Multilateral Socialist Modernization and Chinese Style Development in Three Global Initiatives to Build A Community With Shared Future for Mankind: 习近平在中非合作论坛北京峰会开幕式上的主旨讲话（全文） Full text: Keynote address by Chinese President Xi Jinping at opening ceremony of 2024 FOCAC summit

 

 

I have been writing about what may be the beginning of a substantial rift between the trajectories of the evolution of the concept of development under the leadership of the United Nations apparatus in Geneva and emerging as Chinese Multilateral Socialist Modernization (here, here, here, here, here, here). 

A recent address by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China continues the trajectories of development of the concept of development with Chinese characteristics, and its alignment with the arc of evolution of the notion of development  beyond China. In an Address delivered at the opening of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC)on 5 September 2024, the General Secretary suggested some of the core premises on which an internationalized of Socialist Modernization might be used as a framework for the construction of deep multilateral relations between China and the Global South. This, in turn, is meant to serve as an element in the fulfillment of Chinese objectives to put at the center of global discourse its notion of a community with a shared future built around the values of Chinese style modernization.

The text of the address follows below in its original Chinese and in the English translation prepared by Chinese authorities. A globalized approach to development, to global Socialist modernization, is built around five core discursive tropes:

1. Socialist Modernization is centered on national interest and national realities. Development is a state task and the essence of sovereign prerogative.

2. Socialist modernization is built around the concept of mutually beneficial cooperation (here, here; on its relation to Africa here).

3. Socialist modernization centers its objectives on the masses. "The ultimate goal of modernization is the free and full development of human beings." [实现人的自由全面发展是现代化的最终目标。]

3. Socialist Modernization is a comprehensive notion  that includes the development of culture and cultural connection as well as economic and economic connection; the Chinese framework has been elaborated in a  Global Civilization Initiative (considered here; and here).

4. Socialist Modernization focuses on issues of environment--that includes not just "green growth engines" [“绿色增长引擎”] but also energy accessibility.

5.  Socialist Modernization is grounded in an architecture of stability and security; a set of objectives which have been aggregated into the Chinese Global Security Initiative (eg here).

Put differently, Socialist Modernization pulls together three critical strands--economic development, security development, and cultural (or civilization) development--which together help build a community with a shared future for mankind, the keystone concept around which Chinese multilateralism is grounded. This, in turn, was nicely summarized in a recent essay in Red Flag Journal 《红旗文稿》: 三大全球倡议助力人类命运共同体构建 [Three global initiatives help build a community with a shared future for mankind] authored by Chou Zejing [丑则静] 28 March 2024, which follows below as well in the original Chinese and in a crude English translation (for a discussion outside of China see eg here)..

 

 

In the Val-Halle of Perception: BRICs 2024 «Strengthening Multilateralism for Just Global Development and Security» Documents and the Text of the Kazan Declaration

 

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 But whosoever endeavours to establish wholesome laws in a state, attends to the virtues and the vices of each individual who composes it; from whence it is evident, that the first care of him who would found a city, truly deserving that name, and not nominally so, must be to have his citizens virtuous; for otherwise it is merely an alliance for self-defence; differing from those of the same cast which are made between different people only in place: for law is an agreement and a pledge, as the sophist Lycophron says, between the citizens of their intending to do justice to each other, though not sufficient to make all the citizens just and good: and that this is faact is evident, for could any one bring different places together, as, for instance, enclose Megara and Corinth in a wall, yet they would not be one city, not even if the inhabitants intermarried with each other, though this inter-community contributes much to make a place one city. (Aristotle, Politics, Book III, chp. IX))

 

One of the most important industries that have emerged in this century is that of story telling.  Having effectively mis-read the gist of post-modernist efforts to reframe the analytics of perception, and its consequences for the management of self- and collective consciousness, virtually every person (in the form of influencers in social media for example) and every social collective (from local parents' groups to large congresses of states cobbled together by a patchwork of shared interests. . .or enemies) has invested in the business of narrative. For those with the means (large enterprises, large civil society organizations, states, and international groupings of every kind) the temptations of playing with the so-called master narratives--the lebenswelt or imaginaries of collectives (and the masses these are meant to manage into the appropriate behaviors within their political-economic-oral-cultural orders). What had once been thought of as an object (the customs and traditions of a social collective) the signification of which must be presumed, often tended to and preserved (eg the warning in Aristotle's Politics) has now become an object that ca be distilled, its essence appreciated, and its forms and contents managed, changed and directed to suit the capabilities of those with the ambition to undertake this task.

One does not speak here about the crudities of small time management of taste represented by advertising, and to some extent also of short term propaganda efforts. These are certainly important and touch on broader matters of control (consumption, production, social relations at the margins and the like). One speaks here to the baselines of perception, of a consciousness of things, from out of which it is easier (perhaps) to engage in the practical business of propaganda, of combat, and the instrumentalization of orthodoxy not just to control mass relations, but also to change the nature of perception in a deliberate and increasingly (they hope) well calibrated way. To those ends, of course, the mechanisms of big data tech and its related approaches will be useful, but that is a subject for another day.

The production of perception sensitive documents from out of the 2024 BRICs congress provides a brilliant example of the forms, trajectories, and ambitions for such efforts.  They continue to refine the practice of suffocating alternative perception through a layering of text that buries alternative text in an elegant and relentless way. It is not that the masses actually read these textual productions.  They weigh their heft; they consider their breadth, and the images that illustrate and make more digestible the forms and directions that are their intended effects. They serve as well as the (usually unread) basis form out of which the more crude but effective mechanisms of propaganda and instruction for the masses may be undertaken--text lite. Leadership performative, sound bites, and selected and well curated reductions and quotations serve those ends well.  One learns much from the experience of government in the 1930s-1970s. 

And, indeed, from one way of considering this production one might apply the lens of new quality production in the further development of the fundamental productive forces of the state within the community of states.  In some sense, the Kazan Declaration, asthe product of a series of such declaraitons over the life of BRICs, suggests a striving toward a better, or new and high quality production of narrative as the core productive purpose of the relaitons among states (considered from a certain point of view here).  That is, that utility of the the proper forms of production of perception narrative as the highest form of new quality production for the development of multilateral collectives. In this sense one might consider states as the productive forces of narrative (and certaonly their orthodoxies), or at least that states have sought a dominant role in their ambition to serve that finction (undermined, of course by other perception generating/controlling/managing productive forces). All of these contribute to the modernization of the perception universe within which it is possible to manage and utilize the masses and their own perception dependent production.

BRICs states are not the only ones engaged in this business. Nor is their approach--grounded in the sensibilities of what might be described as "left" sensibilities originating in the 19th century--the only means of effecting these ends. There are orthodoxies and pathways toward the instrumentalization of perception that are as variegated as the ambitions to control those perceptions to certain ends. . Still, there are excellent examples of the form here.

To those ends, as well as for the purpose of better understanding the agendas and the constitution of a certain orthodoxy of perception ans its modalities (in text), the apex official product of the event, its Kazan Declaration: STRENGTHENING MULTILATERALISM FOR JUST GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY, Kazan, Russian Federation (23 October 2024) is reproduced below. Along with that the subsidiary texts meant to fulfill or fill in, at least at the level of discourse (because in the end discourse may well be its own ends) the perception  space created through the Kazan Declaraiton. At a higher level of abstraction, of course, this Kazan Declaration must be understood as merely one brick in the construction of this specific edifice of perception--this Val-halle--into which the divinities of this system will enter and reside.

 

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And the urtext of perception requires conexttually based storytelling in its own right.  That, to some extent, is served by the new quality production of leader speeches that draw on, and that in turn construct, the fundamental perception texts.  But that dialectic reveals rupture as well as commitment to a vision; rupture within, a united front against opposing perception universes no longer congenial to the re-constitution of human relations under their leadership that is sought. See, e.g., President Lula's speech during the open plenary session of the BRICS Summit; Full Text: Address by Chinese President Xi Jinping at 'BRICS Plus' leaders' dialogue; PM's Modi Full Speech At 16th BRICS Summit In Russia; Address by President Cyril Ramaphosa during the BRICS Summit.

Their texts also follow below.

 

 

Framing Socialist Democracy Within the Patriotic Front: Rationalizing the Masses, Through the Hierarchical Structure of the United Front Element

 

Always great to see useful graphics for China's democratic and consultative institutional structures. These remind one that Chinese endogenous (consultative) democratic structures are grounded in the principle that mass (collective) organizations are the most efficient way to ensure a properly functioning system of mass democratic consultation under the guidance and leadership of the vanguard Communist Party of China.  With thanks to my brilliant colleague Chris Mittlestaedt for bringing this to my attention!

Translation follows below

Annual Comparative Law Work-in-Progress Workshop May 1-3, 2025 Announcement and Call for Papers

 

The Judgment of Paris; Pompeii, credit here

Happy to pass along this call for papers for the Annual Comparative Law Work-in-Progress Workshop (May 1-3, 2025). The Workshop is supported by the University of Illinois College of Law and the American Society of Comparative Law. The details follow below.

World Justice Project 2024 Rule of Law Index and Report Now Available

 

The World Justice Project has just made available its 2024 Rule of Law Index covering the great majority of the globe's states.  Relevant links follow.

Full Report

Insights

 Dataset

 Methodology

 Variable Map

The more detailed press release follows below.

Key Findings  the methodology provides a useful framework for interpreting these findings) also follow below

Socialist Global Sustainable Development: Wang Manqian, "The Global Development Initiative injects new impetus into global sustainable development" [王曼倩 全球发展倡议为全球可持续发展注入新动力 ]

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Since 2015's announcement of the UN's 20230 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the issue of the interpretation and fulfillment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals it incorporated has been at the center of the great debates about the nature, character, and fulfillment of development as envisioned in and as this agenda. 

The Agenda remains the world’s roadmap for ending poverty, protecting the planet and tackling inequalities. The 17 SDGs, the cornerstone of the Agenda, offer the most practical and effective pathway to tackle the causes of violent conflict, human rights abuses, climate change and environmental degradation and aim to ensure that no one will be left behind. The SDGs reflect an understanding that sustainable development everywhere must integrate economic growth, social well-being and environmental protection. (here)

While the West and its public-private apparatus have sought to develop a universal narrative about and around the SDG's, the 2030 Agenda, and the imaginaries of development crafted through their language and framework, China has sought to develop and project its own narrative, one developed to align with movement along China's Socialist Path as part of a larger objective of reshaping the entirety of the imaginaries of international legality and policy (here). These have been built around what the Chinese authorities call the "Global Development Initiative" which some in the West have suggested now serves as a chapeau for the earlier initiative like Belt & Road (eg here).  As the Chinese Foreign Ministry explained it in the context of the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (September 2024), 

Three years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the Global Development Initiative (GDI) at the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, calling for building a consensus on pursuing development, promoting shared growth and helping accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The initiative has since been continuously substantialized, its implementation mechanisms increasingly refined, and practical cooperation under its framework has gradually taken shape, thereby offering China's solution to bridging the development gap in Global South countries as well as building a better world together.

China has been marshaling its friends to form a bloc within the UN, the object of which is to promote the GDI, borrowing a similar tactic that has been the specialty of insiders at the UN used to marshal through favored initiatives (for its application in the context of the so-called Treaty on Business and human Rights, see here). Quoting Fu Cong, China's permanent representative at the UN, Chinese reporting noted the way that China

has further expanded "our network of friends".More than 100 countries and international organizations, including the United Nations, "responded positively to the initiative, and the Group of Friends now comprises more than 80 countries", Fu said. The initiative has so far achieved "fruitful outcomes", thanks to "practical cooperation" and "we have made steady progress in the institutional building", said Fu. "The GDI comes from China, but its opportunities and outcomes belong to the whole world. China will continue to work closely with other group members and further advance the work of our group to lend fresh impetus to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda," he said. (HERE)

It is in furtherance of these initiatives that some Chinese policy essays and scholarship has been developed.  Among them, and of some interest is a recent article by Wang Manqian, "The Global Development Initiative injects new impetus into global sustainable development" [王曼倩 全球发展倡议为全球可持续发展注入新动力 ]published in Red Flag Journal 《红旗文稿》. Wang Manqian is Vice Dean and Professor of the School of Marxism at Beijing Foreign Studies University. The essay appears below in the original Chinese and in a crude English translation.

Wang makes three broad points.  The first is that GDI envisions of national context focused approach to development and an inter-governmental structure for coordinating these distinctive pathways toward development, united broadly by generalized shared goals. "The Global Development Initiative encourages countries to formulate development plans based on their own national conditions, while strengthening international policy communication, infrastructure connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration and people-to-people exchanges, so as to build a closer and more pragmatic global development partnership." ["全球发展倡议鼓励各国根据自身国情制定发展计划，同时加强国际间的政策沟通、设施联通、贸易畅通、资金融通和民心相通，从而构建起一个更加紧密、更加务实的全球发展伙伴关系。"].

The second is to align GDI with the emerging structures of socialist modernization as it has been developed within the context of the 3rd Plenum's recent Resolution on Socialist Modernization and New or High Quality Development (3rd Plenum Communique here, discussion here, here, here, and here).  That reinforces the alignment between theoretical development within China (especially with respect to internal development) and the projection of that theoretical development outward in ways that can be generalized for the international community.

The Global Development Initiative is a plan of world significance proposed by China in the context of many challenges and changes in economic globalization. It is mainly based on the "six insistences", namely, insisting on giving priority to development, insisting on putting people at the center, insisting on inclusiveness, insisting on innovation-driven, insisting on harmonious coexistence between man and nature, and insisting on action-oriented. It not only reflects China's profound understanding and active response to global development, but also demonstrates the world value of Chinese-style modernization. 全球发展倡议是中国在经济全球化面临诸多挑战和变革的背景下，提出的具有世界意义的方案，以“六个坚持”为主要内容，即坚持发展优先，坚持以人民为中心，坚持普惠包容，坚持创新驱动，坚持人与自然和谐共生，坚持行动导向，不仅体现了中国对全球发展的深刻理解和积极应对，更展现了中国式现代化的世界价值。

Third, Wang notes the efforts to materialize the vision for a Chinese and Socialist Pathway to development through the further development of networks and inter-linkages at the State level.  To that end he notes what appears to be the critical pathways toward community. These include the further  solidification of the "Friends of GDI" at the UN and likely eventually at other international institutions (the UN Geneva apparatus for example). Another is the parallel development of linked networks through the China International Development Cooperation Agency. The third is through the Belt & Road Initiative networks. The object is to enhance the centrality of China and the Chinese vision for the re-constitution of the forms and trajectories of the global discourse on development and the embedding of the Chinese development imaginary within the structures and operations of the United Nations systems, and beyond. "China adheres to true multilateralism, promotes North-South dialogue, achieves complementary advantages, consolidates the cooperation pattern dominated by North-South cooperation and supplemented by South-South cooperation, and practices the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities" [中国坚持真正的多边主义，促进南北对话，实现优势互补，巩固以南北合作为主导、南南合作为补充的合作格局，践行共同但有区别的责任原则。]. 

Routledge Handbook on Global China (Maximilian Mayer, Emilian Kavalski, Marina Rudyak, Xin Zhang (eds) Now Available.

 

 

Happy to pass along the announcement that the  Routledge Handbook on Global China (Maximilian Mayer, Emilian Kavalski, Marina Rudyak, Xin Zhang (eds) is now available. This from the online press release:

This innovative Routledge Handbook sheds light on the complex and transformative nature of Global China, prompting a re- evaluation of existing theories on global and regional dynamics. It encourages theoretical innovation, methodological reflection and analytical transformation, providing new avenues for critical engagement with China’s global interactions. The chapters propose three key commitments for the study of Global China: Advocating for diverse viewpoints and non- binary frameworks, employing nuanced analysis to understand Beijing’s transnational relations and utilizing alternative methodological approaches to explore different trajectories for China in international affairs.

The Handbook also identifies and avoids epistemic traps that hinder the understanding of Global China, such as othering and strategic narcissism. It suggests five analytical frameworks related to relationality, global capitalist processes, language and discourse power, planetary- scale modernization and experimentalism to guide future research. By adopting these frameworks, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of the multifaceted factors shaping Global China within the broader global context of cooperation, competition and crisis.

The essays are worth reading.  The table of contents follows below.

Cuba's State of Misery (Sacrifice) in its More Ironic State: Excerpt from Fidel Castro's Speech at a Rally of Electrical Plant Workers 11 April 1959 [Discurso pronunciado por el Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz en la concentración de los obreros de plantas eléctricas, el 11 de abril de 1959]

 

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 I have been writing about the institutionalization of States of Misery in Cuba (Discussion Draft Posted: "Cuba and the Constitution of a Stable State of Misery: Ideology, Economic Policy, and Popular Discipline";  PowerPoint for Presentation of "Cuba and the Constitution of a Stable State of Misery).  Born of the revolutionary premise that sacrifice is necessary to realize the promise of the revolution, and impervious to deviations from the Cuban Marxist-Leninist ideal in those Socialist states that survived the collapse of European Marxist-Leninism, Cuba has increasingly returned to the fundamental notions of sacrifice to support an order grounded on present misery to preserve the oral economic order represented as the core premise of the revolution and grounded in the antipathy for consumerism, and the signification of consumerism as the avatar for the corrupting influences  and exploitative debilitation of the contemporary system of individual and markets driven economic systems.  

It is in this context that the recent power disruptions that affected significant portions of Cuba resonate--but perhaps not exactly in the way that the Cuban State apparatus might have preferred. It comes after years (accelerated and intensified form and after COVID (on the COVID accelerator HERE and HERE)) a sacrifices borne by the Cuban population and affecting virtually every sector of life. It has  become more distressing as those sacrifices now also appear to roll back the gains that have been the hallmark of the Cuban official narrative about the success and value of the revolution, not just as an aspirational idea, but as a lived experience. 

A State of Misery (sacrifice) can perpetuate itself only as and to the extent that it does not cross the line between sacrifice and wretchedness. Usually that line is fairly well visible, if only by the markers of popular protests that serve as a warning signal to the nomenklaturea that misery indicators have gone below tolerable levels. That dialectic of protest and misery remains a mystery to outsiders who seek to see in every sacrifice another nail in the coffin of the Cuban Marxist-Leninist regime. Yet for the number of nails on that coffin accumulated over the decades, and the aggregated misery of the population (its sacrifices), alleviated to some extent by the strategic value of migration, subsidies by foreign states and NGOs, and the sometimes clumsy management of the apertures for the non-state and unofficial economic sectors,--for all of that--the current political-economic model and its bureaucracies continue to stumble along. 

And yet the power disruption catastrophe may be different in kind. It is certainly a marker that, from the first months after the success of the 1959 revolution, was seen as a marker inviting revolutionary activity. It is with that in mind, but with no sense of where this may go, that it is worthwhile to reconsider a critical portion of a much longer address delivered by the then young and just emerging leader, Fidel Castro Ruz, at a rally of power plant workers, April 11, 1959. Discurso pronunciado por el Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz en la concentración de los obreros de plantas eléctricas, el 11 de abril de 1959 [Speech delivered by the Commander in Chief, Fidel Castro Ruz at the Rally of Electrical Plant Wokers 11 April 1959]. It follows in its original Spanish and in an English translation.

¿Cuántas son las familias que no tienen corriente eléctrica? ¿Cuántas son las familias que no disfrutan de estos beneficios que la electricidad significa para la familia?

Imaginad una familia de cualquier pueblo de Cuba a la que le supriman la corriente eléctrica, ¿cuáles serían las consecuencias, en primer término? Si tiene refrigerador, se le paraliza el refrigerador; si tiene plancha eléctrica, se le paraliza la plancha eléctrica; si tiene cocina eléctrica, se le paraliza la cocina eléctrica; si tiene radio no puede oír programas, no puede oír música; si tiene un televisor, desaparecen para él todos los programas de la televisión y, por supuesto, cuando llega la noche no podrá encender cómodamente la luz con un botón, tendrá que buscar una vela, tendrá que estar a oscuras. ¿Creen ustedes que podrían soportar las familias que se les quitase la electricidad? ¿Qué pasaría? No me podrían ver aquí. ¿Qué culpa tengo yo de eso?

En dos palabras, que no soportaría el pueblo que le faltase la corriente eléctrica. Sería realmente insoportable eso de que le quitaran el refrigerador, el radio, el televisor, la luz eléctrica, el teléfono también y todo sería un desastre. Deben imaginarse cuántas cosas se paralizarían, sin embargo, ¿pueden ustedes imaginarse que casi la mitad de la población de Cuba no conoce la corriente eléctrica y, por lo tanto, no tiene ni refrigerador, ni hornilla eléctrica, ni plancha eléctrica, ni televisor, algunos tienen radio de pilas; pero, en fin, que más de la mitad de la población de Cuba carece de todos los beneficios que hoy recibe una población que no podría vivir sin la corriente eléctrica? Esa es la realidad de nuestros campos, y esa es la parte del pueblo que hay que ir a redimir ahora, porque justo es que si nosotros disfrutamos de estos beneficios, ellos también los disfruten. Sin embargo, nadie se ocupó de los campesinos.

Allí iban los políticos a buscar cédulas, a buscar votos; allí, el latifundio, el bohío inhóspito, la miseria, el analfabetismo, la enfermedad, el hambre, nada menos que aproximadamente la mitad de nuestro pueblo. Ustedes hoy, al contribuir a la reforma agraria, no solamente están sembrando dinero, están sembrando riqueza, sino están sembrando también justicia, están sembrando salud, están sembrando cultura, están sembrando felicidad, están sembrando hermandad. Porque será más grande nuestra patria cuando haya menos analfabetos, cuando haya menos enfermos, cuando no haya hambrientos, cuando no haya un solo cubano abandonado; será más fuerte la patria cuando hayamos redimido a esa mitad de nuestro pueblo que ha vivido hasta hoy olvidada y desamparada, y será más fuerte nuestro pueblo cuando el torrente de riqueza que esos campesinos van a arrancar a la tierra se revierta sobre las ciudades, sobre los que también necesitan redención, sobre los que están sin trabajo, sobre los que no tienen pan, sobre los que no se pueden ganar el pan con el sudor de su frente aunque quieran, sobre los que están ganando salarios bajos, sobre los que están sufriendo en la ciudad todas las consecuencias de nuestra economía atrasada y colonizada. Redimiremos al campesino económicamente, y el campesino ayudará después a redimir la ciudad y viviremos muy distinto a lo que hemos vivido hasta hoy, en todos los órdenes, no solo en el orden material, sino también en el orden moral.

Si junto con leyes revolucionarias, junto con los sacrificios de hoy sembramos el buen ejemplo, sembramos definitivamente la honradez y el patriotismo en nuestra patria, Cuba podrá decir con orgullo en años no lejanos que será uno de los pueblos más ricos y más felices de la Tierra, y su Revolución será ejemplo para todos los pueblos del mundo (APLAUSOS).

How many families do not have electricity? How many families do not enjoy the benefits that electricity means for the family?

Imagine a family in any town in Cuba whose electricity is cut off. What would be the consequences, first of all? If they have a refrigerator, the refrigerator stops; if they have an electric iron, the electric iron stops; if they have an electric stove, the electric stove stops; if they have a radio, they cannot listen to programs, they cannot listen to music; if they have a television, all the television programs disappear for them and, of course, when night comes they cannot comfortably turn on the light with a button, they will have to look for a candle, they will have to be in the dark. Do you think that families could bear to have their electricity cut off? What would happen? They would not be able to see me here. What is my fault in that?

In two words, the people could not bear to have their electricity cut off. It would be really unbearable if they took away the refrigerator, the radio, the television, the electric light, the telephone too, and everything would be a disaster. You must imagine how many things would come to a standstill, however, can you imagine that almost half of the Cuban population does not know the electric current and, therefore, does not have a refrigerator, nor an electric stove, nor an electric iron, nor a television, some have a battery-operated radio; but, in short, that more than half of the Cuban population lacks all the benefits that today are received by a population that could not live without electricity? That is the reality of our countryside, and that is the part of the people that we must go to redeem now, because it is fair that if we enjoy these benefits, they also enjoy them. However, nobody took care of the peasants.

There the politicians went to look for identification cards, to look for votes; There, the latifundia, the inhospitable huts, the misery, the illiteracy, the illness, the hunger, no less than approximately half of our people. Today, by contributing to the agrarian reform, you are not only sowing money, you are sowing wealth, but you are also sowing justice, you are sowing health, you are sowing culture, you are sowing happiness, you are sowing brotherhood. Because our country will be greater when there are fewer illiterate people, when there are fewer sick people, when there are no hungry people, when there is not a single Cuban abandoned; The country will be stronger when we have redeemed that half of our people who have lived until now forgotten and helpless, and our people will be stronger when the torrent of wealth that these peasants are going to wrest from the land is returned to the cities, to those who also need redemption, to those who are without work, to those who have no bread, to those who cannot earn their bread by the sweat of their brow even if they wanted to, to those who are earning low wages, to those who are suffering in the city all the consequences of our backward and colonized economy. We will redeem the peasant economically, and the peasant will later help to redeem the city and we will live very differently from what we have lived until now, in all aspects, not only in the material aspect, but also in the moral aspect.

If, together with revolutionary laws and today's sacrifices, we sow a good example, we definitively sow honesty and patriotism in our country, Cuba will be able to proudly say in not too distant years that it will be one of the richest and happiest peoples on Earth, and its Revolution will be an example for all the peoples of the world (APPLAUSE).

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One reads this today in a very different way than one might have in April, 1959.  And yet, even then, the fundamental idea of sacrifice, of popular privation in the service of a greater (and abstracted) thing--the revolution, was already much in evidence.  But of course in 1959, flush with the exuberance of a revolution in which, for an instant, almost anything seemed possible, one might never have imagined the power outages of 2024. And yet, perhaps oracularly, Mr. Castro ended his April 1959 remarks to the electrical plant workers with in April 1959, with a vision of the dynamics and realities of the sacrifices to come--for the greater glory of the nation and its revolution. That is how Mr. Castro's remarks end, opening a window, one that no one could have seen through clearly then, of what the future might portend.

Nuestro pueblo será tanto más grande cuanto más grandes sean los obstáculos que tiene delante; más hablará de nuestro pueblo la historia cuanto más dificultades tenga que vencer; más justicia le hará el porvenir cuanto más se le calumnie hoy, y solo podrá decirse que aquí se organizó una sociedad donde todos los pueblos del mundo pudieron venir a aprender lo que era justicia, lo que era democracia, y que supo defenderla y supo sostenerla, y, aunque no sabemos lo que el destino nos depare, sí tenemos la seguridad suficiente para decir que nuestra Revolución triunfará porque sabremos defenderla, o que nuestro pueblo perecerá si es preciso perecer para defenderla (APLAUSOS).

Our people will be greater the greater the obstacles they face; the more history will speak of our people the more difficulties they have to overcome; the more justice the future will do them the more they are slandered today, and all that can be said is that here a society was organized where all the peoples of the world could come to learn what justice was, what democracy was, and that it knew how to defend it and knew how to sustain it, and, although we do not know what fate has in store for us, we do have sufficient certainty to say that our Revolution will triumph because we will know how to defend it, or that our people will perish if it is necessary to perish to defend it (APPLAUSE).

The nation, indeed, may be required to serve as the funeral pyre of the revoolutionary convictions of themiddle of the 20th century, if only because, despite everything, its vanguard appears to continue to insist that both the State and its ideology (certainly as applied) cannot recognize either the passage of time or the realities of changes as Cuba moves from one stage of historical development ot another. 

The text of the entire address follows.

Cuba's State of Misery -- The Electrical blackouts of October 2024

 

Pix Credit here

 

I have been writing about the possibility of theorizing a structure, of sorts, to the present consideration of the state of Cuba and its "state failure."  The object was to interrogate the ruling narrative in its two forms.  

One of them is the narrative of the Evil Empire in which the United States, Fidel Castro's classical hegemon, has been able to diabolically thwart all of Cuba's efforts, in every shape and form, to bring prosperity to Cuba--with prosperity measured by the OECD  and classical economics's yardstick.   The implication, of course, is that with the Embargo gone, Cuba could at least reach some sort of Eden like state the measure of which has always been vague at best. And the premise is that the State and its apparatus, guided by the vision of its political-economic model, is poised for greatness--however that 9is measured. BUt it is also one in which its ow people, corrupted by outsiders, disspate the purty of the system and its forward movement through the corruption of both the non-state sector and the "unofficial" economy.

The other narrative is the dissipation of Soviet style Marxist-Leninism, in which Cuba remains the poster child of the failures of a centrally planned economy. That failure is not limited to the failure of a state apparatus to mimic successfully the market.  It goes deeper than that.  It suggests that such a model cannot avoid the decaying corruption of a nomenklatura system in which people, who ought to know better, devote their lives to perpetrating state theft of mass productivity, assuming the are motivated to compel productivity at all. This is the narrative of system failure precisely because of its doctrinaire abhorrence of markets and the resumptions of classical economic theory.

I have suggested that both of those narratives, even the one nurtured by Cuban authorities, are beside the point--fairy stories designed to advance ideological and state interest agendas.  That is fair.  But one really ought ot know better than to project their own inner demons or angels (their lebenswelt) into the analysis.  But then, Cuba has always appeared to be at its most usefu as an abstraction.  It is an abstraction into which the hopes, lusts, desires, and fears of larger and more significant state elites can project their own neuroses about their own systems and their roles in it. Cuba, in this sense, serves the rest of the world the way that the madam served her clients in that marvelous Genet play, The Balcony, 

Pix Credit here

I suggested (PowerPoint for Presentation of "Cuba and the Constitution of a Stable State of Misery: Ideology, Economic Policy, and Popular Discipline" Prepared for 2024 Annual ASCE Conference) that these essentially narcissictic positions missed the essential point of Cuba--or at leats of Cuban elites.  That the Cuban elites have no interest whatsoever in either conforming to an OECD or a Chinese Marxist Leninist Model.  That, in their own lebenswelt the critical task is to preserve (and eventually advance) the4 ideal of the revolution as developed  in its early decades and memorialized in the 1970s (and reaffirmed by the 7th and 8th PCC Congresses). That in this lebeswelt the primary task of the vanguard is to develop a society in which the people's needs are met, that the vanguard is the focal point for determining the nature of those needs, and that to effectuate that system it is necessary to separate (isolate) the masses from the corruption of a global system of exploitative overproduction and over-consumption in which innovation is dissipated on consumer goods and driven by individuals motivated by a profit maximization ideal. In that context misery may be the best antidote to corruption. And a stable state of misery is the best one can hope for in order to preserve so much of the purity of the revolutionary ideal as it is possible. The rest follows (Discussion Draft Posted: "Cuba and the Constitution of a Stable State of Misery: Ideology, Economic Policy, and Popular Discipline").

It is in this context that the recent tremendous failure of the Cuba power supply will, like other failures, tend to be misunderstood by both Cuba's enemies and friends. 

Cubans experienced their second black out wave Saturday after government officials said they were working to restore electrical service to hospitals and crucial service centers after a grid failure on Friday. “At 6:15 am a new total outage occurred of the national electroenergetic system,” a post on the Cuba Electrical Union’s official Telegram channel said. “The Electric Union is working to reestablish it.” Central and Eastern subsystems were not affected ,according to a Cuban state agency. The country’s power grid has been compromised twice within 24 hours, leaving approximately 10 million without electricity. (here)

As one would expect, press organs like CNN were quick to report the standard line--the blackouts were the results of US Sanctions programs, plus the damage from recent storms.  But the Cuban authorities have also been quite transparent about the increasing risks to their infrastructure of years of neglect.  And not just the power grids--roads, housing stock, water systems--are all vulnerable having been neglected in some cased for more than half a century.    

The people will suffer. That suffering will affect not just quality of life but the capacity of the state to repair and restore some level of economic life.  And the long termj threat to the ability of Cuba to generate sufficient productivity to meet its objectives--in this case not prosperity but the supply of the minimal needs of the people, are itself imperiled.

Rites and popular eruptions are sure to follow.  But also following will be the blossoming of the unofficial markets--fueled, in large part by the diaspora community and its thick network of unofficial supply chains. These will be tolerated--and ignored. The new state regulations shrinking the approved non-state sector are also likely to be ignored. And the level of corruption necessary to make that happen (and to keep government official in the loop) will likely grow. 

 But the conventional impulse, especially in the West, to see this as the beginning of the end of Cuban Marxist Leninism is perhaps premature. It is certainly premature to the extent that the State is able to deploy foreign subsidies to ensure that it continues to provide the minimal necessities that keep the population miserable but nt restive.  That will be a challenge in the ext several months.  But it will be that task that will  provide evidence of the viability of a stable state of misery--and for those watching closely, perhaps some data about where the triggering line is between acceptable stability enhancing misery and what lies beneath. It will also test the strength of the global community's commitment to the preservation of the Cuban State of misery through aid, loan forgiveness, and loan payment forbearance. The inpetus will be European--and driven by Spain.  But expect subsidies from Mexico and Brazil as well.  The form and effect will be telling.

PowerPoint for Presentation of "Cuba and the Constitution of a Stable State of Misery: Ideology, Economic Policy, and Popular Discipline" Prepared for 2024 Annual ASCE Conference

 

I take this opportunity to post the PowerPoint I prepared in connection with the presentation of my paper at the 2024 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy. The PPT may also be accessed HERE: Backer_CubaStateofMisery_ASCE2024.

My paper was posted here (Discussion Draft Posted: "Cuba and the Constitution of a Stable State of Misery: Ideology, Economic Policy, and Popular Discipline") and may be accessed HERE (SSRN): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4991337.

The PPT are also reproduced below.