Untitled - Convivencia

which have received a correct name.According to the minister what do we have tobe afraid of then? Do we have to be afraid offree enterprise?Cuba needs spaces to create, work and solvethe problems and there is no need ofguidelines dictated from above which lookfor the debate and the support below. Theguidelines have to be also explained andexorcized by the very minister of Economicsto the members of Parliament. Parliament isa name that means: space to talk, tonegotiate, to condense, to argue; it’s a placeto look for an improvement or to rejectthings, not to “explain” things from theplatform to the ones sitting below. In anormal parliament the deputies are the oneswho should explain things to the minister,the ones who demand or amend things; theyeven disapprove them if necessary.FREEDOM AND CITIZEN RESPONSIBILITYIt is good and urgent to rebuild what is leftof the Cuban economy. But the old clothescannot be mended using old cloth becausethe new cloth will widen the rip. The old winecannot be poured into an old wineskinbecause the new wine breaks the old vesseland the wine scatters. The new wine has tobe poured into new vessels so the wine andthe vessels can be preserved” (Mt. 9, 16-17).The “wheat is not to be separated from theweed in advance” (Mt. 13, 30)Half a century has help to show theinefficiency of a model that has denied andrectified itself; it has been corrected andbrought up to date. The problem is not theimplementation of the model. It’s about theessence of the model, its constitutiveelements: the authoritarian and strong-willedcentralization, the state ownership andprocedures; the alienated planning ofresources and needs; the blockade to theprivate initiative and to the true independentcooperatives; the moral and administrativecorruption and the prevalence of the politicaldecisions above the moral, economic andsocial norms. All these foundations of themodel have been unmistakably ratified in thefirst Economic and Social Guidelines whichseem to be and are presented as themaximum of the proposed reforms, howeverfeared.As we can see the situation evidently cannot besolved through much reduced lists ofindependent work. They are just lists,insignificant gifts of permissions from the onlyowner and employer. These permissions areonly referred to medieval trades that don’tharm even slightly the constitutive elements ofthe model which doesn’t work.ECONOMY AND ANTHROPOLOGYThe economy is fixed with economy. Andeconomics is a social science, so it is human. Ifeconomics is a human and social science it candisregard, blockade or manipulate theconstitutive elements of the human being.The human person is the subject and the end ofeconomics and the whole social cohabitation.The human person can be the subject ofeconomics only if he is able to manage his lifeand develop his social relations; if he enjoys hisfull capacities, liberties and rights. Thereforeevery attempt to update any economic, politicalor social model will inevitably fail if itdisregards, restrains or blockades thecapacities, liberties and rights of the potentialparticipants in these models.There is no economic development without civiland political liberties. There are no authenticcivil and political liberties without economicliberties and real opportunities.If there is economics without freedom there ishuman and material misery. Our experience of52 years and the failure of all of the totalitarianand vertical systems show this.On the other hand, every model with economicand political liberties without ethic and civicresponsibility, without legal regulations leads tochaos and crisis and these ones produceinjustice, inequality and global destabilization;the trajectory of all of the capitalist crisesreminds us about this periodically.Amartya Sen received the Nobel Prize inEconomic Science in 1998. In theAnnouncement of the Prize it was said: “hecombines the economic tools with thephilosophical tools and he has restored theEdiciones ConvivenciaPinar del Río. 201277