It is noteworthy that the second-highest official in power in Cuba speaks of an “economic shock,” a term taboo for decades.
By Alejandro Armengol (Cubaencuentro)
HAVANA TIMES – Well, that’s a way of saying it. For decades, the Cuban economic mishmash has defied that definition, but the regime insists on celebrating “plenary sessions,” congresses, and assemblies.
It is precisely in this week’s sessions of the National Assembly of People’s Power where Prime Minister Manuel Marrero presented the economic shock plan that will be implemented next year.
It’s noteworthy that the second-highest official in power in Cuba —and possibly at any moment could become the first— speaks of an “economic shock,” a term taboo for decades, with the denial that this could happen in Cuba and that it was one of the evils of capitalism.
Marrero said that the idea is to move to “subsidize people and not products,” and in saying that, he is correct. Although it remains to be seen who the “beneficiaries” will be.
But what’s important now is that suddenly the regime has discovered welfare, food stamps, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the basic products basket, and other means of assisting the poor. Programs that have long existed in capitalist countries —developed and not so developed— to alleviate the needs of the less fortunate, precisely because they live in capitalist countries.
In Cuba, I had been told that this doesn’t happen, that it wouldn’t happen, that it wasn’t necessary. With socialism, economic crises (typical of capitalist society) and those poor remedies for the poor would end.
In the mid-1970s, I worked for nearly three years as a sociological researcher in the Social Assistance Directorate of the Ministry of Labor in Cuba. It seemed like an enormous amount of time, which only served to add another university degree —which I have never used again— to my academic record. In reality, I studied sociology so that, as a working student, I wouldn’t have to work 45 hours a week and punch a card at seven in the morning in an institution full of professionals —lawyers, economists, “researchers”— who were treated like mere pawns. When I finally could leave there for the Ministry of Culture, the deputy minister at the Social Assistance office —a certain Peñalver— called me to his office and reproached me for abandoning the “old folks,” for throwing them to hell. Don’t be upset, I’m not leaving Cuba, I replied.
Wrong I was. Anyway, leaving aside the autobiographical parenthesis, one of the few things I remember from that time is that social assistance was the Cinderella, the poor and miserable relative of the ministry of Labor, which was not talked about on most occasions.
At that time, officials didn’t mention social assistance much. It existed, but for the very poor, the disabled, relatives of common prisoners, and a few more unfortunate ones. The only ones who put effort into it were social workers, who handled the cases. At that time, in the era of “full employment,” the department that mattered was Social Security, and workers were asked not to retire at the age of retirement but to stay in the “trench of work” until they died. Paradoxically, in the workplaces that met the requirements their employees or workers enjoyed the privilege, upon retirement, of doing so with a full salary, as if they were still working. The only condition to become “Heroes of the Moncada” was that no one retired in the workplace.
Over time, those “privileged” who retired with a full salary have ended up selling plastic bags on street corners, thanks to triple-digit inflation and drastic scarcity.
Once again, the Cuban prime minister avoided the real problem.
“It’s not fair that those who have a lot receive the same as those who have very little. Today, we subsidize the elderly pensioner the same as the owner of large private businesses who have a lot of money,” Marrero said.
The issue that escapes the words of the official is that what they receive is a pittance. The destitute —a term that was already used in that Social Assistance Directorate where I worked— are now millions, retired and not retired.
The famous surplus value that Marx spoke of in socialism was supposed to go to the state and not the capitalist, and that state would distribute it among all citizens who lived happily, with full employment, vacations, medical and educational services, and retirement.
The reality is that finally, the regime admits that it must implement a “shock policy” and formalize poverty. Farewell to socialism, but didn’t that already happen decades ago? Or it never existed? Or if it did exist, was it always a failure? Too many questions with a single answer: the ruin of a failed state.
Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times
