the majority of those employed in this way are working without a legal contract. Report to Council of Ministers 29 May 2015, reported in Granma June 1, 2015).
5. Just to mention one example, if the holder of a TCP licence is not physically present at the workplace because of illness, pregnancy or any other reason, the local authorities have the power to withdraw the licence until the person is back. Resolución 41/2013, No. 20, Article 12.
6. Raúl Castro, Informe Central
7. Henken and Vignoli, “Enterprising Cuba.”
8. A leading customs attorney in Miami drew up a ‘yes’ list on the basis of the complicated US Harmonized Tariff Schedule, including most skin and leather products such as footwear, handbags, travel products, ceramics, soaps, cosmetics, pearls, furniture and other wood products, etc. (Miami Herald, February 23, 2015.
9. Bravo, “La reanudación”.
10. ONEI, Anuario Estadística, Table 7.2.
11. Lafitte, Economía.
12. Both quotes are based on the CNN report from the meeting, April 11, 2015.
13. This US policy of abstaining from regime change efforts, but providing political support to what the USA sees as pro-democratic forces, is a general basic principle of President Obama’s present foreign policy, perhaps to be considered an ‘Obama doctrine’. Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine.”
14. Bye, “The End of Plattismo”.
15. In a poll of residents on the island conducted by Bendixen and Amandi International for Univision Noticias and Fusion in collaboration with the Washington Post in March 2015, one of the questions was: ‘Do you think that the normalisation of the relationship between Cuba and the United States is good for Cuba, bad for Cuba, or do you think that it is not of importance for Cuba?’ An overwhelming 97% responded that it is good for Cuba.
16. Brown, The Rise and Fall, Chap. 5
17. Fidel Castro, «“El hermano Obama,”, Granma March 27, 2016.
18. Castro, “Informe.”
19. Quoted by 14ymedio, April 19, 2016.
20. Mesa-Lago, “¿Un paso adelante?”
21. Raúl Castro proposed to the Congress a maximum age of 70 years for leadership positions in the Party, and of 60 for new leaders to be elected. The implementation of that decision, however, will be gradual until the next Congress in 2021. If implemented at the 7th Congress, two-thirds of the Politburo (including Raúl himself, Second Secretary and leading hardliner Machado Ventura, and all five Generals/Comandantes) would have left. With one exception, they were all re-elected. But all five newly elected Politburo members and all 55 new members of the Central Committee are under 60 years of age (average age of the latter is 54 years). It has been reported, and is the impression from speaking to people, that large numbers of party members are now returning their membership cards. An interesting anecdote, actually told me by a young party member, may be illustrative: on a domestic inter-city local currency bus ride, a quarrel emerged between two passengers. When one of them, an elderly man, pulled out his PCC membership card to demand respect for his position, most other passengers (including the one who told the story) broke out in general laughter and ridicule. The message: to be a party member no longer provides you with any particular authority
22. According to official US figures, more than 43,000 Cubans entered the USA in fiscal 2015, which ended on 30 September – the largest number in more than 20 years. The figure is up from a little over 24,000 for fiscal 2014.
23. Huntington, The Third Wave; and Fukuyama, The End of History.
24. Bye, “Political Implications.”
25. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition.
26. Another paradox is that President Obama seems to enjoy more popularity in Cuba than President Castro. According to the previously quoted Bendixen and Amandi poll from March 2015, 80% of Cubans hold a positive view of President Obama, and the same percentage of Pope Francis (before his September 2015 visit), whereas 47% are on balance positive towards their own President Castro (vs 48% saying they are negative).
27. What we may qualify as the non-state share of land tenure (including private property and the so-called credit and service cooperative, CCS, plus the new leaseholders – usufructuarios) has exploded since 2007, from 18.5 % to 49%, representing perhaps two-thirds of the country´s total agricultural labour force of well under one million. Garcia and Nova,.
28. Rojas, “Pluralismo Civil.”
29. Carothers, “How Democracies Emerge.”
30. Fukuyama, “Why is Democracy?,” 15.
31. Saxonberg, Transitions and Non-transitions.
32. In his ‘Informe’ to the 7th Party Congress, Raúl Castro holds out that market and planning ‘may co-exist and complement each other to the benefit of the country, something which has successfully been demonstrated (in China and Vietnam)’.
33. Rojas, “El regimen.”
34. Hernandez, “A History of the Future?”
35. Richard Feinberg, Soft Landing, Table 3.1 has made an interesting calculation of how many are employed in private activities apart from the officially registered non-state sector – unregistered self-employed, part-time self-employed who are keeping their state employment, independent artists and others – concluding that this sector may be approaching the same size as the formal non-state sector.