April 13, 2011
Haroldo Dilla Alfonso
HAVANA TIMES, April 13 — It has become fashionable (and it's good that
it has) to talk about the so-called revolutionary social pact and its
crisis. Flowing from that, according to one's likes, people refer to
the revolution's reformulation, completion or "upgrading" (to use the
jargon characterizing the meager Raulist reforms).
Most recently it was "Espacio Laical" — a highly commendable online
magazine (in Spanish), and one that I always read with delight — that
refloated this issue and called on four distinguished specialists to
give their assessments of the essence of the pact, the reasons for its
crisis and future prospects. Those invited were Lenier Gonzalez, Arturo
Lopez Levy, Alexis Pestano and Carlos Alzugaray (see
It's interesting to note that those who were called upon have profiles
substantially different in terms of their ages, political and
institutional affiliations, places of residence, etc.
This resulted in some explanatory twists that I found delightful, such
as the sophisticated analogical-rhetorical effort of identifying the
Cuban Revolution with the Holy Trinity (a "revolutionary political
Trinity" according to Pestano), as well as the sincere militant
self-censuring of Alzugaray when he apologized for giving political
opinions to avoid "falling into liberalism" (an expression that made me
nostalgically recollect those distant times when I was politically
active in the Young Communist League.
But beyond those and other differences that enrich the dossier, the
interviewees fundamentally agreed when responding to questions about the
"revolutionary social pact," both in terms of what they said and what
they omitted.
WORD GAMES
What was also curious was the style: employing elliptical word games,
uses of implied notions intelligible only to old hands, cryptic
rhetoric, and the scholastic use of authority as a source of knowledge.
With this was the tremendous additional difficulty that
authority/knowledge in Cuba emanates from none other than Raul Castro
(whose intellectual gifts are not exactly a source of national pride).
Likewise, it is interesting to see that the authors live and publish in
the middle of that so-called revolutionary social pact that they are
analyzing – a pact that has essentially meant our giving up our civil
and political rights in exchange for security and social protection.
They are part of the pact and you have to abide by its rules or stop
publishing and living in Cuba.
If we are honest, such Caudine gallows are put up with by the
intellectuals of any system, only that in Cuba the gallows are too close
to the ground, and moving below them is the only game in town (if what
you want is to continue playing).
For those reasons — and this is my principal objection — much of what
the authors are saying is wishful thinking, postulates detached from
reality and that couldn't convince anyone in the country who is not
willing to be convinced. As Marx would say, they are completely
divorced from the cruel real world.
Due to my own theoretical inadequacies, I cannot go into a full
discussion of the dossier; and for reasons of space, nor can I highlight
all of the outstanding theoretical and political virtues that are
contained in the magazine's pages. I only want to stop and point out
two controversial aspects: the doubtful validity of the concept of
revolutionary social contract and the current sense of its use
From my point of view the concept is erroneous. This is not because it
speaks of a social pact characteristic of Natural Law, which can be used
or not (I myself used it widely in the days of CEA [the Center for
Studies of the Americas] 15 years ago); rather, the error is in calling
it "revolutionary."
For a long time now, the Cuban revolution has not existed. It was an
action produced by historical need and that attempted to solve many
problems that the preceding republic was unable to – with the revolution
succeeding in some cases and not in others. It was no one's invention
or the manipulation of a group of men. However that process of radical
transformations was essentially completed by 1965.
What came after 1965 was a series of voluntarist and adventurous acts —
internal and external — whose most strident failure was the sugarcane
harvest of 1970. This was the epic death rattle of an exhausted
revolution that ended up being coddled in the arms of the Soviet bloc.
This also had its advantages, for example in the use of the Soviet
subsidies for an intense process of social mobility whose result was the
guarantee of a future for the island. But nothing of that was
revolutionary. I would say that it was a Thermidorian process sweetened
by subsidies. In any way of looking at it, it was a post-revolutionary
process.
This was the setting in which the social pact being discussed today was
consolidated. It was subordination more than a pact, and negotiated
with great difficulty between two very dissimilar parties.
On one hand there was the atomized individual, lacking autonomous
organizations and constrained by effective structures of political and
police control.
On the other hand was a political class that came out of a violent
action (as is always the case in a revolution) that was able to repress
and disarticulate the effective opposition and export potential. It
counted in its favor a sustained flow of external resources that
provided it with an impressive degree of autonomy in the eyes of
society, and in that same sense a quasi-monopolistic capacity to produce
a credible ideology.
To continue calling this conservative and authoritarian monster a
"revolutionary social pact" is a very costly offering to the ideological
construction that today sustains the Cuban political regime.
To think that it's possible for it to mend its ways is another even
greater error.
Moreover, if this involves affecting such change from a left and
socialist position believing that there exists in Cuba a popular power
base that could be the embryo of an anti-capitalist alternative in the
future, one must realize that a socialist political alternative cannot
be derived from something it never was. To continue believing this is
to continue undermining socialist credibility itself, sinking it in the
silt of caudillo authoritarianism, inefficiency and mediocrity.
The second aspect is simpler. The ruin of the so-called revolutionary
social pact is due to many factors: social mobility, the emergency of
the younger generations, contacts with the diaspora (outside and inside
Cuba), the inevitable rupture of the information monopoly, etc.
However, especially because of the process of recovering economically
from the 1990s, there came onto the Cuban scene a new mechanism for the
allocation of resources and values — the market — that at the same time
became a very distinguished vector of the new means of social mobility.
If this is the case, then the diversity that has to be assumed by
pluralism, which the magazine's commentators decidedly propose, cannot
simply be an advisory accessory of the same mono-centric apparatus that
exists today. Instead, it has to be a principle of re-organization of
the entire political system and government.
In other words, it is not enough to remember that there are blacks and
whites, young and old, women and men, but that there are also social
democrats and social Christians, socialists of various stripes, liberals
and many other political congregations, all with the right to compete
for civic support for their programs and possibly for government offices.
I don't know exactly what the people who run Espacio Laical have in
mind, but I do know that if they published something like that, they
would lose their ability to publish at that very instant. And if that
were to happen I would regret the loss such a valuable forum for
discussing a better future for the island.
But beyond this dilemma, I believe that as the Cuban government reveals
to the masses of people that they themselves will have to solve their
own basic problems in the market and that their social services are
deteriorating, it will not be possible to maintain the principle of
post-revolutionary authoritarianism: they are reneging on the exchange
of civil and political rights for security and social protection.
I believe that there is also an ethical dilemma in remaining silent when
a congress of the party is organized in which any discussion of
political change is prohibited as a guarantee of the indispensable
social peace for capitalist restoration led by the military, the
technocrats and the Castro clan.
Finally, I ask to make a brief digression on a surprising statement by
such a sharp analyst as Lopez Levy. The proximity of the United States
to Cuba (Havana is the Latin American capital closest to American
territory) is always a delicate matter for Cuba, one full of
opportunities but also risks. However it is not possible to continue
speaking of the Cuban political opening while asking to be excused due
to the scarecrow of hypothetical US aggression.
That aggression is no longer part of anyone's agenda, not even those of
the most backward and revanchist groups, which have opted to wait for
the peaceful debacle. Even if I was too categorical in my statement, we
would be in agreement that there exist many ways to prevent interference
without employing repression, prison of banishment of those who do
indeed think differently.
The Cuban leaders know that historically they have shaken hands with the
most uncompromising sectors of the American political spectrum by
boycotting whatever initiative around rapprochement that has existed.
They have also used whatever political dispute that has been possible
(Elian, the Cuban Five, etc.) to sustain their nationalist calisthenics
as a political resource for consensus.
From that is revealed the inconsistency in the proposal made by Lopez
Levy (lacking compassion with his solid intellectual preparation and
with his ideological affiliation): for the liberalization of the
political system. That's to say a little retouching. A liberalized
system would expand freedoms and would allow people to believe and
possibly say what they think.
However I believe that the problem of Cuba is different. It is that of
the radical democratization of the political system, which of course
will guarantee that people think what they like, but especially to allow
those opinions to impact the decisions and be taken into account. That
should be the basis of the future Republic of Cuba. One in which each
citizen's right — social, political or civil— is a duty of public powers
that are democratically constituted, transparent and subject to public
accountability.
I fear that there is no more crucial an aspect for a left political
agenda in Cuba than such democratization. Without it, nothing is worth
the trouble.
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