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JUAN ANTONIO BLANCO is a former adviser to the Cuban Foreign Ministry and the United Nations, and a well-known political analyst. He was interviewed in Cuba for Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly by JILL HICKSON and SHANE HOPKINSON Question: The current US strategy against Cuba is to tighten the blockade, make the Cuban people suffer in order to bring about collapse. There is also a faction in the US ruling class who propose lifting the blockade and flooding the Cuban economy with US dollars, which they argue would facilitate a rapid return to capitalism. How do you view the US strategy?
The policy which guides the US position towards Cuba today is not the Truman Doctrine of containing communism but the Monroe Doctrine, the alleged right of the US to exert its domination on Latin America. I do not see any possibility of normalisation of relations with the United States.
Normalising and re-establishing relations are not the same. To have a normal relationship with the US would mean that we would have the same relationship as with Canada, France, England. If we buy cows from Canada, there is no National Security Council out there trying to work out how the cows can bring subversion to Cuba.
I don't see the war ending; the only thing I see is a possibility of different kind of war against Cuba. We are going to move from overt aggression to a much more subtle policy of cooperation. This would mean a totally new scenario for us. We have not been trained in it; we would have to learn to survive in that new scenario, but certainly it would be a much more civilised way to engage each other.
Question: With the introduction of foreign capital and investment in Cuba, many people in the west are arguing that capitalism is returning to Cuba. How do you respond to this?
I would say that what we are trying to do is a transition from a bureaucratically organised state to a much more participatory society. I don't think we want to move into the myth of the market again. The myth of the market didn't work for us, and it hasn't worked for two thirds of the world's population.
The whole world is looking for a transition into something new; the powers that be believe that the world should stay where it is, but humanity is looking for something new.

There is a thirst for a new kind of society that will be ecologically sustainable and socially responsible. I think if there is a place in the world in which we can become that society, it's Cuba. With 2% of the population in the region we have 15% of the technicians and scientists, and we have an incredible infrastructure in new technologies — bio-tech, software, electronic and medical equipment. I don't think the future of Cuba's economy is going to be in tourism or mineral development; it's going to be in the area of new technologies.
People are getting to the point of understanding that the power of the dollar should be expelled from certain areas of society. Sure you can have entrepreneurs, you can have a private sector and you can have market relations, but the state should also play a certain role. There are things that the state has proven to do much better than the private sector, for example like providing a decent health system to the population.
The private sector has proven it can do some things much better than the state, but I don't think, for example, that the power of money should determine the outcome of elections. I don't think money should control and monopolise culture and information. I don't think it is decent to have transnational corporations monopolising 90% of all the information that is printed in the world.
Question: A survey carried out by the Union of Young Communists found that young people in Cuba today are less willing to join a communist organisation. Do young people see building socialism in Cuba as their future?
Cuban society asl society. We need to review the whole concept of socialism and to redefine it, reinvent it in a certain way. If we do it successfully, I'm sure most people will retain the ethical code of being. The day that most people in Cuba think about making their own buck instead of solidarity with those around them, then the revolution will be lost.
Question: Many people criticise Cuba because of the one party system. Should Cuba have a plural party system?
Pluralism is the possibility of equal access to the market of ideas and equal opportunities for competing with a program and proposals for the support of the population. In the 20th century there have been two different proposals with which to organise the people, to try to provide pluralism. One has been the one party system, the other has been the multiparty system. I don't see either of the two as having provided the promise of freedom, equality and fraternity.
Maybe it is time to consider redesigning a new system without political parties. It is not only the freedom of expression that is needed, but the power to change things. I've seen the multiparty system run things for the last 35 years in Latin America, while we have had a one party system in Cuba. We have changed a lot of things, and they haven't changed a thing there, so there's a balance.
Question: Irwin Silber in the US, who is on the editorial board of CrossRoads, argues that there has been no objective basis for socialist revolution in this century. In your article "Reflections for the third millennium" in Links magazine, you argue that humanity's capacity to redesign society will determine its survival. How do you see the struggle for change in the next period?
First of all we have to move away from the deterministic approach to history. I think that we are going to have the kind of history that we will be willing and capable of constructing for ourselves. There might be an end of history, but not exactly the one that has been predicted by some people. The end of history might be the end of the ecosystem and the end of civilisation.
Irwin Silber might be right that capitalism at this point is as strong as ever, which means that the human race is as weak as ever, that the ecosystem is as weak as ever. So the success of capitalism might prove to be its worst nightmare, because the entrepreneurs will not move to a different planet if the ozone layer breaks down, if the salination of the water and soil keeps destroying the arable land, if the forests come down.
Either we agree to a new redesigning of society, or the whole thing is going to end. There are now a number of new players in the world. These are the drug traffickers, the random violence, the anarchy. They keep re-emerging from the same capitalist structure. So the problem of capitalism is the problem of survival.
Question: What future do you see for socialism in Cuba?
I don't see any future for the brand of socialism which we imported from the Soviet Union, but I do see a future for a new kind of socialism that eventually we might design, that we are looking for.
We need to build up societies that are ecologically sustainable, that are human centred, that are socially responsible — societies which consider human beings not as consumers but as individuals who deserve to have their basic human needs covered. We are still trying to make it viable in Cuba in the middle of a war.