A new study just out from the environmental think tank "Global Footprint Network," has found that the deformed workers state of Cuba is the only country to meet the groups minimal standards for relatively modest resource consumption with high achievement of social development in health, longevity and education. Click on the title to access the NPR story.
These advances for Cuba were created on the one hand by the huge advance that the 1959 Revolution provided by eliminating capitalism and creating a centrally planned, collectivized economy, which is the basis for the provisioning of resources based upon human need. One of the major limits on Cuba's success, and consumption, has been the strangulation embargo imposed on Cuba and repeated attempts to destabilize the island nation by the United States. As the report notes, most likely Cubans would prefer a higher level of consumption, corresponding to a higher level of socio-economic comfort. However the point is that with relatively limited resources, especially given numerous economic constraints, including embargo and U.S. hostility, Cuba has achieved huge social progress and the most expansive system of social protections in all of Latin America, including free universal health care, free or low cost housing, and for many guaranteed life time employment. This was all made possible by the revolution and the collectivized economy, however deformed by nationalist Stalinist bureaucrats from its inception. Defend Cuba from counter revolution! For Proletarian Political Revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy!
3 comments:
I happen to return to your blog casually surfing.
I posted tonight on Cuba as well.
Since I last talked to you, I joined Int'l Marxist Tendency.
Comradely greetings.
I certainly agree with most of your post and would add that bureaucratic planning has enabled the regime to cope with the autarchy imposed upon it by the collapse of the USSR. But I think it's stretching it to praise Cuba for sustainability. It seems to me an unforseen outcome of planning in a resource-poor country rather than Castro et al's conversion to green politics.
Well, the praise is meant for the planned economy. The planned economy is the only sure way that all the earth saving/enviro-friendly policies and technologies can possibly be implemented before further more serious and possible irreparable damage is done. The point is that the market cannot do it.
Hopefully the bureaucracy will not switch to green politics which would mean a even greater deformity of the party than the embrace of Stalinism, what next green Cuban capitalists?
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