The Cuban revolutionary project and its development in historical and global context
 
Charles McKelvey
 
This text has been prepared for the Global Learning Website.  It should not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without acknowledgement or permission from the author.
 
Copyright © 2012 Charles McKelvey

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As a consequence of ideological distortions generated by the world-system, the peoples of the North often have limited consciousness of the dynamics of the world-system, as understood from a Third World perspective; and they generally are not aware of fundamental facts concerning the Cuban revolutionary project.  This essay seeks to explain three dimensions of the Cuban revolutionary project that have relevance to this ideological situation.  (1) The Cuban revolution is fundamentally an anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial revolution, forged in response to the peripheralization of the economy and the imposition of a neocolonial republic; it seeks above all national liberation and true sovereignty.  (2) The Cuban revolutionary project has been characterized by the development of structures of popular participation and popular democracy that are advanced alternatives to the structures of popular representation found in liberal democracies.  (3) The last fifty years have been characterized by changes and shifts in Cuban economic strategies and policies in the context of a socialist project.


The Cuban revolution: A project of national liberation
There is a fundamental difference in perspective between the peoples of the global North and South.  In the North, there is insufficient awareness of the processes of colonialism and neocolonialism, whereas in the South, peoples in movement are unable to forget these processes, and indeed, they consider it their duty to remember them.  In the North, what may be called the “colonial denial” abounds; whereas in the South, “colonial analysis” prevails.  The colonial denial involves a repression of fundamental historical and contemporary facts, a phenomenon that is rooted in the universal need of stratified social systems to generate ideological justifications for inequalities.  The colonial denial is reinforced: by Eurocentric social scientific concepts; by the academic fragmentation of historical social science into the disciplines of history, economics, sociology, political science, and philosophy (see Wallerstein 2011:226-64); and by the prevailing cultural patterns of individualism, consumerism, and ethnocentrism.  Colonial analysis, on the other hand, is rooted in the common experience among Third World peoples of colonialism and neocolonialism.  Memory of this common experience is integral to the historical consciousness of Third World movements, which have been formed precisely for the purpose of overcoming colonial and neocolonial structures and attaining national liberation and true sovereignty in the context of a more just and democratic world system.

The colonial denial is a significant obstacle to understanding the current dynamics of world domination and the Third World movements, including the Cuban Revolution.  But the colonial denial can be overcome by means of encounter with Third World movements, where encounter involves takings seriously the insights of persons who have different horizons of understandings, as a consequence of their rootedness in different cultures and social positions.  Such cross-horizon encounter leads to a discovery of relevant questions and a transformation of understanding.  Through cross-horizon encounter with the movements of the Third World, the peoples of the North can move from the colonial denial to colonial analysis. [1]

From the vantage point of colonial analysis, the decisive event that first began to shape the current reality of Cuba was the Spanish conquest of the island in the sixteenth century.  This was part of the general phenomenon of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of vast regions of America, including what are today the Southwestern United States, Florida, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America.  

The well-known sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein [2] maintains that the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of America was provoked by the crisis of European feudalism, and it established a modern world-system characterized by a capitalist world-economy. [3]  During the first stage of the modern world-system (1450-1640), forced labor was central in the peripheral regions: the hacienda in Latin America that was imposed on indigenous peoples; African slave labor in many regions of America, particularly the Caribbean and Brazil; and coerced cash-crop labor in Eastern Europe.  The forced labor in America was driven by the acquisition of gold and silver, which promoted the economic development of Northwestern Europe by stimulating the expansion of manufacturing and commerce and the modernization of agriculture (Wallerstein 1974; Cf. Galeano 1997, 2004; and López Segrera 1972:27-35, 53-59).    

As a particular manifestation of these global dynamics, the Spanish military conquest of Cuba began in 1511.  The indigenous chief Hatuey, who had fled to Cuba with 400 followers during the Spanish conquest of the island of Hispaniola, led a strategy of guerilla resistance that was able to stop the Spanish advance for three months.  But the Spanish were able to capture Hatuey, and they executed him on February 2, 1512.  They were able to attain effective control of the island by 1512 (Pérez 2006:18-22; Foner 1962:20-32).  

In the aftermath of the military conquest, gold nuggets for export to Spain were obtained from riverbeds, with indigenous forced labor utilized to wash gold nuggets from riverbed sand.  This was as significant economic activity from 1512 to 1542.  Many indigenous people died as a result of the harsh conditions of forced labor, and by 1542 the gold and the indigenous population were exhausted.  Many also died as a result of the disruption of the indigenous agricultural system, which was displaced by a European system or was disrupted by the Spanish introduction of livestock that roamed freely, consuming crops and domestic animals.  Also contributing to the depopulation of the island was the spreading of infectious diseases brought by the Spanish and against which the indigenous populations in America had evolved less immunity than European, African, and Asian populations.  In addition, some were transported to Mexico to serve as slave labor.  By the 1550s, the indigenous population had declined from 112,000 to 3,000 (López Segrera 1972:35-49; Pérez 2006:18-22; Foner 1962:20-32).

With the decimation of the indigenous population and the exhaustion of riverbed gold, there emerged in Cuba a hacienda system dedicated to the exportation of cattle products, including hides, dried beef, and fat.  The hacienda system was the main force of the Cuban economy from 1550 to 1700.  The system was ideal for the prevailing conditions of limited capital and limited labor supply, since the cattle reproduced freely, and production could be managed with no more than two or three slave laborers per hacienda.  Most haciendas were not large, and those that were large in a legal sense were subdivided in practice.  The cattle products were exported to Spain or, through contraband or illegal trade, to other European nations (López Segrera 1972:36, 60-87).

The second stage in the development of the capitalist world-system was a period of stagnation from 1640 to 1750.  It was a time of a "slowdown in the rate of development of the world economy" (Wallerstein 1980: 33), a time in which the world economy reached an economic plateau following a long period of conquest and geographical, economic and commercial expansion (Wallerstein 1980:8, 33).  

During the seventeenth century economic stagnation of the capitalist world economy, both core and peripheral elites had an interest in preserving the core-peripheral relation. [4]  Core manufacturers continued to need the raw materials flowing from the periphery to the core, and peripheral elites found the relation profitable.  The boundaries of core, periphery and semi-periphery continued to be the same as they had been developed during the sixteenth century, although there were some limited changes (Wallerstein 1980:18-19, 25-26, 129).

During the second stage, the West Indies played an important role in sustaining the economic development of Western Europe.  In his classic work, Capitalism & Slavery, originally published in 1944, Eric Williams documents the role of the triangular slave trade and direct British-West Indian trade in promoting the economic development of Great Britain.  These trading relationships promoted the development of: British shipping and shipbuilding; British seaport towns; and British industry, including woolen manufacturing, cotton manufacturing, sugar refining, rum distillation, and the metallurgical industries (iron, brass, copper, and lead).  They also made possible the development of banks and insurance companies.  Williams notes that a similar core-peripheral relation with the French West Indies promoted the economic development of France during this period (Williams 1966:51-107, 209).

In a classic work written in 1970, The Open Veins of Latin America, the Uruguayan-Argentinian intellectual Eduardo Galeano describes the development of sugar production for export during the period 1492-1750.  “The search for gold and silver was, without doubt, the central motor of the conquest.  But on his second voyage, Christopher Columbus brought the first roots of sugar cane from the Canary Islands, and he planted them in lands that today are located in the Dominican Republic.  . . .  In a little less than three centuries after the discovery of America, there was for European commerce no agricultural product more important than the sugar cultivated in these lands” (Galeano 2004:83; 1997:59).

The Portuguese colony of Brazil was the first to develop sugar production on a large scale, developing it on the coastal northeastern region of the colony.  At the end of the sixteenth century, Brazil had 120 sugar mills.  By the middle of the seventeenth century, Brazil was the principal producer of sugar in the world, and it was the largest market for African slaves.  The financing of sugar production in Brazil was undertaken by Dutch capital, and Dutch companies owned the sugar mills and managed the importation of African slaves.  Cultivation was developed originally on large landholdings of a Portuguese estate bourgeoisie, but in 1630 the Dutch West India Company invaded the Northeastern coast of Brazil and took direct control of production.  When the Dutch were expelled from Brazil in 1654, they had already established sugar operations in the Caribbean island of Barbados.  Sugar production and the slave population in Barbados subsequently expanded and effectively competed with Brazilian production, leading to the decline of Brazilian production by the end of the seventeenth century (Galeano 2004:85-88).

The production of sugar in the Caribbean islands became extensive. By 1666, Barbados had 800 sugar plantations and 80,000 slaves, displacing the production of a variety of agricultural and animal products by small-scale producers.  Sugar production also was developed on the Caribbean islands of the Leeward's, Trinidad-Tobago, Guadalupe, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Jamaica as well as Guyana on the South American coast.  (Galeano 2004:90-91).

Sugar production was tied to African slavery.  “Immense legions of slaves came from Africa in order to provide for King Sugar the numerous and free work force that he demanded: human fuel to burn” (Galeano 2004:83; 1997:59).  In Jamaica, for example, the slave population was ten times that of white settlers. 

Sugar production had negative ecological consequences: “The lands were devastated by this egoistic plant that invaded the New World, destroying the forests, squandering the natural fertility, and extinguishing the humus accumulated by the soils” (Galeano 2004:83; 1997:59).

Like gold and silver, sugar production promoted the development of Europe and the underdevelopment of Latin America.  “The long cycle of sugar gave origin in Latin America to prosperities as deadly as those that had been engendered in Postosí, Ouro Preto, Zacatecas, and Guanajuato the furors of silver and gold; at the same time they gave impulse, with decisive force, directly and indirectly, to the industrial development of Holland, France, England, and the United States” (Galeano 2004:83-84; 1997:59-60).

In the case of Cuba, sugar production for export began in the sixteenth century.  However, it was slow in developing, due to: restrictions imposed by the Spanish crown; a limited supply of slaves; a limited amount of capital for the purchase of the means of production; and sufficient supply of the Spanish and world markets by other sources (López Segrera 1972:87-89; Pérez 2006:32-33).  However, sugar production continued to expand in Cuba, based on a foundation of African slave labor, throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, especially after 1750, by which time Spanish restrictions had been removed (López Segrera 1972:97-101), and when the world economy underwent a significant geographical and economic expansion.  

Both gold mining and sugar cultivation represent clear peripheral activities: the production of raw materials for export to the core utilizing forced labor.  The case of tobacco in Cuba is more complex.  The development of tobacco cultivation for export emerged on the island in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (López Segrera 1972:75, 90; Pérez 2006:33).  As the production of a raw material for export, tobacco production was fulfilling a peripheral function in the world economy.  However, tobacco in Cuba was produced not by forced labor but by independent small farmers (López Segrera 1972:75-76; Pérez 2006:33), which generally form the base of a core or semi-peripheral function in the world-economy.  
In the early years of the eighteenth century, the market in Europe for tobacco products expanded, enabling Cuban tobacco producers to expand the cultivation of tobacco.  Some of the larger tobacco producers were able to develop approximately 20 tobacco mills that manufactured powdered tobacco or snuff.  A 1717 decree prohibited the construction of new tobacco mills.  Spain's efforts to restrict tobacco manufacturing in Cuba were related to its long range goal of developing tobacco manufacturing in Spain and confining Cuba to the cultivation and export of the tobacco leaf (Pérez 2006:40).  This reflected Spain’s general policy of protecting the interests of Spanish manufacturing by restricting Cuba to the strictly peripheral function of exporting of raw materials, a policy that retarded the development of manufacturing in Cuba.  

In spite of the limitations imposed by Spanish colonial policies, the production of tobacco by independent farmers and the emergence of tobacco manufacturing indicated some possibility for autonomous development in Cuba.  Also providing a foundation for this possibility was the development of the city of Havana as a major international port, including the development of a shipbuilding industry (López Segrera 1972:90-91).  However, during the eighteenth century, the peripheral tendency was manifest: Cuba's leading exports were raw materials (tobacco, sugar and hides), and its leading imports were textiles and other manufactured goods as well as foodstuff (Pérez 2006:40).  Nevertheless, two alternative potentialities existed side by side: one symbolized by independent tobacco farmers, tobacco manufacturing, the Havana port, and shipbuilding; and the other represented by large sugar plantations utilizing slave labor.  

During the third stage in the development of the capitalist world-economy (1750-1914), the world-system underwent a dramatic productive and technological development as well as commercial and geographical expansion.  Reflecting its hegemonic core status in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Britain took the lead in restructuring its agricultural and industrial production.  Responding to the low prices in grains from 1620 to 1750, British agricultural producers undertook new efforts to maximize profits.  There occurred a new wave of modernization, including consolidation and enclosure, accompanied by acquisition of common and cooperative lands.  This tendency occurred throughout the eighteenth century, but accelerated after 1750 with the emergence of high prices.  In industry, British textile manufacturing was restructured during the period 1780-1840, in that it was made more efficient by the development of larger scale and more mechanized enterprises.  These technological transformations in agriculture and industry gave Britain an advantage over other core states, particularly after 1780 (Wallerstein 1989:57-86).

The British modernization of the textile industry from 1780 to 1840 was made possible by greater access to colonial markets.  Before 1750, the British had greater access than the French and the Dutch to the markets of the British colonies in North America, and British economic ties with North America continued after U.S. independence, preserving the British advantage (Wallerstein 1989:68, 83).  Moreover, from 1750 to 1850, vast new zones were incorporated into the periphery of the world economy.  The peripheralization of these new zones provided an expansion of raw materials for manufacturing and of markets for manufactured goods.  This expansion of raw materials and markets facilitated not only the further industrial development of Britain, but also the industrial development of Western Europe, particularly France, Belgium, western "Germany," and Switzerland (Wallerstein 1989:125).  

The regions incorporated into the periphery of the world economy during the period 1750-1850 included the Indian subcontinent, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire and West Africa (Wallerstein 1989:129).  The process of peripheralization involved four main changes in these regions: their conversion into exporters of raw materials; the imposition of systems of forced labor; the reduction or elimination of manufacturing; and the creation of large-scale economic units, resulting in the concentration of economic power in few hands (Wallerstein 1989:137-66, Frank 1979:88-90).  These dynamics reduced the standard of living of the majority, and they facilitated the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a peripheral elite with an economic interest in the perpetuation of the core-peripheral relation.  At the same time, the peripheralization of these regions functioned to the advantage of Western Europe, providing cheap raw materials for its manufacturing and markets for its manufactured goods.  Accordingly, this process of peripheralization facilitated an expansion of production and commerce in the world economy from 1750 to 1850, thus enabling the world economy to overcome its stagnation and to enter into a period of unprecedented expansion that was both geographical and economic, while promoting underdevelopment in vast regions.  

The geographic and economic expansion of the world economy reached its fullest expression in the period from 1815 to 1917.  This was the era in which the European powers, particularly Britain and France, established colonial domination over Africa, the Arab world, and South East Asia.  During this stage, new regions of the world were peripheralized, so that the modern world economy became truly global in scope (Frank 1979:149, 154-59).

China was a partial exception to the process of peripheralization.  "China never became a colony and was never colonized to the degree that India and parts of South East Asia were.  The forces of world capitalist development therefore never penetrated quite so deeply into the heart of village life as they did elsewhere” (Frank 1979:151-52).  Nevertheless, China did experience a degree of colonization, and it was "forced to accept humiliating economic concessions, trade enclaves, and political intervention by the core powers" (Shannon 1996: 73).  As a result of these concessions, the development of underdevelopment occurred to some degree.

Japan had few natural resources and had little potential as a market for manufactured goods.  As a result, Japan was the only major area in Asia, Africa and Latin America that was entirely spared colonial domination.  Thus Japan was able to experience "independent national development" and did not experience the development of underdevelopment (Frank 1979:153-54).

Thus, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the conquest of the world by seven [5] European nations was complete.  Beginning in the early years of the sixteenth century and culminating in the twentieth century, the European project of domination involved conquest of the Caribbean, Central America, South America, North America, North Africa and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and much of Southeast Asia (except China and Japan).  In the wake of the conquest, colonial empires were established, functioning to develop and maintain the peripheralization of the conquered regions and to repress popular efforts toward transformation.  In this way, the foundation was established for the underdevelopment of vast regions of the world and the development of the nations of the core of the world system.

The expansion of the world economy after 1750 gave rise to significant developments in Latin America.  The global economic expansion created a potential for new markets for raw materials exports from the Spanish and Portuguese colonies.  However, Spain and Portugal, as declining core powers, were growing obstacles to this potential.  Lagging behind Northwestern Europe in manufacturing capacity, levels of capital, and standard of living, Spain and Portugal were increasingly unable to supply manufactured goods and investment capital to Latin America and to provide markets for Latin American raw materials exports.  Thus, Spain and Portugal were becoming less and less useful to the Latin American elite, increasingly playing a parasitic role by levying taxes on Latin America and imposing themselves as forced intermediaries in Latin American foreign commerce.  And they were playing an obstructionist role, preventing the Latin American elite from developing more beneficial commercial relations with other core nations.  These factors gave rise to the Latin American independence movements that led to the establishment of independent republics in most of Latin America by the 1820s.  With independence from Spain and Portugal, the Latin American elite was able to expand commercial relations with the United States and Britain.  It also established the possibility for the United States and Britain to establish neocolonial domination over Latin America, a possibility that the United States was able to exploit more fully in the twentieth century (Weaver 1994; Frank 1979:164-71).

The Latin American republics were based on the principle of what Wallerstein has called "settler independence," an approach to independence first established by the United States in the latter part of the eighteenth century.  Settler independence seeks political and civil rights for European settlers and their descendants, and particularly males with education or property, but not democratic rights for the indigenous people or for the African slaves and their descendants.  Utilizing this concept of settler independence, the Latin American republics, directed by an elite class of European descent, expanded raw materials export production during the nineteenth century.  It the first place, it incorporated more land into the world economy, intruding into indigenous common lands.  Secondly, it converted multi-purpose haciendas into single-crop plantations.  Thus, the global expansion of the nineteenth century facilitated the deepening of the process of peripheralization in Latin America, and it facilitated a strengthening and a consolidation of the position of the Latin American elite vis-à-vis the masses (Wallerstein 1989:212-56).

The Cuban scholar Roberto Regalado has provided a useful summary of economic and social developments in Latin America during the period.  He notes that the expansion of the world economy after 1750 led to prosperity for the Latin American agricultural and cattle sectors tied to the mining industry, giving them the capacity to export other raw materials in addition to minerals.  Conceding to demands from these sectors, the Spanish government announced reforms in 1778 and 1782 that legalized exports of sugar, tobacco, cocoa, and leather to Spanish markets.  But the Latin American agricultural and cattle sectors had interest in direct access to markets of other European nations.  Inasmuch as Spain was not sufficiently advanced industrially to supply manufactured goods, it was becoming a parasitic intermediary between Spanish colonies and industrial nations, particularly Britain (Regalado 2007:104-6).

So there emerged at the end of the eighteenth century a conflict of interest between the Latin American elite and Spain.  The Latin American elite had an interest in free trade with European and American markets, whereas Spain (and Spaniards in America) had an interest in maintaining the monopoly of the Spanish crown over the trade coming from the Spanish colonies.  There simultaneously was emerging a distinct conflict of interest between the Latin American elite and the popular sectors of blacks, indigenous, and mestizos.  The former had an interest in maintaining its economic and social control of the colony, whereas the latter had an interest in fundamental changes in the system of class and racial stratification (Regalado 2007:106-7)

By the early nineteenth century, these conflicts of interest gave rise to independence movements in Latin America.  The movements were formed by planters, farmers, small and medium-sized producers, merchants, intellectuals, and artisans; and they were influenced by the Enlightenment, the American (U.S.) Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution.  As a result of the two simultaneous conflicts of interest, there were two ideological tendencies that Regalado has called oligarchic and progressive.  The oligarchic orientation sought to attain independence while maintaining the socioeconomic status quo, and this approach was favored by the elite participants in the independence movement.  On the other hand, the popular sectors for the most part had a progressive orientation, envisioning independence from Spain as establishing the possibility for fundamental socioeconomic change, including the abolition of slavery as well as other measures in defense of the poor (2007:107-8).  

The independence movements resulted in the establishment of independent Latin American republics, but this involved a transition from colonialism to neocolonialism.  As described by Regalado: “The expulsion of Spain and Portugal from their colonial empires opened the field to the introduction in Latin America of a new form of domination and exploitation – neocolonialism. . . .  Neocolonialism was characterized by the formal institutional independence of the neocolony that masked political subordination and economic dependence in relation to the metropolis” (2007:111).  

True independence would have required the new American republics to politically unify and economically integrate, thus providing the political force and the economic capacity to resist the efforts at penetration by the world´s most advanced economies.  Such unity and integration was advocated by Simón Bolívar, the leading figure of the progressive tendency in the independence struggle in South America.  However, it was not possible to accomplish the union and integration envisioned by Bolívar, because “the Americas lacked a level of capitalist economic development and social structure that could serve as a basis for their integration” (Regalado 2007:108).

The global powers of the era did not immediately penetrate Latin America, due to limitations in the availability of capital, so the new republics enjoyed a brief period of true independence from 1825 to 1850.  British economic penetration began after 1850, and its neocolonial domination was consolidated after 1880 and continued until the Great Depression of the 1930s, when British capital was displaced by that of the United States.  U.S. economic penetration of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America emerged as a policy goal after 1850, and it was effectively accomplished by the 1930s (Regalado 2007:111-18).

As Galeano notes, the penetration of foreign capital after 1850 destroyed what had been, prior to independence, an emerging industrial development, in spite of the limitations imposed by Spanish and Portuguese colonial rule.  At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a significant textile manufacturing industry had developed in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina.  But this young industry did not have a sufficiently developed transportation infrastructure, and thus it could not compete with British textile manufacturing.  The newly independent Latin American republics, controlled by landlords and the merchants, adopted a policy of free trade, rather than protecting infant Latin American industry by means of tariffs and other measures (Galeano 1997:173-81).

Thus the economic relation that emerged between Britain and the Latin American republics in the nineteenth century was a core-peripheral relation.  Britain exported textiles and other manufactured goods to Latin America and imported cattle products from Argentina, guano and nitrates from Peru, copper from Chile, sugar from Cuba, and coffee from Brazil (Galeano 1997:174, 177).  This core-peripheral relation benefitted the Latin American estate bourgeoisie, because it provided markets for the Latin American agricultural and cattle raw materials, and because it was an arrangement that provided for the landlords cheaper manufactured goods than would have been possible under protected national industry.  And it expanded business for merchants.

But the core-peripheral relation established by free trade policies undermined Latin American industry, and it thus weakened the emerging urban industrial bourgeoisie, which was still in an embryo stage of development and did not have sufficient influence over political structures to defend its interests.  Ultimately, for a project of industrialization to be successful, the domestic market would have to be expanded, and this would require raising the standard of living of the superexploited [6] rural masses, which formed the majority of the population.  However, this would have undermined the position of the Latin American estate bourgeoisie, whose exportation of raw materials was accomplished on the basis of an international standard of superexploited low wage labor.  The Latin American estate bourgeoisie therefore always has been opposed to the development of a “genuine national capitalism” (Galeano 1997:185).

During the third stage of the world economy (1750-1914), characterized, as we have seen, by the conquest of vast regions and by the economic development of the core, the veins of Latin America continued to be open.  During this stage, agricultural products replaced silver and gold as the principal raw materials exports and thus became central to structures that exploited the natural resources, superexploited the majority of people, and enriched a small Latin American elite and their core allies.  The principal raw materials exports of the era were sugar, indigo, coffee, guano, and cattle hides, and sugar was the king (Galeano 2004:83-174).

Sugar production, as we have seen, promoted development of the nations of the core, where it was marketed and consumed, and underdevelopment for Brazil and the Caribbean, where it was cultivated.  Galeano writes: “Sugar not only produced dwarfs.  It also produced giants, or at least, it contributed intensely to the development of giants.  The sugar of the Latin American tropics gave great impulse to the accumulation of capital for the industrial development of England, France, Holland, and also the United States, at the same time that it mutilated the economies of northeastern Brazil and the Caribbean islands and sealed the ruin of the history of Africa” (2004:106).  Galeano quotes Augusto Cochin:  “The history of a grain of sugar is above all a lesson in political economy, politics, and morality” (Galeano 2004:106).

In the case of Cuba, the expansion of the global economy after 1750 established new markets for sugar and led to the expansion of Cuban sugar production.  The expansion of Cuban sugar production was aided by the destruction of sugar production in Haiti during the Haitian Revolution (Galeano 2004:92-95).  Accompanying the increase in sugar production, the number of African slaves imported into Cuba increased dramatically, as did the number of sugar mills (Pérez 2006:40).  At that time, sugar as a commercial product was less refined than it would later become.  So these sugar mills manufactured a crude form of brown sugar utilizing slave or low-wage labor.  For this reason, the manufactured sugar of that era is considered a raw material, and its export is considered a peripheral function.  

The expansion of sugar production in the second half of the eighteenth century constituted a deepening of the peripheralization of Cuba.  "As Cuba moved inexorably toward monoculture in the eighteenth century, dependents on imports--foodstuff, clothing, manufactures--increased" (Pérez 2006:48).  But Cuban sugar production still lagged behind the other Caribbean islands (Pérez 2006:54).  However, during the nineteenth century, a deepening of the process of peripheralization in Cuba occurred, and sugar production expanded dramatically.  The sugar expansion had consequences for the development of transportation, in that that there was significant construction of roads, railroads and ports, all of it designed to facilitate the export of sugar.  There also were significant effects on land-use patterns, with sugar replacing alternative uses, including tobacco cultivation, forest, cattle ranching, and coffee cultivation.  This was reflected in export earnings:  by 1860, 74% of export earnings were from sugar.  The sugar production also dramatically increased the number of slaves (Pérez 2006: 56-65; López Segrera 1972:105-58).  

Gloria García (García, García, and Torres-Cuevas 1994) notes that the expansion of sugar in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in undermining alternative land-use patterns, weakened the internal commerce of Cuba and thus undermined the possibility of an autonomous economic development in Cuba.  García also notes (1994:259-60) that in the changing technology of sugar production during the nineteenth century, Cuba moved more and more to the production of unrefined sugar, with the manufacturing of the commercial product increasingly becoming a monopoly of the developed countries.  Thus, the nineteenth century expansion of sugar, in which sugar plantations replaced alternative land uses, including many tobacco farms, tilted the balance in favor of a predominantly peripheral function.  However, a significant level of tobacco farming and manufacturing survived this expansion.

Although sugar replaced coffee in some areas, coffee production also expanded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries on the island as a whole (Pérez 2006:56).  Inasmuch as coffee production was for export with a base of forced labor, the coffee expansion was another element in the deepening peripheralization of Cuba.

The Cuban revolutionary project first emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century.  In its first decades, it was a mixture of reform and revolution.  In general terms, reform refers to improvements in the conditions of a dominated class, without substituting the ruling class with rule by a previously subjugated class, and without fundamental structural change.  In contrast, a revolution involves the replacement of the ruling class with another class, establishing the possibility for fundamental systemic change.  In the colonial situation, the elite within the colony has an interest in substituting its rule for that of the colonial power, but in preventing a popular revolution that would place the newly independent nation under the control of the popular classes.  Inasmuch as Cuba was still a Spanish colony during the nineteenth century,[7] the Cuban estate bourgeoisie had an interest in eliminating the parasitic role of Spain, thus establishing itself as a peripheral elite in a neocolonial republic, similar to the republics on the continent.  At the same time, as a result of the deepening of peripheralization, the popular classes and sectors (formed by workers, peasants, slaves, free blacks and mulattos, and the petty bourgeoisie) had an interest in a revolutionary transformation that would place them in power and that would establish the possibility of independence from the core-peripheral relation and autonomous economic development.  

On October 10, 1868, a movement led by the landholding class in the eastern provinces declared Cuban independence from Spain, launching the Ten Years’ War.  In the eastern provinces, sugar production and slavery were less developed, and cattle haciendas continued to be prevalent in some of the eastern provinces.   The cattle haciendas in part fulfilled a semi-peripheral function of supplying beef to the sugar plantations of the western provinces.  The interests of cattle ranchers thus were connected to some extent to autonomous economic development and to the expansion of an internal market, which would imply an alliance with slaves, freed slaves, and workers.  Nevertheless, many eastern landholders, who also fulfilled a peripheral function of supplying raw materials to Spain and other core nations, sought to include the western estate bourgeoisie, owners of sugar plantations, in the independence movement.  These dynamics led to division in the independence movement between reformist and revolutionary sectors, with the popular classes favoring revolution, and the estate bourgeoisie for the most part favoring reform.  Under the leadership of the eastern bourgeoisie, the independence government adopted reformist measures, with the hope of enlisting the support of the western sugar bourgeoisie, which was hesitant to support a war of independence due to fear that it would unleash a slave revolution, as had occurred in Haiti.  As a consequence of these class, ideological and regional divisions, the independence movement was not able to attain unity, and the Ten Years’ War failed to obtain its objective of independence.  Cuba remained a colony of Spain (Pérez 2006:86-93; Arboleya 2008:49-51; López Segrera 1972:112-15, 126-29).

Reflecting on the failure of the Ten Years’ War, José Martí formulated a vision for Cuba that clearly placed the movement in the revolutionary as against the reformist camp.  The independent Cuba that Martí envisioned would be a society that sought social justice and that endeavored to create "a new people of culture and virtue" that are united regardless of race and class.  As expressed by the Cuban scholar Ibrahím Hidalgo Paz, Martí believed that "a war against Spanish colonialism constituted the only manner, imposed by historic necessity, of attaining the conditions for establishing a democratic republic through the development of a strong and united nation, capable of self-government, without foreign interventions, that would respond to the interests of the great majority" (Hidalgo 2003:49).

The creation of a new people and genuine democracy, for Martí, would be accomplished "through the revolutionary practice of the masses, and this action ought to have the human being as the center of the process itself of change.  The human being is the developer, the actor, and the beneficiary of the revolution, so the success or failure of the emancipatory project will depend on each citizen participating consciously in it, with full knowledge of the collective and individual objectives and of their duties and rights" (Hidalgo 2003:50). 

Although Martí understood the individual to be the center of the revolution and the new society, Hidalgo maintains that he defined the relation between the individual and society in a manner fundamentally different from the individualism and the stress on individual rights and liberties that emerged in the culture of the United States.  For Martí, a genuinely democratic society is organized to provide for the needs and to respect the rights of each individual.  But to attain such a society, each individual has the duty to work in cooperation and solidarity with others, collectively seeking the construction of a society based on fundamental human values.  "The democratic society that Martí postulated must organize the production and distribution of wealth in a manner that satisfies the material and spiritual needs of each individual, and it must attain genuine solidarity, overcoming individualism through the empowerment of human values" (Hidalgo 2003:51).

In such a democratic society, the cultural formation of the people is necessary.  Given that the values and the knowledge of the people have been limited and distorted by the colonial process, independence requires that the people "reconquer itself" and claim its independence not only in a political sense but also in a cultural sense, so that the people collectively develop independent thought, and not a form of thought shaped by the colonial masters (Hidalgo 2003:50).

Martí did not leave a government program or a concrete series of measures to be undertaken by an independent Cuban government.  However, "we know that he insisted that the land was the fundamental base of wealth and that it ought not be concentrated in few hands.  A class of owner-farmers would be the bastion of a nation with agricultural base that would be able to develop through productive and market diversification, and whose industry would be rooted in its agricultural capacities” (Rodríguez 2003:56).

Martí had an internationalist vision, and he was particularly concerned about the efforts of the United States to economically penetrate Latin America and insert itself as a neocolonial power.  In the 1880s, he wrote a number of articles criticizing the U.S. economic policies in relation to Latin America and calling upon Latin Americans to develop structures to protect themselves against the imperialist intentions of the United States (Martí 1998).  Accordingly, Martí advocated not only an anti-colonial struggle against Spain but also an anti-imperialist struggle in opposition to U.S. domination of America.  He believed that the Caribbean was central to the anti-imperialist struggle and that a free Cuba combined with a free Puerto Rico would make possible a free America and a more dignified United States.  

The vision of Martí was not a vision that could be constrained by reformism, and it therefore was in opposition to the interests of: colonial Spain; the United States, increasingly penetrating economically in Cuba and positioning itself to emerge as a neocolonial power in relation to Latin America; and the Cuban estate bourgeoisie, owners of sugar and coffee plantations in Cuba.  The emerging industrial bourgeoisie could support the vision of Marti, to the extent that its strength was tied to the vitality of the domestic market.

Recognizing the formidable enemies that such a vision would create, Martí developed the Cuban Revolutionary Party as a political structure that would unify the popular classes that had an interest in the development of the alternative society.  These classes included agricultural workers, small farmers (independent and renting), urban workers, and the middle class.  They also included persons designated as blacks and mulattos, whose skin color was unimportant scientifically but had great social significance in societies of the era.   Martí considered the unity of these popular classes and social sectors to be indispensable, given the powerful enemies outside and within Cuba that the revolutionary movement would provoke (Arboleya 2008:55-58; Raimundo 2009:88-90).

The Cuban revolutionary movement under the leadership of Martí launched the second war of independence [8] in 1895.  Martí was killed in battle, at the age of 42, in the first months of the war, an incalculable loss to the Cuban revolutionary movement.  Nevertheless, under the command of the Dominican Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo, the Cuban revolutionary forces by 1898 had effectively defeated and demoralized the Spanish troops, which were confined to their barracks and the major cities.  Using as a pretext the explosion of the USS Maine, an event of questionable origins, the United States intervened in 1898, establishing military control of the island and promoting the political structures of an independent republic, established in 1902, that would function as a neocolony of the United States  (Pérez 2006:118-44; Arboleya 2008:59-71).

The Cuban diplomat and scholar Jesus Arboleya maintains that the U.S. neocolonial relation developed with Cuba during the first half of the twentieth century served as the prototype for the neocolonial world-system that reached its zenith during the post-World War II era.  He notes that by the middle of the twentieth century, colonialism was no longer politically possible for the world-system as a result of, first, the emergence of the socialist bloc headed by the Soviet Union, and secondly, the wave of national liberation movements in the Third World (2008:5-6).  This made necessary the development of new forms of domination.  Since capitalism had developed to the stage of finance and monopoly capital characterized by transnational corporations and transnational banks, the development of new forms of domination indeed was possible.  

Arboleya notes that the independence movements in Africa and Asia during the twentieth century were led by the national bourgeoisie within the colonies.  During the struggle for independence, the national bourgeoisie represented the interests of the colony and assumed a position of confrontation with the colonial power.  But the national bourgeoisie consisted of two sectors.  The progressive sector had an anti-imperialist orientation and embraced a form of nationalism that would involve autonomous development, once independence is attained.  The majority sector, however, sought a less fundamental change that would reform only those aspects of the colonial system that restricted the direct participation by the national bourgeoisie in the capitalist world market and limited the development of the national bourgeoisie as a class (2008:6-7).  

When the independence of the colonies in Africa and Asia was attained, the majority sector of the national bourgeoisie in most cases controlled the newly independent nations, and it was able to resolve its differences with foreign capital in order to integrate itself into the system of domination and to share in the benefits resulting from the exploitation of the people.  In this new system of neocolonial domination, the national bourgeoisie no longer represented the interests of the emerging nation before the colonial power; rather, it represented the interests of the former colonial power within the newly independent nation (Arboleya 2008:6-7, 11).

Thus, neocolonialism functions through a national bourgeoisie that is “organically subordinated” to the core power and that is capable of establishing necessary political control in the newly independent nation.  Arboleya uses the term “figurehead bourgeoisie” to refer to a national bourgeoisie with these characteristics (2008:8).

The basic functions of colonialism from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century had been to obtain raw materials and to provide a world market for the products made in the core (Arboleya 2008:4).  These basic economic functions continue under the neocolonial system:  “From an economic point of view, the neocolony is not very different from colonial states.  Its market, internal as well as external, satisfies the interests of the metropolis and is controlled by transnational corporations.  Foreign capital establishes itself in the most dynamic sectors of the economy and dominates vital branches like banking and services indispensable for national life.  More importantly, the neocolony reproduces the colonial condition of dependency with respect to metropolitan interests, and underdevelopment is maintained as a characteristic of the system” (Arboleya 2008:7). 

However, there is an important difference between the colony and the neocolony.  In contrast to the colony, which depends principally on force, the neocolony depends to a considerable extent on ideological penetration in order to maintain social control.  Arboleya notes that a penetrating ideology is able to “embrace the entire social fabric, soothing conflicts that result from the neocolonial situation and creating a culture of dependency that weakens the self-esteem of the people, giving rise to consumerist alienation, and that seeks to adulterate national interests” (2008:8).  

But military power continues to play an important role in the neocolony.  Military power is “the most evident sign of the superiority of the metropolis,” and it has a psychological impact on the people, especially when it has “the capacity to mobilize with maximum efficiency to those places where, generally, it is not permanently established.”   And military power is “the dissuasive force par excellence in opposition to popular resistance when social control escapes temporarily from the hands of the native bourgeoisie” (Arboleya 2008:8).

In order for a neocolonial relation to be consolidated and to function in a stable form, several conditions must be met: the neocolonial power must have the productive capacity to satisfy the internal market of the neocolony and to process the raw materials exports of the neocolony; the neocolonial power must have absolute commercial and financial control, without competition from other core powers for penetration of the neocolony; the national bourgeoisie must function as a figurehead bourgeoisie, meaning that there must be subordinate integration of the national bourgeoisie in the neocolonial relation, without the presence of a sector of the national bourgeoisie that is able to propose an alternative national project that seeks autonomous development; the figurehead bourgeoisie must be capable of establishing relatively stable social and political control of the country; and there must be sufficient ideological and cultural penetration to maintain stability (Arboleya 2008:9).  

During the nineteenth century, the Latin American republics in some respects were neocolonies of England, which Regalado has stressed, as we have seen.  However, Arboleya considers them to have been semi-colonies rather than neocolonies, because not all of the characteristics of neocolonial domination were present.  Since capitalism had not yet arrived at the stage of finance capital, English penetration was commercial rather than financial, involving an exchange of manufactured goods for raw materials without control of banking and financial institutions.  In addition, competition from the United States, also seeking economic penetration of Latin America, prevented England from consolidating economic control (Arboleya 2008:8-9, 42).

The first case of neocolonial domination, tied to the expansion of finance capital and involving ideological penetration, was U.S. domination of Cuba, established during the first decades of the twentieth century.  U.S. commercial and financial penetration of Cuba had begun during the period of 1878 to 1895, between Cuba´s two wars of independence.  During this period of U.S. economic penetration, the Cuban independence movement took a revolutionary turn under the leadership of José Martí, who symbolized the taking of control of the movement from the Cuban bourgeoisie by the Cuban petit bourgeoisie.  The revolutionary proposal formulated by Martí, as we have seen, sought social equality of all classes and races in an independent Cuba, and it reflected an anti-imperialist perspective that embraced the principal of Latin American unity.  The Cuban war of independence of 1895-98 was as much a revolution against the class exploitation of the Cuban bourgeoisie and the imperialism of the United States as it was a war of independence against colonial Spain.  The Martían revolutionary project constituted a threat to U.S. commercial and financial interests in Cuba and U.S. imperialist intentions in Latin America, and it was an important factor in promoting U.S. intervention [9] in 1898 (Arboleya 2008:42, 52-58).

During the U.S. occupation of 1898-1902, Cuban revolutionary military and political institutions were dismantled.  There was ideological confusion and division among the Cuban leadership.  A constitutional assembly, established on the basis of limited suffrage, was developed under U.S. tutelage.  “The Constitutional Assembly was the burial of the Republic of Martí.  It created a government whose structure copied in its fundamentals the North American model.  It recognized the liberal principles of individual liberties and guarantees for citizens, the separation of church and state, and freedom of religion.  Nothing was said in relation to social rights, nor of the obligations of the state in the economy and in the protection and aid of citizens, nor of the strategy that ought to be followed with respect to foreign capital, the monopolies or the large estates” (Arboleya 2008:69).

Following the establishment of the Republic of Cuba in 1902, U.S. commercial, financial, and ideological penetration increased.  U.S. corporations owned the principal enterprises in agriculture, mining, and industry, producing raw materials that were exported to the United States.  The Cuban national bourgeoisie was weakened and became subordinate to and dependent on U.S. capital, in some cases reduced from ownership to management of U.S. owned companies.  U.S. producers dominated the Cuban domestic market.  Cuban teachers were educated in the United States, and U.S. textbooks were used in Cuban public schools (Arboleya 2008:64-66, 76, 80).

In analyzing the transition from Spanish colonial domination to U.S. neocolonial domination, Arboleya notes that the Cuban revolutionary leadership of the era was not sufficiently unified or ideologically prepared to resist the new form of domination being imposed.  The leadership was ideologically prepared to effectively resist most efforts by the United States to re-impose colonial domination under its tutelage, and accordingly the Cuban government prevented the United States from claiming jurisdiction of the Isle of Pines, the largest island of the Cuban archipelago; and it was able to reduce U.S. demands for four military bases to one.  But the Cuban leadership was unprepared to defend the Cuban nation against neocolonial domination, as indicated by the signing of a Treaty of Reciprocal Commerce, which strengthened U.S. control of the Cuban market and reinforced Cuban dependency on the United States.  This failure to defend the national interests in the face of neocolonial domination was a result of ideological penetration, which had generated confusion and limited understanding.  The death of Marti was an important factor in facilitating lack of unity, purpose, and understanding in relation to national interests and popular needs and aspirations (Arboleya 2008:68-71, 75-77).  

The stable functioning of a neocolonial system requires a consensus among principle actors, and this consensus was disrupted in the case of Cuba during the 1920s, putting the neocolony in crisis.  Seeking to reduce competition from foreign producers, U.S. agricultural producers influenced the U.S. government to establish protective measures for U.S. agriculture.  The protective measures placed Cuban sugar producers (including sugar production directly controlled by U.S. capital, which accounted for 40% of sugar production) at a competitive disadvantage in relation to U.S. sugar production.  The fall of Cuban sugar exportation had the consequence that Cuban banks, which had been functioning as intermediaries between U.S. banks and Cuban producers, were now unable to meet credit obligations to U.S. banks.  At first, the Cuban government took measures to protect the Cuban banks, but as a result of U.S. pressure, new laws were passed that facilitated the liquidation of the Cuban banks and the reorganization of the Cuban banking system, placing it under the nearly complete control of U.S. capital.  U.S. direct ownership of the sugar industry also increased.  U.S. financial capital “became the proprietor of most of a great part of the national wealth as well as monopolist of the system of commerce and credit, which signified the nearly absolute denationalization of the sugar industry and banking of the country” (Arboleya 2008:91).

During the 1920s, there was some development of Cuban national industry, as conditions had been created during World War I for the development of import-substitution production in light industry, responding to Cuban consumer demand.  But this was not on a large scale, and Cuban industrial production depended on the importation of materials and machines necessary for production, and it was tied to U.S. capital.  The independent development of Cuban industry was not possible under conditions of U.S. neocolonial domination (Arboleya 2008:94).

Nor was it possible under the neocolonial system to satisfy the demands of the people.  So the conditions of neocolonialism give rise to popular movements in opposition to neocolonialism and unified by an anti-imperialist perspective.  During the 1920s, the Cuban anti-neocolonial movement had many characteristics in common with the popular movements in the neocolonial republics that emerged during the twentieth century throughout Latin America.  However, given the powerful legacy of Martí, the movement in Cuba was more clearly a revolutionary as against a reform movement.  During the 1920s, student, workers’ and women’s organizations emerged and formulated critiques and demands that not only pertained to their particular interests but also to the neocolonial situation of the republic.  Socialist and communist currents of thought began to influence public discourse.  Influential and today celebrated Cuban intellectuals and activists, such as Julio Antonio Mella and Antonio Guiteras, emerged.  Influenced by the Mexican Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the university reform movement in Argentina, they formulated an analysis that synthesized the vision of Martí with the intellectual tradition of Marxism.  The Cuban Communist Party emerged, as did national organizations of workers and students (Pérez 2006:178-86; Arboleya 2008:95-100).

The situation of sustained protest culminated in what came to be known as the Revolution of 1930, and it demonstrated that the figurehead bourgeoisie was not able to maintain social control.  The Revolution of 1930 had undermined the ideological basis of neocolonial domination: “The North Americans stopped being the liberators of Cuba, and even the extreme right had to adopt a nationalist language to promote their positions” (Arboleya 2008:100).  As the neocolony became characterized by conflict, the need for a readjustment of the Cuban neocolonial system became evident.

As a consequence, significant adjustments were made in the neocolonial system during the period of 1933 to 1959, a period which saw two Batista dictatorships (1933-40, 1952-58), a Batista presidency (1940-44) characterized by some concessions to popular demands, and two supposedly-reformist governments (1944-52) characterized by populist rhetoric and high levels of corruption.  The neocolonial adjustment had two basic components.  First, there was greater reliance on the Cuban military, as against the U.S. military, for purposes of social control.  Cuban military forces were strengthened, thus reducing the possible need for direct military intervention by the United States, a necessary step in light of strong popular opposition to U.S. intervention.  Secondly, there was recognition of the need to protect the interests of the figurehead bourgeoisie, in order to give this class a greater stake in the system and to increase its possibility for maintaining social control (Arboleya 2008:100-12).

With the popular election of Batista as president in 1940, the system appeared to have become a perfect neocolonial system.  However, the improved and more advanced neocolonial system was structurally unable to respond to the needs of the people, based as it was on utilizing the resources of the nation in the service of the interests of international capital and the figurehead bourgeoisie.  Thus the anti-neocolonial popular movement continued and intensified, and it provoked the reactionary Batista coup d’état of 1952.  The Batista coup gave rise to an alternative strategy to attain power by the movement, sidestepping the electoral process of representative democracy.  The new stage in the popular struggle was symbolized by the attack on Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953, led by Fidel Castro.  In the trial for the attack, Fidel delivered an address that subsequently was distributed clandestinely and came be to known as History Will Absolve Me.  In addition to condemning the social and economic conditions and the political repression of Cuba, the address outlined a basic program of action, including agrarian reform. Imprisoned for the attack but released by popular demand through a presidential pardon, Fidel led a guerrilla campaign in the mountains of Sierra Maestra during 1957 and 1958.  The 26 of July Movement led by Fidel adopted a strategy of a guerrilla campaign in the countryside and a clandestine struggle of sabotage and protest in the cities, seeking through these means to take control of the government.  The movement was formed by students, workers, peasants, and professionals, and it was led by a lawyer with bourgeois/petty bourgeois roots.  It triumphed on January 1, 1959, with the flight of Batista from the country (Pérez 2006:219-37; Arboleya 2008:114-28; Castro 2011:3-9).

Several factors in the nineteenth century development of Cuba had facilitated the emergence of an advanced revolutionary popular movement.  Historically, the presence of tobacco cultivation by independent farmers and tobacco manufacturing as well as the function of the city Havana as a major international port led to a degree of industrial and commercial development that provided the material foundation for the emergence of proletarian and petit bourgeois classes.  Blacks were integrated into these classes, as a consequence of (1) the use of slaves in urban occupations and (2) the entrance of significant numbers of free blacks and mulattoes into urban occupations.  These dynamics led to the emergence of unity, national identity, and patriotic sentiments among the popular classes that transcended boundaries of race.  In these characteristics, Cuba was different from the English and French Caribbean and the U.S. South (López Segrera 1972:127-39).  At the same time, the sector of the Cuban bourgeoisie tied to the domestic market was not sufficiently strong to channel popular aspirations into a reformist, as against revolutionary, direction.  A revolutionary impulse directed by the unified popular classes had been unleashed, and it continued to express itself and develop from the 1880s to the 1950s.  

The loss of the U.S. neocolony in Cuba constituted a serious threat to the neocolonial system, which at the time of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution was dominated by the doctrine of the Cold War.  This doctrine postulated the impossibility of a lasting peace with the Soviet Union, due to its supposedly expansionist tendencies.  The doctrine served as a justification for the strengthening of U.S. military power and a militarist policy, in which government spending on the military became the stimulus for economic expansion and scientific development.  The Cold War doctrine also functioned as a frame of reference for responding to anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements in the Third World, as such movements became defined as manifestations of Soviet and communist expansionism (Arboleya 2008:132-35).

The Cold War doctrine was an ideological distortion of reality in two important respects.  First, Soviet foreign policy was not expansionistic.  Its basic intention was to create a geopolitical cordon of security in the territory that surrounded its frontiers, while seeking to establish peaceful coexistence with the capitalist powers.  Nor was its foreign policy oriented to the support of Third World revolutions.  It was based not on a theory of a global revolution but on the premise that revolutions, when they occur, emerge from unique factors in each country.  The Soviet Union sometimes supported Third World revolutions, when doing so seemed consistent with its geopolitical strategy; and it refrained from economic exploitation of Third World nations, believing that in the long run this would serve to protect the security of its territory.  But its general orientation was to co-exist with the capitalist nations and to leave the Third World to its fate in the face of the imperialistic intentions of the United States (Arboleya 2008:134-37, 185-88).  

Secondly, the Third World revolutions represent not the expansion of communism but the expansion of anti-colonial, anti-neocolonial and anti-imperialist movements, seeking to construct a more democratic world order.  They have claimed the right of autonomous economic and cultural development in opposition to the imperialist intentions of the United States and other core powers.  There was, however, a degree of truth in the Cold War ideological construction: the Third World revolutions were often inspired by the example of the Russian Revolution and were influenced in varying degrees by Marxism, and their most advanced manifestations (Vietnam, Cuba, and China) were characterized by charismatic leaders who forged a synthesis of Marxism-Leninism with the anti-colonial perspective of national liberation.  But it is often the case that ideological distortions are effective because they contain a grain of truth in a mountain of half-truths and lies.

By virtue of its enormous economic power, the United States was able to disseminate the essentially false Cold War ideological construction throughout the world, presenting itself as a defender of democracy, freedom, and liberty in the face of the threat posed by an international conspiracy of totalitarian communism, when in fact the United States itself was the principal undemocratic force, imposing its neocolonial domination on the world (Arboleya 2008:136-37).

At that same time, the United States continued its economic penetration of Latin America during the twentieth century, with greater emphasis on oil and minerals and less emphasis on agricultural products, although the export of the latter continued to be significant.  Galeano describes the increasing dependence of the United States on petroleum and minerals such as copper, tin, iron, bauxite, magnesium, and nickel.  Given their importance in the development of the economic and military power of the United States, Galeano describes them as the “underground sources of power” (204:175-221).  Writing in 1970, he observes:  “Petroleum continues being the principal fuel of our time, and the North Americans import one-seventh of the petroleum that they consume.  In order to kill Vietnamese, they need bullets, and the bullets need copper; the United States buys beyond its borders one-fifth of the copper that it uses.  The lack of zinc increasingly causes anxiety: nearly half comes from abroad.  One cannot manufacture airplanes without aluminum, and you cannot make aluminum without bauxite: the United States has almost no bauxite.  The great iron and steel centers—Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit—do not find sufficient iron in the deposits of Minnesota, which are on the way to exhaustion, nor do they have manganese in the national territory: the North American economy imports one-third of the iron and all of the manganese that it needs.  In order to produce jet engines, they have neither nickel nor chrome in the subsoil.  In order to manufacture special steels, tungsten is required: they import one-fourth.  The growing dependency with respect to foreign supplies causes an equally growing identification of the interests of North American capitalists in Latin America with the national security of the United States.  The internal stability of the world’s greatest power appears intimately linked to North American investments south of the Río Grande.  Nearly half of these investments are dedicated to the extraction of petroleum and the exploitation of mineral wealth, ‘indispensable for the economy of the United States as much in peace as in war’” (2004:175-76, quoting Edwin Lieuwen; 1997:134-35).

By the 1960s, generous concessions had been granted to U.S companies providing access to: iron, manganese, and radioactive elements in Brazil; lead, silver, and zinc in Bolivia; petroleum in Venezuela; copper in Chile; nickel and manganese in Cuba; and bauxite and manganese in British Guiana (Galeano 2004:175-214; 1997:135-65).  

Against U.S. neocolonial domination stood revolutionary Cuba.  Following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and during the course of a little more than fifty years, Cuba would develop structures of participatory democracy as an alternative to the representative democracy that sustains the neocolonial system.  And it would search for the road to autonomous economic development, with mixed results, but persistently demonstrating its determination to be free of the core-peripheral relation and to achieve true sovereignty and independence.  Its persistence would earn it the respect and admiration of the neocolonized peoples of the earth, who everywhere form popular anti-neocolonial movements, given that the neocolonial world-system is not organized to protect the sovereignty of nations or to provide for the human needs of their peoples.

 
Popular democracy in Cuba

During the neocolonial republic, the political process followed the model of multi-party representative democracy.  The Cuban experience of this model was not very happy.  One president (Gerardo Machado, 1924-33) was elected president on the basis of a reform platform, but during his second term, he delivered a brutal repression of the popular movements seeking more extensive changes.  Two presidents, Ramón Grau (1944-48) and Carlos Prío (1948-52), promised reform, but they delivered corruption.  A short-lived reform/revolutionary government in 1933 was brought to an end by the first Batista dictatorship, formed through the political interventions of the U.S. ambassador and established with U.S. support.  The second Batista dictatorship (1952-59) interrupted the electoral process that likely would have led to the election of a relatively new reformist political party, among whose candidates to the national assembly was the young lawyer Fidel Castro, who had established a name for himself defending the rights of the poor (Pérez 2006:187-219; Arboleya 2008:101-19).

Arnold August describes four important moments in the development of Cuban revolutionary democracy. (1) The first moment was symbolized by the July 26, 1953 attack on Moncada Barracks.  The Batista coup of March 1952 was a reaction to the strength of the popular movement, and it provoked a decisive turn in the strategy of the movement.  The movement in 1953 abandoned efforts to take control of the state through the electoral process and turned to armed struggle, after decades of corruption, manipulation of the electoral process by elites, and nullification of civil liberties when necessary (1999:151-60).      

(2) With the triumph of the revolution of 1959, the revolutionary movement seized control of the state, and the traditional political parties found themselves completely discredited in the public consciousness.  The period of 1959 to 1961 represented a period in which the revolutionary government sought to act decisively in support of the interests of the majority.  The government and the people rejected multiple party elections, seeking to empower people and channel expressions of popular will through such mechanisms as mass assemblies and mass organizations of workers, small farmers, women and students as well as Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (August 1999:184-97).    

(3) In 1970, there began a process of the institutionalization of the revolution.  Structures of popular power were institutionalized through the 1976 Constitution, which established elections of an alternative form, different from those found in representative democracies.  These alternative structures were designed to select delegates and deputies who are truly representative of the Cuban people, and they were designed to establish an electoral process that was not divisive.  The system has multiple candidates for municipal assemblies, but without campaigns in the usual sense and without electoral political parties (August 1999:202-20).
 
(4) In the early 1990s, further efforts were made to improve the process of revolutionary democracy as it had been developing in Cuba, including a direct popular election for the provincial and national assemblies and the development of Popular Councils (August 1999:225-33).

The Cuban Constitution of 1976 established a system of government based on a foundation of local elections.  Urban neighborhoods and rural areas are organized into voting districts, each consisting generally of 1000 to 1500 voters.  Every 2½ years, the voting district conducts elections, in which from two to eight candidates compete.  The nominations are made by anyone in attendance at a series of nomination assemblies that are conducted in each voting district.  The nomination assemblies generally have a participation rate of 85% to 95%.  Those nominated are candidates for office without party affiliation.  A one-page biography of all the candidates is posted in a wide variety of public places.  The nominees are generally known by the voters, since the voting district is not larger than 1500 voters.  If no candidate receives 50% of the votes, a run-off election is held.  Those elected serve simultaneously as delegates to the Popular Council and the Municipal Assembly.   

The Popular Councils were developed during the reform of the early 1990s.  Consisting of municipal delegates and representatives of mass organizations, the Popular Councils function at a level between the voting district and the municipality.  They seek to find solutions for practical problems that people confront in their daily lives.

The elected delegates to the Municipal Assembly participate in the process of developing a list of candidates for the provincial and national assemblies.  This is a complex process.  There are national and provincial candidacy commissions, composed of representatives of the mass organizations.  The candidacy commissions receive proposals for pre-candidates to the national and provincial assemblies from mass organizations at the national, provincial and municipal levels.  After further consultations with the mass organizations, the candidacy commissions present a list of pre-candidates to the municipal assemblies.  If no one raises an objection, the pre-candidate is accepted as a candidate.  If someone raises an objection, a vote is held by a show of hands, and if there is more than 50%, the pre-candidate is accepted as a candidate.  Once the full list of candidates is developed, the general assembly has a secret vote, in which each delegate can affirm or deny each candidate.  Those with more than 50% of the votes are presented as candidates to the people for the general election.  They are candidates from the particular municipality for the provincial and national assemblies.  No more than 50% of the candidates for provincial and national assemblies can be delegates in the municipal assembly.  This is to enable the identification of people who are not well known but who are devoted specialists in their fields and have important contributions to make.  

August (1999) provides intimate portraits of the candidates in voting districts that he extensively observed, and his account enables us to appreciate the moral and intellectual qualities of many of the candidates as well as their modest social roots.  The “campaigns” for provincial and national assemblies are very different from the political campaigns of the representative democracies.  They enable the candidates and people to meet one another, and they also have an educational function in regard to the Cuban political process.  August's description of the meetings of the candidates with the people provides a portrait of the modesty and the dignity of the Cuban political process.

The national, provincial and municipal assemblies all make laws appropriate for their levels of jurisdiction.  They constitute the legislative branch of the government.  The legislative assemblies have supervision over the various ministries, such as health and education, in their levels of jurisdiction.  The responsibilities of the assemblies include the election of administrators of the state at the appropriate level.  These state administrators are salaried professionals who work on a full-time basis.  They administer the various ministries of the state in their jurisdiction, and they are accountable to the assembly.  

At the national level, the selection of state administrators takes the form of selecting the 31 members of the Council of State, including the President of the Council of State.  This is done through a process in which the National Candidacy Commission receives proposals from the deputies of the National Assembly, and from these proposals it submits a list for presentation to the assembly, each deputy having the option of voting yes or no for each candidate.  To be accepted in the Council of State, the candidate must receive more than 50% of the votes.  The Council of State functions as the executive branch of the national government.  

Fidel Castro was elected to the position of President of the Council of State in 1976, and he was re-elected various times to five-year terms, until he retired for reasons of health at the beginning of 2009.  His longevity in this position was a consequence of two fundamental facts.  First, there are not term limits in the Cuban system, so a person can be re-elected to the same position various times.  Secondly, Fidel has had enormous prestige in Cuba, due to his personal, moral, and intellectual characteristics, and due to the role he has played in the development of the Cuban revolutionary project.       
 
The delegates and deputies to the municipal, provincial and national assemblies work on a voluntary basis, without pay, above and beyond their regular employment, except for those elected to serve as officers of the assemblies.  Although the assemblies meet only a few times per year, the work is ongoing in the form of committees and meetings with constituents.  Since these responsibilities, particularly at the lower levels, include meeting with the people, the delegates tend to spend many hours per week meeting with groups and individuals and trying to respond to their needs.  This is a burdensome obligation, inasmuch as the delegates continue to have responsibilities in careers and families.  As a result, there is a high turnover in the assemblies, as many delegates and deputies assume the duty for one or two terms and then retire from this particular responsibility.  Some delegates and deputies, however, continue to serve in the assemblies for many years.

In Cuba, there is a very high level of participation in the electoral process.  During the 1997-98 elections, for example, 36,343 nomination assemblies were held nationwide, in which 86.5% of the people participated.  August's intimate portraits of some of these assemblies show the care that is taken to ensure that there is full and open participation by the people.  In the subsequent voting for delegates (from among competing candidates) to the municipal assemblies, 97.59% of the people voted.  Later, in the voting for provincial and national assemblies, 98.3% of the people voted.  This is the election in which the ballot provides an option of yes or no for each candidate, and 94.45% voted for all the candidates.  

The high level of voter participation is a continuing characteristic of the Cuban system.  In the 2012 partial elections, 94.21% of the voters went to the voting booth.  They were to select one candidate from two or three candidates for delegate to the Municipal Assembly.  In 93.7% of the voting districts, one candidate received 50% or more of the vote, and thus they were elected as delegates.  In 9.7% of the voting districts, no candidate received more than 50%, and runoff elections were scheduled. 

The elections in Cuba have consistently demonstrated the high level of popular support for the Cuban political process.  Counter revolutionary groups have called upon the people to demonstrate opposition to the Cuban political system by turning in blank ballots or ballots marked in such a way that they will be declared invalid.  In the 2012 partial elections, 90.45% of the ballots cast were accepted as valid votes for one of the candidates; 9.55% were declared invalid, either because they were left blank (4.97%), or because they were annulled for being completed in a form not consistent with the rules (4.45%).  If we also take into account the 5.79% who did not vote, we could interpret the results as indicating that 84.79% of the people affirmed their support of the Cuban political process by casting a valid vote for one of the candidates, while 15.21% expressed a protest in one form or another, either by not voting, turning in a blank ballot, or submitting a ballot inappropriately marked.  The voting is secret and anonymous, so that those counting the votes have no way of knowing the identity of the person who turned in the ballot.  The technology and style of the voting is the essence of simplicity and dignity: a sheet of white paper with the names of the candidates and squares beside the names for marking an X, folded in half by the voter, who inserts it into a slit in a wooden box, which is constantly guarded by two school children, dressed in their school uniforms, who salute the voters as they cast their ballots.

Although Cuba has developed advanced structures of popular participation, the process requires constant critical analysis and improvement.  In an empirical study of four municipalities conducted from 1989 to 1991, Dilla, Gonzalez and Vincentelli document the high level of participation in the electoral process, the free and open climate in which the elections are held, the high level of legitimacy of the electoral process, the high regard in which delegates to the municipal assemblies are held, the high ethical and moral qualities of the delegates, and the effective mechanisms through which citizens can present demands to the municipal government (1993:53-96).  At the same time, they observed a tendency toward “a paternalistic vertical relation between the government and the citizens” that restricted popular participation (1993:95-96).  This tendency was intertwined with a tendency toward the centralization of decision-making in the central government as against the provinces and the municipalities, in spite of the fact that the constitution had intended a balance between centralization and decentralization (1993: 31, 97).  This tendency toward centralization was caused by a situation of limited resources, pushing the central authorities to give priority to urgent national needs (1993:114-17).  They concluded, however, that the apparatus of public administration was much more decentralized than it had been prior to 1976 (1993:117).  
In addition, Dilla, González and Vincentelli observed a tendency for the municipal assemblies to assume a more modest role in practice than what was legally designated, as a consequence of the fact that the permanent administrative institutions of the municipalities (responsible for administration in such areas as health, education, agriculture, and industry) held the real balance of power in the decision-making process (1993:100, 103, 110).  Notwithstanding, they noted that the majority of the municipal delegates were of the opinion that the municipal institutions were under the effective authority of the municipal assembly and subordinate to it (1993:104-5).  But Dilla, González and Vincentelli maintained that this subordination was partial, principally as a consequence of the requirements of the central directors of the institutions at the national level (1993:108).   

The Cuban Constitution of 1976 also established requirements for consultation by the national, provincial, and municipal assemblies with mass organizations.  The mass organizations are nation-wide organizations of workers, peasants, students and women as well as the neighborhood organization, the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR).  There is a high level of participation in these organizations. [10]  Workers, peasants and students are organized in their places of work or study; women and the CDRs are organized in neighborhoods.  Regular meetings are held in places of work or study and in neighborhoods to discuss problems and concerns and to search for practical solutions.  The discussions range from concrete problems to major global issues, but most of the conversations deal with practical problems, such as the local doctor not always being available, a street or street light in need of repair, or the location of the bus stop.  The members of the mass organizations elect representatives to serve in positions of leadership at the local, regional and national levels.  The great majority of Cubans participate in two or three mass organizations simultaneously, in their places of work or study and in their neighborhoods.  

The Cuban Communist Party was never conceived as a mass organization (Castro 2011:17-20), and thus it is not open for anyone to join.  Sixteen percent of adults are party members (Bell Lara 2008), and they are selected by the party itself in a thorough process that includes interviews with co-workers and neighbors.  Those selected are considered model citizens.  They are selected because they are viewed as: strong supporters of the revolution; hard and productive workers; well-liked and respected by their co-workers and neighbors; leaders in the various mass organizations of women, students, workers, and farmers; people who take seriously their responsibilities as spouses and parents and family members; and people who have "moral" lives, such as avoiding excessive use of alcohol or extramarital relations that are considered scandalous.  As with those who are elected to the various assemblies, membership in the Communist Party is very time consuming, and party members carry out their responsibilities on a voluntary basis, without pay or compensation.  

The Cuban Communist Party is not an electoral party: it does not nominate or support candidates for office.  Moreover, it does not make laws or select the head of state; these functions are fulfilled by the assemblies, which are elected by the people, and for which membership in the party is not required.  Most members of the national, provincial, and municipal assemblies are members of the party, but many are not, and those delegates and deputies who are party members are not selected by the party but by the people in the electoral process.  The role of the Communist Party in Cuba, mandated by the Constitution, is to act as the vanguard of the revolution.  It makes recommendations concerning the future development of the revolution, and it criticizes tendencies it considers counterrevolutionary.  Jorge Lezcano writes: “The essential functions and role of the party are defined by article 5 of the Constitution, which expresses that the Communist Party of Cuba, Martían y Marxist-Leninist, organized vanguard of the Cuban nation, is the highest leading force of the society and the state; it organizes and guides the common effort toward the high goal of the construction of socialism.  An analysis of this definition enables us to appreciate that the party does not have constitutional political authority, and it cannot participate in elections.  As a consequence of restrictions imposed by Law and by the fact that the Communist Party of Cuba is not an electoral party, it does not nominate or support any candidate. . . .  The Party carries out its work through persuasion, convincing people, education, and close and permanent ties with the masses.  The influence of the Party is based on the fact that it is the population itself that proposes candidates for party membership, and it is the population itself that provides the final evaluation for acceptance for membership.  In addition, the influence of the Party in the masses is based on the good example of its members as well as permanent connections with the people” (2003:47-48).  Although the party ought not to involve itself in the government, there is a tendency for municipal governments to encourage such involvement, as a consequence of the prestige and experience of municipal party leaders (Dilla, González and Vincentelli 1993:112-14).

The role of the party in the Cuban political process can be seen in the process that led to the Guidelines approved by the National Assembly in 2012.  The Guidelines were formulated by party leaders, and they were disseminated to the people, who were given an opportunity to express their views in meetings held throughout the nation in places of work.  Party leaders directed the popular consultations, and they were present to take note of the views of the people.  Subsequent meetings of the party, at national and provincial levels, involved reformulations of the guidelines in light of the recommendations of the people.  The reformulated Guidelines were submitted to the National Assembly, which approved them.  Meetings of the party since the approval of Guidelines by the National Assembly have focused on their implementation.

The party does not always play such an active role in the formulation of important legislation.  In the economic reforms of the early 1990s, the original proposals were developed by the Council of State.  A subsequent popular consultation was held, involving participation by all of the mass organizations in places of work or study and in neighborhoods.  Following the extensive popular consultation, the revised proposals were sent to the National Assembly for approval.  

No reflection on the Cuban political process would be complete without discussion of the role of charismatic authority, given the considerable charismatic authority exercised by Fidel Castro from 1953 to 2008.  In this regard, concepts formulated by the German sociologist Max Weber at the beginning of the twentieth century are useful (Weber 1947:152, 324-25, 328-51, 358-63).  Weber defined power as the ability to carry out one’s will, in spite of the resistance of others.  He distinguished power from authority, which he defined as legitimate power.  He maintained that power is legitimated in one of three ways.  First, it can be legitimated on rational grounds, in which a person has legal authority on the basis of norms and rules established by a hierarchical bureaucratic system.  A president of a country with a system of representative democracy can be considered an example.  Secondly, power can be legitimated on traditional grounds, on the basis of “the sanctity of immemorial traditions” (1947:328) and the status of a chief.  An example would be a king in a seventeenth century European nation-state.  Thirdly, authority can be charismatic, resting on devotion to an individual person with exceptional and exemplary characteristics.  Charismatic authority “is sharply opposed both to rational, and particularly bureaucratic, authority, and to traditional authority. . . .  Both rational and traditional authority are specifically forms of everyday routine control of action; while the charismatic type is the direct antithesis of this” (1947:361).  “Every charismatic authority would have to subscribe to the proposition, ‘It is written . . ., but I say unto you…’  The genuine prophet, like the genuine military leader and every true leader in this sense, preaches, creates, or demands new obligations” (1947:361; italics in original).  

With reference to the charismatic person, Weber wrote:   “The term “charisma” will be applied to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.  These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader” (1947:358-59).

In the context of the revolutionary processes in the modern world-system, persons with charismatic authority possess an exceptional capacity to discern and understand the unfolding of events, and they possesses a strong and faithful commitment to the values of social justice that are the foundation of the revolutionary process.  Such charismatic leaders have emerged in revolutionary movements from the nineteenth century to the present, with the following characteristics:  the leader is a product of a historical social movement and has been formed by it; the leader formulates a more advanced understanding that at the same time possesses a historical consciousness that defines its roots in the historical development of the social movement; the leader is lifted up by the people to speak on its behalf; the leader demonstrates fidelity to the values and ideals of the movement, in spite of having been raised to a higher level of power; and as a consequence of the gift of analysis and the demonstrated fidelity, the leader becomes a symbol of the movement, with enormous charismatic authority.  Examples of social movement leaders with charismatic authority include Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mao, Lenin, Malcolm X, Simón Bolívar, José Martí, Augusto Sandino, Salvador Allende, Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa.  The emergence of a leader with charismatic authority appears to be necessary for a social movement to attain significant goals, possibly because only a leader with charismatic authority is able to unify the various tendencies within the movement.  The death of a leader before the attainment of movement goals can lead to its fragmentation, as perhaps can be said in regard to the premature deaths of Martí, King, Malcolm, and Allende.

In the case of the Cuban anti-neocolonial revolution, Fidel Castro emerged as a leader with charismatic authority.  In accordance with the general pattern, Fidel was formed by a tradition of social movement and struggle, defined and established by José Martí and the subsequent struggles during the neocolonial republic.  Informed by this tradition, Fidel at the same time pushed the movement to a more advanced understanding, which included: the definition of the armed struggle as the only viable option in the face of the March 10, 1952 Batista coup; the formulation of a specific program of action, in History Will Absolve Me, giving concrete direction to the movement, thus strengthening its popular appeal; and a creative theoretical synthesis of the Third World perspective and Marxist-Leninism in the development of the ideology of the movement. [11]  As the movement proceeded through various challenges, Fidel displayed fidelity to the movement’s goals, reinforcing his charismatic authority.  

In order for social movements to continue to pursue their goals after the death of the charismatic leader, which everyone understands will occur sooner or later, there must occur a process of the institutionalization of charismatic authority, which Weber called the routinization of charisma (1947:363-86).  In the case of revolutionary Cuba, the first attempts at the institutionalization of charismatic authority occurred in the early 1960s, with the goal of creating a vanguard political party that would function as an institutional replacement for the personal charismatic authority of Fidel. [12]  In 1961, the Revolutionary Integrated Organizations (ORI for its initials in Spanish) was formed through the integration of the three principal organizations that had combated the Batista dictatorship: the 26 of July Movement (formed and led by Fidel Castro), the 13 of March Revolutionary Directory (a student organization), and the Popular Socialist Party (PSP - the old Communist Party).  ORI, however, was a complete failure.  It was dominated by the veteran leaders of PSP, and it had taken control of government posts in an undemocratic manner, establishing a nest of privilege for the leaders.  Responding to popular protest of these practices, Fidel invoked his charismatic authority in order to eliminate these abuses and to develop alternative procedures, including popular participation in the selection of ORI members.  Thus, although one of the principal goals of ORI was to institutionalize the charismatic authority of Fidel, the net effect was to strengthen and reinforce his charismatic authority.  As LeoGrande has observed, what occurred was a “reassertion of charismatic authority against that of a developing party apparatus” (1979:457-62).

A second effort toward the formation of a vanguard party was made beginning in 1965, with the formation of the Communist Party of Cuba.  The party continued to struggle in the late 1960s, however, as a result of a low number of party members as well as a limited number of trained cadres.  The party functioned as a weak institutional appendage to the enormous charismatic authority of Fidel (LeoGrande 1979:466-73).  

However, in the 1970s, the Communist Party of Cuba began to develop as an institution and to make considerable progress toward developing an institutional foundation for the formulation of political policies and goals, less dependent on charismatic authority, such that one may speak of a relation between the party and Fidel, as two distinct entities.  LeoGrande attributes this to several factors: expansion of party membership; a clearer delineation of functions between the Communist Party of Cuba and the Cuban state; and a reduction of conflicts between the members of the July 26 Movement and the PSP, which had been one of the sources of difficulties in the 1960s (1979:473-79).

Given the authority of the charismatic leader, perhaps the full institutionalization of charismatic authority is not possible when the charismatic leader remains active and present.  The work during this stage is focused on preparing the party for its functioning as a vanguard that inspires confidence in the people, once the charismatic leader is no longer present.  Cuba in the period since 2009 is to some extent a test of this principle, in that Fidel has withdrawn for reasons of health.  But not completely so, since Raúl Castro, who assumed the positions of President of the Council of States and Ministers and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, also possesses considerable charismatic authority, as a consequence of the fact that he has been one of the principle leaders of the revolutionary process since July 26, 1953.  On the other hand, Raúl arrived at the position of leadership of the revolution at a time when circumstances compelled the Communist Party of Cuba to assume a more active role as the vanguard of the Cuban revolutionary process, and as head of the party he has been exhorting the members to assume responsibility for critical reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of the system in the formulation, development, and implementation of the Guidelines.  At the final session of the National Congress of the party prior to the submission of the Guidelines to the National Assembly, Fidel was present for the first time during the process, and he did not speak.  Following the meeting, he wrote a brief reflection, noting that he had observed the process on television, that he was impressed with the capacity of the younger members of the party to formulate constructive critical analyses of the system, and that he was confident that they in the future will fulfill their duty as the vanguard of the Cuban people and the Cuban Revolution.  It also is worth noting that in one of his first public appearances after a lengthy period of total withdrawal from public life (for health reasons), Fidel chose to speak to the Union of Communist Youth.  He concluded with the declaration, “I am confident that the youth of Cuba will do its duty.”

The Cuban political process, then, is characterized by: the election of delegates to municipal assemblies, through free elections with multiple candidates and without electoral parties; election of the provincial and national assemblies by the municipal assemblies; election of executive branches of national, provincial, and municipal governments by the legislative assemblies; the active participation of the people in mass organizations, which have free elections of leaders by members, and which are connected in law and in practice to the municipal, provincial, and national governments; a vanguard political party, which has limited legal authority, and which is formed by persons who are held in high regard by the people, who are consulted in the selection of party members; the emergence of an exceptional leader with charismatic authority, accompanied by the process of the institutionalization of the personal authority of the leader in a vanguard political party that is not an electoral party.  The Cuban political system enjoys a very high level of legitimacy in Cuba, as is indicated by the very high level of participation in the electoral process and in the mass organizations, and by the absence of popular criticism of the political system, such criticism being directed almost entirely toward the need for improvement in the production and distribution of goods and services.

Cubans have a high level of consciousness of the political dynamics of liberal representative democracies.  The Cuban press and people follow with great interest the electoral campaigns of the liberal democracies, especially those in the United States, recognizing that the results of elections can have important implications.  At the same time, there is a widespread perception in Cuba that the electoral campaigns of representative democracies constitute an “electoral farce.”   There are good reasons for this perception: the candidates must raise considerable sums of money in order to pay for political advertising, which provide the people with sound bites rather than reasoned debate of issues; and the people often are poorly informed, especially in the United States, and they often are often manipulated by political elites during the electoral campaigns.  Cuban television and newspaper coverage of the political processes of the liberal democracies has the effect of reinforcing the legitimacy of the alterative process of popular democracy that has been developed in Cuba.

There is a marked tendency for the peoples of the North to make value judgments concerning the Cuban political process from a vantage point that assumes representative democracy to be the only legitimate form of democracy, and with very little understanding of the alternative process of popular democracy that has been developed in Cuba. Enlightenment principles of reason require that, prior to a decision concerning the Cuban political process, one has the duty to develop an informed understanding of the process. 

 
Twists and turns in the Cuban revolutionary project

Jesús Arboleya has identified seven stages in the development of the Cuban revolutionary project: national liberation (1959-61); Cuban socialism based on industrial development, 1961-65; Cuban socialism based on sugar exportation, 1966-70; institutionalization, 1970s; rectification of errors, 1980s; special period, 1989-2001; and integration into the Latin American revolution, 2001 to the present.

National liberation, 1959-61

The first stage of the Cuban revolutionary project was the stage of national liberation, “understood as the breaking of the political and economic ties that established the dependency of the country in relation to the United States, and the end of the neocolonial model established at the origins of the Republic” (Arboleya 2008:164).

The first decisive steps in the Cuban revolutionary project were taken in 1959.  They include significant reductions in housing rents and telephone and electricity rates; the renegotiation of labor contracts, resulting in higher wages; the seizing of the property of those who had been government officials from 1954 to 1958 (during the second Batista dictatorship); and the reduction of luxury imports through tariffs and licensing.  By far, the most significant step in that year was the Agrarian Reform Law, which expropriated sugar and rice plantations and cattle estates in excess of 3,333 acres and real estate in excess of 1000 acres, providing for compensation in the form of twenty-year bonds at 4.5 percent annual interest, with prices determined by assessed value of land for tax purposes.  A total of 4,423 plantations were expropriated, with approximately one-third of the acreage distributed to peasants who worked on it, and two-thirds becoming state property, utilized for the establishment of farms and cooperatives (Pérez 2006:241-44; Arboleya 2008:145).

University of North Carolina Professor of History Louis Pérez sees the nationalization of sugar properties as driven principally by the logic of the Moncada program of action rather than by a commitment to socialism or as a reaction to U.S. hostile policies.  “The revolutionary government was driven to adopt socialist structures by the logic of its reform agenda, especially the requirements of the Agrarian Reform Law.  The nationalization of sugar properties involved the state directly in the organization and management of a strategic sector of the economy in varying degrees of decline, the revival of which, Cubans were convinced, required central planning and state-sponsored development.  Cuban leadership employed socialist mechanisms early, not in reaction to hostility from the United States but as a response to national economic needs.  These were strategies designed to implement reforms as fully and as quickly as possible and at the same time guarantee the political ascendancy of revolutionary elements” (2006:253).

For the Cuban scholar and diplomat Jesús Arboleya, agrarian reform defined the revolution as an anti-neocolonial revolution.  “The Agrarian Reform Law . . . constituted a fundamental ingredient of the political program of the Cuban Revolution, inasmuch as agrarian property ownership constituted the economic means of support of the national oligarchy and the neocolonial system as a whole.  Transforming this reality not only was a requirement in order to advance the social improvements demanded by the revolution, but it also meant a radical change in the reigning structure of power in the country.  For this reason the agrarian reform did not limit itself to the distribution of idle lands—although they represented nearly 30% of the total available land—since the principle objective was the proscription of the plantations, with the intention of giving a death blow to the Cuban oligarchy and the large U.S. companies.  In this manner the agrarian reform defined the anti-neocolonial character of the revolution before socialism was thought of as an immediate option and before their existed official contacts with the Soviet Union” (2008:144-45).

In 1960, Cuba and the Soviet Union signed an economic agreement that included Soviet purchase of Cuban sugar as well as Soviet provision of credit and technical assistance.  The agreement also included the selling of Soviet crude and refined petroleum at prices considerably below those of the foreign oil companies.  When foreign oil refineries in Cuba (Standard Oil, Texaco, and Shell) refused to refine Soviet oil, the Cuban government nationalized the refineries.  With the relation between the United States and Cuba deteriorating, the Cuban government proceeded with further nationalizations, including utilities companies, sugar mills, and banks, including Cuban-owned as well as foreign-owned properties (Pérez 2006:247-48; Arboleya 2008:168-70).

The decisive steps taken during the stage of national liberation generated a counterrevolution.  The Cuban counterrevolution was formed fundamentally by those who interests were adversely affected by the abolition of the neocolonial system and by those who were influenced by ideological penetrations of the neocolonial system.  

In La Contrarrevolución Cubana, Jesús Arboleya (1997) describes the principal social groups that formed the counterrevolution during the stage of national liberation. [13]  In the first place, many Batistianos fled the country and formed an opposition in émigré communities, principally in Miami.  Many Cubans that were part of the Batista dictatorship remained in Cuba and were incorporated into the new society, a process that began with the incorporation of units of the Batista army into the rebel army in the last months prior to the triumph of the revolution.  But for those who had been involved in abusive conduct, such as soldiers who had engaged in torture or rape, or politicians involved in corruption on a large scale, such reconciliation was not possible, given the emergence in Cuba of revolutionary tribunals seeking justice for such conduct, particularly the former (Arboleya 1997:46-49; Arboleya 2009:28; Pérez 2006:244-45).

In January 1959, with the triumph of the revolution, there existed the possibility of an independent capitalist development for Cuba, forged by an alliance of the popular classes and the nationalist sector of the bourgeoisie.  Because of this possibility, members of the national bourgeoisie participated at first in the revolutionary process, and the revolution sought to accommodate the national bourgeoisie, seeking an equilibrium that would protect national industrial development.  However, this path confronted objective obstacles, in the form of a fundamental conflict of interest between workers and management.  In conditions of underdevelopment, the development of national industry would require the attainment of capital for investment in industry.  The capital could be attained through the superexploitation of the workers or the increase of the price of consumer goods through a protectionist regimen. These measures were opposed by the workers, who favored a reduction of profits, an approach that the national bourgeoisie was unwilling to accept.  In 1959, there were frequent labor conflicts, and the government had to mediate in more than five thousand disputes between unions and management.  In this labor-management conflict, the revolution took a general approach of favoring higher wages and a higher standard of living for workers, and in many cases mediated in favor of the workers in labor-management disputes.  In this way, during the stage of national liberation, the revolution broke with the national industrial bourgeoisie, which came to oppose the revolutionary process, with many of its members fleeing Cuba and incorporating itself into the counterrevolution in Miami (Arboleya 2009:18, 32; 1997:53-54). 

The neocolonial system had developed an ideological component that sought to discredit popular anti-neocolonial movements by characterizing them as communist, portrayed as the essence of evil.  As a result, the penetration of anticommunist ideology was a dimension of the structures of neocolonial domination during the era.  In the case of Cuba, at the time of the triumph of the revolution, many people were influenced by anticommunism and some incorporated themselves into the counterrevolution.  Arboleya writes that in Cuba in 1959: “Anticommunism constituted the central nucleus of the dominant ideology, reaffirmed by nearly fifteen years of McCarthyist repression.  The image of communism was associated with the repudiation of God, the persecution of believers, and the rejection of the values of Christian civilization; these opinions influenced many who were affiliated with the counterrevolution” (2009:33).  

Since the anticommunist ideology focused on the supposed antireligious nature of communism, it was particularly influential among Catholics and Catholic student organizations.  The Catholic Church in Cuba prior to 1959 had very weak presence in the countryside and in lower and working classes of urban society.  Catholic parishes were located principally in middle and upper class urban neighborhoods.  Aside from the parishes, the principal presence of the Catholic Church was in the form of Catholic primary and high schools that served the middle and upper classes.  As a result, Catholic anticommunism was principally a middle class and upper class phenomenon (Arboleya 2009:39-40; Arboleya 1997:66-74; Alonso 1999:20-29).

Anticommunist ideology during the stage of national liberation expressed itself the form of objection to members of the Popular Socialist Party (the old communist party) having positions of leadership in the workers´ organizations and being included as members of the government.  From the point of view of the revolution, the exclusion of communists was not a viable option, since the unity of the progressive popular forces was a necessary precondition for the success of the revolutionary process (Arboleya 2009:34-35; 1997:54-56).  

Another sector of the counterrevolution consisted of those connected to the Authenticos, the political party that had been in power from the period of 1944 to 1952.  Members of this party had been a part of the first provisional government after the triumph of the Revolution, but due to the delegitimation of the political parties during the neocolonial republic, this sector soon found itself marginalized, and some became incorporated into the counterrevolution (Arboleya 2009:40-41; Arboleya1997:74-76; Pérez 2006:237-38).

These sectors with economic, political, and ideological motives of opposition to the Cuban Revolution emigrated in large numbers: 62,000 in 1960; 67,000 in 1961; and 66,000 in 1962 (Perez 2006:255).  “The exportation of counter-revolution foreclosed any possibility of a sustained and extensive internal challenge to the revolution.  The flight of the opposition served also to strengthen the revolutionary consensus within the island, thereby contributing in another fashion to further consolidation of the government.  Henceforth, organized opposition to the revolution developed outside of Cuba, largely in the United States.  But even in this instance, the possibilities of Cubans organizing independent and autonomous opposition capabilities were severely limited by the circumstances of their expatriation” (Pérez 2006:256).

As Arboleya has noted, the Cuban counterrevolution found that, weakened by expatriation and by its lack of popular support in Cuba, it had to accept U.S. sponsorship and support, which gave it an anti-nationalist character and thus served to further discredit it in the eyes of the Cuban people.  As a result of its weakness, it turned to terrorism as a form of opposition.  “The counterrevolutionaries had to organize themselves with the acceptance of U.S. tutelage, which came historically conditioned and which was the only form in which they could attain the cohesion and the potential that they did not possess by themselves.  The lack of popular support led them to adopt terrorism as a fundamental method of struggle” (Arboleya 2009:24-25).

As a response to acts of sabotage and terrorism emanating from the Cuban counterrevolution in Miami, with logistical and financial support of the United States (Arboleya 2009), the Cuban Revolution adopted measures for popular self-defense during the stage of national liberation.  In 1959, the Ministry of the Armed Forces organized a civilian militia, which reached 100,000 members in 1960 and nearly 300,000 in 1961.  In September 1960, the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution was organized in neighborhoods for the purpose of vigilance over sabotage and terrorist activities carried out by counterrevolutionaries (Pérez 2006:251).

The stage of national liberation also included the expansion of mass organizations.  As a consequence of the overwhelming popular support of the revolution, the Federation of University Students and the Federation of Cuban Workers were under the leadership of revolutionaries, and efforts were made to expand their numbers and deepen popular participation.  In August 1960, the Federation of Cuban Women was formed.  In May 1961, 100,000 farmers were organized into the National Organization of Small Agriculturalists (Pérez 2006:251).

Cuban socialism based on industrial development, 1961-65

In 1961, on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Fidel Castro proclaimed the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution.  During this second stage of the Cuban Revolution, the policy was to develop through the industrialization of the country, seeking to overcome the underdevelopment and economic dependency that were a legacy of colonialism and neocolonialism.  Marx had conceived that the socialist revolutions would occur in the advanced capitalist countries, so that socialism would be constructed on the basis of advanced technology and automated industry.  But the revolutions triumphed in countries that did not have the productive capacities that Marx had assumed.  Lenin’s NEP and present-day China responded to this situation by adopting measures similar to capitalism, but regulated by the state, in order to accumulate capital necessary for industrial development.  Cuba, however, embarked on a different strategy of eliminating private appropriation of profits and reducing personal income, so that investment could be oriented toward social benefits and placed in service of the development of the nation (Arboleya 2008:164, 171-72).  

The Cuban approach required a high degree of collective consciousness and a will of sacrifice.  The strategy was to focus on satisfying the basic necessities of the population while investing in the formation of human capital through the expansion and improvement of education and public health, while at the same time accumulating capital in order to overcome underdevelopment.  Therefore, the population was asked to leave aside the irrational consumerism characteristic of the capitalist societies.  Accordingly, Che Guevara's concept of the “hombre nuevo” attained considerable influence (Arboleya 2008:172-73).

This approach envisioned that Cuba would have neither rich persons nor beggars.  The majority would be assured satisfaction of basic nutritional needs and access to free education and health care.  The immense majority of the population would have a higher standard of living than the majority of persons in the Third World.  But the upper middle class, consisting of doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, architects, and political leaders would have a standard of living lower than their counterparts in other nations (Arboleya 2008:173).

This philosophy of “igualdad hacia abajo” would require a vanguard advanced in consciousness that would lead the process and that would be recruited from all classes, including professionals, urban workers, rural workers, agricultural cooperativists, and peasants.  This differed from the confused concepts of other Latin American revolutions of the era, presuming, in some cases, that the vanguard would come exclusively from urban proletariat, or assuming, in other cases, that it would be recruited exclusively from the rural peasantry (Arboleya 2008:173).

As a result of the development of an ideology of individualism during the neocolonial republic, the Cuban approach to development and the concept of the “hombre nuevo” was not universally accepted in Cuba.  There particularly was resistance among the professional classes, for whom the neocolonial order had provided, measured in strictly material terms, a better life, and it also had provided a more acceptable social context for egoistic self-expression and for the pursuit of individualist goals (Arboleya 2008:173-74).

The existence of the socialist camp provided some attenuation of the sacrifice entailed by the Cuban approach, and it also provided some reduction of the negative impact of the hostile U.S. policies against Cuba.  The Soviet Union provided commercial credit, and it donated arms.  And it guaranteed a market for Cuban products.  It provided machinery that was integral to the strategy of orienting the economy toward industrial development, seeking to end a dependent relation based on the exportation of raw materials and the importation of consumer goods (Arboleya 2008:175-76).

However, the strategy of industrial development came up against basic obstacles.  For many of the industrial projects, the country lacked sufficient financial capacity to develop the projects with sufficient force, and in many cases it lacked it lacked a sufficient level of technological culture or technicians or a culture of business organization (Arboleya 2008:176).

Cuban socialism based on sugar exportation, 1966-70

Given the obstacles that industrialization confronted, the revolution embarked on a strategy of obtaining the necessary capital for industrial development through expansion of sugar production.  With the triumph of the revolution, the focus had been to break from sugar production, given its central role in the development and the maintenance of the neocolonial system.  But this was re-evaluated in light of the difficulties in the development of industry.  It came to be believed that in the context of the revolutionary project, sugar exportation would not play the same role that it played during the neocolonial system, inasmuch as the profits would not be privately appropriated but appropriated collectively for investments in industrial development (Arboleya 2008:176).

In 1964, agreements were signed with the Soviet Union, in which the Soviets agreed to annual purchases of five million tons of sugar.  Agreements were also made with other countries of the European socialist bloc and with China.  These agreements led to the establishment in 1970 of a goal of a sugar crop of ten million tons.  In order to accomplish the goal, new fertilizers and new varieties were introduced, and investments were made to modernize the sugar industry.  As a result of difficulties in the modernization, millions of Cubans were mobilized to cut the sugar cane.  As a result of these efforts, a record crop was attained.  But it was short of the ten million ton goal, and the mobilization of workers from other sectors had been costly and had caused problems in these sectors.  Fidel Castro announced the results of the sugar harvest a lost battle, assuming personal responsibility for the failure (Arboleya 2008:176-77).

Institutionalization, 1970s

The institutionalization of the Cuban Revolution was made possible, first, by the weakening of the counterrevolution, given the evident failure of its efforts to destroy the revolution in the face of the popular support for the revolution in Cuba; and secondly, by an improvement in the relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union.  In spite of the failure of the ten-million ton sugar harvest, the decade of the 1970s was a time of economic improvement and consolidation of the revolutionary process (Arboleya 2008:177, 181).

During this time, Cuba was integrated into the socialist bloc, which required reorganization of the economy along Soviet lines. The arrangements in the socialist bloc included favorable prices for sugar exports and for the importation of petroleum supplies, which had the effect of improving the material level of the Cuban population.  There were negative aspects of this relation, however, such as the tendency for the Cuban system to tolerate inefficient and costly productive practices and a tendency toward bureaucratism and dogmatism, to some extent abandoning the values that had formed the Cuban Revolution in the 1960s (Arboleya 2008:183-84; Hamilton 2002:21).

The phase of institutionalization also was characterized by the development and approval of the Cuban Constitution of 1976, discussed above.  Arboleya maintains that the Constitution represented a profound reform of the state apparatus, establishing structures of Popular Power and establishing legal relationships between the governing structures of Popular Power and the mass organizations formed by workers, students, women, farmers, and neighborhoods (Arboleya 2008:183).  

Rectification of errors, 1980s

While the European socialist bloc in the 1980s was beginning a process of revision that incorporated elements of capitalism, Cuba was going in the opposite direction, returning to the centralized direction of the economy and to the promotion of moral work incentives over material incentives.  Distancing itself from “real socialism,” Cuba sought to restore values that had been central to the revolution of the 1960s and to the thought of Che Guevara.  There began of process of the “rectification of errors and negative tendencies.”  But before the implications of this turn could be fully developed, the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc collapsed, creating an entirely different social context for the Cuban revolutionary project (Arboleya 2008:191).

Gains of the Cuban revolutionary project, 1959-89

In spite of the U.S. embargo, [14] and in spite of twists and turns in direction, the Cuban revolutionary project, with the support of the cooperative relation with the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, registered significant gains.  

There were significant reductions in income inequality.  Between 1958 and 1978, the income of the poorest 40% of the population had increased nearly fivefold, whereas the income of the richest 5% was cut in half.  There was not complete equality, which never had been a goal.  In 1978, the income of the richest 5% was still 3.5 times that of the poorest 40% (Pérez 2006:272).

There also were gains in literacy.  At the time of the triumph of the revolution, the illiteracy rate in Cuba was 24%.  In 1961, the revolution launched a literacy campaign, in which 271,000 people, including many student volunteers and professional teachers, were organized into instructional brigades.  Some were dispatched to live for a time in rural areas.  Others worked part time in urban areas.  By 1962, the illiteracy rate had been reduced to 4% (Pérez 2006:273).  

Gains were registered in education.  In 1953, 56% of children aged six to twelve were enrolled in school; this percentage rose to 88% by 1970 and 100% by 1986.  The percentage of the population completing sixth grade increased from 20% in 1953 to 32% in 1970 and to 61% in 1981.  University enrollments increased tenfold.  The number of university centers increased from three in 1959 to forty in the 1980s.  There also were significant changes in the fields of study of university students.  Enrollments in the humanities, social sciences and law declined, while enrollments in education, natural sciences, medicine, engineering and architecture, and agricultural sciences increased (Pérez 2006:273-75).

There were important gains in nutrition.  A rationing program guaranteed to every Cuban family at least a minimal diet, and malnutrition was eliminated.  By the early 1980s, the Cuban daily per capita calorie intake was 2,705, above the generally accepted minimum daily requirement of 2,500 calories (Pérez 2006:275-76).

And there have been dramatic gains in health care.  The doctor/population ratio declined from one doctor per 1000 people prior to the revolution to one doctor per 490 people by 1984.  The infant mortality rate, generally accepted as a useful indicator of overall health, declined from 32.3 per 1000 live births in 1953 to 16 per 1000 in 1984.  And having eliminated many communicable diseases that plague underdeveloped countries, the leading causes of death in Cuba became heart disease, cancer and stroke, as in the developed countries (Pérez 2006:276-78).  

Bell Lara writes: “In thirty years, from 1959 to 1989, Cuba achieved levels in the principal life standards and life quality indicators superior to those of Latin American and underdeveloped countries as a whole.  The level of indicators that measure results in this terrain were similar to those of the most industrialized countries of the capitalist system” (2008).

Women have participated actively throughout the revolutionary process in the construction of the new society.  Fifty percent of doctors and a majority of scientists and technicians in Cuba are women.  Leaders of the Cuban Federation of Women, who have been elected by Cuban women organized in their urban neighborhoods and rural communities throughout Cuba, assert that an important factor in the gains of the Cuban Revolution in the areas of health and education has been the active participation of women, who have guided the revolutionary process toward attention to these fundamental human needs (see Pérez 2006:281-85).

Prior to 1989, the Cuban economy had an average annual growth rate of 4.3%, higher than the Latin American average.  Between 1971 and 1985, the Cuban economy grew at an annual rate of 6%, while the Latin American index during these years was -1%.  In addition, the Cuban system had invested in industrial development and in human capital.  In 1989, Cuba had the highest number per capita of scientists and engineers, double the level of Chile and Brazil, and comparable to South Korea and Taiwan, which had the highest level among underdeveloped countries.  The Cuban socialist system had been able to provide for the basic needs of the population and to improve the quality of life in a variety of ways as well as to promote the economic and scientific development of the country (Arboleya 2008:198-99).

Special period, 1989-2001

The collapse of the socialist bloc placed in doubt the gains registered by the Cuba revolutionary project, and it established the possibility that the socialist project in Cuba would collapse.  Alongside the disappearance of its trading partners, the U.S. embargo was maintained and strengthened, and Cuba was ineligible for credits and loans through international finance agencies.  In three years, the Gross Domestic Product was reduced by 23%, due principally to the impossibility of importing capital goods and raw materials.  The purchasing capacity of the country was reduced from 8 billion dollars to 1.7 billion dollars.  The supply of petroleum declined from 13.4 million tons to 3.3 million tons, while national production of petroleum fell 17.8%.  As a result, electric energy was reduced to 70% of its 1989 level, and steel production was at 19% of its 1989 level.  The sugar cane harvest declined from 7 to 4.3 million tons, and agricultural production and animal husbandry declined by 53% (Arboleya 2008:199-200).  

Consumption declined dramatically, and the people began to live under conditions of extreme scarcity.  A good part of the day was spent without electricity.  The system of public transportation was drastically reduced, and many people walked or rode bicycles.  In the context of the stress provoked by a rapid and drastic change in the standard of living of the people, religiosity increased (Arboleya 2008:200-1).

The Cuban government adopted a series of measures of adjustment to the economic crisis.  Cuba’s adjustment policies were in important ways different from the structural adjustment policies adopted in Latin America during the same time period (López 1994).  First, the Latin American structural adjustment was being imposed by international finance agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as a condition for restructuring debts, whereas the Cuban adjustment policies emerged from the Cuban national political process in response to the new international economic and political situation.  Cuba had to adjust to new international realities, but it was Cuba itself who was deciding what to do in the new situation; its policies were not being imposed by outside agencies.  

Secondly, the Latin American structural adjustment policies were designed to increase corporate profits in an era of stagnating profits and markets, without regard for the social consequences of the measures; whereas the Cuban adjustment was designed to protect the standard of living of the Cuban masses, and it included specific programs of protection and support for those who had been working in sectors that were reduced by the measures.  

Thirdly, unlike the Latin American structural adjustment, the Cuban adjustment policies were developed in a context of wide citizen participation.  There was a “popular consultation” in regard to the measures during 1993 and 1994, involving the mass organizations of workers, peasants, students, women and the CDRs.  The popular consultation gave the people an opportunity to make recommendations, many of which were implemented, as well as to gain a greater understanding of the international and national economic situation and of the necessity for the measures.  

The specific policies of Cuba’s adjustment were designed to accomplish particular goals.  (1) In order to overcome economic dependency on a particular region or nation, Cuba sought to diversify its trade and commercial relations.  

(2) In order to escape the pitfalls of an over reliance on raw materials exports, Cuba sought to expand it production in industries that have higher prices and higher wage rates than the classical peripheral exports, such as sugar.  Accordingly, Cuba sought to expand investments in certain branches, such as tourism (with foreign and Cuban state capital), the pharmaceutical industry and biotechnology (with Cuban state capital), petroleum (with foreign and Cuban state capital), and nickel (with foreign and Cuban state capital).  This expansion included efforts to attract foreign capital, but under conditions of strong regulation by the Cuban government, fundamentally distinct from the privatization of companies and the opening to foreign capital that was occurring throughout the world with the imposition of the neoliberal project.  For example, most agreements with foreign hotel companies are joint ventures: the foreign firm finances the construction of the hotel; the land on which the hotel stands is the property of the Cuban government; and the hotel as a building and as an economic enterprise is the property of the joint venture (an association combining the foreign firm and the Cuban government) for a period of 25 to 50 years, following which the hotel reverts to the exclusive ownership of the Cuban government.  Also, the foreign firm does not employ the Cuban workers.  The employees are employed by a government agency, and their salaries are set at a level comparable to salaries in other sectors of the economy.  The government of Cuba attracts foreign investment not by selling natural or human resources cheaply, but by providing an educated workforce, political stability and an opportunity for reasonable profitable investment.  

(3) In order to improve Cuban production, government-owned enterprises were de-centralized, with many branches or enterprises expected to become fully or partially self-financing in accordance with a timetable, with the particular expectations shaped by the marketability of the goods or services that the enterprise produces or provides.  

(4) To preserve the social gains of the Cuban Revolution, a commitment was made to maintain the system of health, education and social security.  

(5) To facilitate the adaptation of agricultural production and animal husbandry to conditions of limited fuel and chemicals, state-owned economic enterprises were converted into cooperatives, and the sale of agricultural products under market conditions was expanded.

(6) In order to generate employment, possibilities for self-employment were significantly expanded.  

(7) In order to attract foreign currency, the possession and trading of foreign currencies by Cubans was made legal.  This lead to the development of a dual economy: one based on “national money,” and another on “Cuban Convertible Pesos” (CUC).  Those retail outlets in Cuba that sell products in CUCs as well as tourists sector services have artificially high prices, functioning as a mechanism for the state collection of funds in order to finance the social services to the population.  Foreign currencies enter the country through relations with foreign companies and through family remittances.  Approximately 60% of the Cuban people have regular access to foreign currencies or CUCs (Arboleya 2008:203).

(8) In order to ensure that the state rather than the people pay the greater cost of the adjustment, when a center of production or service was closed, the state continued to pay 70% of the salaries of people who lost employment until they could be placed in new employment.  

(9) In order to preserve limited resources, rationing of electricity and gasoline was developed.

These policies enabled the country to emerge from the depths of the crisis in 1993 to a level of recovery by 2001.  Beginning in 1994, there was a steady growth in the gross domestic product.  Hamilton observes:  “The net economic effect of the changes introduced during the Special Period was positive.  The economy was saved from collapse and after 1995 began to show significant rates of growth—0.7 percent, 2.5 percent, and 7.8 percent in 1994, 1995, and 1996, respectively, compared with an average annual rate of growth of 4.3 percent from 1959 to 1989 and a 3.5 percent average for Latin America and the Caribbean in the mid-1990s.  Expansion has continued, with growth in GDP of 2.5 percent in 1997, 1.2 percent in 1998, and 6.2 percent in 1999” (2002:24).  The recovery largely was stimulated by growth in tourism, biotechnology, and mining, and it was restricted by persistent stagnation in sugar production as well as declining prices for sugar.  

By 1995, Cuba had formed 212 joint ventures in 26 branches of the Cuban economy with investors from 58 countries.  And 2500 firms from 109 countries began to conduct business in Cuba.  The main foreign investors come from Spain, Mexico, Canada and France, with significant investors also coming from Italy, Holland, Great Britain, Venezuela and Chile.  

Tourism has become the principal industry of the country.  During the 1990s, it grew at a rate of 18% per year, increasing from 340,000 tourists in 1989 to 1,774,000 in 2000, reaching 2 million tourists annually since in 2007.  The hotel capacity on the island has increased threefold from 1989 (Arboleya 2008:204).  

During the Special Period, there were significant investments in the biopharmaceutical industry, with the intention of developing high-technology exports that commands high prices in the world economy.  Cuban scientific research centers have developed fifty products and services that have received international patents, including a Hepatitis B vaccine.  These centers have begun to sell these products and services in the international market, although there are obstacles due to the U.S. blockade as well as monopolization of the market by the large pharmaceutical corporations (Arboleya 2008:205).

Petroleum production increased six fold from 1991 to 2001, and Cuba now produces enough petroleum to be self-sufficient in the generation of electricity (Arboleya 2008:205).  Joint ventures in the nickel industry brought its production to a record level by 2001.  Cuba is the sixth largest producer of nickel in the world, and it has the largest nickel reserves in the world (Arboleya 2008:205).

During the Special Period, the system of health and education developed prior to 1989 was in essence preserved (Arboleya 2008:206).  After 1998, Cuba began to expand its international medical missions in the countries of the Third World, and in 2001, there began a project to reconstruct school buildings and reduce class sizes as well as the development of municipal universities in a project for the “universalization of education.”   

Some of the measures adopted during the Special Period had the effect of generating a level of social inequality that, while low by Latin American standards, represents a level of inequality unknown in Cuba since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.  Particularly important in this regard were the authorization of possession of foreign currencies and the expansion of tourism, self-employment, and private agricultural production.  These measures led to differing levels of access to CUCs as well as inflationary tendencies in the national money economy, leading to devaluation of national money (Arboleya 2008:204).

The emergence of family remittances as an important economic activity has stimulated emigration.  Cuban emigration since 1980 has had principally an economic motivation; its class composition is different from the political migration of the middle and upper classes of the 1960s, and this has provoked changes in the Cuban-American community in Miami.  The new immigrants, especially those since 1990, maintain strong family ties in Cuba and regularly travel to the island.  They tend to favor the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba.  The new immigrants now comprise nearly 50% of the Cuban-American community (Arboleya 2008:203-4).  

As a result of the willingness to sacrifice on the part of the Cuban people, the Cuban Revolution has survived.  There has been some degree of erosion of socialist values, but the popular commitment to the Cuban revolutionary process remains strong, and the Cuban political process continues to be characterized by extremely high levels of mass participation and legitimacy.  As Arboleya writes:  “Few imagined [in 1994] that Cuba would be capable of overcoming this crisis.  Even a good part of the international left predicted the anticipated internment of the Cuban Revolution. . . .  The overcoming of the crisis to the present level constitutes a fact explainable only on the basis of the cohesion created by the Revolution and the virtues of the socialist distributive system.  There were great shortages, but not starvation; unemployment, but not alienation; there were tensions, but not uprisings, much less generalized repression, as would have been normal in the rest of the world.  In the worst moments, the health system was maintained and the schools continued functioning with used books, paper, and pencils” (Arboleya 2008:201-2, 206). 

Arboleya maintains the Cuban Revolution today possesses legitimacy and popular support as a consequence of the fidelity of the revolution to the interests of the popular classes that are its social base, and a result of its defense of the sovereignty of the nation, consistent with the nationalism and anti-imperialism that have been central to the Cuban Revolution since the days of José Martí.  And the popular support of the Cuban Revolution has given it legitimacy before international public opinion (2008:209-10).

Integration into the Latin American revolution, 2001 to the present

Reflecting the international legitimacy of the Cuban Revolution, Cuba has become an important participant in the process of change presently in development in Latin America.  The most important nation in this process has been Venezuela, which has proclaimed its intention to develop “Socialism for the Twenty-First Century.”  The revolution in Venezuela has some characteristics different from the revolution in Cuba, as a consequence of the different particular conditions in the two cases.  For example, there remains in Venezuela the possibility that a nationalist sector of the industrial bourgeoisie can be incorporated in the revolutionary process, a dynamic that would imply the preservation of the multiple-party electoral system.  But the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions have in common that they are both national liberation movements that took decisive steps to break with the neocolonial system and are based on a commitment to improvement of the quality of life of the popular classes (Arboleya 2008:217-24).  

Other nations that are important in the present process of Latin American union, in addition to Venezuela and Cuba, include Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Brazil, and Argentina.  A new Latin American political landscape has emerged, creating a level of independence from the colonial or neocolonial power that is unprecedented in the history of Latin America.  Opposition to neocolonial world-system structures is expressing itself throughout the Third World, although it is most advanced in Latin America.  In the judgment of Arboleya, these developments demonstrate that the Third World is the driving force of the global revolution of our time (Arboleya 2008:217, 225). 

A new economic and social policy, 2012

In order to improve efficiency in the production and distribution of goods and services, increase domestic industrial and agricultural production, increase the capacity of state enterprises to attain goals, and reduce corruption, the National Assembly of Popular Power in 2012 approved the Guidelines of Economic and Social Policy.  As was noted above, the Guidelines were submitted to the National Assembly by the Cuban Communist Party.  They had been initially formulated by the Party, disseminated to the people, and significantly modified as a result of a popular consultation led by the Party.  The formulation of the new policies was motivated by the belief among party members that there was a growing dissatisfaction among the people with the generally low-level of personal income.  This popular dissatisfaction to some extent was stimulated by the presence of foreign tourists with considerably more consumer purchasing power, thus establishing the consumer societies of the north as a point of reference for popular imagination, a phenomenon that also has been reinforced by the emigration of family members to core nations.  At the same time, there have been serious deficiencies in the production and distribution of goods and services, to some extent caused by limited national resources, and to some extent caused by a generalized lack of responsibility and creativity at all levels, among both workers and directors.  

The new policy establishes a significant increase in self-employed workers, resulting in the appearance of a wide variety of vendors of goods and services.  This kind of economic activity had been emerging for twenty years “on the side,” without any official recognition.  It contributed to corruption, in that vendors often found ways to obtain products that had been intended to fulfill the needs of a government project.  The new policy legitimates these informal economic activities, and at the same time makes available a much greater number of products that vendors can legitimately purchase.  The result is a form of economic activity that is similar to the informal economy of many underdeveloped nations, but with the difference that the self-employed in Cuba obtain a formal license to engage in their work, and accordingly, they pay taxes to the state, and they accumulate retirement benefits.    

At the same time that the Guidelines reduce the economic motivation for corruption, they have been accompanied by a clampdown on directors of enterprises that have participated in corruptive practices.  Some directors of enterprises have been relieved of their duties or have been accused of criminal behavior, and these actions have been published in the daily newspapers.  The daily newspapers also have been reporting on those enterprises which have accomplished there productive goals as well as those that have failed to attain their goals.

The Guidelines emphasize decentralization of the state enterprises, so that decisions can be made at a lower level.  It is hoped that this will generate more responsibility as well as more motivation to find solutions to problems in production and distribution at a lower level.

There has been in Cuba since the 1960s an intense debate concerning material versus moral incentives.  In the 1960s, tied with the prevailing concept of the “hombre nuevo,” moral incentives were the basis for policy.  However, in the 1970s, a shift occurred, and the system turned to a greater emphasis on material incentives (Hamilton 2002:20-21; Karl 1975), a change that was related to the greater integration into the socialist bloc of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.  With the rectification of errors during the 1980s, there occurred a return to moral incentives (Arboleya 2008:191), a process that was interrupted by the economic collapse of the early 1990s and the Special Period.  The Guidelines of 2012 represent a turn once again to material incentives, envisioning a stronger link between contribution and salary, between education and salary.

In the Guidelines, the universal provision of education and health services remain untouchable.  However, there is change in policy concerning the universal provision of necessary food products.  Many of these necessary products have been heavily subsidized, available to the people at only a fraction of their actual cost.  The Guidelines recognize, however, that some persons have been benefitting from these subsidies, even though their personal income made unnecessary this benefit.  Thus the Guidelines envision a change from the subsidizing of products to the subsidizing of persons in need.  At the same time, the Guidelines call for the development of a personal income tax system, which is presently being developed by relevant committees of the National Assembly.  

Although Cuba has well developed tradition of popular participation in mass organizations and in the electoral process, many feel that these structures are not fully utilized by the people, especially the young.  There is a call for a renewal of these structures and for greater attention to the importance of popular participation and popular control of the political process.  

The national discussion of the Guideless had put on the table a number of issues, including the balance between state planning and the market and the role of the market in a socialist economy.  This discussion, however, occurs in the context of a generalized commitment to social justice and to socialism.  The state continues to play a central role in economic and social development, and the overwhelming majority of economic enterprises are state-owned or joint ventures between the state and foreign firms.  Eighty-five percent of the workforce is state employed.  As Jorge Luis Santana (2012) states, “We can change the model, but we cannot change the road.  The road is and can only be socialism.  It is a question of socialism or barbarism.”

From 1959 to the present, then, the development of the Cuban political-economic system has passed through various stages, involving basic changes in assumptions, beliefs, and strategies.  Each stage in the development of the system was characterized by a particular context defined by the international situation and domestic issues of the particular time.  Each stage and each moment of change are unique.  But the process of change itself has been the constant.  The changes of 2012 should be understood in the context of a constant process of change and shifting strategies that have characterized the Cuban revolutionary project since 1959.

Socialism, however, can only be attained at an international level.  No country can be fully socialist in the context of a capitalist world-economy.  The socialist transformation can only be a transformation of the world-system.  The long-term viability of the Cuban socialist project depends, in the final analysis, on the extent to which humanity can develop a socialist, or at least post-capitalist, world-system.  


The dialectic of domination and development; and the human quest for liberation

The Cuban revolution emerged in the nineteenth century in a colonial context, and it was given direction by José Martí as a project that sought true independence and a reconstruction of Cuban society.  The revolution proceeded to develop in the context of the neocolonial republic, during which time Fidel Castro emerged as the second charismatic leader in the history of the emerging Cuban nation.  Following the triumph of the revolution, after an initial period in which various paths of autonomous development were possible, the socialist direction of the Cuban project of national liberation was proclaimed.  Fidel provided the ideological foundation to the socialist project, formulating a creative synthesis of Marxism-Leninism with the Third World anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movement and intellectual tradition, most clearly represented by Marti.  The Cuban socialist project of national liberation continued to develop in the context of changing national and international dynamics, but consistently in a situation defined by a neocolonial world-system.  Reflecting the changing dynamics, the project has sought various strategies to guarantee its economic independence and security, with considerable gains in the development of human resources but with persistent frustrations on a material level.  These constant problems in production and distribution have provoked the changes undertaken in 2012.  Meanwhile, the project has been as able to develop an alternative approach to political participation that provides the project with a level of legitimacy that is rare in the world-system.  The strength of the system of political participation is evident in the formulation, development, and implementation of the current changes in the system.  

The significance of the Cuban Revolution lies in what it shares in common with much of humanity in the modern era: a history of colonial and neocolonial domination and a legacy of a struggle for national liberation.  But this modern story is also an ancient one.  The conquest and force that is the foundation of world-system structures of colonial and neocolonial domination is fully consistent with a basic pattern in human history since the agricultural revolution, inasmuch as empires (world-systems) were formed through the conquest of neighboring peoples, promoting the economic and cultural development of the conquering power, in turn making possible conquest on a larger scale.  This dialectical relation should perhaps be named: the dialectic of domination and development. [15]  

Historical world-systems always have come to an end, sometimes being conquered by stronger world-systems, and sometimes collapsing under the impact of their internal contradictions.  Consistent with the latter pattern, the modern world-system is characterized by a fundamental contradiction: it is driven by the unlimited pursuit of capital accumulation by means of the conquest of new lands and peoples; yet it has reached the geographical limits of the planet, thus finding itself without new lands and peoples to conquer.  It thus has entered into a systemic and perhaps terminal crisis, the signs of which first began to appear in the 1970s.  The global elite has responded to the crisis with an aggressive defense of finance capital, distorting some of the cycles and tendencies of the system, throwing it into disequilibrium. [16]

In response to the cynical and destructive project of the global elite, the reform/revolutionary movements of Third World national liberation have reached their most advanced stage.  Important examples of Third World revolutions are the socialist projects of Cuba, Vietnam, and China, which are today joined by new alternative projects in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, supported by progressive governments in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Nicaragua, and in alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran.  These alternative projects of national liberation provide the foundation for a possible sustainable world-system that is more just and democratic.  These projects will continue to develop not in accordance with any preconceived idealistic notion of socialism, but in accordance with fundamental human values, with intelligent and sensible accommodation to the concrete realities of each nation.  These alternative projects are developing in both theory and practice.  They reflect a fundamental human desire for liberation from structures of domination.  They reveal the essential dignity of the human species.

 
Endnotes

1.  I draw here from the Catholic philosopher Bernard Lonergan (1958; 1973).  For further reflection on these themes, see McKelvey (1991).  A more recent formulation of these issues can be found in McKelvey, “Los fundamentos epistemológicos para la participación política de los pueblos del norte en la revolución global nacida en el sur,” which will appear in a forthcoming volume of the Cátedra de Ciencia Política Enfoque Sur de la Facultad de Filosofía e Historia, La Universidad de La Habana.

2.  Wallerstein has described the historical development of the world-system as well as the cycles and tendencies of the system (see Wallerstein 1974, 1980, 1982, 1989, 2000, 2011 and Hopkins and Wallerstein 1996).  He describes the development of the modern world-system through four stages: (1) the origin of the system on the foundation of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of America, 1450-1640; (2) a stage of stagnation and consolidation from 1640-1750; (3) the expansion of the system from 1750-1914, made possible by the conquest of vast regions of Africa and Asia by the European powers; and (4) the twentieth century, characterized by various tendencies, including the emergence of anti-systemic movements, among them Third World anti-colonial movements. Wallerstein’s important and groundbreaking work has reconstructed social science, overcoming the disciplinary boundaries among history, economics, sociology, political science, and philosophy in order to formulate the world-systems perspective, an alternative to the dominant Western social scientific paradigm.  The formulation of the perspective was inspired by Wallerstein’s personal encounter with the nationalist and independence movement in Africa in the 1960s (Wallerstein 1974:4), and as a result, it takes into account the insights of the twentieth century Third World national liberation movements.  However, his analysis of the present structural crisis of the world system from 1970 to the present as well as his projections for the future, including interpretations of world-system ideology and reflections on the implications of the post-1968 “post-modern” epistemological developments (Wallerstein 1995, 1999), reflect a post-1968 progressive consciousness of the peoples of the North, distinct from the emerging Third World perspective.  In spite of this Eurocentric limitation, his work represents an important breakthrough that could play an integral role in the development of a universal and integral social science for the XXI century.

3.  Drawing upon the French historian Fernand Braudel, Wallerstein maintains that there have been many systems that form a world, or world-systems, which transcend political and cultural boundaries.  They were not world systems in the sense of encompassing the entire planet, but in the sense that they were systems that formed a world defined by political-economic structures as well as ideologies.  For this reason, Wallerstein uses the sometimes grammatically incorrect hyphenated world-system: “world” does not modify “system;” rather, two nouns are joined to convey the notion of a system that forms a world.

4.  Wallerstein maintains that the modern world economy is characterized by a geographical division of labor between two regions of the world, the core and the periphery.  The periphery functions to provide cheap raw materials for the core and to provide markets for core surplus manufactured goods.  As a consequence, the periphery promotes the economic development of the core.  In addition, there is a third region, the semiperiphery, which has a core-like relation with the periphery and a peripheral-like relation with the core (Wallerstein 1974:349-50).

5.  Spain, Portugal, England, France, Holland, Germany, and Belgium.

6.  According the Wallerstein, the exploitation of labor takes two forms.  First, there is capitalist exploitation in the sense defined by Marx, where the workers are paid less than the value of what they produce.  The second form of exploitation is superexploitation, where the workers are paid less than what they need in order to live.  Both exploitation and superexploitation are central to the functioning of the capitalist world economy, with exploitation predominant in the core and superexploitation more common in the periphery (Wallerstein 1974; Shannon 1996:25-26, 38-39).

7.  The Spanish colonies in the Caribbean did not become independent during the Latin American independence movements of 1810-24, which established independent (but neocolonial or semi-colonial) republics on the continent.

8.  Some refer to it as the third war of independence, taking into account the “La Guerra Chiquita,” the short-lived war of independence of 1879-80. 

9.  In what U.S. historians call the Spanish-American War and Cuban scholars call the Cuban-Spanish-American War.

10.  Bell Lara (2008) notes that 84% of the population aged fourteen and above participates in the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution; 84% of adult women participate in the Federation of Cuban Women; and 99% of paid workers participate in the Federation of Cuban Workers.   

11.  This synthesis is evident, for example, in the 1974 address to the First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, in which Fidel maintains that the liberation of the nation from imperialist domination unavoidably is united with the elimination of class exploitation within Cuban society (Castro 1990:13).  He proclaims that “our national liberation and social liberation are indissolubly united” (1990:33).  He concludes the address with the declaration: “The images of Martí, Gómez, and Maceo, alongside Marx, Engels, and Lenin, symbolize those that struggled for the Cuban nation next to those who wanted to make all of humanity a great nation.  The Republic has to be with all and for the good of all, as the hero of our independence [Martí] proclaimed, and his words resonate in this hall as an echo of the formidable call with which the founders of scientific socialism moved the world: Workers of all countries, unite” (1990:245-46). 

12.  Fidel himself was speaking as early as 1961 of the importance of replacing the direction of the party by one person, necessary up to that time, with a collective leadership of a party that would be a vanguard political party (Castro 2011:20-22).  

13.  The book also explains how the Cuban counterrevolution in Miami has been able to insert itself into the emergence of the New Right in the United States and to manipulate U.S. policy toward Cuba in a form that promotes its particular interests.  An English translation of the book is available (Arboleya 2002).

14.  Cubans refer to the embargo as a blockade (bloqueo), inasmuch as it seeks to prevent third countries from maintaining commercial and cultural relations with Cuba.

15.  These reflections are based on Diamond (1999) and Kottak (2011).

16.  I have reflected further on this theme in “La Crisis del Sistema Capitalista Mundial: ¿Cíclica o Terminal?” ISRI2012: seminario de relaciones internacionales, Havana, Cuba, April 26, 2012.

 
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