Samuel Farber

The cultural and, to a certain extent, political liberalization that has taken place in Cuba, particularly since Raúl Castro assumed power in 2006, has been mostly limited to certain circles, such as the cultural-political milieu of the Catholic Church, and, to a lesser extent, the academic and artistic milieux of the island.

According to one of the criticisms elicited by my article “Cuba’s One-Party State is the Main Obstacle” published in Havana Times, multiparty systems are a bad idea because they are invariably corrupt and inevitably involve the unprincipled politicking that characterized pre-revolutionary Cuba and other electoral systems in capitalist countries.

Even though the monopoly of power by the Cuban Communist Party may be compatible with a certain degree of liberalization – that is, a relaxation of the control that the State exerts over certain aspects of economic and social life – that political monopoly is the main obstacle to the genuine democratization of Cuban society.

The absence of the right to travel abroad since the sixties has been a major source of discontent among Cubans. With the measures recently adopted by his government, Raúl Castro is now trying to lower the intensity of that discontent by making the existing rules to leave and enter the country more flexible, and in the process, achieve other goals.

Much of the emerging critical Cuban left is advocating worker self-management as a keystone of a truly democratic socialism. Farber argues that the idea has important implications that need to be fully explored.

A legitimate workers’ leader would at least have asked for a salary increase to protect Cuban workers from the uninterrupted rise in the prices of consumer goods. But Valdés Mesa, general secretary of the Confederation of Cuban Workers, did nothing of the sort.

On March 26, Pope Benedict XVI will arrive in Cuba for a two-day whirlwind of religious ceremonies and meetings with the Castro brothers and other political leaders.