You have spoken about the possibility of Cuba maintain-
ing some level of planning. How do you understand the
difference between the Cuban planning process now
and the planning before the crisis?
In its most general sense, planning is society’s ability
to prioritize certain objectives over others and
thereby to regulate its development politically. The
opposite would be the market and thereby private inter-
ests determining society’s objectives. In this broad sense
it is necessary to preserve planning as an essential com-
ponent Cuba’s political and social model. I believe there
is a possibility-we will see how it works out in prac-
tice-of moving toward a kind of planning which relies
more on incentives and less on directives, is more
focused at the macro level, and where a few things are
regulated by the market if the market can do it better
than the plan. We must reinvent a kind of planning that
is possible and viable under our present conditions,
above all now that we have been immersed in the world
market.
But I also think that the planning of the future should
be accompanied by a much higher level of social par-
ticipation than before. Although it was always said that
the plan would be discussed by the workers and the
masses, the reality was totally bureaucratic. It seems to
me that by changing the conception of planning we
have the opportunity to democratize planning.
If the level of inequality continues to grow what can be
done about it, given the circumstances of Cuba today?
In general terms we can say that the level of social
equality depends on at least two factors. One is the level
of socioeconomic development that can generate an
economic surplus large enough to permit a certain
degree of equality. The other is the existence of the
political will, or of political forces with the will to
impose and maintain a certain level of equality. I think
that one of the things that has made the crisis evident is
the fact that our equality was based upon the availabil-
ity of resources and a surplus that weren’t ours.
Had we been left to our own destiny, or in a situation
similar to that of today, even with a preferential trade
treaty with the Soviets but one of a different magni-
tude, we would not have had the levels of equality we
had nor the level of social security we achieved. It
therefore seems to me that behind the policy of adjust-
ing to the new reality, we can reclaim our own dynamic
of development. But being the underdeveloped country
that we are, the possibility of an egalitarian distribution
of the surplus is limited by the size of that surplus and
the necessity of a model that gives incentives to pro-
ductivity. Consequently, for a long time we will have a
level of inequality which will be greater than that
which we used to have.
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26
LIF C B A IVOICES ON THE LEFT
At the political
level, insofar as
All the policies
which
the revolutionary
power can guar-
lead us out of this antee its continu-
ity, the political
initial crisis will will to preserve
its gains will still
generate a new Cuban exist. In my opin-
society with other ion, to preserve these gains–edu-
social aspirations, with cation and health
care for all and a
other unintended and certain level of
undesired social security, for example–a
contradictions. For this surplus large
enough to support
new Cuban society, a private and a
mixed sector will the economic model not be sufficient.
will have to be There will have to
be a state sector
reformulated. of the economy to appropriate a cer-
tain part of the
surplus for social
purposes.
To overcome the crisis, can we speak simply in economic
terms? Isn’t the crisis one that permeates all of society?
I think there are manifestations of the crisis in all
dimensions of society but they don’t seem to me to be
symmetrical. There is a devastating economic crisis, but there are manifestations of the social crisis that are
not economic issues per se. There are fewer social
effects than one might expect and up to now there has
been little political expression of the economic crisis.
So I think that one way to explain how the revolution
has been able to get through these years of devastating
economic crisis is that the preservation of a certain
level of social security, the political culture and the
national symbolism all have impeded the economic cri-
sis from having a symmetrical effect in other dimen-
sions of life. I am not, however, saying that there have
been no manifestations of the crisis in social and polit-
ical spheres.
Now, it’s not even clear when the problems of the ini-
tial crisis will end or when we will begin to deal with
the problems brought about by the solutions to that ini-
tial crisis-the strategies of survival, the economic
adjustment, the structural changes, etc. All the policies
which lead us out of this initial crisis will generate a
new Cuban society with other social aspirations, with
other unintended and undesired contradictions. For this
new Cuban society, the economic model will have to be
reformulated. The political model, the model of social-
ism will have to be appropriate to the problems of the
times. We will see how this is perceived by the political
elite.
There was a direction toward more political openness for
a while, but in the last year or so it seems like there has
been a closing of political space in Cuba.
We can contextualize the moment which inaugurated
the current restrictive political period. It was the speech
given by Fidel Castro on July 26, 1995 in Santiago de
Cuba. Because it was Fidel and because it was a public
speech, it was read, if I remember correctly, as one
which projected policies and strategies for the immedi-
ate period. Since then, certain voices linked to the old
Soviet Marxism that had been quiet are again being lis-
tened to. They have begun to voice statements, worries,
old-style interpretations of events. They cling to the
concern raised by Fidel about the current phase of U.S.
policy. This phase is characterized by ideological diver-
sion, an attempt to influence academic sectors as well
as individuals or sectors which might have an important
role to play in the reproduction of Cuban society. We
are seeing something like an ideological offensive of
imperialism, a taking advantage of the circumstances of
the national crisis and an attempt to establish contacts
and channels of influence.
This call by the revolutionary leadership is more than
justified and is situated in the U.S.-Cuba conflict. We
only have to remember that the United States uses ide-
ology as a weapon, and it is currently intensifying its
ideological campaign. I think that what is going to hap-
pen is that the conservative sectarian sectors-sectors
of the Party, the university, society-will place them-
selves behind this call. In this society there are tenden-
cies that co-exist. There are groups and sectors that
share the revolutionary commitment but have different
perceptions and propose different policies. Historically
these differences have been arbitrated by the country’s
leadership, sometimes leaning one way, sometimes the
other, but always within a process of mediation.
Since the 1980s the situation has evolved as the result
of a political opening and in part the result of some
things that have occurred that escape political control.
In fact, if you analyze what is studied in academia, and
the issues treated in the media, you will find a large
quantity of issues which in the 1980s would not have
been permitted. This is what I am referring to when I
say that all this forms part of a contradiction. Sociology
in Cuba, for example, currently deals with questions of
27 27 VOL XXXI, NO 1 JULY/AUG 1997VOICES ON THE LEFT
the family, the problem of prostitution-even male
prostitution-pollution, bureaucracy, etc. Bureaucracy
has always been a theme of study here, but not with the
political connotations that it now carries.
More than a new political orientation, the new situa-
tion has produced a political permissiveness. Political
events themselves are moving Cuban politics forward;
this is producing certain things that the people are mak-
ing use of before they are authorized, and this then
becomes the object of attention. This explains in part
what happened to the collective with which I was asso-
ciated, CEA, whose work for many years was devoted
to international politics and the projec-
tion of Cuba in the international arena.
Lately we felt we had to occupy our-
selves with internal Cuban themes
because we couldn’t engage in interna- Neoliber
tional dialogue without knowing what
to say about what was happening in to be re
Cuba. Contrary to the assumptions of the pc the current official policies, we were
less concerned with the dialogue with ecoi our enemies than with the questions
raised by the friends of the revolution. adjust
It was the dialogue with the left, with it is m
our friends, that forced us to turn our
attention to what was happening inter- Marxism, nally, and to treat internal events with
the tools of social science, to interpret total con what was going on.
Certainly the important role that Cuba
plays in Latin America has changed in
recent years. How do you see that role
today and in the medium and long-term
future, especially in relation to the Latin
American left?
IC
al
n(
or
ci
IC
the woi
can rear
society co
I think your question raises a problem: what are we
going to categorize as the left? The term “left” is used
very laxly to describe groups in the opposition. This is
an absolutely insufficient characterization of the left.
The left is also characterized in relative terms, and at
other times we understand the left by its program and
its proposals. The Latin American left, even under a
minimal program, always implies a proposal of changes
in existing Latin American society: profound structural
changes in Latin American societies that create the pos-
sibility of true democracy. What the left has to do is
develop an alternative program to social democracy
which is at least minimally anti-capitalist and anti-
imperialist enough to bring real change to the region.
I think we are in a moment of disorientation for the
left. The Sio Paulo Forum has been a success in the
sense that curiously, when the left has been its weakest
in terms of proposals and self-definition, it has achieved
great political consensus in the region. The Sio Paulo
Forum has achieved this in the most difficult moments
for the left. I think it will have been a positive element
if the Forum can create an opening that permits the for-
mulation of a strategy which can become a referendum
for the radical left.
I think that the level of demobilization, of loss of
militancy, of ideological disorientation, of the lack of
an alternative program, is very great on the left. You
can see it in the left’s own fora. And the left, from the
point of view of being a political expression, has been
weakened, divided and subdivided.
This goes against the grain of Fidel’s
warning of the mid-1980s, that the
social conditions of Latin America are
ism tends worse; there are more poor, there is
more exploitation, more insecurity. 1uced to That is to say that the masses, or the
itics of social sectors who can be organized
for social change are more numerous
omic than ever. And this is happening at a time when the left is very weak. I
ent, but think this is a generational problem, a
problem that only a new generation of
re. Like the left can resolve, because it is psy-
it offers a chologically difficult for the old lead-
ers to change course. The intellectual
eption of sectors have been the most beaten
down and the most disoriented by the rld and crisis.
ticulate The left has come apart but the right has achieved a notable capacity for
mpletely. recomposition, which is a problem we
haven’t sufficiently studied. The
neoliberal discourse isn’t pure eco-
nomics liberated from the state. It is
more. It is a philosophical discourse
about the individual, about nature. Our compafiero
Vasconi, who worked with us at CEA until his death
last year, always called our attention to this. “The alter-
native to Marxism is liberalism,” he used to say, “not
simply because it has a different economic project, but
because like Marxism, it has a complete conception of
the world, and can rearticulate society completely.”
Neoliberalism tends to be reduced to the politics of eco-
nomic adjustment, but it is something much more com-
plete.
The left therefore has to offer not only an economic
alternative but a total alternative. I believe we have to
reinvent a discourse in which the national question and
the “third-world” question are better articulated with
the socialist project. We have to elaborate a project that
takes the questions of the nation and the periphery into
account. This is the challenge that lies ahead.
