CUBA'S economic problems developed prior to its revolution. To its advantage, Cuba has very rich soil located in a "marginal tropical climate" mitigated by sea and good rain. The country's supply of raw materials severely limited industrial possibilities, for example, energy needs. For this reason, Castro's hasty industrialization efforts with Russian aid and ideology (not mentioned by Dumont) was unsuited to Cuba's particular conditions.
Before the revolution, Cuba's close proximity to America worked as a double edged sword. America supported the Cuban economy but in turn tied down the island. In the early 1900's U. S. trade took 40 per cent of Cuban exports. Later the American Tobacco Co. controlled 90 per cent of the tobacco exports. Reciprocal trade agreements forced Cuba to flood herself with imported products, primarily American consumer goods. With such a balance of trade, the agricultural specialization in sugar, geared toward the American market, prevented indigenous industrialization and development of an independent economy.
While purchase agreements kept cane cutting prosperous, the Cuban economy was only as healthy as the American. In 1932 Cuban unemployment registered an all time high of 50 per cent! It did not recover fully until the 1952 Korean boom when cane production reached a record seven million tons. This mark was surpassed only last year when eight and one half million tons were processed due to a national mobilization. In such a situation, America's termination of sugar contracts, under the Kennedy administration, dealt a particularly severe blow to the guerrilla government.
Dumont concludes that Castro inherited an economy based on under-utilization of land, managed by a weak corrupt bureaucracy that never channeled funds back into Cuban development, and relied on improvisational economic policies. This heritage, Castro has yet to overcome. According to the recommendations which Dumont submitted to Castro after his three trips to Cuba, the author suggested a policy based on national diversification accompanied with regional specialization of crops employing a plan of concentric circles to the capital: perishable fruits and vegetables would grow nearby and sugar in far out regions.
The guerrillas' lack of administrative and economic experience led to a weak granja, or co-op, system charac-
terized by low yield, high costs, poor management and ineffective incentive structure. Dumont concludes that Cuba's economic woes in 1963 were caused by "bad diffusion [information on] techniques of cultivation, insufficient effort, unsound organization of work, faulty pick up of produce, all of these on top of the harm done by the blockade." In 1964, Dumont claims, these problems were accelerated by an overcentralized economy run by a top heavy bureaucracy. As a result, he stresses the necessity of lower level autonomy or, in Karol's phrase, "grass-roots socialist democracy."
Dumont's neglect of realpolitik as a factor in decision-making leads the reader to believe that blind whim and guerrilla zeal govern Casaros administration. Dumont should have realized that many apparently irrational economic decisions can be understood by other, especially political, criteria: most notably the naive goal-setting which produced last year's sugar harvest fiasco.
This blind spot enables Dumont to gloss over the real angonies of policy decisions. With the effective aid of hindsight he can confidently, even arrogantly, quantify any situation. As predictability is a solid test of analytic accuracy. Dumont could have better conveyed his self-confidence with some forecasts about Cuba's sugar production. Instead he wavers, refusing to commit himself in this controversial area.
That he is famous, socialist and rejected by Castro are all amply evident in the book. Where he lacks substantiation, he relies heavily on his reputation for authority. For Americans unfamiliar with his works who might not accept his word as truth, his style is both obnoxious and unconvincing. Only his obvious comprehensive understanding of Cuba and its economic problems might soothe them. One wishes Dumont could have accomplished his task with more humility and humanity for his readers.
THE Vietnamese war raised new questions about Cuban solidarity between third world peoples and relations with America and Russia.
Che Guevera left Cuba in 1965, according to Karol, on very amicable terms with Fidel. Che hoped to single handedly open a second front of Latin America to bog doyn the American imperialist machine and ease the pressure on the Vietnamese. The slogan "one, two, three, many Vietnams," summarized the new strategy of adopting the Sierra Madre experience to all Latin American revolutions.
The essence of Castroist thought as put by Che was to heighten the political consciousness and international brotherhood of all socialist countries and peoples oppressed by imperialism. While maybe a viable strategy for Cuba, to the Russian doctrine of peaceful coexistence, Karol stresses this was a heresy. The Castrcists also believed that "Latin America lacked the basis for the peaceful transfer to socialism": their second theoretical violation of Russian doctrine according to Karol. Regis Dubray who theorized the Cuban strategy in Revolution in the Revolution? emphasized that only a unique Latin American solution would liberate the area; in other words, the Russian orthodox model was as obsolete for aspiring Latin American revolutionaries as it was for Cuba earlier.
Che's death brought an abrupt end to Castro's hopes of local revolutions and catalyzed a revision of domestic policies. Yet, as in 1961 when Castro turned communist, he only partially rethought development problems. Chronic food shortages, bad distribution and grave imbalance between supply and demand due to the island's "socialist inflation" all pressed Castro in 1968 to decide upon a new era of belt tightening which after five years would bring the island out of underdevelopment. Karol remained pessimistic of this plan, pointing out that Fidel envisioned a quick political solution ignoring the real problem of changing social relationships to fit the demands of the people and instituting real "grass-roots socialist democracy."
Again Castro opted for programs based on economic growth instead of ones that would raise political consciousness. As a result of this lack of faith in the masses to know what is best for themselves, Karol argues that Castro and a handful of leaders have had to decide the most minute day-to-day problems.
Castro's return to the realm of pragmatism coincided with a reconciliation with Russia. Not only did Fidel abandon his ideas of active connivance in Latin American guerrilla movements, but, Karol argues through his fiercely anti-Stalinist perspective, Castro adopted the Russian model of development of the 1930's based on low consumption and high investment behind a centralized and vertical power structure operating in the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Karol indicates that, to justify this new position, Castro made several theoretical distortions, and abandoned his earlier anti-Stalinism and recognition that Cuba was not a proletarian revolution. Unfortunately Karol does not show why Fidel never adopted the Chinese model, one which he claims is more suited to Cuba. What was Fidel looking for by blindly returning to the fold of Russia's bloc?
A "sugar obsession" characterized Cuba's new line. Despite warnings of economists that a ten million ton zafra [harvest] in 1970 was unattainable (Dumont argued that 1975 would be a more realistic date for such a goal), Castro made it a matter of honor to fulfill the revolution's goals. Emphasizing political spirit and good will- a factor Karol ignored in his Russia 1930's comparison- the harvest brought temporarily renewed optimism, as any Venceremos will tell you. Yet the cost of the failure was staggering: serious dislocations in the economy resulted because most of the labor force was diverted to reach the pipe dream. This winter, serious food shortages were reported in Havana.
SOCIALIST revolution remains a bigger battle than liberation from oppression. For Cuba, the real task started when Castro took power. But Fidel has yet to realize that socialism is more than an alliance with friendly allies and five year belt tightening programs. Socialism can only liberate if the people create new institutions to serve their interests efficiently and honestly. Only then will social relationships change.
There is of course great hope for the Cubans. The era of patchwork reforms must soon end; this reality is staring in Castro's face. At the end of last year's sugar harvest, Fidel gave a humble, highly self-critical speech. Hopefully he will come to recognize in his revaluation that the people through their own institutions must control their own existence.