Day: February 15, 2024

By Benjamin Williams

Many see Cuba as a textbook example of the failures of socialism.

However, some on the Left claim that Cuba is not only a socialist success story but that it boasts a higher quality of life than even the United States. This claim often surfaces on social media platforms like Twitter or Reddit, but occasionally finds its way into more mainstream outlets, such as The Guardian.

Another leftist strategy for the defense of Cuba is to acknowledge its struggles but blame them on the United States’ embargo on Cuba instead.

These two positions are obviously mutually exclusive, because Cuba cannot be both prosperous and impoverished at the same time. And yet, I have encountered innumerable apologists who take both positions, sometimes even in the same debate.

The Left has caught itself in a paradox. Is Cuba flourishing from the embrace of socialism, or is it failing under the weight of the US embargo? It can’t be both. To know which position is right, if any, we’ll have to examine the current and historical evidence.

Did Socialism Make Cuba Rich?

One approach we can use to evaluate the claim that Cuba is prospering is to examine the Human Development Index (HDI), a metric published by the United Nations. The HDI takes into account various metrics, including health, education, income, and living conditions, to assess the well-being of a country’s citizens. In the data we see the United States ranks 21st on the HDI, while Cuba occupies the 83rd spot. So, based on this globally accepted measure, it’s clear Cuba doesn’t have a higher quality of life than the United States.

However, proponents of socialism might then argue that even though Cuba doesn’t surpass the United States, it still fares better on the HDI than several non-socialist countries in Latin America, such as Peru, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. This raises the crucial question: Can Cuba’s comparatively higher quality of life be attributed to socialism?

To answer this question, we have to look at Cuba’s historical economic performance. What this reveals is that Cuba was once a remarkably developed and prosperous nation. A study in the Journal of Economic History found that pre-revolutionary Cuba was “a prosperous middle-income economy” with income levels that were “among the highest in Latin America” and almost on par with some European countries. However, after the adoption of socialism in 1959, “Cuba slipped down the world income distribution.” So Cuba’s relative success predates socialism and has actually seen a decline post-revolution.

Poor, but Healthy?

Another focus in the defense of Cuban socialism is the supposed success of its healthcare system. Proponents argue this by pointing to metrics like infant mortality rates and doctors per capita.

This argument also falls apart when we consider the historical context. In 1957, Cuba had the 13th lowest infant mortality rate globally—an achievement that, over the years, has slipped to 49th place today.

The infant mortality rate may be even worse once we account for the flaws in the Cuban government’s data. Some have already tried to do this, such as economist Roberto M. Gonzalez. He found that the “ratio of late fetal deaths to early neonatal deaths in countries with available data stood between 1.04 and 3.03” but Cuba “with a ratio of 6, was a clear outlier.” These data indicate that doctors have likely been re-categorizing late fetal deaths as early neonatal deaths, thus skewing the data. Taking this into account, the infant mortality rate probably stands between 7.45 and 11.16 per 1,000 births. That would put Cuba in 60th place in the world, at best. Many more corrections could be made to these data, but that one correction is enough to demonstrate that Cuba’s ranking is rather bleak.

The claim about doctors in Cuba is also missing context. Cuba has many doctors per capita, but this is because the government has incentives for it to be this way. Doctors are Cuba’s most valuable export. The government only sees them as a commodity to be exploited. Brazil and other nations pay the Cuban government millions for their doctors and medical services. But the doctors themselves see very little of that money. Sometimes just 10% of it. Doctors who defect from Cuba often describe their roles as being akin to slavery. The status of Cuba’s doctors is hardly something to brag about. It is a failure of socialism, not a success.

The Bleak Picture

Another piece of evidence that can shed light on the claim of Cuban prosperity is the migration rate. It stands to reason that people want to leave countries with poor living conditions. It is noteworthy, therefore, that for 60 years Cuba has consistently had a net negative migration rate, while the United States and many other capitalist countries have had net positive migration rates. Why are people so eager to leave if life is so good in Cuba?

Can We Blame the Embargo?

We’ve established that Cuba’s prosperity is a myth. But here the Left falls back on their second claim: that Cuba is only poor because of the US embargo.

Yet, even Fidel Castro and Che Guevara didn’t believe this narrative. Their accounts suggest that the embargo, far from crippling the Cuban government, actually strengthened the revolution and solidified anti-US sentiment. When asked if the US blockade was effective, Castro said it was effective “in favor of the revolution.” Political scientists like Steve Chan and A. Cooper Drury argue that “sanctions may create a ‘boomerang effect.’ Instead of increasing public discontent against the ruling elite, they may produce a ‘rally ’round the flag’ syndrome and stiffen the target population’s resolve to resist foreign coercion. Economic hardship can be attributed to the externally imposed embargo rather than the incumbent regime’s poor performance.”

Guevara said the embargo would do “nothing” to the Cuban economy. But why? In a 1985 interview, Castro explained in more detail. He said that other socialist countries “not only pay us much higher prices and sell their products to us at lower prices, but also charge us much lower interest for credit.” We can confirm this with the historical evidence provided by Cuban economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago. In his book Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies, he points out that Cuba began trading with socialist countries like the Soviet Union as early as 1960, and confirms that “all socialist imports combined significantly surpassed US imports in the early part of that year.” This challenges the argument that the embargo was the primary cause of Cuba’s economic difficulties, as these economic struggles became apparent immediately following the revolution.

Most effects of the embargo were not felt until the fall of the Soviet Union in the early ’90s. So Cuba went through 30 years of economic struggle while being propped up by the USSR. There was a substantial downturn in the ’90s because of this, and the Cuban government resorted to moderate liberalization reforms to offset the resulting problems. The success of these reforms is further proof that Cuba would be better off as a capitalist nation.

Cuba Needs Capitalism

We’ve resolved the Cuban Socialist Paradox. Cuba is not successful because of socialism—its successes predate the socialist government and have dwindled rapidly since the revolution. Cuba is also not a failure because of the sanctions; the embargo historically had little effect on their economy. The bleak truth is that the common conception is correct: Cuba is, in fact, a textbook example of the failures of socialism.

Still, it is possible that the best way to help Cuba along is by abandoning the ineffective embargo. It seems to have only served to strengthen the communist government and give it a scapegoat for its socialist failures. If America expands trade relations with Cuba, we may see the phenomenon that some economists call “Contagious Capitalism.” That is, trade will open up Cuba to more influence from capitalist ideals.

And that’s exactly what the Cuban people need: economic freedom, not more excuses for failed socialist policies.

• About the author: Benjamin Williams is a fellow with FEE’s Henry Hazlitt Project for Educational Journalism. He has produced videos and written content for many libertarian organizations such as the Mises Institute and Students For Liberty. Under the alias PraxBen on TikTok, he has amassed over 200,000 followers and over 80 million views promoting sound economics and libertarianism to younger audiences.
• Source: This article was published by FEE

By Andrew Morrow

By now, you’ve probably heard that Tucker Carlson, recently of Fox News and now of his own independent “network,” interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin. He published the video on February 8 on Twitter.

If you haven’t taken the time to watch it, I highly recommend that you do. It’s long, breaking two hours, and it is dense. Putin is a man who says one thing and really means five things, and that doesn’t work well in our modern soundbite-and-headline news culture. Still, I urge you to take the time to listen. Putin is not going to convince you of anything — at least I doubt that he will — but I don’t think the point of the interview was to “convince” anyone. In this article, I want to lay out my thoughts on the interview, my thoughts on the wider Russia–Ukraine war and what it really means.

A narrative is just good strategy when you’re playing the game

The title of this present article refers to Swedish video game developer Paradox Interactive. The company has made a name for itself publishing “grand strategy” games with titles like Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis. These are games where the player assumes control of a historical nation, people or dynasty and crafts the narrative and strategy of that nation, people or dynasty throughout history. I believe that this, in essence, is what Putin is doing now. He’s playing the grand narrative and grand strategy of the Rus’ people, and he’s playing to win.

If you’re aware of the video, you’re almost certainly aware of the various “fact checks” on Putin’s historical claims. Some of the more notable fact-checks on Putin’s historical claims come from reputable historians whom I greatly respect, like Tom Holland.

What I think most fact-checkers miss is that it doesn’t matter whether Putin’s historical claims are historically accurate. Putin is not writing a paper, giving a book report or making a slide deck presentation. He has no judge or teacher who will be giving out a grade. You cannot point out enough inconsistencies or inaccuracies or fabrications that will make Putin say “Drat, I’ve been found out” and order his armies to turn back in shame and go home. That’s not the point of Putin’s historical claims. Putin is establishing a narrative.

What do I mean by “narrative”? Quite simply, and quite directly, I mean that Putin is telling a story to himself, to his country and to us about why he has decided to go to war. A narrative is less about the past than it is about the present — it exists not to explain history but to justify policy. For this reason, a narrative is fundamentally incapable of being fact-checked or falsified.

The US has had its own fair share of narratives, most famously Manifest Destiny. Many other narratives have also gripped US theory and shaped global aims. The Monroe Doctrine was an American narrative about why America should be responsible for half the globe. The “Arsenal of Democracy” was a narrative about justifying American entry into World War II. Much more recently, the “Global War on Terror” was an American narrative about justifying our continual involvement across the planet in pursuit of everyone we decide to label “terrorist.” Domestically, “systemic racism” is a narrative we’ve concocted to justify the complete upending and reimaging of everything from major sporting events to college admissions to who gets promotions in order to accomplish ideologues’ visions of justice.

What do all of these narratives have in common? The characteristic that fact-checking them is as useful as fact-checking Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. Pushing your glasses up your nose and saying, “Actually, sweetie, that didn’t happen,” is both futile and entirely beside the point. You can point out all the historical inaccuracies that went into each of those narratives until the cows come home, but it won’t change a single thing that the people who believed in political narratives actually do. Narratives are supplanted by other narratives, not facts, because only nerds care about dry, disconnected facts — real people like stories.

What is the story Putin is telling?

What is Putin’s narrative — the grand story for his grand strategy?

As near as can be ascertained and summarized, Putin’s narrative is, “We are fighting to unite the long-divided lands of the Rus’.” Rus’ are the the ethnos from which “Rus-sia” derives its name, after all.

I don’t want to recap the entire history of the Rus, you may as well watch the interview for that. I’m sure you’ve seen the memes already about Putin —  “I’ll give you the thirty-second history, one minute at most,” and then he talks and talks and talks. Still, the real thirty-second recap is quite easy to grasp.

The Rus’ state started around the area of Kiev as a unification of various tribes under a Norse aristocracy. The Rus’ then converted to eastern Christianity and ultimately splintered into various realms under the suzerainty of the Golden Horde. Eventually, one of the more easterly splinter states, centered on Moscow, rose to prominence. Moscow agglomerated the lands of the Rus’ back together over long centuries and much war only, for it to all fall apart again in 1917 with the Bolsheviks (who Putin does seem to consider devils) and the USSR. The USSR, so the narrative goes, arbitrarily divided the lands of the Rus into constituent republics under Moscow’s overlordship. This then fell apart again in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. (Despite his loathing of the Bolsheviks, Putin sees this as another disaster.) This brings us to today, with Moscow once again trying to agglomerate the lands of the Rus’ under its overlordship.

Why is it important that Putin considers the divisions of the USSR’s constituent republics “arbitrary”? It’s because part of this narrative is that the Ukrainians are not their own people, but are confused and temporarily embarrassed Russians, even if they don’t know it. More precisely, Putin asserts that the Ukrainians are an artificial union of Russians, Poles, Lithuanians and Hungarians, but he mostly just cares about the Russian ones. Putin does not outright state, but seems to strongly imply, that the Ukrainian people should be shown that they truly are this collection and the sub-ethnicities that make up the Ukraine should return to their ethnic states.

If the Ukrainians are not their own people, but are just confused Russians, then bringing them back into the fold of Russia is a corrective action and not an unjust war. That’s why a compelling narrative is important. 

By this point, I’m sure you’re railing not just at historical inaccuracies but at the violation of liberal democratic sensibilities about how states are supposed to act. “How can he just say that they’re not their own people?” I have seen. “That’s ethnic cleansing!” I have also seen. “We just don’t do that anymore,” I have seen again and again. Well, they’re doing it, part of this narratival struggle is that the old, post-1945 order is being deliberately destroyed.

At the risk of comparing apples to oranges, imagine a similar situation in the United States with subnational identities during a hypothetically similar collapse to Russia in 1991. Are you a New Yorker, a Vermonter, a Texan… or are you an American? Am I an Indianan, by my birth, or an Arizonan, by my most long-standing abode, or am I an American first? Does being a New Yorker, a Vermonter, a Texan or an Arizonan mean that the supraethnic American state is not my legitimate sovereign? No, of course not. That’s the narratival argument that Putin is making; that Russia is the supra-Russian sovereign.

How will this narrative play out in Ukraine?

Russia is building a narrative, and that narrative is to justify assertions of political authority and sovereignty. Sovereignty always comes down to force. As Jean V. Dubois, a character from Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, astutely noted, political authority is force, force is violence, and violence is the supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived. If the narrative exists to serve and justify force, then, what political authority does it seem like Russia really wants to assert with its force? In other words, how does Putin plan to have this war end? 

I think that, ultimately, Ukraine will be completely partitioned. Russia will annex all the lands east of the Dnieper; it already de facto owns approximately half of those lands. As Ukrainian military strength degrades by the minute, it will no longer have the power to keep the Russians at bay behind an artificial boundary. Only the Dniepr, the most prominent natural boundary in Ukraine, will form a plausible barrier to the Russian advance.

After this, the west of the Ukraine will be divided up between Poland, Hungary and Romania. Sound implausible? Ostensibly, of course, the western partitions will not be annexations, and they will likely be done under a fig leaf of humanitarian aid. Still, they will happen all the same. Kiev might retain some authority in a de facto rump state, a sort of West Berlin-esque enclave, but this would be temporary.

I also see Belarusian accession to Russia itself as very likely. You can’t leave one of the lands of the Rus’ disunited after winning a major war over the very question of uniting the lands of the Rus’, now can you? Already, while Belarus is still nominally independent, it is a vassal of Moscow. Few nations, resurging after a collapse like Soviet Russia suffered in the 1990s, would leave such a large portion of their former territory behind. Watch that space.

Looking further ahead, a by no means inevitable, yet plausible outcome for Russia would be a restoration of the tsarist monarchy, under the Romanovs or otherwise. Putin would have all but restored the Russian Empire after a major victory in Ukraine. Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco did it; although he, not the exiled king, held all of the power, he restored the trappings of monarchy to borrow its legitimacy. Now, Franco is gone, yet Spain is still a kingdom. It’s not without precedent, and it is more doable in Russia than a Westerner might assume. Nostalgia for the monarchy remains surprisingly popular in the Russian Orthodox Church and among Russians generally. Russia already utilizes the imperial ensign, colors and aquila in multiple places that a republic would be embarrassed to do so. Watch this space, too.

So, what’s the conclusion? Russian feelings don’t care about your facts. Putin is stirring great Russian patriotic sentiment to correct perceived historical injustices that they’ve long felt slighted by. Enthusiasm for the war was never very unanimous in the US, and it continues to drop. Once US aid goes fully, there will not be much to stop Russia fully doing what it wills. Will the US get directly involved, starting a nuclear war, over who is sovereign on the Pontic Steppe? I think it very unlikely. Do svidanaya.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

• About the author: Andrew Morrow is a lawyer and a former administrative law judge. Born in Indiana, he later moved to Arizona. Andrew earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Arizona State University. He earned his law degree from Arizona Summit Law School, a school that no longer exists, which is fine by him. Andrew currently practices civil, civil rights and employment litigation in New Mexico and Utah. He likes to read, play video games that are really spreadsheets with graphics attached and chase his two-year-old son around.
• Source: This article was published by Fair Observer

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