Sugarcane Stalinism: State-Capitalism and Development in Cuba

Abstract

Though their conclusions are radically different, defenders of both “socialist” and “neither socialist, nor capitalist” theories about Cuba and other statified societies nevertheless coincide in the view that the nationalization of private enterprises constitutes a partial, or perhaps even wholesale, negation of capitalism and its laws of motion. Throughout this essay, I will attempt a critical analysis of the aforementioned theories employing an approach that is methodologically Marxist and forthright in its commitment to workers’ self-emancipation. I will argue, moreover, that “socialist” Cuba is really a society based on wage labor and capital accumulation. The defining characteristics of this society, to which we will assign the designation ‘state-capitalism’, are the hyper-concentration of capital and collective exercise of de facto control over the means of production by a state bourgeoisie.