Oswaldo PayĆ” and Freedom in Cuba



Cuba needs a peaceful transition. Yes, the Revolution was bloody and there is a problem with political prisoners in Cuba. But Batista was a cruel dictator. How else could you have got rid of him? Look at what the US did to get rid of Saddam Hussein! So, who’s talking? But we have to leave all this brutality behind now and reorganize the international community in a peaceful way. That is why we support Oswaldo Payá. His Christian Movement for Liberation wants a transition by means of dialogue and national reconciliation.

Open and honest dialogue is the best way, actually the only way. It is also the spiritual way! It is also the only way we can be creative and choose the best solutions on the best available evidence. So it is also the scientific way!

Universal health care and education

We disagree with the Cuban leaders for holding on to power and their unwillingness to move to democracy. But it cannot be denied that the present Cuban leaders gave the people something that even the US does not have: universal health care. And of a high quality! Especially when taking into account that this system had to be built despite the US blockade and virtually from scratch with very few resources. A truly remarkable achievement!

And the Cuban leaders also gave the people an excellent educational system. Cuba’s medical schools have trained so many doctors that one of Cuba’s most notable exports is: Cuban doctors! And they go by the thousands to help other Caribbean and Latin-American countries, providing health care to the poor. This is an admirable humanitarian effort by Cuba that deserves our respect. So whatever we may think of the Cuban leadership, it is dead certain they did something good for the people. Something that the US doesn’t even do for its own people!

More appetite for blood?

So let’s forget about witches like Ann Coulter who wants to oust the Cuban leaders by violent means. She somehow can never be satisfied with enough blood. Maybe we shouldn’t even mention her, but she has turned herself into what nobody should ever want to be. She evinces the kind of mentality the Cuban leaders had to deal with. No wonder they opposed the US.

So, we do not agree with Fidel and Raul Castro. Cuba should be free. But the only just way to achieve that, is the peaceful way. Dialogue and new creative ideas, just as Payá is advocating. Otherwise, you would only end up with new oppressive leaders. Then what is won? If the Cuban people have to choose between being poor and living under a capitalist dictatorship or being poor and living under a communist dictatorship, the latter may well be the best choice. But we are not suggesting this choice. We leave that to Ann Coulter and her fascist Neocon friends.

Third way

What we need is real democracy in Cuba. Free and equal people, human rights and free elections. But this does not necessarily mean the Cubans have to choose the capitalist model as practiced in the USA. There is a third way. It can be found in the writings of American lawyer/economist Louis Kelso. We suggest Oswaldo Payá, as well as the Cuban leaders, to study the works of Louis Kelso. Its basis is political democracy, but it adds a crucial factor to it: economic democracy.

Louis Kelso

In fact without freedom (including freedom of enterprise) and democracy, Kelso’s ‘binary economic system’ cannot work. But the economic factor Kelso proposes to add tallies exactly with the Declaration of Independence, where it says that ‘all men are created equal’. Surely that means ‘economic equality’ as well! Kelso has shown how economic equality can be achieved, without any violations of human rights and whilst maintaining full political freedom and democracy as we know it in the US today. Kelso truly hit on the real ‘third way’.

And this third way also includes the idealism of the Cuban Revolution. It is not based on the idea that the means of production should be in the hands of the State. That’s the socialist paradigm, which does not work. ‘Binary economics’ provides the system how the people themselves (individually) become the owners of the means of production. The people are capitalized, not only a small elite (as is the case now in capitalism), but a large part of the population (say 60% or even more). They all become individual owners. And the way to achieve this is not by stealing other people’s property (as the Socialists did and this is where they were dead wrong), but by using State powers to enable the people to buy shares in companies (‘capital workers’ as Kelso calls shares and capital stock). The funds are there. It can be done. It is not fiction. All perfectly legal, and with perfect respect for private property. In fact, it can only ever work if private property is respected! It is based on private property.

This is not fiction. It’s actuality.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, in the US there are already more than 10.000 companies which successfully apply this system, albeit it partially. Partially, because the system is not adopted yet as national policy. As soon as ‘binary economics’ is applied as national economic policy by the State, many more possibilities open up for capitalization of individual citizens. Don’t worry. You don’t have to give up your hard earned savings. The funds are there. The property is already there, even more so in Cuba!

‘Binary economics’ would also result in massive and accelerated economic growth. How and why this can be, cannot be explained in this short article. We will dedicate another article to it. Anyone interested in this can find the basics at www.cesj.org, the website of the Center for Social and Economic Justice. This is a must-study for any thinking person with a heart. It is in fact the new paradigm we have all been waiting for. But you have to make an effort and study at least the book ‘Democracy and Economic Power’ by Louis and Patricia Kelso to understand all of it. We recommend most strongly to our readers to buy and study this book. It is published by the University Press of America. Or study any other book available from: www.cesj.org.

Today’s video is a 1983 interview with Louis Kelso and a labor analyst. It really does work!