Cuban Gov. Economic Failures Are Always the Workers Fault
The Cuban State makes all of its companies and workers believe that they are responsible for the crisis and should be sanctioned for it.
By Benjamin Noria
HAVANA TIMES – A friend told me that the state-owned company where he works would not be paying the share of quarterly profits to workers in November 2024 because the company was fined by the municipal tax office for payment delays, as it has become difficult to generate income due to the economic crisis. Also, the other entities with which it maintains contractual relations have not made payments within the deadlines established in the economic contracts.
In this article, the specific state company where this happened is not essential; we all know here that in Cuba, this happens quite often, nationwide. What interests me is analyzing the macabre plot underlying these events.
Look, the Municipal Office of Finance and Prices imposed a fine for late tax payments on the state company where my friend works. The cause? Well, the same government, through the economic crisis brought on by its mismanagement, prevents state companies from generating income. Hahaha. It sounds like a tongue twister or cacophony.
The Cuban State makes all companies and workers believe that they are responsible for the crisis and should be sanctioned for it. Notice the macabre plot that is revealed through this analysis. The Cuban government continues experimenting on the population. Here, the people are like lab rats.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the government has improvised various measures to stimulate the economy and has mimicked economic models from other countries. So far, it has been shown that all the methods used by the Castro Dynasty harm the people rather than favor them. None of the measures have been aimed at the welfare of the Cuban people, nor at the progress or prosperity of the nation. The 66 years of misery since the Cuban revolution are evidence of this.
Perhaps many naive realists cannot believe that the government has known the solution to the economic issues for many years. The problem is that none of these solutions would benefit them, as it would mean losing some of the privileges they enjoy at the top. They maintain the discourse that their Revolution and socialism are the only path to victory.
Many intellectuals know that Marxist theorists did not explicitly outline in textbooks what economic model the communist and socialist systems should have. In fact, even Marxist textbooks do not discuss the type of government communism should have, nor whether equality and democracy are achievable through this system.
The sugar industry is in ruins, just as the fishing industry, the beekeeping industry, poultry, agriculture, and many more. Nothing works. The government has badly managed the Cuban economy throughout the 66 years since the revolution.
And today, what does the government have to offer? Nothing, as all the money has been spent on repression and propaganda. Truly, the only thing left for us is to wait and see what the uncertain future holds for this country.
It isn’t totally true that Marxist intellectuals didn’t outline the form of government and economy would apply though I understand why you would think so. Engels in his Principles of Communism https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm in a section titled “What will be the Course of the Revolution” states “Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution”. In a later section he describes America as having a democratic constitution in which Communists would work.
As far as the economy was concerned there is a 12 point plan which includes
(i) Limitation of private property through progressive taxation, heavy inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.) forced loans, etc.
(ii) Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists, railroad magnates and shipowners, partly through competition by state industry, partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds.
He invisages gradual transfer to state ownership through compensation and also competition between state owned and non-state companies in which the former would out-perform the latter and push up wages for workers in the whole sector.
It is interesting though I don’t totally agree with him.