Another Masterpost on Cuban Socialism, With Sources
Introduction
Despite comrade u/bayarea415 beating me to it with their excellent megathead on Cuba, I thought I would post the one I was working on as well, just to supplement the available information on the achievements of Cuban socialism.
Summary
Despite great difficulties, the Cuban Revolution has made enormous strides in improving life for the people. A report from Oxfam America, entitled Cuba: Social Policy at the Crossroads, gives this assessment of the Cuban Revolution:
When Cuba’s revolution came to power in 1959, its model of development aimed to link economic growth with advances in social justice. From the start, transforming economic changes were accompanied by equally transforming social initiatives. For example, in 1959, Cuba carried out a profound agrarian reform which ended latifundia [land estate system] in the island and distributed land to thousands of formerly landless small farmers. Alongside this fundamental reform were programs directed at providing health care and education to the farmers and their families. A national health system and its rural health services were introduced in 1959; only 8% of the rural population had access to health care at that time.
The National Literacy Campaign of 1961, recognized as one of the most successful initiatives of its kind, mobilized teachers, workers, and secondary school students to teach more than 700,000 persons how to read. This campaign reduced the illiteracy rate from 23% to 4% in the space of one year.
Initiatives in the cities were no less ambitious. Urban reform brought a halving of rents for Cuban tenants, opportunities for tenants to own their housing, and an ambitious program of housing construction for those living in marginal shantytowns. New housing, along with the implementation of measures to create jobs and reduce unemployment, especially among women, rapidly transformed the former shantytowns.
I highly recommend this report, as it provides perhaps the most in-depth summary of the massive achievements of the Cuban revolution. I will cite it at various points throughout this analysis, as well as many other sources.
Now, let us explore Cuban socialism in more detail.
Economic and Nutritional Indicators
Despite economic pressure, Cuba has maintained a decent quality of life for its people. The unemployment rate remains below 3%, as it has for decades:
According to the FAO, "remarkably low percentages of child malnutrition put Cuba at the forefront of developing countries":
According to a report from the United States Department of Agriculture, the average Cuban consumes approx. 3300 calories per day, far above the Latin American and Caribbean average, and only slightly lower than in the United States. Approx. 2/3 of nutritional needs are met by monthly food rations, while the rest is bought independently:
The report also states:
The Cuban economy has made remarkable progress toward recovery from the economic disaster generated by the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.
The World Food Program (the food-assistance branch of the United Nations) reports that "Over the last 50 years, comprehensive social protection programs have largely eradicated poverty and hunger." This is especially impressive when Cuba is compared to other developing countries, and considering the decades of economic blockade:
The report also states:
The largest island in the Caribbean, Cuba ranks 67th out of 188 countries in the 2015 Human Development Index and is one of the most successful in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
An article in the Guardian addresses this topic:
The article states:
...the evidence suggests that Cuba has made excellent progress towards the MDGs in the last decade, building on what are already universally acknowledged to be outstanding achievements in equitable health and education standards.
According to a new MDG Report Card by the Overseas Development Institute, Cuba is among the 20 best performing countries in the world.
The article also includes a statement from a Cuban economist on how this progress is made:
The Cuban economy is planned and we redistribute income from the most dynamic sectors, which generate most foreign exchange, towards those that are less dynamic but necessary for the country. That's how we maintain a budget to keep health and education high quality and free of charge to the user.
Cuba is also one of the only nations to meet requirements for sustainable development:
Finally, the social security and pensions system in Cuba has drastically improved since the revolution, as evidenced by this statement from the aforementioned Oxfam America report:
Both coverage and distribution have improved significantly since the revolution. With a pension system since the 1930's, Cuba was one of the first Latin American countries to establish one. It consisted of independent pension funds and by 1959 covered about 63% of workers, but the system varied greatly in terms of benefits and relied almost exclusively on workers' contributions. Since 1959, the program has been funded completely by the government. In 1958, about 63% of the labor force was covered for old age, disability, and survivors insurance; today, the coverage is universal.
Healthcare Indicators
Cuba's healthcare system is one of its most impressive and well-known achievements. One excellent source on this is the study Health in Cuba, published by the Oxford University Press' International Journal of Epidemiology:
The study states:
Cuba represents an important alternative example where modest infrastructure investments combined with a well-developed public health strategy have generated health status measures comparable with those of industrialized countries... If the Cuban experience were generalized to other poor and middle-income countries human health would be transformed.
This is demonstrated by the particular health statistics of Cuba after the revolution; let us look at some in detail.
Before the revolution, life expectancy in Cuba was approx. 63 years, compared to approx. 70 years in the USA. By 1973 (thirteen years after the revolution), Cuba had caught up to the USA; it has since surpassed it in terms of life expectancy:
Before the revolution, Cuba's infant mortality rate was almost double that of the United States; today, it approx one-third lower than the United States:
Before the revolution, Cuba's adult male mortality rate was already slightly lower than that of the United States; however, the gap has widened significantly (in Cuba's favor) since the revolution:
Before the revolution, the percentage of women surviving the age 65 was significantly lower in Cuba than in the United States; today, it is slightly higher:
Cuba has also made some amazing healthcare developments. According to the WHO, Cuba is the first nation to eliminate mother-to-child HIV and syphilis transmission:
Cuba is also the first country to develop a potential vaccine for lung-cancer, which has shown very promising results, and is being tested in the USA:
An article in the Guardian sums up Cuban healthcare achievements quite well:
As the article states:
Whether it is a consultation, dentures or open heart surgery, citizens are entitled to free treatment. As a result the impoverished island boasts better health indicators than its exponentially richer neighbour 90 miles across the Florida straits.
This is an enormously impressive achievement.
Educational Developments
Since the revolution, enormous strides have been made in education. This is discussed in the aforementioned Oxfam America report. One of the most significant developments was the National Literacy Campaign, spearheaded by Che Guevara. As the report states:
The National Literacy Campaign of 1961, recognized as one of the most successful initiatives of its kind, mobilized teachers, workers, and secondary school students to teach more than 700,000 persons how to read. This campaign reduced the illiteracy rate from 23% to 4% in the space of one year.
Before the revolution, literacy in Cuba was between 60% and 76%, depending on the estimates used. Today, the CIA World Factbook gives Cuba's literacy rate as 99.8%:
In addition, Cuba spends a greater percentage of GDP on education than any other country in the world:
Infrastructural Developments
In 1959, approx. 50% of Cuban households had access to electricity. By 1989, more than 95% of households had access to electricity, including in rural areas, which had previously been almost entirely deprived:
According to the above report, Cuba also surpassed many of its neighbors in terms of electricity generation:
By 1990 Cuba had roughly 1.8 times more generating capacity per person than the Dominican Republic and 1.3 times more than Jamaica.
In Cuba, access to clean water and sanitation has drastically improved since the revolution. As of 2018, 96.4% of the urban population and 89.8% of the rural population had access to clean drinking water, while 94.4% of the urban population and 89.1% of the rural population had access to improved sanitation services:
An excellent article in the Independent discussed this issue quite well:
As the article states:
This is Fidel’s legacy. Clean water and electricity for all. And universal free education and healthcare. Cubans often joke that they’re healthier and better educated than Americans despite the 50-year-plus US blockade.
So for me, rural Cuba is Fidel’s Cuba. His ideals live on here – and the rural poor of Cuba have benefited the most from his cradle-to-grave policies. Here, the grandchildren of peasants really do go on to become consultant surgeons and commercial airline pilots.
This is an enormous credit to the revolution.
Social Policy
The Cuban revolution has also made great strides in eliminating discrimination and inequality. As the report from Oxfam America states:
Social policy has also favored the development of equity across society, including the equitable distribution of benefits across all sectors of the population, sometimes favoring the most vulnerable. In the last 40 years Cubans have greatly reduced differences in income between the lowest and the highest paid persons. Women have benefited significantly from the revolution as they have educated themselves and entered the labor force in large numbers. The differences among Cubans of different races have also been reduced.
"But What About the Cuban Exiles?"
The most common argument against Cuban socialism is that the Cuban exile population (and their strong distaste for socialism) somehow "proves" that socialist Cuba is terrible. However, this omits a key fact: the exiles come primarily from the wealthy class of Cuba.
A study conducted by researchers from Stanford University (published in the Oxford University Press), entitled Cubans in Exile: A Demographic Analysis, discusses this topic:
The study had this to say:
Comparison of the occupational, age, and educational composition of the community with the Cuban population indicates that the refugees are better educated and come from higher status occupations than the population from which they have exiled themselves... more recent exiles are more representative of the Cuban population, but the rural worker is still vastly underrepresented.
Another thing to consider is that the exile took place during a time of conflict and difficulty for Cuba; the revolution was still very new, and the government had not entirely established itself yet. This likely explains why there were some outliers (i.e. exiles from the working-class population), although the majority were still from the wealthy sectors of Cuban society.
Conclusion
Cuba is a nation with many problems; the economy has slowed since the fall of the Soviet Union (losing your only major trading partner tends to hurt a nation's economy), and international pressure from the USA continues to place Cuba under strain. However, the enormous achievements of the revolution cannot be overlooked; Cuba has provided first-world health and educational standards on a third-world budget, as well as above-average nutrition and infrastructure, all while standing up to the world's most powerful imperialist force, only ninety miles off its shores.
One struggles to find a proper statement with which to sum up the achievements of the Cuban revolution. Perhaps this one, from former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (from April 11, 2000):
Cuba’s achievements in social development are impressive given the size of its gross domestic product per capita. As the human development index of the United Nations makes clear year after year, Cuba should be the envy of many other nations, ostensibly far richer. [Cuba] demonstrates how much nations can do with the resources they have if they focus on the right priorities – health, education, and literacy.
This statement from the aforementioned Oxfam America report gives an excellent summary:
The difficult challenges facing Cuba as it moves forward are not unlike those facing social benefits systems everywhere: budget-buster pension and health costs, increasing demands due to economic crisis, demands to improve both efficiency and effectiveness. All face the challenge of engaging the participation of consumers and require the development of effective mechanisms for monitoring access, reach, and quality of services at the community level, particularly for vulnerable groups. But, unlike the people of many other countries, Cubans face these challenges as a people who have constructed a society that is equitable and humane. Those values and that experience inspire and inform new systems as Cuba moves into the future.
Still, perhaps this passage from the aforementioned Independent article sums it up best:
Most Cubans I speak to support the reshaping of the economy and the greater ties with the US. Just like us, they want to better their lives, they want a better mobile phone, a bigger house, they want to travel. But none of them would want to live in a Cuba, no matter how rich, without universal free education, free healthcare, cheap public transport and the lowest rates of violent crime in the Americas. None of them. This is Fidel's legacy.
That's something which we can all appreciate.
Posted Jul 22, 2019, 9:52 PM UTC · edited