By Geeta Spolia
“I was not chosen to be president to restore capitalism to Cuba,” he said. “I was elected to defend, maintain and continue to perfect socialism, not destroy it.” These are the words of current Cuban president, Raul Castro, reacting to the idea that his nation is on the path to abandoning socialism.
Yet, even he seems to have accepted that the Cuban model doesnt even work for Cubans anymore, a frank admission made by the erstwhile Cuban president and his brother, Fidel Castro.
After the revolution of 1959, and since the 1960s, under the leadership of the communist revolutionary Fidel Castro, Cubas has been a socialist economy in which there was an emphasis on central planning and pubic ownership because of which the state owned and controlled the means of production and private property includes and was limited to items of personal use. The Communist party had complete control over public and private life. Since 2008, when he fell ill, leadership passed into the hands of Fidel Castros brother, Raul who has been president since.
Ever since, Cuba has gradually entered a new era wherein elements of the past let in and combined with the features of market economics. The anachronistic and rigidly socialist ideals have given way to a new public-private hybrid model. Different forms of property ownership, production and investment have come about. The state-dominated economy is allowing more and more for more operation of non-state actors. Real estate, private credit and wholesale markets have seen modest beginnings. Castro had the task of implementing economic reforms while maintaining the continuity of the political system. This was to provide a boost to production and employment through limited entrepreneurship and private initiatives in small-scale enterprises. These reforms have been implemented in the face of the recognition that Cuba must face the challenges that arise internally, from within its borders, in the aftermath of its revolution.
Some of the positive outcomes of the socialist structure were universal literacy, an excellent free healthcare system and low levels of crime. On the flipside there was also rampant poverty in a suppressive and regressive regime that left little room for dissidence and allowed for uninhibited abuse of human rights. Underground capitalism had always existed away and out of plain view, but ensuring the socialist states survival.
Reorganizing the economy is really just a formal acceptance of what has long existed mutely in Cuba. However, the path to market liberalization is marked by several difficulties owing to Cubas political, economic, geographic and demographic peculiarities. It cannot thus adopt the same path as say, China or Vietnam. It has structural weaknesses, such as a vast aging population, deficient productivity and a services-oriented economy. It has experienced fifty-one years of socialist rule, and has to be eased into the market slowly, lest it collapses under the sudden pressure. If the road to liberalization has been shaky and tumultuous, it is due to the leaderships commitment to the ideals of the great revolution, and while change is inevitable in the current global scenario, it will come incrementally.
With Raul Castro ready to step down in 2018, which will see the end of his final term as president, the country will see a much-needed change in leadership and ideology. Cuba is a long way from capitalism and being a market economy, but the timid steps taken by the Raul Castro government have set it off in that inevitable direction. It will be interesting to see the unique course it takes in the coming years.