Abstract
This paper aims to analyse the trajectory and dynamics of Cuban agriculture since the Revolution. It examines the main challenges, divergences and contradictions of its socialist strategy in the agrarian sector, stressing the limits of the industrial and agricultural models and the forces of production inherited from the capitalist world. For this purpose, I examine changes and continuities in terms of land management, crop production, the technological model and agricultural policy. Finally, I look at Cuban agriculture transformations in the 1990s from a social and solidarity economy perspective, signalling their contributions to the renewal of Cuban socialism.
Highlights
This paper aims to analyse the trajectory and dynamics of Cuban agriculture since the Revolution
Several reasons explain this preference for state control – the fear of a decline in productivity if the land was fragmented into a great number of minifundios, the egalitarian principles guiding the policy of the Cuban leaders, the desire to achieve economies of scale and the influence of the hegemonic understanding of socialism in terms of central planning and state property of the means of production to avoid the anarchy of the market
This was due to the integration of Cuba into the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) in 1972 as a producer of raw material within the socialist division of labour, which reinforced the specialisation of the country as a sugar producer (Hernández 2014: 306)
Summary
Ingrid Hanon is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Her research interests lie in the areas of Marxist theory (in particular Marx’s economic thought and the theory of value), sociology of work, the Cuban Revolution, ecosocialism and alternatives to capitalism. Two recent articles related to this work include “Agriculture urbaine et autogestion à Cuba”, Revue internationale de l’économie sociale: Recma, 337, and “Workers’ participation: the challenge of Cuban socialism”, Socialism and Democracy, 33(1)
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