Heinz Dieterich:Three Premises to Save the Revolution When Fidel Dies

A CubaNews translation --
Edited by Walter Lippmann --

1. Fidel sets the task: November 17, 2005. --

On November 17th, 2005, at the University of Havana, Fidel warns
about the danger of the Cuban Revolution ending up as the Soviet
Revolution. To avoid this he sets a task: "What are the ideas or
levels of awareness that would make it impossible for a revolutionary
process to be reversed?"

This is an invitation to world debate, a call for the solidarity of
reasoning. But world solidarity does not understand it so. It is
shocked when the Commandant who for almost fifty years has affirmed
that the Revolution is invincible, that, "Socialism is immortal and
the Party eternal" suddenly publicly declares the opposite. It is an
epistemological earthquake: the Commandant of certainty, of
conviction in the final victory, reintroduces dialectics in the Cuban
official discourse without warnings, preambles or roundabouts. He is
applying dialectics to stagnation, as Bertolt Brecht would say.

Shocked and unbelieving, world solidarity does not react to the
Commandant's call: does not provide the ideas Fidel asked for; keeps
silent and, in some cases, wipes out the speech from public debate
fora. This is a logical and human reaction, because the mere thought
of Fidel's passing fills our hearts with grief. But objectively
speaking this reaction is an act of what Herbert Marcuse called
repressive tolerance, a tolerance that hurts the cause the Commandant
is putting forward.

The Foreign Affairs Minister demands: "Pay attention" to Fidel's
call

On December 23rd. 2005, the talented Minister of Foreign Affairs and
Fidel's ex Personal Assistant, Felipe Pérez Roque, calls our
attention to Fidel's speech. Before the Asamblea Nacional del Poder
Popular (ANPP) or Cuban parliament, he stresses that "we must pay
great attention to Fidel's call at the University, to that phrase
never pronounced publicly before in the history of the Revolution:
the Revolution can be reversed, and not by the enemy that has done
everything to bring about that reversal, but by our own mistakes."

3. The Minister's three barricades of revolutionary defense

Felipe outlines three policies ("premises") to save the Revolution
at
such time when the death of Fidel creates the void that cannot be
filled by just one person and has to be filled by all of us together
as one people" and asks future leaders to act from this very moment
in order to avoid the possible return of capitalism.

1. Preserve the moral authority of the leaders by means of personal
exemplarity without privileges. 2. Maintain the support of the
majority of the population "not on the basis of material consumption
but by ideas and convictions". 3. Avoid the emergence of a new
bourgeoisie that "would again be, if allowed to emerge, pro Yankee,
pro transnational...Let us not be naïve...; the determining factor is
who
receives the income: the majority and the people or the transnational
pro Yankee oligarchic minority...; the issue is who owns the property,
the people or the corrupt minority that bows down to Yankee
imperialism."

4. Would these three armors save the Revolution?

The first proposal of the Foreign Affairs Minister is obviously
correct and necessary. It remains to be seen whether the future
structure of the Cuban political system allows for it. On the second
demand referring to the dialectics of the spiritual and the material,
we must consider Lenin's dictum that the stability of a dominant
class, in this case a ruling class, cannot be separated from its
capacity to solve "the task of production". Let us focus the
following item on this matter.

5.Ethics, consumption and knowledge

The central idea expressed by Fidel in November and now by Felipe is
that the loyalty of the people to their leadership and their
historical project must emanate primarily from ethics (values, ideas
and convictions) and not from consumerism. So defined, the dialectic
unity of opposites in the Cuban reality is not adequately expressed.
The correct opposition would be: ethics and consumption, not ethics
and consumerism.

For any given period there is, as Marx explained, a historically
determined measure of consumption for the worker expressed, in terms
of the process of valorization of the capital, in the variable
capital. This measure of consumption determines, essentially and in a
stratified way, the quality of the material life of the people.
Today, the dominant pattern of consumption in the globe is that of
the middle classes in the First World and, although it is still
unreachable for the majorities, it exerts an irresistible attraction:
so much so that many people risk their lives to get to those
countries.

The idealistic ethics that followed Platonic obscurantism, reinforced
on a daily basis by Catholic moralistic hypocrisy, ignores such
consumption -the material-sensuality-of the flesh-- as a "value".
For
revolutionary socialism and for science based on the binomial
composition of matter-energy of the universe, all ethics must be
materialistic-dialectical, and inevitably consider reproduction, the
pleasure and sensuality of the material as an integral part of the
human condition. And in fact, the majority of humankind acts
empirically on such a pattern. For them, to reach the quality of life
historically determined is a value as strong as or even stronger than
certain moral values or "spiritual virtues". Dialectically, the
material becomes its opposite, the spiritual.

Being the pattern of consumption and of popular culture nowadays
predominantly a universal pattern, not a national variable, the clash
in Cuba is between the universal pattern of First World middle class
consumption - that reaches the population yearly via two million
tourist and daily via the American movies on TV -- and the standard
of living allowed by the level of productive forces and the
redistribution system in the country.

Under such circumstances, an ideological awareness campaign may
reduce certain superfluous consumptions, but access to Internet,
health, education, social and geographical mobility, adequate
individual or collective transportation, certain forms and places for
entertainment, for sexual encounter etc, as well as certain formal
freedoms are part of the historical pattern in place in present day
Latin America and no educational campaign can neutralize this
pattern.

Therefore to vaccinate with ideology the young people against the
essential elements of the life pattern they consider fair and
necessary will only be effective in a minority. It would be more
fruitful to identify such elements and initiate an intense public
debate, primarily with the youth which is the neuralgic point,
although not the only alarming sector (!!), a debate of the type of
the workers parliaments of the 90's and reach a consensus on a
currently feasible consumption pattern.

To appeal to revolutionary discipline and ethical values under the
Cuban present circumstances, to be in the image of Fidel or Che, is
not going to change the general picture, because the objective
situation does not support such rhetoric. For most it would be more
efficient to discuss democratically the alternatives of consumption,
for example whether they prefer more hospitals or transport or
housing, private consumption etcetera, and the means to reconcile
such patterns with the real possibilities of the country.

More education, knowledge and information are not antidotes for
consumption. The more inputs of such nature are given the more
awareness and subject is generated. And more subject means inevitably
a greater wish for democracy. Democracy in all senses -formal,
social, participatory - which becomes, just like the historical
"fair
and necessary" consumption, a fundamental value of human praxis. A
value the government must attend to and provide answers so that it
does not generate a resistance the system cannot absorb.

From technological and cognitive cybernetics we know that a detected
system problem may be fixed (post festum) with proportional
regulations, be them integral or differential. More efficient, of
course, is the preventive normalization which is possible in
statistically detectable events. Both requisites exist in the case of
Cuba. The dramatic calls by Fidel and Felipe refer to preventive
regulation, to the need of taking measures before the death of Fidel;
and the attitudes of the Cuban population are the statistically
measurable events.

6. The decisive issue: property and economic surplus

The Minister of Foreign Affairs is right when he defines economic
surplus as decisive for economy. But its determination must be
widened: who receives the surplus is just as important as who decides
in what way it is received. This issue of economic democracy is a
taboo for bourgeois elites but a key element for the performance of
socialist economies. For as long as the majorities are factually
excluded from the decisions on the use of surplus (investment,
consumption, national budget, payment of the external debt, etc.)
they will not really care whether it is the State, the transnationals
or the gringos who keep it.

As in the false dilemma of "ethics versus consumerism", the
statement
that the decisive element is whether the people or the transnationals
receive the income or have the property over production distorts the
true dialectics of the opposites. Most of the Cuban plus-product is
not received by the transnationals but neither by the majorities: it
is received by the State. And this is the key to the problems of
theft and black market denounced by Fidel.

The productive property in Cuba is essentially in the hands of the
State, not in the hands of the majorities. If it were so, the
majorities would protect it, because common sense shows that nobody
steals from himself. The fact that it is stolen or mistreated has a
clear reading: State property is perceived by many as an alien or
anonymous property that can be privatized by means of theft. For as
long as this remains so, it will be very difficult to put an end to
corruption and robbery, as the case of China indicates. Consequently,
the socialist economy idea of altruistically producing for all
becomes unachievable.

The perception of state productive property as something alien,
similar to capitalist property bound to privatization is confirmed
daily by the fact that people have no real incidence on its use. In
the market economy, essentially, property means the right to alienate
economic assets. Be it good or bad, this does not exist in Cuba. But
the worker does not determine the benefit -- the surplus -- of this
property either and therefore the property is not his. As he is
neither the proprietor nor real owner of the individual or collective
productive property, the direct producer does not protect it.

7. The danger of the new bourgeoisie

A new bourgeoisie "would again be, if we let it emerge, pro Yankee,
pro transnational," says Felipe. This hypothesis deserves
consideration. In Cuba a high bourgeoisie should not be allowed and
needs not be allowed, because the State already takes its place
regarding economic functions. The innovation-production-marketing
complex of, for example, biotechnology performs the functions of a
transnational enterprise (competition, innovation, capital) together

with the contents of an economy more humane than capitalist economy.

The lingering problem is the petit bourgeoisie, i.e. of the small
market production. Let us remember Lenin's warnings about this social
class, but let us also remember: a) at a given historical moment he
had to launch the NEP (New Economic Policy) with the certainty it
would be able to control bourgeois tendencies by means of the
enormous monopolistic power of the Soviet State; b) nowhere in the
world has the State been able to offer adequate quality services in,
for example, gastronomy; c) no State has been able to provide the
cities with the diversity of small businesses, shops, subcultures,
etc, that gives them life, something particularly relevant for
tourism economies; d) the political-economic control of this class
can probably be achieved through tax and judicial system; e) in
LAFTA's global economy, the guarantee of the economic reproduction of
the small entrepreneur can only be offered by the State through
protectionism and subsidies. This is a fundamental reason for
FEDEINDUSTRIA in Venezuela to sup port the Bolivarian process and for
the small farmer and Latin American entrepreneur to support ALBA.

In summary: the situation of the petit bourgeoisie in the USSR under
Lenin was totally different from the situation of the Latin American
petit bourgeoisie today and it would have to be studied concretely to
learn whether or not it should be tolerated and to what extent.

8. Not the least decisive issue: the political superstructure

In June 2002 Felipe had discussed the same topic before the same
audience. At that time he concluded that in the eventual absence of
the Commandant, the defense of the Revolution meant the defense of
the one party system, the centralized economy, the political unity
and the preservation of the armed forces. To maintain a one party
system is probably vital for as long as the imperialist aggression
lasts, but equally vital is to give it a real cybernetic nature if
they wish to prevent the project from having an end similar to the
USSR and the GDR.

9. Lenin, the one party system and cognitive cybernetics

Lenin, who formulated the concept of the democratically centralized
party knew, of course, that every lasting political leadership must
ensure three symmetrical flows of information and real debate: a)
among the sectors of the vanguard or the top echelons of real power,
for instance of the Political Bureau and the Central Committee; b)
between these decision-making centers and the informative and
political elites in the country who, in theory, are the mid-level
cadre and the members of the Party; c) between the vanguard, the
mid-level cadre and the masses. This cybernetic or feedback quality
is essential to optimize the practice of any cybernetic cognitive
system such as the State, the Party or the human being.

In praxis, particularly under Stalin, the necessary equilibrium
between real democracy and verticality, that is between the
symmetrical and asymmetrical communication and power structures, was
abandoned in favor of verticality. The Moscow processes were the
rites of passage (signal of a transition) of the new vertical party
and the public warning of the disappearance of democracy in the USSR;
they were the secular equivalent of the Inquisition pyres in America,
whose ashes indicated the price of dissent under the new order.
Rituals of personality submission such as "criticism and
self-criticism" served the role of humiliation as the clerical
confessional had, and the political police reports defined the
quality and life expectancy of the citizens.

In this way, Stalin generated the institution and political culture
of conformism which liquidated the public institutionality and
culture of pre Socialist societies, from the Greek Agora to the
literary clubs of the French Revolution. In fact, the public
strategic debate of the bourgeois system, a constituent part of the
system, disappeared from the existing Socialist superstructure with
fatal consequences for Socialist evolution. This gave the bourgeois
political superstructure a functional superiority for the
optimization of decisions. This can be exemplified by the war in
Iraq. The great debates on the possible withdrawal from the conflict
take place in the US Congress, on television, in the most important
newspapers of the country, The New York Times and the Washington Post
and in the universities.

In existing Socialism such public domain is non-existing. Strategic
debates take place behind closed doors in the highest echelons of the
Party. Then the official position is informed to and discussed by the
lower levels of the Party. Finally it is disseminated among the
majorities through the media and TV round tables.

The majorities are excluded from the strategic constituent debate and
what they get to see on TV are tactical discussions or mere
repetitions of the official view, always offered by the same
journalists. Differently from what took place during the wonderful
experience of the workers parliaments, the citizen becomes an
observer of the political-economic process, not a protagonist.

10. The vital question for the Cuban Communist Party

The question of whether to maintain a multi-party or a one-party
social leadership system is secondary simply because any of the two
forms will fail in its evolution if it loses its cybernetic
capability. The real question is therefore: How can we guarantee the
vanguard or cybernetic character of the leadership systems we call
State and Party?

The quality of any regulation system depends essentially on two
parameters: a) its sensitivity, that is, the time it takes to
discover or acknowledge a deviation from the programmed value of the
system (Sollwert) and, b) the time the system needs to correct the
deviation (Istwert). Both parameters determine the dynamic behavior
of the system, in this case of the Party-State, and depend in turn on
the quality and quantity of the measurements of the state of the
system (i.e, opinion polls/surveys) and on the relative power of the
different trends and fractions within the ruling class, for example,
the revolutionary trend, the social democratic, the technocratic,
etc.

When in his November speech Fidel asked why the Cuban economists had
not realized how unwise it was to maintain the sugar sector after the
downfall of the USSR he was referring to parameter "a". But the
real
answer is to be found in parameter "b". If the Cuban economists
failed to find the flaw in maintaining the sugar sector, it means
they lack professional training and common sense. Begging the pardon
of my colleagues, this seems to be an unreal supposition. It is more
likely that they did not speak because the Cuban superstructure does
not allow for a public strategic debate that would have been the
right place to discuss the proper warning.

Another example of parameter "b" may be taken from the Bolivarian
Revolution. During the Bolivarian government the great landowners
have murdered more than 130 farmer leaders and not one of the
intellectual or material authors of these murders is in jail. How
long can the correction of this counterrevolutionary "deviation"
and
violation of a State of Law take before the Revolution loses
credibility and power in its alleged war to the death against
latifundia?

Felipe's question is vital as long as it receives a material answer,
not a formal one; a strategic answer, not a tactical one. If the
single party does not recover its dialectics or the cybernetics
intended by Lenin and levels of public strategic debate with the
masses are not reinstated together with the public transparency of
its interactions, it will not be in a position to defend th Rvolution
when Fidel dies.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs understands clearly that the
cybernetics of the Party is the key to the future. When in his speech
he explained why Cuba has not fallen as the USSR did, he quoted
García Márquez. "The explanation is that Fidel is at the same time
the Head of Government and the leader of the opposition." Felipe
added, "He is the main non conformist with what has been done, the
main critic of our work and this gives a special character to our
process."

Thus the life or death political question for the Communist Party is,
What system of institutional dialectics will replace the personal
dialectics of Fidel?

.

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