Cuba is Using Cooperatives to Decentralize its Economy
With the recent announcement that the US will normalize relations with Cuba, change is in the air for the island country. Just a few years before this, Cuba began shifting its economy from state-controlled enterprises to citizen-controlled cooperatives.
Worker cooperatives are nothing new in Cuba. Agricultural coops, which are responsible for 70 percent of the country’s farmed land, are a key part of the state’s subsidized food system. Until recently, however, worker coops were not found in other sectors of the economy. But in 2011, the Cuban Sixth Communist Party Congress approved a set of economic reform goals called the “Guidelines on Economic and Social Policy for the Party and the Revolution.” It contained 313 measures including the following actions:
- Dramatically increase nonstate sector employment of the labor force
- Encourage large-scale private sector business opportunities
- Allow for the creation of nonagricultural worker cooperatives for the first time
- Provide for the use of idle lands in usufruct
- Decentralize the operation of state enterprises
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