You have spoken about the possibility of Cuba maintain- ing some level of planning. How do you understand the difference between the Cuban planning process now and the planning before the crisis? In its most general sense, planning is society's ability to prioritize certain objectives over others and thereby to regulate its development politically. The opposite would be the market and thereby private inter- ests determining society's objectives. In this broad sense it is necessary to preserve planning as an essential com- ponent Cuba's political and social model. I believe there is a possibility-we will see how it works out in prac- tice-of moving toward a kind of planning which relies more on incentives and less on directives, is more focused at the macro level, and where a few things are regulated by the market if the market can do it better than the plan. We must reinvent a kind of planning that is possible and viable under our present conditions, above all now that we have been immersed in the world market. But I also think that the planning of the future should be accompanied by a much higher level of social par- ticipation than before. Although it was always said that the plan would be discussed by the workers and the masses, the reality was totally bureaucratic. It seems to me that by changing the conception of planning we have the opportunity to democratize planning. If the level of inequality continues to grow what can be done about it, given the circumstances of Cuba today? In general terms we can say that the level of social equality depends on at least two factors. One is the level of socioeconomic development that can generate an economic surplus large enough to permit a certain degree of equality. The other is the existence of the political will, or of political forces with the will to impose and maintain a certain level of equality. I think that one of the things that has made the crisis evident is the fact that our equality was based upon the availabil- ity of resources and a surplus that weren't ours. Had we been left to our own destiny, or in a situation similar to that of today, even with a preferential trade treaty with the Soviets but one of a different magni- tude, we would not have had the levels of equality we had nor the level of social security we achieved. It therefore seems to me that behind the policy of adjust- ing to the new reality, we can reclaim our own dynamic of development. But being the underdeveloped country that we are, the possibility of an egalitarian distribution of the surplus is limited by the size of that surplus and the necessity of a model that gives incentives to pro- ductivity. Consequently, for a long time we will have a level of inequality which will be greater than that which we used to have. 1NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS "0 .0 0: 26 LIF C B A IVOICES ON THE LEFT At the political level, insofar as All the policies which the revolutionary power can guar- lead us out of this antee its continu- ity, the political initial crisis will will to preserve its gains will still generate a new Cuban exist. In my opin- society with other ion, to preserve these gains--edu- social aspirations, with cation and health care for all and a other unintended and certain level of undesired social security, for example--a contradictions. For this surplus large enough to support new Cuban society, a private and a mixed sector will the economic model not be sufficient. will have to be There will have to be a state sector reformulated. of the economy to appropriate a cer- tain part of the surplus for social purposes. To overcome the crisis, can we speak simply in economic terms? Isn't the crisis one that permeates all of society? I think there are manifestations of the crisis in all dimensions of society but they don't seem to me to be symmetrical. There is a devastating economic crisis, but there are manifestations of the social crisis that are not economic issues per se. There are fewer social effects than one might expect and up to now there has been little political expression of the economic crisis. So I think that one way to explain how the revolution has been able to get through these years of devastating economic crisis is that the preservation of a certain level of social security, the political culture and the national symbolism all have impeded the economic cri- sis from having a symmetrical effect in other dimen- sions of life. I am not, however, saying that there have been no manifestations of the crisis in social and polit- ical spheres. Now, it's not even clear when the problems of the ini- tial crisis will end or when we will begin to deal with the problems brought about by the solutions to that ini- tial crisis-the strategies of survival, the economic adjustment, the structural changes, etc. All the policies which lead us out of this initial crisis will generate a new Cuban society with other social aspirations, with other unintended and undesired contradictions. For this new Cuban society, the economic model will have to be reformulated. The political model, the model of social- ism will have to be appropriate to the problems of the times. We will see how this is perceived by the political elite. There was a direction toward more political openness for a while, but in the last year or so it seems like there has been a closing of political space in Cuba. We can contextualize the moment which inaugurated the current restrictive political period. It was the speech given by Fidel Castro on July 26, 1995 in Santiago de Cuba. Because it was Fidel and because it was a public speech, it was read, if I remember correctly, as one which projected policies and strategies for the immedi- ate period. Since then, certain voices linked to the old Soviet Marxism that had been quiet are again being lis- tened to. They have begun to voice statements, worries, old-style interpretations of events. They cling to the concern raised by Fidel about the current phase of U.S. policy. This phase is characterized by ideological diver- sion, an attempt to influence academic sectors as well as individuals or sectors which might have an important role to play in the reproduction of Cuban society. We are seeing something like an ideological offensive of imperialism, a taking advantage of the circumstances of the national crisis and an attempt to establish contacts and channels of influence. This call by the revolutionary leadership is more than justified and is situated in the U.S.-Cuba conflict. We only have to remember that the United States uses ide- ology as a weapon, and it is currently intensifying its ideological campaign. I think that what is going to hap- pen is that the conservative sectarian sectors-sectors of the Party, the university, society-will place them- selves behind this call. In this society there are tenden- cies that co-exist. There are groups and sectors that share the revolutionary commitment but have different perceptions and propose different policies. Historically these differences have been arbitrated by the country's leadership, sometimes leaning one way, sometimes the other, but always within a process of mediation. Since the 1980s the situation has evolved as the result of a political opening and in part the result of some things that have occurred that escape political control. In fact, if you analyze what is studied in academia, and the issues treated in the media, you will find a large quantity of issues which in the 1980s would not have been permitted. This is what I am referring to when I say that all this forms part of a contradiction. Sociology in Cuba, for example, currently deals with questions of 27 27 VOL XXXI, NO 1 JULY/AUG 1997VOICES ON THE LEFT the family, the problem of prostitution-even male prostitution-pollution, bureaucracy, etc. Bureaucracy has always been a theme of study here, but not with the political connotations that it now carries. More than a new political orientation, the new situa- tion has produced a political permissiveness. Political events themselves are moving Cuban politics forward; this is producing certain things that the people are mak- ing use of before they are authorized, and this then becomes the object of attention. This explains in part what happened to the collective with which I was asso- ciated, CEA, whose work for many years was devoted to international politics and the projec- tion of Cuba in the international arena. Lately we felt we had to occupy our- selves with internal Cuban themes because we couldn't engage in interna- Neoliber tional dialogue without knowing what to say about what was happening in to be re Cuba. Contrary to the assumptions of the pc the current official policies, we were less concerned with the dialogue with ecoi our enemies than with the questions raised by the friends of the revolution. adjust It was the dialogue with the left, with it is m our friends, that forced us to turn our attention to what was happening inter- Marxism, nally, and to treat internal events with the tools of social science, to interpret total con what was going on. Certainly the important role that Cuba plays in Latin America has changed in recent years. How do you see that role today and in the medium and long-term future, especially in relation to the Latin American left? IC al n( or ci IC the woi can rear society co I think your question raises a problem: what are we going to categorize as the left? The term "left" is used very laxly to describe groups in the opposition. This is an absolutely insufficient characterization of the left. The left is also characterized in relative terms, and at other times we understand the left by its program and its proposals. The Latin American left, even under a minimal program, always implies a proposal of changes in existing Latin American society: profound structural changes in Latin American societies that create the pos- sibility of true democracy. What the left has to do is develop an alternative program to social democracy which is at least minimally anti-capitalist and anti- imperialist enough to bring real change to the region. I think we are in a moment of disorientation for the left. The Sio Paulo Forum has been a success in the sense that curiously, when the left has been its weakest in terms of proposals and self-definition, it has achieved great political consensus in the region. The Sio Paulo Forum has achieved this in the most difficult moments for the left. I think it will have been a positive element if the Forum can create an opening that permits the for- mulation of a strategy which can become a referendum for the radical left. I think that the level of demobilization, of loss of militancy, of ideological disorientation, of the lack of an alternative program, is very great on the left. You can see it in the left's own fora. And the left, from the point of view of being a political expression, has been weakened, divided and subdivided. This goes against the grain of Fidel's warning of the mid-1980s, that the social conditions of Latin America are ism tends worse; there are more poor, there is more exploitation, more insecurity. 1uced to That is to say that the masses, or the itics of social sectors who can be organized for social change are more numerous omic than ever. And this is happening at a time when the left is very weak. I ent, but think this is a generational problem, a problem that only a new generation of re. Like the left can resolve, because it is psy- it offers a chologically difficult for the old lead- ers to change course. The intellectual eption of sectors have been the most beaten down and the most disoriented by the rld and crisis. ticulate The left has come apart but the right has achieved a notable capacity for mpletely. recomposition, which is a problem we haven't sufficiently studied. The neoliberal discourse isn't pure eco- nomics liberated from the state. It is more. It is a philosophical discourse about the individual, about nature. Our compafiero Vasconi, who worked with us at CEA until his death last year, always called our attention to this. "The alter- native to Marxism is liberalism," he used to say, "not simply because it has a different economic project, but because like Marxism, it has a complete conception of the world, and can rearticulate society completely." Neoliberalism tends to be reduced to the politics of eco- nomic adjustment, but it is something much more com- plete. The left therefore has to offer not only an economic alternative but a total alternative. I believe we have to reinvent a discourse in which the national question and the "third-world" question are better articulated with the socialist project. We have to elaborate a project that takes the questions of the nation and the periphery into account. This is the challenge that lies ahead.
