I heard someone refer to Cuba as state capitalist.
When I hear the same thing said about China or the old USSR, I can usually tell when ‘state capitalism’ is being used in good faith or not.
But with Cuba, I don’t know enough.
My instinct, based on little knowledge, is that Cuba is not ‘state capitalist’.
Is it?
What kind of economy does Cuba have?
“State capitalism” as a term comes from western ultra-leftist anti-USSR critiques. Unsurprisingly, they don’t apply it to their own bourgeois dictatorships, who have massive mostly state-run or funded industries like the military and finance. Or take for instance the student loan or utility industries in the US, much of which are state-owned (at the federal or state level), yet extract huge profits from the people (and use it to fund police and military, the two largest budget items at both levels, also state-run).
What matters most, is who holds political power, and in whose interest is the economy run. In socialist countries like China, the USSR, Cuba, the DPRK, capitalists are not organized as a class; individually they are subservient to the state, and capital does not rise above the level of political authority. Private industry exists under the thumb of the communists party. Markets also are shaped to serve the people’s needs above all.
Contrast that with western bourgeois dictatorships: capital stands above political power, regardless of the type of election system, number of parties, or appearance of public debate or a free press.
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good explanation!
Good points. Thanks!
“State capitalism” is an overused and poorly defined term. By some definitions state capitalism could be a model like Singapore’s, or it could be a model like the USSR under Lenin’s NEP, or it could be present day China. It could even refer to Russia or Norway if you use it to refer to a state running certain industries as state owned capitalist enterprises. So first of all you have to decide what you mean when you say “state capitalist”. Is there even a difference between socialism and “state capitalism” at all or are they just synonyms?
Here is what Lenin says:
"[…] You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state-monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism!
[…] If [a huge capitalist undertaking] has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organisation of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking. In whose interest?
Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic. Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy—and then it is a step towards socialism.
For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly."
From “The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It” (1917)
He further elaborates on this point in “The Tax in Kind” (1921). I advise you to read especially this second text as it will clear up a lot of the confusion around this issue.
Here are the links:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm#v25zz99h-360
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/21.htm
Where exactly Cuba’s economy sits on the spectrum from fully planned like the DPRK on the one side to a mixed market economy like China on the other is not as important. What you need to be asking is what its political system is like. Is it the kind of “revolutionary democracy” that Lenin was talking about? And from what i know about Cuba i would say it most definitely is.
My favorite Lenin quote on this:
The state capitalism, which is one of the principal aspects of the New Economic Policy, is, under Soviet power, a form of capitalism that is deliberately permitted and restricted by the working class. Our state capitalism differs essentially from the state capitalism in countries that have bourgeois governments in that the state with us is represented not by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat, who has succeeded in winning the full confidence of the peasantry.
It’s a good quote.
And it highlights one of the problems. When you’re talking with a comrade, and they use the term in this way, you know you can dig in and figure out, e.g. how the working class exercises it’s power.
But most of the time, you hear it in the way you describe in your post above, and know to disregard almost everything else the person says on the matter.
I don’t know enough about Cuba to be able to know the way that it was described as state capitalist – i.e. in the pejorative or as a description of the way the state controls markets, etc.
My first thought was that as Cuba is cut off from most of the world due to embargos, it’s state doesn’t really control markets so much as it controls distribution and production. I had heard, too, that it’s main currency doesn’t work in the same way as ‘normal’ currencies; and that it recently needed to develop a second currency to ‘do capitalism’ in more of an old fashioned way.
But then, there must be something I’m missing, as it must participate somehow in foreign exchange, otherwise how do tourists, etc, spend money there?
The US embargo does really harm Cuba, but its not completely cut off from the world; they still export a lot of tobacco, sugar, and nickel . China, spain, venezuela, and russia are their main trade partners.
They had to diversify their economy during the “special period”, a time of economic hardship when the USSR fell and they had to find new industries besides sugar, and new trade partners. But they came through it, and still have the highest standard of living in the Caribbean and most of Latin America.
I’m not up to date on the currency stuff, but the US uses its dollar hegemony to wreak havoc on a ton of economies, and have a lot of time-tested currency manipulation strategies they employ against their enemies, especially against VZ rn.
Good sources. Thanks for this and the links.
