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.