That’s the new term being tossed about by Cuban “economists” as shown in this Reuters piece:
Cuban army weighs in on economic policy debate
Tue 23 Jan 2007 21:28:01 GMT
By Marc FrankHAVANA, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Cuba’s armed forces, which run the Communist country’s most efficient companies, joined a nascent public debate on future economic policy on Tuesday and appeared to take a stance opposed to full free-market reforms.
The debate, said to be prompted by acting President Raul Castro while his ailing brother Fidel Castro recovers from surgery, is aimed at finding solutions for the most glaring problems of an economy 90-percent owned by the state.
Col. Amando Perez Betancourt, the head of the Cuban military’s effort to make state-run companies more profitable, said profits, wages and productivity had been raised in more than 800 companies by applying methods known in Cuba as “perfeccionamiento empresarial” — roughly translated as perfecting of the (state) company system.
“If you ask me what the most important task facing the state companies is, I would say it is better organization and the way to do that is through perfecting the state company system,” Perez told the Communist Party newspaper Granma.
In any ordinary country with an ordinary economy and an ordinary work force, “perfeccionamiento empresarial” would mean something to the effect of “increasing efficiency and/or productivity”. But in Cuba, where everything is owned and run by the state, including the workforce, perfeccionamiento empresarial is nothing more and nothing less than the masters whipping their slaves to work harder at the plantation.
Phillip Peters, of the Lexington Institute, believes this “would benefit Cuba’s economy to carry out the process fully.”
But he’s wrong, as the money quote from the article proves:
The economy suffers also from chronic disorganization, poor accounting, low quality, lax discipline and graft.
Of course it does. And no matter how much perfeccionamiento empresarial they manage to whip up on the island, the economy will not improve. Why?
Because the political system prevents or represses individual incentive, which is the driving force behind any economy. Without any free market reforms, which this article makes perfectly clear will not be taking place in Cuba and is the reason “perfeccionamiento empresarial” is being implemented, then what’s in it for the workforce? Not a damned thing. So why should slaves work themselves raw if in the end it doesnt improve their lot in life?
Gorgachev tried exactly the same thing in the USSR. I was there the summer he sold it to the All-Union Congress. They called it “khozraschyot”, which is an acronym that means “economic accountability”. It didn’t work, and the whole country collapsed 4 years later. It was a last-ditch effort to keep communism from going bankrupt.
Hopefully this is the beginning of the end it Cuba as well.
Val,
You ask: So why should slaves work themselves raw if in the end it doesnt improve their lot in life?
The answer is simple. To avoid being send to jail! Remember in Cuba you never expect to have a better future, but you are always certain that it can get much more worse. Ask those who just arrived this morning.
Vic,
Your point is well taken, but that strong armn tactic only gets a minimal amount of effort to maintain that worker’s status quo. perfeccionamiento empresarial attempts to get much more form the slave. Plus, I can assure you that if efficiency and productivity is what the aims are for the program, the last thig they can do is start jailing experienced workers. There may be someone waiting in the wings to take thier jobs, but the productivity certainly wont increase. Any way you look at it, its a lose lose situation.
I can’t believe that Reuters still has Marc Frank writing about Cuba. The guy wrote for a communist newspaper here in the states. Oh wait, it’s Reuters. Of course I can believe it.
Reminds me of the old joke from the Soviet Union: “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”
Actually, that’s more of a punchline than a joke, now that I think of it. Either that, or a quip.
Compared to the previous post (19 Cuban’s arriving in Key West) The “perfeccionamiento empresarial” should be debated with some of the folks that are planning on leaving the country. They could teach a thing or two to Cuba’s armed forces about motivation and resourcefulness.
lax discipline and graft, what the hell do you expect for $10 a month.
Val,
I agree with you 100%. But since in my opinion the government in Cuba is more interested in maintain the control that in economic improvement. This will be another of those “pretty names” plans to keep the people working harder under all kind of intimidations with not tangible results. But at the end it will serve it’s real intention of elongating the suffering of the people and make they lives more miserable.
There was a Wall Street Journal article not too long ago on the same topic. Of course it was better reported… turns out the “perfecionamiento empresarial” comes from business-school training these military goons are getting in Europe. soooo… it’s nice of marc to talk up communism, but if there’s any perfecting going on, it should be chalked up to capitalist innovation.
Besides supression of individual iniciative, Val, the socialist economy suffers from a more fundamental problem pointed out by Ludwig von Mises almost 90 years ago. He showed that even if the central planers could count on exemplary socialist automata, highy motivated and 100% honest, they would still generate economy chaos, since lacking competition for scarce resources, and therefore a price system, every socialist enterprise would no be able to know whether it was doing an efficient (from the point of view of consumers) use of raw materials, capital and labor, i.e., they would not be able to do economic calculation.
I agree with Liberal Venezolano,
I would add that since these Military Leaders will not impose the same restrictions on themselves and their comrades; not to mention the fact that work is stopped in order to march and protest in the streets and for other government decrees, these “improvements” will have little impact on productivity.
Their system is inherently flawed and nothing they do within that system will provide the necessary efficiency to make them truly productive.