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
There is a political
and conceptual
distinction to be
made between…
…DEVELOPMENT
…PROGRESS
“[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.”
A process of struggle to
control and distribute
the social surplus
An evolutionary process by
which human potentials
advance within epochs
To page 5
All creatures have to adapt to
the exigent conditions of their
material subsistence
Human beings “make history”, within
a social division of labour, the
relations of which condition the
“production of material life itself”
(and, necessarily, the mode of
exchange of commodities between
consumers and producers)
Marx 1977: 480.
Ultimately, the conditioning
circumstances of individuals’
experience in particular, and
social existence in general, are
the social relations of production
Individuals’ potentials
are socially contingent
Social intelligence, individual
reasoning and human
motivation, empathetically
adapt to the cooperative
exigencies of a deepening
division of labour.
To page 3
To page 3
2
From page 2
Human potentials
develop with the
evolution of
society
“We are what we are
because of enculturation,
plain and simple. This is not
true of any other species.”
Donald 2001: 151
From page 2
Advancing the ‘…capacity to connect to and
understand each other…’ (De Wall 2009b: 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.
Since the Neolithic Revolution (circa 8000-4000 B.C.), when agriculture
was first introduced (leading to settled, rather than nomadic life styles
and social surpluses could be stored, saved and invested), social
organization has been based on the control of surplus production
“[T]he whole history of mankind (since the
dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding
land in common ownership) has been a
history of class struggles, contests between
exploiting and exploited, ruling and
oppressed … [T]he history of these class
struggles forms a series of evolutions … a
proposition which is destined to do for history
what Darwin’s theory has done for biology…”
Frederick Engels’ 1888 Preface to the
English edition of the Communist Manifesto,
in, Marx and Engels 1985: 62 and 63,
emphasis added.
The social relations of production
have evolved through distinct epochs
To page 4
3
From page 3
“The [written] history of all hitherto society is the history of class
struggles … Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and
serf, guild-master 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.
In this epic…
“The Babylonian empire [circa 2000 BC]
deserves a special place in … history … for it
was there that the ‘emergence of the individual
in a literate society … occurs for the first time’.”
Rifkin 2009 [quoting Logan 1986]:194.
Since the Babylonian empire, particular forms of oppression and
exploitation, have been intrinsic to: conquest and slavery, land and
serfdom, and capital and wage labour; as distinct modes of production.
The Roman Empire [44B.C. to 4th Century A.D.] was a story…
“…of latifundia and death squads, masters and slave, patriarchs and subordinated
women … plundered provinces … a struggle between the plutocratic few and the
indigent many … featuring corrupt politicians, money-driven elections, and the
political assassination of popular leaders … I leave it to the reader to decide
whether any of this might resonate with the temper of our own times.”
Parenti 2003: 11
The “temper of our own times” reverberates to the social relation of commodity production
(with the accumulation of capital effected through market exchange and the realization of
surplus value as profits, interest and rent) – see, Cole forthcoming: Chapter 5
To page 5
4
From page 4
From page 2
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―globalization
This tendency, is…
“…in every respect the most important law of modern
political economy … It is the most important law from
the historical [evolutionary] standpoint. It is a law which
despite its simplicity, has never before been grasped
and, even less, consciously articulated.”
The evolution of the capitalist epoch has been impelled by the persistent
tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, and development initiatives continually
re-structure society to augment profitability, increasing the production of
surplus value (and revenues of profit, rent, and interest) to restore capital
accumulation (See Cole forthcoming: Chapter 5)
Marx 1977: 748, emphasis added.
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 6
5
From page 5
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, the increasing irrelevance of representative
democracy in the determination of economic and social policy, etc…
“At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of
society [the division of labour] come into conflict with the existing
relations of production [commodity relations] … From forms of
development of the productive forces these relations turn into their
fetters. Then begins an [evolutionary] era of social revolution.”
Marx 1976: 212, emphasis added
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 7
6
From page 6
“…[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 free-trade agreements, privatization of public services,
political corruption, and struggle to protect indigenous rights,
land entitlements, employment, and the like
To page 8
Biekart 2005.
7
From page 7
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 9
8
From page 8
In all of these instances, debates about the role of the state in development―which hitherto
had been marginalized in the dominant discourse of neo-liberalism―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
This is what an “era of social revolution” feels like:
it is a transformation of the human mind;
individuals’ come to be aware that their experience
is conditioned by the social relations of production:
i.e. the class struggle for profits, interest and rent
To page 10
This is the
process of
praxis
People’s feelings of the
injustice of experience,
become knowledge of
the exploitation of
existence
With social organization
such knowledge becomes
the basis for revolutionary,
political, change
9
From page 9
The competitive dynamic of capital
accumulation impels the division of
labour to expand and deepen
“[I]ncessant revolutions in the methods of production … and [the] need to
expand … [the] scale of production … merely as a means of selfpreservation … simultaneously… [leads to a] concentration of capital …
[the] employment of capitals on a larger scale … [and] its centralization,
i.e., the swallowing up of the small capitalists by the big…”
Marx 1972b: 244, 245 and 246, emphasis added.
“… more and more [people are] enslaved under a
power alien to them … a power which has
become more and more enormous and, in the
last instance turns out to be the world market.’
Regionally, capitalists organize themselves to protect and further
their (local) elite interests as the globalized “world market” comes
under the control of a international, capitalist, ruling class (which has
reached its apogee in the era of financial globalization)
Marx and Engels 1977: 55, emphasis in original
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].
To page 11
10
From page 10
As the world market developed in the Americas since Iberian mercantilist excursions of the 17th century (see Galeano 2009), and the
global hegemony of international finance capital was consolidated, when, in August 1971, US President Regan unilaterally repudiated
the Bretton Woods international trading regime, established in 1944, initiatives in regional organization have become more inclusive
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
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).
La Unión de Naciones
Suramericanas [UNASUR ]
(Union of South American
Nations);
La Alianza Bolivariana para los
Pueblos de Nuestra América
[ALBA] (Bolivarian Alliance for
the Peoples of Our America).
To page 12
To page 14
The concern is to reinforce 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
11
From page 11
The intention is to adapt existing
institutions of regional integration,
to the remorseless, implacable,
inclusivity, of international
competitive markets in the age
of globalization.
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)
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
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
Such a sentiment had already been
voiced in 2005, at the fourth summit of
MECOSUR in Mar del Plata (Argentina).
Nestor Kirchner, the then president of
Argentina, pin-pointed the source of
maladministration in the Americas precisely:
“[T]he United States has the inescapable and
inexcusable responsibility for poverty and
social tragedy in Latin America.” (Wallerstein
2005, author’s translation).
To page 13
12
From page 12
An analysis corroborated at the November 26
2010 South American Summit (of UNASUR) by
Argentine Presidenta Cristina Fernandez de
Kirchener, and Brazilian President Lula da Silva
It was afirmed that the region had to be politically strengthened, not “turning
our backs on the world, or on globalization, but simply seeing the world from
where we live, with our own [national] formulas, projects and programs”
(Kirchener), because, “none of our countries will really be prosperous, without
all of us being also prosperous” (Lula) (see, INSIDECOSTARICA 2010).
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
Already within MERCOSUR there had been competitive conflicts between
Argentina and Brazil, and in the ambit of UNASUR, Brazil is generally seen
of usurping the imperialist role of the United States to the disadvantage of,
and exploiting, weaker, less competitive nations in the region
“Far from showing greater benevolence, than European or United States
firms, towards their regional competitors, Brazilian enterprises create great
tension in the region. Brazilian elites do not see the economic tensions within
Latin America and so not set limits on the activity of their companies.”
Mathias 2008, author’s translation. See also the Economist 2009, and Katz
2010.
13
From page 11
The word “alba” translates as
“dawn of the day” (Velázquez
Spanish and English Dictionary)
The primary areas of activity are the…
“…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.”
The institution of ALBA focuses
on regionally addressing domestic,
communal needs and social
opportunities as the dawning of an
alternative future for Latin America
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 15
14
From page 14
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).
There is not space here to fully describe
and explain the progressive initiatives of
the conception and institution of ALBA,
but see Cole 2010b, and 2011, and
forthcoming, Chapters 2 and 7.
To page 16
15
From page 15
In Latin America, development initiatives within CELAC and UNASUR, as an
expression of capitalist hegemonic power, will, as the “Tendency for the Rate of
Profit to Fall” increasingly takes regional effect, become economically critical,
socially exclusive, politically exhausted, and ultimately morally bankrupt
Historically, the capitalist mode of production
is developed by ruling elites to exploit the
masses to the full extent possible (offsetting
the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall),
and eventually, as the injustice of social
existence becomes intolerable there begins
an era of revolution: as with the decline of the
Roman Empire (and slavery as mode of
production) from the 4th century; the demise
of feudalism in Europe from the 12th century;
and the demise of capitalism from the mid20th century
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 voice and
presence in political parties, at first nationally and
later regionally by uniting within something like
ALBA, an era of revolution will be in train.
To page 17
16
From page 16
“Revolutions are unique moments in which the forgotten, the oppressed and the
humiliated―those who make the world with their hands, bodies and minds―rise
up and suspend the time of contempt to inaugurate a new time; moments,
unforgettable whether long or short, of revelation of their own being, their own
intelligence, and their own inheritance, which is that of all human beings.”
“[Revolution] is a sense of history … it is being
treated and treating others like human beings …
achieving emancipation by ourselves and
through our own efforts … it is a profound
conviction that no power in the world can crush
the power of truth and ideas…”
Hylton and Thomson 2007: xviii.
Castro 2000, emphasis added.
Socialist development, and the ALBA initiative of regional
unification, is an interminable, epochal, mode of transition,
towards the qualitatively distinct and progressive
concatenation of social relations which is communism.
“What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it
has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as
it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect,
economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth
marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.”
Karl Marx (1972a), emphasis added, quoted Guevara 1964: 186.
17
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