Some Dear Abby wannabe named Rupert Cornwell is dispensing free and unsolicited advice to the new Cuban tyrant on the opinion pages of the UK’s The Independent.
Raul Castro’s decision to abolish the sacrosanct principle of equal pay for all is another small step along that trickiest and most treacherous of paths for a communist regime – how to liberalise and streamline a centrally planned system without losing control and destroying it. That Fidel’s younger brother is determined to change Cuba is beyond doubt. The move to pay higher salaries and bonuses for better workers and managers follows several other reforms. Whether they work – or merely hasten the demise of one of the world’s very few remaining communist states – is another matter.
Clearly, Cornwell has reason to worry. Each tiny step the regime is forced to take away from the (c)astro’s dogma, is an admission that their system doesn’t work and a step closer to freedom. This, in Cornwell’s eyes, is a bad thing because it will “merely hasten the demise of one of the world’s very few remaining communist states”. Darn!
I wonder if Cornwell would have dispensed any of his sage advice from the victimizer’s point of view to Botha on how to preserve white minority rule in South Africa?
But, there’s a silver lining in Cromwell’s gray and gloomy forecast: Barack Obama:
The days of draconian US economic sanctions against the island may well be numbered – especially if Barack Obama becomes president.
See, Hope you can believe in-for leftists and US haters everywhere!
The piece of “opinion” here and you can even leave a comment!
Trying to get rid of that cornerstone of Marxist thought, the egalitarian pay scale, was resisted in the Soviet Union as well. The central planners came up with a propaganda campaign to poularize the capitalist notion. This poster, He Who Is Not Lazy Will Receive the Largest Salary! is an example. Perhaps Raul can photoshop the Rooskie poster to read in Spanish. Even the Chinese threw ‘equal pay’ overboard, and becoming more capitalistic has helped them prosper.
It is 50 years too late. I still want the communist elite in Cuba to spend the rest of their natural lives in jail.
No one is reporting the increase in the cost of living in Cuba, which essentially wipes out any miniscule increase in wages that might happen. The real story is that the upper elite are “reforming” the system to make more money for themselves. This may be an admission that state-controlled economies don’t really work, but will there be any practical effect in terms of real reform of the system? I doubt it.