Cuban Barbershops

[Nolan]

We had threads on this before. The bourgeois media painted it as the first step in Cuba "opening up." Apparently that's not what Raul has in mind, revisionist as he is.


Cuba Experiments with Worker-Run Barbershops

HAVANA – The Cuban government has converted a dozen Havana barbershops into cooperatives, whose employees now administer them and decide on the prices they’ll charge and the hours they’ll be open, as part of the tentative reforms announced by President Raul Castro.

The “experiment” began in two of the capital’s 15 municipalities and requires barbers to pay the state company 993 pesos ($45) in advance to rent the barbershops, people involved told Efe.

The barbers are licensees of a sort who also have to pay the electricity, water and telephone bills, plus the salary of a cleaning assistant, but they can run their shops any way they see fit.

Jorge Luis, 36, said that in his barber shop the administrator appointed by the state company left and never came back, so now he and his two colleagues take all the decisions.

“All that has changed is that we’re a little freer to work. We have to work harder and we’re a little scared, because we don’t know if this will be profitable or whether it will work at all,” the barber told Efe.

Arturo, who has been working in the sector for more than 15 years, said that the shops still under state management will continue to charge 1 peso (less than 5 cents) for a haircut, though it has become usual for customers to leave tips that are five to 10 times that “symbolic” amount.

“A lot of people are complaining, but they pay. Others just stay away,” Arturo said, adding that with the new system the client can’t pay what he likes, but has to pay the amount set by the experiment’s barbers.

Officials of the state enterprise that administers most of the barbershops in Havana told Efe that the new system operates only in small shops with two or three chairs, and was discussed previously with the workers.

Barbers who did not want to go on working in barbershops that were to be rented out had the chance to trade places with others who were interested in taking part.

“The government guarantees us a pension and health insurance, but now we don’t have a fixed salary, nor are we told what to do,” Arturo said.

After succeeding ailing older brother Fidel, Raul Castro announced “structural reforms” on the island, but only a few measures have been passed, such as allowing people to moonlight at other jobs, lending state land for individual use, and small changes such as the sale of computers and electrical appliances that was formerly banned.

The president has criticized Cubans who “get desperate” demanding “immediate changes,” without realizing the many issues he has to deal with to assure a future for the revolution led by his brother and predecessor in 1959.

Raul Castro became acting president in July 2006 when Fidel was stricken by a serious illness, and took power definitively in February 2008.

After the collapse of the Cuban economy when the Soviet Union was dismantled in 1991, Cuba experienced a similarly timid opening that allowed the existence of self-employed taxi-drivers, barbers, stylists and restauranteurs. EFE

http://laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=14510&ArticleId=355313

[dawt]

I've been getting the vibe Cuba isn't turning to capitalism, but from socialism slowly to true communism. Decentralising, debuerocratising...
Renting out the places instead of lending them for free sounds a bit suspicious though, and different from what they've been doing with the land, if I remember correctly.

[Obs]

Cuba needs to be very, very careful, and Raúl needs to be replaced very, very soon. But I do hope they'll make it all the way to being the world's first communist nation. They've earned it.

[RedSonRising]

There doesn't seem to be any sort of new ruling class emerging from these shifts, only attempts at decentralization and efficiency in services and distribution. As long as the reforms are popular and stay within the scope of the revolutionary ideal, they're fine with me.

[it_ain't_me]

when khrushchev converted the barber shops into cooperatives that was the beginning of the end. mark my words.

[Robocommie]

I feel for those guys who say they're afraid of the new changes, there has to be a lot more uncertainty now. I just hope that any of these changes and reforms are done slowly, and gradually enough so that if they don't start to work out or prove to be unpopular, they can be reeled back in and undone.

[Obs]

when khrushchev converted the barber shops into cooperatives that was the beginning of the end. mark my words.
You think that's what ended the Soviet Union?

Also, how should socialism turn into communism if not through the creation of cooperatives?

[Black Sheep]

I thought worker-run buisinesses was the core of socialism, and not 'experimentation'

[Tablo]

I've been getting the vibe Cuba isn't turning to capitalism, but from socialism slowly to true communism. Decentralising, debuerocratising...
Are you high?

[Robocommie]

To be honest I think if communism is to ever be achieved, except on the most rudimentary and small scale of levels (like an individual commune) then at the very least there must be world socialism established first. I say this however not as someone who rejects the theory of socialism in one country, but rather as someone who does not believe communism can truly share a world with capitalist states, and even more so if we're talking about a place as small as Cuba.

[Obs]

I think that's probably right, or at the very least, it will require co-operation with existing socialist states. Cuba will need to continue its good relations with the other ALBA countries and, if its state does dissolve, its people will need to be very prepared for the inevitable imperialist aggression.

[it_ain't_me]

You think that's what ended the Soviet Union? i know so. :)

[dawt]

Are you high?
Heh. I don't see it happening either, but the general direction they're moving towards is a better one now.
Optimist here :rolleyes:

[Lulznet]

Glad to see that Cuba has decided to finally let workers cooperatives have their chance. :thumbup1:

[Uppercut]

Some places of work don't really need to be state-run. Barbershops, recreational and cultural facilities, movie theaters, restaurants, etc., don't really require central planning as they only pertain to that specific locality.

I still thing most large scale industry should be nationalized right up until Communism, though.

[RojoyNegro]

when khrushchev converted the barber shops into cooperatives that was the beginning of the end. mark my words.

My dear comrade, the Soviet Union failure wasn’t converts public services into cooperatives or anything like it, one of the main issues was their obsession to become a successful and industrial country to proof that communism was better than capitalism but they forgot “one little important thing” the human part.
The promotion of positive values it’s vital to create the ideal society that we all communist are fighting for, Ernesto Guevara was very aware of this and that’s why he was a strong critical towards the Soviet Union and predict their failure warning them that if they didn’t make some quality change the soviet state was going to disappear as it happen.

Ernesto Guevara brilliant vision its basically the reason of why Cuba, an small country who deals with an evil commercial block its still giving the fight, they believe in a society based on values like equality, solidarity, collectiveness.

The other fatal mistake from Soviet Union was the lack of creativity, they thought that communism had a recipe, that they just need it to follow the instruction in order to success but socialism-communism doesn’t have a recipe, Fidel Castro recognize that in the first year of the Cuban revolution they were making that same mistake and Hugo Chavez declare correctly that socialism it’s an ideology that in practice requires constant reinvention

The theory give us direction but the actions must be adjust to the idiosyncrasy and dynamism of each culture.

[it_ain't_me]

jesus fucking christ you people suck at joke detection

[AK]

Cuba needs to be very, very careful, and Raúl needs to be replaced very, very soon. But I do hope they'll make it all the way to being the world's first communist nation. They've earned it.
A communist nation... that would indeed be a first.

[Obs]

Cut me some slack, you know what I meant.

[robbo203]

Some places of work don't really need to be state-run. Barbershops, recreational and cultural facilities, movie theaters, restaurants, etc., don't really require central planning as they only pertain to that specific locality.

I still thing most large scale industry should be nationalized right up until Communism, though.


Why? What conceivable benefit would that have ?

Engels made the point in Socialialism: Utopian and Scientific

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution

This last cryptic sentence was a reference to the "socialisation" of production which was supposedly promoted by nationalisation. But even this is now a totally redundant reason for wanting nationalisation.

The Communist Manifesto called for centralisation of all capital in the hands of the state in order to hasten the growth of the productive forces. But that was back in 1848 in the era of steampower well before the beginning of the second industrial revolution. By the 1870s - for example in the 1872 preface to the CM - Marx and Engels were already beginning to downplay the importance of their essentially state capitalist reformist agenda and agreeing that much of what they had written had become "obsolete" given the advances of modern industry.

We are now in 2010 - 138 years after the 1872 preface and 164 years after the Communist Manifesto itself. We live in an era in which the forces of production have advanced beyond all recognition compared with Marx's time. We dont need to "develop" these forces any futher in order to have communism. What we now need is to remove those obstacles on the rational application of the technologies we already have, obstacles which are imposed by capitalism and will continue to be imposed for as long as capitalism exists. The productive potential what we have for a communist society right now is being massively squandered by an increasingly wasteful capitalist system which diverts resoruces increasingly away from socially useful production and towards things that add nothing to the sum total of human happiness whatsoever.

We dont need a technical fix. We need a social revolution. Nationalisation was promoted precisely on the grounds that it facilitated a technical fix - it increased productivity. Even if this is true, we dont need more productivity. We need to alter the very purpose of production itself - away from producing for the market and towards producing for human need alone.

Ergo we dont need nationalisation or state run capitalism. Its a completely obsolete programme from the standpoint of the working class today.

[AK]

Cut me some slack, you know what I meant.
What did you mean? Because some say Cuba is already "socialist", and communist society must be global.

[Obs]

Well, I'm not sure completely global socialism must be achieved before the transition to communism. I think that as long as there are enough socialist countries in the vicinity that can defend the communist "country" - for lack of a better word - it's possible to have a communist society. And I think such a socialist alliance can be made if the current progress in Latin America continues. (Of course, none of this applies if you think neither Cuba nor ALBA have anything to do with socialism).

I'm 100% certain you can find Marx or Engels quotes that disagree with me within seconds, but I'm just saying what I believe.

[RojoyNegro]

jesus fucking christ you people suck at joke detection

I think u suck at telling jokes! :D

[Robocommie]

jesus fucking christ you people suck at joke detection

Commies can seem pretty damn humorless at times. :D

[∞]

This is why I encourage you MLers to be Anarchists, I've been pointing out the dangers of CPing for a long time now. :thumbup1:

[maskerade]

Commies can seem pretty damn humorless at times. :D
I've been told the difference between a communist and a socialist is that socialists have a sense of humor:rolleyes:

[Adi Shankara]

For everyone panicking that this is "the end" of Cuba:

1.) it's just an experiment

2.) it doesn't even follow a capitalist model, as it's a cooperative

3.) the property is being leased from the Cuban government, so it's still in the hands of the people

4.) it's not like they're bourgeois; they're barbers who don't own the land, just their own skills; thus, the labor they do is still entirely owned by themselves, exploiting no one

5.) it's just a tiny barbershop(s), that doesn't follow a capitalist model, that isn't like they're holding something integral like the state owned department stores--just a barbershop.