The latest edition of the forum for debate “Dialogue, dialogue”, brings a panel of two experts of the Cuban economy and a journalist specializing in the subject, that joined forces to lay some important points about the process called updating, its dynamics, new rules, the unresolved issues, among others.
OnCuba recommends reading interventions in this panel by Juan Triana Cordoví, Doctor of Economics, Professor and Researcher at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy, Oscar Fernandez Estrada, Doctor of Economics, Professor at the University of Havana, and Ariel Terrero Escalante, journalist specialized in economic, unprofessional member of the national leadership of UPEC, with moderation by historian Elier Ramirez.
The views expressed in the exchange, belong to authorized criteria, and allow recreating a picture of the current state of the economic transformation process, from some of its precedents and future projection on the short and medium term.
OnCuba presents, divided by topics, an extensive summary that focuses aspects that contribute with information and provocative ideas to reflect:
New roles, new rules
Oscar Fernandez
The current transformation process didn’t begin with the Sixth Party Congress, but has a history in the 1990s and even further back. But this specific step, in my opinion, started in October 2010 with the first resolutions authorizing the expansion of self-employment, already three years old. Here already is taking shape, despite the fact that there is no clear conceptualization, in the sense that there isn’t a document that summarizes our aspirations from the point of view of political economy- what the socialist society we want is from a set of ideas that begin to appear contained in the Guidelines.
All this has come to set up a panorama with new actors with old actors with new roles and, at the same time, new rules. Some have been conceiving from the “Referee”, but others that have been established by the very “players”, which sometimes are even apart from what the central referee has tried to promote.
(…)
This view I believe that is moving, but it is not stated anywhere, I rely on a systemic interpretation of all measures that have been taken or are announced, to an economy where markets work basically quite full. We coin it as a market economy, which does not necessarily mean a capitalist economy because there are other elements in the middle.
It would be a market economy very sui generis because it wouldn’t have a predominance of state ownership of the means of production as it has been conceived so far, and in turn would have a broad participation of the private sector, both domestic and foreign, but still no explicit steps on the part of outsiders. It will also be under the state’s regulatory eyes. All with the intention to ensure a progression in this so irregular process that the socialist transition is.
I would like to address five issues that have been introduced as goals, at least implicitly:
– Increase the relative weight of non-state ownership in the economy, whether in private forms of individual or collective ownership, cooperative.
– Transformation of the inefficient state enterprise management model.
– Reorganization of the functions of state institutions.
– Harmonization of the leading role of planning with the market environment in which economic actors will play.
– Achievement of the correspondence between the standard of living of the population and the social significance of the work.
(…)
Changes. Dynamic, speed
Ariel Terrero
I will refer to the speed of change, its dynamics, its pace. Are we going fast, going slow? Can we go faster? Do we take advantage of every situation? Before entering a general assessment I will clarify that I will talk about the speed of the changes since the adoption of the Guidelines.
(…)
I will refer to three speed ranges thereafter, which are state legislative action, that is, the measures taken by the government to implement these guidelines, a second level would be the implementation of these measures by economic actors in the society, and a third level would be the results that those measures have for society.
(…)
We are in a necessary process of experimentation. We have two choices: you copy the model from someone or do our own model. And making your own model necessarily involves experience. We are in a process of gradual transformations, both economically and from a cultural standpoint. We are talking about a society that was top-down, centralized in all areas, and now is changing its ways.
The development agenda. Unsolved problems in the transformation of the economy
Juan Triana
Regarding unresolved issues, I think there is an important group. One is the relationship between economic policy of the update as we understand it today and the political economy of the transition to socialism.
The second topic of this issue of the economic policies of the update and the political economy is what we understand as basic means of production, how to exercise effectively the social ownership of the means of production that are owned by the state; What are the boundaries between social, state, collective and private forms?
(…)
I want to end with a quote from José Martí. He says: “Being good is the only way to be happy. Being educated is the only way to be free. But in the ordinary of human nature, you need to be successful to be good. “That is, to achieve a good society, but to achieve a good society we need to be a prosperous society, otherwise we will not achieve it. From misery miserable people emerge and, occasionally, a virtuoso. But revolutions are not made from the misery; misery is not what causes them: inequality causes them. The miserable, those who just have to eat, have virtually no time to think about revolutions. So we have to be prosperous, to also be able to think ahead. We have to think about the present, in the everyday, in the necessities of life, or we cannot project the future.
Read the whole transcription: here
