When will Raúl ever learn how it's done?

Carlos Alberto Montaner

Fidel reached the age of 83 last week. His brother Raúl is only 78. He is the family's youngest, a cheerful, roguish fellow. He even sings in Chinese.

Fidel commemorated his birthday with a brief article in which he reminded everyone that the job of a revolutionary is to defend just causes.

Raúl celebrated his birthday some months ago by explaining that there is no food, gasoline or materials to repair storm-wrecked houses. Raúl said the country is in the midst of an extremely serious crisis. Cubans, he says, don't work enough. They don't produce. They don't look after their environment. They waste the meager resources they have.

Raúl intends to discipline them with his barracks-hard fist. More dissidents to jail. More corrupt or lazy officials home. More army officers to the boards of public companies.

To Fidel, to govern is to defend just causes. The Colombian narcoguerrillas, for example, or the heroic African wars, those 15 years of battle during which thousands of Cubans died in Angola and Ethiopia trying to impose 20th-century socialism, until the Berlin Wall came down on their heads.

Up against charisma

To Raúl, in turn, to govern is to make sure that Cubans can drink a glass of milk, even if he has to execute half the country at dawn and post a police sentry every 50 meters.

The difference between the two men was explained one century ago by the German sociologist Max Weber. Fidel embodies the quintessence of charismatic power. He is a hero, a passionate prophet, an exceptional person whose unlimited authority lies in his superhuman character. Fidel must be feared and obeyed, even when he leads us to sacrifice.

That's what Messianism is all about: the worship of someone chosen by the gods to whip us all the way to paradise. Apostles don't have to account for their actions because they are not subject to ordinary laws or the shackles of pedestrian common sense.

Raúl's power is rational. He dreams about institutionalizing the government and revitalizing the demoralized Communist Party so he can convey authority in an orderly, disciplined manner. His objective in the five years of useful life he still has (trained by the Soviets, Raúl plans everything in five-year terms) is, first, to hold on to power and, second, to secure that damned, elusive glass of milk that Cubans somehow can't squeeze out of the stingy socialist cows.

He has already said that he wasn't elected to bury the system but to save it. But therein lies a contradiction discovered by Gorbachev in the 1980s: communism is not reformable. There's no way to save it and make it efficient.

No reform possible

There are contradictory elements in Raúl's behavior. He has known for many years that collectivism doesn't work. When Gorbachev published his book Perestroika, Raúl asked his closest personal aide in the armed forces, Jesús Renzoli, an expert in Russian culture and the ins and outs of power, to translate it and distribute it to the army's top brass. Renzoli did so, but Fidel quickly ordered the translation recalled. Perestroika (reform) and glasnost (openness to criticism) were CIA inventions. Raúl obeyed without a whimper, as he always has. You don't argue with charismatic power.

Eventually, Raúl will understand not only that socialism cannot be reformed but also that it is impossible to inherit charismatic power and turn it into rational power. In Cuba, there are no longer any Marxist-Leninists who will swallow the ideological tale.

That is why Raúl can't even organize the Communist Party Congress. He's had to postpone it sine die. Half a century of failure is a lesson much too intense and prolonged to be ignored. Raúl and his entourage know that the young generations of Cubans perceive the ruling circle as a distant, strange and enemy tribe from which one should flee atop anything that will float. ``Things'' are simply beyond repair.

It is true that Fidel didn't designate him as an heir to bury the system but to maintain it, but that was a mission impossible to begin with. Charismatic power can be exerted against reality. Fidel can walk on water. Raúl sinks. Rational power is condemned to obey reality. Raúl should read Max Weber. One is never too old to learn from painful truths.

August 18, 2009

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