Statist utopianism and the Cuban socialist transition

Abstract

This thesis argues that the nature of ‘idealism’ or ‘utopianism’ in Cuba’s post-1959 socialist transition and the peculiarity of Cuban state socialism have been inadequately conceptualised in the literature. It hypothesises that the pervasive state-centrism of Cuba’s prevailing socialist model is a hybrid of ‘statist utopianism’ and the Stalinist imprint of a post-1970, relative Sovietisation of the Cuban Revolution. Statist utopianism is conceptualised in a Marxist theoretical framework as a distinctive approach to the socialist transition: imposing a communist vision on society rather than striving for its organic realisation. Unlike 16th–19th century Utopian socialism, statist utopianism rests on proletarian state power and has a state-centric dynamic. Statist utopianism is conceptualised as having intrinsic subjective as well as political-economic dimensions. The thesis distinguishes between, and contrasts, ‘organic transcendence’ and statist utopian approaches to the socialist transition. The concept of statist utopianism is grounded historically in the late 1960s Cuban and early Soviet experiences of socialist transition. Cuba’s 1968–70 Revolutionary Offensive, which nationalised the remnant urban private sector, is characterised as a statist utopian ‘great leap forward’. The significance of certain continuities and convergences between Cuba’s late 1960s ‘idealist’ phase and subsequent partial and uneven Sovietisation have been understated or overlooked. The thesis identifies methodological weaknesses in the ‘historical pendulum’ approach to the periodisation of the Cuban Revolution. It concludes that certain conceptual identities and institutional peculiarities of the prevailing (and now receding) Cuban socialist model comprise a mutually reinforcing state-centric nexus that cannot be explained on the basis of Sovietisation alone, and which therefore seems to be a peculiar hybrid of statist utopianism and the Stalinist imprint of Sovietisation. The concept of statist utopianism developed in this thesis casts the Cuban socialist transition and the Cuban Communist Party’s contemporary renovation project in a distinct light.