THE ECONOMIC REFORMS IN CUBA: STRENGTHENING THE COUNTRY'S ESSENTIAL SOCIALIST CHARACTER OR A TRANSITION TO CAPITALISM? THE IMPACT ON EDUCATED YOUTH

Abstract

AbstractThe economic reforms announced by Raul Castro over two years ago simultaneously opened the economy to a significant degree of privatisation while maintaining the state's political and economic hegemony. This strategy, while opening opportunities to local entrepreneurs and foreign investors, promises to retain the country's revolutionary and social character.While it is too early to make any definitive predictions about whether Cuba is undergoing a process of socialist renewal or one of capitalist restoration, the country is, undoubtedly, experiencing a transition that cannot be easily reversed. Young people are particularly impacted by these changes as guaranteed employment is no longer provided and those job categories that can be exercised in the rapidly growing non-state sector typically do not include the professions to which educated youth aspire.This article provides an overview of the process of economic reform to date, outlines the complexities and controversies that accompany it, and suggests that Cuban young people are increasingly prepared to exercise the option of leaving Cuba in search of work. To be considered a success the economic reforms must, among other accomplishments, convince educated young Cubans that they can meet their aspirations on the island.Keywords: economic reform, educated youth, non-state sector, ideological transformation, capitalist transformation, cuentapropistaIntroductionOn 1 August 2010, in a speech to Cuba's legislature, the National Assembly of Popular Power, Raul Castro announced sweeping economic reforms (Castro, R. 2010b). The August Announcements, as I came to call this speech, and the details which followed, contained measures that were designed, as the Cuban president put it, to move Cuba back from the economic precipice (Castro, R. 2010a). This image of Cuba's economy that the president presented is, by all accounts, an apt description of the country's state of affairs. The speeches of the president, combined with national and international press reports and scholarly articles provide us with detailed information about the challenges facing the Cuban economy. The revitalisation of the Cuban economy is to be achieved through a radical downsizing of the state economic and bureaucratic apparatus. This downsizing, which is known as reduccion de plantilla involves a two-stage programme of massive layoffs which, at the time of writing (mid 2012), approaches 1 million workers in a workforce of about 5 million. In order to absorb the resulting unemployed workers, the reforms provided for the creation of a non-state sector1 composed of three categories: (a) self-employed individuals (who work a cuenta propia, i.e., on their own account, the practitioners of which are known as cuentapropistas); (b) micro and medium sized enterprises; and (c) worker and campesino production cooperatives. In addition to reducing the state's payroll, these layoffs reflected the government's desire to significantly reduce and, as much as possible, eliminate the state's obligation to provide important but non-strategic services to the population (a role now largely reserved for the non-state sector) while leaving key elements of the economy (e.g., large-scale industrial development, off-shore oil exploration and extraction, and the provision of infrastructure) in the hands of the state and its joint-venture partners. The creation of a non-state sector with hundreds of thousands of economically active participants would also serve to create a tax base whereby the government hopes to generate more of the revenues required to pay for state expenditures and the key social services, such as health and education, that are so closely identified as being amongst the most important achievements of the revolution.Cuba: A Process of Socialist Renewal or Capitalist Restoration?Despite the downsizing of the state bureaucracy and the passing over to the non-state sector the task of providing goods and services to the population, President Castro made the commitment that the reforms will not compromise what he called the 'essential socialist nature' of the Cuban revolution. …