VenEconomy: Let’s hope he follows Raúl’s example!

Published on 8/3/2010.

In the 1920s, when the Russian economy went into a recession, Lenin implemented the New Economic Program (NEP), which allowed the people who farmed the land to enjoy the profits they obtained, while small and medium companies were freed from the controls of the communist State.
The economy recovered following the implementation of these measures. Then, following the death of Lenin, Russia took another backward step with the arrival of Joseph Stalin’s fierce, bloody communism, which plunged the Soviet Union into poverty and claimed the lives of millions of people.
In the 1990s, history repeated itself in Cuba. When he found himself without the economic support of the USSR, Fidel implemented a kind of NEP. He opened up the economy a bit, allowing private individuals to engage in agriculture and provide certain services, such as the “paradores” (small restaurants with seating for 12), and the economy posted its highest level of growth in decades.
Unfortunately, with the arrival of Chávez in the presidency, the Venezuelan Government stepped in and started to provide Cuba with patronage in the USSR’s stead, with the result that Fidel once again closed the economy to private initiative and returned to the backwardness of a communist regime.
Now, more than 10 years later, the new commander of the Cuban revolution, Raúl Castro, is leaving the doors of the economy ajar to allow people who farm the land to enjoy the fruits of their labor and private individuals to provide certain services. Everything seems to indicate that, in Raúl’s Cuba, there is the possibility of a more open economy.
This shoring up of the economy by setting it on the path to greater freedom would seem to be due to Raúl Castro’s certainty that the Venezuelan bonanza and, therefore, the unconditional economic support Chávez has been giving the Castro regime are coming to an end.
It is worth noting that this opening up of Cuba’s market is happening just when Chávez is taking steps to put communism firmly in place in Venezuela. Last week, the President signed a string of new socialist laws, among them the Partial Amendment to the Lands and Agricultural Development Act, which eliminates the right to own agricultural land, the Insurance Business Act, which burdens this sector with functions that are the responsibility of the State, and the Supreme Tribunal of Justice Act, which, among other things, grants the Constitutional Chamber full powers to reverse decisions handed down by any of the TSJ’s five chambers, making it a kind of Supreme Court within the Supreme Tribunal. This means that there will be no firm sentence worth the paper it is written on, so finally eliminating any vestiges of the rule of law.
One would hope that, influenced by his friend Raúl, Chávez will also consider opening up the economy, even if it’s just a little bit.