New Cuba: Beachhead for Economic Democracy Beyond Capitalism
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13918-the-new-cuba-a-beachhead-for-economic-democracy-we-should-support
The year 2012 may have been the United Nation's International Year of Cooperatives, but 2013 may turn out to be the more historic year for worker-ownership if the Cubans have anything to say about it.
To listen to the mainstream American media, however, you'd never know it. As a video supplement to a recent New York Times article makes clear, the corporate press has already made up its mind on how the story of Cuba's economic liberalization is bound to end:
"In a state defined by all-consuming communism for the past 50 years, capitalist change comes in fits and starts, and only at the pace that the government is willing to allow."[Emphasis added]
In other words, Cuba's post-communist story ends just like China's - in capitalism, because according to orthodox dogma, there's nowhere else to go. Trapped by the limited possibilities of this dichotomist capitalism-or-communism mentality, mainstream commentators lack the perspective needed to appreciate (much less inform others) that a transition away from a state-dominated command economy might conceivably lead to a type of market that is very distinct from our elite-shareholder-dominated and profit-fixated capitalist model.