Cuba's public "privatization" debate

[pampango]

Source: Global Post

But in recent months, Granma (Cuba's largest newspaper) has become an unlikely forum for a debate that seems to portend much-expected reforms to Cuba’s state-run economy. Most surprising, at least for the pages of Granma, is that many of the editorials contain rather frank criticisms of Cuba’s economic ills, which include petty corruption, the widespread theft of state goods and a low-wage system that pushes Cubans into black-market activity to make ends meet.

A flurry of op-ed columns have appeared lately in the paper’s “letters to the editor” section, staking out positions for and against something Cubans are calling “privatization” — small-scale liberalization measures that might allow more entrepreneurship and private business. At its roots, it is an argument over how to revive Cuba’s anemic economy, which was already woefully inefficient and unproductive before the global recession hit.

“What would it mean for the State to eliminate the ongoing farce of state-owned property?” asked one letter, signed by D. Gonzalez de la Cruz. Pilfering is so rife at state-run businesses that they’re already being privatized, he argued. “In our current situation, privatization is already happening” Gonzalez wrote. “Only instead of a rational and well-thought-out process, it’s chaotic and perverse. What kind of social benefits do we get from state-run business and restaurants where the State pays the bills but the profits — obtained fraudulently and illegally — go into the pockets of the those who prey off the people and the State?”

Since Raul Castro officially took over Cuba’s presidency from his elder brother in 2008, his government has enacted modest reforms to Cuba’s agricultural sector, putting unproductive state land in the hands of private farmers and cooperatives. But many services and small businesses — from watch repair to fast-food restaurants to bakeries — remain in state hands.

And yet, if “privatization” is being floated in Granma and other official newspapers, does it indicate some package of liberalization measures have already been decided upon by the Castro government? “I think these are changes that almost everyone supports, including many Communist Party militants, but I don’t know when they may occur” said dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who said he has been followed the debates “with great interest.”

Read more: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/cuba/100205/privatization-granma-liberalization

[Vogon_Glory]

1. I Hope Cuba Doesn't Privatize The Way Russia Did

I hope that Cuba doesn't privatize the way that Russia did after the collapse of the old Soviet Union (Good riddance to the latter)! I'd be very sad to see Cuba's state-owned enterprises handed out to connected cronies in a tropicalized version of the Russian oligarchs' big grab.

I really don't see Cuba's current centralized state socialism as being particularly viable in the long term, especially in the face of a decaying national infrastructure and mounting international debt.

Cuba would be better off privatizing a lot of the smaller firms, and in letting them do it now.

[IDFbunny]

2. After the Soviet collapse

tycoons and mineral barons suddenly appeared. We can hope for a fair redistribution but I think Castro's cronies will get the spoils.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Of course, 90% of the problems with Russia's privatization was that

it was more or less controlled by western monetary policy - if they wanted loans or assistance they had to do it in line with the wishes of neo-con banksters. Between that, and the fact that the only capitalists in the country were criminal black-marketers, they were pretty well fucked from the start.