Journals
Thursday,May 26 2005, 07:46:02 PMFarming in Cuba : A Breif Review
Farming in Cuba
Once farmers have sold their quota to the state, they may sell their excess fruit and vegetables at the farmer’s markets. In 1993 when the government began to break up the state farms, they introduced Resolution 357, allowing the formation of relatively autonomous cooperatives. They farm government land but they own the harvest. They must sell their quota to the state and adhere to state rules, like selling at 20% below the farmers' markets.
In addition to a salary, the 43 workers on Norma's farm receive 40 pesos worth of produce a month. As the average monthly wage is about 217 pesos (roughly US $10), the supplemental food is welcomed. They breed goats, sheep and chickens for the workers. They sell a large selection of fresh and dried herbs. Spices are hard to get outside of the organiponicos. Medicinal herbs, known as green medicine, are grown here. The use of alternative medicine is widespread.
They teach organic gardening courses on-site and hope to incorporate canning and preserving into the curriculum. Jars (for preserving) are hard to come by in Cuba and this is a simple project that the government could alleviate easily.
The Antonio Nunez Jimenez Foundation is a non-profit, dedicated to promoting sustainable environmental practises. The group is housed in a well-maintained museum, a tribute to its founder, a prolific writer, scientist, explorer, and collector. They offer permaculture courses; publish and distribute brochures and newsletters; and maintain a small demonstration garden. Course graduates then go out and start urban gardens on roof tops, boulevards and in community spaces.
Around the corner from A. Nunez is a government run, seed house (Casa de Semillas). These "gardening stores" sell a variety of seeds, seedlings, biological pest controls, organic fertilizers and tools. None of the farmers we talked to saved their own seeds because they were readily available from the government, and storage was a problem in the tropical environment. Farmers did complain about the lack of variety. Only one variety of lettuce is grown on many farms.
(See: http://www.cityfarmer.org/CubaSpringPhotos.html
Recent Cuban Reforms -- (Extracts from: http://www.choicesmagazine.org/2003-4/2003-4-01.htm
Faced with a crisis brought on by an end of Soviet subsidies, Cuba radically changed the state sector in 1993; about 80% of the farmland was then held by the state and over half was turned over to workers in the form of cooperatives—UBPC (Basic Unit of Cooperative Production). Farmers lease state land rent free in perpetuity, in exchange for meeting production quotas. They may even bequeath the land, as long as it continues to be farmed. A 1994 reform permitted farmers to sell their excess production at farmers' markets.
The reforms emphasized five basic principles. Foremost of these was a focus on agroecological technology, supported by the state/university research, education, and extensions system. There had been researchers, outreach specialists, and faculty devoted to agroecology before the crisis. The crisis not only brought them to the forefront, but universities, research centers, and agricultural policies were reoriented to make agroecology the dominant paradigm. To begin to understand the magnitude of this reorientation, imagine for a moment that your local college of agriculture reoriented its entire curriculum, research, and extension programs to agroecology. Pick yourself up off the floor, and now image that all the universities as well as all national agricultural policies in your country were reoriented to agroecology.
A second principle of the reform was land reform; state farms were transformed to cooperatives or broken into smaller private units, and anyone wishing to farm could do so rent free. In effect, a right-to-farm policy was implemented. A third principle of the reform was fair prices to farmers: Farmers can sell their excess production at farmers' markets; average incomes of farmers are three times that of other workers in Cuba. A fourth principle of reform is an emphasis on local production in order to reduce transportation (and hence energy) costs. Urban agriculture, a key to this reform, produces nearly the recommended daily allowance of 300 grams per person of produce. The fifth principle of reform is farmer-to-farmer training as the backbone of the extension system.
Impact of the Reforms
What were the results of these reforms? Production of tubers and plantains tripled and vegetable production quadrupled between 1994 and 1999, while bean production increased by 60% and citrus by 110%. Potato production increased by 75%, and cereals increased by 83% between 1994 and 1998. Calorie intake rose to 2,580 per capita per day—just under the minimum recommended by the World Health Organization. This is despite Cuba being the second poorest country in the Americas.
The conversion of Cuba's agriculture to more sustainable practices has focused on urban agriculture and domestic crops. Indeed, these practices seem to free up scarce chemicals for the traditional export crop, sugar. Sugar continues to be produced in monoculture, but increasing amounts of organic sugar are being produced, largely for export.
Urban agricultural production climbed from negligible in 1994 to more than 600,000 metric tons in 2000. There are more than 200,000 urban farm plots ranging in size from a few meters to a hectare in size. Production practices rely on organic matter, vermiculture, raised beds, crop rotation, companion cropping, and biopesticides. Yields are between 6 and 30 kilos per square meter and are predominantly roots, tubers, and vegetables. A proposed project called Calle Parque (street parks) will extend urban agriculture and provide much-needed urban cooling by converting some streets in central Havana to parks and gardens. The reforms have not yielded dramatic results for sugar, meat, or dairy, nor for traditional import crops (rice and beans). Cuba continues to rely on food imports, as it has since it was colonized. In 2000, Cuba imported US$141 million in rice, US$65 million in beans, and US$60 million in milk products. Cuba imports about a million metric tons of feed grains, a half million metric tons of soybeans, 100,000 metric tons of chicken and pork, substantial amounts of cooking oil, soybean meal, and malt. Because of the U.S. embargo, Cuba has to buy these products from distant countries, adding on average 30% to the cost of food imports over what they would pay for U.S. products. Cuba buys rice from India and China, dairy products from the European Union, grains from South America and Eastern Europe, and meat from Canada and Brazil.
Meat production and dairy production were hit particularly hard by the loss of subsidized Soviet feed and petroleum. The loss of petroleum meant that animal traction became a strategy to reduce reliance on farm machinery. Animal traction is also better for soil management, particularly given the smaller farm size after land was redistributed. However, the conversion to animal traction was impeded by lack of oxen and expertise. The solution was to prohibit slaughter of cattle without government permission (in order to build up the herd) and to create "schools" to train the oxen (and presumably farmers). More than 150,000 oxen have been trained at these schools, and pairs of working oxen are ubiquitous throughout Cuba. This dramatic transformation did not come without a cost—the availability of beef plummeted, and anyone caught illegally slaughtering cattle could spend up to 20 years in jail.
Policy Themes -- This kind of policy solution—trading personal liberty for social goals—is common in Cuba. Not only cattle are managed as a national resource—the dean of an agricultural university in Cuba declared that "soil is a strategic national resource." Intellectual property is also managed as a public resource. Cuban researchers are developing biotechnology applications for agriculture and medicine. However, the Cuban government prevents anyone from patenting discoveries funded by government research. Intellectual property developed with public funds is treated as a public resource.
Cubans share their poverty; living standards are low. Yet, despite being the second poorest country in the Americas, there is no widespread hunger; housing is generally free, if dilapidated and crowded; Cubans are one of the most educated populations in the world; and there is universal free health care. All Cubans have access to a basic (although minimal) diet through their ration card. Cubans supplement this with food they grow, barter for, or buy at farm stands, farmers' markets, or dollar stores. Cubans spend about two thirds of their income on food, but not everyone has the same buying power. A 2000 Lexington Institute study found that it took the average Cuban on a government salary four days to earn enough money to buy a basket of food consisting of one pound each of pork, rice, and beans, two pounds of tomatoes, three limes, and a head of garlic. A retiree on a pension would need 7.2 days, and a private taxi driver in Havana would need 3.5 hours.
Citizen Responses
Cubans have a range of responses to this situation. Many Cubans are dedicated to social equity and are pragmatic about the individual sacrifices required so that everyone has something to eat. Some are discontented feeling that they are underemployed given the level of (free) education that they have and could have a higher living standard under a capitalist system. No one says that the situation is easy, and the embargo (called a blockade in Cuba) is viewed by all as the primary barrier to improving the situation.
The Farm Bureau has made some headway with the State Department to allow some U.S. exports (in Havana, we bought Washington State Red Delicious apples -- for 50 cents each! -- at a dollar store). Cuba wants to buy U.S. farm products: rice, dairy products, feed grains, soybeans, meat, and poultry. However, it is unlikely they will be able to do so without some means of earning dollars, and their export products are sugar, citrus, tobacco, tropical fruits and vegetables, and seafood, which would compete with some U.S. producers.
The Future
Everyone expects political changes when Castro dies, but one must be mindful that there is an immense state system that permeates society. Many people benefit from this system, and Cubans are well aware of the example of the Soviet collapse and ensuing economic and social crisis in Russia. It is likely that Cuba will continue to promote agroecological practices and to expand urban agriculture simply because they are yielding results. The bad experiences with large agricultural operations, both before and after communism, make it unlikely that anyone could credibly promote a return to large, high-input operations as a matter of national policy.
The positive results that farmers, university researchers, and extension are getting from the transformation of Cuban agriculture will likely encourage them to continue to pursue sustainable practices whatever comes next. Cuban people are eating better and healthier than before, though things are far from perfect. However, the relevant comparison is to other Latin American countries; Cuba simply does not have the widespread hunger, destitution, and suffering that are commonplace in countries with much higher GDP per capita.
The extent of future success with sustainable agriculture will of course depend on what markets Cuban farmers will have access to and what types of competition they will face from imports. Although great strides have been made, Cuba will likely always be a food importer, and it will certainly be in Cuba's interest to buy its imported meat, rice, beans, oil, soy, and dairy products as cheaply as possible. If the United States wants to supply these imports, it will need to negotiate a means for Cuba to earn the money to buy them. Removing the travel ban and permitting U.S. tourists would certainly yield more unity among U.S. agricultural interests than allowing importation of Cuban sugar, citrus, and tobacco.
On Cooperatives:
It is possible to set up an organization owned by the community (the members) and operated democratically by the workers. Policy issues would have to be negotiated between the two constituencies. Ideally, the workers would have the protection of a union whose values and actual functioning parallel direct democracy, in order to protect aganist rouge power tripping member boards or other such tendencies that would undermine democracy within. On the same token, the workers should be required to negotiate with the community with regard to the end result of what is done or produced (ie. we could do without a collectively run GMO farm, or chemical manufacturer, that is not accountable to the community). Also, both constituencies are checks upon one another.
In short, a sort of decentalized socialist democracy and economic democracy, as a coalition between workers in an organization and the community it affects. The process to reform coops or collectives into a hybrid model of direct democracy is experimental and not easily accomplished without commitment and effort.
Co-operatives are about workers, producers and consumers having a share or the rights of OWNERSHIP. A collective is about the workers, producers, etc, having equal MANAGEMENT rights and decision-making responsibilities. Co-ops usually have a board of directors that may or may not include workers, but collectives are run by the people who make the big decisions together. Whether you work in a co-op or collective, you have to work under certain decisions that are made...it's just that in a co-op, you might have to live with decisions that you had no input into, but in a collective, you helped negotiate any decisions that were made.
So it's a lot harder for collectives to sell-out...
Funes, F., Garcia, L., Bourque, M., Perez, N., & Rosset, P. (Eds.) (2002). Sustainable agriculture and resistance: Transforming food production in Cuba. Oakland, CA: Food First Books.
Sinclair, M., & Thomson, M. (2001). Cuba: Going against the grain: Agricultural crisis and transformation. Boston, MA: Oxfam America.
international@lifecyclesproject.ca, http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1460
Wednesday,May 11 2005, 11:20:44 PMCUban Agriculture Long Study and Data
Agriculture in Cuba part II.
III. Organization of Production
http://www1.lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/asce/cuba3/puerta1.html
Agricultural production presently takes place under four different forms that show varying degrees of State intervention (Table 1).[15] The State sector comprises large State farms. The non-State sector includes "the Cooperatives of Agricultural Production (CPA), the Cooperatives of Credit and Services (CCS) and, finally, the dispersed small private producers who establish commitments with the State regarding the sale of agricultural products" (Comité Estatal de Estadísticas, 1991, p. 178).
The Cooperatives of Agricultural Production (CPA) are defined as "a superior form of collective production of social property which were started after the farmers' decision to join their lands and other fundamental means of production" (Comité Estatal de Estadísticas, 1991, p. 178).
Table 1. Main characteristics of the four official forms of agricultural production in Cuba from more- to less-controlled enterprises.
STATE SECTOR
State Farms
-Under the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) or the Ministry of the Sugar Industry (MINAZ).
-Social ownership. Wage earners. Priority for inputs, technical assistance, credit, investments, new technology, etc.
-Enterprises: agriculture, cattle, forestry, agroindustrial complexes (CAI) in sugar and rice.
-All sales to the State procurement agency (acopio).
-Concentrated housing and social services as incentives to workers.
NON-STATE SECTOR
Cooperatives of Agricultural Production (CPA)
A "superior form of production" -Collective ownership.
-State land and machinery.
-Established "freely" by farmers' decisions.
-Join lands and other means of production.
-Products belong to the cooperative.
-Salary is advanced payment.
-Benefits in services, not in cash.
-Most sales to the State (acopio).
Cooperatives of Credit and Services (CCS)
"Primary organizations" -Collective nature.
-Assets belong to the State.
-Facilitate common use of infrastructure (irrigation, warehouses, etc.), equipment and services (credit and technical assistance).
-Individual property of the farm.
-Private production without hired labor.
-Most sales to the State (acopio).
Dispersed (separated) Producers
"Traditional form of production (chaotic and anarchic)"
-Controlled inputs.
-Own investment plan.
-Own production without hired labor: subsistence=> barter=> sales.
-Some sales to State (Exceptions: at the farm in the 1970s and at the free farmers' markets in the early 1980s).
Source: Summarized mainly from Comité Estatal de Estadísticas (1991, p. 178) and other Cuban sources. The origins and reasons for establishing the CPAs are described by Benjamin et al. (1986). The decision to push cooperatives was made in 1975 when the government realized that "the small farmers were not pulling their own weight, producing far below their potential while burdening the government with the cost of low interest credits, crop insurance, and social services" (p. 175).
CPAs were also seen "as a way of increasing productivity through smaller government investments" since State farms had shown that "huge investments in such inputs as irrigation and machinery were slow to pay off" (pp. 175-176).
Official statistics reveal interesting insights about the evolution of CPAs (Table 2). Except for tobacco, which shows a steady decrease in the number of CPAs, the remaining crops have experienced ups and downs, and all show a decline from 1987 to 1989. Similar trends are observed in the remaining indicators (area, number of members, average ha/coop, and number of members per coop), with the exception of ha/member which has remained relatively constant since 1985 at about 14 ha.[16]
The Cooperatives of Credit and Services (CCS) are "primary organizations of a collective nature that allow the public use of irrigation, some facilities, services and other means, as well as the transacting of their credits, although the property of each farm, its equipment and resulting production remains private" (Comité Estatal de Estadísticas, 1991, p. 178).
Finally, the "dispersed" (separated) farmers are those who work their lands with family labor, follow ANAP's planting and production plans, and deliver an assigned share of their production to the State procurement agency (acopio). These farmers control 3.4 percent of the total agricultural land, have restricted access to some factors of production and inputs, but produce a large share of several agricultural commodities.
In summary, there are State farms, CPAs, CCSs, and small dispersed semi-private farmers. The previous categories reflect the State intervention in descending order but the use of four different groups is a source of confusion that needs to be elucidated or at least addressed.
The breakdown most commonly used in official Cuban statistics includes the State and non-State sectors:[17]
State Sector Non-State Sector
State farms CPAs
CCSs
Dispersed farmers
However, a difference is made between the socialist and the private sectors:[18]
Socialist Sector Private Sector
State farms CCSs
CPAs Dispersed farmers
Table 2. Selected indicators of the Cooperatives of Agricultural Production (CPA) in Cuba, selected years 1980-89.
Year
Item 1980 1981 1982 1983 1985 1987 1989
____________________________________________________________________________
Number
Sugarcane 314 348 431 441 422 432 411
Tobacco 262 233 222 230 212 206 197
Coffee 130 199 283 290 266 271 266
Other 329 348 480 511 478 509 479
Total 1,035 1,128 1,416 1,472 1,378 1,418 1,353
Area 213 383 690 938 1,009 977 876
(1,000 ha)
# Mem- 29,535 39,519 63,285 82,611 69,896 69,604 63,838
bers
Average 206 340 488 637 732 689 648
ha/CPA
Members 29 35 45 56 51 49 47
/CPA(#)
Ha/member 7.1 9.7 10.8 11.4 14.3 14.1 13.8
__________________________________________________________________
Source: Comité Estatal de Estadísticas (1991, p. 184); "Other"
and "Ha/member" based on calculations by the authors.
In essence, all four forms of production are subjected to the power of the State, whose interference decreases (but does not end) from State farms to dispersed farmers: State farms ==> CPAs ==> CCSs ==> Dispersed farmers.
The National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), has evolved throughout the years to become a quasi-governmental organization (See Puerta and Alvarez, 1993, p. 13). Domínguez has explained the origins and evolution of ANAP in the following manner:
The revolutionary government sought to bring political order and social equality to the countryside by abolishing their many competitive rural political organizations and replacing them with the single... ANAP, in which political and ideological merit rather than wealth or social status would determine political leadership and access to power. This association, unlike the other mass organizations in the early 1960s, looked after the interests of its members, lobbying vigorously on their behalf among the other offices of the state. The expansion of the power of the state into the countryside in subsequent years curtailed ANAP's autonomy and adaptability, turning it into an extension of a government whose policies a majority of the peasantry continued to resist even into the 1970s. In particular, most peasants stubbornly opposed government programs that required them to surrender the right to decide how their land would be used, a resistance that remains to the present day (1978, p. 424).
Although not truly independent, ANAP is still the only Cuban association with a semi-private sector component. Its membership surpassed 200,000 in the past and accounted for almost one-third of the economically active rural population.[19]
IV. Structure of Land Distribution and Use
Total area of Cuban agricultural units has experienced a continuous expansion (Table 3). From 1973 to 1989, the area increased from about 9 million ha to slightly over 11 million ha, an equivalent of 24 percent, distributed as follows:[20] six percent in agricultural lands (from an increase of nine percent in farmed land and a decrease of three percent in non-farmed land), and the remaining 18 percent in non-agricultural lands (a nine percent boost in both forest and land devoted to other purposes). The former coincides with the expansion of military enclaves protected by forestry areas. The latter is due primarily to the expansion of housing facilities and services in the countryside, a process intended to concentrate the rural population within the boundaries of productive units. As an urbanization program, it represents an innovative national effort to develop rural areas, achieving better results than the Rumanian case.
Following the official breakdowns, the total of slightly over 11 million hectares of Cuban land is distributed in the following manner: the State sector controls 82.3 percent while the non-State sector controls the remaining 17.7 percent. Using the socialist versus "private" sector breakdown, the socialist sector accounts for 90.2 percent while the remaining 9.8 percent is in "private" hands. In terms of non-agricultural land, the State sector controls 95 percent of the total, while the non-State sector controls only five percent (Table 4).
The land use within each type of agricultural organization unveils an interesting fact (Table 4). Dividing the amount of farmed land over total agricultural land provides a parameter that measures the intensity of land use. The State occupies the first place with 68.4 percent followed by dispersed farmers with 63.3 percent, then by CPAs with 58.4 percent and, finally, by CCSs with 50.6 percent. This differential usage should be kept in mind since the State controls the best available lands, as explained in the following section.
Go to Part II [ Edits still? ]
Organization and Performance of Cuban Agriculture at Different Levels of State Intervention
Ricardo A. Puerta, Avanced Trading Corporation and José Alvarez, University of Florida [1]
Part II.
V. The First Test: Access to Inputs
Before analyzing relative productivity and production parameters, the first question one must answer is whether or not all types of agricultural production units have equal access to inputs and technology. If not, is the access determined by the degree of State intervention? In simple terms, are non-State farmers playing on a level field? The following quotes have been taken from the work of foreign and Cuban researchers, and statements submitted by Cuban officials to the United Nations and published by its Committee on Food Aid Policies and Programmes (World Food Program -WFP/CFA).[21] They provide some insights on this issue.
On the use of best available lands:
The cooperatives also benefitted in this [1981-83] period by the policy of granting the CPAs the best land, as land was traded by state farms and cooperatives in order to consolidate contiguous land areas (Deere et al., 1992, p. 125).
Before the revolution, the best flat soils in the province [of Camagüey] were used for sugarcane. The best of the remaining land was occupied by large beef-producing ranches, and the state farms within the project area have been established on these ranches. The remaining areas of land were generally the least valuable and belong to the present cooperative sector within the project area (WFP/CFA: 25/11-A (CDL) ADD. 3, 28 March 1988, p. 3).
Much of the land [in the CPAs] is still natural pasture --uneven and covered with shrubs and stones. The cooperatives consist of pieces of land which can be several kilometers apart. The Government has assisted cooperatives to establish greater contiguity of land area by exchanging state land with cooperative land (WFP/CFA, p. 4). [However, the collection of milk twice a day] is more easily achieved with CPA's than with CCS's because of the greater compactness and scale of production of the former and dispersion of the latter (WFP/CFA, p. 5).
On access to inputs in general:
On the whole, state farms have received significant quantities of modern inputs (fertilizers, irrigation, mechanization) since the mid-1960s (Forster, 1989, p. 251).
Private farmers had the lowest priority for buying scarce agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers, irrigation equipment, and farm machinery and vehicles, that would have enabled them to produce more. During our visits to the countryside, we met farmers who could not buy even such a commonplace implement as a hose for watering vegetable crops (Benjamin et al., 1986, p. 170).
Since the revolution, the state sector has received the benefit of well-organized technical and capital inputs and is now far in advance of the private sector in terms of development and standards of management (WFP/CFA, p.4).
Table 3. Structure of land distribution and use in Cuban agriculture, 1973 and 1989.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
___________Year________________
Item 1973 1989 Difference
______________________________________________________________________________________________
- - - 1,000 ha - - - 1,000 ha % (a)
Total area 8,907.7 11,016.4 + 2,108.7 + 24
Agricultural 6,270.2 6,775.1 + 504.9 + 6
Farmed 3,645.7 4,417.5 + 771.9 + 9
Non-farmed 2,624.5 2,357.6 - 266.9 - 3
Non-agricultural 2,637.5 4,241.3 + 1,603.8 + 18
Forest 1,771.7 2,610.9 + 839.2 + 9
Other 865.8 1,630.4 + 764.6 + 9
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Note: "Other" includes unfit and watery lands, and land for building purposes.
(a) In relation to the 8,907,700 ha in total land area in 1973.
Source: Comité Estatal de Estadísticas, 1977 Anuario, p.63; 1989. Anuario, pp. 185-186.
Table 4. Structure of land distribution and use in Cuban agriculture, by productive sector, 1989.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
_________Total area_________ _____________Share (a)___________
State CPA CCS Disp. Total State CPA CCS Disp. __________________________________
TOTAL - - - - - - - 1,000 ha - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Percent - - - - - -
Agricultural
Farmed
3441.4 449.4 373.7 45.9 4410.4 78.0 10.2 8.5 3.3 100
Pastures
1240.4 272.0 308.9 67.8 1889.1 65.7 14.4 16.3 3.6 100
Idle
350.7 48.4 56.5 16.9 472.5 74.2 10.2 12.0 3.6 100
Total
5032.5 769.8 739.1 230.6 6772.0 74.3 11.4 10.9 3.4 100
Non-Agricul.
4032.7 98.4 94.0 19.3 4244.4 95.0 2.3 2.2 0.5 100
TOTAL
9065.2 868.2 833.1 249.9 11016.4 82.3 7.9 7.6 2.2 100
____________________________________________________________________________________
(a) Calculated by the authors.
Source: Comité Estatal de Estadísticas (1991, p. 185)
This [average CCS] farmer cannot contribute as much towards the establishment of pasture and forage as the farmers in the CPA models because he does not have the necessary machinery. He must also chop his cane by hand. There is no investment in buildings, yards, weighing scales or machinery, apart from a share in the tractor-plus-trailer unit required for the CCS deliveries (based on 39 members per CCS). This farmer controls ticks on his cattle by means of a knapsack spray unit. He uses the regional project machinery unit to plant his pastures (25 hectares) and cane (two hectares). He has no irrigation (WFP/CFA, p. 18).
On taxation:
Under the tax law of April 1983, the production cooperatives received preferential treatment. Both CPAs and individual farmers were now subject to a progressive income tax on their sales to the state, to range from 5 percent to a maximum of 20 percent. But whereas the cooperatives would be taxed on the value of their net sales income, individual farmers would be subject to a tax on their gross sales income. Opposition to the progressive taxation structure was so vehement among peasants that in 1984 it was reduced to a flat 5 percent of gross sales income for all individual farmers. The progressive taxation of CPA profits was rescinded at the same time, although they maintained the advantage of being subject to a 5 percent tax of net, rather than gross, sales income (Martín Barrios 1987, 209) (Deere et al., 1992, p. 126).
On access to machinery and technical assistance:
By 1985, thirty-nine of the forty-five Havana Province sugarcane CPAs owned all the equipment necessary to harvest their own sugarcane fields. Individual sugarcane farmers, in contrast, continued to lease mechanized services from state farms (ANAP-MINAZ 1986, 1).[22] The latter situation was often beset by delays since the state farms generally carried out their own planting and harvest operations first, reducing the yields and thus profits of individual farmers. State policy also encouraged giving priority to the CPAs over individual farmers in the delivery of technical assistance and other aid (Deere et al., 1992, p. 125).
On interest rates and investment:
Whereas independent farmers paid interest rates of 6 percent, the CPAs would pay only 4 percent on their loans. Moreover, the lion's share of private-sector investment credit --the level of which was to increase significantly-- would now be channeled to the new cooperatives (Deere et al., 1992, p. 121).
The Bank of Cuba grants credit at a six-percent annual interest rate to members of CCS's and at four percent to the CPA's (WFP/CFA, p. 4).
The allocation of the WFP funds in the Jimaguayu Basin has been modified so that a larger share, or 51 percent, will be given to the cooperative and private producer sector and remaining 49 percent to the state farms. This allocation ... reflects the keen interest of both WFP and the Government in supporting the cooperative and private dairy producers, who are the poorest farmers in the project area and who have been very responsive in the first phase. It should be noted that whereas in the original project the distribution of the combined government and WFP funds to the public and cooperative and private producer sectors in the Jimaguayu basin were 88.6 percent and 11.4 percent respectively, during the next four years (1988-91) the percentage distribution has been modified so that the public sector will receive 73.1 percent and the cooperative and private producer sector 26.9 percent (WFP/CFA, p. 9).
On access to credit:
Data provided by the Cuban National Bank's Credit Division for Cooperatives and Peasants in 21 February 1991 for the 1979-90 period (Deere et al., 1992, Table 2, p. 124) reveal drastic inequalities. In 1979, CPAs received 7 million pesos (44 percent) in credit, while individual farmers obtained 9 million pesos (56 percent). In 1990, CPAs borrowed 47 million pesos (92 percent), while individual farmers were lent 4 million pesos (8 percent), reflecting a decreasing trend that started in 1982.
On the political motives:
The different treatment of CPAs and individual farmers with respect to interest rates, taxes, access to equipment and construction materials, and so on, is of course an economic incentive designed to make the CPAs more attractive and viable than individual farming (Deere et al., 1992, p. 141).
To delve further into the issue, let us analyze the only crop (sugarcane) for which official statistics are available (Table 5). Except for application of balanced fertilizer (N-P-K) with non-mechanical means (slightly higher in non-State farms), and with mechanical means (about the same in both sectors), the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this section is "no" in the case of sugarcane farmers:
(a) irrigated area in the non-State sector accounts for only 10 percent of its total cane area, while it is over 20 percent in the State sector.
(b) although the gap has been closing since the late 1980s, non-State farms still apply less nitrogen fertilizer than State farms by non-mechanical means;
(c) although the disparity has been decreasing since the mid-1980s, applications of herbicides by non-mechanical means in non-State farms are still between 50-60 percent lower than in the State sector; and
(d) access to mechanical inputs, with the exception of balanced fertilization mentioned above, shows even more disparity between the two sectors. Non-State farms use aerial fertilization in only two percent of their cane area, while State farms do it in about 20 percent of their area. The gap in the use of tractors for cultivation has been closing in recent years but it is still much lower in the non-State sector than in the State sector despite the fact that cultivation with non-mechanical means and hand weeding are also lower in the non-State sector (cannot hire labor) than in the State sector (Table 5).
It must be pointed out that non-State farms include CPAs which, as shown in a previous section of this paper, have the blessings of the State and preferential access to inputs when compared with CCS members and dispersed farmers. That explains the sharp increases in the use of nitrogen fertilizer, and of mechanical cultivation and mechanical balanced fertilization after 1975.[23]
Table 5. Comparison of State and non-State access to inputs and cultural activities as a percentage of sugarcane area, selected years 1975-89.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Year
1975 1980 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989
Activity
S NS S NS S NS S NS S NS S NS S NS
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Percent(a)- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
MECHANICAL
Aerial fert.
19.2 4.2 23.6 1.6 22.8 0.8 16.3 0.6 12.4 0.5 15.1 2.0 20.5 2.5
Balanced fert.
29.8 10.5 58.2 23.2 65.0 58.2 69.6 59.5 75.3 74.2 61.6 59.3 61.5 60.2
Cultivation
102.0 28.0 146.0 47.0 214.0 147.0 270.0 175.0 248.0 176.0 196.0 144.0 192.0 164.0
NON-MECHANICAL
Balanced fert.
80.9 83.4 81.6 76.6 69.5 74.4 73.9 73.6 72.3 71.6 64.3 70.4 64.1 70.2
Nitrogen fert.
43.4 24.9 78.2 50.0 74.1 59.4 72.0 60.3 66.0 57.5 60.4 59.9 65.7 61.7
Cultivation
175.0 150.0 172.0 122.0 219.0 172.0 275.0 200.0 253.0 200.0 200.0 164.0 197.0 188.0
Herbicide ap.
103.0 24.0 142.0 36.0 110.0 41.0 128.0 53.0 126.0 57.0 113.0 62.0 132.0 75.0
Hand weeding
153.0 162.0 191.0 145.0 140.0 129.0 162.0 144.0 185.0 157.0 231.0 177.0 231.0 189.0
Area irrigated
10.7 5.9 21.7 8.2 24.5 8.9 NA NA 23.2 10.0 23.5 10.4 23.5 9.8
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
(a)Percentages higher than 100 represent activities performed
more than once over the same area.
Source: Calculated by the authors from Comité Estatal de
Estadísticas (1991, pp. 187, 190).
Go to Part III
VI. Production and Productivity in the Non-State Sector
This section tests the general hypothesis that, as the State intervention decreases over agricultural production units, the quantity and quality of output increases despite a decreasing access to factors of production and other resources. The analyses are based upon the contribution of the non-State sector to total production from its share of planted area, and the total production per planted area --a proxy for missing yield data in all crops except sugarcane.
Specific hypotheses are included for more-perishable commodities such as fruits and vegetables; for less-perishable commodities such as viandas[24]; and for the intermediate commodity of sugarcane, which needs to be processed in the State mills and for which complete data are available. The specific hypotheses originate in the following assumed scale of preferences for farmers: on-farm consumption ==> barter ==> black market sales.[25]
The previous hypotheses, and the way they are tested, are the result of the fact that, measuring productivity in the non-State sector, still presents the problems stated by Forster (1989, pp. 241-243). First, with the exception of sugarcane, the Anuario Estadístico de Cuba no longer reports yield comparisons between the State and non-State sectors as it did for the 1972-75 period. (The Anuario still reports area harvested and yields for the State sector; however, production per planted area is used as a proxy for yield because of data availability for both sectors.) Second, Cuban production statistics reflect only commodities collected by or sold to the State procurement agency (acopio), thus excluding any output consumed on the farm, bartered, or sold privately --legally (in the farm during the 1970s or in the free farmers' markets during the 1980s) or in the black market-- and products left standing in the fields due to harvesting or collection problems.[26] Therefore, acopio's production figures undoubtedly understate non-State sector output more than State sector output because of the difference in resource allocation for harvesting and post-harvesting activities.[27]
Finally, official statistics on the area planted by non-State farmers seem to be based on estimates given to ANAP by the farmers themselves. The fear of future expropriations, and the satisfaction of their scale of preferences, may lead farmers to: (a) under-reporting their planted area; (b) non-reporting intercropping practices; and (c) reporting as self-consumption the plantings intended for sales.
Those statistical problems, however, do not preclude the fulfillment of our objectives. The caveats should be kept in mind when reading the discussion of productivity in most of the commodities analyzed.
Sugarcane
Sugarcane is perhaps the best case study to test the main postulate of this study for the reasons stated by Forster (1989). First, because it occupies most of Cuba's farm cropland and is of critical importance to the national economy, it has been a high priority crop for State managers and technicians. Second, it is the commodity with more available data. Finally, because it requires processing, it is not consumed in significant amounts by non-State producers nor sold privately in large quantities outside acopio (p. 248).
Even with the dramatic disparity of non-State farmers' access to inputs, they have performed slightly better than State farms in each of the last twenty-one seasons (zafras) for which data are available (Table 6). On the average, these farmers have accounted for 17.9 percent of harvested area but have produced 19.3 percent of total output. Yield differences range from a low 0.3 in 1983-84 to a high 11.7 metric tons/ha in 1976-77. Average yields in the State sector have been 50 metric tons/ha, compared with 54.8 metric tons/ha in the non-State sector, with both following almost identical patterns that may reflect annual weather conditions.[28] These figures represent an average difference of around 5 metric tons/ha/year, which translate into an increase of close to 10 percent in favor of the non-State sector (Fig. 1). These results may appear fairly insignificant but they represent an "extra" zafra every 10 years. Furthermore, and ceteris paribus, if the non-State sector were in charge of State lands (Comité Estatal de Estadísticas, 1991, p. 188), this apparently minimal difference in productivity would translate into an "extra" zafra every four years.
In summary, the general hypothesis is accepted. The non-State sector is more productive than the State sector in the intermediate case of sugarcane despite its lack of access to some capital inputs and technology. The available data facilitated the testing of the hypothesis. The logical explanation is that almost all sugarcane produced is handed over to acopio because it is not suitable for direct consumption, barter or black market sales since it needs to be processed and the State controls all sugar factories.
Seasonal Crops
The general hypothesis is more difficult to test in the case of seasonal crops than in sugarcane. The analysis is based upon the contribution of the non-State sector to total production from its share of planted area, and the total production per planted area (a proxy for missing yield data) of the different crops. Although lack of data restricts the analysis, the information available leads one to believe that the performance of the non-State sector in the production of seasonal crops is mixed.
Tubers and Roots
With the exception of potato, the contribution of the non-State sector to total production of tubers and roots is smaller than its share of the area planted to these crops resulting from lower production per planted area (Fig. 2 and Table 7). During the study period, the annual average share of area planted to potato by the non-State sector was almost 18 percent, while its contribution to total production per year was over 19 percent.
Table 6. Comparison of the Cuban sugarcane State and non-State sectors, by area harvested, total production and yield, 1968-69 through 1988-89.
________________________________________________________________________
Non-State sector (a)
% Area % Total Yield (mt/ha) Difference a
hrv. vs. prod. Non-State State mt/ha Percent
Season (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
____________________________________________________________________
1968-69
24.9 27.1 48.2 42.8 +5.4 + 12.6
1969-70
21.7 23.3 59.9 54.7 +5.2 + 9.5
1970-71(b)
20.4 21.5 44.1 41.1 +3.0 + 7.3
1971-72
18.9 19.6 39.1 37.1 +2.0 + 5.4
1972-73
17.5 18.5 47.1 44.4 +2.7 + 6.1
1973-74
16.5 17.7 48.7 45.0 +2.9 + 8.2
1974-75
16.8 18.3 48.0 43.6 +4.4 + 10.1
1975-76
15.9 18.2 50.3 42.7 +7.6 + 17.8
1976-77
16.8 19.9 62.8 51.1 +11.7 + 22.9
1977-78
16.5 20.7 61.2 55.3 +5.9 + 10.7
1978-79
15.9 17.5 64.6 57.8 +6.8 + 11.8
1979-80
15.1 16.6 50.5 45.2 +5.3 + 11.7
1980-81
16.3 18.2 61.3 53.8 +7.5 + 13.9
1981-82
16.0 17.6 61.0 53.9 +7.1 + 13.2
1982-83
19.3 21.2 63.6 56.7 +6.9 + 12.2
1983-84
18.3 18.3 57.6 57.3 +0.3 + 0.5
1984-85
18.2 18.4 50.7 49.8 +0.9 + 1.8
1985-86
17.6 18.0 52.7 51.3 +1.4 + 2.7
1986-87
17.1 17.8 54.5 51.7 +2.8 + 5.4
1987-88
18.2 19.5 61.3 55.9 +5.4 + 9.7
1988-89
17.2 18.0 62.8 59.4 +3.4 + 5.7
Average (a)
17.9 19.3 54.8 50.0 + 4.7 + 9.5
_________________________________________________________________________________________
(a) Calculated by the authors. Col (5) = (3) - (4); col. (6) = [(5) / (4) * 100].
(b)From the 1987 Anuario, p. 309.
Source: Comité Estatal de Estadísticas (1991, p. 188).
The figures for the rest of tubers and roots show a different picture. Average annual share of area planted to boniato was 34.6 percent, while average annual contribution to production was 30 percent, reflecting the difference in production per planted area between 3.9 and 3.3 mt/ha for the State and non-State sectors, respectively. Malanga shows more dramatic differences than boniato. While the average share of planted area amounted to 55 percent, the non-State sector contributed only 34.5 percent to total production per year as the result of an annual average 8.6 mt/ha in the State sector versus and average of 3.2 mt/ha in the non-State sector. Statistics for all tubers and roots (which include other crops also) show a non-State average share of planted area of 40 percent with a 29 percent contribution to total production. Average annual production per planted area is higher (6.5 mt/ha) in the State sector than the 3.9 mt/ha of the non-State sector.
As stated above, production figures represent only the volumes moving through the State procurement agency (acopio). These figures contradict Forster's findings for the 1964-76 period (1989, pp. 244-245) when the non-State sector was making a larger contribution to production. Her work indicated that root crops and vegetables "do best under the small-scale, labor-intensive cultivation typical of peasant smallholdings and are also the crops which have received the least emphasis on state farms" (p. 248). The fact of the matter is that, with the exception of potato, the statistics show large differences in favor of the State sector.
The low degree of perishability of these commodities, combined with the assumed scale of preferences for farmers, may provide an explanation for the apparent low performance. Tubers and roots can be stored for a period of time long enough to facilitate their hiding from acopio for future on-farm consumption, bartering or sales in the black market. The case of malanga, which reflects even poorer performance, may reinforce the previous explanation. The demand for this commodity is higher than for the other tubers and roots. Benjamin et al. (1986) call malanga "the starchy tuber most Cubans love" (p. 57) while stating that "Cubans consider [malanga] the ideal weaning food" (p. 57). However, this commodity is not legally available to the general population since it is "allocated through rationing primarily to groups with special diets --small children, the elderly, people with digestive problems, for example" (p. 64).
Vegetables
The non-State sector has consistently produced more than its share of area planted to these crops (Fig. 3 and Table 8). During the study period, the non-State sector has accounted for an average of over 49 percent of the area planted to all vegetables while its contribution to total vegetable production averaged almost 60 percent. Specific figures for tomato are 54 and 58 percent; for onion they are 42 and 49 percent; and for pepper they are 76 and 89 percent, respectively. The differences in annual average production per planted area are impressive when one considers the constraints faced by farmers in the non-State sector. On the average, the non-State sector has outproduced the State sector in tomato (17.5 percent), onion (38 percent), pepper (116 percent), and all combined vegetables (56 percent) in every of the 16 years in the study period.
Notwithstanding Forster's quote in the previous section, the case of vegetables is different than that of root crops. First, vegetable production is capital intensive in many areas of the world. Therefore, the statement does not justify the poor performance of the Cuban State sector. Second, if pepper[29] production is excluded, the State and non-State sectors have an equal share of area planted to vegetables and the latter outproduces the former every year. Even if vegetables were among the crops which have received the least emphasis on state farms,[30] one has to recall the case of sugarcane --the most important crop in Cuban agriculture and thus "a high priority commodity for state farm managers and technicians" (p. 248). Yet, non-State sugarcane farmers have also consistently outproduced the State sector in this capital-intensive commodity.
Table 7. Share of area planted and contribution of the Cuban non-State sector to the production of selected tubers and roots, and production per planted area as a proxy for missing yield data in the State and non-State sectors, 1970, 1975, and 1977-89.a
________________________________________________________________________
Potato Boniato Malanga All
Year A P S NS A P S NS A P S NS A P S NS
________________________________________________________________________
Percent - mt/ha - Percent - mt/ha - Percent - mt/ha - Percent - mt/ha -
1970 31 41 6.0 9.3 43 21 1.5 0.5 67 41 1.8 0.6 45 33 2.7 1.7
1975 27 28 12.7 12.9 17 22 3.6 5.1 63 60 4.3 3.8 27 30 4.9 5.8
1977 24 25 12.4 13.0 34 31 3.8 3.3 53 35 8.2 3.9 44 33 6.3 4.0
1978 17 21 18.1 22.7 40 34 3.4 2.7 45 16 16.8 4.1 47 26 9.6 3.8
1979 21 18 15.8 13.3 37 30 3.6 2.6 43 21 12.6 4.6 45 28 7.7 3.7
1980 16 19 16.6 20.4 37 35 4.7 4.2 49 23 14.2 4.5 43 31 7.3 4.3
1981 14 17 16.2 21.6 33 30 4.6 4.0 51 20 12.4 3.0 37 26 7.3 4.4
1982 16 15 18.0 17.0 28 25 3.5 3.1 59 27 8.3 2.2 35 25 5.9 3.6
1983 14 16 15.8 18.9 33 28 4.5 3.7 57 28 9.2 2.7 39 29 5.9 3.8
1984 14 14 15.6 15.6 35 33 4.6 4.2 57 30 9.5 3.0 39 28 7.4 4.5
1985 13 15 20.2 23.2 42 37 4.6 3.8 58 44 6.9 3.9 42 30 7.5 4.3
1986 15 14 22.4 21.7 37 33 4.3 3.6 57 40 10.0 4.9 41 28 8.0 4.4
1987 13 15 13.9 16.7 36 30 4.4 3.3 63 46 6.1 3.1 42 30 6.0 3.5
1988 14 15 14.9 16.4 34 29 3.7 2.9 53 34 5.5 2.5 39 27 5.7 3.3
1989 18 16 18.1 16.1 33 29 3.9 3.2 50 53 3.9 2.0 39 28 5.4 3.3
Average 18 19 15.8 17.2 35 30 3.9 3.3 55 34 8.6 3.2 40 29 6.5 3.9
______________________________________________________________________________________
A = Area planted. P = Production. S = State sector. NS = Non-State sector.
aArea figures are percentages of area planted in that year. Production figures
are percentages of volumes moving through the State procurement agency
(acopio).
Source: Calculated by the authors from Comité Estatal de
Estadísticas (Various Issues).
Table 8. Share of area planted and contribution of the Cuban non-State sector to the production of selected vegetables, and production per planted area as a proxy for missing yield data in the State and non-State sectors, 1970, 1975, and 1977-89.a
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Tomato Onion Pepper All
Year A P S NS A P S NS A P S NS A P S NS
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Percent - mt/ha - Percent - mt/ha -Percent - mt/ha - Percent - mt/ha -
1970 24 30 5.5 7.2 50 44 6.4 5.0 12 66 5.5 7.6 16 33 2.8 7.2
1975 38 41 7.9 8.7 44 66 3.5 8.8 71 83 5.7 11.4 35 48 4.5 7.7
1977 46 55 4.7 6.7 59 56 5.8 5.2 83 89 4.9 8.1 46 58 3.2 5.2
1978 50 56 6.7 6.8 57 67 4.5 6.9 87 91 5.6 8.2 49 60 3.4 5.3
1979 56 53 6.7 6.0 56 67 4.7 7.5 86 93 3.1 6.7 54 60 3.9 5.1
1980 57 63 6.2 7.8 50 70 2.6 6.1 91 94 6.7 10.8 54 66 4.0 6.5
1981 55 59 9.0 10.5 26 62 1.8 8.4 81 92 3.4 9.2 49 57 6.0 8.4
1982 56 65 6.0 8.7 35 42 3.6 4.9 79 91 3.7 10.2 48 60 4.2 6.8
1983 60 68 3.9 5.5 39 21 4.0 1.7 79 91 3.1 7.7 51 63 3.2 5.3
1984 60 65 5.6 7.0 36 32 3.5 3.0 76 90 3.3 9.3 55 63 4.0 5.6
1985 61 58 9.1 8.2 40 39 7.1 6.9 82 91 5.4 11.9 58 63 5.6 6.7
1986 64 62 7.7 7.0 37 47 3.9 5.7 80 89 4.0 7.9 59 64 4.7 5.7
1987 63 68 4.9 6.1 33 46 4.6 7.9 82 91 5.0 11.3 59 69 3.4 5.2
1988 60 66 6.2 7.8 33 34 4.2 4.3 75 92 2.9 11.0 54 65 3.4 5.4
1989 58 65 5.2 6.8 34 43 3.2 4.7 73 89 4.0 11.5 52 65 2.8 4.9
Average 54 58 6.3 7.4 42 49 4.2 5.8 76 89 4.4 9.5 49 60 3.9 6.1
_________________________________________________________________________________________
A = Area planted. P = Production. S = State sector. NS = Non-State sector.
aArea figures are percentages of area planted in that year. Production figures
are percentages of volumes moving through the State procurement agency
(acopio).
Source: Calculated by the authors from Comité Estatal de
Estadísticas (Various Issues).
The main hypothesis of this study has been demonstrated in the case of vegetables. The reason for the higher productivity in the non-State sector is that these highly perishable crops have to be moved fast to the State's r
Monday,May 9 2005, 09:36:25 PMPart One: Revolutionary Transition Designs
Communities in some regions may be forced to hold clandestine or rushed meetings of Popular Assemblies to form political cadres and self defense arrangements. Hopefully, the people in many nations will see and embrace the connection of all struggles for sovereignty, autonomy, resistance, food security & radical restructuring of all aspects of all countries.
-- A Una Trumviraste a Otro? Lideres Hoy?
Revolutionary Transition Designs For Survival, Participatory Democracy and The Development of "A New Socialism"
(Chapter One)
(Chapter One)
For the People of Ecuador and Bolivia and All Who Struggle Against USA Imperialism
Chapter Two , at: http://www.bcz.com/members/blog/revolucionarias/
Original April 25 Draft ( Chapter One) at:
http://print.indymedia.org/news/2005/05/1905.php
www.zorpia.com/venezuela1
"There has to be direct democracy, people’s government with popular assemblies and congresses where the people retain the right to remove, nominate, sanction, and recall their elected delegates and representatives… As well as political democracy there has to be economic democracy. If an elite owns and controls big business such as oil and the mines there can be neither real democracy nor social equality. Control over the productive apparatus of society has to be distributed.
This can take forms such as community ownership, self-managed enterprises and cooperatives. We call for a people’s revolutionary constituent assembly to help reconstruct from below the republic, the state and the nation of Venezuela…[ Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru... Belize...everywhere and all of the above] We have resources of energy, gold, silver, petroleum and steel. If we use national capital and process them here in Latin America we can sow the seeds of a new continent and a new development. " Hugo Chavez (Our reference for this is: Stephen O’Brien interview of Chavez at the São Paulo Forum in El Salvador in July 1996 for the CISLAC magazine Venceremos.)
Eight years later, at the opening of a social debt forum in Caracas Hugo Chavez set the outline for a continuing debate asking the question: " If it isn't Capitalism, what is it? I have no doubts ... its Socialism ... which Socialism of the many that exist? ... we must invent it ... therefore, the importance of debate ... 21st Socialism has to be invented."
AN APPEAL FOR AID: We are unaware of other groups producing aids for revolutionary transitions, but we hope to find them. We ask for input, for collaboration (translations) and a website where these issues can be addressed, debated and made available to people in several languages. Time is slipping away and the capitalists, imperialists and elite are always far ahead of the people and the poor. Please consider the importance of the events unfolding in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela (not to mention the cruel disasters of Colombia and the inevitably of Peru.)
Radical Restructuring: Part I. Applying Revolutionary Transition Designs to Develop A New Socialism
Poor Countries and Revolutionary Movements cannot expect any help from anyone. They cannot wait for Chavez in Venezuela or a worldwide movement of aid to attend to their needs. They must prepare for the worst: USA invasions or USA collusion with elite sabotage and a collapse of economic relations with most of the world. The MER solidaristic economic program addresses this real world context and what countries must do. It is also meant as a guide for revolutionary groups to present workable and visionary manifestos of the path to a sustainable and equitable design for living. Our dreams are utopian, but we aim for real and enduring results. To re-build the foundation of a people start with education – once you know what you want to teach...
Part II. Revolutionary Policies for Transitional Survival:
Democratic Redistribution and Radical Restructuring for a New Beginning
The following program will typically be required of the revolutions in the Andes and throughout Latin America (the pace of adaptation and implementation may vary somewhat) :
Phase One:
1. All cities, towns and rural districts should form popular assemblies that document the Demands, Expectations and Policies that the residents support. A two thirds vote should be attempted on these positions from the participants of the assemblies. Failing that, the vote tallies for the majority and minority positions should be recorded. In forming these assemblies care should be given to balance participation and functionality with size. We estimate that each assembly should represent between 2000 and 20,000 people over 16 years of age. Based on this criteria a nation of 5 million people over 16 would have about 500 assemblies. Geography and travel requirements should also be considered so that travel does not restrict participation unduly.
2. Based on these Position decisions, each assembly would designate a national subdivision (contiguous or nearby) that it chooses to affiliate with. Depending on these desired affiliations each country would be divided up into three to seven autonomous regions.
3. The assemblies of the cities, towns and rural areas would then choose Delegates to a Regional Popular Assembly for each autonomous region. The delegates should be chosen proportionately from lists of delegates who support differing Positions, ethnic groups or sub-regions. Each assembly would choose one delegate per 1000 people living in their assumed influence. If there were 5 million people in the country and five autonomous regions of about one million each, then each Regional Assembly would have about 1000 delegates attending.
4. Regional Assemblies would vote on Positions and select Delegates for a National Constituent Constitutional Convention; one delegate per 30,000 people in the region. Roughly, 160 Delegates from each Region would then attend the Constitutional Convention.
5. Regional Assemblies would continue to meet, vote on evolving Positions and send updates to the Constitutional Convention. Final decisions from the Constitutional Convention would be voted on by the entire population of each region with a majority vote required for ratification. Failing ratification a Region would have to work out a relationship with the rest of the country. Provisions for requiring a Region to accept the National decision could be made if the Ratification was supported by more than two thirds of the nation and less than 60 percent of a Region rejected the new Constitution. Provisions for a requirement that the percentage of participating voters in each region meet a certain threshold (66 percent?) should be considered. The processes used in Venezuela and the Venezuelan Constitution should also be consulted.
6. Regional Assemblies would assume all roles of the government pending the ratification of a new constitution. Local Popular Assemblies representing at least 30,000 people could over-ride Regional Assembly decisions by the vote of 75 percent of the participants of the local Popular Assembly (Until the Constitution is ratified).
7. All of the above recommendations are designed for countries where the government has collapsed or lost all legitimacy. They are also applicable for regions of a country where there is oppression from a central government or where the national government is fast loosing legitimacy.
8. At all levels of society it is imperative that the people form committees for: Water, Health, Labor Solidarity, Community Planning and Environmental Health and Protection.
PHASE TWO:
1. National Constituent Constitutional Convention
A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION should consider all aspects of a nation's future and the means to establish democratic, transparent and productive structures for the whole nation. For the first month of its meeting Positions should only be adopted by a two thirds vote, after one month a 51 percent vote should be adopted. Care should be given to assure that the votes and voices of all significant sectors of the nation are included in the Convention: women, students, workers, soldiers, indigenous groups, young people, slum dweller organizations, unions representing poor workers, small farmers and landless farmers.
a. Prioritize: The needs of the whole population for a new revolutionary/solidarity education; water for drinking and for crops; pure and affordable food/national food security; equitable land distribution; indigenous, campesino and small farm agricultural support; and enhanced popular participation in all decisions.
b. Secondary priorities: Community and national defense; housing with long term use/needs taken into account (priority for slum, rural and border areas); cooperative production units; Watershed restoration; and public spending for the sustainable development of natural and other resources.
c. Policies:
1. Expropriation of all foreign, elite or important land, structures and businesses. In cases where this is too difficult or too dangerous then the Constitution should institute extreme taxation of all foreign and elite owned businesses, bank accounts and resources to accomplish state takeover at the lowest cost and minimal disruption.
2. Extreme tariffs on all products imported to or from non-aligned nations. Quotas on imports from friendly nations to protect local businesses.
3. Extensive long term programs for the relocation of urban people to rural areas for production and for defense.
4. Education for solidarity and revolutionary economics, society and consciousness. 5. (to be continued and updated)
Part III. Overview of the Struggle and a New Agrarian Based Socialist Economics
In The MER Solidarity Model there is a market economy but the government at all levels – directed by the people’s budget prioritizations – intervenes in the market to create sufficient basic goods and to satisfy basic needs within sustainability guidelines. ( LINKS…)
A Typical Program for The Revolutionary Takeover of a Country like Bolivia or Ecuador or Peru
III.I. The Short Transition Period (First 3-5 Weeks of a Takeover) :
Immediate Priorities (Go-Slow Option)
The development path for Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru is quite similar. The poor and their allies must seize most of the land and all valuable industries, assets and bank accounts. The first thing that a new government does is to seize the banks (including the Central Bank), institute currency controls, and seal its borders to prevent capital or equipment flight. We assume that the armed forces and the police remain loyal to the people and all suspect individuals and units would be demobilized or jailed.
Security and law and order are the next responsibilities. Soldiers and police not required for protection of vital installations should be assigned to neighborhood or regional assemblies to be deployed as requested by these local authorities (worker-soldier alliance). Lists of critical jobs should be drawn up by the assemblies and the positions necessary are filled. Garbage collection, water supply, electricity (rationed), and emergency medical needs are at the top with sewage disposal and heating or cooling next. The central government's primary role other than security is to seize all food supplies and critical parts (equipment) and to distribute it fairly according to need and circumstances (weather, poverty and breakdowns). The government (local, regional and national) should also distribute transport vehicles and fuel supplies as best it can.
III.II. Phase II of Transition Period (First 3 months) :
Beginning the Orientation to Long-Run Priorities (The "Go-Slow" Option)
The primary requirements during the first months of a popular uprising are to further develop and secure the neighborhood and regional assembly operations, effectiveness and organization; to prioritize productive factors (money, skills, workers and material) for long run production of basic goods; and the planning for the inputs and related needs to secure the factors required to produce: Food, electricity, transport services, housing, health care, communications, environmental/sanitation and water.
III.III. ECONOMIC POLICIES: "Go Slow" Option
1. Credit and Currency Controls. All debts subject to cancellation.
2. Public Land given to organizations and sustainable farming coops.
3. Modest Credit programs for key sectors of the economy.
4. Increased property and income taxes on corporations, the rich and idle lands.
5. Partial decentralization of administration, armed forces and large state enterprises.
6. Increased minimum wages and health clinic access.
7. Regional Employment Programs in agriculture, land improvements, transportation and import substitution enterprises (public and private).
8. Import Substitution (with subsidies, tariff protections and research priorities for local businesses) becomes the main industrial and cooperative sector focus, with attention to interconnections (linkages and input factors).
9. Modest re-nationalization of progressively smaller foreign and then domestic monopolies, oligarchies and concentrations of ownership.
10. Encourage South American Countries (or all countries) to abrogate the UN drug treaty and launch new legalization and crop substitution programs.
11. Direct the national and regional universities and trade schools to study and compliment research in organic farming, solidarity enterprises, import substitution and ways to assist other countries (Cuba, Bolivia etc... )
12. Limit News Media ownership and require more PSAs (public or educational) and programming by organizations representing poor people and minorities. Institute high fines for lies and media misinformation ...
III.IV. Phase III - of The "Go Slow" Option
1. All of Part II, but more and faster...
2. Subsidize linkages that support import substitution enterprises managed by workers collectively or through cooperatives. Extend these programs both locally, regionally and beyond the country with friendly regimes.
3. Military construction projects: schools, hospitals, sanitation, water, market places, environmental restoration and infrastructure. Creation of a civil militia and dual purpose roles for military units.
4. Links across borders and funding for a variety of rural development approaches. Eco and activista tourism, aid programs and fair trade networking (high valued crops and crafts).
5. Government purchases of lands and increased confiscations.
6. Increase taxes on medium size farms and some on small farms that are profitable.
7. Limits tightened on land ownership. Require divestment (break up) of business conglomerates.
8. Re-location projects to rural areas for urban people. Grant urban land titles and increase urban and near-urban land and business confiscations and purchases.
9. Education for Solidarity at all levels of society.
10. Establish regionally owned and locally operated retail food stores to sell stable goods at subsidized prices in poor neighborhoods and rural areas. Community cafeterias and Free Stores (for rationed clothing, toys, household products) established as possible.
11. TACTICS of Strategic Effect: High and progressively increased corporate Taxation can be used to Bankrupt FOREIGN OR ELITE factories and other business interests. Use the governmental powers of condemnation and the justification of the public's goods/benefits... Can also use buyouts with low fixed exchange rates (an low interest) payments - and then devalue the currency a lot. - Or just simply nationalize and promise to pay... or not...
Part IV. The Crisis Program :
The Fast or Crisis Transitional Economic Program
In this scenario communities in all regions will be forced to hold clandestine or rushed meetings of Popular Assemblies to form political cadres and self defense arrangements. Hopefully, the majority of people in many nations by this time will have seen and embraced the connection of all struggles for sovereignty, autonomy, resistance, food security and radical restructuring of all aspects of all countries. This consciousness will empower people knowing that their struggle is one of many and an important part of a continental struggle whose success will sustain and re-enforce their efforts and eventual triumph. This must be a triumph of participation and decentralization in the struggle for national self-reliance, national self-determination and in the re-construction of humane societies.
Significant damage may be done to valuable infrastructure such as businesses and institutions that were seen as supporters of the former corrupt regime: public service utilities like water, power, education, mass transit or telephone (general communications) that had been privatized or run corruptly. Foreign corporations, banks and local partners of large foreign corporations may also be targeted. Large landowners will be ruthlessly driven from their vast properties and genetically altered seed and chemical suppliers may well be destroyed. Media broadcast facilities are often ransacked and export facilities (ports) are sure to be looted or damaged.
Spokespersons from many popular assemblies, unions and the military must be ready to step forward to call a national strike, road blockades and a date for a Constitutional Convention. When all regions and forces accept this framework, then the strikes and blockades can end as needed.
IV. II. Crisis Policies
Implement all of the Slow Program policies quickly, over the course of a few months. Get rid of US dollars (Yankee $ Power) and the previous currency. End trade with those aligned with the US. Fire most of the upper level military. Put half of the military to work like in Venezuela' Plan Bolivar and welcome Cuban, Venezuelan and international aid workers (doctors, engineers, advisers).
Everywhere people will denounce the US and demand leaders like Hugo Chavez and public policies that redistribute power to the people, land to the poor and dignity for all. Nationalize, and then localize a people's democratic news and entertainment media network to educate and inform the people and to spread the message of resistance to the imperialists. Ban all advertising for money and replace with consumer reports and tests of products. Ration the broadcast time for statements from political campaigns and significant groups.
IV. III. For the Preservation of Domestic Security and Self Defense (originally written for Venezuela but applicable everywhere):
1. Restrict travel by the wealthy of your country (Venezuelans and others) and require background checks of US, Colombian and Haitian citizens entering Venezuela (or other aligned places).
2.Maintain strict currency controls and broaden investigations of tax paying compliance by US and opposition connected businesses and organizations.
3. Expose the connections between the Cisneros clan (or your local and national elite), the AUC/Colombian elite, the Miami-Cuban CIA mafia and Spanish rightwing drug dealers (and US, Spanish and Mexican Banks!)
4. Phase out US Embassies, all US government operations, most US NGOs and all US corporations and other related associations.
5. Accept only Euro currency for oil and other exports (until a regional currency is adopted). Institute surcharges on all US ships, airplanes and US exports and imports. Venezuela Econ Policies http://vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=16154 (See end of Chapter Two for many links to Venezuelan Policies)
6. Stop oil and other exports to US client regimes in the region: Colombia, Dominican Republic, Aruba, Curacao (Israel).
7. Sell national assets that are outside of your country (CITIGO in Venezuela's case). Assist Bolivia and other friendly countries with their energy projects and operations. Start palm oil (bio-diesel) plantations and processing facilities in regions with few energy sources.
8. Place high tariffs on all luxury goods.
9. Slow down, shut down and sell businesses or properties owned outside of your country (CITGO in Venezuela's case).
10. Demand that the US pull out of military agreements in your country (weapons, training, drug war) and in the region (Aruba – Curacao near Venezuela, Manta in Ecuador, Iquitos in Peru). Make OAS demand that the US obey international law, treaties and withdraw its fleet from near the coasts of Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru - Or else an oil and trade embargo will be enforced !
Part V. Other Examples of Demands and the Issues involved in Revolutionary Changes:
Many people have known about policies that can improve conditions for rural people. An example is found in the demands made by highland Indians in Ecuador. Conaie and Ecuarunari led the Indian uprising of 1990, helped by Confeniae. From the platform that the occupation of the Santo Domingo church provided, the leadership disseminated a succinct program:
1. Return of lands and territories taken from indigenous communities, without costly legal fees
2. Sufficient water for both human consumption and irrigation in the indigenous communities, and an environmental plan to prevent contamination of water supplies
3. No payment of the municipal taxes levied on the small properties owned by indigenous farmers
4. Creation of long-term financing for bilingual education programs in the communities
5. Creation of provincial and regional credit agencies under the control of Conaie
6. Debt pardon for all debts indigenous communities have incurred with government ministries and banks
7. Reform of the first article of the Ecuadorian Constitution such that it recognizes Ecuador as a multinational state
8. Immediate delivery of funds and credits currently assigned to the indigenous nationalities
9. A minimum two-year price freeze on raw materials & manufactured goods used by communities in agricultural production, & a reasonable price increase for agricultural products sold by the communities, relying on the free-market.
10. Initiation & termination of all necessary & priority construction of basic infrastructure in the indigenous communities
11. Unrestricted import and export privileges for indigenous artisans and merchants of artisan-craft
12. Strict protection and controlled exploration of archaeological sites under the supervision of Conaie
13. Expulsion of Summer Institute of Linguistics (a missionary group), in accordance with Executive Decree 1159 of 1981
14. Respect for the rights of children and the raising of consciousness in the government regarding the actual state of affairs extant among children
15. National support for the practice of indigenous medicine
16. Immediate dismantling of organizations created by the political parties that parallel governmental institutions at the municipal and provincial levels, and which manipulate political consciousness and elections in the indigenous communities (Hoy 6/29/90)
Part VI. Consider your revolution an experiment in developing an alternative to
corporate dominated globalization.
Implement the kinds of policies that :
1. show that poor people in the 3rd world can generate economic growth without international corporate investment;
2. create an economy with barriers to corporate domination: Generate jobs that are insulated from multinational corporate practices of moving into a region and then leaving to escape upward wage pressures;
3. make more efficient use of local raw materials than would a vertically integrated international corporate production process;
4. reinforce local democracy, participation, and empowerment of ordinary people. The goals of new projects include developing an economy that is egalitarian and a political structure that allows for the greatest possible democratic participation of workers and consumers in designing their own products.
5. provide an example to others of the power of cooperatives as engines of economic growth and development that simultaneously promote social justice and support communities.
Development Guides and Ideas: Do inventories of natural resources, public resources (lands and schools etc ); Collect data on trade, fair trade inputs, forest resources and problem areas (pollution, erosion, corruption); Hydro potentials with a priority to the cheapest, least disruptive and the development needs of a place (social harmony, or small scale economic development priorities.)
Inventory crafts outputs and investigate their expanded market potential. Analyze potentials for tourism and the risks associated with it.
Natural resources - especially coal, oil, gas and forests (and the impacts of their development) - are set to the highest criteria for development and wise, long–run sustainable management. Sustainability and the future value of resources are carefully considered (long term yields and profits realized by slow development of the resource). Another factor is the future availability of improved techniques for mitigating ecological problems. Also, less public funding of infrastructure investments are needed in the short term under a "go-slow" regime (pipelines, ports and roads). Instead, national and regional governments can invest in schools, teachers and revolutionary criteria that will help people come up with more creative, practical and socially profitable goals and methods of resource and social development. Reduce erosion, build smarter (infrastructure, industry, utilities) and focus skills and investments on import substitution (ISE ) products and techniques.
The goal and the planning for university and Secondary School research is directed to how to improve and facilitate the alternative economic program of solidarity and social economy. For example: students would design or compare (dissect) foreign models of motors or engines (vehicles, plows, pumps, etc) and test them and see which were best and worst and then redesign them for local production - or a cheap method of remanufacturing used items (justified by overall ISE program).
Please send us historical examples of these policies and revolutionary situations and important criteria for planning a new system.
Part VI. (To be Continued)
Chapter Two at: http://www.bcz.com/members/blog/revolucionarias/
Voces de Ecuador: “DESTRUIR EL CAPITALISMO...CONSTRUIR EL SOCIALISMO”
Lo que hoy presenciamos en el Ecuador es un acumulado de descontento, que pretendió ser manipulado, y seguramente lo será, a partir de la pugna de dos grupos dominantes por el control de la Corte Suprema de Justicia, del Tribunal Electoral y del Tribunal Constitucional, donde el gobierno de Gutiérrez, aupados por el PRIAN, el PRE, se confrontaban con el PSC, la ID. Como siempre en este cotejo político dos grupos económicos buscan el reacomodo, el control para incrementar sus ganancias, y servir mejor a las grandes transnacionales: por un lado el grupo liderado por Fidel Egas y en el otro campo están Noboa e Isaías.
Punto aparte merecen lo que en nuestro país se llama “izquierda”, aquella que institucionalizada en la maraña burocrática y oportunista del sistema, se ha puesto a la cola de las distintas facciones de la burguesía y en un descarado ir y venir sola a atinado esconderse como la avestruz (escondida la cabeza en un hueco, su culote visible persiste en su afán de alcanzar migajas del sistema para mantener su aparato burocrático electorero) y de manera maniobrera hoy pretende colarse a la lucha emprendida por los y las ecuatorianas.
Desobediencia, rebelión, paro, acción directa, construcción, debate, reflexión, son palabras que en una dialéctica de encaminar futuro se han entremezclado, y que exigen que se potencie organización que surja desde abajo, y que practiqué una democracia directa para el desarrollo de su agenda política propia y sus formas de lucha a emprender. Para cambiar el Ecuador no basta que se vayan todos hay que “destruir el capitalismo para construir el socialismo”, como proclamaba una pancarta difundida por un bloque autónomo en el pasado paro de la ciudad de Quito.
Important Links: (Enlaces)
http://www.cybercircle.org/
Official Women's Bank Website (spanish)
http://www.banmujer.gov.ve/
The Greening of Venezuela---David Raby
Wednesday, Jul 28, 2004
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1226
US Workers Study Ven (New May1) - http://www.anncol.org/side/1318 and also at: http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2005/04/1713976.php
Statemant from Armed Group in Ecuador http://ecuador.indymedia.org/es/2005/04/9296.shtml
MAY 1 ver Chapter TWO: http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2005/04/287212.php
Assambleas and Problems - http://ecuador.indymedia.org/es/2005/04/9336.shtml
Exploring the “chasm”: A libertarian reply to Celia Hart (CUBA DEBATE) - http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/04/316415.shtml
75,000 Venezuelan Peasants Win Land Titles---Argiris Malapanis
http://www.themilitant.com/2004/6815/681503.html
The Three Prongs of the Bolivar – Rodriguez – Sucre Encirlcment of US Imperial Plans
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_16310.shtml
The Bolivarian Circles of Aragua State, Venezuela
http://www.venezuelasolidarity.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=4&MMN_position=37:37
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1369
Chavez speaking at the 4th Summit on the Social Debt in Caracas, Venezuela.
Imminent Invasions: The Layers of Imperial Tactics
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15785.shtml
revolutionary_democracy@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.bcz.com/members/blog/revolucionarias/
Monday,May 9 2005, 09:28:06 PMPart Two Revolutionary Transition Designs
CHAPTER TWO: 
-=- (2) Chavez on Socialism: http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/chavez_opposition_capitalism.htm
Join A Life of Revolutionary Democracy:
A STATEMENT ON NEW SYSTEMS AND NEW POLICIES FOR THE STRUGGLE OF SOVEREIGNTY AGAINST NEO-LIBERALISM AND THE SLAVERY DEMANDED BY USA IMPERIALISM
National and Global movements need to coordinate their strategies around building a Global Anti-Capitalist Bloc. The most promising region to support is the Andes including Venezuela. Through coordinated efforts at fundraising, policy proposals, education and political pressure a worker-student vanguard in the rich countries can help the mass of poor Third World people to take over their (South American) governments and build up the Global Anti Capitalist Bloc. As we grow stronger and more independent of the USA and world markets, the momentum for a Revolutionary and Anti-Capitalist Democracy will cascade across the planet.
For every reason in the world you should be fighting capitalism. We fight Capitalism because it concentrates wealth and power at the international level (USA-UK, Exxon-Mobil, Citi-Bank, Wal-Mart) and also at the national or even the local level) 300 USA billionaires, the Colombian Narco-Oligarchy, the millionaire death squad and foreign ranchers throughout the Amazon). We fight capitalism – especially the globalization of a savage corporate capitalism –because it makes a joke of democracy by taking away most economic decisions from communities and nations. This globalization replaces our options, debate and culture with un-elected WTO tribunals and capitalist legalisms of a powerful corporate design.
USA-UK capital is violent to the environment and the poor. It is always backed up by an obscene military-espionage apparatus – and so we fight it.
We fight for the possibility of options and open experimentation in designing sustainable systems of living.
The pace and methods chosen by different cultures and regions may vary, but only by placing the social – the people – at the center of development can humans achieve peace or sustainability.
Section One
MER ECONOMIC MODEL for a Revolutionary Democracy:
Ecuadoran/Bolivian Crisis Advice
The MER approach rejects the capitalist notion that you simply socialize and train people to fill jobs determined by the market forces of big business and their government cronies. Without the old market forces to tell us what to learn and what attitudes to develop, we have to have a plan for the kind of world we are fighting for and what kinds of skills will be needed in that world that we must win.
The experiments in Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua are valuable investments that help us in designing better systems of participation for a people-centered development program. This economic program is also a philosophy of change, a description of a solidaristic society and macro-economic policies for a new economics. MER is expanding the scope and detail of its analysis of Venezuela, Bolivia and Peru. We seek collaborators and have considerable projects for interns or interested people to engage in.
The social and economic problems in the world arise from a structural inbalance of political, economic and social power between the countries in North and those in the South. This imbalance in power translates into unequal trade patterns, unequal access to resources and most importantly the increasing desire of certain economic, social and political elite (the oligarchy) to impose their will on the rest of the people. The effects of these are poverty, hunger, malnutrition, natural disasters, economic, social and political upheavals in countries in the south. The most effective way to combat these social evils in a sustainable way is to fight against the power relations at all levels. Stronger organisations from the civil society and more importantly membership-organisations of peasant farmers, women, workers and rural communities are the building rocks to effect changes. These organised bodies need to participate in the decision-making process affecting them and also embark on countervailing power process.
Section Two:
Emergency Self Organization of Cities, Regions and Rural Areas
Original April 25 Draft ( Chapter One) at:
http://print.indymedia.org/news/2005/05/1905.php
www.zorpia.com/venezuela1
Chapter Two , at: http://www.bcz.com/members/blog/revolucionarias/
For logistics, self defense and the development of many poles of leadership we recommend that in Ecuador and Bolivia people should divide the countries up into 3 or 7 sectors (regions/states) of autonomous action and responsibility for command and control of self defense forces and negotiations. Certainly these separate governments should cooperate and execute joint maneuvers or actions as appropriate. Further, we recommend that in each new sector that the ideology and plans for action and national reconstruction be discussed openly, in detail and stated clearly. We would hope that the vast majority in each region would support the final document. People who have a strong disagreement with a majority position should either move to a region that more closely reflects their views or work where they are and patiently extol the virtues of their particular program.
Venezuela and other revolutionary groups can facilitate, support, share experiences and information, and build strong relations of solidarity with organised groups of marginalised people in the Andes to improve their power relations. Such unequal power relations affect life on local, community, provincial, national and international levels. Those who want to assist can build and enhance the capacity of these organisations so that they can respond effectively to the needs of their stakeholders and other aligned groups in their country or region.
Taking control of their own development processes means having the power over resources and translating these means into ends. Therefore, we recommend that at the Revolutionary Assemblies to decide the future of Ecuador and Bolivia, that an uncompromisable position is the nationalization of all land and resources above or below the land. From this beginning groups and states can decide how much land a person or family can lease back from the government and whether these rents are paid locally, regionally or nationally (or a mix of them).
We must seek to improve the working, delivery, transparancy, accountability and participatory role of the organisations concerned. Sustainable improvement of the lives of people can be done by the people themselves. Local organisations and assemblies should have significant control over resources, investments and policies. All banks should be locally owned and run as people’s cooperatives with audits done by outside groups.
Membership organisations like peasant farmers' organisations, cooperatives, trade unions, women’s groups and community-based organizations should be favored and be represented at assemblies both local and national. The economic and social problems in the South are caused by the conditions there (lack of resources, lack of capacity & management skills, natural disasters and political woes) and by an inadequate preparation for local self defense against the machinations of the capitalists of the North and the local elite.
Globalisation, liberalisation, and open market economic doctrine are causing massive problems in the South. Trade exploitations, aid policies, agricultural policies, impositions of structural adjustments policies, tied-Aid, debt issues and environmental pollution require a whole new approach to social and economic development. To rebuild Ecuador or Bolivia all current trade and investment deals should be abrogated without recompense. High tariffs on luxuries and products that can be grown or produced locally should be installed. Fair trade deals can be introduced and several countries in the region can be expected to offer assistance and equitable trade deals. In both countries possession of dollars should become a criminal offense and new currencies should be issued to capture losses from counterfeits and the black market.
Things that prevent us from achieving an equitable society where all socially based voices can work toward a sustainable system.
Examples: Capitalism, the rich, the USA, the commercial-military-espionage forces that the USA and EU maintain around the planet (Imperialism), activists who can't or don't believe in studying and outlining their goals, strategies and tactics; Trivial or insufficient critiques. (10) [ Critiques of Capitalism and Activism ]; the disease of a selfish materialistic obsession (11).
It is divisive to focus on the problems when the entirety of the system is bankrupt and the reform movements can no longer comprehend the degree or the time that would be required to patch up such a collapsing and degrading system as the world suffers under today... Will Tomorrow be another story? We have to overthrow capitalism and demolish USA hegemony before we can establish real education which is necessary before a real democracy.
Solutions:
National and Community development should focus on production and marketing of farming products and small-scale industries. Attention to input factors and the input and output linkages, both locally and regionally, can enhance and accelerate the program to move toward solidarity and productivity.
Section Three: APPLYING POLICY to the Reality of Global Struggle
MER Does the Following: Educate through Writings, Workshops, Curriculum and Films the Policies that Are Changing the World in Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and everywhere that People Fight Capitalism and the US-EU Empire to Build a People-Centered Solidarity Society that Prioritizes Women and Children; Revolutionary Education; Dignity for the Indigenous and Workers; Pure Food; Heath for All Including the Environment; and an Economics of Agrarian-Based Community-Owned Worker-Managed Market Socialism.
The world economy has entered a monopoly capitalist phase dominated by a US-EU empire and US militarism. Change in the empire is unlikely and the annihilation of alternative experiments by the US coupled with the confusion on the left makes organizing opposition difficult. A crisis of overproduction threatens the capitalist plan and so wars, economic growth and creating consumer markets in China and India are pursued. The continued destruction of the environment is guaranteed. Trade, the WTO, stock market speculation and technologies such as genetically modified plants and animals are the foundations of the empire’s plan. Efforts to change the global economy from the top down through the UN or a Fair Trade WTO are unlikely. Global warming threats in the third World are severe, with coastal cities and drought prone farming areas especially vulnerable.
In the MER economic program there is a market economy but the government at all levels – directed by the people’s budget prioritizations – intervenes in the market to create sufficient basic goods and to satisfy basic needs within sustainability guidelines. Efforts at regional cooperation and integration (ALBA, Mercosur and PetroSur) offer some aid to the MER project goals.
The key policy areas that a new system or economic order naturally embraces:
A Comprehensive National Education Program for A Solidarity Society that Prioritizes:
Women and Children; Dignity for the Indigenous and All Workers; Health for All Including the Environment;
and a Participatory Economics of the Local: Land and Liberty.
BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION AND THE TRANSITION TO SOLIDARITY ECONOMICS
The Venezuelan economic program has channeled wonderful increases in spending for education, the poor, health and nutrition programs among a few of its accomplishments. However, the government has not significantly entered the market to employ people and to protect the economy for the poor. Instead Chavez relies on the market, on the business community and the underground economy to employ people and provide most of the goods. Chavez uses global conflict/revolution as the necessary vision rather than relying on the power of the local and a New Economic of the local. Several of his programs will help build momentum toward a solidaristic society and greater changes.
II. A NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY – Structures and Guides
Capitalism pretends that all needs are provided for by maximizing corporate profits. But despite huge expensive bureaucracies the rich countries still have serious social problems concerning health, education and crime. The MER Solidaristic Policies model maximizes food security; health and well-being; participation; a practical education; the values and benefits of cooperation; and a goal of many equalities. We are sure that such policies can produce enough (social) profits to satisfy basic needs for development: the people empowered.
Examples from the Program of MER:
1. Extreme taxation of all foreign and elite owned businesses, bank accounts and resources to accomplish state takeover at the lowest cost and minimal disruptions.
2. Extreme tariffs on all non-aligned nations' imports.
3. Extensive programs for the relocation of urban people to rural areas for production and for defense.
4. Education for solidarity and revolutionary economics, society and consciousness.
What Kind of Economy Do We Want ? - What Kind of Economy Can We Have?
We observe that capitalist-oriented market systems are inefficient from moral, social, environmental and sustainability perspectives. Rather than maximize output and then support government bureaucracies and complex legal systems in order to compensate for all the externalities and problems of a growth oriented market system, we propose a new orientation called Agrarian Based Socialism, Solidarity Economics or the Social Economy of Christian Socialism. More profits stay inside the country when trade – or imports are reduced. Mercosur could help Bolivia and Peru – under new governments and new constitutions – by charging no tax on their agricultural exports to other countries. The alternative to the US – designed Western Hemisphere Free Trade plans (FTAA/ALCA/AFTA) is Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA ). These plans would have more power if they required the members not to belong to any individual trade or aid agreements not sanctioned by the group – MERCOSUR/ ALBA.
The goal of Solidarity Economics is to increase the availability of basic needs goods and to accomplish this with a declining impact on the environment. The real choice that people have is: Do they want a sustainable and just economy that is kind to people and neighbors or do they want the US to destroy the planet and debase humanity fighting ugly resource wars? An economic system is only as complex as a people allow it to be. People can have the sustainable economy that they want. It will be different and poorer in many ways than the late 20th Century US economic model. But it will be understandable because it is local, open (transparent) and decided by the people themselves.
The problem with markets is that corrupt governments write the laws to benefit the wealthy, the big companies and growth. These are corporate subsidies and state socialism for the rich.(30) The invisible hand of government policies shapes the production costs and the prices that consumers are willing to pay. If people want a country with many small farms producing organic products then they will be able to employ many people in a labor-intensive program. But people will pay more for food in the short run than they would if they continued to let rich people gobble up farmland and poison it with chemicals, pesticides, herbicides and GMOs. Prices are only lower in the corporate farm system because so many of the externalized costs are not paid by the corporation. These costs include slave labor, child labor, cheap loans, social suffering from the displacement of small farmers, repression of farm workers and impacts on the environment.
Instead of a profit maximizing and export-based decision-making criteria Solidarity Economics would create a long-run soil conserving and biologically diverse system of farming where inputs - especially imported inputs - were not needed and expensive machinery would be replaced with labor, local resources and ingenuity.
VII. Agrarian-Based Localization: Directions of Priority
Prioritizing the basic needs of any society, results in an eventual transformation of a society. A new type of economic structure is then born along the lines of a green local-socialist decentralization program.
People should organize and reprioritize state and local policies for:
Women and Children; Education for a Solidarity Society of Pure Food, Dignity for Indigenous People and All Workers; and Health for All Including the environment.
Any country or region that seeks to provide these basic needs in a sustainable way will have little additional funds to waste on militaries and corporate subsidies. In parts of Latin American one can see a new world being born. It’s a world where people create the space and freedom to be themselves and care for themselves and their families. New economic structures can accomplish this in ways that build thriving, sustainable communities.
The sciences of Agro-Ecology and Watershed Management can guide localization planning with prioritization for sustainability and equity.
With common sense, lessons learned from the past and citizen empowerment through participation, all aspects of this world will evolve differently than the chaotic and cruel dictates experienced when international capital and the powerful elite force rapid change and modernization on every corner of the planet.
A Structure for Solidarity, Local Power and Sustainable Economics
Solidarity Economics argues for a bias toward rural areas and a policy structure of localization where local resources are used sustainably to produce most of the basic needs goods and a surplus for trade with its nearest neighbors first
This structure solves the problems of bureaucracies, political conflict and concentration of wealth. Markets are used locally, but trade is regulated beyond regions through toll roads and high fuel taxes. Toxic chemicals, genetically altered organisms (GMOs) and the weapons trade would be banned. Combined with ecological guidelines and additional restrictions on trade and land ownership, the market would create economic conditions that support small, medium and cooperative-based farms and rural enterprises. The importance of political democracy beyond a locality will eventually decline because most of the decisions over public policy are set in a well-biased (science-based) constitution or made locally.
Agrarian Reform: The Unfinished Revolution
Even poorly endowed places must take advantage of whatever will grow. Trees and riparian areas protect the water and biological resources. Some food, fish or export crops are necessary output from all places. Protecting renewable resources like the soils, forests, estuaries and fisheries is a duty and the basis of natural wealth.
The “Who owns the good farmlands” determines the wealth distribution of a region. The “What is farmed” determines the food dependency/food sovereignty of a place. The “Where” of farming determines the impacts on the ecology and the longrun productivity of the country. Overproduction near rivers or steep hills has a potentially large impact. Light grazing rotations and tree crops would be chosen by a community if it exercised control over the use of its resources. The “Why of farming” – or the Why Subsidize Small Farms and rural communities - determines the importance of culture, respect, sustainability and the connections of the people to the land and the ecology that they live in and depend on. The “How” of farming is connected to and grows out of all of these factors. Investments and trade polices accelerate or control trends in production and growth and thus affect all aspects of rural life and the well-being of the whole country. For decades investments in Latin America have been capital intensive (with an urban – industrial bias) thus creating greater unemployment and a rural exodus to mega-city slums.
Government commissions and scientific research panels (drawn from local and regional experts, students and faculty) will draw up detailed lists of each region’s resources: grazing lands, farmlands (in several categories of richness and environmental sensitivity), damaged lands, forests, special wildlands or habit zones, erosion zones, fishing zones and tourist or recreation areas.
After these studies are completed lands would be redistributed for free to competent farmers and ranchers.
Compensation for seized lands will not be possible in most places because of a lack of funds and the revolutionary perceptions that will accompany these drastic changes. Current owners of land could retain twice the standard limit that is set locally for a particular land type (typically 5 to 10 hectares for the highest quality lands and 20-40 hectares for marginal or grazing lands). Adults over 21 can only own the land that they live on and their vehicle license plate must be from that parcel’s address.(35)
Initially land is redistributed to three sectors: small holders, coops and locally owned lands held for distribution to newcomers and population growth.
Next the government would analyze imports and exports at national and regional levels.
A plan or recommendation is drawn up that considers priority for basic needs goods and the national and regional production advantages: resources, skills, interests and existing complimentary infrastructure. From this point in the process the popular assemblies and research panels devise the final plans for land use, investments and subsidies.
VIII. Ideas for Local Solidarity Projects and Import Substitution with Value Adding
MISC REVIEW OF PROBLEMS –
Force the USA – EU – OECD to Consume and Pollute Less.
a. Reduce USA Corporate Profits Through Trade Barriers (Tariffs and Quotas), Embargos, Debt Erasures, Boycotts and the Expropriation of USA Corporate Holdings. Expel Everything and Everyone Connected to the USA and Seize Their Stolen Possessions.
b. Make the USA-EU Empires Pay Higher Oil Prices With Oil Embargos or by Utilizing Most of the Oil Within the South. Charge the USA Surcharges for Oil Purchases (& other products) and Require Them to Use Ships and Refineries in the South.
Defend and Build up the Revolutions in the South
a. Prepare Strategies to Resist USA Imperialist Attacks. The Best Defense is a Strong People with a Clear Ideology, Decentralized Economy and Decentralized Mobile Armed Forces.
Build a Personal and Social Consciousness of the Importance of the Environment to Self Reliance, Solidarity and National Defense
a. Solidarity Economics: A Solidaristic Decentralized Cooperative and Local-Oriented Economy.
b. Education (Latin America) for Solidarity and Eco-protection/ Sustainability.
Important Links (Enlaces)
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=30658
Alan Woods and William Izarra stress need to leave reformism behind
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_16899.shtml
Venezuela's National Assembly (AN) passes Land Law reform bill.
Ecuatorianos, un abrazo desde Venezuela ; From carlos acosta – Abril 21
Hermanos Ecuatorianos, revolucionarios y concientes; reciban un abrazo solidario y mil felicitaciones por su valentía y su nueva y energica decision en pro de la justicia y de la unidad de nuestro continente suramericano. Desde Venezuela les saludamos y aplaudimos su clarisima vision. Aqui seguimos con Chavez y alla, con el pueblo ecuatoriano.
Desobediencia, rebelión, paro, acción directa, construcción, debate, reflexión, son palabras que en una dialéctica de encaminar futuro se han entremezclado, y que exigen que se potencie organización que surja desde abajo, y que practiqué una democracia directa para el desarrollo de su agenda política propia y sus formas de lucha a emprender.
Para cambiar el Ecuador no basta que se vayan todos hay que “destruir el capitalismo para construir el socialismo”, como proclamaba una pancarta difundida por un bloque autónomo en el pasado paro de la ciudad de Quito.
Estrategias anticapitalistas - Eduardo Campillo 22.Apr.2005 16:45
Congratulations to all the ones that fight for the change. I hope that we do not only throw out Gutierrez and his group ... we should also throw out all the politicals, the courts and make changes in the Ecuadorian democratic system. These things no doubt occur to me some but I expect that to you they occur themselves more and better: To call Civic Assemblies and to have them become Constituent Assemblies; To dissolve the old political parties; To govern through an Assembly of Citizens that represents each one of the sectors of workers of the country, chosen by the votes of their companions; To direct the security forces through the Government of the Civic Assembly; To judge the corrupt; To carry out an "economy of solidarity", supplying materials and services to the weak and exchanging them among businesses; and To expropriate businesses and to become many cooperatives of the workers.
Enhorabuena a todos los que luchan por el cambio. Espero que no sólo echéis a Gutierrez y compañía de todo poder político sino que sean juzgados y se realicen cambios en el sistema democrático ecuatoriano. Se me ocurren algunos pero espero que a vosotros se os ocurran más y mejores.
-Convocar Asambleas Ciudadanas y convertirlas en Constituyentes llegado el momento.
-Disolver los antiguos partidos politicos.
-Gobernar desde una Asamblea de Ciudadanos que representen a cada uno de los sectores de trabajadores del país, elegidos por los votos de sus compañeros.
-Dirigir las fuerzas de seguridad desde el Gobierno de la Asamblea Ciudadana.
-Juzgar a los corruptos.
-Llevar a cabo una "economía de solidaridad", suministrando materiales y servicios a los débiles e intercambiándolos entre empresas.
-Expropiar empresas y convertirlas en cooperativas de trabajadores.
Saturday,Apr 23 2005, 01:58:42 AMIf we are to learn from the past, we need...
If we are to learn from the past, we need critical and ruthless analyses of the post-revolutionary societies, their achievements as well as failures.
It should be evident by now that a transfer in class power can make a real difference.
That shows up during the early days of a move to a new social system: elimination of hunger, creation of full employment, the spread of literacy, universal education and medical care for all the people, and an escape from imperialist domination.
These steps toward social justice are not easy. Moreover, booby traps may slow and divert further progressive and radical changes.
A Workable market Socialism for CHavez's Christian Socialist Solidarity
Some of the varied accounts of market socialism given by political theorists and economists do attempt to meet this theoretical challenge (Miller, 1990). But I will argue that it is the work of the American Legal Realists and Critical Legal Studies writers with respect to the nature of the market and property rights that provides the strongest theoretical grounding for the viability of the market socialist project.
Once the market socialist project has been given the theoretical 'green light', I will move on to consider the range of concrete proposals which have been offered. I will argue that the theoretical work of the Realists and CLS writers also give us guidance as to which part of this spectrum to favour--namely the highly decentralised models involving productive enterprises which are democratically run and owned by those who work in them.
Private Property and the Market in Capitalist and Socialist Theory
As we are all aware, capitalism stresses the importance of a free market and private property. The market is seen as a decentralised mechanism for sending signals to economic actors that ensure that resources are used efficiently, and in a way that satisfies the demands of consumers. The market works by trading valued rights, and so it is no surprise that capitalism also stresses that market actors should have a strong bundle of private property rights that they can use and trade as they see fit. The capitalist stress on free markets and private property connects with the stress in classical liberal theory on individual liberty and neutrality regarding conceptions of the good. The market was seen as a neutral mechanism which allowed each individual to pursue his unique conception of the good or worthwhile life. It maximised freedom of choice.
Socialism can be seen historically as a reaction against what capitalism actually produced in the 18th and 19th centuries--for most people it produced great inequality, lack of freedom, harsh living condition, stunted lives, and exploitation. This reaction against capitalism took a number of forms, but Marxism was the dominant variety of socialism from the second half of the 19th century on. Marxism stressed the negation of the essential features of capitalism--private property in the means of production would be replaced by socialised ownership, and conscious planning of the economic aspects of our lives would replace the anarchy and cruelties of the market.
This is the source of the feeling of some theorists on both the right and the left that market socialism is an impossible contradiction. Socialism is understood by them to be co-extensive with the Marxist position that markets and private property rights must be eliminated. If socialism is understood in this way, 'market socialism' is indeed incoherent. But this is a misunderstanding both of the actual history of socialist thought, and of its potential resources. Although Marxism has been the dominant socialist theory for a long time, and although it strongly influenced the communist regimes, it is not the only response that socialism did develop or could develop in response to capitalism.
A much milder socialist response that came into being in some countries was social democracy. Here there is some regulation and shaping of market transactions, especially in the labour market, but the basic approach is to leave the capitalist property rights and market system alone, and allow this system to play itself out. Then a social democratic government changes the resulting end-state to one which better accords with socialist ideas of equality and security of material benefits. This is typically achieved by taxing and redistributing the wealth generated by the capitalist economic system. In social democracies we see that a weak form of socialism is compatible with the market and private property as they are conceived under capitalism.
Here is a different socialist response, although it has not been applied in any country so far. It does not seek to eliminate capitalist markets and private property in the means of production, as in Marxism, nor simply leave them in place but milk them, as in social democracy. The goal of this approach is to keep the institutions of private property and the market, but not as they are realised under capitalism. The goal is to reconceive and remodel them so that they naturally produce results which are more in line with socialist values, without the need for significant ex post facto rejigging by the state. The focus here is thus upon establishing an economic system with socialist-inspired property and market ground rules at the beginning, rather than on altering the end-state achieved when an economic system with capitalist ground rules is allowed to play itself out. If this project could be realised, it would be a more strongly socialist response to capitalism than social democracy because it would focus not just upon altering patterns of distribution, but also upon altering capitalist property rights and the ways production is carried on. This project describes the variety of market socialism which I want to explore in this paper (it is not the only possible variety as we will see). We will have to wait until later to see whether it can be carried out in any convincing concrete way, and even before that there are other conceptual challenges which will have to be surmounted. But at least at this stage we can see that it is a form of market socialism which would be free from the charge of 'impossible contradiction' which is made by those who see socialism as being identical with the Marxist position.
This variety of market socialism has moved a long distance from Marxism by its refusal to seek the negation of the market. Notwithstanding this concession to capitalist orthodoxy, it can expect to meet with further objections from defenders of capitalist market society. First, they may feel that private property and the market are not subject to redesign in the way proposed by this market socialist model. 'Everything is what it is, and not another thing', and so private property and the market cannot be changed much from what they are now without losing their essential natures. The assertion here is that once you accept the basic concept of the market, most of the detailed structure of the market, i.e. its groundrules and dynamics, follow as a matter of course without significant choice on your part.. This assertion lies behind the other capitalist claim that the market is just a neutral procedural device, i.e. its rules involve no political choices or commitment to a particular social vision. Private property and the market have to be realised pretty much as they are now for them to exist at all, because technical efficiency considerations and the logical implications of the concepts 'private property' and 'market' demand this.
Second, they will see the projected redesigning of property rights and the market as just another example of the socialist impulse to get the state into areas it does not belong. As has often been noted, classical liberal political thinking divides social space into public and private zones. It is crucial on this picture to keep the state out of the private zone and confined to its legitimate role in the public zone. But private property rights and the free market belong firmly in the private zone. Any redesigning of them by the state is therefore deeply improper. It would involve the state moving into the private zone to affect relationships and decisions that individuals should be left alone to make. So again we seem to end up with a contradiction. The market is within a private area which the state should be kept out to the greatest extent--that is why it is called a 'free market'. But a 'market socialism' with the goal of reconceiving and reconstructing the market and private property involves the state penetrating deeply into that private zone.
However, I will now argue that Legal Realism and CLS have provided adequate responses to these objections, and have also provided the theoretical foundations for a version of market socialism which seeks to retain private property and the market, while simultaneously reconceiving them in a radically different way from capitalism.
Legal Realism and Critical Legal Studies
Critical legal studies writers such as Roberto Unger (1987:124,129,134,136,160.), Karl Klare (1991:72-81), and Duncan Kennedy (1991) reject the claim that it is not possible significantly to rework the content of 'private property' and 'the free market' from what they are now without moving outside the boundaries of those concepts altogether. They reject the views of conservative defenders of the free market in Anglo-American writings who seem to think that the free market requires, by definition, something quite definite and circumscribed, and something quite close to what already exists in those economies. The CLS argument is that very abstract concepts such as the free market, which is just an economic system where 'a large number of independent agents bargain on their own initiative and for their own account' (Unger, 1987:122), can be made concrete in many different ways, and in many more ways than we have hitherto experienced.
Some indirect support for this position is found in the fact that we can find actually existing private property and free market capitalist regimes that differ substantially from Anglo-American models in places like Germany, Japan, and the four Asian 'tigers' (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea). But the thrust of the CLS argument carries us further than these examples. Consider again that abstract description of the free market: an economic system where a large number of independent agents bargain on their own initiative and for their own account. One foundational question here is: what kinds of entities are these independent agents or market actors to be? Are they to be just individual human beings, or groups of human beings such as partnerships? Are artificial legal entities such as corporations and states to be allowed to participate as market actors too, and if so, are they to have exactly the same rights and powers as human market actors? The choices you make with respect to this one foundational question will produce very different types of free market systems--imagine what it would be like if only humans, not corporate actors were allowed--but they will all fit the definition and be free market systems.
There are many other foundational choices of this kind which have to be made in order to specify or describe any free market system:
(1) What types of things can be owned and traded in the market? For example: can people be owned? Can body tissues and body parts be owned? Can corporations own other corporations? Are some desired things to be outside the scope of the market mechanism entirely (Radin, 1987)?
(2) What bundle of rights does an owner get? Is it the cluster which Honoré (1961) described in his paradigm case, or should some of that bundle be permanently redistributed so that all of those rights can no longer be concentrated in one pair of hands? Should the right to alienate be stripped from the ownership bundle for a larger class of property than it is at present?[1]
(3) How can interests be transferred, and what counts as a 'voluntary' as opposed to a 'coerced' transaction? How much and what types of power over other people is seen as acceptable (Robertson, 1995)?
The point made by the CLS writers is that foundational questions such as these cannot be avoided, and can be answered in many different ways, producing a much greater variety of possible free market systems than the orthodox defenders of currently existing capitalism imagine. This means that the market socialist project I described earlier gets the theoretical 'green light', since it simply wants to give different answers to the foundational choices which have to be made in any private property and free market system.
But the necessity for foundational choices of these kinds to be made also counts against the second objection to the market socialist project noted above. That objection, you will recall, was that it was an improper intrusion into the private zone if the state acted to redefine private property or market rights. But now we have seen that it is impossible to have any free market and private property system without the state acting to provide answers to foundational questions like the ones above. So if it gives different answers to these questions at some later time, it is not doing something any different from what it did when it set up the original rules; it is not now entering into a private zone that it has hitherto kept out of. The state not only always has been, but always has to be, deeply involved over in the private realm liberals wanted to keep it out of. This holds true even if you don't have a soviet-style planned economy, or a social democracy that alters end-states, and instead have the most laissez-faire 'free market' system. The implication of this is that the division of social space into public and private realms so beloved of liberal thinkers has some serious problems.
And it gets worse still. The market is seen as a neutral facilitating structure in liberal theory. It imposes no values or goals on people, but simply allows them to pursue their own unique visions of the good life. But now we see that any market system requires foundational choices, and on what basis are these foundational choices made? The different choices are not simply aesthetic: they have power implications, and therefore have implications for the eventual distribution of power, wealth, and status that is generated by the system. This was a point stressed by Robert Hale (1923; 1943), a legal economist who had a great influence on both the Legal Realists and the later Critical Legal Studies writers.[2] The choices made in establishing any market system are not just technical and neutral ones, therefore, but political choices. In making them the state cannot be neutral, but is guided by a conscious or implicit commitment to a particular social vision, or vision of how society could and should be ordered. It then follows that any conception of free markets that stresses their neutrality, and denies the political choices that inevitably go into their formation, is ideological. It operates to disguise, behind a smokescreen of neutrality, the political choices benefiting some groups at the expense of others.
Further Implications of the Legal Realist and CLS Analysis for Market Socialism
The Realist and CLS analysis just described has significant implications for a widening of the scope of the market socialist project. When we turn to those offering descriptions and analyses of market socialism, we find that many of their models and critiques implicitly accept limitations on what the market socialist project involves (Bardhan and Roemer, 1993; Le Grand and Estrin, 1989). In particular, many seem to accept that the differences between capitalism and socialism, in an economic sense, depend upon different answers to the choices between public ownership versus private ownership, and market versus plan. If you choose public ownership and plan, you have communism. If you choose private ownership and market, you have capitalism. On this understanding, market socialism is what you get when you chose instead public ownership and market. The underlying limitation is that any form of socialism must involve public ownership, (although it needn't be what we know as nationalised state ownership).
Oscar Lange's market socialism of the 1930s would fall into this category (Lange and Taylor, 1994). An interesting modern example of this type of market socialism is provided by John Roemer (1993a:89; 1993b:347). He basically sees all enterprises as publicly owned, run by hired managers, and competing against each other for profits in a market system However, instead of the profits going to the state, they are distributed directly to citizens via dividends paid by mutual funds which supply capital to the enterprises, and in which all citizens are given shares. These shares can be traded for other mutual fund shares, but cannot be sold for cash, and thus the ability to concentrate holdings is limited. A much more egalitarian distribution of wealth results.
A great value of the Realist and CLS analysis is to provide the theoretical foundations for varieties of market socialism that are not confined to working out new forms of 'public ownership', as these models do, but seek instead to rework the content of 'private property'. The realist and CLS contributions give a theoretical foundation for varieties of market socialism in which private property and the market are retained, but reconceived by the giving of different answers to the foundational choices necessary to establish any private property and market system. The market socialist foundational choices would be guided by the desire to achieve, without massive government ex post facto tinkering, outcomes or end-states that were more egalitarian, democratic, and communitarian than those produced by the capitalist private property and market system.
A Market Socialist Model
Finally, after the theoretical objections have been overcome and the theoretical foundations have been provided, we come to the task of evaluating attempts to carry this new type of market socialist project forward. In practice this project has amounted to a shift to producers' co-operatives as the predominant economic form.[3] There are many differing models of such a 'self-managed market socialism', and we shall choose one to look at in more detail shortly. But first note how an economic system based on producers' co-operatives is still recognisable as a private property and market system.
(1) The main economic actors are producers' co-operatives rather than corporations, but these co-operatives compete against each other to sell goods and services to the public. There is still a market structure but with different actors than the ones we are used to under capitalism.
(2) There are still private property owners who own these new economic actors, but again, these are different from the owners we are familiar with now. Whereas the owners of corporations, the shareholders, can be people who do not work in the enterprise, this is not possible with producers' co-operatives. Their owners can only be people working in the enterprise.
(3) On some models these new owners take over most of the ownership bundle that Honoré described. Thus the right to manage, the right to income, and the right to capital that Honoré described as part of private property ownership are not taken away and given to the state, as in nationalisation. Instead this bundle is taken from one set of people, the suppliers of capital, and given to another set, the suppliers of skills and labour.
(4) On other models the treatment of the ownership bundle is more complex. In them it is not the case that the familiar ownership bundle under capitalism is simply transferred to a different class. The rights might be permanently disaggregated, and distributed among different groups of people. Or the ability of the owners of the enterprise to alienate their interests might be more limited than they are under capitalism, without being removed altogether.
Let us finally look briefly at one detailed model of self-managed market socialism.[4] The model I will describe is that given by Thomas Weisskopf in 'A Democratic Enterprise-Based Market Socialism' (1993:120). Weisskopf recognises that capitalist forms of enterprise ownership combine control rights and income rights, (understood broadly as including both the income from assets and the proceeds from asset sales), and also allow private individuals to acquire such ownership rights in varying amounts. But this means that 'capitalist ownership generally confers control over enterprises on a group of private owners or shareholders with unequal membership rights, little social contact, few ties to the area in which the enterprise is located, and no enduring common identity.' (Weisskopf, 1993:126) Such private ownership is not 'individual', since many owners are involved, but nor is it collective or social in any strong sense.
Market socialists argue that ownership of productive assets should be more social; it should be ownership by people who do form a genuine community. Different models of market socialism result depending on the type of community chosen. 'In particular, whether the community is a political constituency (local, regional, or national) or an economic constituency (those who work in an enterprise) and which enterprise ownership rights--control and/or income--are to be held on an equal basis by members of the relevant community and which (if any) are till to be available for acquisition in varying amounts by private individuals.' (Weisskopf, 1993:122). He describe two pure models based on (1) ownership by political communities and (2) ownership by workers of an enterprise. In each of these the community keeps the full ownership bundle of control and income rights. After noting problems with each pure model, he tries to combine elements of both to produce a hybrid that combines greater economic efficiency with greater satisfaction of the socialist goals of greater equality, democracy, community, and social rationality.
(1) Democratic self-management is required for all enterprises with more than a minimum number of people involved. The members of the enterprise elect a governing council on a one person, one vote basis, and this council hires managers. (Weisskopf, 1993:126)
(2) The enterprise finances itself and/or acquires assets in the following ways:
(a) by leasing assets.
(b) by borrowing funds from independent and democratically self-managed banks and other financial intermediaries to purchase assets.
(c) by selling non-voting tradable equity shares to independent mutual funds, and using the proceeds to purchase assets. The mutual funds receive no formal control rights, but get the right to receive dividends and to realise capital gains or losses by selling shares. Thus his model 'unbundles the control and income rights associated with capitalist enterprise ownership.' (Weisskopf, 1993:125).
(d) by reinvesting some of their net operating surplus in the purchase of assets. 'In this case all members of the enterprise community receive--in proportion to the rate at which they earn income in the enterprise--individual nonvoting nontradable equity shares, which generate dividends and capital gains or losses in exactly the same way as any tradable shares held by outsiders, according to the performance of the firm; the capital gains or losses can be realised, however, only as and when the insiders leave the firm and cash in their equity--by selling positive equity claims back to the enterprise, or making good on negative equity claims resulting from poor enterprise performance.' (Weisskopf, 1993:127). This internal capital account model is based on that developed by the Mondragon co-operatives in Spain. (Ellerman and Pitegoff, 1982-3).
(3) In order to achieve a broader distribution of the fruits of these enterprises without the familiar taxation and redistribution, Weisskopf proposes a two-tier stock market system. The two tiers are (a) shares in the worker-owned enterprises themselves, and (b) shares in the mutual funds which purchase shares in the worker-owned enterprises. The shares in the worker-owned enterprises can only be purchased by competing mutual funds, not individuals or enterprises.
These mutual funds can sell shares in their portfolios to other mutual funds for cash. But the shares in these mutual funds themselves would, in a manner borrowed from Roemer (1993a;1993b), be spread among all of the adult citizens, thus ensuring a more egalitarian distribution of the income of the worker self-managed enterprises. To avoid some people being able to buy up and accumulate citizens' mutual fund shares, these shares can only be traded for other mutual fund shares. They cannot be purchased for cash or converted into cash. But this trading, based on the dividends paid by the mutual funds, which are in turn based on the performance of the enterprises which form the portfolios of the mutual funds, will send signals about the performance of the enterprises and their managers which can be used for disciplinary purposes.
I have chosen to focus on Weisskopf's model of market socialism because at one level it retains many of the familiar features of capitalism. There is private ownership of productive assets and capital, there is debt financing and equity financing, there are decentralised market mechanisms at work. But each of these elements has been reinflected, reconceived and altered to increase socialist outcomes. There will be greater equality in the distribution of material benefits because income differentials are typically smaller when they are chosen by the workers at producers' co-operatives, and because some of their profits will be distributed to all citizens via ownership of shares in the mutual funds. Democratic decision-making will be extended into the workplace and the economy because workers in an enterprise now retain control over it. The expectation is that this enhancement of democratic skills will flow over into the regular political process too. Ownership of productive assets will have a more social nature, as now ownership will be held by people in a genuine form of community, rather than isolated shareholders with no real connection to the enterprise they own.
Weisskopf acknowledges that his model is more achievable at the moment in the Eastern European post-communist countries, where most of the productive assets had already been socialised in the hands of the state. The state need only devolve most of its ownership rights to enterprises and mutual funds to establish a Weisskopf-type economy, whereas in the West the realisation of his model would involve massive and costly expropriation of the current owners of shares in enterprises and mutual funds.
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References
Bardhan, Pranab and Roemer, John (1993) Market Socialism: The Current Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellerman, David and Pitegoff, Peter (1982-3) 'The Democratic Corporation: The New Worker Co-operative Statute in Massachusetts', [1992-3] New York University Review of Law and Social Change 441
Hale, Robert (1923) 'Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State', 38 Political Science Quarterly 470
--(1943) 'Bargaining, Duress and Economic Liberty', 43 Columbia Law Review 603
Honoré, Tony (1961) 'Ownership', in A. G. Guest, (ed.) Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence
Kennedy, Duncan (1991) 'The Stakes of Law, or, Hale and Foucault!', 15 The Legal Studies Forum 327.
Klare, Karl (1991) 'Legal Theory and Democratic Reconstruction: Reflections on 1989', 25 U. of British Columbia Law Rev. 69.
Lange, Oscar and Taylor, Fred (1994) 'On the Economic Theory of Socialism' in A. Nove and I. Thatcher (eds.) Markets and Socialism Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
Le Grand, Julian and Estrin, Saul (1989) Market Socialism. Oxford: Clarendon.
Miller, David (1990) Market, State and Community. Oxford:Clarendon
Nove, Alec (1983) The Economics of Feasible Socialism. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Radin, Margaret (1987) 'Market-Inalienability', 100 Harvard Law Review 1849.
Robertson, Michael (1995) 'Property and Ideology', 8 The Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 275.
Roemer, John (1993a) 'Can There Be Socialism after Communism?' in P. Bardhan and J. Roemer (eds.) Market Socialism: The Current Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
--(1993b) 'The Possibility of Market Socialism' in D. Copp et al. (eds.) The Idea of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Unger, Roberto (1987) Social Theory: Its Situation and its Task. A Critical Introduction to Politics, a Work in Constructive Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weisskopf, Thomas (1993) 'A Democratic Enterprise-Based Market Socialism' in P. Bardhan and J. Roemer (eds.) Market Socialism: The Current Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Endnotes
1. Even under current capitalist arrangements, it is not the case that all those things which can be owned as private property can be freely alienated. E.g. prescription medicines, home brewed beer.
[2.] For reliance on Hale by Critical Legal Studies writers, see Klare (1991) at footnotes 18, 20, 25 and accompanying text, and Kennedy (1991).
[3.] They will not be the only economic units or actors. Market socialist models tend to be pluralist. See for example Nove (1983) ch. 5 where he lists centralised state corporations, socialised enterprises, co-operative enterprises, small-scale private enterprise, and individuals.
[4.] Remember though there are many differing models. Is the enterprise to be owned jointly, or are workers to have individual alienable shares reflecting their portion of the capital value? Although only workers can be owners, can the enterprise also hire employees who are not owners? How is the enterprise to be financed--internally through retained earnings, or externally from lenders of capital? What kinds of entities should these capital providing bodies be? The choices with respect to these issues turn out to be very relevant for efficiency considerations. It is not enough, after all, to think up a different form of private property and market system: it has to be one that works efficiently or it will compare poorly to the existing arrangements.
Socialism cannot be created overnight. A long transition is needed to build its political, human, and economic foundations. If we are to learn from the past, we need critical and ruthless analyses of the post-revolutionary societies, their achievements as well as failures. It should be evident by now that a transfer in class power can make a real difference. That shows up during the early days of a move to a new social system: elimination of hunger, creation of full employment, the spread of literacy, universal education and medical care for all the people, and an escape from imperialist domination. These steps toward social justice are not easy. Moreover, booby traps may slow and divert further progressive and radical changes.
The transition to full-fledged socialism entails a long and bumpy road full of pitfalls and contradictions. Time is needed to: (a) convert existing productive forces into worker-controlled and peasant-controlled enterprises, (b) create new productive forces for the basic needs of the entire population, and (c) construct a legal-political-cultural superstructure adapted to a cooperative commonwealth. Shortcuts are few and far between. Nor can general recipes be designed that will suit every country and anticipate every twist and turn of history. Room must be provided for a process of trial and error, which means informing and involving the masses, including the power of the masses to recall administrators and correct errors.
The socialist vision encompasses a nonhierarchical, egalitarian society—one which strives to improve the living standards and quality of life, with top priority given to the poorest, most discriminated against, and powerless. Thus, the dominant tendency in China during roughly the first 30 post-revolutionary years was to dedicate resources and effort to achieving equality and meeting the basic needs of the people, especially those of the downtrodden. By the end of the 1970s (covering roughly the first three decades after the revolutionists came to power), China had become a highly egalitarian society, arguably the most egalitarian on earth in terms of the distribution of income and in meeting basic needs. Since then, however, a striking turnaround has taken place—in fact as in theory. The heads of the party and the government encouraged a blossoming of private industry via domestic and foreign investment. A turn to so-called market socialism was proclaimed. The U-turn in the ruling ideology was dramatic. Market socialism, it was said, would lead to speedy growth of material production, a growth of riches that would inevitably trickle down to all social sectors.
China’s new course has indeed resulted in an extremely rapid increase of production and total national income. However, the wealth created didn’t trickle down very far. The result is a very rich upper stratum and a comfortable middle class, and as for the rest: poverty, insecurity, unemployment, and a decline in education and medical care. The effect of the turnaround is finally acknowledged in official circles. Last year the political department of China’s Ministry of Finance issued a report on the subject. People’s Daily Online (June 19, 2003) ran an article containing the substance of the document. The article began by acknowledging that the government report had revealed: (1) “A ceaseless widening of the gap in income distribution and the aggravated division of the rich and the poor is occurring”; and (2) “Amassed wealth is becoming more concentrated, with the difference of family fortunes becoming bigger and bigger.”
What is clear from the Chinese experience is that the basis of the class struggle continues even after nationalization of business institutions. The mentality (ideology) of the old society does not evaporate into thin air after a revolutionary change. It remains and conflicts with the socialist road. Other strains arise from the potential and actual entrenchment of a bureaucratic elite, the persistence of hierarchy, and the complexity of building a people’s democracy. The bureaucratic elite and other privileged groups sustain a competing ideology—one that justifies their privileges, which are at odds with the needs of the mass of the people. Members of the elite are commonly concerned with passing on their advantages to their children, typical of class society. The clash of class interests continues from generation to generation. In this way the class struggle persists, though in different forms from the past. At heart, as Mao pointed out, even some in high Communist Party positions wanted to take the “capitalist road.”
The ideological struggle that takes place is linked with differences over the rate and direction of growth. Unfortunately, growth in itself is the deity worshipped by “capitalist roaders,” whereas the crucial questions are: What kind of growth? For what purpose? For whose benefit? Should the growth be geared to satisfying the desires of intellectuals, managers, business owners, and the bureaucratic political groups and classes? Or, should the direction of growth be oriented towards improving living standards and quality of life for the mass of the people?