The components of the proprietary State prioritize their personal ambitions and shares of power over national interests.
HAVANA.-In Little chronicles of great days (1990), the Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz describes two ways in which the State can assume its role within economic activity. According to Paz, when the state It is limited in size and functions, acts as a neutral arbiter between economic actors, respects private property and lets the market function. That is the just State.
On the other hand, when the State grows excessively, replaces the market with planning, regulates prices and blocks private property, it becomes a proprietary State.
Cuba fully fits into this last category. In a totalitarian society led by a clique clinging to power, the proprietary State dominates not only the political sphere, but also all economic spheres: production, services, distribution of the — already reduced — national wealth and management of foreign investment.
Paradoxically, this state omnipresence does not energize the processes: it slows them down and entangles them in endless bureaucracy. The recent trajectory of foreign investment in Cuba confirms this reality, despite the official discourse that insists that these capitals are essential to reactivate the economy.
Although public information on the progress of foreign investment is scarce, everything indicates that its slow and unstable pace worries the regime itself. Proof of this were the words of Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz before the National Assembly, last July, when he stated: “Measures and actions have been approved and are in the process of being implemented to boost foreign investment, such as simplifying, making more flexible and streamlining the evaluation and approval processes of projects and businesses”.
Today Marrero tours Saudi Arabia and Qatar with the aspiration of attracting investors from those oil nations. However, it is likely that, as has already happened with businessmen from multiple countries, any interest will be stopped by the conduct of the owning State.
In countries where the just State prevails, the rulers do not feel like owners of the country: they are conceived as public servants, with limited mandates and the obligation to put the national interest before their private aspirations. That is why foreign investment is adopted without fear.
In Cuba the opposite happens. The lack of simplification, dynamism and flexibility – to which Marrero alluded – is not coincidental: it responds to the interests, privileges and power quotas of those who make up the proprietary State, who fear losing control in the face of truly free and competitive foreign investment. And, clearly, they are determined not to give in.
For this reason, we Cubans who long for democracy and the rule of law demand the urgent establishment of a just State in our homeland.
