Stagnation Has Regained Ground

Pedro Campos

HAVANA TIMES — I have been following the information published about the recent meetings of party-government, and if sometimes I’m excited about the president’s words, this time I find them disappointing instead.

He remains committed to the dubious state-run, centralized, authoritarian, wage-labor model that is incapable of generating well-being for the people and the workers – given their complete divorce from the means and ends of the new society for which the majority craves.

The “change of structures and mentality” has not occurred, not even among the top levels of the party-government.

The main objective of the “updating” — which is the government giving up everything that’s considered an economic burden and providing what doesn’t work to “non-state forms of production” — has basically given priority to “self-employment” that hires workers – a euphemism for private capitalism.

The participation of workers and the general population continues to be reduced to them giving their opinions. The “Guidelines” were approved by the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, not by the people.

The “Guidelines” and the so-called process of “updating” are nothing more than an attempt to maintain, in essence, the old bureaucratic model of “state socialism.”

Whereby the statist tendency has prevailed, pro-capitalist economism has succeeded in gaining a base, and socialist self-management has been reduced to the role of a mere spectator of a select and state-monitored group of “experiments” with cooperatives, from which a law will eventually come in a few (?) years.

For the government-party, the wide ranging experience with cooperatives and national and international associations is insufficient to approve the extension of a cooperative law to all sectors of the economy.

Stagnation has regained ground. The president can’t make a signal to the left and turn to the right without creating problems on the road.

There is no socialism without the direct involvement of people and workers in all decisions that affect them.

It’s not the enemies who are the crux of the slowness of the government policies, but those in power, who are the ones making progress difficult.

It doesn’t seem that US government policy is turning Cuba into another Libya. It is as if they’re encouraging the current leadership in their “pragmatic” efforts aimed at restoring domestic and foreign private capitalism.

The Cuban government doesn’t have to discuss our internal political problems with the US government, but with the Cuban people.

The so-called “updating” has generated no tangible benefits for the majority. The new society must be built today, not tomorrow.

The youth and professionals have had enough and continue leaving the country. How long can we put up with absurd policies?

Other situations, in very delicate environments, are going wrong for the government, though this is no fault of imperialism; instead, it is due to the incapacity and political ignorance of its functionaries and “experts.”

The internal and external consequences of these blunders and poor economic, political and social performance in recent years is yet to be seen.

I’m not encouraged by what the government has been doing and saying lately. If capitalism is restored in Cuba, the only ones responsible will be those authorities who have always been in power.

For our part too, “the table is ready.”… but not for imperialism – rather, for all Cubans. We have nothing to discuss with the empire, while it maintains its criminal blockade, and never will we discuss our internal affairs with them.
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To contact Pedro Campos, write: [email protected]