What the New Left in Cuba Isn’t Telling Us

Haroldo Dilla Alfonso*

HAVANA TIMES, Dec 20 — One of the political facts that has surprised me most in the recent period is the number of people, networks and organizations on the left that have adopted critical positions towards Raul Castro’s “updating” of the Cuban economic model.

From a certain angle, there’s nothing new in there being a left critique in Cuba. In fact, this always existed within the academic realm, and at the beginning of the revolution there existed leftist political groups that had differences with government policies.

In addition — and no less important — within the organized opposition there are groups that are positioned in this place on the political spectrum, often programmatically more authentic than the Communist Party itself (as is the case, for example, of the Arco Progresista).

The uniqueness of these people is that:

• They do not belong to organizations that are known and entrenched, but to groups that have all the appearance of small discussion forums, which at the most act in concert with larger networks such as the “Observatorio Critico” (Critical observatory).

• Although they do not advocate a break with the political regime, they do not consider it necessary to follow the “proper channels” of criticism according to the party liturgy. Instead, they express themselves via various public and private means. Thus, even when they select the political class as their interlocutor (they end up advising it on how to do things to take advantage of what could be that class’s “last chance”), at the same time, they try to do the same with other interlocutors among the few Cubans who have access to the Internet or among the international left.

• This involves not only Marxist critics, but this is repeated by the whole variety of critics on the international left, ranging from social democratic and anarchist positions to specific positions in relation to gender, sexual preferences and environmentalism. These latter areas, noted in the margin, are where they have produced the strongest and most refreshing positions as possessors of a new vision of everyday life.

A Positive Sign, but…

All of this is a positive political signal. It’s very important that there appears on the Cuban political scene a critical left horizon ready to make demands on the entrenched authoritarian left and the Communist Party hierarchy. It’s good that in the future they will contest the political hegemony (in those insurmountable terms proposed by Gramsci as ethical-political leadership) over the other center and right political currents.

But at the same time, I think the emerging left faces several critical issues to be resolved if it wants to actually be a political alternative in Cuban society. Said in another way, if it doesn’t want to simply be a testimonial piece on the shelves of a left that don’t tire from marching from defeat to defeat toward a mythical victory.

Above all, most of the critics on the left still believe that the Cuban Revolution is a living process, with socialism only in a dormant condition (like Trotsky imagined with regard to his Soviet workers state, before falling dead to the blow of an ice ax delivered by one of Stalin’s agents).

As a result, the Cuban left regularly agrees on the diagnosis of the bureaucratization of the system as preventing the development of socialism. But for the accomplishment of this they see reserves that exist in both the party membership and within the political elite itself, particularly in an ideological fetish called the “historic leadership.”

The problems of so-called “Cuban socialism” are, therefore, external problems (oligarchy, bureaucracy, authoritarianism) to this ideal system, ones that can be eliminated while retaining the essence of the system.

Therefore, the way to eradicate this is to emphasize those opportunities at the grass roots for democracy and cooperative ownership, and to lend advice that will unshackle the socialist re-appropriation process.

I am one of the first to recognize political value that this discussion possesses, as well as the clarity of many assessments due to these critiques on the left, which undoubtedly enrich the public debate and the just, united and democratic political tasks of the republic of the future.

For example, to me it seems very positive that these critics stress the importance of promoting cooperative ownership as well as workers self-management and co-management. These cases have been successful in many places, and therefore they constitute viable alternatives to privatization or the maintenance of the current state system.

However, we must bear in mind that due to its complexities and characteristics, not all of the economy can be cooperatively managed — not even the bulk of it — and that cooperativization entails other problems that are as acute as those generated by private property.

We are forgetting the simple chains whereby the relations of production determine the superstructure: all of this is much more complex, simply because today’s societies, including Cuba, are more complex.

Likewise, I find it highly positive that they raise the defense of a principle that has governed social services in Cuba: universal access to their benefits and the non-privatization of their providers.

One can discuss the best way to finance this system and to make it less inefficient, but not its relevance as a paradigm. To defend this achievement of Cuban society is indisputable goal.

But I’m afraid that to maintain the idea — the one held by most people — that a transition from the current state of affairs to a higher stage of socialism is possible, is actually a path that takes us back to square one.

It is clearly volunteerism and paradoxically ignores the ABCs of Marxist methodological analysis that these people and groups say they treasure.

A Military Technocracy

A socialist resurgence of the Cuban system is not possible. There is no longer a revolution and socialism never existed. What exists today is a post-revolutionary system adrift, one without visible counterweights to capitalist restoration and that operates under the direction of a military-technocracy in the process of conversion to the new bourgeoisie.

Moreover, this technocracy-turning-bourgeoisie will defend their economic privileges and control of the state with the ferocity Al Capone’s own bodyguards – and, curiously enough, they’ll do it in the name of “the nation, the revolution and socialism.”

The economy is a disaster that requires a heavy injection of capital, which doesn’t exist in the country. Cuban society consists of people who are educated and intelligent, but impoverished and weary of the epoch-making goals that place the future beyond their own lifetimes.

If the democratic left really wants to be a political alternative, it cannot continue clinging to utopias; the same goes for many intellectuals who embrace these utopias as a means of forgetting the miserable political world in which they live and in which they are ultimately complicit.

Democracy Is Vital

Above all, the left requires a good program for a better life in a scenario of freedom and solidarity, not emancipatory paradigms that call on people to sacrifice the present for the future.

In this context, democracy is vital. Nothing is more authentic now for the left in Cuba than to call for political democracy and social autonomy. This is simply because only autonomy and the organization of popular sectors — unions, diverse associations and parties — can guarantee the preservation of the social achievements and serve to advance the country in terms of equity and social justice – goals inevitable for the left.

This can only be achieved in a democratic system, obviously for everyone, and especially for those who think differently.

Therefore, it’s also essential to break with the Cuban political regime and with all its ideological fetishes. You can’t forget the slapping around of the Ladies in White and express solidarity with the Chilean students being beaten and abused by the police.

You can’t ignore the systematic repression of opponents — no matter what their political stripes — and defend the right of the outraged to occupy Wall Street.

You can’t convince anyone that there’s a future beyond the mediocrity of the Raulist updating and his Chinese model by simply criticizing a bureaucracy that no one knows exactly where it is.

You can’t continue venerating a Communist Party charged with legitimating capitalist restoration via the authoritarian road while continuing to talk about post-capitalist emancipation.

Whenever I write about this, I recall an image from a novel by my friend Lichi in which a bearded woman named Bebe was trying not to open her eyes in the morning to avoid seeing the world. Dazed and hesitant, she was living through the trauma of romances gone wrong.

The emerging democratic left writes with the anguish of Bebe and warns its supposed interlocutor — the post-revolutionary political class — that time is running out for it.

But that’s not true; the fact is that time is running out for the left. And one day this left, like Bebe in her day, will understand that what remains from all of its lost love is “pure rubble that the wind or memory will leave for time to sweep away.”

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*A Havana Times translation of the original article published in Spanish by Cubaencuentro.com