Capitalism and Socialism in Cuba documents the history of the attempts by a small island nation to survive and gain respectability within an everchanging international political economy. Professor Ruffin presents a detailed account of the social, political, and economic forces affecting Cuba's prospects for development under both capitalism and socialism. Part one of the study focuses on Cuba's historical association with capitalism and the relationship that Cuba established with the United States. Part two of the study delineates the nature of Cuba-Soviet relations and deals exclusively with the question of socialist dependency. Professor Ruffin's study is a systematic analysis of the internal (race and class formations) and external (capitalism and socialism) factors that have thus far shaped Cuban history.
* Named "Outstanding Academic Title" by CHOICE Magazine * Uses first-hand accounts to provide a balanced report of the socialist Cuban reality * For anyone seriously debating the US policy toward Cuba Relating the experiences of contemporary Cuban people, this book is an original analysis of the economic policies and trends in socialist Cuba. Based on Jatar-Hausmann’s personally-collected data, it surveys more than two-hundred self-employed individuals, and includes interviews with government officials, academics, and average citizens. Vignettes depicting citizen’s daily struggles illustrate dilemmas and complexities of a socialist nation transitioning to a more open economy.
This book demonstrates that the cooperative model is based on principles essential to building a more just and democratic society. It is argued that this is the best economic reform alternative to neoliberal capitalism and authoritarian socialism in Cuba, and that this model can also radically transform other economies around the world.
The book argues that the Cuban Revolution warrants a closer look as a model of socialist human development. A re-reading of the Cuban Revolution from this angle engages unresolved issues in the theory of socialist humanism and the notion of human development popularized by the United Nations Development Programme (i.e., predicated on capitalism). UNDP economists and other agencies of international cooperation for development give a human face to a capitalist development process that is anything but humane. Socialism in Cuba has taken a very different form (socialist human development) than it did elsewhere in the twentieth century. The Cuban Revolution's unique characteristics enabled it to survive adverse conditions - a 'near-perfect storm' - that still threaten its evolution.
The extraordinary account of the Cuban people’s struggle for survival in a post-Soviet world In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced the start of a crisis that decimated its economy. Helen Yaffe examines the astonishing developments that took place during and beyond this period. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Cuban leaders, thinkers, and activists, this book tells for the first time the remarkable story of how Cuba survived while the rest of the Soviet bloc crumbled. Yaffe shows how Cuba has been gradually introducing select market reforms. While the government claims that these are necessary to sustain its socialist system, many others believe they herald a return to capitalism. Examining key domestic initiatives including the creation of one of the world’s leading biotechnological industries, its energy revolution, and medical internationalism alongside recent economic reforms, Yaffe shows why the revolution will continue post-Castro. This is a fresh, compelling account of Cuba’s socialist revolution and the challenges it faces today.
As once-powerful communist rulers flee their presidential palaces and centralized economies give way to free markets, the future of Latin America's last socialist country hangs in the balance. In a fast-paced style that is both technically sophisticated and admirably free of economic jargon, Eliana Cardoso and Ann Helwege provide a much-needed road map for a peaceful and productive transition from communism to capitalism. They vividly depict the tough choices Cuba faces in the years ahead, and propose a series of reforms to ease Cuba through a transition to capitalism while preserving some legitimate gains--such as those in education and health care--that socialism has provided the Cuban people. The authors begin with the crux of Cuba's predicament: it is an overly centralized single-crop economy that is fast running out of money, as it can no longer depend on privileged trade relations with the former Soviet Union. In this difficult period, Cuba faces the challenge of managing an increasingly chaotic, dysfunctional economy. Is Cuba's transition to capitalism bound to yield another Haiti? Cardoso and Helwege answer with a resounding no. They begin their analysis with a fascinating history of the political roots of Cuba, from Cuban "independence" after the Spanish-American War to the rise of Castro and the development of a socialist economy. After discussing the various economic alternatives reflected in the experience of neighboring countries--models as diverse as Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Chile--the authors present a systematic program to help Cuba prevent economic decline and political chaos. Their plan involves rapid privatization and the attraction offoreign investment, while providing safeguards against the excesses and inequalities endemic to Latin American capitalism.
“Frequent insights, stimulating historical comparisons, and command of the data relating to Cuba’s economic and social performance.” —Foreign Affairs Uncritically lauded by the left and impulsively denounced by the right, the Cuban Revolution is almost universally viewed one dimensionally. In this book, Samuel Farber, one of its most informed left-wing critics, provides a much-needed critical assessment of the Revolution’s impact and legacy. “The Cuban story twists and turns as we speak, so thank goodness for scholars such as Samuel Farber, an unapologetic Marxist whose knowledge of Cuban affairs is unrivalled . . . In this excellent, necessary book, Farber takes stock of fifty years of revolutionary control by recognizing achievements but lambasting authoritarianism.” —Latin American Review of Books “A courageous and formidable balance-sheet of the Cuban Revolution, including a sobering analysis of a draconian ‘reform’ program that will only deepen the gulf between revolutionary slogans and the actual life of the people.” —Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums
Guevara's best-known presentation of the political tasks and challenges in leading the transition from capitalism to socialism. Includes Castro's 1987 speech on the 20th anniversary of Guevara's death.
Socialism is strangely impervious to refutation by real-world experience. Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society, from the Soviet Union to Maoist China to Venezuela. All of them have ended in varying degrees of failure. But, according to socialism’s adherents, that is only because none of these experiments were “real socialism”. This book documents the history of this, by now, standard response. It shows how the claim of fake socialism is only ever made after the event. As long as a socialist project is in its prime, almost nobody claims that it is not real socialism. On the contrary, virtually every socialist project in history has gone through a honeymoon period, during which it was enthusiastically praised by prominent Western intellectuals. It was only when their failures became too obvious to deny that they got retroactively reclassified as “not real socialism”.
Conquering Nature provides the only book-length analysis of the environmental situation in Cuba after four decades of socialist rule, based on extensive examination of secondary sources, informed by the study of development and environmental trends in former socialist countries as well as in the developing world. It approaches the issue comprehensively and from interdisciplinary, comparative, and historical perspectives. Based on the Cuban example, Diaz-Briquets and Perez-L—pez challenge the concept that environmental disruption was not supposed to occur under socialism since it was alleged that guided by scientific policies, socialism could only beget environmentally benign economic development. In reality, the socialist environmental record proved to be far different from the utopian view. Between the early 1960s and the late 1980s the environmental situation worsened despite Cuba's achieving one of the lowest population growth rates in the world and having eliminated extreme living standard differentials in rural areas, two of the primary reasons often blamed for environmental deterioration in developing countries. The government's approach was to "conquer nature" and under its central planning approach, it did not take local circumstances into consideration. This disregard for the environmental consequences of development projects continues to this day despite official allegations to the contrary—as the country pursues an economic survival strategy based on the crash development of the tourist sector and exploitation of natural resources. An underlying conclusion of the book is that the environmental legacy of socialism will present serious challenges to future Cuban generations. Conquering Nature provides, for the first time, a relevant analysis of socialist environmental policies of a developing country. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Cuba and those interested in environmental issues in developing countries.
