Cuba’s Economic Reforms Called Neoliberal
HAVANA TIMES, Oct. 20 – Representatives of the Cuban opposition described as neoliberal the economic reforms announced by the island’s government, which include the laying off of half a million state workers. “The combination of massive layoffs with the way in which self-employment is being reintroduced and with a new foreign capital project, hidden from Cuban citizens, is the opening to the late, harsh and primary neoliberalism,” states the document presented in this capital by Manuel Cuesta Morúa, of the Arco Progresista social democratic coalition, reported IPS.
That’s silly. Neo-Liberalism means battering down the defenses of countries around the world for monopoly capitalist penetration via the IMF, World Bank and traitorous local capitalists in the victimized countries. If there’s one thing Cuba is not doing, it is not going down on its knees before world monopoly capitalism in a neo-liberal retreat from national independence.
What the Cuban leadership is doing is thrashing about without a correct ideological star to guide it, hoping by trial and error to save socialist state power. Unfortunately, it is not un-doing the lethal harm done by the concept that the socialist state must own everything in sight.
A new guiding star should be located by the Cuban leadership that focuses on “partial” state ownership of the major instruments of production, and let the employees of cooperativized industry and commerce build a workable socialist cooperative republic.