Gabriel Krell

Blog: Notes on Cuba

December 20, 2023

Synthesis of a couple meetings:

Although there is a good amount of mobility regarding composition of the party - party officials are usually from normal proletariat background; children of party officials often become normal workers instead of party officials; even the National Assembly has a fair bit of turnover - ideologically it's been ossified. Advancement in the party is too highly correlated with correct political views as judged by above (which is euphemized as a "technocracy" of Marxist study).

If demands of people change (as they probably will), this idealogical ossification is functionally the same thing as being anti-democratic or having a "top-down"/"Stalinist" approach.

Evidence:

• Strong: Economy is the worst since the Special Period. More than half of entire state budget currently earmarked for building hotels. People would not have voted to focus on tourism; instead, overwhelming opinion would have the budget spent making commodities cheaper or improving the crumbling housing stock.
• Weak: Ideology of entire system has mostly followed what was available externally. The revolution, and Fidel, wasn't nominally socialist until alignment with the USSR was the best option. Now that the USSR is gone, Cuba is sliding closer to China's policies of economic liberalization / market socialism / etc. We can view this as distributed realpolitik responses to international conditions, or as evidence that ideology is largely top-down (based on international convenience) instead of bottom-up. No clear reason that the masses would become more liberal as a result of seeing the USSR hollowed out by capitalists (but it is possible that they'd look at China's ascendency and say those guys look like they have some good ideas).
• Weak: Early on, Che favored strong + lively debate. Meanwhile, Fidel wanted to jail other tendencies (and did once Che left). To some degree, public social attitudes appear to have tracked the leaders, e.g. Castro was pretty anti-gay, and as he softened the public became less homophobic. It should work the other way around: the party and people develop dialectically, and the leaders implement that thought.¹
• Medium: Like China, non-party-affiliated labor unions are banned. Theoretically this is the same question as having a one-party state: you could have all the democracy inside the party, which would advocate for workers and maintain an essentially administrative government. In practice it looks pretty suspicious.
• Speculative: Cuba's decision to focus on tourism to the exclusion of building up their productive capacity seems short-sighted. One interpretation is that the party is responsive to people's demands, but mostly the short-term material ones: put food on the table and improve the country year-to-year, and people aren't going to care about democracy and subsequent suboptimal economic planning if their needs are met anyway. (Framed differently this is the capitalist libel of "they're just trying to stay in power".) Anecdotally, the party does seem to be responsive to some immediate demands; people have the impression that shit gets done. Theoretically, vigorous debate implemented by a healthy democracy would result in forward-looking policy of e.g., building productive capacity around their nickel reserves and becoming an exporter of nickel products, and the absence of such policy should tell us that something is wrong. Their development of medical industry is a substantially similar strategy, but it's largely dependent on Venezuela in an "oil money for doctors" partnership.

Future theoretical/research topics:

1. the party and people develop dialectically, and the leaders implement that thought¹

   Seems right to me but I have little theoretical basis for making it up. If it's correct, how exactly does this dialogue proceed (vanguard party etc)? We can see that executives who are also big ideological contributors is a recipe for a cult of personality. Is this implied idea of a "leader" as a separate entity, able to take executive action without unduly influencing ideological development of the party/people, even possible? Can we structure government to avoid concentrated executive power without condemning it to death by committee?
2. How can Cubans democratize and extend the gains of the revolution without color-revolution-ing themselves?
3. How can American leftists do that? What actions does "critical support" boil down to?