[Marxism] Ricardo Ronquillo Bello: "A Lot to Cook"

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(Further discussion of the issue of pressure cookers
which Fidel Castro has spoken of at great length in
two recent speeches. Some more subtle implications
are suggested in this gently-formulated commentary.)
======================================================

JUVENTUD REBELDE
OPINION
Sunday March 13, 2005
A Lot to Cook
by Ricardo Ronquillo Bello

A CubaNews Translation from the Spanish original.
Revised, edited and web-posted by Walter Lippmann.
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs089.html

Life and the interpretation of life events tend to be very
subjective.

It all depends on your focus and perspective. This is
clearly seen in the following views of Fidel's public
speech on International Women's Day.

"What is the use of a pressure cooker?", asked a man to his
neighbor -- after this week's speech -- as the man was
wondering why he would want yet another pressure cooker.

"What do you think, brother, to cook faster, right?",
answered the neighbor.

"Don't you think you can look at it in a different way?"
the first man went on.

"Well, what is the point then?"

"This cooker is not so much for cooking than for showing we
are building up pressure and will be able to cook all the
raw things that made our life harder."

And in the same way as the pressure cooker and the other
benefits to make everyday life easier, this speech - as
well as the previous recent ones -- has diverse readings,
many of them deep and far-reaching and whose meanings we
have not completely grasped yet.

One of the most important -- from my point of view -- is
the indication that the time when the State lost ground to
private initiatives -- not always legitimate -- is coming
to an end.

In different sectors a few neo-liberal thinkers sprang up
and showed their teeth at certain debates. A few years ago,
in this column, I denounced one of their pronouncements.
Someone said that if the farmers in an area in the east of
the country lived in poor and shattered bohios, and their
income was absolutely insufficient, it was their
responsibility; there was nothing to do, just let them be.
To this official, poverty was not a social malformation,
but rather an individual problem.

The fact is that under the structural and ethical
imbalances resulting from the crisis we lived through,
there thrived distortions and even private operations
within some institutions and state enterprises, damaging
the prestige of the public entities and services of the
nation.

All this moved to a social debate -- with its ideological
toll -- on the convenience of allowing for private
initiatives in a number of sectors. Thus we let in the
symptoms of the neo-liberal virus which stigmatizes the
State and, of course, Socialism as a sociopolitical model.

This is why when in his speech Fidel dealt with what some
could consider the "small and insignificant" detail of the
rubber gaskets for the pressure cookers, the topic had
other implications, apart from its literal and direct
reading.

I believe he meant that a Socialist state, in possession of
the main resources of the nation, modern, sensitive and
solid, is capable of providing solutions to the most
complex problems; provided it has the mechanisms to detect
them and the political will to eliminate them.

Fidel renewed the potential of a model that, despite
constant harassment and enormous obstacles, has allowed the
country to uphold and expand its dream of freedom and
social justice. At the same time, he defined again the role
of the State we have founded: to administer the resources
of the people for the benefit of the people.

As you can see, in this cooker we will be buying -- or will
be getting free of charge -- even when some cannot yet see
it, many other things are cooking.

http://www.jrebelde.cu/2005/enero-marzo/mar-13/muchas.html


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