The Christian Science Monitor
By John Hughes John Hughes – Wed Oct 6, 2:18 pm ET
Cuba's tacit admission that its communist economy is failing marks the
end of an era.
It follows the eclipse of similarly stultified economies in three other
lands of lingering communist persuasion – China, Vietnam, and North
Korea. All have either moved, or appear to be moving, to free,
market-based economies while retaining a communist structure to continue
harsh political control.
Cuba may be no exception. It recently announced plans to dump hundreds
of thousands of government workers into a suddenly authorized private
sector. That doesn't mean democracy is right around the corner. Though
the brothers Castro, Fidel and Raúl, may soon be passé, some
Cuba-watchers expect their successor may be a tough, but as yet
unidentified, general from the powerful military who will use the
Communist Party structure to maintain authoritarian rule.
So while some international critics, like the delusional Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, continue to rant against capitalism and
America, aging communist regimes seek the fruits of capitalism's
prospering systems while retaining power with communism's political
infrastructure. It is an intriguing period in history.
Signs of reformDuring Fidel's long absence for health reasons, his
empowered brother Raúl has hinted at modest reforms. He has ordered the
release of a number of political prisoners. He has expressed impatience
with the inefficiency of the labor market and sent Cuban delegations to
Russia, China, and Vietnam to study their departure from communist
economic models.
In August he declared in public: "We have to erase forever the notion
that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without
working." This was a reference to the fact that most of the population
is employed by the state, and with the low wages they are paid – on
average $20 a month – many people do not work very hard. There is
large-scale moonlighting, dabbling in the black market, and reliance on
money sent from abroad by Cuban exiles. Now Raúl is setting free about
10 percent of the state's workforce, encouraged to launch small
businesses or otherwise fend for themselves.
Meanwhile Fidel, in a interview with an Atlantic Monthly reporter, let
slip his view that the Cuban economic model has failed, hastily but not
credibly claiming later that he had been misunderstood.
Looking to Russia, China, and VietnamWhat the brothers Castro learned
from studying Russia, China, and Vietnam is that all have supplanted the
old communist economic systems with consumerism, free markets, and
privatization in varying degrees, while China and Vietnam have kept the
state in firm control. Even North Korea, whose communist-run economy has
left many of its citizens hungry and despairing, has rehabilitated a
former prime minister who was fired three years ago for promoting
market-oriented reforms. Pak Pong-ju re-surfaced from obscurity in
August, with restored party status, stirring speculation that economic
reforms and pragmatism are in store. This suggested policy shift comes
at a time when Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, is engineering the
political succession from himself to one of his sons, the 20-something
Kim Jong-un.
Vietnam, while under strict Communist Party political control, has been
steadily transforming from a centrally planned economy to a
market-oriented one, with rapid growth stimulated by the traditional
entrepreneurship of its people.
And despite the Communist Party's tight hold on the reins of political
power, China's free-market economy has become the second largest in the
world, exceeding even Japan's. Its populace of industrious millions has
built roads and high-speed railway networks and factories and whole
manufacturing cities, turning out cars – and now electric cars – and
electronics, machinery, and consumer goods for export and to meet the
demands of its own increasingly affluent citizens.
All this freeing up of centralized economies that have proved inept is
of course a step on the road to the inevitable: namely, the political
freedoms that the respective regimes fear, and â€" ultimately â€"
democracy. We must hope that such progress will come sooner, rather than
later.
John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, writes a biweekly column.
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