A PRESENTATION TO THE
CONFERENCE:
CUBA IN THE 21ST CENTURY
KEN COLE
April 17 2012
“We all have our convictions … [and we] can all influence each other. In the long run we shall
all reach similar conclusions.
My deepest convictions [are]: the incredible and unprecedented globalization … is a product
of historical evolution … Is it a reversible process? … No … Is it sustainable? No. Will it
subsist for long? Absolutely not … Will it last decades? Yes, only decades…
How will such a transition take place? We do not know … Will it be through deep and
catastrophic crises? Unfortunately, this is most likely, almost inevitable and it will happen
through many different ways and forms of struggle…
Who will be the builders of the new world? The men and women that inhabit our planet. What
will be their basic weapon? Ideas will be, and consciousness. Who will sow them, cultivate
them and make them invincible? You will.
Is it a utopia, just one more dream among so many others? … As the most visionary of the
sons and daughters of this island [José Martí] said: ‘Today’s dreams are tomorrow’s
realities.”
Fidel Castro 1999: 63.
1
Human beings, historically have
progressed as they have deepened and
extended the social division of labour
“[W]e must begin by stating the first premise of all
human existence and, therefore, of all history, the
premise, namely, that men must be in a position to
live in order to be able to “make history”. But life
involves before everything else eating and drinking, a
habitation, clothing and many other things. The first
historical act is thus the production of the means to
satisfy these needs, the production of material life
itself … [is the] fundamental condition of all history.”
In the 21st century human existence has
progressed to a global division of
labour―globalization―which, oxymoronically
has been experienced as underdevelopment
Marx 1977: 480.
The social relations of
production are the conditioning
circumstances of social
existence in general
Social intelligence, individual
reasoning and human
motivation, empathetically
adapt to the cooperative
exigencies of a deepening
division of labour.
“We are what we are because of
enculturation, plain and simple. This
is not true of any other species.”
To page 3
Donald 2001: 151
2
From page 2
Advancing the ‘…capacity to connect to and
understand each other…’ (De Wall 2009: 225,
emphasis added) towards the ideal of all people,
empathetically interacting with each other.
“[I]n communist society … nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can
become accomplished in any branch he wishes … [O]nly with the universal development
of the productive force [division of labour] is [such] a universal intercourse [relations]
between men established … [C]ommunism can only have a “world-historical” existence.”
Marx & Engels 1977: 54, and 56, emphasis in original.
However,
“The history of all hitherto society is the history of class struggles
… Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,
stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an
uninterrupted, now hidden, now in open fight, a fight that each
time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at
large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
Marx and Engels 1985: 79.
To page 4
3
From page 3
In contemporary, capitalist, times…
“…callous cash payment … has drowned the most heavenly
ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has …
set up that single unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In one
word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it
has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”
Marx and Engels 1985: 82, emphasis added.
By the 21st century, the division of labour (the conditioning
circumstance of human life) developed into global
relations of “callous cash payment”, and “that single
unconscionable freedom – Free Trade” had evolved into
the “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” of
unregulated, international, financial capitalism
The class struggle is global (albeit that the struggle is based
upon everyday, local, experiences of exploitation and injustice)
With competitive exchange, there is an emergent…
“…incompatibility between the productive development of society and its
hitherto existing relations of production…” which is expressed “… in bitter
contradictions, crises, spasms … [and] these regularly returning
catastrophes lead to their repetition on a higher scale…’
Marx 1977: 749 and 750, emphasis added.
To page 5
4
From page 4
In the 21st century the “contradictions, crises and spasms” of
globalized capitalism have assumed the guise of global
economic crises, financial speculation, national debt,
unemployment, impoverishment and widening inequality,
fiscal austerity and limited social provision of services, etc…
The contradictions of globalized capitalism
came to a head in Latin America in 1982
The “debt crisis” ensued when Mexico's Finance
Minister, Jesus Silva-Herzog, declared that foreign
debt obligations could no longer be honored
In response, commercial banks reduced or halted new lending in Latin America and
refused to refinance billions of dollars of short-term loans. And in the last two decades
of the twentieth century, every Latin American economy, with the exception of Cuba,
has been “structurally adjusted” by the World Bank and the IMF to preserve the
financial integrity of global finance (euphemistically justified as “debt relief”)
To page 6
5
From page 5
“…[plunging] Latin America [in the 1980s] into its deepest
crisis this [twentieth] century … Deregulated economies …
synonymous with unprecedented social polarization, …
plummeting living standards … and multi-billion dollar
fortunes … [led to the] massive pillage of the economy (by
foreign and local investors and bankers) and the state (by
elected politicians and non-elected officials).”
Petras and Morely 1992: 7.
The 1980s became a “lost decade”: average per capita income in Latin America
declined by 0.9% per annum in the 1980s and by 1.5% in the 1990s (Robinson
2008): and between 1983 and 1992 the overall number of people living in poverty
increased from 78 to 150 million (Korzeniewicz and Smith 2000)
Denied any semblance of democratic control over their lives
by the machinations of political institutions adapting national
economic activity and local enterprise to accommodate the
rapacious needs of international capital, people organized
themselves into social movements to defend against the
(local) effects of (global) economic exploitation
“From the early 1990s … social movements
of very different backgrounds have been at
the forefront of social protest, at the local as
well as at the national and supranational
level ... there have been impressive
mobilizations and campaigns that cannot be
considered as isolated activities.”
Social movements structure political
dissent around opposition to freetrade agreements, privatization of
public services, political corruption,
and struggle to protect indigenous
rights, land entitlements,
employment, and the like
To page 7
Biekart 2005.
6
From page 6
However, social change necessitates
institutional organization orientated to the
emergence of an alternative social environment
In this regard, since the final years of the twentieth
century, there has been an ideological sea change: there
is an evolving social consciousness amongst los humildes
[the disadvantaged masses] (See Dominguez 2009)
There has been a Pink Tide in Latin American politics
December 1998 Hugo Chávez was elected President of Venezuela: August 1999 Bharrat Jagdeo, of the People's Progressive Party, was
elected President of Guyana: October 2002, Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers' Party, was elected President of Brazil, reelected in
October 2006, to be succeeded on January 1 2011 by Dilma Rousseff (also of the Workers Party): in May 2003 Néstor Carlos Kirchner, of
the Frente para la Victoria [FPV ] (Front for Victory), was sworn in as President of Argentina and in October 2007, Cristina Fernández
Kirchner succeeded him, and was reelected on October 23 2011: October 2004 in Uruguay, Tabaré Ramón Vázquez Rosas, of the Frente
Amplio (Broad Front) coalition, was elected President and in elections of 29th November 2009 he was succeeded by José Mujica, exTupamaro National Liberation Front guerrilla and activist of the 1970s and 80s: January 2006, Evo Morales of the Movimiento al Socialismo
[MAS] (Movement for Socialism), was elected President of Bolivia, and was re-elected on December 7 2009 for the period 2010-2015:
March 2006, Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria, of the Socialist Party, was elected the first female President of Chile; in April 2006, Ollanta
Humala, of the Peruvian Nationalist Party, came within 5% of being elected President, although he subsequently gained an undisputed
victory in the Presidential elections of June 6 2011; in July 2006, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the Party of Democratic Revolution, lost
the election for President of Mexico by less than 1% in a disputed contest; in November 2006 José Daniel Ortega Savedra, of the
Sandinista National Liberation Front, regained the Presidency of Nicaragua; in November 2006, in Ecuador, Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado
who founded the Alianza PAIS-Patria Altiva i Soberana (Proud and Sovereign Fatherland Alliance) was elected President and reelected in
April 2009: in September 2007 Alvaró Colom, leader of the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza [UNE] (National Union of Hope) became
Guatemala’s first left-leaning president in fifty three years: April 2008 Fernando Lugo, a Roman Catholic bishop, of the Christian Democratic
Party, a party integrated into a coalition of more than a dozen opposition parties and social movements, known as the Patriotic Alliance for
Change, was elected President of Paraguay: March 2009, Mauricio Funes of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, a movement
which fought a 12 year guerrilla war up until the early 1990s, won the presidential elections in El Salvador.
To page 8
7
From page 7
In all of these instances, debates about the role of the
state in development―which hitherto had been
marginalized in the dominant neo-liberal discourse of
“structural adjustment”―moved to centre stage.
This political “Pink Tide”, albeit with different emphases
and in distinct contexts, addressed development
strategies and social policies which were intended to
advance workers' rights, and there was a commitment to
poverty alleviation and social reforms
“The Latins are defying the American Empire”
Perkins 2007: 79
Historically to try to contain the power
of the “American Empire” Latin
American elites have organized
themselves within institutions of
“regional economic integration”
To page 9
8
From page 8
In Latin America for instance: La Organización de Estados Centroamericanos [ODECA] (Organisation of Central American States)
(1951), becoming La Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana [SICA] (Central American Integration System) (1991); the Latin
American Free Trade Association [LAFTA] (1960); Central American Common Market [CACM] (1961); Caribbean Free Trade
Zone (1968), which later evolved into the Caribbean Community and Common Market [CARICOM] (1973); the Cartagena
Agreement launched the Andean Group (1969), becoming the Comunidad Andina de Naciones [CAN] (Community of Andean
Nations) (1996); La Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración [ALADI] (Latin American Integration Association) (1980); Mercado
Común del Sur [MERCOSUR] (Southern Common Market) (1985); Grupo de Rio (Rio Group) (1986); El Sistema de Integración
Central Americana [SICA] (Central American Integration System) (1991); Plan Puebla Panamá [PPP] (Puebla-Panama Plan)
(2001); La Unión de Naciones Suramericanas [UNASUR] (Union of South American Nations) (2007); and most recently, (2011) La
Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y del Caribe (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) [CELAC].
In the globalized world of the 21st century there are three comprehensive regional initiatives to advance and
protect Latin American interests (albeit that these hemispheric, elemental, concerns are variously defined)
La Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos
y del Caribe [CELAC] (Community of Latin
American and Caribbean States),
established February 23 2011
To page 10
La Unión de Naciones
Suramericanas [UNASUR ] (Union
of South American Nations);
To page 11
La Alianza Bolivariana para los
Pueblos de Nuestra América [ALBA]
(Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples
of Our America).
To page 12
9
From page 9
CELAC is inclusive of every state in the
Americas except: USA, Canada; Caicos,
Turks, Montserrat, Virgin Islands, Leeward
Islands; Puerto Rico, St. Croix; Guadeloupe,
Martinique, French Guyana (the last three
groups of nations, still colonial territories, are
respectively administered by the British,
United States and French governments).
The concern is to preserve national
sovereignty and domestic political and
legal, institutions, in the light of
continued, regional, deprecation of the
rule of international law by successive
US governments.
In spite of US President Barrack Obama’s
promise to set a new tone of respect and
work towards a “…peaceful, prosperous,
and democratic hemisphere…” (FPF
2009), with the US being a “…friend of
each nation and every man, woman and
child who seeks a future of peace and
dignity…” (NYT 2009)
US inexpiable, political actions under
Barrak Obama’s presidency, in
Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador,
Paraguay, Haiti and Honduras, and a
renewed capacity to “execute expedient
warfare” (from military bases in
Colombia) throughout the Americas,
suggests that United States’, regional,
imperialist ambitions, remain unabated
10
From page 9
UNASUR combines two trading blocs: the MERCOSUR [1985]
(Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Colombia); and the Andean
Community [1996] (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru); additionally
including Chile, Guyana, Surinam and Venezuela
UNASUR is a pact modeled on the European Union and is
an initiative in economic integration (the Constitutive Treaty
being signed in Brasilia, May 23 2008)
The intention is to adapt existing institutions of regional
integration, to the remorseless, implacable, inclusivity, of
international competitive markets in the age of globalization.
The problem is perceived to be the management of globalization
to expiate United States “unfair” economic exploitation, and is not
as issue of capitalist globalization per se
Optimistically, the institution of UNASUR may
temporarily assuage the “contradictions,
crises, spasms which regularly return to
capitalist economies, each time repeated on a
higher scale”, although, at the cost of invoking
“many different ways and forms of struggle”, of
which Fidel Castro warned in the opening
quote to this presentation
11
From page 9
The institution of ALBA focuses on regionally
addressing domestic, communal needs and
social opportunities as the dawning of an
alternative future for Latin America
ALBA is an initiative in political unity not
simply an institution for economic integration
The primary areas of activity are the…
The word “alba” translates as
“dawn of the day” (Velázquez
Spanish and English Dictionary)
“…promotion and development of a peaceful democratic culture
focusing on integration in Latin America and the Caribbean, through
exchanges of ideas and implementation of social, economic, and
cultural development projects; eradication of extreme poverty;
education; combating corruption; employment generation; and
elimination of discrimination for reasons of gender or race.”
Carmen Jacqueline Giménez Tellería, President of the ALBA
Governing Council.
Tellería, 2006, emphasis added.
ALBA, originally conceived as La Alternativa Bolivariana para las
Americas y el Caribeño (the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and
the Caribbean), was first voiced after the first meeting between (the soon
to become President of Venezuela) Hugo Chávez, and Fidel Castro, in
December 1994, in Havana (see, Elizalde and Báez 2005)
On December 14 2004, in Havana, the first declaration
and agreement made under the framework of ALBA was
signed between Cuba and Venezuela
To page 13
12
From page 12
Subsequently: Bolivia joined April 29 2006; Nicaragua January 11 2007; Dominica
January 26 2008; Honduras August 26 2008 (although after the coup of June 28 2009
which deposed democratically elected President Manual Zelaya, the United States
backed right-wing regime of Roberto Micheletti withdrew from ALBA); and St Vincent
and the Grenadines, Ecuador, and Antigua and Barbuda June 24 2009.
At the IVth Extraordinary Summit in June 2009, convened to
receive St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ecuador, and Antigua
and Barbuda, into the ALBA fold, the name was altered to the
Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América
(Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America
Reflecting that this process of unification was no
longer a political ambition but “…a geopolitical,
regional, platform of economic power … embracing
eighty million people, with an annual product of six
hundred million dollars and reserves of gas,
petroleum, water and fertile land…’ (Chávez 2009).
In 8 years there have been: 10 Presidential
Summits; the establishment of an ALBA Bank; a
regional trading currency (the SUCRE); the
founding of TELESUR; an ALBA Health Ministry
in Havana; 3 Olympic style Games in Havana;
many cultural and tourism initiatives; etc…; but
most importantly, there is a bond of mutual
solidarity and support to regionally progress “21st
Century Socialism” (see Cole: 2008; 2010a;
2010b; 2011; forthcoming)
13
In Latin America, development initiatives within CELAC and UNASUR, will, as the
“crises, spasms which regularly return to capitalist economies”, become economically
critical, socially exclusive, politically exhausted, and ultimately morally bankrupt
The humildes of the Americas, at first as individuals, and later organized within
social movements, will struggle to oppose the local injustice of global exploitation
As disaffected people search for meaning to their (globalized) existence, and,
find a political voice, at first locally, then nationally, and later regionally by
uniting within something like ALBA, an era of revolution will be in train
“That humanity has no alternative but to change direction cannot be doubted. How will it change?
What new forms of political, economic and social life will be adopted? This is the most difficult
question to answer … In this the subjective factor will play the most important role…’
Fidel Castro, 2003: 52, emphasis added, author’s translation.
An understanding which (importantly) is distinct to that of (the current President of the Councils of State and Ministers) Raul Castro: “…everything
… depends on the success we have economically … Fundamental to ALBA’s success … is the economic question.” (Raul Castro 2012).
Fidel’s emphasis is on human progress: human beings evolving to become more
Raul’s emphasis is social development: people politically struggling to have more
While progress will lead to development, development (per se) will not lead to progress, and the periodic “crises
and spasms” of the capitalist world economy will return on a “higher scale”, and regional class struggles will
deepen: progress is based on “ideas and consciousness”. As José Martí advised, "It is knowledge that counts”
14
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