Workers' Paradise regained?

Not exactly Miltonian poetry, but we recognize the theology from Dr. Steve Ludlam in The Morning Star;

Much of the recent media commentary on Cuba’s economic reforms highlights the growing private sector, implying a transition to capitalism.

This ignores Cuba’s dominant state sector, its planning system and the role of private enterprise in socialist transition. For socialists, the defining innovation of capitalism is not private property but systematic exploitation of “free” wage labour.

The reforms give management more autonomy and diversify the world of work. So what about the workers and their unions? What is in the 2014 Labour Code and other recent legislation, and what about salaries and job security?

The New Labour Code, replacing the 1985 original, emerged from a mass consultation.

Nearly 70,000 workplace meetings discussed the draft version and the union federation, Ministry of Labour and National Assembly together analysed submissions and agreed changes before the National Assembly debate.

On and on and on, he drones, like a schoolboy reciting his catechism. Eventually though, he ends up admitting;

Cuba’s “special period” of recovery and dual currency since the 1990s crisis undermined salaries and income distribution.

r > g in el paraíso, Prof?

A central objective of the reforms is to restore adequate salaries, and the “socialist principle of distribution” linking incomes to output.

Hey! Wait a minute...aren't salaries supposed to be according to need?

Maybe Herbert Stein was right, if something is unsustainable....But, Amen, amen, and amen;

The challenges would be immeasurably easier to confront without the US blockade.