Sketch For A Debate On Inequality

Sketch For A Debate On Inequality / 14ymedio, Regina Coyula
Posted on September 7, 2015

Regina Coyula, Havana, 5 September 2015 — The distinguished researcher
Pedro Monreal in his interesting work Social Inequality In Cuba,
Triumphal March? which I recommend reading, notes that there is no
scientific evidence to support that economic decentralization brings
inequality. The inequalities are not the result of economic adjustments
implemented in recent years. They are older; only now they are more,
greater and more visible. While I do not have a scientific formula,
observation of the environment allows one to also diagnose with
sufficient empirical logic that Cuban society is experiencing rising
inequality.

Economic policy has served to widen the gap between different income
levels, more evident since the expansion of self-employment. Previous
policies, in their intent to reduce this gap, had the dubious
achievement of making a clean sweep downwards, that is, impoverishment.
Improvisation and voluntarism still have their day and have been a
constant which economists and planners have had to deal with.

The full social equality, liberty and dignity that so many talk about,
are relative concepts in our society; the so-called "circumstantial
necessity" of inequality seems much more permanent; social equality
rests in equality of opportunities, but not of possibilities. To
privilege the term "social justice" before that of equality offers
better perspectives.

If I understood the Palma coefficient correctly as an indicator of the
degree of inequality comparing the richest 10% of society and the
poorest 40%; in the study of the statistics a comparative analysis with
similar strata of society before the economic crisis of the '90s and
before the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 cannot be omitted.

Beyond production and productivity, a source of income that has nothing
to do with work is remittances—money sent from family or friends abroad.
Any citizen who receives just 100 CUC a month lives notably better than
the immense majority of Cubans. Nor should we forget the point that
remittances are received mostly by residents of the capital and by white
people, and the terms of this paragraph are very important when speaking
of inequality.

Let passion blind no one: mismanagement of the economy has been the
responsibility of the socialist government, no matter how many attacks,
"blockades" and "media campaigns against Cuba" have been generated from
the exterior. It is not enough to have guaranteed health care, education
and social security prior to our hitting bottom in the crisis of the
'90s, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

The disappearance of Soviet subsidies exposed the vulnerability and the
ineffectiveness of the domestic economy; not only had the national
project that would bring welfare and justice not been achieved, but
along the way, the social cost meant a loss of freedoms, moral and
material impoverishment, and massive emigration. This is not the idea of
a successful naitonal project.

Monreal discusses the overlap between the political analysis of
inequality and economic analysis. Like the academic adventure itself,
policy changes often create expectations that end up being disappointed.
I believe that this element, which refers directly to a criticism of the
government, is intended to avoid leaving the analysis in the field of
the economists.

To mention the Battle of Ideas* strikes a dissonant tone in a study of
inequality, because that effort absorbed substantial economic resources
for an exclusively political objective. These unknown and difficult to
measure figures impede the calculation of a cost-benefit balance, but I
have not the least doubt that those resources would have been much
better employed had they been used for the construction and repair of
houses, for one example.

It will be very hard for the socialist vision to see the workers happy
to offer their skins for tanning – according to the Marxist allegory
cited by Monreal – if in that way they can finish the month without
"production failures" or "diversion of resources."

This will happen with the coming of foreign businesses paying
poverty-level wages, relative to their countries of origin, but yet much
higher than current Cuban wages. This is what happened in Vietnam and
China, now "revisionists" (a word now fallen into oblivion but so in
vogue in the sixties and seventies of the last century) with respect to
Marxist theory.

Without proof, I say this more as an observation and common sense, my
impression is that Cubans are not entirely satisfied with the maxim
"better the known evil"… and feel inclined to take risks and test their
strengths in the vagaries of an open economy, and perhaps in this way,
feel themselves to be less unequal.

*Translator's note: Fidel Castro coined the term "Battle of Ideas"
during the custody battle over the Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old lone
survivor of a group of Cuban rafters, rescued off the coast of Florida
in 2008.

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