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Latin America 
Self-criticism
Debating the left
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann
original:
http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia.php?id_noticia=28907

Cuba's dilemma and hopes

"This Revolution is sick and tired of justifications' (Raúl Castro) (1).

The dangers our Commander in Chief alerted us to in his November 2005 speech at the University are still latent, since no significant change toward more socialism has taken place yet.

By Pedro Campos Santos (for Kaos en la Red) [04.01.2007 21:48] - 362 readings 5 comments

 

A 12.5% economic growth: its actual impact on and meaning to everyday life.

 

It has always been said, and practice has shown, that a report on the increase or decrease of a country's GDP reveals little, if anything, about the economic realities facing a population.

 

In 2006, Cuba announced an economic growth of 12.5% that our friends overseas can bring to bear in an effort to "demonstrate" that our socialism has succeeded despite the U.S. blockade. Our enemies in turn will use the same figure to try and prove that Cuba "tampers with the data" and to poke holes in the Revolutionary Government's credibility, never mind that it always tells the truth.

 

Plenty of articles have been already written in praise of such towering growth. Comparing these data on economic progress with those in the rest of Latin America may work just fine for propaganda purposes outside Cuba. Our friends would like that most people across the region could enjoy similar standards. However, rather than being a shot in the arm for the Revolution inside Cuba, this view is poisonous. We Cubans want, need, to at least recover the living standards we had before the special period, and the said numbers and comparisons say nothing about it. Comparisons can only have room within ourselves, what we were and what we aspire to be.

 

An attitude of smug conformity with this balance plays along with bureaucratic stagnation and can even lead us to the eerie conclusion that if things are so fine as they are now then we have to take no further pains or make any changes, let alone move on to the socialism we need, the new one, that of the 21^st century. And as everybody knows, if you stop crawling up you will slide back down.

 

Actually, this growth had a positive, if modest, impact on the aspects that hit ordinary Cubans the most, namely health care, food, energy, housing and transportation. It could all be summarized like this: health services have improved a great deal from the material viewpoint, albeit the lack of qualified personnel made itself felt in many places; the sale of rationed food supplies reached a plateau, though the rest are still at a shortfall and very expensive; the blackouts are gone, even if there was a rise in electricity prices; for the first time in many years over 100,000 homes were built or completed, whereas the existing ones keep getting worse, and public transportation is dreadful, except for the inter-provincial bus service, which improved in spite of its high fares. In some respects we're better-off than in the special period; in others the situation remains unchanged, but all in all we're still way below the levels we had in previous years.

 

As reported in the recent 8^th Session of the National Assembly of the People's Power, this growth was possible mainly because we put a curb on our excessive waste of resources and increased our services. They also said that general productivity lagged behind the average pay raise, something difficult to understand in a country where most people have very low salaries; that for all the weather's generosity agriculture gave a poor yield; that industrial production was inadequate and there were delays in investment. Besides, they pointed out, the housing plan failed to achieve 30% of its production target even if all the necessary resources had been allocated to that end; tourism didn't increase; the sugar industry has yet to recover lost ground; the energy revolution program is not working at the expected pace; and, according to Raúl, public transportation had all but collapsed.

 

Huge though it may be, insofar as this growth that saving and service policies made possible goes hand in hand with so much inefficiency in the rest of the fields that there's no sign of any clear-cut, specific effect on the mainstays of a sound economy which, to be so, must be largely self-sufficient and proportionally developed.

 

We'd be fooling ourselves if we believed that growth entails economic development, and just as wrong if we thought that social development means more hospitals and schools, more doctors and teachers, more subsidies and social assistance and more charity from a paternalistic State.

 

A great nuclear power, the USSR made it to outer space and yet failed to develop socioeconomic production relations based on a socialist self-management system, opting instead for the wage-earning labor system so typical of capitalism. Consequently, the process ended up back at square one.

 

The energy plan is expected to lay the foundations of development, but it remained unclear whether its goal is to devise more "industrial development policies" in line with the current production relations of a wage-earning system or to foster production relations supported by socialist self-management, which needs not one more cent to be invested or an extra meter of electric cable to operate, only downright governmental and Party support.

 

If nothing else, this growth "and the abovementioned shortcomings" shed light on the unsuspected capacity of Cuban producers and the country's economy once labor's socialist self-management is put to work (through cooperative mechanisms and joint workforce-State management) as a function of the workers' interests.

 

To pinpoint deficiencies was the Assembly's key achievement.

 

What made the 8th Session of the [National Assembly of] People's Power stand out from others was not the 12.5% growth announcement but the higher number of remarks about ongoing deficiencies and ideas to fix them. Even if it fell short of Raúl's expectation to have a wide-open debate, this meeting could be the first step toward the solution of our great many problems and a springboard to genuine renovation, provided much-need changes are made in the present political and economic leadership system.

 

This time the Assembly was not as self-righteously complacent as on previous occasions. There were praising speeches now and then, but what has come to public notice highlights unsolved problems, specific inadequacies, and unfulfilled targets. Many called a spade a spade, and at least scratched the surface of some matters when they failed to get to their bottom.

 

In a demonstration of the spirit that prevailed in their discussions, Raúl said: "[?] this Revolution is sick and tired of justifications"; "revolution means not to lie"; "all inaccuracies and untrue data, deliberately disguised or not, have to stop"(*).

 

Raúl vilified in precise terms the red tape apparatus that keeps farmers and cooperative members, who provide 65% of all agricultural products, from being paid their dues, and demanded that the Assembly be specifically briefed in its next meeting about the causes for and solutions to this major conflict. Besides, he claimed to have promoted a number of recent investigations which Granma daily published about drawbacks in food production, stockpiling and marketing programs.

 

Minister of Economics and Planning José Luís Rodríguez, whose words were more about deconstructing problems than they were on heaping praise, remarked that solving our difficulties will require "everybody's efforts and the participation of all workers in their organization's decision-making process"(*) He made no further points in this regard, but talking about the workers being involved in decision-making sounds like a step in the right direction.

 

Along the same lines was the speech given by Minister of Finances and Prices Georgina Barreiro. In presenting the draft State Budget for 2007, she said: "the regular meetings workers hold to discuss the budget and control its execution become a tool to reach their goals." (**)

 

A spirit of self-criticism, born of the intention to identify and solve problems by getting all workers involved, is a prerequisite to this end. That we have made real progress in addressing these issues is by no means a reason to be fully satisfied with the discussions and their results. Many questions went unanswered, many topics were left untouched, and many concerns remained ignored.

 

Raúl cleverly echoed popular feelings with the phrase heading this article. Our people are also sick and tired of justifications and want tangible results. In keeping with that spirit some key issues must be approached, since the future of the Revolution, our homeland and socialism, which are all one and the same, depends on how they evolve.

 

A necessary debate and the discrepancies therein.

 

In the VII Congress of the Federation of University Students (FEU), Raúl stated the need for debate and analysis to solve problems within the framework of collective discussion. On that occasion the General said: "Sometimes people are afraid of the word discrepancy, but I'm one of those who say that the more we discuss and disagree, the better the resulting solutions."
 

According to reports published in the press, on TV and on the Internet about the recent session of the People's Power Assembly, criticism has unquestionably increased, but the debate failed to live up to our expectations, to wit, the disagreement Raúl asked for. It's true that the representatives of the government�s bureaucratic apparatus spoke, but those supposed to speak on behalf of the people never did it. Were they by any chance the same ones?

 

Even if government officials acknowledged that there are deficiencies, the inquisitional role of the delegates elected by the people is still nowhere around. Both the agreements of the recent XIX Congress of the Cuban Labor Unions (CTC) and the publicized speeches given by top figures in the 7th Congress of the FEU [University Students Federation] and the words of the state's main leaders in the Assembly's latest session suggest that all debates and solutions are being focused on the effect rather than on the root causes of these evils.

 

It's not only about discussing, but providing enough freedom of speech without having the top leadership trying from up there to guide or control the debates and any eventual solution, so that we can attack our problems at their roots and taking things as far as possible. If we settle for debating corruption and lack of discipline without talking about their economic and social causes, we'll be making a unilateral, not a multilateral, analysis. We'll find no right solutions as long as we fail to discuss our problems in detail and look at their actual causes.

 

If we aim for the deep-seated causes of capitalism's problems and crises by delving into the socioeconomic production relations it adopts, we must do the same to find the true systemic origin of the problems we face with our current socioeconomic order.

 

Therefore, we must debate problems about ownership, corporate management, decision-making and resource-controlling processes, salary systems, surplus distribution methods, and the ways for all workers to play an active role in the overall organizational and decision-making procedures in any enterprise or production entity.

 

These essential issues were not addressed in the public analysis we saw, where they still blame our serious problems with corruption and discipline and the behavior of administrative officials and workers alike on secondary, not primary, factors related to social conscience such as ethics, all of which are building blocks of a superstructure supported by its form of production relations. Any analysis that evades these profound issues will lead us into a vicious circle.

 

Raúl is obviously imposing a different style of leadership. Meanwhile, the Revolution and the people are waiting, for they need more. Any change must start at the bottom, particularly with the way production is organized, to redeem the workers' effective leading role in corporate management and empower the people with means to directly control self-government structures at all levels.

 

Our shortcomings are blamed on labor indiscipline and hence, indirectly, on the workers themselves.

 

Labor indiscipline has been pointed as the single common cause of all our shortcomings, and the emphasis to solve them has been placed on just two important measures: a couple of resolutions taken by the Labor and Social Security Commission on working hours and their observance. With this discourse, and perhaps without even realizing it, they are placing the entire burden of responsibility for these problems on the workers' shoulders, the only ones in this country who really have nothing to do whatsoever with decisions taken at any level.

 

Our workers can only be held responsible, if at all, for their age-old tolerance of this whole governmental, demonstrably inefficient, wasteful, all-messing, hardly useful bureaucratic apparatus, taking into account that it's the Council of State where all effective actions and decrees really come from and decisions are centrally made before they are sent to the Assembly's two-day-long sessions for approval. Truth is, the Assembly just approves decrees and laws already passed by the Government.

 

The workers' mistake was that they failed to find ways to reform, change or restructure red tape, not to usher in a counterrevolutionary plan like the Varela Project or any other similar pseudo-democratic rubbish intended to restore capitalism, but to avoid our present stagnation and ensure both the advance of the Revolution and Socialism and, especially, our people's effective control over the government's institutions. Institutionalization can't be synonymous with bureaucratization.

 

Getting rid of that bureaucratization is to some extent what Fidel and Raúl tried to do, the former with his Battle of Ideas, to secure the works and tasks that he deemed most important for the benefit of the people, and the latter by taking the army's production programs out of the government's system in order to guarantee the military's self-sufficiency. They knew that bureaucratic barriers in the likes of those mentioned during the sessions would have shut out their plans.

 

Seen from the outside, the plans designed by the Council of State and the Revolutionary Armed Forces have been more efficient, better funded, more encouraging to the workers, and in a way more independent than the rest of the economy. However, nothing was said about it in the Assembly.

 

If the acting leaders really want to advance the country, they'd better bear in mind somehow the creative manner in which Fidel and Raúl have tried to devote effort and resources to make their plans work and review the wheels that set in motion the government machine and all of its Council of Ministers, Ministries and Vice Ministries, Divisions and Delegations, groups of enterprises, bureaucratic and cadre apparatus, buildings, means of transport, and lodgings, in addition to the cost of the whole structure. An analysis of that kind would entail the most conveniently real, effective subordination of such huge machinery to the relevant Assemblies of the People's Power.

 

We must preserve the unity of the Revolution's forces

 

Raúl has often talked about the need for unity in this period our country is going through. The bases of unity under Fidel's guidance might change in the present circumstances. There's a one-party system in Cuba, but that doesn't mean everybody follows the same lines. We're all in favor of Socialism, but the fact is that there are reconcilable differences as to how to carry on, not to mention a diversity of interests between various sectors. If we were to deny this we would be closing our mind to a reality that will eventually blow in our face.

 

Our future unity is likely to be based on principles and ends, not on names and men.
 

Every year in its last session the Assembly chooses the name of the next one, and now they decided to call 2007 Año 49 de la Revolución (49^th Year of the Revolution) and that from now all years will be called 50^th, 51^st, and so forth.

 

First of all, this decision violates the sovereign character of each term of office inasmuch as it is imposing upon future Assemblies the names they must use for years to come. Also, and most importantly, it disregards that 2007 marks the 50^th Anniversary of the Heroic Attack on the Presidential Palace, a historical and revolutionary event of great significance staged by students and youths who fought the dictatorship and, as Raúl Castro himself said in the 7^th Congress of the FEU, represented the oldest revolutionary organization, created even before the first Communist Party.

 

Furthermore, the presence of students and youth in the vanguard of social struggle has been a distinctive feature of the Cuban revolutionary movement since time immemorial.

 

Thus they overlook the meaning of the Attack on the Palace at a time when uniting the revolutionary forces is paramount, so much so now that Fidel is ill and our students have just undertaken key missions assigned by the top government right after a landmark Congress, which is not only counter to the unity we need but also detrimental to the very credibility of those who claim to have it and harmful to the survivors of that exploit.

 

The same applies to the 50^th anniversary of the Cienfuegos Uprising. They could have found a common formula to encompass both events, like "Year of the 50^th Anniversaries of the Attack to the Palace and the Cienfuegos Uprising". Is it too late yet?

 

Just as these omissions may affect some of the Revolution's sectors and forces, holding labor indiscipline responsible for our serious problems is like adding fuel to the fire of disunity at the very heart of the people, especially after the Assembly was considerably lenient to the identified failures.

 

Under the new circumstances, cohesion "not a fake consensus that conceals our differences" is more necessary than ever before among the Revolution's internal forces. Come from where it may, that bond must be carefully protected so that we can keep a tight leash on any narrow-minded attempt at sectorial, generational or other type of control. Imperialism is on the alert for any symptom of that disease to nurture it and exploit it, as they have done in the past. Except that now that Fidel is ill, or when he's gone, things could get more dangerous.

 

The discipline we need is not exactly the military sort.

 

In the last few months there's been the state apparatus has shown to be clearly bent on solving our serious economic and social problems by imposing stricter, Army-style administrative and labor discipline. That was the prevailing trend in the XIX CTC Congress and the two main governmental resolutions passed by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security on discipline and working hours in its efforts to cope with our production problems. And so was the discourse that loomed large in this session of the National Assembly.

 

The Second Secretary of the Party has repeatedly said "and rightly so" that FAR's experience in organization and production must be taken into account in civilian life. He's also aware that the key to the success of the Army's agricultural and industrial enterprises over civilian entities is not precisely military discipline, but its combination with methods of economic incentives and collective management. It's this side of the equation, in no way related to military considerations, what must be taken into account.

 

We should make the most of that experience. Corporate Improvement, a process that never got around to be implemented in civilian life as originally planned because of all the bureaucratic constraints set up by the state system, includes basic elements of socialist self-management which just have to be complemented with a more democratic corporate management and collective control over capital investment and profit sharing.

 

Raúl is right to harp on discipline, since he has spent a lifetime organizing the Armed Forces, where discipline and centralized command are pivotal to attain to good military preparedness and readiness to eventually engage the enemy, so it's only natural that he should rank today's managerial and labor discipline among our main economic problems.

 

Some comrades fear that Raúl's insistence on discipline may lure other leaders into a mechanical transference of the Army's formal discipline and exacting style to people's working or civilian life, and assure that by so doing they would be misreading his purposes, twisting his orders and making labor and social relations even harder to deal with.

 

Raúl has explained how he uses his collective management method with his Generals and the way important decisions are jointly made. That may work just fine in the Army, but it's still not enough to develop a socialist society and economy with all the earmarks of widespread, all-level democratic participation in decision-making by all workers and social groups, each of whom must take responsibility for and greenlight their plans and budgets. Ergo, rather than chasing after participative democracy, we should strive for a decision-making democracy, given that participation amounts to nothing without decision-making power.

 

Both the Party and the People's Power organs had been partly militarized during the Special Period, at a time when the Political Bureau was bestowed with authority to make decisions and appointments that are still put to good use these days, when it's about time we organize the VI Party Congress. As relevant as those experiences might have been in times of war, we must discard them now instead of making the serious mistake of scattering them across society.
 

That many leaders of proven revolutionary integrity who used to be in the military decide later on to join up the country's sociopolitical and productive life is understandable in a society where the army institutions played such an outstanding and decisive role in the Revolutionary victory and its subsequent defense. Yet, bringing with them their own ways and styles and blending them into their new entities and functions is at best counterproductive and autocratic for a socioeconomic system intended to work under different rules. Any attempt to impose a military-style disciplinary regime on our people, our production and our Party could only have a disastrous effect. All social, economic and political problems must be tackled with solutions of the kind.

 

A society and its economy never run on military batteries. Even if we're on a permanent war footing with our enemy, our combat is fought on many fronts (political, diplomatic, economic, social, cultural, military and security, to name the most important ones), each with its own operational features, methods and laws, which must be respected and never interchanged. Discipline is as crucial to a soldier as it is to a civilian and to any social, productive and political activity. It's just that each activity has its own discipline.

 

The awful Stalin-based experience of subordinating the Party and society as a whole to state security surveillance and control rather than the other way around should not have any chance here. Otherwise, our future failure is a sure bet.

 

Whereas in the military loyalty to the Chief's orders is central to win a combat, in civilian life the boss's loyalty to the citizens' interests moves into first place. If the MCI (Military Counterintelligence) starts from the premise that nobody should be trusted except those who kowtow to the military commanders, then we have to question everyone in civilian, and especially, in political life that turns a deaf ear to the people's and workers' interests. The ultimate decision about the best interests of a people and its workers comes from neither the brass nor the security organs appointed by them, but from the democratically exercised will of freely associated citizens and workers.

 

When he was organizing the "necessary war" "since war is not always so" Martí, who admired generalissimo Máximo Gómez like no one else, wrote him: "A nation is not founded, General, the way one commands a military camp". We will not solve our economic and social problems with more discipline, like in the Army. Problems here are of a different nature and respond to other laws, and that must be respected.

 

No negative experience from the past is to be repeated, like when other State institutions and bodies were force-fed military systems and methods which had nothing in common with their functions. The people and the workers are visibly frowning upon the dogged insistence on discipline as a solution to Cuba's economic and social problems, as is evidenced in their disagreement with the provisions of the two related resolutions dropped in their lap.

 

Workers produce in socialism because they're convinced that their work will benefit society, their region, their fellow workers and themselves. Discipline in production must stem from consciousness, not imposition. To this end, production relations can no longer be based on the centralization of ownership and decision-making and the wage-based system of work à la capitalism. Such organization must be adapted to new forms of socialist production based on social self-management, ownership and usufruct rights for labor and social groups, democratic production management, and a collectively approved, equitable and inegalitarian distribution of surpluses.

 

The necessary solutions to our fundamental problems were not discussed.

 

While it's true that there were very positive observations about the countless deficiencies, problems and shortages facing us, it's also a fact that, barring the report on agriculture demanded by Raúl and drafted along those lines, there was not one convincing argument about their causes. Nor was a single crucial measure specifically approved to harness them, since everything is entrusted to possible investments in the future, savings, further discussions and more discipline. Reports have it that the Assembly basically took in everything said there as proper. No one was held accountable for so much incompetence.

 

The National Assembly was supposed to comment on all those serious insufficiencies and call somebody to account on behalf of the voters who put them there, not only to put the finger on individual or collective responsibility, but also on the mechanisms and methods that pave the way for or leave the door open to failure. It's the people who are paying the consequences, while the cost in terms of prestige, strength and popularity is written in red numbers on the balance sheet, already affected, which keeps tabs on the political wealth of a Revolution that we all must protect.

 

Over a year ago, in November 2005, Fidel warned that we, the revolutionaries ourselves, could destroy the Revolution if we failed to resolve our problems. Apparently nothing was said about it in this Assembly, nor was any reference made to the measures taken as a result of the warning. Everything revolved around the attacks on corruption and indiscipline, the concentration of hard currency expenditures in a singe state account, the Energy Revolution, the assignment of students to service stations, and the Party pairs*, who hardly solved anything important. Given that all these measures were taken before Fidel's illness, what new things have been done in the last 6 months in response to the speech delivered in the University by the Head of the Revolution?

 

The working class, the people and the Revolution need to see clear and concrete actions regarding issues such as the two currencies in circulation, salary and pricing policies, a revision of ownership and production relations and of the wage-based labor system so typical of capitalism, the decentralization of resources and decision-making, and what real control by the People's Power would mean, among a number of other long expected measures that we can't afford postponing anymore lest the Commander in Chief's November 2005 prediction become a reality.

 

None of these crucial problems was addressed in this Assembly. No solution was offered.
 

All but complete apathy is known to exist at grassroots level concerning the People's Power-led rendering-of-accounts assemblies, since they're always the same: the electors submit a string of requests, shorter and shorter every time, that in most cases go unanswered when the following meeting takes place, considering that their solution is in someone else's hands. Besides, the municipal delegates appointed to the National Assembly seldom meet with their electors, and we all know that their names were not included in the list of candidates bearing in mind the municipality's problems and needs, but the "general" interests of those who decided on the said candidacy�s composition and then asked us to cast a "united" vote.

 

Should things go on like this, the National Assembly is likely to suffer the same fate as the grassroots meetings to render accounts and run the risk that, come the next election, people will vote for none of the names in the official list, if at all, and thus the number of blank or spoiled ballot papers will rise, as it's been happening of late, to the extreme that they reached the 15% mark in the past election.

 

If, like National Assembly President Alarcón said, the People's Power is meant to be the foremost expression of democracy and popular participation, it's right there in the National Assembly where actions should first appear that vouch for the said democracy and participation. This session gained ground as far as voicing problems was concerned, but failed to provide the new solutions our people are demanding, as remarked in Dibujo de la Cuba Futura (Sketch of a Future Cuba), an article published by Juventud Rebelde daily on January 2, 2007.

 

Maybe some comrades up there feel safe enough in their positions to pay no heed to or give these observations the go-by. Nevertheless, we the revolutionaries down here on the trenches are feeling the popular vibes and noticing the increasingly widening gap between the central State's interests, views and prospects and those of the people's, an unfortunate occurrence likely to lead us straight to the fateful outcome foretold by Fidel.

 

The People's Power must carry out its duty as representative of our People's interests, overseer of the state apparatus, and keeper of the people's resources, assets and money; it must make in-depth analyses of our problems and put forward alternative solutions to cope with our present situation. As long as the National Assembly provides no solutions, leaves it all to the government and keeps walking safely along the sandy shore instead of diving headfirst into our sea of problems, it will be doing the Revolution's cause a very poor service.

 

Conventional wisdom has it that you can't judge objectively when you're involved, and it happens that the National Assembly members are also the executors of the budget that they themselves must supervise. Perhaps, without lapsing into a trilogy of powers, we should think of something like entrusting the supervision of the executors to the people's representatives, so that no one can be at once supervisor and executor. It might even prove desirable to make the same division at all levels of the People's Power.

Where are we heading?

It can no longer be argued that we have no experience in constructing the new society as an excuse to hold on to the stagnant methods of old. We're quite skilled at how it must NOT be constructed and have plenty of theoretical material to rescue the values of Marxism-Leninism and the synthetically practical contributions made by succeeding revolutionists to clearly comprehend the most general features of the new socialism, that of the 21st century (participation, democracy, inclusion, self-management and integration).

Some things, however unpleasant, must be spoken out if we honestly want to "love and construct": hushing up our differences saying that airing them favors the enemy or else putting them off indefinitely does nothing but hinder the Revolution's progress and strengthen red tape, corruption and authoritarianism as it puts aside all barriers to and opponents of those very evils. Intolerance and lack of culture for debate have nothing to do with democratic centralism, a term very often deprived of its first and most important part.

Raúl has said more than once, and the events of the last few months have proved him right, that the Communist Party of Cuba is the sole entity capable of substituting for our Commander in Chief. Truth is, however, judging by the methods and criteria prevailing these days, that not even the Party seems to be ready to take charge of such a colossal mission. To fill that void and become the proper subject of much-needed socialist transformations, the Party will have to change many internal things on the double, give up all bureaucratic and anti-democratic methods, lead through its members and not as an institution, learn from the workers instead of backbiting them, and assume the general conceptions of the new socialism of the 21st century, to name just a few.

It's precisely the practical Party-State bond that now exists which stops the former from playing its true role, worn-out as it presently is by its involvement in the State1s every bureaucratic and administrative step and still rushing to watch over every little thing that happens. The Party leaders have been turned into bureaucrats of the state apparatus who are responsible for about everything. They call it "partycracy" in Latin America, and it's something we must leave behind.

These and other flaws in the work of the Party and the People's Power organs had been already mentioned in Raúl's democratic Call to the IV Party Congress in 1990. It would do to revisit his remarks and make the necessary readjustments that they put in the back burner that time.

We won't solve past mistakes by condemning them to the obscurity of the culprit's mind, but by mending them so that they can be properly buried in the memory of those worst affected by them. That's also important to the Revolution's internal cohesion.

People's reaction both to Fidel's illness and to his Proclamation should not be likened to writing a blank check out to the team mentioned in the statement, but rather as a token of respect and affection for our historical Chief and, if it comes to it, as their assent to remain on hold  for as long as it takes, hopeful that the "continuators" will come up with solutions to the crippling problems facing our people. That�s a palpable reality we can notice in the masses.

Thinking that further food, transport and housing benefits will make those masses feel satisfied is as gross a mistake as underestimating our people and workers' political maturity and cultural levels. Rather than subsidized material improvements, our workers demand real respect for and recognition of their efforts and productive self-sufficiency. If we expect people to make a living by the sweat of their brow, let their work be respected as their means of living and let piecework be applied fair and square, not in its bureaucratic meaning of a salary at odds with a concrete production output, but as justly and democratically as the workers decide by themselves in accordance with the new socialist production relations. This is a very pressing matter.

If we keep acting in the belief that our almighty, all-possessing, pious State will meet our people's accumulated material and spiritual needs with a "better" distribution of profit, we will be soon heading for the disaster we want to avoid. In place of a "charitable and open-handed" State, what our people, society and the economy itself need is a State that fosters more popular participation and empowerment. Martí said so as early as in 1884 "123 years ago" when he warned us of a paternalistic State. Let it be understood that without Fidel in command nothing can be or be made in the same way.
 

Budgets and investments in particular should be approved, both at corporate level and in the People's Power's various stages of authority, by all interested parties and not only by their representatives. An enterprise's budget, accordingly, is to be approved by its whole staff, and the National Budget submitted to a referendum following widespread discussion.
 

The dangers our Commander in Chief alerted us to in his November 2005 speech at the University are still latent, since no significant change toward more socialism has taken place yet. On the contrary, they might get even worse were eventual modifications be made in the U.S. imperialism's policies "never mind its objectives" aimed at slackening the strain and lifting the blockade, a call that will make scarcity and the continuation of authoritarian and statutory centrist policies all the more difficult to justify.

 

With more of the same, we'll never make any progress. Nor with development policies that keep multiplying the potential of the working capital controlled by the State apparatus. Only through widespread democratic and sharing of workers and citizens alike in the benefits of collective ownership over the means of production, either directly or in usufruct; their participation in the administration, management and decision-making processes incumbent upon them, and their control over the distribution of the wealth they produce, will we be able to overpower corruption and squandering, help people feel as if they were the real owners and move on towards new stages of social development.
 

May everything said herein be welcomed as still another appeal to confront our situation and think together, as Fidel asked from us in the VI Plenary Meeting of the Party, to find ways to stand up collectively to this problems that constructing socialism under new circumstances entails. It seems to be clear to many people that we just can�t go on with today's excessively centralized bureaucratic system based on wage-earning labor and state ownership over things that belong to every one and no one responds for. We know the key, basic ideas of the 21^st century's Socialism; we're acquainted with them, for they're all around us in our society and already taking roots in American land. As if there was any other choice.
 

The man who has stood for a Revolution can only be replaced by another Revolution, the one that we have been called to make and are yet to finish, so that we can leave behind the old concepts of State Socialism based on state ownership and wage-earning labor and advance towards socialist relations built upon the premises that the means of production must be owned and used by labor and social groups invested with democratic management powers and responsible for controlling the surplus, within the context of a process that must cover society as a whole.

 

Whether temporary, extended or indefinite, the physical absence of our Commander in Chief can only encourage us to seek for ways to ensure the continuity of his work.

 

We can and must preserve the irreversible character of the Revolution, an endeavor we can only guarantee when social self-management is similarly ensured under Socialism.

 

(1) Reports on the 8^th Session of the National Assembly of the People�s Power, published in Granma daily on December 23, 2006.

(2) Speech delivered by the Minister in the Assembly.

 

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