Capitalist Dependency and Socialist Dependency: The Case of Cuba

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs. INTRODUCTION IS SOCIALISM A MEANS TO ELIMINATE or reduce dependencyand its alleged concomitants? According to a number of authors, including those of the most influential recent approaches to the study of Latin American politics and development, it is. Indeed, for most of these authors socialism is the only desirable or acceptable way to address the problems of dependent capitalism. For them, capitalism is inherently exploitative and repressive; socialism is the only desirable or acceptable path to a more autonomous, egalitarian, free and just society (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979: ix-xxiv, 209-216).As some of the foregoing implies, and as is obvious to anyone familiar with the literature, for many authors the truth or falsity of this view is not a matter amenable to resolution by anything so mundane as reference to historical experience. For such analysts, this view is true by definition. The analyst using this perspective first "assumes" it to be true and then "demonstrates" that it is true by citing data that support it (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979: x). In this interpretation, the practice of comparing hypotheses against evidence and rejecting or modifying the hypothesis if the evidence fails to be supportive is "formal," undialectical, positivist, ethnocentric, and bourgeois (Cordoso, 1977:15).Additionally, there is another problem with a different origin but the same result. Edy Kaufman (1976:14-15) has noted that manypolicymakers and partisans of both Communist and capitalist countries reject, apriori, the possibility of any analogies, parallels, or comparisons of the influences exerted by the two superpowers on smaller countries. "Extreme partisans of both camps," Kaufman reports, INTRODUCTION IS SOCIALISM A MEANS TO ELIMINATE or reduce dependency and its alleged concomitants? According to a number of authors, including those of the most influential recent approaches to the study of Latin American politics and development, it is. Indeed, for most of these authors socialism is the only desirable or acceptable way to address the problems of dependent capitalism. For them, capitalism is inherently exploitative and repressive; socialism is the only desirable or acceptable path to a more autonomous, egalitarian, free and just society (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979: ix-xxiv, 209-216).As some of the foregoing implies, and as is obvious to anyone familiar with the literature, for many authors the truth or falsity of this view is not a matter amenable to resolution by anything so mundane as reference to his...

O Sistema Socioeconômico Cubano (1959-2018): concepção, evolução e situação atual

“…O modo de organização socioeconômico da URSS, caracterizado por um socialismo fortemente centralizado, facilitava e ampliava as possibilidades de coerção sobre as lideranças cubanas, dado que o Estado soviético controlava quase a totalidade dos investimentos e recursos materiais provenientes de seu território direcionados à Cuba. (Packenham, 1986) Sob a estrutura capitalista pré-1959, existia dependência para com os capitais internacionais e as multinacionais estrangeiras exploradoras de recursos naturais e mãode-obra local, contudo a ampla presença do setor privado nestas esferas de atuação fazia com que a dependência cubana fosse mais econômica do que política. Após a Revolução, apesar das vantagens econômicas obtidas nas relações com a URSS se comparadas às que vigoravam com os EUA no período anterior, permaneceu o caráter de dependência econômica dado que quase a totalidade do comércio internacional cubano se deu com a URSS e países da COMECON, e se ampliou significativamente a dependência política.…”

“…Sessão baseada emEckstein (1985); Fedoseiev, Grigulevitch, Maiorov (org. )(1985);Katz (1983);Mesa-Lago (1974);Packenham (1986) …”

Bringing the Cuban Economy into Focus: Conceptual and Empirical Challenges

“…United States prior to 1960 (see Packenham 1986).35 Some analysts suggest, however, that the Cuban economic relationship with the Soviet Union is qualitatively different from the former one with the United States in that neither the Soviet Union nor Soviet citizens actually own Cuban resources (through direct investmentj.w…”