Juan Valdéz Paz: Social researcher, Cuba

...In its most general sense, planning is society's ability to prioritize certain objectives over others and thereby to regulate its development politically...

...In this broad sense it is necessary to preserve planning as an essential component Cuba's political and social model...

...We will see how this is perceived by the political elite...

...One is the level of socioeconomic development that can generate an economic surplus large enough to permit a certain degree of equality...

...And the left, from the point of view of being a political expression, has been weakened, divided and subdivided...

...For this surplus large enough to support new Cuban society, a private and a mixed sector will the economic model not be sufficient...

...Like the left can resolve, because it is psyit offers a chologically difficult for the old leaders to change course...

...In general terms we can say that the level of social equality depends on at least two factors...

...The Latin American left, even under a minimal program, always implies a proposal of changes in existing Latin American society: profound structural changes in Latin American societies that create the possibility of true democracy...

...In fact, if you analyze what is studied in academia, and the issues treated in the media, you will find a large quantity of issues which in the 1980s would not have been permitted...

...Consequently, for a long time we will have a level of inequality which will be greater than that which we used to have...

...Certainly the important role that Cuba plays in Latin America has changed in recent years...

...Now, it's not even clear when the problems of the initial crisis will end or when we will begin to deal with the problems brought about by the solutions to that initial crisis-the strategies of survival, the economic adjustment, the structural changes, etc...

...How do you see that role today and in the medium and long-term future, especially in relation to the Latin American left...

...The Sio Paulo Forum has achieved this in the most difficult moments for the left...

...This phase is characterized by ideological diversion, an attempt to influence academic sectors as well as individuals or sectors which might have an important role to play in the reproduction of Cuban society...

...This is what I am referring to when I say that all this forms part of a contradiction...

...We are seeing something like an ideological offensive of imperialism, a taking advantage of the circumstances of the national crisis and an attempt to establish contacts and channels of influence...

...of the economy to appropriate a certain part of the surplus for social purposes...

...Lately we felt we had to occupy ourselves with internal Cuban themes because we couldn't engage in interna- Neoliber tional dialogue without knowing what to say about what was happening in to be re Cuba...

...I think we are in a moment of disorientation for the left...

...this is producing certain things that the people are making use of before they are authorized, and this then becomes the object of attention...

...What the left has to do is develop an alternative program to social democracy which is at least minimally anti-capitalist and antiimperialist enough to bring real change to the region...

...There is a devastating economic crisis, but there are manifestations of the social crisis that are not economic issues per se...

...And this is happening at a time when the left is very weak...

...The left is also characterized in relative terms, and at other times we understand the left by its program and its proposals...

...There are fewer social effects than one might expect and up to now there has been little political expression of the economic crisis...

...If the level of inequality continues to grow what can be done about it, given the circumstances of Cuba today...

...I think that one of the things that has made the crisis evident is the fact that our equality was based upon the availability of resources and a surplus that weren't ours...

...The term "left" is used very laxly to describe groups in the opposition...

...The opposite would be the market and thereby private interests determining society's objectives...

...Neoliberalism tends to be reduced to the politics of economic adjustment, but it is something much more complete...

...We can contextualize the moment which inaugurated the current restrictive political period...

...Historically these differences have been arbitrated by the country's leadership, sometimes leaning one way, sometimes the other, but always within a process of mediation...

...Since the 1980s the situation has evolved as the result of a political opening and in part the result of some things that have occurred that escape political control...

...there are more poor, there is more exploitation, more insecurity...

...I think that the level of demobilization, of loss of militancy, of ideological disorientation, of the lack of an alternative program, is very great on the left...

...We only have to remember that the United States uses ideology as a weapon, and it is currently intensifying its ideological campaign...

...It is a philosophical discourse about the individual, about nature...

...The other is the existence of the political will, or of political forces with the will to impose and maintain a certain level of equality...

...We must reinvent a kind of planning that is possible and viable under our present conditions, above all now that we have been immersed in the world market...

...Because it was Fidel and because it was a public speech, it was read, if I remember correctly, as one which projected policies and strategies for the immediate period...

...policy...

...The political model, the model of socialism will have to be appropriate to the problems of the times...

...There was a direction toward more political openness for a while, but in the last year or so it seems like there has been a closing of political space in Cuba...

...The intellectual eption of sectors have been the most beaten down and the most disoriented by the rld and crisis...

...IC al n( or ci IC the woi can rear society co I think your question raises a problem: what are we going to categorize as the left...

...Had we been left to our own destiny, or in a situation similar to that of today, even with a preferential trade treaty with the Soviets but one of a different magnitude, we would not have had the levels of equality we had nor the level of social security we achieved...

...It was the speech given by Fidel Castro on July 26, 1995 in Santiago de Cuba...

...We have to elaborate a project that takes the questions of the nation and the periphery into account...

...It therefore seems to me that behind the policy of adjusting to the new reality, we can reclaim our own dynamic of development...

...This goes against the grain of Fidel's warning of the mid-1980s, that the social conditions of Latin America are ism tends worse...

...This call by the revolutionary leadership is more than justified and is situated in the U.S.-Cuba conflict...

...Contrary to the assumptions of the pc the current official policies, we were less concerned with the dialogue with ecoi our enemies than with the questions raised by the friends of the revolution...

...recomposition, which is a problem we haven't sufficiently studied...

...The left therefore has to offer not only an economic alternative but a total alternative...

...Our compafiero Vasconi, who worked with us at CEA until his death last year, always called our attention to this...

...You can see it in the left's own fora...

...The neoliberal discourse isn't pure economics liberated from the state...

...All the policies which lead us out of this initial crisis will generate a new Cuban society with other social aspirations, with other unintended and undesired contradictions...

...Political events themselves are moving Cuban politics forward...

...I ent, but think this is a generational problem, a problem that only a new generation of re...

...1uced to That is to say that the masses, or the itics of social sectors who can be organized for social change are more numerous omic than ever...

...How do you understand the difference between the Cuban planning process now and the planning before the crisis...

...In this society there are tendencies that co-exist...

...But being the underdeveloped country that we are, the possibility of an egalitarian distribution of the surplus is limited by the size of that surplus and the necessity of a model that gives incentives to productivity...

...It is more...

...Bureaucracy has always been a theme of study here, but not with the political connotations that it now carries...

...To overcome the crisis, can we speak simply in economic terms...

...There are groups and sectors that share the revolutionary commitment but have different perceptions and propose different policies...

...Although it was always said that the plan would be discussed by the workers and the masses, the reality was totally bureaucratic...

...The alternative to Marxism is liberalism," he used to say, "not simply because it has a different economic project, but because like Marxism, it has a complete conception of the world, and can rearticulate society completely...

...I believe we have to reinvent a discourse in which the national question and the "third-world" question are better articulated with the socialist project...

...The Sio Paulo Forum has been a success in the sense that curiously, when the left has been its weakest in terms of proposals and self-definition, it has achieved great political consensus in the region...

...So I think that one way to explain how the revolution has been able to get through these years of devastating economic crisis is that the preservation of a certain level of social security, the political culture and the national symbolism all have impeded the economic crisis from having a symmetrical effect in other dimensions of life...

...They cling to the concern raised by Fidel about the current phase of U.S...

...I am not, however, saying that there have been no manifestations of the crisis in social and political spheres...

...This is the challenge that lies ahead...

...For this new Cuban society, the economic model will have to be reformulated...

...Sociology in Cuba, for example, currently deals with questions of 27 27 VOL XXXI, NO 1 JULY/AUG 1997VOICES ON THE LEFT the family, the problem of prostitution-even male prostitution-pollution, bureaucracy, etc...

...In my opinsociety with other ion, to preserve these gains--edusocial aspirations, with cation and health care for all and a other unintended and certain level of undesired social security, for example--a contradictions...

...I believe there is a possibility-we will see how it works out in practice-of moving toward a kind of planning which relies more on incentives and less on directives, is more focused at the macro level, and where a few things are regulated by the market if the market can do it better than the plan...

...But I also think that the planning of the future should be accompanied by a much higher level of social participation than before...

...I think it will have been a positive element if the Forum can create an opening that permits the formulation of a strategy which can become a referendum for the radical left...

...ticulate The left has come apart but the right has achieved a notable capacity for mpletely...

...This explains in part what happened to the collective with which I was associated, CEA, whose work for many years was devoted to international politics and the projection of Cuba in the international arena...

...It seems to me that by changing the conception of planning we have the opportunity to democratize planning...

...Isn't the crisis one that permeates all of society...

...More than a new political orientation, the new situation has produced a political permissiveness...

...Since then, certain voices linked to the old Soviet Marxism that had been quiet are again being listened to...

...I think there are manifestations of the crisis in all dimensions of society but they don't seem to me to be symmetrical...

...This is an absolutely insufficient characterization of the left...

...will have to be There will have to be a state sector reformulated...

...adjust It was the dialogue with the left, with it is m our friends, that forced us to turn our attention to what was happening inter- Marxism, nally, and to treat internal events with the tools of social science, to interpret total con what was going on...

...I think that what is going to happen is that the conservative sectarian sectors-sectors of the Party, the university, society-will place themselves behind this call...

...1NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS "0 .0 0: 26 LIF C B A IVOICES ON THE LEFT At the political level, insofar as All the policies which the revolutionary power can guarlead us out of this antee its continuity, the political initial crisis will will to preserve its gains will still generate a new Cuban exist...

...They have begun to voice statements, worries, old-style interpretations of events...