An academic has a specific training that he uses to produce reliable knowledge about a realm or problem of reality. This is done while maintaining methodological rigor and empirical evidence. An intellectual—a term that brings together certain academics, artists, and writers—broadcasts ideas in public space to support a cause. Both identities – academic and intellectual – sometimes coincide in the same person. A duality that is not always assumed or transparent, however.
Sometimes academics act as intellectuals, but they do not always take publications and public interventions as narratives that mix an analysis of reality with a subjective position on it. They are often presented as neutral, technical, and unchallengeable positions. When this happens, it becomes difficult to determine how far the empirical evidence goes – what reality shows – and how far the speaker’s normative choices – what is believed.
Today’s debate about the Cuban Missile Crisis reproduces these epistemological confusions and political prejudices. In the reform-oriented sector of the economy – in research and emerging entrepreneurship – criticism of the current model of state socialism is often accompanied by praise for the reforms in China and Vietnam. Analyzing the successes of the Asian processes in wealth creation and the transformation of the socio-economic structure, it becomes clear that they surpass the disastrous Cuban reality.
Both nations managed to transform their social and productive structure. They migrated from heavily backward rural countries to industrialized countries with large middle classes. With its demographic, productive and territorial potential, China is now the second world power. Vietnam, plagued by wars and famine yesterday, now exports food and high-tech equipment.
But the progress of authoritarian reformism is not particularly virtuous when one assesses how progress has been matched by setbacks on the right. The repressive traits of the Chinese and Vietnamese models (violations of civil liberties, lack of political liberties, lack of accountability) have not only remained undiminished but have expanded – as evidenced by the rise of social controls and technology, and espionage against democratic nations.
The extent and forms of corruption and poor management have even been recognized by economists, who celebrate the success of the model[1]. The transferability and scaling of the specific idiosyncratic and institutional factors of China and Vietnam in Cuba is not easy to solve. In the reformist intellectual and business realm identified with the Asian alternative, there is little discussion on the subject.
Even in the recent works of specialists like Carmelo Mesa-Lago, whose intellectual work and personal career make him the most important and serious student of the Cuban economy – with the consequent distrust of the Cuban bureaucracy – laudatory references to the cases of China and Vietnam appear with a problematic balance. On the one hand, Mesa-Lago bases its analysis on extensive consultation of data and experts on the reforms in these countries, which casts a bad light on the island’s state-run economic model. On the other hand, despite the fact that he has always defended a Keynesian model of democracy, statements such as the following seem to suggest an alternative to the ruling elite:
“I have proved that the Sino-Vietnamese model is capable of rescuing Cuba from the current chaos and the situation it has been experiencing since the 1990s and putting it on the path of sustainable economic and social development. Moreover, it could do this by maintaining the power of the Communist Party.”
The opinion is not enough to overcome pessimism by pointing out that “if it is difficult for Cuba to adopt the Sino-Vietnamese model, it will be more difficult to move to a hybrid economic model with democracy”.
Progressive economists such as Thomas Piketty and Mauricio de Miranda have each pointed out the importance of non-separate economics and politics, expert analysis and democratic engagement for the global and insular framework. In Capital and Ideology, Piketty recalls that the terms by which the world is read and transformed—markets, wages, capital, and competition—are social and historical constructions. These “relate primarily to the ideas that every society has of social justice and a fair economy, as well as the political and ideological balance of power between the various groups and discourses involved”.
Mauricio de Miranda, in his analyzes in La Joven Cuba, made clear how the classic state socialisms – including the Cuban one – shared with their reformed counterparts in communist Asia the existence of a powerful elite that merged political, economic and cultural power; a domain that goes hand in hand with the suppression of the right to rights of the majority of citizens.
However, certain mantras about the form and substance of orderly and stable change are repeated over and over again in the approach of (selective) economic reformers. Below I question three basic ideas behind the approach.
1- Phase of Changes. The approach of the proponents of the Asian alternative seems to reproduce the shortcomings of the modernization theory, according to which the development of economic liberalization would ultimately lead to political democratization. Or, even more blatantly, they suggest that Cuba needs more markets and consumption, which would sacrifice citizens. current studies[2] on the post-communist legacy in European countries refute the deterministic reading. The experience of a small neighboring country like Costa Rica[3] – where socio-economic development and democratic quality have had healthy feedback over the past half-century – also shows that there is no reason to fall in love with an Asian authoritarianism distant from Latin American geography, culture and society. Today they propose to turn Cuba into China or Vietnam, why not strive to become Panama or Uruguay?
2- Selectivity in rights. For those proposing the Chinese or Vietnamese model, the rights of owners and consumers should be privileged, rather than the rights of workers and, more broadly, citizens. When the Asian alternative is proposed, the situation appears on the horizon. It’s an oddly similar interpretation – in terms of evading liberties and supporting order – of the agenda of the neoliberals who supported the Chilean and Argentine dictatorships with the promise of further general prosperity behind privatization and assimilation. Which, in the current scenario of decapitalization, social spending cuts and the deterioration in the living conditions of the majority of the Cuban population, would doom them to continue to wait disciplinedly for the supposed impact behind the promised growth to materialize.
3- Ranking of Actors. Governors are given the time, capacity and will to correct course and implement the proposed reforms. It does not matter that the lack of quality of an elite and an institutional design incapable of promoting the general good of the nation have been demonstrated. Defenders of the Asian alternative are always confident that the reformer will emerge in their ranks. In the meantime, the demands and demands of the popular classes are only interpreted as pressure for reform from above. Wouldn’t it be desirable, in line with opening up to capitalist investment, domestic or foreign, to defend the urgencies and agencies of state and private workers, unplugged entrepreneurs, smallholders, retirees?
The teleology of building capitalism is supposed to bring democracy later, if at all; the obfuscation (consciously or unconsciously) of an integral citizenship that privileges the rights of so-called entrepreneurs and their local and foreign partners; and the blank check for the modernizing (neo-capitalist) sector of the elite and contempt for the exploited sectors. All of these are ramifications of a commitment to the Chinese or Vietnamese model that enjoys such good press in sections of Cuban public opinion.
A proposal that, speaking of probabilities, seems as distant and sparse as that of a simultaneous transition to a market economy with political democracy. Because when it comes to celebrating illiberal recipes, how many Chinas and Vietnams are there in Africa or Latin America today? Isn’t political repression without economic progress the form most existing authoritarianisms have taken?
I add one last factor. If a key technocrat from the Stolypin Institute or a professor emeritus from the Chinese Academy proposed such a path, there would be complete agreement between the proponent and what was proposed. But when academics or business people, protected by the institutions and rights of an open society, do so – in the US, Europe or Latin America – the question changes. They propose to others a model in which they do not live. There is a certain dissonance between the conditions of possibility – everyday life and professional development – and the content – economic reform with maintenance of the dictatorship – of those who today defend the Asian alternative for Cuba.
The seriousness of the Cuban Missile Crisis – direct responsibility for the decisions of its predatory ruling elite, embedded in island politics and society for six decades – complicates both the economist proposition of Asian reformism and the broader agenda of economic and political transition. When the future is so uncertain, it is better to follow the suggestions that say the most benefits for most people from now on. Because human nature is expressed in the wholeness of individuals and communities, which are not divisible in their dimensions and goals. As another famous economist recalled:
“Politics are needed for sustainable, just and democratic growth. This is the reason for the development. Development is not about helping a few individuals get rich, or creating a bunch of absurd sheltered industries that only benefit the country’s elite (…). Development is about transforming societies, improving the lives of the poor, empowering all to thrive, and accessing health and education. This kind of development will not happen if only a few dictate the policies that a country must follow. In order to make democratic decisions, it is necessary to ensure that a range of economists, officials and experts from developing countries are actively involved in the debate. It also implies broad participation, well beyond experts and politicians.” [4].
The integral development of a country is based on inclusive institutions in which socio-economic modernization, the rule of law and the autonomous political participation of citizens go hand in hand.[5]. As Amartya Sen and other specialists have pointed out, authoritarian models – in the vast majority of verifiable experience – hamper the ability to correct policies decided from above by their elites, with a particular impact on the most disadvantaged sectors.
People do not have to be forced to choose between material progress, social justice and political freedom. To understand the above is at the same time the realistic verification of a historical experience and the utopian commitment to a citizen election.
[1] Milanovic, B. (2019). Capitalism Alone: The Future of the System That Runs the World, Harvard University Press.
[2] Magyar, B. and Madlovics, B. (2020): The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes: A Conceptual Framework, Budapest-New York: CEU Press.
[3] Indeed, in Professor Carmelo Mesa-Lago’s work on issues such as social policy, there is a fair balance of the Costa Rican model against the statist imprint of the Cuban and Chilean neoliberal legacy.
[4] Stiglitz, J. (2002). “Towards a globalization with a more human face”, in The Malaise of Globalization, Taurus, Madrid.
[5] Acemoglu, D. & Robinson, JA (2019). The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty, London, Penguin Press.