Happy Talk from Cuba's General-President

Happy Talk from Cuba's General-President / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar
Posted on January 2, 2016

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 2 January 2015 – In
the Cuban National Assembly of People's Power final meeting of the year,
the Minister of the Economy and the general-president himself coined a
new expression. Both alluded to "reserves of efficiency" available to
the Cuban economy to face the challenges of the future.

The optimistic tone of the phrase gives the impression that, starting
now, the government can count on a secret weapon to guarantee the
long-promised prosperous and sustainable socialism.

Whatever the accepted meaning of the term "reserve" might be, in its
sense of "value that is saved for special occasions" it must always
imply the willingness to conserve – at least what is included under this
heading – the fruits of an unexpected surplus. We hear about a nation's
"gold reserves," or its "water reserves" for times of drought, "fuel
reserves" for a long trip, as well as "troop reserves" which are not
mobilized until they are needed, along with "food reserves," jealously
stored for an emergency situation.

Efficiency, an abstract noun with practical implications, cannot be
saved or set aside for another time. That which was not used,
irretrievably disappears when an action concludes with unalterable
results. How can a surgeon explain to the family of a patient who just
died on the operating table that some quantity of efficiency reserves
remain unused in the failed operation?

In cutting sugar cane, one of the indicators of efficiency is the height
of the pieces of cane remaining in the ground. If they are very long, it
is unthinkable to make another pass to recover the wasted cane; if they
are cut too close to the ground the cane will not germinate again and a
great deal of useless organic material will inevitably – and without
recourse – contaminate the mass fed through the mill. In that case, the
efficiency will be vaporized and no one will be able to argue that
having left the stalk too long or too short represents reserves of
efficiency to achieve a better crop for the next harvest.

Efficiency is a value that must be constantly renewed under new
circumstances and attached to the unstoppable development of productive
forces, as a Marxist faithful to the catechism would say. Unlike
stagnant water in a reservoir, resources that have served to make work
efficient today will not be equally useful for what we are going to
undertake tomorrow.

Whomever tries to exhibit, with cheerful optimism, their supposed
reserves of efficiency, can do so only to the extent they have been
inefficient. It is a trick of linguistics. There are no reserves: there
were only deficits."

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