- 16 Feb 2017 13:22
#14776852
Our entire history is a mountain of dead, raped, defiled, bodies-Dagoth Ur
So I think we can all be agreed on the fact that Cuba's economy is not working. Land is underused, inefficiency in the state sector is rife and one of the underpinnings of the system is cheap oil from Venezuela which could collapse any day now. An interesting article on this was published in Jacobin last year.https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/alternative-cuba-socialism-left-opposition-worker-control/https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/alternative-cuba-socialism-left-opposition-worker-control/
The TL;DR of it's proposals is this
Having come to a semi-Mutualist/Georgist perceptive on matters economic, I broadly agree with this analysis save for the last paragraph as it is light on state interference but I;m interested in the perspectives of more statist socialists on how Cuba should proceed.
The TL;DR of it's proposals is this
Cuban socialists might find areas of overlap with the liberal Catholic and social-democratic critics. Those include proposals that would promote agricultural production and productivity, such as codifying individual farmers’ usufruct rights, eliminating the compulsory sale of agricultural produce to the government at prices dictated by the Acopio, and creating wholesale markets for small firms and individual producers.
In the field of urban employment, these proposals include forming cooperatives based on the initiative of interested workers, rather than on government diktats trying to dispose of so-called lemons — unprofitable enterprises or businesses that are difficult to administer on a centralized basis, like small restaurants.
At the same time, this new left will need to counter other proposals from those same groups. For example, they call for legalization of all forms of self-employment, including occupations that should be run on behalf of the public interest, like education and medicine.
The Left can respond to the call for free importation by arguing that a democratically run state should allocate foreign exchange on a strict priority basis, with social criteria that favor the most economically deprived sectors of the population and the purchase of capital goods that would most support the country’s economic development. Otherwise, affluent Cubans might waste the country’s relatively scarce foreign exchange on frivolous imports, such as expensive vehicles or luxurious furniture and household effects.
Having come to a semi-Mutualist/Georgist perceptive on matters economic, I broadly agree with this analysis save for the last paragraph as it is light on state interference but I;m interested in the perspectives of more statist socialists on how Cuba should proceed.
Our entire history is a mountain of dead, raped, defiled, bodies-Dagoth Ur