Raul Castro Loud and Clear on Cuba’s Future

Some remarks on Cuban President Raul Castro’s summary of the 20th Congress of the Cuban Workers Federation (CTC).

Pedro Campos  

HAVANA TIMES — Cuban President Raul Castro has just summarized the outcome of the 20th Congress of the Cuban Workers Association (CTC). His statements were very clear:

“We must never forget that the economic system that will prevail in socialist, independent and sovereign Cuba will continue to base itself in the people’s ownership over the fundamental means of production and that State companies will continue to be the main form of organization of the domestic economy – and that the building of our socialist system will depend on their performance.”

Thus, Cuba’s “prosperous and sustainable” socialism will continue to depend on State companies, those that exploit the salaried labor of Cubans with miserable wages and have demonstrated their utter inefficiency in the course of over fifty years. Free labor associations, cooperatives or free individual work – these, the forms of production that Marxists believe should predominate under socialism, will not be the basis of the system.

Raul Castro should be congratulated for being so clear and sincere. If anyone had any doubts about the possibility of important changes under his leadership, everything is now clear as day. Many of us were already aware of the situation some time before, but some continued to wait for true reforms.

I imagine fewer and fewer people continue to believe that Cuba’s State monopoly capitalism can mutate into a form of socialism.

After these pronouncements, does anyone still have any doubts that democratization is a condition of socialism?

To say anything else would be to harp on the same old issues.
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Pedro Campos: pedrocampos313@yahoo.es