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A Firsthand Account
Cuba in the Twentieth Year of the Revolution
by José G. Pérez
Intercontinental Press, pp.1188-1200, (1979)
In July and August 1979, I and nearly 200 other young Cubans living abroad conducted a month-long visit to our homeland, as part of the Antonio Maceo Brigade. Our contingent was named in memory of Carlos Muñiz Varela, a brigade leader assassinated in Puerto Rico last April by counterrevolutionary exiles.
This was the second such visit by young Cubans living abroad. The first, at the end of 1977 and beginning of 1978, played a major role in advancing the rapprochement between the Cuban government and the Cuban community abroad that has come to be known as the "Dialogue." As part of promoting a new relationship with Cubans abroad, the Cuban government is releasing all persons still imprisoned for crimes against the revolution. In addition, tens of thousands of Cubans abroad are being permitted to visit their homeland. (In September the U.S. government abruptly revoked the charter of the Panama-based airliner that was coordinating most of these return visits.)
The Dialogue represents a sharp reversal of the Cuban government's attitude toward the exiles. (For a more detailed analysis of the Dialogue and its significance, see "Meaning of the Dialogue—Cubans in the United States and the Cuban Revolution" by José G. Pérez, in IP/I Sept. 24, 1979, p. 907.)
While many in the Antonio Maceo Brigade are supporters of the revolution, this was not a requirement for participation in the contingent. To participate, brigadistas had to oppose the U.S. economic blockade, have left Cuba before the age of eighteen due to parental decision, and not have a hostile attitude toward the revolution.
During the months leading up to the trip, those who had been involved in the first contingent and were organizing the second made a conscious effort to involve a broad spectrum of young Cubans, including many who had little previous political experience or knowledge about the revolution.
Makeup of the Brigade
The biggest part of the contingent came from the United States, since most Cubans abroad live there. Others came from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain, where the brigade has groups. Individuals came from Peru and Canada.
Most brigadistas were not affiliated with left political organizations. The small percentage who were included members of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, the U.S. Socialist Workers Party, the Social Democratic Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol, and pro-Moscow Communist parties.
In addition, some brigadistas had been activists in various social protest movements, such as the environmental, antinuclear, women's liberation, and gay rights movements. Some didn't consider themselves socialists, although most did.
The contingent's political diversity made it anything but a group predisposed to accept without question the positions and presentations of the Cuban government and leaders. On the contrary, many were not sure about, or disagreed with, various official positions. On a couple of occasions this led to lively exchanges. While most of us were inspired by what we saw in Cuba, some were unmoved and a few were downright disenchanted.
What We Did
We heard talks on a variety of topics, ranging from economic development, culture, and education to the role of such organizations as the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (FMC—Federation of Cuban Women), Asociación Nacional de Agricultores Pequeños (ANAP—National Association of Small Farmers), and the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas (UJC— Union of Young Communists).
The schedule organized by the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos (ICAP—Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples), which organized the trip, was a heavy one. Nevertheless, there were several free days when we could take off on our own, go wherever we wanted, and talk to whomever we wished. There was no suggestion that we should limit our contacts to functionaries or officials. On the contrary, we were encouraged to meet the widest possible cross-section of the Cuban people.
Most brigade members still have relatives in Cuba and were able to spend several days visiting them. There were brigadistas who hadn't seen close relatives for nearly twenty years—and this also afforded many of us close contact with a wide sample of the Cuban population.
ICAP and the fifty-odd young people from Cuba who accompanied us throughout the entire four-week tour made no attempt to disuade us from asking questions or expressing opinions. On the contrary, we were encouraged to raise our ideas and discuss all aspects of the Cuban revolution.
We worked for a week and a half building apartments with the workers of the Ariguanabo textile plant, located almost an hour by bus outside the city of Havana. In addition to Havana, the Brigade also visited the provinces of Holguín, Santiago de Cuba, Cienfuegos, and Pinar del Río as well as the Isle of Youth (formerly the Isle of Pines).
How Cubans View Brigade
Given its composition and the unique role it has played in the Dialogue, the Antonio Maceo Brigade is held in high esteem throughout Cuba, both by government officials and most of the people. A feature-length documentary, Fifty-five Brothers and Sisters, was made about the brigade's first contingent. The Cuban news media prominently covered the visit of our Carlos Muñiz contingent. We were received everywhere like brothers and sisters in the struggle against the U.S. government's hostile policy toward Cuba.
The attitude toward us was captured in a phrase of Fidel, summarizing his meeting with the Brigade's first contingent a year and a half ago: "La patria ha crecido" (the homeland has grown).
I felt there was a special openness to discuss with us many problems and challenges still facing the revolution—a greater openness than there might have been with other visitors, especially from the United States. In addition, it was easy to simply take off on our own during free time and melt into the general population.
Much could be written about Cuba on the basis of such a trip. The accomplishments of the revolution show what can be done by the working people of other countries if they follow the Cuban road. This article, however, has a particular goal: to provide information that might help clarify the discussion on the character of the Cuban leadership and its policies.
Within the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist organization, this discussion centers around whether the Cuban leadership is revolutionary—as the Fourth International has maintained—or whether a hardened bureaucratic caste, like the one that exists in the Soviet Union, has emerged in Cuba with institutionalized material privileges. Is the Castro leadership following a course that is in the interests of the Cuban workers and peasants? Or does it defend its own material privileges at the expense of the Cuban workers and peasants?
This discussion is not limited to the Trotskyist movement. Many of the same questions were raised in classes held by the Antonio Maceo Brigade in New York in preparation for the trip, as well as by brigadistas while we were in Cuba. Many books and articles published in the United States and other countries have also focused on this question. In Cuba, I met people who are aware of and follow both the broader discussion and the debate within the Trotskyist movement.
Before I visited Cuba I had a definite opinion on the basic questions. Despite the differences of opinion I have with the Cuban leaders on a number of points, I was convinced that the Castro team is a revolutionary leadership that bases itself on the conscious, organized power of the Cuban working class in alliance with the peasantry.
While in Cuba, I made a special effort to look into a number of questions that are cited as key tests of the character of the government—the policy toward women, the peasantry, and Blacks; the use of material and moral incentives; policy toward homosexuals; cultural policy; the degree to which high government officials and other functionaries have institutionalized material privileges; whether privileges have tended to increase; and many others. What I saw confirmed my assessment— sometimes in unexpected ways. This article is a report on what I found.
'We Are Internationalists'
Internationalism isn't just official policy in Cuba. It is something felt and lived by the entire nation, as much a part of Cuba as the Sierra Maestra or the royal palms. No matter where you go or who you talk to, the profound internationalist spirit of the Cuban revolution is in evidence.
Everywhere billboards proclaim: "For Vietnam, even our own blood"; "We are internationalists"; and "Long live the Sandinista National Liberation Front."
Theatres show documentaries about Angola's struggle for independence and Cuba's aid to Ethiopia in beating back the imperialist-inspired Somali invasion. Top hit songs on the radio, such as the "Song of the Twentieth Anniversary," proclaim "the honor of being internationalists."
Despite Cuba's own pressing needs, more than 1,000 (out of 14,000) Cuban doctors are abroad helping countries such as Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia, South Yemen, and Mozambique. A thousand teachers are helping Angola carry out a literacy campaign. In addition, thousands of African students, from junior high school age up, are studying in Cuban schools.
We arrived in Cuba July 14, as the final offensive against the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua was nearing victory. People everywhere were talking about Nicaragua, passing on the latest news, breaking into Anti-Somoza chants and slogans. Granma and Juuentud Rebelde, the two main newspapers, devoted most of their front pages every day to Nicaragua. As the Sandinista offensive advanced, the headlines got bigger and the tone of the coverage more enthusiastic: Somoza Flees! The last pockets of the Somozaist resistance have been crushed!
Celebrations erupted all over the island. As the days passed, and reports from Nicaragua indicated the FSLN was initiating far-reaching social programs in the interest of the working masses, the rejoicing spread. A former commander of the July 26 Movement's Rebel Army, who is now head of a government institute, explained the rejoicing to me: "We have been waiting for this for twenty years. Now we aren't alone."
The climax of the celebration was the July 26 rally in Holguín, a city in eastern Cuba. Surrounded by twenty-six commanders of the FSLN, Fidel gave a speech pledging that Cuba would do everything within its power to aid the Sandinista revolution.
This promise was enthusiastically greeted by the Cuban people. Every day Granma, Juventud Rebelde, and other news media would report how the staff of such and such a hospital had met and voted to support Fidel's call for aid to Nicaragua. During our month-long tour, the brigade visited several hospitals and I talked to many doctors. I asked them whether they were willing to go to Nicaragua. Everywhere I received the same response: Cuba should do anything and everything for any nation fighting for its liberation.
One answered my question with an anecdote about several young professionals who had wanted to go fight against the South African invasion of Angola. They volunteered to go but were turned down, given the surplus of volunteers and Cuba's needs for trained personnel. So they went to another town, trying to pass themselves off as unskilled workers, hoping they would get to go.
Aiding the African Revolution
I met quite a few people who were veterans of the Angola and Ethiopia campaigns.
I had read the account by Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez explaining how Cuba received an urgent request for aid from the Angolan government when that country was invaded by South Africa. (See Intercontinental Press, January 31, 1977, Vol. 15, No. 3, p. 74). The Cuban leadership had less than twenty-four hours to decide, and did so at a November 5, 1975, meeting. By November 7 the first contingent of 650 troops was on its way to Angola by plane.
Justo Hernandez, one of the people working with us in construction, was in one of the first contingents to go to Angola. He explained how the mobilization was carried out.
In the middle of the night a telegram was delivered to his apartment telling him to report to the local military committee. "When?" he asked the people who delivered the telegram. "Right now," they said. There was a jeep waiting for him downstairs.
When he got to the offices of the military committee, other members of the reserves of the Revolutionary Armed Forces were already there.
An officer explained the situation: Angola had been invaded by South Africa and had turned to Cuba for help. Nobody knew how much South Africa was willing to commit to the invasion, nor whether the United States would intervene openly with its own troops. No one knew how the United States would respond to Cuba's bold decision to aid the Angolans with military forces. But that didn't stop them.
Volunteers would leave directly from the military committee. For security reasons, they couldn't even notify their families. Relatives would be informed of the situation later by the military committee.
Justo reported that although most volunteered to go, there were some who felt they couldn't or simply didn't want to go. There was no attempt made to pressure anyone into volunteering—if you weren't sure, it was better that you stayed behind. As it was, there were many more volunteers than were needed.
Similar stories were told to me by people all over Cuba.
'Let Them Be Like Che’
Che Guevara is the symbol of the internationalist spirit of the Cuban revolution. At any factory, farm, warehouse, school, or hospital, you can see portraits of Guevara. October 8, the day he fell in battle in Bolivia twelve years ago, is commemorated as the "Day of the Heroic Guerrilla."
This is not the kind of lifeless cult that is sometimes built up around a historical figure, the better to bury what that person really stood for. Guevara's books, speeches, and articles are widely read and used as texts in Cuban schools and in political education classes run by the Communist Party and Union of Young Communists.
A nine-volume collection of his works, published on the tenth anniversary of his death, is available for the equivalent of five dollars. Some of his major writings, such as Episodes of the Revolutionary War, Guerrilla Warfare, Socialism and Man, and Message to the Tricontinental, are also available as separate books or pamphlets.
In his eulogy of Guevara, Fidel Castro said: "If we wish to express what we expect our revolutionary combatants, our militants, our men to be, we must say, without hesitation: 'Let them be like Che!'. . . If we wish to say how we want our children to be educated, we must say without hesitation: 'We want them to be educated in Che's spirit!'. . . If we wish to express what we want our children to be, we must say from our very hearts as vehement revolutionaries: 'We want them to be like Che!'"
That pledge is being carried out in Cuba today.
Virtually all of Cuba's six to fourteen year-olds belong to the Pioneers, a government-sponsored youth organization.
Among the books the Pioneers read is one called Che—Commander of the Dawn. In her introduction, author Renee Mendez Capote states:
"The author hopes to give to the youth ... an idea of the great humanity of this Argentine who made of Cuba his second homeland; who went to die in Bolivia because for him, true communist, the homeland had no borders. The homeland is there where other brothers fight and sacrifice themselves, convinced that the struggle will always take them to victory, because if they fall there will be other hands to pick up their rifles and carry onward the uncontainable battle for freedom. ...
"The author wants the youth who read this book to keep always in their heart the reason for the oath of our Pioneers: 'Pioneers for Communism! We will be like Che!'"
If you talk to the Pioneers, you will see that they are indeed being educated in Che's spirit. The second day we were in Cuba we were taken to the inauguration of the Main Pioneer Palace, which is located in Lenin Park in Havana. The overwhelming majority of the several thousand people present were Pioneers. We spent several hours talking with them, waiting for the ceremonies to begin.
I asked one boy what kinds of games Cuban children play.
"We play Sandinistas versus the National Guard."
"And how does it go?"
"Sometimes it's hard, nobody wants to be a National Guard. We all want to be Sandinistas."
I got into a conversation with a girl, perhaps ten years old, about life in the United States and what it was like. She knew quite a bit about it—the unemployment, having to pay for medicine or to go to school. But she still wanted firsthand testimony.
Then she asked me if I wanted to move to Cuba. I told her I wanted to stay in the United States and make a revolution there like the Cuban revolution.
She asked me if there were many revolutionaries in the United States, and I told her not enough, not so many as in Cuba. To which she responded that we should go ahead and start the revolution; Cuba would send us more revolutionaries to finish the job.
Cuban children identify completely with the revolution. When they speak of things the revolutionary government has done, they always speak of what we did, even if it happened before they were born.
During a visit to a Pioneer Palace in a rural area in Santiago de Cuba, a pionero gave us a guided tour. He showed us the different workshops where the Pioneers learn about everything from communications to agriculture. One of these was the workshop of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, which has a display case with several rifles, some of them obviously old and used, some of them brand new. The pionero explained:
"These," he said, pointing to the old rifles, "are some of the weapons we used to liberate our homeland.
"And these," he added, pointing to the new rifles, "are some of the weapons we use today to help liberate other homelands."
Moscow's Foreign Policy
The revolutionary internationalist foreign policy of the Cuban government contrasts sharply with Moscow's, which is based on reaching class-collaborationist diplomatic deals with imperialism to preserve the world status quo.
Nowhere has this difference been more obvious recently than in the responses by Havana and Moscow to the revolutionary process unleashed by the overthrow of Somoza. Far from the enthusiastic solidarity and calls for material aid I witnessed in Cuba, Moscow has so far come through with practically no assistance to help reconstruct Nicaragua. And Moscow-oriented Stalinist parties around the world have given only routine coverage to events in Nicaragua and have not thrown their often substantial influence and resources into a massive solidarity effort. The Stalinists know that U.S. imperialism is dead-set against the Nicaraguan revolution, and they don't want to endanger detente by stepping on Washington's toes.
In his July 26 speech, Fidel included an explicit reference to the Soviet Union in his call for an "emulation campaign to see who can do the most for Nicaragua."
"We invite the United States, we invite all the countries of Latin America, we invite all the countries of Europe, countries of the Third World, our sister socialist nations," Fidel said.
"This is our position, in order to make a really human, really constructive effort based on a spirit of emulation."
This contrast between the foreign policy of Havana and Moscow has been shown time and again throughout the two decades of the Cuban revolution, especially around Cuba's unbending solidarity with Vietnam. On several occasions, the Cubans openly took Moscow to task for its inadequate aid to Vietnam. Usually, however, the Cuban leaders choose—as in the case of Nicaragua—to exert the power of their own example as a way to pressure Moscow into providing at least token aid and support.
People in Cuba feel tremendous gratitude toward the Soviet Union for the substantial aid without which Cuba would long ago have been crushed by U.S. imperialism. It is not unusual for Fidel and other Cuban leaders to express appreciation for aid from the "homeland of Lenin."
"Others may bite the hand that has given them generous aid," Fidel said during his speech on the revolution's twentieth anniversary last January. "Cuba and her sons and daughters of today and tomorrow will acknowledge and be eternally grateful for what the Soviet Union has meant to our people!"
The Castro leadership obviously feels that Cuba's relationship with the USSR limits its freedom to differentiate Cuba's own foreign policy from that of Moscow. So explicit criticisms are few and far between, and differences are muted.
Of course, it is generally accepted in Cuba that the two countries follow their own independent foreign policies, and this is freely acknowledged by the Cuban government. Castro repeatedly stressed this point, for example, in interviews with U.S. reporters in late September. "At times we coincide. We don't always coincide," Castro told CBS News correspondent Dan Rather. Castro cited the October 1962 missile crisis as an example where the Cuban and Soviet foreign policy views did not coincide. (See IP/I, Nov. 5, 1979, Vol. 17, No. 40, p. 1071.)
While the existence of these differences is generally recognized in Cuba, however, the way they are handled often leads to confusion and a lack of understanding among the Cuban people about the source and significance of these differences. This does not contribute to their education about Stalinism and its class-collaborationist role in undermining progressive struggles around the world.
During our tour, for example, we were given a presentation on Cuba's foreign policy. During the question and answer period, somebody asked what the Cuban leadership thought of the foreign policy of the USSR. The answer was that obviously the policies of the two countries were different if for no other reason than that the Soviet Union is one of the two greatest powers in the world. That was the entire explanation.
Later, in an informal discussion with a person who turned out to be an official of the Cuban Foreign Ministry (although I didn't know it at the time), I returned to the question, expressing my dissatisfaction with the earlier answer. His reply was:
"The world revolutionary movement is very complex. The socialist camp is very complex, and undoubtedly there have been mistakes, there have been problems, weaknesses. To the degree these situations persist—and if you look at China this is undoubtedly true, for example—to the degree problems exist, this is due to the fact that imperialism, that capitalism, still retains a certain strength. Our method is not to seek divisions within the revolutionary movement, to fight only the imperialists, and to the degree the imperialists are weakened, these problems will be overcome."
Privilege In Cuban Society
Cuba's internationalist foreign policy is an extension of the proletarian policies followed by the Castro leadership on domestic questions.
Marxists who hold that the Cuban leadership is not revolutionary must demonstrate that a new, privileged ruling layer is consolidating or has consolidated itself, and that the Castroist leadership is baaed on and fights for policies that protect the interests of this privileged social stratum, rather than the interests of the workers and peasants.
Because this question of material privilege is central, I tried to find out as much as I could about the real standard of living of the working masses compared to that of government functionaries and administrators, and to determine whether differences that exist have tended to increase over the past decade.
From all accounts, the economic situation of Cuba has improved substantially since the late 1960s. The fruits of this growing productivity have not been distributed disproportionately to a thin, privileged stratum of the population, but have benefited society as a whole.
Many of the extreme shortages of consumer goods that existed in the late 1960s have eased. For example, unlike a decade ago, there is now quite a bit of clothing in the stores. Some of it is still rationed, and everyone gets the same bare minimum of rationed clothing at low prices, whether you are a peasant or the president of a government institute. But, in addition, much clothing is now sold without the need for ration coupons, although at higher prices.
Cuban wage scales nominally run from about 90 to 700 pesos a month. (Officially 1 peso equals US$1.40.) However, in practice, it is rare for anyone to earn less than 120 pesos, and the only people I heard of who earn more than 400 pesos are a few doctors who occupy special posts.
For example, at one warehouse I visited in the city of Havana, formerly owned by my father, wages range between 120 and 152 pesos a month. The salary of the top administrator is 163 pesos a month.
At the factory that produces sugarcane harvesting combines, production workers earn up to 154 pesos and the highest paid administrator receives 250 pesos.
This doesn't tell the whole story, however, because workers engaged in productive labor—but not administrators—are entitled to incentive pay for surpassing the production norms for their job. The rate of incentive pay is 100 percent—if you produce twice as much, you get paid twice as much. In addition, all the employees, in this case including administrators, are entitled to an additional bonus of 10 percent of all their earnings during a three-month period if their factory, warehouse, or farm meets all its goals for quantity produced, efficient use of raw materials, etc.
At the warehouse I visited in Havana, for example, the effect of these incentive pay plans was that many workers consistently had much higher take-home pay than the administrators. This has created a problem, in that many workers are unwilling to accept promotions to administrative posts because it would mean a cut in real income.
Disparities in the standard of living are further reduced because everyone in Cuba receives many essential goods and services either free or at subsidized prices. Health care and education are totally free. About two-thirds of the cost of child-care is subsidized, and fees are adjusted according to income, ranging from two pesos to forty pesos a month. Rent is no more than 10 percent of income, and usually is 6 percent, which represents a substantial subsidy. All workers get at least one meal, sometimes two meals, every day at their workplaces for fifty Cuban cents each, which also represents a subsidy.
The 'Historic Wage'
Since the early 1970s, there has been a big effort to eliminate one source of sizable wage disparities, the so-called historic, or carry over, wage.
In Cuba, a historic wage is what a person holding that position earned under capitalism. If before the revolution you had a position that paid extraordinarily well, you continued to receive that wage even though the wage that other workers would normally receive today might be substantially lower. The rationale for this policy was that these wages were often the result of struggles by the workers of a particular plant, and what the workers were able to win under capitalism through their struggles shouldn't be taken away by the socialist revolution. The revolution set the goal of reducing inequalities in the workforce by raising the standard of living of the worst-paid workers, rather than lowering the wages of the best-paid.
Those who benefited most from this policy were the skilled aristocracy of Cuban workers, as well as many professionals. Over time historic wages tended to get transferred as an individual moved from one job to another and new "historic wages" tended to be created for positions where they had not existed before. I was told by one administrator that historic wages showed a particular tendency to become attached to administrative posts. Often this was done legally; sometimes not.
The policy adopted in 1973 prohibits the creation of any new historic wages, either for individuals or for posts. The historic wages that exist are now strictly nontransferable—if you leave a job, you leave the wage, and if a new person takes a job that previously had a historic wage, the new person gets only the regular wage.
This has sharply reduced one big source of large (for Cuba) disparities that fostered bureaucratic abuses and influence peddling.
Other measures have been adopted to prevent the growth of special privileges for functionaries. For example, there is a big shortage of housing in Cuba, as well as an insufficient supply of TVs, refrigerators, and other consumer durables. After various experiments, the Castro leadership implemented a plan of distribution primarily through workplace assemblies. The workers vote on who, among those who don't have a particular item, are most deserving because of their work performance. They are entitled to buy the scarce items.
As Fidel explained in his speech to the 1973 Congress of the Central Organization of Cuban Trade Unions:
"The distribution of household electrical appliances is another problem we've discussed. We understand that the solutions you've come up with are good ones. Some contradictions have arisen in the process. A worker said it was usually the 'good guy,' the worker liked by everyone, who got the electrical appliance.
"Now, if a 'good guy' can fool the masses, what about the public official? If a public official, instead of the masses, is in charge of distribution, he makes a hundred mistakes for every one the masses made."
Castro added that, of course, it was preferable not to have shortages. But if there isn't enough to go around, the system of workplace distribution has an additional advantage:
"... we think that, as long as these electrical appliances are scarce, the workers should be the first ones to get them. It's a matter of having the workers come first in a nation of workers. Before, electrical appliances were sold to anybody who was willing to stand in a long waiting line in front of a store, and this method caused a lot of irritation."
Earlier in his speech Castro had referred to the problem that developed in the late 1960s, with many people, especially women, leaving the labor force. In Cuba, people told me one reason for this was that it took hours and hours of standing in line to obtain many items. Even worse, some people began to pay others to stand in line for them, meaning that those with higher incomes got preferential access to items in short supply.
I found that overall the official policies are followed in real life. Of course, there are more than a few individuals who use their positions to secure privileges for themselves and who are guilty of other abuses. In Cuba, these comfortable careerists are popularly referred to as the 'acomodados.'
But the policy of the Cuban leadership seeks to counter this process and is a real check on it. Being an administrator doesn't automatically bring preferential treatment. For example, the administrator of the warehouse in Havana that I visited had been without an apartment of his own since divorcing his wife two years before. He said that was because couples with children get priority for housing. (Workplace distribution applies only to newly built apartments.)
Relations on the Job
Relations on the job also reflect the absence of a privileged ruling group alien to the Cuban workers and hostile to their interests. Cuba does not have a system of democratic workers and peasants councils and there is no democratic control by the workers over the national economic plan.
But assemblies of workers at each workplace vote on the economic plan proposed for that workplace. Worker representatives, elected by an assembly of the entire work force, participate in the management councils of all enterprises. Five-member commissions of workers elected by secret ballot handle all cases of discipline within a workplace. A worker cannot be fired by management; only the workers themselves have that right.
In capitalist countries such as the United States, labor discipline and productivity are maintained primarily through the punitive pressures of economic coercion supplemented by favoritism. Workers who don't behave to the bosses' satisfaction get tossed onto the unemployment lines.
In Cuba, everybody has a job. Virtually every workplace I visited reported that they had fewer workers than they should have. Even if a worker is fired from a job, the government still has the responsibility of finding that person another one.
Nevertheless, the revolution's leaders have said that they jumped ahead of themselves in the late 1960s, when the policy was to move away from economic rewards for high productivity, and goods and services were increasingly distributed free to the population.
It rapidly became apparent that, given Cuba's stage of development, free distribution created a tendency to waste things that do not exist in limitless supplies. An experiment at a large housing development, for example, demonstrated that those who received an unlimited quantity of water for free used four to five times as much as those who had to pay something for it. The policy that was finally adopted was to provide free of charge the amount considered adequate for an average family, and to charge for any amount over that.
Moreover, the shortages of consumer items, coupled with the very low prices and increasing free distribution meant that a large amount of money accumulated in the hands of individuals. This resulted in a growing problem of people leaving the workforce, especially women.
The revolution dealt with this problem by raising the prices of non-essential items such as liquor.
More important, the so-called "parallel market" was created. Many items that still are in short supply are available in modest quantities at very low prices through the rationing system. If there is a surplus, it is sold first-come, first-served, but at higher prices. An extreme example is cigarettes, which are still rationed. Each adult is entitled to eight packs a month at the equivalent of US$0.28 each. Additional packs cost more than US$2.
Through these techniques surplus money has been reabsorbed, and it has become possible to meaningfully reinstitute economic incentives. Norms (quotas) exist for every job, and pay is determined by fulfillment of these norms. The guiding principle is: From each according to their ability; to each according to their work.
Contrary to what some have claimed, this has not meant the abandonment of moral—that is, political—incentives, which continue to be viewed as fundamental elements in building socialism.
"We should never think we are going to solve with money the problems that only consciousness can solve," Castro said in his 1973 speech to the congress of the Cuban labor federation. "We must use material incentives intelligently and combine them with moral incentives, but we must not be deluded into thinking we are going to motivate the man of today, the socialist man, only through material incentives, because material incentives no longer have the validity they have under capitalism, in which everything—even life and death-requires money.
"That is why the contribution made by the consciousness of the workers, by the political culture of the workers and by their attitude becomes an irreplaceable element in socialism, since the workers' motivations are of a different character." The goal of both the material and the moral incentive is to deepen social consciousness, to make each individual aware that his or her relationship to society is different from what exists under capitalism.
"Above all we want to create the consciousness that the material welfare of the individual is dependent on the economic development of the society as a whole," an official of JUCEPLAN, the central planning agency explained in a talk to members of the Antonio Maceo Brigade. "The harder we work, the more we produce, the more there will be for everyone."
Cuban Communist Party
The Cuban Communist Party (FCC) and Union of Young Communists (UJC) are not organizations composed primarily of careerists and privilege-seekers. I met scores of members of the two organizations in Cuba. They were distinguished above all by being what they claim to be— conscious and dedicated revolutionists. This was indicative, though hardly a scientific poll.
To become a member of the party, you must be nominated by your co-workers and ratified by the party nucleus that you are to join. The PCC leadership has stressed the need to maintain and strengthen the working-class composition of the party. The number of administrators and functionaries that are permitted to enter each year is deliberately limited.
A distinguishing mark of the PCC and UJC members I met was their enthusiastic support for Cuba's anti-imperialist foreign policy and their eagerness to take international assignments. They reminded me of the IWW rebels described by James P. Cannon, founder of the Socialist Workers Party, as the backbone of any revolutionary movement: "The shock troops of the movement were the foot-loose militants who moved around the country as the scene of the action shifted.” Except that the Cuban revolutionaries have expanded the scope of their activities far beyond the boundaries of one country.
Women In Cuba
Among the most widely discussed social questions in Cuba today is the liberation of women. I found more ferment and motion around this than any other domestic political issue.
The Castro leadership has promoted the battle for women's equality since the first days of the revolution. For example, in a speech on February 6, 1959—less than a month after the Rebel Army's triumphant entry into Havana—Fidel was already beginning the job of educating the Cuban people on this question:
"The evils that have been accumulating are many. . . .
"There is talk, for example, of racial discrimination and it is true. But there is no talk about sex discrimination, of the number of women that they try to exploit, of the way women are viewed more as objects of pleasure than as figures in society who are and can be at the same height as men.
"On one occasion when we decided to organize the battalions of women fighters [as part of the Rebel Army], I explained the social reasons for doing this. I found a great difficulty in the prejudices of many men, and I had to explain to them that women are one of the sectors most discriminated against. . . .
"Women form part of the accumulation of prejudices that the social life, the economic circumstances and conditions of our country, have created. . . ."
Since 1959, tremendous strides have been made towards achieving full equality for women. Among the greatest beneficiaries of the literacy campaign carried out in the first years of the revolution were the women, since they suffered from a significantly higher rate of illiteracy than men. For twenty years women have benefited from real equality in education, both among the youth and in the educational campaigns carried out among the adult population.
These educational advances in turn have facilitated the growing integration of women into the labor force. Before the revolution there were less than 200,000 women employed, 70 percent of them as domestics. One of the first tasks undertaken by the revolution was to provide training for those women so that they could take productive jobs. Today, some 800,000 women are employed, nearly 30 percent of the work force. Both the absolute number of working women and the percentage of the labor force that is female is increasing every year.
Discrimination against women is a crime punishable by law. Women's right to control their own bodies has become a reality through abortion and contraception, which are free and available to women of all ages. Women have broken into many previously all-male preserves, such as the medical profession and many industrial jobs.
One of the priorities of the revolutionary government from the very first years has been to utilize even scarce resources to develop and constantly expand low-cost, high-quality child-care centers. Currently there are facilities for more than 90,000 children, and they are being expanded at a rate of more than 10,000 places a year.
The centers accept children from the age of forty-five days up to when they enter school. They are not just baby-sitting services, but provide education, health care, balanced diets, and even clothing for the infants. Some centers are open twenty-four hours a day for women who work at night or have rotating shifts.
In addition, the government has set up boarding schools for hundreds of thousands of junior high school and high school students, who return home only on weekends. These schools have proved immensely popular both with parents and young people.
For students who live at home, the government is now providing free lunches at most schools. In prerevolutionary Cuba, the virtually universal practice was that children went home for lunch, making it very difficult for mothers to hold an outside job.
Challenges Ahead
Nevertheless—as the leaders of the revolution are the first to admit—full equality for women remains a goal yet to be achieved in Cuba.
The First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, held at the end of 1975, adopted a thesis and a resolution on women's liberation.
These documents emphasize that the oppression of women has its roots in the rise of class society:
"Discrimination against women started many centuries ago, since when the primitive communities disintegrated and private property and the division of society into classes was established, men obtained economic supremacy and with it social predominance.
"Through the different regimes based on the exploitation of man by man, women were relegated to the reduced framework of the home, her possibilities for participating in social production were limited or she was ruthlessly exploited.
"These concepts, which prevailed in our country until the overthrow of capitalism, can have no place in the stage of the building of the new society."
The thesis then shows, with facts, figures, and numerous examples, both what was achieved in the first fifteen years of the revolution and the considerable ground still to be conquered. It singles out, for example, the relatively low percentage of women who occupied leading posts in organizations such as the trade unions and the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, in the party, and in the administration of the economy.
The thesis cites several reasons for this situation. The first is simply the short time the revolution has been in power: fifteen or twenty years are but a minute when measured on the timepiece of the evolution of human societies. Another reason is Cuba's continuing economic backwardness. This makes it impossible, for example, for the government to simply build, overnight, all the child-care facilities, cafeterias, and laundries needed for women to participate equally in society.
The third factor cited by the document is prejudices against women. "A fundamental battle has to be carried out in the field of consciousness, because there still exist many backward attitudes that we are dragging with us from the past" (emphasis in original)
In a talk to members of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, two leaders of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) explained what further progress had been achieved in the past few years.
The number of places for children in child-care centers has jumped from 55,000 to 92,000 in the last three years. Many new boarding schools have been built. Progress has been made in eliminating entertainment and cultural presentations that depict women as sexual objects. For example, the selection of carnival queens, which the FMC leaders said were often no more than beauty contests with a socialist veneer, has been halted.
Protective legislation that forbade women from holding certain physically strenuous or dangerous jobs has been replaced with recommendations to women that they not seek such jobs. But the final decision in now up to the woman, and a woman who applies for any job opening she is qualified to hold cannot be denied that job because of her sex.
The percentage of party members who are women has increased from 13 to 19 percent since 1975. The percentage of leading posts occupied by women in organizations, the economy, and the government has also increased.
This continuing progress has not been without friction. For example, the representatives of the FMC said it took quite a "fight" with the Ministry of Labor to convince them to drop regulations that made it illegal for women to hold certain jobs.
The FMC sees its basic task as "the full integration of Cuban women into Cuban society on the basis of full equality, not only in the laws and in theory, but also in practice." For that reason, "we will have to exist until discrimination and all its vestiges have been totally eliminated."
Continuing, steady progress towards full equality for women has been accompanied by increasing formal and informal discussion on the role of women in society.
For example, a recent film released by the Cuban film industry, Retrato de Teresa (Portrait of Teresa), deals with this question.
The film is about a woman textile worker with three children who finds herself torn between her desire to escape the stultifying limits of domestic life and the demands placed on her by her husband.
She is involved in a cultural group sponsored by her union. The union wants her to keep participating in it, which she also wants to do. At the same time she has to do all the housework and her husband is constantly accusing her of neglecting the home. Needless to say, he does absolutely nothing to help with household chores, much less share them equally with his wife.
As a result of all the pressure, Teresa takes a leave of absence from her job. But immediately upon returning to work, the conflict breaks out again. Her husband moves out after a violent fight and has an affair. Teresa, relieved of the pressure from her husband, continues in the cultural group, which wins national recognition.
The movie ends with Teresa's husband trying to patch things up with her. He asks her to forgive him, and she answers with a question: "What if I had walked out and had the affair?"
His response is automatic—"No es lo mismo,"—it's not the same. With that, Teresa turns her back on him and walks away.
The film, which premiered the week of July 26, has been the focus of intense discussions, because it portrays something very common in Cuban society. As increasing numbers of women have been able to move into the work force and achieve economic independence, the divorce rate has risen sharply.
A special screening of the film was arranged for the brigade in Santiago de Cuba, and the following day we had a long bus trip to Cienfuegos. We spent the whole morning on the bus in a discussion, at tunes quite sharp, over the issues raised in the film.
The discussion started when one of the male college students from Cuba accompanying us on the trip remarked, "Of course, it isn't the same." This immediately met with a rash of objections, primarily from the women, and a heated discussion got under way, lasting several hours. Later, the discussion was rekindled when someone dragged out a copy of the Cuban CP thesis on women's liberation, quoting a part that says: "There cannot exist one morality for women and another for men; this is contrary to Marxist-Leninist ideology and the principles of this Revolution.
"It is wrong to judge women in a different way than men; what is socially acceptable for men should be equally socially acceptable for women. . . .
"Men and women should be equally free and responsible to determine their relations in the arena of sexual life" (emphasis in original).
I was curious to see whether the discussion on the bus had been atypical of Cuban society. I therefore went to see Retrato de Teresa again during a free day in Havana, and afterward stood outside the theater talking to people.
The same discussions were repeated— about the double standard in morality, about the responsibility of men for the housework, caring for the children, and related matters. The discussions would break down into smaller groups, with clumps of people breaking off to go to Coppelia's, a big ice-cream establishment across the street. I went with two women in their twenties who had been particularly insistent on defending equality for women, and who, it turned out, were both members of the Union of Young Communists.
We continued on the same theme, waiting in line to buy ice cream and then eating it.
Cuban Family Code
They said that the discussion on the role of women in Cuban society had really gotten off the ground on a massive scale only a few years before, with the government's introduction of the Family Code, which was formally proclaimed law at the beginning of 1975.
I told them that some radicals in the United States have attacked the Family Code, claiming it reinforced the family as an institution of the oppression of women. Their reaction was utter disbelief.
"You have to understand where we are coming from. Twenty years ago, if a girl in my family went out with a boy without a chaperone, she would have been considered a whore. A woman's place was to have babies and do the housework and to keep quiet unless spoken to. Often your parents told you who to marry, and if the man cheated on you, you couldn't leave him, for how were you to survive. Contraception was considered an attack on a man's virility; abortion a crime punishable by law. Women were denied education, access to jobs—everything."
They explained that the revolution had changed all that, and that a good number of the changes were ratified by the Family Code.
"It says women are equal in marriage, that's the main thing." They described the various provisions—equal control of joint property; equal rights and responsibilities for raising the children; equal right to have a profession or a job and to participate in broad social activity; elimination of any distinction between "legitimate" and "natural" children; enumeration of the duties of the parents toward their children and of the rights of children, etc.
It even says that men should share the housework equally. They described the mass meetings that were organized in every neighborhood to discuss the Family Code.
"When it was done well, it was tremendous," explained one of the young women. "Everything would go along fine, everyone agreeing, until they got to the part about equal responsibility for the home and for raising the children, and when this was explained, things got hot. It provoked much discussion, at the meeting, and afterwards.
"Then came the film," she added, referring to a documentary about the discussions held on the code. "The machistas were made to look very bad in the film, and this provoked more discussion, and it's been going on. But it is a very long process, because it's not just changing someone's opinion on something, but changing the way people live."
Freedom of Opinion
Contrary to the image presented in the capitalist news media, Cuba is not a police state where people can't express antigovernment opinions for fear of ending up in a forced labor camp. Quite the contrary. Although most people I met were supporters of the revolution, some disagreed with one or another measure, and a few frankly couldn't have cared less about the revolution. They weren't afraid to say so.
One young man explained to me that the revolution was terrible because of the censorship of music. I was surprised by his statement, since I had spoken to many people, including artists, and had been told that the cultural policy of the government remained what it had been from the beginning—anything goes as long as it's not advocacy of counterrevolution. So I asked him to explain.
He claimed that several musical groups that are very popular in the United States had been banned from Cuban radio because they had given concerts in Pinochet's Chile. He rattled off a half-dozen names. I had never heard of any of them. In fact, American disco and rock music is quite popular in Cuba, and on certain Cuban radio stations you're as likely to end up listening to the Bee Gees as to a native Cuban artist.
So I asked him what records these groups had put out and what their hit songs were. He didn't know. To me, it sounded like a frame-up, and I told him so. He assured me it wasn't so—he'd heard this reported on Voice of America.
Later I got a chance to ask a member of the writers' and artists' union about songs being banned from the radio. He said he'd never heard of such a thing. (He also added that he didn't think a boycott of Pinochet's collaborators was such a bad idea, or a violation of artistic freedom.)
If there is one term that describes the prevailing attitude in Cuba on many social and cultural questions, it is tolerance. The operative word is "respect"—you respect someone's right to say something, do something, be a certain way, even if you, or the party, or the government, do not agree with it.
For example, there is complete freedom of religion in Cuba. If you want to go to church, you go. If you want to pray, you pray. In reality, most people, especially young people, don't have anything to do with churches. I passed by one Havana church while Sunday, noon mass was in progress. A small congregation of maybe fifteen or twenty people were in the front pews, dwarfed by the huge building. They were mostly older women.
"We don't worry about religion," a member of the Communist Party told me. "In the old society it was a source of hope for those without any, and was kept up by the rich so that people would pray instead of fighting the exploiters. Now the people know where hope lies—in the revolution— because they have seen the promises kept. Some people still pray to god to go to heaven, but they know if they want to solve a problem down here, they should talk to their delegate in the People's Power."
If the pope visited Cuba today, he would certainly not find himself received as in Poland!
The same kind of tolerance and respect characterizes other social relations.
Cuba was a Latin American country strongly influenced by the Catholic Church, and many traces of that influence still remain. Pre-marital sex, for example, was to people of my parents' generation the gravest of sins.
There is no "party line" on whether young people should have sexual relations. But in schools sex education is provided, and contraception and abortion are freely available. If a young, unmarried woman has an abortion, her parents are informed only if she wants them to be. The government respects the privacy of the individuals.
The government has been moving toward a similar policy on homosexuality. Laws inherited from the capitalist past punishing homosexuality as a crime have been quietly eliminated in the last few years. In this case, government policy considers the heterosexual couple to be the norm—but what people do in their own homes is their affair. According to government officials we spoke with, the antihomosexuality propaganda campaigns carried out in earlier years have been abandoned.
While in Cuba, I happened to meet some homosexuals, including members of the UJC, and they confirmed that this is the case. At the same time, they pointed out that antihomosexual attitudes are deeply held by many Cubans, and that this can be a big problem, especially in the absence of any efforts by the government to combat these prejudices.
The situation of unmarried mothers is in some ways similar. Again, the government holds the heterosexual couple to be the norm, but a woman's decision to become a single mother is her own. In this case, equal rights for her and the child are specifically guaranteed by the Family Code.
Institutlonalization
Among American radicals, one of the least understood changes in Cuban society in recent years has been the process known as "institutionalization," and in particular, the setting up of government bodies known as Assemblies of People's Power.
These assemblies function on three levels: local, provincial, and national. The members of the assemblies generally do not devote most of their time to its work. Often they are workers who continue with their regular jobs. If they devote full time to assembly tasks, they take a leave from their regular job and, while working for the assembly, get paid whatever they were previously earning.
Local assemblies are elected periodically by direct secret ballot. By law, there must be at least two candidates for every delegate's seat, and all candidates must live in the neighborhood or area from which they are elected. Nominations are made at neighborhood assemblies.
Cuban law forbids any organization, including the Communist Party, from presenting official candidates, slates, or endorsements. U.S.-style campaign hoopla is also outlawed, being considered—not without reason—as more appropriate for a carnival than for an election.
At the same time, however, this way of organizing elections deemphasizes discussion of issues and policies and make no provision for the election of candidates based on the political positions they hold on the issues facing the Cuban working people and their government.
The local Assemblies of People's Power run the schools and many other local services. They elect from their members an executive committee and full-time functionaries. The delegates from the neighborhoods play the role of ombudsman, and one of the major roles of the assemblies is to serve as a link between the locality and the various administrative branches of the central government and economy. The assemblies also play a role in formulating economic development plans for their area. Every three or four months, the deputy from a neighborhood has to present before a neighborhood mass meeting an accounting of what he or she has been doing. If at any time the people of the neighborhood are dissatisfied, the delegate can be recalled either through petition or through vote at a neighborhood meeting. The final decision on whether a delegate stays or goes is by secret ballot. If the delegate is removed, a new election is then held. Although recalls aren't common, it's happened often enough in the few years the system has been in operation {about 100 times) that everyone knows it is not merely a formal provision, but one that can be readily exercised.
Prom my discussions with people in various parts of Cuba, I found that the role of the assemblies is pretty much as officially described, although there is unevenness from area to area and even within a given locality in how well and responsively the system functions. Often this depends on who the particular delegate happens to be.
In general, people I talked with thought that this system is far preferable to the previous practices, where lines of authority over local services were often unclear and where many decisions had to be referred to government ministries headquartered in Havana, at which point they often got lost in administrative red tape.
The provincial assemblies are elected by the local assemblies. Delegates to provincial assemblies can be members of the local assemblies, but most often are not. The National Assembly is elected by the provincial assemblies.
According to the Cuban Constitution, the National Assembly is the highest decision-making body. Since it meets only a few days each year, however, most of its responsibilities are delegated to the smaller committees it elects—the Council of Ministers and the Council of State. Given the degree of popular support for the policies of the revolution and for the central team of leaders around Fidel Castro—which is identified with the development and implementation of the revolution's line of march—the fact that the top government officials are now elected hasn't brought about many changes.
The establishment of the organs of People's Power is the centerpiece of institutionalization, but not its only aspect. It has been a broader process of establishing vehicles through which Cubans can express opinions on and, within limits, participate in running society.
As part of institutionalization, the unions have been virtually rebuilt and their role clarified. Among the tasks of the unions is to defend the interests of the workers, ensure good working conditions, and guarantee that workers receive the pay they are entitled to. Union assemblies also discuss and vote on the economic plan for a given workplace. If the workers differ with the planning authorities on the goals, part of the job of the union leadership is to discuss with the planners and come up with a revised proposal.
Local union officials are elected by secret direct ballot and can be removed from their posts by the members at any time. (This is generally true of the local officials of all the mass organizations sponsored by the government, such as the Federation of Cuban Women and the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.)