Cuba - State-Capitalism
to Market Stalinism
In
the 80s draconian drug sentencing laws helped the prison population to explode
by some 80%. CMT a tee-shirt company in the southwestern US was originally
looking to relocate to Honduras where workers would be paid the US equivalent of
$1.75 per hour, this company chose instead to relocate behind bars and pay
prisoners $5.75 per hour.
The
increase in labor costs would be more than made up elsewhere, in defrayed
shipping costs for example. Over the next year and a half CMT plans to expand
its prison workforce by 200.
The
supporters of prison labor say that companies are having such troubles in
recruiting employees in the current low unemployment/low wage economy would
benefit from this expansion. The truth is it is not about finding employees it
is "wage inflation" that scares the bourgeoisie these days. Wages
started dropping slowly in 1973 and have only just stopped their decline over
the past few years of "historic economic expansion".
Worker
productivity in the US has only just started to get back to the levels of
productivity prior to 1973. The AFL-CIO unions occasionally make noise about
prison labor although this is only when they feel the pressure of the loss of
dues paying members, otherwise they could not care less.
Some
21,000 federal prisoners now work for Federal Prison Industries (FPI), in 2006
the number working for the federal government is estimated to be about 30,000.
In
Oregon prisoners are leased out to private companies at three dollars a day.
Half of all camouflage uniforms in the US are produced by prison labor, in this
case literally clothing the forces that invaded ex-Yugoslavia and currently bomb
Iraq on a weekly basis. The governor of the state of Wisconsin has called
recently for "turning our prisons into factories" in order to
supplement the state's "labor shortage" (1). It is not really a labor
shortage but rather it is the capitalists who refuse to pay the wages required
to attract workers.
Twenty
years ago Prison Industry Enhancement (PIE) programs were created, they involve
contracting out prisoners to private industry rather than putting them to work
in the state capitalist FPI. PIE growth has been at around 20% since 1995.
Growth of incarceration coupled with a growth in prison labor and privately
owned prisons all represent a facet in the continuing need for capitalists to
reduce labor costs this is made more pressing given the level of turmoil in the
world economy today.
Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota form the "ninth district".
In these states the growth of PIE programs has been the greatest in South Dakota
where before 1994 in this district there were only 82 prisoners employed in such
programs today the number stands at 182. These numbers aren't particularly
impressive, in fact prison labor is about 7% of the entire prison population
both state and federal in the US.
However,
extraordinary profits are being made. The current Governor of South Dakota is
attempting to become the largest contractor of housing, prefabricated housing,
in the state. Out of some 2,500 houses built statewide, State Prison Industry
heads seek to build 300 of these units.
This is
only a very small example applied to a state that has a small population but the
expansion of these programs has been uniform throughout the country.
This
represents a desperate attempt of the bourgeoisie and their political bosses to
kick money back to private industry and defray their own expenses in housing
prisoners and ultimately to keep labor costs from increasing too much. Part of
this is also complimented by the elimination of welfare in favor of work-fare
schemes that further serve keep the cost of labor down. Prisoners are often
burdened with heavy fines (they can even be charged money for room and board),
for those who manage to get these jobs the choice is clear. The future of the
prisons is to work for private or state industries. This trend can only continue
to expand. It is imperative for workers to start to claim their class identity
through struggle. It is through their own organizations outside of the orbit of
the unions and the state, that they may be able to defend themselves against
these attacks.
Many
apologists still repeat that although Cuba is not democratic they do have
universal health care and free education. This to them is Socialism or at least
what is good about socialism. Even these social policies of the Cuban state do
not originate in Socialism. Indeed the very first of the great social reforms
that occurred in Germany under the leadership of Bismarck were carried out back
to back with laws aimed at abating the growing popularity of Germany's
Social-Democratic Party. In October of 1878, the Anti-Socialist Laws were passed.
On February 15, 1881, Bismarck stated from the throne at the opening of the
Reichstag that: "A remedy cannot alone be sought in the repression of
Socialistic excesses; there must be simultaneously the positive advancement of
the welfare of the working classes" (Dawson 110).
It
was necessary to give workers something back to keep them quiet.
Eventually
the Social-Democratic Party wholeheartedly adopted this approach to "Socialism"
and the irony is that this is what socialism has become to the eyes of all. The
nature of capitalism does not change simply because the state takes over some of
the functions that at one time were held in private hands. Engels writing in
1878 in chapter two of Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science: "But
the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership,
does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the
joint-stock companies this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the
organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the general
external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the
encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern
state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state
of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The
more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it
actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The
workers remain wage-workers -- proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done
away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples
over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the
conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the
elements of that solution." The
Stalinist deification of Marx, Engels, and Lenin only serves to make their
actual words even more inaccessible. Obviously from what Engels writes he viewed
the tendency to the expansion of national capital as a means not of ushering in
socialism but as a tendency which could potentially weaken the ruling class by
bringing things in the economy "to a head".
This
tendency towards a capitalism of the state reached it peak in the 20th Century
as a fully-fledged monolithic ideology masquerading in supreme irony under the
name of "Marxism". Bukharin writing in The ABC of Communism gives a
precise description of State Capitalism that could pass as a description of any
Stalinist state: "State
capitalism uniting and organising the bourgeoisie, increasing the power of
capitalism, has, of course, greatly weakened the working class.
Under
State capitalism the workers became the white slaves of the capitalist state.
They were mobilised and militarised; everyone who raised his voice against the
war was hauled before the courts and sentenced as a traitor. In many countries
the workers were deprived of all freedom of movement, being forbidden to
transfer from one enterprise to another.
"Free"
wage workers were reduced to serfdom; they were doomed to perish on the
battlefields, not on behalf of their own cause but on behalf of that of their
enemies. They were doomed to work themselves to death, not for their own sake or
that of their comrades or their children, but for the sake of their
oppressors" (Bukharin 119).
Aside
from the frequent references to the First World War, it could be describing
almost any state that followed the lead of the USSR or the PRC. That Bukharin
was wrote this in 1920 in a book intended as a popular outline of the program of
the Communist Party of Russia is a supreme historical irony.
How
does a State Capitalist country measure its economy in real terms? Where the US
uses the System of National Accounts (SNA), Cuba used, during the majority of
its existence as a Soviet bloc state, the Material Product System (MPS). Whereas
in the US we would use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as one measure of economic
performance, in Cuba figures like Gross Social Product (GSP) would be used. One
difference between the two is that economic spheres such as the Military,
Health, Housing, Banking are not counted towards economic activity and
considered "non-productive".
The
other major difference is that under the MPS system the output at previous
stages is counted again at each stage, this gives an over-inflated picture to
data on economic activity. In the US other means are used to give an overly rosy
picture of the economy (Zimbalist 1-3).
The
Cuban economy by 1993 had really bottomed out GDP growth was falling at a
staggering rate of -14.9%. Gross domestic investment in 1990 was at 26.7
percentages of GDP. By 1993 this had fallen to 5.4%. Finally by 1998 that same
statistic was back up to 11.9%. One of the biggest claims of the Stalinists and
their cheerleaders is that planned State Capitalist economies do not undergo the
typical cycles of boom and bust that other states go through. This is a lie. In
the early eighties the Cuban economy was expanding, by the mid-eighties it was
suffering like other Latin American economies during the so-called "lost
decade". The collapse of the Soviet union put the Cuban economy into
another tailspin and it is only until the last few years that the Cuban economy
has been able to start regaining some lost ground (ECLAC 189).
One
of the classic Marxist aspects of what makes capitalism what it is and why the
capitalist class behaves as it does is the extraction of surplus value from the
worker. If you are paid a wage you are being robbed of the product of your
labor. Another aspect of capitalism is the general tendency for the rate of
profit to fall, this is not an iron rule but a general tendency in that rates of
profit eventually do fall. This requires a constant drive towards expanding
technology so as to keep up with competitors, it also requires that workers
wages stay low enough to avoid cutting into profit margins. These forces are
certainly present within Cuba.
As
the collapse of the Soviet Union sent shock waves through the Cuban economy
certain "free market" reforms have taken place, this is somewhat like
the Chinese model of reform sometimes referred to as "Market
Stalinism". All the problems of a "free market" with none of the
free expression usually associated with capitalist democracy - in other words
the worst of both worlds.
According
to the Economist, in 1989, 95% of Cuban workers worked for the state. Today that
number has decreased to 75% of Cuban workers in the state sector. This most
likely represents not so much a growth of "free enterprise" but a
growth of the more precarious sector of the informal economy - selling stuff in
the street (Economist 6). Even in the crucial agricultural sector of the Cuban
national economy the state has lessened its grip. In 1992, 75% of all productive
land was owned by the Cuban government. Just three years later, in 1995, only
27% of such land was controlled as such. What has replaced these big state farms
is a system of agricultural cooperatives, in which the state is still present
but the exploitation is more self-managed (Economist 7). In many ways such
reforms resemble a loosening up of the economy but it is more likely that they
represent a drive for greater efficiency on behalf of Cuba's ruling class.
Many
corporations have been quite interested in doing business in Cuba, even US
corporations although they are not technically allowed to do so at the moment.
The Chairman of the Sherrit Corporation of Canada turned to Cuba for the
extraction of nickel-cobalt in 1990 after loosing its Russian nickel supplier.
So a new mine was established in Moa on the eastern tip of the island. In honor
of this lucrative partnership, the Chairman of Sherrit, Ian Delany, presented
Castro with a gold-framed certificate of ownership of 100 shares in the Sherrit
Corporation (Economist 10).
Neither
the USSR nor Cuba objected to doing business with foreign enterprises on the
world market. Despite claims to "socialism", Cuba has always been open
to foreign capital with the punishing exception of the US. The ruling class
having the power and control of social wealth can call itself whatever it wants.
The obvious answer is for Cuban workers to take things into their own hands they
can best do this by working together with other workers outside of Cuba and all
over the world. If the ruling class can rewrite history and call itself
socialist then workers surely can show the ruling class what real socialism is.
ASm
Bukharin, N. and Preobrazhensky, E. The ABC of Communism: A Popular Explanation of the
Program of the Communist Party of Russia.
Ann Arbor; University of Michigan Press, 1966. Cuba Survey. Heroic Illusions. The