Cuba’s Economic Surrealism

In his economic dreamland of surrealist juxtapositions and non-sequiturs, with visions free from conscious rationality, General Castro believes that improved state management is the way to save Cuba’s communist system. The hostility toward individual freedoms and success embodied in his economic reform program signals its inevitable failure. The desire for control by the military and the Party of every aspect of Cuban life is the antithesis of the individual freedoms and empowerment necessary to bring about an economic renaissance.

By José Azel l January 30, 2018

Havana in the 1950s and in the 21st Century

With his characteristic intellectual wit, Cuban writer Carlos Alberto Montaner defines communism as “the time countries waste between capitalism and capitalism.” By this account, Cuba has now wasted six decades of economic development and appears incapable or ignorant of how to change course. The economic platform for the VI Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, revealed ideological bewilderment manifested in absurd and incongruous policymaking.

The Draft Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy – the 32-page document that proposes to chart Cuba’s economic future – affirms that: “The new economic policy will correspond with the principle that only socialism [i.e. Cuban communism] is capable of conquering the difficulties… and that central planning and not the market will be supreme in the actualization of the economic model.”

The document persistently emphasizes General Castro’s militaristic themes of increased efficiency, discipline, and control. It insists, for example, on setting prices according to the dictates of central planning and insuring that any new “non-state” economic activities (apparently the term “private sector” is not to be spoken) do not lead to the accumulation of wealth. The General is not interested in introducing Deng Xiaoping’s market socialism with Deng’s pronouncement that “to get rich is glorious.”..........To Read More.....