Though Cowards Flinch

During the recent Communist Party Congress, the ‘cuentapropismo’ initiative was adopted after being presented to the country by the Cuban Trade Unions. It will consist of the legalisation of small enterprises, pertinent at a time when many state jobs are being cut, and the private sector increasingly relied upon.

Parallels are already being made to this initiative and the New Economics Policy (NEP) in Russia circa 1921.

Back then there was an economic crisis of epic proportions, war communism became the bane of the peasantry life, which culminated in mass refusals to plant more food than could be eaten owing to the confiscations by the state. Millions of Russians in the countryside had died from famine, which led to an uprising by the peasants, joined by sailors and other workers against war communism policies, who were eventually defeated by the Red Army in what came to be known as the Kronstadt Rebellion.

The NEP was a policy taken by Lenin to allow private enterprise limited freedom in order to raise productivity; in his words it was taking one step backwards in order to take two steps forwards later. It was not a long-term policy, but its use would take as long as it needed. It has been speculated that had Lenin not died a few years after its inception, and had Stalin not committed to central planning and the dismantling of NEP policies, laws for private capital might have been relaxed way past their eventual demise in 1928.

It was of ethical concern to all those involved with the Communist party – particularly the Left Opposition both within and out of the Bolsheviks – but the concession was that trade unions would protect workers in both the public and private sectors.

However, with the state legislating for the creation of a class enemy within the working class itself – the Nepman (rich business people) or the kulacs (better off peasantry) – and the fact that in 1928 Russian production had begun reaching levels not seen since 1914, the bargaining chip of the trade union within an economy which seems to be working, seems hardly a concession towards the achievement of full socialism.

If Lenin’s policy was towards a capitalism mandated by the state, would he really have bent down to union pressure in the face of workers’ rights versus a productive economy? In other words, since Lenin sacrificed socialism – the project he had worked all his life to pursue – for the gain of production, come what may – would he have sacrificed the conditions of a worker in the private sector, against trade union best wishes, for that same goal of increased industrial and agricultural production?

Unfortunately he died before any substantial answer to this question could be made, but its possibility cannot be ignored.

The difference between Russia and Cuba is that while Lenin freed up capital, not once did he give the impression that he’d stopped believing in the socialist model. However on the other hand, even Fidel Castro has been explicit on this: “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore”.

This is where the comparison falls short. Lenin believed that a spell of capitalism would increase productivity – and it did – and then they could re-join the road to socialism. Then he died. Raul Castro has mentioned nothing about the cuentapropismo being a short term measure, in fact judging by his brother’s words, it looks quite the opposite. If history is anything to go by, for socialism to return to Cuba, Raul Castro needs to die. But then, perhaps if history is anything to go by, a new economic policy wouldn’t be such a bad thing as far as production is concerned.

The world has turned upside down, at least that was what we thought. Tony Blair and George Bush were liberal heroes in the Middle East while the left back home were doing their best to excuse Islamic fanaticism as a response to imperialism.

More sense was being spoken by Sarkozy on the economy than many of our left-leaning economist MPs, and while US politicians were all bending over backwards to seem the most comfortable with a mosque within three minutes walking from the site of 9/11, while reminding us of the peaceful message of Ramadan, radicals such as Hugo Chavez and that Scottish hottie George Galloway were cuddling up to an Iranian president so seemingly nonchalant that a woman in his country could be stoned to death for a crime, proof of which would not fool a duck on acid, one wondered whether the world would soon just burn up and implode.

But, behold, some sense has been restored. Think what you will of Castro, I remember in my own days of ardent support, all I had in my intellectual toolbox to return the question of human rights was something along the lines of: well it’s better than the record of Saudi Arabia, and imperialist countries trade with them, don’t they!

A fair point, even to this day, but only serves to criticise the west’s stupidity for trading with Wahhabi catastrophists, does not in any way, shape or form exonerate Cuba’s own dissenter prison population.

In fact, Castro has recently come out against Ahmadinejad calling him an anti-Semite for “denying the holocaust” while urging “Tehran to acknowledge the “unique” history of antisemitism and understand why Israelis feared for their existence”.

Some have rightly commented that this could put Hugo Chavez – who will soon meet Venezuelan Jews to prove once and for all that he is not an anti-Semite – in a peculiar situation with the Iranian premier. Might put Galloway in the doghouse too, as in 2006 he published the Fidel Castro handbook while calling him the “the living person he most admires“.

While this isn’t gamechanging stuff, it certainly does restore faith that international leftism is not a catch-all attachment to the underdog – which in recent times has meant all manner of disparate politicians and politics uniting under the flimsy banner of anti-Americanism.

Such a union was destined to fail, and this is preferable too, for we can’t have good progressives mixing with election-fiddling theocrats with a bent for killing innocent women – that just wouldn’t do.

Nothing has changed my feelings towards Castro, but I’m glad he has done this, because many socialists look up to him – Chavez and Galloway noted – and this might provide a necessary blow to the head for those whose oiled-gloves are trying to juggle egalitarian principles with Islamist horse feathers.