Perspectives on Cuban Economic Reforms

by Jorge F. Pérez-López (Editor), Matías F. Traveso-Díaz (Editor)

Book by

193 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1998

Reviews

[E.M. Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mid-90s collection on the Cuban economic reforms enacted during the Special Period, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Bloc. The articles themselves are, for the most part, explicitly anticommunist, and written from the perspective of the Washington Consensus. I suppose this makes sense for a mainstream economic text of its time. The sole exception to this trend is a reform proposal from a set of Cuban economists who seek to 'continue reforms while adhering to socialist principals' (much to the dismay of many of the other writers in this volume!) Their proposal is much in line with the reforms of China and Vietnam, which could be considered socialism with market characteristics, capitalism aiming on the path to socialism, or state capitalism, depending on who you ask. I am of the opinion that the reintroduction of private ownership of companies (meaning the capitalistic style of ownership) is fundamentally capitalist, though I will admit Vietnam has seemed to have done this while maintaining important aspects of their socialist superstructure and incentivizing co-ops over standard capitalist businesses. Regardless, I think it is for the best that Cuba went along the path they did, rather than the state capitalist leaning one suggested by the Cuban economists in here. While Cuba has opened up markets, they have done so primarily focusing on self employed people, and co-operatives, neither of which operate under a capitalistic means of ownership, maintaining the central socialist creed of economic democracy. Though the book claims to contain both socialist and capitalist perspectives, this is more or less it when it comes to explicitly socialist analysis.

One might wonder why I rated this anything more than two stars at most given my fairly harsh criticisms here. While I disagree entirely with the analysis conducted around the reforms, I will admit that this book was incredibly useful at educating me on the specific reforms enacted. The book itself has solid historical value, and, early on, contains a comprehensive and easy to understand outline/summary of Cuba's economic journey into the special period. Though huge chunks of this book are damnably biased against any form of social ownership, the outline itself should be relatively agreeable to capitalists and socialists alike, and I came away from the book far more educated on Cuba's policy than I had been before. Additionally, the reform piece highlights an interesting alternative, and more precedented journey Cuba could have taken, and the rest of the articles, if nothing else, provide a look at how the Washington Consensus colored analysis quite negatively during the Neoliberal Age we seem to be emerging from just now. With these things in mind, I opted to give this (in my opinion, deeply flawed) work three stars, for the value I got out of it.