CUBA ECONOMIC MODEL OF DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNISM

By

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would take this opportunity to thank my research supervisor, family and friends for their support and guidance without which this research would not have been possible.

DECLARATION

I [type your full first names and surname here], hereby declare that this research is my own un aided work and it has not been earlier submitted for any educational purpose. The ideas of this dissertation are mine and not of the university.

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ABSTRACT

In “The transferability of Cuba's Revolutionary Development Model,” Rifler made reference to the emerging Cuban socioeconomic model of the 1970s as one that was in the process of evolution and whose ultimate characteristics had not yet jelled. Nonetheless, some of its traits were quite distinctive and clearly defined. The most significant one was its “de-marketizatlon,” a term meant by the author to denote the replacement of the market system by central planning. The degree of hierarchical control in the new Cuban “Economic Management System” was very high indeed and was essentially in conflict with attempts at granting more autonomy to individual firms. In reality, decentralization in that context would be applicable only to the decentralization In that context would be applicable only to the delegation of supervisory tasks and not the substance of economic decisions them. These would remain unaffected by the administrative changes in process. This model, according to Ritter, superseded the earlier “basic dynamic model,” which was primarily y redistributive in nature and concerned itself with growth only at a subsequent stage. Even then, the Impact of the model on the latter variable was to result indirectly from the Improvement In human resources that it was designed to attain.

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTII

DECLARATIONIII

ABSTRACTIV

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Background1

Research objectives1

Reliability and Validity1

Generalizability2

Ethical Considerations3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW5

Chinese Experience with Communism: Mao Zedong's Marxist-Leninist Orthodoxy5

Communist Ideology in 21st-century Politics8

Communism10

The Marx-Engels Theory of Communism10

Historic materialism14

Communist Ideology in Cuba and the Soviet Union: Leninism and Stalinism16

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs):29

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY31

Case study31

Data Analysis31

CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION33

Cuban economic model33

The Cuban economic achievements36

Agrarian Reform36

Tourism38

Mass education: an endless campaign39

Economic indicators40

GDP40

Population40

Life expectancy40

Mortality rate40

Human development ranking41

Literacy rate41

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION42

REFERENCES44

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Background

Communist ideology, in the form of its various “brands” (Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism), has had a powerful impact on shaping political realities throughout the 20th century. In fact, the most consequential political events of the past century can neither be explained nor understood without a clear reference to communist ideas and the most significant attempts at their implementation. It is important to understand that the political slate was not just wiped clean with the turn of the millennium. The need for furthering scientific analysis of the communist ideology and the variety of its implementations certainly warrants including this chapter in the 21st Century Political Science handbook.

Research objectives

The research aims to answer the following

What is the prospect for Cuba model of development in the new millennium?

How communism affected Cuban economy?

Reliability and Validity

The term bias is a historically unfriendly pejorative frequently directed at action research. As much as possible, the absence of bias constitutes conditions in which reliability ...