Translation: Raul's unpublished Congress remarks

During the opening session of the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) in April, Raul Castro delivered the Main Report on behalf of the PCC Central Committee. 

As can be seen in the official telecast of the Congress proceedings, at several points during his address he departed from the prepared script. Some of these parenthetical comments are noteworthy, in my opinion, for their importance, candour and clarity.

Since these additional comments do not form part of the official report adopted by the Congress, they do not appear in either the Spanish text of the Main Report or the official English translation of this document.

Here are my translations of a selection of these comments, taken from YouTube clips of the telecast in Spanish. To give context for each of these comments, I've prefaced them with an extract of the preceding text of the official English translation of the Main Report.

In the first of Raul's remarks below he hammers home his determination to demand the implementation of the Congress decisions. In the second, he touches on the distortion of Lenin's conception of the complementary but distinct roles of the revolutionary party and the socialist state it leads in the Soviet Union after Lenin's death. 

In the third, he makes an explicit reference to the predominance of "the dominant class", the working class, in the highest body of the Cuban state, the National Assembly of People's Power. In the final comment, he urges delegates to not raise their hands mechanically "without knowing what you're voting for", alluding to the fact that this has often happened in the past. 

Raul Castro: selected unpublished remarks during Main Report to Sixth PCC Congress

Translation: 

Marce Cameron

Context:

[W]e feel it is advisable to remember the orientation included by comrade Fidel in his Central Report to the First Party Congress, nearly 36 years ago, about the Economy Management System that we intended to introduce back then and failed due to our lack of systematization, control and discipline. 

He said "… that the Party leaders but foremost the State leaders turn its implementation into a personal undertaking and a matter of honor as they grow more aware of its crucial importance and the need to make every effort to apply it consistently, always under the leadership of the National Commission created to that end…,” and he concluded: “…to widely disseminate information on the system, its principles and mechanisms through a kind of literature within reach of the masses so that the workers can master the issue. The success of the system will largely depend on the workers' knowledge of the issue.”

Remarks:

I won’t tire of repeating to you from this podium what you’ve heard me say on various occasions: that in this country, in this Revolution, almost all, if not all, of the most important things have already been said. So I say little, and I’ll continue saying little. [Long pause] But, in line with the responsibilities that the people have conferred on me through their National Assembly and the Party Congress, I will simply demand that my orders and orientations be carried out according to the directives of the corresponding leading bodies. [Prolonged applause]

(Source: YouTube clip 15 minutes 02 seconds)

_______

Context:

The first thing we should do to correct a mistake is to consciously admit it in its full dimension but the fact is that, although from the early years of the Revolution Fidel made a clear distinction between the roles of the Party and the State, we were inconsistent in the follow-up of his instructions and simply improvised under the pressure of emergencies. 

There can be no better example than what the leader of the Revolution said as early as March 26, 1962, by radio and television, explaining to the people the methods and functioning of the Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas (ORI), which preceded the Party. He said “…the Party leads, it leads through the entire Party and it leads through the public administration. An official must have authority. A minister must have authority; a manager must have authority and discuss as much as necessary with the Advising Technical Council (today, the Board of Directors), discuss with the working masses, discuss with the Party cell, but it is the manager who makes the decision, because it is his responsibility…” This orientation dates back 49 years.

There are very well defined concepts that, in substance, remain completely valid regardless of the time that has passed since Lenin formulated them, almost 100 years ago, and they should be taken up again, bearing in mind the characteristics and experiences of our country.

Remarks:

...since Lenin formulated them, almost 100 years ago, with absolute clarity. If in the years following his death all of this was distorted, we’re not obliged to copy these errors. We have to think with our own heads and come to our own conclusions about this. Because the characteristics of no two countries are identical. In our own small country, you yourselves are exceptional witnesses to the fact that in many ways, each province is distinct from the others, though naturally the law applies equally throughout the country.

(Source: as above, 35:59)

_______

Context:

In 1973, during the preparations of the First Party Congress, it was defined that the Party must lead and supervise with its own ways and means, which are different from the ways, means and resources available to the State for exercising its authority. The Party’s guidelines, resolutions and provisions are not legally binding for all citizens; it is the Party members who should abide by them as their conscience dictates since there is no apparatus to force or coerce them into complying. This is a major difference about the role and methods of the Party and the State. 

Remarks:

... Because the state has its [National Assembly], where an expression of the dominant class [i.e. the working class] predominates. So it elaborates its laws for the benefit of the dominant class. And when someone doesn’t comply with these laws, the police take them to the courts where they face a prosecutor, and the accused are tried, judged and condemned; then the police come along and take them to prison.

(Source: as above, 38:46 )

_______

Context:

Comrades, the idea is to forever relieve the Party of activities completely alien to its nature as a political organization; in short, to get rid of managing activities and to have each one do what they are meant to do.

Remarks:

... This is easy to say. Now we’ll see how this fight goes, how we wage this struggle. Fraternal struggles, let’s be clear. Naturally, those of us who agree with this here [gesturing to his speech notes] think we’re going to win. And when I say “with this here”, this depends on you approving it. If you don’t, so be it. We’ll discuss it democratically and in depth, as we’ve already done in part [i.e. during the pre-Congress debate]. And I’d like to point out in this departure from the text of the official report – which was approved by dozens and dozens of compañeros, including the Central Committee – the responsibility that we have, the thousand delegates here, above all for this document that we’re going to adopt. Don’t raise your hands mechanically without knowing what you’re voting for. I don’t defend this or that idea. I orient, I advise you to think, and to always get to the bottom of things, [beyond] the superficial.

(Source: YouTube clip 3:02) 

Comment: Cuba reconceives socialism

The dust has settled from the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) and reactions are circulating in cyberspace from all quarters, some better informed than others. It's amusing to note that at least one foreign news agency reported that Fidel was present for the singing of the national anthem at the close of the Congress. Fidel was there, they got that right, though it wasn't the national anthem but the communist Internationale that had nearly a thousand delegates, overcome with emotion, holding hands and swaying to the melody.

The best informed and most interesting commentaries on the Congress are those of Cuban commentators living on the island who are sympathetic to Cuba's socialist project and who, because they don't shoulder heavy PCC or state responsibilities, are free to do what Cuba's revolutionary journalists have been urged to do by Raul Castro: speak their minds and tell it how it is, responsibly of course. In the main report to the Congress, Raul called on Cuban journalists to "definitively banish the habit of describing the national reality in pretentious high-flown language or with excessive formality". In other words, more real journalism please and less self-congratulatory propaganda. 

Those of us who write about Cuba from outside the country from a position of solidarity should also adopt this approach. As the Cuban Revolution changes, so do the requirements of solidarity. It's no longer enough, for example, to point out that Cuba has free health care and education. People want to know why universal rationing and subsidies are disappearing, why half a million state-sector workers are to be made "available" (the Cuban euphemism) in a first stage of rationalisations, whether Cuba is following the Chinese road to capitalist restoration. 

The best way to approach such understandable doubts and concerns is to acquaint oneself with the internal debate in Cuba, much of which is publicly accessible in the internet age, and draw one's own conclusions. My own conclusion is that Cuba is on the path of socialist renewal. A renewal process that embodies a reconception of socialism — or, to be more precise, of the socialist-oriented society — that junks both idealistic errors and the discredited Soviet manuals on "Marxism-Leninism" in a return to classical Marxism's conception of the transition from capitalism to socialism, in the concrete conditions of Cuba today. But more on this in another blog post.

As expected, the Congress adopted the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines. The final draft, which was substantially modified on the basis of the public debate and further amended by the Congress's five working commissions, has yet to be published. Given the importance of this document it seems to me that a balanced assessment of the outcome of the Congress and the pre-Congress debates must await the publication of the final version of the Guidelines. While it has been reported that more than two thirds of the guidelines were modified in the final draft as a result of the public debate and some 30 new guidelines were added, we don't know which ones were modified, how much, and most importantly, in what direction. Some things are known. For example, Raul noted in the main report that Cubans will soon be able to buy and sell their homes and cars.

If the Guidelines adopted by the Congress are not translated into English then I'll translate them and publish them on this blog as soon as they become available in Spanish. In the meantime, I'd encourage readers who haven't already done so to read the official English translations of Raul Castro's opening and closing speeches to the Congress and, if you have the time and the interest, the following commentaries from Cuba. All are candid, well informed and offer valuable insights and reflections. All have been previously published in English. Over the next few weeks I'll endeavour to compile, translate and post a selection of other such commentaries which have not been translated. 

Main report to the Congress

Raul's closing address 

Interview with Ricardo Alarcon, President of Cuba's National Assembly of People's power 

Twenty Years Are Really Something, by Luis Sexto, Cuban journalist

The Congress's Political Balance, by Jesus Arboleya, Havana University

Raul Castro, the First Secretary by Fernando Ravensberg, BBC Mundo Havana correspondent

Translation: A victory for socialism

Bohemia editorial, March 31, 2011

Translation: Marce Cameron

With its focus on economic policy, the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party will mark a new milestone in the history of the nation and of the Revolution that in January 1959 initiated profound changes in all spheres "for the humble and by the humble", as Fidel said in 1961, and "with all and for the good of all", as Jose Marti proclaimed on the eve of the necessary war [for independence from Spain].

Just as we celebrate half a century since the Bay of Pigs victory, which was also the first great defeat of Yankee imperialism in the Americas, this Congress will have to approve the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines for the Party and the Revolution, which will be ratified with realism and fidelity to the principles sown and defended up to now — the decision of the Cuban people, led by its political vanguard, to continue building our socialism.    

Cuban socialism was not installed by the victorious divisions of the Red Army, as the Commander in Chief [Fidel Castro] said on December 7, 1989 before the graves of Antonio Maceo and Panchito Gomez Toro in the farewell service for the internationalist volunteers who lost their lives in honourable missions, both military and civilian: "In Cuba, socialism was forged by Cubans".      

In this way we have sustained it until today, it should be added, before reiterating that this is how it will continue to be, since for a small country such as ours — close neighbour of the powerful empire that is always determined to annexe us — socialism is not only dignity and social justice but the guarantor of independence and sovereignty, of the existence and the continuity of the nation.     

This socialism, however, demands not only reaffirmation of intention and will demonstrated in great sacrifices; it must make itself truly sustainable in the global conditions of all manner of crises, of economic insecurity, wars and many other threats arising from the exploitative capitalist social order in times of rapid technological and scientific development and, simultaneously, a crisis on the moral and ethical plane. We must ensure the viability of this socialism in a country with scarce material resources that is blockaded and attacked.         

    

This sustainability translates not into the pursuit of growth, abundance and irrational and unequal consumerism — as capitalism tries to distort the expression of human progress — but in the search for a genuine solution to the economic problems, in material progress as the basis for socialist policies. We must always be clear on this point so as not to confuse nor deviate from our course.       

The guardian of this process of economic advance, as in other goals, always for the common good, is the people together with the Communist Party as its political vanguard, but also the Union of Young Communists, the mass student and social organisations and People's Power, all the institutions created by the Revolution since its inception; dignified, patriotic Cubans that are the majority.    

The Sixth Party Congress will not only be that which brings together a thousand delegates elected by the base. It was also what we did prior to this gathering throughout the country, discussing the Draft Guidelines in an exemplary exercise of democracy. More than 70% of the population participated in these discussions in more than 127,000 meetings, during which more than 2.3 million interventions were made that enriched and deepened the ideas being debated.

      

This is how we create our socialism in Cuba. A forge that today necessitates, moreover, that the updating of the economic model be carried through to completion, involving a struggle against very dangerous ills such as bureaucracy and corruption that are alien to and incompatible with the essence of our ideal of a more just society.

      

After the Congress will come the most complex, arduous and unavoidable task given the great impetus we now need and that we have decided to give ourselves. We must achieve the transformations we have proposed in mentalities and in a more systematic approach. An energetic — and satisfying, if we do it properly — effort to put into practice everything agreed to and mandated by the Sixth Party Congress and the national consensus.  

A great new battle that once again, as 50 years ago at the Bay of Pigs, will end in a victory for socialism.

Translation: The fragmentation of anxiety

Regular readers of my blog may have been wondering why I had not posted any translations since February 8. Don't worry, I wasn't taking a break from Cuba solidarity work, I was working on the Sydney University Cuba-Venezuela Solidarity Club broadsheet for the start of the new university year in Australia. Four thousand copies have now been printed for distribution at Sydney University, the Australian National University in Canberra and the University of Western Australia in Perth. If you're interested you can view or download a PDF version of this broadsheet from the homepage of the Cuba-Venezuela Solidarity Clubs website.

I should also take this opportunity to thank Norman Girvan from the University of the West Indies in St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, for compiling a nice PDF version of my complete translation of Carlos Alzugaray's essay "Cuba: Continuity and political change", with permission from the author and the magazine Temas. Here is the link to the compilation.

Below is Luis Sexto's latest commentary in Juventud Rebelde. Notable is the following: "I've spent the past 40 years of my journalistic career expressing opinions; I have never been told what to think, nor what to say." He alludes to the fact that self-censorship, as much if not more so than official censorship, has contributed to the stifling of critical reflection and debate in Cuba's revolutionary mass media. This is changing: Raul Castro has repeatedly urged Cubans to speak their minds and abandon displays of false unanimity.     

The fragmentation of anxiety

By Luis Sexto

Juventud Rebelde, February 10, 2011

Translation: Marce Cameron

Cuban Communist Party offices, Old Havana

Those who have suffered it may relate how anxiety fragments one from within; it perplexes. And without this commentator pretending to know anything about medicine, I could elaborate on this example and admit that a collective anxiety could undermine the general unity [around Cuba's socialist project].         

I've begun my commentary with such scientific "rigour" because some of the messages [from readers] that arrive in my mailbox pulse with anxiety. I don't doubt the sincerity with which they've been written; and I realise that rather than doubt, people feel somewhat desperately anxious that the problems be resolved or dissolved. And there's a danger in that, because anxiety, I've heard it said, is like the waiting room for depression and pessimism.

The anxiety seems to play with some of us. Before knowing about the socio-economic strategy [proposed in the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines] to confront the weaknesses and deficiencies of our society, many revolutionary Cubans were alarmed because time passed and "nothing was done". We were anxious, and time snipped away at our hope... OK, Raul [Castro] had warned that everything had to be thought through very gradually, intelligently and maturely, so that the country would not make mistakes. We must not forget, and this is the opinion of this commentator, that sometimes in Cuba errors are rectified with other errors.    

Well then, now anxiety arises in some because they believe that what is decided is a brainchild of the bureaucracy aimed at dismantling the country. Yes, this has been said in the messages of some people who are very honourably worried. One can understand, then, that anxiety hopes that the solutions materialise in hours and that nothing changes so that nobody suffers. As if Cinderella's fairy godmother could change pumpkins into luxury coaches... when we can't even cultivate pumpkins.           

Excuse my frankness. I've learned to trust in a republic that has not only confronted its errors and its negative historical heritage, but which also has to deal with an external enemy which is not a child's bedtime story. Outside the country there are those who do their utmost to leave revolutionary Cuba defenceless.

On the other hand, if the Revolution and the socialist state cease being paternalistic institutions, pampering, unable to utilise everything and everyone efficiently, the cure for these ills will not be painless. Nobody doubts that [state-sector] payrolls were inflated, unbearable; nobody doubts that efficiency and everything else flows from restoring the value of work [i.e. reasserting the role of wages], and so long as five people do the work of one, work will never be valued. Nobody doubts, either, that there have been excessively generous pensions that need to be revised — albeit with caution and justice.            

I'd like to say, in summary, that when one pokes at a wound in order to heal it, it hurts. And because of this I believe that what has been projected and discussed so far, and what may be projected and discussed in the future is more than a mere bureaucratic formula; it's a decentralising strategy aimed at the bureaucratic mentality, which will surely be defended. Perhaps the principles [of the "updating" of Cuba's socialist economic model] published in well-known documents do not cede space [to workers, cooperatives and small-scale private enterprises]? Perhaps they do not aim to convert self-employment into a creative sector that contributes to resolving necessities? And if someone complains today about taxes, I'm of the opinion that at some point they'll have to serve as a stimulus [to production and services] while rationally controlling excessive enrichment.

There will be compatriots who don't share my opinions. I've spent the past 40 years of my journalistic career expressing opinions; I have never been told what to think, nor what to say. So I'll finish by saying, as I said a week ago: if those that committed errors are the same as those who will have to rectify them, I interpret this phrase as saying that they are the same because we are the same nation, the same people. And that therefore we must renew ourselves inside and out, ethically and patriotically, and accept that politics, from the municipality upwards, has to create confidence, to explain, to convince, and to make us — as Che  would say — the first to act and the last to receive. And also the first to trust. All this touches on everything we've done to justify our existence in the Revolution that arose to liberate us from external and internal leashes, despite errors and frustrated dreams that await our collective and solidaristic kiss to awaken, renewed.   

  

Translation: Port workers debate Guidelines

In Australia, port workers are known as "wharfies". In the US they are known as "longshoremen", while elsewhere in the English-speaking world they are "stevedores", "dockworkers" or "dockers". Such are the difficulties of translation for a multinational audience. 

At the other end of the lexical labyrinth are the peculiarities of Cuban Spanish. I once made the innocent mistake of asking for a "papaya" in a Havana fruit market, not realising that in certain parts of Cuba — unlike in the rest of the Latin America — "papaya" is a colloquial term for vagina. My request drew howls of laughter from the youths working the fruit stall.

Here is another report of a grassroots debate on the Draft Guidelines.

Port workers in the economic debate  

By Lourdes Perez Navarro

Granma, January 31, 2011

Translation: Marce Cameron

Achieving an elementary understanding of economics among leaders as well as workers was a recurring theme during the debate on the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines of the Party and the Revolution that took place in the Haiphong Base Enterprise Unit, belonging to the Havana Port Services Enterprise of the ASPORT Enterprise Group [of socialist state enterprises].

Commenting on Chapter 1 that deals with the economic management model, Dionisio Zayas pointed out that the preparation of leaders from the enterprise point of view is very precarious. "The ABC of the [enterprise] director is the economy, having an understanding of accounting and finances; they don't have to be a specialist, as General Raul Castro said [in the National Assembly in December], but they have to know the elementary principles".                 

We come across enterprises, he added, where the technical economic plan is not discussed with the workers, despite the obligation to do so. "The plan has to be discussed first with the workers, not discussed in an office and then the order comes down to comply with this or that."

He concluded: "If everyone contributes what they're supposed to in an optimal way, we're going to leave behind the economic potholes that we have today."

Individual responsibility in the economic context also surfaced in the discussion. It's essential that we workers master fundamental aspects of the economy, said Hugo Pons.

Participation in the planning process, he said, is precisely one of the cardinal elements to ensure that the workers assume the role that corresponds to us if we truly are [co-]owners of the means of production.               

After reading an excerpt from Guideline No. 4 — that imposes a training process on all the institutions that would facilitate the structural, functional, organisational and economic changes in the enterprise system — Pons insisted on the need to "achieve ever greater mastery over every little thing we do, independently of the fact that, certainly, the management of the enterprise must be sound to begin with, but it won't be sound enough if its workers are not."

Dionisio Zayas intervened in the analysis of Chapter 5 on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, and proposed a new Guideline: "Ensure the implementation of Law 38 on Innovations and Rationalisations".

Commenting on the chapter referring to transport policy, Gustavo Monteagudo expressed support for the idea of creating cooperatives in the public transport system for passengers, which would stimulate discipline, good service and care for the means of transport.   

In Guideline No. 264, which talks about "organising and prioritising attention to and the quality of technical services for the maintenance and technical readiness of the means of transport...", Juan Vasquez thought it would hit the nail on the head if rather than saying "attention to", it said "the assurance of technical equipment".

If we are not assured a supply of spare parts to make the changes when needed according to the maintenance cycle, the time will come when, at the end of the warranty period, the equipment is out of service, he said.   

Alicia Lean said that in Guideline No. 273, where it says that the work of maintaining and conserving the housing stock must receive priority attention, it should be added: "and reduce the paperwork for these efforts". They are so cumbersome, she said, that the people tire of them, stop going through the formalities and resort to illegalities.

One of the workers directed a question to the chair of the meeting: "Aren't we going to take a vote on whether or not we approve of the interventions of the compañeros? The response was a clear expression of socialist democracy: "Everyone is free to propose whatever they like; all the proposals will be recorded and compiled, and will enrich the debates of the 6th Party Congress."

Translation: Everyone's Congress

Everyone's Congress

By Alberto Nunez Betancourt

Granma, February 4, 2011

Translation: Marce Cameron

Unity is forged and reaped in the broadest socialist democracy and in open discussion with the people of all issues, no matter how sensitive they may be. Raul Castro

More than six million Cubans have participated in the analysis of the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines of the [Communist] Party and the Revolution. Working groups take into account all the proposals.

 *  *  *

Studying the Draft Guidelines

The congress of the people is taking place in the neighbourhoods and workplaces. More than six million compatriots have participated in the analysis of the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines of the Party and the Revolution, with more than 70% of the projected meetings having taken place.

With responsibility, in free and open exchanges, Cubans examine every chapter of the important text, knowing that all the interventions or proposals for additions, modifications, deletions, doubts and/or concerns are gathered meticulously. After being processed and classified according to theme, they are considered, with the help of computer specialists, by more than 5,000 specialists in every municipality and province. The proposals are then referred to the 12 working groups that worked on the elaboration of the Draft Guidelines, under the guidance of the principal leaders of the Party, state and government. These working groups are now committed to evaluating the information collected and proposing the relevant changes with a view to presenting a final draft to the 6th Communist Party Congress [in April].          

The chapters eliciting the most opinions and proposals are Chapter 6, dedicated to Social Policy; Chapter 2 (Macroeconomic Policies); Chapter 1 (Economic management model); Chapter 11 (Policies for construction, hosing and water resources) and Chapter 10 (Transport policy). Of the Guidelines themselves, among the most discussed are No. 162, referring to "implementing the orderly elimination of the ration book [distribution system]..."; Nos. 61 and 61 (pricing policy); No. 133 (quality and rigour of the teacher training process); No. 278 (application of flexible arrangements for swapping, buying, selling and leasing of housing), and No. 54, referring to the process of working towards monetary unification.          

But if opinions that coincide and reflect consensus are important, also valuable, worthy of respect and considered [by the experts and working groups] is the valid opinion of any citizen with regard to additions or modifications to one or more Guidelines.

The current process of mass participation has its antecedents in the call made by General Raul Castro in his speech of July 26, 2007, in Camaguey, when he asked the people to discuss the future of our socioeconomic development. More than 1.3 million proposals were put forward in the subsequent debates. Two years later, in the popular consultation around the speeches of compañero Raul on July 26 in Holguin, and on August 1 in the National Assembly of People's Power, nearly 2.3 million proposals for action, supportive comments, suggestions and criticisms were added.

Nothing has remained rhetorical. The militants of the Party and the population participate in the political process of preparation of the upcoming Congress. Once again we talk about planning, profitability, efficiency, investments, savings. The economic battle is essential because our quality of life depends on it. The Guidelines also contain the spirit of rectification of errors and negative tendencies, a logical continuity of the [Rectification] process begun in the 1980s, and which does not deserve to be truncated. The analysis of the Draft Guidelines will be the sole theme of the Party Congress in April.

To set off along a better path, towards preserving what we have achieved and making our socialism irreversible, takes wisdom and courage. We Cubans are not in an era of lamentations, nor of defeats, but of taking sure steps to guarantee the socialist future of the homeland. We must delve into issues of organisation, of boosting the effectiveness of oversight, of demanding more [of those with responsibilities] in the midst of a complex reality for a country which has confronted, in the past five decades, the tremendous siege that the economic war waged by 10 US administrations amounts to.

Despite all this, the people discuss and contribute [to the debate] with optimism, because a true Revolution renews itself continually; is self-critical; learns from it mistakes; never ceases to promote [ethical] values; has confidence in its youth, which have never let it down, and less so will they do it now and later on, when they have the responsibility of continuing its work with an ever-greater protagonist role in its leadership, convinced that for our people the concepts of homeland, independence and socialism are indissolubly linked.                       

      

Comment: Cuba prepares for 6th Party Congress

The commentary below has been written for Direct Action monthly, an Australian socialist publication. An edited version will appear in the February issue.

Cuba prepares for Sixth Communist Party Congress

By Marce Cameron

In November, Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez, flanked by a large delegation of Venezuelan government officials, visited the Cuban capital, Havana. The purpose of the Venezuelans' visit was twofold: to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the signing of the historic cooperation pact between Cuba and Venezuela, core of the pro-socialist Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (known by its Spanish acronym ALBA), and to review and strengthen economic and social cooperation between the two socialist revolutions. 

At the conclusion of the summit, Cuban President Raul Castro, after joking that he would speak before Chavez because his speeches are always concrete and concise, unlike the person sitting next to him — drawing laughter from Chavez himself and the audience of Venezuelans and Cubans at Havana's international convention centre — announced that the Sixth Cuban Communist Party (PCC) Congress would be held in the second half of April, 2011. The Congress, the first since 1997, will coincide with the 50th anniversary of Cuba's defeat of the US-sponsored mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs and Fidel Castro's declaration, on the eve of hostilities, of the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution.

Raul announced that the Congress would have a single agenda item: the economy. Other discussions and decisions related to the party's leadership role in society and its internal functioning would be deferred to a PCC conference, to be convened after the Congress sometime this year. He also announced the publication of the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines, a 32-page document detailing the PCC leadership's proposal for "updating" Cuba's socialist economic model. Fidel Castro, retired Cuban President and PCC first secretary, had been the first to receive a copy of the Guidelines, Raul noted as he handed Hugo Chavez the second copy. In his speech, Chavez began by chiding Raul for taking more than half an hour, then praised Cuba for its revolutionary consistency. Commenting on the importance of the economic battle, he recalled Lenin's phrase: "Socialism equals Soviet power plus electrification", by which Lenin meant industrialisation, said Chavez.

That Chavez and other key members of his revolutionary socialist government were present at the public announcement of the PCC's historic Sixth Congress symbolises the importance of Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution to the renewal of Cuba's socialist project, two decades after the demise of Soviet bureaucratic "socialism" plunged the Cuban Revolution into a deep and prolonged crisis known as the Special Period. The crisis has been mainly economic, bringing to mind images of long queues for rationed products, bicycles replacing buses and oxen replacing tractors as the Revolution drew on its wellspring of political consciousness and social solidarity to sustain the core social achievements flowing from the 1959 revolution.

  

But the collapse of the Soviet Union was not only an economic blow, it was also an ideological blow. In 1989, the post-capitalist societies that had emerged on the basis of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Red Army's liberation of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II and the overturn of capitalism in China, North Korea and Vietnam occupied a third of the planet's land surface. By 1992 the Soviet Union was no more, and imperialism triumphantly proclaimed the "end of history". The old Soviet manuals on "Marxism-Leninism" and their dogmatic certainties were as discredited as the regimes that had spawned them.

  

Yet socialist Cuba, under the leadership of Fidel and the Cuban Communist Party, stood firm, fulfilling Fidel's pledge that "Cuba will know how to remain the example of a revolution that does not give in, that does not sell out and does not go down on its knees". It was not the end of history, he said, and he was right. It could be said poetically that history was reborn in Venezuela on April 13, 2002, when Chavez was restored to the presidency after a short-lived US-backed coup in a popular insurrection, opening the way for the de-facto nationalisation of Venezuela's oil wealth by the revolutionary government emerging from this insurrection, which in turn signalled the opening of Venezuela's socialist revolution. Thus Cuba's isolation in the Americas came to an end, and the two revolutions joined hands to be wipe out curable blindness in the hemisphere and to share the oil wealth, among other solidarity projects.  

Class character of PCC 

As Cuban diplomat and historian Carlos Alzugaray Treto points out in his essay "Cuba: Continuity and political change" published in the October-December, 2009 edition of the Cuban journal Temas, many leftists outside Cuba do not recognise that the PCC is essentially different to the parties of bureaucratic power and privilege that ruled the former socialist states of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (to which could be added China).

"Despite the fact that the PCC leadership has committed errors that have been recognised and/or rectified", Alzugaray Treto acknowledges, "and that methods and styles of work bearing the imprint of their origins in the Soviet political model still persist — such as the excess of centralism, for example — in reality the Cuban leadership has been concerned with two central aspects: the vanguard character of its militants that must be the first in every political social initiative, and the struggle against manifestations of corruption in its ranks. The honesty, sensitivity and the spirit of sacrifice championed by [Argentinean-born Cuban revolutionary leader] Che Guevara have been, in general, paradigms of Cuban communist conduct and not the privileges and perks of the nomenclatura, as happened under actually existing socialism [e.g. Soviet bureaucratic 'socialism']".

This difference goes to the heart of why Cuba has not succumbed to bureaucratic degeneration and capitalist restoration. Every revolutionary socialist party in power attracts opportunists as well as revolutionaries and there are always problems of bureaucratism, which is a hang-over from capitalism. How rigorously the party, together with the revolutionary working people, can weed out the "rotten apples" from its ranks depends, in the final analysis, on the balance of forces in society between the old capitalist social order that has been defeated — but which presses in from the outside (imperialism) and wells up from within (the survivals of capitalism) — and the elements of the new, emerging socialist order. 

In the Soviet Union from the late 1920s, following the death of Lenin and weakened by civil war, international isolation and the inexperience of the revolutionary leaders in dealing with the new phenomenon of bureaucracy in a worker's state, the rising Stalinist bureaucracy overwhelmed the revolutionaries and, briefly, the rest is history. In Cuba since 1959, the revolutionaries have always had the upper hand, as they do today. During the Special Period, generalised scarcity and legal incomes insufficient to cover all basic necessities have given rise to generalised petty corruption, not only among administrators but among the general population. This, in turn, has contributed to widespread instances of more serious corruption among public officials, creating a social base for pro-capitalist ideas and influences.  

Since opposition parties are banned in Cuba, a necessary defensive measure against US attempts at subversion, such pro-capitalist ideas and influences are inevitably reflected, to one degree or another, within the PCC. In March 2009, for example, Carlos Lage, executive secretary of the Council of Ministers and foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque, were dismissed from their posts for abuse of power. In one of his commentaries, Fidel said that the two leaders had been "seduced by the honey of power". Yet despite such instances of loss of revolutionary morale and abuse of power, the PCC has preserved its character as a selective organisation of the most class-conscious and committed revolutionaries. Any pro-capitalist elements within the PCC are up against a formidable obstacle: a mass revolutionary socialist party led by the historic leadership of the 1959 revolution with some 800,000 members, firm roots in the working class, a heroic tradition of international solidarity from Angola to East Timor and, counting the PCC's predecessors, five decades of hard-won struggle experience.  

As the last congress to be presided over by the historicos, Fidel's generation of revolutionary leaders, approaches, the Revolution looks to new generations of capable leaders to continue the struggle. Many in Cuba would agree with Temas editor Rafael Hernandez: the Revolution “must go forward and leave more and more room for the new generations. Those new generations are demanding capability, a degree of decision over their own ideas, their own problems and criteria about  the meaning of a socialist society. And I think that the socialism of the future is the socialism of the young.”  

Debate 

In preparation for the Congress, millions of Cubans, both party members and non-members, are participating in grassroots debates on the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines in PCC base committees, workplaces and neighbourhoods. Raul Castro has repeatedly urged a free and frank debate, breaking from past practices of false unanimity and the suppression of differences. "There is no need to fear differences in a society such as ours, where due to its essential nature there are no antagonistic [social class] contradictions because there are not the social classes that would give rise to them. From the profound exchange of divergent opinions come the best solutions, if such exchanges are guided by sound purposes and the viewpoints are expressed responsibly", he said in a speech to Cuba's National Assembly of People's Power in February, 2008. 

Two poles have emerged in the national debate on the future of socialism in Cuba, a debate initiated by Raul Castro soon after he became interim president in July 2006. What could be called the critical renovationist current, led by the PCC leadership, recognises the need for far-reaching changes to Cuba's socialist model in the direction of more public debate, more socialist democracy via the decentralisation of social planning and an opening to small-scale private and cooperative enterprises to boost the overall efficiency of the economy and thus the material wellbeing of the working people — while maintaining the dominance of socialist state enterprises and of planning over the market.

At the other pole are those who fear such changes, either because they have erroneous or obsolete ideas about the socialist-oriented society or because they defend administrative prerogatives and, in some cases, illicit privileges from criticism and initiative "from below". Some would like to see Chinese-style pro-capitalist policies. They will be disappointed by draft Guideline No. 3, which states: "In the new forms of non-state management [of social property], the concentration of ownership in legal or natural entities shall not be permitted"; and by a payroll tax that effectively limits the size of legal small private businesses to 10-15 workers.     

Within the renovationist current led by the PCC leadership there is a spectrum of opinion. The PCC leadership strives for consensus on the key elements of its proposals for the way forward, the economic aspects of which are summarised in the 291 paragraphs of the Draft Guidelines. With no alternative proposal on the table at a national level and the public debates on the Guidelines due to conclude at the end of February, it's likely that the Guidelines, enriched and amended on the basis of the public debates but retaining their core principles and key elements, will be adopted by the PCC Congress in April.

Translation: Debate in a Guantanamo barrio

Here, taken from today's edition of Granma, is a report on a discussion of the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines in a barrio (neighbourhood) in the eastern city of Guantanamo, not far from the infamous US naval base of the same name. For those of us trying to understand the debates and changes taking place in Cuba from the outside and from a position of solidarity, the value of this report is that it brings us down to earth from the lofty heights of theoretical debates on the meaning of socialism and how to build it, and what Cuba can learn from other experiences — vital as these debates are in Cuba and elsewhere.  

At the level of the local community, if this and other similar reports are anything to go by, most people's concerns are more prosaic: the price of a jar of marmalade, how much a student must pay to ride to school in a horse and coach, the clinic that has run out of cotton swabs, too few outlets selling non-rationed soap and toothpaste. The Cuban Communist Party (PCC) leadership has proposed a single agenda item for the 6th PCC Congress in April: the economy. Other important discussions and decisions will be deferred to a subsequent party conference, date to be announced, later this year. 

Cynics might wonder if the preoccupation with such things as marmalade and toothpaste reflects a lack of interest in debating the more strategic and theoretical issues involved in Cuba's socialist renewal, and if so, whether the PCC is somehow to blame. Aside from the fact that public debate on theoretical and strategic issues is indeed taking place in Cuba today, as I've tried to convey in other translations, this would be to forget something as basic as a bar of soap: the whole point of socialism is to satisfy the material and spiritual needs of a liberated humanity. Zooming in to the microcosmic level, to an urban community at the mountainous end of a Caribbean island subject to a US economic war — and a US naval base down the road that tortures prisoners — this means, among other things, ensuring that the Emilio Daudinot clinic in Guantanamo has a good supply of cotton swabs. 

The call by the PCC leadership to debate the Draft Guidelines, which run to 291 paragraphs, is aimed precisely at involving all Cubans in the process of rethinking and redefining Cuba's socialist economic model. And, as a roadmap to a reinvigorated socialist-oriented economy, the Guidelines must solve the problem of marmalade.    

Debate centres on prices in a Guantanamo barrio

By Jorge Luis Merencio Catuin

Granma, January 27, 2011

Translation: Marce Cameron

Guantanamo. — Despite what many had expected, the orderly elimination of the ration book [system of distribution of highly subsidies basic goods] was not the theme of the majority of interventions in the analysis of the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines of the Party and the Revolution in an area of Circumscription [i.e. municipal government electoral district] No. 11, of the Norte-Los Cocos-Confluentes Popular Council, in this city.

Because, as was noted in this neighbourhood debate, the people gain clarity, especially after a profound and detailed explanation of the economic projection — accessible to the entire population after being transmitted by Cuban television and reflected in the press — in the National Assembly of People's Power [in December] that analysed the Guidelines and the proposed updating of Cuba's economic model.

Hence the population, now with more arguments, weighs the pernicious effect on the country's economy and the construction of socialism of maintaining the ration book for a prolonged period, an expression of egalitarianism that benefits equally those who work and those who don't, or who do not need to [e.g. because they receive remittances from family living outside Cuba].

This issue, addressed in Guideline 186, did not however go unnoticed. Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR) members Landelino Garrido and Niurka Columbie suggested that the unrationed sale of soap and tooth paste, at higher prices, should happen in a greater number of establishments to facilitate their acquisition by consumers and to counteract hoarding.

The greatest number of opinions expressed centred on the concern raised by Ramon Prieto Medina about the pricing policy (Guidelines 61-63), in particular "the price rises in some product lines, without any prior information to the public".            

Last October I bought a tin of marmalade at the Ideal La Creacion Market and the other day it cost ten pesos more, said Prieto Medina, and added that for New Year he bought a bottle of Caribe Refino rum for 75 pesos, and 24 hours later its price had increased to 98 pesos.   

It's irrational that the prices change overnight and, worse still, that the consumer discovers this at the time of purchase. The speed of these price increases, plus the lack of information, creates a negative image of retail commerce, of disorder, that anybody can increase prices, he said.       

He expressed his disagreement with the increase from one to two pesos for the cost of a fare imposed by the [horse] coachmen.         

"I think the transport authorities must take the necessary measures to face up to this problem, because a student that has a double session of classes, and who must use this means of transport, has to spend eight pesos daily just to go by coach from home to school and vice versa", added the other CDR member. 

   

Charging two pesos per trip is a violation by the coachmen, said Manuel Taboni Joubert, a functionary with the National Tax Office in Guantanamo. Such a procedure has nothing to do with the reorganisation of transport called for in Guideline 249.     

Barbaro Ambert explained that the majority of the Cuban people are aware of the difficulties the country faces in undertaking the production of a large number of medications, above all the scarcity of raw materials, but that these limitations do not justify the lack of a cotton swab to heal a wound in a polyclinic such as the Emilio Daudinot clinic.

"This is the result of the disregard of someone, of the poor service that is sometimes provided and that so irritates the population. Everybody agrees with the content of Guideline 143, referring to the upgrading of the services provided by this sensitive sector", Barbaro concluded.

At the end of the meeting the CDR members applauded, in a gesture of gratitude, the [Cuban Communist] Party and the Revolution for keeping the people informed and making them the protagonists of this historical moment.   

Translation: Debate contributes wealth of arguments

This brief report highlights the importance of Cuba's intellectual and artistic vanguard in the process of debates and changes aimed at renewing Cuba's socialist project. It also gives some idea of the scale of the national debate on the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines. 

In the final paragraph there is a reference to Fidel's "Words to the Intellectuals", a 1961 speech in which he said that the Revolution's cultural policy would be, essentially,"within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing". This has been interpreted in various ways during the past five decades. Today, Cuba's revolutionary artists and intellectuals enjoy more freedom of expression than ever before. 

Massive debate on Guidelines contributes enormous wealth of arguments

Said Esteban Lazo in his address to the National Council of UNEAC. Stressed the importance of intellectual thought and artistic creation in the process of updating Cuba's economic model.  

By Pedro de la Hoz  

Granma, January 13, 2010 

Translation: Marce Cameron

The process of discussion of the Economic and Social Guidelines for the Party and the Revolution is contributing to an enormous wealth of arguments for the necessary and urgent updating of the Cuban socialist model, commented Esteban Lazo, member of the [Communist Party] Political Bureau, during his intervention in the meeting of the National Council of the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) this Wednesday in the capital.

After 55,000 meetings to debate the Guidelines in Party base committees and the Union of Young Communists, workplaces, centres of education and in neighbourhoods — around one-third of the meetings scheduled in the program of debates — the proposals, suggestions, opinions and considerations constitute a valuable contribution to the content of the Guidelines and express, in their breadth and diversity, the popular will to defend and renew the socialist experience that will be reflected in the 6th [Communist Party] Congress [in April].       

It's very difficult to carry out the transformations that we propose if we don't count on the consensus of everyone, on the opinion of everyone, Lazo stressed. The Revolution, affirmed Lazo, who is also a vice-president of the Council of State, needs your thinking, your understanding and your creativity because culture, today more than ever, is revolution.       

The National Council of UNEAC analysed the challenges for culture in light of the new economic scenario and the international projection of Cuban art and literature in a session featuring the participation of Political Bureau members Ricardo Alarcon, President of the National Assembly of People's Power and Abel Prieto, Minister of Culture.

Margarita Ruiz, president of the National Heritage Council and Eusebio Leal, Havana city historian, highlighted the responsibility and commitment to conserve and manage the National Monuments. Introducing the session, Miguel Barnet, UNEAC president, recalled that in 2011 the organisation will celebrate half a century of existence and noted another essential half-century anniversary, that of Fidel's Words to the Intellectuals, cornerstone of the Revolution's cultural policy.