Sergio G. Roca, Dept. of Economics, Adelphi University, N.Y.
[1] Janos Kornai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). The first half of the book provides a theoretical summary of classical socialism (Stalin-Mao political economic model) and its internal contradictions. In the second part, Kornai deals with the processes of economic reform and retrenchment, especially in Hungary and the USSR. He does not address the post-socialist transitions on the grounds that they are still ongoing developments.
[2] Ibid., p. xxv.
[3] Ibid., Chapter 15.
[4] For example, see Carmelo Mesa-Lago, The Economy of Socialist Cuba: A Two Decade Appraisal (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981); Archibald R. M. Ritter, The Economic Development of Revolutionary Cuba: Strategy and Performance (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974); and Sergio G. Roca, "Cuban Economic Policy in the 1970s: The Trodden Paths," in Irving L. Horowitz, ed., Cuban Communism, 3rd ed. (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1977). For a different perspective se Claes Brundenius, Revolutionary Cuba: The Challenge of Economic Growth with Equity (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984) and Andrew Zimbalist and Susan Eckstein, "Patterns of Cuban Development: The First Twenty-Five Years," in World Development, 15:1 (January 1987), pp.5-22.
[5] Kornai, The Socialist System, p. 433.
[6] For the text of the new Cuban constitution, see Granma, September 22, 1992, pp. 3-10. For insightful commentary on the constitutional changes, see the interview with Juan Escalona, president of the ANPP, in Granma, July 9, 1992, p. 3.
[7] See Manuel Rúa and Pedro Monreal, La apertura económica cubana," in Cuban Foreign Trade, 1993:1, pp. 1-11.
[8] Vivian del Rosario Hernández, "España-Cuba: empresas mixtas, nuevos lazos y nuevas realidades," (paper), La Habana, Centro de Estudios Europeos (November 1992), p. 16.
[9] The New York Times, January 12, 1993, p. A6. A similar policy apparently is also being applied to local and regional levels of government. According to the newspaper Trabajadores, "territorial self-management," in effect in the provinces of Las Tunas and Cienfuegos, seeks to encourage local solutions to continuing problems with production shortages and social services complaints. See Cuba International, November 1992, pp. 46-47.
[10] Gillian Gunn, "The Sociological Impact of Rising Foreign Investment," Cuba: Briefing Paper Series, No. 1 (January 1993), p. 13.
[11] Interview with José Luis Rodríguez during conference of the Institute of Cuban Studies at Rollins College (Orlando, Florida), June 1992.
[12] FBIS-LAT-91-076-A, April 19, 1991, p. 2. I thank Sergio Díaz-Briquets for this reference.
[13] Jorge Pérez-López, "The Cuban Second Economy: Methodological and Practical Issues Related to Quantification," in George P. Montalván, ed., Cuba In Transition, Volume 2: Papers and Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (Miami: Florida International University, 1993), pp. 185-203.
[14] See Homero Campa, "Alarmante análisis económico del Partido Comunista: Iniciativa privada en pequeña escala propuesta para Cuba," in Proceso (Mexico), January 11, 1993, pp. 44-47. A brief version of this report has been published in a Cuban journal. See Julio Carranza Valdés, "Cuba: Los retos de la economía," Cuadernos de Nuestra América, 9:19 (July-December 1992), pp. 131-159.
[15] Andrew Zimbalist, "Teetering on the Brink: Cuba's Current Economic and Political Crisis," Journal of Latin American Studies, 24:2 (May 1992), pp. 409 and 416.
[16] Jo Thomas, "The Last Days of Castro's Cuba," The New York Times Magazine, March 14, 1993, pp. 34-39 ff.
[17] Jonathan Rosenberg, "Cuba's Free Market Experiment: The Mercados Libres Campesinos, 1980-1986," Latin American Research Review, 27:3 (1992), pp. 51-89. Further evidence is found in the wide-ranging debate among Cuban planners and economists held in November 1990 by the Asociación Nacional de Economistas de Cuba's chapter at the Junta Central de Planificación in Cuba Económica, 1:1 (April-June 1991), pp. 130-148. Finally, see also the sharp criticisms and novel policy suggestions contained in the "CEA Report," including the reinstitution of small-scale private business. See footnote 15.
[18] In a recent review of Cuba's economic literature, I found strong evidence of independent, critical, and nationalist sentiments among Cuban economists even in their articles for domestic professional journals. See Sergio G. Roca, "Evolución del pensamiento económico cubano sobre Cuba y la economía internacional a través de las revistas económicas," Estudios Internacionales (Chile), forthcoming.
[19] Carmelo Mesa-Lago, "Cuba's Economic Strategies for Confronting the Crisis," in Carmelo Mesa-Lago, ed., Cuba After the Cold War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), p. 247.
[20] See Soledad Cruz, "Eliminar las causas de los azares," Juventud Rebelde, July 8, 1990, p. 2.
[21] See Granma, January 1, 1992, p. 3-5.
[22] Gunn, op. cit., pp. 1-2.
[23] Ibid., p. 12. It is interesting that an editorial writer in the national party newspaper also made the same point: "We are reforming the economic system, accepting the participation of foreign capital by way of private firms and joint enterprises, which implies exposure to management techniques and administrative practices that sooner rather than later will be reflected throughout the economy." See Jorge Gómez Barata, "Cierto, falso o todo lo contrario," Granma, March 10, 1992, p. 6.
[24] Arturo Villar, "The Trials and Tribulations of Cuba's Managers," The Wall Street Journal, February 12, 1993, p. 15. For a similar report concerning small-scale private services, see Deroy Murdock, "Market Solutions Fill Socialist Voids in Cuba," The Wall Street Journal, March 26, 1993, p. A11.
[25] For example, then-foreign minister Ricardo Alarcón declared in March 1993: "We are not seeking to develop a mixed economic model here but rather a project of socialist development. . . This socialist project would be in contradiction with the development of capitalism in Cuba." [Reuters News Service, March 5, 1993.] José Luis Rodríguez, deputy director of CIEM, told me in June 1992: "We are interested in mechanisms of the market, but not in the market system itself. . ." [Interview at IEC/Rollins College, June 1992.]
[26] See Granma Internacional, November 10, 1993, pp. 4-9