Fidel poses the task: November 17, 2005
On the 17th of November, Fidel warned at the University of La Havana on the danger that the Cuban Revolution might end like the Soviet. To prevent this, he laid out a task: „What would be the ideas, or level of consciousness which would make impossible the reversion of a revolutionary process?“
Incredulous from the event, world solidarity did not react to the call of the President: It did not bring forth the ideas Fidel solicited: It was silent and, in some cases, the discourse of the Commandante disappeared from the public forums of debate. This is a logical human reaction, because the mere idea of the disappearance of Fidel fills the heart with sadness. But, objectively, it is one of those acts which Herbert Marcuse called „repressive tolerance“, a tolerance that does not favor the cause which the Commandante is endeavoring to advance.
„Pay attention“ to the call of Fidel, demands the Secretary of State.
On the 23rtd of December, 2005, the talented chancellor and former personal secretary pf Fidel, Felipe Perez Roque, newly called attention to the speech of Fidel. He insisted before the Cuban Parliament, the National Assembly of Popular Power (ANPP), that „we must give all attention to this call launched by Fidel at the University, to this phrase never pronounced before publicly in the history of the revolution, that the revolution could be reversible, and not by the enemy which has done all in its power to do it, but by our errors“.
The three rings of revolutionary defense of the Secretary of State.
Felipe posed three policies (premises) destined to save the revolution, for when the death of Fidel „leaves the vacancy no one can fill and which we have to fill between us as a people“, and asked that the future leaders act from now on to prevent the possible future return to capitalism.
These premises are:
- Maintain the moral authority of the leadership, through a leadership based on example and without privileges over the people.
- Guarantee the support of the majority of the people, „not on the basis of material consumption but on the basis of ideas and convictions“.
- Prevent the emergence of a new bourgeoisie which „would be again, if we let it emerge, be pro-Yankee, pro transnational … we must not fall into ingenuities … the decisive point is who gets the income (ingreso): if it is the majorities and the people or the oligarchic transnational and pro-Yankee minority; the point is, whose is the property? If of the people, the majority, or if it belongs to the corrupt and servile minority associated … with Yankee imperialism.“
Will the three defenses of the Secretary of State save the Revolution?
The first proposal of the Chancellor is, obviously, correct and necessary. We will have to see if the future configuration of the Cuban political system will permit imposing it. As to the second imperative, which refers to the dialectic between the spiritual and the material, it is necessary to take into account the dictum of Lenin that the stability of a dominant class, in this case a leading class, can not free itself from its capacity to resolve „the task of production“. Let us dedicate the following point to this problem.
Ethics, consumption and consciousness
The central idea expressed by Fidel in November and now by Felipe is, that the loyalty to the leaders and their historic project must derive primarily from the ethics (values, ideas convictions) and not from consumerism. Defined thus, the dialectical unity of the contradictions of Cuban reality are not adequately reflected. The correct contradiction would be: ethics and consumption, not ethics and consumerism.
For all epochs there are, as Marx already explained, a fund of consumption of the worker historically determined which is expressed, in terms of the valorization of capital, in variable capital. This consumption fund determines, essentially in stratified form, the quality of material life of the people. At present, this standard of dominant consumption on the world level, is that of the middle class of the First World, and although it continues to be unreachable for the majorities, it exercises an irresistible attraction: to such an extent that many risk their lives to get to these First World countries.
The idealistic ethic which follows Platonic obscurantism, daily reinforced by the moral hypocrisy of Catholicism, denies this consumption – the material, sensual, carnal – as „value“.
For revolutionary socialism and science, which takes off from the constituent binomial of material-energy of the universe, all ethics has to be materialist-dialectical, which inevitably considers reproduction, enjoyment and sensuality of the material as an integral part of the human condition. And, in fact, the majority of humanity acts on this pattern. For it, to reach the historically determined quality of life is a value: as strong, or even stronger than certain moral values or „spiritual virtues“. Dialectically, the material converts itself into its opposite, the spiritual.
As the pattern of popular consumption and culture today is a predominantly universal pattern, not a national variable, the shock in Cuba is produced between the universal pattern of consumption of the firstworldist middle class – which arrives annually to the Cuban population by way of two million tourists, and daily by the U.S. films which television transmits – and the standard of life which the productive forces and the distributive system of the country permits.
In such circumstances, a campaign of increasing conscientiousness can reduce certain superfluous consumptions, but the access to the internet, education, health, social and geographic mobility, adequate individual or collective transport, definite forms and places of entertainment, of sexual liberty, etcetera, together with definite formal liberties, are part of the historic pattern prevailing in present Latin America, and no educational campaign can neutralize this pattern.
In this sense, a campaign to vaccinate the young ideologically against the essential elements of the patterns of life which they consider just and necessary, will only reach a minority. It would be more promising to identify those elements, enter into an intensive public debate, above all with the youth, which is the most neuralgic point, but not the only, which must catch the foci of alarm, a debate on the style of the workers’ parliaments of the nineties, and consensualize the model of consumption viable at this moment.
To appeal to the revolutionary discipline and ethical values in the present circumstances of Cuba , to have to be like Fidel or Che, will not change the general panorama of the situation because the objective conditions do not sustain this discourse. For the majority it would be more efficient to discuss democratically the alternatives of consumption, for example, if they prefer more hospitals, transport, or living allowances, private consumption, etc. and the paths to achieve that level within the possibilities of the country.
Better education, knowledge and information are not an antidote to consumerism. The o more inputs of this type are being produced, the more self-conscience, individuality and „subjects“ are being generated. And more „subjects“ mean, inevitably, more desire for democracy. Democracy in all senses – formal, social, participative- which converts itself, the same as historically „just and necessary“ consumption, into a fundamental value of human praxis: value, to which the government has to give answers if it is not to generate resistances which the system can not absorb.
From cognitive and technological cybernetics we know that it is possible to try to repair detected system-problems (post festum) with proportional, integral or differential regulations. More efficient, certainly, is the normalizing preventative which is possible in events statistically detectable. Both requisites are present in Cuba. The dramatic calls to attention of Fidel and Felipe refer to the preventive regulation, that is, the necessity to take measures before the death of Fidel: and the attitudes of the Cuban population towards the Revolution constitute „events“ statistically measurable.
The decisive topic: property and the economic surplus
The Chancellor defined with good reasons the economic surplus as the decisive variable in an economy. But it is necessary to amplify this determination: not only is it key who receives it but who decides about it and in what form. This is the issue of economic democracy which in the market economy (crematistica) is taboo, but which in the socialist economy is the key to success. As long as the majorities are de facto excluded from the decisions on the use of the surplus, (investment, consumption, national budget, payment on the foreign debt, etc.), it doesn’t matter to them really if it is the State, the transnationals, or imperialisms who end up with it.
As happens in the false dilemma of „ethics versus consumerism“, the affirmation that what is decisive is whether the people or the transnationals receive the income or have the productive property, distorts the real dialectics of the contradiction. The Cuban surplus product, in its greater part, is not received by the transnationals, nor the majorities: the State receives it. And this is the nodal point of the problems of the theft, corruption and the black market which Fidel has denounced.
The productive property in Cuba belongs essentially to the State. It is not in the hands of the majorities. If it were, the majorities would protect it, because it is common sense that no one robs himself. The fact that it is robbed and mistreated has an irrefutable reading: state property is perceived by many as an alien or anonymous property, which can be privatized by stealing. While this is like that, it will be difficult to end the corruption and theft, as the example of China shows. In consequence, the idea of the socialist economy, to produce altruistically for all, makes itself nonviable.
The perception of state productive property as something alienated, similar to capitalist property, which can be privatized, is reaffirmed daily by the fact t hat the people have no real influence on its use. Property, in the market economy means essentially, the right to alienate economic assets. For better or worse, this does not exist in Cuba. But neither does the worker determine the benefit of this property, its surplus product, made by him, and thus he neither is the possessor. On not being either proprietor nor real possessor of the individual or collective property, the direct producer does not identify with it and, in consequence, does not protect it adaquately.
The danger of the new bourgeoisie
A new bourgeoisie „would be, if we let it emerge, pro Yankee, pro transnational“, says Felipe. This hypothesis merits more reflection. The big bourgeoisie in Cuba must not be permitted nor is it necessary to permit, because the State substitutes for its economic functions. The innovation-production- commercialization complex of biotechnology, for example, fills the functions of the transnational enterprises (competitivity, innovation, capital) together with economic contents more human than the capitalist.
There remains, then, the problem of the small bourgeoisie, that is, small mercantile production. We recall the advice of Lenin on this class, but we remember also, that at a certain historic moment he had to implement the NEP, with the certainty that the revolutionaries could control the bourgeois tendencies through the enormous monopolistic power of the Soviet State;
- that in no country in the world has the State been able to provide services of adequate quality, for example, in gastronomy;
- that no State has been able to give the cities the diversity of small enterprises, stores, subcultures, etcetera, which gives them life, which is particularly important in economies of tourism;
- that the political-economic control of this class could be achieved probably with the tax – and judicial system;
- that in the global economy of the FTAA the guarantees of economic reproduction of the small businessman can only be provided by the State through protectionism and subsidies, which is the fundamental reason why FEDEINDUSTRIA in Venezuela is with the Bolivarian process and why the small peasant and Latin American enterprise supports Hugo Chávez’ ALBA initiative.
In resume; The situation of the small bourgeoisie in the USSR under Lenin was fundamentally different from that of the Latin American small bourgeoisie today and will have to be analyzed concretely to know in what degree it may be tolerated or no.
The no less decisive theme: the political superstructure
In June of 2002 Felipe had spoken on the same theme before the same Forum, concluding on that occasion that in the eventual absence of the Commandante, the defense of the Revolution would pass to the defense of the one party, the centralized economy, political unity and preservation of the armed forces. To maintain the one party is probably vital during the imperialist aggression, but equally vital is to give it a real cybernetic character, if it wants to avoid the project ending like the USSR and the GDR.
Lenin, the sole party and cognitive cibernetics
Lenin, who conceived the party of democratic centralism knew, certainly, that any system of lasting political control has to guarantee three symmetrical currents of real information and debate:
- between the fractions of the vanguard or summit of real power, for example, of the Politburo and of the Central Committee;
- between these centers of decision and the political and information elite of the country, which, in theory would be the middle leadership and the members of the party;
- between the vanguard, the middle leadership and the masses.
This cybernetic or feedback quality is fundamental for the optimization of any cognitive cybernetic system, such as are the State, the party, and the human being.
In praxis, particularly under Stalin, the necessary equilibrium between real democracy and verticality, that is between the communication structures and symmetrical and asymmetrical power, were abandoned in favor of verticality. The Moscow trials were the rite of passage (announcement of transition) of the new vertical party and the public notice of the disappearance of democracy in the USSR; they were the secular equivalent of the burnings at the stake of the Inquisition in America, whose ashes signalized the price of dissenting in the new order.
Rituals of humiliation similar to the clerical confessional, like „critique and self-critique“, and the inquisistion-like anonymous reports of the political police defined the quality and possibilities of life of the citizens.
In this manner, the Stalin model generated an institutional environment and a political culture of conformism which liquidated the institutionality and culture of the public sphere of the presocialist societies, from the Greek Agora to the literary clubs of the French Revolution. In fact, the public sphere of strategic debate of the bourgeois system, which is constituent to it, disappeared from the superstructure of „real existing socialism“ with fatal consequences for socialist evolution, leaving the bourgeois political superstructure with a functional superiority in the optimization of decisions. This does not mean, that bourgeois governments don´t make mistakes but the bourgeois superstructure evidently provides for a considerable capacity of perception and adaptability to structural changes, which has not been observed in the one-party system of historic socialism.
This feedback quality of the public sphere can be exemplified with the war in Iraq. The great debates within the power elite and information elite on how to get out of the quagmire, in considerable measure take place within the public domain, for example, the U.S. Congress, on television, in the most important dailies of the country like the New York Times and the Washington Post and in the universities.
In „real existing socialism“, that public sphere does not exist and Fidel´s commentary on the „critique-self-critique mechanism“ clearly recognizes the point. The strategic debates take place behind the closed doors of the highest heads of the party. Afterward the official position is brought down and discussed in the lower levels of the party. Finally it is disclosed to the majorities through the press and roundtables on television.
The constitutive majority is excluded and what it sees on television are tactical discussions or simple repetitions of the official vision, delivered generally by the same journalists.
In difference from what happens in the marvelous experience of the Cuban worker parliaments of the nineties, the citizen is converted into a spectator of the political-economic process, not its demiurge.
The vital question for the Communist Party of Cuba
The question, whether a plural party system or a uniparty system of social management should be maintained is secondary, for the simple fact that either of these the two political forms breaks down if it loses its cybernetic or democratic capacity. The real question is: „How can we guarantee the vanguard or cybernetic character of the systems of leadership and coordination which we call State and Party?
The quality of whatever system of regulation depends essentially on two parameters:
- its sensibility, that is the time which passes between the discovery or recognition of a deviation of the system parameters, of its programmed values (Sollwert);
- the time that the system requires to correct the deviation (Istwert).
Both parameters – which determine the dynamic behaviour of the system, in this case of the Party and the State – depend, in their turn, on the quantity and quality of the measurements of the state of the system (for example, polls of opinion, elections, etc.) and on the realative power of the diverse fractions of the leading class, for example, the revolutionary, the socialdemocratic or the technocratic strata.
When Fidel asked in his November speech, why the Cuban economists did not take account of the insensibility of maintaining the sugar sector after the fall of the USSR, the parameter „a“ was referred to. But the real answer is better found in parameter „b“.
If the Cuban economists did not detect he contradiction of maintaining the sugar sector, it means that they lacked professional skill and common sense. With all the reserves confronting my colleagues, it seems to me that this is an unreal supposition. It is much more probable that they did not speak out because the Cuban superstructure does not foresee the public sphere of debate which would have been the place to discuss the respective warnings.
Another example of the parameter „b“ can be taken from the Bolivarian Revolution. During the Bolivarian Government the latifundistas (great landowners) have assassinated more than 130 peasant leaders, without a single one of the intellectual and material authors of these assassinations being in prison.
How much time of correction of this counterrevolutionary „deviation“, and of the State of Rights, does the Revolution have, before it loses its credibility and power in its supposed „war to the death against latifundism“?
The questioning of Felipe is vital, provided it receives an answer which is not formal, but material: not tactics but strategy. If it is not achieved to return to the sole party the dialectic or cybernetic quality intended by Lenin and the restitution of public spheres of strategic and massive debate, together with the public transparency of their interactions, the Party will not be in conditions to defend the Revolution at the death of Fidel.
The same Secretary of State understands in depth that the cybernetic of the Party is the key to the future. In explaining in his discourse why Cuba had not fallen like the USSR, he cited Gabriel Garcia Marquez: „The explanation for Cuba is that Fidel is at the same time the Head of the government and the leader of the opposition“ Felipe added: „He is the main non conformist with what is done, the principal critic of the work and this gives a particularity to our process.“
The political question of life or death for the Communist Party is, therefore: What will be the system of institutional dialectics which will substitute for the personalized dialectics of Fidel, after he no longer leads the Cuban Revolution?
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