Open Doors on Cuba’s Future

Erasmo Calzadilla

HAVANA TIMES, Feb 8 — In my preceding post, I made reference to this absurd episode of Cuban political history in which — not at the barrel of a canon but in a state of shock — our society constitutionally endorsed its subordination to an authority standing above it: the Cuban Communist Party (PCC).

I explained how to me this appeared to be a mistake that our generation and future ones will have to correct. In the meantime it will cost us dearly, but no more dearly than following that same decision.

That was the general idea of my post, however a group of commenters (who I thank for their participation) quickly assumed that my diatribe against partyicracy* was praise for multiparty systems.

For them I wrote this response:

My call is not for multipartyism, but for self-government generated from below, and the further from below the better.

With self-government we could choose any variation except those that close off the future to different parties and different forms of government.

The concentration of power in the state, a party or capitalists would only be another way to restrict and close the future.

Among those who commented, there was no shortage of those who tried to legitimize the PCC-cracy by invoking Marti and his effort to organize a single party, the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PRC).

Those who attempt this old argument do not take into account that:

1. Marti fought to reunite all Cubans around a single party, but he didn’t advocate banning or stigmatizing other parties or punishing those who followed them.
2. The PRC did not claim itself to be a power standing above society.
3. As the party of the nation, it represented the whole society and not just one part of it.

So that’s it for now.
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* Particracy (also ‘partitocracy’, ‘partocracy’, or ‘partitocrazia’) is a de facto form of government where one or more political parties dominate the political process, rather than citizens and/or individual politicians.