Sixth Congress of the CPC: Paper socialism

Authors:
José Alberto López Rafaschieri and Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

In the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, the guidelines that will govern the economic model of this Caribbean nation in the coming years were agreed. To maintain the facade of a dictatorship that still endures despite Fidel's convalescence, and the pride of not admitting internal idealogical conflicts, the discourse that graced the event was "socialism, revolution and more socialism", without making a stop at the anti-communist reforms of Raul Castro, or openly discussing the increasingly evident crisis of faith of the upper levels of government in the Marxist philosophy.

The previous Congress had occurred in 1997. At that meeting, the final document mentions the word "socialism" only three times, while the same word is invoked 26 times in the document prepared in 2011; demonstrating the Cuban leadership's desire to emphasize the socialist character of the post-Fidel era.

But the repetition of the word socialism, more than before, does not help if the signs that the Cuban regime shows illustrate serious internal contradictions. Fidel told the world few months ago, "the Cuban model no longer works even for us", while the Communist Party shouted the "continuity and irreversibility of socialism" at the past week's convention. Who should we believe?

Although Cuban politicians tried to keep the revolutionary rhetoric, the final document coyly warns a socialism that is unlike that of Fidel. The text says, for example, "the economic system will continue to prevail based on the socialist ownership of all the people over the fundamental means of production". We note the intentional inclusion of the word "fundamental" in the declaration, which leaves the door open for private sector participation in non-strategic areas of the Cuban economy, as Raul has been allowing in the small farming and other business.

Classical Marxism, in which Fidel believed, has among its ideological pillars the collective ownership of the means of production and the abolition of private property, regardless of whether these resources were fundamental or not. They may include 26 times more the word socialism in the conclusion of the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, but the socialist ownership of some means of production, the fundamentals, sounds more like a mixed economy model than a socialist one.

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