"Life is showing us that there was a lack of control over certain problems." This is how Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel justified his announcement that the regime will be creating Communist Party (PCC) and Young Communist Union (UJC) committees in MSMEs (medium, small and micro enterprises).
To translate that from the Castroist lexicon, what he was saying was that the political/state intervention of MSMEs has been decided, especially of those not close to the regime.
And I say political/state intervention because the PCC is not a political party. Every Communist party that takes over a Government (never democratically) goes from a political party to a Party-State, eradicating the classic institutions of the Nation-State, which it swallows up and supplants. This has happened in every Communist country.
The Cuban Party/State, however, is particularly unique. It is a repressive, economic, administrative, and propagandistic state octopus that scares, indoctrinates and controls the masses, but it is, in turn, subordinated to a military mafia that is the supreme power over the Party/State, and controls the Armed Forces, the state companies that still make profits, and 90% of the foreign currency that enters the country. And it is accountable to no one.
And, as if that were not enough, in its offensive against MSMEs the Party-State will exploit its totalitarian trade union arm. On October 3, the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC) established the first union bureau (imposed by force) in the private sector of commerce, gastronomy and services at the "El Castillito" recreational center in Havana, and they plan to do the same thing with all the MSMEs in the country.
That is, the West's only central trade union that represents employers and represses workers is also part of the largest attack on private property since the "Revolutionary Offensive." The difference is that the regime seems not to have realized that this is 2024 and not 1968, when it had a sugar daddy that bankrolled it.
Handcuffing or eliminating MSMEs that compete with GAESA
Raul's attack has two objectives: 1) to handcuff or remove those independent MSMEs that compete with GAESA and, in the process, tighten the leash on MSMEs close to the regime so they don't get uppity and aspire to independence; 2) repeat the mantra of the "continuity of the Revolution" and strengthen the PCC and CTC's control over the private sector.
There are currently 11,288 MSMEs in Cuba, of which 222 are state-owned, according to official data. The big and important ones are connected to the regime, owned by dictatorial oligarchs or by "children and grandchildren of the Revolution," frontmen, cronies, or camouflaged property of GAESA.
Many MSMEs are listed as independent and are not, but others are, and it is against them that the ongoing onslaught is mainly directed. There are also private businesses that "get along" with the government, but are not directly connected to it.
Then there are Cuba’s self-employed, its "mules," its clandestine private pharmaceutical micro-networks, free merchants, and its indispensable and enormous black market, where there is no PCC, and no unions.
Private property has already become essential
In short, there is a new phenomenon in Cuba that the dictatorship refuses to recognize: private property is back, and this time it is to stay. And I am not referring only to the capitalism of GAESA, or to the neo-Castro model (even with Raúl Castro alive) that the military mafia is already building, or to the MSMEs of oligarchs, or to the country's daddy’s boys, but rather to the private sector, in general, as an expression of Communist failure.
I always remember a phrase that could be heard in Sovietized Poland: “Communism is a long road that goes from capitalism to capitalism.” And that, in Cuba, is already apparent. In order to survive, people on the island increasingly depend on private property, and not on the Stalinist "consolidated companies" set up by "Che" Guevara.
The crucial nature of private property is already recognized by the regime. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero, recently revealed that the private sector accounts for 44.4% of all sales in the country, and that the "non-state" sector (he's allergic to the word "private") generates 20% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Marrero also reported that in the first half of this year the private sector imported products worth 936 million dollars. If at the end of the year that figure reaches 2 billion, and the country imports 6.5 billion, 31% of the total will have been bought by private companies. And it does not matter if it is masked by GAESA, as it functions as a wholesale market for independent MSMEs that sell retail in the country's neighborhoods.
The most striking fact is that, as the newspaper Granma recently revealed, at the end of 2023 the "non-state" sector employed 1.6 million workers. According to official data, the private sector already accounts for 31% of all jobs in the country.
The State cannot fill the void left by "the invisible hand"
But that percentage is higher, actually, because the Government is not counting hundreds of thousands of workers who work independently, such as those already mentioned, and others who work as tutors, caregivers for the sick or elderly, and servants in the homes of leaders and people rich in dollars, etc.
The Castroist state is no longer able to fill the gap, as more than 20% of GDP is generated by the private sector, which generates 44% of total sales, and two million jobs. In fact, it cannot keep up with "the invisible hand" to which Adam Smith (private company) referred, despite the obstacles thrown in its way.
Of course, with Castro II still a "leader," and with GAESA's quasi-monopoly of the still-profitable economic branches, this embryo of capitalism is limited to trade, and not industry. It does not produce industrial goods, but that will also come.
The truth is that, without sufficient state revenue, with tourism, exports and remittances down, industry and agriculture destroyed, and without the necessary fuel, or access to international credit, and with crushing foreign debt, Castroism can no longer stop what, come hell or high water, will continue, largely thanks to money from those in the community of exiles.
Few whistleblowers: the CCP and CTC collapse
Politicizing it will not be possible, and it will be very difficult to unionize private property. There will be very few candidates for PCC-CTC whistleblowers and henchmen, and the CCP, UJC, and CTC are falling apart.
More and more Party leaders complain that there are many more members leaving the PCC than there are joining it. The head of the PCC in Santiago de Cuba, Beatriz Johnson, revealed that there are workplaces in which there are no longer PCC divisions because there are no members.
In the UJC the situation is even worse. At a state company, which the Anonymous site did not identify, a UJC leader recently insulted a member named Yanet because she asked to deregister. At that company another Communist leader stressed that in recent months another 11 members have left the UJC, several of them "with positions in the organization, and even in the military."
This is why the PCC and the UJC do not give membership figures, or they lie. And the CTC does not give figures either, by union, or nationally. What everyone knows is that Cuba's trade unions are on the wane. Hundreds of thousands of union members have emigrated, and others will soon, especially the youngest.
In other words, the "Revolution's historical changing of the guard" rejects these unions outright, along with Che Guevara's "new man." Now they migrate together.
It is simple: in Cuba we must unshackle all the country's productive forces and do away with the lethal idiocy of favoring "consolidated" Guevarists in order to "build socialism," as Fidel Castro said in 1987, after having declared the beginning of this "construction" 27 years before.
Of course, no one can rule out that this crusade against private property will rage on, even though doing so would bankrupt thousands of MSMEs and other businesses, leading to famine, and a humanitarian crisis.
But it could also mean the country's socio-economic collapse. The dictatorship's higher-ups may be grappling with the dilemma of whether to move forward, give this "Revolutionary Offensive II" another twist, water it down, or scrap it. In the coming weeks we shall see.
As for the question in the title, no matter what the oligarchs decide, they cannot escape the stubborn reality: in Cuba the private sector is irreversible! Right?