Third and final of the series about corruption in Cuba which appeared in successive Sunday editions of Juventud Rebelde [Rebel Youth], nation's second-largest mass circulation paper.

The Problem of Cheating
[part three of three]

by Yailin Orta Rivera, Norge Martínez Montero and Roberto Suá¡rez
22 October 2006 Juventud Rebelde
A CubaNews translation by Ana Portela. Edited by Walter Lippmann. http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs965-1.html

A team of experts from the Philosophy Institute will soon start a research project on socialist property in Cuba, a steppingstone to an essential inquiry focused on more than just economic considerations.

According to Doctor Ernesto Molina, much is yet to be covered, and what remains to be seen is how science will contribute to solve these problems in the field of services.

Socialist property in Cuba is facing internal as well as external threats. Science must get to the root of this problem if we expect to win this war.

This is the main conclusion we reached after we talked with Cuban philosophers and economists so as to find a sound reason for the distortions exposed by this newspaper in two preceding reports about how the line between social and private property is getting increasingly thinner in many state-owned service organizations and the resulting economic and moral dangers thereof.

To these scholars, socialism's economic difficulties spring precisely from the fact that this is, historically, a very young system in which many things have yet to be changed.

An expression by our Commander in Chief came up constantly in our conversation with these analysts. In a key speech he delivered on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of his admission to Havana University, Fidel said our biggest mistake was thinking that someone here knew anything about socialism.

Philosophy Institute researcher Jesús García will lead the team of experts who will soon analyze the topic of property in Cuba.

"Capitalism created the working class, the bearer of socialist revolution. Socialism found its opportunity in the very heart of capitalism, but it was born in Third World countries and with the great mission of facing up to that huge industry," said Dr. Ernesto Molina, a consulting professor at the Department of Economic and Technical Affairs of the Higher Institute of International Relations.

He points out that, as a result, domestic production has to be extraordinarily competitive before it can deal as effectively as possible with global capitalist competitiveness, the major external threat hanging over socialist property.

"This is not the only danger. There are external threats too, mostly because the socialist economics manuals we studied were very apologetic and portrayed socialism as a very harmonic and perfect society, free from stain or blemish. And a society stemmed from capitalism has no choice but to have contradictions.

"In Cuba, a developing country, socialism was not born to a highly developed capitalist nation, as Karl Marx had described. We came into an underdeveloped economic structure that takes very long to change. The good news is, our socialist property can be planned, and therefore you have a long-term strategy in your hands.

"What we have to avoid is letting the market transform by itself the country's economic structure. Thats only possible through strict planning, the State's irreplaceable role.

"Add to this that some things are deformed in our society, and thus much has to be guaranteed by means of cohesion and control? but not everything. There has to be a scientific design for our society to be economically and politically organized and capable of working better".

Given the complexity of this task, a group of experts from the Philosophy Institute will soon start a research project on socialist property in Cuba.

In this way, they agree, the way is paved for an essential study that demands a multidisciplinary scientific research aimed at all fields, not only economics.

"Some only care about solving nothing but their personal problems. Much as they deny it, that's what you see in practice. Hence the need to lay the foundations of our society's success in being better and changing that opinion," Molina underscores.

In his opinion as an economist, the major difficulty to solve many of the problems found in the field of services today is that Cuban socialism came into being amidst a weak economy, where the low supply was incapable of meeting people's demand.

"Taking that supply out of the deficit hole is of crucial importance, and the foremost issue. Prices are sky-high because of a production deficit. Of course, it can be solved overnight, but if we're smart we can find alternatives to change that situation.

The way certain sectors of the population condone negative actions in the field of services, an unjustified cultural trend to put up with such a thoughtless attitude, is paradoxical at best.

"If we want to make those changes we must think of something more than words or school programs. That's as important as creating objective conditions to make citizens function collectively.

"Public opinion plays a pivotal role in this process. In a social property system, you must learn from an early age to show solidarity with the rest of society, in such a way that if you grow up with that awareness any future accusation of incompetence or lack of responsibility, come from where it may, will hit home, because you will be quite ashamed of hogging the limelight like that.

"Much is yet to be covered to this end, and what remains to be seen is how science will contribute to the solution. However, that we are merely admitting to the presence of this problem in the field of services and to the existence of contradictions within our society can be labeled a big step forward.

"Che Guevara was one of socialism's fiercest critics, never mincing his words to rebuke a mistake. In line with the example that he, our Commander-in-Chief, and other Cuban leaders have set, we social scientists feel morally bound to put our finger on the root cause of these phenomena and the way to cope with them".

An SOS for quallity

Even if more polished, multidisciplinary studies are yet to be undertaken, many Cuban analysts have already approached these questions from the viewpoint of economic and philosophic sciences and drawn preliminary conclusions about the causes and likely solutions to these wrongs. Among those scholars is Dr. Hiram Marquetti, a professor at the Center for Studies on Cuban Economics, who states the food-serving units and related services have long been used as a means to keep a financial balance and therefore overrated as far as their money-collecting function is concerned.

"Other functions within the framework of this activity have been often affected as a result of the lack of a quality culture in the field."

Another problem weighing down on the service activity is the resulting loss of confidence among customers. "There's always an excuse: on one hand, the outcome of the special period, and on the other, an unstable supply.

"Further, the so-called "penalties" –overcharging for a product or selling less amount than they charge you for– have become an unwarranted cultural trend. What's paradoxical about it is the indolence you notice in certain sectors of the population before these negative actions, since they accept is as part of something conventional wisdom has tagged as "self-defense". On the basis of these criteria, a trend has developed to justify theft as a commonplace occurrence, because "people have to solve their individual problems" in any way they can.

"A mistaken notion of what providing a service is all about has taken root here. Beyond its financial significance, we must value its quality.

"The concepts of user and customer are very different: the former, unlike the latter, is not in the position to make any demand. In contrast to consumer protection, a wholly negative culture has evolved around the demands you can make in the face of poor service.

"We must once and for all start measuring the effectiveness of a service by means of quality indicators, not only quantitative results. We must come up with indicators in which qualitative considerations carry some weight.

The professor believes turning things around will take a long time, taking into account that it's not easy to reinstate quality indicators and assure the chain of supply at the same time.

"Digging into these problems calls for an all-encompassing approach, important as it is to lay down codes of conduct as well as rights and duties, because who protects me if I lose out on something I'm not liable for in the first place?

"We look at a service, whether it's good or bad, as something foreign to us and simply pass the buck. If anything is not delivered, we blame in on somebody else. There's indolence and apathy. For all the historic roots of the above shortcomings, we must try to find a possible solution.

"Nonetheless, there's evidence that we can do positive things with the existing service structure. Encouraging results have been achieved in provinces like Ciego de Ávila and Cienfuegos, where they strive to improve service quality.

"We have to focus on where we can make improvements to preserve the role of services, not only in terms of the portions we sell but of the service we offer.

"I insist that we must study both the organizational structure and the chain of supply as a whole."

Changing for the better

Food and beverage services in Cuba are primarily designed to collect money and keep a financial balance: quality is thus pushed into the background.

"Even if the citizens tend in general to link these difficulties with the economic crisis after the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the USSR, the debate about poor services is as old as the very decision to socialize them in the wake of the so-called revolutionary offensive of the 1960s," as the renowned intellectual and revolutionary fighter Carlos Rafael Rodrguez avowed in the 1980s.

"We put the blame on the special period, but the fact is that things were not working in the field of services even before 1989. There was a shortage of consumables and other irregularities that harmed everyone, even the hard currency outlets," according to Dr. Omar Everleny, a professor at the Center for Studies on Cuban Economics.

"To this day we keep eating in dirty cafes where customers are mistreated, mainly because there's no direct relationship with the utilities. For instance, a product is priced and charged at 2.40 CUC even if the place is supposed to be air-conditioned but it's not, nor do they have take-out containers or a napkin for you to wipe your fingers."

"When our market was opened to hard currency," Omar continues "there was some degree of organization and structure, but not anymore, I'm sorry to say. The essential, direct link between state-owned labor and the profits it yields. It's incredible, not to say impossible, to think that for a salary of little more than 200 pesos an employee is willing to offer a good service, let alone that this individual has to provide the light bulbs, mops, and other items he/she needs to get the job done."

"A worker does that only if he/she makes a lot more than 200 pesos; otherwise the salary is not enough to buy so many supplies and still make ends meet. Claiming that they just make 200 pesos and some change is nothing but a whopping great lie."

The economist also refers to the need for an effective maintenance system so that the employees don't have to take on the responsibility for fixing anything in their workplace, and that same system must guarantee maintenance work in the places so repaired, and not only in commercial or food-serving units.

Most of these outlets have operated in a vicious circle of economic and other irregularities, which we think we solve by ousting managers and employees from the premises, but life has proved now and again that it isn't so, for the problem goes deeper than that and therefore requires tighter measures. "How many times a food-serving unit has been 'cleaned' of its financial problems, only to start reporting astonishingly low returns in just a few months that the State has to defray all over again!"

"Too much has been spent on the money-collecting mission of food-serving units and very little on assessing their service quality. Their role is to collect money and keep the financial balance, but also to offer a quality service to people, and that?s nowadays a contradiction of sorts that has a direct impact on customers".

Omar mentions another problem that must be readily solved: supplying these units. "Some of them only have coffee and cigarettes for as long as three days; they get nothing, so they sell nothing, and the resulting image leaves much to be desired."

Life is richer than that

A researcher at the Philosophy Institute of the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment, Jesús García, underscores that life is richer than any theory.

"Granted, the managers can be lazy when it comes to procurement, but sometimes they stumble upon many obstacles in the process. It's not only up to them to find a solution. Besides, we should wonder how often the employees mentioned in the newspaper reported those problems to the proper people within their workplace and what solutions, if any, were sought.

"What's more, in the case of services directly subordinated to the Local Organs of the People's Power structure, how often and how much may the issue have been discussed in the relevant assemblies? And how are the solutions implemented in those enterprises and their local Boards of Managers and followed on a daily and systematic basis by the Assembly Commissions?

"We must examine how communication flows to and from employees, consumers and managers in those units, how decisions are taken and the required process is put into practice to meet the customer's needs and reconcile interests by allocating resources within the State's means. In this way, we go back to a focal point: socialist socioeconomic planning.

"All these mix-ups have paved the way for the need to start a multidisciplinary study so that we can contribute to improve what?s at the bottom of this matter."

Their inquiry combines these and other topics related to socialist property and its inherent complexities when this kind of transformation takes place in our present conditions.

Searching for balance

In researcher Luis Marcelo's opinion, it's important to plan things so that decision-making is transferred to the production stage.

Owing to noncompliance in services, as we search for a better economic model, commercial and service activity in Cuba is yet to meet the Cuban people's expectations.

The reflection is put forward by Lic. Luis Marcelo Yera, from the National Economic Research Institute (INIE).

In state-owned commercial and service activity the employees have the biggest interest in seeing the supply work out well, even if they must take care of it themselves; otherwise they have to abide by the province's Commercial and Food Service Board: close down their workplace.

"This is no doubt an anomaly. These units are expected to provide what it takes so as to keep the service going without the need to do that kind of thing. Its a problem we must solve gradually."

"It's important to plan things so that decision-making is transferred to the production stage. We must find some balance here.

"All major decisions involving an enterprise are taken in governmental bodies. Still, the Fifth Party Congress's Economic Resolution made it clear that state functions must be separated from enterprise functions."

"We borrowed a slanted theory from the Soviet Union. Marxism is an integrated theory. I guess we should once again conduct an in-depth study of key issues like the law of value and the realization of social property.

"We can and we must give more decision-making power to the workers. And social control mechanisms need to be improved too."

"It's imperative that we be able to produce. State-owned enterprises have to be able to compete, not with one another, but with other forms of property. We live amidst a highly competitive environment of undreamed-of proportions, which poses a big challenge.

"As socialism emerged in Soviet Russia, it implemented a type of state property unable to keep up with the upwardly mobile productive forces that had existed from man's early ages through capitalism.

"In our case, around 3,800 state-owned enterprises comprising over 60,000 grassroots units have such responsibility. To this end, having in Cuba a state enterprise system free from bureaucratic ties is perfectly feasible.

"Those of us working for socialism have been unable to identify all the good accomplishments mankind has made regarding organization to turn an enterprise into a highly competitive entity."

"One of transitional socialism's economic principles is the centralization of the main production means, which doesn't mean decision-making has to be as much centralized. We need to maintain a proper balance between the oftentimes confused centralization (strategic decision-making) and decentralization (operational decision-making)."

"We thought that by so doing socialism would be forever in place, but we had made a mechanical instead of a dialectical negation of capitalism when we adopted its best organizational practices which, as Che very well pointed out, have nothing to do with its exploitative nature."

[end]

Previous: The Problem of Cheating, part two
Previous: The Problem of Cheating, part one

^ Top